It seems impossible for petrol heads coal and gas heads, and especially nuke-heads to get their heads around this – BUT – renewable energy and energy efficiency ARE HAPPENING – world -wide, in both big ways, and small ways.
It must be tough, when you’re addicted to such a complex , complicated, and expensive technology as nuclear power – as well as addicted to the money you get from being involved in this business – it must be tough to consider the reality that the fuels for solar and wind energy are FREE, and so is the energy conservation from good design in energy efficiency.
As Dr Helen Caldicott pointed out, long ago, if they could put a blanket around the sun and sell holes, they would.
The out-dated energy systems of the past – nuclear,coal, gas, are looking more
and more like unwieldy and costly dinosaurs, as the world wakes up to the diversity and flexibility of 21st Century clean energy systems.
The nuclear lobby now tries its last ditch promotional pipe-dream – Small Nuclear Reactors – that in fact would rely on the continuation of the old big ones.
I watched the “Chernobyl” miniseries, and I was struck by the accuracy. The scene on the roof of the reactor as depicted in the fictional episode, was accurate in so much detail, compared to the 1986 real film.
There were many who risked their lives after the Chernobyl disaster — but none more so than a man desperate to show the world what happened,LJ Charleston, 21 July 19 When Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko took his camera onto the roof of Chernobyl’s reactor four in the aftermath of the fatal explosion, he had no idea he was right in the middle of what was — in April 1986 — the most dangerous place on earth.
He also had no idea that his chilling documentary Chernobyl: Chronicle of Difficult Weeks, about the clean-up of the radioactive material at Chernobyl, would be his very last.
He died of acute radiation sickness a year later.
The award-winning film director, who was working for Ukrainian TV at the time, was said to have been quite unaware of the dangers he was putting himself in when he agreed to film from the roof next to reactor four.
He’d been hired to film in the exclusion zone. But his gravest error was agreeing — along with two assistants — to climb up to the most lethal area of all, just days after one of the worst man-made disasters of all time.
Even 33 years after the explosion, Shevchenko’s film is still an eerie reminder of the sacrifices made by those who risked their lives in the clean-up efforts at Chernobyl.
Today, as the world focuses once again on those events due to HBO’s series Chernobyl, it’s worthwhile putting the spotlight on the courageous Shevchenko.
He gave his life so that we could see with our own eyes what went on during the clean-up. It was, at times, incredibly basic and put so many lives at risk.
And, by doing so, Shevchenko was unknowingly filming his own death……
Shevchenko, who was the first and only film maker allowed on location in the exclusion zone of Chernobyl, is best known for Chernobyl — Chronicle of Difficult Weeks. You can watch the full cut of his film here.
The film is entirely in Russian, although it’s believed people are currently working on English subtitles. It includes interviews with beleaguered scientist Valery Legasov, now famous due to the HBO series in which he’s played by Jared Harris.
Legasov committed suicide two years after the disaster, on the anniversary, due to the horror of his experiences and the lies he had to tell the International Atomic Agency in Vienna to cover up Soviet mishandling of the event.
Shevchenko’s footage of Chernobyl has not been widely seen and the fact he lost his life a year after the explosion has been completely obscured, as his name isn’t listed on official records of deaths. At the time, his two assistants were receiving hospital treatment, but there is no word of what became of them.
Sydney archaeologist Mr Robert Maxwell, the only archaeologist who has worked in Chernobyl across two field excursions, told news.com.au Shevchenko was well-respected and trusted to film the clean-up efforts, as it was such a highly sensitive time for the Soviets.
“He was granted permission to film the clean-up, including the incredibly dangerous work of the ‘biobots’,” Mr Maxwell said, referring to the name given to the workers sent in to clean up……..
THE ‘BIOBOT FOOTAGE’
One of the most memorable and unbelievable scenes in the TV series Chernobylfeatures liquidation workers on the roof, using shovels to throw highly radioactive material back into the core.
