Chris Busby published an answering to this paper. As soon as I am getting it, I will add it here below this paper.
By Bertrand R. Jordan – Unité Mixte de Recherche 7268 ADÉS, Aix-Marseille Université/Etablissement Français du Sang/Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Espace éthique méditerranéen, Hôpital d’Adultes la Timone, 13385 Marseille Cedex 05, France
ABSTRACT The explosion of atom bombs over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 resulted in very high casualties, both immediate and delayed but also left a large number of survivors who had been exposed to radiation, at levels that could be fairly precisely ascertained. Extensive follow-up of a large cohort of survivors (120,000) and of their offspring (77,000) was initiated in 1947 and continues to this day. In essence, survivors having received 1 Gy irradiation ( 1000 mSV) have a significantly elevated rate of cancer (42% increase) but a limited decrease of longevity ( 1 year), while their offspring show no increased frequency of abnormalities and, so far, no detectable elevation of the mutation rate. Current acceptable exposure levels for the general population and for workers in the nuclear industry have largely been derived from these studies, which have been reported in more than 100 publications. Yet the general public, and indeed most scientists, are unaware of these data: it is widely believed that irradiated survivors suffered a very high cancer burden and dramatically shortened life span, and that their progeny were affected by elevated mutation rates and frequent abnormalities. In this article, I summarize the results and discuss possible reasons for this very striking discrepancy between the facts and general beliefs about this situation.
THEfirst (and only) two A-bombs used in war were deto-nated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. Casualties were horrendous, approximately 100,000 in each city including deaths in the following days from severe burns and radiation. Although massive bombing of cities had already taken place with similar death tolls (e.g., Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo, the latter with 100,000 casualties on March 9, 1945), the devastation caused by a single bomb was unheard of and remains one of the most horrifying events in the past century. The people who had survived the explosions were soon designated as Hibakusha and were severely discrim-inated against in Japanese society, as (supposedly) carriers of (contagious?) radiation diseases and potential begetters of malformed offspring. While not reaching such extremes, the dominant present-day image of the aftermath of the Hiroshima/ Nagasaki bombings, in line with the general perception of radiation risk (Ropeik 2013; Perko 2014), is that it left the sites heavily contaminated, that the survivors suffered very serious health consequences, notably a very high rate of cancer and other debilitating diseases, and that offspring from these sur-vivors had a highly increased rate of genetic defects. In fact, the survivors have been the object of massive and careful long-term studies whose results to date do not support these conceptions and indicate, instead, measurable but limited det-rimental health effects in survivors, and no detectable genetic effects in their offspring. This Perspectives article does not provide any new data; rather, its aim is to summarize the results of the studies undertaken to date, which have been published in more than 100 papers (most of them in interna-tional journals), and to discuss why they seem to have had so little impact beyond specialized circles.
Bombings and Implementation of Cohort Studies
Characteristics of the bombs and the explosions
Figure 1 Number of solid cancers ob-served up to 1998 in the exposed group; the white portion indicates the excess cases associated with radiation (compar-ison with the unexposed group). Data are from Preston et al. (2007).
The device used at Hiroshima was based on enriched uranium and exploded at an altitude of 600 m with an estimated yield equivalent to 16 kilotons of high explosive. The bomb at Nagasaki was based on plutonium and exploded at 500 m with a yield of 21 kilotons. The major effect of both bombs was an extreme heat and pressure blast accompanied by a strong burst of gamma radiation and a more limited burst of neutrons. The heat blast set the (mostly wooden) buildings on fire in a radius of several kilometers and resulted in an extensive fire-storm centered on the explosion site (also called the hypocen-ter). People were exposed to the combined heat and radiation blasts, with little shielding from the buildings; most of those located within 1.5 km of the hypocenter were killed. The contribution of fallout from these explosions, which occurred mostly as “black rain” in the following days, is not precisely known: few measurements were taken due to scarcity of equipment, and investigations in the first months were per-formed by the US army and subsequently classified. It was probably limited: the bombs exploded at a significant altitude, the resulting firestorm carried the fission products into the high atmosphere, and the eventual fallout was spread over a large area. In addition, a strong typhoon occurred 2 weeks after the bombings and may have washed out much of the materiel. The major health effects (other than the heat blast and accompanying destruction) were almost certainly due to the gamma and neutron radiation from the blasts themselves, and these doses can be quite reliably estimated from the dis-tance to the hypocenter. Thus studies on the survivors can ascertain the health effects of a single, fairly well-defined dose of gamma radiation with a small component from neutrons.
The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and the Radiation Effects Research Foundation
In 2010, when some members of Congress expressed concerns about a Russian state-owned company taking control of 20 percent of the U.S. uranium-producing capacity, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission assured Congress that no uranium would leave the U.S. because the Russian company, Rosatom, did not have an export license for nuclear material.
Yet in 2012, the Obama administration approved the export of yellowcake uranium — the raw material needed to make nuclear weapons — from Russian-owned mines in Wyoming to Canada. According to a report in The Hill, 25 percent of the uranium was later shipped to Europe and Asia.
How did it happen? It was just this easy: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted an amendment to the existing export license of a Kentucky trucking firm, RSB Logistics Services. The now Russian-owned mining firm, Uranium One, was added to the trucking company’s list of clients whose uranium could be shipped to Canada.
The exports continued for two years.
Rosatom purchased a majority stake in Uranium One, then a Canadian mining firm, in 2010, and by 2013 had acquired 100 percent of the company. Both the purchase of the company and the exports were legal, approved by multiple agencies of the U.S. government.
But why?
The answer to that question is now the subject of investigations by at least three committees of Congress.
Some of the mysteries to be solved include:
Why didn’t the FBI tell anybody about evidence gathered in 2009 that Rosatom’s main U.S. executive was involved in a racketeering scheme — bribery, kickbacks, money laundering and extortion — and why did the Department of Justice require the FBI’s informant in the Russian nuclear industry to sign a non-disclosure agreement?
What role, if any, did $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation by investors in Uranium One play in the State Department’s decision to sign off on the deal while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State?
Why did a Kremlin-connected investment bank that was promoting Uranium One stock agree to pay former president Bill Clinton $500,000 for a speech in Moscow?
Did political pressure or concealed information affect any federal department or agency’s decision to approve Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One or its later exports?
Why did the Commerce Department remove Rosatom from a list of companies that needed special approval to export nuclear or other sensitive technology or material in May, 2011?
Did bribery or racketeering compromise the negotiations or terms of the New Strategic Arms Reduction treaty between the U.S. and the Russian Federation, which went into force in February, 2011?
The Senate Judiciary, House Oversight and House Intelligence committees have just announced new investigations that may find the answers to some of these questions. The FBI’s confidential informant has been granted permission to testify about what he witnessed, including actions that his attorney, Victoria Toensing, described to Fox Business Network as “all these bribery payments.”
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has called for a special counsel to be appointed to investigate crimes that may have been committed in connection with Uranium One.
We don’t yet know whether the decisions to allow an unfriendly government to own, control and export U.S. uranium were made as part of an unsuccessful attempt to improve relations with Russia, or whether the decisions were improperly, or illegally, influenced by payments and politics.
But the American people deserve a full, public accounting of the actions of all the officials who were responsible for a breach of national security that may have made our country, and our allies, permanently less safe.
By SETH TUPPER – Associated Press – Saturday, November 4, 2017
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) – Bob Hicks was spending a cold December night in his barracks 53 years ago at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City when the phone rang.
It was the chief of his missile maintenance team, who dispatched Hicks to an incident at an underground silo.
“The warhead,” the team chief said, “is no longer on top of the missile.”
Hicks eventually learned that a screwdriver used by another airman caused a short circuit that resulted in an explosion. The blast popped off the missile’s cone -the part containing the thermonuclear warhead -and sent it on a 75-foot fall to the bottom of the 80-foot-deep silo.
The courageous actions Hicks took that night and over the next several days were not publicized. The accident was not disclosed to the public until years later, when a government report on accidents with nuclear weapons included seven sentences about it. The report listed the accident as the nation’s first involving a Minuteman missile.
Fifty-three years after he responded to a nuclear-missile accident near Vale, Bob Hicks returned to the site of the former accident and also visited the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site near Wall.
Further details were reported publicly for the first time, drawn from documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the Rapid City Journal and others, and from Hicks himself, who is now 73 years old and living in Cibolo, Texas.
When Hicks was sent to the accident on Dec. 5, 1964, he was only 20 years old, and the cryptic statement from his team chief was the only information he was given.
“That was enough to cause me to get dressed pretty quickly,” Hicks recalled.
The trouble began earlier that day when two other airmen were sent to a silo named Lima-02. It was 60 miles northwest of Ellsworth Air Force Base and 3 miles southeast of the tiny community of Vale, on the plains outside the Black Hills.
Lima-02 was one of 150 steel-and-concrete silos that had been planted underground and filled with Minuteman missiles during the previous several years in western South Dakota, where the missiles were scattered across 13,500 square miles. There were hundreds more silos in place or soon to be constructed in North Dakota, Missouri, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska, eventually bringing the nation’s Minuteman fleet to a peak of 1,000.
The original Minuteman missiles, called Minuteman I, were 56 feet tall and weighed 65,000 pounds when loaded with fuel. The missiles were capable of traveling at a top speed of 15,000 miles per hour and could reach the Cold War enemy of the United States, the Soviet Union, within 30 minutes.
Each missile was tipped with a thermonuclear warhead that was many times more powerful than either of the two atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Japan during World War II. One government agency reportedly estimated that the detonation of an early 1960s-era Minuteman warhead over Detroit would have caused 70 square miles of property destruction, 250,000 deaths and 500,000 injuries.
The two airmen who visited the Lima-02 silo on Dec. 5, 1964, were part of a young Air Force missile corps that was responsible for launching and maintaining the missiles. The two airmen’s names are redacted – as are many other names – from an Air Force report that was filed after the accident.
Where did you grow up? The answer to that question has been the most significant information in my (Patricia Hoover’s) medical history.
I spent my first 18 years downriver and downwind from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. In the mid-1940s, when Hanford’s eight nuclear reactors went on line, my family, neighbors and those around us found with growing alarm and confusion that our formerly healthy lives were deteriorating. My community was struck with high rates of thyroid cancers, miscarriages, birth defects and many other anomalous medical conditions.
It took more than 40 years to verify our suspicion that the federal government had contaminated the air, water and food chain throughout the Northwest. In 1986, thousands of activists were finally granted a Freedom of Information Act request. Despite repeated government denial, 19,000 pages of operating documents confirmed that hundreds of thousands of curies of radiation were released from Hanford over years of operation.
The revelation finally explained numerous medical events that took place early in my life. It answered why men in lab coats came to my junior high health class in Hermiston, Oregon, to palpate the throat of every student as if it were part of the curriculum. I understood why my thyroid gland had quit functioning at age 11 and developed a tumor the size of a grapefruit 18 years later. I no longer considered my mysteriously fractured ankle and my classmates’ numerous broken bones to be normal childhood mishaps.
If you lived anywhere near one of America’s eight nuclear facilities – Richland, Washington; Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Savannah River, South Carolina; Paducah, Kentucky; Denver; Idaho Falls, Idaho; or Amarillo, Texas – you may well have had similar experiences.
One of the few agencies that monitor and hold these nuclear sites accountable for rule-abiding operations is under attack internally. In a recently exposed letter, Sean Sullivan, the chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, urges the Trump administration to disband the board or drastically slash its budget.
This independent board has acted as an important watchdog over the nuclear weapons complex since Congress chartered it in 1988, and it is a transparent source of public information. It provides weekly reports, including contractors’ mistakes that may jeopardize the safety of 40,000 workers and nearby communities, and functions as an essential check and balance between the government and the nuclear industry. Sullivan’s action, undertaken without the knowledge of the four other board members, reflects the dangerous pattern of secrecy by which our nuclear weapons facilities have always operated.
Sullivan has himself stated that the board played a helpful role in protecting public health in its early years. He is, however, mistaken in calling the DNFSB an irrelevant “relic of the Cold War.” We live under a president who wants to see drastic growth in our nuclear stockpile. On top of his regular issuance of bombastic threats, the president has unilateral discretion over the arsenal’s use.
