Thunder Bay Council to debate nuclear waste position
Thunder Bay’s city council will debate whether to stake out a position opposing the transportation of nuclear waste through the city.
TBnewswatch.com Ian Kaufman, Oct 27, 2023
THUNDER BAY — Thunder Bay’s city council will consider its position on the transportation of nuclear waste through the area on Monday, as a decision to ship the waste to the Ignace area looms.
Citizen groups Environment North and We the Nuclear Free North asked council last year to endorse the “proximity principle,” which would dictate keeping nuclear waste as close as possible to its point of generation.
That ask was referred to the city’s intergovernmental affairs committee, which will present a recommendation against the step at a council meeting on Monday…………..
The groups point to a now decades-old plebiscite in which Thunder Bay voters expressed concerns over nuclear waste disposal.
A 1997 plebiscite asked citizens if they were in favour of nuclear waste disposal in the Thunder Bay area. Of roughly 40,000 who voted, over 91 per cent voted no.
In 2000, city council passed a motion building on that plebiscite, expressing “concern with the transportation of nuclear waste through the city of Thunder Bay.”………………
We the Nuclear Free North has launched a similar call to endorse the proximity principle at Queen’s Park, delivering a long-shot petition in May bearing over 1,000 signatures to the Ontario Legislature.
It wants the province to direct Ontario Power Generation to look to storage systems at or near points of generation, rather than a deep geological repository in other areas of the province.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, the industry group tasked with finding a disposal solution for Canada’s nuclear waste, is considering Revell Lake, between Ignace and Dryden, and South Bruce as DGR sites.
A selection between the two sites for the $25-billion project is expected in 2024. …………………………………………
Wendy O’Connor, communications lead for We the Nuclear Free North, said approving a repository in Ignace would force the region to bear the burden of a nuclear waste a problem “that’s been sidestepped for decades.”
“There is no solution to nuclear waste. There is no good, totally safe way to deal with it,” she said.
However, she believes a solution closer to where waste is generated at sites in Southern Ontario makes more sense……………………………….. https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/council-to-debate-nuclear-waste-position-7745525 #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes
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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara have decamped to a luxury mansion with a deep nuclear bunker
Daily Mail, By MELANIE SWAN, 29 October 2023
- Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara are hiding in a luxury mansion
- It is owned by US billionaire Simon Falic, and comes with high security
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara have decamped to the luxury mansion with a deep nuclear bunker, amid growing public anger towards the country’s leaders.
The gated mansion in a Jerusalem mansion, owned by US billionaire Simon Falic, comes with high-level security.
He said the staff are being moved there, including their personal chef, with the preparations suggesting future meetings with world leaders will also be relocated there.
The decision to move into a residence with a deep nuclear bunker is not a common one in Israel, even among the super-rich.
But with the looming threat from Iran, a handful of the PM’s inner circle have built them……………………………………….
Prior to the Hamas atrocities, hundreds of thousands of Israelis had been protesting against the premier and his right-wing coalition over plans to reform the judicial system, allegations of cronyism and allowing Jewish settlers to expand into more areas that were supposed to be occupied by Palestinians. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12684385/Israeli-prime-minister-Benjamin-Netanyahu-wife-Sara-decamped-luxury-mansion-deep-nuclear-bunker.html #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes
Experts fear Ukraine will run out of ammo in 2024 – Le Monde
Rt.com 29 Oct 23
Russia has a distinct arms production advantage, multiple European analysts told the newspaper
The Ukrainian military will run out of ammunition next year, and Kiev’s Western backers won’t be able to fully restock it until 2025, European military experts told Le Monde on Friday. With Russian arms production in full swing, Moscow is better prepared for a war of attrition, the analysts warned.
In a lengthy article dissecting the failure of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive, the French newspaper highlighted three key factors: Russia’s decision to voluntarily withdraw from Kherson and construct an elaborate line of defenses in late 2022, Ukraine’s insufficient tactical prowess, and Russia’s “greater strategic depth” – or its ability to replace lost men and materiel.
“2024 is going to be fraught with danger for the Ukrainians,” risk consultant Stephane Audrand told Le Monde. “The equipment that has already been delivered to them will be depleted, but they will only be able to partially reconstitute it, as Western production capacities will not be optimal until 2025.”…………….
