“We were informed by our Saudi counterpart, King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, that KEPCO was shortlisted for a nuclear project in Saudi Arabia,” the ministry said in a statement.
The statement said the winner of the tender was expected to be chosen in 2019. Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil producer, plans to build two nuclear plants to diversify its energy supply and has been in talks with companies from South Korea, the United States, Russia and China for the tender.
In May, Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih met South Korean Energy Minister Paik Un-gyu in Seoul. Falih told reporters on the sidelines of an industry event that he was “optimistic” about South Korea being on the tender shortlist.
South Korea, the world’s fifth-biggest nuclear power user, is seeking to export its nuclear reactors abroad.
In 2009, a South Korean consortium led by KEPCO won an $18.6 billion (14.08 billion pounds) deal to construct four nuclear plants in the United Arab Emirates, the country’s ever nuclear export success.
KEPCO was also selected as a preferred bidder in December last year for Toshiba’s NuGen nuclear project in Britain and the Korean company planned to talk with Toshiba to buy a stake in the project.
Reporting By Jane Chung and Cynthia Kim. Editing by Jane Merriman
Morning Star 29th June 2018 ,ENVIRONMENT Secretary Michael Gove promised earlier this month to crack
down on “crony capitalism.” At the same time his cabinet colleague
Energy Secretary Greg Clark was offering a £5 billion bailout to Japanese
nuclear firm Hitachi.
It looks like a classic crony capitalist deal. Gove
argued: “Crony capitalists have rigged the system in their favour and
against the rest of us.” A classic crony capitalist deal is where a big
firm uses its power and lobbying to squeeze a contract from the government
that is good for the capitalists but bad for us.
The Hitachi bailout looks like such a rigged deal. Hitachi Europe chief executive Sir Stephen
Gommersall isn’t an expert in nuclear power or engineering. He is the
former British ambassador to Japan. Gommersall was hired right out of the
Foreign Office to help open doors for Hitachi. Tim Stone sits on the board
of Horizon Nuclear Power, Hitachi’s British nuclear arm. Stone, a former
KPMG consultant, was chief adviser to the energy secretary from 2008-13,
helping shape both Labour and Tory-Lib Dem governments’ nuclear energy
policy. Before that Stone advised the government on many PFI deals,
including famously bad-value ones. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nuclear-powered-crony-capitalism
A broad coalition of 75 industry, government, and military dignitaries — a quarter of whom are retired admirals or vice admirals — has come out in support of President Trump’s plan to bail out the nation’s struggling nuclear plants, agreeing that more premature closures pose a national security threat.
“We urge you to continue to take concrete steps to ensure the national security attributes of U.S. nuclear power plants are properly recognized by policymakers and are valued in U.S. electricity markets,” according to the letter, which was addressed to U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry and dated last week.
The letter could help stave off the planned closures of FirstEnergy Solutions’ Davis-Besse nuclear plant east of Toledo, its Perry nuclear plant east of Cleveland, and its twin-reactor nuclear complex west of Pittsburgh.
FES has announced it will close Davis-Besse by May 31, 2020, unless a buyer or bailout emerges. The other three nuclear plants are to be closed by the end of 2021.
FES and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., both subsidiaries of Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., are in bankruptcy proceedings because those plants — as well as several coal-fired power plants — have become unprofitable during the era of record-low natural gas prices and growth in the renewable energy sector. FirstEnergy has said it wants out of electricity generation, and that what’s left of the corporation will be focused on transmission.
The high-profile letter in support of saving nuclear plants is being circulated by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry’s lobbying arm on Capitol Hill.
Besides admirals and vice admirals, the signatories include former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former U.S. senators Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.), Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), Trent Lott (R., Miss.), Jim Talent (R. Mo.), and John Warner (R., Va.).
