2023 September 10 « nuclear-news

A Slow mindless grind towards nuclear Armageddon?

Strategic Culture, Fri, 01 Sep 2023

This week saw widespread air strikes on the Russian Federation involving mass aerial drone attacks. Six regions were attacked including the capital, Moscow. Among the targets was the Kursk region where a nuclear plant is located. Several international airports across Russia were temporarily shut down. This is an incredible situation in which Russian territory is being targeted by a military assault not seen since the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany.

The U.S. media could barely contain its glee at the surge in air strikes on Russia. The New York Times hailed them as a “morale booster” for Ukraine, while CNN noted cryptically that the Kiev regime was “emboldened” to hit strategic targets inside Russia. The telling question of course not asked by CNN is: emboldened by whom?

Most of the incoming drones were shot down or disabled by Russian air defenses. But that is beside the point that Russian territory is now being targeted by mass attacks. And there can be no doubt that this “emboldened” military campaign is being enabled and directed by the United States and its NATO allies who are arming the Nazi regime in Kiev to the teeth.

The air strike, this week at Pskov airport is particularly revealing. Several Russian military cargo planes were reportedly destroyed. The location is only some 30 kilometers from Russia’s northwestern border with Estonia and over 600 km from Ukraine. It is almost certain that NATO members Estonia and possibly Latvia enabled that attack on Pskov. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has openly accused NATO of participating in the air assaults on Russian territory. The British publication, The Economist, also reported that NATO hardware, satellite and navigational logistics were vital for the drone campaign.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s National Security Council, this week stated that Russia now has legal justification for going to war with NATO members directly. He warned that the world is on the brink of a nuclear conflagration.

We need to step back here and see the process of the proverbial boiling-frog scenario.

[CORRECTION: It’s a myth that frogs will stay in water that slowly heats, until they die. In reality, they will try to get out, as soon as the temperature becomes uncomfortable.]

This describes an insidious creeping situation which would otherwise not be tolerated. A frog apparently will jump back from a pot of boiling water but if the frog is placed in the pot of water which is then slowly brought to the boil it will succumb passively to its ill fate.

The process seems apt as a metaphor for the conflict in Ukraine between the U.S.-led NATO bloc and Russia. The Kiev regime was installed in 2014 through a CIA-backed coup against a democratically elected president; it was armed and trained by NATO, despite its vile Nazi battalions, to attack ethnic Russians in Ukraine; when Russia intervened militarily in February 2022 after diplomatic offers were rejected by the U.S. and NATO, the conflict has steadily escalated over the past 18 months to the point where pre-war Russian territory is now coming under mass air strikes.

This mass assault on Russian territory by NATO forces would have been unthinkable only a few months ago. And yet here we are at that astounding point.

There seems little doubt that the air strikes on Russia are a sort of Plan B to compensate for the abject failure of the NATO-backed regime on the battlefields in Ukraine. The much-vaunted “counteroffensive” that started in June has become a debacle for the NATO sponsors. The turn towards drone strikes on Russia appears to be a change in tactic as a way of terrorizing the Russian population and destabilizing the authority of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as distracting from NATO’s military incompetence.

Russia’s defense doctrine mandates the use of nuclear weapons if the state’s existential security is threatened. So far, the NATO-backed drone attacks on Russia have not reached that threshold. But the incremental process is dangerously heading in that dreadful direction.

If we were to turn the tables on the situation, the audacity would become even more apparent. Can anyone imagine for a second how the United States would react if a foreign adversary was enabling the launch of air strikes on Washington DC and other strategic centers, whereby airports were shut down and military infrastructure was being destroyed?………………………………………………………………. more https://strategic-culture.su/news/2023/09/01/boiling-frogs-towards-nuclear-armageddon/

September 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Residents file suit to halt wastewater release from Fukushima plant

About 150 residents from prefectures such as Fukushima and Miyagi went to court on Friday to halt the release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, making it the first lawsuit of its kind.

In the suit filed with the Fukushima District Court against the central government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc, the plaintiffs said the water discharge, which started on Aug. 24, threatens citizens’ right to live safely and hinders local fishermen’s businesses.

They are also seeking nullification of nuclear regulators’ approval of facilities installed for the water discharge and a ban to be placed on the release.

An additional lawsuit at the end of October is being planned…………………………………………………………………. https://japantoday.com/category/national/residents-file-suit-to-halt-wastewater-release-from-fukushima-plant

September 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, Legal | Leave a comment

Today Hinkley C contract would cost £180 per MWh around 3xs the cost of offshore wind

DAVID TOKE, SEP 8, 2023 https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/today-hinkley-c-contract-would-cost

There’s been a lot of talk about how offshore wind has ‘increased’ its costs since the last Government contract auction – but that’s not a patch on nuclear power a la Hinkley C, courtesy of EDF. Capital costs for the project have increased in real (not just inflation) terms by around 50 percent since 2012, and there’s probably a lot worse to come.

The figure of £92.50 per MWh is often mentioned as the price of the contract for Hinkley C, and that is the contract price in 2012 prices. In today’s money using the Government’s preferred CPI calculator that is £124 per MWh – higher even than the currently gas-inflated wholesale power price.

But it is worse, much much worse than that, because Hinkley C’s real, not just inflation-adjusted price, has increased. In 2012 the capital cost was estimated at £16 billion by EDF. Now the capital cost in 2012 prices has risen to around £33 billion in 2023 money or around £24 billion in 2012 money.

That means that if Hinkley C’s contract was set up today at the revised capital cost then the equivalent contract price would be about £138 per MWh in 2012 prices and around £180 per MWh in today’s prices. That is of course if the contract was assessed on the same contract length – 35 years, and on a similar rate of return. The rate of return certainly would not be less since interest rates are a lot higher than they were in 2012.

The estimates published by EDF do not include interest rate charges. They are called ‘overnight’ costs, which in itself is highly ironic since the last thing nuclear power stations are noted for is being built overnight. Their construction takes many years, racking up immense interest charges on the way. If this was a private company they surely would have gone bust by now. The only way that EDF could get themselves into this position is because everybody knows that the French Government will inevitably bail them out.

Of course, as far as Hinkley C costs go, the only way is up. Heaven knows how high they will go! And the Government is going to make electricity consumers pay for the next EDF nuclear disaster at Sizewell C!

So let’s reflect a bit on the apparent horror apparently experienced by the UK Treasury that they might have to offer more than £44 per MWh (at 2012 prices) for offshore wind contracts.

September 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Scott Ritter: A comprehensive Ukrainian defeat is the only possible outcome of its conflict with Russia

Rt.com 8 Sept 23

Kiev was offered a peace deal long ago, but chose war instead, egged on by its Western backers. Now its fate is sealed

September 2 marked the 78th anniversary of the World War Two surrender ceremony onboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. This moment formalized Japan’s unconditional capitulation to the United States, and its allies, and marked the end of the conflict. From the Japanese perspective, it had been ongoing since the Marco Polo bridge incident of July 7, 1937, which started the Sino-Japanese War.

There was no negotiation, only a simple surrender ceremony in which Japanese officials signed documents, without conditions.

Because that is what defeat looks like.

History is meant to be studied in a manner that seeks to draw out lessons from the past that might have relevance in the present. As George Santayana, the American philosopher, noted, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The Ukrainian government in Kiev would do well to reflect on both the historical precedent set by Japan’s unconditional surrender, and Santayana’s advice, when considering its current conflict with Russia

First and foremost, Ukraine must reflect honestly about the causes of this conflict, and which side bears the burden of responsibility for the fighting. ‘Denazification’ is a term that the Russian government has used in describing one of its stated goals and objectives. President Vladimir Putin has made numerous references to the odious legacy of Stepan Bandera, the notorious mass murderer and associate of Nazi Germany who is feted by modern-day Ukrainian nationalists as a hero and all but a founding father of their nation.

That present-day Ukraine would see fit to elevate a man such as Bandera to such a level speaks volumes about the rotten foundation of Kiev’s cause, and the dearth of moral fiber in the nation today. The role played by the modern-day adherents of the Nazi collaborator’s hateful nationalist ideology in promulgating the key events that led to the initiation of the military operation by Russia can neither be ignored nor minimized. It was the Banderists, with their long relationship with the CIA and other foreign intelligence services hostile to Moscow, who used violence to oust the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, from office in February 2014.

From the act of illicit politicized violence came the mainstreaming of the forces of ethnic and cultural genocide, manifested in the form of the present-day Banderists, who initiated acts of violence and oppression in eastern Ukraine. This, in turn, triggered the Russian response in Crimea and the actions of the citizens of Donbass, who organized to resist the rampage of the Bandera-affiliated Ukrainian nationalists. The Minsk Accords, and the subsequent betrayal by Kiev and its Western partners of the potential path for peace that these represented, followed.

Ukraine cannot disassociate itself from the role played by the modern-day Banderists in shaping the present reality. In this, Kiev mirrors the militarists of Imperial Japan, whose blind allegiance to the precepts of Bushido, the traditional ‘way of the warrior’ dating back to the Samurai of 17th century Japan, helped push the country into global conflict. Part of Japan’s obligations upon surrender was to purge its society of the influence of the militarists, and to enact a constitution that deplatformed them by making wars of aggression – and the military forces needed to wage them – unconstitutional.

Banderism, in all its manifestations, must be eradicated from Ukrainian society in the same manner that Bushido-inspired militarism was removed from Japan, to include the creation of a new constitution that enshrines this purge as law. Any failure to do so only allows the cancer of Banderism to survive, festering inside the defeated body of post-conflict Ukraine until some future time when it can metastasize once again to bring harm……………………….

As the Western establishment media begins to come to grips with the scope and scale of Ukraine’s eventual military defeat (and, by extension, the reality of a decisive Russian military victory), their political overseers in the US, NATO, and the European Union struggle to define what the endgame will be. Having articulated the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as an existential struggle where the very survival of NATO is on the line, these Western politicians now have the task of shaping public perception in a manner that mitigates any meaningful, sustained political blowback from constituents who have been deceived into tolerating the transfer of billions of dollars from their respective national treasuries, and billions more dollars’ worth of weapons from their respective arsenals, into a lost and disgraced cause.

………………………………….. Russia has been undertaking the successful demilitarization of Ukraine’s armed forces since the initiation of partial mobilization. The equipment Ukraine is provided by the West is similarly being destroyed by Russia at a rate that makes replacement unsustainable. Meanwhile, Russia’s own defense industry has kicked into full gear, supplying a range of modern weapons and ammunition that is more than sufficient.

The harsh reality is that neither Ukraine nor its Western allies can sustain the operational losses in manpower and equipment that the conflict with Russia is inflicting……….. if Kiev persists in extending this conflict until it is physically unable to defend itself, it runs the risk of losing even more territory, including Odessa and Kharkov.

Russia did not enter the conflict with the intent of seizing Ukrainian territory. But in March 2022, Kiev rejected a draft peace agreement (which it had preliminarily approved at first), and this decision to eschew peace in favor of war led to Russia absorbing Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson.

As one of its conditions to even begin negotiating for peace with Moscow, Kiev demanded the return of all former Ukrainian territories currently under Russian control – including Crimea. To achieve such an outcome, however, Ukraine would have to be able to compel compliance by defeating Russia militarily and/or politically. As things stand, this is an impossibility.

What Ukraine and its Western partners do not yet seem to have come to grips with is the fact that Russia’s leadership is in no mood for negotiations for negotiations’ sake. Putin has listed its goals and objectives when it comes to the conflict – denazification, demilitarization, and no NATO membership for Ukraine.

……….The longer Kiev – and its Western partners – drag out this conflict, the greater the harm that will accrue for Ukraine……….. https://www.rt.com/russia/582259-ukraine-unconditional-surrender-nato/

September 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

If Everyone Understood That The US Deliberately Provoked This War

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, SEP 7, 2023 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/if-everyone-understood-that-the-us?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=136816741&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

War is the single worst thing humans do. The most insane. The most cruel. The most destructive. The most traumatic. The least sustainable. Those who knowingly choose to steer humanity into more war when it could be avoided are the worst people in the world, without exception.

And there are mountains of extensively documented evidence that that’s exactly what the drivers of the US-centralized empire did in Ukraine. That’s why so many western analysts and experts spent years warning that the actions of western powers were going to lead Ukraine into disaster, and it’s why US empire managers keep openly boasting about how much their proxy warfare in Ukraine advances US interests. They knowingly steered Ukraine into war to advance their own geostrategic interests while being fully aware that no powerful nation would ever permit the kinds of foreign threats the west was amassing on its borders, and then they intervened in the early days of the war to prevent the outbreak of peace.

If there was widespread awareness of these facts, the US war machine would lose support around the world — not just for its actions in this one war, but for all future wars as well. Which is why so much energy goes into making sure this does not become a widespread understanding.

The official mainstream narrative throughout the western world is that Putin invaded Ukraine solely because he is evil and hates freedom. That’s the actual, literal belief about this war that the western political/media class works to instill in the western public. Anyone who counters this self-evidently ridiculous assessment with facts and evidence gets branded a Russian agent and swarmed with pro-US trolls on social media, and loses all hope of securing a major platform in any mass media.

And it’s important to notice that shutting down all mature adult analysis of the events which led to the war in this way does not actually save a single Ukrainian life. It doesn’t make Russia any more likely to stop fighting and withdraw its troops. All it does is prevent people from seeing the US empire for what it really is. It isn’t being done to protect Ukrainians, it’s done to protect the empire.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to the information interests of the US empire would be for a critical mass of people to become aware that all this death and destruction in Ukraine could have been avoided by the US-centralized empire behaving less aggressively on Russia’s doorstep, and that those aggressions were instead increased with the goal of advancing US strategic interests on the world stage. If everyone really, deeply understood that all this suffering, all these mountains of human corpses could simply not have happened if the US hadn’t been feverishly focused on securing planetary domination at all cost, the US would no longer be able to manufacture consent for its agendas. It would no longer be able to whip up international support for its actions against its enemies. It would no longer be able to persuade the world to help prop up the hegemony of the dollar.

But because the US empire has the most advanced soft power apparatus that has ever existed, hardly anyone understands this. Not even the people who understand that the west provoked this war have deeply grappled with exactly what that means on a visceral emotional level, for the most part. It’s more of a superficial intellectual understanding for most, without really grokking into the horror of it all, really letting the enraging nature of what the US empire did wash over them.

The west was deceived into supporting yet another evil American war, this time with the added dimension of nuclear brinkmanship threatening the life of every terrestrial organism. All to suck Moscow into another draining military quagmire so war plans can be safely drawn up against China while advancing US energy interests in Europe and building support for US military alliances. It’s almost too evil to take in. There aren’t really words for it.

And that’s one of the reasons it’s hard to get people to take in exactly what happened with Ukraine: people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea that anyone could be that evil, much less the government we’ve been trained by Hollywood to think of as sane and humanitarian.

It’s about as monstrous a thing as you could possibly come up with. Yet here it is, still unfolding in all its blood-spattered glory.

Our task then is to help people see this and understand it, not just intellectually but emotionally. Help people really grasp deep down the horrors the US empire unleashed upon our world with the war in Ukraine; the suffering; the death; the existential danger. We can’t fight the empire on our own, but we can each do what we can to help weaken the consent manufacturing machine it uses to rule and terrorize the world.

September 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics, USA, weapons and war | 2 Comments

The Pentagon is the Elephant In the Climate Activist Room

By Melissa Garriga and Tim Biondo, World BEYOND War, September 7, 2023

With nearly 10,000 people expected to take to the streets of New York City on September 17 for the March to End Fossil Fuels, the climate justice movement seems more organized than ever. But, there’s a big elephant in the room, and it has the Pentagon written all over it.

The U.S. military is the world’s largest institutional oil consumer. It causes more greenhouse gas emissions than 140 nations and accounts for about one-third of America’s total fossil fuel consumption. The Department of Defense (DoD) also uses huge amounts of natural gas and coal, as well as nuclear power plants at its bases around the country. How can we demand the U.S. be part of a movement that aims to end the use of fossil fuels and protect our planet when their own institution is wreaking havoc without accountability? The answer: you can’t.

As long as we ignore the Pentagon’s role in perpetuating climate change, our fight to protect the planet is incomplete. We also risk undermining our own effectiveness by not taking into account how the nearly trillion dollar military budget takes away from people’s access to resources that not only affect their capacity to fight for climate justice but also to live under extreme economic inequality.

While United States officials want the consumer public to be responsible for their personal carbon footprint, such as making motorists switch to electric vehicles or banning incandescent light bulbs they are avoiding responsibility for the large carbon “bootprint” the military is leaving across the globe. From burn pits in Iraq, or the use of depleted uranium and cluster munitions in Ukraine, to the ever-expanding list of domestic and oversea military bases – the United States military is not only destroying its own country but devastating indigenous communities and sovereign nations through extreme environmental degradation.

According to the Environmental Working Group, “more than 700 military installations are likely contaminated with the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.” But the problem goes far beyond drinking water. In Japan, the indigenous Ryukyuan is pushing back against yet another military base being built on the island of Okinawa. The new base is a major threat to the fragile ecosystem the Ryukyuans work hard to maintain. The damage to their marine ecosystem of course coincides with the poisoning of their drinking water – a fight both Hawaii and Guam are all too familiar with.

All of these contributing factors of climate destruction are happening in “conflict free” zones,but what impact does the U.S. military have on active warzones? Well, take a look at the Russian/Ukraine war – a war that the U.S. is helping to sustain to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars. CNN recently reported that “a total of 120 million metric tons of planet-heating pollution can be attributed to the first 12 months of the war.”

…………………………….. We need to stop spending billions on weapons systems designed to fight imaginary enemies . Instead we should use that money for domestic priorities like health care, education and infrastructure projects here at home.

We need to work side by side with all nations to address climate issues. This includes those we have deemed as enemies as well as the Global South – who are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.

We need to make sure that our tax dollars are being spent on the things that matter most to us–and that means an end to endless war and environmental degradation. We need a Green New Deal which redirects federal funds from military spending towards domestic priorities like health care, education and infrastructure projects.

When it comes to the fight for climate justice, the Pentagon is the elephant in the room. We can’t keep ignoring its enormous “bootprint.”. It’s simple – to defend earth we must end war and we must end it now. Peace is no longer something that should be looked at as an utopian idea – it is a necessity. Our survival depends on it. https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-pentagon-is-the-elephant-in-the-climate-activist-room/

September 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Health and safety concerns raised with Dounreay management

Some trade union and safety representatives have no confidence in the
management at Dounreay and have raised health and safety concerns at the
site.

A number of employees told the John O’Groat Journal that they are
also worried over how issues on the well-being of staff were being
addressed. “There are numerous cases of staff members off due to
work-related stress – some as a result of bullying and harassment,” said
one worker. “Concerns have been raised but do not appear to be addressed.
“Dounreay has said that ‘our workers are out greatest asset’, but from the
conversations I’ve had with people across site, this is not believed.”
Another employee stated: “This has been an ongoing issue for years. It is
hard to prove in many cases and has been dealt with in some instances.
Safety reps have been involved in meetings on this topic along with the
chairman of the Trade Union Co-ordinating Committee.”

John O’Groat Journal 8th Sept 2023

https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/trade-union-and-safety-reps-have-no-confidence-in-dounreay-m-325766/

September 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | employment, UK | Leave a comment

UK and Japan’s governments funding research on problem of nuclear waste

Two projects have been awarded a share of £1 million, delivered by the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK
Research and Innovation (UKRI), to address challenges in: radioactive waste
treatment, packaging, and storage; remote handling, robotic, and autonomous
systems in decommissioning; environmental behaviour of radionuclide release
and management of risk and degraded infrastructure.

The UK-Japan Civil Nuclear Research programme is a partnership between UKRI and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The research
projects are being led by academics at the universities of Strathclyde and
Sheffield.

UK Research & Innovation 8th Sept 2023

https://www.ukri.org/news/uk-japan-partnership-to-develop-new-tech-for-nuclear-waste-disposal/

September 10, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, wastes | Leave a comment