The week in nuclear news
The pandemic and the development of the vaccine have dominated the news this week. Also, the impending USA electoral college vote is holding media attention, along with the potentially violent movement to overthrow Joe Biden’s election win.
The U.N. Climate Change Action Summit drew attention both to the scale ofthe action needed, and to the efforts being made by different nations .
On the broad news, nuclear issues are in the background. For me, life has been busy, too. So this week’s notes are mercifully short.
Dr Helen Caldicott on the nuclear lessons of the past – time to take note of them.
Greenhouse gas emissions transforming the Arctic into ‘an entirely different climate’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOV9QB4c4BA
Google headline news on “Nuclear” – articles are strongly pro nuclear, and for “Small Modular Reactors”, even more so.
Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) if they work, will arrive too late to make a difference to global heating.
Uranium Film Festival 2020 – a huge success under difficult circumstances.
Microwave Radiation ‘Most Plausible’ Cause Of Diplomats’ Ailments.
USA.
- Biden’s opportunity to make much needed changes on nuclear weapons policy. House Armed Service Committee calls for new National Defense Strategy, including “no first use” nuclear policy. Denouncing the immorality of nuclear weapons also means to jail for some.
- Nuclear powered electric vehicles? not existing, and not likely.
- Opponents of the Ohio bailout of nuclear industry want more than just a freeze on this law.
- Trying to test for cracks in nuclear waste containers that have to last for over a million years.
UK.
- Significant problems for UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent , if U.S. Congress refuses to fund a next-generation warhead. The new way to hide the money splurged on nuclear weapons – via Small Nuclear Reactors.
- Nuclear developers keenly await UK government support for new reactors large and small. Sizewell C nuclear power station, thrown into doubt as China ponders pulling out of £20bn project. Beware the nuclear road to nowhere.
- British government’s “perpetual” lack of knowledge about £130bn clean-up of 17 old nuclear sites..
CANADA. Canada’s Coalition for Responsible Energy Development is sceptical about Small Nuclear Reactors. Federal funding for new nuclear reactors is a serious mistake that blocks swift ation on climate. With Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) Canada is back in the nuclear weapons business. Growing political opposition in Canada to Small Nuclear Reactors.
EUROPE. European Commission excludes nuclear power from the EU’s proposed green finance taxonomy,
FRANCE. France and European Union have not yet agreed on nuclear reform– Four organisations join in legal action aimed at stopping the Flamanville nuclear power project. Botches and crisis in France’s nuclear energy system.
JAPAN. Japanese govt trying to entice people by money grants, to come and live in Fukushima . For the first time ever, a Japanese court rules against a government approval on nuclear safety. Nuclear power industry stunned by Osaka District Court ruling canceling central government approval for reactor restarts. For safety the 40 year limit on nuclear reactor’s life should be kept. Japan’s power companies consider opening up Aomari nuclear waste site to other utilities.
IRAN. Iran hastens nuclear legislation in response to the assassination of its nuclear scientist. Iran’s President Rouhani ready to restore the nuclear deal. Iran clearly wants to maintain the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran Awards Military Medal To Nuclear Scientist Assassinated Last Month,
RUSSIA. Russian Ambassador to U.S. Sees Hope for Nuclear Arms Treaty Extension. Thieves steal equipment from Russia’s nuclear war ‘doomsday’ plane..
UKRAINE –Shutdown of 3 uranium mines in midst of dispute could lead to ecological disaster in Ukraine.
MARSHALL ISLANDS. The continuing tragedy and nuclear abomination of U.S. tests on the Marshall Islands.
AUSTRALIA. Far from “broad community consent”– nuclear waste dump plan for Kimba South Australia..
Google headline news on “Nuclear” – articles are strongly pro nuclear, and for “Small Modular Reactors”, even more so
Today Google headline articles on “nuclear”total 96. As usual, most were pro nuclear articles, many reading like straight out handouts frm the industry. However, unusually this week, the pro nuclear stories tended to cover both large and small nuclar reactors, suggesting the promotion of both types. This is a trend that contrasts with the earlier propaganda of small reactors as the preferable option.
If you tap in “Small Modular Reactors” into Google News Search, today you get 98 headlines. It is interesting that the nuclear lobby prefers to promote these new nuclear fantasy gimmicks by leaving out that word “nuclear”. They know they’re up against the public’s perception of nuclear as something dirty, dangerous and connected to weapons of mass destruction. The public is right, and it will be a marathon public relations battle to overcome that truth.