Also signing the letter was former New Jersey Gov. and former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman as well as many former industry executives, such as Daniel Akerson, General Motors’ chairman and chief executive officer from 2010 to 2014; Thomas Christopher, former AREVA chief executive officer; Charles Pryor, retired Westinghouse Electric Co. and URENCO USA chairman, and Jeffrey Wadsworth, former Battelle Memorial Institute president and chief executive officer.
In addition, the letter is signed by three former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairmen, Nils Diaz, Dale Klein, and Richard Meserve; as well as some former NRC commissioners, and several former directors of national laboratories.
The Trump Administration plan to bail out struggling nuclear and coal-fired power plants came two months after FirstEnergy Solutions filed what many experts view as a historic and potentially landmark petition for relief under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws.
The bankruptcy filing has drawn national attention because FirstEnergy is one of America’s largest utilities. It appealed to Mr. Perry for help in late March when it filed for bankruptcy.
Those nuclear plants — in addition to numerous coal-fired power plants under FirstEnergy — represent a huge chunk of electricity for the regional electric grid that Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection operates in 13 states, including Ohio. That grid, which serves 65 million people, is the nation’s largest.
Mr. Perry is being asked to exercise emergency authority under a pair of federal laws typically reserved for wars or natural disasters.
According to The Associated Press, such a move is “unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.”
PJM has said the planned shuttering of those plants pose “no immediate threat to system reliability,” and warned of higher prices, as have many others.
The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, one of several parties that opposes such an emergency order, has called FirstEnergy’s request “extraordinary,” as well as “fundamentally unjust and unreasonable for Ohio consumers,” adding Ohioans will be subject to “paying subsidies and above-market prices for electricity” if a bailout is granted.
Also objecting have been attorneys general from nine states and the District of Columbia, calling the company’s justification “legally flawed” and “a grave abuse of the Federal Power Act,” a section of which provides for relief during national emergencies.
The Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center — which called upon the NRC to investigate the utility’s decommissioning trust fund days before FES filed for bankruptcy protection — also has filed a 96-page petition in opposition, which it prepared with the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund, the Ohio Environmental Council, and Ohio Citizen Action.
The NRC found no shortfall during its last audit of the trust fund, completed in March, 2017.
The ELPC is one of several groups that have labeled Mr. Trump’s directive as an act of socialism, saying it goes against free market supply-and-demand principles. Those opposed include the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the industry benefiting most from expanded production of natural gas.
The United States is now the world’s largest producer of natural gas. Industry executives and government officials said at a conference in Washington last week that the country could expand its shale gas output another 60 percent in the coming decades.
The administration’s position is that America cannot become overly reliant on natural gas, renewable energy, and other sources of electricity that are now being sold at much cheaper prices. Natural gas in particular has made great inroads in the market because of how prices have fallen dramatically over the past decade once the modern era of fracking shale began.
Bolton: US has plan to dismantle NK nuclear program in year , WP ,By Matthew Pennington and Lolita C. Baldor | AP, July 1 Washington The United States has a plan that would lead to the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in a year, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Sunday, although U.S. intelligence reported signs that Pyongyang doesn’t intend to fully give up its arsenal.
John Bolton said top U.S. diplomat Mike Pompeo will be discussing that plan with North Korea in the near future. Bolton added that it would be to the North’s advantage to cooperate to see sanctions lifted quickly and aid from South Korea and Japan start to flow.
Bolton’s remarks on CBS’ ”Face the Nation” appeared to be the first time the Trump administration had publicly suggested a timeline for North Korea to fulfill the commitment leader Kim Jong Un made at a summit with President Donald Trump last month for the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.
Holtec International has proposed placing used fuel rods from all U.S. nuclear reactors in a shallow burial site near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Recently, The New Mexican reprinted a Carlsbad Current-Argusarticle featuring the point of view of Holtec executives, who painted too rosy a view of the safety issues this proposed facility could present.
There is pressure from the public to move used fuel rods away from their current locations — the reactor sites — especially when reactors have been shut down. The risks of storage in casks are low, the risks of transport are higher; in either case, the failure of a single cask, whether through natural degradation processes or terrorism, could release more radiation than did the accidents at Chernobyl or Fukushima.