Meanwhile, the Pentagon emptied its stockpiles of 155mm ammunition in South Korea and Israel to keep Kiev’s guns firing. With Israel also asking for this increasingly rare ammo, Washington has reportedly diverted tens of thousands of shells back into its Israeli depot, having originally set them aside for Ukraine…………………
Even if the entire Western world were to mobilize its entire arms production capacity exclusively for Ukraine, “that will be not enough for this war,” Ukrainian Strategic Industries Minister Aleksandr Kamyshin told Politico on Monday. https://www.rt.com/russia/585972-ukraine-run-out-ammunition/
With Hamas gone, Gaza still wouldn’t be free
As a classic settler-colonial state, Israel is doing the only thing it knows how to do. So long as the West keeps cheerleading, that includes genocide
JONATHAN COOK, OCT 28, 2023
“……… First, settler colonial movements are distinguished from standard colonialism – like British rule in India – by the fact that the settler population wishes not just to steal the native population’s resources but to replace the native population itself.
There are lots of examples of this: European settlers dispossessed native peoples in what we today call the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, for example.
The definition of genocide in international law exactly describes what those Europeans did to the local population: mass killings; inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of all or part of the native community; preventing births within the local population; and forcibly transferring native children to the settler population.
European settlers who today call themselves Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders never had to account for their crimes against those native peoples. Which possibly explains why European countries and their settler colonial outgrowths are today lining up against the rest of the world to support Israel as it intensifies industrial genocide in Gaza.
The truth is the “western” world order was built on genocide. Israel is just following in a long tradition…………………………………………………
The final model for a settler colonial population is to drive the native population over the border, in an act of ethnic cleansing. This was Israel’s preferred option in 1948 and again in 1967, when it decided to expand its borders by occupying the remaining Palestinian lands in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
The Palestinians in Gaza are an object lesson in the various ways a native population can be abused by a settler colonial movement……………………………..
Unlike white South Africa, Israel is not looking for peace and reconciliation. It is revisiting other settler colonial options.
In the current attack on Gaza, it is implementing a mixed model: genocide for those who remain in Gaza, ethnic cleansing for those who can get out (assuming Egypt finally relents and opens its borders).
None of that has anything to do with Hamas. The most one can say is that Hamas’ resistance has forced Israel’s hand. It has had to abandon its siege-apartheid model – the long term imprisonment of a population with no resources, no freedom of movement, no clean water, no jobs.
Instead, it has returned to the tried-and-tested formulas of genocide and ethnic cleansing……………………….
Palestinians overthrowing Hamas, or Hamas surrendering, would not turn Gaza into a Dubai-on-the-Mediterranean. Palestinians there would still be prisoners, though possibly allowed slightly better conditions.
If you doubt that, look to the West Bank, which is ruled not by Hamas but by the supine Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas. He calls security cooperation with Israel – suppressing on Israel’s behalf the Palestinians’ craving for freedom – a “sacred” duty. His biggest aspiration is a diplomatic solution that creates a severely circumscribed Palestinian mini-state.
If Israel can’t allow freedom to the West Bank under Abbas, how is it ever going to give freedom to tiny Gaza, even without Hamas, especially after the United Nations declared the enclave as fundamentally “uninhabitable” in 2020?
Israel could never allow the Palestinians out of their Gaza prison because their rapid growth in numbers is seen as a threat to Israel’s Jewish majority.
Remember: settler colonial populations are there to replace the native population, not to make peace with them, not to shares resources, not to give them their freedom.
Israel is doing the only thing it knows how to do. And as long as the West is cheerleading, that includes genocide.
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/with-hamas-gone-gaza-still-wouldnt #Israel
Israel Has Permanently Lost The Argument
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 27, 2023
Israel and its allies get away with a lot by marketing this as a “war”. It’s not a war. Israel launches high-tech military explosives at civilian buildings in a huge concentration camp while Hamas fires back with glorified fireworks which do light property damage. That’s not a war, it’s a massacre.
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I was upset when I saw that Israel has killed seven thousand people in its Gaza bombing campaign but then a really smart Israel apologist told me Hamas might be exaggerating those numbers and maybe it’s more like four thousand, so now I think it’s fine…..
Look it’s very simple: if your words say “we’re not targeting civilians we’re targeting Hamas” but your actions say you’re inflicting siege warfare on the civilian population and carpet bombing entire city blocks into rubble, then you’re not really targeting Hamas.
