This week’s nuclear and climate news
Can’t keep up with the pandemic news – I hope you can.
One thing, though. Beyond Nuclear has pointed out the significance of the floods in Midland, Michigan, where they do have one nuclear research reactor, but fortunately no commercial ones. They warn on ” the almost impossible challenge of evacuating people to safety during simultaneous catastrophic events.” The floods bring together the climate, pandemic, and nuclear dangers all in one area.
Public attention is not on this one. BUT, the 2020 Review Conference of a landmark international treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), is due soon, though postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is also at risk. It’s under the radar, while everyone worries about COVID-19 and climate, – but the danger of nuclear weapons use is escalating, as Donald Trump unravels the treaty system that is aimed at preventing nuclear war. He also wants USA to hugely increase its nuclear weaponry.
Some bits of good news – Maasai Nature Conservancy Asks For Help To Fight Pandemic—And 100,000 People Answer. World’s Most Endangered Primate Population Triples After 17 Years of Careful Conservation
A moment of reckoning – when coronavirus meets climate change. Coronavirus: How to prevent a new nuclear arms race – and future pandemics.
Australia, and other countries – deaths from global heatinge are being underestimated
The danger to children of low level nuclear radiation has been underestimated.
The international nuclear weapons race. Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at risk, due to Donald Trump’s accusations ?
ANTARCTIC. Antarctic krill threatened by warming waters – climate change’s danger to the marine ecosystem.
UK. Ministry of Defence’s poor management of contracts for nuclear infrastructure projects. Sellafield’s safety dilemma– risk of coronavirus versus risk of nuclear accident. Britain will have to decide whether it wants nuclear power stations funded — and powered — by China. Doubts on the funding of Britain’s £18bn Sizewell nuclear plan. Move to prevent dumping of Hinkley radioactive mud on the South Wales coast. Shinfield residents urged to look out for update from nuclear weapons facility.
JAPAN. Time that Japan faced up to the folly of its nuclear fuel cycle dream.
NORTH KOREA. Kim Jong-un Moves to Increase North Korea’s Nuclear Strength.
USA.
- USA’s Plan to spend Russia and China ‘into oblivion’ in arms race will bankrupt only America. Trump Administration Weighs First Nuclear Test in Decades. USA wants thousands of Hypersonic Missiles, using artificial intelligence. USA’s F-35’s Nuclear Weapons Upgrade Delayed as Program Costs Top $1.6 Trillion. Coronavirus likely to put a dint in USA’s nuclear weapons spending.
- U.S. Unprepared for Nuclear Accident During Pandemic.
- The flooding danger to nuclear radioactive sites –Michigan dams fail.
- More about dirty nuclear tricks in Ohio.
- President Donald Trump and his administration have no plans to use Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository.
- COVID-19 in worker at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant.
- Over 120 local and national organizations urge U.S. Congress to help nuclear frontline communities. Coalition pursues extra $7.25B for DOE nuclear cleanup, job creation.
- Removal of Fort Belvoir’s SM-1 nuclear reactor to proceed after Army finalizes environmental assessment.
- US Congressman Engel Suggests Saudi Arms Sales Behind Firing of State Dept. Watchdog .
EUROPE. A mistaken idea, to put U.S. nuclear weapons in Poland.
INDIA. Climate: Cyclone Amphan disaster in India, Bangladesh.
SAUDI ARABIA. Saudi Arabia’s push for nuclear power – a nuclear weapons danger.
CANADA. Bruce Power and the Ontario Government ordered come clean on the cost of nuclear power.
SOUTH KOREA. South Korea risk of power disruption, as nuclear spent fuel builds up, with storage shortage.
NORWAY. Dismantling of Norway’s nuclear research reactors – up to 25 years, about $billion
AUSTRALIA. Misleading and inaccurate information provided by authorities on National Radioactive Waste Management. Australian Law on radioactive waste to be changed in order to prevent any judicial review!.
The danger to children of low level nuclear radiation has been underestimated
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How dangerous is low-level radiation to children? https://climatenewsnetwork.net/how-dangerous-is-low-level-radiation-to-children/#.Xsn914VYtCg.twitter May 22nd, 2020, by Paul Brown
A rethink on the risks of low-level radiation would imperil the nuclear industry’s future − perhaps why there’s never been one. The threat that low-level radiation poses to human life, particularly to unborn children, and its link with childhood leukaemia, demands an urgent scientific reassessment. This is the conclusion of a carefully-detailed report produced for the charity Children With Cancer UK by the Low-Level Radiation Campaign. It is compiled from evidence contained in dozens of scientific reports from numerous countries over many decades, which show that tiny doses of radiation, some of it inhaled, can have devastating effects on the human body, particularly by causing cancer and birth defects. The original reports were completed for a range of academic institutions, governments and medical organisations, and their results were compared by the newest report’s authors, Richard Bramhall and Pete Wilkinson. They believe they have provided overwhelming evidence for a basic rethink on so-called “safe” radiation doses. They write: “The fundamental conclusion of this report is that when the evidence is rationally assessed it appears that the health impacts, especially in the more radio-sensitive young, have been consistently and routinely underestimated.” Ceaseless controversy The pair concede this is not the first time such a call has been made, but it has never been acted upon. Now they say it must be. What constitutes safety for nuclear workers and for civilians living near nuclear power stations, or affected by fall-out from accidents like the ones at Sellafield in Cumbria in north-west England in 1957, Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, has always been highly controversial. Bramhall and Wilkinson detail how the debate began in earnest in the 1980s, when a cluster of childhood leukaemia cases, ten times higher than would be expected, was identified around Sellafield. Government inquiries followed but reached no settled conclusion, and low-level radiation safety has been a scientific battleground ever since. The official agencies appointed by governments are still using dose estimates based on calculations made in 1943, when Western governments were trying to develop an atomic bomb.
The new report highlights that this was when very little was known about how tiny doses of ingested radiation could affect the body − and when DNA was yet to be discovered. Despite the fact that international standards are based on these scientifically ancient, out-of-date assumptions, they have not been revised. If they were, the results could be catastrophic for the nuclear industry and for the manufacturers of nuclear weapons. The report makes clear that if the worst estimates of the damage that low-level radiation causes to children proved anywhere close to correct, then no-one would want to live anywhere near a nuclear power station. Most would be appalled if they knew even small numbers of children living within 50 kilometres of a station would contract leukaemia from being so close. It acknowledges that the stakes are high. If the authors’ findings are accepted, then it will be the end of public tolerance of nuclear power. Revolution needed Despite this long-lived institutional pushback from governments and the industry, the report says what is needed is a scientific revolution in the way that low-level radiation is considered. It compares the situation with the treatment of asbestos. It was in the 1890s that the first evidence of disease related to asbestos exposure was laid before the UK Parliament. But it was not until 1972, when the causal link between the always fatal lung cancer, mesothelioma, and human fatality rates was established beyond reasonable doubt, that the use of asbestos was banned. This delay is why on average 2,700 people still die annually in the UK: they were at some point exposed to and inhalers of asbestos. Another example, which the report does not quote but is perhaps as relevant today, is air pollution. It has taken decades for the scientific community to realise that in many cities it is the tiniest particles of air pollution, invisible to the naked eye, that are taken deepest into the lungs and that cause the most damage, killing thousands of people a year. So far governments across the world have not yet outlawed the vehicles and industrial processes that are wiping out their own citizens in vast numbers. Anxiety not irrational The report cites many studies, with perhaps the most telling those that compare the actual numbers of cancers and malformations in babies which occurred in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident with the numbers to have been expected if the currently accepted and out-of-date risk calculations had been used. Despite the difficulties of getting information from reluctant governments close to Chernobyl, the report says: “The discrepancy between the number of congenital malformations in babies expected after Chernobyl and the number actually observed was between 15,000 and 50,000.” The authors say their object “is to dispel the repeated assertion that public anxiety about the health impact of radioactivity in the environment is irrational.” Both Wilkinson and Bramhall have considerable experience of dealing with governments, both inside official bodies as members, and as external lobbyists. They detail how they believe the concerns of both ordinary people and scientists have been swept aside in order to preserve the status quo. Clearly, in sponsoring the report, Children with Cancer UK agrees. − Climate News Network |
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Michigan flooding: a warning on potential triple disaster – climate, pandemic, and nuclear radiation
Michigan authorities were forced to face a “no-win compromise” between protecting the public from exposure to Covid-19 while at the same time moving people out of harm’s way after heavy rains caused failures at the Edenville and Sanford dams, leading to devastating floods.
The Dow plant insists there have been no chemical or radiological releases, but the situation will be evaluated once floodwaters recede. Fortunately, no full-scale commercial nuclear power plant was in the path of the Michigan floods.
Operating nuclear power stations are required by federal and state laws to maintain radiological emergency preparedness to protect populations within a ten-mile radius from the release of radioactivity following a serious nuclear accident. These measures include mass evacuations.
However, many communities around the nation’s 95 commercial reactors are presently sheltering-in-place at home as a protective action during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Michigan flooding has forced the relocation of thousands of citizens from their stay-at-home lockdown into the social distancing challenges of mass shelters. Evacuating tens of thousands from a likely more far-reaching radioactive cloud to mass shelters, as is presently planned during a nuclear emergency, raises difficult if not impossible choices under pandemic conditions.
In fact, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) (Sect.03.02 p.2) between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) already obligates the federal government to re-exam radiological emergency plans around nuclear facilities specifically in response to a pandemic, and to identify any shortcomings, deficiencies and enhancements that might be needed under such conditions.
But to date, neither agency has taken the initiative to do so. In fact, the NRC actions are focused on relaxing safety measures required by operating licenses, resulting in extended work hours for reactor operators and security guards, and deferred safety inspections and repairs for as much as another 18 months. This makes an accident more likely.
Given what we are now seeing in Michigan, the NRC and FEMA should lose no time in reviewing their MOU and the viability of their radiological emergency plans, and take action to make any necessary enhancements or shut these nuclear facilities down.
Beyond Nuclear has identified two such actions under the MOU as vital to public health:
- The NRC and FEMA must conduct a “Disaster Initiated Report”, as mandated by the MOU, on the adequacy of offsite radiological emergency response plans during the pandemic, and;
- Federal and state response plans need to be bolstered by the immediate pre-distribution of potassium iodide (KI) tablets by direct delivery to every resident within the ten-mile radius of U.S. nuclear power stations, now, before any accident occurs. This is in accordance with disaster medicine expert recommendations including from the American Thyroid Association (ATA).
- KI, if taken promptly in advance or shortly after exposure to radioactive iodine, is recognized by the US Food and Drug administration as a safe, inexpensive and effective prophylactic prevention for thyroid cancer and other developmental disorders caused by exposure to highly mobile iodine-131. Radioactive iodine is a gas released early in a serious nuclear accident.
- KI is particularly important for the protection of infants, young children and pregnant women and should be readily on hand, according to the ATA and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The ATA further recommends stockpiling KI tablets in schools, hospitals, police and fire stations from 10 miles out to 50 miles from every nuclear power plant. These institutions could then serve to pre-distribute KI free through the mail upon request to every home and business within 50 miles of an operating nuclear plant.
KI is commonly used to iodize table salt in concentrations. When taken in tablet form, it saturates the thyroid with stable iodine and blocks the absorption of radioactive iodine into the thyroid gland.
- KI only protects the thyroid. It does not protect other parts of the body, or prevent damage from other radioactive isotopes released during a nuclear power plant accident, such as cesium-137 or krypton or xenon gases. Ideally, it is used to provide protection to the thyroid — because iodine-131 can be the large and early radioactive exposure first to arrive — while people are still evacuating out of the oncoming radioactive fallout pathway.
KI is a critical adjunct to evacuation, but it should not replace evacuation from a nuclear accident, even during a viral pandemic. If faced with an immediate threat to life, perhaps even a triple threat such as an extreme flood, a nuclear accident and Covid-19 exposure, evacuation must be the immediate decision.
However, at least having KI tablets on hand provides for a reasonable protection from the radioactive iodine, a fundamental human right while seeking to shelter farther away from a nuclear accident.
The prospect of a nuclear disaster prompting a mass evacuation during a viral pandemic reinforces the need for an energy policy focused on safe, clean and affordable renewable energy. It’s time to remove the added and unnecessary danger presented by the 95 nuclear reactors still operating in the US today and transition to a rapid phaseout before a nuclear emergency during a pandemic becomes a nightmarish reality.
On weapons treaties US administration is blundering toward nuclear chaos
Fumbling the nuclear football: is Trump blundering to arms control chaos?
The president believes he alone can negotiate away nuclear weapons and win a Nobel prize – but he has quit three treaties and gutted his administration of experts, Guardian, Julian Borger in Washington Sun 24 May 2020
The Trump administration signaled this week that it was ready to get back in the business of nuclear arms control. A newly appointed envoy, Marshall Billingslea, made his first public remarks to announce talks with Russia are about to resume.
“We have concrete ideas for our next interaction, and we’re finalizing the details as we speak,” Billingslea said.
The fact that this relaunch came on the same day that the US was pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty (OST) – the third withdrawal from an arms control agreement under the Trump presidency – underlined the contradictions at the heart of the administration’s approach towards nuclear weapons.
According to those who have worked for him on the issue, Trump is preoccupied with the existential threat of nuclear war, and resolved that he alone can conjure a grand arms control bargain that would save the planet – and win him the Nobel prize.
But at the same time, he is clearly thrilled by the destructive power that the US arsenal gives him, boasting about the size of his nuclear button, and a mystery “super duper” missile he this week claimed the US had up its sleeve.
Administration officials have been left to try to confect a coherent-sounding policy out of such contradictory impulses – so far without success.
“He believes only he has what it takes to make the big deal, if only everyone else – all the experts – would get out of his way,” a former senior official said. “But he just has no idea about how to make it happen.”
Billingslea, the new envoy, is not an arms control specialist. He previously served as the undersecretary for terrorist financing at the US Treasury and was nominated last year to the top human rights job at the state department – but that foundered amid controversy over his involvement in the post 9/11 torture programme . The arms control envoy job did not require Senate confirmation.
In his maiden speech as envoy, Billingslea made clear that if there were to be a new arms race, the US would win.
“We know how to win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion,” he said in a videoconference organised by the conservative Hudson Institute thinktank on Thursday. It was a statement of bravado as the US plunged into recession owing about $7tn in foreign debt, $1tn to China.
Billingslea argued Trump would succeed through his mastery of the art of the deal.
“The president has a long and successful career as a negotiator, and he’s a master at developing and using leverage,” he said, showing an early instinct for what it takes to keep your job in this administration.
So far, however, Trump has failed to negotiate a single arms control agreement. His flamboyant summitry with Kim Jong-un produced nothing, and the North Korean nuclear weapons programme has continued unabated. Meanwhile the president has taken the US out of three arms control agreements, leaving them dead, dying or maimed.
He walked out of the nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, and the following year withdrew from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which had kept nuclear missiles out of Europe since the cold war. Then on Thursday, he confirmed the US was leaving the OST, agreed in 1992 as a means of building transparency and trust between Russia and the west through observation overflights of each other’s territory.
That may not be the end of Trump’s arms control demolition. The Senate never ratified the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, which – partly as a result – has yet to come into force. But the US has signed it and observes a voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests.
Hawks in the administration, however, want a renunciation. At a high-level White House meeting last week, the suggestion was raised that the US carry out its first underground nuclear test since 1992, according to former officials. The proposal was resisted by the state and energy departments. A senior administration official told the Washington Post however the proposal is “very much an ongoing conversation.”
The only arms control agreement still in effect is the 2010 New Start treaty, which limits US and Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 each. It is due to expire in February but it can be extended for another five years. The Trump administration has not taken a position on whether it wants an extension, however.
“There’ll be plenty of time to look at the full range of options related to that treaty,” Billingslea said. At the same time he made clear he viewed New Start as being inadequate, criticising its verification requirements, its exclusion of non-strategic, shorter-range weapons – and, most importantly, the fact that it does not include China……
Arms control advocates in the administration believe that the insistence on China’s inclusion was originally pushed by Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, a lifelong opponent of arms control treaties, and his like-minded aide, Tim Morrison, as a means of killing off New Start.
……Disarmament advocates worry that even if Billingslea re-establishes regular contacts with Moscow, the US no longer has the diplomatic muscle to pursue substantive, complex arms negotiations because of the steady loss of experienced staff responsible for such negotiations.
“It’s not obvious they have a kind of a serious team in place to try and make that happen,” a western diplomat said.
“Three years after entering office, the Trump administration lacks a coherent set of goals, a strategy to achieve them, or the personnel or effective policy process to address the most complex set of nuclear risks in US history,” a group of arms control experts wrote in a report this month by the disarmament group, Global Zero. “Put simply, the current US administration is blundering toward nuclear chaos with potentially disastrous consequences.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/24/nuclear-weapons-donald-trump-arms-control-chaos
Australia, and the world, underestimate how many die due to global heating
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Experts Warn Climate Change Is Already Killing Way More People Than We Record, Science Alert ,CARLY CASSELLA, 25 MAY 2020
People around the world are already dying from the climate crisis,and yet all too often, official death records do not reflect the impact of these large-scale environmental catastrophes. According to a team of Australian health experts, heat is the most dominant risk posed by climate change in the country. If the world’s emissions remain the same, by 2080 Australian cities could see at least four times the number of deaths from increasing temperatures alone. “Climate change is a killer, but we don’t acknowledge it on death certificates,” says physician Arnagretta Hunter from the Australian National University. That’s a potentially serious oversight. In a newly-published correspondence, Hunter and four other public health experts estimate Australia’s mortality records have substantially underreported heat-related deaths – at least 50-fold. While death certificates in Australia do actually have a section for pre-existing conditions and other factors, external climate conditions are rarely taken into account. Between 2006 and 2017, the analysis found less than 0.1 percent of 1.7 million deaths were attributed directly or indirectly to excessive natural heat. But this new analysis suggests the nation’s heat-related mortality is around 2 percent. “We know the summer bushfires were a consequence of extraordinary heat and drought and people who died during the bushfires were not just those fighting fires – many Australians had early deaths due to smoke exposure,” says Hunter……. “Death certification needs to be modernised, indirect causes should be reported, with all death certification prompting for external factors contributing to death, and these death data must be coupled with large-scale environmental datasets so that impact assessments can be done.” …… Such action, they say, is imperative. Not only for Australia but many other countries in the world. The United Kingdom has documented some problems with accurately filling out death certificates, and cities in several parts of the world are on track for similar heat-related mortality rates as Australia. But there are some places that will need to do more than just update their current system. In the tropics, there’s little valid mortality data on the more than 2 billion people who live in this heat-vulnerable region. And that makes predicting what will happen to these communities in the future much trickier. “Climate change is the single greatest health threat that we face globally even after we recover from coronavirus,” says Hunter. “We are successfully tracking deaths from coronavirus, but we also need healthcare workers and systems to acknowledge the relationship between our health and our environment.” In an unpredictable world, if we want to know where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been. Figuring out how many of us have already died from climate change will be key to that process. We can’t ignore it any longer. The correspondence was published in The Lancet Planetary Health. https://www.sciencealert.com/official-death-records-are-terrible-at-showing-how-many-people-are-dying-from-the-climate-crisis |
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Misleading and inaccurate information provided by Australia’s authorities on National Radioactive Waste Management
Peter Remta – submission to Senate Committee on National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020 [Provisions] Submission 65 more https://antinuclear.net/2020/05/23/peter-remta-misleading-and-inaccurate-information-provided-by-authorities-on-national-radioactive-waste-management/
“………. EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM The explanatory memorandum accompanying the Bill simply repeats many of the inaccurate and misleading comments and information provided by the Department of Industry Innovation and Science and ANSTO to the communities of the initially accepted sites in South Australia since the beginning of the nomination process under the existing legislation.
………I must stress that the serious and unacceptable manner in which quite inaccurate information has been disseminated on behalf of the government on such an important issue both now and during the nomination and selection process has only caused more concern and community dissension and I suggest will lead to a greater general apprehension of starting a nuclear industry in Australia
Explanatory memorandum assertions :
1. While the concept of a single and purpose-built nuclear waste facility is a desired objective as outlined at the start of the explanatory memorandum it will be difficult to achieve as is now proposed.
To begin with it is wrong to say that this facility will support nuclear science and technology since it fails to meet the safety prescriptions for a facility of that nature.
It is also wrong to link the provision of nuclear medicine to the proposed storage and disposal of waste at the facility as the various entities generating waste from medical and research activities will continue relying on their own disposal methods and will not necessarily use a government run business for that purpose.
2. Most importantly it is a totally false and misleading proposition to suggest that the failure to establish the facility as proposed by the government will somehow lead to a reduction in nuclear medical services and treatment and the government should quickly correct that serious misconception since this has been a rather distressing concern for the community at Kimba and generally. It is therefore disingenuous to give that impression that this will be a central
facility for all nuclear waste in Australia.
3. While existing waste is held in numerous locations around the country there is no legal or other requirement that this waste would be disposed of at the facility and it is therefore disingenuous to give the impression that this will
be a central facility for all waste in Australia.
4. The reference to meeting with the international obligations under the Joint Convention4 ignores the safety code requirements promulgated some 12 years later under which it would be very difficult to establish the proposed
facility.
5. The suggestion of acquiring additional land for such things as all weather road access is only another example of the intrinsically unsuitable nature of the chosen site and the lack of planning and the necessary technical knowledge for construction of the facility.
6. The process of identifying a suitable location being a 40 year effort again shows the inability of the government or simply ignores that the current process in a proper manner only began after 2012 under the existing legislation.
7. To suggest proper and successful consultations with community members is a test of normal intelligence having regard to the strong and spirited opposition to the facility from the outset by the community generally and the fact that a concerned Aboriginal group has litigated its opposition to an appeal to the Federal Court5 and may now resort to a referral to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
8. The financial aspects of the government’s proposals lack frankness and justification when it has been claimed variously that the amount so far spent in selecting the site is $55 million or $85 million over the past five years but with a constant refusal to provide any details as to how that money has been spent or applied.
Surely there should be proper public disclosure of this quantum of expenditure when compared to the usual outcry where there is only a fraction of that amount involved if there is no reasonable explanation given. Moreover this should be gauged against the persistent refusal of the government to pay for an independent assessment and scrutiny of its
proposals by the members of the Kimba community who oppose the facility.
9. The statement as to compatibility with human rights is again with respect rather nonsensical when the government was incapable of holding a proper and valid ballot (albeit through the District Council of Kimba) which totally ignored the inclusion of an opposing argument contrary to the recognised and applicable principles of human rights. That ballot and the previous one as well as some claimed community surveys failed to meet the principles of informed consent which places a high standard of compliance on both the government and the District Council.
This becomes even worse by excluding the Aboriginal peoples from the ballotIf the government were genuine then it should hold another ballot with a more appropriate and wider base for voting and with the prior provision of all pertinent
information including the arguments or case against the facility. This goes back to providing a proper assessment and scrutiny of the government’s proposals by the opposing members of the Kimba community which has never been
the case.
Regrettably the compatibility statement is more prescriptive in its content instead of actually dealing with the facts of the situation and circumstances that occurred and which have been presented in the statement in a most favourable light for the government. when under the most basic of constitutional and democratic rights they
should have been included in that process…………
Sections on NAPANDEE FINANCIAL ASPECTS INFORMATION, BALLOTS, and INFORMED CONSENT LEGAL ACTIONS MANAGEMENT of FACILITY INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS TECHNICAL ASSESSMENT [these will be published here separately, later]
…. CONCLUDING COMMENTS and RECOMMENDATIONS Continue reading
Britain will have to decide whether it wants nuclear power stations funded — and powered — by China.
 Times 24th May 2020, The great China dilemma: Caught between two superpowers, Britain faces difficult decisions on everything from nuclear power to medicine. On the picturesque Suffolk coast, a battle is intensifying that will help define Britain’s relationship with China.In one corner is a group of celebrities and locals, including the Love Actually actor Bill Nighy, and Andy Wood, chief executive of Adnams brewery in Southwold. In the other are two nuclear power giants, Electricité de France (EDF) and China General Nuclear (CGN).
China and France want to build Sizewell C, a nuclear power station capable of supplying 7% of the UK’s electricity. The Stop Sizewell C campaigners share one concern with some politicians, notably the hard right of the Conservative Party: why is Britain relying on China to
supply its electricity? “China is adept at cyber-attacks,” said Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C. “I would doubt whether there could be a 100% cast-iron guarantee that operating systems were immune to that. Even if you set aside security concerns, you’ve got real vulnerabilities with a government that is prepared to use economic sanctions.” Sizewell is just a part of the communist state’s Belt and Road initiative to dominate the world with cash, technology and influence. It plans to use the UK as a showcase for its nuclear technology, with state-owned CGN providing 20% of the funds for Sizewell.
China is also helping bankroll the delayed and over-budget Hinkley Point C power station in Somerset. However, the bigger prize lies on the Essex coast at Bradwell. There, 40 miles east of London, CGN wants to install its homegrown HPR1000 nuclear reactors. CGN will be the two-thirds owner of the Bradwell plant, EDF the junior partner.
EDF and CGN claim that the power stations will be impervious to cyber attack. In
Britain, a new China-sceptic organisation, the China Research Group, has been formed by Tory MPs led by Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs select committee. It is a far cry from the “golden era” in Sino-British relations promised by David Cameron in 2015, when Chinese
president Xi Jinping visited the UK and the pair drank pints in a pub. At CGN, concern is growing about the rising tide of Sinophobia and its investment in the UK. As the Chinese embassy in London pumps out defensive statements about China’s role in tackling Covid-19, Britain will have to decide whether it wants nuclear power stations funded — and powered — by China. CGN’s UK chief executive, Zheng Dongshan, is understood to have
pressed energy minister Nadhim Zahawi for clarity around the UK’s intentions on new nuclear. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/the-great-china-dilemma-6rdmhw3wl |
Kim Jong-un Moves to Increase North Korea’s Nuclear Strength
Kim Jong-un Moves to Increase North Korea’s Nuclear Strength, NYT, 24 May 20
After another weekslong absence from public view, Mr. Kim convened his top military body to promote top aides specializing in nuclear and missile forces.
USA’s Plan to spend Russia and China ‘into oblivion’ in arms race will bankrupt only America
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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter In a stunning display of arrogance, ignorance, and hubris, President Trump’s new arms control czar threatens to spend America’s adversaries into “oblivion” in any new arms race. But the joke is on him.
Trump’s newly appointed Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea has breathed new life into an historical interpretation that holds the United States won the Cold War with the Soviet Union by escalating an arms race that turned out to be unsustainable for Moscow, bankrupting the Soviet economy and accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union as a political entity. In remarks made to the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, Billingslea noted that the threat of a new arms race would be enough to bring both China and Russia to the negotiating table for the purpose of crafting a new trilateral arms control treaty that would replace the current bilateral New START treaty, scheduled to expire in February 2021. We intend to establish a new arms control regime now, precisely to prevent a full-blown arms race,” Billingslea said. If, however, either Russia or China (or both) decided to forego negotiations and continue to pursue new strategic nuclear weapons, then President Trump “has made clear that we have a tried and true practice here”.
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NPT’s 50th Anniversary Encourages 17 Signatories To Remind Five Nuclear-Weapons States of Their Commitments
 NPT’s 50th Anniversary Encourages 17 Signatories To Remind Five Nuclear-Weapons States of Their Commitments IDN -In Depth News By UN Bureau, 24 May 20, NEW YORK (IDN) – The upcoming 2020 Review Conference of a landmark international treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, presents “a timely opportunity for the States Parties to undertake a comprehensive review and assessment” of its current status, says the Joint Communiqué issued on May 19 by 17 States Party to the NPT.
A total of 191 States have joined the Treaty, including the five nuclear-weapon States – USA; Russia, China, Britain and France – which entered into force in 1970. More countries have ratified the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, which analysts perceive as a testament to the Treaty’s significance. Signatories to the communique look forward to work with other States Parties. There is no doubt that the implementation of disarmament commitments would have allowed more resources to be allocated for sustainable development as well as international cooperation and preparedness to deal with such public health and global emergencies. “It is now time that States Parties translate words into concrete actions backed by clear and agreed-upon benchmarks and timelines. Only through such efforts can we look ahead towards a successful next 50 years of the NPT, improving on the important achievements of the last 50 years, which we presently commemorate,” accentuates the communique. Following is the full text of the Joint Communique:…… https://www.indepthnews.net/index.php/opinion/3564-five-nuclear-weapons-states-urged-to-fulfil-commitments-on-npt-s-50th-anniversary |
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Trump Administration Weighs First Nuclear Test in Decades
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Trump Administration Weighs First Nuclear Test in Decades: WaPo https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-administration-weighs-first-nuclear-test-in-decades-report-says ALARMING Blake Montgomery May. 22, 2020 Top U.S. national security officials discussed performing the United States’ first nuclear test since 1992 at a meeting last Friday, The Washington Post reports. Multiple members of the Trump administration say Russia and China have both performed low-yield nuclear tests, accusations both countries have denied and which have not been independently verified. The topic of renewing testing reportedly arose at a meeting of the heads of national security agencies on May 15, though officials did not come to an agreement. Testing nuclear weapons would likely strain relations with other nuclear powers.
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Doubts on the funding of Britain’s £18bn Sizewell nuclear plan
Times 24th May 2020, EDF submits £18bn nuclear plan. Energy giant EDF is poised to submit plans for an £18bn nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast, stoking tensions
over China’s role in Britain’s critical infrastructure. EDF is expected
to submit a development consent order (DCO) to the planning inspectorate on
Wednesday — a crucial stage in building Sizewell C, which will supply 7%
of the country’s electricity. China General Nuclear (CGN) is funding 20%
of the Sizewell development, with the French state power company
shouldering the rest of the cost, although sources said CGN may opt not to
fund its construction.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/edf-submits-18bn-nuclear-plan-lsc3q8378
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