Anyway, of these 98 articles, 86 were clearly promotional. It must be easier for journalists to just regurgitate slick nuclear industry propaganda,- rather than to do your own research on costs, safety, wastes, carbon emissions in the total set-up and fuel chain, and of course, to research the facts on climate effect.
The remaining 12 articles were either critical of, or dubious about, the viability of small nuclear reactors.
Going back to the “nuclear ” headline news, 68 of the 96 articles concerned “peaceful” nuclear power. And of those 68 articles, 47 were clearly pro nuclear. These pro nuclear articles included 28 that read like industry promotions, with confident sounding predictions about energy security, climate action, reducing costs and so on.
Popular pro nuclear topics were of course climate action, financial benefits, nuclear fusion, hydrogen and space travel. Also mentioned – the role of women, nuclear medicine and human rights benefits (!!) There was little mention of managing nuclear wastes, with just one article wxpressing confidence about this.
There were 8 clearly anti nuclear articles – focussing on costs, politics and radioactive wastes.
There were 13 articles that were “neutral”, with factual information, mainly on politics, and avoiding opinions. These included several on the subject of the assassination of a Iranian nuclear expert.
Articles on nuclear weapons.
Of the 28 stories on nuclear weapons, 14 were opposed, aiming towards arms control, or nuclear disarmament . 9 were factual information, without opinions. 5 were factual discussions, yet pro nuclear in expressing the “need” for nuclear weapons, and some with national pride in them.
The continuing tragedy and nuclear abomination of U.S. tests on the Marshall Islands
The lingering legacy of US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/the-lingering-legacy-of-us-nuclear-testing-in-the-marshall-islands/NTHZG3PJNS6NXV4SZLPTHCANNY/13 Dec, 2020, By RNZ.
The US detonated its largest nuclear bombs around the Marshall Islands in the 1940s and 50s – but the Marshallese are still campaigning for adequate compensation.
The Marshall Islands are two chains of 29 coral atolls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii.
Following the tests, whole islands ceased to exist, hundreds of native Marshallese had to be relocated off their home islands and many were affected by fallout from the testing.
In 1977, US authorities put the most contaminated debris and soil into a huge concrete dome called the Runit Dome, which sits on Enewetak Atoll and houses 88,000 square metres of contaminated soil and debris.It has recently received media attention as it appears to be leaking, due to cracking and the threat from rising sea levels, while some Marshallese have fears it may eventually collapse.
However, American officials have said it’s not their problem and responsbility falls on the Marshallese, as it is their land.
The US has cited a 1986 compact of free association, which released the US goverment from further liability, which will go up for renegotiation in 2023.
Meanwhile, the Marshallese continue to campaign for adequate compensation from the US.
While he said that suggestions that the Rumit Dome – nicknamed “The Tomb” by locals – was about to collapse were alarmist, there were still major concerns surrouding it.
“The issue is it’s got plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,000 years, and how long does concrete last?”
Describing the structure as a “symbol of the nuclear legacy here”, Johnson said that US government scientists had reported there was already so much contamination in the area that it would be difficult to find what leakage from the dome had added.
The United States has continued to refuse to accept responsibility for the Runit Dome’s condition, despite its history of nuclear testing in the country.
“The nuclear weapons test legacy is the overriding issue in the Marshall Islands with the United States and it remains a festering problem, because US compensation and medical care and so forth was only partial for what was needed,” Johnson said.
The first compact to free association between the Marshall Islands and the US contained a compensation agreement, including the establishment of a nuclear claims tribunal to adjudicate all claims. While it determined there was a large amount of compensation due to Marshallese on various atolls, this has never been paid out, apart from funding of $150 million in 1986.
Since then, the US has accepted no more liability on nuclear compensation, as the compact resulted in the Marshall Islands being an independent country, able to join the United Nations.
However, Johnson said the United States Congress had taken a different position on this.
There have also been big differences in the treatment of Marshallese nuclear victims and those in the United States
“The US used Bikini and Enewetak to test its biggest hydrogen bombs,” Johnson said. “While it maintained a nuclear test site in Nevada, it only tested relatively small nuclear devices there, because it simply could not test hydrogen bombs in the continental United States – Americans wouldn’t have stood for it.”
Not long after the 1986 free association compact ended American responsibility for nuclear compensation in the Marshall Islands, the US Congress enacted a radiation compensation act for Americans – which Johnson said really emphasised the unfairness of the situation.
“Long story short, they appropriated $100 million and then they ran out, the US congress appropriated more, again ran out, appropriated more and fast-forward to 2020 and they’re over $2 billion in compensation awarded to American nuclear victims.
Johnson also had concerns about the lack of a baseline epidemiological study by the US, following the tests. Studies on the affects of radiation centred around thyroid issues, but many islanders have reported cancer, miscarriages and stillbirths in the years following.
His wife Darlene Keju died of breast cancer, which also affected her mother and father – she grew up on one of the islands in the downwind zone of the tests.
The US had never looked at rates of cancer, or studied the differences between low fallout and high fallout areas, he said.
Johnson hoped the nuclear legacy between the countries could be worked out amicably, but he wasn’t too optimistic.
Despite this tension, Johnson said the Marshallese did not harbour anti-American sentiment and the compensation issues were a “black mark on an otherwise good relationship” between the two countries.
He said around 30 to 40 percent of all Marshallese were living in the US.
“The Marshall Islands, since WWII, has a very long standing high regard and strong relationship with the US that came out of the end of the Japanese period of militarism and the execution of many islanders and privation, into a period where the US fostered democratic institutions, created opportunities for education, providing scholarships, opening the door to people going to the US and the unpacked treaty really put this together, in terms of the relationship that’s of benefit to both sides.”
However, ongoing tensions between the US and China may help the Marshall Islands in their push for further compensation.
“Possibly the changing geopolitical situation out here might offer an opening to get some interest to try to amicably do something to resolve the whole thing,” Johnson said.
But the nuclear legacy is not the only issue affecting the island – climate change is looming large and reports by US scientists have said that the Marshall Islands could be uninhabitable by the 2030s, due to rising sea levels.
Indigenous opposition to uranium milling and the import of radioactive material

When locations were chosen more than half a century ago for the dozens of uranium mills that dot the Four Corners landscape, one common factor was almost always considered: proximity to productive uranium mines.
The region’s best uranium deposits typically only contain a small percentage of the valuable radioactive mineral, and being able to process the material at a nearby mill was critical to saving on transportation costs.
For the last conventional uranium mill still operating in the United States, however, the business model has changed. San Juan County’s White Mesa Mill, which is owned by the Denver-based company Energy Fuels Resources, hasn’t processed ore from local mines in recent years. Instead, it has survived primarily by accepting uranium-bearing material from around the country and, more recently, as far away as Japan. State regulators are also considering an application from the company to import material from Estonia.
Members of the Ute Mountain Ute community of White Mesa, which is located three miles from the mill site, spoke out against the mill’s continued operation on Tuesday at an annual town hall event that was held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The event, which was sponsored by a coalition of 12 grassroots community groups and environmental organizations, featured presenters from across Indian Country who spoke about the legacy of uranium production and nuclear waste storage on Native Americans as well as the White Mesa Mill.
The mill has accepted radioactive material from the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and Energy Fuels has expressed interest in processing tailings from the more than 500 abandoned uranium mines that have yet to be cleaned up on the Navajo Nation.
Scott Clow, environmental programs director for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, said that such proposals address a real need to remediate contaminated sites on tribal lands, but that they also “pit tribes against tribes.”
“We all want those places to be cleaned up, but we don’t want it to go to White Mesa,” Clow said.
Thelma Whiskers and Michael Badback of the White Mesa Concerned Community group said emissions from the mill can be smelled in White Mesa on a regular basis, adding they believe the facility has had negative health impacts on local residents.
“Let’s just keep … fighting to not have [the mill] close to the reservation,” Whiskers said. “I care for the community members and the children and the grandchildren.”
In an effort to better understand both the potential environmental and health impacts of the mill, Clow said the tribe has projects underway with both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Two new monitoring wells were drilled this fall between the mill and the community with EPA funding in order to better track potential water quality changes, Clow said, and a branch of the CDC is helping the tribe plan epidemiological work in the White Mesa community that could provide more information about health concerns among residents.
Other speakers at the event addressed the legacy of uranium production elsewhere in Indian Country.
“A lot of the land in our community has been disrupted and we can no longer use it [for livestock],” she said. “We can’t grow crops because the EPA has stated that if we grow crops we’ll be further exposed to uranium contamination. We can’t drink the water.”
Keyanna added the uranium contamination has had not only physical health consequences but has caused spiritual and mental health impacts as well, all of which have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
“It feels like a prison,” Keyanna said. “We’re not only prisoners during this pandemic, but we’ve kind of always been prisoners [since] this uranium industry started in our community.”
Leona Morgan, co-founder of the Indigenous-led group Haul No!, which opposes Energy Fuels’ plans to mine for uranium near Grand Canyon National Park and haul ore across the Navajo Nation, encouraged meeting participants to oppose a separate proposal currently being considered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that could result in radioactive material being hauled from the Church Rock area to the White Mesa Mill for processing.
“It’s not just an individual human rights issue,” he said, addressing the residents of White Mesa. “It’s a collective rights issue for your people to live in a safe and healthy environment: your homeland.”
Zak Podmore is a Report for America corps member and writes about conflict and change in San Juan County for The Salt Lake Tribune.
Japanese govt trying to entice people by money grants, to come and live in Fukushima
![]() The Yomiuri ShimbunGovernment grants of up to ¥2 million will be provided next fiscal year to people who move to one of 12 municipalities surrounding the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, where meltdowns occurred following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, according to sources. The 12 municipalities — all in Fukushima Prefecture — are Futaba, Okuma, Tomioka, Namie, Iitate, Kawamata, Minami-Soma, Katsurao, Naraha, Kawauchi, Tamura and Hirono. Next March will mark 10 years since the nuclear accident at the plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc., but the population of these municipalities still hovers around 20% of the number in the basic resident register. Evacuation orders were issued at the time of the accident but have since been gradually lifted. The government aims to promote the reconstruction and revitalization of the area by not only encouraging evacuees to return, but also by getting people from outside the area to move in. The grants will be offered, likely next summer or later, to people who did not live in the 12 municipalities at the time of the 2011 accident. A family moving in from outside Fukushima Prefecture will receive ¥2 million, and a family from within the prefecture will be offered ¥1.2 million. For a single-person household, the grant will be ¥1.2 million for a newcomer to the prefecture and ¥800,000 for someone from Fukushima Prefecture. Recipients would be required to live in the region for at least five years and to have a job. People who live in the 12 municipalities and telework for firms outside the region will also be eligible for a grant. Those who start businesses within five years of moving to one of the municipalities will also receive three-quarters of the necessary expenses, with a maximum limit set at ¥4 million. The grants will be paid from resources including subsidies to accelerate the revitalization of Fukushima Prefecture, provided to the Fukushima prefectural government and the 12 local governments by the Reconstruction Agency. |
|
Beware the nuclear road to nowhere
Nuclear power is the slowest and most expensive way to reduce carbon emissions, per kilowatt hour. Choosing new nuclear therefore impedes and supplants renewable energy development, which would save more carbon far sooner and faster and at a lower cost.
Beware the nuclear road to nowhere
Don’t be led up the garden path on the nuclear road to nowhere, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2020/12/13/dear-people-of-anglesey/By Linda Pentz GunterDear people of Anglesey:
The announcement that a US consortium, consisting of American companies Bechtel, Southern Company and Westinghouse, could take over the Wylfa B nuclear power project in North Wales, may sound like a much-needed jobs panacea, but it is another cruel joke on the people of Anglesey.
Horizon/Hitachi’s legacy of broken promises, destroyed homes and landscapes, and a 100% failure to deliver the promised two-reactor Wylfa B project, is already a bitter pill. Inking a new nuclear deal with the American consortium would turn it into a poison one. Trust me, we know. We’ve already swallowed it.
Here in the US, the track record of Bechtel, Southern Company, Westinghouse and the AP1000 reactor design, now being proposed for Wylfa B, should send a dire warning to Wales.
Westinghouse’s AP1000 two-reactor project at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina ballooned to $9 billion in costs and bilked ratepayers of $2 billion before it was abandoned in 2017 after a 9-year debacle. The project’s director, Stephen Byrne, pled guilty to a massive nuclear conspiracy that defrauded ratepayers, deceived regulators and misled shareholders, but not before pocketing a tidy $6 million for himself.
The company’s former CEO, Kevin Marsh, has agreed to plead guilty to federal conspiracy fraud charges, will go to prison for at least 18 months, and will forfeit $5 million in connection with the $10 billion nuclear fiasco.
Southern Company’s “flagship” nuclear project at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, where two AP1000 reactors are still under construction, is now five years behind schedule with costs soaring to at least $28 billion, more than double the original projection. The site has recently suffered an epidemic of Covid-19, as the company rushes to meet completion deadlines and save additional costs.
Even $12 billion in federal loan guarantees wasn’t enough to keep the Georgia project afloat, so ratepayers are helping to foot the bill in advance under a law similar to the UK’s regulated asset base scheme, with no guarantee that the reactors will ever be finished.
Bechtel is no more reliable and was caught up in a 2016 lawsuit that led to a $126 million settlement for subpar work while building a nuclear waste treatment facility at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Of course, that’s just the tip of Bechtel’s ugly iceberg. It, too, has seen company executives convicted of crimes, and was a key player in Iraq, before, during and after the US war there, helping to bring about the war in the first place, then scoring more than $680 million in contracts to help rebuild what it was complicit in destroying.
Efforts to find a new buyer for Wylfa B now that Hitachi, which owns the land, has decided to withdraw, are also rife with hollow promises. One such claim, that a revived Wylfa B would deliver electricity at a “market competitive price”, really means that Welsh electricity customers and British taxpayers will pay, because nuclear by itself isn’t competitive. That’s already borne out by the financial collapse of the AP1000 Moorside project in Cumbria, where weeds now obscure the NuScale sign at the abandoned site.
The false narrative put forward to justify resumption of nuclear construction at Wylfa B — that it is essential in order to reach a 2050 net zero emissions target — is disproven by reality: new nuclear power plants are by far the most expensive option, especially compared to the rapidly falling cost of renewables, and take far too long to tackle climate change, which is here, now.
Nuclear power is the slowest and most expensive way to reduce carbon emissions, per kilowatt hour. Choosing new nuclear therefore impedes and supplants renewable energy development, which would save more carbon far sooner and faster and at a lower cost.
Fortunately there are alternatives for the region, whose young people should not feel forced to leave to find work; whose farmers should be able to maintain their way of life; whose families should not have to watch their ancestral homes torn down; and whose local businesses could once again thrive.
Sustainable, Wales-based projects that employ local people in the long-term, while preserving language, culture and landscape, are abundantly possible. Many of these can be found in a new report from SAIL, which outlines a foundational economy for Ynes Môn — as Anglesey is more properly known in Welsh — and Gwynedd.
Reclaiming the Wylfa site to re-wild it would do more for climate change than a nuclear power plant and would attract visitors to its natural wonders, Heritage Coastline and extraordinary wildlife. More visitors in turn helps stimulate local businesses.
The island is even primed for new renewable energy projects, especially offshore wind, which again would provide much-needed, longterm employment.
There is no need for the people of Anglesey to be deceived once again by foreign corporations bearing false nuclear gifts that fail to materialize. Opening the door to Bechtel and co. will only lead to yet more environmental damage, and to more despair and disillusionment as, once again, promised nuclear jobs fail to materialize.
Anglesey can avoid being led down another garden path, soon to be overgrown with weeds, on the nuclear road to nowhere. It’s time for Anglesey Council to step up and say no to nuclear and commit to projects that will deliver safe, long-term jobs to the region without stealing money from the pockets of ratepayers and without wrecking the precious landscape they call home.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International.
Pathway of the peacemakers — Beyond Nuclear International

Denouncing the immorality of nuclear weapons also means to jail for some
Pathway of the peacemakers — Beyond Nuclear International
Dr Helen Caldicott on the nuclear lessons of the past – time to take note of them
HELEN CALDICOTT: Time to learn lessons of the past on nuclear, Independent Australia, 13 Dec 20, By Helen Caldicott | 13 December 2020
“………What rained down on those two Japanese cities seventy-five years ago was destruction on a scale never seen before or since. People exposed within half a mile of the atomic fireball were seared to piles of smoking char in a fraction of a second as their internal organs boiled away. The small black bundles stuck to the streets and bridges and sidewalks of Hiroshima numbered in the thousands.
A little boy was reaching up to catch a red dragonfly with his hand against the blue sky when there was a blinding flash and he disappeared. He turned into gas and left his shadow behind on the pavement, a haunting relic later moved to the Hiroshima Museum. A woman was running while holding her baby; she and the baby were turned into a charcoal statue.
In all, about 120,000 people were killed immediately by the two bombs and tens of thousands more died later due to radiation exposure………..
in medical school I learned about radiation biology — the classic experiments of Hermann J. Muller, who in the 1920s irradiated Drosophila fruit flies inducing genetic mutations and morphological abnormalities. Concurrently, the United States and the Soviet Union were testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, bombarding huge populations with radioactive fallout.
In my naiveté, I couldn’t understand what these men thought they were doing because the mutagenic and carcinogenic effects of ionizing radiation were well known in scientific circles. Madame Curie had died of aplastic anaemia secondary to radium, an alpha emitter polluting her bones; her daughter died of leukemia, and many of the early radiologists who exposed themselves randomly to X-rays died from malignancies.
Einstein wrote:‘The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.’
Robert Oppenheimer, watching the world’s first nuclear explosion in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 1945, muttered to himself: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita.
The scientists knew that they had discovered the seeds of human destruction.
So, in full awareness of its newfound ability to destroy the human race, what did the world do next?
The United States and the Soviet Union decided to outdo each other by conducting a nuclear arms race, building tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Between 1945 and 1998, the United States conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests, producing cancer in tens of thousands of people. It has built more than 70,000 atomic and hydrogen bombs; the Soviets and later the Russian Federation had tried to keep up, building at least 55,000 of their own.
Arms control agreements over the years have managed to reduce stockpiles to about 14,000 nuclear weapons today, in the possession of nine nations: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. The United States and Russia still lead the pack, each with more than 6,000 total weapons, including about 1,600 each that are actively deployed.
A nuclear “exchange” between these two superpowers would take little over one hour to complete. A twenty-megaton bomb (the equivalent of twenty million tons of TNT) would excavate a hole three-quarters of a mile wide and 800 feet deep, converting all buildings and people into radioactive fallout that would be shot up in the mushroom cloud.
Within six miles in all directions, every living thing would be vaporised. Twenty miles from the epicentre, huge fires would erupt, as winds of up to 500 miles per hour would suck people out of buildings and turn them into missiles travelling at 100 miles per hour. The fires would coalesce, incinerating much of the United States and causing most nuclear power plants to melt down, greatly exacerbating radioactive fallout.
Potentially billions of people would die hideously from acute radiation sickness, vomiting and bleeding to death. As thick black radioactive smoke engulfed the stratosphere, the Earth would, over time, be plunged into another ice age — a “nuclear winter,” annihilating almost all living organisms.
Seventy-five years after the dawn of the nuclear age, we are as ready as ever to extinguish ourselves. The human race is clearly an evolutionary aberrant on a suicidal mission. Our planet is in the intensive care unit, approaching several terminal events.
Will we gradually burn and shrivel life on our wondrous Earth by emitting the ancient carbon stored over billions of years to drive our cars and power our industries, or will we end it suddenly by creating a global gas oven?
The International Energy Agency said recently that we only have six months left to avert the effects of global warming before it is too late. Earlier this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been.
Australia’s coal and nuclear lobbies have just recruited a new puppet, Mining Council CEO Tania Constable has been championing nuclear power at a time when we should be discussing renewables.
In truth, the U.S. Department of Defense is a misnomer; it is actually the Department of War, Death and Suicide. Hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money are spent annually by corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems and Raytheon Technologies Corporation to create and build the most hideous weapons of destruction.
Brilliant people employed by these massive corporations, mostly men, are deploying their brainpower to devise better and more hideous ways of killing.
President Donald Trump is right when he says we need to make friends with the Russians, for it is Russian bombs that might well annihilate the United States. Indeed, we need to foster friendship with all nations and reinvest the trillions of dollars spent on war, killing and death, saving the ecosphere by powering the world with renewable energy including solar, wind, and geothermal and planting trillions of trees.
Such a move would also free up billions of dollars that could be reallocated to such purposes as providing free medical care for all U.S. citizens, along with free education, housing for the homeless and care for those with mental illness.
The United States needs to rise to its full moral and spiritual height and lead the world to sanity and survival. I know this is possible because, in the 1980s, millions of wonderful people rose up, nationally and internationally, in opposition to the arms race and the Cold War.
But what is the present reality in the United States?
There are 450 Minuteman III missiles operational on the Great Plains — in Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. In each missile silo are two missileers, who control and launch the missiles which contain one or two hydrogen bombs. Planes armed with hydrogen bombs stand ready to take off at any moment, and nuclear submarines silently plough the oceans ready to launch.
Both the United States and Russia have nuclear weapons targeted at military facilities and population centres. Nuclear war could happen at any time, by accident or design. The late Stephen Hawking warned in 2014 that artificial intelligence, now being deployed by the military, could become so autonomous that it could start a nuclear war by itself.
This threat is largely ignored by politicians and the mainstream media, who continue to practice psychic numbing as we stumble blindly toward our demise.
How come the physicists, engineers and military personnel who have laced the world with nuclear weapons ready to launch never factored into their equations the probability that an immature, petulant man-baby could hold the trigger for our destruction in his hands? https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/helen-caldicott-time-to-learn-lessons-of-the-past-on-nuclear,14614
You can follow Dr Caldicott on Twitter @DrHCaldicott. Click here for Dr Caldicott’s complete curriculum vitae.
