2013 August 19 « nuclear-news

Shortage of funds holds up depleted uranium deconversion plant

Funds shortage delays uranium plant Alburquerque by Nick Pappas / Journal Ast. Business Editor 18 aug 13, International Isotopes Inc.’s construction of a first-of-its-kind depleted uranium deconversion plant just west of Hobbs will be delayed because of a shortage of funding for the $125 million project, the company acknowledged Friday…… The Idaho Falls company announced the selection of a 640-acre building site 15 miles west of Hobbs in March 2009 and submitted its license application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission the following January. The NRC issued a 40-year construction and operating license last October.

Originally, International Isotopes officials said they hoped to complete construction of the facility in Lea County by the end of 2012.

But the need for additional funding – a mix of equity and debt financing – has extended that timeline…… http://www.abqjournal.com/248776/biz/funds-shortage-delays-uranium-plant.html

August 19, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, Uranium | Leave a comment

When a nuclear attack does occur, there will be no winners

if the attack does occur, escalating to nuclear weapons will worsen the scale of military devastation even for the side initiating nuclear strikes.

As long as anyone has nuclear weapons, others will want them; as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will be used again some day by design, accident, miscalculation or rogue launch; any nuclear exchange anywhere would have catastrophic consequences for the whole world.

Global threat of nuclear deterrence JAPAN TIMES, BY RAMESH THAKUR AUG 18, 2013 BEIJING – Nuclear weapons are uniquely destructive and hence uniquely threatening to all our security. There is a compelling need to challenge and overcome the reigning complacency on the nuclear risks and dangers, and to sensitize policy communities to the urgency and gravity of the nuclear threats and the availability of nonnuclear alternatives as anchors of national and international security orders.

The transformation of anti-nuclear movements into coalitions of change requires a shift from street protest to engagement with politics and policy.

A nuclear catastrophe could destroy us anytime. Because we have learned to live with nuclear weapons for 68 years, we have become desensitized to the gravity and immediacy of the threat.

The tyranny of complacency could yet exact a fearful price if we sleepwalk our way into a nuclear Armageddon. It really is long past time to lift the shroud of the mushroom cloud from the international body politic………..

Against nuclear-armed rivals, they cannot be used for defense. The mutual vulnerability of such rivals to second-strike retaliatory capability is so robust for the foreseeable future that any escalation through the nuclear threshold really would amount to mutual national suicide. Their only purpose and role is mutual deterrence.

However, here too national security strategists face a fundamental and unresolvable paradox. In order to deter a conventional attack by a more powerful nuclear adversary, each nuclear-armed state must convince its stronger opponent of the ability and will to use nuclear weapons if attacked.

But if the attack does occur, escalating to nuclear weapons will worsen the scale of military devastation even for the side initiating nuclear strikes.

Because the stronger party believes this, the existence of nuclear weapons may add an extra element or two of caution, but does not guarantee complete and indefinite immunity for the weaker party…….Almost half a century after the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was signed, the world is still perched precariously on the edge of the nuclear precipice.

We need authoritative road maps to walk us back from the nuclear cliff to the relative safety of a less heavily nuclearized, and eventually a denuclearized, world. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/08/18/commentary/global-threat-of-nuclear-deterrence/#.UhJ2P9Jwo6I

August 19, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment