On November 8th two machines arrived at Fukushima Daiichi : a bridge crane and a fuel handling machine. These two machines will be installed on the reactor 3’s platform in order to unload the pool of its fuel.
The European Commission shows that once more it does not give a damn about the health of the European, this time by lifting the restrictions and controls on the Fukushima products, rice, some fishes and seafood!!!
The problem is it might not even be clearly labelled from Fukushima, and most of people in Europe are still quite ignorant of internal radiation thru contaminated produce.
The EU allows Chernobyl area berries and mushrooms to be labeled as organic. Fukushima rice should fit right in .
The European Union has decided to lift import control on some agricultural produce and seafood from Japanese prefectures affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.
Currently, food products from 13 Japanese prefectures remain under control even after gradual easing by the EU. These products cannot enter EU nations without a radiation safety certificate to prove the product is within the EU safety standards.
Starting on December 1st, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, will phase out the certificate on some products from 10 prefectures.
Those products include rice from Fukushima Prefecture, yellowtail fish, red sea bream, some mushrooms and mountain vegetables. All products from Akita Prefecture will have been cleared.
No restriction on Fukushima rice will mean that rice from other prefectures will no longer need a certificate. Observers say this would encourage rice farmers across the nation to export more.
The Japanese government has been asking the EU to lift restrictions on all the remaining controlled products.
It was therefore essential, as requested by CRIIRAD on 5 October 2017, to identify
the installation at the origin of the ruthenium 106 pollution and to implement
protection for the nearby population. And all the more because, as CRIIRAD has denounced several [times?]
Once again, the criteria for intervention 7 adopted by the French authorities to implement protective measures are excessively high.
However, the documents analyzed by CRIIRAD show that, as a first step, the official services in Europe have simply insisted on the absence of health consequences on the European territory.
This situation raises many questions about the effectiveness of the IAEA (International Energy AgencyAtomic) and official radiation protection agencies of European countries.
Valencia, November 10, 2017 (11H)
Commission of Research and Information
Independent on Radioactivity
29 courses Manuel de Falla / 26000 Valence / France
. 33 (0) 4 75 41 82 50 / bruno.chareyron@criirad.org
RUTHENIUM 106
Contamination with ruthenium 106
Radioactive releases are considerable and would come from Russia or from nearby countries!
Officials are finally concerned about the importance of the ruthenium 106 discharges
from September 2017, and the risks incurred as close as possible to the source term! At first, the Official releases have simply emphasized the absence of risk in France and Europe.
The CRIIRAD had alerted as early as October 5, but to no avail, about the risks incurred by local populations. However, we know since Chernobyl that we must act very quickly because the exposure is major in the first days and the first…
This articles asks the question.. Even at low densities could this plume have injured anyone? And the links point to 2 sources of possible harm.
1/ The local population downwind from the plume
2/ People further away but living under or near High Voltage Power Lines.
Reblogged for any who missed it earlier this weekend (busy nuclear and climate news weekend) ..
“We do not believe that ions are dangerous – the danger comes from the pollutants. The ions merely assist the particles to stick to the lungs. If there are no dangerous particles in the air to attach to the ions, there is no risk of ill health.” Source 2015 Charged particle concentrations near busy roads can exceed that under power lines.
Nuclear-news just published two stories to note that go with the above link to the Charged particle paper and article.
The first is the new findings from Prof. Chris Busby and the second is the report of a plume of Ruthenium 106 Beta particles in the air throughout Europe. Why is it that no actual plume chart videos were released to explain the way that the plume got to Europe from the Urals region? (
Press-conference of the coalition Don’t nuke the climate: “Is nuclear a solution to climate change?”
Speaking: Speaking:Kerstin Rudek, BI Luchow-Dannenberg and Don’t Nuke The Climate campaign, Germany
Markus Atkinson, Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia
Vladimir Slivyak, Ecodefense, Russia
Nuclear industry and its supporters became very active inside the UN talks promoting outdated, expensive and dangerous nuclear energy as a climate friendly technology. Russia, USA and several other countries are organizing pro-nuclear side-events at COP-23 and trying to get developing world to believe in nuclear solution. The reality is that nuclear is not carbon free and far too expensive to be any kind of solution. Nuclear waste is another hot problem that doesn’t have a solution. Activists from various countries talk on why nuclear is part of problem and not part of solution. Also announcing the demonstration against false solutions for climate change on November 11 in Bonn.
you can’t advocate for nuclear reactors without indirectly advocating for nuclear weapons and radioactive waste. That’s because nuclear reactors are producers of both weapons material and radioactive waste. Ike was a nuclear conman. ‘Atoms for Peace’ have always been Atoms for War.
The Real Nuclear Triad: Energy, Weapons and Waste byJAMES HEDDLE , COUNTERPUNCH, NOVEMBER 7, 2017 “……..Nukes on the Dole – Radioactive Welfare Queens
…………. some strange recent developments.
Nuclear utilities are in trouble, fighting for life against – as Amory Lovins once predicted – ‘a massive overdose of market forces’ and the surging economics of renewables.
But wait. Whatever happened to ‘”the wisdom of the ‘free market’?” Around the country, as aging reactors reach the end of their operational and economic lives, some states like Wisconsin, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Nebraska are letting them die a dignified natural death. But other states, like New York and Illinois are putting their moribund reactors on life support at public expense. Projections suggest that state-sponsored electric ratepayer handouts in the two states could total as much as $10 billion over 12 years.
Tim Judson, Director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), warns that if other states follow New York and Illinois, “The price would be outrageous. If reactor subsidies go nationwide, it could cost $130-$280 billion by 2030.”
Bailout legislation for dilapidated reactors is now pending: in Connecticut, for Millstone 2 & 3; in New Jersey, for Salem 1 & 2 and Hope Creek; in Texas, for South Texas 1 & 2 and Comanche Peak 1 & 2; in Maryland, for Calvert Cliffs 1 & 2; and for nine reactors in Pennsylvania including Beaver Valley 1 & 2, Three Mile Island 1, Susquehanna 1 & 2, Limerick 1 & 2, and Peach Bottom 2 & 3.
Meanwhile America’s Trillion dollar nuclear arsenal upgrade goes forward, even as an overwhelming majority of United Nations states sign on to a treaty declaring the possession, use or threatened use of nuclear weapons illegal under international law.
In the face of the spreading renewed nuclear crackpotism noted above, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), has been the driving force behind the UN Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons. ICAN will receive the Nobel Peace Prize Dec 10.
Atoms for Peace War
All of which suggests, you can’t advocate for nuclear reactors without indirectly advocating for nuclear weapons and radioactive waste. That’s because nuclear reactors are producers of both weapons material and radioactive waste. Ike was a nuclear conman. ‘Atoms for Peace’ have always been Atoms for War.
And, as Bennett Ramberg showed conclusively in his prescient, but tragically ignored, 1984 book Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril, its also because every nuclear reactor and radioactive waste storage site in the world are themselves nuclear-weapons-in-place for any enterprising terrorist.
Nuclear Power’s Existential Crisis, New Matilda, By Jim Green on November 12, 2017
Nuclear power is dying a slow, painful and wildly expensive death, writes Jim Green. This year has been catastrophic for nuclear power, and just when it seemed the situation couldn’t get any worse for the industry, it did. There are clear signs of a nuclear slow-down in China, the only country with a large nuclear new-build program.
China’s nuclear slow-down is addressed in the latest World Nuclear Industry Status Report and also in an August 2017 article by former World Nuclear Association executive Steve Kidd.
China’s nuclear program “has continued to slow sharply”, Kidd writes, with the most striking feature being the paucity of approvals for new reactors over the past 18 months. China Nuclear Engineering Corp, the country’s leading nuclear construction firm, noted earlier this year that the “Chinese nuclear industry has stepped into a declining cycle” because the “State Council approved very few new-build projects in the past years”.
Kidd continues: “Other signs of trouble are the uncertainties about the type of reactor to be utilised in the future, the position of the power market in China, the structure of the industry with its large state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the degree of support from top state planners and public opposition to nuclear plans.”
Over-supply has worsened in some regions and there are questions about how many reactors are needed to satisfy power demand. Kidd writes: “[T]he slowing Chinese economy, the switch to less energy-intensive activities, and over-investment in power generation means that generation capacity outweighs grid capacity in some provinces and companies are fighting to export power from their plants.”
Kidd estimates that China’s nuclear capacity will be around 100 GW by 2030, well below previous expectations. Forecasts of 200 GW by 2030, “not unusual only a few years ago, now seem very wide of the mark.” And even the 100 GW estimate is stretching credulity ‒ nuclear capacity will be around 50 GW in 2020 and a doubling of that capacity by 2030 is highly unlikely in the context of the slow-down.
Kidd states that nuclear power in China may become “a last resort, rather as it is throughout most of the world”. The growth of wind and solar “dwarfs” new nuclear, he writes, and the hydro power program “is still enormous”.
Chinese government agencies note that in the first half of 2017, renewables accounted for 70 per cent of new capacity added (a sharp increase from the figure of 52 per cent in 2016), thermal sources (mainly coal) 28 per cent and nuclear just 2 per cent. And just in the past week, Beijing announced plans to stop or delay work on 95 GW of planned and under-construction coal-fired power plants.
Crisis in the US and malaise elsewhere
The plan to build two AP1000 reactors in South Carolina ‒ abandoned in July after A$11.5‒13.3 billion was spent on the partially-built reactors ‒ is now the subject of multiple lawsuits and investigations including criminal probes.
Pro-nuclear commentator Dan Yurman discussed the implications of the decision to abandon the VC Summer project in South Carolina in a September 11 post:
“It is the failure of one of the largest capital construction projects in the U.S. Every time another newspaper headline appears about what went wrong at the VC Summer project, the dark implications of what it all means for the future of the nuclear energy industry get all the more foreboding…. Now instead of looking forward to a triumph for completion of two massive nuclear reactors generating 2300 MW of CO2 emission free electricity, the nation will get endless political fallout, and lawsuits, which will dominate the complex contractual debris, left behind like storm damage from a hurricane, for years to come.”
The only other nuclear new-build project in the US ‒ two partially-built AP1000 reactors in Georgia ‒ is hanging on by a thread. Georgia’s Public Service Commission is reviewing a proposal to proceed with the reactors despite the bankruptcy filing of the lead contractor (Westinghouse), lengthy delays (5.5 years behind schedule) and a doubling of the cost estimate (the original estimate was A$17.9 billion and the latest estimates range from A$32.5‒38.4 billion for the two reactors).
Indicative of their desperation, some nuclear advocates in the US (and to a lesser extent the UK) are openly acknowledging the contribution of nuclear power (and the civil nuclear fuel cycle) to the production of nuclear weapons and using that as an argument to sharply increase the massive subsidiesthe nuclear power industry already receives.
The French nuclear industry is in its “worst situation ever“ according to former EDF director Gérard Magnin. The only reactor under construction in France is six years behind schedule, the estimated cost has escalated from A$5 billion to A$16 billion, and the regulator recently announced that the pressure vessel head of the reactor will need to be replaced by 2024 following a long-running quality-control scandal. The two French nuclear utilities face crippling debts (A$56.5 billion in the case of EDF) and astronomical costs (up to A$151 billion to upgrade ageing reactors, for example), and survive only because of repeated government bailouts.
In South Africa, a High Court judgement on April 26 ruled that much of the country’s nuclear new-build program is without legal foundation. There is little likelihood that the program will be revived given that it is shrouded in corruption scandals and President Jacob Zuma will leave office in 2019 (if he isn’t ousted earlier).
Public support for South Korea’s nuclear power program has been in free-fall in recent years, in part due to a corruption scandal. Incoming President Moon Jae-in said on June 19 that his government will halt plans to build new nuclear power plants and will not extend the lifespan of existing plants beyond 40 years.
In June, Taiwan’s Cabinet reiterated the government’s resolve to phase out nuclear power by 2025.
In the UK, nuclear industry lobbyist Tim Yeo says the compounding problems facing the industry “add up to something of a crisis for the UK’s nuclear new-build programme”. The estimated cost of the only two reactors under construction was recently increased to A$46.2 billion (A$23.1 billion each) and they are eight years behind schedule.
India’s nuclear industry keeps promising the world and delivering very little ‒ nuclear capacity is 6.2 GWand nuclear power accounted for 3.4 per cent of the country’s electricity generation last year.
In Japan, Fukushima clean-up and compensation cost estimates have doubled and doubled again and now stand at A$245 billion. Only five reactors are operating in Japan, compared to 54 before the March 2011 Fukushima disaster.
In Russia, Rosatom’s deputy general director Vyacheslav Pershukov said in June that the world market for new nuclear power plants is shrinking, and the possibilities for building new large reactors abroad are almost exhausted. He said Rosatom expects to be able to find customers for new reactors until 2020‒2025 but “it will be hard to continue”.
In Switzerland, voters supported a May 21 referendum on a package of energy policy measures including a ban on new nuclear power reactors. Thus Switzerland has opted for a gradual nuclear phase-out and all reactors will probably be closed by the early 2030s, if not earlier (while all of Germany’s reactors will be closed by the end of 2022 and all of Belgium’s will be closed by the end of 2025)……. https://newmatilda.com/2017/11/12/nuclear-powers-existential-crisis/
With a projected need for five years of $4 billion annual budgets for the Hanford nuclear reservation, the Hanford Advisory Board is urging the Department of Energy to propose a ramp up in funding to Congress and the White House.
It called the current funding trend “dangerous and destructive” in a letter of advice sent to DOE at the conclusion of a two-day meeting Thursday in Richland. The board is composed of a broad representation of Tri-City and Northwest interests.
Last month, Stacy Charboneau, the DOE headquarters official who oversees Hanford and other environmental cleanup field operations across the nation, warned that Hanford cannot expect significant increases in its budget, which now ranges annually from $2.2 billion to $2.5 billion.
But under current plans, once the vitrification plant starts treating low activity radioactive waste, more money will be needed for waste treatment operations while construction continues on other parts of the plant needed to treat high level radioactive waste. Low activity waste treatment could begin as soon as 2022.
In addition, there will be increased work needed to retrieve radioactive waste from underground storage tanks and feed it to the facilities that will process low activity radioactive waste into glass logs for disposal.
The cost of the vitrification plant and tank farm work, plus $1.2 billion needed to meet legal deadlines for the rest of the nuclear reservation’s cleanup and for general operations, has been estimated at $4 billion for approximately 2022-27.
The advisory board called for a steady ramp up to that amount.
“It is the only way to help avert a major catastrophe, reduce overall costs and risks to workers, the public and the environment,” the board told DOE.
It also asked for more money to establish new storage capacity for the 56 million gallons of radioactive waste held in underground tanks above groundwater that flows toward the Columbia River.
Hanford now has just 27 double shell tanks in service to hold waste emptied from leak-prone single shell tanks until the waste can be treated for disposal.. The oldest double shell tank was taken out of service after it sprang multiple leaks between its shells, and other double shell tanks are at risk, according to the board.
DOE has resisted calls to build more double shell tanks, saying the money could better be spent on advancing environmental cleanup needed after the past production of plutonium at Hanford for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.
The board said it has become increasingly concerned about inadequate funding for a wide range of Hanford work, leading to the delay of cleanup projects, sometimes for decades.
“Many of Hanford’s hazardous buildings and storage facilities are 50 to 70 years old,” the board said.
Delaying work increases the cost of Hanford cleanup, both because of the large amount of money spent on maintenance and because degrading facilities increase the risk of significant accidents, the board said.
An earthquake could cause underground tanks to fail, resulting in widespread contamination to the groundwater, the board said.
The leak within Hanford’s oldest double shell tank, AY-102, resulted in $100 million being spent to empty the tank, including 500,000 hours of labor over three years and 30,000 worker entries into the tank farms.
The roof of the defunct, 470-foot-long, highly contaminated REDOX processing plant recently had to be replaced to keep the plant from deteriorating until it can be cleaned up.
“These and many other hazards at Hanford will only increase with time as the facilities continue to age and degrade,” the board said.
Important cleanup work is being done, including demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant and preparations to move radioactive cesium and strontium capsules out of an underwater pool to safer dry storage, the board said.
“Even as important as these projects are, each took longer than necessary because of serious constraints on funding,” the board said.
It called on DOE to develop an emergency plan with funding in case of a major tank failure. It also should have money available at a national level for incidents like the leaking double shell tank or the PUREX tunnel breach so that future incidents do not reduce money already budgeted for planned cleanup work, the board said.
Trump’s CIA Is Laying the Groundwork for a Devastating War on Iran, with Help from Neocon Think Tank, By Ben Norton, Global Research, AlterNet 10 November 2017
An ex-CIA analyst has raised suspicions about the CIA’s release of bin Laden documents and apparent collaboration with the hard-right organization Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The Central Intelligence Agency appears to have collaborated with the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies to try to link Iran to the Salafi-jihadist group al-Qaeda.
Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and spokesman, has suggested that the move may be part of a wider campaign by the Trump administration’s new CIA director to establish “a rationale for regime change” in Tehran.
In the lead-up to the illegal 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the effort to link Baghdad to al-Qaeda was “a key element of the march to war,” Price explained, implying that the Trump administration might be doing something similar with Iran.
President Donald Trump has, since the beginning of his term, made aggressive opposition to Iran a key feature of his foreign policy. He has surrounded himself with anti-Iran hawks in the White House, and pledged to unilaterally “tear up” the nuclear deal agreed to by major world powers.
Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. proxy in the Middle East, has in recent weeks escalated its campaign against Iran. The Saudi monarchy pressured Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign, and has been accused of holding him hostage. The kingdom then effectively declared war on Lebanon, in the name of countering Iran and its ally Hezbollah.
President Trump has praised Saudi Arabia’s belligerent intervention and foreign meddling, even while accusing Tehran of doing exactly what Riyadh is doing. The U.S. government is working very closely with the Saudi monarchy and Israel to, in Trump’s words, “counter the regime’s destabilizing activity.”
Supposed Al Qaeda links
To justify these aggressive actions, the Trump administration has tried to link Iran to al-Qaeda.
The neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies published an article November 1 that aimed to highlight the alleged connections between the two. In order to do so, the staunch right-wing organization cited previously unreleased CIA documents that had allegedly been collected in the May 2011 U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) indicated in the post, “The CIA provided FDD’s Long War Journal with an advance copy of many of the files.”
The right-wing think tank’s Long War Journal project subsequently stressed that the documents purportedly “show Iran facilitated AQ at times.” The Long War Journal also claimed that several al-Qaeda leaders lived in Iran, where they were allegedly detained at the time.
Next, Long War Journal editors Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio conducted a lengthy interview with conservative radio host John Batchelor, in which they hammered on bin Laden’s supposed connections to Iran.
FDD has for years advocated for aggressive U.S. action, including military options, against Iran. It is one of the leading anti-Iran voices in the Beltway’s constellation of neoconservative think tanks. Funded in the past by the billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a confidant of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, FDD has been on the front lines of the campaign to undermine the Iran nuclear deal, which the far-right U.S. president has promised to “tear up.”
Herald 12th Nov 2017, MoD under fire over plans for huge expansion of Scottish nuke bases
Revelations that the Ministry of Defence is planning 14 major new
developments at the Trident nuclear bases on the Clyde have sparked fierce
criticism.
Details released under freedom of information law shows that the
MoD is aiming to complete a “nuclear infrastructure” project at Faslane
by 2027 and a similarly named project at Coulport by 2030. Faslane on the
Gareloch is the home port for the UK’s four Trident nuclear submarines,
and Coulport nearby on Loch Long is where the nuclear warheads are stored.
The SNP has attacked the nuclear projects as “massively waste and
expensive”. It pointed out that over 120 countries had recently backed a
new United Nations’ treaty banning nuclear weapons. “Not only is
Westminster intent on ignoring the recently passed UN treaty, it is
continuing to ignore its own commitment under the Nuclear Non-proliferation
Treaty to reduce and then eliminate its nuclear arsenal,” said SNP MSP
and leading nuclear disarmament campaigner, Bill Kidd. “Britain and the
other four members of the original nuclear club on the UN security council,
have no intention of ever giving up Trident. It’s this outrageous
arrogance that has let the nuclear genie out of the bottle in North
Korea.” http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/environment/15656030.MoD_under_fire_over_plans_for_huge_expansion_of_Scottish_nuke_bases/
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has released the 2017 edition of its International Status and Prospects for Nuclear Power report series.
Pro-nuclear assessments present low and high forecasts and readers might reasonably assume that the most likely outcome will lie somewhere in the middle. But the IAEA has assessed its past performance and found that even its low-growth forecasts tend to be too high (see p56 in this IAEA report and see this analysis).
So if the forecasts of pro-nuclear organisations like the IAEA are of any value, only the low-growth forecast need be considered. In its latest report, the IAEA’s low-growth forecast is a decline of global nuclear power capacity by 12 per cent in 2030 and 15 per cent in 2040 ‒ from 392 GW in 2016, to 345 GW in 2030 and 332 GW in 2040).
The IAEA has sharply reduced its forecasts since the Fukushima disaster ‒ partly because of the political fallout of that disaster, and partly because nuclear power is the only energy source that is becoming more expensive over time (a negative learning curve).
Note that the current high estimate for nuclear capacity in 2030 (554 GW) is only slightly higher than the pre-Fukushima low estimate (546 GW).
The IAEA’s long-term low-growth forecast is that nuclear capacity will rebound after falling to 332 GW in 2040 and will be close to the current capacity of 392 GW in 2050. The report notes that achieving that underwhelming outcome ‒ stagnation over the next one-third of a century ‒ would require 320 GW of new build to replace retired reactors. In other words, 10 new reactors will need to come online each year until 2050 just to maintain current nuclear capacity.
Comparison with renewables
The recent IAEA report states that the share of nuclear power in total global electricity generation has decreased for 10 years in a row, to under 11 per cent in 2015, yet “this still corresponds to nearly a third of the world’s low carbon electricity production”. In other words, renewables (24.5 per cent) generate more than twice as much electricity as nuclear power (10.5 per cent) and the gap is growing rapidly.
Five years from now, renewables will likely be generating three times as much electricity as nuclear reactors. The International Energy Agency (IEA ‒ not to be confused with the IAEA) recently released a five-year forecast for renewables, predicting capacity growth of 43 per cent (920 GW) by 2022. The latest forecast is a “significant upwards revision” from last year’s forecast, the IEA states, largely driven by expected solar power growth in China and India.
The IEA forecasts that the share of renewables in power generation will reach 30 per cent in 2022, up from 24 per cent in 2016. By 2022, nuclear’s share will be around 10 per cent and renewables will be out-generating nuclear by a factor of three. Non-hydro renewable electricity generation has grown eight-fold over the past decade and will probably surpass nuclear by 2022, or shortly thereafter, then leave nuclear power in its wake as renewables expand and the ageing nuclear fleet atrophies.
The Real Nuclear Triad: Energy, Weapons and Waste byJAMES HEDDLE , COUNTERPUNCH, NOVEMBER 7, 2017Clear and Present Danger
Never before has the unbreakable connection between nuclear energy, weapons and waste been so blatantly obvious to the public eye…yet, with so little notice.
Although President Trump has threatened to obliterate North Korea and its 25 million people ‘with fire and fury the like of which the world has never seen,’ the NYT is reporting that America’s Asian allies doubt Washington’s ‘resolve’ to defend them with nuclear weapons and they want their own – an idea recently also floated by Trump himself.
In a new twist on the last century’s discredited ‘Atoms for Peace’ meme, the new nuclear delusion seems to be that the more countries that have nuclear weapons (Iran and North Korea excepted), the more ‘secure’ the world will become.
Speaking recently at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, Trump’s VP Mike Pence, a self-declared devout Christian who ‘gave my life to Jesus,’ declared “… there’s no greater force for peace in the world than the United States nuclear arsenal.”
Implication: every country should feel safer if they have a nuclear arsenal of their own. That seems precisely Kim Jong-Un’s own calculus, given his country’s previous horrific carpet-bombing experience with the US – “we… eventually burned down every town in North Korea,” Gen. Curtis LeMay told Congress – not to mention the recent history of Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Nuclear Circular Firing Squad
As agitation reportedly builds in South Korea and Japan for building their own nuclear arsenals, the Times reveals that, as a result of the radioactive waste output of their already existing nuclear energy reactor fleets, each of these tiny countries has accumulated enough weapons-grade plutonium to produce – respectively – 4,600 and 6,000 nuclear bombs.
How about that? Nations without their own ‘commercial power’ nukes must certainly take note.
Never mind the fact that such a triangle of nuclear-armed, mutually hostile, neighboring states would be like, say, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut each having their own nuclear arsenals, all pointing at each other. Talk about a circular firing squad. It’s the very definition of an ‘everybody loses’ situation.
Nuclear Triplets Joined at the Hip
But, while this is clearly an illustration of a new epidemic of nuclear crackpot madness spreading around the world, it is also the latest of several clear illustrations – and blatant, though veiled, public admissions – that the DNA-destroying nuclear triplets of energy, weapons and radioactive waste are inseparably joined-at-the-hip.
In the UK:
“Military Nuclear Industry to be Supported by Payments from Electricity Consumers”
In Britian, reports the Guardian, “The government is using the “extremely expensive” Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to cross-subsidize Britain’s nuclear weapon arsenal, according to senior scientists.”
The Guardian story continues,
In evidence submitted to the influential public accounts committee (PAC), which is currently investigating the nuclear plant deal, scientists from Sussex University state that the costs of the Trident programme could be “unsupportable” without “an effective subsidy from electricity consumers to military nuclear infrastructure.”
Prof Andy Stirling and Dr Phil Johnstone from the Science Policy Research Unit at the university write that the £19.6bn Hinkley Point project will “maintain a large-scale national base of nuclear-specific skills” without which there is concern “that the costs of UK nuclear submarine capabilities could be insupportable.”
Hibakusha calls for abolition of nuclear weapons during Vatican speech, Japan Times, JIJI, NOV 12, 2017
VATICAN CITY – An atomic bomb survivor strongly called for the abolition of nuclear weapons during an international conference held in the Vatican City on Saturday.
Nuclear weapons are “an injustice that must be abolished by the responsibility of the humans that made them,” Masako Wada, 74, assistant secretary-general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, or Nihon Hidankyo, addressed the conference.
Wada was exposed to radiation from the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on the city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, when she was one year old.
Nuclear Detonation App Lets You Target Your Own Hometown US News, By RUSTY MARKS, The Exponent Telegram CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) 12 Nov 17, — With current talk of the threat of nuclear war with North Korea, did you ever wonder what would happen if someone dropped a nuclear weapon on your hometown?
There’s an app for that.
Nukemap, which can be found at nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap, is an interactive Google Maps program developed in 2012 by Allen Wellerstein, a historian who studies the history of nuclear weapons.
“It’s sort of a morbid thing to play with, but it’s also very interesting,” said Alex Burns, a historian who teaches a course in modern military history at West Virginia University. Burns is familiar with Nukemap, having tried the program out himself……….
Users of the program can type in any town, just about anywhere in the world, and pick the type of bomb they want to detonate, either on the ground or in an airburst. Click the box to calculate casualties to find out how many people might be killed or injured in the blast.
Wellerstein has said the estimated effects of the blasts should be taken with a grain of salt, and they don’t take into account long-term effects of fallout or radiation or variables like the weather or the height a bomb is detonated at. But the results give some idea of what might happen a nuclear blast.
According to Nukemap, a 150-kiloton nuclear airburst over Charleston, the state’s capital, could be expected to kill about 36,200 people and injure another 37,680. One hundred fifty kilotons is thought to be the largest nuclear warhead developed by the North Koreans.
Want to nuke Big Ugly? One hundred seventy dead and 2,100 wounded. War? One thousand eighty killed and 1,390 wounded……..
Nukemap says a 150-kiloton explosion over the South Korean capital Seoul could be expected to kill nearly 417,000 people and leave almost 1.9 million wounded. An airburst over Tokyo might leave almost 455,000 dead and 1.7 million wounded.
An airburst over Los Angeles, assuming North Korean missiles can reach that far, might kill 215,500 people and injure 620,500, according to Nukemap.
In comparison, a retaliatory strike against Pyongyang, North Korea with a single 300-kiloton Minuteman III missile could be expected to leave nearly 841,000 people dead and more than 1 million wounded………
Bill Gates, while motivated to help fight climate change, has also long been trying to make a success of his nuclear technology company Terra Power. The climate emergency presents him with the perfect opportunity to promote this, and especially, to get tax–payer funding to do it, as he suggests in his new book.
Elon Musk and Bill Gates: beware of gurus toting solutions to climate change
Elon Musk has grand plans to save the world. Bill Gates has just published his book ”How To Avoid a Climate Disaster”. They both envisage tax-payer funding for their solutions. But beware of gurus toting the solution to the planet’s crisis.
If you don’t think that our home planet is in an ecocidal crisis, then you’ve been blissfully unaware of global heating, over-population, biodiversity loss, waste crises, plastic pollution, overconsumption of energy , water shortages, deforestation, nuclear danger, space junk danger, perpetual nuclear war risk…….
Visionaries like Bill Gates and Elon Musk have brought extraordinary, and beneficial advances to our human society. On the way, they have become billionaires. And good luck to them. But their wealth and fame has made them all too ready to be seen as world leaders, and to see themselves as having the solutions to world problems. This can be problematic, as in effect, some of their solutions exacerbate the problems.
The future envisioned by both Bill Gates and Elon Musk has one huge blind spot. They both foresee ever-expanding energy use, and they plan for that – problems can be fixed with technology.
On a finite planet, endless energy use just cannot work. But the concept of enough is just not in their plans. If the human species does not take up the concept of enough, we could just become an extinct species. Technology could be used to reduce energy use, but that idea fades away as Gates, Musk, and other technocratic leaders see progress as being to have ever more exciting and energy-guzzling gimmicks and activities.The digital revolution. It should be a benefit, enhancing our lives, and in many ways, it IS. But an energy price is paid in our unbridled use of digital technology. Every email, emoji, Facebook post, tweet, blogpost, Youtube, uses electricity. It’s not as if these actions just disappear ”into the cloud”. What a dishonest term that is! There is no such cloud. What there actually IS – is a host of vast areas of dirty great data” farms”. There’s another dishonest term. They’re not farms. They are soulless collections of great metal servers, using ever growing amounts of electricity, and of water, to keep them cool.
Then there’s the price at the end. It’s very hard to find out the details and the extent of toxic materials from digital technology, that are dumped in poor countries. And, to be fair, companies like Apple, have made some efforts to reduce their ewaste. https://www.ewaste-expo.com/is-apple-delivering-on-its-environmental-claims/
However, planned obsolescence is rampant in the high tech world, resulting in the utter tragedy of ewaste pollution, – from discarded smartphones, laptops, computers, printers, TVs, fidbits, smart fridges, robots etc, the tragedy of the thousands of children working as waste-pickers in India and Africa, in slum conditions. E-waste includes many toxic materials such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury, that release dioxins. . ”With no health or environmental protections in the slum, the toxins contaminate the air, water, and the food consumed in the slum…….. The area is constantly covered in thick, toxic smoke from the burning of electrical cables that goes on all day and night,” – High-tech hell: new documentary brings Africa’s e-waste slum to lifehttps://news.mongabay.com/2012/04/high-tech-hell-new-documentary-brings-africas-e-waste-slum-to-life/
Both Gates and Musk are enthusiasts for renewable energy, and in the climate crisis, they are to be applauded for their work in this direction. Yet, as with all kinds of digital technology, renewables should not be unlimited, and do have their downsides, both in the production (pollution from rare earths mining/processing), and in the final disposal, with toxic wastes, and components that are difficult to recycle. . The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that solar panels produced 250,000 metric tonnes of waste in 2018 alone.
Bill Gates and Elon Musk do show their awareness of the planet’s grave environmental problems, but we don’t hear from them about energy conservation, or about moving away from the consumer society. Both talk quite enthusiastically about the great increase in energy use that we can expect. They complacently predict endless energy use, just as the nuclear lobby did in its glossy advertising film ”Pandora’s Promise”
Elon Musk now plans to put 24,000 satellites into space, and is well known for his dream of colonising Mars, and This idea has, of course, been taken up by many others, and there’s a sort of general public delight in space travel and interstellar rocketry. People seem oblivious to the fact that this will require huge amounts of energy, and that the space scientists already are turning away from clean solar power, to the far more dangerous source of nuclear fission. They’re also oblivious of the state of affairs in near space, where the trillions of bits of space debris pose dangers, floating about just like the plastic pollution in the oceans. Meanwhile the military planners in USA, Russia, China are already planning for nuclear weapons and war in space.
No surprise then that Elon Musk sees nuclear power as necessary – not just for his predicted need for much more electricity on Earth, but for this obsession with satellites and rockets.
Bill Gates, while motivated to help fight climate change, has also long been trying to make a success of his nuclear technology company Terra Power. The climate emergency presents him with the perfect opportunity to promote this, and especially, to get tax–payer funding to do it, as he suggests in his new book.
Wake up people! These two gurus have done some good stuff. But don’t let them manipulate us into dangerous territory – with nuclear technology, so connected with weaponry, and with its dangers, and the unsolved problem of radioactive trash. Sure, technology has got to be part of solving the planet’s crises. But we need much more imaginative leadership to steer our species away from infinite consumption and infinite energy use.