If it wasn’t for Shevchenko’s 1986 footage, we would not know that this happened. The men could only work in frantic 90 second shifts; any longer and their exposure to the radiation would be fatal.
What makes the footage so compelling is that we can clearly see some men picking up the radioactive graphite with gloved hands. We also see Shevchenko filming from the roof top, wearing only a flimsy mask and cap for protection. Then we can see how badly damaged the footage is as the radiation makes an impact on the film itself.
It’s harrowing to see how much work the men are doing with their hands.
This is Shevchenko’s footage focusing on the rooftop clean-up.
Chernobyl. Cleaning the roofs. Soldiers (reservists). 1986.
The Trump administration and the media have, to date, successfully made the Iranian government the focus of scrutiny that the public would be well-served to turn on them as well
The U.S. news media’s coverage of the Iran nuclear issue has been woefully off-kilter for many years. Now, however, those same outlets are contributing to the serious crisis building between Washington and Tehran.
Iran has responded to Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal by resuming the stockpiling of low enriched uranium, removing the cap on the level of uranium enrichment and resuming work at the Arak nuclear reactor, while making it very clear that those steps would be immediately reversed if the United States agreed to full compliance.
The major fact about Iranian nuclear policy before the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was negotiated should shape public understanding of the current conflict: For more than three years, from 2012 to 2015, Iran could have enriched enough uranium at 20% enrichment level for one or more nuclear weapons, but it chose not to do so. Instead, it used the U.S.’s knowledge of that capability as leverage against the U.S. in negotiating what eventually became the JCPOA.
The real nuclear crisis facing the United States is not that of an Iranian regime threatening a nuclear conflict. Rather, it’s a U.S. government policy that rejects the 2015 compromise and seeks to provoke Iran even further.
Yet that’s not the way The New York Times and other news media have covered the story. From the start of the current phase of the conflict, corporate media coverage has overwhelmingly emphasized a presumed new Iranian threat to “break out” in order to obtain the enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. ………
The media narrative about Iran’s resuming uranium enrichment thus suggests that what Americans should be worried about primarily is not the provocative character of the Trump administration’s Iran policy but the threat that Iran will move toward a “breakout” strategy vis-à-vis its nuclear weapons capability.
Iran’s enrichment diplomacy
The real history of Iran’s uranium enrichment strategy shows, however, that that nation was always aimed at rolling back U.S. financial sanctions and compelling the United States to acknowledge legitimate Iranian interests in the region rather than to fuel a race for a nuclear bomb……….
This all amounted to a clear signal to the Obama administration that Iran was ready to negotiate strict limits on its enrichment if the United States abandoned its zero-enrichment demand. “They are creating tremendous capacity,” a senior U.S. official told The New York Times, “but they are not using it.” The official acknowledged, moreover, that Iran’s enrichment diplomacy gave it “leverage” on U.S. policy.
The widely accepted notion that Iran was prevented only by U.S. pressure from making a breakout bid for a nuclear weapon and that Iran is now once again threatening to do so is central to the present toxic political atmosphere surrounding the Iran nuclear issue.
In fact, by mid-2012 Iran already had what was called a “breakout” capability but chose to use instead to induce the United States to negotiate seriously with Iran.
As the IAEA documented in its August 2012 report, Iran already had produced 189 kg of 20% enriched uranium, which was close to the minimum estimate of what experts believe it would take to produce the 25 kg of 90% enriched uranium needed for a single nuclear weapon. And had Iran actually used the additional 1,440 centrifuges available, Iran could have tripled its stockpile of 20% enriched uranium within a matter of months.
A media crisis on the Iran nuclear issue
From mid-2012 until the JCOPOA was completed in mid-2015, Iran chose to pursue an agreement with the United States instead of exploiting its capabilities for a breakout. But that pivotal episode in Iran’s past enrichment diplomacy has been ignored by the corporate media. Now the media are once again portraying Iran primarily as the aggressor in the breakout narrative despite the clearly expressed Iranian readiness to reverse the process.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is already preparing for a new confrontation with Iran over its resumption of enrichment even as it planned to add still more onerous sanctions. Hidden near the bottom of its story, The New York Times revealed on July 1 that the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies were “beginning to review what steps to take if the president determined that Iran was getting too close to producing a bomb.”
