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Czech nuclear problem: Where to store toxic waste?

Prague wants to accelerate plans to store nuclear waste underground, but is running into strong local resistance.

Politico, BY TIM GOSLING, JUNE 16, 2023 

PRAGUE — The Czech Republic is betting big on nuclear as part of a shift away from polluting fossil fuels. But it’s struggling to find the answer to a key question: Where will it dump all of that radioactive waste?

The government’s new long-term energy strategy involves adding up to four new reactors to the six aging units that currently provide around 35 percent of the country’s electricity. The government hopes to finalize a tender for the first in 2024. 

“It is vital” for the Czech Republic “or any country expanding its nuclear fleet, to have a comprehensive strategy for managing the radioactive waste,” said Miluš Trefancová, a spokesperson at the ministry of industry and trade.

Spent fuel from its existing reactors is currently stored at the country’s two nuclear power plants, Dukovany and Temelín. But with the country building out its nuclear fleet, it will need to find a new solution.

Prague is now racing to speed up highly ambitious, decades-old plan to build a deep geological repository that would see the high-level detritus buried half a kilometer underground for the next 100,000 years. Finland hopes to launch the world’s first such facility in the next year or two.

Time is running out for the Czechs, though, with new EU rules on what counts as a sustainable investment demanding that new nuclear projects secure a building permit by 2045 and file detailed plans for storing high-level radioactive waste by 2050 in order to qualify for a green label.

Those deadlines have focused minds in Prague, which lobbied hard alongside like-minded EU countries to have nuclear technology included in the EU’s list of sustainable investments.

The Czech government is already struggling to find a financing model to build new nuclear units, the first of which is widely expected to cost significantly more than the original estimate of €6 billion. A failure to qualify such projects as sustainable investments under the EU rules would make them unfeasible.

Building a deep geological repository is “an essential component” of the country’s energy strategy, said Trefancová. Plans are in place “to accelerate the preparation by 15 years,” she added.

Prague vs. the NIMBYs

Selecting a site has proved to be a major headache. Not only do countless geological, hydrological and other tests need to be undertaken, but the government has run into strong resistance from locals, who are wary of hosting the waste facility.

If the technical evaluation process was the only issue, plans could easily be sped up, but the social dimension is trickier, said Lukáš Vondrovic, head of the state’s Administration of Radioactive Waste Repositories.

The government is now favoring locations close to existing nuclear power plants in the hope that local resistance there will be lower. But the four municipalities shortlisted in 2020 are also putting up a fight, accusing the government of poor planning and a lack of communication. They also say their concerns about the likely impact on the environment, house prices or tourism are being ignored.

“The municipalities are not anti-nuclear,” said Hana Konvalinková from the Platform Against Deep Storage NGO, a group that involves three of the four municipalities. “They understand that the waste must be dealt with, but they want full transparency and participation.”

As part of a bill aimed at accelerating the plans, presented to parliament in May, the government pledged to give municipalities a greater say in the process.

But the NGO is highly skeptical of the move, saying the bill is vaguely worded and has too many loopholes, according to Konvalinková. The municipalities want the right to veto any nuclear waste project, pointing to Finland as the example to follow………………………

 the Czech authorities are wary of allowing the localities the option of blocking decisions. Trefancová said the government “cannot guarantee the right to veto.”

Prague appears determined to push ahead: The ministry now says it hopes a site will be identified by the end of the decade. All of the preparatory and construction work would then likely need to be completed by 2050 to meet the EU’s taxonomy requirements.

Trefancová pointed out that Finland’s Onkalo project took 27 years to build, but suggested that Prague continue its push to convince Brussels to offer flexibility on the deadline. https://www.politico.eu/article/czech-republic-nuclear-power-problem-where-store-toxic-waste/

June 20, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, wastes | Leave a comment

TODAY. Two ruthless killer regimes, who hate each other, are now to cosy up for the benefit of the “peaceful” nuclear industry. What could possibly go wrong?

ISRAEL has been systematically committing serious human rights violations against Palestinians for decades. Violations such as forcible transfer, administrative detention, torture, unlawful killings and serious injuries, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms have been well documented by Amnesty and others.

SAUDI ARABIA – Torture is used as a punishment – Executions are on the increase –  No free speech – No protests – Women are widely discriminated against  – Torture in police custody is common – You can be detained and arrested with no good reason – Religious discrimination is rife – Migrant workers have been deported en masse – Human rights organisations banned.

The glorious global nuclear industry now brings these despicable national leaders together. For the “peace-loving” USA etc, all is now forgiven and forgotten .

Israel – ever ready for nuclear war – and Saudi Arabia soon to be. What could possibly go wrong?

Jun 17, 202 NBC News , Hanan Khashoggi says she lives in fear, afraid she could “be assassinated at any time,” following the brutal killing of her husband, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which a U.S. intelligence report found was approved by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. CNBC’s Eamon Javers brings us the NBC News exclusive interview.

June 20, 2023 Posted by | Christina's notes | 8 Comments

Daniel Ellsberg’s message to us, and to future generations

Bulletin, By Martin E. Hellman | June 16, 2023

Dan Ellsberg was a brave man. In an effort to end the Vietnam War, he risked spending the rest of his life in jail by leaking the Pentagon Papers. In so doing, he changed history—and our knowledge of our own history.

I’ve been privileged to know Dan for almost 40 years, as a friend and as an activist who is trying to save humanity from our self-created nuclear Doomsday Machine. So it was with sadness and a sense of impending loss that I read his March 2 post, where he revealed that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had been given less than six months to live. When the Bulletin invited me to write this piece about Dan, I had a conversation with him so he could tell us what he would like to say to us and to future generations, upon his death. (He died on June 16 at his home in Kensington, Calif., at age 92.)

What do you think should be done to bring stated and actual policy in line with one another?

Dan’s laughter was sparked by seeing the goal stated so baldly, especially since both Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden had stated that, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Dan then noted that America’s nuclear posture is “directed toward meeting that mission” (that is, winning a nuclear war), even though such a mission is “infeasible and impossible.” He decried the American nuclear establishment for giving “no importance whatever to expressing in public what their actual aims and interests and options are.” He also noted that Russia does roughly the same thing and that this refusal to acknowledge reality has to change.

In The Doomsday Machine, Dan recommends a two-step process to make the world safer (see pages 335-350). First, he notes, current, bloated nuclear arsenals and unrealistic war fighting plans would destroy the planet if used. He then says that:

… you can’t eradicate the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons and delivery systems. But you can dismantle a Doomsday Machine [that would destroy the planet]. … the existence of one such machine [does not] compel or even create a tangible incentive for a rival or enemy to have one. In fact, having two on alert against each is far more dangerous for each and for the world than if only one existed.

… the current danger of Doomsday could be eliminated without the United States or Russia coming close to total nuclear disarmament, or the abandonment of nuclear deterrence, either unilaterally or mutually (desirable as the latter would be). …

This dismantlement of the Doomsday Machines is not intended as an adequate long-term substitute for more ambitious, necessary goals, including total universal abolition of nuclear weapons. We cannot accept the conclusion that abolition must be ruled out “for the foreseeable future” or put off for generations.

Our subsequent conversation dealt with a variety of aspects of nuclear risk and how to reduce it.

The Pentagon Papers, Vietnam, and nuclear risk……………………………………………………………………….

Nuclear weapons are a Sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads

Marty: Let’s come back to what you would like to say to future generations—or people right now even.

Dan: Right now, that there is, and has been for 70 years, a very significant danger of the end of civilization: the death of most humans on Earth within a year by the effects of nuclear winter and nuclear fallout. And that almost nothing has succeeded in lowering that probability, although there are many things that could be done and should have been done. But perhaps it is not too late to accomplish those things now.

We are living, as John F. Kennedy put it, “under a sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads.” And that thread has not been strengthened in the slightest over the years.

What is happening now in the new Cold War is that the chance of reducing that risk is vanishing, the door is in the process of closing.

Is it already too late? We don’t know. But I choose to act, and I urge others to act as if it’s not too late. And I can be very specific on what that would mean.

We need coordination of action that also applies to climate change. It is hard to imagine a way of reducing the global emissions of CO2 that does not involve coordinated action between the major emitters like the US, China, India, Russia, and Europe.

Coordinated action of a kind that seems almost impossible after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, exploited as that has been by the West to reintroduce a Cold War in which the aims of the adversary are magnified, in which military solutions are looked for. So the chance of lowering the arms budget has virtually disappeared. But, even more importantly, the chance of doing any of the things that would lower the risk of nuclear winter has been almost eliminated at this point.

For over half a century, the existence on both sides of vulnerable land-based ICBMs[5] has been the hair trigger to the Doomsday Machine. They pose a use-it-or-lose-it mentality which encourages each side to launch its missiles on ambiguous warning, lest they be destroyed—in order to attack the ICBMs of the other side.

Coordinated action of a kind that seems almost impossible after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, exploited as that has been by the West to reintroduce a Cold War in which the aims of the adversary are magnified, in which military solutions are looked for. So the chance of lowering the arms budget has virtually disappeared. But, even more importantly, the chance of doing any of the things that would lower the risk of nuclear winter has been almost eliminated at this point.

For over half a century, the existence on both sides of vulnerable land-based ICBMs[5] has been the hair trigger to the Doomsday Machine. They pose a use-it-or-lose-it mentality which encourages each side to launch its missiles on ambiguous warning, lest they be destroyed—in order to attack the ICBMs of the other side.

The numbers [of nuclear warheads] per se don’t matter so much, except for reducing them down to a level that could not produce Doomsday, could not produce omnicide. The potential for that catastrophe has existed for decades and can be eliminated without giving up deterrence.

Does any nation have the right to threaten to kill billions of people? I would say they don’t, and they cannot possibly justify it by a need to deter nuclear attack on themselves, since much smaller arsenals would serve that purpose.

But it gets very tricky when you add that little thing of deterring a nuclear attack against your allies. That produces a very strong incentive to make it look as though you believe you could lower the damage to your own nation, and God knows we have acted as though we believe that hoax since the ’50s or ’60s.

When it comes to that, it’s a total license, as McNamara found, to build a first-strike weapon, to try and make it credible that you’ll respond to an attack on your ally by initiating nuclear war against a nuclear weapon state. And there’s no limit to what you can spend under that crazy assumption.

In other words, it’s been a madman threat from the very beginning……………………….. How do you move people from a totally insane plan to which they’re committed? ……………….. How do you persuade them away from a plan that is batshit crazy?

The risk of a nuclear war

,………………………………………………………….. My guess is that there is not a high likelihood of nuclear war in the current stalemate in Ukraine, so long as Putin is not confronted with losing Crimea or all of the Donbas. But if American troops or Polish troops or German troops were to maintain those tanks and planes that are being given to Ukraine by the West, or to man them, that would be a very significant change, because it could confront Russia with actually losing the Donbas or Crimea. And I think, in those circumstances, Putin would be strongly tempted, as we would be in similar circumstances, to break through that with “small” nuclear weapons in an effort to bring people to their senses and say, “This can’t go on. You’ve got to negotiate at our terms.” Putin’s use of nuclear weapons in that kind of scenario could succeed, but probably would not.

And another thing that I’ve learned, Marty, and that I think is not sufficiently appreciated, is that men in power are willing to risk world annihilation rather than to accept a short-term loss. And it’s not a question of realism or unrealism, it’s a willingness to gamble. They know it’s not likely to succeed, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do it, because there is a chance that it may succeed, which is enough to get them to gamble the world.

Our presidents have that power every hour of every day.

Dan’s father’s awakening………………………………………………………….

The need for action: a fool’s errand?

Dan: People just don’t realize how big this is. What do they do? They don’t do anything one way or the other. The death of humanity is not something that moves them to vote. They act as if there is no chance to make any difference. As if it’s impossible to change things.

Yet, we all thought the Berlin Wall coming down was impossible. Nelson Mandela becoming president of South Africa without a violent revolution seemed impossible.

In the same way, I currently cannot see any chance of getting rid of ICBMs, or of no-first-use. But miracles do happen. I choose to act as if it makes a difference. And it’s just a choice. I can’t defend that. It’s just a better way to live. It’s the way I choose to live. We can work to prevent the cataclysm.

And I think one aspect of that is, 12 months into this Ukraine war, suggesting anything that involves a chance to end it is seen as being on the wrong side. Yet going on as we have has risks vastly disproportionate to any advantage that would be gained in another 12 months of stalemate. The latest leaks indicate exactly what The Pentagon Papers showed: that the people inside perceive themselves as in a stalemate for at least the next 12 months. So what will the effort to break through the stalemate in the 12 months be likely to accomplish? Very little. And what’s the possible downside? The end of everything, essentially.

And likewise, on Taiwan. It’s outrageous. We are risking everything over the issue of the control of Taiwan. When I say risking everything, I mean we are risking all-out nuclear war. And would people, a thousand years ago, have taken such a risk? I think if they could have, they would have. So we’re not worse than people were. We just have a lot more at stake. This is not a species to be trusted with nuclear weapons.

Concluding the interview

Marty: In your email to me, you said, “Other than dying, I’m okay.” I like your humor.

Dan: Well, we’re all dying. I’m in very good shape. For my best friends, I would not wish better than to have the last month I’m having with my wife and my friends like you.

Editor’s note: A 2018 Bulletin interview with Daniel Ellsberg about his book, The Doomsday Machine, can be found here.

Notes……………………………………………………………………………………. https://thebulletin.org/2023/06/daniel-ellsbergs-message-to-us-and-to-future-generations/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter06192023&utm_content=NuclearRisk_DanielEllsberg_06162023

June 20, 2023 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, weapons and war | 2 Comments

Workers, residents, at US site that made Nagasaki A-bomb’s plutonium, are still suffering

after he and a local journalist conducted a survey on surrounding farms in 1985, Bailie began to have doubts. Nearly all the families living nearby suffered from cancer, birth defects, or thyroid disease, he says — health issues that could be attributed to radiation exposure. This led to the area being coined “the death mile” by some journalists at the time.

documents that were declassified in the late 1980s showed that Hanford had contaminated the surrounding farmland, air, farm animals, and crops with unsafe levels of radiation for years.

June 18, 2023 , Mainichi, Japan

HANFORD, Washington (Kyodo) — As cleanup efforts continue in Washington state at a decommissioned U.S. nuclear facility that played a crucial role in the country’s acquisition of the atom bomb in World War II, questions linger over whether the site has caused serious health issues for workers and local residents.

Construction began on the facility, known as the Hanford site, eighty years ago in 1943 and involved the building of the world’s first large-scale nuclear reactor.

Through the Manhattan Project, a U.S. government research and development program for building nuclear weapons, the site’s B reactor, erected on a 580-square-mile stretch of land next to the Columbia River in south-central Washington, produced the nuclear material for one of the only two atomic bombs ever used in an armed conflict.

Codenamed “Fat Man,” the device was detonated over the city of Nagasaki in southwestern Japan on Aug. 9, 1945, effectively ending Japan’s involvement in the conflict.

The 6.2 kilograms of plutonium contained in the nuclear device released energy equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, taking the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people while subjecting the surrounding area to deadly radiation, killing countless more.

But citizens of Nagasaki may not be the only victims of Hanford’s plutonium production. During its decades of operation, U.S. residents living near and mainly downwind of the complex experienced severe health effects that they believe stem from the site’s activities.

One such resident is Tom Bailie, 76, who grew up and still resides just miles downwind from Hanford in a farming community.

Reflecting on his upbringing, Bailie recalled during an interview in April that no one ever thought the site at Hanford would cause harm to “patriotic American citizens.”

But, after he and a local journalist conducted a survey on surrounding farms in 1985, Bailie began to have doubts. Nearly all the families living nearby suffered from cancer, birth defects, or thyroid disease, he says — health issues that could be attributed to radiation exposure. This led to the area being coined “the death mile” by some journalists at the time.

Bailie said that his wife, father, and three uncles all had cancer before passing away, while his two sisters also have cancer and take thyroid medicine. The year before Bailie was born, his mother had a stillbirth. Bailie himself was born with birth defects and was on an iron lung when he was 4 years old. He now requires medication for a thyroid problem.

Bailie vividly remembers encounters with “men in space suits,” equipped with dosimeters to measure radiation levels, walking on his farm. The men would collect soil samples and even ask the farmers to send the heads and feet of ducks and rabbits they would kill while hunting to Hanford for analysis.

When he began speaking out about the hardships and health problems that he attributed to the Hanford site, many people from the community dismissed him as “nuts” or “crazy.” Some even mockingly referred to him as the “glow-in-the-dark farmer.”

But documents that were declassified in the late 1980s showed that Hanford had contaminated the surrounding farmland, air, farm animals, and crops with unsafe levels of radiation for years…………………….

Before being decommissioned in 1989, Hanford produced around 74 tons of plutonium, nearly two-thirds of all the plutonium produced for government purposes in the United States. One of the consequences of the site’s work was massive amounts of contamination and dangerous leftover byproducts, most of which remain on the site today.

Currently, 177 underground tanks containing 56 million gallons of highly radioactive waste, contaminated buildings, and cocooned reactors still exist there, alongside multiple other buried waste sites.

The same year Hanford was decommissioned, cleanup efforts began for dealing with the dangerous byproducts left over from the production of plutonium. Efforts to clean the area of waste are anticipated to be astronomically costly and time-consuming.

According to Hanford’s latest estimate, released in 2022, the total cost of the cleanup is projected to range from $319.6 billion to $660 billion, with a completion date not expected until at least fiscal 2078.

But Tom Carpenter, 66, former head of Hanford Challenge, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the responsible and safe clearing of the Hanford site, argues that using the word “cleanup” is misleading.

Carpenter says complete eradication of contamination from thousands of acres is impossible, and not the goal of the cleanup process. He asserts that the best that can be achieved at Hanford is “the mitigation of some risks.”

Hanford Challenge’s primary goal, he says, is to ensure authorities prioritize a swift cleanup and make sure that no corners are cut, nor workers put in unnecessary danger. This includes fighting for those who are currently working on the site.

Many workers involved in the cleanup of the Hanford site continue to be exposed to toxic chemicals, vapors, and radioactive materials, resulting in debilitating health conditions.

A recent survey of the workers by Washington state revealed more than 50 percent of them had been exposed to radioactive or toxic chemicals. Workers exposed to these dangerous materials and vapors have developed beryllium disease, cancers, organ damage, and occupational dementia.

Until recently, these workers had to prove that their health issues were directly caused by their work at the Hanford site to receive assistance with their medical expenses.

According to former worker and Hanford Challenge director Jim Millbauer, 65, proving this was extremely difficult, costly, time-consuming, and often fruitless, as most occupational illness claims were rejected.

But a recent law has changed this, presuming that any health effects suffered by workers who spend just eight hours working at Hanford are caused by working at the facility, making it easier for sick workers to get their treatment paid for. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230616/p2g/00m/0in/069000c

June 20, 2023 Posted by | employment, health, USA | Leave a comment

Putin warns NATO over being drawn into Ukraine war

By Zahid Mahmood, CNN, June 17, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned there is a “serious danger” of NATO being drawn further into the Ukraine war if members of the alliance continue to supply military weaponry to Kyiv.

“NATO, of course, is being drawn into the war in Ukraine, what are we talking here,” Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday.

“The supplies of heavy military weaponry to Ukraine are ongoing, they are now looking into giving Ukraine the jets.”

The comment appeared to be a reference to the F-16 fighter jets some members of the NATO alliance are making plans to supply Ukraine with.

NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was formed in the aftermath of World War II to defend Western nations from the Soviet Union [despite USSR being their ally in WW2 !]and the alliance contains a mutual defense clause where an attack on any one member is considered an attack on all. While Ukraine is not a member of NATO, some NATO members have been supplying Kyiv with tanks, armored vehicles and other weaponry – prompting threats of retaliation from Russia.

German Leopard 2 tanks, British Challenger 2 tanks and American Bradley and Stryker vehicles are among the Western equipment that has been sent to Ukraine.

In late April, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO allies and partners had delivered more than 1,500 vehicles and 230 tanks to the country.

During his speech in St. Petersburg, Putin said Russia had destroyed tanks “including Leopards” at the front lines.

“And if they are based abroad, but used in fighting we’ll see how to hit them, and where we can hit those means that are used against us in fighting,” Putin said.

“This is a serious danger of further drawing NATO into this military conflict,” he added………………………….. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/17/europe/nato-danger-ukraine-war-putin-intl-hnk/index.html

June 20, 2023 Posted by | politics international, Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

“Radioactive” is compelling viewing

“Radioactive” is compelling viewing

New film spotlights women’s experiences with the Three Mile Island nuclear accident

By Karl Grossman

Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island is the title of a newly-released documentary feature film directed, written and produced by award-winning filmmaker Heidi Hutner, a professor of environmental humanities at Stony Brook University, a “flagship” school of the State University of New York.

With greatly compelling facts and interviews, she and her also highly talented production team have put together a masterpiece of a documentary film.

It connects the proverbial dots of the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant disaster—doing so brilliantly.

The documentary has already received many film awards and has had a screening in recent months in New York City—winning the “Audience Award for Best Documentary” at the Dances With Films Festival—and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Sarasota, Florida; Dubuque, Iowa; Long Island, New York; First Frame International Film Festival in New York City; the Environmental Film Festival in Washington D.C., and is soon the featured film at Kat Kramer’s #SHEROESForChange Film Festival in Los Angeles and the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, California, as well as the Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. And there will be tours across the U.S.

Resident after resident of the area around Three Mile Island is interviewed and tells of widespread cancer that has ensued in the years that have followed the accident—a cancer rate far beyond what would be normal. Accounts shared in the documentary are heartbreaking.

A whistleblower who had worked at the nuclear plant tells Hutner of the deliberate and comprehensive attempt by General Public Utilities, which owned TMI, to cover up the gravity of the accident and its radioactive releases, especially of cancer-causing Iodine-131 and Xenon 133.

An attorney, Lynne Bernabei, involved in litigation in the wake of the accident, says the Three Mile Island “cover-up was one of the biggest cover-ups in history.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission which is “supposed to protect the public” has then and since been just “interested in is promoting the [nuclear] industry. This is corrupt,” says attorney Joanne Doroshow, now a professor at New York Law School and director of the Center for Justice & Democracy. Many examples of this are presented.

The documentary’s focus on women includes women being far more at risk to the effects of radioactivity than men. Mary Olson, a biologist, founder, and director of the Gender & Radiation Impact Project, says in the film that those setting radiation standards in the U.S. from the onset of nuclear technology in 1942, based impacts on a “25 to 30 years-old” male “defined as Caucasian.” She said, “It has come to be known as the ‘Reference Man.” However, Olson cites research findings that “radiation is 10 times more harmful to young females” and “50 percent more harmful to a “comparable female” than it is to “Reference Man” who is “more resistant” to radioactivity than a woman.

There’s the scientist Dr. Aaron Datesman, who is now pursuing a major chromosomal study regarding the impact of the disaster on the health of people in the area and how people have been harmed despite the denials of the nuclear industry. This study is based on his recent ground-breaking work, “Radiological Shot Noise,” in Nature.

And more and more…………………………………………………………………………. more https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/06/18/radioactive-is-compelling-viewing/—

June 20, 2023 Posted by | history, incidents, media | Leave a comment

More trouble at Vogtle

June 19, 2023  https://beyondnuclear.org/more-trouble-at-vogtle/

The nuclear drumbeaters ignore stories like this latest setback out of Georgia because the inconvenient truth of nuclear power is that it is NOT reliable, is far too slow and expensive and of course comes with a myriad of safety problems and no solution to the radioactive waste it generates.

The only US flagship for new reactors is the Vogtle 3 and 4 project in Georgia, which continues to stutter and stumble as it tries to bring two AP 1000 reactors to life, already heralded as a “milestone” with neither reactor yet on line.

Vogtle 3 has already had several setbacks delaying its commercial operation. The most recent is a problem in the hydrogen system that is used to cool its main electrical generator, delaying operations until July (barring other problems that could still arise.)

The twin reactor project is already 16 years in the making and now at least $20 billion over budget. Despite all this and the nuclear poster child for risk that is the 6-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, embroiled in a war, the pro-nuclear propaganda machine rolls blindly on.

 https://www.wabe.org/georgia-power-says-vogtle-nuclear-reactor-delayed-another-month-by-turbine-problem/

“……………………………………In Georgia, almost every electric customer will pay for Vogtle. Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers are already paying part of the financing cost and elected public service commissioners have approved a monthly rate increase of $3.78 a month for residential customers as soon as the third unit begins generating power.

A July operation date means that increase would hit bills in August, two months after residential customers see a $16-a-month increase to pay for higher fuel costs. Georgia Power also raised rates by 2.5% in January after commissioners approved a separate three-year rate plan. Increases of 4.5% will follow in 2024 and 2025 under that plan.

Commissioners will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs of Vogtle, including the fourth reactor.

June 20, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | 1 Comment

Japan urged to halt release of toxic water

By Xu Weiwei in Hong Kong and Karl Wilson in Sydney, China Daily : 2023-06-19 

Impact of Fukushima nuclear plant discharge plan seen as catastrophic

Environmental and social experts from across Asia have called on Japan to refrain from contaminating the sea with radioactive wastewater after it began test running the equipment to discharge toxic water from a crippled nuclear power plant into the Pacific.

The nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant will contain traces of tritium, a radioactive isotope, and possibly other radioactive traces such as carbon-14, scientists said.

“Nobody wants to dump (radioactive substances) into the ocean,” said David Krofcheck, senior lecturer in the faculty of science at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

“We need to be aware of the difference between tritium and carbon-14, on one hand, and the radioactive fission products which tend to remain in the human body,” he said, adding that tritium could still enter the food chain throughout its buildup in underwater plants.

“This organically bound tritium still decays with a half-life of 12.3 years, and it stays in the human body for about 10 days, the biological half-life, before excretion.”

Instead of pumping the wastewater into the sea, Japan can dispose of it safely, Krofcheck said, offering an alternative for managing the Fukushima water: to hold it on site in an ever “growing number of water tanks”.


“If the water is properly filtered to leave only tritium and carbon-14, the natural decay of tritium can be used to reduce its radioactivity.

“Since the radioactive half-life of tritium is 12.3 years, holding the water in tanks for seven half-lives would reduce the tritium content to less than 1 percent of its current value.”

This option still leaves the carbon-14 that would still roughly have the same radioactivity because of its 5,730-year half-life, he said.

The potential impact of releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima plant into the ocean remains a subject of contention and concern among stakeholders, said Anjal Prakash, clinical associate professor (research) and research director of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.

“The ocean release decision itself has sparked opposition, leading to ongoing debates on alternative water management strategies. The decision-making process weighs safety, public perception, regulations and potential impacts on industries and trade.”

While the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, operator of the crippled plant, say there is minimal risk, differing opinions persist, Prakash said, adding that factors such as ocean currents, distance, dilution and treatment efficacy will determine the impact on neighboring areas, including South Asia, Pacific Island countries, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world.

Long-term effects and bioaccumulation concerns remain, he said. “Evaluating the precise impact is complex, necessitating considerations of various factors and ongoing scientific research.”

Despite continuing opposition from domestic experts, civic groups and fishery organizations, Japan has been rushing to dump the nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean, which has also spurred protests from neighboring countries and communities within the Pacific Islands.

Firm opposition

In April the Fijian government reaffirmed its opposition to Japan’s plan to discharge nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica said earlier that the Pacific Ocean should not be seen as an easy and convenient dumping ground for unwanted and dangerous materials and waste that larger countries produce but do not want to use in their own ecosystem, local media reported.

“The social and economic impact of this irresponsible behavior is catastrophic, particularly on our vulnerable communities,” he said.

Environmental groups have argued that the move sets a bad precedent and poses a serious danger to Pacific communities that depend on the ocean for their livelihoods…………….

Many people are asking why, if the wastewater treated by Japan’s Advanced Liquid Processing System is so safe, Japanese are not using such water for alternative purposes, in manufacturing and agriculture for instance.

According to a report issued by Tokyo Electric Power Company on June 5, the radioactive elements in the marine fish caught in the harbor of the Fukushima plant far exceed safety levels for human consumption. In particular, the content of cesium-137, a radioactive element and a common byproduct in nuclear reactors, is said to be 180 times that of the standard maximum stipulated in Japan’s food safety law.

Kalinga Seneviratne, a visiting lecturer at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, said: “The contamination will affect the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (adopted in 1986) areas as well when it eventually flows there. Also, since fish stocks are migratory, contaminated fish could be caught within the treaty area.”…………………………. https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202306/19/WS648f8421a31033ad3f7bce66.html

June 20, 2023 Posted by | ASIA, oceans, politics | 1 Comment

“Nuclear is CLEAN” Trumpets Westinghouse’s Uranium Fuel in Cumbrian Press Adverts

“Nuclear is CLEAN” Trumpets Westinghouse’s Uranium Fuel in Cumbrian Press Adverts

 https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2023/06/18/nuclear-is-clean-trumpets-westinghouses-uranium-fuel-in-cumbrian-press-adverts/

Name: Anita Stirzaker Ad type:Brand/product: Westinghouse Electric Company

Your complaint:
Advert in the Whitehaven News (and other regional papers?) for Westinghouse “Shaping Tomorrow’s Energy to deliver a carbon-free future in the UK. Westinghouse is shaping the future of clean energy in the UK.”

The advert talks about the AP1000 “ready for deployment in the UK” – this is not the case – the AP1000 has not been given licence approval for any sites in the UK as far as I know and there are no operational AP1000 reactors anywhere in Europe as far as I know. The AP1000 would not be “carbon free” as the uranium fuel requires fossil fuel at every stage from mining to looking after the wastes. The Westinghouse plant at Springfields itself uses enormous amounts of gas to manufacture uranium fuel and has I believe its own dedicated gas pipeline into the site. Sellafield is where the fuel from Springfields ends up and this has its own gas plant on site called Fellside. Westinghouse itself in its 2022 Sustainability report (https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/Portals/0/about/Westinghouse%202023%20ESG%20Report.pdf) says it has a “net-zero” carbon emissions target by 2050″ note this is the more slippery accounting of “net-zero” which is definitely not “carbon free” as the advert in the Whitehaven News claims.

The advert claims that Westinghouse is shaping “clean energy”. this is not the case – the Springfields site itself uses lots of freshwater in all its processes – far more I believe than the fracking industry would have done in the Preston area. The fresh water use is enormous especially if the leaching of uranium fuel from the grounds of foreign countries is included along with cooling the hot nuclear wastes at Sellafield.

The nuclear industry cannot legitimately claim to be clean while radioactive and chemical emissions are routinely dumped to the environment. Then there is the possibility of catastrophic accident. What other industries have such large Emergency Zones in the case of accident ? At the lancaster canal alongside the Springfields plant there are Westinghouse notices saying “if you hear a loud, continous siren (like an air-raid siren) you should leave this area as quickly as possible”.

There is another conflicting notice saying “Go inside your boat and stay inside until instructed otherwise. Close all windows and doors. Switch off all heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. Tune to the local radio station and listen for announcements telling you what to do.”

That is not a “clean” industry!

From Springfields Westinghouse site there are a cocktail of radioactive an chemical wastes going into the landfill at Clifton Marsh – the latest plan is to open an incineration plant on the Westinghouse Springfield site to take in nuclear waste (including intermediate nuclear wastes) from Europe and burn it there.

That is not a “clean” industry.

If Shell has been taken to task for its “clean” claims then the nuclear industry cannot be allowed to get away with this greenwashing of its fossil fuel use alongside its radioactive and chemical emissions to land, rivers,sea and air. The nuclear industry is not fully insured for good reason – it is uninsurable.

June 20, 2023 Posted by | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Zelensky admits that there was an ongoing civil war prior to the Russian invasion, claims Russia will attack a NATO member

Zelensky Slams Trump for Saying He Would End the War in Ukraine

The Ukrainian leader admitted that there was an ongoing civil war prior to the Russian invasion.

By Kyle Anzalone / Antiwar June 18, 2023

In an interview with NBC News, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attacked former President Donald Trump’s pledge to end the war. He argued that if Kiev does not defeat Moscow, Russia will attack a NATO member state and force the US into a direct conflict.

Zelensky was asked about Trump’s claim he would immediately engage the Kremlin in talks and bring the war to a negotiated settlement. “Are they ready to start a war to send their children? Are they ready to die?” he said in the interview that was published on Thursday. “If Russia occupies Ukraine, they will move on to the Baltic countries, to Poland, to any NATO country, and in that particular case the U.S. will have to choose between dismantling NATO or fighting.”

Kiev and hawks in Washington have asserted that Ukraine is a bulwark, protecting members of NATO from Moscow’s expansionist ambitions. However, there is no evidence that the Kremlin eyes attacking another country. Russian President Vladimir Putin views Ukraine as a unique security threat to his county and says seizing territory protects Moscow against the expanding NATO alliance.

Ukraine hopes to be added as a member of the alliance once the war is over. “We need an invitation, and it needs to be clear that after this war, if we are ready, and if the Ukraine army is ready to NATO standards, then after the war we will be invited to join.” Zelensky continued, “It’s very important to hear the truth and not tell us lies.”

In 2008, Ukraine was told it would one day receive full NATO membership. At the time, Moscow denounced the proposal, saying it violated red lines and, from the Russian perspective, would create a significant security threat.

Despite the Russian objections, NATO maintains its doors are open to new members, but Ukraine does not currently meet the requirements. As Kiev is currently at war with Moscow, admitting Ukraine into the alliance will put NATO in direct confrontation with Russia.

At times, Kiev appears to be frustrated with NATO refusing to make a formal commitment to Ukraine. Zelensky is threatening to sit out a coming meeting of the North Atlantic alliance in July because Ukraine will not receive a pledge to become a member at the end of the war.

Zelensky went on to slam Trump, claiming he was unable to end the war in Ukraine while he was in office. “Why didn’t he do that earlier? He was president when the war was going on here,” he explained. “I think he couldn’t do that. I think there are no people today in the world who could just have a word with Putin and end the war.”

The statement appears to be an admission from Zelensky that the war in Ukraine began before the Russian invasion in 2022. Prior to the Russian invasion, Ukraine was embroiled in an eight-year-long civil war. Washington and NATO justify their support for Kiev by saying the Russian invasion was “unprovoked.”

The Minsk Accords were agreed to by Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France with the intention of ending the civil war. However, Zelensky was unable to get neo-nazi paramilitaries fighting for Ukraine to comply with the agreement. In the days before the Russian invasion, there was a surge in fighting between Ukrainian forces and rebels in the Donbas region.

June 20, 2023 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine | 3 Comments

Global biodiversity crisis

Nature is in crisis. Soils are being depleted faster than they can
regenerate, wildlife populations have crashed by two thirds in 50 years,
bird species are vanishing, a quarter of all plant and animal species are
dying out and their rate of disappearance is accelerating.

We are living through the sixth mass extinction in the planet’s history. For the first
time we are the cause. It’s not a distant threat but an immediate one. We
have had our free lunch building, poisoning, extracting, dredging,
harvesting, rapaciously demanding all the natural world can offer us. We
are treating the planet’s life as an infinitely exploitable, adaptable
resource. It isn’t. We are killing the web of growing things on which our
own survival depends.

Times 16th June 2023

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-thousand-little-acts-can-help-save-nature-0lcflzwgf

June 20, 2023 Posted by | environment | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s “spring counteroffensive not making progress: will NATO resort to deploying tactical nuclear weapons for Ukraine?

Since the initiation of the United States’ multitrillion-dollar nuclear weapons buildup in 2016, the US has been working to create smaller and lower-yield “usable” nuclear weapons.

Are nuclear weapons the next red line NATO will cross in Ukraine?

Andre Damon @Andre__Damon, 16 June 2023, WSWS

Nearly two weeks in, it is clear that Ukraine’s “spring counteroffensive,” promoted for months by the US media, has made no significant headway, while the Ukrainian armed forces have taken devastating physical losses.

Ukrainian officials claim to have retaken 38 square miles since the start of the offensive. These scraps of territory have been purchased with as many as 1,000 casualties per day, putting the total at up to 12,000 since the start of the offensive. Russian officials have released video of armored vehicles being destroyed by missiles, drones and long-range artillery, including over one dozen advanced Leopard 2 tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

For the first year and a half of the conflict, the US and NATO powers have operated on the premise that they could prosecute the war by sending ever more advanced weapons to Ukraine, while letting Ukrainians serve as cannon fodder on the battlefield.

With cold indifference to the catastrophic loss of human life, the Biden administration has sought to fight the war to the last Ukrainian. But the problem with this strategy is that NATO is running out of Ukrainians to send to their deaths.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured so far. This is a substantial portion of the fighting-age population, leading the Zelensky government to more desperate measures to find new bodies to throw at the front lines.

Against this backdrop, the defence ministers of NATO countries concluded a two-day summit Friday aimed at finalizing plans for a military alliance between NATO and Ukraine. On Thursday, a Biden administration official told CNN that they are “open” to an accelerated plan for Ukraine to join NATO.

This will be the content of the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, whether through Ukraine directly joining NATO or in the form of the provision of “security guarantees.”

The real issue, however, is not Ukraine entering NATO, but NATO “entering” Ukraine through a vast escalation of its involvement in the war. The only reason for accelerating Ukraine’s entry into NATO is to create the framework for such an escalation.

The entire credibility of NATO has been staked on an effort to hurl the Russians over the border, generating a crisis that would lead to the collapse of the Putin government. The logic of escalation leads inexorably to direct NATO intervention in the conflict.

Every time the US and NATO powers have claimed they would not do something in Ukraine, they have gone ahead and done it, from the provision of battle tanks and fighter jets, to weaponry that has been used to attack Russian soil.

What will be the next “red line” that NATO will cross in response to the deteriorating military situation in Ukraine? There are several possibilities:

First, the creation of a “no-fly zone” and the direct engagement of Russian forces by NATO aircraft.

Second, the direct deployment of NATO troops into the war zone.

And third, the deployment or even use of tactical nuclear weapons by NATO to prevent a Russian victory in the conflict.

It is worth noting that during the Cold War, the US geopolitical strategist Henry Kissinger, recently the subject of media adulation on the occasion of his 100th birthday, once described the use of tactical nuclear weapons to avert a disaster precisely like that faced by Ukrainian forces.

In his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, Kissinger argued for the deployment of nuclear weapons in frontline combat and their use on the battlefield by the United States in the struggle to prevent advances by conventional forces.

“Limited nuclear war,” that is, nuclear war that does not lead to global annihilation and “Mutually Assured Destruction,” Kissinger argued, “is in fact a strategy which will utilize our special skills to best advantage, and it may be less likely to become all-out than conventional war.”

He argued that such a war would be “improvised in the midst of military operations [and] would be undertaken under the worst possible conditions, both psychological and military,” i.e., precisely the conditions now developing in Ukraine.

Rather than targeting “the largest centers of population,” Kissinger argued, nuclear weapons could be used as part of warfare “based on small, highly mobile, self-contained units” aimed at “depriving aggression of one of its objectives: to control territory.” He continued, “Small, mobile units with nuclear weapons are extremely useful for defeating their enemy counterparts or for the swift destruction of important objectives.”

There was one overwhelming flaw in Kissinger’s strategy. It assumed that those targeted by US nuclear weapons would restrict their own responses and that escalation would be contained. But for all their evident insanity, Kissinger’s doctrines have, in fact, been a major inspiration for the current US nuclear strategy.

Since the initiation of the United States’ multitrillion-dollar nuclear weapons buildup in 2016, the US has been working to create smaller and lower-yield “usable” nuclear weapons.

A 2015 paper by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) noted, “The scenarios for nuclear employment have changed greatly since the ‘balance of terror’ between the two global superpowers.” As a result, the “second nuclear age” involves combatants “thinking through how they might actually employ a nuclear weapon, both early in a conflict and in a discriminate manner.”

In 2019, Foreign Affairs published an article entitled “If You Want Peace, Prepare for Nuclear War” by Elbridge Colby, one of the principal authors of Trump’s 2018 National Defense Strategy. Colby wrote, “The risks of nuclear brinkmanship may be enormous, but so is the payoff from gaining a nuclear advantage over an opponent.

“The best way to avoid a nuclear war,” Colby continued, “is to be ready to fight a limited one.”

The 2022 US Nuclear Posture Review makes clear that the US reserves the right to use nuclear weapons to achieve any kind of national objective. It declares, “Although the fundamental role of US nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack, more broadly they deter all forms of strategic attack, assure Allies and partners, and allow us to achieve Presidential objectives if deterrence fails.”

The US and NATO powers have staked their entire credibility on the objective of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia…………….  https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/06/17/bwxw-j17.html

June 20, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukraine sustains massive single-day losses – Russian MOD

 https://www.rt.com/russia/578244-ukraine-heavy-casualties-mod/ 19 June 23

Kiev’s forces have lost over 1,000 soldiers and 20 tanks in a single day across the frontlines, the Russian Defense Ministry claims

Ukrainian military forces have sustained heavy casualties across the frontlines during the last 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry has said. Russia’s Zaporozhye and Donetsk regions have seen the most intense fighting, with Kiev losing more than 800 soldiers in those regions.

“Over the past day, enemy losses in the Southern Donetsk and Zaporozhye directions amounted to more than 800 Ukrainian servicemen, 20 tanks, four infantry fighting vehicles, [and] 15 armored fighting vehicles,” the military stated on Sunday during a daily media briefing. The ministry did not elaborate on whether its figures for casualties includes those killed and injured or fatalities exclusively.

As well as these setbacks in personnel and equipment, Ukrainian troops also lost two US-made M777 howitzers and several Soviet-made artillery systems, the military added.

The immediate vicinity of Donetsk city has also seen intense fighting, with Ukrainian forces losing over 200 soldiers on this axis, according to the ministry. The Russian military has destroyed multiple soft and armored vehicles on the outskirts of Donetsk, it also said, as well as two major ammunition stockpiles to the northwest of the city.

The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has intensified after Kiev launched its long-heralded counteroffensive in early June. Thus far, the Ukrainian military has failed to make any major gains, sustaining heavy losses in the process and losing large amounts of Western-supplied hardware. According to the estimates of Moscow’s military, some 7,500 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded amid the counteroffensive effort.

June 20, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment