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Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s Speech stressed energy development, and co-operation wit South Korea

Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s Speech: On the Domestic Front, 38 North, BY: GLYN FORD, JANUARY 9, 2019  “……

    • The speech was framed within the successes of last year. The 2013  Line of promoting two fronts—economy and a nuclear deterrent—simultaneously had finally been delivered. The country lives under the protective umbrella of its nuclear deterrent and can turn its focus to the “higher goal” of economic construction.

Kim acknowledged that challenges to this domestic agenda certainly exist, noting especially the misallocation of labor, lack of expertise and poor productivity. In his speech, he instructed a reallocation of labor and resources, both for the military and the Party, to start to address these barriers to success. He also indicated that contingency plans were being explored in case a second summit with Trump fails to set US-DPRK relations back on track.

………Focus on Energy Generation

The country’s principal economic bottleneck is the desperate need for a massive increase in electricity production. A first step is the renovation and modernization of the supply industry. By singling out the Pukchang Thermal Power Complex for praise all the others inevitably lie in its shadow. Yet the most aggravating problem is fuel shortages. Under the current sanctions regime, the short-term solution—and by no means good news for the climate-change lobby—to the electricity shortage is massive increases in productivity in the coal sector. ………..

While hydroelectric plants merit a passing mention, in reality, the North is close to maximizing the use of the water resources available with both floods and droughts sharply reducing output. In the longer term, Kim argued that the country needs to “create a capacity for generating tidal, wind and atomic power under a far-reaching plan.” The last underlines Pyongyang’s perception that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula does not preclude ambitions to be a civil nuclear power. The ongoing construction of their indigenous Experimental Light Water Reactor (ELWR) at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center suggests that light water reactors will form the backbone of the industry, harking back perhaps to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) from the 1990s. ………..

There is no question the Party is now on top as well as on tap with constant references to its primacy. Kim emphasized in his speech that the KPA is to “defend the Party and revolution and the security of the country and the people and continuously perform miraculous feats at all sites of socialist construction.” Echoing that sentiment, the People’s Internal Security Forces are there to protect Party, system and people, in that order.

Delivering peace and prosperity to the Korean Peninsula is the stated goal for both Pyongyang and Seoul. Kim underscored this mandate with:

“When north and south join hands firmly and rely on the united strength of the fellow countrymen, no external sanctions and pressure, challenges and trials will be able to hinder us….We will never tolerate the interference and intervention of outside forces who stand in the way of national reconciliation, unity and reunification with the design to subordinate inter-Korean relations to their tastes and interests.”

The “dog that didn’t bark” is the “end-of-war” declaration. Last summer, Pyongyang complained long and hard that Washington had not delivered on its promise to sign a political declaration ending the Korean War. In Kim’s New Year’s speech, this declaration failed to get even a mention. Pyongyang seems to have moved on, from Washington at least. Kim stated, “it is also needed to actively promote multi-party negotiations for replacing the current ceasefire on the Korean peninsula with a peace mechanism in close contact with the signatories to the armistice agreement so as to lay a lasting and substantial peace-keeping foundation.” The concept of a bilateral US-DPRK declaration signed by Seoul and Beijing has now become a multilateral proposition and negotiation. Which parties would be involved is unclear, but this may have been one of many topics discussed between Kim and Chinese President Xi Jinping during Kim’s birthday visit to Beijing

……….Until now Pyongyang has rigidly adhered publicly to parallel bilateral negotiations, one with Washington looking for a peace settlement accompanied by sanctions relief and a second with Seoul on economic cooperation. Now with the potential for the first set of negotiations to go multilateral, the second set may follow suit, increasing pressure on Moon to put clear blue water between Seoul and Washington with respect to “maximum pressure.”https://www.38north.org/2019/01/gford010919/

January 12, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, politics, politics international | Leave a comment

The utter complexity of Moving Nuclear Waste Out of San Diego

North County Report: The Head-Spinning Complexity of Moving Nuclear Waste Out of San Diego, Voice of San Diego, 9 Jan 19 

