The Bomb Plant: America’s Three A.M. Nightmare- Video
“SRS is the 3 a.m. nightmare… It is where Al Qaeda or a domestic lunatic could do real damage – permanent unrecoverable damage.”
By Joseph Trento, on November 14th, 2012
Aiken, S.C. – Tons of weapons grade plutonium and other nuclear materials, a target for terrorists, are not being properly protected by the National Nuclear Security Administration at the Department of Energy’s sprawling Savannah River Site, according to security consultants and U.S. counterintelligence officials.
A secret security review underway at DOE and other government agencies after an elderly nun last summer breached a NNSA bomb-grade-uranium facility at the Oak Ridge Tennessee Y12 area reveals “harrowing problems in site management and control at other DOE sites,” said a Homeland Security official who requested anonymity. The official said that the Savannah River Site was of concern because “SRS does not have the staffing or the facilities to protect the huge amounts of plutonium that have been brought to SRS in recent years.”
Road Entrance to Savannah River Site
SRS has one of the greatest concentrations in the world of radioactive material. In one old reactor building – the K Area Material Storage (KAMS) facility – protected by the same contractors that botched security at Oakridge, there is enough weapons grade plutonium to destroy the world multiple times. Here plutonium in its purest form can be found by the ton.
There are no military guards at SRS as there are at most facilities where nuclear weapons are transported or stored or nuclear-powered ships or submarines are based. Instead, a privately contracted guard force, numbering in the hundreds, is responsible for a facility bigger in area than Washington, D.C. and its inside-the-beltway suburbs. That private guard force has to contend with numerous entrances to the more than 310 square mile facility as well as a public highway that cuts through it and 17 miles of Savannah River shoreline that runs unnervingly close to the KAMS facility where the plutonium is stored.
Mike Pilgrim
The private contractor guard force is owned by a foreign company with a long record of botched security operations from Afghanistan to London to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Mike Pilgrim, a top security contractor who has done security work for SRS, said the security situation at the facility is “a serious threat to public safety.” Pilgrim’s job is to imagine the worst possible scenario that could happen and figure out how to stop it. He has worked around the world protecting presidents, military bases, airports and, earlier in his long career, DOE nuclear sites, including SRS.
Pilgrim said, “SRS is the 3 a.m. nightmare… It is where Al Qaeda or a domestic lunatic could do real damage – permanent unrecoverable damage.” Pilgrim’s fears are borne out by intelligence reports going back to 2000 when the CIA discovered that Osama bin Laden was trying to obtain nuclear materials for a terrorist attack. In the treasure trove of information gathered about the intentions of Al Qaeda terrorists was a list of potential targets. At first, U.S. authorities assumed nuclear materials would be obtained from Pakistan’s own facilities or North Korea. The CIA thought an attempt would be made to purchase materials from disgruntled former Soviet technicians and scientists. But as the international community worked together to successfully lock down these sources after 9/11, the possibility of a theft or assault on a U.S. facility such as SRS was taken more seriously.
UK -Energy bill published – as it happened -The Guardian highlights
- Leo Hickman
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 November 2012 17.04 GMT
Today, after months of speculation, politicking and lobbying, the coalition government finally publishes its energy bill.
At 11.30am, the energy secretary Ed Davey will make a statement to the House of Commons, followed by an hour-long press conference at 1pm. (You, too, might have spotted that it happens to coincide with another long-awaited publication.)
Steve Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, and Dr Paul Dorfman, founder of the Nuclear Consulting Group (a joint statement):
The energy bill will not complete its passage in this parliamentary term and carbon reduction targets and funding beyond 2020 will be decided in 2016, long after the government has completed negotiations on the price to be paid for nuclear energy. This price will be well above the market price for electricity, and energy consumers will be required to pay the difference (via ‘Contracts for Difference’) through a levy on their bills. The impact of these contracts would be to shift the very great economic risk of building new nuclear facilities from the nuclear corporations to consumers. With the stroke of a pen, the government is attempting to disguise a ‘subsidy’, under which the corporate liability for new nuclear cost over-runs is simply passed on to the UK consumer. And if new build in Finland and France is anything to go by, these cost over-runs will be very great. In order to pay for new nuclear by the time it comes online, the subsidy budget will have to double to about £15bn and would have to be financed from additional levies from consumers. But new nuclear plants cannot be online before 2020 the time when funding under the current bill is no longer quantified. This raises two questions: will renewables face a ‘fiscal cliff’ post-2020 because all the budget for additional budget post-2020 will already have been committed to nuclear; and is new nuclear the most cost-effective way to meet our climate change targets?.….