The new nuclear crisis with Iran is being stoked by the corporate media’s collective failure to convey the reality of the situation to the public. Thus, the Trump administration and the media have, to date, successfully made the Iranian government the focus of scrutiny that the public would be well-served to turn on them as well. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/18/how-corporate-media-are-fueling-new-iran-nuclear-crisis
Nuclear industry has been pushing for less oversight, and it’s working. L A Times ELLEN KNICKMEYER, ASSOCIATED PRESS , JULY 17, 2019
Fewer mock commando raids to test nuclear power plants’ defenses against terrorist attacks. Fewer, smaller government inspections for plant safety issues. Less notice to the public and to state governors when problems arise.
They’re part of the money-saving rollbacks sought by the country’s nuclear industry under President Trump and already approved or pending approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, largely with little input from the general public.
The nuclear power industry says the safety culture in the U.S. nuclear industry — 40 years after a partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania — is “exceptional” and merits the easing of government inspections.
Maria Korsnick, president of the industry’s Nuclear Energy Institute trade group, said she welcomed changes in NRC plant oversight “to ensure that it reflects a more robust understanding of the current performance of the U.S. nuclear fleet.”
Opponents say the changes are bringing the administration’s business-friendly, rule-cutting mission to an industry — nuclear reactors — in which the stakes are too high to cut corners.
While many of the regulatory rollbacks happening at other agencies under the current administration may be concerning, “there aren’t many that come with the existential risks of a nuclear reactor having a malfunction,” said Geoff Fettus, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council on nuclear issues.
This week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released staff recommendations for rollbacks in safety inspections for the 90-plus U.S. nuclear power plants and for less flagging of plant problems for the public. Democratic lawmakers and one commissioner expressed concern about the safety risks and urged the commission to seek broader public comment before proceeding.
The country’s nuclear regulators were looking at “far-reaching changes to the NRC’s regulatory regime without first actively conducting robust public outreach and engagement,” Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a letter to Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki.
Svinicki and two other commissioners did not respond Wednesday to requests for comment made through the agency’s public affairs staff. Public affairs director David Castelveter said the commission would respond directly to lawmakers on Pallone’s letter.
A fourth commissioner, Jeff Baran, spoke out Tuesday, saying he opposed cutting inspections and reducing oversight. Baran called for more public input on proposed rollbacks.
Nuclear regulators post notices of meetings on proposed rollbacks of oversight of nuclear power plants on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission website. Lawmakers complained that there has been scant notice to the public at large about the meetings or proposals.
In general, according to attendance logs, the rollbacks are being hashed out at meetings attended almost solely by commission staffers and nuclear industry representatives. ……
Edwin Lyman, a nuclear safety expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists said the security changes “are jeopardizing public health and safety by restricting the NRC’s ability to ensure that nuclear plants are sufficiently protected against radiological sabotage attacks.”
In January, in one of the comparatively few widely reported changes, commissioners rejected staff recommendations for making nuclear plants harden themselves against natural disasters on the scale of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused meltdowns at three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan……
Some rollbacks pushed by the industry have been rejected by the commission’s staff. Others are still under consideration, including one that would further cut inspections by regulators and allow more self-inspections overseen by plant operators.
Times 20th July 2019 Nuclear power plant will suck fish to their deaths, The Times, Ben Webster,, Oceans Correspondent, July 20 2019 It has been described as a giant plughole under the sea, sucking in 130,000 litres of water a second along with vast numbers of fish. The twin inlet tunnels stretching two miles out into the Severn estuary are so big that a
double-decker bus could drive through them.
The system will cool a new
nuclear power station being built at Hinkley Point in Somerset but
conservation groups say it will kill up to 250,000 fish a day and must be
altered or scrapped. They say that EDF, the French state-owned energy
group, has grossly underestimated the system’s impact on marine life in the
estuary, a special conservation area.
A 5mm mesh will be installed to
prevent larger fish being swallowed but the groups, including the Blue
Marine Foundation, Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and Somerset Wildlife Trust,
say many fish will be fatally injured when pressed against it. Small fish,
eels and the fry of many species, such as salmon, whiting and cod, will be
sucked through the mesh and into the cooling system.
The groups say it
could damage the population of twaite shad in the UK, a small herring-like
fish that used to spawn in the estuary by the millions but has dwindled to
tens of thousands.
EDF says the system will kill about 650,000 fish a year.
It has asked to vary its original permits and planning permission for the
power station to allow it to remove an “acoustic fish deterrent” from the
cooling system. It argues that, even without it, the impact of the system
on fish populations will still be “negligible”. EDF says fish will be
adequately protected by other measures, one which will slow the water
entering the system and another which will return to the sea the fish
sucked in.
Conservation groups argue that scientific analysis they obtained
of the cooling system shows far greater harm to marine life. This analysis
is partly based on measurements of fish swallowed by the cooling system of
Hinkley Point B, a nearby nuclear power station which consumes a quarter of
the sea water that will be extracted to cool Hinkley C.
They want the
government to reject EDF’s application and, if the company cannot mitigate
the damage, force it to use other ways to cool the station, such as cooling
towers or ponds.
James Robinson, of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, said:
“The authorities must decide if it’s worth building a giant plughole to
suck millions of sea animals to their deaths, in one of our most important
protected marine areas, in order to produce electricity.” Charles Clover,
director of Blue Marine Foundation, said the groups would also challenge
plans by EDF for a similar system at its proposed new nuclear power station
at Sizewell in Suffolk.
Turkey’s Akkuyu nuclear plant facing numerous safety concerns – Birgün, https://ahvalnews.com/akkuyu/turkeys-akkuyu-nuclear-plant-facing-numerous-safety-concerns-birgun21 July 19,Top-level officials working at Turkey’s Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant construction project say a series of problems, including lack of design adaptation and a shortage of competent engineers on site, are posing serious safety concerns, left-wing Birgün newspaper reported.Located in Turkey’s Mediterranean coastal town of Mersin, Turkey’s first nuclear power plant Akkuyu is a joint Russian-Turkish project with Russian energy company Rosatom as the majority stakeholder. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin kicked off the construction of the plant on Apr. 3 amid concerns about the potentially destructive ecological consequences of the plant.
The project hit a snag in May when fissures discovered in the foundations, according to pro-government outlet HaberTürk. New concrete was laid only for more cracks to be discovered.
The problem of the cracks, discovered by Turkey’s Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK), have since been fixed, however the foundation of the plant remains a problem.
The design of the plant was created with Russian landscape and weather in mind and is in need of revision to be adapted to Turkey’s warm climate, officials told Birgün.
“For example, sloping in the mountains should be conducted in a more horizontal fashion, but it has been done vertically to minimise costs and this is resulting the boulders continually rolling down the hills,’’ one official said.
The ground the plant is being built on, which according to a geology engineer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, is filled with gaps and cannot support the plant.
“Technically speaking, you can construct a structure over any kind of surface. However, the structure at hand is not a copy-paste matter, it must be revised according to the present surface. None of this is happening because the engineers of the project are not competent,’’ the engineer said, pointing to gaps that may lead to condensation, among other problems.
The project is run entirely on the ‘’past experiences’’ contractors, one official said. ‘’They are acting as though a building is being constructed instead of a nuclear reactor. And even during the process of constructing a building, a much more serious plan of action is followed.’’
The cooling of the plant is to take place through the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
The warm water to be released into the sea after the cooling process, a chemical engineer who spoke to left-wing Birgün daily said, will lead to increased temperatures in the water, which in turn affects marine life.