The clock is ticking on attempts to find a suitable destination for nuclear waste from the decommissioned San Onofre power station north of Oceanside, and Carlsbad is sending a new representative to SANDAG.   What to do with the spent nuclear fuel at the decommissioned San Onofre power station north of Oceanside — let’s just call it “waste” — is an important question. But I hadn’t spent much time thinking about it because it seemed remote and abstract……

 lots of people have lots ideas about what to do with the millions of pounds of nuclear waste in San Diego County sitting, as the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation put it, “100 feet from the shoreline, on a receding bluff, near a fault line … next to the one of the nation’s busiest freeways, and within roughly 50 miles of the densely populated City of San Diego.”

Everyone with a stake in San Onofre seems to agree today that the waste shouldn’t be there, especially as the Pacific Ocean creeps closer. But moving the waste inland is politically difficult because it requires buy-in from outside communities and action at the federal level.

“We have maybe a year to work on this,” said David Victor, a UCSD professor international relations and chair of a San Onofre community engagement panel, “then the presidential election will shut down the conversation.”

Southern California Edison, the station’s majority owner, has long maintained that the waste is safe and being properly stored. Earlier this week, a nonprofit estimated that a major release of radiation on the site could cause upwards of $13 trillion in economic damage…..

San Onofre was closed and then decommissioned in 2013 after the detection of a small radiation leak. When the station’s owners got permission from the California Coastal Commission in 2015 to begin burying the waste in dry bunkers on the beach, they cited a lack of off-site places willing to take it. Several groups filed suit and the owners agreed in 2017 to move the canisters away from the Pacific Ocean. Eventually. And pending the development of a federally approved facility, possibly in New Mexico, Texas or Arizona.

There’s been a growing sense of urgency in recent months, and not just among activist kombucha sellers. Although no one was hurt, an incident in August has given plenty of cause for concern.

Workers at the station were loading a nuclear canister into a bunker when it got wedged near the top and remained that way for about 45 minutes, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Eventually the workers readjusted and lowered the canister the remaining 18 feet.

SoCal Edison told regulators about the incident the following business day, but the public didn’t learn of it until a contractor blew the whistle at a later community meeting. In response, an independent nuclear expert told the U-T that although the incident posed no threat to public, the station was “tempting fate.”

Even the station’s chief nuclear operator said the incident was unacceptable and suspended the transfer of nuclear fuel from cooling pools into dry bunkers on the San Onofre site. He has also acknowledged a second, previously unreported incident, in July, when workers encountered trouble lowering another canister into place. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected soon to hand down a punishment.

Meanwhile, according to the U-T, former San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre, who sued San Onofre’s owners in 2015, is asking the FBI to investigate whether the handling of nuclear waste by a SoCal Edison contractor rises to the level of a criminal violation.

So, Where’s the Nuclear Waste Supposed to Go?

Last year, the U.S. House passed a bill intending to redevelop permanent storage at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, which had already received billions in investment but had been stalled under the Obama administration thanks to Sen. Harry Reid. That bill had the support of then-Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican whose district included San Onofre, and was meant to appease lawmakers who were reluctant to hold the waste before it went to the final destination.

In bureaucratic-speak, these facilities are known as “interim storage.”……….

There are dozens of sites across the country where waste is accumulating with nowhere to go……. https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/north-county-report-the-head-spinning-complexity-of-moving-nuclear-waste-out-of-san-diego/

January 12, 2019 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Over 600 Environmental Groups lobby U.S. Congress in support of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal

More Than 600 Environmental Groups Just Backed Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal,Gizmodo, Brian Kahn , 11 Jan 19, Pressure continues to mount on Congress to get its act together on climate change. The latest salvo came on Thursday, as 626 groups delivered a letter to every member of Congress laying out their support for a Green New Deal and their demands.