Some other extracts from live the streaming blog
[…]
Guy Shrubsole, an energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, has emailed to say he’s spotted something interesting:
Trawling through the energy bill’s small print, it looks like the government is trying to dilute still further its already weak commitments on cleaning up the power sector. Up until now, DECC have said they were looking at the power sector decarbonising to 100g of carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour by 2030. But today, DECC have snuck out documents saying they will be ‘updating their analysis’ to anticipate emissions being up to 200g/kWh by 2030.
They’d already moved the goalposts – now they’re moving them again. It’s a total cop-out that will hurt the climate and tie us into an expensive dash for gas.”
The relevant doc is here
Of course, the Committee on Climate Change – which was set up to advise government on setting carbon budgets – recommends (pdf) a target of 50g CO2e/kWh by 2030.
[…]
Tom Burke, the environmental consultant and former director of the Green Alliance, has written a comment piece for the Guardian today arguing that, despite common thinking, the energy bill is actually a victory for Davey and the Liberal Democrats, as opposed to George Osbourne and the Treasury:
The government is now explicitly committed to meeting its obligations under the renewables directive. And it has provided the money to do so through increased cap in the levy control framework. That means that by 2020 just over 30% of our electricity will come from renewable sources.
This is a significant defeat for the Treasury, which has long sought a way to avoid meeting this commitment. It means that by 2020 a lot of relatively cheap renewable electricity will have been contracted for an as-yet unspecified period, but which is likely to extend beyond 2030. John Hayes, the wind-sceptic energy minister, may think he has killed onshore wind, but he will now discover that money talks louder than ministers.
[…]
Ray Noble, PV specialist at the Solar Trade Association:
Solar could readily deliver a third of the UK’s power supply, using south-facing roofs and facades alone. This technology will be massive. Furthermore solar puts the power to generate directly in the hands of millions, not the few. Decc and its electricity market reform agenda now need to fully recognise the major role that solar power will play in transforming our electricity markets. The approach so far has been top down. Solar power means a bottom-up energy revolution and any government serious about breaking open the electricity market to much greater consumer choice and competition should be right behind us.
Time that the Left woke up to the scourge of consumerism
So if you can, work less, so others can work more, on some days buy nothing – expect the New Statesman, of course. Otherwise buy less, buy better, but buy time, love, care, compassion, freedom and some control over your life and your society the only way you can – by doing it not as a consumer but as a citizen
Why is the left silent on the scourge of consumerism? Labour must look beyond the politics of more and recognise that the good life cannot be bought off a shelf. New Statesman, BY NEAL LAWSON 29 NOVEMBER 2012 Did you do it – by accident or design? Did you manage to buy nothing on Buy Nothing Day last Saturday? What do you mean you didn’t know you it was Buy Nothing Day? Too busy Xmas shopping?
The idea that an issue can only be raised by dedicating one day out of 365 to it is just one indication of how we 
have become a consumer society. Being a consumer society doesn’t mean that all we do is shop, rather it suggests that knowing ourselves and others by what we consume is the prime way in which society now reproduces itself. It is the dominant way of being, just as work once was, when we knew ourselves, and others, primarily as producers. We were what we did.
Now we are what we buy.
I don’t know the ‘Buy Nothing Day’ people but I’m guessing the problem isn’t consumption per se. We have to consume to live. The problem is one of balance. What is the damage being done to us, our society and the planet by consuming too much? And the issue is not the inability
of capitalism to balance its need for expanding profit and our
individual, collective and environmental needs, capitalism can’t do
balance. The problem is that our politicians have given up trying to
secure that balance through regulation……..
