News media -Don’t call nuclear power “clean” or “green”

Ann Darling: Nuclear power should not be linked with words like ‘clean’ or ‘green’ https://www.gazettenet.com/Darling-letter-28945232, 10/14/2019 I got behind on my reading and am just now going through your series on climate change and climate activism. I’ve learned a lot. Thank you.

I’m writing because I’ve been trying to get your writers and editors to think twice when you see mention of nuclear power in association with adjectives like clean or green. I see I have to keep on trying.

Buried in your article Sept. 19 extolling the green virtues of Holyoke Gas & Electric, I found this: HSG&E “provides an enormous advantage when looking to improve the city’s commitment to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The source of energy HG&E draws from are around 90 percent carbon-free, including nuclear and hydro.”

To begin, creating no greenhouse gasses during the actual generation of energy is not the litmus test for clean and green. Good science demands that we also ask, is the power source sustainable? Does the extraction of the fuel pollute the planet? Does the waste from producing the energy pollute the planet?

In the case of nuclear power, the answers are all these questions is a resounding no. Uranium is a finite source of fuel. Its mining consumes tremendous amounts of water and leaves radioactive tailings that are still being cleaned up and have poisoned mostly Native American communities for decades.

The radioactive waste generated during power production, the most toxic thing known to humankind, is with us forever, and there is no good way to neutralize or segregate it. Let’s not forget the link to nuclear weapons. The radioactive waste is used in weapons.

Yes, during electricity generation, nuclear power facilities don’t emit greenhouse gasses. Thinking that nuclear power is, therefore, a good or useful thing to address climate change is short-sighted and just plain bad science. If we have learned anything, it should be that we have to consider all the consequences of a means of power production before we adopt it.

I call on HG&E to divest of nuclear power and on the Gazette to think more incisively and critically about this. I challenge you to run a series on nuclear power generation and its supposed “greenness.”

October 17, 2019 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general

2 Comments »

From the Incompetent Moron in Chief That Wants To Arm Saudi Arabia with Nuclear Weapons and Help Build several Nuclear Reactors for the 911 Perpetrators

Trump is not pulling out of Syria to get American troops out of the Middle East. He is Moving them to Saudi Arabia, to help The Corrupt-Moronic Blood Thirsty Thug in Saudi Arabia that is not unlike himself. Trump is also leaving Syria because, his family got a bribe to sell out the Kurd’s.
Saudi Arabia is getting it’s ass kicked in Yemen By the
Houthis. Hundreds of once arrogant Saudi Troops and American Mercenaries run by Trump’s mercenary Buddy, Eric Prinze have been captured by the Houthis. Trump is moving american Troops from Syria to SA and from elsewhere.

https://www.opednews.com/articles/Crown-Prince-Mohammad-bin-by-Pepe-Escobar-Crown-Prince-Mohammed-Bin-Salman_Houthis_Saudi-Arabia_Yemen-Destruction-191004-985.html

See Whole Article Partially Reprinted

“It is clear to us that Iran bears responsibility for this attack. There is no other plausible explanation. We support ongoing investigations to establish further details.”

The statement above was not written by Franz Kafka. In fact, it was written by a Kafka derivative: Brussels-based European bureaucracy. The Merkel-Macron-Johnson trio, representing Germany, France and the UK, seems to know what no “ongoing investigation” has unearthed: that Tehran was definitively responsible for the twin aerial strikes on Saudi oil installations.

“There is no other plausible explanation” translates as the occultation of Yemen. Yemen only features as the pounding ground of a vicious Saudi war, de facto supported by Washington and London and conducted with US and UK weapons, which has generated a horrendous humanitarian crisis.

So Iran is the culprit, no evidence provided, end of story, even if the “investigation continues.”

Hassan Ali Al-Emad, Yemeni scholar and the son of a prominent tribal leader with ascendance over ten clans, begs to differ. “From a military perspective, nobody ever took our forces in Yemen seriously. Perhaps they started understanding it when our missiles hit Aramco.”
Abqaig

A satellite image from the US government shows damage to oil and gas infrastructure from weekend drone attacks at Abqaig on September 15.
Al-Emad said: “Yemeni people have been encircled by an embargo. Why are Yemeni airports still closed? Children are dying without treatment. In this current war, the first door [to be closed against enemies] was Damascus. The second door is Yemen.” Al-Emad considers that Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Sayed Nasrallah and the Houthis are involved in the same struggle.

Al-Emad was born in Sana’a in a Zaydi family influenced by Wahhabi practices. Yet when he was 20, in 1997, he converted to Ahlulbayat after comparative studies between Sunni, Zaydi and the Imamiyyah – the branch of Shi’ite Islam that believes in 12 imams. He abandoned Zaydi in what could be considered a Voltairean act: because the sect cannot withstand critical analysis.

I talked and broke bread – and hummus – with Al-Emad, in Beirut, during the New Horizon conference among scholars from Lebanon, Iran, Italy, Canada, Russia and Germany. Although he says he cannot get into detail about military secrets, he confirmed: “Past Yemeni governments had missiles, but after 9/11 Yemen was banned from buying weapons from Russia. But we still had 400 missiles in warehouses in South Yemen. We used 200 Scuds – the rest is still there [laughs].”

Al-Emad breaks down Houthi weaponry into three categories: the old missile stock; cannibalized missiles using different spare parts (“transformation made in Yemen”); and those with new technology that use reverse engineering. He stressed: “We accept help from everybody,” which suggests that not only Tehran and Hezbollah are pitching in.

Abqaiq
© AFP
Smoke billows from the Aramco oil facility in Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province after the Sept 14 attacks.

Comment by Shelley Havens | October 17, 2019 | Reply
Problem that the UK Government has is that reprocessing for years at Sellafield has left the UK Government with 142 tonnes of Plutonium Pu239. It only takes 5 to 10 kg of Plutonium Pu239 to make a nuclear bomb. The whole temptation with Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C projects is that can be run on dirty MOX fuel to try to extract some energy value from the Plutonium, even though reactor dynamics with MOX fuel are far more difficult to control in comparison to “once through” enriched Uranium U235/238 fuel (i.e. higher risk of an accident occurring). Nobody seems to be honest to declare why the UK Government is tempted, even though wind power is now 30% of the cost of energy from Hinkley Point C and a far less risky commercial investment.

Comment by Dr Timothy Norris | October 18, 2019 | Reply