nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

To 7 August – nuclear news this week

A bit of good news – The largest landfill in Latin America has now been restored into a thriving mangrove ecosystem.

TOP STORIES

Wilfred Burchett: The Atomic Plague,

Those who will fire the nuclear weapons are thoroughly trained to have no hesitation. We must stop them.

US rejects Australian plea to drop Assange case.

UK government must come clean, to tax-payers and consumers, on the financial figures before signing up to new nuclear programme. ( Full report. See in particular paras 41 -44)

Senate passes $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA): No audits necessary.

Dangers of Tritium.

Aggressive U.S. Push for Military Supremacy in the Arctic Could Trigger Nuclear War.

Climate. A Vital Atlantic Ocean System Could Collapse Sooner Than Previously Thought . The Chilling Truth: Antarctica Just Lost an Ice Mass the Size of My Country .

Nuclear. Well – It’s been THAT memorable week – the 78th anniversary. I can’t add to the many fine stories this week. Except to note that all nuclear-weapons nations are sticking to their policies, and the nuclear industry is enthusiastically propagandising -because we all know that small nuclear reactors etc have nothing to do with military use, don’t we?.

 Christina notes. Forget Oppenheimer. The real nuclear hero is Joseph Rotblat.       The persecution of Wilfred Burchett and Julian Assange  .

CLIMATE. Nuclear war would be more devastating for Earth’s climate than cold war predictions – even with fewer weapons. What you won’t learn about in Oppenheimer: the potential effects of a nuclear winter.

ECONOMICS. How the “Nuclear Renaissance” Robs and Roasts Our Earth.       First new US nuclear reactor in 3 decades may well also be its last.          Nuclear power’s landmark project stumbles across the finish line. The unpalatable facts of the costs to consumers of electricity from new nuclear power. The High Costs and Failures of Nuclear Reactors.

ENERGY. The digital data industry is an energy-and-water-guzzling climate disaster. For Scotland, energy is our best argument for independence.

EMPLOYMENT. Hinkley Point scaffolders begin industrial action over pay and shift patterns.

ENVIRONMENT. Environment Agency allows Hinkley Point C permit variation to remove fish deterrent system. Nuclear Weapons: Devastation Inside the U.S. Do right by the whales.           Water. Water Wars: Cooling the Data Centres. Environment Agency grants contentious Hinkley C water discharge permit.

ETHICS and RELIGION. Scared to Death! Oppenheimer and the threat of nuclear destruction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xthzy1PxTA&t=5s

HISTORY. Western Media Has Falsely Presented the Donbas’ Drive For Autonomy as Being Instigated By Moscow.

LEGAL. Judge tosses charges against executive in South Carolina nuclear debacle, but case may not be over.

MEDIA. Like ‘the tolling of a distant temple bell’, Ibuse Masuji’s Black Rain remembers the horrors of Hiroshima and warns of the inhumanity of war. ‘Barbenheimer’ highlights U.S. ignorance of nuclear reality.        Greg Mitchell on “Oppenheimer” & Why Hollywood Is Still Afraid of the Truth About the Atomic Bomb.      Why no Hollywood movie on Nagasaki A Bombing? Humans Might Be About to Break the Ocean? Don’t Stop the Presses.

OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Campaigners against Sizewell C nuclear plan welcome call for financial clarity from Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.       

Together Against Sizewell environmental group angry at the coming destruction of marine life, as acoustic fish deterrent will not be installed at Hinkley Point C nuclear.         Pacific anti-nuclear groups condemn Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka for backing Fukushima wastewater stance.

PERSONAL STORIES. Oppenheimer’s nuclear fallout: How his atomic legacy destroyed my world.

POLITICS.

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. 

PROTESTS. Protests held in Tokyo against nuclear water discharge,

SAFETY. UN nuclear watchdog finds no explosives at Zaporizhzhia plant.       Russia’s Kola nuclear power plant turns 50. That is not necessarily something to celebrate.        Non-compliant fire program halts decommissioning of Whiteshell Nuclear Laboratories.

URANIUM. Niger stops uranium and gold export to France.

WASTES. 

WAR and CONFLICT    When facts cut through the fog of war.       Is the US preparing to dump the proxy war in Ukraine so it can start another in Taiwan?     Nuclear catastrophe threat is ‘great and growing’, warn over 100 top medical journals.      Veterans, descendants of nuclear testing era urged to apply for British medal.      

 Decades Later, the U.S. Government Called Hiroshima and Nagasaki ‘Nuclear Tests’, Japan marks 78th anniversary of US atomic bombing on Hiroshima, calls nuclear deterrence ‘folly’. Japan condemns Russia nuclear threat on Hiroshima anniversary.

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES

The Sky’s the Limit on Nuclear Weapons Spending, But What Does It Really Get Us? US cluster munitions will bring more pain and death to Donbass civilians, and Washington doesn’t care. Kiev’s broken record: no matter what advanced weaponry the West sends, there is no magic wand to conjure a Ukrainian victory. Military Initiative by Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) is Another Major Step in Prospective War on China. How Have Nuclear Weapons Evolved Since Oppenheimer and the Trinity Test?  

 Building for War: The US Imperium’s Top End Spend. USA flexes its belligerent muscles in Western Australia, showing off its nuclear submarines.      AUKUS, Australia and the drive to war. A Client State. 

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Christina's themes | 23 Comments

Water Wars: Cooling the Data Centres

August 6, 2023,  Dr Binoy Kampmar,  https://theaimn.com/water-wars-cooling-the-data-centres/

Water. Data centres. The continuous, pressing need to cool the latter, which houses servers to store and process data, with the former, which is becoming ever more precious in the climate crisis. Hardly a good comingling of factors.

Like planting cotton in drought-stricken areas, decisions to place data hubs in various locations across the globe are becoming increasingly contentious from an environmental perspective, and not merely because of their carbon emitting propensities. In the United States, which houses 33% of the globe’s data centres, the problem of water usage is becoming acute.

As the Washington Post reported in April this year, residents in Mesa, Arizona were concerned that Meta’s decision to build another data centre was bound to cause more trouble than it was worth. “My first reaction was concern for our water,” claimed city council member Jenn Duff. (The state already has approximately 49 data centres.)

The move to liquid cooling from air cooling for increasingly complex IT processes has been relentless. As the authors of a piece in the ASHRAE Journal from July 2019 explain, “Air cooling has worked well for systems that deploy processors up to 150 W, but IT equipment is now being manufactured with processors well above 150 W where air cooling is no longer practical.” The use of liquid cooling was not only more efficient than air cooling regarding heat transfer, but “more energy efficient, reducing electrical energy costs significantly.” The authors, however, show little concern about the water supplies needed in such ventures.

The same cannot be said about a co-authored study on the environmental footprint of US-located data centres published two years later. During their investigations, the authors identified a telling tendency: “Our bottom-up approach reveals one-fifth of data center servers’ direct water footprint comes from moderately to highly stressed watersheds, while nearly half of servers are fully or partially powered by power plants located within water stressed reasons.” And to make things just that bit less appealing, it was also found that roughly 0.5% of total US greenhouse gas emissions could also be attributed to such centres.

Google has proven to be particularly thirsty in this regard, not to mention secretive in the amount of water it uses at its data hubs. In 2022, The Oregonian/Oregon Live reported that the company’s water use in The Dalles had almost tripled over five years. The increased usage was enabled, in no small part, because of increased access to the municipal water supply in return for an upgrade to the water supply and a transfer of certain water rights. Since establishing the first data centre in The Dalles in 2005, Google has also received tax breaks worth $260 million.

The city officials responsible for the arrangement were in no mood to answer questions posed by the inquisitive paper on Google’s water consumption. A prolonged 13-month legal battle ensued, with the city arguing that the company’s water use constituted a “trade secret”, thereby exempting them from Oregon’s disclosure rules. To have disclosed such details would have, argued Google, revealed information on how the company cooled their servers to eager competitors.

In the eventual settlement, The Dalles agreed to provide public access to 10 years of historical data on Google’s water consumption. The city also agreed to pay $53,000 to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which had agreed to represent The Oregonian/Oregon Live. The city’s own costs had run into $106,000. But most troubling in the affair, leaving aside the lamentable conduct of public officials, was the willingness of a private company to bankroll a state entity in preventing access to public records. Tim Gleason, former dean of the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication, saw this distortion as more than just a touch troubling. “To allow a private entity to essentially fund public advocacy of keeping something out of the public domain is just contrary to the basic intent of the law.”

Instead of conceding that the whole enterprise had been a shabby affront to local residents concerned about the use of a precious communal resource, compromising both the public utility and Google, the company’s global head of infrastructure and water strategy, Ben Townsend, proved benevolent. “What we thought was really important was that we partner with the local utility and actually transfer those water rights over to the utility in a way that benefits the entire community.” That’s right, dear public, they’re doing it for you.

John Devoe, executive director of the WaterWatch advocacy group, also issued a grim warning in the face of Google’s ever increasing water use, which will burgeon further with two more data centres promised along the Columbia River. “If the data center water use doubles or triples over the next decade, it’s going to have serious effects on fish and wildlife on source water streams, and it’s potentially going to have serious effects for other water users in the area of The Dalles.”

Much of the policy making in this area is proving to be increasingly shoddy. With a global demand for ever more complex information systems, including AI, the Earth’s environment promises to be stripped further. Information hunger risks becoming a form of ecological license.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Decades Later, the U.S. Government Called Hiroshima and Nagasaki ‘Nuclear Tests’

The military was able to test both a uranium-fueled bomb on Hiroshima and a second plutonium bomb on Nagasaki to gauge their effects on big cities.

Today, in some elite circles of Russia and the United States, normalized talk of using “tactical” nuclear weapons has upped the madness ante.

NORMAN SOLOMON, AUG 1, 2023 https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/2663585/posts/4838936867

In 1980, when I asked the press office at the U.S. Department of Energy to send me a listing of nuclear bomb test explosions, the agency mailed me an official booklet with the title “Announced United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 Through December 1979.” As you’d expect, the Trinity test in New Mexico was at the top of the list. Second on the list was Hiroshima. Third was Nagasaki.

So, 35 years after the atomic bombings of those Japanese cities in August 1945, the Energy Department—the agency in charge of nuclear weaponry—was categorizing them as “tests.”

Later on, the classification changed, apparently in an effort to avert a potential P.R. problem. By 1994, a new edition of the same document explained that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “were not ‘tests’ in the sense that they were conducted to prove that the weapon would work as designed…or to advance weapon design, to determine weapons effects, or to verify weapon safety.”

But the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually were tests, in more ways than one.

Take it from the Manhattan Project’s director, Gen. Leslie Groves, who recalled: “To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids. It was also desirable that the first target be of such size that the damage would be confined within it, so that we could more definitely determine the power of the bomb.”

A physicist with the Manhattan Project, David H. Frisch, remembered that U.S. military strategists were eager “to use the bomb first where its effects would not only be politically effective but also technically measurable.” The military was able to test both a uranium-fueled bomb on Hiroshima and a second plutonium bomb on Nagasaki to gauge their effects on big cities.

For good measure, after the Trinity bomb test in the New Mexico desert used plutonium as its fission source on July 16, 1945, in early August the military was able to test both a uranium-fueled bomb on Hiroshima and a second plutonium bomb on Nagasaki to gauge their effects on big cities.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | history, Japan, weapons and war | 1 Comment

NATO’s Secret Armies – Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe

This fascinating new study shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe after World War II.

These secret soldiers were trained on remote islands in the Mediterranean and in unorthodox warfare centres in England and in the United States by the Green Berets and SAS Special Forces. The network was armed with explosives, machine guns and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and secret arms caches in forests and mountain meadows. In some countries the secret army linked up with right-wing terrorist who in a secret war engaged in political manipulation, harrassement of left wing parties, massacres, coup d’états and torture.

Codenamed ‘Gladio’ (‘the sword’), the Italian secret army was exposed in 1990 by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to the Italian Senate, whereupon the press spoke of “The best kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II” (Observer, 18. November 1990) and observed that “The story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller.” (The Times, November 19, 1990). Ever since, so-called ‘stay-behind’ armies of NATO have also been discovered in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and Turkey. They were internationally coordinated by the Pentagon and NATO and had their last known meeting in the NATO-linked Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in October 1990.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, resources - print, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Greg Mitchell on “Oppenheimer” & Why Hollywood Is Still Afraid of the Truth About the Atomic Bomb

The movie Oppenheimer about the “father of the atomic bomb” focuses on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s conflicted feelings about the weapons of mass destruction he helped unleash on the world, and how officials ignored those concerns after World War II as the Cold War started an arms race. Journalist Greg Mitchell says that while the film is well made and worth seeing, “the omissions are quite serious.” He says there is little mention of the dangers of radiation and no focus on the impact of the bomb on its victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film also does not question the necessity of using the bomb in the first place, upholding the “official narrative … that has held sway since 1945,” says Mitchell.

Greg Mitchell is a documentary filmmaker and the author of numerous books, including The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. He was editor of Nuclear Times magazine from 1982 to 1986 and has written about this new film for Mother Jones, on his Substack, and in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times headlined “‘Oppenheimer’ is here. Is Hollywood still afraid of the truth about the atomic bomb?” Transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/7/2…

August 7, 2023 Posted by | media, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Kiev’s broken record: No matter what advanced weaponry the West sends, there is no magic wand to conjure a Ukrainian victory

Rt.com 6 Aug 23

Zelensky’s team keeps asking for more advanced military hardware as though hoping for a divine intervention that can turn the tide of war.

“………………………………………………………………………Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podoliak……….. advocated for a political solution to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine by calling on the West to provide F-16 fighters, ATACMS long-range artillery rockets, and modern missile and air defense systems to Ukraine.

According to Podoliak, these weapons are needed by Ukraine to forcibly evict Russian forces from territory Ukraine claims is illegally occupied by Russia (including Crimea). Anything less than this, he contends, “will result in the collapse of the global security order and the triumph of bloody cannibals around the world.”

…………………..the emphasis placed by the Ukrainian politician on the impact the requested weapons would have on the outcome of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is telling. On its face, Podoliak’s statement at once reveals the depth of Ukraine’s military difficulties, and the reality that nothing – not even the provision of the requested weapons systems – can reverse the trajectory of strategic defeat that Kiev currently finds itself on.

Back in December 2022, the commander of Ukrainian forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, articulated what material support he wanted from NATO, Western Europe, and the US in order to defeat Russia. “We need tanks,” Zaluzhny said. “We need armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles. And we need ammo. Please note, I’m not talking about the F-16 now.”

At the end of June 2023, however, Zaluzhny, confronted with the fact that the counteroffensive he had promised if he received the requested weapons (he did) was failing, sang a different tune. “I do not need 120 planes [i.e., F-16’s]. I’m not going to threaten the whole world. A very limited number would be enough. But they are needed. Because there is no other way. Because the enemy is using a different generation of aviation. It’s like we’d go on the offensive with bows and arrows now, and everyone would say, ‘Are you crazy’?”

The US and its NATO allies are currently providing training to Ukrainian pilots on the F-16, and it is expected that Ukraine may receive a small number of the aircraft sometime later this year. But they will not be available in time to have an impact on Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive, something Zaluzhny believes to be a mistake on the part of his Western partners.

Zaluzhny’s American counterpart, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, disagrees. Following a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which coordinates the supply of weaponry to Ukraine, Milley told the press that the provision of F-16s made no sense from a financial perspective. “If you look at the F-16, 10 F-16s [cost] a billion dollars, the sustainment cost another billion dollars, so you’re talking about $2 billion for 10 aircraft,” Milley said, noting that if the US had provided F-16s earlier, Ukraine would not have gotten much of the equipment Zaluzhny claimed he needed to carry out the Ukrainian counteroffensive. “There are no magic weapons in war,” Milley said. “F-16s are not and neither is anything else.”

Podoliak and the Ukrainians disagree. While hopes for an F-16-powered ‘Divine Wind’ remain quashed for the moment, Kiev is hoping that the US will lift its prohibition on the supply of ATACMS long-range artillery rockets. As things currently stand, however, such a decision is not in the works, with the Biden administration continuing to be worried about any possible escalation in the Ukraine conflict that could lead to a direct military-on-military clash between the US and Russia.

……………………….The problem facing Ukraine is that Russia has responded to the provisions of these weapons by unleashing a massive suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) campaign designed to neutralize them, and all of Ukraine’s air defense for that matter. This campaign has been successful at stripping away air defense from the front lines and weakening it around critical strategic targets inside Ukraine. Russia today enjoys air superiority throughout Ukraine, able to strike any target it desires at any time. While Ukraine continues to ask for modern air defense systems to replace those destroyed by Russia, the bottom line is these will suffer the same fate as those that preceded them – being destroyed or rendered ineffective. 

Podoliak knows the hard truth, yet he and other senior Ukrainian officials continue to call upon the collective West to provide a miracle weapon that will tip the scales in Ukraine’s favor………. https://www.rt.com/russia/580768-ukraine-western-weapons-victory/

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Why no Hollywood movie on Nagasaki A Bombing?

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition.
Glen Ellyn IL  06 Aug 23
In the 1952 movie ‘Above and Beyond’, movie idol Robert Taylor played handsome Col. Paul Tibbetts, straight out of Central Casting, who piloted Enola Gay to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima 78 years ago today. We all grew up in awe of Tibbetts, Enola Gay and the perfect mission which incinerated Hiroshima from the first A Bomb dropped in anger.My awe eventually turned to revulsion over a horrendous war crime.
 
But who piloted what plane that dropped the second A Bomb on Nagasaki just 3 days later?

 The American Story has largely erased the saga of the Nagasaki mission for good reason. It was a colossal screw up that almost got the pilot court martialed; indeed, nearly detonated Fat Man over the Pacific en route.

Trouble began early on. Paul Tibbetts, fresh from his Hiroshima success, picked his friend Charles Sweeney to pilot the drop plane ‘Bockscar’ instead of its regular pilot Fred Bock. Sweeney was unfamiliar with both combat and the plane. Preparing for takeoff, Sweeney was unable to operate the reserve tank containing 640 gallons of fuel needed to get Bockscar safely back to its Tinian takeoff point. Bock may have had the familiarity with the plane to accomplish that. Regulations required the mission be scrapped so Sweeney and crew exited Bockscar. But Tibbetts overruled them and the mission was on with insufficient fuel.

Three hours in, worse trouble. Fat Man’s red detonation lights began blinking wildly. Chief weaponeer Dick Ashworth frantically searched the blueprints and realized 2 switches had been reversed in the pre flight assembly. Solving that problem, everyone relaxed till Bockscar failed to rendezvous with the second of two back up planes, one for photography and one for instruments. The instrument plane, The Big Stink, was 9,000 feet above Bockscar.

Instead of pushing on to original target Kokura, Sweeney wasted 45 minutes of precious fuel trying to link up. Big Stink pilot Hoppy Hopkins broke radio silence frantically calling Tinian asking “Is Bockscar down?” Mission officials only heard “Bockscar Down” and freaked out believing Bockscar, Fat Man and the 13 member crew were in Davy Jones Locker.

Ashford was frantic that all was lost. As tension mounted between the weaponeer and the pilot, he finally persuaded Sweeney to proceed to primary target Kokura. But a smokescreen put up by Japanese defenders responding to the Hiroshima attack caused Sweeney to go around for a second and third bomb run, wasting more fuel.

More trouble. Flack and approaching Japanese Zeros forced Sweeney to abandon Kokura to flee 100 miles to alternate target Nagasaki.

The drop made, Sweeney made a desperate dive to avoid the mushroom cloud that nearly engulfed them. But his previous delays made the return trip to Tinian impossible. Low on fuel, Sweeney began a treacherous 450 mile flight on dwindling fuel for Okinawa. All aboard Bockscar prepared to ditch. Approaching the Okinawa airfield unable to radio the tower of their emergency, Bockscar had to drop into a forced landing amid numerous other flights without control tower clearance. Bockscar bounced 25 feet in the air landing at 30 MPH over the maximum landing speed, nearly colliding with a row of fuel laden B-24’s. One engine quit on the approach and another upon touchdown. Thinking Bockscar was lost, airport personnel inquired who this strange plane was that descended out of the sky unannounced. ‘We just dropped an atomic bomb’ was the reply.

There were no celebrations for the crew of Bockscar. Officials considered a courts martial for Sweeney for his life and mission threatening delays but considered the embarrassment it would cause and decided against. Why mar the mission-perfect first nuking of civilians by Paul Tibbetts and Enola Gay?

While we’ll never get a Hollywood treatment of the Bockscar A Bomb mission, it would be a lot more exciting than ‘Above and Beyond’. An appropriate title? ‘Nearly Down and Out Over Nagasaki’.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | history, media, Reference, weapons and war | 2 Comments

Japan marks 78th anniversary of US atomic bombing on Hiroshima, calls nuclear deterrence ‘folly’

Japan has marked the 78th anniversary of the US atomic bombing on Hiroshima, where its mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the Group of Seven leaders’ notion of nuclear deterrence a “folly”.

Key points:

  • Japan’s prime minister said the road to a world without nuclear weapons was getting steeper due to the Russia-Ukraine war
  • The G7 leaders said nuclear weapons should serve to deter aggression and prevent war 
  • UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the “drums of nuclear war are beating once again” 

The day to commemorate the victims of the world’s first nuclear attack comes as Russia has raised the spectre of using nuclear weapons in its war with Ukraine……………………………………..

more https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-06/japan-marks-78th-anniversary-of-hiroshima-bombing/102694840—

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Environment Agency grants contentious Hinkley C water discharge permit

 The Environment Agency has granted a contentious water discharge activity
(WDA) permit to NNB Generation Company at Hinkley Point C near
Burnham-On-Sea.

The decision has provoked concerns from the Stop Hinkley
campaign group. It comes as the Environment Agency says it has added new
limits and conditions to the permit variation requested by the company
“to protect people and the environment”.

A WDA permit allows the company to discharge returned abstracted seawater from the cooling water system, fish recovery and return system and other liquid trade effluents,
including treated sewage effluent, to the Bristol Channel.

 Burnham-on-sea.com 4th Aug 2023

Environment Agency grants contentious Hinkley C water discharge permit

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Japan condemns Russia nuclear threat on Hiroshima anniversary

Bangkok Post, 6 Aug 23

Japan’s prime minister hit out at Russian threats to use nuclear weapons as the country marked the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Sunday.

…………………”Japan, as the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings in war, will continue efforts towards a nuclear-free world,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at a ceremony in Hiroshima.

The path towards it is becoming increasingly difficult because of deepening divisions in the international community over nuclear disarmament and Russia’s nuclear threat,” he said.

……………………………….At the ceremony, thousands of people — survivors, relatives and foreign dignitaries from a record 111 countries — prayed for those killed or wounded in the bombing and called for world peace.

Russia and Belarus were not invited to the ceremony for the second straight year because of the Ukraine crisis.

Participants, many dressed in black, offered a silent prayer at 8.15am (6.15am in Thailand) when the first nuclear weapon used in wartime was dropped………………………………………………………………………………more https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/2624486/japan-condemns-russia-nuclear-threat-on-hiroshima-anniversary

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Chilling Truth: Antarctica Just Lost an Ice Mass the Size of My Country

Antarctica’s sea ice is not just a local phenomenon — it plays a significant role in regulating the Earth’s temperature.

Ricky Lanusse 6 Aug 23

“………………………….Recent reports from July 30th, 2023, reveal that Antarctica has lost a mass of ice the size of my country, Argentina, the 8th largest country in the world. And this profound loss is sending shockwaves through the global community.

The Unprecedented Melting

As the heatwave tightens its grip on the northern hemisphere, Antarctica broke a different kind of climate record.

Antarctic sea ice has shown variability for decades, fluctuating between historical highs and lows.

In a normal situation, the ice reaches its lowest point in late February and then recovers during the winter. Since 2016, scientists have witnessed a drastic downward trend that defies all expectations.

But this year, it is at its lowest level since records began 45 years ago. A disturbing sign that something has changed on our planet…………………….. (Subscribers only) more https://medium.com/the-new-climate/the-chilling-truth-antarctica-just-lost-an-ice-mass-the-size-of-my-country-d8970933f260

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment