Research has found disturbing differences in the attitudes of scientists in different areas, to health and environmental risks of the nuclear industry.
It is even more disturbing that policy-makers and politicians prefer to support and value the opinions and work of the very scientists who are least informed and least interested in those risks.
Politics and Scientific Expertise: Scientists, Risk Perception, and Nuclear Waste Policy, Richard P. BarkeHank C. Jenkins‐Smith. – To study the homogeneity and influences on scientists’perspectives of environmental risks, we have examined similarities and differences in risk perceptions, particularly regarding nuclear wastes, and policy preferences among 1011 scientists and engineers. We found significant differences (p0.05)in the patterns of beliefs among scientists from different fields of research. In contrast to physicists, chemists, and engineers, life scientists tend to: (a)perceive the greatest risks from nuclear energy and nuclear waste management; (b)perceive higher levels of overall environmental risk; (c)strongly oppose imposing risks on unconsenting individuals; and (d)prefer stronger requirements for environmental management.
On some issues related to priorities among public problems and calls for government action, there are significant variations among life scientists or physical scientists. We also found that–independently of field of research–perceptions of risk and its correlates are significantly associated with the type of institution in which the scientist is employed. Scientists in universities or state and local governments tend to see the risks of nuclear energy and wastes as greater than scientists who work as business consultants, for federal organizations, or for private research laboratories. Significant differences also are found in priority given to environmental risks, the perceived proximity of environmental disaster, willingness to impose risks on an unconsenting population, and the necessity of accepting risks and sacrifices. more https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1993.tb00743.x
Donald Trump says he’s ready to pull the plug on the summit meeting with Kim Jong Un, if he feels it’s “not going to be fruitful.” It took years of careful multi-national negotiations to develop a nuclear deal with Iran. Trump apparently expects Kim Jong Un to quickly agree to “complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of the North Korean program”. That can’t be done quickly, even if Kim agreed. And what would Kim want, in return?
Remembering that Donald Trump’s main aim is to be the centre of attention – what better centre-stage position, than walking out of the summit, and bringing us all to the nuclear brink again?
Dr Helen Caldicott – forthright and clear – on Donald Trump, and the nuclear war danger.
Trump leaves open possibility of bailing on meeting with North Korea leader, Military Times, By: Matthew Pennington, The Associated Press , 19 Apr 18, WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said that although he’s looking ahead optimistically to a historic summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un he could still pull out if he feels it’s “not going to be fruitful.”
Trump said that CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Kim “got along really well” in their recent secret meeting, and he declared, “We’ve never been in a position like this” to address worldwide concerns over North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
But speaking alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday, after the allies met at Trump’s Florida resort, he made clear that he’d still be ready to pull the plug on what is being billed as an extraordinary meeting between the leaders of longtime adversaries.
“If I think that if it’s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful we’re not going to go. If the meeting when I’m there is not fruitful I will respectfully leave the meeting,” Trump told a news conference. He also said that a U.S.-led “maximum pressure” campaign of tough economic sanctions on North Korea would continue until the isolated nation “denuclearizes.”………
Other than the threat posed to by North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, another issue overhanging the summit plans is the fate of three Americans detained there. Trump said that was under negotiation and there was a “good chance” of winning their release, but he wouldn’t say whether that was a precondition for sitting down with Kim.
Pompeo raised the question of the three Americans in his meeting with Kim, a U.S. official said.
Trump also said he had promised Abe he would work hard for the return of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea. Tokyo says at least a dozen Japanese said to have been taken in the 1970s and 1980s remain unaccounted for.
RADIOACTIVE PIGS Japan ‘covering up’ Fukushima nuclear danger-zone radiation levels and blackmailing evacuees to return to radiated areas swarming with radioactive pigs and monkeys
Three reactors went into meltdown after the 2011 Japanese tsunami in the worst accident since Chernobyl, leaving an apocalyptic vision of ghost towns and overgrown wildernesses and scared residents refuse to return Sun UK, By Patrick Knox 19th April 2018
JAPAN is lying to the world about nuclear-ravaged Fukushima’s recovery while forcing terrified evacuees to return to their radioactive homes, it is claimed.