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Israel-Palestine is a very complicated, confusing, highly nuanced debate between those who think murdering thousands of children is fine and those who do not.
This is a very complicated genocidal massacre. Most complicated genocidal massacre in the history of genocidal massacres. There’s two sides to this genocidal massacre. This genocidal massacre requires nuance……………………………………..
It keeps surprising me that Israel apologists still expect to be taken seriously. Israel is massacring children by the thousands and turning Gaza into rubble and they still expect you to listen to them receptively when they defend its actions. It’s actually starting to get morbidly fascinating.
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Israel has lost the argument. Permanently. There’s no coming back from this.
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I cannot adequately express the immensity of my respect for the many, many, many Jewish voices I’ve seen taking a firm and forceful stand against the Gaza massacre. …………more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-has-permanently-lost-the-argument #Israel
Israel Cut Off Gaza’s Communications Because Murderers Don’t Like Witnesses
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 28, 2023 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-cut-off-gazas-communications?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=138354929&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email
Israeli ground forces have ramped up activities in Gaza in what anonymous US officials are reportedly telling the press is a “rolling start” to the long-anticipated ground invasion.
Israel has also concurrently crippled Gaza’s largest telecommunications service, which had been the enclave’s last remaining contact with the outside world after Israel knocked out all the others. Humanitarian organizations and mainstream press outlets now say they have lost communication with their contacts in Gaza in a level of information blackout we’re unaccustomed to seeing in modern times.
“This information blackout risks providing cover for mass atrocities and contributing to impunity for human rights violations,” Human Rights Watch correctly notes.
And I’m going to go ahead and say that’s probably not just a convenient coincidence for Israel. A genocidal massacre in total darkness works very much to the advantage of those doing the massacring.
As Israeli siege warfare cuts Gazans off from both electricity and communications, we’re seeing the lights go out in Gaza in more ways than one.
The light has been further dimmed by the rampant killing of journalists by the Israeli military. Wikipedia, whose notoriously rigged editing system tends to skew information in the favor of US information interests, still currently lists 17 journalists killed by the IDF in Gaza and another one in southern Lebanon in this current onslaught. NPR lists the numbers a bit higher, while conveniently declining to say who did the killing.
An Al Jazeera reporter named Wael Dahdouh lost his wife, son, daughter and baby grandson to a single Israeli airstrike in Gaza, saying “They’re taking their revenge by killing our children!” on the air while kneeling over the body of his dead son. He had reportedly moved them south of Gaza City following an Israeli evacuation order, believing it would keep them safe.
According to Reuters, the IDF is now telling both the Reuters and AFP news agencies that it cannot guarantee the safety of their reporters if they continue operating in the Gaza Strip. After Israel’s historically unparallelled assault on journalists these past three weeks, this can only be interpreted as a threat.
As we have discussed previously, Israel has been suffering for years from an increasingly worsening PR crisis as the ability to share and circulate raw video footage of its abuses emerged with the arrival of smartphones and widespread social media access.
During a 2021 video appearance for the International Festival of Whistleblowing, Dissent and Accountability, Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook made some remarks that I find myself contemplating frequently as Israel scrambles to shut all the lights off in Gaza. Cook described the changes he’s seen as smartphones and internet access made Palestinians less dependent on the work of sympathetic western activists and gave them the ability to directly share footage of their own abuse.
Here’s a quote:
“Sadly most corporate journalists paid little attention to the work of these activists. In any case, their role was quickly snuffed out. That was partly because Israel learnt that shooting a few of them served as a very effective deterrent, warning others to keep away.
“But it was also because as technology became cheaper and more accessible — eventually ending up in mobile phones that everyone was expected to have — Palestinians could record their own suffering more immediately and without mediation.
“Israel’s dismissal of the early, grainy images of the abuse of Palestinians by soldiers and settlers — as ‘Pallywood’ (Palestinian Hollywood) — became ever less plausible, even to its own supporters. Soon Palestinians were recording their mistreatment in high definition and posting it directly to YouTube.”
Israel is perhaps more acutely aware than any other government on earth of how disadvantageous it is to have your crimes recorded in the light of day and shared with the world. That’s why it shut the lights off in Gaza: because murderers don’t like witnesses. #Israel #Palestine
Ohio House bill would declare nuclear power as ‘green energy
Cleveland.com By Jake Zuckerman, jzuckerman@cleveland.com 27 Oct 23
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A lengthy, bipartisan list of Ohio House lawmakers introduced legislation Tuesday that would expand the legal definition of “green energy” to include nuclear power.