The list of groups includes heavy hitters in the climate and policy world like Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity, 350, and Indivisible, as well as a raft of local groups in a show of how the idea of a Green New Deal has captured grassroots activists. But the letter also highlights some areas of disagreement with previous proposals for how to shape a Green New Deal, particularly when it comes to pricing carbon and nuclear power.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez popularized the proposal for a Green New Deal to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels in a little over a decade during the midterm election, and protests on Capitol Hill have galvanized support. Add in the fact that there’s basically a decade left to get our act together to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, and it’s clear the time is here to shape the only climate plan in line with the science into a specific set of policy proposals.

“With a new House majority, which is so diverse and so representative of a new generation, now is the time to emphasize the urgent need for climate action,” Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Earther.

The letter sent to Congress on Thursday lays out the 626 groups’ vision for a Green New Deal. On the energy side, it calls on the government to stop leasing federal lands for fossil fuel extraction, to end approval for new fossil fuel infrastructure, and utilize the Clean Air Act to set more stringent standards for greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. It also calls for shifting to 100 percent renewable power by 2035 if not sooner.

The letter emphasizes respecting indigenous rights and a transition away from fossil fuels that centers justice, including a “comprehensive economic plan to drive job growth and invest in a new green economy that is designed, built and governed by communities and workers.” A similar plan has been implemented in Spain to help coal workers, while the pitfalls of not engaging with the people most impacted by the transition away from fossil fuels are clear in France’s yellow vest protests.

The plan isn’t totally feasible right now because of, as Snape put it, “the toddler in the White House,” but he added that the growing impacts of climate change mean that “at some point we believe elected Republicans will have no choice but to join our effort.”

Getting Republicans under the tent may take compromise, to say nothing of other groups already on board with the Green New Deal. The letter sent to Congress notably mentions that any energy transition must “exclude all combustion-based power generation, nuclear, biomass energy, large scale hydro and waste-to-energy technologies.” …….https://earther.gizmodo.com/more-than-600-environmental-groups-just-backed-ocasio-c-1831640541?IR=T

January 12, 2019 Posted by | ENERGY, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Will the Rocky Flats Grand Jury Files Finally Be Opened?

 https://www.westword.com/news/rocky-flats-grand-jury-documents-should-be-released-for-audit-of-nuclear-weapons-plant-cleanup-11106187

PATRICIA CALHOUN | JANUARY 11, 2019 This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the FBI raid on the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, the first (and so far only) raid of one federal agency by another. At dawn on June 6, 1989, dozens of FBI and EPA agents entered the plant sixteen miles northwest (and upwind) of Denver, seeking evidence of alleged environmental crimes at the government facility that had been producing plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs since the ’50s…and been the site of leaks, fires and other accidents for decades.

The evidence they found was ultimately considered by Colorado’s first-ever special grand jury, empaneled in August 1989. After two years of deliberations, the jurors wanted to indict eight individuals — some from the Department of Energy, some from Rockwell International, which ran the plant for the DOE — for environmental crimes. Instead, in March 1992 the Department of Justice sealed a deal with Rockwell, fining the company $18.5 million, less than it had made in one year of bonuses. No individuals were named.

January 12, 2019 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Pope Francis speaks out on the immorality of having nuclear weapons

Pope Francis Rejects Existence of Nuclear weapons,  https://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=37433&SEO=pope-francis-rejects-existence-of-nuclear-weapons  Vatican City, Jan 7 (Prensa Latina) Pope Francis said on Monday that the existence of nuclear weapons is functional to a logic of fear that has to do not only with parties in conflict, but with the entire human race.

In his speech before the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, on the occasion of the congratulations for the new year, the Supreme Pontiff said that international relations cannot be dominated by military forces, reciprocal intimidation or the ostentation of military arsenals.In this regard, he pointed out that it is sad to see how the arms market not only does not stop, but there is an increasingly widespread tendency for individuals and states to arm themselves.

Francis pointed out that ‘it is especially worrying that nuclear disarmament, so desired and pursued in part in the past decades, is now giving way to new, increasingly sophisticated and destructive weapons.

Weapons of mass destruction, particularly atomic weapons,’ he said, ‘generate nothing but a misleading sense of security and cannot constitute the basis for peaceful coexistence among members of the human family, which must nevertheless be inspired by an ethic of solidarity.The Pope referred, on the other hand, to the floods, floods, fires, earthquakes and droughts suffered in 2018 by regions of the Latin American continent and South-East Asia, for which he considered urgent an agreement of the international community on environmental issues and climate change.

He also stressed that in the light of the consensus reached at the recent International Climate Conference (COP-24) in Katowice, he expected a more decisive commitment from states to strengthen collaboration to urgently address the worrying phenomenon of global warming.

January 12, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Climate change: seal levels are rising at different rates around the globe

Explainer: Why sea levels aren’t rising at the same rate globally, A spinning planet, melting ice sheets and warmer waters all contribute to sea level rise, Science news for Students, KATY DAIGLE, CAROLYN GRAMLING, JAN 10, 2019 The sea is coming for the land. In the 20th century, ocean levels rose by a global average of about 14 centimeters (some 5.5 inches). Most of that came from warming water and melting ice. But the water didn’t rise the same amount everywhere. Some coastal areas saw more sea level rise than others. Here’s why:

Swelling seawater  As water heats up, its molecules spread out. That means warmer water takes up slightly more space. It’s just a tiny bit per water molecule. But over an ocean, it’s enough to bump up global sea levels……..

Land a-rising  Heavy ice sheets — glaciers — covered much of the Northern Hemisphere about 20,000 years ago. The weight of all that ice compressed the land beneath it in areas such as the northeastern United States. Now that this ice is gone, the land has been slowly rebounding to its former height. So in those areas, because the land is rising, sea levels appear to be rising more slowly.

But regions that once lay at the edges of the ice sheets are sinking. ……..

Land a-falling, Earthquakes can make land levels rise and fall…….

Glaciers begone  Melting glaciers also can add water to the oceans. But these huge ice slabs affect sea levels in other ways, too.

Huge glaciers can exert a gravitational tug on nearby coastal waters. ……. https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer-why-sea-level-rise-rate-varies-globally

January 12, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, oceans | Leave a comment

Five of France’s EDF nuclear reactors shut down, awaiting regulatory approval

Creusot: 5 EDF reactors still without ASN green light. Five nuclear
reactors are still waiting for an operating license from the Nuclear Safety
Authority (ASN) as part of the investigation of the manufacturing records
of the Creusot plant, while the other 53 have already received fire green,
Creusot’s spokesperson said .

“We are still waiting for elements of answers from EDF,” she said to explain the delay of the
investigation which was to end on December 31, 2018. The five reactors
concerned are Cattenom 4 (1,300 MW ), Fessenheim 1 (880 MW), Flamanville 2
(1,330 MW), Golfech 1 (1,310 MW) and Tricastin 2 (915 MW). All five
reactors will be shut down for maintenance in the coming weeks, as follows:
Cattenom 4 (January 19th to April 11th), Fessenheim 1 (January 19th to
March 20th), Flamanville 2 (January 10th to July 10), Golfech 1 (February
16 to March 23) and Tricastin 2 (January 26 to April 1). The reactors will
not be able to restart without prior approval from ASN.

January 12, 2019 Posted by | France, safety | Leave a comment

Windscale/Sellefield Pt. 1 Research for a book length study

January 12, 2019 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Cumbria Trust challenges the national geological screening exercise. — Cumbria Trust

Background Cumbria Trust welcomed the 2014 decision to conduct a national geological screening exercise – something which we had been pressing for since our formation a year earlier. At the time it was one of the few positive signs in the 2014 White Paper that DECC had learned lessons from the failure of the MRWS […]

via Cumbria Trust challenges the national geological screening exercise. — Cumbria Trust

January 12, 2019 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

January 10 Energy News — geoharvey

Opinion: ¶ “The Green New Deal Builds a Bridge to the Future, Not a Wall Around the Past” • For the Earth, it’s all about carbon emissions. Nothing else matters: not class distinctions, not national pride, not wealth, and not religion. Carbon emissions must be tamed now, for us to have any hope of avoiding […]

via January 10 Energy News — geoharvey

January 12, 2019 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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