Let’s not forget that President Biden is just as pro nuclear as Trump was
The new U.S. Democratic leadership is making positive noises for the continuation, and possible expansion, of the previous administration’s own beefed up nuclear strategy despite the left’s traditional aversion to the technology, say those in the industry.
The ambitious roadmap pushes for a continuation of technological advances and investigations for existing reactors, advanced reactors and advanced nuclear fuel cycles while rebuilding U.S. global leadership in nuclear energy technology.
Five Goals
The ‘blueprint’ lays out five goals, breaks down each into explicit objectives and lists timelines for performance indicators.
The first, ‘Enable continued operation of existing U.S. nuclear reactors’, calls to demonstrate a scalable hydrogen generation pilot plant by 2022 and begin replacing existing fuel in U.S. commercial reactors with accident tolerant fuel by 2025.
Protesters call on Hopkins University to drop nuclear weapons research
 Protesters call on Hopkins to drop nuclear weapons research The Johns Hopkins Newsletter, By CHRIS H. PARK and MIN-SEO KIM | January 27, 2021 Members of Prevent Nuclear War Maryland, a Baltimore-based anti-war, anti-nuclear weapons organization, protested the University’s involvement in nuclear weapons research with the U.S. government on Friday, Jan. 22.The group also celebrated the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) — a legally binding international treaty prohibiting the development, ownership and deployment of nuclear weapons by nation……….. On Friday, around a dozen protesters held bright yellow banners reading “nuclear weapons are illegal” on the Charles Street median and in front of the marble Hopkins sign on the Merrick Gateway, conversing with passers-by. Protesters criticized the University’s engagement with nuclear weapons research at the Applied Physics Lab (APL). Hopkins is the top recipient of federal research and development funds, receiving $2.351 billion in a contract from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in 2019. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons identified Hopkins to be one of the universities involved in developing and maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal in its 2019 report. Max Obuszewski, one of the co-founders of Prevent Nuclear War Maryland, said he has been protesting nuclear weapons for over 30 years. He believes that continued development and possession of nuclear weapons poses an existential threat to the world. “Our government is going to spend trillions of dollars to refurbish the nuclear arsenal. We have to make the legislators give us security, like health care and education. We don’t have any of that,” he said. “What we’re doing now is to shame the United States and the nuclear weapons contractors into joining the treaty.” Prevent Nuclear War, the parent organization of the group Obuszewski founded, has worked to mobilize support for the “back from the brink” resolution in local and state governments. The resolution calls on the federal government to renounce its nuclear first-use policy, limit presidential authority to launch a nuclear attack, reduce spending on nuclear weapons research and work with other states to eliminate nuclear weapons. Baltimore was the first major city to endorse its version of the resolution, introduced by then-City Councilman Bill Henry. Because APL research is classified — unlike work in other University divisions — it is unclear how many of its contracts with the DOD are related to nuclear weapons. In an email to The News-Letter, Karen Lancaster, the assistant vice president of external relations for the Office of Communications, noted that the APL was a research division of the University, not an academic one, thus is exempt from the University-wide rule on not allowing classified work……. Lancaster did not comment specifically on APL’s nuclear weapons research program. Dr. Gwen DuBois, a co-founder of Prevent Nuclear War Maryland, stated that the University should turn its efforts to research that would have immediate positive effects on people’s lives. She is an alum of the Bloomberg School of Public Health and teaches part-time at the School of Medicine. “Johns Hopkins University of Medicine has played a great role in the COVID-19 pandemic. That is what we expect of this great institution, but not profiting off immoral and illegal weapons,“ she said. “What we want to see from Hopkins is to pull out from contracts with nuclear weapons. Hopkins is knee-deep in this stuff and isn’t transparent.” Obuszewski also stated that nuclear weapons research is a reckless avenue to allocate University resources. “We think it’s abominable,“ he said. “Especially in this pandemic, let’s not waste all this money on nuclear weapons.” DuBois expressed hope that Hopkins students and faculty would pressure the University leaders to stop engaging in this research, citing the impact made by students who protested the now-suspended plans to create a private police force. “[TPNW] is an opportunity for universities and corporations to reassess what they do. For corporations, it’s going to come from the shareholders. For universities, the pressure’s going to come from the students or professors,“ she said. “There’s nothing that gives us more hope than seeing students help us. If nothing else, if this opens up a dialogue with the University, that would be tremendous: Bring it out into the open and let the University debate this.” https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2021/01/protesters-call-on-hopkins-to-drop-nuclear-weapons-research |
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America’s nuclear industry in bed with safety regulators – can Biden fix this?