After removal from a reactor, the fuel rods are placed in pools of water, which allow this high-level waste to cool. After several years of cooling, they are placed into casks. Radioactivity given off by these fuel rods remains dangerous to all life for at least 10,000 years. They are much more radioactive than the waste at WIPP.
The canister design approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Holtec proposes is a thin-walled design, with an interior five-eighth-inch stainless-steel cask holding fuel rods. That is placed into another stainless-steel cask, with lead and boron in between to abate radiation. Two vent holes in the exterior cask allow cooling air to flow. Casks need to cool to 400 degrees Celsius to allow safe transport.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates very low risk of cask failure for at least 20 years. However, it will take 20-30 years for the casks to cool enough for transport. Given that cask cracking has been observed after 10 years, ultimate failure seems likely.
The long-term solution is likely to be underground burial at a well-researched location. It is unlikely that this high-level waste will be cool enough for a long-term underground repository until about 60 years after it is removed from the reactor.
The proposed Holtec interim storage facility has numerous fatal procedural and structural flaws. Alkaline soils there are corrosive. Fencing the site will not protect the area from armor-piercing artillery launched by terrorists from either of the two roads surrounding the site. There will be no continuous monitoring program to detect leaks. There is no plan on how to deal with leaking canisters. The data on radiation exposure to workers is proprietary. Transport vibration could cause cracking of the fuel rods, after which they cannot be safely transported at all. The best transport is via rail at low speeds, but the railroads have not been contracted. The transportation casks have not been tested to failure: What about a head-on collision of two trains, or trains falling off of a bridge?
The storage plan should be an integrated one, which industry experts admit is not the current approach. The movement of casks should be minimized. Unless a permanent repository is developed, the proposed interim site could become permanent. WIPP was studied as a transuranic radioactive waste site, not a high-level waste site, and no high-level waste repository exists.
It is no wonder that pecan farmers, dairy farmers and the oil, gas and tourism industries are worried. One accident could shut down the entire region. After 10,000 canisters have been sent to southeast New Mexico, at least one serious accident is likely to occur, based on Department of Energy analysis performed by Sandia engineers regarding shipping high-level waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Your grandkids might never get to visit Carlsbad Caverns. Are the 50-100 jobs that Holtec would bring worth the risk of 10 centuries of contamination?
The deadline for comments to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is July 30. Submit comments to: Holtec-CISFEIS@nrc.gov
For further information, go to riograndesierraclub.org/holtec. John Buchser of Santa Fe is the immediate past chairman of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club. He is interested in seeking solutions to sustainable use of our water in New Mexico and West Texas.
Ken, opinion contributor 30 June 18 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 about the masses 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.
Nuclear Gravity Bomb Completes First Qual Tests on B-2 Bomber ,Military.com 30 Jun 2018 By Oriana Pawlyk
The B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb has gone through its first series of tests on the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
The Air Force, together with the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, earlier this month released a B61-12 non-nuclear test assembly from the Spirit. The kit included a NNSA-designed bomb assembly and the Air Force’s acquired tail-kit to be used on the B61-12 variant of the bomb, according to a Department of Energy release……….
Using the B61-12 will help consolidate and replace the existing B61 bomb variants in the U.S.’s nuclear stockpile, the release said. The first completed bomb kits are scheduled to debut sometime in fiscal 2020.
In May, top Air Force officials announced trials with the B61-12 were progressing successfully.
“We’ve already conducted 26 engineering, development and guided flight tests,” said Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration. “The program’s doing extremely well.”
The B61-12 modification program, which has been in the works for at least seven years, is slated to be carried by the B-2, as well as the future B-21 Long Range Strategic Bomber, known as the Raider.
The F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office has also been working on integrating the latest modification into its weapons arsenal.
