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Media hype about nuclear fusion is designed to make research on thermonuclear weapons look acceptable

Gordon Edwards, 26 Dec 22, The recent worldwide media hype about fusion energy saving the world by providing clean energy in the foreseeable future, based on a single 85 nanosecond burst of fusion heat triggered by a battery of 192 lasers focussed on a peppercorn-sized pellet at a US weapons laboratory, is extraordinarily unbalanced and deceptive reporting. I believe it to be fundamentally fraudulent, and quite contrary to the Pugwash movement’s commitment to promoting scientific, evidence-based policymaking. 

The distortion of truth on this topic is designed to make research on thermonuclear weapons more acceptable to the public and to elected representatives. It will have no near-term applications that will be of any use in tackling climate change. To assert the contrary is naive at best, or manipulative and dishonest at worst.

A balanced debate is not achievable when one side of the debate is so unbalanced to begin with. It is not advisable to dilute every climate change discussion by giving equal time to climate deniers, nor to include creationist theories in every discussion of evolution, nor to invite anti-vaxers in all discussions of the covid pandemic. Similarly it is not helpful to have fusion energy enthusiasts distracting our attention completely away from the military nature of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Labs,

The following two paragraphs by M.V. Ramana put the matter quite succinctly:(

See https://thewire.in/the-sciences/nuclear-fusion-energy-breakthrough-celebration )

“On December 13, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had reached a “milestone”: the achievement of “ignition” in nuclear fusion earlier in the month. That announcement was hailed by many as a step into a fossil fuel free energy future. US senate majority leader Charles Schumer, for example, claimed that we were “on the precipice of a future no longer reliant on fossil fuels but instead powered by new clean fusion energy”.

“But in truth, generating electrical power from fusion commercially or at an industrial scale is likely unattainable in any realistic sense, at least within the lifetimes of most readers of this article. At the same time, this experiment will contribute far more to US efforts to further develop its terrifyingly destructive nuclear weapons arsenal.”

December 26, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, spinbuster | Leave a comment

  Why all the hysteria over not clapping for Zelensky?

Tucker Carlson rips comparisons of Ukraine’s Zelenskyy to Winston Churchill

Fox News 23 Dec 22 You can’t even really call it news anymore. It’s some kind of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” scenario on display every single day. Yesterday, last night, the president of Ukraine showed up in Congress wearing a green sweatshirt and cargo pants for maximum disrespect, and demanded the United States continue to spend more on his country’s border security than we spend on our own. That actually happened. 

It was a pretty cheeky performance if you think about it. But like Sam Bankman-Fried before him, Zelenskyy put a salesman’s gloss on what otherwise might look very much like a scam. So the tens of billions of dollars you’ll be sending me is not charity, Zelenskyy explained. It’s not a gift. It’s not like the 20 bucks you gave the homeless guy at Union Station this morning for a quart of vodka. No, it’s not that at all. This money, Zelenskyy said, is, quote, “an investment.” Oh, an investment. 

So what exactly are the terms of this investment now that we’re talking finance? When do we get our dividend checks? Well, Zelenskyy didn’t specify that. Though, at one point in his speech, he did provide a hint. Are the tens of billions of dollars you’re sending me with no audit and no concrete proof of what I’m actually doing with it, will all that money be “enough,” Zelenskyy asked rhetorically. Answer: “Not really.” 

“Not really.” In other words, the return on our investment in Ukraine will be more pitches for more investments in Ukraine. Give me money so I can demand more money. That’s what Zelenskyy promised us last night.

And under certain circumstances, that might actually be fine. If nothing else, Zelenskyy is quite an audacious young entrepreneur with the kind of pluck and fast-talking shamelessness where you think, “This guy is either going to wind up in prison or very rich, and maybe both.” And there are times when you might want to throw a kid like that a few bucks just to see where it goes. You don’t know. 

But unfortunately, this is not one of those times. The United States is flat out of money and not just in some abstract PowerPoint presentation kind of way, where we show you graphs of the national debt and we all pretend to be shocked and horrified. No, no, no. The United States is broke in a real way, meaning we can no longer afford to take care of our citizens.

For example, 15 million Americans are about to lose their healthcare coverage under Medicaid. Now, these are people who got coverage during COVID, but will now lose that coverage thanks to a provision in the $1.7 trillion spending bill that’s about to become law. As CNBC reports, governors of various states have informed the Biden administration that the cost of keeping all those people on Medicaid is “too high.” And it is high. Undoubtedly, it is high. 

How high is it? Well, over the last three years since COVID began, the federal government spent about $100 billion in extra Medicaid payments to Americans. That’s a lot of money. How much is it? Well, it turns out that $100 billion is roughly what Congress has sent to our fast-talking Ukrainian friend in the sweatshirt in less than a single year. Just for comparison, just you would know what the priorities are in Washington, your health care is just too expensive. Sorry. And your border is too. Can’t afford it. But for the strongman who runs Ukraine, no cost is too high……………………………………………

But here’s the interesting thing. Almost every person in the room clapped like a seal. So no matter what that man said — Send me more money! I command you! Send me more money! We’re taking care of it the most responsible ways — they applaud, all of them, almost like they have to. …………

Now there are 435 members of the House of Representatives, and they’re Republicans and Democrats. And famously, they don’t get along. They don’t agree on anything. They can’t even pass a budget because they disagree on everything very bitterly. And yet, when a foreign leader shows up in cargo pants to tell them lies and give them orders, they all applaud. That’s pretty weird behavior in a democracy if you think about it. The fractious debate we hear so much about doesn’t exist. And in fact, looking at the screen last night, it didn’t really look like a democracy, to be honest. 

Clapping is mandatory as long as Zelenskyy is speaking. Now there were a few who didn’t obey. That would include Matt Gaetz of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado. And when they didn’t stand up and applaud, they found out the hard way what happens to people who dare not to applaud. 

NBC News took off right after them. That was the headline for NBC. Its house “historian” Michael Beschloss declared this: “For any members of Congress who refuse to clap for Zelenskyy, we need to know from them exactly why. We need to know why.” Thought crime alert. You’ve been reported as not applauding. Explain yourself, pleb. And then Beschloss went on television to drive home the point. Our sources have reported you are not clapping. Watch this.[on original]

……………………………. Why wouldn’t you clap for a man who banned a Christian denomination? A man who arrested priests, raided monasteries, seized churches outlawed opposition media outlets, outlawed political parties that opposed him, threw his primary political opponent in jail. Why would you applaud for a man like that? Do you love Putin? Are you opposed to democracy? Explain yourself. That’s what he’s saying. That’s what they’re all saying.

It’s absurd. What they’re describing is the opposite of democracy. There’s no democracy in Ukraine, obviously. Banning a Christian denomination. Shut up. But he did. ………….

Is it possible that the more ludicrous the lie they tell you, the fewer questions they can tolerate about it, the less dissent they can put up with because they fear the whole edifice might crumble if they allow one person to ask one reasonable question. It’s possible that’s what’s happening. ……………………………………….

GEN. BARRY MCCAFFREY: This is a historical figure. This guy actually can be compared to Winston Churchill, to Lincoln in 1860.

So that kind of solves a mystery from last night. How can any self-respecting American sit there when some foreign dictator shows up wearing his workout clothes in the US Congress and starts demanding, with a very apparent lack of gratitude, that we send him tens of billions of dollars when we’re running out of money? How could you sit and put up with that? And then drapes a Ukrainian flag in our Congress. How could you put up with that? 

Well, because you’re not a self-respecting American. You have no self-respect. You have no dignity. You don’t care. You’ll say anything. You’ll tell any lie. You’ll repeat any talking point. And when someone from the DNC or the White House sends you a note by text, saying, “Compare him to Churchill,” you do because you have no self-respect. That’s the problem. So while millions of Americans can’t afford to go to the doctor and we have no border, our leaders and our media are imagining they’re very close to Winston Churchill. ………………….

none of the lawmakers who clapped yesterday had any idea either. They’re clapping for regime change. They’re clapping for an uncertain and incredibly dangerous future. It’s not getting the Russian military out of Ukraine. It’s much more than that. And they don’t want to know more. 

And you know what they don’t care about? You, your health care, your southern border, your children, your schools, your country. They don’t care. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-why-all-hysteria-not-clapping-zelenskyy—

December 26, 2022 Posted by | spinbuster | Leave a comment

In protecting the biosphere from plutonium and other wastes, the first step is to stop producing them

paulrodenlearning 27 Dec 22, We have all of the wastes from the nuclear weapons and nuclear power program. We don’t know what to do with it and it and they must be kept out of the biosphere forever. So, the first step is to stop making more wastes. Shut down the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industry.

The second step is to store the waste in a secure, stable facility that can withstand earthquakes, accidents, terrorist, and or nuclear/conventional attack for billions of years. As the former Congressman John Hall and former rock star wrote in his 1980 solo album, “Power” in his song, “Plutonium is Forever.”

Has everybody forgotten about Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island? Nuclear power is too dangerous, too expensive and totally unnecessary for our energy needs. Just go to the Websites of The Solutions Project and the Rocky Mountain Institute.

We have the resources and the technology to transition to renewable energy now. All we lack is the political will to do so, because the elected leaders in Washington, DC and in our State Houses have all been bought off by the nuclear and fossil fuel industries by their unlimited and unregulated campaign PAC donations, which remain anonymous. They have the best Congress and State Legislatures that money can buy. “Money talks, B.S. walks and we are all running a “very distant” third.”

December 26, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

The Nuclear Subsidy Tango of Bill Gates and Joe Manchin

Bill Gates sold West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin on this year’s Democratic climate spending blowout as a way to put unemployed coal workers to work building advanced nuclear reactors.

Now we learn, belatedly, that these projects depend on Russia for fuel and will cost taxpayers more than
advertised. The Energy Department last year awarded up to $2 billion for an advanced nuclear reactor “demonstration” project in Wyoming being developed by TerraPower, a company Mr. Gates founded. These advanced reactors have been promoted because they take up significantly less space than conventional reactors and could theoretically use reprocessed nuclear fuel.

Wall St Journal 22nd Dec 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-subsidy-tango-of-bill-gates-and-joe-manchin-terrapower-climate-spending-john-barrasso-jennifer-granholm-11671741449

December 26, 2022 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Zelensky’s diaspora delegation led by economic hit-woman who led plunder of Ukraine

the conflict with Russia has provided Zelensky with justification to strip 70 percent of Ukraine’s workers of collective bargaining rights and arrest everyone from his political rivals to socialist organizers – a wave of repression

With tens of billions more on the way to Ukraine, the country’s debt to international creditors continues to grow, setting the stage for another crushing wave of austerity after the war. The diaspora operatives I encountered on their way into the Capitol gallery appeared poised to guide the plunder from the comfort of suburban America.

The Grayzone, MAX BLUMENTHAL·DECEMBER 23, 2022 The Grayzone intercepted Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukrainian diaspora delegation outside the US Capitol and encountered Natalie Jaresko, the corporate operative who helped guide Wall Street’s pillaging from Kiev to Puerto Rico. Jaresko indignantly justified Zelensky’s banning of his political rivals as a necessary wartime measure.

Steel fencing and police barricades ringed the perimeter of the US Capitol Building hours ahead of the arrival of Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president appeared in Washington DC in the early afternoon on December 21, 2022, emerging from a US military jet clad in an olive drab sweatshirt and cargo pants, and charged with a singular mission:

convince Congress and the Biden administration to send his government more than the whopping $45 billion in military and humanitarian aid it had already allocated for 2023.

Just outside the police barricades, at the eastern side of the Capitol grounds, as a demonstration by a small but dedicated group of antiwar activists wound down, a group of around 20 Ukrainians in dark business attire gathered for a photo. They were on their way into the Capitol, where they were to function as Zelensky’s personal cheering section, representing the Ukrainian diaspora before a nationally televised audience.

I approached members of the delegation to challenge them on Zelensky’s lobbying push and the planned expansion of the NATO proxy war he is leading against Russia. My questions were met with a torrent of worn-out talking points about Ukraine’s crusade to defend democracy, accusations that Moscow was sponsoring my reporting, and a complaint that $45 billion in US aid was too little.

Several of the Ukrainian delegates I encountered on the way into the US Capitol happened to have played significant roles in the transformation of Ukraine from a neutral state into a hyper-militarized vassal of the US and the IMF.

The most voluble among them, acting as a de facto spokesperson for the group, was Natalie Jaresko. A Ukrainian-American financial industry operative, Jaresko presided over several IMF austerity packages and the rampant privatization of Ukraine’s economy as the country’s Minister of Finance in its post-coup government.

The economic hit-woman

In our exchange, Jaresko unabashedly defended Zelensky’s outlawing of 11 opposition political parties, his banning of opposition media, and his plans to blacklist the Russian wing of the Orthodox Church. “It’s martial law!” Jaresko exclaimed, justifying Kiev’s authoritarian crackdown as a necessary wartime measure.

Jaresko has seen the corruption and de-democratization of Ukraine from within. She helped open up the country’s economy to Western multinationals after being appointed to the Foreign Investors Advisory Council of Victor Yuschenko, a neoliberal president who gained power thanks to the “Orange Revolution” backed by US intelligence and Western-aligned oligarchs George Soros and Boris Berisovsky in 2005.

Under Yuschenko’s reign, Ukraine’s government officially heroized the World War Two-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. During our exchange, Jaresko deflected when asked if she supported Bandera. However, her brother, John, has presided over the construction of a memorial in Bloomingdale, New Jersey to “Heroes of Ukraine” including World War Two-era Nazi collaborators, according to researcher Moss Robeson.

Nine years later, following the Euromaidan coup also engineered by Washington, Jaresko rose to Minister of Finance. She was granted Ukrainian citizenship on the day of her appointment.

Through her new post, Jaresko assumed control of Datagroup, the company that oversees Ukraine’s telecom sector. As former investment executive Tim Duff recounted, Jaresko “immediately proceeded to squeeze her competitor, the owner of Datagroup, out of business using the kind of foreign currency loan debt scam favored by Mafia hoods and economic hitmen employed by the CIA.”

While in Kiev, steering the government alongside a cadre of Ukrainian-American operatives, Jaresko grumbled about her salary while angling for opportunities to supplement it. In a withering analysis of her financial self-dealing, the late investigative journalist Robert Parry found that Jaresko “collected $1.77 million in bonuses from a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund where her annual compensation was supposed to be limited to $150,000”

As Jaresko lapped up praise from Beltway corporate media, the NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council that employed her as a visiting fellow acknowledged that under her watch, “the average monthly wage in Ukraine is only $194, an inflation rate of 55 percent is decimating citizens’ purchasing power, and a painful IMF-mandated austerity program involving sweeping cuts to social programs is being implemented.”

In 2017, Jaresko was rewarded with an appointment and $625,000 salary as director of Promesa, the unelected US board charged with restructuring Puerto Rico’s debt – and which average Puerto Ricans refer to derisively as “La Junta.” Jaresko resigned  rom her position this April after leaving Puerto Rico’s economy firmly in the hands of Wall Street creditors.

The all-encompassing shock therapy that Jaresko prescribed from Puerto Rico to Ukraine was only possible thanks to society-wide disasters. In San Juan, it was Hurricane Maria that placed neoliberal capitalism on overdrive; in Kiev, it was a coup and a proxy war. Indeed, the conflict with Russia has provided Zelensky with justification to strip 70 percent of Ukraine’s workers of collective bargaining rights and arrest everyone from his political rivals to socialist organizers – a wave of repression that Jaresko explicitly justified in her exchange with me.

The Ukrainian president accompanied his Pinochet-style crackdown with an appeal this October at the NYSE Stock Exchange for multinational corporations to deepen their exploitation of his country’s economy and resources. As The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein reported, Zelensky’s foreign investment initiative plastered the word “deregulation” across the homepage of its website.

The diaspora lobbyist

As I challenged the Ukrainian delegation on the nearly $100 billion of military aid the US has forked over to Kiev, a bespectacled middle-aged man interjected, demanding to know why I supposedly supported an “unprovoked” assault on an “innocent people.”

I countered that I opposed the Ukrainian military’s 8-year-long attack on the ethnic Russian population of Donetsk and Lugansk, where thousands had been killed before the Russian military ever entered Ukraine in February 2022. I then asked the indignant character if he also opposed the shelling of civilians in the eastern republics.

His reply came in the form of a firm “no!”

That person turns out to be a member of the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe named Orest Deychakiwsky. His commission is charged with monitoring Ukrainian compliance with OSCE commitments, including those Kiev made – and relentlessly violated –– to the Minsk Accords. As former German Chancellor Angela Merkel confessed this December, Ukraine’s Western backers used the Minsk Accords as a stalling tactic to prepare it for military conflict with Russia………………………………..

“We’re gonna send a lot more!”

With tens of billions more on the way to Ukraine, the country’s debt to international creditors continues to grow, setting the stage for another crushing wave of austerity after the war. The diaspora operatives I encountered on their way into the Capitol gallery appeared poised to guide the plunder from the comfort of suburban America.

In the meantime, lawmakers from both parties can hardly contain their exuberance for expanding the proxy war. As one of the energy industry’s favorite senators, Democrat Joe Manchin, exclaimed when I asked him on a sidewalk outside the Capitol about the billions in military aid on the way to Ukraine, “We’re gonna send a lot more. I’m all in!” https://thegrayzone.com/2022/12/23/zelenskys-diaspora-hit-woman-ukraine/

December 26, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Never mind about sanctions – Russia’s export of nuclear products and services is soaring

Russia’s state nuclear energy company Rosatom expects its exports to have
increased by 15% this year, chief executive Alexey Likhachev was quoted as
saying by Russian newspaper Izvestia on Monday. Rosatom’s portfolio of
foreign orders is set to remain stable at $200 billion, “even in the
current geopolitical situation,” Likhachev said.

Supply of Rosatom products and services abroad is expected to top $10 billion this year, the
top executive of Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation said. The rise
in exports this year is due to contracts Rosatom was already implementing,
as well as its supplying of fuel, conversion services, and enriched uranium
products, according to Likhachev.

Rosatom has avoided sanctions since
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because of its importance in the supply chain
of the global nuclear power industry. Yet, many Western governments and
customers have been looking to procure alternative nuclear fuel supply,
where possible, so as not to rely on a Russian state corporation for part
of their energy needs.

Oil Price 26th Dec 2022

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russias-Nuclear-Energy-Giant-Expects-2022-Exports-To-Rise-By-15.html

December 26, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, Russia | Leave a comment

Over 500 U.S. military personnel have sought Washington’s okay to work for foreign governments: case of Azerbaijan

PanARMENIAN.NetDecember 6, 2022 Two U.S. generals sought to profit from connections with Baku but Air Force objected During the height of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. military leaders flocked to Azerbaijan to embrace its president, Ilham Aliyev, despite a report from the U.S. Embassy comparing the mustachioed strongman to mafia bosses in “The Godfather.” Setting […]

Over 500 U.S. military personnel have sought Washington’s okay to work for foreign governments: case of Azerbaijan — Anti-bellum

December 26, 2022 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Fake, dishonest ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ group

 https://nuclear.foe.org.au/fake-greens-group/?fbclid=IwAR0HrgSSduu8dLrYSebJa7MAFIcjTWvqjewphjAGjpQI3PTswPfzm6_JN0E

The Australian Greens have strong, principled anti-nuclear policies (with some obvious allowances for the beneficial uses of nuclear technology e.g. nuclear medicine).

A group called ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy‘ has nothing to do with the Australian Greens. The spokesperson for the group, Tyrone D’Lisle, is NOT a member of the Australian Greens. He resigned as convener of the Queensland Young Greens in 2013 following behaviour which he attributed to stress and exhaustion. A Greens representative said: “Mr D’Lisle’s views do not represent Greens policies.” D’Lisle resigned from the Greens altogether in 2017.

It is unclear if there are ANY members of the Australian Greens in ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’. The group is either partially fake (it includes non-members of the Greens) or completely fake (with NO members of the Greens). We do not know if the group is breaking any state or federal laws by calling itself ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ when some or all members of the group are not members of the Australian Greens.

We’ve only come across two people who identify as members of ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’. They may be the only two people in this group. ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ acknowledge that they are a “relatively small group”.

Update: ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ claim that the ‘real’ name of their group is ‘Greens for Nuclear Energy Australia’ but they can’t change their facebook group name ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’! Evidently the group has tried to change its name, an implicit acknowledgement that they have been falsely misrepresenting themselves as members of the Australian Greens and as a sub-group of the Australian Greens political party.

Furthermore, they are shifting their propaganda over to new sites called ‘Australians for Nuclear Energy’ … another implicit acknowledgement that they have been falsely misrepresenting themselves as members of the Australian Greens and as a sub-group of the Australian Greens political party.

It was only after Friends of the Earth exposed the fakery of this ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ group that they announced that their ‘real’ name is ‘Greens for Nuclear Energy Australia’ and decided to shift their propaganda to new sites which make no mention of the Greens.

What to make of the new name ‘Australians for Nuclear Energy’? As far as we know there are only two members in the group, so it should be called ‘Two Australians for Nuclear Energy’. Or to use their own terminology, ‘A Relatively Small Number of Australians for Nuclear Energy’.

The Big Lie

‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ lie. For example, they claim that “senior people within environmental organisations like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth have stated they don’t want to change [their position regarding nuclear power] because they will lose funding.”

D’Lisle has been asked on countless occasions to substantiate or retract that claim but he has done neither. There is no truth to the claim. It is a fabrication. It is a lie.

D’Lisle claims he was not responsible for the lie but he refuses to say 1) who was responsible for it, 2) who else apart from him posts on facebook as ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’, and 3) whether anyone other than D’Lisle posts on facebook as ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’.

The claim about Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace is a dishonest fabrication and it is also defamatory. Perhaps that is why ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ are concealing authorship of the lie.

Perhaps D’Lisle was responsible for the lie, in which case he has lied about Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace and then lied about lying. Or perhaps another member of ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ was responsible for the lie, in which case D’Lisle is concealing the deceit of another member of his group.

D’Lisle acknowledged in correspondence with Friends of the Earth that he has zero evidence to support the accusation against Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. So why no public retraction and apology?

As for the contributions of ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ to energy debates, it’s a concoction of misinformation, half-truths and outright lies:

* They claim that “civilian nuclear energy programs don’t lead to nuclear weapons programs” even though they repeatedly have.

* D’Lisle thinks “the world is going nuclear”. In fact, nuclear power has been stagnant for the past 30 years and its future is bleak, largely because nuclear power is far more expensive than renewables (including storage and transmission costs).

* They claim there were no radiation deaths from the Fukushima disaster DESPITE BEING WELL AWARE of the World Health Organization report which concluded that for people in the most contaminated areas in Fukushima Prefecture, the estimated increased risk for all solid cancers will be around 4% in females exposed as infants; a 6% increased risk of breast cancer for females exposed as infants; a 7% increased risk of leukaemia for males exposed as infants; and for thyroid cancer among females exposed as infants, increased risk of up to 70%.

* They make dishonest claims about the Chernobyl death toll. They suggest a death toll of less than 100. Blatant deceit. They ignore studies such as: the estimate of 16,000 cancer deaths across Europe in a study published in the International Journal of Cancer, and the World Health Organization’s estimate of “up to 9,000 excess cancer deaths” in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. For a longer discussion on pro-nuclear deceit regarding Chernobyl, click here.

* ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ trivialise Chernobyl (and other nuclear disasters) by peddling the argument that the psychological trauma was greater than the biological effects from radiation exposure. There’s no dispute that, as the World Health Organisation states, the relocation of more than 350,000 people in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster “proved a deeply traumatic experience”. How to compare that psychological trauma to estimates of the cancer death toll from radiation exposure, such as the UN/WHO estimate of 9,000 cancer deaths in ex-Soviet states or the International Journal of Cancer study estimating 16,000 deaths across Europe? They can’t be compared. Apples and oranges. Most importantly, why on earth would anyone want to rank the biological damage and the psychological trauma from the Chernobyl disaster? Chernobyl resulted in both biological damage and psychological trauma, in spades. Psychological insult has been added to biological injury. One doesn’t negate the other.

* And they make false and indefensible claims about numerous other nuclear-related topics.

December 26, 2022 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, spinbuster | Leave a comment