’Chlorine is placed in the water to avoid mussels etc. from sticking to the pipes used to draw the water. And then this water, which now naturally has chlorine in it, is released into the sea,’’ the official said. ‘’Imagine the damage this can create in the sea, which is filled with living organisms.’’
Mini-nuclear power plants at least 10 years out: Canadian Nuclear Association, The Post MillennialbyJason Unrau, 21July 19,
Could tiny nuclear power plants be the answer to cleaner power for diesel-reliant, remote communities and mine sites? Economics, geography and regulatory complexity makes such proliferation of small modular reactors very unlikely says the Canadian Nuclear Association.
According to association president John Stewart, 10 years is the soonest any such nuclear power device could be deployed anywhere in Canada, and that expanding nuclear power usage would likely happen first where the primary power source remains coal.
“You would want the new generators to go in exactly where those coal plants are,” he said, necessitating scaled down versions of the 900 megawatt CANDU reactors at Darlington, Ontario, rather than micro reactors, some as small as one-megawatt currently under development.
Residents tout small steps in same direction , Peninsula Daily News, By Brian McLean, Sunday, July 21, 2019 , PORT TOWNSEND — Port Townsend City Council members were moved when several residents impressed upon them the value of taking small steps toward a larger issue.
The council unanimously passed a resolution last week in support of a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons following similar actions earlier this spring by the Jefferson County commissioners and the county health department.
“My sense about what this means is not just moving away from the constant waste of money that, if it’s ever put to use, may cost us all of our lives, but also to free up the science and technology and engineering necessary to move towards a more useful strategy as a country,” said Port Townsend’s Doug Milholland, a resident who drove the efforts to pass the resolution.
“Let’s say yes to life.”
Forest Shomer, a speaker in May at the Global Earth Repair conference in at Fort Worden, said that whatever happens in the Key City reverberates.
“We’re right across the water from [Naval Magazine] Indian Island,” Shomer said. “We’ve heard the words so much, ‘Neither confirm nor deny,’ so we don’t know if, right at this moment, we’re sitting three miles away from nuclear weapons.
Skunk Works’ Exotic Fusion Reactor Program Moves Forward With Larger, More Powerful DesignThis will be the company’s fifth major design iteration as it pushes ahead toward building a potentially revolutionary practical prototype. The Drive, BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK, JULY 19, 2019, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works is building a new, more capable test reactor as it continues to move ahead with its ambitious Compact Fusion Reactor program, or CFR. Despite slower than expected progress, the company remains confident the project can produce practical results, which would completely transform how power gets generated for both military and civilian purposes……
The CFR program is built around new patented reactor design, which The War Zone has explored in detail in the past, that uses superconducting coils to more effectively generate a magnetic field to contain the heat and pressure of the reaction. Lockheed Martin’s hope is that this will overcome challenges that have relegated nuclear fusion power generation to the realm of experimentation since the first concepts emerged in the 1920s.
Since then, teams in various countries have built functional fusion reactors, but they remain large, inefficient, and expensive. Last year, China touted progress on its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), but without highlighting that this reactor is situated inside a two-story building within the Dongpu Science Island, a large research campus on a lakeshore peninsula in China’s Anhui Province. An international consortium also hopes to have the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) up and running in France in 2021, but this reactor will weigh approximately 23,000 tons.
Containing the reaction, the same one that occurs in our sun and other stars, and doing so for a protracted period of time, remains the biggest hurdle. Nuclear fusion creates temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees Fahrenheit, which, in turn, also generate extremely high pressures inside the reactor vessel. The energy from fusion reactions can be so powerful that countries have already weaponized it in the form of hydrogen bombs. …….
Unfortunately, despite the progress that Skunk Works has made, many questions remain about whether its new reactor concept will be able to succeed whether other designs have failed. Lockheed Martin has initially suggested it might have a viable prototype ready this year or the next.
Guardian 19th July 2019 Britain’s first climate “citizens assembly” opened its final session
on Saturday morning at which more than 50 Londoners will decide on
carbon-cutting measures they want their district to enact in order to
confront climate change.
Camden’s Citizens Assembly, convened to
interrogate what locals, neighbourhoods and the council can do for the
environment, is deliberating action that would reduce fossil fuel usage in
homes and public buildings and on roads. The wishlist will be considered by
the council as it draws up an environment action plan for 2020.
The outcome
of the assembly will be closely watched by other councils planning to
follow suit this year, and by Westminster which will hold its own national
climate assembly in the autumn. Council officials say there is a clear
intention to implement at least some of the recommendations.
“I hope
there will be some concrete action that we can take forward as a
council,” said Georgia Gould, the council leader. “That’s the idea of
it being an open process – you are letting go of that control. Our
climate is in a crisis and we need to act in radical new ways and this
assembly is part of developing those new ideas.”
Ideas being considered
include community energy projects such as solar panels on schools, GP
surgeries and public buildings, a revolution in heating buildings that
favours air source heat pumps over old-style gas boilers, better insulation
and urban greening.
The Energyst 18th July 2019The GB electricity system operator has suggested demand-side response (DSR) is more reliable than nuclear power in its latest Capacity Market auction
guidelines. National Grid ESO has given DSR a de-rating factor of 86 per
cent, while nuclear is de-rated to 81 per cent.
DSR is also deemed to be
marginally more reliable than biomass, coal and most interconnectors, per
the guidelines. Industry participants suggested the move reflected the
expertise of DSR providers in managing their portfolios. “Presumably [the
de-rating factors] reflects recent reliability of the UK nuclear fleet, and
superior performance of aggregators in delivering contracted response,”
wrote Jon Ferris, strategy director at energy blockchain firm Electron.
Planned small nuclear project reaches milestone with more Utah cities signing on, Deseret News, By Amy Joi O’Donoghue@amyjoi16 July 20, 2019 SALT LAKE CITY — Enough communities in Utah and elsewhere have agreed to purchase nuclear power from a small modular reactor planned at the Idaho National Laboratory, triggering a next phase in its development.
Participating members in the Carbon Free Power Project signed contracts that total more than 150 megawatts, which means there will be an increased focus on site characterization and preparing a license for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Touted as next generation technology in delivery of nuclear power, the small modular reactors developed by Oregon-based NuScale would be the first of its kind in the nation, made up of 12 individual 60 megawatt modules…….
Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems officials say the nuclear component for cities typically hovers in the 5 to 10 megawatt range and is not a big piece of their portfolio, but cities could always opt to buy more.
The project is backed heavily by the U.S. Department of Energy, which gave NuScale a competitive award of $226 million in 2013 to develop the technology. Two years later, the federal agency gave NuScale $16.7 million for licensing preparation.
Two of the modules will be used by the agency’s Idaho National Laboratory in support of research and also to deliver power to the sprawling facility occupying more than 800 acres outside of Idaho Falls. ….
critics say the new untested technology may end up costing municipal ratepayers millions in the long run, and there are cheaper alternatives that won’t generate nuclear waste.
HEAL Utah commissioned a study that it says shows several alternative scenarios that are much less costly and don’t involve investment in a “high-risk” project.
Douglas Hunter, CEO and president of the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, said there are several contractual “off-ramps” built into the project that allow both the municipal power association and its member cities to walk away.
Before the next application is submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the association will have to agree to go forward and participating members can agree to proceed, or back out.
I am revealing some meaningful facts about Fukushima.
1.Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama,in his twitter of June 1,criticized
an interim report presented by the Fukushima Prefecture that denies the
influence of radiation on children’s cancer,thus recalling the importance of
ethics to us.
2.Former Prime Minister is vigorously engaged in pleading for abolishing
nuclear reactors and for promoting natural energies.He is determined to prevent the restarting of the second Tokai Nuclear Reactor,situated only 100 kilometers away from Tokyo. He is to visit the nearby city Hitachi in September to make a speech that could gather thousands of citizens.
