Climate and nuclear news – to 12 December
William Perry, formerly of the Pentagon, and former U.S. Secretary for Defense, is renowned for his work aimed at limiting nuclear weapons, and warning the world of the great threat of nuclear war.
But now, even Perry is recognising that, in some ways, climate change is an even greater existential threat to the world. He points out that nuclear catastrophe can happen quickly, but that it’s possible to prevent it. But climate change is happening slowly, inexorably, and could be irreversible.
He’s convinced me, and I had always thought that nuclear disaster was the most important danger.
With that new realisation in mind, I’m seeing the events in Poland this week – the COP24 UN Conference on Climate Change, with a more acute interest. This international meeting comes right after the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
Fabricated media attacks on Julian Assange. The article that a Fairfax journalist didn’t want to write, about Julian Assange. Rallies will demand that Australia insists on Julian Assange’s safe departure from UK.
Do corporations have a legal right to destroy the planet’s ecosystem?
The worst performing countries for climate action- USA and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, the US, Kuwait and Russia tried to erase meaning of UN’s report on the impacts of 1.5C warming. Coal lobby is prominent at COP24 U.N climate change conference. Climate denialist group held fringe meeting in Poland, banning access by environmental reporter.
New nuclear power plants, prolong existing ones – to solve global warming?
A wave of change is coming to our planet’s water resources.
Energy efficiency the starting point for effective climate policies.
Assessing the effects of planetary electromagnetic pollution.
USA.
- U.S. preparing to wreck the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START)? If USA dumps the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) – Putin threatens arms race.
- Michael Flynn’s involvement in shady nuclear deals with Saudi Arabia.
- USA’s intractable nuclear waste problem: a new approach is needed. No answer to clean up Washington’s Hanford nuclear site. Idaho closure of nuclear-waste treatment plant to affect Hanford.
- Public health and safety endangered by weakening The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
- USA Energy Dept extends period for public comment on classification of High Level nuclear waste.
- S.C. ratepayers still vulnerable to next billion-dollar disaster.
JAPAN. Former mayor expresses anger at Tepco in trial over Fukushima crisis. Results of the first-round thyroid examination of the Fukushima Health Management Survey. Thyroid cancer impact on children and teens following Fukushima nuclear accident. Fukushima evacuees forced back into unacceptably high radiation zones.
TAIWAN. Taiwan Votes to Maintain Import Ban on Fukushima Food Imports.
FRANCE. Despite President Macron, France’s government report calls new nuclear power uneconomical.
UK.
- With Brexit, thorny nuclear problems about the ownership of EU nuclear materials stored in Britain. UK must explain its plans for civil nuclear power security under ‘no deal’ Brexit scenario. UK tax-payers, not the nuclear industry, will pay for the new safeguards regime, post Brexit !
- As UK’s planned Wylfa nuclear power station might be axed, UK’s whole nuclear project is in doubt. UK govt allowing Chinese nuclear technology for Bradwell reactor? China’s push to take over the abandoned Moorside nuclear project. New nuclear station next to Minsmere wildlife reserve? Sizewell action group to hold EDF to account.
- Scotland’s wind power output over 100%.
NORTH KOREA. If USA does not lift sanctions, North Korea could revive nuclear weapons development.
INDIA. Nuclear Expansion in Kaiga: Is India Ready for the Risk?
SOUTH AFRICA. South Africa Energy Minister Fires Nuclear Corporation’s Board .
RUSSIA. Russia sends 2 nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela.
GERMANY. Germany a leading solar power producer, despite its low hours of sunshine.
IRAQ. Depleted uranium – the cancer-causing weapon still taking its toll in Iraq.
BELARUS. TOR-M2 air defense missile systems to protect Belarus nuclear power plant.
Do corporations have a legal right to destroy the planet’s ecosystem?
Right to end life on Earth: Can corporations that spread climate change denialism be held liable?
