Poisoned Door Handle Hints at High-Level Plot to Kill Spy, U.K. Officials Say, NYT, By ELLEN BARRY and DAVID E. SANGERAPRIL 1, 2018 LONDON— British officials investigating the poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian double agent, believe it is likely that an assassin smeared a nerve agent on the door handle at his home. This operation is seen as so risky and sensitive that it is unlikely to have been undertaken without approval from the Kremlin, according to officials who have been briefed on the early findings of the inquiry……..
Because the nerve agent is so potent, the officials said, the task could have been carried out only by trained professionals familiar with chemical weapons. British and American officials are skeptical that independent actors could have carried out such a risky operation or obtained the agent without approval at the highest levels of the Russian government .
…… Four weeks after the assassination attempt, British and American officials are turning to the question of whether President Vladimir V. Putin himself was aware of, or ordered, the attack.
They say there is no evidence so far of his direct participation, but the Russian president, a former K.G.B. officer, is skilled at hiding his communications.
Russia has denied involvement in the poisoning, and in the election hack.
……. Some experts have expressed caution about assuming that
Mr. Putin approved the attack. Its timing was awkward, coming too late to help him much in last month’s election, and casting a diplomatic shadow over Russia’s hosting of the 2018 World Cup.
And the Kremlin’s embrace of proxy forces in recent years has opened the door to freelancing from other power centers, like security agencies or the country’s military intelligence, which may not share their plans in detail.
………Russia on Saturday also released a list of questions addressed to Britain, France and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which will hold a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the Skripal poisoning.
The questions scrutinize the British claim that the nerve agent originated in Russia, noting that an antidote was provided to the Skripals within hours of their poisoning, and questioning whether British scientists had produced Novichok nerve agents in their own laboratories. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/world/europe/russia-sergei-skripal-uk-spy-poisoning.html
Energy Hogs: Can World’s Huge Data Centers Be Made More Efficient?
The gigantic data centers that power the internet consume vast amounts of electricity and emit 3 percent of global CO2 emissions. To change that, data companies need to turn to clean energy sources and dramatically improve energy efficiency. Yale Environment 360 BY FRED PEARCE•APRIL 3, 2018
The cloud is coming back to Earth with a bump. That ethereal place where we store our data, stream our movies, and email the world has a physical presence – in hundreds of giant data centers that are taking a growing toll on the planet.
Data centers are the factories of the digital age. These mostly windowless, featureless boxes are scattered across the globe – from Las Vegas to Bangalore, and Des Moines to Reykjavik. They run the planet’s digital services. Their construction alone costs around $20 billion a year worldwide.
The biggest, covering a million square feet or more, consume as much power as a city of a million people. In total, they eat up more than 2 percent of the world’s electricity and produce 3 percent of CO2 emissions, as much as the airline industry. And with global data traffic more than doubling every four years, they are growing fast.
Yet if there is a data center near you, the chances are you don’t know about it. And you still have no way of knowing which center delivers your Netflix download, nor whether it runs on renewable energy using processors cooled by Arctic air, or runs on coal power and sits in desert heat, cooled by gigantically inefficient banks of refrigerators.
We are often told that the world’s economy is dematerializing – that physical analog stuff is being replaced by digital data, and that this data has minimal ecological footprint. But not so fast. If the global IT industry were a country, only China and the United States would contribute more to climate change, according to a Greenpeace report investigating “the race to build a green internet,” published last year.
Storing, moving, processing, and analyzing data all require energy. Lots of it. The processors in the biggest data centers hum with as much energy as can be delivered by a large power station, 1,000 megawatts or more. And it can take as much energy again to keep the servers and surrounding buildings from overheating.
Almost every keystroke adds to this. Google estimates that a typical searchusing its services requires as much energy as illuminating a 60-watt light bulb for 17 seconds and typically is responsible for emitting 0.2 grams of CO2. Which doesn’t sound a lot until you begin to think about how many searches you might make in a year.
And these days, Google is data-lite. Streaming video through the internet is what really racks up the data count. IT company Cisco, which tracks these things, reckons video will make up 82 percent of internet traffic by 2021, up from 73 percent in 2016. Around a third of internet traffic in North America is already dedicated to streaming Netflix services alone.
Two things matter if we are to tame these runaway beasts: One is making them use renewable or other low-carbon energy sources; the other is ramping up their energy efficiency. On both fronts, there is some good news to report. Even Greenpeace says so. “We are seeing a significant increase in the prioritization of renewables among some of the largest internet companies,” last year’s report concluded.
More and more IT companies are boasting of their commitment to achieving 100 percent reliance on renewable energy. To fulfil such pledges, some of the biggest are building their own energy campuses. In February, cloud giant Switch, which runs three of the world’s top 10 data centers, announced plansfor a solar-powered hub in central Nevada that will be the largest anywhere outside China.
More often, the data titans sign contracts to receive dedicated supply from existing wind and solar farms. In the U.S., those can still be hard to come by. The availability of renewable energy is one reason Google and Microsoft have recently built hubs in Finland, and Facebook in Denmark and Sweden. Google last year also signed a deal to buy all the energy from the Netherlands’ largest solar energy park, to power one of its four European data centers.
Of the mainstream data crunchers for consumers, Greenpeace singled out Netflix for criticism. It does not have its own data centers. Instead, it uses contractors such as Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud-computing company, which Greenpeace charged with being “almost completely non-transparent about the energy footprint of its massive operations.” Amazon Web Services contested this. A spokesperson told Yale Environment 360 that the company had a “long-term commitment to 100 percent renewable energy” and had launched a series of wind and solar farm projects now able to deliver around 40 percent of its energy. Netflix did not respond to requests for comment.
Amazon Web Services has some of its largest operations in Northern Virginia, an area just over the Potomac River from Washington D.C. that has the largest concentration of data centers in the world. Virginia gets less than 3 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, plus 33 percent from nuclear, according to Greenpeace.
Some industry insiders detect an element of smoke and mirrors in the green claims of the internet giants. “When most data center companies talk about renewable energy, they are referring to renewable energy certificates,” Phillip Sandino, vice-president of data centers at RagingWire, which has centers in Virginia, California, and Texas, claimed in an online trade journal recently. In the U.S. and some other countries, renewable energy certificates are issued to companies generating renewable energy for a grid, according to the amount generated. The certificates can then be traded and used by purchasers to claim their electricity is from a renewable source, regardless of exactly where their electricity comes from. “In fact,” Sandino said, “the energy [the data centers] buy from the power utility is not renewable.”
Others, including Microsoft, help sustain their claims to carbon neutrality through carbon offsetting projects, such as investing in forests to soak up the CO2 from their continued emissions.
All this matters because the differences in carbon emissions between data centers with different energy sources can be dramatic, says Geoff Fox, innovation chief at DigiPlex, which builds and operates centers in Scandinavia. Using data compiled by Swedish state-owned energy giant Vattenfall, he claims that in Norway, where most of the energy comes from hydroelectricity, generating a kilowatt-hour of electricity emits only 3 grams of CO2. By comparison, in France it is 100 grams, in California 300 grams, in Virginia almost 600 grams, in New Mexico more than 800 grams.
Meanwhile, there is growing concern about the carbon footprint of centers being built for Asian internet giants such as Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba in China; Naver in South Korea; and Tulip Telecom in India. Asia is where the fastest global growth in data traffic is now taking place. These corporations have been tight-lipped about their energy performance, claims Greenpeace. But with most of the region’s energy coming from coal-fired power stations, their carbon footprint cannot be anything but large.
Vattenfall estimates the carbon emissions in Bangalore, home of Tulip’s giant Indian data center, at 900 grams per kilowatt-hour. Even more troubling, the world’s largest center is currently the Range International Information Hub, a cloud-data store at Langfang near the megacity of Tianjin in northeast China, where it takes more than 1,000 grams of CO2 for every kilowatt-hour.
Almost as important as switching data centers to low-carbon energy sources is improving their energy efficiency. Much of this comes down to the energy needed to keep the processors cool. Insanely, most of the world’s largest centers are in hot or temperate climates, where vast amounts of energy are used to keep them from overheating. Of the world’s 10 largest, two are in the desert heat of Nevada, and others are in Georgia, Virginia, and Bangalore.
Most would dramatically reduce their energy requirements if they relocated to a cool climate like Scandinavia or Iceland. One fast-emerging data hub is Iceland, where Verne Global, a London company, set up its main operation.
…….. Greenpeace says the very size of the internet business, and its exposure to criticism for its contribution to climate change, has the potential to turn it from being part of the problem to part of the solution. Data centers have the resources to change rapidly. And pressure is growing for them to do so.The hope is that they will bring many other giant corporations with them. “The leadership by major internet companies has been an important catalyst among a much broader range of corporations to adopt 100 percent renewable goals,” says Gary Cook, the lead author of the Greenpeace report. “Their actions send an important market signal.”
But the biggest signal, says Fox, will come from us, the digital consumers. Increasingly, he says, “they understand that every cloud lives inside a data center. And each has a different footprint.” We will, he believes, soon all demand to know the carbon footprint of our video streams and internet searches. The more far-sighted of the big data companies are gearing up for that day. “I fully expect we may see green labelling for digital sources as routine within five years.” https://e360.yale.edu/features/energy-hogs-can-huge-data-centers-be-made-more-efficient
Guardian 2nd April 2018,One of Australia’s proudest land rights struggles is passing an important
anniversary: it is 20 years since the establishment of the blockade camp at
Jabiluka in Kakadu national park.
This was the moment at which push would
come to shove at one of the world’s largest high-grade uranium deposits.
The industry would push, and people power would shove right back.
The blockade set up a confrontation between two very different kinds of power:
on the one side, the campaign was grounded in the desire for
self-determination by the Mirarr traditional Aboriginal owners,
particularly the formidable senior traditional owner Yvonne Margarula. They
were supported by a tiny handful of experienced paid staff and backed by an
international network of environment advocates, volunteer activists and
researchers. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/03/20-years-on-from-the-jabiluka-mine-protest-we-can-find-hope-in-its-success
Antarctica retreating across the sea floor, EurekAlert , UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS , 3 April 18 Antarctica’s great ice sheet is losing ground as it is eroded by warm ocean water circulating beneath its floating edge, a new study has found.
Research by the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) at the University of Leeds has produced the first complete map of how the ice sheet’s submarine edge, or “grounding line”, is shifting. Most Antarctic glaciers flow straight into the ocean in deep submarine troughs, the grounding line is the place where their base leaves the sea floor and begins to float.
Their study, published today in Nature Geoscience, shows that the Southern Ocean melted 1,463 km2 of Antarctica’s underwater ice between 2010 and 2016 – an area the size of Greater London.
The team, led by Dr Hannes Konrad from the University of Leeds, found that grounding line retreat has been extreme at eight of the ice sheet’s 65 biggest glaciers. The pace of deglaciation since the last ice age is roughly 25 metres per year. The retreat of the grounding line at these glaciers is more than five times that rate.
TEPCO, Tohoku Electric to give Japan Atomic financial boost to help restart reactor https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180329/p2a/00m/0na/015000c, (Mainichi Japan) Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (TEPCO) and Tohoku Electric Power Co. have decided to help Japan Atomic Power Co. cover the some 174 billion yen needed to finance preparations to restart its Tokai No. 2 nuclear power station.
The hefty sum is the estimated cost of safety upgrades required by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) to restart the plant in the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture. The NRA, which carries out mandatory plant inspections ahead of any reactor restart, has requested Japan Atomic to submit a plan to secure the necessary funds for the safety measures.
However, Japan Atomic’s sole business is nuclear power generation, and both its two reactors are currently stopped. The company has only survived this far thanks to the basic annual fee of about 100 billion yen included in its power supply contracts with Japan’s five big electric utilities. Under these conditions, it looked extremely difficult for Japan Atomic to cover the Tokai No. 2 station upgrade costs on its own, and the firm appealed to TEPCO and Tohoku Electric — both of which have power purchase contracts for electricity from the plant — for support.
TEPCO and Tohoku Electric are set to decide on March 30 to accept Japan Atomic’s plea for financial help and open discussions, and notify the power producer. Japan Atomic will in turn present the outside aid to an upcoming NRA inspection committee meeting.
Regarding the aid, TEPCO and Tohoku Electric will consider guaranteeing loans to Japan Atomic from its creditors. However, the utilities plan to make that decision once they have evaluated progress on the inspections needed for the Tokai No. 2 plant to be restarted, and examined the formal construction cost estimates for the necessary safety upgrades.
The announcement of TEPCO and Tohoku Electric’s financial backing for Japan Atomic will bolster the case for the Tokai No. 2 station’s return to operation. However, the restart faces hurdles, including obtaining local resident approval and the need for the surrounding local governments to draw up evacuation plans in case of a serious accident at the plant. Thus, even if the power station does pass the NRA inspections, there is no guarantee it can be restarted.
Furthermore, TEPCO is also liable for tremendous costs associated with dealing with the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster, and the company could face criticism for offering financial aid to Japan Atomic under these conditions.
India and Pakistan are quietly making nuclear war more likely, Both countries are arming their submarines with nukes. Vox, By Tom Hundley Apr 2, 2018 “……….The audacity of a bloody attack inside one of the most heavily secured naval facilities in Pakistan was jarring enough. Even more jarring was the source of the attack: al-Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the strike and praised the dead men as “martyrs.” Five more naval officers implicated in the plot were later arrested, charged with mutiny, and sentenced to death.
The Zulfiqarincident is the most serious in a long string of deadly security breaches at Pakistani military installations, from multiple attacks on nuclear facilities near Dera Ghazi Khan (2003 and 2006) and on the air force bases at Sargodha and Kamra (2007 and 2012) to the the gruesome 2014 attack on a school for the children of military officers in Peshawar that left more than 140 people dead, including 132 children.
But even if Pakistani bases have been hit before, the Zulfiqarstrike is particularly alarming. That’s because Pakistan is preparing to arm its submarines and possibly some of its surface ships with nuclear weapons — which means terrorists who successfully fight their way into a Pakistani naval base in the future could potentially get their hands on some of the most dangerous weapons on earth.
The Pakistan navy is likely to soon place nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on up to three of its five French-built diesel-electric submarines. It has also reached a deal with China to buy eight more diesel-electric attack submarines that can be equipped with nuclear weapons. These are scheduled for delivery in 2028. Even more disturbing, Pakistani military authorities say they are considering the possibility of putting nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on surface vessels like the Zulfiqar.
Pakistan says its decision to add nuclear weapons to its navy is a direct response to India’s August 2016 deployment of its first nuclear submarine, the Arihant. A second, even more advanced Indian nuclear submarine, the Arighat, began sea trials last November, and four more boats are scheduled to join the fleet by 2025. That will give India a complete “nuclear triad,” which means the country will havethe ability to deliver a nuclear strike by land-based missiles, by warplanes, and by submarines.
The submarine is the key component. It’s considered the most “survivable” in the event of a devastating first strike by an enemy, and thus able to deliver a retaliatory second strike. In the theology of nuclear deterrence, the point of this unholy trinity is to make nuclear war unwinnable and, therefore, pointless.
When it comes to India and Pakistan, by contrast, the new generation of nuclear submarines could increase the risk of a devastating war between the two longstanding enemies, not make it less likely. ……..
……. India and Pakistan are mortal enemies that have dozens of nuclear warheads aimed at each other. That was scary when those nukes were only on land. It’s a much scarier situation now that those nukes have been put onto submarines that move deep underwater, holding the deadliest payloads imaginable.
Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan to launch Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, ABC News, 3 Apr 18 The leaders of Russia and Turkey are scheduled to launch the start of the construction of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant as ties between the countries deepen.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin, on his first foreign visit since re-election on March 18, arrived in Ankara on Tuesday for talks with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The two will remotely launch the construction of the Russian-made Akkuyu nuclear plant on the Mediterranean coast.
Daniel Ellsberg’s decision to release the Pentagon Papers was an act of valor—his actions saved countless lives. He was a whistleblower who changed the course of history and curtailed an ongoing genocide which ended up preventing the needless dissolution of American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians alike. The publishing of the Pentagon Papers is a prime example of the critical part a free press plays in keeping governments in check and exposing the corrosive nature of consolidated power. This is why the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights enshrines the rights to free speech and of a free press in the United States Constitution.
Tyrants throughout history have targeted journalists and reporters for a reason.
On Wednesday afternoon, Julian Assange, who has been forced into self-imprisonment at the Ecuadorian embassy since 2012 to ward off prosecution from the United Kingdom and the United States, had his internet access cut off. Assange is our generation’s Daniel Ellsberg; WikiLeaks—the online publication he started—has been invaluable in letting the public know about the malfeasance of their elected officials and highlighting the duplicity of governments throughout the world. In an era where mainstream journalists have been turned into a corporate-state propagandists, WikiLeaks stands out in their dogged pursuit of truth and exposing deep-seated corruption and graft.
On October 12, 1969, Daniel Ellsberg copied a secret dossier with the intention of disclosing the truth about the Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers were a chronicle of events that recorded the scope of operations in Vietnam and beyond—details which were being withheld from the American public. The Vietnam War was built on the foundation of lies; we were rushed into the war using the Gulf of Tonkin as a false flag and defending freedom as a pretext to further the interests of the defense-financial complex. The truth eventually caught up to the lies of politicians and bureaucrats; Defense Secretary Robert McNamara later admitted the Gulf of Tonkin attack never took place.
The Gulf of Tonkin set the stage for a decade of continuous half-truths and outright lies as the US government suppressed information from the citizenry and kept falsifying records. This coordinated campaign of governmental disinformation prolonged a war that led to the deaths of 58,200 Americans and snuffed the lives of over 2 million Vietnamese people. It was this pernicious operation of deceit—intent on keeping the public in the dark—that prodded Ellsberg to act. After presenting the findings of the Pentagon Papers to authorities in government only to be met with a wall of silence, he decided to inform the press. The firestorm of controversy that was created after The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers and the ensuing outcry from the public played a large part in bringing an end to the Vietnam War.
Daniel Ellsberg’s decision to release the Pentagon Papers was an act of valor—his actions saved countless lives. He was a whistleblower who changed the course of history and curtailed an ongoing genocide which ended up preventing the needless dissolution of American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians alike. The publishing of the Pentagon Papers is a prime example of the critical part a free press plays in keeping governments in check and exposing the corrosive nature of consolidated power. This is why the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights enshrines the rights to free speech and of a free press in the United States Constitution.
Tyrants throughout history have targeted journalists and reporters for a reason. Napoleon Bonaparte, a savage dictator, once noted that four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. He said this because he knew that journalists can awaken a slumbering public from sleep and rally them against repressive regimes. A free press is the last line of defense between liberty and despotism. The founders of our republic, in the hopes of preventing America from traveling down the path of authoritarianism, made the rights of a free press sacrosanct for this exact reason. Sadly, our nation is living proof that all revolutions eventually devolve to the very tyranny that gave birth to them.
Bureaucrats and elected officials in government learned the wrong lessons from the Pentagon Papers. Instead of being transparent and reducing corruption in governance, authorities decided to cloak themselves in darkness, methodically target whistleblowers for prosecution and intimidate journalists in order to prevent them from doing their jobs. All this is taking place in a backdrop where corporations have initiated a hostile takeover of government; by weaponizing their wealth, globalist oligarchs have effectively turned public servants and technocrats into their enforcers and security guards.
In an environment where billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Rupert Murdoch own more than 90 percent of the media content and the way it is disseminated to the public, reporters and journalists in corporate media have to be mindful of keeping their checks as much as they are fearful of getting a knock on the door from subpoena bearers. This systematic war against free press metastasized after the heinous attacks of 9/11; the US government—yet again using national security as a pretext—made it a priority to silence dissent within government and neutralize aggressive reporting against its excesses. As western powers piously preach about freedom and democracy throughout the globe, they are steadily dismantling both domestically.
On Wednesday afternoon, Julian Assange, who has been forced into self-imprisonment at the Ecuadorian embassy since 2012 to ward off prosecution from the United Kingdom and the United States, had his internet access cut off. Assange is our generation’s Daniel Ellsberg; WikiLeaks—the online publication he started—has been invaluable in letting the public know about the malfeasance of their elected officials and highlighting the duplicity of governments throughout the world. In an era where mainstream journalists have been turned into a corporate-state propagandists, WikiLeaks stands out in their dogged pursuit of truth and exposing deep-seated corruption and graft.
It is this defiance in seeking truth and bringing light to criminality that has earned WikiLeaks in general, and Julian Assange specifically, scorn and contempt from autocrats in D.C. and throughout European capitals. It is at once amusing and vexing to hear public officials take to the podium to lecture tinpot dictators about good governance and respecting a free press while they target whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and harass reporters like Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald who dare give voice to them. This quest to silence free speech and neuter a free press is a bipartisan campaign and a bilateral initiative. Both sides of the aisle in D.C. and a multitude of supposedly “democratic” governments throughout the world are stepping up efforts to eradicate the rights of journalists and truth-tellers alike.
On Friday (30 March), the Belgian government approved a new energy pact that will see the country phase out atomic power between 2022 and 2025.
Belgium’s federal government signed off on an agreement that will see the country’s seven nuclear reactors shuttered by 2025.
As part of a package of other measures, Doel and Tihange nuclear power stations will be closed and more investment will be pumped into renewable energy capacity building, particularly offshore wind farms………
Micro-cracks were discovered in reactors at both power plants in 2013 and were closed until 2015 while extensive safety checks were carried out. Environmental groups were outraged when their licences were extended until 2025, by which time they will nearly be half a century old.
The global nuclear decommissioning services market size is expected to be valued at USD 8.90 billion by 2025
Nuclear Decommissioning Services Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Reactor Type (PWR, BWR, PHWR, GCR), By Strategy (Immediate and Deferred Dismantling, Entombment), And Segment Forecasts, 2018 – 2025 BY Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: sarah@reportbuyer.comReportBuyer LONDON, April 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ –According to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc., exhibiting a 6.8% CAGR during the forecast period. Global nuclear phase out and rising support from governments post nuclear accidents are among major factors expected to fuel market growth over the years to come.
Rise in public safety concerns due to hazardous consequences of nuclear accidents is set to actuate market demand over the coming years.In addition, increasing sustainability concerns are likely to positively impact market growth.
The transitioning trend toward renewable energy thanks to various government initiatives and regulations is also projected to promote nuclear decommissioning services over the forecast period.
With extensive research and development underway, various novel decommissioning technologies to enable efficient dismantling of nuclear facilities have been developed. Furthermore, in order to enable sustainable development, government authorities are providing various incentives and support schemes for efficient dismantling of nuclear plants. …….
The global nuclear decommissioning services market size is expected to be valued at USD 8.90 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc., exhibiting a 6.8% CAGR during the forecast period. Global nuclear phase out and rising support from governments post nuclear accidents are among major factors expected to fuel market growth over the years to come.
Rise in public safety concerns due to hazardous consequences of nuclear accidents is set to actuate market demand over the coming years.In addition, increasing sustainability concerns are likely to positively impact market growth.
The transitioning trend toward renewable energy thanks to various government initiatives and regulations is also projected to promote nuclear decommissioning services over the forecast period.
With extensive research and development underway, various novel decommissioning technologies to enable efficient dismantling of nuclear facilities have been developed. Furthermore, in order to enable sustainable development, government authorities are providing various incentives and support schemes for efficient dismantling of nuclear plants.
Key market players include Orano Group; Babcock International Group PLC; Westinghouse Electric Company LLC; AECOM Group; Studsvik AB; Bechtel Group Inc.; GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy; and Magnox Ltd. These companies mainly focus on innovation to improve service quality and meet global demand.
Trump’s new national security team likely spells disaster for the Iran nuclear deal, What happens next? Brookings, Suzanne Maloney, Monday, April 2, 2018 “…….. Tehran now faces powerful resistance to its expanded regional posture—from Israel, which has launched attacks on Iranian positions in Syria, and from its traditional rival Saudi Arabia, whose brash young crown prince appears determined to contest Iran’s reach at any price. Across a tense and unsettled region, Iran remains the 800-pound gorilla, but Iranian commanders are wary about the prospect of new pushback, promising that “we won’t be blindsided by the enemies.”
DARK CLOUDS IN DC
The most imminent threat, however, emanates from Washington, where the Trump administration is poised to upend the 2015 nuclear deal, a move that would reinstate harsh economic sanctions on Iran and intensify frictions between the two old adversaries.
Last week’s announcement that former Bush administration official John Bolton will join the White House on April 9 as Trump’s third national security advisor casts an even more ominous pall over the start of the new year for Tehran. Bolton has consistently and vociferously campaigned against the nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), insisting that “Trump can and should free America from this execrable deal at the earliest opportunity” and outlining a step-by-step plan for doing so. He proposes to replace diplomacy with military strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, coupled with “vigorous support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.” Even more unfortunately, Bolton has depicted a deranged, discredited cult of Iranian expatriates as a legitimate opposition movement—a ludicrous embrace that defies explanation, except perhaps the group’s lavish kickbacks.
FirstEnergy Seeks Bankruptcy Protection for Ailing Coal and Nuclear Subsidiaries, The move follows FirstEnergy’s request for a federal bailout. Greentech Media, JEFF ST. JOHNAPRIL 02, 2018
Utility FirstEnergy has taken the long-threatened step of filing for bankruptcy protection for its competitive power generation subsidiaries. It’s the latest development for a coal and nuclear power fleet that has become a focus of the Trump administration’s efforts to shift energy policies to favor fossil-fired electricity.
Saturday’s filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio seeks Chapter 11 protection for FirstEnergy Solutions (FES), as well as for subsidiaries FirstEnergy Generation and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company. The companies, which operate power plants in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic, hold about $3.8 billion in collective debt, as compared to 2017 revenues of $3.1 billion.
FirstEnergy’s fleet has been losing money for years, unable to compete against cheap natural-gas-fired power, as well as a rising share of low-cost renewable energy. The company warned of possible bankruptcy in its nuclear business in early 2017, and in February of this year, CEO Chuck Jones warned that its power plant subsidiary faced insolvency as early as the next month.
………FirstEnergy’s woes have also become the focus of a concerted effort by Trump administration officials to rewrite federal energy regulations in ways that would provide extra payments to its struggling power plants, largely at the cost of increased energyprices and reduced competitiveness for renewables.
That includes Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s Federal notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) which sought out-of-market payments for power plants with 90 days of fuel supply — something only coal and nuclear power plants have — on the grounds that the grid could fail without them.
The NOPR, which was denied by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in January, appears to have been influenced by Perry’s association with coal company CEO and owner Robert Murray, an outspoken financial supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Murray Energy, which counts FirstEnergy as its largest customer, has long argued that the coal industry deserves regulatory relief from market forces, environmental laws and other constraints. Last year, the company sought federal emergency relief for its own operations, claiming that it faced bankruptcy if FirstEnergy’s plants closed. While the request was denied, Perry’s NOPR was seen by some industry-watchers as a backdoor attempt to fulfill the company’s request for financial relief for its biggest customer.
On Friday, FirstEnergy followed Murray Energy in asking DOE to provide financial relief to its power plants under its rarely-used authority under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to intervene in energy markets and respond to power grid reliability emergencies. The petition was widely criticized by energy industry groups, consumer and environmental advocates, and competitors such as NRG Energy, as a last-ditch attempt to save the company from insolvency.
Minnesota Is the Latest Frontier in a Showdown Over Nuclear Costs, Xcel Energy seeks upfront approval for nuclear repairs and maintenance. Greentech Media, EMMA FOEHRINGER MERCHANTAPRIL 02, 2018
Bills working through both chambers of the Minnesota legislature would grant the state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy, approval for nuclear facility cost recovery before the money is spent. Currently, the utility commission uses rate cases to analyze returns after the utility shells out.
Last week, the Senate version passed out of committee.
The divisions the bills have created within the state — with the utility commission, some lawmakers, clean energy advocates and the executive branch on one side, and Xcel and other members of the legislature on the other — echo wider debates about large nuclear power plants in the U.S., and who should pay for them.
South Carolina is still negotiating the fallout from the cancellation of two new reactors at its VC Summer Plant. Ratepayers there have already paid billions of dollars for a project that will never be completed. In March, Georgia regulators approved a merger of Scana Corporation and Dominion Energy, which may provide some relief for ratepayers. But the deal still needs federal approval as well as the OK of South Carolina regulators and Scana shareholders. Lawmakers in the state are also still mulling how much more ratepayers should pay for the failed project.
Meanwhile, progress at the controversial Vogtle Nuclear Plant in Georgia continues trudging along.
…….Another nuclear battle is playing out in New York, with competitive power producers such as NRG Energy and Dynegy challenging the state’s use of zero energy credits, footed by ratepayers, for nuclear power plants. The plaintiffs say the credit’s use interrupts competition. Lower courts have ruled in favor of the state in both New York and in a similar case in Illinois.While varied in their policy implications, all of these state cases have spurred debates about whether large-scale nuclear — which has proven itself to be very costly — should receive monetary support or subsidies, and in what form. In the first days of 2018 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission killed a proposal from Energy Secretary Rick Perry to buoy nuclear (and coal) power plants. Another resilience proceeding is now underway at FERC to assess what benefit, if any, these plants should receive.
A bankruptcy declaration from FirstEnergy days after the company requested a bailout for its coal and nuclear plants from the Department of Energy indicates the economics are not getting better for these plants.
While the New York and Illinois cases wend their way through the courts and FERC considers its next move, the debate over nuclear support in Minnesota may end more quickly: at Governor Mark Dayton’s desk. He has said he won’t sign the bill because it undermines the authority of the PUC.
Toxic Townships: Landfill Leak Raises Concerns, http://unewsonline.com/2018/03/28/toxic-townships-landfill-leak-raises-concerns/Riley Mack, Staff Writer, 28 Mar 18, The world’s oldest nuclear weapons’ waste could be in the air, the soil or even within homes. What seemed like a wonderful place to raise children has turned into a nightmare for the citizens of the St. Louis suburbs. These families are living just miles from the West Lake Landfill, which was given the Superfund status in the 90s: A title received only by the most contaminated areas in the country. With little help from the government, residents are dying due to rare cancers that come from exposure to what appears to be toxic elements. Their homes were unknowingly a part of the birth of the atomic age. It all began in 1942, when St. Louis was selected as a center for holding uranium in order to assemble the first atomic bomb.
Following recent media attention toward groups like Just Moms STL, a documentary called “Atomic Homefront” that was released in 2017, publicized the issue and ultimately gained attention for the community by showcasing personal stories. One community member within the documentary named Anna Vasilenok states in a public meeting that she moved from Chernobyl in order to relieve her family of this type of tragedy, then went on to tearfully recall all the family members she lost from cancer due to the nuclear disaster. She asked the government officials within the meeting “Do you want that for your children? Who will pay for all the expenses of cancer?”
Staring into the sympathizing audience surrounding her, Vasilenok said “the government has to be held responsible,” and that the government officials they had elected only had interests in their own money. The community “can’t be quiet anymore,” she vehemently declared.
Like Vasilenok, the Just Moms STL group speaks volumes for this issue and surpasses their namesake with their important mission. The early days of this society was a Facebook page where worried community members posted their grievances and advice on the situation. When the conditions of the environment escalated, so did the responsibilities of the group. Dawn Chapman, a forthright activist and co-founder of the group states that cleaning up the St. Louis area is their task bebeen a pivotal role in the intervention of media (and therefore, policymakers) to create real change for their community. They even extended their activism to marching in Washington when Gina McCarthy, a former administrator for the EPA, wouldn’t answer their emails.
Unfortunately, the Just Moms STL organization’s suspicions were correct. In August 2015, soil was found to be contaminated with Thorium 230 at St. Cin Park, a popular playground for children and high schoolers in the Hazelwood area.
The community arranged an emergency meeting with local officials, where they learned that the parks are still open for families and children to visit; enraged, community members stepped forward to challenge these representatives. One man announces that “the original point where [the waste] had come from took [his] father” and now, “this park has taken [his] son” — all of this taking place in the parks where the gates are still wide open.
Hazelwood Parks City Manager Matthew Zimmerman disconcertedly stated back to the distraught families, “If we didn’t have parks there, then where would the children go?” As of January 2018, it has been declared that all companies liable for the dumping owe an expected cost of $236 million, which is a large increase from the project fund of $24.5 million in previous years. Although not enough to form a buy-out option for those who need the funds to move out of their contaminated homes, it is physical and monetary action that is heavily needed for these residents. It will partially excavate tons of radioactive waste from the Republic Landfill in St. Louis over the next five years.
Ironically, a large sign posted in front of Republic Landfill’s site brightly states that “Customer satisfaction is the key to our success!” Whether this is the satisfaction of the community members, or of their own greedy agenda is up to the lawmakers to decide.
Le Monde 1st April 2018, [Machine Translation]By validating, on Wednesday 28 March, the project to
dismantle the Monju breeder reactor, the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (ARN)
thwarting Japan’s ambition to control the fuel cycle and adds a new nuclear
bill in the archipelago. The project involves a dismantling over thirty
years of the facility built in Tsuruga in the department of Fukui (center).
It should cost 375 billion yen (2.86 billion euros). The operation will
start as soon as July by the removal of the fuel. Then the sodium –
liquid delicate cooling to handle because flammable on contact with air –
will be removed. Disassembly will follow, with an end scheduled for 2048. http://www.lemonde.fr/energies/article/2018/04/01/nucleaire-les-ambitions-contrariees-du-japon_5279295_1653054.html
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