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Brink of catastrophe: Japan as Pacific polluter

True, the IAEA (the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency) has provided helpful cover for the Government of Japan (and the TEPCO power company) by taking the view that the environmental impact of discharge of polluted (but “processed” to remove most of the major radio-active materials) cooling water would be “negligible.” That, however, is neither surprising nor decisive.

The IAEA, founded in 1957, is an organisation devoted to the propagation of “safe” civil nuclear energy; the state of Japan is its third largest source of its funds; and the future of the global nuclear industry depends on there being seen to be a “final solution” to the problems posed by Fukushima.

 https://johnmenadue.com/brink-of-catastrophe-japan-as-pacific-polluter/ By Gavan McCormack, Aug 30, 2023

In 2011, Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, roughly 250 kilometres north of Tokyo, was hit by a magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami. Three reactors stopped immediately but the loss of electricity supply led in the days and months that followed to breakdown of the cooling system and to a series of hydrogen explosions and meltdowns of the cores of Reactors 1 to 3.

Prime Minster Kan Naoto feared for the worst. He faced the possible need to evacuate the whole Kanto region, including the Tokyo metropolitan area. Japan itself, its state and society, stood on the brink of catastrophe. That fate was only narrowly averted.

To this day the flow of water to cool the debris polluted with various forms of radioactivity has had to be maintained. Over the past twelve years some 1.34 million tons of water has accumulated and is being held in a vast array of over 1000 tanks along the coast of Fukushima prefecture. Those tanks are about 98 per cent full, but the flow of contaminated water will have to be continued for at least the next three decades, or till such time as the site can be cleaned up. Nobody today can say with any confidence when that might be.

The polluted waters contain 64 radioactive elements, or radionuclides, of greatest concern being carbon-14, iodine-131, caesium-137, strontium-90, cobalt-60 and hydrogen-3, also known as tritium. Some have short life and might already have ended, but others take longer to decay, with a half-life of more than 5,000 years in the case of carbon-14 (Nature, 29 June 2023). Tritium, which focuses most attention, has a half-life of 12.3 years. Its concentrations may be low, but one hundred years will have to pass before its threat to humans and the ocean becomes truly negligible

The government has yet to find additional sites for expansion, and each day it has to put about 90 tons of newly polluted water somewhere. And, while the people of Japan remain steadfast in opposing any return to the pre-2011 vision of a nuclear-powered, energy self-reliant, superpower Japan future, government and bureaucracy are increasingly open about their determination to pursue just such a goal.

In 2016, the Japanese government considered multiple methods of treating the water. Ruling out simple continuation of the status quo – more and more tanks along an already crowded sea-front – there seemed to be three options: ocean discharge, atmospheric discharge, and underground burial. The cost differential was estimated at 34.9 billion yen to release the problem materials as gas into the atmosphere, 24.3 billion to dig a deep hole and bury it, but just 3.4 billion to pour it out gradually into the sea.

The logic of such math was inescapable. The chosen option was the one that was cheaper by a factor of 7 or more. Time, and the recuperative, regenerative powers of the sea, would come to humanity’s rescue. The materials would be released into the ocean (channelled by giant pipes to a point about one kilometre offshore). That process began on 24 August 2023.

Anxiety, alarm, and increasingly anger, spread, both within Japan (and especially in the Fukushima vicinity that bore the brunt of the initial 2011 disaster) and on the part of Japan’s Pacific neighbour states – China (including Hong Kong), Korea (north and south), Russia, Philippines,  and the mini-states of the South Pacific (its 18 countries and regions). In Japan just 44 per cent of people said they had “no worries” over the release, but about 75 per cent said the government had not properly explained what it was doing.

The Japanese government, having promised it would take no step without duly consulting all concerned parties, proceeded to ignore that principle both in regard to its own citizenry (especially those employed in its once vibrant fishing industry) and its Pacific neighbours, whose shores are washed by the same Pacific waters.

True, the IAEA (the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency) has provided helpful cover for the Government of Japan (and the TEPCO power company) by taking the view that the environmental impact of discharge of polluted (but “processed” to remove most of the major radio-active materials) cooling water would be “negligible.” That, however, is neither surprising nor decisive. The IAEA, founded in 1957, is an organisation devoted to the propagation of “safe” civil nuclear energy; the state of Japan is its third largest source of its funds; and the future of the global nuclear industry depends on there being seen to be a “final solution” to the problems posed by Fukushima.

Though given little attention in media coverage of the problem, a small but significant body of scientific opinion has begun to express severe criticism of IAEA for its failure to apply its own fundamental principles, being in some important respects “at least 10,000 times in error,” neglecting to give proper consideration to the non-dumping solutions, “grossly over-stating” well known facts in its “eagerness to assure the public that harm will be ‘negligible’.” (Arjun Makhijani, “TEPCO’s ALPS-treated Radioactive Water Dumping Plan Violates Essential Provisions of IAEA’s General Safety Guide No. 8 and Corresponding Requirements in Other IAEA Documents, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research [IEER], 28 June 2023.

In this view, the IAEA should, starting with Japan, provide assistance to nuclear-possessing countries to stop dumping so that the oceans that have been much abused in so many ways for so long can at least have a chance to begin recovering.

When then Prime Minster Abe Shinzo told the world in September 2013 that Fukushima was “under control,” he lied. Till 2018, all attempts to locate the missing reactor cores, let alone to place them “under control,” had failed. Only in 2021 did it become possible at least to locate the debris in one reactor. But knowing the location is but the start. Now we know where it is, we are no closer to knowing how to deal with it. The recovery effort for two of the reactors will not commence until 2024. If they succeed in locating the debris, estimated to be about 880 tons, it will then have to be extracted, gram-by-gram. Meanwhile, as of 2023, between 4,000 and 5,000 workers are mobilised each day to perform various (high-risk) tasks in the disaster zone.

To the peoples of the small states of the Pacific, serial victims of waves of nuclear testing, first American, then French, the blow coming from nuclear-victim country Japan was especially bitter. To the shock and harm caused by the initial massive radioactivity release of 2011 has now to be added that of the deliberate, premeditated dumping of nuclear wastes from 2023. The “great powers” in the past had given Island peoples repeated assurances that there would be no risk to health or environment from testing or dumping. Those peoples watch sadly now as nuclear victim country Japan does likewise, engaging in intense propaganda efforts to line up regional states to endorse its wastewater dumping campaign.

Japanese words today rings as hollow to Pacific Island peoples as did once American or French words. Even the Japanese people themselves, when it comes to Fukushima wastewater dumping “have little trust in TEPCO or the Japanese Government.” (Suzuki Tatsujiro, former Vice-Chairman of Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission, quoted in Makhijani, p. 3)

by the current administration and by the process launched on 24 August. The support given Japan’s ocean dumping by prominent Western industrial countries strikes Pacific Islanders as hypocritical (Kalinga Seneviratne, “To the Pacific islands, the West’s support for Japan’s Fukushima nuclear waste ocean dumping is hypocrisy,” South China Morning Post, 20 July 2023,) Motarilavoa Hilda Lini, chief of the Turaga nation of Pentacost Island, Vanuatu, and activist of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, puts it this way, “We are people of the ocean. We must stand up and protect it.” She went on,

“We need to remind Japan and other nuclear states of our Nuclear Free and independent Pacific movement slogan: if it is safe, dump it in Tokyo, test it in Paris, and store it in Washington, but keep our Pacific nuclear-free.” (Guardian, 26 April 2023).

Brushing aside the pleas of neighbour states, especially those of the long-suffering peoples of the Pacific Islands, Japan has pressed ahead to dump its nuclear wastes into the ocean, ensuring that in due course a third wave of nuclear pollution will wash over Pacific shores.

August 31, 2023 Posted by | oceans, wastes | 2 Comments

Why Ukraine’s Western backers are happy to feed Zelensky’s fantasies about American F-16s

 https://www.rt.com/news/581828-ukraine-zelensky-f16-west/ 30 Aug 23

The Wunderwaffe delusion: Why Ukraine’s Western backers are happy to feed Zelensky’s fantasies about American F-16s

The 50-year-old jet won’t turn the tide of the conflict in Kiev’s favor, but it profits its partners to keep pretending

By Chay Bowes, journalist and geopolitical analyst, MA in Strategic Studies,

As the Western establishment media begrudgingly accepts what many analysts have long predicted – that Kiev’s counteroffensive is a catastrophic failure – it seems that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky hasn’t gotten the memo.

He seems adamant that the mercurial F-16 fighter jet is the missing link required to spur his depleted military to victory against Russia. There is, however, a little problem with his thesis – there’s more than one, actually, but let’s start with the most obvious.

Even as Ukraine’s long-awaited, much-hyped, but now obviously failed counteroffensive grinds to a bloody and costly halt, it seems the pro-war enthusiasts in the West and their proxies in Kiev still believe that the F-16, an American fighter jet that first took to the skies nearly 50 years ago, can somehow save the day for Zelensky and his NATO handlers. But at the same time trouble seems to be brewing in paradise as the Western media, which has thus far played such a pivotal role in overhyping Kiev’s military capabilities, is now less than convinced that this aging American castoff can play anything close to a defining role in NATO’s stalling proxy war against Russia.

While Ukrainian casualties mount, Kiev still insists that its long-telegraphed counteroffensive is indeed “inching forward,” even though the stark reality is that only a tiny fraction of its stated goals have been achieved with vast amounts of Western materiel lost in the process.

This all comes as Ukraine’s Western “partners,” who were previously so eager to “stand with Ukraine as long as it takes,” become less and less absolutist in their convictions. A coming winter, domestic woes, failed sanctions against Russia, and endless demands from Kiev to replace cash and equipment are all starting to wear on an increasingly nervous NATO. 

. Zelensky’s failed offensive is now accelerating the natural progression of war weariness in the West, where once there was supreme, almost absolute, confidence that Ukraine’s heroic warriors would easily cast out the barbarous Russian invaders. It seems that now even the spokesman for Ukraine’s decimated air force, Yury Ignat, seems to accept that when it comes to actually defeating the huge Russian military machine, talk is very cheap. Ignat recently revealed that Ukrainian fighters can barely take off before they are targeted by an overwhelming array of Russian fighters and anti-aircraft systems. He also noted that Russian fighters are far more advanced and have a far longer combat range, something the Ukrainian president conveniently forgets to mention during his awkward cockpit photo ops in Denmark, where he yet again peddles the now-tired promise of the latest in a long line of “game changers” – all of which the Russian Army has proven to be anything but. All they change, sadly, is the length of the conflict and the number of Ukrainian men doomed to die fighting it.

While the NATO architects of this conflict are of course eager to dangle the carrot of F-16 deployment to an increasingly desperate Kiev, in reality the fighters are highly unlikely ever to see service in the skies above Ukraine, at least not while the conflict is in its current active phase. Only three “partner” countries (Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands) have promised to hand a few of the fighters over to Kiev, and there are still massive logistical issues that would need to be ironed out before they could even land in Ukraine, let alone take off and enter combat.

It’s important to pay attention to where information about the reality of the F-16s’ potential deployment comes from. That’s why, when US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Milley warned that the planes won’t act as a “magic weapon” for Ukraine, many sober, nonaligned analysts took note. Milley pulled no punches as he tried to pour some cold water on Kiev’s expectations regarding the aging jet. “The Russians have 1,000 fourth-generation fighters,” said the general following a meeting of the multinational Ukraine Defense Contact Group in May. “If you’re gonna contest Russia in the air, you’re gonna need a substantial amount of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters, so if you look at the cost curve and do the analysis, the smartest thing to have done is exactly what we did do, which is provide a significant amount of integrated air defenses to cover the battlespace and deny the Russians the airspace.”

It seems that when a message isn’t playing to the narrative, the message gets conveniently shelved. General Milley’s comments are a sobering reminder of the undeniable battlefield reality, a truth routinely lost on Zelensky and company as the PR prerogative trumps the strategic reality on the ground yet again in Kiev.

Interestingly, Milley also addressed the huge costs associated with the provision of the F-16 to Ukraine: “If you look at the F-16, ten F-16s cost a billion dollars, the sustainment cost [is] another billion dollars, so you’re talking about $2 billion for ten aircraft.” He also suggested that if the cash sent to Ukraine so far had been spent on this type of weapon, not on artillery and air defense, Kiev would be in a much worse position than it is today. “There are no magic weapons in war, F-16s are not and neither is anything else,” he said. Of course, the blunt and, from a Ukrainian point of view, dismal reality is that Ukraine’s dilapidated infrastructure can’t even begin to accommodate these complex jets. Ukraine has no appropriate training facilities on its soil, and a mere eight Ukrainian pilots have begun training in Denmark. More are set to start the process in the US in October, but it would take years of preparation to have adequate pilots in any meaningful numbers. Another fact glossed over by Kiev is that the F-16s, should they ever get as far as Ukraine, will need a lot of ground maintenance infrastructure and highly complex logistical support, all of which would have to be deployed into what is essentially a war zone. No one on the NATO team seems to want to address the minor detail that the Russian Air Force will be hunting both the jets and the infrastructure from day one – another inconvenient reality conveniently ignored.

While it now seems obvious that the actual provision of F-16s to Ukraine is probably nothing more than a far-off mirage, many now see the jet in the context where it actually belongs – as another NATO castoff cynically dumped into Ukraine by Washington’s allies on the promise of higher-tech replacements by a cash-hungry Uncle Sam. But given the dire performance of Western hardware on the battlefield so far, it will surprise no one if the US ultimately cans the entire project rather than suffer the embarrassing, and inevitable, images of burning F-16s joining those of American Bradleys and MaxxPros in the fields of southern and eastern Ukraine.

So as the increasingly uneasy architects of this catastrophic conflict finally begin to accept that this all only ends one way, they’re likely to string Kiev along for as long as possible when it comes to the illusive F-16s, just like they’ve been doing with their promises of EU and NATO membership. Let’s not forget, it was those very same hollow promises that set Ukraine on the road to this devastating conflict with Russia, a conflict only the very foolish could now believe will be won with a handful of 50-year-old fighter jets.

August 31, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Doubles Imports of Russian Uranium to Largest Amount Since 2005

 https://sputnikglobe.com/20230824/us-doubles-imports-of-russian-uranium-to-largest-amount-since-2005-1112841852.html

– The United States bought 416 tonnes of uranium from Russia in the first half of 2023, which is 2.2 times bigger than in the same period last year and the largest amount since 2005, Sputnik has calculated using data of the US federal statistical system.

In the first six months of 2022, the US bought 188 tonnes of uranium from Russia, and 418 tonnes in January-July 2005.

Russia supplies the US only with uranium-235 enriched fuel, which is the country’s main “radioactive” imports. However, the analysis also took into account data on imports of natural and depleted uranium, which the US purchases from other countries.

The cost of imported Russian uranium amounted to $696.5 million, which is the highest value since 2002, the year when the US started to break data down by months. The cost of supplies increased 2.5 times year-over-year, and Russia’s share in US uranium imports grew by 13 percentage points to 32%.

The US also significantly increased its purchases of uranium from the United Kingdom in 2023 – by 28% to $383.1 million, bringing it to just under 18% of all imports. The most significant increase was observed in France’s exports, which stood at $319 million, 15% of total imports, in 2023 against $1.9 million a year earlier.

August 31, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, Uranium | Leave a comment

Rocket-Launching Billionaires Promise a New Pie in the Sky

Musk and Bezos are peddling new age-y religious drama of disaster and salvation, says author Mary-Jane Rubenstein.

By Kelly Hayes , TRUTHOUT August 17, 2023

hat we’re getting from both Musk and Bezos is this classically new age-y religious drama of disaster and salvation. They preach, they tell us that the end is near, the disaster is coming, that the world is going to end, but there is another world that everybody can build together, a new world and a place that they’ve never seen and a place that seems totally impossible,” says professor Mary-Jane Rubenstein, author of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” host Kelly Hayes and Rubenstein discuss the religiosity of “NewSpace,” and how activists can challenge the new “pie in the sky” ideology that billionaires like Musk and Bezos are crafting.

Transcript

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. MJR: So Musk and Bezos are probably the two best known actors in the contemporary corporate space race. As you probably know, Elon Musk wants us to move to Mars. He wants to colonize Mars. Jeff Bezos has a different plan. He thinks Mars is too far away. He wants to build space colonies that are closer to home that are positioned between the moon and the Earth. It would be sort of like living in a mall, a space mall, like a rotating indoor shopping center where the climate is controlled and there’s no real outside. But presumably you’d be able to grow some plants and things like that, and you’d be able to get your food and it would be totally perfect weather all year round and things like that.

So anyway, they have different views about what our lives are going to look like in outer space. Again, Musk has this sort of homesteader ideal that we’re going to terraform Mars and make it habitable for human beings. Bezos wants to keep us a little closer to Earth in these rotating shopping malls. Both of them are convinced that in order for human beings to, well, survive for Elon Musk, or to thrive for Jeff Bezos, we have to leave the Earth. And each of them is using his massive economic status and power to channel ungodly amounts of money and resources into conquering the cosmos so that human beings can have a decent future.

“KH…………………………………………….Bezos’s company Blue Origin and Musk’s SpaceX spent $2 million and $2.4 million, respectively, lobbying for government contracts in 2021. But Musk’s talk of using his vast wealth to “extend the light of consciousness” also helps spin popular mythos around extreme inequality in our times — like a new variation of the Divine Right of Kings. Instead of being chosen by God, men like Musk and Bezos are chosen by the market, and rather than representing an injustice, their absurd wealth supposedly represents our best hope for the future…………………………..

……………………………………… MJR: The environmental damage that the contemporary space race is doing is one of the most under-discussed crises of our contemporary moment. 

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. What I’m trying to say is I don’t think Elon Musk, a private entrepreneur, would have gotten NASA to offload to him so many of its contracts — I don’t think that he would’ve had the wherewithal to set up this massive Starlink Constellation without a big vision that presents itself as humanitarian, as future-oriented, as ideologically pristine, which is to say it’s a vision of the salvation of humanity that’s going to take place on Mars.

And again, once you sort of shake off the ideological patina here, you realize that Mars is terrible. It’s a terrible planet. If you get an invitation to go homestead Mars, probably don’t do it. It’s bad there. It’s really bad there. But I think he needs that vision in order to sell any of it.

KH: So, in Elon Musk, we have a man whose preposterous ideas are propped up by extreme wealth, a cult of personality, and one of the most absurd privatization gambits in U.S. history. But his current endeavors, like those of Jeff Bezos and other men who would like to rule space, are also propped up by some of the same ideas that have allowed the wealthy to loot and pillage the world we currently inhabit.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. MJR I think symbolically and politically and rhetorically, the creation of the Space Force says that we do not agree that space is supposed to be a theater of peace. Rather, it’s supposed to be a theater of war. ………………………

‘……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Capitalism relies on infinite growth. We can’t have infinite growth. We’re on a finite planet. So what we’re seeing right now [are] convulsions of late stage capitalism; it’s realizing it’s reaching limits and is therefore seeking out other planets and using this humanitarian claim as a justification for primarily economic ends. So we need to know that. This is just as much of an ideological ploy as the idea that Spain needed to conquer the Americas in order to save Indian souls or something like that. So I’m recommending some suspicion when it comes to these big grand narratives about the salvation of all of humanity……………………………………………………………  https://truthout.org/audio/rocket-launching-billionaires-promise-a-new-pie-in-the-sky/

August 31, 2023 Posted by | Religion and ethics | 1 Comment

Australian Financial Review gets it not quite right about why nuclear power is the wrong solution

31 Aug 23

The Australian Financial Review says the question of why nuclear power isn’t the right solution for Australia deserves a serious answer.

Fair enough.

The Financial Review argues the rest of the world is moving to nuclear. An odd claim, when the world added 295GW of wind and solar last year but just 1.5GW of nuclear power. The International Energy Agency predicts that “only a small number of units are likely to start operating this decade”.

In fact, there are five serious answers to why nuclear is the wrong solution for Australia.

When thinking about the conundrum of how we manage this massive transformation to a lower-emissions energy grid, it is hard to think of a more ill-fitting solution for Australia than going down the nuclear road.

No.1 issue: cost. Proponents of nuclear energy simply dismiss the multitude of evidence that nuclear power is the most expensive form of energy available. Or, worse, seek to undermine the rigorous independent analysis that finds it so.

GenCost, independently prepared by the CSIRO and Australian Energy Market Operator, is one of many studies which find nuclear the most expensive form of energy. Despite the political attacks on AEMO and CSIRO in recent weeks, it is a robust report and their analysis stands up to scrutiny.

As AEMO has said: “Recent media commentary that AEMO’s Integrated System Plan (ISP) does not include transmission and storage, as well as generation costs associated with providing electricity to Australian customers, is wrong.” And the finding is clear: renewables (including the cost of transmission and storage) are cheaper than nuclear by several multiples.

If you don’t like the work of AEMO and CSIRO, sure, look around for an alternative report. Take a recent report by Lazard on the levelised cost of energy in the US. It found that between 2009 and 2021, utility-scale solar costs came down 90 per cent and wind 72 per cent, while new nuclear costs increased by 36 per cent.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) can supply up to 300 megawatts per plant. They are conservatively costed at $5 billion each. You need quite a few 300MW SMRs to replace say a 2GW coal-fired power station like Eraring. That is an extremely expensive transaction. The leader of the Nationals has said nuclear power wouldn’t cost Australia “a cent”. How can an alternative government make such a ridiculous claim with a straight face?

2. Second, the much-vaunted small modular reactor technology is unproven. There is no commercial SMR operating anywhere in the world. There are two demonstration plants: one floating around on a barge in Russia and one in China.

Last week’s Financial Review editorial lauds Ontario’s plans. Really? Ontario Power Generation has not released any costings for its proposed SMRs and it is yet to receive (or even apply for) environmental approvals. Are we to hang our hat on this technology for our national energy plan?

3. Third, nuclear is notoriously slow to build. Can anyone credibly claim that Australia could have a nuclear plant operating by the early or even mid-2030s, when we need no-emissions technology to be supplying the vast bulk of our power? The answer to that question, reasonable observers would agree, is “no”.

4. inflexibility. The fourth serious answer to the Financial Review’s suggestion of a nuclear path is that it is not a flexible source of energy. As we move to more renewables, we need peaking and firming that can be tuned on and off at short notice to fill gaps in renewable supply. Coal-fired power stations can be turned down, but not off. Likewise, a nuclear power station cannot easily be turned off once it is running.

Nuclear power is largely useless as peaking and firming support for renewables. This is where gas-fired power stations are a useful back-up to renewables. The latest technology allows gas-fired power stations to be turned on with two minutes’ notice.

5. Finally, there’s the matter of nuclear waste. Small modular reactors would produce no small amount of waste. A Stanford University study finds that “… most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors …”

For 235 years, Australia has searched for comparative advantage. We have found one. It is renewable energy. Imagine having abundant resources of the cheapest form of energy available and choosing, as a matter of policy, to deploy a source of energy much more expensive and slower to build instead? That’s what advocates of nuclear power are arguing for.

After 10 years of denial and delay on climate action, I’m not interested in more years of distraction by a debate on an energy source which clearly doesn’t stack up for our country.

August 31, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

‘Ignorance, Incompetence and Cynicism’ -military and scientific authorities attitudes to Aboriginal rights and safety‘

29th August 2023

NFLA Policy Briefing 274: ‘Ignorance, Incompetence and Cynicism’: The attitudes the military and scientific authorities adopted to Aboriginal rights and safety during and after the testing of British atomic weapons in South Australia 29 Aug 23 https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/briefings/nfla-policy-briefing-274-ignorance-incompetence-and-cynicism-the-attitudes-the-military-and-scientific-authorities-adopted-to-aboriginal-rights-and-safety-during-and-after-the-tes/

August 31, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Living on a War Planet

All this has put fresh wind in the sails of the weapons manufacturers of the American military-industrial-congressional complex. In May 2022, the CEO of Lockheed Martin thanked President Biden personally for his kindness. F-16s, after all, are big money-makers. As for the additional fuel that ordinary Ukrainians require, it is now being sequestered underground by Ukrainian commodities traders at enormous environmental risk.

And Managing Not to Notice.

SCHEERPOST, By David Bromwich / TomDispatch August 30, 2023

A new war, a new alibi. When we think about our latest war — the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically — there is a hidden benefit. As long as American minds are on Ukraine, we are not thinking about planetary climate disruption. This technique of distraction obeys the familiar mechanism that psychologists have called displacement. An apparently new thought and feeling becomes the substitute for harder thoughts and feelings you very much want to avoid.

Every news story about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest demand for American or European weaponry also serves another function: the displacement of a story about, say, the Canadian fires which this summer destroyed a forest wilderness the size of the state of Alabama and 1,000 of which are still burning as this article goes to press. Of course, there is always the horrific possibility that Ukraine could pass from a “contained” to a nuclear war, as out of control as those Canadian fires. Yet we are regularly assured that the conflict, close to the heart of Europe, is under careful supervision. The war has a neatly framed villain (Vladimir Putin) and — thanks to both the U.S. and NATO — a great many good people containing him. What could possibly go wrong?

A fantasy has taken root among well-meaning liberals. Ukraine, they believe, is the “good war” people like them have been searching for since 1945. “This is our Spain,” young enthusiasts have been heard to say, referring to the Spanish Republican war against fascism. In Ukraine in the early 2020s, unlike Spain in the late 1930s, the Atlantic democracies will not falter but will go on “as long as it takes.” Also, the climate cause will be assisted along the way, since Russia is a large supplier of natural gas and oil, and the world needs to unhook itself from both.

That theory got tested a year ago, with the underwater sabotage of Russia’s Nordstream natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. President Biden, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland all welcomed that environmental disaster. In an eventually deleted message the former Polish foreign minister and war advocate Radislaw Sikorski tweeted thanks to the U.S. for what he took to be a transparently American operation.

The American media, however, treated the attack as an imponderable mystery, some reports even suggesting that Russia might have destroyed its own invaluable pipeline for reasons yet to be fathomed. Then, in a February 2023 article, the independent investigative reporter Seymour Hersh traced the attack to the U.S., and later Western reports would come halfway to his conclusion by assigning credit to Ukraine, or a pro-Ukrainian group.

As of late summer, all reporting on the Nordstream disaster seems to have stopped. What has not stopped is the killing. The numbers of dead and wounded in the Ukraine war are now estimated at nearly half a million, with no end in sight.

The Nordstream wreck was only one attention-getting catastrophe within the greater horror that a war always is. An act of industrial sabotage on a vast scale, it was also an act of environmental terrorism, causing the largest methane leak in the history of the planet. According to a report in Forbes, “The subsequent increase in greenhouse gases… was equivalent to as much as 32% of Denmark’s annual emissions.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was an illegal and immoral act, but the adjective that usually follows illegal and immoral is “unprovoked.” In truth, this war was provoked. A contributing cause, impossible to ignore, was the eastward extension of NATO, always moving closer to the western borders of Russia, in the years from 1991 to 2022………………………………………………..

Counterfeit Solidarity

The United States has supported Ukraine with copious donations of weapons, troop-trainers, and logistical and technical advisers left to work the interoperable targeting equipment we “share” with that country. Between 2014 and 2022, NATO drilled at least 10,000 Ukrainian troops per year in advanced methods of warfare. In the war itself, weapons supplies have climbed steadily from Stinger and Javelin missiles to Abrams tanks (whose greenhouse-gas environmental footprint is 0.6 miles per gallon of gas, or 300 gallons every eight hours of use), to cluster bombs, and most recently the promise of F-16s.

All this has put fresh wind in the sails of the weapons manufacturers of the American military-industrial-congressional complex. In May 2022, the CEO of Lockheed Martin thanked President Biden personally for his kindness. F-16s, after all, are big money-makers. As for the additional fuel that ordinary Ukrainians require, it is now being sequestered underground by Ukrainian commodities traders at enormous environmental risk.

Wars and their escalation — the mass destruction of human life that is almost invariably accompanied by destruction of the natural world — happen because preparations for war bring leaders ever closer to the brink. So close, in fact, that it feels natural to go on. That was certainly the case with Russia, Ukraine, and NATO, and the escalation that followed. Examples of such escalation are indeed the rule, not the exception in time of war………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

All of us now inhabit a war planet threatened in other devastating ways as well. Our escape will not be achieved through a new “norms-based” international order in which NATO, with the U.S. at the helm, replaces the United Nations as the global authority presiding over war and peace. The “next war on the horizon,” whether in the Baltic Sea, the Persian Gulf, or Taiwan, is a matter of grave interest to the citizens on all those horizons who may want anything but to serve as its field of exercise. Meanwhile, the lesson for the United States should be simple enough: the survival of the planet cannot wait for the world’s last superpower to complete our endless business of war. https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/30/living-on-a-war-planet/

August 31, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Australian Teachers in boycott of nuclear submarine project

The Australian: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/teachers-to-ban-indoctrination-on-nuclear-submarines/news-story/d7d7c434d3f4ec2982fb52063eecf1a3?amp

The Australian Education Union will meet to discuss boycotting a science experiment that would see students design nuclear-powered submarines.

By natasha bita. August 29, 2023 The Australian: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/teachers-to-ban-indoctrination-on-nuclear-submarines/news-story/d7d7c434d3f4ec2982fb52063eecf1a3?amp

Pacifist teachers are boycotting a Defence Department “brainwashing’’ program that asks children to design nuclear-powered submarines.

The Australian Education Union federal executive will meet this week to consider a national boycott of the science project, which requires high school students to design a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a submarine.

The union is furious that the Albanese government is spending $368bn on AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines at a time when most public schools are receiving less money than they were supposed to under the Gonski needs-based funding deal.

At a grassroots level, some teachers are boycotting the Nuclear-Powered Propulsion Challenge, which was launched by Deputy Chief of Navy Rear Admiral Jonathon Earley in June as a science, technology, engineering and maths competition.

The controversial STEM challenge asks students to work in teams to submit engineering plans for submarine nuclear propulsion.

Defence devised the program “to inspire students to discover how nuclear propulsion works and how it makes submarines more capable’’.

Winning students from each state and territory will visit HMAS Stirling in Western Australia, tour a Collins-class submarine, dine with submariners and use a training simulator to “drive” a submarine through Sydney Harbour.

AEU branch meetings in Victoria have resolved to block the project in schools, and environmental group Friends of the Earth is now pushing for a national boycott.

Friends of the Earth nuclear-free co-ordinator Sanne de Swart said the Defence Department had made a “blatant attempt to normalise nuclear power and indoctrinate children into building in­struments of death’’.

She said the STEM project was “indoctrinating” students and failed to address the health and environmental risks of nuclear power.

“It fails to acknowledge Australia’s significant and devastating history with nuclear, including the atomic bomb tests, uranium mining and the attempts to impose nuclear waste dumps,’’ she said.

Union members at Virtual School Victoria voted to condemn the program.

“We resolve to refuse to refer students to this program or others like it, and we will refuse to promote it within our schools,’’ the branch stated.

A union meeting of public school teachers in the regional Victorian town of Benalla also called on the state’s Education Department to “cease all involvement in this and similar programs’’.

“The government spending of $368bn on AUKUS nuclear submarines will require whole new industries in Australia, and beginn­ing to draw our brightest teenage students into a war industry is outrageous,’’ their motion states. “A politicised pro-AUKUS curriculum has no place in our schools.’’

Melbourne primary school teacher Emma Kefford is planning to vote for a boycott at a meeting of the AUE’s inner-city branch on Thursday. She said she was “pretty disturbed’’ that the Defence Department was providing curriculum material to schools.

“I think it contradicts some of the other values in the Australian curriculum,’’ she said. “These inventions seem pretty exciting to young people, but they’re often removed from the realities of war and the horrors it entails.’’

The Victorian Education Department promotes the challenge on its website, saying: “We’re encouraging schools to register teams of 3 to 5 students to work together on the project.’’

The South Australian government also promotes the program on its website, as a way to “get young Australian minds thinking like engineers and scientists, by completing activities based on nuclear submarine engineering’’.

A spokesman for federal Education Minister Jason Clare said he did not share the concerns. The Defence Department was asked how many schools were participating but did not respond.

August 30, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, Education | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s army is running out of men to recruit, and time to win

It’s a brutal but simple calculation: Kyiv is running out of men. US sources have calculated that its armed forces have lost as many as 70,000 killed in action, with another 100,000 injured. While Russian casualties are higher still, the ratio nevertheless favours Moscow, as Ukraine struggles to replace soldiers in the face of a seemingly endless supply of conscripts. [Comment: There’s no evidence nor reason to believe that Russian casualties are higher. ]

Victory may be in sight for Vladimir Putin

ROBERT CLARK, 22 August 2023  m https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/22/ukraines-army-is-running-out-of-men-to-recruit/

The war in Ukraine is now one of attrition, fought on terms that increasingly favour Moscow. Kyiv has dealt admirably with shortages of Western equipment so far, but a shortage of manpower – which it is already having to confront – may prove fatal.

Broadly speaking, Kyiv’s highly anticipated counter-offensive has gathered much-needed momentum in recent weeks, with hard-fought gains around the strategically important village of Robotyne. [Comment: Losing thousands of men for a village or 2, which it’s likely to lose back to Russia in a few weeks time, is not a ‘gain’; more so because that’s exactly Russia’s goal: to reduce the number of troops in the Kiev-junta’s Nazi-aligned military.]

If this falls, the road to the Azov sea will be in sight. If Ukrainian forces can reach the coast, they will split the land-bridge connecting Russia with Crimea, potentially routing Moscow’s troops.

Ukraine’s forces, however, are not just fighting massed defences and artillery fire. They are also fighting against time. Having first penetrated the formidable Russian minefields four weeks ago, Kyiv is desperate to exploit its early successes before mounting casualties and autumn rains destroy its fighting capability.

The summer has been wet, and the autumn months traditionally bring heavy rains which turn the soft ground of eastern Europe into a thick mud as tanks, armour and artillery churn the battlefield. [Comment: Particularly because a lot of the vehicles and weapons gifted to them by the West are designed for fighting tribal groups in desert conditions]

This can all but halt meaningful advances, locking armies into place and buying the Russians time to add to the deeply dug trench networks and multi-layered minefields that have made retaking lost territory such hard going.

Perhaps more important, however, is the heavy toll the fighting is taking on the people of Ukraine. The Russian armed forces began the war with an official strength of one million, and a true strength estimated by some analysts at between 700,000 and 800,000.

A further two million men – former conscripts and contract servicemen – were available in the reserves, and some seven million men of conscription age (18-26) left to draw on, even before the Kremlin raised the age limit to 31.

Ukraine, meanwhile, had a pre-war population of 44 million. By the end of the first year of the war, some six million had fled abroad. The armed forces number around 200,000 active personnel, roughly the same again in reserve, and can draw on another 1.5 million fighting-age males. [Comment: The Kiev junta has lost nearly 300,000 men already, and those it ‘can draw on’ cannot be much more because, for many months, social media has been littered with footage showing unwilling conscripts being dragged into vans: ‘More than 280,000 dead’: Estimate of Ukraine’s military losses calculated using published obituaries]

It’s a brutal but simple calculation: Kyiv is running out of men. US sources have calculated that its armed forces have lost as many as 70,000 killed in action, with another 100,000 injured. While Russian casualties are higher still, the ratio nevertheless favours Moscow, as Ukraine struggles to replace soldiers in the face of a seemingly endless supply of conscripts. [Comment: There’s no evidence nor reason to believe that Russian casualties are higher. ]

Volunteers are no longer coming forward in numbers sufficient to keep the army at fighting strength: those most willing to fight signed up years ago. The latest recruitment slogan is “it’s OK to be afraid”, but there are still many attempting to dodge being drafted to fight on the front lines.

For all the difficulties the Kremlin has faced in its forced conscriptions, it still has hundreds of thousands of men to draw upon. This is a resource Ukraine simply cannot match, and one that the West cannot supply.

For Vladimir Putin, victory may at last be in sight as Western support begins to waver. If Kyiv cannot break through the Russian lines now, it may never be able to. If it runs out of willing men to recruit, the West cannot help.

Robert Clark is director of the Defence and Security Unit at Civitas

August 30, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | 3 Comments

Only Idiots Believe The US Is Protecting Australia From China

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, AUG 29, 2023  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/only-idiots-believe-the-us-is-protecting?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The Economist has taken a keen interest in Australia lately, which if you know anything about The Economist is something you never want to see happen to your country. Two articles published in the last few days by the notorious propaganda outlet have celebrated the fact that Australia appears to be the most likely nation to follow the United States into a hot war with China as it enmeshes itself further and further with the US war machine.

In “How Joe Biden is transforming America’s Asian alliances,” The Economist writes the following:

Meanwhile, the ‘unbreakable’ defence relationship with Australia is deepening, following the AUKUS agreement struck in March, amid a flurry of equipment deals and military exercises. Should war break out with China, the Aussies seem the most willing to fight at America’s side. Australian land, sea and air bases are expanding to receive more American forces. Under the AUKUS deal, Australia is gaining its own long-range weapons, such as nuclear-powered (but not nuclear-armed) submarines to be developed jointly with America and Britain. The three partners want to work on other military technologies, from hypersonic missiles to underwater drones.

“Taken together the ‘latticework’ of security agreements, shows how America’s long-heralded pivot to Asia is accelerating.”

In “Australia is becoming America’s military launch-pad into Asia,” The Economist elaborates upon this war partnership with tumescent enthusiasm, calling it a “mateship” and likening it to a “marriage”, and calling for a rollback of US restrictions on sharing military technology with Australia.

“If America ever goes to war with China, American officials say the Aussies would be the likeliest allies to be fighting with them,” The Economist gushes, adding, “Australia’s geographical advantage is that it lies in what strategists call a Goldilocks zone: well-placed to help America to project power into Asia, but beyond the range of most of China’s weapons. It is also large, which helps America scatter its forces to avoid giving China easy targets.”

The Economist cites White House “Asia Tsar” Kurt Campbell reportedly saying of Australia, “We have them locked in now for the next 40 years.” 

“Equally, though, Australia may have America locked in for the same duration,” The Economist hastens to add. 

Well gosh, that’s a relief.

“How the world sees us,” tweeted former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr when sharing the Economist article.

“Historians will be absolutely baffled by what’s happening in Australia right now: normally countries never voluntarily relinquish their sovereignty and worsen their own security position out of their own accord. They normally have to lose a war and be forced to do so,” commentator Arnaud Bertrand added to Carr’s quip.

As much as it pains me to admit it, The Economist is absolutely correct. The Australian government has been showing every indication that it is fully willing to charge into a hot war with its top trading partner to please its masters in Washington, both before and after the US puppet regime in Canberra changed hands last year. 

This sycophantic war-readiness was humorously mocked on Chinese state media back in 2021 by Impact Asia Capital co-founder Charles Liu, who said he didn’t think the US will actually fight a war with China over Taiwan, but the Australians might be stupid enough to fight it for them.

“US is not going to fight over Taiwan,” Liu said. “It’s not going to conduct a war over Taiwan. They may try to get Japanese to do it, but Japanese won’t be so stupid to do it. The only stupid ones who might get involved are the Australians, sorry.”

He had nothing to be sorry about; he was right. Australians are being very, very stupid, and not just our government. A recent Lowy Institute poll found that eight in ten Australians believe the nation’s alliance with the United States is important for Australia’s security, despite three-quarters also saying they believe the alliance makes Australia more likely to be drawn into a war in Asia. 

That’s just plain stupid. A war with China is the absolute worst case security scenario for Australia; anything that makes war with China more likely is making us less secure. Making bad decisions which hurt your own interests is what stupid people do.

That’s not to say Australians are naturally dimwitted; we’re actually pretty clever as far as populations go. What’s making us stupid in this case is the fact that our nation has the most concentrated media ownership in the western world, a massive chunk of which is owned by longtime US empire asset Rupert Murdoch. This propaganda-conducive information environment has been distorting Australia’s understanding of the world so pervasively in recent years that on more than one occasion I’ve had total strangers start babbling at me about the dangers of China completely out of nowhere within minutes of striking up conversation with them.

This artificially manipulated information ecosystem has made Australians so pants-on-head idiotic that they think the US empire is filling their country up with war machinery because it loves them and wants to protect them from the Chinese. That’s as stupid as it gets.

The single biggest lie being circulated in Australia right now is that our government is militarising against China as a defensive measure. China has literally zero history of invading and occupying countries on the other side of the planet. You know who does have a very extensive history of doing that? The United States. The military superpower that Australia’s military is becoming increasingly intertwined with. The belief that we’re intertwining ourselves with the world’s most aggressive, destructive and war-horny military force as a defensive measure to protect ourselves against that military force’s top rival (who hasn’t dropped a bomb in decades) is transparently false, and only a complete idiot would believe it.

We’re not militarising to defend ourselves against a future attack by China, we’re militarising in preparation for a future US-led attack on the Chinese military. We’re militarising in preparation to involve ourselves in an unresolved civil war between Chinese people that has nothing to do with us. China has been sorting out its own affairs for millennia and has managed to do so just fine without the help of white people running in firing military explosives at them, and Taiwan is no exception.

The imperial media talk nonstop about how the People’s Republic of China is preparing to seize control of Taiwan using military force, without ever mentioning the fact that that’s exactly what the US empire is doing. The US empire is preparing to wrest Taiwan away from China to facilitate its long-term agenda to balkanize, weaken and subjugate its top rival.

Only a complete blithering imbecile would believe any part of this is being done defensively. It’s being done to secure unipolar planetary domination for the world’s most powerful and destructive government, and only an absolute moron would agree to risk their own country’s security and economic interests to help facilitate it.

August 30, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

OPENING THE FLOOD GATES AT FUKUSHIMA

Discharging radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is avoidable, risky and potentially illegal

By Sarah Hachman and Associate Professor Tilman Ruff AO, University of Melbourne, 29 Aug 23 https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/opening-the-flood-gates-at-fukushima

The Japanese government intends to discharge all 1.34 million tonnes of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, an operation that began on 24 August 2023. Presumably, it also plans to discharge the wastewater that will continue to accumulate over the coming decades.

This decision is not only harmful to human and environmental health but is also in direct violation of international law.

The original announcement, made in 2021, came 10 years after a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami struck Japan’s east coast, damaging the cooling mechanisms at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS) and causing three nuclear reactors to meltdown.

The destruction of the FDNPS released an estimated 520 Peta Becquerels (520 x 10¹⁵ nuclear decays per second) of various radionuclides (radioactive elements) into the atmosphere, including cesium, carbon-14, iodine-129, and tritium. However, this figure excludes noble gases such as xenon-133, of which the Fukushima release was the largest since atmospheric nuclear bomb tests.

AN INCOMPLETE CLEAN-UP

Following the incident, the Japanese government worked with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) on a plan to decommission the plant, efforts which continue to this day.

The first step of this process was to ensure the reactors remained stable. As such, ocean water was pumped into the reactors as a replacement for the now-defunct cooling mechanisms. Though necessary, this process, along with extensive groundwater leakage, has produced over one million tonnes of irradiated wastewater, which continues to accumulate daily.

This wastewater is being decontaminated using an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), a filtration process intended to remove 62 radionuclides from water using a series of chemical reactions. However, this system’s consistent effectiveness, even with repeated treatment, has not yet been demonstrated, and ALPS is incapable of eliminating tritium and carbon-14.

As of July 2023, the ALPS-treated wastewater was being stored on-site in 1,046 storage tanks that are nearing capacity, hence the claimed need for ocean discharge.

The Japanese government plans to incrementally discharge the treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean over the next 30 to 40 years. Though presented with other disposal options, such as long-term storage in purpose-built, seismically-safe tanks and solidifying the water in a leakproof form such as mortar or concrete, the task force declined to explore these avenues due to complexity and cost.

Even after initial cleaning, 70 per cent of the stored wastewater contains levels of radionuclides above regulatory standards, in some cases up to 20,000 times higher. And it’s not just tritium (more on this substance below) in this water, there are other, more toxic, substances, such as cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60.

However, the IAEA found that Japan’s plans “are consistent with IAEA Safety Standards” and that the levels of tritium, carbon-14, and other potential radioactive contaminants will be within international standards when discharged, without TEPCO having demonstrated its water cleaning can consistently achieve this.

Dilution of the wastewater as planned to meet regulatory limits will not alter the total amount of materials released, which is the key factor.

TEPCO estimates the annual radiation dose to people from the discharged water would be lower than that of a dental x-ray or a round-trip flight from New York City to Tokyo.

However, TEPCO’s checkered history gives little grounds for confidence in its assurances.

NOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE OF SAFETY

Despite reassurance from the IAEA, the scientific community remains divided on the decision, citing growing evidence of how tritium may impact human and environmental health.

Moreover, environmental scientists have argued that the amount considered to be an environmentally safe level of radiation is more political than scientific. National standards invariably lag behind the science, and regulatory limits for tritium in water vary from as much as 7000 Bq/L (Becquerels per litre) in Canada to 15 Bq/L in California.


Tritium is a naturally occurring, radioactive form of hydrogen also produced by nuclear reactors and explosions. It is the largest radioactive byproduct of nuclear power plants. It reacts with oxygen to create tritiated water, which is why ALPS is unable to filter it. Tritium exposure has been largely considered to be harmless in low concentrations and, when ingested, tritiated water is processed in the body identically to water.

There is strong evidence, however, that tritium, particularly organically-bound forms, may have lasting health effects similar to other forms of radiation exposure, such as decreased lifespan, developmental delays and cognitive deficits, immunodeficiency, infertility and birth defects, and cancer and DNA mutations among humans, land animals and aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates who experienced high or prolonged exposure.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection considers tritium’s beta radiation overall to be twice as biologically damaging as X-rays, and organically-bound tritium three times as damaging as tritium incorporated into water.

Though the task force has committed to monitoring tritium exposure in aquatic animals, TEPCO noted that “fish tritium measurement is very difficult and there are only a few analysis agencies that are capable of performing this measurement,” and that reports from these agencies are often conflicting, making this an insufficient risk mitigation strategy.

ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

Japan joined both the 1972 London Convention to prevent marine pollution by waste dumping, and also the 1996 Protocol which specifically prohibits the marine dumping of radioactive waste. In 1996, Japan ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an international agreement that established a framework for maritime activities.

By ratifying UNCLOS, Japan committed itself to “protect and preserve the marine environment” and abstain from polluting waterways from “land-based sources”.

Additionally, in 1992 Japan committed to the Rio Declaration, a collection of goals created by the UN targeting sustainable development and environmental protection that heavily emphasises the precautionary principle. Article 15 states: “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

Though there is still debate within the scientific community surrounding the effects of tritium and what constitutes an acceptable level of radiation exposure, two truths remain. One, Japan has committed itself to environmental protection, and two, the contaminated wastewater is a land-based source of pollution.

Furthermore, the very existence of the debate on tritium’s safety and the knowledge that the discharged water will contain other, more harmful radioactive pollutants, requires Japan to employ the precautionary principle just as they agreed to in 1992.

The Japanese government moving forward with the discharge plan, disregarding its commitments to the global community and international efforts for environmental protection sets a precedent for how the global community responds to modern nuclear crises.

Approving this plan means approving a compromise on human and environmental health, inflicting a transboundary and transgenerational problem on peoples around the Pacific with no offsetting benefit or say in the decision, and a failure to engage state and non-state actors with stakes in the nuclear industry to question what’s acceptable.

As such, the Japanese government must follow through on its commitments to the international community and critically consider alternatives for wastewater disposal. The discharge is planned to go on for 30-40 years and radioactive wastewater will continue to accumulate.

Even though it has already started, it can still be stopped and a better alternative implemented.

August 30, 2023 Posted by | oceans, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

Kazakhstan’s 40-Year History of Nuclear Testing: Call to Action for Nonproliferation Education

Nuclear tests were carried out there in complete secrecy and absolute denial of harmful effects of the radiation fallout.”  

Nearly 1.5 million Kazakh people have suffered as a result of the 456 nuclear tests (340 underground and 116 aboveground) conducted for more than four decades at the Semipalatinsk polygon.   

BY ASSEM ASSANIYAZ    28 AUGUST 2023

LONDON – Fourteen years ago, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declared Aug. 29 the International Day against Nuclear Tests. Initiated by Kazakhstan, its increasing relevance for the entire world community is fueled by sprawling geopolitical instability. In an interview with The Astana Times, Margarita Kalinina-Pohl, a U.S.-based expert in nuclear and radiological security, addressed ongoing challenges in nuclear disarmament and raised an importance of nonproliferation education.     

Kalinina-Pohl is the director of the CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) Security Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) with a 25-year work experience in education. The center is part of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) at Monterey, California. For this story, she shared intriguing insights of her research on nuclear and radiological security in Central Asia.  

The legacy of nuclear testing

Christopher Nolan’s recently released film “Oppenheimer” about the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II remains a topic of heated discussions. However, the Hollywood movie, in her opinion, was “focused on the Trinity Test [the first detonation of the U.S. nuclear weapon] and its successful outcome, but it was silent about the human cost of local communities, known as the New Mexico ‘downwinders’.” 

The Trinity nuclear test was part of the U.S.-led Manhattan Project, the code name for the scientific and military undertaking for the development of the first atomic bombs. 

“Manhattan Project leaders did not inform people living nearby or downwind about the test, nor were Marshallese informed why they had to move from their land when nuclear atmospheric tests were conducted in the Pacific Ocean,” she said.  

“The Soviets did the same to the Kazakh people living in the vicinity of the Semipalatinsk Test Site (STS),” she noted. “Nuclear tests were carried out there in complete secrecy and absolute denial of harmful effects of the radiation fallout.”     

Nearly 1.5 million Kazakh people have suffered as a result of the 456 nuclear tests (340 underground and 116 aboveground) conducted for more than four decades at the Semipalatinsk polygon.   


In the early 1990s, Kazakhstan faced an urgent need to secure dangerous materials, prevent brain drain, and start remediation and cleanup activities of the weapons of mass destruction (WMD). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country transferred nearly 1,400 Soviet nuclear warheads to Russia and joined the nonproliferation regime.    

Kalinina-Pohl visited the Semipalatinsk polygon twice during her management activities at the CNS regional office in Kazakhstan. On her first private visit in 1999, she and her colleague from Switzerland had a tour to the experimental field (the former site for atmospheric nuclear tests) and to Degelen mountain (the tunnels for underground tests).  

As for the second visit in 2001, she participated in a range of events commemorating the 10th anniversary of the STS closure organized by veterans of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk antinuclear movement, the first major anti-nuclear protest movement in the former Soviet Union. The official ceremony was held in the Kazakh city of Kurchatov and the program included another trip to the site.  

“The encounters in Kurchatov and Semipalatinsk had a profound effect on me personally and professionally. It was an eye-opening experience that helped me realize the colossal efforts put into the tests and their large-scale impact on people and environment,” she said.  

Another memory she shared from her visits was the impression from the Stronger Than Death monument, a memorial to the victims of nuclear tests. A mother under the nuclear mushroom shielding her child “depicts a powerful image.”  

“In addition to dangerous nuclear materials at this site, the Soviet legacy left radioactive sources for military, research, and industrial purposes. On top of that, biological weapons were also produced in Kazakhstan. They were tested at Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea,” she noted.  

“The voices of the victims were silent for so long,” said Kalinina-Pohl. She emphasized that their true stories are being uncovered today, citing the example of works of a Kazakh artist and a nuclear disarmament activist Karipbek Kuyukov, who experienced firsthand consequences of nuclear tests at STS. 

The book “Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb” written by a Kazakh prominent nuclear non-proliferation expert Togzhan Kassenova allowed Kalinina-Pohl to learn more about the plight of victims of nuclear tests in Kazakhstan. She recommended reading it, as “a full understanding of the complexity and soreness of the decision to close the test site came after this story.” 

Nuclear and radiological security in Central Asia 

This September marks another milestone in the history of nuclear disarmament – the 30th anniversary of the initiative to establish the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (CANWFZ). It led to the signing of the Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) in 2006 in the Kazakh city of Semei, also referred as the Treaty of Semipalatinsk. 

Kalinina-Pohl herself was born near one of the former uranium mine sites in Kyrgyzstan.  

“Central Asian states – Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in particular – are still coping with the Soviet uranium mining legacy in the form of impoundments containing radioactive waste, known as tailings. They cause harm to people and the environment, representing a safety concern,” she said.  

Along with other countries in the world, Central Asian states are also embarking on civilian nuclear energy programs…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Kazakhstan’s longstanding commitment to nuclear disarmament resulted in its active participation in drafting and adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). It was entered into force in an expedited manner in January 2021. The country’s chairmanship in TPNW by the end of this year will be mainly focused on victim assistance and environmental remediation. https://astanatimes.com/2023/08/kazakhstans-40-year-history-of-nuclear-testing-call-to-action-for-nonproliferation-education/

August 30, 2023 Posted by | Kazakhstan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Vivek Ramaswamy: Cut funding for Ukraine or face ‘post-Zelensky warlord’

Tony Diver, Telegraph, Fri, 25 Aug 2023

The war in Ukraine will end with the country under the control of a “post-Zelensky warlord” if America does not cut its military funding, Vivek Ramaswamy has said.

The entrepreneur and presidential candidate, who was considered the breakout star of Wednesday’s Republican primary debate, has pledged to stop US support for Mr Zelensky if he wins control of the White House next year.

He said Ukraine would end up “just like what happened after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan” if America does not “step in” to end Western military aid.

The war in Ukraine has become controversial among some on the political Right, who argue its cost has become unjustifiable.

Polls show that the proportion of GOP voters who believe America is doing too much for Ukraine have tripled since last spring, to 44 per cent, while a significant majority of Democrats support more spending.

Some Republicans in the House of Representatives have indicated they will be less willing to support funding increases in future, although few take as hardline a stance as Mr Ramaswamy.

In the debate in Milwaukee, the 38-year-old entrepreneur said more military aid for Ukrainian forces would be “disastrous” and amount to “protecting against an invasion across somebody else’s border”.

And in comments published later by Voice of America, he went on to suggest the continuation of the war would be worse for Ukraine’s long-term interests and stability.

“My plan to end the Ukraine war will actually be probably better for Ukraine, at least it comes out with sovereignty intact. You mark my words, the way this war ends right now without the US actually stepping in and saying we’re not going to fund any more of it is going to be some post-Zelensky warlord takes over, with a couple 100 billion dollars of American military equipment. Just like what happened after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and you see how far that got us.”

Mr Ramaswamy has said he would prioritise a trip to Moscow in his first year as president and give Russia a guarantee that NATO will never admit Ukraine. He has said his foreign affairs policy would be based on the “America First” strategy pursued by Donald Trump between 2016 and 2020, when he withdrew from international organisations and treaties, including the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Ron DeSantis, the second-placed Republican candidate after Mr Trump, has also pledged to cut funding to Kyiv.……………..  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/25/vivek-ramaswamy-ukraine-post-zelensky-warlord-russia/

August 30, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukraine conflict may be lengthy – Canadian PM

Rt.com 29 Aug 23,

Justin Trudeau has pledged that Ottawa, along with the other G7 members, will support Kiev for as long as it takes.

It may still be a long time before the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia ends, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said. He added that his country as well as the other G7 nations are prepared to support Kiev for the long haul.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Seventh Global Environment Facility Assembly in Vancouver on Saturday, Trudeau said that the Group of Seven leaders have always known that Ukraine’s counteroffensive “was going to be a long process.”

Certainly from the conversations we’ve had at the G7 and NATO, we are ready for a war that will take as long as it needs to, because we cannot and must not let Russia win,” he added.

Ukraine launched its much-hyped counteroffensive in early June in the east and south of the country, but has yet to make any significant gains. Senior officials in Kiev, including President Vladimir Zelensky, have acknowledged that it is going more slowly than anticipated.

Western media outlets have reported heavy losses among Ukrainian forces as they try to breach Russian defenses.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed earlier this month that Kiev had lost over 43,000 military personnel and nearly 5,000 pieces of military equipment since the start of the counteroffensive.

The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous officials in Washington, reported on Thursday that the US is unlikely to give Ukraine “anywhere near the same level” of military aid in 2024 compared to this year.

On Friday, Bloomberg claimed that European officials are growing increasingly concerned that US President Joe Biden could “nudge” Ukraine toward peace talks next year.

Earlier this month, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said on Telegram that hostilities between Russia and Ukraine could drag on for years or even decades……………….  https://www.rt.com/news/581911-canadian-pm-ukraine-conflict-lengthy/

August 30, 2023 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Young Vietnamese Diplomat Envisions Nuclear-Free World

She is proud that Viet Nam has ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and is currently at accession level with the NPT.

  • Lê Nguyen An Khanh is a young diplomat with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Viet Nam. She is passionate about the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and world peace.
  • UNITAR Division for Prosperity trains government officials in Asia to learn about international nuclear disarmament processes and build their communication and negotiation skills.

28 August 2023, Hiroshima, Japan – Lê Nguyen An Khanh is a young official from Viet Nam, working at the Department of International Organisations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She believes that diplomats like her have the responsibility to advocate for nuclear disarmament. But it’s not always easy to keep abreast of the intricacies of the field. “We are constantly having [to] research all the issues, of which nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation is a huge part”, she says………………………………………………………………………………….

Lê has had to learn how to take the uncertainties of global politics and turn them into something surmountable. She is proud that Viet Nam has ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and is currently at accession level with the NPT. She wants to make sure her country’s voice is heard on the international stage, that it is seen as a world player. (Plus, she enjoys meeting, learning and working with like-minded people from different backgrounds and cultures.)

Being a young diplomat can come with its challenges: her views and opinions may not be granted the same weight as her older, perhaps more experienced, colleagues. But Lê challenges other young diplomats to be passionate and work hard.

“If you work hard enough, stick to your ideals and you are passionate about what you do and want to do in the future, people will recognize you – especially the seasoned diplomats who have already been there. You have to demonstrate that you are willing and have the capability to deliver. [If] you have a passion, you will be able to overcome challenges”. -Lê Nguyen An Khanh, Vietnamese diplomat and 2023 alumna, UNITAR Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Training Programme

Looking to the Future

Lê will incorporate into her work all that she learned in the UNITAR training and expects to share her knowledge with colleagues in other departments and ministries as well. She applauds the UNITAR Hiroshima Office for putting together a well-organized and resourced training programme that she calls “an epitome of a good training programme”.

In the next 20 years, Lê says she wants to see more UNITAR offices around the world and for more people to learn about nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. “I want to see UNITAR bring people from different regions with different cultures, race, genres to show the similar yet different experiences of their lives.”

Her personal goal is to make sure that she contributes to global peace.

Peace is a universal value. Everybody wants peace. I think peace is the motivation for every country to move towards development and stability. It is only when we have peace that we can move forward and make ourselves stronger.” -Lê Nguyen An Khanh, Vietnamese diplomat and 2023 alumna, UNITAR Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Training Programme

About UNITAR

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is a dedicated training arm of the United Nations. In 2022, UNITAR trained 396,046 learners around the world to support their actions for a better future. In addition to our headquarters in Geneva, we have offices in Hiroshima, New York and Bonn and networks around the world.

The Division for Prosperity is based in the Hiroshima Office and Geneva. We seek to shape an inclusive, sustainable and prosperous world through world-class learning and knowledge-sharing services on entrepreneurship, leadership, finance and trade, digital technologies, and nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. We empower individuals from least-developed countries, countries emerging from conflict, and small-island developing states – especially women and young people – to bring about positive change.

United Nations Volunteer Ruhiya Yousuf contributed to this article.

August 30, 2023 Posted by | politics, Vietnam | Leave a comment

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