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Biden can rescue the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from industry capture, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Frank N. von Hippel | January 27, 2021 Over the past two decades, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been captured by the nuclear power companies it is supposed to regulate. The process of capture and resulting erosion of regulation has been driven in part by the increasingly poor economics of nuclear energy as companies struggle to avoid large costs due to additional safety measures. However, the path has been laid to a potential disaster. The consequences of a severe nuclear accident in the US could potentially be 100 times worse than the 2011 Fukushima accident (Figure 1). The Biden administration has an opportunity to turn the situation around, but it is important to understand the problem.
Nuclear power is struggling economically in the United States. Nuclear power is declining— especially in states hosting about half of US nuclear capacity, where nuclear power plants have to compete with natural gas, photovoltaic, and wind-energy power plants. In Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Illinois, nuclear utilities have persuaded state legislatures to mandate subsidies averaging about $100 million per reactor per year to keep reactors on line. One justification has been that nuclear power is climate friendly and therefore should be subsidized as solar and wind power have been. Another locally important argument has been to preserve about 1,000 jobs per reactor. Finally, in Ohio and Illinois, utility bribes to legislature leaders are being investigated. In the absence of such subsidies, in 2019, nuclear power plants were shut down for economic reasons in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In 2020, the Indian Point 2 reactor in New York was shut down because Governor Cuomo considered its location near New York City to be dangerous and excluded it from the state subsidy deal. Indian Point 3, the remaining reactor operating on the site, will be shut down in 2021. A reactor in Iowa, was also shut down in 2020 because of storm damage that was deemed too costly to repair. In Illinois, Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear operator, has threatened to shut down in 2021 four reactors that were not included in the state subsidy deal. In regulated markets, where state regulators guarantee utilities that they will be able to recoup their investment and operating costs plus an agreed profit, most existing nuclear power plants are continuing to operate. One exception is California, where Pacific Gas & Electric decided to shut down the state’s last two nuclear power reactors in 2024 and 2025 because they “would be uneconomical to run in the near future.” That is the situation for existing reactors. The economic situation for new nuclear reactors is much worse because they have to pay off their high capital costs in additional to their operating costs. As a result, since the 1970s, there have been only two efforts in the US to launch construction of new power reactors. In 2008. nuclear utilities in the adjoining states of South Carolina and Georgia contracted to build a pair of new nuclear power reactors in each of those states. These decisions were facilitated by state regulators allowing the companies to charge their customers for a substantial part of the capital cost during construction. In addition, the US Energy Department guaranteed $12 billion in loans for the Georgia plant, enabling it to obtain low-interest credit. In 2017, however, the South Carolina project was abandoned due to huge cost overruns and schedule slippages. The project in Georgia continues despite a doubling of its estimated cost and at a delay of at least five years in its completion. These adverse developments caused the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric Co., the world’s leading designer of nuclear power plants in the 1970s. Given this history, it is generally agreed that US utilities are unlikely to make significant new investments in nuclear power. This is true despite the claims of advocates for “advanced” sodium-cooled and molten-salt reactors. Although beloved by some nuclear engineers, these are designs from the 1960s that were abandoned because they could not compete with the water-cooled reactors that dominate nuclear power today. Similarly, the “small modular reactors” that the US Department of Energy has been promoting for the past decade also appear to be noncompetitive. For the foreseeable future, therefore, the contribution of nuclear power to the US electricity supply will be almost entirely from the existing fleet of reactors. Even though the oldest US power reactor has only operated for 51 years, and the 11 power reactors that shut down during the past decade were all less than 50 years old, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already begun to extend the licenses of US nuclear power plants to 80 years of operation ……..Risk-informed regulation or deregulation? Our protection against future accidents depends on expert and vigilant regulation. Unfortunately, as with the Federal Aviation Administration, which was captured by Boeing, resulting in the avoidable crashes of two new Boeing 737-MAX aircraft in 2018 and 2019, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission too is currently compromised by the industry it regulates. Because of the industry’s economic situation, the NRC has been pressed by its congressional overseers and the nuclear industry not to mandate costly safety upgrades such as those costing more than a billion dollars per reactor that regulators in France and Japan required after the Fukushima-Daiichi accident. “Risk-informed regulation” is the way in which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has justified avoiding imposing costly upgrades. It basically involves doing a cost-benefit analysis for any proposed new safety regulation for already-licensed nuclear power plants. The costs considered are those that would be incurred by the nuclear utilities if the safety improvement were required. The benefits are the projected reductions of the probability-weighted number of cancer deaths and losses of property due to accidents. One problem with risk-informed regulation is that probability calculations for major accidents are very uncertain and subject to arbitrary assumptions. An example is the commission’s decision to assume that there is zero probability that terrorists could cause a large release because regulatory requirements have been established for protections against terrorist attack: Because various studies and regulatory changes implemented following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have considered security issues associated with [spent fuel pools], malevolent acts are not included in this analysis. On the basis of that logic, the probability of criminal acts should be zero because we have crime-prevention programs, Major errors in consequence calculations also are buried in the commission’s massive, opaque regulatory analyses. For example, the commission underestimated by more than an order of magnitude the economic losses due to a release of radioactivity from a spent fuel fire 100 times larger than that from the Fukushima accident by: 1) only taking into account losses within a 50-miles radius (see Figure 1); 2 on original) secretly increasing the threshold contamination level for long-term population relocation by a factor of three in its consequence calculations; and 3) assuming that huge areas could be decontaminated within a year, in complete disregard to actual post-Fukushima experience in Japan. Correction of these errors would have increased the estimated average cost of a spent fuel pool fire in the United States to about $2 trillion and forced the commission to end its unsafe practice of allowing US nuclear utilities to dense-pack their spent fuel pools up to five times their original design capacity. The opaqueness of the cost-benefit analyses—along with assumptions such as those above that the commission refuses to change when challenged—suggests that these analyses may be deliberately skewed to avoid requiring nuclear power plant operators to make costly investments in safety at a time when many plants are in a precarious economic situation. That suspicion is consistent with an account of the origin of risk-informed regulation given by former US Sen. Pete Domenici in his 2004 memoir, A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy………….. When the commission’s staff urged that, despite the results of the cost-benefit analysis, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should require the improvements because of “the importance of containment systems within the [commission’s] defense-in-depth philosophy,” the nuclear industry mobilized a furious letter of opposition from the Republican majority of the House oversight committee and the majority on the commission voted against the staff recommendation. Under the Trump administration, the commission moved further toward industry self-regulation………….. In response to the commission’s request, the plant operators of 55 of the 61 US nuclear power plants reported that their plants faced flood heights beyond those they had been designed against. But upgrades in seismic and flood protection could be costly, and some plants might close down if required to make those investments. The Trump-appointed commission majority overruled the staff and decided that any upgrades would be voluntary, not compulsory……… Rescuing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Biden administration has an opportunity to fix this situation. After President Biden won the election, NRC Chair Christine Svinicki announced she would resign on his inauguration day, sparing herself the indignity of being replaced as chair as President Trump had replaced her predecessor three days after Trump’s inauguration. This left the 5-person commission with both a vacancy and a need for a new chair. As a first step, President Biden appointed one of the Democratic commissioners, Christopher Hanson, as chair. With regard to the vacancy, by statute, no more than three members of the commission can be from the same party. Of the remaining four commissioners, two are Democrat and two are Republican appointees. The president therefore can fill the vacancy. With a knowledgeable and independent nominee, the NRC could be put back in the middle of the regulatory road. Commissioners are subject to Senate confirmation, however, and if the nuclear utilities deem a candidate to be anti–nuclear energy, industry opposition could make confirmation impossible. It is therefore important to find a nominee for the next vacancy who is knowledgeable but cannot be credibly attacked by the industry as “anti-nuclear.” At the same time, however, the Biden administration should not lean over backward—as some previous administrations have—and require advance clearance for its nominee from the nuclear industry. It is critical that the US have an independent and credible Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Historically, the NRC has had a strong staff and should be able to recover from the anti-regulatory bias of its recent majority. If there is a new leadership that is willing to endorse real safety improvements while avoiding to the extent possible accelerating the demise of the industry, the staff will support it. Informing regulatory decisions with cost-benefit analyses can be part of the process, but the biases that have been built into the process will have to be fixed, and the large uncertainties in estimates of the probabilities of low-frequency events will have to be taken into account in the policy-making process https://thebulletin.org/2021/01/biden-can-rescue-the-nuclear-regulatory-commission-from-industry-capture/ |
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It is all over for Britain’s £20bn Wylfa nuclear project
Wylfa: End for £20bn nuclear plant bid as plans ditched, It is all over for the £20bn project to build a new nuclear power plant on Anglesey, after developers dropped their planning bid.
Horizon Nuclear Power has pulled a request to approve reactor designs at Wylfa, blaming UK government funding options as one reason.
Japanese backers Hitachi pulled out of the development last September.
Another firm has since unveiled plans for a smaller hybrid nuclear and wind plant on a separate site at Wylfa.
The Development Consent Order (DCO) process, which is the name given to planning applications for major UK infrastructure projects such as Wylfa, has been under consideration since June 2018.
A decision was due to be made on the plan by the UK’s business and energy secretary at the end of April, following a series of requests by Horizon to extend the process while it held talks with other interested parties.
But Horizon has now written to the Planning Inspectorate and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, confirming the end of the troubled project.
Its letter said negotiations on the future of Wylfa had been “positive and encouraging”.
However, it added: “They have not, unfortunately, led to any definitive proposal that would have allowed the transfer to some new development entity.
“In light of this and in the absence of a new funding policy from HM Government, Hitachi Ltd., has taken the decision to wind-up Horizon as an active development entity by 31 March 2021.
“As a result, we must now, regretfully, withdraw the application.”…… https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-55833186
Universities in collusion with nuclear industry
U.S. universities have continued to build connections to the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Although students and faculty have opposed university participation in nuclear weapons research and development at various points in the last 70 years, such participation continues.
November 15, 2020 by beyondnuclearinternational https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/2663585/posts/3150281214 An ICAN report
Universities across the United States are identified in this report for activities ranging from directly managing laboratories that design nuclear weapons to recruiting and training the next generation of nuclear weapons scientists. Much of universities’ nuclear weapons work is kept secret from students and faculty by classified research policies and undisclosed contracts with the Defense Department and the Energy Department. The following is the executive summary from ICAN’s report: Schools of Mass Destruction, with some changes made for timeliness.
Over the next ten years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates U.S. taxpayers will pay nearly $500 billion to maintain and modernize their country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, or almost $100,000 per minute. A separate estimate brings the total over the next 30 years to an estimated $1.7 trillion. In a July 2019 report, National Nuclear Security Administrator Lisa Gordon-Haggerty wrote, “The nuclear security enterprise is at its busiest since the demands of the Cold War era.”
In addition to large amounts of funding, enacting these upgrades requires significant amounts of scientific, technical and human capital. To a large extent, the U.S. government and its contractors have turned to the nation’s universities to provide this capital.
Over the next ten years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates U.S. taxpayers will pay nearly $500 billion to maintain and modernize their country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, or almost $100,000 per minute. A separate estimate brings the total over the next 30 years to an estimated $1.7 trillion. In a July 2019 report, National Nuclear Security Administrator Lisa Gordon-Haggerty wrote, “The nuclear security enterprise is at its busiest since the demands of the Cold War era.”
Despite these debates, U.S. universities have continued to build connections to the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Although students and faculty have opposed university participation in nuclear weapons research and development at various points in the last 70 years, such participation continues.
Universities involve themselves in the nuclear weapons complex through the four channels listed below. In return for this engagement, universities receive funding, access to research facilities, and specific career opportunities for students.
1) Direct Management
A handful of universities directly manage nuclear weapons related activities on behalf of the federal government, retaining contracts worth billions of dollars per year collectively. These include the University of California, Texas A&M University, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Rochester.
2) Institutional Partnerships
Many of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) sites advertise collaborative agreements with local and national universities. These formal agreements allow the institutions to cooperate on research and share personnel and expertise. They can also provide university researchers access to funding and advanced facilities in the NNSA laboratories. The report highlights more than 30 such agreements with schools in 18 states.
3) Research Programs and Partnerships
In addition to formal institutional partnerships, numerous connections exist between universities and the nuclear weapons complex at the research project level. In a report delivered to Congress in July 2019, the NNSA highlights that more than $65 million in grants were delivered to academic institutions in the last year to support stockpile stewardship. When including grants and subcontracts from the NNSA labs as well, the total amount of funding to universities for research may be higher than $150 million per year.
4) Workforce Development Programs
Former Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry has written that finding “the next generation workforce of world-class scientists, engineers and technicians is a major priority.” Through university partnerships, vocational training programs and research fellowships, the NNSA creates employment pipelines for the development of its future workforce.
A primary goal of this report is to facilitate a shared understanding of university connections to nuclear weapons research and development. A common factual basis will help communities of university faculty, students and administrations engage in robust internal debates and take action. Universities would not willingly participate today in the production of chemical and biological weapons; for the same humanitarian reasons, no university should seek an association with the other category of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons.
While American universities have played a key role in the development and continuation of nuclear weapons, they can now join U.S. cities and states that have rejected U.S. nuclear weapons and called on the federal government to support nuclear reductions and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. In light of the research presented, this report offers the following recommendations to universities:
Recommendations
• Provide greater transparency into connections with the nuclear weapons complex;
• Stop directly managing nuclear weapons production sites and dissolve research contracts solely related to nuclear weapons production;
• For contracts with dual-purpose research applications, demand greater transparency and create specific processes for ethical review of this research;
• Advocate for reinvestment of weapons activities funding to non-proliferation and environmental remediation efforts; and
• Join cities and state legislatures in urging the federal government to support the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and reverse course on nuclear arms control backsliding.
See the full list of universities.
The above is the Executive Summary of ICAN’s report on US Universities. Read the full report. Beyond Nuclear is a member of ICAN.
In addition to large amounts of funding, enacting these upgrades requires significant amounts of scientific, technical and human capital. To a large extent, the U.S. government and its contractors have turned to the nation’s universities to provide this capital.
At the same time, the United States is shirking its previous commitments to nuclear arms control and reducing nuclear risks despite its obligation under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue good-faith measures towards nuclear disarmament.
In August 2019, the United States officially withdrew from the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, testing a treaty-prohibited missile shortly thereafter. The Trump Administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review expanded the circumstances under which the United States would consider the first use of nuclear weapons and called for the development of two new sea-based low-yield nuclear weapon systems.
Internationally, many member states of the United Nations have recognized the devastating humanitarian and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons: debating, adopting, signing and now ratifying the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Far right American extremists could pose nuclear terrorism risks
Sarkar Published Op-Ed on Domestic Nuclear Terrorism. https://www.bu.edu/pardeeschool/2021/01/27/sarkar-published-op-ed-on-domestic-nuclear-terrorism/ 27 Jan 21, Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Jayita Sarkar, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an op-ed in the Washington Post discussing the threat of domestic nuclear terrorism in the United States.
An excerpt:
The key to preventing such a catastrophic attack will be moving beyond a one-dimensional understanding of terrorism as the violent threat of radical Islam, and better understanding the different ways in which far-right domestic terrorism has grown in the United States and the specific threats this brings. Despite ample evidence to support the concern that insider threats pose high security risks in nuclear and radiological environments, little has been done at the policy level.
The full op-ed can be read on The Washington Post‘s website.
Jayita Sarkar is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. Her expertise is in the history of U.S. foreign policy, nuclear proliferation, the global Cold War, South Asia and Western Europe. Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Cold War Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Cold War History, International History Review, and elsewhere. Dr. Sarkar obtained a doctorate in International History from the Graduate Institute Geneva in Switzerland. Read more about her here.
Nuclear weapons now illegal – only rogue states have them, Puget Sound should not!
Only Rogue States Have Nuclear Weapons, https://limitlesslife.wordpress.com/2021/01/27/only-rogue-states-have-nuclear-weapons/ By David Swanson, Executive Director of World BEYOND War, and Elizabeth Murray, of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, published by Kitsap Sun, January 24, 2021
From January 18 to February 14, four large billboards are going up around Seattle that proclaim “Nuclear Weapons Are Now Illegal. Get them out of Puget Sound!”
What can this possibly mean? Nuclear weapons may be unpleasant, but what is illegal about them, and how can they be in Puget Sound?
Since 1970, under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, most nations have been forbidden to acquire nuclear weapons, and those already possessing them or at least those party to the treaty, such as the United States have been obliged to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
Needless to say, the U.S. and other nuclear-armed governments have spent 50 years not doing this, and in recent years the U.S. government has torn up treaties limiting nuclear weapons, and invested heavily in building more of them.
Under the same treaty, for 50 years, the U.S. government has been obliged “not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly.” Yet, the U.S. military keeps nuclear weapons in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. We can dispute whether that state of affairs violates the treaty, but not whether it outrages millions of people.
Three years ago, 122 nations voted to create a new treaty to ban the very possession or sale of nuclear weapons, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize. On January 22, 2021, this new treaty becomes law in over 50 nations that have formally ratified it, a number that is rising steadily and is widely expected to reach a majority of the world’s nations in the near future.
What difference does it make for nations with no nuclear weapons to ban them? What does it have to do with the United States? Well, most nations banned landmines and cluster bombs. The United States did not. But the weapons were stigmatized. Global investors took their funding away. U.S. companies stopped making them, and the U.S. military reduced and may have finally ceased its use of them. Divestment from nuclear weapons by major financial institutions has taken off in recent years, and can safely be expected to accelerate.
Change, including on such practices as slavery and child labor, has always been far more global than one might infer from the typical U.S. history text. Globally, nuclear weapons possession is becoming thought of as the behavior of a rogue state. One of those rogue states keeps some of its stigmatized weaponry in Puget Sound.
The Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor hosts eight Trident submarines and arguably the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the world. Former Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen famously characterized Kitsap-Bangor as “the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.” New nuclear-armed submarines are now planned for deployment to Kitsap-Bangor. The relatively tiny nuclear weapons on these submarines, horrifyingly characterized by U.S. military planners as “more usable” are two to three times as powerful as what was dropped on Hiroshima.
Do the people of the Seattle area support this? Certainly we have never been consulted. Keeping nuclear weapons in Puget Sound is not democratic. It’s also not sustainable. It takes funding badly needed for people and our environment and puts it into environmentally destructive weaponry that increases the risk of nuclear holocaust. Scientists’ Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than ever before. If you want to help dial it back, or even eliminate it, you can get involved with the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action and with World BEYOND War.
“It is cheaper to deal with climate crisis than to leave it:” Biden takes lead on Climate Day — RenewEconomy
A raft of major new executive orders from Joe Biden’s team adds another tonne of pressure onto Australia’s stagnant government. The post “It is cheaper to deal with climate crisis than to leave it:” Biden takes lead on Climate Day appeared first on RenewEconomy.
“It is cheaper to deal with climate crisis than to leave it:” Biden takes lead on Climate Day — RenewEconomy
Rupert Murdoch gets phoney Australia Day Award, thanks to fossil fuel and finance industries
Murdoch’s Australia Day award — brought to you by miners and bankers
Those who promote and profit from fossil fuels have appropriated the phoney awards handed out by the obscure Australia Day Foundation. https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/01/27/rupert-murdoch-australia-day-foundation/– DAVID HARDAKER, JAN 27, 2021
On the face of it it looks to be an extraordinary decision: a prestigious honour bestowed on the media mogul whose recent hits in the United States include helping fan an insurrection against democracy via Fox News and in Australia leading the way on climate change denialism in cahoots with the Morrison government it supports.
The foundation and its awards are backed by a group of international conglomerates including mining giants BHP, Rio Tinto, Woodside and Anglo-American. Australia’s big banks, the National Australia Bank and Westpac, are also in on the act. Another leading name is CQS, the wealthy London hedge fund founded by Australian business figure Sir Michael Hintze.
Hintze is not well known in Australia, but he is at the centre of a powerful network of business and conservative UK and Australian politicians. As we reported last year he has been a force behind the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation which has given voice to the views of Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell.
Nominally a business outfit, the foundation also blurs the lines with government. It is sponsored by Austrade and uses Australia House, home to the Australian High Commission, in London to hand out its “Australia Day” awards to UK and Australian figures of its choosing.
This year it gave its honorary Australian of the Year in the UK award to Conservative British MP Liz Truss who promoted the cause of Abbott as a trade adviser to the UK government. Past recipients have included Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Hintze is not well known in Australia, but he is at the centre of a powerful network of business and conservative UK and Australian politicians. As we reported last year he has been a force behind the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation which has given voice to the views of Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell.
Nominally a business outfit, the foundation also blurs the lines with government. It is sponsored by Austrade and uses Australia House, home to the Australian High Commission, in London to hand out its “Australia Day” awards to UK and Australian figures of its choosing.
This year it gave its honorary Australian of the Year in the UK award to Conservative British MP Liz Truss who promoted the cause of Abbott as a trade adviser to the UK government. Past recipients have included Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Hintze is not well known in Australia, but he is at the centre of a powerful network of business and conservative UK and Australian politicians. As we reported last year he has been a force behind the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation which has given voice to the views of Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell.
Nominally a business outfit, the foundation also blurs the lines with government. It is sponsored by Austrade and uses Australia House, home to the Australian High Commission, in London to hand out its “Australia Day” awards to UK and Australian figures of its choosing.
This year it gave its honorary Australian of the Year in the UK award to Conservative British MP Liz Truss who promoted the cause of Abbott as a trade adviser to the UK government. Past recipients have included Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Why Samantha Power should not hold public office in USA administration
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JANUARY 27, 2021 BY DAVIDSWANSON https://davidswanson.org/why-samantha-power-should-not-hold-public-office/ It took a variety of approaches to market the 2003 war on Iraq. For some it was to be a defense against an imagined threat. For others it was false revenge. But for Samantha Power it was philanthropy. She said at the time, “An American intervention likely will improve the lives of the Iraqis. Their lives could not get worse, I think it’s quite safe to say.” Needless to say, it wasn’t safe to say that.Did Power learn a lesson? No, she went on to promote a war on Libya, which proved disastrous.
Then did she learn? No, she took an explicit position against learning, publicly arguing for the duty not to dwell on the results in Libya as that might impede willingness to wage war on Syria. Samantha Power may never learn, but we can. We can stop allowing her to hold public office. We can tell every U.S. Senator to reject her nomination to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Samantha Power, as “Human Rights Director” at the National Security Council and Ambassador to the United Nations, supported the U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen and Israeli attacks on Palestine, denouncing criticisms of Israel and helping block international responses to the attacks on Yemen. Power has been a major proponent of hostility toward Russia and of unfounded and exaggerated allegations against Russia. Power has, in lengthy articles and books, shown remarkably little (if any) regret for all the wars she’s promoted, choosing instead to focus on her regret for missed opportunities for wars that didn’t happen, especially in Rwanda — which she misleadingly depicts as a situation not caused by militarism, but in which a military attack would have supposedly reduced rather than increased suffering. We don’t need war advocates who use more humanitarian language. We need peace advocates. President Biden has nominated a far less enthusiastic war proponent than usual to direct the CIA, but it’s not clear how much that will matter if Power is running USAID. According to Allen Weinstein, a co-founder of the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization funded by USAID, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” USAID has financed efforts aimed at overthrowing governments in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The last thing we need right now is a USAID run by a habitual “intervener.” Here’s a link to an online email-your-senators campaign to reject Samantha Power. |
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Fukushima nuclear clean-up delayed as new radioactive contamination found
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Newly found Fukushima plant contamination may delay cleanup as thousands still unable to return home https://www.9news.com.au/world/japan-nuclear-explosion-new-fukushima-plant-contamination-fears-leave-thousands-unable-to-return/afae1775-bcbf-472a-98a0-313efc1e7335, By Associated Press Jan 27, 2021 A draft investigation report into the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown, adopted by Japanese nuclear regulators on Wednesday, says it has detected dangerously high levels of radioactive contamination at two of the three reactors, adding to concerns about decommissioning challenges.
The interim report said data collected by investigators showed that the sealing plugs sitting atop the Number Two and Number Three reactor containment vessels were as fatally contaminated as nuclear fuel debris that had melted and fell to the bottom of the reactors following the March 2011 tsunami and earthquake.
The experts said the bottom of the sealed plug, a triple-layered concrete disc-shaped lid 12 metres in diameter sitting atop the primary containment vessel, is coated with high levels of radioactive Cesium 137.
The Number One reactor lid was less contaminated, presumably because the plug was slightly knocked out of place and disfigured due to the impact of the hydrogen explosion, the report said.
The experts measured radiation levels at multiple locations inside the three reactor buildings, and examined how radioactive materials moved and safety equipment functioned during the accident.
They also said venting attempt at Unit Two to prevent reactor damage never worked, and that safety measures and equipment designs still need to be examined.
The lid contamination does not affect the environment as the containment vessels are enclosed inside the reactor buildings.
The report did not give further details about if or how the lid contamination would affect the decommissioning progress.
Nuclear Regulation Commission Chairman Toyoshi Fuketa called the findings “extremely serious” and said they would make melted fuel removal “more difficult.”
He said figuring out how to remove the lids would be a major challenge.
Removing an estimated 900 tons of melted fuel debris from three reactors is a daunting task expected to take decades, and officials have not been able to describe exactly when or how it may end.
The Fukushima plant was to start removing melted fuel debris from Unit Two, the first of three reactors, later this year ahead of the 10th anniversary of the accident.
But in December, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the government announced a delay until 2022.
They said the development of a robotic arm for the debris removal — a joint project with Britain — has been delayed due to the pandemic.
Under the current plan, a remote-controlled robotic arm will be inserted from the side of the reactor to reach the molten fuel mixed with melted parts and concrete floor of the reactor.
Eventually the lids also would have to be removed, but their contamination is a major setback.
The team of experts entered areas inside the three reactors that were previously highly contaminated and inaccessible after radiation levels came down significantly.
They’re seeking data and evidence before they get lost in the cleanup.
Massive radiation from the reactors has caused some 160,000 people to evacuate from around the plant.
Tens of thousands are still unable to return home.
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Get the Nuclear Weapons Out of Germany
What can this possibly mean? Nuclear weapons may be unpleasant, but what exactly is newly illegal about them, and what do they have to do with Germany?
Since 1970, under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, most nations have been forbidden to acquire nuclear weapons, and those already possessing them — or at least those party to the treaty, such as the United States — have been obliged to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”……….
Change, including on such practices as slavery and child labor, has always been far more global than one might infer from the typical self-centered U.S. history text. Globally, nuclear weapons possession is becoming thought of as the behavior of a rogue state — well, a rogue state and its collaborators.
Can the German government be brought up to international standards? Belgium has already come very close to evicting its nuclear weapons. Sooner rather than later, a nation with U.S. nukes will become the first to toss them out and to ratify the new treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Even sooner, some other member of NATO will probably sign onto the new treaty, putting it at odds with NATO’s involvement in the hosting of nuclear weapons in Europe. Eventually Europe as a whole will find its way to the anti-apocalypse position. Does Germany want to lead the way to progress or bring up the rear?
New nuclear weapons that could be deployed in Germany, if Germany allows it, are horrifyingly characterized by U.S. military planners as “more usable,” despite being far more powerful than what destroyed Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Do the people of Germany support this? Certainly we have never been consulted. Keeping nuclear weapons in Germany is not democratic. It is also not sustainable. It takes funding badly needed for people and environmental protection and puts it into environmentally destructive weaponry that increases the risk of nuclear holocaust. Scientists’ Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than ever before. If you want to help dial it back, or even eliminate it, you can get involved with World BEYOND War. ……….. https://davidswanson.org/get-the-nuclear-weapons-out-of-germany/
Doomsday Clock stays at 100 seconds to midnight
 The most dangerous situation humanity has ever faced, by Edmund G. Brown Jr. and Robert Rosner January 27, 2021 (CNN) For a year now, the world has been ravaged by the horrors of Covid-19. It has caused millions to lose their jobs, overwhelmed health care systems and dramatically changed how we live. The disease has killed more than 2 million people and infected 100 million around the globe.Even so, we face fundamentally greater threats to humanity than this pandemic. We refer to the catastrophic dangers which nuclear weapons and climate change pose — dangers that preceded this pandemic and will persist long after it ends. Unfortunately, and unlike the priority given to developing a vaccine against the virus, little progress was made to reduce the danger of the world’s nuclear weapons arsenal or to effectively slow the carbon emissions warming our planet in 2020. The sudden appearance and confused response to the virus makes all too clear how ill-prepared the world can be when it has to deal with an unprecedented threat of global magnitude.
This is why the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Wednesday that the hands of the iconic Doomsday Clock remain at 100 seconds to midnight — as close to the end of humanity as the clock has ever been. The temptation, of course, in a dark hour is to cling to even the faintest signs of light and hope. And the truth is that there are some encouraging signs now emerging. However, we continue to teeter at the brink and moving the Clock away from midnight would provide false hope at a time when urgent action is what is needed. n 2020, the nuclear powers continued their blind and bellicose march toward catastrophe — with the recklessness of spending to “modernize” weapons systems matched only by recklessness of world leaders’ rhetoric. As we see it, the potential for the world to stumble into nuclear war increased last year. Despite this looming danger, there is little dialogue, but lots of accusation and blame shifting…………. As we noted in the 2020 Doomsday Clock statement, the existential threats of nuclear weapons and climate change have intensified in recent years because of a threat multiplier: the continuing corruption of the information ecosphere on which democracy and public decision-making depend. This “infodemic” came into even greater focus as governments struggled to contain and confront the pandemic. The now widespread and wanton disregard for science and the large-scale embrace of conspiratorial nonsense — often driven by political figures and partisan media — undermined the ability of responsible national and global leaders to protect the security of their constituents in 2020. Nonetheless, we do see some positive developments that could turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock next year. The election of a US President who respects science, acknowledges climate change as a profound threat and supports international cooperation puts the world on a better footing to address global problems. And the new administration has already taken two meaningful steps: The US is rejoining the Paris climate accord and agreed to extend the New START arms control agreement with Russia for another five years. In the context of a post-pandemic return to relative stability, more action rooted in science and multilateral cooperation could create the basis for a safer and saner world.,,,, We remain perilously close to catastrophe. The pandemic laid bare our shared vulnerability. Now, the question is whether we choose to recognize that vulnerability with respect to the climate and nuclear threats. The imperative must be to rise above narrow nationalism and embrace planetary realism, recognizing that nations, no matter how different, share profoundly common interests. It remains 100 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous situation that humanity has ever faced. It is time for all to take the actions needed to — quite literally — save the world. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/27/opinions/doomsday-clock-dangerous-situation-brown-rosner/index.html |
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Reviving the Iran nuclear deal will test Joe Biden
Reviving the Iran nuclear deal will test Joe Biden, Tehran says the ball is in America’s court, but Washington first wants compliance, Ft.com, DAVID GARDNER, 27 Jan 21,
US president Joe Biden’s incoming foreign policy team, full of veterans from the Barack Obama administrations, will have no illusions about how tricky it will be to refloat the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that was torpedoed by Donald Trump in 2018. They know from direct experience how canny Iranian negotiators are — and how antagonistic relations have become with the Islamic Republic. ………
Ho hum – another delay, another cost rise – for the beleaguered Hinkley nuclear power project
expected to rise again, the energy firm behind the plant revealed. EDF said
significant progress has been made on the site in Somerset but the start of
electricity generation is now expected in June 2026, compared with previous
estimates of an opening date at the end of 2025. The cost for the project
is now estimated at between £22 billion and £23 billion, compared with
projected costs of £21.5 billion and £22.5 billion announced in 2019. The
coronavirus crisis led to a number of changes on the Hinkley site,
including reducing the number of workers to enable social distancing, and
concentrating on the most critical areas of construction.
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/uks-new-nuclear-power-plant-4932726
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