3.On June 25,three days before the G 20 Summit in Osaka,white smoke was
observed blowing up near No.6 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi.
There is no press report about this up to this day. On 28 June,an acquaintance
informed me of it and a director in charge of the Fukushima Prefecture I
contacted confirmed this and asked me to reassure people that there was
no need for panic.I sent out a BCC message to this effect.
Why me and not the media !
I have sent a message to Prime Minister Abe to inform him of the fact and
the problem regarding the media.
4.The floods in Kumamoto in Kyushu actually oblige 1 million residents to
take refuge.We are reminded that Japan is a super power of natural disasters.
The actual severe heat wave in Europe makes us anxious about the Tokyo Olympic Games taking place in mid-summer.
Is Tokyo Ready for the Olympic Juggernaut? Tokyo says that it’s ready to host the 2020 Olympics. The early numbers—and quality of Olympic leadership—are not encouraging. The Nation, By Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff 18 July 19
This is not so much a prophecy as it is a prediction: The city of Tokyo is in serious trouble. We are headed to the “Electric Town” this week to look at how this modern metropolis of more than 9 million people is preparing to host the 2020 Summer Olympics exactly one year before the five-ring juggernaut rolls into town. To be clear, the Olympics—and their masters in the International Olympic Committee—are not in trouble. They will nest in Tokyo’s five-star hotels, avoid traffic in special Olympic driving lanes and gather a mighty profit. But, if recent history is any guide, the city and its residents are in for a very rough ride.
We are heading to Tokyo to report on the preparations underway for (and growing resistance against) next year’s games, but even before we land there are some things we can be sure about. One is that the debt to be incurred from the Games could have a perilous effect on Japan’s economy. The country is already weighted down by debt, with Forbes magazine publishing breathless articles about “when Japan’s debt crisis will implode.” The 2020 Olympics costs have exploded, now in the range of $30 billion, four times the original cost projections. After a slew of bad press, Tokyo organizers have claimed that they’ve made extreme budget cuts, but as sports economist Andrew Zimbalist noted, many of these cuts were fictitious. And the cuts the organizers have made have largely been on essentials related to the experience of fans and athletes, like new transportation infrastructure for the games.
Thirty billion dollars might seem like a drop in the bucket for a country whose total debt stands at over $11 trillion, but taking on any water at this point could prove deeply harmful politically and economically. It could mean even steeper cuts to social services, which is a recipe for social conflict. We don’t need to look further than the fallout following the 2016 Olympics in Rio to see just how combustible a bloated Olympics can be for a struggling economy.
Speaking of conflict, anti-Olympic dissent is already percolating in Japan. While we are there, we’ll be attending a demonstration on July 24, the one-year mark before the Olympics kick off, where people from Olympic cities across the world—past, future, and prospective—are coming together to protest against the cost, displacement, and militarization that the Games bring. We’ll attend a conference and workshops organized by activists who have been resisting the excesses of the Olympics. And we’ll travel to Fukushima, the site of the horrific 2011 nuclear meltdown, and future home of Olympic baseball and softball games as well as the site where the Olympic torch relay will begin. We will also be looking at areas of the city that are being upended by the Olympics. ……..
Expect to see swathes of the mainstream media say that “Tokyo has the Olympics in its sights.” The opposite is true: The Olympics have Tokyo in its sights. Tokyo is the target. The only question is how much of the Olympics it can withstand. Over the coming week, we’ll give you on-the-ground analysis from a future Olympic city where activists are standing up and saying hell no. We’ll gather stories from locals whose lives are being directly affected by the Olympics. We’ll pull back the Olympics’ shimmering curtain of propaganda and see what lies behind it.
United Nations: demasking the Torture of Julian Assange. Rico Brouwer and Nils Melzer
Three Mile Island (& Fukushima) Lies & Cover-Ups w/ Gundersen & Wasserman
Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019
Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.
A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.
Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019
