What could Biden’s nuclear policy look like?
 What could Biden’s nuclear policy look like?
King County sits only miles away from one-third of the deployed U.S. nuclear arsenal. Courier Herald By Aaron January 12, 2021 For Leonard Eiger, having the U.S. Navy’s entire Pacific fleet of nuclear-armed submarines only a short excursion away doesn’t sit well with him. The longtime anti-nuclear weapons activist and former North Bend resident has for decades worked to educate Puget Sound residents about Naval Base Kitsap Bangor, which houses around one-third of the nuclear weapons that are actively deployed. Eight of the 14 Ohio-class submarines, which carry powerful nuclear weapons, are stationed out of the base in Kitsap County. “For me there’s a real futility in thinking of, and preparing to fight, a nuclear war,” Eiger said. “Because any nuclear war, any nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia, is game over.” Eiger lived in North Bend for 26 years, before recently moving to the San Juan Islands. He’s been involved with the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, which stages demonstrations against — and education campaigns about — nuclear weapons. As the Donald Trump administration winds down, he’s hoping that a Joe Biden presidency will mark a turning point in the way the U.S. approaches nuclear weapons. The Trump administration didn’t make significant progress toward renewing the New START Treaty, which expires on Feb. 5 and began deploying “low-yield” nuclear weapons on submarines, he said. The administration also did not subscribe to a “no first use” policy. It also pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. The Trump administration didn’t make significant progress toward renewing the New START Treaty, which expires on Feb. 5 and began deploying “low-yield” nuclear weapons on submarines, he said. The administration also did not subscribe to a “no first use” policy. It also pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. And if a nuclear weapon was fired at one country, other nuclear powers wouldn’t know where it was destined, and could launch their own nukes, fearing an attack, he said. These missiles are something that Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, is thinking about. He said that this could make military leaders more comfortable using them from technical and humanitarian points of view because there could be less collateral damage and fallout …….. On the first use of nuclear weapons, Biden’s policy platform states that he believes the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to deter other countries from attacking the U.S. with nuclear weapons. If he holds to this statement, then he would enact a no first use policy, according to Kristensen………. Treaties Biden is also hoping to resurrect two important nuclear treaties. The first is the Iran nuclear deal, which was negotiated by the Obama administration while he served as vice president. Trump withdrew from the treaty and put additional sanctions on Iran……. The second significant nuclear agreement is the New START Treaty between Russia and the U.S. The treaty limits the number of nuclear weapons that the countries can own, and have deployed, at any given time. It includes all three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad, including submarine, bomber and land-based missiles. Biden’s policy platform states he will try to renew and extend the New START Treaty. The treaty could be extended up to five years, but Kristensen said the administration could choose a shorter term. If Biden chose to go with a longer five year renewal, it would likely have a calming effect on nuclear competition between the U.S. and Russia. However, a shorter term would send signals that the two countries need to address the problems with the treaty and create something stronger, Kristensen said….. ………… For activist Leonard Eiger, the world of today is only here because of a series of fortunate events. He cited the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the U.S. and Russia came close to nuclear war in 1962. “We still live under the threat of either accidental or intentional nuclear war,” he said. “So long as nuclear weapons exist, that threat will continue to exist.”……… https://www.courierherald.com/news/what-could-bidens-nuclear-policy-look-like/ |
|
As pandemic cripples America, Donald Trump orders funding for military Small Nuclear Reactors in space
|
Trump orders DoD to explore use of nuclear power for space, Defense News,
By: Aaron Mehta 14 Jan 21, WASHINGTON — In the waning days of his administration, U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at pushing the Department of Defense toward quickly developing and producing small nuclear reactors for military use — and to see if they could be used by military space vehicles.