More than seven years after the nuclear catastrophe rocked the world, many of the 154,000 people who fled their homes have not returned and towns remain deserted.
Thousands of irradiated wild boars and monkeys roam around while poorly paid and protected decontamination workers scrub homes, schools and shops down ready for people to come home.
Chilling footage of taken inside the evacuated areas of Fukushima City and Köryama lay bare the disaster that unfolded after an earthquake, measuring 9.01 on the Moment Magnitude scale, struck off the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011.
……….Now there is a big campaign is under way to make people return but residents, campaigners and experts believe it not safe.They accuse the Japanese authorities of wanting to allay public fears over the nuclear power by downplaying the dire consequences of the leak.
Propaganda videos showing the remarkable recovery of Fukushima have been spread by the government on its social media accounts.
But senior nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie, from Greenpeace Japan, said the nuclear nightmare continues.
He said: “They are not telling the whole truth either to the 127 million people of Japan or to the rest of the world – about the radiation risks in the most contaminated areas of Fukushima.
“The nuclear crisis is not over – we are only in year seven of an accident that will continue to threaten public health, and the environment, for decades and well into the next century.
“Attempts by the government and the nuclear industry communicate that it is safe and it’s over are a deliberate deception.”
……….Mr Burnie said: “If they can create the illusion of the region that that has recovered from the nuclear accident they think it will reduce public opposition. [to development of nuclear power]”But meanwhile the crisis continues at the Fukushima plant.
He said: “The massive Ice Wall built at the nuclear plant to stop contamination of groundwater is a symbol of this failure and deception – this is no Game of Thrones fantasy but the reality of a nuclear disaster that knows no end.”
Today he says there were areas of Fukushima where radiation levels could give a person’s maximum annual recommended dose within a week.
He said: “This is of particular concern with regards to poorly paid decontamination workers, thousands of whom have been involved in attempts to decontaminate radiation around people’s homes, along roads and in narrow strips of forest.”
Mr Burnie said the government claims decontamination has been completed in 100 percent of affected areas after a £8bn clean up operation.
But he added: “What they don’t explain is that 70-80 percent of areas such as Namie and Iitate – two of the most contaminated districts – are forested mountain which it is impossible to decontaminate.
“In areas opened in March 2017 for people to return – radiation levels will pose a risk until the middle of the century.
“These areas are still to high in radiation for people to return safely – and is one reason so few people are returning.”
Meanwhile heavy-handed tactics are being used with some fearful residents reporting that they have been warned they won’t receive lifeline compensation cash if they don’t comply.
Dr Keith Baverstock, a radiation health expert who was at the World Health Organization at the time disaster, told Sun Online: “For the past two years the Japanese government has encouraged the evacuees to return to their homes, but relatively few people have taken up this offer, even though there is a threat – it may even now be a fact – that their compensation will cease.”
Dr Baverstok says the plant and the areas remain a danger zone for humans.
He said: “It seems there is no end in sight for the release of radioactive water from the site and these releases will inevitably put more radioactivity into the food chain if the local waters are fished.
For the past 20 years, French nuclear waste agency Andra has tested the stability of the clay of the northeastern village to see if it could hold radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years.
Andra is preparing a formal request for next year to build the 25 billion euro ($31 billion) facility to hold waste from the reactors of state-owned utility EDF.
French nuclear regulator ASN has already said the plan is sound and deep geological storage is the safest way to protect future generations from radioactive waste.
But a police van at the main square is testimony to rising tensions and demonstrations that have at times blocked the area where Andra wants to dig.
“Life will become unbearable here with the nuclear waste and all the demonstrators,” said Bure mayor Gerard Antoine, who breeds beef cattle.
Antoine approved the installation of Andra research facilities two decades ago but said he now regrets that decision and would say no if he were asked today.
Hundreds of demonstrators who built a camp nearby were kicked out by police in February but say they are there for the long run and will fight the project until the government changes its plans.
“We are heading straight for … a nuclear disaster, that’s why we’re against it,” said Jean-Marc Fleury, a local elected official with an environmentalist party.
Police are maintaining a heavy presence while protesters have regrouped in and around a house in the Bure village centre.
The future Cigeo site is designed to cover an area of 600 hectares and have 250 kilometres of underground galleries where nuclear waste would be buried in huge rust-proof cylinders.
DEEP BURIAL
Andra, which carried out research work via a research laboratory 500 metres underground, wants to start work on the site in 2022 and complete it by 2030.
“We’re not going to do deep burial of (nuclear) waste if we had any doubt that it would leak or contaminate the environment,” said Andra spokesman Mathieu Saint Louis.
“The ultimate goal with an underground installation such as this one is precisely to protect ourselves from the danger of (nuclear) waste.”
For now, spent fuel from French nuclear reactors is stored in pools next to the reactors before it is shipped to state-owned nuclear fuel group Orano’s recycling plant in La Hague, western France.
But La Hague is not designed for long-term storage and France does not have a solution 40 years after investing heavily in nuclear energy. Other countries that use nuclear power face the same problem.
The Bure site is designed so that nuclear waste could be retrieved for the first 100 years if scientists find a better solution than burying it. Otherwise, the underground galleries will be permanently sealed with concrete.
Anti-nuclear activists say deep geological storage does not offer perfect guarantees against radiation leakage in ground water. They want the waste moved to underground facilities that are just a few metres deep, to monitor it better. Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Ingrid Melander and Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Two main types of radiation in space are extremely harmful to humans: protons spewed out by the sun and cosmic rays. These high-energy particles and the secondary radiation they create penetrate deep into cells, promoting chronic and sometimes deadly diseases such as cancer.
Cancer is a major risk of radiation exposure, but there are more immediate and surprising symptoms. Deep-space radiation might promote cataracts and impair eyesight
Animal-based experiments also suggest radiation could damage the nervous system, including the brain, which might impair astronauts’ focus and memory.
But the cosmos teems with invisible, high-energy radiation – particles travelling near light-speed that can pummel human travellers and the surfaces of worlds like tiny bullets.
NASA recently signed on to test a new polymer-based radiation-blocking vest for astronauts, called AstroRad, on its next mission around the moon.
Musk, meanwhile, has said his new Big Falcon Rocket will use water to block radiation, though only during emergencies.
“Ambient radiation damage is not significant for our transit times,” Musk said during an Oct. 2017 chat on Reddit. “Just need a solar storm shelter, which is a small part of the ship.”
But just how bad is the problem of radiation in space?
The graphic below [on original] – created using data provided by NASA, the EPA, FDA, NRC, scientific journals, and other sources – compares various exposure levels in scenarios both familiar and far-flung.
Hover over a category box to see how it compares.
Musk has “aspirational” hopes to launch a round-trip mission to the red planet with humans in 2024, but the trip could total a year, and astronauts may spend about 500 days on Mars’ surface.
The whole journey would expose astronauts to about 1,000 millisieverts – depending on how many solar storms belch high-energy particles toward Mars, and whether the first entity to reach the planet actually lands on it.
This means the first Martian explorers could get roughly eight times the amount of radiation per year of a radiation worker’s annual exposure limit. In total, the space travellers would get about one-third of the way toward hitting a NASA astronaut’s maximum lifetime exposure limit (2,500-3,250 mSv).
Where the radiation comes from – and why cancer isn’t the only danger
Two main types of radiation in space are extremely harmful to humans: protons spewed out by the sun and cosmic rays. These high-energy particles and the secondary radiation they create penetrate deep into cells, promoting chronic and sometimes deadly diseases such as cancer.
Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere protect us by deflecting and absorbing most of this energy.
“The background radiation rates on the ground are 100 times to 1,000 times smaller than they would be above the atmosphere in free space,” Edward Semones, a radiation health officer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, previously told Business Insider.
Cancer is a major risk of radiation exposure, but there are more immediate and surprising symptoms. Deep-space radiation might promote cataracts and impair eyesight. Even high-flyingcommercial-airline workers face that risk because of the thinner atmosphere.
Animal-based experiments also suggest radiation could damage the nervous system, including the brain, which might impair astronauts’ focus and memory.
“You’re somehow losing cognitive ability,” Semones said, adding that, over the years, this “may impact conducting the mission.”
Ultimately, colonists may try to terraform Mars – a deliberate and unprecedented act of climate change.
Frozen carbon dioxide at the Martian poles could be turned into greenhouse gases in order to create a radiation-absorbing atmosphere that would insulate the surface. Plants could then convert the thin air into oxygen and, over hundreds of years, temperatures may warm enough to melt hidden water and make it again flow on Mars’ surface. One day, that could even permit spacesuit-free excursions.
Jim Green, the former head of NASA’s planetary science division, has proposed building anartificial magnetic shield for Mars to protect a hypothetical nascent atmosphere from the sun’s proton radiation, which might otherwise blow the air into space.
“This may sound ‘fanciful’ but new research is starting to emerge revealing that a miniature magnetosphere can be used to protect humans and spacecraft,” Green and other researchers wrote in a brief study of the concept in 2017. “If this can be achieved in a lifetime, the colonization of Mars would not be far away.”
Nasa is to make a major announcement about its project to put nuclear power in space.
The agency has been working on “Kilopower” – a project to use a nuclear reactor to generate clean energy on the Moon, Mars and beyond – for some time. And now it will hold a press conference to reveal the latest results from its plans to unveil a new space exploration power system, it has said.
The conference will see the agency discuss the results of its latest experiments, it said in a release. It has been conducted from November 2017 through until March 2018, at the Nevada National Security Site or NNSS.
That site, deep in the Nevada desert, has long served as a testing ground for nuclear experiments. In the 1950s, for instance, it was used to detonate nuclear bombs that could be felt across the state and into Las Vegas.
Nasa hopes that Kilopower can use some of that same nuclear technology to provide energy for space explorers as they make their way through the solar system. They will need energy for a wide variety of tasks, from generating the light, water and oxygen they need to conducting experiments and sending information back to Earth.
“That’s why NASA is conducting experiments on Kilopower, a new power source that could provide safe, efficient and plentiful energy for future robotic and human space exploration missions,” Nasa wrote in a statement in January.
“This pioneering space fission power system could provide up to 10 kilowatts of electrical power — enough to run two average households — continuously for at least ten years. Four Kilopower units would provide enough power to establish an outpost.”
Using nuclear fission will allow astronauts to be able to generate energy wherever they are. If people on Mars, for instance, the amount of energy coming from the sun varies wildly; on Moon, the night lasts for 14 days.
“We want a power source that can handle extreme environments,” says Lee Mason, NASA’s principal technologist for power and energy storage. “Kilopower opens up the full surface of Mars, including the northern latitudes where water may reside. On the Moon, Kilopower could be deployed to help search for resources in permanently shadowed craters
Interview A conversation with Helen Caldicott From the forthcoming issue (May 2018)Taylor and Francis online, 17 Apr 18 Dan Drollette Jr For decades, anti-nuclear weapons campaigner Helen Caldicott (helencaldicott.com) has been educating people about the effects of nuclear weaponry and issuing rousing calls to action. A practicing pediatrician from Australia, Caldicott was the subject of an Oscar-winning short film, If You Love This Planet, and is the author of 12 books.In this Skype interview from her home in Sydney, Australia, the 79-year-old Caldicott doesn’t pull punches. For nearly six decades, she has been taking on the powers that be, in joyously feisty terms: She has said that the US Defense Department should be re-named the Killing Department and characterized Barack Obama as an “intelligent, lovely man, who failed the world” when it came to eliminating nuclear weapons. She considers the movie Dr Strangelove more of a documentary than a satire, labeled arms manufacturers “wicked,” and called American politicians “corporate prostitutes.”
And of the current president, Caldicott said: “We’ve got a man in charge who I think has never read a book, and who knows nothing about global politics, or his own country’s politics. Who operates with his own kind of sordid intuition. And he’s putting people in every department committed to destroying that department. He’s absolutely destroying the infrastructure of America.”
Noting that it was International Women’s Month, Caldicott had one thing to say to young women: “We need to take over, because we’re on the short course to annihilation, and we need to say to men ‘Look, stand aside, you need your bottom smacked.’ ”
Yet for someone who has spent a lifetime fighting vigorously against the specter of nuclear annihilation, Caldicott reveals that she is remarkably pessimistic about humanity’s chances. Caldicott said that she wants her tombstone to read: “She tried.”
Editor’s note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
……..I noticed there seem to be a lot of people in the anti-nuclear weapons movement with medical backgrounds.
Helen Caldicott:
It’s a medical problem. And explaining the medical dangers of nuclear war was a very good way to teach people what the danger is, and to bring it home to their city. That approach was – and is – very powerful. During the 1980s, when I was one of the leaders of the nuclear weapons freeze movement and one of the founding presidents of PSR, we at PSR held symposia on the medical effects of nuclear war at various universities, all around the country. It started at Harvard, where we had George Kistiakowsky, a physicist who had been in the Manhattan Project as an explosives expert (https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/george-kistiakowskys-interview). It was quite wonderful.
Although afterwards, some journalists did say: “What are doctors talking about this for, this is a political issue.” And we said no, it’s a medical issue, because it will create the final medical epidemic of the human race……….
…… I think we’re actually in a much more dangerous situation than we were during the height of the Cold War, though no one’s really taking any notice. I mean, Dan Ellsberg went to 14 different publishers before Bloomsbury published his book. And my latest book, Sleepwalking to Armageddon, (https://thenewpress.com/books/sleepwalking-armageddon) is not selling very well at all. It seems like society is practicing psychic numbing and manic denial. We’re into clothes and food, and all sorts of things like that, while life on the planet just hangs in the balance………
Of course. America’s economy is built on killing. It’s the Killing Department, not the Defense Department. There’s no defense from nuclear weapons. It’s all run by voracious, wicked corporations, such as Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, General Dynamics, and the like. And many American politicians are corporate prostitutes. ……
……..Dan Drollette: How would you characterize Trump and his administration?
Helen Caldicott:
Trump is a dolt. He’s an idiot. We’ve got a man in charge who I think has never read a book, and who knows nothing about global politics, or his own county’s politics. Who operates with his own kind of sordid intuition. And he’s putting people in every department committed to destroying that department. He’s absolutely destroying the infrastructure of America.
When you think of all the brave, heroic Americans who worked hard all their lives to set up wonderful laws to protect the environment and protect the people and protect the children and protect the Earth, what’s happening is shameful. It’s all being undone, and I can’t understand why.
……..Dan Drollette:
What about his administration’s doings on the world stage?
Helen Caldicott:
For some reason, Trump likes Putin and the Russians. Well, I think I know why. I think that they and the oligarchs have funded Trump for years and years and years. It’s mostly, I think, about money. Trump wants to get on well with them, which is good because, you know, there’s almost certainly about 40 hydrogen bombs targeted on New York as we speak. So, therefore, it is imperative that America get on well with the Russians and in fact, push for bi-lateral nuclear disarmament. So, from that perspective, it makes me feel a little bit … less anxious.
………I think that enlarging NATO right up to the Russian border was extremely provocative. That policy largely came about because of people like Lockheed-Martin president Norman Augustine, who I’ve previously described elsewhere as “commander-in-chief of the Pentagon.” Because after the Cold War ended, Lockheed-Martin et al had nowhere to make money. They’re going to make money by making bombs, killing people, and then making more bombs.
So, Augustine set off on a journey to all the newly released little countries – Lithuania, Latvia, etcetera – to say “Look, if you want to be a part of NATO and have a democracy, you have to spend about $3 billion on armaments.” (http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/29/world/arms-makers-see-bonanza-in-selling-nato-expansion.html) And let’s be frank: NATO is in fact America. So that was all well and good for Lockheed-Martin, even though it meant that America went back on its promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not be enlarged. As a consequence, there are NATO missiles right up to the Russian border, on what had been territory that was previously friendly to Russian, which is extremely provocative. Imagine if the situation were reversed, and Canada became part of the Warsaw Pact, and they put Warsaw Pact-missiles on the US border. How do you think America would react? So that’s problem number one………https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MBkXvHtz5QyAfikSM8Cv/full
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said North Korea might end its nuclear program while the US keeps its troops in South Korea. We’ve been here before. Vox By Alex Ward@AlexWard Voxalex.ward@vox.com
North Korea may have just announced a major concession ahead of talks with President Donald Trump.
According to South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday, North Korea is ready for “complete denuclearization,” meaning that it would stop improving its nuclear weapons and missiles that can hit America and its allies. What’s more, North Korea would do that — and the US can keep its troops in South Korea.
If North Korea is seriously considering that, it would be a marked shift from its past stance. When Pyongyang usually talks about denuclearization, US troop removal is always a sticking point. Pyongyang fears that US troops are only waiting to invade North Korea, and so it wants to keep its nuclear arsenal to deter that incursion. But now, it’s possible America’s 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula can stay as North Korea winds down its program.
Pyongyang’s new stance, if true, could change the tenor of Trump’s potential meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late May or early June. Abraham Denmark, a former top Asia security official at the Pentagon, tweeted on Thursday that North Korea’s announcement could mean Trump and Kim may strike an agreement.
“Looks like a deal may actually be coming together,” Denmark said. “Shaping up to be a comprehensive package that involves a peace regime, denuclearization, and eventual normalization of relations.”
Hundreds of lawmakers from Germany, France, and Britain have called on their counterparts in the U.S. Congress to support the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, calling it a “major diplomatic breakthrough.”
The initiative came as U.S. President Donald Trump has set a May 12 deadline to either improve or scrap the deal providing Iran with relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its atomic program.
“We were able to impose unprecedented scrutiny on the Iranian nuclear program, dismantle most of their nuclear enrichment facilities, and drastically diminish the danger of a nuclear arms race,” reads a statement signed by some 500 MPs from the German, British, and French national parliaments and posted online on April 19.
Britain, Germany, and France are signatories to the nuclear accord, along with the United States, China, and Russia.
Trump accuses Tehran of violating the spirit of the agreement and has called on European powers to “fix” what he says are the “terrible flaws” of the agreement. He wants new restrictions to be imposed on Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs.
“It is the U.S.’s and Europe’s interest to prevent nuclear proliferation in a volatile region and to maintain the transatlantic partnership as a reliable and credible driving force of world politics,” the European lawmakers said.
They wrote that abandoning the accord would result “in another source of devastating conflict in the Middle East and beyond,” would “diminish the value of any promises or threats made by our countries,” and would damage “our credibility as international partners in negotiation, and more generally, to diplomacy as a tool to achieve peace and ensure security.”
“We therefore urge you to stand by the coalition we have formed to keep Iran‘s nuclear threat at bay,” they added.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will both travel to Washington next week on separate official visits, in part to convince Trump not to pull the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran.
The Latest on the United States and North Korea , WASHINGTON (AP) Chron — 19 Apr 18 The anti-nuclear weapons group that won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize says it’s “very supportive” of a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, after months of risky tensions between them.
Executive director Beatrice Fihn of ICAN says that mutual threats between the two leaders have made the risk of nuclear confrontation “really dangerously high.”
Speaking to reporters, Fihn said that if the summit in late May or early June makes progress on disarmament, “we’ll definitely applaud it … every step forward is positive.” Overall, she reiterated ICAN’s support for a nuclear weapons ban treaty, saying, “It’s hard to see the world being able to solve one nuclear-armed state at this point in isolation from the other states.”…..https://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/The-Latest-US-says-it-s-maintaining-pressure-on-12847167.php
Iran earthquake latest: Magnitude-5.5 quake strikes near nuclear power plant Country sits on major fault lines and is prone to frequent tremors, Independent UK, Agency, Independent Staff – 19 Apr 18, An earthquake has hit southern Iran just 60 miles from the country’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.
It hit on Thursday morning and was also felt in Bahrain and other areas around the Persian Gulf.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake struck at 6.34am GMT, some 60 miles east of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, the only operating nuclear power station in the Islamic Republic.
The USGS put the earthquake’s magnitude at 5.5, while Iranian state television, citing officials, described the quake as a magnitude 5.9. Varying magnitudes are common immediately after a temblor.
Government-run TV did not report any damage at the Bushehr plant, which has seen other earthquakes in the past and was built to resist damage from the tremors………
The USGS put the earthquake’s depth at 6.2 miles (10km) below the surface. Shallow earthquakes often have broader damage.
A magnitude-5 earthquake can cause considerable damage.
Ostap Semerak called for international help to stop a potential “radiation catastrophe” as the United States also expressed concern over the mine and a key water facility in eastern Ukraine that has temporarily shut down after five workers were shot.
Soviet specialists conducted the underground explosion to free trapped gas at the YunKom mine in Yenakieve, 55km northeast of what is now the militant stronghold of Donetsk, and pumps have kept the blast zone relatively dry ever since.
Separatist officials insist that pumping and special monitoring are no longer necessary, however, citing local and Russian experts who say radioactivity levels in the mine are normal, and that flooding it would pose no threat of contamination to the Donbas region’s water table.
“What the militants are playing at is nothing other than terrorism and political blackmail,” Mr Semerak told members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
“Our joint task with international partners is to prevent a second Chernobyl in Donbas,” he said, referring to the atomic power station north of Kiev that exploded in April 1986, showering much of northern Europe with radiation
Drinking water
Earlier this week US state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter: “Plans by Russian proxies to flood the abandoned YunKom coal mine… could threaten drinking water of thousands of Ukrainians in Russia-controlled eastern Ukraine. We urge Russia and its proxy authorities to act responsibly.”
Four years of fighting in Donbas have killed more than 10,300 people, displaced 1.6 million and ravaged an industrial region of mines, metal works and chemical plants, creating the potential for a long legacy of environmental problems.
“Any present destabilisation of the mine via flooding could release up to 500 cubic metres of radiation-contaminated mine waters into the ground water table,” the OSCE said.
The conflict frequently disrupts water supplies through Soviet-built canals and pipes that criss-cross the front line, and which workers take considerable risks to maintain and repair after damage by shelling.
Under fire
The Donetsk water filtration plant, which sits right on the frontline, shut down again on Wednesday after five employees were wounded when their bus came under fire the previous day.
Hundreds of thousands of people in government and militia-held territory receive water from the plant, which is often struck by shells despite the presence there of chlorine and other hazardous chemicals.
“The chlorine is being washed out so it doesn’t stay in the pipes. They are halting the pumping station,” said Alexander Yevdokimov, acting head of the Donbas Water company. “It doesn’t mean we have shut it down forever, but we simply need security guarantees for our employees.”
Ms Nauert said the US urged “all forces to withdraw from positions around the Donetsk filtration station and other critical civilian infrastructure”.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has called for 42 actions to correct safety deficits that led to a series of radioactive releases during demolition of the now-closed plutonium processing facility at the former Hanford nuclear weapons production site in Washington state.
The actions include better application of coatings and use of other technologies to control spread of radioactive contamination, broader radiation boundaries, improve air dispersion measurement and modeling, greater involvement of employees as demolition moves ahead, and better training of and communication with site workers to solicit their input.
Following the releases, site remediation halted last December. Several hundred workers were tested for radiation exposure. Test results showed that several dozen workers had inhaled or ingested detectable radiation but at levels acceptable to the department.
The shutdown only affects demolition of the plutonium facility, but that is a significant part of the $2 billion a year Hanford cleanup. Hanford, in turn, is the largest component in what is the world’s more expensive remediation program. During World War II and the Cold War, the Hanford site was one of more than 100 U.S. plants that made nuclear weapons components. All the plant sites are undergoing some level of remediation.
The radiation exposure incidents at Hanford occurred last year and DOE’s analysis of what happened was released publicly in March. Additionally, DOE recently announced an additional internal but independent review of the plutonium demolition project. That analysis will be “ongoing,” according to DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments, which will conduct the review. An official with the office would not predict when oversight will end.
The demolition and remediation will not restart until the Washington State Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which regulate Hanford cleanup activities, are satisfied the operation is safe, according to DOE and Washington state officials.
The plutonium finishing facility turned plutonium nitrate solutions into solid, hockey-puck-sized plutonium “buttons” that could be shipped to other facilities. It once was a complex of some 90 building and was shut down in the 1980s. Cleanup began in 1989; demolition began in 2016.
Last June and again in December, demolition activities contaminated workers and vehicles at the site. Small levels of radiation were found away from the plutonium facility but still within the Hanford site. No detectable amounts were found in workers’ homes, DOE says.
In the March report, DOE says 281 workers requested bioassays and were tested following the December release. The results found two doses less than 1 millirem, eight doses between 1 to 10 mrem, and one dose between 10 to 20 mrem. DOE sets the acceptable level at 100 mrem/year for nonradiological workers and members of the public and 500 mrem/year for radiological workers.
Following the June release, some 300 workers requested testing and bioassays found elevated radiation exposure for 31 workers, DOE says.
BBC forced to deny reporting outbreak of nuclear war after fake news clip goes viral Telegraph UK, Will Horner
The BBC was last night forced to distance itself from a fake news clip reporting the outbreak of nuclear war after a video purporting to show hostilities between Russia and Nato was widely circulated online.
The three-minute clip, which appears to be set in the BBC News studio and uses the BBC logo, features a British presenter claiming armed conflict has broken out in the Baltic after a Russian aircraft was shot down.
It features footage of Russian naval ships launching cruise missiles, nuclear mushroom clouds, and shows the Queen being evacuated from Buckingham Palace.
“This video clip claiming to be a BBC news report about NATO and Russia has been circulating widely… We’d like to make absolutely clear that it’s a fake and does not come from the BBC,” the corporation said on Twitter.
The clip is a shortened version of an hour-long video that has been uploaded to YouTube several times since 2016 with the disclaimer that it is a “fictional dramatization.”
It began widely circulating on social media, particularly WhatsApp, after it was edited and re-uploaded to YouTube on Monday without that disclaimer.
The video also features a new ending purporting to be a “nuclear attack warning” with the logos of the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office.
The presenter of the video told The Daily Telegraph he was employed by Benchmarking Assessment Group, an Irish talent headhunting company, to shoot the video that would be used as a “psychometric test” to see how “their clients react in a disaster scenario”.
“From the original YouTube posting it says very clearly that it is fictional. You’d have to be an idiot to believe it anyway, it doesn’t even look like a genuine BBC news report. It was never meant to,” said Mark Ryes, a British voice actor……..
