GR: There’s lots of loose talk going around about “geoengineering” our way out of the climate-change disaster. I say it’s loose talk because there’s been no serious testing of efficacy and long-term consequences. Actually, scientists have analyzed most of the ideas such as blasting sunlight-blocking particles into the atmosphere, converting CO2 to useful materials, and so forth and found that such techniques fall short of what’s needed. The article below describes another debunking, this time the idea that we could clear the air by planting CO2-absorbing forests.
Climatologists have determined that we have already released enough carbon, methane, and other greenhouse gases to cause disastrous climate changes. And so far, the way we might save a fair portion of our civilization is to stop burning coal, oil, gas, and even wood now.
26 May, 2017 – “Humans cannot simply plant their way out of trouble: trees cannot absorb the ever-increasing…
¶ In an article in Science, researchers from Princeton University and the Union of Concerned Scientists found that a reliance on “faulty analysis” by US nuclear experts could result in a catastrophic fire that has the potential to force some 8 million people to relocate, and result in a staggering $2 trillion (£1.5 trillion) in damages. [Wired.co.uk]
Possible contamination pattern from a hypothetical fire in a spent-fuel pool at the Peach Bottom nuclear plant. Red and orange areas would require evacuation. (Image: Michael Schoeppner, Princeton University, Program on Science and Global Security)
World:
¶ Pope Francis put climate change on the agenda of his first meeting with President Trump, and the subject is likely to come up again and again in the president’s encounters with other world leaders in the coming days. Mr Trump told his Vatican hosts that he would make a final…
Military replaces nuclear police at Sizewell in Operation Temperer response to Manchester terrorist bombing East Anglian Daily Times , 24 May 2017
Armed soldiers are at Sizewell nuclear power stations in Suffolk as part of the security response to Monday’s terrorist bombing in Manchester. The military presence is part of the Government’s Operation Temperer providing up to 3,800 troops to support police in their security operations, following the attack at Manchester Arena, which left 22 people dead.
A spokesman for EDF Energy, which operates Sizewell, moved to reassure people that the threat level was unchanged on site, where there is always an armed presence. The soldiers are replacing armed officers from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), who had been redeployed as part of Operation Temperer.
The CNC said it had provided a number authorised firearms officers to support colleagues in Home Office forces.
“Our civil nuclear sites remain fully protected and the CNC will continue to carry out their core role of protecting nuclear sites and materials, while also being part of the strategic reserve supporting communities across the country,” a spokesman added.
The Pentagon Can’t Believe Trump Told Another President About Nuclear Subs Near North Korea
“We never talk about subs!” three defense officials told BuzzFeed News after a transcript of a call between President Trump and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte was published. BuzzFeeed News, May 25, 2017,Nancy A. Youssef BuzzFeed News World Reporter Pentagon officials are in shock after the release of a transcript of a call between President Donald Trump and his Philippines counterpart revealed that the US military had moved two nuclear submarines towards North Korea.
“We never talk about subs!” three officials told BuzzFeed News, referring to the military’s belief that keeping submarines’ movements secret is key to their mission.
While the US military will frequently announce the deployment of aircraft carriers, it is far more careful when discussing the movement of nuclear submarines. Carriers are hard to miss, and that, in part, is a reason the US military deploys them. They are a physical show of force. Submarines are, at times, a furtive complement to the carriers, a hard-to-detect means of strategic deterrence.
According to the transcript, released Wednesday, Trump called Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte April 29, in part to discuss the rising threat from North Korea. During that call, while discussing ways to mitigate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions, Trump said: “We have two submarines — the best in the world. We have two nuclear submarines — not that we want to use them at all. I’ve never seen anything like they are but we don’t have to use this, but [Kim] could be crazy, so we will see what happens.”
During the same call, Trump also called the North Korea leader a “madman with nuclear weapons” and celebrated Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.” The Filipino leader has supported the alleged extrajudicial killing of 8,000 people since he took office in June, part of his purge to rid his nation of drugs. Duterte has bragged about committing murder himself, called former president Barack Obama a “son of a bitch” and once threatened to suspend the bilateral agreement between his nation and the United States that allows US troops to visit the Philippines.
“Keep up [the] good work, you are doing an amazing job,” Trump told Duterte during the call.
A US official who had previously seen a version of the transcript confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the published version appeared accurate.
By announcing the presence of nuclear submarines, the president, some Pentagon officials privately explained, gives away the element of surprise — an irony given his repeated declarations during the campaign that the US announces far too many of its military plans when it comes to combatting ISIS.
Moreover, some countries in the region, particularly China, seek to develop their anti-sub capability. Knowing that two US submarines are in the region could allow them to test this.
Finally, it is unclear why Duterte would need to know the specific number of subs in the region. The Philippines is not a part of US military efforts to deter North Korea, so why would Duterte need to know such details?
BBC News 24 May 2017 The United Nations has warned that President Donald Trump’s plans to cut contributions to peacekeeping will make such work “impossible”.
The US administration signalled heavy cuts to UN operations, in its budget proposals released on Tuesday. The US foots more than a quarter of the UN’s $7.9bn (£6.1bn) peacekeeping bill.
A spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the organisation was willing to discuss how peacekeeping could be made more cost-effective.
Mr Trump’s budget proposal declares new “attention on the appropriate US share of international spending at the United Nations”.
The document does not provide a detailed breakdown, but Reuters news agency reports the drop in funding for the operations could amount to $1bn.
The spokesman said the UN was studying Mr Trump’s plan. “The figures presented would simply make it impossible for the UN to continue all of its essential work advancing peace, development, human rights and humanitarian assistance,” he said.
On May 9, workers discovered a 20-foot-diameter hole where the roof had collapsed on a makeshift nuclear waste site: a tunnel, sealed in 1965, encasing old railroad cars and equipment contaminated with radiation through years of plutonium processing. Potential radiation levels were high enough that some workers were told to shelter in place while others donned respirators and protective suits as they repaired the hole.
The Hanford complex, which dates back to 1943, produced the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Half the size of Rhode Island, it is often described as the most contaminated place in the United States. Until its last reactor closed in 1987, it churned out plutonium for the roughly 70,000 nuclear weapons the United States built during the Cold War. As the historian Kate Brown documents in her book Plutopia, which explores the uncanny similarities between Hanford and its Soviet counterpart Ozersk, Hanford has been a slow-motion environmental disaster since its opening, constantly excreting radioactive contaminants into the air and water.
More dangerous than the tunnels are the giant tanks of liquid nuclear waste: 177 of them containing 56 million gallons of radioactive soup whose composition is only approximately known. The contents of some have to be stirred periodically to prevent the formation of hydrogen bubbles that would cause the tanks to explode. One million gallons of this witches’ brew have already leaked into the groundwater from tanks that were built to last only 20 years. The US government projects that it will cost more than $107 billion to clean up the site, with remediation finished by 2060. Few knowledgeable people put much credence in either number. Continue reading →
Climate Change Could Uncover An Abandoned Arctic Nuclear Base, HuffPost Canada | By Sarah Rieger, 05/25/2017
Climate change is causing record levels of ice to disappear from the Arctic, and the melt is unearthing something that was supposed to stay buried for centuries — an abandoned U.S. nuclear base.
The US army’s top secret arctic city Under the Ice! “Camp Century” Restored Classified Film
Camp Century was built in Greenland in 1959 during the peak of the Cold War. The subterranean base held between 85 and 200 soldiers year-round. The base was built under the pretense that it would be a centre for scientific experiments on the icecap and a space to test construction techniques in Arctic conditions.
The base was really part of “Project Iceworm,” a top secret U.S. army program that intended to build a network of missile launch sites under the ice sheet.
The camp was essentially a small town under the ice. When abandoned in 1967, the trenches and buildings — including houses, a town store and even a hospital — were left behind, too.
The engineers stationed there also abandoned a nuclear generator that was “minimally” decommissioned, as they assumed it would be “‘preserved for eternity‘ by perpetual snowfall,” according to a 2016 study by Geophysical Research Letters. Other than the nuclear reaction chamber, all of the infrastructure and nuclear waste at the site was left intact.
The researchers weren’t totally off-base with their belief that the site wouldn’t melt. The camp was established on what’s known as the “dry snow zone” of the Greenland ice sheet, where almost no surface melting was known to occur at the time.
According to NASA’s Earth Science Communications Team, geoscientists in the ’60s believed that the climate could only change on a large timescale, over thousands of years. It wasn’t until 1979 that it was proven that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would result in significant negative changes to the earth’s climate.
Climate change is hitting the Arctic hard. Surface ice melt in Northern Canada grew by 900 per cent between 2005 and 2015, a recent study found, and melting glaciers have begun to release pollutants like DDT and PCBs into the environment.
Hanford Nuclear Cleanup Budget Slashed in Energy Proposal, Bloomberg Business, By Chuck McCutcheon, 25 May 17Washington state’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation, scene of a recent collapse of a tunnel containing nuclear waste, would see its funding slashed under President Donald Trump’s new budget proposal…..
Trump’s budget blueprint calls for reducing cleanup at Hanford from $921 million to $716 million, a 22 percent reduction. That comes as the budget proposes to boost overall departmental defense-related environmental cleanup of materials from $5.28 billion to $5.54 billion.
Hanford Cleanup Needed
Washington state’s congressional delegation, including Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, long have pressed various administrations to commit to cleaning up Hanford. The site in eastern Washington has milllons of gallons of highly radioactive wastes stored in 177 aging underground tanks, some of which have leaked.
“Previous administrations and Congress have repeatedly supported the legal and moral obligation of the federal government to clean up the Hanford site, and we urge you to continue this important work to protect health and safety,” the two senators and Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said in a May 19 letter to Perry.
The Hanford tunnel, containing radioactive wastes that were byproducts of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, partially collapsed on May 9, prompting nearby workers to evacuate. A worker’s clothing also was exposed to radioactive contamination in what Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) called an “alarming incident.”…. https://www.bna.com/hanford-nuclear-cleanup-n73014451452/
Platts 23rd May 2017 The Trump administration is proposing to end construction of a facility deigned to convert 34 mt of plutonium from surplus nuclear weapons to nuclear reactor fuel, concluding it would “be irresponsible to pursue this approach when a more cost-effective alternative exists.”
The administration, which Tuesday unveiled its proposed fiscal 2018 budget, said it will direct CB&I Areva MOX Services to develop a plan “as soon as practical,” to halt construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and securely shut the facility by late 2018.
The 2018 fiscal year starts October 1. Congress must authorize and appropriate fiscal 2018 spending and the president must sign the budget bill. The $340 million that Congress appropriated in an omnibus budget resolution for fiscal 2017 was earmarked primarily for the installation of ductwork and to seal openings in the facility used during
construction.
The fiscal 2018 proposal states appropriations for the MOX project after this fiscal year are “to be determined,” with no dollar amount specified. A justification for terminating the MOX project that the US Department of Energy provided Tuesday noted that the facility’s $4.8 billion cost projected in 2007, with a startup date of 2015, had ballooned
to $17.2 billion by 2016, with 2048 the earliest date, by which mix-oxide fuel could be produced. DOE now estimates the completion cost at up to $26 billion.
DOE noted that analysis it and “external independent analyses” have conducted “have consistently concluded that the MOX approach to plutonium disposition is significantly costlier and would require a much higher annual budget than an alternate disposition method, ‘Dilute and Dispose.'” https://www.platts.com/latest-news
Korsnick calls for concerted nuclear advocacy effort, World Nuclear News 24 May 2017
The US nuclear energy industry must work together to strengthen existing relationships and build new coalitions among supporters of nuclear energy’s different attributes, according to Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) president and CEO Maria Korsnick….
Korsnick said the industry has developed the National Nuclear Energy Strategy to communicate nuclear energy’s benefits “more aggressively, more widely and more consistently than we ever have before”. The industry has “stepped up our advocacy efforts not just a notch or two, but by a great margin”, she said……..
“this remains a time of great stress for the nuclear energy industry”, she said, stressing that the industry must ensure nuclear energy remains part of the conversation on clean energy.
Nuclear Reactor Involved In US History’s Worst Meltdown At Risk Of Shutting Down, Daily Caller ,ANDREW FOLLETT, Energy and Science Reporter, 24 May 17 THE PENNSYLVANIA POWER PLANT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE LARGEST NUCLEAR MELTDOWN IN U.S. HISTORY FACES EARLY RETIREMENT, ACCORDING TO NUCLEAR INDUSTRY OFFICIALS.
Exelon Corporation announced Wednesday that it would have trouble selling electricity generated by the Three Mile Island (TMI) and Quad Cities nuclear power plants in 2020. Exelon didn’t sell any of the stations’ power during advanced auction in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.
Exelon’s other nuclear plants in the region were able to sell their power for the 2020-2021 planning year, but the company says TMI hasn’t been profitable for five years — the site of a partial nuclear meltdown in the 1970s.
“The failure of the TMI plant, in particular, to clear the PJM capacity auction is the latest data point that all is not well with the U.S. electricity marketplace and that nuclear energy plants are at risk for premature closure if the current market is not reformed and innovated,” David Blee, executive director of the Nuclear Infrastructure Council, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
In March 1979, TMI’s number 2 reactor partially melted down, causing the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear operating history. The event spurred environmentalist campaigns to prevent other nuclear power plants from being built, and has tarnished the industry’s reputation ever since….
…..TMI’s possible closure is not an isolated incident. About half of U.S. nuclear reactors are at risk of closing early…In the past two years, six states have shut down nuclear plants, and “dozens” of other plants across the U.S. are facing challenging economic conditions, placing them at risk of imminent retirement. Decommissioning reactors can cost up to $1.5 billion and take up to 60 years to complete….
Solar industry has 3.09 million people vs 1.2 million in wind
China employment at 3.6 million vs 777,000 in U.S.: Irena
The renewable energy industry employed 9.8 million people last year, up 1.1 percent from 2015, led by the solar photovoltaic business, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency’s annual report on the industry.
Growth has slowed in the past two years, while the solar photovoltaic category, with 3.09 million jobs, and wind business more than doubled their respective employee numbers since 2012, the first year assessed, Irena said in the report.
“The nature of jobs is changing a little bit, with more emphasis on the installation, operational and maintenance side,” Adnan Amin, Irena’s director general, said Wednesday in an interview in Abu Dhabi. “That doesn’t grow as fast as the growth in manufacturing, which was very quick because the technology cost was coming down and you had this huge explosion in equipment.”
Jobs will continue to grow in developing countries, especially in Asia, he said.
Here are some of the highlights from the report:
Global renewables employment has climbed every year since 2012, with solar photovoltaic becoming the largest segment by total jobs in 2016.
Solar photovoltaic employed 3.09 million people, followed by liquid biofuels at 1.7 million. The wind industry had 1.2 million employees, a 7 percent increase from 2015.
Employment in renewables, excluding large hydro power, increased 2.8 percent last year to 8.3 million people, with China, Brazil, the U.S., India, Japan and Germany the leading job markets. Asian countries accounted for 62 percent of total jobs in 2016 compared with 50 percent in 2013.
Renewables jobs could total 24 million in 2030, as more countries take steps to combat climate change, Irena said.
The alert was sent out during a regularly scheduled drill to test the readiness of emergency officials in case of an actual emergency at PSEG Nuclear’s Artificial Island generating complex in Lower Alloways Creek Township.
“At 8:45 p.m., a training message was created in order to test an electronic communications system,” New Jersey State Police said in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon.
Buoyed by State Aid, U.S. Nuclear Plant Still Fails at Auction, Bloomberg, by Jim Polson, May 25, 2017
Quad Cities fails to submit winning bid at PJM auction
Three Mile Island at risk of early retirement: Exelon
Even the promise of state subsidies wasn’t enough to help a struggling nuclear power plant in the biggest electricity market emerge a victor in a closely watched auction.
Exelon Corp. said its Quad Cities plant in Illinois didn’t clear at the annual auction of capacity rights by PJM Interconnection LLC. It was the first time the grid operator had held a sale since a handful of nuclear reactors in Illinois and New York won subsidies to stay open.
In the run-up to the auction, opponents of subsidies had feared Exelon might undercut rivals in the knowledge that Quad Cities would be a recipient of state aid. With reactors reeling under competition from cheap shale gas and renewables, more states could now face pressure to help out ailing nuclear plants, according to Kit Konolige, a utilities analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.
“Exelon could make the other argument, that even with the subsidy it wasn’t able to clear,” Konolige said by phone on Wednesday. “That’s how bad its economics were.”……..
Exelon said the plant has not yet been selected to receive zero emissions credits under the Future Energy Jobs Act, which is designed to promote a clean energy future for Illinois, and is expected to come into force in June…..
Exelon’s Three Mile Island station, scene of the worst accident in the history of U.S. commercial nuclear energy, may not be so lucky. After failing to clear at the past three PJM auctions, the plant is at risk of early retirement. It hasn’t made a profit in five years and remains “economically challenged” given the lack of federal or Pennsylvania energy policies that value zero-emissions nuclear power, the company said.Exelon’s other nuclear plants in PJM cleared in the auction. Oyster Creek didn’t take part, since it’s scheduled to shut in 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-24/buoyed-by-state-aid-u-s-nuclear-plant-still-fails-at-auction
Amherstburg Wants Nuclear Response Plan Update, Blackburn News, BY MARK BROWNMAY 25, 2017 @markbrownradioThe town of Amherstburg is hoping to get provincial cooperation as it updates its nuclear response plan. The town has delegated the responsibility of updating the plan to deputy fire chief Lee Tome, who has been lobbying the province to put some cash behind a plan update, as well as draft guidelines similar to those already in place at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Tiverton. These guidelines would be set in the event of a nuclear incident at the nearby Fermi II nuclear power plant in Michigan.
Amherstburg Mayor Aldo DiCarlo says the town has pretty much been on its own as far as coming up with an emergency response plan.
“We obviously do not have that kind of control, as it’s in the United States,” says DiCarlo. “So when you read the provincial guidelines, they’re very specific to the nuclear plant in the province, and we don’t have that.”
The current plan places responsibility for a response to a nuclear accident at Fermi on the shoulders of the town. The updated plan would reduce the primary emergency zone from the current 23km to the standard 16km that is the U.S. standard, as well as provide for distribution of the K-I pill, a potassium iodide tablet taken to reduce or prevent the effects of radioactivity. A report on the updated plan was presented to Amherstburg town council on Tuesday night.
DiCarlo, though, has a hard time understanding why the province has not recognized the unusual situation Amherstburg is in.
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