The F-35 was designed with a requirement to carry a nuclear payload. In 2015, an F-35 flew with the B61-12 to measure its vibration in the aircraft’s weapons bay.
Nation Cymru 28th June 2018 ,Robat Idris: I’ve just returned from Japan as part of a joint Friends of
the Earth Japan/PAWB (People Against Wylfa B) campaign against nuclear.
I saw the ongoing nightmare that is Fukushima – deserted towns, farmland
laid to waste, human tragedies. A similar disaster at Wylfa would be the
end of any hope of a viable Wales – but politicians here discount any
such possibility.
PAWB will host a visit from Fukushima evacuees in July
– so people here can learn what damage nuclear can do. So as an opponent
of Wylfa B who happens to be a Leanne Wood supporter, I welcome her
unambiguous anti-nuclear statement. The untenable position of Plaid on
nuclear is to be revisited. After the Westminster announcement that
“austerity” and privatisation apparently doesn’t apply to nuclear
power at Wylfa, Plaid’s ignoring of the subject in the hope that it would
go away is no longer acceptable. https://nation.cymru/opinion/ive-been-to-fukushima-plaid-cymru-needs-to-revisit-its-untenable-position-on-nuclear-power/
Ekklesia 1st July 2018 ,The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has responded to a statement released
by the USA, UK and Russia to mark the 50th anniversary of the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) on Sunday 1 July 2018. Kate
Hudson, CND General Secretary, said: “While it is right to mark the
anniversary of the landmark NPT, this statement from three of the major
nuclear states smacks of appalling hypocrisy. http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/26227
Nuclear-free world unlikely as UN treaty turns 50, DW, 1 July 18 Fifty years after countries signed the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, there are still nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons spread around the world. Experts today believe that complete nuclear disarmament remains unlikely.
If it weren’t the site of a historical anachronism, hardly anyone would take any notice of Büchel, a small town west of Frankfurt, between Koblenz and Trier. Büchel is home to the last remaining atomic bombs in Germany, which have been stored here since the end of the Cold War. The air force base here allegedly houses around 20 B61 bombs, although the exact number is secret. But one thing is certain: each of them is many times more destructive than the bombs that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The atomic bombs in Büchel belong to the US, but in an emergency they would be flown to a target and dropped by German Tornado fighter-bombers. Pilots from the Tactical Air Force Wing 33 have been regularly practicing with dummy bombs for decades. The squadron is the main employer in the area, but the existence of these nuclear weapons doesn’t show up anywhere on Büchel’s website.
This strategy, in which other NATO states also participate, is called “nuclear sharing.” Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey also have US nuclear weapons on their territory. The concept of nuclear deterrence which underlies this strategy is still in great demand. As recently as 2012, it was confirmed by NATO as a “core element of collective defense.”
Original goal: Nuclear disarmament
The mood was very different 50 years ago. In the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed by the US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union on July 1, 1968, the signatory states undertook to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They were also striving for complete nuclear disarmament. Germany joined the treaty in 1975, and it has since been signed by more than 190 states.
For a long time, the treaty was regarded as the cornerstone of global disarmament efforts. Today, it appears to be little more than a toothless tiger. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates there are still nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons worldwide. According to their research, the majority are held by the US (6,800) and Russia (7,000).
According to theologian Eberhard Schockenhoff, a professor at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg and long-standing member of the German Ethics Council, the nuclear strategies of both sides are based on maintaining this residual stock, at least at its current level.
“This is ethically unacceptable,” he said. The nuclear powers have “written off” the goal of nuclear disarmament — if not in public, at least behind closed doors.
The clock is ticking…
Tom Sauer, a political scientist and disarmament expert at the University of Antwerp, believes the treaty is “in total crisis.” The last review conference in 2015 broke down, and he fears this will also be the case for the next one in 2020.
He believes that this state of affairs will continue until the signatory countries finally fulfil their obligations, which include a massive reduction of warheads down to zero, he says. “They promised that in 1968, but they’re not doing it.”
But instead of reducing their stockpiles, nuclear weapon states have been modernizing their weapons and incorporating new technology, such as sophisticated guidance systems. Experts say the danger of nuclear war is greater today than it has been for decades.
In January, a panel of scientists, including 17 Nobel Prize winners, set the symbolic Doomsday Clock— which measures how close the planet could be to catastrophe — at 11:58 p.m.. The readjustment put the clock at the closest it’s been to midnight since the height of the Cold War…..
New UN attempt
Has the danger posed by the continued existence of nuclear weapons been misjudged, 50 years after the signing of the non-proliferation treaty? Sauer fears this might be the case. He remains concerned that disarmament talks between the US and Russia are currently on hold, and that other countries, in particular Iran and Saudi Arabia, may be striving for nuclear weapons of their own.
Sauer hopes the United Nations will eventually support a complete ban on nuclear weapons, as outlined in a treaty adopted in July 2017 by 122 votes from its 193 member states. Once 50 countries ratify this treaty, it will become legally binding. To date, only 10 countries have done so — none of them major world powers.
If and when that happens, all the signatory countries would then consider nuclear weapons illegal, said Sauer. “The wind is changing, and nuclear powers are on the defensive.”……
David Lowry’s Blog 29th June 2018, Article I of the NPT starts with the following commitment on Russia, the US
and UK: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to
transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear
explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices
directly, or indirectly”
Extraordinarily, just two days earlier in
Washington, the US hosted a bilateral meeting with the UK to celebrate the
60th anniversary – from July 3, 1958 – of a hugely significant nuclear
defence agreement (commonly called the US–UK Mutual Defense
Agreement,(MDA) with defence spelled with an ‘s’ even in the official
UK version, hinting at the origin of its drafting). http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.com/2018/06/naked-nuclear-hypocrisy.html
FARMINGTON — Federal and tribal officials expressed support Wednesday for proposed amendments to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act during a hearing in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bipartisan legislation was introduced in January 2017 to expand compensation under the act to victims of radiation exposure, including those who worked in uranium mines after 1971 in northwest New Mexico and those exposed to radiation from testing sites in the West and the Pacific islands.
Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is among five senators sponsoring the bill and provided testimony in front of the committee in Washington, D.C.
“This bill would close the gaps in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to make sure that those downwinders and miners and millers who were unknowingly exposed to radiation — but who are not now eligible under the act — are fairly compensated,” he said.
Although Congress amended the act in 2000, it still left out several groups, including downwinders living in the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico and the post-1971 miners, Udall added.
“While the federal government stopped purchasing domestic uranium in 1971, the mines continued to operate and the federal government failed to implement worker safety standards,” Udall said adding work sites lacked showers and caused workers to take contaminated clothing home.
Approximately 30 million tons of uranium ore was removed from 1944 to 1986 from the Navajo reservation, and more than 500 abandoned uranium mines exist in the region, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Navajo Nation Vice President Jonathan Nez provided comments to the committee on behalf of the tribe. His comments included calls to support amending the types of documentation used to prove residency and employment.
“The verification process for downwinders is cumbersome and restrictive. The DOJ should allow the use of affidavits from local officials to verify residence,” Nez said.
He added that information from uranium companies should be streamlined to ease the verification process.
“As the Navajo Nation vice president, I urge you to act now. Our people have been waiting for justice for far too long,” Nez said.
He noted that among those attending the hearing was a tribal member who developed health problems from uranium mining.
This individual could not fly due to his health, so he drove across country to attend the hearing, Nez said.
Noel Lyn Smith covers the Navajo Nation for The Daily Times. She can be reached at 505-564-4636 or by email at nsmith@daily-times.com.
Energy Live News 29th June 2018 ,Horizon Nuclear Power’s Wylfa Newydd plans formally approved. Four key
environmental permits will now enter the assessment stage. Horizon Nuclear
Power has had its plans to build the proposed Wylfa Newydd nuclear power
station in Wales formally approved by the Planning Inspectorate. The
Development Consent Order process now formally begins with the
pre-examination phase, which is where members of the public can become an
‘interested party’. An Examining Authority is also appointed at this
stage and interested parties will be invited to attend a preliminary
meeting. Four other key environmental permits will now also enter the
assessment stage, which will be delivered by Natural Resources Wales. https://www.energylivenews.com/2018/06/29/horizon-nuclear-powers-wylfa-newydd-plans-formally-approved/
Parliament 19th June 2018 Neglected Large-Scale Value for Money Issues in Public Accounting for Costs
of the Defence Nuclear Enterprise :Written evidence a review of issues that
are of direct relevance to the core topic of the National Audit Office
(NAO) report of 2018 concerning ‘the Defence Nuclear Enterprise’
(henceforth ‘NAO Report’). The material summarized here supplements and
updates evidence published by the PAC Inquiry of October 2017. The authors
believe on grounds of many years of research at the Science Policy Research
Unit at the University of Sussex that the matters documented here raise
large-scale, long-run value for money issues of pressing national
importance, which remain seriously neglected in work to date either by the
NAO, the PAC or any other official bodies – and which are therefore
gravely under-scrutinized by Parliament or wider UK policy debates
Palestinians and Nuclear Weapons, The National Interest,
The unresolved Israel-Palestinian conflict is one of the major factors preventing an effective region-wide prohibition of nuclear weapons.,by Paul R. Pillar , June 29, 2018
The Palestinians
“……… Consider the issue of nuclear weapons. Most of the states of the region have actively supported diplomacy aimed at making the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone. Israel, backed by the United States and now especially by the Trump administration, has opposed this diplomacy and looked for ways to impede it. These lines of contention were apparent this spring at a preparatory meeting for the next quinquennial review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Israel argues that restrictions on nuclear weapons cannot be considered in isolation from other regional security issues. On the face of it, that is a valid argument, given the possible role of nuclear weapons as a deterrent against perceived non-nuclear threats. But Israel and its U.S. backer define the stumbling block in more Israel-specific terms. The Trump administration’s representative at the preparatory committee meeting spoke of many ostensible and mostly vaguely worded reasons to slow-roll diplomacy on a regional nuclear weapons-free zone, but the specific problem he singled out was “the non-recognition of Israel by some regional states.”
Any talk of recognition or non-recognition of Israel should immediately evoke the Arab League peace initiative , which has been on the table since 2002 and commits all the Arab states to recognition of, and peace with, the state of Israel contingent on a withdrawal from occupied territories and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem.
Subsequent modification of the initiative has made clear the Arabs’ acceptance of land swaps that would not require rigid adherence to boundaries that existed prior to the 1967 war. Saudi Arabia took the lead in constructing this peace proposal. The initiative is still on the table. Despite the dalliance with Israel of de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman and reports that he is willing to throw Palestinians under the bus as he pursues his own agenda, his government still subscribes to the terms of the initiative.
……… Full recognition requires the players in question to recognize the national rights of all other players and not to occupy someone else’s territory indefinitely. Also fair: amid much talk about recognizing Israel’s right to exist, it surely is just as reasonable to insist on recognition of the Palestinians’ right to exist. The conclusion: the unresolved Israel-Palestinian conflict is one of the major factors preventing an effective region-wide prohibition of nuclear weapons.
That the Trump administration has gone all in with the Israeli government’s wishes while continuing to claim for itself the principal mediator’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute augurs very badly for any settlement of the conflict in the foreseeable future. The pessimism is only accentuated when taking into account the personal and financial interests of would-be U.S. mediators that make it understandable for Palestinian leaders to reject them as hopelessly biased. The kind of suffering that has played out in Gaza and along the Gaza fence is one reason to regret the dim prospects for peace on this issue. http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/palestinians-and-nuclear-weapons-24752
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