Explaining the India-China conflict
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Nuclear powers, a disputed border and an uneasy truce: Explaining the India-China conflict A border clash between the two nuclear armed neighbors has drawn the world’s gaze to a disputed region in the Himalayas NBC News, June 20, 2020, By Saphora Smith High up in the Himalayas, Indian and Chinese armed forces warily eye each other across a disputed border region that has become the scene of a tense standoff between the two nuclear powers. The conflict in the remote Galwan Valley that spans their shared border sparked into life Monday with the killing of 20 Indian soldiers, the first reported deaths in 45 years. China has not disclosed whether its forces suffered any casualties, according to a report in its state-run newspaper, the Global Times. The deaths have drawn the world’s gaze to a region that the two most populous countries have been contesting for decades. The implications go far beyond the lonely snowcapped mountains of this geopolitically complex region.
………Thousands of troops have been camped either side of the Galwan Valley, in the mountainous region of Ladakh, for weeks.
The tense standoff started in early May, when Indian officials said Chinese soldiers crossed the boundary in Ladakh at three different points, erecting tents and guard posts and ignoring verbal warnings to leave, according to The Associated Press. That triggered shouting matches, stone-throwing and even fistfights between the two sides, much of it replayed on television news channels and social media, the news agency reported……. Among the reasons raised by analysts include China’s objection to India’s construction of a road through the Galwan Valley connecting the region to an airstrip, New Delhi’s increasing close alliance with Washington, and Beijing’s support for Pakistan in its dispute with India over the Kashmir region. ……… https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/nuclear-powers-disputed-border-uneasy-truce-explaining-india-china-conflict-n1231310 |
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Heaviest load ever through Nevada, the 770-ton reactor pressure vessel from dead SanOnofre nuclear station
A heavy chunk of the San Onofre nuclear plant is slowly moving to Utah, San Diego Tribune,
The 770-ton reactor pressure vessel from Unit 1 is part of the plant’s decommissioning efforts, By ROB NIKOLEWSKI, JUNE 19, 2020
A reactor pressure vessel that helped Unit 1 at SONGS generate electricity left the plant’s premises May 24 via railand is now at an industrial park in North Las Vegas, Nevada, about to be taken some 450 miles north on roads, accompanied by a pair Nevada Highway Patrol trooper pilot cars, to the Utah border.
The shipment will then continue, reaching the Energy Solutions disposal site in the town of Clive, Utah, located about 75 miles west of Salt Lake City.
The old reactor vessel and its contents are designated as Class A low-level waste, considered by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the least hazardous of radioactive waste classifications. Encased in a carbon steel cylinder for the trip, the vessel contains pieces of radioactive metal and grout.
Officials with the Utah Department of Transportation are awaiting a permit from Emmert International, a company based in Oregon contracted to move the vessel to its final destination…..
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, officials expect the vessel to leave North Las Vegas June 29 and arrive in Clive seven days later.
The vessel will be loaded onto a trailer 122 feet long, with 45 axles. The trailer’s eight pieces are being put together with cranes at the Apex Industrial Park. Once assembled, the trailer will then take to the road, avoiding Interstate 15 by traveling on U.S. Highway 93, state Route 318, U.S. Highway 6, back to Highway 93 and eventually taking Interstate 80 into Utah.
Six heavy-duty Class 8 trucks with combined 4,000-horsepower will haul the vessel. The entire configuration will use 460 tires that are 18 inches wide to prevent damaging roads, bridges and public infrastructure. Emmert International will use hydraulic jacks to reinforce drainage culverts.
“It’s the heaviest load to ever traverse Nevada roadways,” Nevada Department of Transportation spokesman Tony Illia told the Review-Journal. ….. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2020-06-19/a-heavy-chunk-of-the-san-onofre-nuclear-plant-slowly-moving-to-utah
Environmental problems, and legal holdup for Russia’s $20 billion nuclear power project in Turkey
Russia’s $20 billion nuclear power project located in Mersin on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast has long come under fire over safety and environmental concerns, including claims of large cracks in the concrete foundations due to loose and unstable ground in the area.
Officials broke ground on the Akkuyu power plant in 2018, which is set to be Turkey’s first nuclear power station and is due to come online in 2023 – the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey.
But engineers and workers began ringing alarm bells over a potential nuclear disaster soon after its inception, and a group of NGOs filed a lawsuit with a Turkish court demanding for construction to be halted…….
A Turkish court in the southern province of Mersin ruled on Friday to accept a request by the NGOs for relevant ministries and the National Security Council (MGK) to be able to intervene in the project, Cumhuriyet newspaper reported.
The court said the case would be reported to the MGK, which has no obligation to intervene in construction, but may now choose to do so. Lawyers involved in the case hd also said that the Russian power power plant could pose a national security threat to Turkey.
The court also gave the green light to a request by the NGOs for the involvement of a number of Turkish ministries in the case, including the Health Ministry, the Treasury and Finance Ministry, as well as the Food, Agriculture and Livestock Ministry.
How this latest development will play out in the ambitious Russian-Turkish joint-venture remains to be seen. But it arrives at a time of ongoing tensions between Ankara and Moscow over Idlib province in northwest Syria, where the two countries back opposing sides……https://ahvalnews.com/nuclear-energy/turkeys-russian-nuclear-power-project-hits-legal-hurdle
Now, the nuclear arms race has become even worse
[Andreas Kluth] Nuclear arms race worse than last one Korea Herald, By Bloomberg 21 June 20, As long as the pandemic rages, the world’s leaders are understandably preoccupied with the threat of disease. But there are other dangers to humanity that demand attention. One of the most frightening is nuclear war. Unfortunately, the risk of that happening keeps rising.
The headline numbers are misleading. Yes, the global stockpile of nuclear warheads decreased slightly last year, according to the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. But that’s only because the US and Russia, the two countries that still account for more than 90 percent of global nuclear stocks, dismantled some of their obsolescent warheads.
Even more worryingly, states are reviewing their strategies for using these weapons. Gone is the amoral but logical stability of the Cold War, when two superpowers kept each other and the world in check with a credible threat of “Mutual Assured Destruction.”
Russia, for instance, increasingly sees smaller “tactical” warheads as a possible way to compensate for weaknesses in its other military forces. It’s conceivable that a conflict starting with hybrid warfare — ranging from disinformation campaigns to soldiers in unmarked uniforms — could escalate to a conventional war and a limited nuclear strike, inviting a counter strike and so forth.
There’s also speculation that India could soften its policy, adopted in 1998, never to be the first to use a nuclear weapon. Such thought experiments are no small matter for a country with two hostile and nuclear-armed neighbors, Pakistan and China. Just this week, India and China clashed again over their disputed border in the Himalayas. What North Korea could get up to in a crisis that it itself provokes is anybody’s guess.
Meanwhile, all efforts to limit or reduce nuclear weapons have ground to a halt. A treaty between the US and the Soviet Union that eliminated land-based missiles with short and intermediate ranges collapsed last year, after the US accused Russia of cheating.
And the two old foes aren’t even close to extending their only remaining arms-control agreement, called New START, which expires in February. One reason for that failure was America’s insistence that the third and rising superpower should join the negotiations. But China, which sees itself as merely catching up with the two nuclear kingpins, balks at accepting any limits.
Progress has also stalled in updating the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, exactly 50 years after it took effect. It sought to keep additional countries from making bombs by encouraging them to use fissile material (uranium or plutonium) only for civilian purposes such as generating electricity. But five countries have gone nuclear since it was signed. Worse, game theory suggests that it’s rational for more states to follow. Iran could be next.
The only international agreement to ban these evil weapons altogether, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons passed by the United Nations in 2017, has the same chance as a snowball in a fission event. No member of the nuclear club intends to ratify it, nor do many other countries……….
USA’s secret plan for “dominance”by exploding a nuclear bomb on the moon
REVEALED: The US wanted to detonate a nuclear bomb on the MOON in 1959 to counter the Soviet lead in the space race and show dominance
- New details of an astonishing scheme, first detailed in 1999, have been revealed
- John Greenewald, Jr writes in Secrets from the Vault about numerous plans
- He says a nuclear bomb on the moon was ‘one of the stupider things’ considered
- The US government also wanted to build a military base on the moon by 1966
By HARRIET ALEXANDER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 10:28 AEST, 21 June 2020 | UPDATED: 15:01 AEST, 21 June 2020
New details about a U.S. plan to blow up a nuclear bomb on the moon as a Cold War ‘show of dominance’ have been revealed in a recently-published book.
The secret mission, code-named Project A119, was conceived at the dawn of the space race by an Air Force division located at New Mexico‘s Kirtland Air Force Base.
A report authored in June 1959 entitled ‘A Study of Lunar Research Flights’ explained plans to explode the bomb on the moon’s ‘terminator’ – the area between the part of the surface that is illuminated by the sun, and the part that’s dark.
The explosion would have likely been visible with the naked eye from Earth because the military had planned to add sodium to the bomb, which would glow when it exploded
A nuclear bomb on the surface of the moon was definitely one of the stupider things the government could do,’ said John Greenewald, Jr., author of Secrets from the Vault.
The book, published in April, details some of the more surreal suggestions made in history.
Greenewald, 39, has been interested in U.S. government secrets since he was 15 and has filed more than 3,000 Freedom of Information Requests……… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8443569/US-wanted-detonate-nuclear-bomb-moon-1959-dominance.html
False fright: religious group advertisement claims “Islam” about to make nuclear strike
Horrific’ Ad Suggesting Nuclear Attack From ‘Islam’ Appears In Nashville Newspaper, Paper Apologies
Nicholas ReimannForbes StaffBusinessI’m a news reporter for Forbes, primarily covering the U.S. South.
The Tennessean issued an apology Sunday after “a bizarre, pseudo-religious” full-page ad appeared in the newspaper’s Sunday edition claiming that “Islam” was planning a nuclear strike on the city of Nashville, Tennessee, on July 18, saying that the ad violated the paper’s standards forbidding hate speech and that it is investigating how the ad from a “fringe religious group” was able to be published in the Sunday paper.
The paper said Sunday that it immediately pulled the ad from future editions, which appeared in the “A” section—the front section—of Sunday’s newspaper. …… https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/06/21/horrific-ad-suggesting-nuclear-attack-from-islam-appears-in-nashville-newspaper-paper-apologies/#138034315c03
UN nuclear watchdog seeks to inspect old nuclear sites in Iran
UN nuclear watchdog seeks to inspect old nuclear sites in Iran https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2020-06/un-nuclear-watchdog-seeks-to-inspect-old-nuclear-sites-in-iran.html The board of the UN atomic watchdog agency has issued a condemnation of Iran for stonewalling its nuclear inspectors.By Nathan Morley The United Nations’ atomic agency is continuing to put pressure on Iran.
In a new resolution, the international body has insisted Iran provide access to two sites where nuclear activity may have taken place in the last two-decades.
The resolution, which was put forward by France, Germany, and Britain with support by the United States, was passed by 25 votes in favour.
China and Russia voted against while seven other countries abstained
The UN is calling on the Iranians to satisfy the Agency’s requests without any further delay. It wants access to two sites in order to clarify whether undeclared nuclear activity took place there in the past.
However, Iran has been blocking access to the sites since early 2020, a move which has fuelled a diplomatic dispute. It is reported that the sites in question are not directly relevant to Iran’s current nuclear programme.
Speaking after the vote, Kazem Gharib Abadi, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, said he strongly rejected the resolution and would respond appropriately in due course.
For its part, the IAEA said it still has the access it needs to inspect Iran’s declared nuclear facilities according to its mandate under the nuclear deal reached in 2015.
1 This Month.
15- 23 November – Urgent Call for a Week of Coordinated Protests – No War on Venezuela! No Troops on our Streets!
19th and 20th November – Online Event- Holding the Memories: Communities Leading the Fight for Nuclear Archival Justice
– https://events.humanitix.com/holding-the-memories Hosted by Nuclear Truth Project
NEW YORK Wednesday November 19, 4pm, EST
LONDON Wednesday November 19, 9pm, GMT
MELBOURNE Thursday, November 20, 8am, AEST
FIJI/MARSHALL ISLANDS Thursday 20 Nov – 9am FJT & MHT
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
of the week. STAND – Severnside Together Against Nuclear Development . THE TRUE FACTS ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER
Why it is: Unaffordable – Dangerous – Unnecessary – Bad For The Environment
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