Nuclear news this week

Things appear to be quiet on the global nuclear news scene. Lulled by the present stalemate in USA-North Korea nuclear tensions, the world’s media complacently reports on the nuclear weapons build-up going on in USA, Russia, India, Pakistan , and China to a much lesser degree.

The main focus of media about things nuclear is the hype about “new nuclear” – Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, (SMRs). So many news items in praise of SMRs – all sounding suspiciously as if copied from industry handout sheets, and all claiming that nuclear is the cure for climate change. Do these journalists ever bother to check on the facts about this claim?

The world’s many pollution problems are at last being recognised as a global malaise, with the horror stories of epidemic plastic rubbish in oceans and on beaches. Climate change is manifested in various ways: it’s affecting migration patterns, changes in Arctic seas, wildfires, bees, water, hotspots in South Asia.

Russia’s Putin has all the advantages in the coming summit with Trump.

World Nuclear Market is Shrinking – preview of 2018 World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR),

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors are NOT going to save the nuclear industry.

High cancer rates in flight attendants – effect of ionising radiation.

International nuclear decommissioning market will be worth £250bn by 2030.

NORTH KOREA. North Korea has little incentive to “denuclearize”. Trump’s incoherent strategy leaves the world in danger.North Korea carrying out improvements at Yongbyon Nuclear Research Facility. A nuclear North Korea seen not as a threat, but as an ideal stabilizer.

ARCTIC. Arctic climate change: The northern Barents Sea has warmed 1.5 degrees Celsius in just 18 years.

ISRAEL. The dangers in Israel’s and USA’s policy of deception about Israels’ nuclear weapons. Israel is sure that nuclear power for Saudi Arabia will not lead to Saudi nuclear weapons.

RUSSIA.Russia’s environmental groups demand an end to secrecy about Russia’s nuclear wastes.

JAPAN. Delay in removing spent nuclear fuel from Fukushima’s crippled nuclear reactor. Japanese firms shift to clean energy despite state’s cling to nuclear power. Despite everything, Japan’s power companies are still loyal to nuclear power.

USA.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urges China to enforce sanctions on North Korea. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confident that North Korea understands what is expected in complete denuclearization. Previously angry and aggressive, John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, now chummy with Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Despite the Outer Space Treaty to prevent this, USA has a long history of planning for nuclear weapons in space.
A glut of plutonium pits. Oh great! USA can make more nuclear weapons.
Redress for nuclear industry whistleblowers in USA.
Radiation from USA’s nuclear bomb tests went far and wide – now compensation is needed.
New report connects cancer increase in North St Louis County with radioactive pollution from Coldwater Creek.
Protest campaign to stop nuclear waste transport in Idaho.
Trumpocracy – analysed by Noam Chomsky.
USA local group works to remove investments from nuclear weapons making companies.

CANADA. Toronto schools want anti-radiation pills in case of nuclear incident at Pickering plant. Protesters rally in Pickering to decommission nuclear power plant.

FRANCE. France’s anti nuclear activists not imprisoned. EDF aims to be the key corporation in nuclear station decommissioning. French nuclear corporation EDF hedges its bets: now starting 2 renewable energy programmes.

UK.

Scrap Trident or risk a “nuclear annihilation abyss”– former nuclear sub commander warns UK govt.
How the British government struck such a terrible deal as Hinkley Point C nuclear power project.
Britain’s Planning Inspectorate has accepted Hitachi unit Horizon’s application for the Wylfa nuclear power station in Wales.
UK govt launches pro nuclear campaign, pushes for women in the nuclear industry.
UK’s nuclear power bigwigs want “community engagement”, but exclude critics of Sizewell nuclear project.
Theresa May’s UK govt rejects renewables, promotes nuclear – and cancels promising tidal energy project.UK’s nuclear lobby appears to be winning, but the Tidal Lagoon Energy movement has not given up.
Norwegian anti nuclear protest ship “Nora” sails to Sellafield to campaign for the closure of the nuclear plant.

NORWAY. Halden nuclear reactor shut down not just for safety reasons, more because it lost so much money.

AUSTRALIA. A critical time, as Govt rather secretively tries to set up a nuclear waste dump in a small rural community.

INDIA. India – the global nuclear weapons threat that is being ignored. India’s space dream – to develop nuclear fuel from helium on the moon. USA’s General Electric and France’s EDF getting together to market to India huge and costly nuclear station.

SOUTH AFRICA. In South Africa, there’s confusion about the new government’s policy on matters nuclear.

JORDAN. Jordan gives up on big nuclear power station, but might be sucked in by “Small Nukes” propaganda.

GERMANY. Germany’s successful development towards nuclear fusion.

FINLAND. Finland’s nuclear waste dump will still be in the trial stage for years.

June 30, 2018 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's notes

4 Comments »

There is little, if nothing, to stop the madness in america now. Fascism is here to stay. The courts are captured, the legislature. Nuclear waste shipments course through america on interstates. At least 60 or 70 reactors are to the point, where any one of them could fail. Trumps reaction, is to extend them, make them less safe, subsidize them, and cut-back, oversight on them. That is fascism. That is america.

There are nuclear catastrophes going on at the St Louis Dump. In Lake Mead. At Hanford. At several reactors and waste sites. In our households, from the highly radioactive water we drink.

There are 20 yo, 30yo, 40 and 50 yo reactors, that are leaking like a sieve, that are on the verge of melt downs, all over the United States. Fuel pools that could loose coolant and burn the most radioactive aubstances into to air for thousands of miles dispersal. Huge radioactive waste containers, blowing up in Idaho.

Trumps answer is to not watch them at all. Allow the owners to monitor their safety. Even when people manifest acute radiation sickness, the fascists will lie.

Will americans do anythhing about the grotesque nuclear hell both america and japan are in now. The despicable fascist govts that have taken over in this depressionary economy where 50% are impoverished and things are and will get worse under the current blatantly, fascist regime?

Look at china: A totalitarian country where Every truckdriver in red china went on strike last week! The totalitarian government, in China did not crackdon on the truck drivers. The Chinese Government did the exact opposite. They sat down with the truckers.Their demands are being met,
efficently and pretty thuroughly because, the Chinese have a dynamic economy. They have hope.

Things are so ugly, amoral and brutal in america now. A man like trump would be likely to call out the troops and call for a crackdown if there were a general truckers strike, in America now. His ugly supporters would cheer it on

Americans are consumed by smart phones, computers, the internet, twitter. They in the stranglehold of the bogus tech crapo social platforms. Completely distracted by gaslighting mind-warped self indulgence and twitter trolls. Even as everything around us is falling apart. Our livlihoods, our futures, our children’s future, our health, our environment.

Things do not look well. This country, is held under a very tight vice grip of banality, poverty, insecurity and insanity right now. Most people are too stupid and pretzle brainwashed to get it. There are multiple prongs to a few multifaceted propaganda machines , controled by EVER fewer puppetmasters.

There is emerging, the very serious and real threat of a machine of terror. People are not stirring to the bloody realities and horrors of this threat, in any real ways.

I do not hold any illusions about the motives of the fascists , after what happened this week. I could see it coming, when many were deluded into thinking trump, was anything other than a totalitarian psychopath.
Concentration camps for children. Extremists calling for rightwing death squads to kill jornalists. Rightwing fascists, jingoists and nazis, calling for rallys and death squads to kill young people. To kill people on a much grander scale than charlottesville. If that happened it might be an ignition point.

Rightwing deathsquads, massacering people in homeless camps, may not do much to start demonstrations. It is because, so many americans, have become amoral . They have become desensitized, to most of the brutal cruelty that is emerging in America. Uncaring, about the mass murder and bombing, carried out by our military, for some time in other parts of the empire and, the world.

Only the more humanistic elements of this society seem to care, at this point. They are actively engaging others about it. They seem to be getting support in a plurality, outside of what is left of mainstream white society.

Perhaps some grotequely, racially motivated atrocity could mobilize that group to the streets and, young people would follow.

During the sixties there were leaders like martin luther king to provide a template for protest and chenge. The young white people, had a very strong impetus to lay down in the cogs of the machine . To try and stop it, or slow it down. That is because of the depredations of the senseless imperial war in Vietnam.

Although america is mostly controlled by whites now, the fascists are actively and brutally repressing and suppressing a very large, and diverse part of the population.

The fascists have to play the ugliest race and bigotry cards possible. That is because, this is a depressionary economy where 40% or more, whites included, are in serious poverty.

The fascists are very good at manipulating the internet. Their blue dog coconspirators are very good at gaslighting the more employed and comfortable in this society, with the mass media and celebrity. This may account for the amorality and desensitization of whites and and others, that are not rightly the ruling class.

The fake celebrity, the three card monty games, the blue dog media and republican play on them, takes the spotlight, off the open brutality and corrupt evil that has now overtaken us.

Many able bodied people, who could take to the streets are in a fish bowl, where they think nothing will happen to them and the system will right itself

At the same time, trump and the Republican wrecking crew, are actively destroying everything most americans have cherished and held close to their hearts, for years. By killing off the last of endengered bison, bears, cats, wolverines here and in Alaska. By destroying all commons, public education, national parks, what is left of the middle class.

They are gutting their access to healthcare. Gutting social security. Gutting medicare. Gutting access to affordable housing to their children and the elderly. The elderly who are becoming homeless, are bowled over by the christofascist bullshit. When people do become homeless, they are neutralized.

The fascists gave trillions of tax cuts, to the billionaires and corporations. They are subsidizing, the absolute poisoning and polluting of our country. Doing so with chemicals, coal plants , nuclear plants, trillions on crackpot spacewars farces and further massive military intrigues.

This is a highly effective fascist machine rolling over america.

Many able bodied young people are very concerned about health care. Especially if they have children. Maybe they will act soon. In protest.

Many americans that are not doing so well, keeping their heads above water. These folks are so very brainwashed and, amoral at this point. They do not care about yemen. They do not care about the nuclear buildup. Do not care about losing their medicare and social security. They do not care abput the masees of homelessness in the streets. Many could care less, about the the evil of child concentration camps at the border. Even if right wing death squads do start murdering journalists.

Comment by Ken | June 30, 2018 | Reply
- Thank you, Ken, Interesting analysis – it will be reposted as an article on Monday
  
  Comment by Christina MacPherson | July 1, 2018 | Reply
  - Thanks Christina. Things are escalating. There was a riot precipitated by fascist in Portland today. People marched in San Francisco, about the cruel Child concentrantion camps, and children being kept in cages in Arizon and Texas.
    And texas GovernorAbbot endorses murdering Journalists while target shooting in Texas.
    
    Governor jokes about shooting reporters after signing gun bill
    https://goo.gl/images/Doib5T
    
    Images may be subject to copyright.
    
    Comment by Ken | July 1, 2018
  - Disgusting stuff! I would be following this more – but I am not a USA resident, and also, I’m trying to keep this website dedicated mainly to nuclear issues. Of course I realise that it is all related – all connected to the aggressive style of the people in power – an addiction to violence that is becoming suicidal, with the nuclear weapons race.
    
    Comment by Christina MacPherson | July 1, 2018

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