If a corporation’s propaganda destroys the world, doesn’t that conflict with our right to live? Salon , MATTHEW ROZSA, DECEMBER 10, 2018
To facetiously paraphrase a line that I often hear from global warming deniers: Don’t be offended, I’m just asking questions.
It’s conventional wisdom that the right to free speech does not permit you to shout “fire!” in a crowded theater – but does that mean you have the right to claim there is no fire when a theater is ablaze?
This is the question posed by the existential crisis of man-made global warming, and it is one that doesn’t lend itself to an easy answer. Certainly it can be acknowledged that man-made global warming has forced us to re-examine other verities that once underpinned the modern liberal political order. Laissez-faire economic theory, which holds that state regulation of the economy is an unequivocal social ill, doesn’t stand up when you consider that insufficient environmental regulations got us into this mess and stronger ones will be necessary to mitigate the damage. A similar observation could be made about the consumerist ethos that drives free market economic models: A status quo of constant expansion may be economically healthy within the paradigm of capitalist markets, but it is devastatingly unsustainable when it comes to the fitness of our planet………
“In my book ‘The Hockey Stick and the Climate War,’ I state that those who knowingly misled the public and policymakers about the reality and threat of climate change must be held responsible for their actions, and that includes legal repercussions,” Mann told Salon. “Note that there is a distinction between those at the top (e.g., fossil fuel executives and lobbyists and the politicians in their pocket) who are guilty of misleading the public, and those at the bottom (the typical climate denying trolls we encounter on the internet) who in many cases are actually victims of the disinformation campaign.”………https://www.salon.com/2018/12/09/right-to-end-life-on-earth-can-corporations-that-spread-climate-change-denialism-be-held-liable/
Fossil fuel panel, of Americans plus Australia’s ambassador for environment, Patrick Suckling, scorned in Ploand

A Trump administration presentation extolling the virtues of fossil fuels at the UN climate talks in Poland has been met with guffaws of laughter and chants of “Shame on you”.Monday’s protest came during a panel discussion by the official US delegation, which used its only public appearance to promote the “unapologetic utilisation” of coal, oil and gas. Although these industries are the main source of the carbon emissions that are causing global warming, the speakers boasted the US would expand production for the sake of global energy security and planned a new fleet of coal plants with technology it hoped to export to other countries.
The event featured prominent cheerleaders for fossil fuels and nuclear power,including Wells Griffith, Donald Trump’s adviser on global energy and climate, Steve Winberg, the assistant secretary for fossil energy at the energy department, and Rich Powell, the executive director of the ClearPath Foundation, a non-profit organisation focused on “conservative clean energy”. The only non-American was Patrick Suckling, the ambassador for the environment in Australia’s coal-enthusiast government.
None of the US participants mentioned climate change or global warming, focusing instead of “innovation and entrepreneurship” in the technological development of nuclear power, “clean coal” and carbon capture and storage.
Ten minutes into Griffith’s opening speech, he was interrupted by a sudden, sustained, loud volley of laughter by several dozen protesters that was then followed by a single shout of “It’s not funny”, and then a series of chants of “Keep it in the ground” and “Shame on you”.
Several campaigners read statements. “There is no such thing as clean coal. Coal is deadly from the beginning to the end. They talk about the life cycle of coal, I talk about it as a death march. My father died of black lung, and I am in this struggle with others whose fathers and husbands are dying of black lung right now,” said Teri Blanton of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, which represents Appalachian coal workers in North America.
After the protesters were led away by security guards, Griffiths said: “In the US our policy is not to keep it in the ground, but to use it as cleanly and efficiently as possible”.
This statement was contradicted by climate analysts, who noted the US environment agency estimates that 1,400 more deaths per year will result from Trump’s proposal to replace the Clean Power Act.
“It’s ludicrous for Trump officials to claim that they want to clean up fossil fuels, while dismantling standards that would do just that,” said Dan Lashof, the director of the World Resources Institute. “Since taking office, this administration has proposed to roll back measures to cut methane leaks from oil and gas operations, made it easier for companies to dump coal ash into drinking water, and just days ago proposed easing carbon pollution rules for new coal-fired power plants.” …….
Echoing a claim often made by Trump, Griffiths said the US would not be subject to agreements that hamstrung domestic growth, while allowing China to operate with high emissions.
This was the second consecutive year that the Trump team was heckled after promoting fossil fuels and nuclear power at the climate talks, underscoring how the US position has shifted since the president took power in 2017………
An alternative, non-official US delegation has backed a faster transition to renewables. Made up of city- and state-level governments, business executives and religious leaders, the “We’re still in” group is staging dozens of events in a bid to show action is still possible without White House support.
Nonetheless, many observers at the official US panel were ashamed at the position of their federal government. “I was completely embarrassed to be an American”, said Leo McNeil Woodberry of the Climate Action Network. “Everything they proposed was absolutely wrong. I can’t believe they are putting profits over the planet, and profits over people.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/10/protesters-disrupt-us-panels-fossil-fuels-pitch-at-climate-talks
USA’s intractable nuclear waste problem: a new approach is needed
U.S. must start from scratch with a new nuclear waste strategy, a Stanford-led panel says
Thousands of tons of highly radioactive spent fuel are in temporary storage in 35 states, with no permanent solution being discussed. International experts led by Stanford show how to end this status quo. Stanford News, BY KATHLEEN GABEL CHUI AND MARK GOLDEN, 10 Dec 18, The U.S. government has worked for decades and spent tens of billions of dollars in search of a permanent resting place for the nation’s nuclear waste. Some 80,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and millions of gallons of high-level nuclear waste from defense programs are stored in pools, dry casks and large tanks at more than 75 sites throughout the country.
A Stanford University-led study recommends that the United States reset its nuclear waste program by moving responsibility for commercially generated, used nuclear fuel away from the federal government and into the hands of an independent, nonprofit, utility-owned and -funded nuclear waste management organization.
“No single group, institution or governmental organization is incentivized to find a solution,” said Rod Ewing, co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and a professor of geological sciences.
The three-year study, led by Ewing, makes a series of recommendations focused on the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The report, Reset of America’s Nuclear Waste Management Strategy and Policy, was released today.
A tightening knot
Over the past four decades, the U.S. nuclear waste program has suffered from continuing changes to the original Nuclear Waste Policy Act, a slow-to-develop and changing regulatory framework. Erratic funding, significant changes in policy with changing administrations, conflicting policies from Congress and the executive branch and – most important – inadequate public engagement have also blocked any progress.
“The U.S. program is in an ever-tightening Gordian knot – the strands of which are technical, logistical, regulatory, legal, financial, social and political – all caught in a web of agreements with states and communities, regulations, court rulings and the congressional budgetary process,” the report says.
The project’s steering committee sought to untangle these technical, administrative and public barriers so that critical issues could be identified and overcome. They held five open meetings with some 75 internationally recognized experts, government officials, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, affected citizens and Stanford scholars as speakers.
After describing the Sisyphean history of the U.S. nuclear waste management and disposal program, the report makes recommendations all focused around a final goal: long-term disposal of highly radioactive waste in a mined, geologic repository.
“Most importantly, the United States has taken its eyes off the prize, that is, disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste in a deep-mined geologic repository,” said Allison Macfarlane, a member of the steering committee and a professor of public policy and international affairs at George Washington University. “Spent nuclear fuel stored above ground – either in pools or dry casks – is not a solution. These facilities will eventually degrade. And, if not monitored and cared for, they will contaminate our environment.”
The new, independent, utility-owned organization would control spent fuel from the time it is removed from reactors until its final disposal in a geologic repository. ………https://news.stanford.edu/2018/12/10/square-one-u-s-nuclear-waste-management-program/
Despite President Macron, France’s government report calls new nuclear power uneconomical
Building new nuclear plants in France uneconomical -environment agency https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL8N1YF5HCGeert De Clercq, DECEMBER 11, 2018
State environment agency contradicts Macron on new nuclear
* New nuclear reactors would be structurally loss-making
* Renewables could account for 85 pct of power mix by 2050.
Building new nuclear reactors in France would not be economical, state environment agency ADEME said in a study on Monday, contradicting the government’s long-term energy strategy as well as state-owned utility EDF’s investment plans.
In a speech last month, President Emmanuel Macron said nuclear energy would remain a promising technology for producing low-cost, low-carbon energy and that EDF’s EPR reactor model should be part of future energy options.
Macron has also asked EDF to draw up a plan for building new reactors with a view to making a decision about nuclear in 2021
Two EPR reactors under construction in France and Finland are years behind schedule and billions of euros over budget.
“The development of an EPR-based nuclear industry would not be competitive,” ADEME said, adding that new nuclear plants would be structurally loss-making. bit.ly/2GlEbcT
Building a single EPR in 2030 would require 4 to 6 billion euros of subsidies, while building a fleet of 15 with a total capacity of 24 gigawatt-hour by 2060 would cost the state 39 billion euros, despite economies of scale that could bring down the EPR costs to 70 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh), ADEME said.
Renewables costs could fall to between 32 and 80 euros/MWh, depending on the technology, by 2060.
But extending the existing fleet too long, while also building new EPRs, would lead to overcapacity, compromising returns on all generation assets, including renewables.
EDF – which generates about 75 percent of French electricity with 58 nuclear reactors – declined to comment.
The ADEME report, which studied energy mix scenarios for 2020-2060, said renewables could account for 85 percent of power generation by 2050 and more than 95 percent by 2060, except if the government pushes through the EPR option anyway.
The gradual increase of renewables capacity could reduce the pre-tax electricity cost for consumers – including generation, grids and storage – to about 90 euros per MWh, compared to nearly 100 euros today, ADEME said.
ADEME director Arnaud Leroy, appointed in February, helped write the energy chapter of Macron’s election programme and was a spokesman for his campaign, but the agency is independent and earlier studies have also contradicted government energy policy.
In 2015, a ADEME study suggesting that France could switch to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050 at a cost similar to sticking with nuclear was barred from publication for months by the government. reut.rs/2RLGKG8 (Reporting by Geert De Clercq; editing by David Evans)
The worst performing countries for climate action- USA and Saudi Arabia
US, Saudi Arabia back-of-the-pack on curbing climate change, Researchers have identified the United States and Saudi Arabia as the climate change laggards. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/us-saudi-arabia-back-of-the-pack-on-curbing-climate-changeThe United States and Saudi Arabia rank last when it comes to curbing climate change among the 56 nations accounting for 90 percent of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, researchers said Monday.A large number of laggards means the world is dangerously off-track when it comes to slashing the carbon pollution that has already amplified droughts, flooding and deadly heatwaves worldwide, they reported on the margins of UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland.
Only a few countries have started to implement strategies to limit global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit),” the cornerstone target of the 2015 Paris climate treaty, according to NewClimate Institute and Germanwatch, an NGO.
