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‘Grave concerns’ as Japan’s plan to release Fukushima water into the sea approved by nuclear watchdog

Japan’s nuclear meltdown 12 years ago led to a bandaid solution for radioactive waste. Now, time has run out and the next option is unthinkable.

Alex Blair, news.com.au 11 July 23

The UN’s international nuclear watchdog has come under heavy criticism after green-lighting Japan’s controversial plan to slowly dump radioactive water used to stem the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

When three reactors first went into meltdown over 12 years ago, nuclear authorities around the globe knew what was at stake. But a hasty bandaid fix — 1000 massive containment tanks built onsite — was never going to solve the issue long term. And now it appears time has run out for authorities looking to move forward.

Two years ago, Japan announced plans to gradually release the 1.33 million cubic metres of contaminated water into the sea over the next 30 to 40 years. Their strategy has now been approved after a lengthy review phase by the Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which claims the water will be processed to remove almost all radioactive elements, except tritium.

Efforts are now being made by nuclear and political authorities to ease public suspicion, with IAEA chief Rafael Grossi meeting with Fukushima residents this week in an effort to quell concerns.

However, one thing in particular has sparked intense backlash from surrounding nations and a portion of the global nuclear field. Within all the official box-ticking and PR campaigns urging confidence from the public, nuclear officials cannot be 100 per cent certain their plan will be safe and effective.

“These are global issues and need to address in a holistic manner,” Professor of Genetic Toxicology Awadhesh Jha told news.com.au. “Very limited information is available and we need to do more to assess the long-term effects, both with respect to human and environmental health.”

His criticisms echoed those from the Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, Henry Puna, who said the release should be stalled “until we are certain about the implications of this proposal on the environment and on human health”.

In an article penned earlier this year, Mr Puna accused the Japanese government and international watchdogs of negligence, claiming there was no way to know the full impact until after decades of dumping nuclear material.

“The discussions this past year have not been encouraging,” he wrote.

We have uncovered serious information gaps and grave concerns with the proposed ocean release. Simply put, more data is needed before any ocean release should be permitted.

“Despite this, Japan is continuing with plans for discharge in the spring of 2023, relying on the next four decades of discharge to figure it out.

“It would be unconscionable for us as a region to once again allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security.”

China, South Korea call for ‘transparent, convincing response’

China has been the most critical of Japan’s closest neighbouring nations, accusing Tokyo of turning the ocean into its “private sewer” and calling on more safety data from the nuclear watchdog.


Chinese officials have also accused the Japanese government of breaching “international moral and legal obligations”, warning that if the plan goes ahead, Japan “must bear all consequences”.

“Japan should stop the plan to release the water into the sea, but seriously consult with the international community and consider a scientific, safe, transparent and convincing response,” China’s ambassador to Japan said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile in South Korea, public polls revealed 80 per cent of the country are deeply concerned about the unknown long-term effects of the water release………………………

Tetsu Nozaki, chairman of the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations, argued Japan’s government was misrepresenting local sentiment, which he said remained strongly opposed to the plan……………………………………

A radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium is one the most expensive, rare, and potentially harmful elements in the world, according to nuclear engineer Arjun Makhijani, a prominent anti-nuclear campaigner and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

In his book Exploring Tritium’s Danger, Makhijani claims that “one teaspoon of tritiated water would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the US drinking water limit; that is enough to supply about 1 million homes with water for a year”………………….

How will Japan’s plan work?

The diluted water will be discharged into the Pacific Ocean to Japan’s east via an undersea tunnel located off the coast.

With the IAEA’s approval, pumping could commence as early as August…………………………

But according to Professor Jha, further research is essential to comprehensively assess the potential risks posed by tritium to the marine food chain.

Professor Jha’s laboratory experiments indicate that tritium has the ability to accumulate in the tissues of shellfish, such as mussels and oysters.

He believes actual consequences of real-world exposure remain largely unexplored and require closer investigation.

“It needs an international research effort,” he said.

Professor Jha’s criticism came as the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the firm that runs the site, admitted the giant mass of water will need additional, “secondary” treatment to reduce the presence of other isotopes including ruthenium-106, cobalt-60 and strontium-90.

But there are still concerns over whether the water being released will have been completely cleansed before coming into contact with sea life.

“Unlike tritium, cobalt-60 is 300,000 times more likely to accumulate on the seafloor at the outlet of the pipes,” Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said.

“It will build up over time, it will accumulate. So whatever amount you put in, it doesn’t just dilute away.”

What are the other solutions?

…………………..Buesseler on the other hand advocates for the treated water to be used in concrete production for massive buildings around the Fukushima plant.

Buesseler argues this would generate the least risk, with “little potential for human contact, as the concrete being used on the Fukushima Daiichi site and/or tsunami barriers for coastal protection”.

“Since contaminated water is still being generated, this ocean dumping – that is what it would be called if the water were put in a barrel and thrown overboard – of radioactive water would continue for 30 years (possibly more),” Buesseler writes.

“The water would still contain some strontium-90 and other radionuclides with attendant risks of uptake associated with seafloor sediments.

“Besides the radioactivity exposure, which TEPCO estimates will be well below 1 millisievert per year, the dumping would also create reputation damage to the fishing and tourist industries, not only in Japan but across other countries in the Pacific region.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/grave-concerns-as-japans-plan-to-release-fukushima-water-into-the-sea-approved-by-nuclear-watchdog/news-story/854cc5d9618a2a5bde1de2f657f49a89


July 11, 2023 Posted by | Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment

Red alert at Zaporizhzhia?

The threatened deadly scenarios could not happen at a wind farm

By Linda Pentz Gunter, 10 july 23 https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/07/09/red-alert-at-zaporizhzhia/

Amidst accusations from both the Russian and Ukrainian sides that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine has been wired for detonation or could be deliberately attacked during the current war there, one absolute truth remains: nuclear power plants are inherently dangerous. 

Whether the rhetorical threats are real or not remains subject for debate. What is incontrovertibly real is the danger a nuclear power plant poses. After all, that is why the two sides are making these threats in the first place: because the outcome would be so deadly. If Zaporizhzhia was a wind farm, it wouldn’t even be mentioned.

Each nuclear reactor contains a lethal radioactive inventory, in the reactor core and also in the fuel pools into which the irradiated fuel is offloaded and, over time, densely packed. Casks also house nuclear waste offloaded from the fuel pools. 

Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe with at least 2,204 tons of highly radioactive waste within the reactors and the irradiated fuel pools. 

Depending on the severity of what transpires, any or all of this radioactive fuel could be ignited.

Amidst the confusion and unreliability of any pronouncements uttered through the “fog of war”, there remain several unanswered questions that have led to heightened rumor and speculation:

Has the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in fact been wired for detonation and whose interests would be served by blowing up the plant? 

Why is there an exodus of both Russian and Ukrainian plant personnel? 

Will the sabotage of the downstream Kakhovka dam that resulted in catastrophic flooding, also lead to an equally catastrophic loss of available cooling water supplies for the reactors and fuel pools? 

Will the backup diesel generators, frequently turned to for powering the essential cooling each time the plant has lost connection to the electricity grid, last through each crisis, given their fuel must also be replenished, potentially not possible under war conditions?

None of these threats would make headlines if Zaporizhzhia was instead home to a wind farm or utility scale solar array. This perhaps explains the rush now to downplay the gravity of the situation, with claims in the press that a major attack on the plant would “not be as bad as Chornobyl” and that radioactive releases would be minimal and barely travel beyond the fence line.

This is an irresponsible dismissal of the real dangers. The measured assessment of Dr. Edwin Lyman at the Union of Concerned Scientists confirms that an attack on Zaporizhzhia could indeed be catastrophic.

The graphite moderator used at Chornobyl undeniably worsened the outcome of that explosion and its aftermath. The graphite fueled the fire and the smoke further suspended what became the radioactive fallout that traveled far and wide across the former Soviet Union and all of Europe.

The part played by the graphite moderator in increasing the severity of the Chornobyl disaster has led to an assumption that major fires and explosions at Zaporizhzhia would result in less serious consequences, given the reactors are not of the same design. All six at Zaporizhzhia are Russian VVERs, similar to the Pressurized Water Reactor used here in the United States. (Chornobyl was the older RBMK.)

However, while Zaporizhzhia may be a less primitive design, it is not harmless. (Absurdly, these 1980s reactors are described in the press as “more modern.”)

If the uranium fuel in the Zaporizhzhia reactors or irradiated fuel storage pools overheats and ignites, it could then heat up the zirconium cladding around it, which would ignite and burn fiercely as a flare at temperatures too hot to extinguish with water. 

The resulting chemical reaction would also generate an explosive environment. The heat of the release and any subsequent detonations could breach concrete structures, then loft radioactive gas and fallout into the environment to travel on the weather. 

Radioactive fallout could contaminate crucial agricultural land in Ukraine and potentially also in Russia should prevailing winds travel eastward at the time of the disaster. As we have learned from the Chornobyl fallout, this is an enduring harm that enters the food chain and human bodies and remains harmful in the environment indefinitely, as exemplified by the 1,000 square mile Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.

Who then consumes that food is also of critical importance. While Europe allows an already too high 600 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) of radioactive cesium in food, contaminated food supplies from Ukraine that read at higher levels after a nuclear disaster could be exported to countries with even weaker standards, including the US where the limit is an unacceptable 1200 Bq/kg. But will those consuming such foodstuffs be counted among the victims of such a nuclear disaster? Likely not.

The true numbers of those harmed by the Chornobyl disaster will never be known due to institutional suppression and misrepresentation of the numbers and the absence of record-keeping in the former Soviet countries affected. Therefore, to suggest that a major nuclear disaster at Zaporizhzhia would be “not nearly as bad as Chornobyl” is too broad and speculative without looking at the specifics.

Those specifics depend on whether the disaster involves hydrogen explosions such as happened at Fukushima, or fires resulting from a bombing raid or missile attack, which could disperse more radioactivity further. It would also depend on whether all six reactors suffered catastrophic failures, whether all of the fuel pools were drained and caught fire and whether the storage casks were breached.

It would further depend on which way the wind was blowing, and if, when and where it subsequently rained out a radioactive plume, all factors that influenced where the Chornobyl radioactive fallout was deposited.

If Zaporizhzhia comes to harm, each side in the conflict will almost certainly hold the other responsible. But ultimately, the responsibility we all share is to reject the continued use of a technology that has the potential to wreak such disastrous consequences on humanity.

Nuclear power is the most dangerous way to boil water. It is unnecessary, expensive, and an obstacle to renewable energy development. It is intrinsically tied to the desire for — and development of  — nuclear weapons, the use of which could be the other lethal outcome in this war.

Zaporizhzhia is in the news almost every day. The propaganda may be deliberately alarmist, but the basis for the alarm is very real or it would not be in the headlines in the first place. 

It is time to see sense. Calling for a no-fire zone around Zaporizhzhia is not enough. We must call for no nuclear power at all.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International. 

July 11, 2023 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Biden Keeps Lying About The US “Not Trying To Surround” China

ignore the words and watch the actions.

You simply cannot understand the geopolitics and major conflicts of the 2020s without understanding that the US empire has been actively amassing military threats in the immediate surroundings of its top two rivals — China and Russia — that it would never tolerate anyone else amassing anywhere near the United States. The single dumbest thing the US empire asks us to believe nowadays is that surrounding its two biggest foes with war machinery is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JUL 11, 2023  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/biden-keeps-lying-about-the-us-not?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=134297841&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

President Biden had a recent interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria during which he defended his controversial decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine and suggested that the US can continually support Ukraine the way it supports Israel rather than adding it to the NATO alliance.

About halfway through the interview Biden said something about China that’s worth flagging, because the claim he makes is self-evidently false, and it’s not the first time he’s made it.

Describing the conversations he’s been having with China’s President Xi Jinping, Biden said the following:

“We’re going to put together the Quad which is India, Australia, the United States and Japan. I got a call from him [Xi] on that. He said why are you doing that. I said we’re not doing that to surround you, we’re doing that to maintain stability in the Indian Ocean and in the South China Sea. Because we believe the rules of the road about what constitutes international air space, international space and the water should be maintained.”

Biden uttered this same bogus talking point about not trying to surround China last month at the private fundraising event where he made headlines by calling Xi a “dictator”:

“But what he was really upset about was that I insisted that we — we reunite the Qu- —  so-called Quad.  He called me and told me not to do that because it was putting him in a bind.  I said, All we’re doing — we’re not trying to surround you, we’re just trying to make sure the international rules with air and sea lanes remain open.” 

Biden is lying. The US is deliberately surrounding China with war machinery and has been for years, and has rapidly escalated its efforts to do so during Biden’s term. There are currently no fewer than 313 US military bases in East Asia by the Pentagon’s own admission, with the Biden administration adding four new ones in the Philippines. Biden’s war machine has been busy instituting the AUKUS alliance which is specifically set up to menace China, moving nuclear-capable bombers to Indonesia, signing a military deal with Papua New Guinea, working to station missile-armed marines at Japan’s Okinawa islands, staging provocations in Taiwan, and getting into increasingly confrontational encounters with Chinese military vessels and aircraft off China’s coast as part of its dramatically increased military presence in the area.

So of course the US is trying to surround China, as evidenced by the mountains of US war machinery that are being moved into areas surrounding China. Biden can babble all he wants about wanting to secure sea lanes and protect international waters, but only a drooling idiot would believe the world’s most powerful empire is militarily surrounding its top geopolitical rival as an act of defense.

And Beijing is under no illusions about this. Xi said in a speech earlier this year that “Western countries—led by the U.S.—have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development.”

So Biden isn’t trying to fool the Chinese government with his “We’re not trying to surround you” schtick — he’s trying to fool you. He’s trying to fool the western public and the allies of the United States, who would get spooked if the US president openly admitted to a deliberate campaign of militarily encirclement against an economic superpower they all trade with extensively.

You simply cannot understand the geopolitics and major conflicts of the 2020s without understanding that the US empire has been actively amassing military threats in the immediate surroundings of its top two rivals — China and Russia — that it would never tolerate anyone else amassing anywhere near the United States. The single dumbest thing the US empire asks us to believe nowadays is that surrounding its two biggest foes with war machinery is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression.

The best advice I can offer about US-China tensions is to ignore the words and watch the actions. Ignore what officials say about wanting peace and not trying to surround China and supporting the One China policy etc, and just watch all the US war machinery that’s being rapidly added to that region. The US empire is better at international narrative manipulation than any power structure that has ever existed in human history, but what they can’t spin away is the concrete maneuverings of solid pieces of war machinery, because they are physical realities and not narratives.

July 11, 2023 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

‘Russian victory’ worse than civilian cluster-bomb deaths – says Pentagon official

A US official has defended the decision to supply Ukraine with the weapons, which are banned in more than 100 countries.

US fears of Russian success on the battlefield outweigh concerns that deliveries of cluster bombs to Ukraine could result in civilian casualties, a senior Pentagon official acknowledged on Friday.

Speaking to reporters, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl defended the White House’s decision to approve another $800 million weapons package for Ukraine, including cluster munitions. The weapons are banned in more than 100 countries.

When they detonate, the munitions release many small bomblets over a wide area. A percentage of bomblets fail to detonate on impact, however, and unexploded elements pose severe risks to civilians for years after  fighting ends.

Asked if the Pentagon has assured its allies that the munitions will not cause excessive civilian harm, Kahl replied: “I’m as concerned about the humanitarian circumstance as anybody, but the worst thing for civilians in Ukraine is for Russia to win the war. And so it’s important that they don’t.”……………………………  https://www.rt.com/news/579374-pentagon-cluster-munition-civilian-casualties/

July 11, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Holtec hogs the money, but Michigan ratepayers will foot the bill for reactor resuscitation.

   by beyondnuclearinternational By Jeff Alson

The 52-year old Palisades nuclear power plant near South Haven, Michigan, on the shore of Lake Michigan near both Chicago and Grand Rapids, is one of the oldest and most degraded reactors in the country. In 2006, Palisades’ original owner, Consumers Energy, cited a wide range of major safety concerns when it sold the plant to Entergy, including that Palisades had one of the most embrittled reactor vessels in the country, needed a new reactor vessel head and steam generator, and had suffered from control rod drive mechanism seal leaks since it first opened. 

As natural gas, and then wind and solar, became cheaper and cheaper, Palisades’ electricity became increasingly uncompetitive. Michigan ratepayers subsidized its electricity for years, sometimes paying as much as 57% above market rates. Trying to minimize additional costs, Entergy refused to invest in the most important safety repairs.

In 2018, Entergy announced it would sell the old and dangerous plant to Holtec, a decommissioning company, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved. The plant was formally closed on May 20, 2022, nuclear fuel was removed on June 13, and the plant was sold to Holtec on June 28, 2022. 

The NRC then terminated Palisades’ operating license.

For four years, from 2018 through 2022, every major stakeholder—Entergy, the NRC, the Michigan Public Service Commission, energy and environmental NGOs, groups representing electricity consumers, and, notably, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer—agreed that Palisades should be shut down. 

The Governor’s own MI Healthy Climate Plan, released in April 2022, appropriately ignored Palisades’ imminent closure, since there are far cheaper and safer alternatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

What changed? Holtec saw an opportunity to feed from the public trough by getting billions of dollars of corporate welfare, from both the state and federal government, to raise Palisades from the dead.

Holtec has requested a $300 million subsidy from Michigan taxpayers and in late June got a $150 million blank check from the Michigan legislature added to the current state budget without any public debate whatsoever. More ominous, Holtec also wants Michigan ratepayers to, once again, be forced to buy electricity at above-market prices that could significantly raise Michigan’s electricity rates, already the highest in the Midwest.

For example, when operating properly, the 700 megawatt Palisades plant can generate about 6 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. If this electricity were just one cent per kilowatt-hour more expensive than market prices, ratepayers would have to pay an extra $60 million per year. If it were five cents more expensive, the total subsidy would increase to $300 million per year. If Palisades operated for another 5 or 10 years, the total ratepayer subsidy could reach into the billions of dollars.

Holtec will likely apply for multiple federal subsidies as well. To reopen Palisades, Holtec has already applied to the Department of Energy (DOE) for a billion dollar nuclear loan guarantee under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and may apply for an additional $1.2 billion from the 2021 Infrastructure bill. Separately, Holtec has applied to DOE for $7.4 billion in loan guarantees under the 2005 Energy Policy Act for one or more future small modular nuclear reactors.

Michigan taxpayers and ratepayers have had too many nuclear white elephants: ……………………………………………………………….

Jeff Alson is an Alliance to Halt Fermi 3 board member and an environmental engineer who worked on auto pollution issues for 40 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/07/09/holtec-hogs-the-money/

July 11, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | 2 Comments

The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation

 Mark Diesendorf: The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation: Technological,
Socioeconomic and Political Change. We are facing environmental crises and
increasing social inequality. The solutions must go beyond campaigning on
individual issues. We must weaken the driving forces: capture of
nation-state by powerful vested interests and an economic system that’s
based on exploiting the environment and the majority of the world’s people.

 Mark Diesendorf 9th July 2023

July 11, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Russia calls on NATO to discuss Ukraine nuclear plant

Canberra Times, 9 July 23

The leaders of the United States-led transatlantic NATO defence alliance should discuss Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant at their summit, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says.

NATO leaders will meet in Vilnius on Tuesday and Wednesday to tackle a wide range of topics, from divisions over Ukraine’s membership bid and Sweden’s accession to boosting ammunition stockpiles and reviewing the first defence plans in decades.

Accusing Ukraine of “systematic infliction of damage” to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Zakharova said “the NATO summit’s key attention should be devoted to it”.

“After all, the vast majority of the alliance members will be in the direct impact zone” (if something were to happen at the plant), Zakharova said on the Telegram messaging app.

Vilnius is some 1000 kilometres from the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest.

Both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of planning to attack the plant, which is located on Russian-held territory in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, near the front line of Russia’s conflict with Ukraine………….

The International Atomic Energy Agency experts based at the plant said they had yet to observe any indications of mines or explosives at the plant but needed more access to be sure.  https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8263420/russia-calls-on-nato-to-discuss-ukraine-nuclear-plant/

July 11, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, safety | Leave a comment

Labour seeks pact to keep AI out of nuclear arms deployment

David Lammy wants UK to agree rules with other countries to regulate use of artificial intelligence in controlling nuclear weapons

 Telegraph 8th July 2023

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/08/labour-explore-ai-ban-decisions-nuclear-weapons-david-lammy/

July 11, 2023 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

Germany Rejects Cluster Bombs For Ukraine As Clip Surfaces Of Biden Admin Previously Calling Them A ‘War Crime’

Zero Hedge, BY TYLER DURDEN, SATURDAY, JUL 08, 2023 

In light of the Biden White House approving cluster bombs for Ukraine, under the justification that ‘but Russia used them first’, below is a quick trip down memory lane…

First, here is then White House press secretary Jen Psaki unequivocally condemning the use of cluster munitions as a potential “war crime” in 2022. The implication behind the exchange is that only the “bad guys” use them…

[Video here on original]

Next, below is a lengthy letter from top-ranking Congressional Democrats in a 2013 written to then President Barack Obama highlighting the evils of cluster bombs, explaining they are “indiscriminate, unreliable and pose an unacceptable danger to US forces and civilians alike.”

The letter emphasized they “cause unintended harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure, in many cases long after the cessation of hostilities,” and also recalled that “During Operation Desert Storm, US-dropped cluster submutnions caused more US troops casualties than any single Iraqi weapon system.”

Back when Democrats were outraged over cluster bombs and the potential for war crimes and indiscriminate killing…

[documentery evidence here on original]

It’s no wonder that key US allies in Europe are now objecting to the decision to supply Kiev with the internationally banned weapons. 

“Germany opposes sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, its foreign minister said on Friday, a day after U.S. officials said Washington was planning to provide Kyiv with the weapons, widely denounced for killing and maiming civilians,” Reuters reports. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters in Vienna: “I have followed the media reports. For us, as a state party, the Oslo agreement applies.”

As for NATO leadership, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg shrugged off reports that the US is set to announce cluster bombs for Ukraine. “This will be for governments to decide, not for Nato to decide,” he said Friday. He essentially said that because Russia is already deploying them, this makes it okay for Ukraine to do the same…… https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/germany-rejects-cluster-bombs-ukraine-clip-surfaces-biden-admin-previously-cal1

July 11, 2023 Posted by | Germany, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Jacobs’ nuclear spin-off raises alarm in Whitehall

 Whitehall officials have raised concerns about the spin-off of a £3
billion business that services vital parts of Britain’s nuclear and
defence infrastructure. The Cabinet Office is understood to have met the
chief executive of US engineering giant Jacobs, which in March announced
its intention to separate its “critical missions solutions” (CMS)
business. This operation is helping to build the Hinkley Point C reactor in
Somerset. It also manages waste and decommissioning at the Sellafield
nuclear site and has overseen projects at AWE Aldermaston, a nuclear
weapons base.

Gareth Rhys Williams, chief commercial officer of the Cabinet
Office, met Jacobs boss Bob Pragada last month to seek assurances that the
spin-off would not affect the delivery of its government contracts.

Jacobs decided to spin off its multinational CMS business to concentrate on more
lucrative consulting work. It is unclear whether this will take the form of
a stock market float, or even a sale. McKinsey is believed to be one of the
advisers leading the spin-off.

Industry sources suggested the separation of
CMS could have implications for national security, given the sensitive
nature of its contracts, especially if it were snapped up by a foreign
buyer. Separately, energy secretary Grant Shapps will this week deliver an
update on Great British Nuclear, which is running a competition to pick
developers of small modular reactors. It is expected to outline a
twin-track approach to projects, with a first wave of more traditional
designs to be followed by “advanced” modular reactors.

 Times 9th July 2023

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jacobs-nuclear-spin-off-raises-alarm-in-whitehall-d9vn7r3jv

July 11, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A watershed week in nuclear news

A bit of good news -The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation

It’s a watershed moment – on 2 counts:

1. Ukraine. The determination of the USA-led Western countries to bring Ukraine into NATO is a red flag to Russia, and current events, indicate that the West, and its charismatic super-star Zelensky, will not countenance any negotiated end to the war.

2. The IAEA’s Rafael Grossi has made it clear that the Fukushima nuclear wastewater MUST be emptied into the Pacific, to ensure that this practice is accepted, for the continued growth of the nuclear industry world-wide.

Christina notes. IAEA hypocrisy, and the little Fukushima nuclear radiation mill.       And the prize for HYPOCRISY goes to Rafael Grossi,Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. No real research into the effects of releasing nuclear waste-water into rivers and seas. Oh goody! That means it’s OK, (doesn’t it?)

TOP STORIES

Ralph Nader: Reverse the Accelerating Warfare State Before It’s Too Late! Daniel Kovalik: Why Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is legal under international law. Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.

Better, safer, alternatives for managing Fukushima’s radioactively polluted wastewater.         Cover up? Did atom bosses collude to ‘manage message’ of Japanese plan to poison Pacific? Will this whistleblower be heard by anyone? Fukushima: Anxiety and anger over Japan’s nuclear waste water plan.

An Attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Could Still be Catastrophic (- nuclear promoters minimise the risk). Red alert at Zaporizhzhia? US cluster bombs deal is clear signal that war is not going well for Ukraine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpVon7R2XKo

CLIMATE. Wishful thinking about nuclear energy won’t get us to net zero. 

CIVIL LIBERTIES. Ben & Jerry’s, CodePink Co-Founders Arrested in DC Demanding Freedom for Julian Assange.

ECONOMICS.

ENERGY. Germany’s power mix boasts more renewables, lower spot market prices – despite nuclear exit. Fukushima: China calls for suspension of Japanese plan to release radioactive water into sea. Russian K-278 sub sank 30 years ago but continues to leak radiation.         Historic Hanford contamination is worse than expected.

FILM. The Fukushima Disaster: The hidden side of the story, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBqk0OtlE8k

HEALTH. Workers, residents at US site that made Nagasaki A-bomb’s plutonium still suffering. U.S. senators seek expanded compensation for people exposed to nuclear fallout.

INDIGENOUS ISSUES. Local colleges train students to work in a plutonium pit factory, but at what cost?      First Nations won’t back nuclear plant expansion until waste questions are answered. Barngarla people continue their fight against the proposed Kimba nuclear waste dump.

LEGAL  High nuclear crimes don’t pay.

MEDIA. Fukushima, the Hidden Side of the Story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBqk0OtlE8k . Journalists Abandoned Julian Assange and Slit Their Own Throats. Today in war propaganda.

  NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY. World’s Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal.         Even the science engineering big-wigs don’t seem too enthusiastic about nuclear fusion.         Sweden goes for small nuclear reactors, dumps renewable energy plans.     Canada planning World’s Biggest Nuclear Power Plant .    UK Labour seeks pact to keep AI out of nuclear arms deployment.

OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR. Huge protest against Rafael Grossi at Gimpo airport, Seoul, South Korea.       Jeju islanders protest Japan’s radioactive water discharge. UN report on Japan’s Fukushima water plans fails to placate opponents. Come and join us: Nuclear Free Local Authorities individual membership launched on Independence Day. Backlash builds as Japan prepares to release wastewater from Fukushima nuclear plant. Nagasaki to take shot at G-7 over its nuclear deterrence stance.

POLITICS. Italy’s Nuclear Energy Debate: Past, Present, and Future. US govt provides yet another round of money grants to companies, including Westinghouse, to promote nuclear power development. RFK Jr torches Biden for handing “horrific” cluster munitions to Ukraine.

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. ” The future of nuclear as an alternative energy source relies on the success of the Fukushima release” – Rafael Grossi, (“problem is war, not nuclear energy”- Grossi). International community cannot tolerate Japan’s nuclear-contaminated water dumping.. Ukraine, Russia accuse each other of planning to attack Europe’s biggest nuclear plant. Russia and Ukraine step up rhetoric around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Ukraine in talks with Bulgaria to buy Russian nuclear reactors with EU funds. N Korea slams US move to deploy nuclear submarines to peninsula.

SAFETY. Russia calls on NATO to discuss Ukraine nuclear plant. IAEA: Europe’s largest nuclear power plant regains back-up electricity feed. Especially in USA, nuclear reactors are getting very old – past their use-by dates. INCIDENTS: One of the world’s worst nuclear disasters is likely something you’ve never heard of.

SECRETS and LIES. Nuclear Contaminated Water Dumping: IAEA Concludes ‘Absolute Safety of Nuclear Contaminated Water’ – with Japanese Government Money?.   

  Despite Zelensky’s claims, there’s no evidence that Russia has rigged Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya plant with explosives, nuclear watchdog says.

SPINBUSTER. Despite Zelensky’s claims, there’s no evidence that Russia has rigged Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya plant with explosives, nuclear watchdog says. John Bolton Accidentally Explains Why US Policy On Russia And China Is Wrong.

WASTES. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi says he’s satisfied with Japan’s plans to release Fukushima wastewater. Japanese regulator greenlights discharge of nuclear waste from Fukushima plant.         What to know about Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water from Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea. Japan Set to Pour Fukushima Water Into Pacific, Irking China. Japan’s nuclear regulator finishes inspection of Fukushima radioactive wastewater release system. Japan claims that China and South Korea both pour radioactive waste-water , worse than Japan’s, into the oceans. 

 Hanford nuclear waste site has a clean-up bill of 560 billion USD in Washington DC . Missouri S&T will ask St. Louis-area residents their opinions about nuclear waste.

WAR and CONFLICT.

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.

July 10, 2023 Posted by | Christina's notes | 8 Comments

Daniel Kovalik: Why Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is legal under international law

One must begin this discussion by accepting the fact that there was already a war happening in Ukraine for the eight years preceding the Russian military incursion in February 2022. And, this war by the government in Kiev against the Russian-speaking peoples of the Donbass – a war which claimed the lives of around 14,000 people, many of them children, and displaced around 1.5 million more even before Russia’s military operation – has been arguably genocidal. That is, the government in Kiev, and especially its neo-Nazi battalions, carried out attacks against these peoples with the intention of destroying, at least in part, the ethnic Russians precisely because of their ethnicity.  

The argument can be made that Russia exercised its right for self-defense

10 July 23 https://www.rt.com/russia/554166-international-law-military-operation-ukraine/

Daniel Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and is author of the recently-released book Nicaragua: A History of US Intervention & Resistance.

For many years, I have studied and given much thought to the UN Charter’s prohibition against aggressive war. No one can seriously doubt that the primary purpose of the document – drafted and agreed to on the heels of the horrors of WWII – was and is to prevent war and “to maintain international peace and security,” a phrase repeated throughout. 

As the Justices at Nuremberg correctly concluded, “To initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” That is, war is the paramount crime because all of the evils we so abhor – genocide, crimes against humanity, etc. – are the terrible fruits of the tree of war.

In light of the above, I have spent my entire adult life opposing war and foreign intervention.  Of course, as an American, I have had ample occasion to do so given that the US is, as Martin Luther King stated, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”  Similarly, Jimmy Carter recently stated that the US is “the most war-like nation in the history of the world.” This is demonstrably true, of course. In my lifetime alone, the US has waged aggressive and unprovoked wars against countries such as Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Libya, and Somalia. And this doesn’t even count the numerous proxy wars the US has fought via surrogates (e.g., through the Contras in Nicaragua, various jihadist groups in Syria, and through Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the ongoing war against Yemen).  

Indeed, through such wars, the US has done more, and intentionally so, than any nation on earth to undermine the legal pillars prohibiting war.  It is in reaction to this, and with the express desire to try to salvage what is left of the UN Charter’s legal prohibitions against aggressive war, that a number of nations, including Russia and China, founded the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter. 

In short, for the US to complain about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of international law is, at best, the pot calling the kettle black. Still, the fact that the US is so obviously hypocritical in this regard does not necessarily mean Washington is automatically wrong. In the end, we must analyze Russia’s conduct on its own merits.  

One must begin this discussion by accepting the fact that there was already a war happening in Ukraine for the eight years preceding the Russian military incursion in February 2022. And, this war by the government in Kiev against the Russian-speaking peoples of the Donbass – a war which claimed the lives of around 14,000 people, many of them children, and displaced around 1.5 million more even before Russia’s military operation – has been arguably genocidal. That is, the government in Kiev, and especially its neo-Nazi battalions, carried out attacks against these peoples with the intention of destroying, at least in part, the ethnic Russians precisely because of their ethnicity.  

While the US government and media are trying hard to obscure these facts, they are undeniable, and were indeed reported by the mainstream Western press before it became inconvenient to do so. Thus, a commentary run by Reuters in 2018 clearly sets out how the neo-Nazis battalions have been integrated into the official Ukrainian military and police forces, and are thus state, or at least quasi-state, actors for which the Ukrainian government bears legal responsibility. As the piece relates, there are 30-some right-wing extremist groups operating in Ukraine, that “have been formally integrated into Ukraine’s armed forces,” and that “the more extreme among these groups promote an intolerant and illiberal ideology… ”  

That is, they possess and promote hatred towards ethnic Russians, the Roma peoples, and members of the LGBT community as well, and they act out this hatred by attacking, killing, and displacing these peoples. The piece cites the Western human rights group Freedom House for the proposition that “an increase in patriotic discourse supporting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia has coincided with an apparent increase in both public hate speech, sometimes by public officials and magnified by the media, as well as violence towards vulnerable groups such as the LGBT community.” And this has been accompanied by actual violence. For example, “Azov and other militias have attacked anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, media outlets, art exhibitions, foreign students and Roma.”  

As reported in Newsweek, Amnesty International had been reporting on these very same extremist hate groups and their accompanying violent activities as far back as 2014.

It is this very type of evidence – public hate speech combined with large-scale, systemic attacks on the targets of the speech – that has been used to convict individuals of genocide, for example in the Rwandan genocide case against Jean-Paul Akayesu. 

To add to this, there are well over 500,000 residents of the Donbass region of Ukraine who are also Russian citizens. While that estimate was made in April 2021, after Vladimir Putin’s 2019 decree simplified the process of obtaining Russian citizenship for residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, this means that Russian citizens were being subjected to racialized attack by neo-Nazi groups integrated into the government of Ukraine, and right on the border of Russia.  

And lest Russia was uncertain about the Ukrainian government’s intentions regarding the Russian ethnics in the Donbass, the government in Kiev passed new language laws in 2019 which made it clear that Russian speakers were at best second-class citizens. Indeed, the usually pro-West Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed alarm about these laws. As the HRW explained in an early-2022 report which received nearly no coverage in the Western media, the government in Kiev passed legislation which “requires print media outlets registered in Ukraine to publish in Ukrainian. Publications in other languages must also be accompanied by a Ukrainian version, equivalent in content, volume, and method of printing. Additionally, places of distribution such as newsstands must have at least half their content in Ukrainian.”  

And, according to the HRW, “Article 25, regarding print media outlets, makes exceptions for certain minority languages, English, and official EU languages, but not for Russian” (emphasis added), the justification for that being “the century of oppression of … Ukrainian in favor of Russian.” As the HRW explained, “[t]here are concerns about whether guarantees for minority languages are sufficient. The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s top advisory body on constitutional matters, said that several of the law’s articles, including article 25, ‘failed to strike a fair balance’ between promoting the Ukrainian language and safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights.” Such legislation only underscored the Ukrainian government’s desire to destroy the culture, if not the very existence, of the ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

Moreover, as the Organization of World Peace reported in 2021, “according to Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Decree no. 117/2021, Ukraine has committed to putting all options on the table to taking back control over the Russian annexed Crimea region. Signed on March 24th, President Zelensky has committed the country to pursue strategies that . . . ‘will prepare and implement measures to ensure the de-occupation and reintegration of the peninsula.’” Given that the residents of Crimea, most of whom are ethnic Russians, are quite happy with the current state of affairs under Russian governance – this, according to a 2020 Washington Post report – Zelensky’s threat in this regard was not only a threat against Russia itself but was also a threat of potentially massive bloodshed against a people who do not want to go back to Ukraine.

Without more, this situation represents a much more compelling case for justifying Russian intervention under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine which has been advocated by such Western ‘humanitarians’ as Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice, and which was relied upon to justify the NATO interventions in countries like the former Yugoslavia and Libya. And moreover, none of the states involved in these interventions could possibly make any claims of self-defense. This is especially the case for the United States, which has been sending forces thousands of miles away to drop bombs on far-flung lands.  

Indeed, this recalls to mind the words of the great Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said, who opined years ago in his influential work, ‘Culture and Imperialism’, that it is simply unfair to try to compare the empire-building of Russia with that of the West. As Dr. Said explained, “Russia … acquired its imperial territories almost exclusively by adjacence. Unlike Britain and France, which jumped thousands of miles beyond their own borders to other continents, Russia moved to swallow whatever land or peoples stood next to its borders … but in the English and French cases, the sheer distance of attractive territories summoned the projection of far-flung interest …” This observation is doubly applicable to the United States.

Still, there is more to consider regarding Russia’s claimed justifications for intervention. Thus, not only are there radical groups on its border attacking ethnic Russians, including Russian citizens, but also, these groups have reportedly been funded and trained by the United States with the very intention of destabilizing and undermining the territorial integrity of Russia itself.  

As Yahoo News! explained in a January 2022 article:

“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.

The program has involved ‘very specific training on skills that would enhance’ the Ukrainians’ ‘ability to push back against the Russians,’ said the former senior intelligence official.

The training, which has included ‘tactical stuff,’ is ‘going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine,’ said the former official.

One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. ‘The United States is training an insurgency,’ said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how ‘to kill Russians.’”

(emphasis added).  

To remove any doubt that the destabilization of Russia itself has been the goal of the US in these efforts, one should examine the very telling 2019 report of the Rand Corporation – a long-time defense contractor called upon to advise the US on how to carry out its policy goals. In this report, entitled, ‘Overextending and Unbalancing Russia, Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options’, one of the many tactics listed is “Providing lethal aid to Ukraine” in order to “exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability.”

In short, there is no doubt that Russia has been threatened, and in a quite profound way, with concrete destabilizing efforts by the US, NATO and their extremist surrogates in Ukraine.  Russia has been so threatened for a full eight years. And Russia has witnessed what such destabilizing efforts have meant for other countries, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria to Libya – that is, nearly a total annihilation of the country as a functioning nation-state.  

It is hard to conceive of a more pressing case for the need to act in defense of the nation. While the UN Charter prohibits unilateral acts of war, it also provides, in Article 51, that “[n]othing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense… ”  And this right of self-defense has been interpreted to permit countries to respond, not only to actual armed attacks, but also to the threat of imminent attack.  

In light of the above, it is my assessment that this right has been triggered in the instant case, and that Russia had a right to act in its own self-defense by intervening in Ukraine, which had become a proxy of the US and NATO for an assault – not only on Russian ethnics within Ukraine – but also upon Russia itself. A contrary conclusion would simply ignore the dire realities facing Russia.

July 10, 2023 Posted by | Legal, Reference, Russia | Leave a comment

RFK Jr torches Biden for handing “horrific” cluster munitions to Ukraine.

Daiy Caller 10 July 23

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasted the Biden administration Friday following an announcement that the Department of Defense would transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.

The Biden administration announced plans to primarily send M864 155-millimeter artillery shells, known as Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM), which dispense smaller explosive weapons over an area to attack personnel and vehicles, reversing a previous decision to withhold the weapons. Cluster munitions are controversial due to the risk posed by “dud” submunitions that could cause harm to civilians long after a conflict is over and were last manufactured in the 1990s, The Washington Post reported.

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasted the Biden administration Friday following an announcement that the Department of Defense would transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.

The Biden administration announced plans to primarily send M864 155-millimeter artillery shells, known as Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM), which dispense smaller explosive weapons over an area to attack personnel and vehicles, reversing a previous decision to withhold the weapons. Cluster munitions are controversial due to the risk posed by “dud” submunitions that could cause harm to civilians long after a conflict is over and were last manufactured in the 1990s, The Washington Post reported.

“These munitions scatter bomblets across the landscape,” Kennedy said in a follow-on post. “Many fail to explode — until children pick them up later. They have caused thousands of injuries and deaths to civilians.”……………

“Fortunately for Biden, there’s no anti-war left in the US Congress to bother him about this,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted. “There are a few left-ish commentators, otherwise loyal to Democrats, who are making some noise about it, but by and large this will go forward without protest.”  https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/07/robert-f-kennedy-jr-torches-joe-1

July 10, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Journalists Abandoned Julian Assange and Slit Their Own Throats

The failure by journalists to mount a campaign to free Julian Assange, or expose the viscous smear campaign against him, is one more catastrophic and self-defeating blunder by the news media.

CHRIS HEDGES, JUL 10, 2023

LONDON: The persecution of Julian Assange, along with the climate of fear, wholesale government surveillance and use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, has emasculated investigative journalism. The press has not only failed to mount a sustained campaign to support Julian, whose extradition appears imminent, but no longer attempts to shine a light into the inner workings of power. This failure is not only inexcusable, but ominous. 

The U.S. government, especially the military and agencies such as the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and Homeland Security, have no intention of stopping with Julian, who faces 170 years in prison if found guilty of violating 17 counts of the Espionage Act. They are cementing into place mechanisms of draconian state censorship, some features of which were exposed by Matt Taibbi in the Twitter Files, to construct a dystopian corporate totalitarianism.  

The U.S. and the U.K. brazenly violated a series of judicial norms and diplomatic protocols to keep Julian trapped for seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy after he had been granted political asylum by Ecuador. The CIA, through the Spanish security firm UC Global, made recordings of Julian’s meetings with his attorneys, which alone should invalidate the extradition case. Julian has been held for more than four years in the notorious Belmarsh high-security prison since the British Metropolitan Police dragged him out of the embassy on April 11, 2019. The embassy is supposed to be the sovereign territory of Ecuador. Julian has not been sentenced in this case for a crime. He is charged under the Espionage Act, although he is not a U.S. citizen and WikiLeaks is not a U.S.-based publication. The U.K. courts, which have engaged in what can only be described as a show trial, appear ready to turn him over to the U.S. once his final appeal, as we expect, is rejected. This could happen in a matter of days or weeks. 

On Wednesday night at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Stella Assange, an attorney who is married to Julian; Matt Kennard, co-founder and chief investigator of Declassified UK, and I examined the collapse of the press, especially with regard to Julian’s case. You can watch our discussion here. 

“I feel like I’m living in 1984,” Matt said. “This is a journalist who revealed more crimes of the world’s superpower than anyone in history. He’s sitting in a maximum-security prison in London. The state that wants to bring him over to that country to put him in prison for the rest of his life is on record as spying on his privileged conversations with his lawyers. They’re on record plotting to assassinate him. Any of those things, if you told someone from a different time ‘Yeah this is what happened and he was sent anyway and not only that, but the media didn’t cover it at all.’ It’s really scary. If they can do that to Assange, if civil society can drop the ball and the media can drop the ball, they can do that to any of us.” 

When Julian and WikiLeaks released the secret diplomatic cables and Iraq War logs, which exposed numerous U.S. war crimes, including torture and the murder of civilians, corruption, diplomatic scandals, lies and spying by the U.S. government, the commercial media had no choice but to report the information. Julian and WikiLeaks shamed them into doing their job. But, even as they worked with Julian, organizations such as The New York Times and The Guardian were determined to destroy him. He threatened their journalistic model and exposed their accommodation with the centers of power.

“They hated him,” Matt said of the mainstream media reporters and editors. “They went to war with him immediately after those releases. I was working for The Financial Times in Washington in late 2010 when those releases happened. The reaction of the office at The Financial Times was one of the major reasons I got disillusioned with the mainstream media.”

Julian went from being a journalistic colleague to a pariah as soon as the information he provided to these news organizations was published. He endured, in the words of Nils Melzer, at the time the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, “a relentless and unrestrained campaign of public mobbing, intimidation and defamation.” These attacks included “collective ridicule, insults and humiliation, to open instigation of violence and even repeated calls for his assassination.”

Julian was branded a hacker, although all the information he published was leaked to him by others. He was smeared as a sexual predator and a Russian spy, called a narcissist and accused of being unhygienic and slovenly. The ceaseless character assassination, amplified by a hostile media, saw him abandoned by many who had regarded him a hero. 

“Once he had been dehumanized through isolation, ridicule and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide,” Melzer concluded. 

The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Der Spiegel, all of which published WikiLeaks documents provided by Julian, published a joint open letter on Nov. 28, 2022 calling on the U.S. government “to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.” 

But the demonization of Julian, which these publications helped to foster, had already been accomplished……………………………………………………………………………

“This is not just about Assange,” Matt continued. “This is about all of our futures, the future for our kids and our grandkids. The things we hold dear, democracy, freedom of speech, free press, they’re very, very fragile, much more fragile than we realize. That’s been exposed by Assange. If they get Assange, the levies will break. It’s not like they’re going to stop. That’s not how power works. They don’t pick off one person and say we’re going to hold off now. They’ll use those tools to go after anyone who wants to expose them.” 

“If you’re working in an environment in London where there’s a journalist imprisoned for exposing war crimes, maybe not consciously but somewhere you [know you] shouldn’t do that,” Matt said. “You shouldn’t question power. You shouldn’t question people who are committing crimes secretly because you don’t know what’s going to happen…The U.K. government is trying to introduce laws which make it explicit that you can’t publish [their crimes]. They want to formalize what they’ve done to Assange and make it a crime to reveal war crimes and other things. When you have laws and a societal-wide psyche that you cannot question power, when they tell you what is in your interest, that’s fascism.”  https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/journalists-abandoned-julian-assange?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=134153872&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

July 10, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, civil liberties, media | Leave a comment

U.S. senators seek expanded compensation for people exposed to nuclear fallout

Downwinders near 1945 test site would be among those added to list

By Susan Montoya Bryan The Associated Press, Sunday, Jul 9, 2023,  https://www.the-journal.com/articles/u-s-senators-seek-expanded-compensation-for-people-exposed-to-nuclear-fallout/

ALBUQUERQUE – U.S. senators from New Mexico and Idaho are making another push to expand the federal government’s compensation program for people exposed to radiation following uranium mining and nuclear testing carried out during the Cold War.

Downwinders who live near the New Mexico site where the world’s first atomic bomb was tested in 1945 as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project in World War II also would be among those added to the list.

The legislation would amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include eligible residents in areas affected by fallout in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah and the territory of Guam.

Democrat Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Republican Mike Crapo of Idaho announced Thursday that they were reintroducing the bill in the Senate after previous attempts to expand the program stalled.

The measure also has been introduced in the U.S. House, with supporters saying the clock is ticking as more people are diagnosed with cancers that they say are connected to exposure.

Lawmakers are hoping that momentum gained last year following bipartisan approval of legislation that prevented the compensation program from expiring can be tapped to expand the program and ensure that it doesn’t expire as scheduled next summer.

The challenge will be getting more Republicans to support the legislation, said Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor and co-founder of the New Mexico-based advocacy group Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. She said many people who would benefit from expanded coverage are in states represented by GOP lawmakers.

Cordova said radiation exposure continues to affect the latest generation of families who were exposed to fallout from nuclear weapons testing. She pointed to her niece, a 23-year-old college student who recently was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and the 2-year-old granddaughter of a Tularosa family who had an eye removed due to cancer.

“New Mexico has been asked to do so much,” said Cordova, noting the state’s role in development of the nation’s nuclear arsenal and in the disposal of the resulting waste. “We bear the brunt of this and they still won’t recognize that we were the first people to be exposed to radiation from an atomic bomb and no one has looked back.”

Advocates have been trying for years to bring awareness to the lingering effects of nuclear fallout surrounding the Trinity Site in southern New Mexico and on the Navajo Nation, where millions of tons of uranium ore were extracted over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities.

Under the legislation, eligibility also would be expanded to include certain workers in the industry after 1971, such as miners.

The reintroduction of the legislation precedes the 78th anniversary of the Trinity Test in New Mexico on July 16 and comes as the federal government prepares to ramp up production of the plutonium pits used to trigger nuclear weapons.

Crapo said that while extending the compensation program for another two years is critical, more needs to be done to address the health effects of fallout from nuclear testing for his constituents in Idaho and elsewhere in the West.

For Luján, amending the compensation act has been a long battle. As a member of the U.S. House, he has introduced the legislation in each session since first being elected in 2008.

“Through no fault of their own,” Luján said, “these workers and nearby communities were exposed to radiation as part of our national defense effort, impacting generations to come without providing the same relief available to other communities included under RECA.”

Since the program began in 1992, more than 54,000 claims have been filed and about $2.6 billion has been awarded for approved claims. An estimated $80 million is needed for the compensation trust fund for the 2024 fiscal year that began July 1, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

July 10, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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