The order, signed Jan. 5 and posted publicly Jan. 12, is not the first time the value of nuclear power for military operations has been studied. There is a long history of the Pentagon considering the issue, which proponents believe could alleviate the department’s massive logistics challenge of keeping fuel moving around the world……… In terms of terrestrial efforts, the executive order requires the defense secretary to, within 180 days, “establish and implement a plan to demonstrate” a micro-reactor at a domestic military installation — in other words, setting up an actual test of a nuclear reactor at a U.S. military location. However, that doesn’t mean the first test will be on a military base. One location to keep an eye on is the Nevada National Security Site, a Department of Energy location roughly 65 miles from Las Vegas……. Noted Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, “the signing of this at the very last minute of the Trump administration suggests someone is concerned [President-elect Joe Biden] might not support the program.” Specific to space, the order calls for the defense secretary, in consultation with the secretaries of state, commerce and energy as well as the NASA administrator, to “determine whether advanced nuclear reactors can be made to benefit Department of Defense future space power needs” and to “pilot a transportable micro-reactor prototype.” In addition, the order directs an analysis of alternatives for “personnel, regulatory, and technical requirements to inform future decisions with respect to nuclear power usage” as well as “an analysis of United States military uses for space nuclear power and propulsion technologies and an analysis of foreign adversaries’ space power and propulsion programs.” ……… While the order speeds up the timetable for a test of a nuclear reactor at a military installation, the idea of using nuclear power is hardly a new one for the DoD. In fact, the Pentagon currently has two different development tracts for small nuclear reactors. The first is “Project Pele,” an effort to create a small mobile nuclear reactor in the 1-5 MWe power range, being run out of the Strategic Capabilities Office. In March 2020, the department awarded three companies a combined $39.7 million to start design work for Project Pele, with plans to select one firm in 2022 to build and demonstrate a prototype. The second effort is run through the office of the undersecretary of acquisition and sustainment. That effort, ordered in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, involves a pilot program aiming to demonstrate the efficacy of a small nuclear reactor, in the 2-10 MWe range, with initial testing at a Department of Energy site around 2023. If all goes well, the goal is to have a permanent small nuclear reactor on a military base around 2027. Even if all those timelines are hit, it is unlikely microreactors could proliferate quickly throughout the military………. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2021/01/13/trump-orders-dod-to-explore-use-of-nuclear-power-for-space-systems/ |
|
Trump chaos highlights risks of sole nuclear launch authority
Trump chaos highlights risks of sole nuclear launch authority, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/trump-chaos-highlights-risks-of-sole-nuclear-launch-authority/, 12 Jan 2021, |Ramesh Thakur, Critics of nuclear weapons have long pointed to two sets of risks. First, deterrence stability depends on all fail-safe mechanisms working every single time in every bomb-possessing country. That is an impossibly high bar for nuclear peace to hold indefinitely. Second, it also requires that rational decision-makers be in office in all the world’s nine nuclear-armed states.
In the past four years the latter risk has intensified in particular because of the personality traits of two of the nine leaders concerned, which is why US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un were described as the godfathers of the UN nuclear ban treaty. The late Bruce Blair, a former nuclear launch officer and respected anti-nuclear campaigner, said in 2016: ‘The thought of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death.’
The issue acquired unexpected urgency amid ugly scenes outside and inside Congress after it duly certified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. On 8 January, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi discussed with General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, precautions for ‘preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike’. Milley’s office confirmed to the New York Times that he had answered her questions about the nuclear command authority.
The US has no extant legal mechanism for addressing Pelosi’s concern. On 22 December 2008, in the final days of the George W. Bush presidency, Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed the unchecked presidential authority.
” For 50 years, he said, ”the US president has been ‘followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football [so-called because the code word for the first set of nuclear war plans was ‘Dropkick’] that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use … He doesn’t have to check with anybody. He doesn’t have to call the Congress. He doesn’t have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in.’
Because of the launch-on-warning posture of nuclear weapons on high-alert status, the US nuclear system is designed to respond to a commander-in-chief’s launch order instantaneously. Missiles would leave their silos just four minutes after the president’s command authorising a strike, so that they launch before they’re destroyed by enemy missiles and hit their targets within 30 minutes of launch.
The one historical occasion on which the president’s unchecked power was an issue was in the dying days of Richard Nixon’s presidency amid the Watergate crisis. Writing in Politico in 2017, Garett Graff recalled how Defense Secretary James Schlesinger had issued an unprecedented set of orders, directing that if Nixon gave any nuclear launch order, military commanders were to check either with him or with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger before executing them. This was after Senator Alan Cranston had phoned Schlesinger to warn him about ‘the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust’. Apparently Nixon had alarmed congressmen by telling them during a meeting: ‘I can go in my office and pick up a telephone, and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead’.
In 1973, Harold Hering, a US Air Force major on training to command nuclear missile silos, asked: ‘How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?’ Good question. Instead of receiving an answer, Hering was eased out of the military, lost his final appeal in 1975 and changed careers to take up long-haul trucking. Recalling Hering’s ‘forbidden question’, Ron Rosenbaum comments in How the end begins: the road to a nuclear World War III:
You might think such a question—the sanity of a president who gives a nuclear launch order—would require some extra scrutiny, but Major Hering’s inconvenient query put a spotlight on the fact that the most horrific decision in history could be executed in less than fifteen minutes by one person with no time for second-guessing.
According to law professor Anthony Colangelo, military officers have ‘a legal duty to disobey illegal nuclear strike orders’ and the use of nuclear weapons wouldn’t satisfy the tests of legality under international humanitarian and human rights laws. However, a Congressional Research Service note on 3 December restated the prevailing consensus: ‘The US President has sole authority to authorize the use of US nuclear weapons.’
A former head of US Strategic Command, General Robert Kehler, notes that military officers are bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice ‘to follow orders provided they are legal and have come from competent authority’. In a statement on 7 January, even the International Crisis Group, whose primary field of interest is the conflict-riven regions of the world, highlighted the president’s ‘unfettered power to launch nuclear weapons’ among the perils of the chaotic transition from Trump to Biden.
An angry and vengeful president in denial about the election outcome but with his finger still on the nuclear button—the same one that he’d boasted was ‘bigger and more powerful’ than Kim’s—has helped to reconcentrate minds. In the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, President John F. Kennedy kept his head while the military advisers around him, led by the notorious General Curtis LeMay, wanted to deploy nuclear weapons and invade Cuba.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the world has desperately hoped that, given the strategically challenged president’s unpredictability and unreliability, former generals in his cabinet would act as the adults in the room in any crisis situation. It was in the context of Trump’s failure to grasp core nuclear realities that his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, famously remarked that Trump was a ‘fucking moron’.
The sole launch authority is so powerful and so unchecked that it’s truly scary. Bruce Blair’s two-step recommendation was adoption of a no-first-use policy in the short term and total elimination of all nuclear weapons through ‘global zero’ in the medium term. Biden can and should change the nuclear command structure once he’s in office and require the agreement of at least one other senior official for authorisation of a nuclear strike to be legal.
If this can be of more than theoretical concern with respect to the US, we surely are justified in having even graver concerns about the potential for nuclear weapons being used irresponsibly by some of the other leaders with their fingers on nuclear triggers. Having put ‘guardrails around the sole authority of the US president … to launch nuclear weapons’, Biden could then focus on the urgent need to reduce nuclear risks globally.
Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary-general, is emeritus professor at the Australian National University and director of its Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.
USA will be bound by nuclear weapons ban treaty, and should join it.
U.S. should join nuclear weapons ban treaty https://www.syracuse.com/opinion/2021/01/us-should-join-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-your-letters.html– Michaela Czerkies Jan 13, 2021
On Jan. 22, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will enter into force. This treaty is a historic achievement in the global movement to abolish nuclear weapons, making it illegal under international law for participating nations to “develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess, or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” The treaty also acknowledges the suffering that nuclear weapons testing and use have inflicted around the world, and includes provisions for environmental remediation and assistance to people affected.