Most governments “lack the political will to phase out fossil fuels with the necessary speed.” Continue reading
No answer to clean up Washington’s Hanford nuclear site
There’s no easy fix for our nuclear past At Washington’s Hanford nuclear site, failing infrastructure and make-do plans as the West prepares for a new round of radioactivity. High Country News, Heather Hansman, Dec. 10, 2018, Fhe Hanford nuclear complex in eastern Washington lies in a green-gold sagebrush steppe, so big you can’t see the edges of it and shimmery in the summer heat. The only landmarks are low-slung buildings on the horizon and ancient sand dunes scrubbed bare when the glaciers melted. There’s almost no trace that this is the biggest nuclear waste dump in the country. The scale of nuclear waste is like that: sprawling out into the metaphysical distance, too big for the human mind to hold. Over the ridge north of us, the Columbia River curves around the site, appearing motionless until you get close and see how much water is pushing past the banks. Over the past year, a series of accidents has put the spotlight on Hanford, its aging infrastructure and the lack of a long-term solution. In May 2017, part of the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility, which holds rail cars full of solid waste, collapsed. Later that year, workers tearing down the Plutonium Finishing Plant were contaminated with plutonium and americium particles when an open-air demolition went wrong. In December, others inhaled radioactive dust at the same site, halting work indefinitely. Then, in June of this year, the Department of Energy (DOE), which is responsible for the site, released a proposal to reclassify some of the high-level waste as less toxic, with what’s called a “Waste Incidental to Reprocessing” evaluation, so they could clean it up sooner and more cheaply. “There’s a lot more work to do than there is money to get it accomplished,” Price said. “We’ve really come to a fork in the road.” Across the country, big energy companies are considering a move from coal to nuclear-fueled plants even as sites like Hanford remain mired in many-decades-long cleanups of radioactive landscapes. As the possibility of more waste looms, Hanford has become a flashpoint for people who fear that there’s no safe way to deal with our nuclear legacy. In this era of climate change and large-scale environmental degradation, the site raises the question: Can we ever clean up the mistakes of our past? ………….The Government Accountability Office estimates cleaning up Hanford could total more than $100 billion. Since 1989, when Hanford was first designated as a Superfund site, 889 buildings have been demolished, 18.5 million tons of debris have been put in controlled landfills, and 20 billion gallons of groundwater have been treated. With three decades of work, the scope of the problem has been greatly reduced, but the really toxic stuff is still on site. The groundwater beneath Hanford is never going to be clean enough to drink, thanks to a cocktail of chemicals: strontium-90, which deteriorates marrow in the bones of humans and animals and takes 300 years to break down; hexavalent chromium, which mutates salmon eggs; and technetium-99, which dissolves like salt in water and has a half-life of 211,000 years.
The 586 square miles of sage still hold the 324 Building, home to highly radioactive nuclear containment chambers called hot cells, less than 1,000 feet from the Columbia and right across from the town of Richland, where many of the Hanford workers live. In the central plateau, where the ghostly vitrification plant stands, the Waste Encapsulation Storage Facility holds 1,936 radioactive cesium and strontium capsules currently kept in a glorified swimming pool. If an earthquake were to crack the pool, or the water supply were to run dry, those isotopes, physically hot and linked to bone cancer, would spread quickly.
The knotty heart of the cleanup is the tank farm, on the central plateau, where 56 million gallons of high-level waste — the official term for the long-lived radioactive material leftover from plutonium production — sit in 177 underground tanks. Each tank holds a unique mixture of sludge, solid, supernate liquid and crusty saltcake — a witch’s brew of 1,800 different chemicals that are buzzing, off-gassing and breaking down. Sixty-seven of the 149 carbon-steel single-shell tanks and one of the newer 28 double shells have leaked, but the Energy Department refuses to build new ones, and every year the timeframe for cleanup gets longer. If you think it’s nearly intractable, that’s because it is,” said Randy Bradbury, the communications director from Washington’s Department of Ecology, one of the three parties that regulates the site. “The biggest mind-boggling thing about it is that we’re all going to be dead before this is cleaned up.” That timespan challenges our decision-making, which is much more suited to responding to accidents than to multigenerational cleanup projects. Philosopher Timothy Morton categorizes nuclear weapons, waste and explosions (not to mention climate change and the longevity of Styrofoam cups) as “hyperobjects” — real-life objects that are too large in time and space for humans to fully grasp. How, then, can we calculate all their costs? The Department of Energy spends billions of dollars on the cleanup each year; next year, it has a $2.4 billion budget. But those billions are barely enough to keep the wheels on, and the Government Accountability Office estimates that the last 15 percent of the cleanup could be as expensive as the first 85 percent, which has already taken 30 years. Maintaining the tanks alone costs $300 million a year, and the minimum amount needed to keep things safe increases as time goes on and infrastructure ages. There currently isn’t enough federal funding to meet cleanup benchmarks, and no money has been allocated for accidents like the tunnel collapse that contaminated workers. At the current rate of funding and cleanup, the DOE’s Richland Office, which manages most of the site, falls another year behind schedule every two years, and the Office of River Protection, which oversees the tank waste, slips back a year every three. This year, President Donald Trump proposed slashing the budget for Hanford cleanup by $230 million. ….….. Cleaning up the tank farm requires moving the waste out of the single-shell tanks, which are each as wide across as a tennis court and can hold up to a million gallons of waste, and into the sturdier double-shell tanks. From there, it will — theoretically — be vitrified, or turned into glass, at the as-yet-unbuilt vitrification plant and then sent to the stalled-out proposed federal nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, or to another long-term storage facility. Every step is excruciatingly complex. The massive tanks were designed to hold radioactive materials, not release them, so any material in these tanks has to come out through a pipe just 12 inches around. Challenges like this have forced Hanford managers to invent every step of the cleanup process, from how to sample the contents to how to keep video cameras from burning up in the radioactive heat inside. It’s a constant guessing game, where the questions of how to store the waste and neuter its effects change endlessly. That’s why in June, the Energy Department proposed reclassifying the remaining high-level waste in the C section of the tank farm as low-activity waste, and then filling the tanks with grout to stabilize the remaining 66,000 gallons of waste, so it could be kept onsite permanently. The department thinks that it would be safe enough to close the door on the tank cleanup once the grout is in, except for long-term monitoring. ……… Some people believe a fast response may be safer than a slower, more thorough response. “Until all the waste is out of those tanks, it’s almost inevitable that more of them will leak,” Bradbury says. The tanks, built starting in the 1940s, were designed to safely contain waste for up to 40 years on the assumption that we’d have figured out a long-term plan by then. But we haven’t, at Hanford or anywhere else. High-level waste was never supposed to stay on site permanently. The waste from the tanks is intended to be vitrified, turned into glass rods, then sent to a federal repository, where it would sit, isolated, forever. But that repository doesn’t exist yet, and it’s possible that it never will. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987 designated Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the spot to store the waste. Despite $15 billion spent studying the site, and a growing cost to hold the waste at other sites, plans for Yucca have been in limbo for decades, in large part because of opposition from Nevadans, including former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who don’t want the waste transported through or stored in their state. A bill to reopen Yucca passed the U.S. House of Representatives as recently as May, but failed in the Senate. “We’ve made stuff that will be dangerous for millennia and we deal with it in two-year congressional cycles,” said William Kinsella, a North Carolina State University professor whose research includes nuclear weapons cleanup. “We don’t want to make hasty decisions, but it’s a chokepoint for nuclear constipation.”That has created expensive and dangerous blockages throughout the nuclear waste management system. Without a place to send waste, the cleanup at Hanford has no real endgame. Because of the long-term impossibility, the Hanford Advisory Board — a coalition of tribal members, community volunteers and government workers who advise the agencies that manage the site — is constantly worried that the funds might dry up while the tanks are still full. The fear of slashed funding, and the cleanup’s long delay, is part of what drove the Department of Energy to consider grouting.
But the proposal worries watchdog groups, who are concerned about short-sighted cost-saving measures that could put surrounding communities at lasting risk by keeping 700,00 gallons of waste that’s currently classified as high-level, and that might ultimately leak to the river on site. “What the DOE is proposing is to make the Hanford site a high-level waste repository in all but name,” said Tom Carpenter, executive director of the Hanford Challenge, an environmental advocacy group. “That does not belong in an agriculture zone in a major river system in an earthquake zone.” ……… I ask Price what he thinks the worst-case scenario might be, and he says there are two things that keep him up at night. The first is a dramatic natural disaster, such as an earthquake or a fire, that would damage the fragile infrastructure and cause a massive spill. The site sits at the drought-prone edge of the Cascadia subduction zone, so both are likely. The week before our visit, a fire burned 2,500 acres here, and we can still smell the charred sage. But Price’s second fear is about the equally insidious threat people pose to themselves: A lack of long-term protection and the erosion of care. He says the paradox of Hanford is trying to convince people that the site is safe now, but that in 500 — or 1,000 — years, it might not be, and that we have to make decisions with those unknown risks in mind. “I’m not really worried about today, broad-scale, but I’m worried about the future,”………… Heather Hansman lives in Seattle, where she writes about water and the West. Downriver, her first book, will be out in April. https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-theres-no-easy-fix-for-our-nuclear-past |
|
New nuclear power plants, prolong existing ones – to solve global warming?

Assessing the effects of planetary electromagnetic pollution
Planetary electromagnetic pollution: it is time to assess its impact, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196%2818%2930221-3/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email
Priyanka Bandara
David O Carpenter
Open AccessPublished:December, 20 As the Planetary Health Alliance moves forward after a productive second annual meeting, a discussion on the rapid global proliferation of artificial electromagnetic fields would now be apt. The most notable is the blanket of radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation, largely microwave radiation generated for wireless communication and surveillance technologies, as mounting scientific evidence suggests that prolonged exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation has serious biological and health effects. However, public exposure regulations in most countries continue to be based on the guidelines of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which were established in the 1990s on the belief that only acute thermal effects are hazardous. Prevention of tissue heating by radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation is now proven to be ineffective in preventing biochemical and physiological interference. For example, acute non-thermal exposure has been shown to alter human brain metabolism by NIH scientists, electrical activity in the brain, and systemic immune responses.
At the Oceania Radiofrequency Scientific Advisory Association, an independent scientific organisation, volunteering scientists have constructed the world’s largest categorised online database of peer-reviewed studies on radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation and other man-made electromagnetic fields of lower frequencies. A recent evaluation of 2266 studies (including in-vitro and in-vivo studies in human, animal, and plant experimental systems and population studies) found that most studies (n=1546, 68·2%) have demonstrated significant biological or health effects associated with exposure to anthropogenic electromagnetic fields. We have published our preliminary data on radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation, which shows that 89% (216 of 242) of experimental studies that investigated oxidative stress endpoints showed significant effects.
This weight of scientific evidence refutes the prominent claim that the deployment of wireless technologies poses no health risks at the currently permitted non-thermal radiofrequency exposure levels. Instead, the evidence supports the International EMF Scientist Appeal by 244 scientists from 41 countries who have published on the subject in peer-reviewed literature and collectively petitioned the WHO and the UN for immediate measures to reduce public exposure to artificial electromagnetic fields and radiation.
Evidence also exists of the effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation on flora and fauna. For example, the reported global reduction in bees and other insects is plausibly linked to the increased radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation in the environment.
Honeybees are among the species that use magnetoreception, which is sensitive to anthropogenic electromagnetic fields, for navigation.
References……

As UK’s planned Wylfa nuclear power station might be axed, UK’s whole nuclear project is in doubt
Fresh doubts have been raised over prospects for the UK’s new nuclear power programme after a report that Hitachi is considering axing plans for a plant in Wales.
The Japanese conglomerate’s mooted 2.9GW nuclear power station on Anglesey is next in line in the UK’s nuclear plans after EDF Energy’s 3.2GW Hinkley Point C scheme in Somerset.
However, Japan’s TV network Asahi reported that the Wylfa Newydd scheme may be scrapped, sending Hitachi’s shares up by almost 3%, before ending up by 1%.
The project is expected to be discussed at the Japanese multinational’s board meeting on Tuesday.
The Guardian understands that cancelling the power station would result in Hitachi having to write off its near-£2bn investment in the project.
Ministers have already been hit by the recent collapse of plans for a significant new nuclear plant in Cumbria after Toshiba failed to find a buyer for the Moorside project.
However, it would be surprising if Hitachi pulled the plug on Wylfa at this stage. Tripartite talks are still ongoing between the firm and the UK and Japanese governments.
The business secretary, Greg Clark, said in June that the UK was considering taking a “direct investment” in the power station, overturning decades of policy of not taking a stake in civil nuclear power. But such projects should be financed by the private sector “in the longer term”, he said.
The UK is understood to have offered to take at least a £5bn-plus public stake to make the financing of the £16bn power station work.
The company and government are still continuing with talks, which insiders described as “fairly intense”.
Hitachi’s British subsidiary Horizon will need to reach an agreement with the UK by the middle of 2019, if it is to clear EU state aid approval and hit its timetable of making a final investment decision in mid-to-late 2020.
Wylfa is one of two sites that Hitachi is considering, with an identical 2.9GW plant planned for Oldbury in Gloucestershire.
A Horizon spokesperson said: “Since the secretary of state’s statement to the House in June this year we’ve been in formal negotiations with the UK government regarding financing of the Wylfa Newydd project in a way that works both for investors and the UK electricity customer.”
The company said the negotiations were commercially confidential and it would not comment on rumours or speculation.
Greenpeace UK said investors could see the economics of new nuclear did not add up. “As Hitachi contemplates whether to pull out of Wylfa, UK government might contemplate whether they’ve been backing the wrong horse for many years,” said Doug Parr, the group’s chief scientist.
Nuclear power – a dubious solution to global warming
Nuclear’s long odds. Climate change is here, but nuclear power as a solution faces economical and historical challenges. High Country News, Dec. 10, 2018 “…….. outside Los Angeles, the Woolsey Fire, fanned by the same late-season winds, raced through chaparral toward the sea, burning the houses of both rich and poor.
Coming on the heels of a deadly hurricane season and a tempestuous election, the blazes delivered an unmistakable message: Climate change is here, no matter how vociferously some deny it, and we have to take notice…….
Russia sends 2 nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at last week’s meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart Vladimir Padrino Lopez that Russia would continue to send its military aircraft and warships to visit Venezuela as part of bilateral military cooperation. ….
Russia-US relations are currently at post-Cold War lows over Ukraine, the war in Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. Russia has bristled at US and other NATO allies deploying their troops and weapons near its borders. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/south-america/russia-sends-2-nuclear-capable-bombers-to-venezuela-20181211-p50lea.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
Cold war efforts to provide bunker protection against nuclear bombing
America’s Nuclear Battle Plan if Russia Went to War: Massive Bunkers Under U.S. Cities, National Interest, |
UK anti nuclear campaigner awarded prestigious American Geographical Society Medal
to New York to receive the Alexander and Ilse Melamid Medal by the American
Geographical Society. The award recognised his “outstanding work” in
the nuclear research field. He is chairman of Blackwater Against New
Nuclear Group – Banng – which opposes plans for a new Chinese-built power
plant on the River Blackwater in Bradwell.https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/17283588.prof-praised-for-outstanding-contribution-to-nuclear-research/
Germany a leading solar power producer, despite its low hours of sunshine
https://germanyworks.ft.com/energy/german-solar-power-is-a-sunrise-market/
-
Archives
- August 2022 (150)
- July 2022 (368)
- June 2022 (277)
- May 2022 (375)
- April 2022 (378)
- March 2022 (405)
- February 2022 (333)
- January 2022 (422)
- December 2021 (299)
- November 2021 (400)
- October 2021 (346)
- September 2021 (291)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Fuk 2022
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS