Why Environmental Activists Are Afraid to Speak Out, http://www.sixthtone.com/news/why-environmental-activists-are-afraid-speak-out ,Feng Yongfeng, Feb 21, 2017 In 2007, soon after I founded an organization called “Nature University,” I ran a program for those with an interest in conservation — both experts and amateurs alike. I took them walking along Beijing’s waterways every Saturday, and each time, we saw foul water pouring directly into the streams and rivers. “We are environmental activists,” some of our shocked volunteers said. “We shouldn’t just look on and do nothing.”
Nature University is a Beijing-based virtual community school for sharing information about environmental protection. We mainly target volunteers and nongovernmental organizations in our campaigns. Back in 2007, our big idea was to launch a photo event encouraging people to send in pictures of Beijing’s sewage outlets, which we would then forward on to the authorities to create a dialogue with them about water pollution.
Hardly anybody responded to our call for submissions. When the time for action arrived, I was left wondering where all the once-vocal critics had gone. In my opinion, they failed to overcome the deep-seated fear of speaking out — a fear passed down from generation to generation. People were afraid that if they reported severe pollution in the area, their families or friends might become targets for retribution by those responsible, such as factory bosses or owners.
Fear of playing a role in public affairs is rooted in many people’s upbringings. From a young age, Chinese parents constantly warn their children that only grave misfortune will come of stepping into the public domain and challenging the powers that be, citing examples from ancient history in which those who made enemies of such people were executed, their accomplices exiled, and their family and friends mistreated. This mindset leads many environmental activists to gag themselves. Activities like crowdfunding, agenda-sharing, photographing contamination sites, lodging official complaints, and speaking out on social media all suffer under this mentality.
Sometimes, activists treat all stakeholders in a pollution event — from coal mine owners to managers, from local officials to the most menial workers — as enemies to be held in the utmost contempt. As their fear turns to anger, they make themselves more foes than friends, and therefore find more problems than solutions. Everyone involved in the disaster becomes a symbol of the fear they feel, and thus everyone becomes an antagonist in the fight for real change. It is hardly surprising that many of the projects organized by environmental activists are stymied by infighting before they truly get off the ground.
Environmental activists are at war with pollution, but fear of the transgressors keeps us too daunted to act. Ingrained self-denial makes us reluctant to pursue meaningful endeavors and keeps us locked in constant equivocation. Therein lies China’s dilemma: Very few people are happy about pollution, but even fewer are willing to act decisively against it. The only way to publicly escalate the issue is to stay mentally strong and argue based on the facts we have. Blots on China’s environmental landscape cast shadows over a large portion of the population. It is in the public interest to fight pollution, but we are too worried about ramifications for individuals when we should be worried about the collective good.
We must exorcise our collective malaise if we are to save our environment. If you suspect that a factory is acting irresponsibly in limiting pollution, do something about it. Find out about what it produces, the technical details of its product, and the national laws requiring it to protect its surroundings. If you find inconsistencies in any of these areas, report them.
Make your voice heard through social media and crowdfunding. Be encouraged by small but meaningful signs of progress. Day by day, week by week, a concerted public effort can and will reshape the environment around us, provided we can muster a groundswell of support. With these tools, we can overcome fear. The only real thing we should fear is our own apathy and lack of ambition when it comes to social and environmental justice.
A workshop I attended at the prestigious Peking University last December convinced me of this. At the end of the event, a student asked, “What is the greatest challenge facing China’s environmentalist groups today?” I expected the answer to be something rather banal, like a shortage of funding, labor, or knowhow. Instead, the speaker — the secretary general of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, Zhou Jinfeng — gave a much more refreshing response: “Now is the best time for environmental groups to make their mark in China, because no other country in the world has more environmental disasters going unchecked. Environmental groups, activists, and volunteers will have an impact in China so long as they put their words into actions. So why are so many of you sitting around watching?”
Ingrained self-denial makes us reluctant to pursue meaningful endeavors and keeps us locked in constant equivocation. Therein lies China’s dilemma: Very few people are happy about pollution, but even fewer are willing to act decisively against it. The only way to publicly escalate the issue is to stay mentally strong and argue based on the facts we have. Blots on China’s environmental landscape cast shadows over a large portion of the population. It is in the public interest to fight pollution, but we are too worried about ramifications for individuals when we should be worried about the collective good.
Perpetrators of ecological disasters are far more vulnerable than most people think. From the moment when a pollution event occurs, those responsible for it live in fear of the judgment — both official and unofficial — against them. Yet to capitalize on this weakness in those who ravage the land, sea, and air, environmental crusaders must be brave. Even just a few soldiers fighting valiantly on the front lines can turn the tide of battle and inspire the public to put aside its fear of jumping into the fray.
Ex-spy Plame’s big worries: ‘reckless’ president, nuclear weapons, By Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Feb 17,When the most famous ex-CIA spy alive is concerned about the world blowing up, there’s probably something worrisome in that.
Sure, this is the kind of fretting Valerie Plame Wilson has been doing since her cover was famously blown in 2003 by an operative of President George W. Bush’s administration. But as she dashed through San Francisco last week to speak at a cyberterrorism conference, Plame said she sees the country heading into a dangerously unstable period that just might result in disaster involving her No. 1 concern of the past several years:
Nuclear bombs.
Blame it on President Trump, his reckless ways, and the “low-quality people he surrounds himself with,” she said.
“What I find most concerning about him is his access to the nuclear command and control structure,” Plame said the other day over breakfast at a diner before delivering a speech to the RSA 2017 Conference on international security. “We’re still deciding whether to take Trump literally or seriously. But during the campaign he made comments about ‘So what if Japan gets a nuclear weapon,’ and intimating that a nuclear strike is not out of the question.
“He is so casual and reckless. Impulsive, to say the least. This is a man who gets riled up by a tweet. Is this the guy you want to make nuclear decisions?”………
Plame said that, as a specialist in keeping security tight, she has been particularly mortified by Trump’s apparent sloppiness — from neglecting to go to a secure location at his Mar-a-Lago estate when he received information about a North Korean missile launch to one of Trump’s supporters cavalierly posting a Facebook picture of himself at a Trump event with “Rick,” the military officer carrying the president’s “football” of nuclear attack codes.
However, watching Trump’s news conference Thursday made her even more concerned as he casually mused that he could shoot a Russian ship “right out of the water,” and that “nuclear holocaust would be like no other.”
“So, this is the president to whom we have entrusted our nuclear codes?” she said. “The incompetence we’ve seen is — and I know this is a widely overused word right now — unprecedented. And it’s more than just Trump.
China delays nuclear reactor start again https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/34464586/china-delays-nuclear-reactor-start-again/#page1AFP on February 22, 2017, Paris (AFP) – Two nuclear reactors being built in the southern Chinese city of Taishan will come onstream months later than planned, said China General Nuclear Power (CGN), which runs the project together with France’s EDF.
“Taishan Nuclear recently organised a comprehensive evaluation on subsequent engineering construction plan and relevant risks, and after due consideration, it is decided to adjust the construction plan of Taishan project,” CGN said in a statement filed late Monday to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
The reactors are of the so-called third-generation European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) type which has yet to go onstream anywhere in the world, and their start had been delayed once before, in 2016.
Britain in September gave the green light, with conditions, to EDF and CGN to build such a reactor an Hinkley Point, after a heated debate which included worries about China’s involvement.
Following EPR delays in Finland and in France, the two Chinese reactors are set to become the first of their type to go into service anywhere.
“The expected commercial operation of Taishan Unit 1 and Taishan Unit 2 are adjusted from the original first half of 2017 and the second half of 2017 to the second half of 2017 and the first half of 2018, respectively,” it said.
Construction of the Taishan plant started in 2009.
Karachi is unsafe with nuclear, solar better Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistan’s most renowned nuclear physicist, discusses the prospects of solar power, Chinese nuclear reactors and hopes and fears he has for Pakistan’s energy future., Eco Business, By Zofeen T. Ebrahim, 20 Feb 17, “………More nuclear plants don’t make economic sense to me. We are going for nuclear electricity because the Chinese badly want to sell their reactors to Pakistan – we are China’s only customer for nuclear power plants. China has loaned Pakistan 80 per cent of the amount needed for the Karachi Nuclear Power Plants (KANUPP)…..
After the tsunami initiated disaster at the plants in Fukushima, it became clear that having nuclear plants near any city was a bad idea. If something ever goes wrong with KANUPP, what will happen to Karachi defies the imagination. Fukushima was a small town of 80,000 disciplined people.
Karachi has 22 million people most of whom feel no twinge when going through a red light. Evacuating them in any disciplined manner would be impossible. And evacuate to where? A catastrophic disaster doesn’t have to be caused by a tsunami – an act of terrorism, sabotage, earthquakes, or operator error (as happened at Chernobyl in 1986) could all take us down that path…….
The global nuclear industry obviously aims to make safer reactors. But the problem is that no one can foresee all the ways in which things could go wrong. The fuel contained in a typical reactor core has more than a thousand atom bombs’ worth of fissile material.
And, even though a reactor cannot blow up in the same way as a bomb, it can release thousands of times more radioactivity than was released by the bomb explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As far as our options go, Pakistan does not make nuclear power reactors. These are beyond our technological capability. Making bombs is far easier and obviously we are making lots of them……
Climate change can be better fought by concentrating on solar and wind power, making more efficient electricity grids, and by cutting down on wastage. Also, if one looks into the carbon cost of making nuclear plants, the savings due to cheap nuclear fuel are much less.
How about if we use thorium fission reactors, or is this still an academic discussion?
PH: India has been planning on doing this for 40 years. There’s still no electricity being produced by thorium fuelled reactors. In any case, it’s not an option for Pakistan because we don’t have thorium deposits and do not have the capacity to make our own nuclear power plants. http://www.eco-business.com/news/karachi-is-unsafe-with-nuclear-solar-better/
Germany demands answers after Swiss nuclear reactor is restarted… and then shut down again,The Local, 20 Feb 17, The German environment minister has demanded answers from the Swiss authorities after the Leibstadt nuclear reactor in the canton of Aargau near the German border was switched off on Friday night, just seven hours after being restarted following a six months shutdown.
Shortly after the reactor was brought on line at around 5.30pm on Friday, operator KKL noted a malfunction of the exhaust system responsible for filtering gases from the condenser in a non-nuclear area of the reactor, KKL said in a statement……
Greenpeace has also criticized the move, while 16,000 people have signed a petition against the reactor led by a Swiss Green Party politician, reported Swiss news agencies.
Russia to rely less on nuclear weapons as their conventional strength rapidly increases, Business Insider, Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press, 21 Feb 17, MOSCOW (AP) — Russia will continue to see the development of its nuclear forces as a top priority, but the military will rely increasingly on conventional weapons to deter any aggression, the Russian Defense Minister said Tuesday.
Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that weapons such as the long-range Kalibr cruise missiles carried by navy ships, long-range cruise missiles carried by Russian strategic bombers and the land-based short-range Iskander missiles will play an increasingly important role as a non-nuclear deterrent. Those missiles can carry nuclear or conventional warheads.
Shoigu pointed to the new missiles’ debut in the Syrian conflict, saying they have proven themselves well.
“The development of strategic nuclear forces will remain an unconditional priority,” Shoigu said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies. “Russian nuclear weapons ensure the guaranteed deterrence of aggression by any foreign power.”
At the same time, he added, “the role of nuclear weapons in deterring a potential aggressor will diminish, primarily thanks to the development of precision weapons.”
Until recently, Russia lacked long-range cruise missiles with conventional warheads similar to those in the U.S. inventory.
Pope says indigenous people must have final say about their land Francis echoes growing body of international law and standards on the right to ‘prior and informed consent’, Guardian, David Hill, 21 Feb 17, In the 15th century papal bulls promoted and provided legal justification for the conquest and theft of indigenous peoples’ lands and resources worldwide – the consequences of which are still being felt today. The right to conquest in one such bull, the Romanus Pontifex, issued in the 1450s when Nicholas V was the Pope, was granted in perpetuity.
How times have changed. Last week, over 560 years later, Francis, the first Pope from Latin America, struck a rather different note – for indigenous peoples around the world, for land rights, for better environmental stewardship. He said publicly that indigenous peoples have the right to “prior and informed consent.” In other words, nothing should happen on – or impact – their land, territories and resources unless they agree to it.
“I believe that the central issue is how to reconcile the right to development, both social and cultural, with the protection of the particular characteristics of indigenous peoples and their territories,” said Francis, according to an English version of his speech released by the Vatican’s press office.
“This is especially clear when planning economic activities which may interfere with indigenous cultures and their ancestral relationship to the earth,” Francis went on. “In this regard, the right to prior and informed consent should always prevail, as foreseen in Article 32 of the [UN] Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Only then is it possible to guarantee peaceful cooperation between governing authorities and indigenous peoples, overcoming confrontation and conflict.”
The warships will take part in the Navy Parade at the island of Kronstad just outside St. Petersburg on July 30, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports.
In addition to «Pyotr Velikiy» and nuclear powered submarines, more than 30 surface warships and 40 planes and helicopters will join in for the parade.
The Navy Day in late July is an annual event where President Vladimir Putin normally participate. The main parade has earlier been arranged in Severomorsk where the Northern fleet has its headquarters. In 2014, some few months after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, the main naval parade took place in Sevastopol, the base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
In the Baltic, where the navy sails vessels from both St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, no nuclear powered vessels are based.
«Pyotr Velikiy» and several of Russia’s older nuclear powered submarines are, however, built at naval yards in St. Petersburg. The battle cruiser has not been in the Baltic since she sailed out on her maiden voyage towards the Barents Sea in late 1996.
The Russian navy’s nuclear powered submarines are also seldom sailing the Baltic Sea.
On their way to this summer’s naval parade outside St. Petersburg, the nuclear powered battle cruiser and submarines will have to sail along the coast of Norway through the Öresund strait between Denmark and Sweden heading north to the Baltic Sea east of Gotland and west of the Baltic States before sailing east south of Finland and north of Estonia.
«Pyotr Velikiy» is powered by two nuclear reactors and carries a wide-range of weapons including cruise-missiles and several types of surface-to-air missiles, torpedoes and rocket launchers.
The announcement do not details which of the Northern fleet’s nuclear powered submarines that will take part.
The UAE’s Nuclear Push And the Potential Fallout for the Middle East, Foreign Affairs 21 Feb 17,
The United Arab Emirates will soon be the first Arab state with a nuclear power program and the first to join the civilian nuclear club in more than a quarter of a century. Barring any delays, the country’s first reactor is scheduled to be operational by May 2017, after further inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure the fuel is used only for peaceful purposes. So far, the project is on budget and on schedule. The remaining three 1,400 megawatt South Korean-designed reactors are under construction and will be gradually connected to the grid by May 2020.Along with such progress have come concerns about Arab states using their forthcoming nuclear capabilities to build a weapon sometime in the future….
Study: Savings possible by shutting down NW nuclear-power plantSeattle Times February 21, 2017The Associated Press PORTLAND (AP) — A new study says Pacific Northwest ratepayers could save hundreds of millions of dollars if the Bonneville Power Administration and Energy Northwest close the region’s only commercial nuclear power plant and replace its output with renewable energy.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reports (http://bit.ly/2lJ7Z7q) that the Portland-based McCullough Research consulting firm estimated savings from $261.2 million to $530.7 million over 10 years due to historically low renewable energy prices.
Tepco uses the RISER quadcopter drone to visually map gamma radiation in the unit 3 turbine building. The RISER quadcopter drone is equipped with GPS, HD cameras and the N-Visage 3D gamma radiation detector which produces color images of radiation. It has a small size 3d gamma camera.
The N-Visage 3D gamma radiation detector technology has been used previously to examine the refueling floor of unit 2 and some other areas of the reactor buildings.
The RISER quadcopter drone has a maximum radiation resistance of 10 mSv/hr so it won’t be used into the more dangerous areas of the site.
The media are trying to blame the Russians (Of course ).. there has also been other reactor problems in Europe..
Norway has damaged fuel in its Halden research reactor since Oct last year 2016 (reported) and it is releasing Iodine 131 but they said then that they are filtering the releases and none is getting out of the building.. Ukraine is straining their reactors because right wing Kiev mobs are blocking coal from the Russian eastern side.
This last week the Eurdep mapping was turned off in Ukraine, Poland and Russian monitoring was stopped for the same period and these monitoring stations are still offline today .. And in another incident, there has been a release a few days ago from Spain I think? ..
Also Irelands rad monitoring was switched off on Sunday morning, probably because of a release from Flamanville (France) that is having problems getting restarted or maybe Sellafield (UK) .. some small evidence on the Irish EURDEP for that (I have a screenshot above ) .. A reactor in Germany is off gassing with a very high spike shown on the Eurdep monitor map from last week probably due to maintenance or refueling of the reactor.
On the widely January 2017 reported release likely from the ancient Budapest Medical Isotope Institute in Hungary
Hervé Courtois“In November 2011, for example, iodine-131 had been detected in air in several European countries and the survey4 had led to the rejection of iodine-131 from a radioisotope production institute in Budapest ( Hungary). Measurements carried out by the CRIIRAD laboratory in November 2011 confirmed a significant contamination of the vegetation with iodine-131 and iodine-125 in Budapest, several kilometers from this nuclear site.”
Eurdep radiation mapping mostly gets switched of when there is an unintended release. This is done by the IAEA to protect the nuclear industry and have it seem in a better light.
An example of a switch off and peaks before from Ireland withing the last week (possibly to do with Flamanville or Sellafield nuclear sites;
In short the January release was due to the Budapest Medical Isotope Institute and the IAEA are covering it up again. A shortage of medical isotopes is causing increased releases of a number of isotopes and Iodine 131 is the easiest to measure. The pollution near the source should be made public as this area will have contaminated milk an vegetables. It is a crime that under privileged children are allowed to get cancer so that over privileged adults can be treated for cancer!
To expose children to possible radioactive nanoparticles without any protection just for the sake of propaganda to show that everything is safe and back to normal in Fukushima is irresponsible and criminal! All in the name of the recovery and reconstruction campaign organized by the Japanese government to welcome all the tourists to come to “clean” beautiful Japan for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics! Olympics to which Fukushima produce will be used to prepare the meals fed to the visiting athletes! All in the name of promotion and economic reconstruction! Alternate facts, total denial of reality being substituted to real facts and dangers. A total insanity!
A former soccer training facility close to Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant has been used as a staging point for recovery work since the 2011 nuclear disaster, but that’s about to change.
Temporary dormitories for workers stand where there used to be a soccer field at the facility, called J-Village. The area is filled with memories for Shigenari Akashi, who worked as a coach for a junior youth team there for more than 10 years.
“National tournament finals used to be held here. Children from all over the country would practice hard, aspiring to play here,” Akashi says.
J-Village was Japan’s first national soccer training center. It opened in 1997 and over the years saw more than a million visitors. The complex was even used to train the national teams of Japan and Argentina.
But the nuclear disaster changed everything. The facility is just 20 kilometers from the plant, so Tokyo Electric Power Company rented it to set up an operational base for containing the accident.
“I was in shock and at a loss for words when I saw the Self-Defense Forces’ tanks here, and the gravel laid on the natural turf for the parking lot,” says Akashi.
At the end of last year, the moment he had been waiting for finally arrived as TEPCO began work to return the facility to its original form.
Fukushima Prefecture has even bigger plans — tt wants to build Japan’s first “all-weather soccer field” at the site. Part of the facility is scheduled to open in the summer of 2018.
The Japan Football Association has given the project its full support. The Japanese national team will use the new J-Village as its training base for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
But there are bigger challenges than rebuilding. There are fears over radiation levels — in some areas they’re still higher than international standards recommend. So the J-Village operator has a plan.
“The construction work will focus on largely replacing the soil, a technique we expect will reduce radiation levels more than usual decontamination methods,” says Eiji Ueda, who is executive vice president at the facility. “We can emphasize how safe it is by hosting national teams from Japan or perhaps abroad for training.”
A town near J-Village was evacuated because of the disaster. Residents got the green light to move back a year and a half ago but few have returned as most of the evacuees still live in a neighboring city.
Akashi and his co-workers have been giving soccer classes for children, including some who lived near J-Village. But there are mixed feelings about playing there again.
“I want to use the new J-Village, but I live far away now, so it will be hard to go there very often,” says a boy at the facility.
“We still have the lingering memory of it being used as the staging ground for decommissioning work,” says one father.
For Akashi, he’s got a specific goal in mind.
“In reviving J-Village, we want to give back local people a gathering place and their sense of pride. We believe this will also help to revive Fukushima as a whole,” he says.
The clock on the J-Village scoreboard is stopped at 2:46 p.m., the moment the earthquake struck. The deep rift created over the last 6 years will need to be filled so that the clock can move forward once more.
The Japanese government is set to lift evacuation orders in heavily contaminated areas around Fukushima. It will cut compensation and housing support to survivors, who are still struggling six years later.
Their basic rights to health, housing, and environment are being violated. The government is desperately trying to minimize the disaster at the expense of survivors in an attempt to revive the dying nuclear industry and suffocate other cleaner energy sources. We must say no!
Greenpeace has just published report on the Fukushima disaster entitled “No return to normal”. They made a study of the potential doses of the inhabitants who would return to the evacuated areas, with a focus on Iitate-mura. http://www.greenpeace.org/japan/Global/japan/pdf/NRN_FINweb4.pdf
The report is based on many on-site measurements and makes lifetime dose assessments.It should be noted that the samples were taken by the citizen laboratory Chikurin, founded with the support of the ACRO. http://chikurin.org/
The authorities planned to lift the evacuation order at the end of March in Iitaté-mura, except in areas classified as difficult return zones, as well as in the Yamakiya district of Kawamata.Compensation will stop within one year.This concerns more than 6,000 people in Iitate who are facing a dilemma, as in all the other contaminated territories.
Greenpeace recalls that decontamination concerns only areas close to dwellings and cultivated fields and that forest covers 75% of this mountainous area.Even in areas where decontamination work has been carried out, the doses remain high. Greenpeace carried out measurements of soil contamination and dose in 7 dwellings to estimate the exposure for people who would return. This varies between 39 and 183 mSv over 70 years from March 2017. This may exceed the limit of 1 mSv / year which is the dose limit in normal time and the total dose of 100 mSv from which the Japanese authorities admit that there is an increased risk of cancer. The doses taken at the beginning of the disaster are not taken into account in this calculation.
In its calculations, the government estimates that the dose rate is reduced by 60% in homes due to the screening effect of the walls.But the measurements made by Greenpeace in a house show that the reduction in exposure is not as strong.
).. there has also been other reactor problems in Europe..