Biden’s opportunity to make much needed changes on nuclear weapons policy
Biden’s First Move on Nuclear Weapons, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/12/bidens-first-move-nuclear-weapons/170652/
When Putin calls to congratulate the new U.S. president, Biden should seize the opportunity. By GLENN NYE and JAMES KITFIELD, At some point in the coming weeks President-elect Joe Biden will likely receive a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulating him on his election victory. Biden should seize the opportunity to provide an overdue reality check on nuclear weapons.Tensions between the two nations that possess roughly 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads are reaching levels not seen since the darkest days of the Cold War, even as the edifice of arms control agreements that kept Cold War dangers in check teeters on the verge of collapse. Under the guise of weapons modernization both nations are also engaged in an incipient nuclear arms race. Little wonder that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has reset its Doomsday Clock to just one hundred seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been to Armageddon. When he takes office on Jan. 20, Biden can help arrest that dangerous spiral by fulfilling his campaign pledge to extend the New START Treaty before it expires in early February, and to use it as a foundation to pursue new arms control agreements. Recent jockeying between U.S. and Russian negotiators on a one-year extension of New START highlight just how complex and difficult arms control negotiations have become. In an era of renewed major power competition, destabilizing new technologies, and rising international tensions and distrust, managing U.S.-Russian relations already are difficult. They only will become more so as Moscow comes to terms with a new Biden administration unwilling to overlook, as President Donald Trump has, Russia’s history of cyber and disinformation attacks on the American political system. Before the election, talks between U.S. and Russian negotiators on extending New START bogged down over the Trump administration’s insistence that a one-year extension include a freeze on strategic nuclear weapons that are currently covered by the treaty, as well as tactical nuclear weapons that are not. As is often the case in arms control talks the devil was in the details of a verification regime to monitor such a “freeze.” But the goal of constraining shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons was laudable and should be pursued in follow-on talks. |
|
Iran clearly wants to maintain the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
Iran will not accept new nuclear deal: MP, Tehran Times December 13, 2020 “Iran’s position on the JCPOA is quite clear. There is a consensus in the establishment in its entirety on the nuclear deal that Iran demands that all JCPOA parties should return to the deal and implement it unconditionally,” the lawmaker said, according to the Parliament’s news agency ICANA.
Rahimi Jahanabadi also referred to the upcoming meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission, which is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, saying that during the meeting the two issues should be discussed. “It is expected that Mr. Araghchi, as Iran’s representative, underlines two issues in the JCPOA Joint Commission meeting. First of all, he should reiterate that the JCPOA is the best deal. Second, Iran will not accept a new deal and negotiations,” the lawmaker said, adding that Iran should tell the 4+1 that it will return to its past activities if the Westerners fail to implement their commitments. 4+1 refers to France, Britain, Russia and China as four permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. First it was referred to as 5+1, before Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the multilateral agreement. On Saturday, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, the deputy foreign minister of Iran for political affairs, announced in a statement that the Joint Commission will hold a meeting at the level of deputy ministers and political directors. The meeting will be held via videoconference. Araghchi said he will represent Iran in the meeting……… https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/455734/Iran-will-not-accept-new-nuclear-deal-MP |
|
|
U.S. House Armed Service Committee calls for new National Defense Strategy, including “no first use” nuclear policy.
HASC Chair Smith Calls For New National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Policy Review, USNI News, By: John Grady
As part of that strategy, “I think we should have a no-first-use policy” because “nuclear weapons are a special case. They are “weapons that could destroy the planet.” Rep. Adam Smith, (D-Wash.) said while speaking at a Center for Strategic and International Studies online forum Friday said he also wants the United States to maintain “robust deterrence” but delivered with “a more cost-effective approach.”
mith recognized the strong opposition he has from progressives in the Democratic Party and also among some Republicans to spending on military projects, modernization, basing and operations. Left-leaning Democrats see these efforts “as pivoting to a new Cold War” that will “come into conflict with Russia and China.”
Smith said later that “there are plenty of other ways of deterring our adversaries” other than engaging them in war.
He said three questions needed to be asked when building a “robust” and “cost-effective” defense:
What is the goal; what is the objective; and what are the tools you need to get there.
mith recognized the strong opposition he has from progressives in the Democratic Party and also among some Republicans to spending on military projects, modernization, basing and operations. Left-leaning Democrats see these efforts “as pivoting to a new Cold War” that will “come into conflict with Russia and China.”
Smith said later that “there are plenty of other ways of deterring our adversaries” other than engaging them in war.
He said three questions needed to be asked when building a “robust” and “cost-effective” defense:
What is the goal; what is the objective; and what are the tools you need to get there………… https://news.usni.org/2020/12/11/hasc-chair-smith-calls-for-new-national-defense-strategy-nuclear-policy-review
Iran Awards Military Medal To Nuclear Scientist Assassinated Last Month
Iran Awards Military Medal To Nuclear Scientist Assassinated Last Month NDTV 13 Dec 20, Tehran:
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday posthumously awarded a prestigious military decoration to top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated last month, state television reported.
Fakhrizadeh was killed on a major road outside Tehran in late November in a bomb and gun attack that the Islamic republic has blamed on its arch foe Israel……. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/iran-awards-military-medal-to-nuclear-scientist-mohsen-fakhrizadeh-assassinated-last-month-2338031
NUCLEAR-ARMED RIVALRY IN SOUTHERN ASIA
NUCLEAR-ARMED RIVALRY IN SOUTHERN ASIA, Arms Control Wonk,by Michael Krepon | December 13, 2020 “……….. Deterrence alone doesn’t make nuclear-armed rivals safer because nuclear deterrence is based on credible threats and because these threats generate counter-measures. Nonetheless, rivals continue to compete, either in search of advantage or to avoid disadvantage.The threat of escalation is inherent in nuclear deterrence since threats that do not convey the potential for greater violence cease to deter. Herein lies an insoluble problem for nuclear deterrence strategists. How can escalation be controlled when it is premised on seeking advantage?
o resolve this conundrum, deterrence strategists must on truly heroic assumptions. One assumption is that nuclear-armed rivals can signal each other effectively because they have sufficient information and are on the same page. Another assumption is that command and control remains intact and that there will be no panic and unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. A third assumption, most heroic of all, is that the disadvantaged side will accept loss without resorting to spasm attacks that seek to destroy cities that are the repositories of world history. These are the unspoken and mostly unexamined assumptions behind the deterrence constructs of escalation control and escalation dominance. These are the rationales behind the fielding of counterforce capabilities that target opposing nuclear capabilities. These intellectual constructs can collapse like a house of cards after first use. After first use, nuclear-armed rivals may not be on the same page. Even if a rival chooses escalation control instead of escalation dominance, this targeting strategy has to be backed up by the threat of further escalation. And then what? This systemic problem applies to all nuclear-armed rivals, but is even more pronounced on the subcontinent because one of the rivals — India — has declared a policy of massive retaliation in the event of first use by Pakistan. This declaration is meant to deter, but if deterrence fails, this nuclear posture skews decisions toward a cataclysmic outcome whether or not this declaratory doctrine is a ruse. After first use, massive retaliation looses its deterrent value, becoming instead an existential threat to both rivals. India’s embrace of massive retaliation is as dangerous as Pakistan’s embrace of first use. The intellectual constructs of escalation control, escalation dominance, and massive retaliation work on the printed page and in war plans but are likely to fail catastrophically once the nuclear threshold is crossed and retaliation begins. Once nuclear deterrence dies, escalation takes over……….. Washington and Moscow have accomplished much by way of treaties in part because they accepted roughly equivalent capabilities. Essential equivalence is harder to imagine or to accept in bilateral accords between India and Pakistan or between India and China. A numbers-based, bilateral India-Pakistan or India-China treaty requires not only rough equality or an acceptable hierarchy but also acceptable and effective monitoring arrangements. These are significant hurdles. Trilateral China-India-Pakistan accords also seem very unlikely, since India would be outnumbered and since triangular nuclear competitions are prone to instability. Other treaty-based avenues to stabilize the triangular competition in Southern Asia also face long odds. Multilateral diplomacy on a fissile material cut-off treaty is moribund. India and Pakistan have not signed or ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; China has signed but not ratified. The United States could prompt a cascade of stabilizing ratifications, but this seems a tall order in the Biden administration, given the partisan divide on Capitol Hill. ……………. Because deterrence dies with first use, the most essential responsibility for those who possess nuclear weapons is not to use them in warfare. The stigma attached to nuclear testing reaffirms the norm of non-use. Diplomacy can be resurrected atop these norms, which are the fundamental building blocks for other measures of reassurance. As numbers grow, norms become even more important. At a time when political relations are sour and diplomacy is dormant in Southern Asia, extending the 75-year-long norm of non-battlefield use and the norm against testing, now over two decades long, are absolutely central. https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1210453/nuclear-armed-rivalry-in-southern-asia/ |
|
-
Archives
- August 2022 (202)
- July 2022 (368)
- June 2022 (277)
- May 2022 (375)
- April 2022 (378)
- March 2022 (405)
- February 2022 (333)
- January 2022 (422)
- December 2021 (299)
- November 2021 (400)
- October 2021 (346)
- September 2021 (291)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Fuk 2022
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS