Why did over 90 nuclear safety scientists resign en masse from an institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)?
90 CAS nuclear scientists who resigned were allegedly ‘poached’Source: Global Times 2020/7 More than 90 nuclear safety scientists with an institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) resigned enmasse according to media reports, with the unusual high number of resignation drawing public attention, considering the essential service the scientists provide.
An employee at the Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology (INEST) under The Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (CASHIPS) of CAS said the more than 90 researchers who voluntarily left their jobs were “poached” and the resignations were part of “normal staff turnover,” the Shanghai-based news website thepaper.cn reported Thursday.
The employee didn’t identify which company or institute may have recruited the researchers.
INEST, located in Hefei, capital of Central China’s Anhui Province, a hub of China’s scientists, has about 600 members and 80 percent of researchers have PhD degrees, according to the institute’s website………Earlier media reports show the resignations were triggered by a conflict with new security staff hired in mid-June at INEST.
According to the official website, INEST was established in September 2011. It is devoted to the design and R&D of advanced nuclear energy and safety technology, and also an independent nuclear safety assessment center with the aim of promoting the sustainable development of nuclear science and technology.
The employee said the 90-plus researchers submitted their resignations in June. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1194812.shtml
Greta Thunberg calls for immediate action on ‘existential crisis’ of climate emergency
INTERVIEW-Greta Thunberg demands ‘crisis’ response to climate change, https://in.reuters.com/article/climate-change-greta/interview-greta-thunberg-demands-crisis-response-to-climate-change-idINL5N2EN3E3
* Thunberg says people in power have practically ‘given up’
* Signed letter to European leaders with other activists
* ‘We need to treat this crisis as a crisis’ (Add quotes from Thunberg to Reuters television)
In an interview with Reuters television, the 17-year-old said governments would only be able to mount a meaningful response once they accepted they needed to transform the whole economic system.
“We need to see it as, above all, an existential crisis. And as long as it’s not being treated as a crisis, we can have as many of these climate change negotiations and talks, conferences as possible. It won’t change a thing,” Thunberg said, speaking via video from her home in Stockholm.
“Above all, we are demanding that we need to treat this crisis as a crisis, because if we don’t do that, then we won’t be able to do anything,” Thunberg said.
Thunberg joined several thousand people, including climate scientists, economists, actors and activists in signing an open letter climateemergencyeu.org urging European leaders to start treating climate change like an “emergency.”
The letter was made public on Thursday, a day before a European Council summit where countries in the 27-member EU will try to reach a deal on the bloc’s next budget and a recovery package to respond to the economic shock of the coronavirus pandemic.
Demands in the letter included an immediate halt to all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, in parallel with a rapid ending of fossil fuel subsidies.
It also called for binding annual “carbon budgets” to limit how much greenhouse gas countries can emit to maximise the chances of capping the rise in average global temperatures at 1.5C, a goal enshrined in the 2015 Paris climate accord.
“We understand and know very well that the world is complicated and that what we are asking for may not be easy. The changes necessary to safeguard humanity may seem very unrealistic,” the letter said.
“But it is much more unrealistic to believe that our society would be able to survive the global heating we’re heading for, as well as other disastrous ecological consequences of today’s business as usual.”
The letter called for climate policies to be designed to protect workers and the most vulnerable and reduce economic, racial and gender inequalities, as well as moves to “safeguard and protect” democracy. (Reporting by Matthew Green; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
The ever-increasing threat of coronavirus, but the global heating threat is even worse
Climate change is the greatest threat, The Canberra Times, 18 Jul 20 While the world 
was preoccupied with an ever increasing number of coronavirus cases this week, a hugely significant scientific report was allowed to pass under-reported and unremarked.
This was the study of the 2020 Siberian heatwave by World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who have been monitoring extreme weather events for years.
The heatwave had contributed to raising the world’s average temperature to the second highest on record for the period from January to May this year.
WWA said Siberia had experienced “unusually high temperatures”, including a record-breaking 38 degrees celsius in the town of Verkhoyansk on June 20, causing wide-scale impacts including “wildfires, loss of permafrost, and invasion of pests”.
While all of this, and reports food supplies are being affected with fish swimming deeper in search of cooler water, is alarming, the real cause for concern is the finding the prolonged heatwave had been made “600 times more likely as a result of human-induced climate change”……….
while it is a given that the climate deniers will dismiss the report as “bunkum” and “fake news”, those who actually know what they are talking about have no such doubts.
Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – who was not involved in the study – said the methodology was “state of the art” and that the findings were, if anything, “conservative”.
If, as many believe, temperatures in Arctic and Antarctic regions are “canaries in the coal mine”, this latest report is a warning that should not be ignored. Given it comes on top of linkages between Australia’s spring and summer bushfires and man-made global heating, it is yet another argument for this country to do much more to reduce to carbon dioxide emissions as a matter of urgency.
And let’s not forget, if 2019 was anything to go by, our next bushfire season is just around the corner.
While the federal government has done a commendable job in seeking the best possible expert advice on the coronavirus and then following it, it has yet to do the same with climate and energy policy. That has to change. Coronavirus is a crisis, climate change is an existential threat. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6838483/climate-change-is-the-existential-crisis/?cs=14245
Global heating is turning cities into death traps
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Cities Are Becoming Climate Death Traps https://newrepublic.com/article/158537/cities-becoming-climate-death-traps 17 July 20 A new era of heat waves is here. We aren’t ready. As the coronavirus pandemic continues throughout the United States, another deadly pandemic comes out to strike in the summer: extreme heat. Year after year, more people are dying because it’s simply too hot. As of right now, both this country and others lack even an accurate way of counting those deaths—let alone a comprehensive plan to reduce them. Thanks to climate change, it’s about to get much worse.
For the past week, the American South and Southwest have been experiencing record-breaking temperatures. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted above-average heat for nearly the entire U.S. this summer. Unprecedented, early-summer heat waves roasted the Middle East in May and Siberia in June, setting the latter on fire. Arizona had its earliest-ever hundred-degree heat wave in April—and another 110 degree heat wave in May. Spain endured 105 degree heat this month. When the heat index, a “feels-like” combination of temperature and humidity, reaches 104 degrees Fahrenheit indoors or out, human body temperature risks rising above the typical roughly 99 degrees Fahrenheit. When body temperature rises above 104 degrees, the consequences can be fatal within 30 to 60 minutes. “Heat-related deaths are notoriously difficult to track because the role of heat isn’t always obvious. One 2017 study found that extreme heat can kill people in 27 different ways,” Juanita Constible, senior advocate, climate and health at the National Resources Defense Council, told me. “If someone dies of a heart attack during a heat wave, there’s a good chance that’s how their death will be recorded by officials, even if high temperatures were the trigger.” Many scientists argue that official heat-death counts underestimate substantially. According to the World Health Organization, 166,000 people died due to heat waves between 1998 and 2017, but the true figure may be far higher. In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only count deaths where heat illness is explicitly noted, so the official CDC count of heat-triggered deaths sits at just around 600 per year. Epidemiologists estimate that the real figure may be closer to 12,000—20 times higher than the official count. Climate change is making heat waves longer, hotter, and more deadly. Scientists estimate that 80 percent of record-breaking heat waves would not have occurred without human-caused warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. And urban areas, in particular, face special risk of heat deaths because of the heat island effect, in which dark pavement, roofs, and concrete absorb additional heat, making temperatures much hotter than the reported weather in any given city. In the U.S., heat deaths have more than doubled in Arizona in the last 10 years. Last year, a dangerous heat wave hit while storms left residents in the D.C. and New York City metro areas without power. Power outages can be deadly in a heat wave because without air conditioning, many people can’t cool off. In two heat deaths in a 2018 Arizona heat wave, the deceased were found indoors with a broken air conditioning unit that they couldn’t afford to fix. “Some people won’t use their air conditioning because they’re afraid of the bills,” Patricia Solís, executive director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at Arizona State University, told National Geographic. “They think they’re OK without it, but that’s how people die.” “There are huge policy gaps in the U.S. with respect to extreme heat protections,” Rachel Licker, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told me. “We found that without real action on climate change, by midcentury more than 250 cities across the U.S. are projected to experience 30 or more days with a heat index above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This includes many cities that historically haven’t experienced this level of extreme heat.” |
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Forest fires raging over wide areas of the Brazilian Amazon
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Dramatic footage fuels fears Amazon fires could be worse than last year
As dry season starts campaigners sound alarm over ‘shocking’ scale of fires, as Bolsonaro doubles down on denials, Guardian, Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro, Sat 18 Jul 2020 Dramatic new images have shown fires raging over wide areas of the Brazilian Amazon nearly a year after blazes across the region sparked an international crisis for the far-right government of President Jair Bolsonaro. The video images and photographs were filmed during a flight by Greenpeace over a wide area of forest in Mato Grosso state in the south of the Amazon on 9 July. Filmed just as the Amazon dry season was beginning, they raise fears that this year’s fires could be as devastating and perhaps worse than 2019’s. “It was shocking to see the size of this deforestation and fires, at a time when the government is dismantling environment protection,” said Rômulo Batista, senior Amazon campaigner for Greenpeace, who spent days flying over a wide area. “It is the beginning of the dry season and we saw fires and areas being prepared for deforestation.”………. official data shows the Brazilian government’s efforts so far this year have failed to bring results. Brazil saw more fires in the Amazon this June than in any year since 2007. Brazil’s space research agency INPE spotted 2,248, compared with 1,880 in June last year. Preliminary data showed deforestation from January to June, at 3,069 sq km, was 25% up on the same period last year. ……… https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/17/dramatic-footage-fuels-fears-amazon-fires-could-be-worse-than-last-year |
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Wildfire out of control in Greece?
Homes under threat as wildfire burns southeast of Athens, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/homes-under-threat-as-wildfire-burns-southeast-of-athens Homes and camps were evacuated as a precaution around the coastal town of Laviro in Greece while firefighters worked to contain a wildfire.
Additional resources requested for Siberian forest fire; state of emergency
Additional resources requested for Siberian forest fire, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/additional-resources-requested-for-siberian-forest-fire 17 Jul 20, A state of emergency has been declared in the Khanti-Mansi Autonomous District as 25 fires continue to burn across 12,000 hectares.
Massive wildfire in rural central California
Massive wildfire in rural central California, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/massive-wildfire-in-rural-central-california 17 Jul 20 More than 900 firefighters aided by helicopters and air tankers battled a wildfire in a rural area of central California.
Nuclear bomb testing – the cruellest legacy of environmental injustice and racism
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Nuclear testing legacy is ‘cruellest’ environmental injustice, warns rights expert,
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/07/1068481 16 July 2020
Human RightsThe dangerous legacy of nuclear weapons testing continues to affect many communities, a leading rights expert said on Thursday, on the 75th anniversary of testing in the United States, that heralded the nuclear age.
In an appeal to governments worldwide to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, UN Special Rapporteur on toxics, Baskut Tuncak, said that the Trinity tests in New Mexico on 16 July 1945, were the prelude to “two horrific explosions suffered by (the) innocent people of Japan”, during the Second World War.
They were also followed by the detonation of hundreds of nuclear bombs over vulnerable communities in the Pacific, and the disposal of radioactive waste on lands and territories of indigenous peoples. Paradise lostThis had created a legacy of nuclear testing that “is one of the cruellest examples of environmental injustice witnessed” in “what should be a peaceful island paradise”, said Mr Tuncak, who reports to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. From 1946-58, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated on the Marshall Islands, he said, the equivalent of more than 1.5 “Hiroshima-sized explosions every day for 12 years”. Communities “have suffered unimaginably” from radioactive contamination and this continues today “with a legacy of contamination, illness and anguish”, the expert insisted.
Twin environmental disasters made matters worse, he added, referring to climate change-induced sea level rise and nuclear waste concentrated in a radioactive “tomb”. 200 tests in 30 yearsSimilarly, in French Polynesia, over 200 nuclear tests were conducted over a 30-year period from 1966 to 1996, subjecting inhabitants to associated health and environmental damage, the Special Rapporteur said. From Greenland to the indigenous territories of the United States, he warned that people continued to suffer from the nuclear testing era. Waste not“In recent decades, numerous Native American tribes received funding to store unwanted nuclear waste on their lands,” he said. “Those of Point Hope, Alaska, became recipients of radioactive soil and higher cancer rates that are believed to have been the foreseeable result. And the people of Greenland discovered radioactive waste left by the US military, unbeknownst to them as the ice continues to melt in the Arctic.” This discriminatory approach should be addressed by all States as part of the discussion on “systemic racism” and nuclear disarmament, Mr. Tuncak insisted. “Unaddressed, the dangers of radioactive contamination will persist for centuries, and so too will the harmful legacy of racism that surrounds this tragic chapter of humanity,” he added. |
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Rolls Royce Small Modular Nuclear Reactors: not small, not modular, not cheap, and not going to happen
100% Renewables 16th July 2020, The Government has just announced a £40 million research programme into so-called advanced modular reactor technology that is highly unlikely ever to see any practical use. That is because the so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) are much too expensive for civilian use.
In an important sense it is nonsense to talk about research to develop SMRs as a ‘new’ technology simply because they already exist. They power military submarines and also US aircraft carriers. Their design is simply a smaller
version of the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) design that dominates the world nuclear power industry. Indeed PWRs began as small projects housed in submarines which were then developed up in scale so that they could produce electricity more cheaply.
At 450 MW for their proposed plant, the plant is not far off the same order of magnitude as conventional plant – for
example the AGR series that currently generates the bulk of British nuclear plant has units of around 600-660 MW. In fact, as Tom Burke points out, they are close to the size of Britain’s first generation of reactors, the ‘Magnox’ reactors.
Neither is the plant proposed by Rolls Royce modular in the sense that such plant can be rolled off a production line. What Rolls Royce claims is that some parts can be produced in a ‘modular’ fashion. This is not the same as producing whole units off a production line, and in fact the developers of the nuclear plant Vogtle in the USA also claim to produce parts in a ‘modular ‘fashion (although this plant is now hopelessly behind schedule with very large cost overruns).
Peace cranes flyimg in Vermont , in support of U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Peace cranes on Church Street aim to abolish nukes, https://www.wcax.com/2020/07/17/peace-cranes-hanging-on-church-street-to-abolish-nuclear-weapons/ WCAX News Team Jul. 17, 2020 BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Cranes are a symbol of peace in many cultures, and 1,000 origami peace cranes from Japan are now displayed in front of Burlington City Hall in observance of next month’s 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.The story behind the peace cranes is of a little girl, Sadako Sasaki, who developed cancer from atomic radiation because of the Hiroshima bombing. Sasaki started getting sick around age 11.
Robin Lloyd, an activist for abolishing nuclear weapons, believes Sasaki’s story will not only reach the hearts of Vermonters but also teaches an important lesson.
“The cranes date from a little girl who got leukemia from the Hiroshima bombing,” Lloyd said. “Then her health started to fail and her friends said, ‘If you can fold 1,000 cranes, then your wish will come true.‘”
Sasaki died before she reached 1,000 cranes, but her story lives on. Organizers at Thursday’s event in Burlington say they want to use the peace cranes to gain support for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Joseph Gainza, a longtime Vermont peace activist, says that Vermont has supported nuclear weapons abolition in the past.
”The House of Representatives overwhelmingly — and the Vermont Senate unanimously — voted on a resolution calling on the United States to enter into the nuclear weapons abolition treaty,” Gainza said.
Today, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons continues to gain support, according to Maho Takahashi, an activist in Burlington. ”With that treaty, once 50 countries ratify it, it will enter into force,” Gainza said.
The peace cranes will be flying for the next week. Each crane has a lesson that visitors are encouraged to take and learn from.
California Coastal Commission unanimously approves storage plan at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
California Coastal Commission unanimously approves storage plan at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station CBS8, 17 Jul 20, The Commission voted 10-0 to approve the program to allow storage of spent nuclear fuel on-site. SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — The California Coastal Commission voted 10-0 in a special meeting today to approve an inspection and maintenance program allowing Southern California Edison to store spent nuclear fuel in a storage site at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
The program outlines actions SCE will take to inspect the canisters that contain spent nuclear fuel, as well as how potential issues with the canisters will be remedied.
Robotic devices will be used to inspect the canisters and site conditions will be simulated on a test canister, which will be observed for potential degradation. Two spent fuel storage canisters will be inspected every five years starting in 2024, and the test canister will be inspected every two to three years.
Canister flaws will be repaired by the application of a nickel-based metallic spray, and the presence of flaws may result in increased canister inspection frequency and an increase in the number of canisters inspected.
The inspection and maintenance program was also reviewed by the engineering consulting firm LPI, which provided recommendations that included the increase in canister inspections should flaws arise.
Nearly 3.6 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel are stored at the plant, which stopped producing electricity in 2012.
Concerns remain over the plant’s proximity to the ocean and the potential for the site to be affected by rising sea levels, tsunami inundation, seismic hazards.
By 2035, the commission may look to relocate the canisters to another site, although no such location is available, according to a commission report. ……. https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/san-onfre-nuclear-power-plant-storage-approval/509-b0c102a6-86b7-45c3-a5d7-b5013cfc19c4
Nuclear waste is piling up in California: leadership is needed
Gov. Gavin Newsom and leaders from the Legislature must demand action on nuclear waste and fill gaps in oversight. By Bart Ziegler, CalMatters, 17 Jul 20,
Bart Ziegler is president of the Samuel Lawrence Foundation, a nonprofit based in Del Mar, bart@samuellawrencefoundation.org.
From San Onofre to Humboldt Bay, nuclear waste is piling up in California.
This most-toxic waste – tons and tons of it – is deadly for 200,000 years. Stranded next to a rising ocean at aging and decommissioned plants, the waste has no permanent home.
California is overdue in showing leadership.
Just as California has broken ranks with the federal government on regulating greenhouse gas emissions, Gov. Gavin Newsom and leaders from the Legislature must demand action on nuclear waste and fill gaps in oversight.
With federal regulators all but cornering nuclear policy, the industry all too often is left to regulate itself. Meanwhile, private contractors slop at ratepayer-funded decommissioning troughs while running loose with safety.
Enough is enough, California!
In north San Diego County, conditions at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station scream for state intervention, as Rep. Mike Levin, a Democrat from San Juan Capistrano, concluded in a task force report issued recently.
First, some background.
Decommissioning started this year at the San Onofre plant, which quit making electricity in 2012. The plant’s majority owner, Southern California Edison, has opened its $4 billion decommissioning purse to Holtec International as lead contractor in charge of transferring 3.6 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel from cooling pools to a storage system of Holtec’s design.
That’s where things get dicey.
Edison’s contractors are cramming the spent fuel assemblies into thin-walled, steel canisters. Workers hoist the canisters from wet storage with a behemoth, track-driven gantry crane and crawl them to a concrete, dry-storage vault. That’s where the 73 canisters will stay. Indefinitely.
Public hand-wringing intensified after a near-accident in 2018 involving a fully-loaded canister and the release of reports showing the canisters are prone to gouging during transfer. That can lead to corrosion and failure, especially in a marine environment. To make matters worse, the canisters cannot be repaired, monitored, inspected or transported once entombed in the vault.
What can California do? For starters, leaders can immediately improve oversight of nuclear waste storage.
Nuclear plant owners admit to not having developed procedures to replace fully-loaded canisters. That’s why, as part of decommissioning California’s coastal nuclear plants at San Onofre, Diablo Canyon and Humboldt Bay, the state Coastal Commission must demand the construction of handling facilities – known as “hot cells” – where canisters can be repaired or replaced.
State lawmakers should order construction of a hot cell at the decommissioned Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station, just 40 miles south of their offices in Sacramento.
In San Diego County, near the border with Orange County, 8.2 million people live within 50 miles of the old San Onofre plant. On July 16, the California Coastal Commission is set to act on a staff recommendation to approve Edison’s application to dismantle the plant’s cooling pools. That approval would be disastrous. For now at least, the spent fuel cooling pools provide our last option for dealing with a damaged canister.
Coastal Commissioners are appointed by the same Legislature that should prepare for a crisis instead of responding to one. You don’t wait for a fire to create a fire department. Preparation is cheaper and faster than responding to a crisis. Tragically, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that preparation is not always our strongest suit.
As recommended in the Report of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station Task Force, a state model would improve agency coordination on waste storage permit applications and increase engagement with federal agencies to advance solutions for containing and handling deadly nuclear waste. The solutions should be tied to strict, economic enforcement.
Coastal commissioners, lawmakers, regulators and anyone else with a stake in California – that’s nearly 40 million of us – should read the report and demand action on nuclear waste.
Purpose of US International Development Finance Corporation perverted in the interests of the nuclear industry
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Trump’s new foreign investment agency: Itching to build on nuclear quicksand. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Victor Gilinsky, Henry Sokolski, July 17, 2020 In 2018 a Republican Congress, with strong Democratic support, created the US International Development Finance Corporation to “provide the developing world with financially sound alternatives to unsustainable and irresponsible state-directed initiatives.” That’s government-speak for competing with China’s Belt and Road initiative. It didn’t take very long, however, for the new agency to fall in line with an irresponsible state-directed initiative of its own—the Trump administration’s all-out effort to encourage nuclear exports.
In June, the agency, whose own rules prohibit financing nuclear exports, proposed to fling the doors open to such financing, without limiting its scope to the agency’s mission to help the economies of the lower income countries with modest, environmentally sensible projects. There is no hint on what sorts of conditions would apply on funding nuclear reactors. Would the country have to have a system of safety regulation? Would it have to meet security requirements? Would it have to allow international inspections? It isn’t even clear whether the agency’s support would be limited to US reactor exports, and therefore subject to the requirements of the Atomic Energy Act’s Section 123 or whether they could also cover equipment purchases from other suppliers. Such details determine whether a federal bureaucracy is constrained to act responsibly, or whether it is free to cater to the latest whims of the White House. To justify its proposed action, the agency relies on the administration’s ritual talking points—that nuclear exports will “offer an alternative to the financing of authoritarian regimes while advancing US nonproliferation safeguards and supporting US nuclear competitiveness.” These pearls are straight out of the administration’s April 2020 interagency report “Restoring America’s Competitive Nuclear Energy Advantage.” So are the agency’s assurances that advanced “small modular reactors” and “microreactors” will have significantly lower costs than existing nuclear power plants and “could help deliver a zero-emission, reliable, and secure power source to developing countries, promoting economic growth and affordable energy access in underserved communities.” This is all pie in the sky: None of these plants have been built, and their characteristics and economics are speculative. But if the proposed change is restricted to small reactors or microreactors, the nuclear industry’s influential registered lobby, the Nuclear Energy Institute, hasn’t heard about it. The Institute’s president crowed her unqualified approval: “The US International Development Finance Corporation’s proposed policy change to lift its legacy prohibition on nuclear energy projects supports the development of clean, reliable energy worldwide, helps countries reach their energy development goals, buttresses US national security, and can help level the playing field for US firms.” Nor does her response suggest any awareness that the agency’s financing of nuclear projects will be limited to countries in the lower portion of the economic scale……, This whole affair is the latest expression of the administration’s organizing principle for nuclear energy policy—finding ways to loosen rules and to create subsidies to propel nuclear exports. This is supposed to energize the much-diminished domestic nuclear manufacturing sector. Since the whole policy doesn’t make any economic sense, the ultimate argument is based on the dogma: Come what may, we have to head off sales by our adversaries China and Russia……. The agency does have on its books good environmental, social, and economic criteria for evaluating projects. But will they be applied as intended?,………..https://thebulletin.org/2020/07/trumps-new-foreign-investment-agency-itching-to-build-on-nuclear-quicksand/# |
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Slow progress of Michigan bill opposing high-level nuclear waste dump
Michigan bill opposing high-level nuclear waste dump languishes in Senate committee Iosco County News Herald, By Jim Bloch For MediaNews Group,Jul 16, 2020
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- The Michigan House of Representative passed a concurrent resolution on Feb. 5 opposing the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump near the shores of Lake Huron in the municipality of South Bruce, Ontario, Canada.
The resolution was sponsored by Gary Howell, the republican representative of the 82nd District, which comprises Lapeer County.
It urges “the United States Congress to take every legal action possible to prevent the construction of any underground high-level nuclear waste repository in the Great Lakes basin,” and urges “the Canadian government to prohibit a high-level nuclear waste repository anywhere in the Great Lakes basin.”
One of the cosponsors of the resolution was Gary Eisen, the St. Clair Township Republican who represents the 81st District, which swoops around the southern half of St. Clair County and includes Marysville, St. Clair, Marine City and Algonac, as well as surrounding townships.
“It’s sitting in the Senate now in Dan Lauwers’s committee,” Eisen said in June, noting that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on a lot of the legislature’s work. “Everything’s ten times harder now.”
The resolution is in the Committee on Energy and Technology, which Lauwers chairs. His 25th Senate District includes St. Clair County………..
“Placing a deep geological repository near the Great Lakes is a high-risk venture with the potential of causing irreparable harm to millions of lives,” said the resolution. “Underground waste repositories have leaked in the past, costing billions of dollars to repair. Germany, for instance, is spending billions of dollars to dig up low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste that was stored in a salt mine due to leakage and other environmental concerns. In 2014, chemical reactions in a steel barrel full of radioactive waste caused an explosion and fire at a low- and intermediate-level underground waste site in Carlsbad, New Mexico causing a cloud of radioactivity to be released at the surface. Not only did this put the health and safety of the public at risk, it cost taxpayers $2 billion to clean up and repair. As demonstrated, low- and intermediate-level facilities have failed, and this high-level nuclear proposal provides no guarantee, whatsoever, to keep radioactive waste from our environment.”
If the Michigan Senate approves the resolution, it will be sent to Prime Minister of Canada, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Premier of Ontario, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the Speaker of the U.S. House, the President of the U.S. Senate, the members of the Michigan congressional delegation, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
On Jan. 17, Michigan’s U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, along with Congressman Dan Kildee and Congressman John Moolenaar, introduced a bipartisan resolution opposing Canada’s placement of a permanent nuclear waste storage in South Bruce.
If the Michigan Senate approves the resolution, it will be sent to Prime Minister of Canada, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Premier of Ontario, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the Speaker of the U.S. House, the President of the U.S. Senate, the members of the Michigan congressional delegation, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
On Jan. 17, Michigan’s U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, along with Congressman Dan Kildee and Congressman John Moolenaar, introduced a bipartisan resolution opposing Canada’s placement of a permanent nuclear waste storage in South Bruce. http://www.iosconews.com/news/state/article_c5a6ae58-996b-5665-b599-cfa8fde7c6ae.html
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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