We are at the most critical moment in nuclear history since the Cuban missile crisis, and now is prime time to strengthen, rather than abolish, agencies like the DNFSB.
My downwinder medical history, and those of thousands of other Americans who grew up near nuclear plants, is evidence of the debilitating health effects of radiation. My experiences speak clearly to the absolute need to keep the DNFSB engaged in its significant role, regulating safe operations at all eight U.S. nuclear weapons facilities.
In recognition of this necessity, we encourage you to call your senators and your representatives. Urge them to speak up in Congress and oppose disbanding the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. This independent nuclear watchdog must continue its vital work.
Patricia Hoover, of Eugene, Oregon, is a Hanford Downwinder and member of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND). Susan Cundiff, of Eugene, serves on the national board of WAND and leads the Oregon chapter.
Across the region, half-finished projects stand as emblems of bungled industry efforts. At its core, this history has been defined by secrecy, miscalculations and decisions made by the few at the expense of ordinary people.
By Caroline Peyton And Special to The State’s editorial board
November 03, 2017 1:16 PM
Columbia, SC
The South has more nuclear reactors than any other region, and South Carolina is the nuclear epicenter. Home to the Savannah River Site and some of the first commercial reactors and deriving 50 percent of its electricity from nuclear power today, the Palmetto State has a devotion to the atom that few can match. The cancellation of the V.C. Summer expansion project testifies to innumerable missteps, but our collective amnesia has missed the bigger story: The South’s long, messy nuclear history is a catalog of modest successes and epic failures.
Sadly, the V.C. Summer project shutdown is nothing new for the South. It has happened at least 22 times since the 1970s. Some plants existed merely as blueprints, while others were canceled mid-construction. Across the region, half-finished projects stand as emblems of bungled industry efforts. At its core, this history has been defined by secrecy, miscalculations and decisions made by the few at the expense of ordinary people.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Southern politicians envisioned regional transformation through atomic energy; the South would become an “energy breadbasket.” A network of elected officials, utility companies and industry lobbyists sold these projects as job creators, an endless source of cheap energy and boons to the rural communities located near reactors.
This building spree resulted in more than 40 commercial nuclear reactors operating at 23 sites and earned the South industry admiration for its “nuclear friendly citizenry.” Yet those reactors represent only a fraction of what could have been; approximately 35 additional reactors were proposed for Southern states, including a half-dozen where construction had started and billions of dollars were spent on the nuclear road to nowhere.
So what happened to those ill-fated reactors? By the late 1970s, projections for energy demands declined, construction costs didn’t match initial projections, and the accident at Three Mile Island soured public opinion. Local concerns mattered too.
In South Carolina, the failed nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Barnwell County, along with the staggering influx of radioactive waste, helped spawn the South’s largest anti-nuclear protest. Protestors flocked to Barnwell denouncing South Carolina’s role as the nation’s trash can.
In Mississippi, infuriated ratepayers gathered outside the Grand Gulf nuclear plant and burned their utility bills. Other plants were plagued with serious safety issues and community opposition, like the now-operating Waterford 3 reactor in Louisiana.
The most notorious episode occurred with the Tennessee Valley Authority, where a corporation fought landowners in Hartsville, Tenn., to build the “world’s largest nuclear plant” — only to pull the plug. What remains in this bucolic setting are half-finished remnants and a lone cooling tower, fittingly called a “used beer can” by residents. TVA ultimately canceled 10 reactors after spending billions, which tarnished its legacy, permanently marred local landscapes and exacerbated a climate of distrust.
The broad outlines of the V.C. Summer fiasco could have been ripped from any headline in the late 1970s.
Today, the cavernous structures attract photographers seeking dystopian backdrops. Mostly though, they continue to rust away, a symbol of a beleaguered industry that has never resolved fundamental problems — namely projects mired in secrecy and unrealistic cost estimates.
Despite industry reforms since the 1970s, V.C. Summer’s collapse sounds familiar to those well-acquainted with the region’s nuclear past. Bad legislation, the Base Load Review Act of 2007, placed the cost burden upon the ratepayers and limited SCE&G and SCANA’s accountability. A secret report, along with internal emails between SCE&G and state-owned Santee Cooper, reveal a troubling array of warning signs and uncorrected problems.
While it’s true that there were new problems here, such as the Westinghouse bankruptcy, the broad outlines of the V.C. Summer fiasco could have been ripped from any headline in the late 1970s. In the case of those canceled projects, no genuine attempt at restitution was made. Those abandoned plants offer guidance for today.
Legislators and public service commissions must prioritize ratepayers first, better understand the risks involved in large-scale reactor projects and let history inform their decisions as well. If the industry wants to retain the South’s “nuclear-friendly citizenry,” it, too, must confront the nuclear ghosts of its past, and reject the hubris, secrecy and overblown projections that have doomed so many plans and, in some cases, left Southerners with little more than nuclear ruins.
Dr. Peyton wrote her dissertation at USC on the South’s nuclear history
The UN Climate Change Conference will take place 6-17 November in Bonn, Germany and will be presided over by the Government of Fiji. The COP is the forum where UN members meet to discuss how they will limit climate change. This year’s edition, COP23, is more about preparing procedural decisions than reaching agreements as in Paris. Nevertheless, there will be interesting discussions and protests. With America now out of climate accords, China is taking the lead.
Forbes 30th Oct 2017, The UN Environmental Program (UNEP) has rejected the World Nuclear Association’s (WNA) offer to provide financial support to the 8th Annual Sustainable Innovation Forum (SIF).
Described by its chairman as the “largest business-focused side event during the annual Conference Of
Parties” the event is scheduled to take place alongside COP23 in Bonn, Germany. Originally accepted as a gold sponsor and ready to pay the £40,000 ($68,338) fee, the World Nuclear Association was recently notified that its sponsorship had been rescinded upon intervention by the UN Environment Program (UNEP).
Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron team up to prevent NUCLEAR FALL-OUT
FEARS of a nuclear fall-out between Iran and the US has led to Vladimir Putin forming an unlikely alliance with France’s Emmanuel Macron. By DAN FALVEY Mr Putin teamed up with the French President to try and ease escalating tensions surrounding Iran’s nuclear capabilities. It comes as Donald Trump accused Iran of not upholding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear agreement, with the UK, US, Russia, France, China, and Germany in 2015 which aims to limit the country’s nuclear arsenal.
However, fears that the deal could collapse have increased in recent months after the US President threatened not to sign off on the agreement claiming that Iran had broken parts of the pact. Mr Putin and his French counterpart spoke on the phone yesterday to reaffirm their support for the implementation of the deal.
A press statement released by the Kremlin said the Russian leader and Mr Macron agreed on the importance that the deal went ahead.
Last month, the Norwegian Nobel Committee handed a group dedicated to abolishing nuclear weapons its Peace Prize. Now, the Swedish government is looking into expanding its existing network of nuclear fallout shelters, according to news website the Local. A first proposal was included in a report released several weeks ago and followed a review of existing shelters this year, Swedish officials confirmed Friday, saying that the proposed changes were still under consideration by the government.
Sweden has 65,000 shelters, which would provide space for up to 7 million people, but that leaves an estimated 3 million inhabitants without protection.
At least one European country takes the risk of a nuclear war even more seriously: Switzerland may have fewer people than Sweden, but it has built about four times as many nuclear shelters — easily enough for the country’s entire population and then some.
In Sweden and elsewhere, the nuclear shelters are also supposed to protect the population from other hazards, like a biological weapons attack or more-conventional warfare. Often located in publicly accessible buildings, such as schools or shopping centers, they can usually also be used as storage sites or garages and are funded with taxpayer money.
In contrast, in Switzerland all houses above a certain size must include shelters in the basement, putting the financial burden on citizens themselves. That rule was abolished in 2011 by the Swiss parliament, but reintroduced months later after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.
The accident brought back memories of Chernobyl in 1986, and led to a renewed public debate in Europe over the risk of radiation. In Germany — where public shelters are far less common than in Sweden or Switzerland — Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to abandon nuclear energy entirely, despite having championed it for decades. It was her biggest political U-turn in her now 12 years in office.
Such preparations and protective measures may appear strange to Americans. Public nuclear shelters are practically nonexistent in the United States, although there have been recent reports of an increase in demand.
Until recently, few Swedes knew the location of the closest nuclear shelter in their neighborhood. (The government now offers an online map.) Sweden stopped expanding its shelter network almost two decades ago, when nonproliferation supporters appeared to be on the winning side of history. Then came Iran’s nuclear program, the Fukushima accident, Russian military operations, North Korea’s missile tests — and President Trump.
Whereas confidence among Europeans that President Barack Obama would “do the right thing regarding world affairs” ranged between 70 and 90 percent in a number of surveyed nations during his term, those numbers plummeted after Trump’s inauguration and have only gone down since. Only 7 percent in Spain and 11 percent in Germany now say they have confidence in Trump. Top officials in Germany have also directly contradicted Trump’s North Korea policies, and have voiced concerns that the White House may overreact to nuclear provocations and escalate the war rhetoric being exchanged with North Korea.
Europeans are similarly worried that decades-long nonproliferation efforts could be dismantled virtually overnight, leading to a new arms race. In 2009, the Obama administration negotiated a treaty with Russia in which both countries agreed to cap the number of deployed warheads. Trump reportedly called the agreement a bad deal in his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year, although administration officials have since backtracked.
Sweden’s new shelter locations indicate that at least some of the concerns are connected to Russia. One of the regions where most new shelters are expected to be constructed in the coming years is the island of Gotland, where military defenses were recently expanded with the declared aim of stopping a possible Russian invasion.
Forbes 30th Oct 2017, Fukushima City is 50 miles northeast of the Fukushima-Daiichi Power Plant, so the radiation levels have been lower there than in the restricted areas, now reopening, that are closer to the plant. Hayama was unable to test monkeys in the most-contaminated areas, but even 50 miles from the plant,he has documented effects in monkeys that are associated with radiation.
He compared his findings to monkeys in the same area before 2011 and to a control population of monkeys in Shimokita Peninsula, 500 miles to the north. Hayama’s findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports, published by Nature.
Among his findings: Smaller Bodies — Japanese monkeys born in the path of fallout from the Fukushima meltdown weigh less for their height than monkeys born in the same area before the March, 2011 disaster, Hayama said. “We can see that the monkeys born from mothers who were exposed are showing low body weight in relation to their height, so they are smaller,” he said.
Smaller Heads And Brains — The exposed monkeys have smaller bodies overall, and their heads and
brains are smaller still. “We know from the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that embryos and fetuses exposed in utero resulted in low birth weight and also in microcephaly, where the brain failed to develop adequately and head size was small, so we are trying to confirm whether this also is happening with the monkeys in Fukushima,” Hayama said.
Over the past half-century, growth in the global economy and carbon pollution have been tied together. When the global economy has been strong, we’ve consumed more energy, which has translated into burning more fossil fuels and releasing more carbon pollution. But over the past four years, economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions have been decoupled. The global economy has continued to grow, while data from the EU Joint Research Centre shows carbon pollution has held fairly steady
China is becoming a global climateleader
China’s shift away from coal to clean energy has been largely responsible for this decoupling. Due to its large population (1.4 billion) – more than four times that of the USA (323 million) and nearly triple the EU (510 million) – and rapid growth in its economy and coal power supply, China has become the world’s largest net carbon polluter (though still less than half America’s per-person carbon emissions, and on par with those of Europeans). But as with the global total, China’s carbon pollution has flattened out since 2013.
That’s especially remarkable because it puts China about 15 years ahead of schedule. In an agreement with President Obama ahead of the Paris international climate negotiations, Chinese President Xi Jingping pledged that China’s carbon emissions would peak by 2030. Republican Party leaders grossly distorted this agreement at the time, with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell claiming:
As I read the agreement it requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years while these carbon emissions regulations are creating havoc in my state and around the country
As the chart above [on original] shows, Chinese carbon emissions tripled between 1999 and 2013. To slow that rate of growth to zero as the Chinese economy continues to grow would require a dramatic shift in the country’s energy supply. But that’s exactly what’s happened, with the Chinese government cancelling over 100 planned new coal power plants earlier this year. Chinese coal consumption has in fact fallen since 2013. And China and the EU have pledged to strengthen their efforts to cut carbon pollution.
America isn’t a lost cause
In 2016, American carbon pollution fell to below 1993 levels. The emissions decline began around 2008, which is also when natural gas, solar, and wind energy began rapidly replacing coal in the power grid.
And yet, while these steps can slow the decline in American carbon pollution, the transition from coal to clean energy will nevertheless persist. Coal simply can no longer compete with cheaper, cleaner sources of energy, and the next American president can quickly reverse many of the Trump administration’s anti-climate orders.
The film chronicles the heated political battle to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
It shows how a nuclear engineer turned whistle blower, a 93-year-old grandmother, and a scrappy new governor, join forces with a wide array of activists to score a major environmental victory by shutting down the aging atomic plant.
The film’s Director will be part of the post film discussion. The documentary, which is at times humorous and frightening, captures the views of people on both sides of the issue.
Producers said one fact in the film that can’t be ignored is that high-level radioactive waste will remain at every nuclear power plant around the world indefinitely.
The film’s world premiere was at The Provincetown International Film Festival. Tickets for this special premier are just $12.
Introduction: Nuclear Energy in Asia, by Mel Gurtov
The Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011 has raised serious questions about nuclear power.
In our work since Fukushima, we have tried to answer two questions: What is the current status of nuclear energy in Asia? Does nuclear power have a future in East Asia? By answering those questions, we hope to contribute to the global debate about nuclear energy. To be sure, questions of such magnitude can rarely be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Decisions on energy are made at the national level, on the basis of both objective factors such as cost-effectiveness and notions of the national interest, and less objective ones, such as influence peddled by power plant operators, corruption, and bureaucratic self-interest. Nevertheless, by closely examining the status and probable future of nuclear power plants in specific countries, the authors of this volume come up with answers, albeit mostly of a negative nature.
At the start of 2017, 450 nuclear power reactors were operating in 30 countries, with 60 more under construction in 15 countries. Thirty-four reactors are under construction in Asia, including 21 in China. The “Fukushima effect” has clearly had an impact in Asia, however. In China, no new construction took place between 2011 and 2014, although since then there has been a slow increase of licenses. Nevertheless, the full story of China’s embrace of nuclear power, as told in this volume by M. V. Ramana and Amy King, is that the onset of a ‘new normal’ in economic growth objectives and structural changes in the economy have led to a declining demand for electricity and the likelihood of far less interest in nuclear power than had once been predicted.
On the other hand, in South Korea, which relies on nuclear power for about 31 per cent of its electricity, Lauren Richardson’s chapter which is presented here, shows that the Fukushima disaster and strong civil society opposition have not deflected official support of nuclear power, not only for electricity but also for export.
Meanwhile, the 10 countries that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are divided about pursuing the nuclear-energy option, with Vietnam deciding to opt out in 2016, and Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines at various stages of evaluation. Even so, the chapter by Mely Caballero-Anthony and Julius Cesar I. Trajano shows that only about 1 per cent of ASEAN’s electricity will derive from nuclear power in 2035, whereas renewables will account for 22 per cent.
How viable nuclear power is finally judged to be will depend primarily on the decisions of governments, but increasingly also on civil society. ASEAN has established a normative framework that emphasises safety, waste disposal, and non-proliferation; and civil society everywhere is increasingly alert to the dangers and costs, above-board and hidden, of nuclear power plants.
As Doug Koplow’s chapter shows, for example, the nuclear industry, like fossil fuels, benefits from many kinds of government subsidies that distort the energy market against renewable energy sources. Costs are politically as well as environmentally consequential: even if construction begins on a nuclear power plant, it will be cancelled and construction abandoned in 12 per cent of all cases. It is important to note that of the 754 reactors constructed since 1951, 90 have been abandoned and 143 plants permanently shut down.
When construction does proceed, it takes between five to 10 years on average for completion (338 of 609), with some 15 per cent taking more than 10 years. And, in the end, old and abandoned reactors will have to be decommissioned, as Kalman A. Robertson discusses, with costs that may double over the next 15–20 years.
As Robertson points out, the problem of safe disposal of radioactive waste and the health risk posed by radiation released during decommissioning should be factored into the total price that cleanup crews and taxpayers will eventually pay. On top of all that, there isn’t much experience worldwide in decommissioning.
Then there is the issue of trust in those who make decisions. Tatsujiro Suzuki’s chapter shows that in Japan, the chief legacy of Fukushima is public loss of trust in Japanese decision-makers and in the nuclear industry itself. Several years after the accident, costs continue to mount, a fact that pro-nuclear advocates elsewhere in Asia might want to consider. They also need to consider the issue of transparency for, as Suzuki shows, the nuclear industry has consistently dodged the fairly obvious lessons of Fukushima with regard to costs, nuclear energy’s future, and communication with the public. Similarly, in Taiwan, as Gloria Kuang-Jung Hsu’s study shows, transparency about safety issues has been notoriously lacking, and a history of efforts to obfuscate nuclear weapon ambitions means that constant vigilance over nuclear regulators is necessary.
Of course, if public opinion does not count in a country—say, in China and Vietnam—the issue of trust is muted. But we know that, even there, people are uneasy about having a nuclear power plant in their backyard. Issues of hidden cost and public trust are also embedded in the biological and health threat posed by nuclear energy. Tilman A. Ruff, a long-time student of radiation effects on human health, demonstrates how these effects have been underestimated. He offers a detailed explanation of what exposure to different doses of radiation, such as from the Fukushima accident, means for cancer rates and effects on DNA. Timothy A. Mousseau and Anders P. Møller, who have undertaken field research for many years on the genetic effects of the Chernobyl accident, look at how nuclear plant accidents affect the health of humans and other species. Combined, these two chapters offer a potent, often overlooked, argument against the nuclear option.
This introduction by Mel Gurtov and the following article by Lauren Richardson are adapted from Peter Van Ness and Mel Gurtov, eds., Learning From Fukushima. Nuclear Power in East Asia. Australian University Press.
Protesting Policy and Practice in South Korea’s Nuclear Energy Industry , by Lauren Richardson
Japan’s March 2011 (3/11) crisis spurred a revival in anti-nuclear activism around the globe. This was certainly the case in South Korea, Japan’s nearest neighbour, which was subject to some of the nuclear fallout from Fukushima. This chapter examines the puzzle of why the South Korean anti-nuclear movement was apparently powerless in the face of its government’s decision to ratchet up nuclear energy production post-3/11. It argues that its limitations stem from the highly insulated nature of energy policymaking in South Korea; the enmeshing of nuclear power in the government’s ‘Green Growth Strategy’; and certain tactical insufficiencies within the movement itself. Notwithstanding these limitations, the movement has successfully capitalised upon more recent domestic shocks to the nuclear power industry, resulting in a slight, yet significant, curtailing of the South Korean government’s nuclear energy capacity targets.
Introduction….. The evolution of South Korea’s nuclear energy policy…… The bottom-up movement against nuclear energy…….. Phase 1: Pre-Fukushima…….. Phase 2: Post-Fukushima….. Explaining the limited policy change…… The insularity of nuclear power policymaking…… Nuclear power as ‘green’ energy……. Tactical insufficiencies in the anti-nuclear movement……..
New challenges to South Korea’s nuclear energy industry…… Corruption scandals…….. Cyber-attacks on nuclear power plants….
Asia Times 30th Oct 2017, Shaun Burnie: The global nuclear industry developed over the past fifty
years dependent upon vast quantities of steel components supplied by a relatively small number of specialized manufacturers. One of them is Kobe Steel Ltd.
The steelmaker, a pillar of corporate Japan, is embroiled in the early days of disclosure of falsification of steel manufacturing data that extends to products used in planes and trains, to motor vehicles and spacecraft.
And nuclear power plants. Kobe Steel and its broad collection of subsidiaries have supplied products to the nuclear industry both in Japan and around the world since the 1960’s. It’s a fair bet that every one of the 60 nuclear reactors operated in Japan since 1966 had some component supplied by Kobe Steel. http://www.atimes.com/article/nuclear-tentacles-kobe-steel/
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