It is fitting that the TPNW enters into force just after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. King clearly stated that nuclear disarmament was deeply linked to racial justice and essential to our survival. He called for a ban on nuclear weapons, understanding that, “a full-scale nuclear war would be utterly catastrophic.”
Scientists must tell the truth on our consumerist, ecology-killing Ponzi culture
Scientists must not sugarcoat the overwhelming challenges ahead. Instead, they should tell it like it is. Anything else is at best misleading, and at worst potentially lethal for the human enterprise.
Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp , The Conversation, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University. Daniel T. Blumstein, Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, Paul Ehrlich, President, Center for Conservation Biology, Bing Professor of Population Studies, January 13, 2021
Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.
The research published today reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world. We outline the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption and planetary toxification. We clarify the gravity of the human predicament and provide a timely snapshot of the crises that must be addressed now.
The problems, all tied to human consumption and population growth, will almost certainly worsen over coming decades. The damage will be felt for centuries and threatens the survival of all species, including our own………
academics tend to specialise in one discipline, which means they’re in many cases unfamiliar with the complex system in which planetary-scale problems — and their potential solutions — exist.
What’s more, positive change can be impeded by governments rejecting or ignoring scientific advice, and ignorance of human behaviour by both technical experts and policymakers.
More broadly, the human optimism bias – thinking bad things are more likely to befall others than yourself – means many people underestimate the environmental crisis.
Numbers don’t lie
A bad situation only getting worse
The human population has reached 7.8 billion – double what it was in 1970 – and is set to reach about 10 billion by 2050. More people equals more food insecurity, soil degradation, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss.
Essentially, humans have created an ecological Ponzi scheme. Consumption, as a percentage of Earth’s capacity to regenerate itself, has grown from 73% in 1960 to more than 170% today.
High-consuming countries like Australia, Canada and the US use multiple units of fossil-fuel energy to produce one energy unit of food. Energy consumption will therefore increase in the near future, especially as the global middle class grows.
The danger of political impotence
Our paper found global policymaking falls far short of addressing these existential threats. Securing Earth’s future requires prudent, long-term decisions. However this is impeded by short-term interests, and an economic system that concentrates wealth among a few individuals.
Right-wing populist leaders with anti-environment agendas are on the rise, and in many countries, environmental protest groups have been labelled “terrorists”. Environmentalism has become weaponised as a political ideology, rather than properly viewed as a universal mode of self-preservation.
Changing course
Fundamental change is required to avoid this ghastly future. Specifically, we and many others suggest:
- abolishing the goal of perpetual economic growth………..
Don’t look away………
Scientists must not sugarcoat the overwhelming challenges ahead. Instead, they should tell it like it is. Anything else is at best misleading, and at worst potentially lethal for the human enterprise. https://theconversation.com/worried-about-earths-future-well-the-outlook-is-worse-than-even-scientists-can-grasp-153091
Joe Biden under pressure from nuclear lobby, despite the failing state of their industry
The United States has about 94 traditional reactors, out of the 440 worldwide, but rising costs have forced many plants to shut with five more expected to close this year in Illinois and New York.
Nuclear power faces competition from electricity stations that burn cheap, plentiful natural gas and from renewable power, including wind and solar.
As Britain’s plan for Wyfla nuclear project founders, it’s time to start a green revolution
PAWB 11th Jan 2021, On the last day of troubled 2020, the Westminster Government has deferred a decision on a Development Consent Order for a nuclear power station at Wylfa until the end of April 2021.
This is the fourth time this has happened, and the second time in a row for Duncan Hawthorne, chief executive Horizon, to ask for a deferral.
On January 10 the Times revealed that Hitachi is winding Horizon up completely by March 31, 2021. This is the logical conclusion of the process that started exactly two years ago when Hitachi suspended Horizon’s operations at Wylfa. Then in September 2020, they announced that they were ditching their plans to build two huge reactors at Wylfa completely.
The attempt to build Wylfa B has been shambolic from the start. It’s high time to abandon the foolish dream that has paralyzed Anglesey’s development since 2006. As we approach the 10th
anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, the latest to be mentioned as ‘saviours’ of the radioactive poisoning project that would threaten the health of everyone on the island and beyond are three US companies.
Here they are: Bechtel Corporation, Westinghouse and Southern Company. Here are
some of the trio’s transgressions: Bechtel – recently fined nearly $58million for financial fraud with another company over a 10-year periodat Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the most radioactively contaminated site in the United States. This followed a fine of $125million for low quality work on the same site in 2016. Much more could be said about Bechtel. Westinghouse and Southern Company – Westinghouse went bankrupt while trying to build Vogtle Power Station in the state of Georgia.
The two AP1000 reactors of the type destined for Wylfa are five years behind Schedule, have doubled in cost to $25billion, and there is no guarantee that thepower station will ever be completed. Another of their projects was the V C Summer nuclear plant in South Carolina. It was abandoned unfinished in 2017, and is still being paid for by taxpayers.
However, with this latest information, it looks very unlikely that these three American companies are prepared to pay through their noses for two white elephant sites at Wylfa and Oldbury.
This is the end of Horizon’s journey. And the end once and for all of the nuclear industry’s plans to destroy an especially beautiful part of northern Ynys Môn. It is high time that politicians on Ynys Môn andGwynedd Councils, the Senedd in Cardiff, and at Westminster to recognise
this fact and to turn their attention towards cleaner, cheaper and more sustainable ways of producing electricity. The renewable technologies are available. This is the time to start a real green revolution.
Czech government plans to impose nuclear dump on municipalities against their will
Euractiv 12th Jan 2021, Czech municipalities fight against nuclear waste repository. Czech
municipalities chosen to provide space for a deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel are ready to fight against the government’s decision “with all possible means”.
On 21 December, the Czech government decided that a radioactive waste repository will be created in one of the four selected sites.
However, although the government intends to launch exploratory works in order to find the most suitable location, there is no possibility for affected areas to have their say in this matter. Four municipalities hoped that their negotiating position would be strengthened by a new law but it has never been proposed by the government despite its previous promises.
Amid ongoing lawsuits about nuclear corruption, Ohio regulators will stall the nuclear bailout law
 Ohio regulators set to officially pause nuclear bailout fees created through tainted energy bill https://www.cleveland.com/open/2021/01/ohio-regulators-set-to-officially-pause-nuclear-bailout-fees-created-through-tainted-energy-bill.html Jan 11, 2021 By Andrew J. Tobias, cleveland.com
COLUMBUS, Ohio — State regulators have ordered a pause on the $170 million in annual new fees created through the controversial House Bill 6, following a judge’s recent ruling in a lawsuit brought by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and officials in Cincinnati and Columbus. The Ohio Air Quality Development Authority will formally suspend the charges, $150 million of which would bail out two financially troubled Ohio nuclear plants owned by a former FirstEnergy subsidiary, during a scheduled meeting on Tuesday, the agency’s executive director wrote in a recent letter to officials with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. As part of the same official process, the PUCO on Dec. 30 acted to prevent the new fee from going into effect while the legal challenge continues. Both agencies cited a Dec. 21 ruling from a Franklin County judge who, ruling on the lawsuit from Yost and two Ohio cities, ordered the fees be blocked from going into effect. The fees, worth more than $1 billion to the nuclear plants, were to have appeared on Ohioans’ power bills starting on Jan. 1.
But the pause could remain in place at least until a March 5 hearing in the Franklin County case, according to a PUCO spokesman.
Yost and the local officials sued over the law after federal investigators said it was the product of an elaborate corruption scheme financed by FirstEnergy and its affiliates that led to the arrest of former House Speaker Larry Householder and others last July. Prosecutors have said in exchange for $61 million, spent to help Householder become speaker and on a political campaign supporting the law, Householder agreed to push the bill through the legislature. FirstEnergy, based in Akron, hasn’t been charged or officially accused of wrongdoing. Householder has pleaded not guilty to a federal corruption charge, but two associates who helped pass House Bill 6, Jeff Longstreth and Juan Cespedes, have pleaded guilty to participating in the scheme.
The fees will remain blocked even though the Ohio Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a different HB6 legal challenge filed by the Ohio Manufacturers Association, a business group. The Supreme Court previously ordered the fees paused while it considered OMA’s arguments. The OMA had asked permission to drop its challenge, saying the issue was moot since the PUCO had agreed to pause the nuclear subsidies in response to the Franklin County case.
DeWine and state legislative leaders have called for House Bill 6 to be repealed or at least, revisited. But state lawmakers failed to do so during their lame duck session in December, since House members were unable to agree on what specific action to take. The law’s future remains unclear, with legislators expected to reconvene in the coming weeks.
Numerous HB6-related state and federal investigations, including from the FBI and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, are ongoing, as are numerous lawsuits.
|
|
Quakers welcome nuclear weapons ban treaty
|
Richmondshire Quakers welcome nuclear weapon treaty http://www.richmondshiretoday.co.uk/richmondshire-quakers-welcome-nuclear-weapon-treaty/January 13, 2021 Joe Willis Quakers in the district have welcomed an international treating prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons.
On January 22, the United Nation’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons passes into international law. Over 50 nations have now signed the treaty to eliminate the weapons and the threat opponents say they pose to the environment and human survival. Members of Wensleydale and Swaledale Area Quaker Meeting have joined Quakers around the world to call for the weapons to be banned and the treaty to be adopted. A spokesperson said: “Practically, their use is becoming obsolete as warfare moves towards cyber crime and drone warfare. “Our government wants to spend over £200 billion on upgrading our nuclear weapons and Trident submarines when the threat to us all is Covid-19 and climate change. “We welcome this moment of light in these dark times and urge our government to join others working for a more peaceful solution to our problems.” |
|
1.This Month
Bill Gates, while motivated to help fight climate change, has also long been trying to make a success of his nuclear technology company Terra Power. The climate emergency presents him with the perfect opportunity to promote this, and especially, to get tax–payer funding to do it, as he suggests in his new book.
Elon Musk and Bill Gates: beware of gurus toting solutions to climate change
Elon Musk has grand plans to save the world. Bill Gates has just published his book ”How To Avoid a Climate Disaster”. They both envisage tax-payer funding for their solutions. But beware of gurus toting the solution to the planet’s crisis.
If you don’t think that our home planet is in an ecocidal crisis, then you’ve been blissfully unaware of global heating, over-population, biodiversity loss, waste crises, plastic pollution, overconsumption of energy , water shortages, deforestation, nuclear danger, space junk danger, perpetual nuclear war risk…….
Visionaries like Bill Gates and Elon Musk have brought extraordinary, and beneficial advances to our human society. On the way, they have become billionaires. And good luck to them. But their wealth and fame has made them all too ready to be seen as world leaders, and to see themselves as having the solutions to world problems. This can be problematic, as in effect, some of their solutions exacerbate the problems.
The future envisioned by both Bill Gates and Elon Musk has one huge blind spot. They both foresee ever-expanding energy use, and they plan for that – problems can be fixed with technology.
On a finite planet, endless energy use just cannot work. But the concept of enough is just not in their plans. If the human species does not take up the concept of enough, we could just become an extinct species. Technology could be used to reduce energy use, but that idea fades away as Gates, Musk, and other technocratic leaders see progress as being to have ever more exciting and energy-guzzling gimmicks and activities.The digital revolution. It should be a benefit, enhancing our lives, and in many ways, it IS. But an energy price is paid in our unbridled use of digital technology. Every email, emoji, Facebook post, tweet, blogpost, Youtube, uses electricity. It’s not as if these actions just disappear ”into the cloud”. What a dishonest term that is! There is no such cloud. What there actually IS – is a host of vast areas of dirty great data” farms”. There’s another dishonest term. They’re not farms. They are soulless collections of great metal servers, using ever growing amounts of electricity, and of water, to keep them cool.
Then there’s the price at the end. It’s very hard to find out the details and the extent of toxic materials from digital technology, that are dumped in poor countries.
And, to be fair, companies like Apple, have made some efforts to reduce their ewaste. https://www.ewaste-expo.com/is-apple-delivering-on-its-environmental-claims/
However, planned obsolescence is rampant in the high tech world, resulting in the utter tragedy of ewaste pollution, – from discarded smartphones, laptops, computers, printers, TVs, fidbits, smart fridges, robots etc, the tragedy of the thousands of children working as waste-pickers in India and Africa, in slum conditions. E-waste includes many toxic materials such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury, that release dioxins. . ”With no health or environmental protections in the slum, the toxins contaminate the air, water, and the food consumed in the slum…….. The area is constantly covered in thick, toxic smoke from the burning of electrical cables that goes on all day and night,” – High-tech hell: new documentary brings Africa’s e-waste slum to life https://news.mongabay.com/2012/04/high-tech-hell-new-documentary-brings-africas-e-waste-slum-to-life/
Both Gates and Musk are enthusiasts for renewable energy, and in the climate crisis, they are to be applauded for their work in this direction. Yet, as with all kinds of digital technology, renewables should not be unlimited, and do have their downsides, both in the production (pollution from rare earths mining/processing), and in the final disposal, with toxic wastes, and components that are difficult to recycle. . The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that solar panels produced 250,000 metric tonnes of waste in 2018 alone.
Bill Gates and Elon Musk do show their awareness of the planet’s grave environmental problems, but we don’t hear from them about energy conservation, or about moving away from the consumer society. Both talk quite enthusiastically about the great increase in energy use that we can expect. They complacently predict endless energy use, just as the nuclear lobby did in its glossy advertising film ”Pandora’s Promise”
Elon Musk now plans to put 24,000 satellites into space, and is well known for his dream of colonising Mars, and This idea has, of course, been taken up by many others, and there’s a sort of general public delight in space travel and interstellar rocketry. People seem oblivious to the fact that this will require huge amounts of energy, and that the space scientists already are turning away from clean solar power, to the far more dangerous source of nuclear fission. They’re also oblivious of the state of affairs in near space, where the trillions of bits of space debris pose dangers, floating about just like the plastic pollution in the oceans. Meanwhile the military planners in USA, Russia, China are already planning for nuclear weapons and war in space.
No surprise then that Elon Musk sees nuclear power as necessary – not just for his predicted need for much more electricity on Earth, but for this obsession with satellites and rockets.
Less well understood than his push for electric cars and Tesla technologies, is Elon Musk’s investment in the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Running Bitcoin demands enormous amounts of electricity, as Timothy Rooks explained recently https://www.dw.com/en/why-does-bitcoin-need-more-energy-than-whole-countries/a-56573390
Bill Gates, while motivated to help fight climate change, has also long been trying to make a success of his nuclear technology company Terra Power. The climate emergency presents him with the perfect opportunity to promote this, and especially, to get tax–payer funding to do it, as he suggests in his new book.
Wake up people! These two gurus have done some good stuff. But don’t let them manipulate us into dangerous territory – with nuclear technology, so connected with weaponry, and with its dangers, and the unsolved problem of radioactive trash. Sure, technology has got to be part of solving the planet’s crises. But we need much more imaginative leadership to steer our species away from infinite consumption and infinite energy use.
-
Archives
- April 2021 (82)
- March 2021 (282)
- February 2021 (271)
- January 2021 (278)
- December 2020 (230)
- November 2020 (297)
- October 2020 (392)
- September 2020 (349)
- August 2020 (351)
- July 2020 (280)
- June 2020 (293)
- May 2020 (251)
-
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
- 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