Harm of Fukushima’s nuclear radiation is being underestimated
Underestimating Japan’s Nuclear Disaster By Richard Wilcox theintelhub.com November 30, 2012 Every day, very sad and disturbing news about the Fukushima nuclear disaster reveals itself. People in Fukushima are suffering the brunt of this nightmare. But it is also a fact of life that Tokyo drinking water is irradiated. It is not by much, but as we will see even a little bit of radiation can cause harm.
The Japanese government has measured cesium in much of the public water supply in the northeastern and Tokyo regions. From January to March 2012, 0.0071 becquerels per kilogram of cesium 134 and 137 was measured in Tokyo; April to June, 0.0049; and from July to September 0.0053 (4; 5; 6). This indicates that although the amount is small, the problem is not improving. There may be ecological and seasonal reasons, along with levels of ongoing emissions from the Fukushima nuclear power plant (FNPP), as to why the level is not steadily decreasing.
It is worth perusing the research results of ACRO, the French radiation monitoring group, which has posted comparative radiation contamination data from Fukushima and other prefectures measured from water, soil, house dust and human urine (7).
America’s nuclear reactors disintegrating – headed for crisis
Nuke power’s collapse gets ever more dangerous November 30, 2012, Harvey Wasserman
In the wake of this fall’s election, the disintegration of America’s decrepit atomic reactor fleet is fast approaching critical mass. Unless our No Nukes movement can get the worst of them shut soon, Barack Obama may be very lucky to get through his second term without a major reactor disaster.
All 104 licensed US reactors were designed before 1975—a third of a century ago. All but one went on line in the 1980s or earlier.
Plunging natural gas prices (due largely to ecologically disastrous fracking) are dumping even fully-amortized US reactors into deep red ink. Wisconsin’s Kewaunee will close next year because nobody wants to buy it. A reactor at Clinton, Illinois, may join it. Should gas prices stay low, the trickle of shut-downs will turn into a flood.
But more disturbing are the structural problems, made ever-more dangerous by slashed maintenance budgets.
- San Onofre Units One and Two, near major earthquake faults on the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, have been shut for more than nine months by core breakdowns in their newly refurbished steam generators. A fix could exceed a half-billion dollars. A bitter public battle now rages over shutting them both.
- The containment dome at North Florida’s Crystal River was seriously damaged during “repair” efforts that could take $2 billion to correct. It will probably never reopen.
- NRC inspections of Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun, damaged during recent flooding, have unearthed a wide range of structural problems that could shut it forever, and that may have been illegally covered-up. According to William Boardman, NRC documents show nearly three dozen reactors to be at risk from dam breaks.
- Ohio’s Davis-Besse has structural containment cracks that should have forced it down years ago and others have been found at South Carolina’s V.C. Summer reactor pressure vessel.
- Intense public pressure at Vermont Yankee, at two reactors at New York’s Indian Point, and at New Jersey’s Oyster Creek (damaged in Hurricane Sandy) could bring them all down.
Projected completion of a second unit at Watts Bar, Tennessee, where construction began in the 1960s, has been pushed back to April, 2015. If finished at all, building this reactor may span a half-century.
Two new reactors under preliminary construction in South Carolina have been plagued by delays and cost overruns. Faulty components and concrete have marred two more under construction at Vogtle, Georgia, where builders may soon ask for a new delay on consideration of proposed federal loan guarantees.
This fall’s defeat of the very pro-nuclear Mitt Romney is an industry set-back. The return of Harry Reid (D-NV) as Senate Majority Leader means the failed Yucca Mountain waste dump will stay dead. A number of new Congressionals are notably pro-green, in line with Obama’s strong rhetorical support.
Fukushima patients in worse condition than expected
Foreign doctors on Fukushima trip “very surprised” at condition of patients: “Symptoms are always the same” — Pains at rear of ears, stomatitis, skin disease… more (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/foreign-doctors-very-surprised-find-patients-worse-condition-anticipated-symptoms-always-same-pains-rear-ears-video
November 28th, 2012
Title: Report on the “Learn from Chernobyl” tour in Japan
Source ERF2012 (Cinema Forum Fukushima)
Date: Nov 25, 2012
Ms. Kazuko Kawai, Founder of Voices for Lively Spring (a Japan-based human rights organization and a grass-root organization): The radiation problem, health problem is spreading all over Japan now through burning debris Iwate and Miyagi, and also contaminated food.
Both foreign doctors participated in the IPPW World Conference and the field trip in Fukushima, which was organized by Peace Boat and Green Action and other organizations.
And they thought that they had sufficient information, but then they observed the health consultations on the tour and were very surprised to find out that actual patients were in even worse condition than they had anticipated.
The symptoms are always the same as Dr. [inaudible] said. […] Nose bleeds, skin disease, diarrhea, respiratory diseases, pains at the rear of the ears, stomatitis, and so on, and so on – as well as thyroid disorders.
Giant new tomb for Chernobyl’s nuclear wreck
Footage of new giant sarcophagus at Chernobyl — Still nowhere near dealing with corium over 25 years later — Storage area for fuel debris not yet built (VIDEO)
http://enenews.com/fukushima-woman-people-are-talking-about-nose-bleeds-and-coughing-that-wont-end-nurses-warn-patients-stay-quiet-dont-mention-radiation-to-doctor-video
Title: Giant 100-meter sarcophagus constructed at Chernobyl nuclear
plant (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Source: RT
Date: Nov. 28, 2012
The milestone first stage of the new sarcophagus for Chernobyl’s
nuclear power station has been completed. The unique construction to
safely contain the radioactive emissions of Chernobyl for the next 100
years will be ready by October 2015.
The unprecedented new shelter will be 108m high (equivalent to a
30-story apartment building), 257m wide, and 150m long (almost two
football fields). The approximate weight of the structure will be
29,000 tons. […]
“Construction of the new confinement is the very first stage to reach
the main goal – stabilization of the installation inside the
installation and extraction of the debris containing nuclear fuel,”
Igor Gramotkin, director-general of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
said at a media briefing. […]
Dr Carlo Mancini, the chairman of the International Advisory Group
(IAG), the scientific supervisor of the NSC project, says a nuclear
waste site for safely stocking thousands of tonnes of the radioactive
debris from Chernobyl is yet to be constructed. […]
New Chernobyl cover – a race against time
Engineers race to contain Chernobyl radiation Roger Boyes Moscow
The Times, , November 28 2012
Racing against time, Ukrainian engineers have started erecting a huge
igloo-like structure to stop radioactive contamination leaking in the
future from the abandoned Chernobyl power station.
At present the crippled plant — which, after the 1986 meltdown, sent a
plume of radioactive fallout billowing across Europe — is covered by a
concrete sarcophagus.
But experts believe that it will contain radioactivity for only 30
years, or until 2016…subscribers only,
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article3614151.ece
VIDEO: Nuclear Power is a Ticking Time bomb – conservative radio host says
Alex also talks with Gar Smith, author of Nuclear Roulette, a book also available at the Infowars Store that debunks the claim nuclear energy is clean, cheap, and safe.Nuclear Roulette
http://www.infowarsshop.com/Nuclear-Roulette_p_736.html
November 30th, 2012
Title: Nuclear Roulette: Countdown to Extinction
Source: The Alex Jones Radio Show
Date: Nov 29, 2012
I’m sorry folks, I’m what you call a libertarian constitutionalist. Back when I was more ignorant 15 years ago I was all about nuclear power, but now they are rotting and falling apart and the corporations don’t care, they’re crazy.
People say well why do you have a guy on, an environmentalist, when you’re talking about the green movement… because they attachall this real reasonable stuff to something run by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan that is a taxed based-system and so if we just fight the environmental movement, #1 it makes us look stupid and it’s not sophisticated. There’s a real environmental movement then there’s a clone of it, a counterfeit.
Nuclear power is a ticking time bomb that just keeps going off and now when they have leaks all the time in Nebraska or up in Canada, it’s a footnote now.
I believe that this is one of the greatest threats facing humanity is the fact that the nuclear industry is becoming collectively insane and self-destructive, and if they want to kill themselves that’s their business. They’re not going to kill me and my family.
Watch the video here
France’s confidence in nuclear power is cracking
First public debate on nuclear energy Oman daily Observer, 01 December 2012 By Muriel Boselli — For decades, the elite engineers turned out by Paris’s grand Corps des Mines academy were faithful followers of the pro-atomic creed that transformed their country into the most nuclear-reliant nation in the world. But a new generation of Mines graduates is starting to question that policy. It is a change of mindset that could aid efforts by President Francois Hollande to cut reliance on nuclear power from 75 per cent to 50 per cent of the electricity mix by 2025……
The Corps des Mines became an example of French post-war “dirigisme”
— the policy under which the state seeks to direct the economy —
determining how nuclear energy was used for civilian and military
purposes, with the development of France’s atomic bomb.
The construction of 58 nuclear reactors prompted successive French
governments to invest massively in electric heating to absorb the
supplies. France became the world’s top electricity exporter. Now some
Mines graduates say the heavy dependence on one energy form means
France struggles to cope with seasonal demand spikes…..
Alumni include Anne Lauvergeon, ex-head of nuclear giant Areva,
current head of France’s nuclear energy watchdog ASN, Pierre-Franck
Chevet, his predecessor Andre-Claude Lacoste, and Jacques Repussard of
the IRSN nuclear safety institute.
Socialism in Florida – taxpayers take finacial risks, nuclear company gets profits
Nuclear reactor tax puts unfair risk on customers By
Stephen Smith http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/fl-sscol-oped1130-20121130,0,5749854.story
11:26 a.m. EST, November 30, 2012
A misguided state law that allows big power companies to shift costs
and financial risk to customers for new nuclear power generation is
the last thing Florida’s families and businesses need as they dig out
of the worst recession in recent memory.
In 2006, the Florida legislature passed a bill to promote the
construction of new nuclear reactors, but it did this by shifting all
the costs and financial risk from utility company shareholders to its
customers. It allows companies, such as Florida Power & Light to bill
customers for specific costs before new reactors are built.
The law essentially imposes a “nuclear tax” by forcing customers to
pay preconstruction costs, including a hefty return to power company
shareholders, through their utility bills. Customers are charged
before the reactor has even produced electricity. In fact, the law
allows a big power company to recover all of its construction costs
for a reactor project even if it chooses to abandon it. This could
leave FPL customers on the hook for billions of dollars.
Last year, the Florida Public Service Commission approved $196 million
in costs that were passed on to FPL customers for nuclear-related
projects, including proposed new reactors at Turkey Point, 25 miles
south of Miami. This year, FPL sought and was recently granted another
$150 million. What’s particularly stunning about this is FPL continues
to request and be granted recovery of these costs by the PSC without
ever expressing a clear commitment to build the proposed new reactors.
This law, while saddling customers with significant costs and risk,
turns traditional utility regulation on its head. Power company
shareholders typically shoulder the risk for the construction of power
plants because prior to this new law, utilities could not charge
customers for new plants until they delivered power to customers. In
return, the state allows them to earn a rate of return on their
investment in the plant.
But this law now socializes costs and all the risk of reactor
construction by shifting it to customers. Meanwhile it privatizes all
the reward to big power company shareholders, such as FPL — even
though they shoulder no risk. FPL has recently requested an 11.25
percent return for its shareholders as part of a base rate increase.
The FPL project, if ever completed, is estimated to cost upwards of
$20 billion. Clearly an 11.25 percent return on $20 billion is a sweet
return for FPL shareholders for a risk-free investment.
Children should be evacuated from Fukushima: radiation level is rising
Fukushima worst confirmed, radiated children need evacuation http://www.examiner.com/article/fukushima-worst-confirmed-radiated-children-need-evacuation NOVEMBER 30, 2012 BY: DEBORAH DUPRE Evidence has been released Friday showingnew radiation is leaking at Fukushima’s nuclear power plant as its operator TEPCOdisclosed more video recordings f its in-house teleconferences in the early phase of the 2011 catastrophe, showing employees’ tense communications before radioactive water was released into the sea. The UN calling for TEPCO and the government to observe health rights earlier this week has prompted an urgent international petition to evacuate radiated children.
“We have confirmed a worst situation — Water containing extremely high levels of radiation flowing into sea,” Masao Yoshida, then manager of the plant, says in new video footage of early days of the Fukushima catastrophe.
President of The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Arjun Makhijani told NBC News TODAY that the Japanese government has not been forthcoming about the amount of radiation leaking from the Fukushima nuclear plant and that new radiation is being released.
300,000 Japanese children are being radiated daily The radiation level is increasing. Responding to the right to health being violated in Japan, the World Network for Saving Children from Radiation is circulating two urgent petitions for action involving children and radioactive contamination from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear disaster as the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health released a statement saying the Japanese government and TEPCO must do more to help radiation victims from the Fukushima triple meltdown.
The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health, Anand Grover, operating in a position not established until this century, reports that reports that Japan and TEPCO must do more to h lp those exposed to radiation from the Fukushima triple meltdown.
Grover urges Japan “to heed people’s voices in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster,” and to expand monitoring of nuclear radiation effects on people’s health.
The right to health report recommendations include: reducing contamination to within background levels, strengthening food contamination monitoring, and allowing full participation by citizens by using contamination data they generate, giving them money to leave contaminated areas for safer ones, and giving them their own and their children’s medical records.
A final report will be issued in June, 2013.
“Now, more than one and a half years after the nuclear accident, 260,000 Japanese children are still living in the catastrophe’s radioactive contamination,” Beyond Nuclear says.
One petition is directs Japanese authorities to evacuate children to non-contaminated areas of Japan. The other calls for justice and accountability following the widely recognized “man-made” nuclear disaster for which to date not one single person has been held accountable.
To learn more and to lend your signature in support of a more healthy future for Japanese children caught in the Fukushima contamination, visit http://www.save-children-from-radiation.org/petitions/
Dysfunctional science has led to complacency about how bad Fukushima really is
the international scientific community has failed us and become the promoter of “Dysfunctional Science.”
“Science is at a tipping point because, having fragmented into specialties and sub-specialties, it is no longer equipped to deal with falsifying data. The barricades of technical jargon and self-serving politics prevent the specialists from seeing what would be all too obvious from a higher vantage point. Such a system is averse to outside challenges by ‘those who transcend the conventional,’ and leading authorities feel free to ignore them….
Few universities have shown the courage to insist on a broad and balanced picture of present knowledge or an even-handed comparison of theoretical assumptions and available alternatives. To apply such basic standards today would risk discrediting entire departments” (30).
Nuclear energy, which provides only 2.5 percent of global primary energy needs, is the most dangerous experiment humanity has ever undertaken. The time to end the insanity is now (31). Between reducing consumption, rearranging society in a less consumer intensive form, and implementing an array of alternative energy schemes, our problems could be solved
Underestimating Japan’s Nuclear Disaster By Richard Wilcox theintelhub.com November 30, 2012 “………Postmodern Postmortem Denial Syndrome The college aged students I teach in Japan are in denial and do not want to talk about Fukushima. Some have even give pro-nuclear presentations in class! Indeed, many are keenly aware of the nuclear dangers and are critical of nuclear power, but others have fatalistic attitudes. Some students told me their parents who live in Fukushima or near there are worried and angry about the situation, but if you ask the average person in Tokyo about the issue, they would probably just shrug their shoulders. People do not like having bad news pointed out to them or having their noses rubbed in radioactive debris. If they feel, or the mass media helps them to believe, that they are far enough away from the problem, they can convince themselves that it is not worth worrying about.
Escapism and distraction is the name of the game. Japanese TV variety shows can only be described as narcissistic, self-absorbed, childish, silly and often substance-less nonsense. This is great for creating a dumbed-down and subservient society but not good for long term sustainability. A thriving democracy depends upon a well informed public. The situation is similar in many countries.
What is the psychological dimension for understanding how a society can become so complacent while life-threatening dangers stare us in the face? Like a beautiful but beguiling snake that has been trampled upon, the venom released from the bite of its fangs can be deadly to the victim.
An apt illustration of our cognitive dissonance comes from journalist David McNeil, who endured the 311 nuclear crisis in Tokyo and notes with irony, “[t]hroughout the worst week of the crisis, a diligent clerk at my local video store phoned daily to remind me that I had failed to return a DVD” (27). Even though the country had been nearly brought to its knees, it was business as usual. Political analyst, Dean Hendersen, notes an historical aspect of this behavior:
“By indoctrinating people as to the omnipotence of the Emperor and of the need to make sacrifices in his name, the Japanese become in many ways the most exploited people on the planet- working long hours, never questioning their supervisors, singing company songs and drinking only with company cohorts after hours. Any resistance to this fascism is instantly branded anti-Japanese behavior. The perpetrator is considered mentally disturbed. Rather than challenge this state terror regime, most Japanese have learned to suppress their feelings…” (28).
The cultural underpinnings that led to the nuclear disaster are explained by Professor Shaun O’Dwyer, who studies modern Confucianism.
“There are two important habitual attitudes in postwar Japanese and East Asian governance that are arguably Confucian. There is paternalism on the part of governments, legitimized by the efficiency of a highly educated, meritocratic bureaucracy; and (until recently) reciprocating loyalty from citizens, grounded in a faith in the moral and intellectual ability of their leaders to work for their good.
Germany’s Gorleben nuclear waste storage problem
Nuclear storage at Gorleben to stay temporary, until vote, Deutsche
Welle, 30 Nov 12
Germany’s environment minister has said exploration work on perhaps
turning Germany’s nuclear waste storage facility at Gorleben into a
permanent facility will be halted at least until next year’s federal
elections.
Environment Minister Peter Altmaier said on Friday that all
Nuclear storage at Gorleben to stay temporary, until vote, Deutsche
Welle, 30 Nov 12
Germany’s environment minister has said exploration work on perhaps
turning Germany’s nuclear waste storage facility at Gorleben into a
permanent facility will be halted at least until next year’s federal
elections.
Environment Minister Peter Altmaier said on Friday that all
exploratory and survey work at the Gorleben atomic waste storage
facility, being conducted with the view of making the temporary site
permanent, would stop until Germany goes to the polls next year.
Though there’s no fixed date yet, the federal election is likely to
take place in September. Altmaier also said he hoped the exploratory
work might remain frozen “beyond that point.”
Various German governments have sought to make Gorleben a permanent
nuclear waste storage facility since 1977, encountering considerable
public resistance along the way. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
involvement in developing the site as environment minister in the
1990’s has also come under scrutiny.
Politicians recently agreed to start fresh talks, billed as a blank
canvas, with the idea of finding a permanent storage facility
somewhere else in Germany – rather than continuing to debate
Gorleben’s suitability specifically……
http://www.dw.de/nuclear-storage-at-gorleben-to-stay-temporary-until-vote/a-16421380
Iran warns on leaving Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, if attacked
Iran may quit anti-nuclear arms pact if attacked: envoy By Fredrik Dahl
VIENNA | Fri Nov 30, 2012 (Reuters) – Any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities may lead to it
withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a pact aimed at
preventing the spread of nuclear arms, a senior Iranian official said on Friday.
Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic
Energy Agency, also suggested Iran in such a case could kick out IAEA
inspectors and install its uranium enrichment centrifuges in “more secure” places.
His comments may strengthen concerns among many Western nuclear
experts that military action against Iran aimed at preventing it from
developing nuclear weapons may backfire and only drive its entire
nuclear program underground.
Iran may quit anti-nuclear arms pact if attacked: envoy By Fredrik Dahl
VIENNA | Fri Nov 30, 2012 10:31am EST
(Reuters) – Any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities may lead to it
withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a pact aimed at
preventing the spread of nuclear arms, a senior Iranian official said on Friday.
Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic
Energy Agency, also suggested Iran in such a case could kick out IAEA
inspectors and install its uranium enrichment centrifuges in “more secure” places.
His comments may strengthen concerns among many Western nuclear
experts that military action against Iran aimed at preventing it from
developing nuclear weapons may backfire and only drive its entire nuclear program underground.
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