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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

The nuclear lobby will be delighted with this knighthood, earned for obscuring the cause of leukaemia

Knighted for Services Rendered: Don’t Worry about the Nukiller Plant on your doorstop – Just Let Them Drink 

The New Years Honours List Does its Thing…..‘For 30 years I’ve been obsessed by why children get leukaemia. Now we have an answer’

Let Them Drink Yoghurt!

Newly knighted cancer scientist Mel Greaves explains why a cocktail of microbes could give protection against disease

The national press trumpet the clarion cry that could have come from the nuclear industry’s PR book:   “From this perspective, the disease has nothing to with power lines or nuclear fuel reprocessing stations, as has been suggested in the past, but is caused by a double whammy of interacting prenatal and environmental events, as Greaves outlined in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer earlier this year.”

It seems a good time to revisit one of our early blog posts which first appeared on Indymedia back in 2009. What has changed?  The Nuclear Spin has got more blatant and God Forbid that anyone should mention nukiller and leukaemia in the same breath.

What ever did happen to all that research from the body snatching scandal?

Marianne Birkby  04.09.2009

Bodysnatching, radioactive poisoning and infanticide, the nuclear industry  has it all in spades.
Is this alarmist, you might ask? No, not really. Let’s look at “bodysnatching”: remember the Redfern Inquiry into the taking
of body parts from radioactively-contaminated workers in Cumbria? Radiation Free Lakeland has been contacted by many people anxious to know when the findings of this Inquiry will be revealed so that justice and closure can
take place.
That thousands of dead nuclear workers’ organs were taken without consent for secret research into radiation poisoning was and is morally unacceptable. The government has put the Redfern Inquiry “on hold” indefinitely. What other industry can get away with such a suspension of justice and carry on with business as usual?Radioactive poisoning?
Sellafield recently admitted to exposing two workers to dangerous levels of radiation in 2007 and were supposed to be sentenced in Carlisle’s Crown Court on 21st August this year. This also has been held back and at the time of writing no new date has been set. Again, what other industry has such power and influence?Infanticide?
In Germany, a major Government-sponsored scientific study recently uncovered very strong links between living near nuclear power plants and childhood leukaemia: these findings were accepted by its government. Many peer-reviewed scientific articles in respected journals have described these disturbing findings in detail. In essence, increased numbers of pregnant women near German nuclear reactors are having babies which later die of leukaemia. Let’s call this by its proper name: infanticide. It appears we might be killing our babies for the sake of nuclear electricity. Should we be doing this? Should we be proposing to build yet more nuclear reactors?
Where has our moral compass gone  ?Independent scientists have stated that whatever the explanation for these increased leukaemia deaths in babies, they raise difficult questions including whether vulnerable people – in particular, pregnant women and women of child-bearing age – should be advised to move away from nuclear facilities. What other industry would be allowed to get away with this nonsense? Can you imagine a chemical firm getting away with it?
Some people appear to accept nuclear (often half-heartedly or with embarrassment) as they misguidedly think nuclear is a solution to global warming. But it isn’t. The nuclear industry overall causes large carbon releases (think of uranium mining, milling and processing) and its potential for reducing UK CO2 emissions is a pitiful 4% according to the Government’s
Sustainable Development Commission in 2006. There are many options for reducing our CO2 emissions, but it turns out nuclear is the least cost effective.
Just ask yourself – if nuclear power led to reduced reliance on oil then why is nuclear France’s per capita consumption of oil higher than non-nuclear Italy, nuclear phase-out Germany or the EU average?But even if nuclear were everything the government and industry falsely claim regarding climate change – that would still not justify new build. Nuclear also results in our passing on dangerous nuclear wastes, for which there is no solution on the horizon, to our children and grandchildren and to future generations for many millennia: this is ethically and morally
scandalous.So why are we being steam-rollered into a nuclear future? Let’s stand up together and say, loudly, NO TO NUCLEAR.Medicine, Conflict and Survival
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:

Childhood cancers near German nuclear power stations: hypothesis to explain
the cancer increases
Ian Fairlie
Online Publication Date: 01 July 2009

 https://webmail.plus.net/src/webmail.php

January 1, 2019 Posted by | spinbuster, UK | 4 Comments

Trump’s done one good thing – stopped the Bill Gates- China “new nuclear power” push

Bill Gates shelves nuclear reactor in China, citing U.S. policy, Axios, Amy Harder, Dec 30

TerraPower, a nuclear-energy company founded by Bill Gates, is unlikely to follow through on building a demonstration reactor in China, due largely to the Trump administration’s crackdown on the country.

Why it matters: This is a blow to America’s attempts to commercialize advanced, smaller scale nuclear technology and, separately, further evidence of soured relations between the U.S. and China under President Trump.

Driving the news: In a year-end blog post covering various topics published Saturday night, Gates said of TerraPower: “We had hoped to build a pilot project in China, but recent policy changes here in the U.S. have made that unlikely.”

Details: The Trump administration, led by the Energy Department, announced in October that it was implementing measures to “prevent China’s illegal diversion of U.S. civil nuclear technology for military or other unauthorized purposes.”

  • Those measures have made it nearly impossible for TerraPower’s project to go forward, according to multiple people familiar with the development.
  • TerraPower had pursued plans to build a pilot reactor in China because that country has two things America doesn’t — growing electricity demand and a long-term strategic energy plan — a top TerraPower executive told me last year.
  • Morning Consult and, separately, an analyst for the think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies, covered the impacts of the October policy change shortly after it occurred, with brief mentions of the likely negative impact on TerraPower………

What’s next: “We may be able to build it [the reactor] in the United States if the funding and regulatory changes that I mentioned earlier happen,” Gates said in his post, although he didn’t specify which funding or regulations.

Meanwhile, the Energy Department just announced it plans to buy some of the power from new advanced reactors being pursued by NuScale, another advanced nuclear company, for here in the United States. https://www.axios.com/bill-gates-nuclear-reactor-china-terrapower-be4c792c-6f76-4723-bf63-d8f9fb527dc1.html

 

January 1, 2019 Posted by | business and costs, China, politics, USA | 2 Comments

Weather – perhaps out best hope of bringing home the urgent message of climate change

We can’t lose sight of the most important story of the year, https://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/we-can-t-lose-sight-of-the-most-important-story-of-the-year-20181231-p50oy5.html, By David Leonhardt 1 January 2019 
Our best hope may be the weather.For a long time, many people thought that it was a mistake to use the weather as evidence of climate change. Weather patterns contain a lot of randomness. Even as the earth warms and extreme weather becomes more common, some years are colder and calmer than others. If you argue that climate change is causing some weather trend, a climate denier may respond by making grand claims about a recent snowfall.

And yet the weather still has one big advantage over every other argument about the urgency of climate change: We experience the weather. We see it and feel it.

It is not a complex data series in an academic study or government report. It’s not a measurement of sea level or ice depth in a place you’ve never been. It’s right in front of you. And although weather patterns do have a lot of randomness, they are indeed changing. That’s the thing about climate change: it changes the climate.

I wanted to write my last column of 2018 about the climate as a kind of plea: amid everything else going on, don’t lose sight of the most important story of the year.

I know there was a lot of competition for that title, including some more obvious contenders, like President Donald Trump and Robert Mueller. But nothing else measures up to the rising toll and enormous dangers of climate change. I worry that our children and grandchildren will one day ask us, bitterly, why we spent so much time distracted by lesser matters.

The story of climate change in 2018 was complicated — overwhelmingly bad, yet with two reasons for hope. The bad and the good were connected, too: Thanks to the changing weather, more Americans seem to be waking up to the problem.

I’ll start with the alarming parts of the story. The past year is on pace to be the earth’s fourth warmest on record, and the five warmest years have all occurred since 2010. This warming is now starting to cause a lot of damage.

In 2018, heat waves killed people in Montreal, Karachi, Tokyo and elsewhere. Extreme rain battered North Carolina and the Indian state of Kerala. The Horn of Africa suffered from drought. Large swaths of the American West burned.

Amid all of this destruction, US President Donald Trump’s climate agenda consists of making the problem worse. His administration is filled with former corporate lobbyists, and they have been changing federal policy to make it easier for companies to pollute. These officials like to talk about free enterprise and scientific uncertainty, but their real motive is usually money. Sometimes, they don’t even wait to return to industry jobs.

I  often want to ask these officials: deep down, do you really believe that future generations of your own family will be immune from climate change’s damage? Or have you chosen not to think very much about them?

As for the two main reasons for hope: the first is that the Trump administration is an outlier. Most major governments are trying to slow climate change.

The second reason for hope is public opinion. No, it isn’t changing nearly as rapidly as I wish. Yet it is changing, and the weather seems to be a factor. The growing number of extreme events — wildfires, storms, floods and so on — are hard to ignore.

Only 40 percent of Americans called the quality of environment “good” or “excellent” in a Gallup Poll this year, the lowest level in almost a decade. And 61 percent said the environment was getting worse. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 66 percent of Americans said they wanted to see action to combat climate change. Some polls even suggest that Republican voters are becoming anxious about the situation.

The politics of climate change remains devilishly hard, especially because so many people around the world feel frustrated about their living standards. France’s “gilet jaune” protests, after all, were sparked by a proposed energy tax. Compared with day-to-day life, the effects of climate change have long felt distant, almost theoretical.

But now those effects are becoming real, and they are terrifying. To anyone who worries about making a case for climate action based on the weather, I would simply ask: do you have a better idea?

January 1, 2019 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Arrests at the Pentagon, of 4 peaceful Catholic protesters against nuclear weapons

January 1, 2019 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

Kim Jong-un sends a conciliatory message to Donald Trump, as nuclear weapons talks remain stalled

North Korea’s Kim sends ‘conciliatory message’ to Trump as nuclear weapon negotiations continue to stall Kim Jong-un had promised Donald Trump that they would work towards denuclearising North Korea, but negotiations haven’t advanced in months, Independent UK, Kristin Hugo New York 1 Jan 19 

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sent a  “conciliatory message” to Donald Trump as nuclear weapon talks between the two nations having stalled in recent months.

South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported the fact the letter has been sent on Monday, but did not include the details of the message or how it was sent. The report said that the message was in regard to US-North Korea relations, and that it was “letter-like.”

On Sunday, the office of South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said Mr Kim had sent a letter to his counterpart in Seoul saying he wants to hold more inter-Korean summits next year to achieve denuclearisation of the peninsula…….

In November, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was scheduled to meet senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol in New York City to discuss how to move forward. However, that meeting was suddenly cancelled, and has not yet been rescheduled.  ……

Reuters reached out to a North Korean official, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, but has not yet received a response.  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/north-korea-trump-kim-jong-un-message-nuclear-weapons-negotiations-sanctions-south-korea-a8705846.html\

January 1, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, politics international | Leave a comment

The Nuclear Resister monitors arrests for civil disobedience, and supporters women and men jailed for these actions

Since 1980, the Nuclear Resister has provided comprehensive reporting on arrests for anti-nuclear civil resistance in the United States, with an emphasis on providing support for the women and men jailed for these actions. In 1990, we expanded our work to include reporting on anti-war arrests in North America, plus overseas anti-nuclear and anti-war resistance with the same emphasis on prisoner support.

Through the publication of a newsletter every three months, and other education and outreach, the Nuclear Resister serves to network this nonviolent resistance movement while acting as a clearinghouse for information about contemporary nonviolent resistance to war and the nuclear threat. We believe that in any significant movement for social change, many committed individuals are imprisoned. Behind bars, they are physically isolated from their supporters and their own resistance activity is limited. Broader awareness of their actions and support for the imprisoned activist are essential to the movement for a peaceful, nuclear-free future.

The Nuclear Resister provides the names and jail addresses of currently imprisoned anti-nuclear and anti-war activists. People are encouraged to provide active support by writing letters to those behind bars and in other ways requested by the prisoners.

Since 1980, Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa have been co-coordinators of the Nuclear Resister and co-editors of the newsletter. Hundreds of people have helped over the years by distributing newsletters, helping staff a Nuclear Resister booth at various events, doing artwork and writing articles for the newsletter, helping at mailing parties, providing information about actions and legal updates, sending photos, helping with the website and blog, and writing letters of support to imprisoned activists. http://www.nukeresister.org/about-us/

January 1, 2019 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

The nuclear power industry is moribund

Nuclear power practically dead, The Guardian, Phillip Griffin, Dec 29 ……Wind, solar, and storage technologies (thermal storage for heat/cold, electric vehicles, grid batteries, power-to-gas) are plummeting in price. Efficiency and conservation are no-brainers: building envelope improvements, LED lighting, and high-efficiency heat pumps are proven methods. Many ways exist for highly renewable energy systems to be affordable and reliable, says science. Brown et al. (2018) conclude, “the 100 per cent renewable energy scenarios proposed in the literature are not just feasible, but also viable.”

Global data show renewable electricity adds output and saves carbon faster than nuclear power does or ever has. (Lovins et al., 2018).

Nuclear takes forever, 10-19 years from planning-to-operation, or gets abandoned. About half the nuclear reactors ever ordered in the US were canceled. New wind and solar farms take 2-5 years from planning-to-operation.

Nuclear power is practically dead. Look at the Vogtle nuclear plant being constructed in the US. It’s taking forever as always, and the projected cost has spiraled from an original $4.4B to an estimated $25B including financing costs.

We’re out of tomorrows. In Canada, existing hydroelectric reservoirs can act as giant batteries. Wind, solar, and efficiency measures are affordable, as are a myriad of storage solutions. These project costs are falling, they scale rapidly, and consistently come in on time and budget. None of this holds true for nuclear power. https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/letter-to-the-editor/letter-nuclear-power-practically-dead-271713/

 

January 1, 2019 Posted by | general | Leave a comment