The bill is a way of saying that Ohio should increase its nuclear generation, and that the state is open for business to the industry, according to state Rep. Sean Brennan, a Parma Democrat who sponsored it………..
Last year, state lawmakers added a provision to state law that created a new legal definition for the term “green energy” that explicitly includes energy generated via natural gas.
The new law also includes any energy resource that either releases “reduced” air pollutants or is more sustainable “relative to some fossil fuels” – an expansive definition for a term usually reserved for renewable resources like wind or solar power……………………………….
The bill has not yet been assigned to a committee, where it would undergo hearings before any future votes. https://www.cleveland.com/open/2023/10/ohio-house-bill-would-declare-nuclear-power-as-green-energy.html #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes
Lawyers circle nuclear startup NuScale over claims a 24-reactor deal will fail
Short seller brands blockchain firm Standard Power a “fake customer”
October 27, 2023 By Peter Judge https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/lawyers-circle-nuclear-startup-nuscale-over-claims-a-24-reactor-deal-will-fail/
Nuclear power startup NuScale is facing investigation by lawyers after a short-seller’s report alleged that it has sold 24 reactors to a “fake customer.”
NuScale announced a deal earlier this month to supply blockchain firm Standard Power with 1,848MW of power provided by 24 of NuScale’s small modular reactors (SMRs), to power two US data center sites.
Last week its share price dropped around 10 percent after a scathing report from short seller Iceberg Research claimed that the deal, estimated at $37 billion, had “zero chance of being executed.” The shares bounced back around six percent earlier this week, when NuScale responded, saying the Iceberg claims were “riddled with speculative statements with no basis in fact.”
NuScale has contracted to provide Standard Power with 1,848MW of power, but Iceberg predicts Standard Power will be unable to support the contract. Among other things, Iceberg points out that Standard Power’s CEO Maxim Serezhin has an outstanding $54k tax warrant in New York, rendering his assets vulnerable to seizure, adding that a former Standard Power leader, Adam Swickle, was found guilty of securities fraud in 2003.
The Standard Power deal is massively bigger than NuScale’s only other contract, with the government-backed Carbon Free Power Project (“CFPP”) to provide Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (“UAMPS”) with 462MW, and is also bigger than Standard Power’s other major deal, a 200MW contract for nuclear power at Shippingport Pennsylvania.
Iceberg says NuScale has “around 15 months before its cash runs out,” and says the UAMPS contract is reaching a crucial stage, claiming: “NuScale has been given till around January 2024 to raise project commitments to 80 percent or 370 MWe.”
Iceberg also cast doubt on NuScale’s commercial partner Entra1, saying it was set up in 2021 to finance NuScale reactors, has only one employee, and was “very unlikely to be able to finance even a portion of this contract.”
NuScale said it “will not engage in a point-by-point rebuttal of every falsehood,” but issued statements on several points, saying that NuScale has a “solid balance sheet,” and that US Department of Energy (DOE) support for the CFPP “has advanced our SMR technology to the point of commercialization.”
DOE support has been a key factor in NuScale’s development, helping it bring nuclear power down to a commercial price point, however, the price of nuclear electricity from its projected plans has been creeping up, from an initial estimate of $55 per MWh to around $90 per MWh, making it less competitive.
NuScale said it “will not engage in a point-by-point rebuttal of every falsehood,” but issued statements on several points, saying that NuScale has a “solid balance sheet,” and that US Department of Energy (DOE) support for the CFPP “has advanced our SMR technology to the point of commercialization.”
Iceberg suggests that it may not be able to fully deliver without further support from the US government, which it says will “dilute” shareholder value. NuScale went public with a SPAC in May 2022.
Lawyers investigated NuScale on behalf of investors over “possible violations of federal securities laws,” include Howard G. Smith, which issued a press release this week, and Rosen Law Firm, which is planning a class action lawsuit. These releases are classed as “attorney advertising.”
Overall shares in NuScale have fallen around 75 percent since their peak in late 2022, from around $14 to around $3.5.
Israel-Palestine: Names released of 7,028 Palestinians killed, 2,913 of which are children, after Biden questions death toll
Health ministry says US administration ‘devoid of human standards, morals’ for ‘shamelessly’ questioning validity of figures
Middle East Eye, By MEE staff, 26 October 2023
The Palestinian health ministry on Thursday released the names of 7,028 people killed by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip, a day after US President Joe Biden questioned the death toll since the war began on 7 October.
Biden told reporters at the White House that he has “no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth” about the number of people killed by Israel so far. “I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” he added.
In response, the health ministry published a 210-page report, detailing the names, ages, genders, and ID numbers of every person killed in the enclave. The ministry said an English version of the report will be published soon.
Health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said the US administration was “devoid of human standards, morals and basic human rights values” for “shamelessly” questioning the validity of the death toll.
“We decided to go out and announce, with details and names, and in front of the entire world, the truth about the genocidal war committed by the Israeli occupation against our people,” he said.
Between 7 October and 3pm local time on 26 October, 7,028 Palestinians were killed, including 2,913 children, the report stated.
A total of 3,129 females and 3,899 males were killed. The number of unidentified people killed stands at 218, but they are not included in the final death toll.
The report also excludes those buried without being brought to hospital, those for whom hospitals were unable to complete registration procedures, and people missing under the rubble, who number around 1,600, with many of them feared dead.
As such, the ministry said the actual death toll is likely to be much higher than the report stated.
“We confirm that the doors of the Ministry of Health are open for all institutions to have access,” Qudra said in a statement.
“Let the world know that behind every number is the story of a person whose name and identity are known. Our people are not nobodies who can be ignored.”
Despite Biden questioning the accuracy of the death toll, the HuffPost revealed that the State Department recently cited the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza in nearly 20 “situation reports”.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Biden’s remarks were “shocking and dehumanising” and urged him to apologise.
“Countless videos coming out of Gaza every day show mangled bodies of Palestinian women and children – and entire city blocks levelled to the ground,” Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive director, said.
“President Biden should watch some of these videos and ask himself if the crushed children being dragged out of the ruins of their family homes are a fabrication or an acceptable price of war. They are neither.”
Many experts consider figures provided by the Palestinian ministry reliable, given its access, sources, and accuracy in past statements.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, told the Washington Post earlier this week the ministry’s figures are “generally proven to be reliable”………………………
more https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-death-toll-names-killed-released-biden-questions #Israel #Palestine
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Earth close to ‘risk tipping points’ that will damage our ability to deal with climate crisis, warns UN
Humanity is moving dangerously close to irreversible tipping points that
would drastically damage our ability to cope with disasters, UN researchers
have warned, including the withdrawal of home insurance from flood-hit
areas and the drying up of the groundwater that is vital for ensuring food
supplies.
These “risk tipping points” also include the loss of the
mountain glaciers that are essential for water supplies in many parts of
the world and accumulating space debris knocking out satellites that
provide early warnings of extreme weather.
A new report from the UN
University (UNU) in Germany has set out a series of risk tipping points
that are approaching, but said having foresight of these meant that it
remained possible to take action to prevent them. Tipping points are
triggered by small increases in their driving force but rapidly lead to
large impacts.
Guardian 25th Oct 2023
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/25/climate-crisis-threatens-tipping-point-of-uninsurable-homes-says-un #climate #globalheating
Al Gore on why the ‘deck is stacked against’ COP28
Al Gore kicked off the Moral Money Summit Americas yesterday with an
impassioned attack on the “buddy-buddy” relationship between political
leaders and the fossil fuel industry, which he said was threatening the
prospects for global climate action.
“We need to remove the political
obstacles and opposition being put in place by the fossil fuel companies
that use their legacy network of financial and political ties and lobbying
and campaign contributions . . . for the destruction of humanity’s
future,” the former US vice-president and chair of Generation Investment
Management told me.
A month before the start of the UN’s COP28 climate
conference in Dubai, Gore warned that “the deck is stacked against a
successful outcome”, in part due to the appointment of Sultan al-Jaber,
chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as its president.
FT 25th Oct 2023
https://www.ft.com/content/be225dc7-e230-4a50-9751-29843b23cb3c
War Against Renewables Takes Terrifying Turn in Newsom’s Nuke-Powered California
Embrittlement transforms a metallic reactor pressure vessel (RPV) as heat, pressure and radiation rob it of resilience. An embrittled reactor pressure vessel can shatter when coolant water is poured in during an emergency, causing massive steam, hydrogen and fission explosions.
HARVEY WASSERMAN, TRUTHOUT
PG&E now says it won’t test its reactor in Diablo Canyon for deadly embrittlement this year as planned.
The nuclear industry’s war against renewable energy has taken center stage in California under Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, with a terrifying new development now threatening the state and nation with increased risk of intense radioactive fallout.
This week on October 24 — despite earlier assurances — Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) revealed that it will not test its 38-year-old atomic reactor in California’s Diablo Canyon for embrittlement during the current refueling outage, but instead plans to wait until the next outage in 2025 before conducting the crucial safety tests.
Embrittlement transforms a metallic reactor pressure vessel (RPV) as heat, pressure and radiation rob it of resilience. An embrittled reactor pressure vessel can shatter when coolant water is poured in during an emergency, causing massive steam, hydrogen and fission explosions.
The reactor in Diablo Canyon showed dangerous embrittlement during the last inspections of it, which took place between 2003 and 2005, and it has not been tested since. PG&E now wants the 38-year-old atomic reactor, which is known as Unit One, to operate years longer without examining this core safety feature, arguing that it is not able to remove a component needed for testing until 2025.
This terrifying decision epitomizes the all-out war occurring between nuclear power and renewable energy in California.
On the grid, against rooftop solar panels, in batteries in basements, at the marketplace and regulatory agencies, in the banks and the legislatures – the zero-sum confrontation between green power and the “Peaceful Atom” stands to define the human future.
It begins on the wires.
Since 1985, the two big light-water reactors at the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, have regularly poured more than a thousand megawatts each of “baseload energy” into the grid.
But the value of that energy has been upended by a spectacular influx of renewable green power. With nearly 1.8 million rooftop installations, California now gets far more juice from solar panels — more than a quarter of the state’s electricity — than from Diablo.
Since 1985, the two big light-water reactors at the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, have regularly poured more than a thousand megawatts each of “baseload energy” into the grid.
But the value of that energy has been upended by a spectacular influx of renewable green power. With nearly 1.8 million rooftop installations, California now gets far more juice from solar panels — more than a quarter of the state’s electricity — than from Diablo………………………….
Overall, batteries have now become such a dependable, fast-growing piece of the energy supply that a Vermont utility is proposing to install them in their customers’ basements rather than extending new power lines. In a state whose single atomic reactor has recently shut, the battery-based system will be cheaper and more reliable than depending on power wired in from distant generators.
Likewise, Diablo’s inflexible feed has become an unsustainable dinosaur. Atomic reactors are neither cheap nor easy to manipulate. They function primarily in a straight-line paradigm (except when refueling or being repaired) with the same high-priced power flowing into the grid in a steady stream.
By contrast, decentralized renewables like solar and wind are quick to ramp up or down. With batteries now in millions of basements, inflexible baseboard power becomes a burden, clogging up the grid when cheaper, quicker-to-deploy renewables could flow to meet peak demands while scaling back at times of lower usage. In essence, Diablo’s power has become the electric equivalent of a debilitating blood clot.
Ironically, earlier this year a forced slowdown hit Finland’s new Olkiluoto reactor. Opened in May, after long delays and huge cost overruns, Olkiluoto had to slow down production within weeks to clear the grid for a massive influx of far cheaper wind and hydro power.
Partly due to this extremely expensive market disconnect, Pacific Gas and Electric in 2016 agreed to phase out the two Diablo reactors in 2024 and 2025, when their Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) operating licenses would expire as they reached 39 and 40 years old respectively. Facing a wide range of additional repairs and regulatory mandates, PG&E joined with then-Gov. Jerry Brown to chart orderly shutdowns in sync with the transition toward a renewable-based grid.
After months of tense high-level negotiations, the agreement was also signed by then-Lieutenant Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state legislature and key regulatory agencies, local governments, major labor unions, environmental groups, and others. The landmark agreement included union-endorsed compensation and retraining for the plant’s labor force, environmental concessions, tax subsidies for local governments, and more. As a whole, it created a crucial template for phasing out old atomic reactors amidst the global tsunami of new renewables………………………………………
But in 2022, Newsom suddenly trashed the shutdown deal he’d signed six years before. Warning of potential shortfalls during very narrow theoretical windows of potential peak demand, he strong-armed the legislature and the Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) into a bailout plan with more than $1.4 billion in state funds for PG&E to keep Diablo running, along with another $1.1 billion from the federal government.
The move has shocked and infuriated the state’s anti-nuclear and renewable energy movement. Its extremely complicated ramifications are now being challenged throughout the regulatory and court systems.
The Mothers for Peace has taken the NRC to federal court, arguing that PG&E’s relicensing plans fall short of the agency’s own long-standing requirements.
In league with Friends of the Earth, Mothers for Peace has also filed a petition with the NRC to warn that the elderly Unit One of the Diablo plant is deeply — possibly fatally — embrittled.
Embrittlement occurs as a reactor pressure vessel is subjected to extreme heat, pressure and radiation over decades of operation. In response, the RPV’s metals lose their resiliency. In an emergency situation, with a rapid influx of cold water, the RPV could shatter, leading to steam, hydrogen and radiation explosions involving massive releases of apocalyptic fallout.
Among much more, NRC tests conducted in 2003-2005 showed that Unit One was already dangerously embrittled. Unique amalgams used in its formative welds have since been abandoned for safety reasons.
Embrittlement tests are required by NRC regulations to be done every 10 years. Failure to check for embrittlement at Massachusetts’s Yankee Rowe reactor in 1992 resulted in an NRC-ordered permanent shutdown.
But allegedly no such tests have been comprehensively conducted at Diablo One for 20 years. The reactor is currently offline for a refueling expected to last about 50 days. A wide range of experts is calling for detailed inspections of the plant’s internals to be conducted immediately. Thus far there’s been no response from the NRC, but, as explained above, PG&E now says it won’t inspect Unit One for embrittlement at least until 2025, with results not likely to come until 18 months later. Yet the utility expects to operate the plant until then without having inspected this crucial safety feature.
While gliding toward a permanent shutdown since 2016, PG&E also let slide a series of routine maintenance requirements that have alarmed technical observers. Expert observers worry that if the plant’s allowed back online without a thorough public inspection, California’s downwind safety could be deeply compromised. Seeing as Diablo is located on the central California coast, fallout from an explosion there could carry all the way across the continental United States.
he deepening doubts surrounding Diablo Canyon — especially in the wake of the 2016 decision to shut it — have aroused serous grassroots anger against Newsom.
But it doesn’t stop with just nuclear power……………………………………….
n 2021, Newsom’s handpicked CPUC launched a devastating anti-solar attack. ……………………………
……………as atomic energy falls deeper into an economic pit, the push to sustain it with massive subsidies could only be coming from the nuclear weapons industry, whose infrastructure, fuel supply and core of trained personnel may be essential to the continued supply of atomic bombs.
………………………….. Whatever the case, these coming months of California’s energy war — tested safe versus dangerously embrittled, green versus nuclear, flexible versus baseload, old reactors versus new panels, wind turbines and batteries — will go a long way toward defining the nature of our nation’s future power supply. https://truthout.org/articles/war-against-renewables-takes-terrifying-turn-in-newsoms-nuke-powered-california/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=19c5e52962-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_3_20_2023_13_41_COPY_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-19c5e52962-649984717&mc_cid=19c5e52962&mc_eid=082a9d17c9 #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes
Israel to refuse visas to UN officials after Guterres speech on Gaza war
Protesting the UN chief’s indirect criticism of Israel, Israel’s UN envoy says ‘the time has come to teach them a lesson’.
Israel will refuse visas to United Nations officials, its ambassador to the UN has said, as the country’s spat with the international organisation deepens.
Gilad Erdan made the statement on Wednesday, according to Israeli media, as the fallout from the UN chief’s speech at the Security Council the previous day continues.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres indirectly criticised Israel for ordering the evacuation of civilians from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip. He also said Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 did not happen “in a vacuum” as the Palestinians have been “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”.
Many countries welcomed Guterres’s “very balanced approach”, reported Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo from New York. However, Israel was “furious” and its officials called on the UN chief to resign.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who was at the debate, “was so upset”, said Elizondo, “that he cancelled a meeting with the secretary-general that was supposed to happen Tuesday afternoon”.
“It is really unusual to see this sort of reaction against the secretary-general,” Elizondo added.
“Due to his [Guterres’s] remarks, we will refuse to issue visas to UN representatives,” Erdan told Army Radio. “We have already refused a visa for Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths. The time has come to teach them a lesson.”
Erdan said on X, formerly Twitter, that the UN chief has “expressed an understanding for terrorism and murder” with this speech.
Later, Guterres posted an extract from his speech on X in an apparent bid to show he has criticised both Hamas and Israel for the crisis in Gaza.
“The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the horrific attacks by Hamas. Those horrendous attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” he wrote.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned Israel’s call for the UN secretary-general to resign, describing it as an “unprovoked attack”.
In a post on X, the Palestinian ministry described Israel’s position as an “extension” of its “disrespect and lack of commitment” to the UN, its charter, and resolutions regarding Palestine.
The Gaza war
Hamas fighters stormed into Israel on October 7 and attacked largely civilian targets, including families and a music festival, killing at least 1,400 people and taking more than 220 captives, according to Israeli officials.
About 5,800 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, have been killed across the Gaza Strip in retaliatory Israeli bombardments, the territory’s Health Ministry said.
Guterres, who last week travelled to the Rafah crossing in a bid to get assistance through the border between Egypt and Gaza, in his speech also welcomed the entry of three aid convoys so far.
But the UN chief said it was just “a drop of aid in an ocean of need”, as the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) warned it would be forced to stop working Wednesday due to lack of fuel.
“To ease epic suffering, make the delivery of aid easier and safer, and facilitate the release of hostages. I reiterate my appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Guterres said.
Security Council deadlock
Backed by the United States, Israel has rejected calls to halt the offensive, saying that would only allow Hamas to regroup.
The US last week vetoed a draft resolution on the crisis, saying it did not sufficiently support Israel’s right to respond to Hamas.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked the Security Council to back a new US-led resolution that “incorporates substantive feedback”.
The draft, seen by the AFP news agency, would defend the “inherent right of all states” to self-defence while calling for compliance with international law. It would back “humanitarian pauses” to let in aid but not a full ceasefire.
“No member of this Council – no nation in this entire body – could or would tolerate the slaughter of its people,” Blinken said. #Israel #Palestine #Blinken
Fukushima nuclear plant workers sent to hospital after being splashed with tainted water
Guardian, 27 Oct 23
The operator Tepco says the workers came in contact with the wastewater when a hose came off accidentally and have been taken to hospital as a precaution
Four workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant were splashed with water containing radioactive materials, with two of them taken to hospital as a precaution, according to the plant operator.
The incident, which took place on Wednesday, highlights the dangers Japan still faces in decommissioning the plant. The reactor was knocked out by an immense tsunami in 2011 in the world’s worst atomic disaster since Chornobyl in 1986.
Five workers were cleaning pipes at the system filtering wastewater for release into the sea when two were splashed after a hose came off accidentally, according to a spokesperson for operator Tepco.
Two others were contaminated when they were cleaning up the spill, the spokesperson added………
Tepco said that both would stay in hospital for “about two weeks” for follow-up examinations and that the company was analysing how the accident had occurred while reviewing measures to prevent a repeat of it………………………
more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/27/fukushima-nuclear-plant-workers-hospitalised-after-being-splashed-with-tainted-water #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes #radiation
UK’s new Energy Act gives Energy Security Secretary the power to oversee and give funding to Great British Nuclear (? the poisoned chalice?)
From nuclear to heat pumps: What’s included in the UK’s new Energy
Act? The UK Government has received Royal Assent for the Energy Act and
says measures included could leverage £100bn of private investment in the
sector.
Here, we outline the key inclusions in the Act. ……………..
By 2050, the UK is aiming to host up to 24GW of nuclear
capacity, up from 6GW at present. The growth should be delivered using a
mix of large projects, including one to come online this decade, and small
modular reactors (SMRs).
The new Act gives Energy Security and Net-Zero
Secretary Claire Coutinho the power to designate a new publicly owned
company, Great British Nuclear, to oversee the Government’s involvement
in delivering new nuclear projects.
She will also have the power to
allocate additional financial assistance to the company going forward due
to the Act. In return, Great British Nuclear is required to report annually
to Coutinho and she must lay this report before Parliament. Under the Act,
Great British Nuclear’s objective is set out as “facilitating the
design, construction, commissioning and operation of nuclear energy
generation projects for the purpose of furthering any policies published by
the Government”
Edie 26th Oct 2023
https://www.edie.net/from-nuclear-to-heat-pumps-whats-included-in-the-uks-new-energy-act/ #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes
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