Nuclear Issues and Epidemiology – theme for May 2020
Epidemiology – a forgotten science? But now, in the time of pandemic, it has come into its own.
The coronavirus illness is a global phenomenon. Global economies have ground to a halt. Epidemiologists, formerly just boring old farts, in a world that reveres high tech and space scientists, now are called upon for guidance .
Epidemiologists are not industry’s favourite people. Sir Richard Doll, in the 1950s, combined laboratory studies on mice with painstaking epidemiological research, proving that cigarette smoking causes cancer, British Tobacco did not like him.
The nuclear industry learned – to downgrade epidemiological research, and prevent it wherever possible. Subservient governments complied with the nuclear industry.
BUT – there has been epidemiological research applied to nuclear’s ionising radiation and its effect on health – just a few examples – on nuclear workers’ health., on residents of Belarus and Ukraine, on the developing foetus,
Right now, the world sees value in identifying cases, clusters – where the invisible coronavirus exists, with its threat of immediate illness and death.
Equally dangerous the cases and clusters of accumulating radioactive particles lead to the threat of later illness and death.
It is time that epidemiological research on ionising radiation was done, properly, thoroughly, like Richard Doll’s cigarette study. Time to no longer allow the nuclear industry to downplay and stifle such research, (and not to let them do their own biased studies)
Coronavirus a big threat to Russia’s secret nuclear cities, as virus incidence rises
Concern as coronavirus threatens Russia’s closed ‘nuclear 
cities’ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/concern-as-coronavirus-threatens-russias-closed-nuclear-cities
Rosatom nuclear chief warns of ‘particularly alarming situation’ in three areas as country reports biggest daily rise in cases, Reuters in Moscow 29 Apr 2020
Alexei Likhachev, Rosatom chief, said the pandemic ‘creates a direct threat’ to Russia’s nuclear cities.
The head of Russia’s state-run nuclear corporation has expressed concern about the spread of the new coronavirus to three “nuclear cities”, including one that houses a top-secret research institute that helped develop the Soviet atomic bomb.
The cities are closely linked to Russia’s nuclear industry, which is managed by the Rosatom corporation. Several are closed to foreigners and Russians require special clearance to enter them as facilities located there are closely guarded secrets.
Rosatom chief Alexei Likhachev said special deliveries of ventilators and personal protection equipment (PPE) were being sent to the closed town of Sarov, east of Moscow, and other towns where dozens of cases of the virus have been registered.
“This [pandemic] creates a direct threat to our nuclear towns. The situation in Sarov, Elektrostal [and] Desnogorsk is today particularly alarming,” he said in an online speech to Russia’s nuclear industry workers.
“The situation in Sarov is exacerbated by an outbreak of the illness in the nearby Diveyevo monastery,” he said, without elaborating further.
Likhachev made his remarks on a day when Russia reported its biggest daily rise in new coronavirus cases. Russia now ranks eighth worldwide with 93,558 confirmed cases, though its death toll of 867 is still far below that of many other countries.
Moscow, which accounts for more than half of Russia’s cases, and many other regions have imposed stay-at-home orders to curb the spread of the virus.
Sarov, which was so secret that it did not appear on maps until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, remains an important part of Russia’s nuclear military complex, defence experts say.
It is home to a research institute that gained prominence last year when five of its scientists died in a mysterious accident at a military testing site in the far north.
Rosatom said the incident had occurred during a rocket engine test on a sea platform. Some US experts said they suspected it had been a botched test of a new missile vaunted by the president, Vladimir Putin.
Last week, Rosatom said seven people at Sarov’s All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics had been diagnosed with coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases in the city – which has a population of about 95,000 – to 23.
It said the outbreak in Sarov had begun when a retired couple returned to the city from a Russian holiday resort and that more than 100 people had since been isolated to stop it spreading further.
The pandemic is showing us how our trashed world can heal
Now We Know How Quickly Our Trashed Planet Can Heal
Clean air, wandering goats. The pandemic is teaching us that all is not yet lost. By Margaret Renkl “………. Now a pandemic has turned us all into window gazers. We have been given an unexpected space for wondering. In cities the world over, songbirds seem louder now that they aren’t competing with the sounds of traffic.
I think the birds are enjoying this,” wrote a New York City bookseller in response to an online order I’d placed for a new field guide to songbirds. “In NYC we can hear them better than ever.”
But it’s not just that our ears are tuned, in the new silence, to the sounds of birds that have always shared our world. Coyotes now wander the sidewalks of San Francisco and the streets of Chicago; Great Orme Kashmiri goats forage in the town of Llandudno, Wales; a groundhog snarfs pizza right outside a window in Philadelphia; a mountain lion jaywalks in San Mateo; wild boars root in the medians of Barcelona; a red fox saunters across a driveway in Nashville.
This pandemic has overlapped with the annual spring songbird migration, so it’s possible that people are seeing birds that truly weren’t there before we all went into lockdown. But in general it’s not true that the wild animals we’re seeing from our windows have become more plentiful in our absence. They are simply making themselves more visible to us now that we have become less visible to them.
The pandemic is teaching us that all is not yet lost.
None of these changes will last — the human race cannot stay cooped up indoors forever — but while we have both the time to observe and the window perch to watch from, we can use this cultural moment to rethink our relationship to wildness. We can ponder what it truly means to share the planet. We can resolve to change our lives.…..
And so our first task when we emerge from this isolation will be to remember. To sear into our memories that pure pageantry of wildness, of life in its most insistent persisting. And then to try in every possible way to save it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/opinion/coronavirus-shutdown-environment.html
Offshore wind is General Electric’s great opportunity, not dodgy Small Nuclear Reactors
GE Power Plays: Wind Might Blow Coal, Gas And Nuclear Away, Seeking Alpha, Apr. 29, 2020 Keith WilliamsGE offshore wind: massive offshore turbine Haliade-X 12MW looks like a winner.
GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy may be a receding opportunity.
GE might sell its steam power business and rationalise its fossil fuel interests.
The power and renewables businesses are important in considering investment in GE.
………. Nuclear Small Modular Reactors : GE-Hitachi BWRX-300
There is a lot of talk in the nuclear industry and also in political circles from groups who are opposed to solar PV and wind developments, yet who acknowledge the need for low emissions technologies. The World Nuclear Association (WNA) has an excellent summary of many proposed developments in the area of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs). The list of projects is long but many (most) seem to be struggling. A key point from the WNA report is the following : “Licensing is potentially a challenge for SMRs, as design certification, construction and operation licence costs are not necessarily less than for large reactors.” This is a huge red flag for any SMR project.
A second objection is cost of nuclear power versus solar PV/wind plus storage. There is a lot of information about these relative costs, including well into the future. I am not aware of any studies that suggest that any nuclear technology will be able to compete with renewables and storage on price. A recent study (December 2019) by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and CSIRO concluded that SMR nuclear reactors will generate power costing ~8x that of rooftop or solar PV and wind, with solar and wind costs of power generation being similar.
……. With Small Modular Reactors the poster child of nuclear power supporters, it is clear that there is a lot riding on this potential saviour for the nuclear industry after Fukushima and recent delays and cost blowouts in the European (especially UK, French and Finnish) nuclear industries.
With current focus on emissions reductions and the climate emergency, this is an excellent time for low emissions technologies. However, the need is now and renewables (solar PV and wind) plus storage (pumped hydro and batteries) are making a lot of progress in addressing the needs. My question is whether the cost structure and long lead times mean that nuclear technology is too expensive and late to play a part.
A recent summary of the current state of the nuclear industry as a whole is depressing reading for someone who is enthusiastic about the nuclear industry’s prospects. A lot has to happen in the next decade and SMR technology isn’t ready yet. Is GE investing a lot in a technology that can’t compete with the dramatic advances in solar PV, wind and battery storage?……
GE’s adventures in nuclear developments seem like the kind of speculative play GE could happily fund when it was one of the world’s biggest and most powerful engineering companies. It doesn’t have that status anymore and my take is that it needs to cut its cloth and focus on projects that will have more immediate commercial outcomes. Of course, that is asking for a big rethink about how GE sees itself, but does it really have a choice if it wants to survive?
Offshore wind business
While there is some apprehension in the wind industry, especially in the US and China, as changes in regulations come into force next year, and 2020 has been messed up by COVID-19, there is a long-term future for wind power; offshore wind prospects look huge………
GE Renewable Energy is a major wind turbine supplier, with more than 42,000 of its turbines (mostly onshore) installed. Its role in the wind industry is extensive, from manufacture, digital optimization, operations and maintenance. Its onshore turbines range in size from 1MW to 5MW. GE installed ~50% of onshore turbines in the US last year, a 40% increase compared with the number of onshore turbines it installed in the US in 2018.
The offshore market is still emerging, with turbines substantially bigger than those used onshore. ….. The area that looks to me as if it could become a big winner is in offshore wind turbine developments, ….
A lot of investors have GE in their portfolios and a lot more are probably reflecting on whether GE might once again become a secure safe-haven investment. My biggest issue with GE is that it seems to me it is yet to understand that it is no longer the huge and dominant business that can afford to make big bets that burn a lot of cash. The current SMR nuclear programs in GE seem to be in this category. They have a very low chance of success but require major resources. I’d prefer not to have these distractions in a company I invest in….. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4340805-ge-power-plays-wind-might-blow-coal-gas-and-nuclear-away
Climate change: lakes and rivers will become drier, increasingly infectious and toxic
Climate change: lakes and rivers will become drier, increasingly infectious and toxic, Stuff NZ, Olivia Wannan, Apr 30 2020
By dragging our feet on climate action, we increasingly condemn our beloved lakes and rivers to a future of salmonella contamination, algal blooms, species extinctions and drying out, a new report warns.
Our Freshwater 2020, produced by the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics NZ, is a stark reminder that the already-threatened health of our waterways rests on our ability to urgently shift away from fossil fuels.
Even if emissions stay at historically low levels, temperatures will continue to rise in the coming decades, due to the lag between releasing greenhouse gas and the effects on our atmosphere, seas and waterways.
As the climate warms, rain storms will intensify, snowfall will decrease, glaciers will melt, soils will dry out and the sea level will rise – each affecting our lakes and rivers.
In the east, regions such as Hawke’s Bay will see increasingly low waterways by the end of the century, says Ministry for the Environment departmental science advisor Dr Alison Collins.
In the west – particularly in the South Island – rivers and lake levels are expected to rise, potentially leading to flooding.
After extreme downpours, drinking water and swimming spots are at high risk of being contaminated with infectious tummy bugs such as salmonella and harmful strains of E.coli, she says. Northern and remote eastern communities with less-developed water supply systems are particularly vulnerable.
Toxic algal blooms will become more common, as warmer temperatures reduce the mixing between upper and lower levels of deep lakes, boosting nutrient levels at the surface and algal growth. Without the waters mixing, the lake bottom is also deprived of oxygen, which drives out animals such as crayfish (kōura) and mussels (kākahi).
Combined with pollution and habitat loss, climate change is likely to push some freshwater species – both native and introduced – to extinction, the report says. …… https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/121178883/climate-change-lakes-and-rivers-will-become-drier-increasingly-infectious-and-toxic
Time to support humanitarian initiatives for North Korea
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The Looming Crises in North Korea: Coronavirus, Starvation and a Nuclear Test ,https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/looming-crises-north-korea-coronavirus-starvation-and-nuclear-test-149301 29 Apr 20, “We will know soon enough what is going on with Kim Jong-un. However, for now, one thing is very clear. North Korea is on the precipice of crisis—from wide-spread illness and starvation or from a nuclear provocation that escalates into a disastrous miscalculation. We can choose to ignore past lessons when perhaps millions died before in North Korea, but I cannot.”
by Philip W. Yun In the midst of a world engulfed in pandemic, economic meltdown and distracting speculation over Kim Jong-un’s health, we are in danger of missing two new crises to come: (1) an overwhelming cycle of disease and famine in North Korea; as well as (2) a seventh North Korean nuclear weapons test. Both possibilities ominously signal what we don’t need more of — major instability in Northeast Asia which risks miscalculation and possibly war. As a former State Department official, I bore witness through cables and media reports to the North’s 1990’s famine, and during official trips to Pyongyang, I saw the heavy toll of mass starvation on the faces of Pyongyang’s residents. Reportedly millions died. As a second-generation Korean-American, I promised myself then that I would not let another similar tragedy unfold without sounding the alarm.
Pyongyang has proudly declared that it has no COVID-19 cases. Few believe this is true. Even with comprehensive social distancing and draconian quarantine measures, we know that viruses respect no borders. So even taking the regime’s assertions at face value, it is only a matter of time before the disease mounts its own kind of invasion.
In the case of COVID-19, North Korea’s citizenry is particularly susceptible to a devastating outbreak. Decades of malnutrition have left the population’s health and immunity compromised. North Korea’s persistently high rates of respiratory diseases like tuberculosis show the country is not capable of dealing with these types of sicknesses at any scale. Where international sanctions are stringent and the economy sputtering, domestic shortages are chronic — the country will have few personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators and other medical basics. Rather than request international assistance, its mistaken priority to keep the country under control will likely delay an effective response until it is too late.
To make matters worse, North Korea may soon be facing more food shortages. The challenge is daunting even in normal times. But during a pandemic, who will plant, harvest and process badly needed grains if all are sheltering or ill?
When faced with a crushing combination of large-scale malnutrition and COVID-19, the regime will do what it always does when it doesn’t have proper tools — it will triage. North Korea will devote precious resources to its privileged and not to everyday North Koreans, leaving them to simply die either from disease or lack of food. Regardless, the loss in human life could be shocking and threatening to the regime’s very existence. Adding to this morass is the high likelihood that North Korea will test another nuclear device. Here’s why: First, Kim Jong-un was embarrassed by last year’s summit in Hanoi because the North’s leaders had high expectations for concrete gains (like sanctions relief); yet nothing came. Relations with the U.S. are dead. Kim’s highly publicized remarks in December 2019 have arguably rejected diplomacy while simultaneously bracing the country for greater hardship and possible provocations. With a population under pressure, Kim will do what many political leaders do when stressed, internally rally his country by touting an outside threat. Second, the North’s leaders are skilled at making the country’s weakness an asset, usually by resorting to nuclear extortion to draw international benefits. We can expect more of this. More troubling, however, is North Korea’s tendency to double down and show “strength” during unusual internal turmoil – usually in the form of a deliberate warning to adversaries to back off and leave the country alone. If Kim Jong-un is ailing or dead, then this incentive becomes even greater for those in charge and a nuclear test more certain. Third, there is a technical imperative. To produce a truly operational nuclear device, North Korea must test again. Undoubtedly, its military is aggressively lobbying for another test because it sees a nuclear weapon as the best guarantee against invasion and attack. Finally, there is perhaps a no better time to conduct a test than this year. Governments around the globe are mired in and distracted by a pandemic and the prospect of world-wide depression. Ever opportunistic, the North could very well calculate the international political costs of a nuclear test as minimal. So what do we do?Having contained COVID-19, South Korea has the means and know-how to help the North; its President Moon Jae-in, the will. The U.S. needs to set aside differences with the South over security costs and fully support upcoming peace and humanitarian initiatives that are sure to come. The U.S. must then work with the WHO and others, like Japan, Russia, and China, to put together a comprehensive approach that will augment South Korean efforts. While a decision to conduct a nuclear weapons test or some other provocation is solely up to North Korea, there is a small chance, and one worth taking, that American willingness to help the North during a time of dire need may create an opening to somehow persuade the North to forego a test. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the U.S. must lead. We can’t do everything, nor should we, but our role in the world, I believe, remains essential.
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Low Oil Prices May Kill Off The Next Nuclear Boom Before It Begins
Low Oil Prices May Kill Off The Next Nuclear Boom Before It Begins, Oil Price, By Alex Kimani – Apr 27, 2020Opening up the West
On Thursday, the Nuclear Fuel Working Group (NFWG) made recommendations to the U.S. Administration to open up ~1,500 acres outside the Grand Canyon for uranium production, arguing that the country needs to beef up domestic production to avoid an over-reliance on foreign sources.
The organization has recommended spending $1.5 billion over ten years buying uranium from American producers to create a uranium stockpile that would necessitate buying about 10 million pounds a year.
The working group’s report claims that the United States also needs more uranium for two other purposes:
– Low-enriched uranium for the production of tritium for nuclear weapons through the 2040s, and
– Highly enriched uranium to be used as fuel for Navy nuclear reactors through the 2050s
The slow and painful demise of the American uranium mining industry can be chalked up to the fact that the country is not endowed with the most abundant and most accessible uranium deposits, with resources in Canada and Australia boasting significantly higher uranium content and a lower production cost per unit.
American miners have had trouble making a profit from their operations even at the best of times. Consequently, the industry has historically had to rely heavily on government largesse.
During the golden age of American uranium that spanned from 1955-1980, the U.S. government offered fat uranium bonuses in a bid to shore up its stockpiles during the Cold War. These included 10-year price guarantees for certain kinds of ore as well as $10,000 discovery and production bonuses for new sources, which pencils out to nearly $100K in today’s dollars. The incentives set off a mad gold rush in the nation’s vast Western region as every man with a jeep and a Geiger counter set out to make the next significant discovery.
The program was a resounding success: U.S. uranium stockpiles skyrocketed so much that the government stopped paying out the bonuses sometime in the 1960s…….
By 1987, the tables had turned completely, with the country importing nearly 15 million pounds of uranium while domestic production clocked in at just 13 million.
Growing competition weighed heavily on domestic production while the country’s love affair with nuclear energy got its first dose of the harsh reality of nuclear technology thanks to the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in 1979 as well as the Chernobyl reactor meltdown of 1986 that turned an entire Ukrainian city into a ghost town. Meanwhile, utilities began to grow weary of the time and cost of building reactors, which further depressed demand.
The result: U.S. uranium production had sunk to a 35-year low by the time the last wave of reactors came online in 1990…….
Brief Renaissance
The U.S. uranium industry enjoyed a renaissance in the early 2000s as falling global stockpiles, and booming economies in China and India drove new demand.
Unfortunately, this, too, was not to last as the financial crisis of 2008 destroyed demand, while the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011 led to another severe backlash that set off a new round of reactor closures while Germany set to phase out the technology by 2022.
The third nuclear gold rush is starting off on very shaky grounds, too.
First off, the world’s strategic uranium reserves are not in any immediate danger of running out. In 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that the global nuclear fleet has enough stockpiles for 130 years, more than enough for the markets to respond to any shortfalls rapidly as they have done in the past. …..
But more importantly, trying to open up the west for uranium mining is bound to be met with stiff resistance and widespread public uproar.
For all its setbacks over the years, nuclear power has remained broadly popular in the United States. However, the turning point came in 2016 when the majority of people turned against the technology.
The latest poll last year revealed that American public opinion remains split over nuclear power, with 49 percent of U.S. adults either strongly favor (17 percent) or somewhat favor (32 percent) it in power generation while 49 percent either strongly oppose (21 percent) or somewhat oppose (28 percent) its use……
The funny thing is that Gallup has found that American opinion on nuclear power does not have much to do with radiation or safety concerns; rather, it is driven by prevailing fuel prices. …..
a 2020 Colorado College Conservation in the West Poll found that 71 percent of voters in the Mountain West and 77 percent of Arizona voters oppose the development of new uranium mines on public lands adjacent to the Grand Canyon. It’s the kind of backlash that no president wants to deal with, whether they are seeking re-election or not. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Low-Oil-Prices-May-Kill-Off-The-Next-Nuclear-Boom-Before-It-Begins.html
Solar and Wind Cheapest Sources of Power in Most of the World
Solar and Wind Cheapest Sources of Power in Most of the World https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/solar-and-wind-cheapest-sources-of-power-in-most-of-the-world By Brian Eckhouse, April 28, 2020,- Batteries also gaining against traditional energy sources
- Most competitive new power is wind in U.S., solar in China
Solar and onshore wind power are now the cheapest new sources of electricity in at least two-thirds of the world’s population, further threatening the two fossil-fuel stalwarts — coal and natural gas.
The levelized cost of electricity for onshore wind projects has fallen 9% to $44 a megawatt-hour since the second half of last year. Solar declined 4% to $50 a megawatt-hour, according to a report Tuesday by BloombergNEF.
The prices are even lower in countries including the U.S., China and Brazil. Equipment costs have come down, technologies have improved and governments across the world have boosted clean-power targets as they seek to combat climate change. That could squeeze out coal and natural gas when utilities develop new power plants.
“Best-in-class solar and wind projects will be pushing below $20 per megawatt-hour this side of 2030,” Tifenn Brandily, an analyst at BNEF, said in a statement. “There are plenty of innovations in the pipeline that will drive down costs further.”
Yet it remains unclear whether the coronavirus’ impact on coal and gas prices will erode the competitiveness of wind and solar. “If sustained, this could help shield fossil fuel generation for a while from the cost onslaught from renewables,” Seb Henbest, chief economist at BNEF, said in the statement.
A decade ago, solar was more than $300 a megawatt-hour and onshore wind exceeded $100 per megawatt-hour. Today, onshore wind is $37 in the U.S. and $30 in Brazil, while solar is $38 in China, the cheapest sources of new electricity in those countries.
Battery storage is also getting more competitive. The levelized cost of electricity for batteries has fallen to $150 a megawatt-hour, about half of what it was two years ago. That’s made it the cheapest new peaking-power technology in places that import gas, including Europe, China and Japan.
BNEF’s levelized cost for electricity measures the entire cost of producing power, accounting for development, construction and equipment, financing, feedstock, operation and maintenance.
France’s unfairly heavy monitoring of anti-nuclear activists, treating them as violent criminals
Justice has massively monitored Bure’s anti-nuclear activists Reporterre, April 27, 2020 / Marie Barbier (Reporterre) and Jade Lindgaard. Dozens of people tapped, a thousand retranscribed discussions, more than 85,000 conversations and intercepted messages, more than 16 years of cumulative telephone surveillance time: the judicial information opened in July 2017 is a disproportionate machine of intelligence on the movement antinuclear from this village of the Meuse, according to the documents consulted by Reporterre and Mediapart.
Faces caught in a web of arrows and diagrams. Under each photo: date and place of birth, nickname, organization. The individuals are grouped into “clans”, linked to places and ratings of the investigation file. Some faces are magnified, others reduced to the size of a pinhead. Some people are entitled to a photo, others appear in the form of a pictogram – blue for men, fuchsia pink for women.
This diagram [on original] was produced by the Anacrim criminal analysis cell of the national gendarmerie. Its software, Analyst’s notebook, makes it possible to visualize the links between people via their telephone numbers, places, events. This technique is usually used to solve particularly serious crimes: it recently emerged from the Gregory of legal darkness case, and is currently used in the investigation of the multi-repeat killer Nordahl Lelandais.
Examining magistrate Kévin le Fur used it to dissect the organization of the opposition movement at Cigeo, the radioactive waste landfill center planned next to the village of Bure, in the Meuse. Scheduled to come into operation in 2035, it is one of the largest industrial facilities in project today in France, and a very sensitive site for the nuclear industry.
The Anacrim diagram appears in the file of the judicial information for association of criminals, where ten antinuclear militants are under investigation for various reasons in connection with degradations committed in a hotel and the organization of an undeclared demonstration in August 2017. Subject to strict judicial control, those under investigation are prohibited from seeing each other, talking to each other and even being in the same room.
In the Bure case, Anacrim produced a total of fourteen diagrams on “the role and involvement” of the accused and the interactions between collectives and associations. This method leaves its mark on education. Seven people, among the ten indicted, are for criminal association, but 118 individuals are listed in the organization chart of the gendarmes placed in the investigation file.
Dozens of people tapped, more than a thousand transcribed discussions, tens of thousands of conversations and intercepted messages, more than fifteen years of cumulative telephone interception time: the judicial information opened in July 2017 looks like a real intelligence machine on the anti-nuclear movement of Bure, according to the investigation file consulted by Reporterre and Mediapart, and of which Liberation had unveiled part of the content in November 2018. An extraordinary investigation, extremely intrusive and focused on the surveillance of political activists whom the justice system seems to consider as enemies of democracy.
Molotov cocktails and stones fly. Gendarmes were injured and a protester mutilated by a grenade on the foot. Those charged are for different reasons from each other: participation in a gathering after summons, participation in a criminal association for the preparation of an offense punishable by five or ten years’ imprisonment, detention (or complicity) in an organized gang of incendiary product, damage to the property of others by dangerous means, concealment of property from an aggravated theft, voluntary violence in meetings.
From the first days of the investigation, the gendarmes were worried about “criminal designs” unrelated to the “legitimate challenge in a democratic state” of the militants implicated. “These actions can no longer be considered as a legitimate social and societal protest” or “as a form of democratic opposition”, they write in a report, July 27, 2017. According to them, “some of the opponents deliberately choose a violent path. They attack the property associated with the contested projects, but sometimes also the people working for the development of these industrial installations and at the same time against the police. ” In the eyes of the investigators, “opponents criminalize themselves”.
Part of the seals is sent to the Anti-Terrorism Office, a unit of the gendarmerie responsible for the prevention and suppression of acts of terrorism. To take the measure of the surveillance of the militants of Bure and their entourage, Reporterre and Mediapart evaluated the means deployed by the gendarmerie and the justice in their mission. Almost 765 telephone numbers have been the subject of identity verification requests from telephone operators. At least 200 other requests were made to find out the call histories, their places of emission, the bank details of the holders subscription, PUK codes to unlock a phone when you don’t know your PIN.
According to Me Raphaël Kempf, one of the lawyers for the indictments: Listening for so long is proof that we are not in a classic criminal judicial procedure intended to collect evidence of the commission of crimes, but that we are using the means of law and criminal procedure for the purpose of intelligence, which is political in nature. ”
If we add up all these sequences, we get a cumulative time spent listening to activists equivalent to more than sixteen years! According to the minutes, most of these people were listened to permanently by a team of gendarmes taking turns behind their screens. In total, more than 85,000 conversations and messages were intercepted, according to our estimates. And no less than 337 conversations were transcribed on trial- verbal, to which are added some 800 messages reproduced by the Technical Assistance Center (CTA). Are these means proportionate to the crimes being prosecuted? Joined by Reporterre and Mediapart, Olivier Glady, public prosecutor of Bar-le-Duc answers: “I cannot answer that. This is a dossier that makes fifteen volumes. You have files of other kinds (traffic in vehicles or narcotics) which are roughly equivalent, I am not sure that the proportionality of the investigations is simply to relate to a number as you give it to me. ”
During these innumerable hours spent listening to the militants, the gendarmes tracked the indications, sometimes tiny, of each other’s responsibilities in organizing the protest. These are two cultures which, behind closed doors of a judicial investigation, seem to confront each other from a distance. On the one hand, the gendarmes. On the other, anti-nuclear, libertarian culture, who refuse hierarchy and formal assignments to roles. Inevitably, the vision of gendarmes stumbles on the spontaneous and horizontal practices of regulars at the Maison de la Résistance. This old farm in Bure was bought in 2004 by anti-nuclear activists to create a place of struggle. It has become a place of collective life where people come to sleep during a gathering, get together, work, cook, party……. https://reporterre.net/1-3-La-justice-a-massivement-surveille-les-militants-antinucleaires-de-Bure
EDF’s planned Sizewell nuclear power station – vulnerable to sea level rise
Climate News Network 28th April 2020, Controversial plans by the French nuclear giant EDF to build two of its massive new reactors on the low-lying east coast of England are causingalarm: the shore is eroding and local people fear sea level rise could maroon the station on an island.
because they fear the proposed sea defences for the new station, Sizewell C, will be inadequate.
will be adequate.
of construction, 60 years of operation and then the time needed to decommission it.
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/sea-level-rise-threatens-uk-nuclear-reactor-plans/
With international finance help, Russia is dismantling its most radioactive ship
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Russia’s most radioactive ship reaches dismantlement milestone The Lepse service ship, once the most glaring nuclear hazard in the Murmansk harbor, will now be emptied of nearly all of its radioactive cargo by the end of this year, Russian nuclear authorities have said. Bellona April 29, 2020 by Anna Kireeva, Charles DiggesThe Lepse service ship, once the most glaring nuclear hazard in the Murmansk harbor, will now be emptied of nearly all of its radioactive cargo by the end of this year, Russian nuclear authorities have said.
During its career as a refueling vessel for Soviet era nuclear icebreakers, the Lepse amassed 639 spent nuclear fuel assemblies, some of them damaged, creating an environmental danger that bobbed neglected at a Murmansk dock for decades. After it was taken out of service in 1988, the Lepse was left to languish at Atomflot, the headquarters of Russia’s nuclear icebreaker fleet, where it posed a severe radioactive hazard to Murmansk and its 300,000 residents. Over the course of more than two decades, Bellona worked with Russian officials ensure the vessel’s safe disposal. Now those plans are coming to fruition as officials say 97 percent of the nuclear fuel loaded into the Lepse’s holds will be emptied at the Nerpa Shipyard, to where the vessels was finally moved in 2012 for its painstaking dismantling…… All told, the Lepse participated in 14 refueling operations aboard the Lenin as well as the nuclear icebreakers the Sibir and the Arktika. In 1981, the vessel was again retrofitted, this time to so it could accommodate irradiated machine parts and other radioactive waste the nuclear icebreakers needed to offload. The Lepse’s history took a darker when it was used to help dump radioactive waste in the Kara and Barents Seas, contributing to Russia’s Cold War heritage of f nuclear and radiological hazards strewn across the Arctic sea floor, the extent of which is only beginning to be understood. It was in the early 1990s that the Lepse and the dangers it posed caught Bellona’s eye, and the organization mobilized the European Union to allocate funding toward removing it from Murmansk harbor and safely dismantling it. The boat was finally towed from Atomflot to the Nerpa naval shipyard in September 2012, after more than a decade of strenuous and often tedious negotiations among Bellona, the Russian government and European financial institutions – most notably the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development – to ensure the Lepse’s safe disposal. The EBRD-managed program is financed by the NDEP Nuclear Window, an international fund with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK. The bank is also helping finance the safe removal of some 22,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies from Andreyeva Bay, a former technical base used to service Soviet Northern Fleet Submarines. https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2020-04-russias-most-radioactive-ship-reaches-dismantlement-milestone |
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Coronavirus spreads to Russia’s ‘secret’ nuclear cities
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Now, coronavirus spreads to Russia’s ‘secret’ nuclear cities,
WION New Delhi, Delhi, India Apr 29, 2020, The coronavirus has rattled Russia. The number of cases in the country is nearing the 100,000 milestone, the country’s oil prices have collapsed and its economy is set to contract by 4 to 6 per cent.
In the latest, the coronavirus has begun spreading to Russia’s nuclear cities. The secret cities are at high risk and they stand exposed. ……
Also lying exposed are Russia’s secret cities. The Wuhan virus has sneaked its way past their fences and now Sarov, Elektrostal and Desnogorsk are infected. The situation is so bad that a top Russian executive was forced to mention these cities during his address. “The situation in Sarov, Elektrostal, Desnogorsk is today particularly alarming. In Sarov, the situation is being compounded by the outbreak in the nearest Diveyevo convent,” Rosatom chief, Alexei Likhachev, said. Sarov has at least 23 coronavirus cases. The numbers for Elektrostal and Desnogorsk are not clear. Also unknown are the number of hospitals in these cities and their pandemic preparedness. Not surprising, given everything around these cities is blurry. Sarov, Elektostal, and Desnogorsk are among Russia’s many secret cities.
They are highly restricted, so much so that they weren’t shown on the map until the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. These cities were excluded from train and bus routes. They were known only by their postal codes. Sarov, for example, was Arzamas-16. No one knew who lived there. The lives of its residents were as secretive as those of KGB agents. For years, the Russian government rewarded the residents of its secret cities with numerous perks – private apartments, well-paying jobs and good healthcare. These cities are closely linked to Russia’s nuclear industry. They are managed by Russia’s state atomic energy corporation – Rosatom.
Sarov became a closed city after World War-II. Once known for its monastery, the city was quickly turned into a rocket-making hub. It’s monastery buildings were converted into rocket factories. Today, Sarov is home to one of Russia’s top research institutes. The city is fenced, patrolled by the military and no one can enter without a pass. Last year, five scientists from the research institute died in a mysterious accident. No one knew what had happened. Russia said there was an accident during a rocket engine test.
The United States claimed it was a missile test gone wrong. Today, these secret cities are becoming coronavirus hotspots. Russia says it is sending emergency ventilators and medical aids to its nuclear cities but truth be told – we may never know what’s really going on there. https://www.wionews.com/world/now-coronavirus-spreads-to-russias-secret-nuclear-cities-295663
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Beyond Nuclear opposes Holtec nuclear waste plan: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not above the law
Group Plans To Fight Effort To Build Nuclear Waste Dump In New Mexico https://www.krwg.org/post/group-plans-fight-effort-build-nuclear-waste-dump-new-mexico
Beyond Nuclear has challenged the NRC’s authority to approve Holtec’s license application because it contemplates that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) may become the owner of the irradiated reactor fuel. The federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) prohibits federal ownership of spent fuel, however, unless and until a federal repository for permanent disposal is operating.
The NRC Commissioners acknowledged that Federal law prohibits federally-sponsored storage of irradiated reactor fuel unless and until a repository for permanent disposal is in operation. Nevertheless the NRC threw out Beyond Nuclear’s legal challenge to the project on the ground that Holtec could be depended on not to implement the unlawful provision if the license were granted.
The Commissioners’ decision affirms an earlier ruling by the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that the storage facility may be licensed despite the illegal license terms contemplating federal ownership of the irradiated fuel. The Licensing Board accepted arguments by Holtec and the NRC’s technical staff that the license containing illegal provisions could be approved as long as it also contained a provision that would allow private ownership of the spent fuel.
Mindy Goldstein, a lawyer for Beyond Nuclear, stated, “the NRC’s decision flagrantly violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits an agency from acting contrary to the law as issued by Congress and signed by the President.” Goldstein also stated that “the Commission lacks a legal or logical basis for its rationale that the illegal provisions could be ignored in favor of other provisions that are legal, or that an illegal license could be issued in ‘hopes’ that the law might change in the future. The APA gives the NRC no excuse to ignore the mandates of federal law.”
Diane Curran, also a lawyer for Beyond Nuclear, said the group will pursue a federal court appeal of the NRC decision. “Our claim is simple,” she declared. “The NRC is not above the law.”
Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear, called the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act “the public’s best protection against an interim storage facility becoming a de facto permanent, national radioactive waste dump at the surface of the Earth.” According to Kamps, “Congress knew, in passing the NWPA, that the only safe long-term strategy for care of irradiated reactor fuel is to place it in a permanent repository for deep geologic isolation.
Congress acted wisely in refusing to allow nuclear reactor licensees to transfer ownership of their irradiated reactor fuel to the DOE until a repository was up and running. The carefully crafted Nuclear Waste Policy Act thus protects a state like New Mexico from being railroaded by the powerful nuclear industry, its friends in the federal government, and other states looking to off-load their mountain of forever deadly high-level radioactive waste.”
Kamps added: “A deep geologic repository for permanent disposal should meet a long list of stringent criteria. These include legality, environmental justice, consent-based siting, scientific suitability, mitigation of transport risks, regional equity, intergenerational equity, and non-proliferation, including a ban on reprocessing. This is why a coalition of more than a thousand environmental, environmental justice, and public interest organizations, representing all 50 states, have opposed the Yucca Mountain dump targeted at Western Shoshone Indian land in Nevada for 33 years.”
“On behalf of our members and supporters in New Mexico, and across the country along the road, rail, and waterway routes in most states, that would be used to haul the high risk, high-level radioactive waste out West, we will appeal the NRC Commissioners’ bad ruling to the federal court,” Kamps added.
Beyond Nuclear is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization. Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic. The Beyond Nuclear team works with diverse partners and allies to provide the public, government officials, and the media with the critical information necessary to move humanity toward a world beyond nuclear. Beyond Nuclear: 7304 Carroll Avenue, #182, Takoma Park, MD 20912. Info@beyondnuclear.org. www.beyondnuclear.org.
Indian Point nuclear power station’s first step to closure, as one reactor shuts down
Nuclear power plant north of New York City to start shutdown, Daily Journal ,By MARY ESCH Associated Press, Apr 29, 2020
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — With the push of a red button, one of the two operating nuclear reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center along the Hudson River north of New York City will shut down Thursday night as federal regulators consider the plant owner’s proposal to sell it to a company that plans to demolish it by the end of 2033 at a projected cost of $2.3 billion.
The 1,020-megawatt Unit 2 reactor will close for good Thursday and 1,040-megawatt Unit 3 will close in April 2021 as part of a deal reached in January 2017 between Entergy Corp., the state of New York and the environmental group Riverkeeper. The Unit 1 reactor shut down in 1974, 12 years after the plant began operation in the Westchester County town of Buchanan……
Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo had long sought the shutdown, saying the plant 24 miles north of Manhattan posed too great a risk to millions of people who live and work nearby. Riverkeeper noted Hudson River fish kills, soil and water contamination, recurrent emergency shutdowns and vulnerability to terrorist attacks. Entergy cited low natural gas prices and increased operating costs as key factors in its decision to close Indian Point and exit the merchant power business.
A year ago, Entergy announced a deal to sell the 240-acre facility to the New Jersey-based decommissioning firm Holtec International, which has submitted a dismantling plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At a public information session held online last week, NRC representatives said the commission is reviewing Holtec’s financial and technical qualifications, as well as public comments, before approving the license transfer.
According to the NRC, Indian Point will join 13 other nuclear power plants across the United States that have begun the decades-long process of decommissioning, which dismantles a facility to the point that it no longer presents a radioactive danger.
Under the decommissioning process, spent fuel rod assemblies are initially placed in large pools of water where the hot fuel is cooled for at least two years. Then the spent fuel is transferred into giant steel and concrete cylinders that stay at the site unless or until a national nuclear waste storage facility is created……..
A 2017 analysis by the New York Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s electrical grid, concluded that Indian Point’s closure won’t impair the grid’s ability to keep New York City’s lights on. ……https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/state/nuclear-power-plant-north-of-new-york-city-to-start-shutdown/article_62453a0b-19d7-5baf-9dfc-a7db2d15710f.html
Do-it-yourself radiation monitoring
By Dahyun Kang, April 28, 2020 Watching the HBO drama Chernobyl about the nuclear disaster that occurred in April 1986 gave me a whole new perspective on how destructive radioactive particles can be. One scene depicted local men and women fearfully looking toward the nuclear site, a dim red glow against the night sky. Highly radioactive cesium-137-contaminated dust fell like snow on children running in the streets. Plant workers and firefighters died gruesomely after exposure to acute radiation doses unleashed by the debris that exploded from the nuclear reactor. No one knew what to do because Soviet bureaucrats delayed accident announcements and evacuation orders.
The lack of information about radiation levels meant that people were exposed to radiation for a longer duration than if they had received timely warnings. The Chernobyl drama not only helped me realize the disastrous consequences and hazards of radiation, but also inspired me to create a radiation estimator that could provide estimations of environmental radiation levels in places where there are no stationed detectors.
A focus on Fukushima. To develop my estimator, I focused on the Fukushima region in Japan. I chose this area because of the nuclear disaster there in March 2011, when three nuclear power plant cores melted down and released radionuclides into the atmosphere. The Japanese government chose this region to hold a couple of events that are part of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and Paralympics, branded as the “Reconstruction Olympics.”
The environmental group Greenpeace has raised concerns about whether people attending these Olympic events—which have now been postponed until 2021—could be exposed to lingering radiation. In a report published last month, Greenpeace claimed measurements taken by a survey team detected radioactive hotspots at the Fukushima Azuma Baseball Stadium near Fukushima City, in the area around the city’s central station, and at the J-Village sports complex where the Olympic torch relay will start. According to Greenpeace, the highest measurement at J-Village on October 26, 2019, was 71 microsieverts per hour close to the ground, a reading more than 1,750 times higher than pre-2011 background levels. The forested mountains covering roughly 70 percent of the Fukushima prefecture cannot be decontaminated and therefore pose a recontamination risk to areas when heavy rainfall or typhoons mobilize radionuclides, which Greenpeace says happened during two intense typhoons in 2019.
Japan’s Shinzo Abe administration plans to host the Olympics baseball and softball games at the Azuma stadium, approximately 80 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant site where the nuclear accident occurred. J-Village, where the torch relay will begin, is located about 20 kilometers south of Fukushima Daiichi.
How I built my radiation estimator. The nonprofit organization Safecast, which collects radiation readings taken by volunteers and makes them publicly available at no charge, provides data for a number of locations worldwide—particularly in Japan, where the monitoring network began as a response to the Fukushima disaster. Using the Safecast website, I collected data from the Fukushima prefecture. With the help of mathematical software called Mathematica, I then developed a mathematical equation that takes the Safecast Fukushima data and provides estimates of radiation values at any other location in Fukushima. With the help of a relative who works as a coding programmer, I also created a Radiation Estimation website that uses the mathematical equation to estimate radiation values, in microsieverts per hour, for any latitude and longitude entered by a user.
For example, if the user enters the latitude and longitude of the Azuma stadium, the equation gives an estimate of 0.103 microsieverts per hour. According to the International Commission on Radiological Protection, anything less than 0.23 microsieverts per hour is considered a safe dose, based on the recommended public dose limit of 1 millisievert per year (1 millisievert is equivalent to 1,000 microsieverts).
Future efforts. Currently, my radiation estimator inevitably contains some degree of uncertainty due to limited available data from the Fukushima prefecture, which covers about 13,700 square kilometers. The estimates would be more precise and could be applied beyond Fukushima if there were more disclosed data available to reference.
What about the radiation levels in my own city and others in the United States? Unfortunately, I was unable to find enough open radiation data available to make a good estimate. The US Environmental Protection Agency runs a nationwide environmental radiation monitoring system, RadNet, which has 140 radiation air monitors spread across 50 states, mostly in the heart of big cities. Although these monitors run 24/7, collecting near-real-time measurements of gamma radiation, the number and locations of the monitors are inadequate to cover all of the United States.
There are 96 US nuclear power reactors in operation. Who can assure the American public that no nuclear catastrophe on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima will occur in the United States? It is natural for the public to be worried and to insist that the US government install more radiation monitors near reactors and the surrounding populated areas to protect the public. Information collected by the monitors should also be disclosed to the public.
Once sufficient environmental radiation data are available, my radiation estimator would be applicable in my own city and others in America as well. I hope to raise awareness of environmental radiation and offer people information about what kind of environment they are living in. Since my radiation estimator is only a first step in that direction, I hope that someone with more expertise can build upon my idea to create a more precise tool that provides information about environmental radiation anywhere on the globe.
1.This Month
Julian Assange’s Trial Is FIXED! w/Chris Hedges
Annie Jacobsen: Inside DARPA: The Pentagon’s Brain
Annie Jacobsen, “Operation Paperclip” – Nazi involvement in USA’s nuclear weapons industry
Demand Justice for Nuclear Frontline Communities in COVID-19 Stimulus
https://www.change.org/p/release-julian-assange-from-belmarsh-prison-before-covid-19-spreads
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