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Who Would Take the Brunt of an Attack on U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos?

These fallout maps (on original) show the toll of a potential nuclear attack on missile silos in the U.S. heartland

Scientific American BY SÉBASTIEN PHILIPPE 1 Dec 2023, [on original – excellent maps , charts, and illustrations]

This article is part of “The New Nuclear Age,” a special report on a $1.5-trillion effort to remake the American nuclear arsenal.

Last March the U.S. Air Force released a two-volume, 3,000-plus-page report detailing the environmental impact of its plans to replace all 400 “Minuteman” land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with new “Sentinel” missiles by the mid-2030s. The program is part of a $1.5-trillion effort to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal and its command-and-control infrastructure. The report, required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, covers the “potential effects on the human and natural environments from deployment of the Sentinel system” and from, among other things, the refurbishing of existing missile silos and the construction of new utility corridors and communications towers. But it doesn’t mention the most significant risks to surrounding communities—namely, what happens if these missiles, which are intended to serve as targets for enemy nuclear weapons, are ever attacked.

The original purpose of the land-based missile system was to deter an enemy nuclear attack by threatening prompt and devastating retaliation, but a key argument for the continued existence—and now the replenishment—of the land-based missiles is to provide a large number of fixed targets meant to exhaust the enemy’s resources. 

Since 1962, when the first ICBMs were installed in the U.S. heartland, competition from other legs of the nuclear triad has forced the rationale for land-based weapons to evolve. By the 1970s, when the U.S. Navy deployed long-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the air force had placed 1,000 Minutemen in silos across seven states. As missile-guidance systems improved, it soon became clear that the land-based weapons were vulnerable to attack because of their fixed locations, whereas the stealthy sea-based weapons were much better protected.

The air force used the vulnerability of the land-based missiles to argue for their necessity. In 1978 General Lew Allen, Jr., then air force chief of staff, proposed that the silos offered “a great sponge” of targets in the U.S. to “absorb” incoming Soviet nuclear weapons. Destroying the missile fields would require such a massive attack that adversaries couldn’t manage it or even contemplate it. Absent the land-based missiles, the argument goes, an adversary would have far more resources available to seek out and attack other U.S. military and infrastructure targets or even cities.

Even if an adversary is rational enough to not initiate a full-scale attack, the land-based missiles greatly increase the risk of accidental nuclear war. To preclude the possibility of enemy weapons destroying the missiles in their silos, the air force maintains the fleet on high alert, ready to launch on an order from the president—within minutes of enemy missile launches being detected. This “launch on warning” posture makes land-based missiles the most destabilizing leg of the U.S. nuclear triad (which also comprises the missiles based on aerial bombers and submarines). During the cold war there were several false alarms about enemy attacks. If a similar error precipitates the launching of the ICBMs, the adversary will almost certainly retaliate by launching its own nuclear arsenal at military, industrial and demographic targets in the U.S.

Attacking a missile silo requires detonating one or two nuclear warheads, with explosive yields equivalent to 100,000 tons of TNT, close to the buried target. The resulting nuclear explosions will generate gargantuan fireballs that will vaporize everything in their surroundings and produce destructive shock waves capable of wrecking the missiles in their launch tubes. Because the warheads will detonate close to the ground, the nuclear fireballs will suck in soil and other debris and mix it with radioactive bomb effluents as they rise in the air. About 10 minutes after detonation, the mixture of debris and fission products will form miles-high radioactive mushroom clouds, which will then be dispersed by high-altitude winds, leading to fallout on downwind areas.

Studies of the projected fallout from a nuclear attack on the missile fields, published in Scientific American in 1976 and 1988, showed that radioactive particles could travel hundreds of miles downwind. A 1990 guide from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on risks and hazards from natural and nuclear calamities confirmed these assessments, adding that no locality in the U.S. was free of the risk of receiving deadly levels of radiation. Today FEMA’s publications about the effects of nuclear explosions focus on single nuclear detonations; the agency no longer publishes countrywide assessments of risks from nuclear attacks.

All these past studies relied on relatively simple fallout models and average seasonal winds. Current computational capability, along with higher resolutions in archived weather data, allows scientists to map the radiological risk from a preemptive nuclear attack on the missile silos in unprecedented detail. The results of my simulations, presented here for the first time, paint a harrowing picture of the potential consequences of living with these weapons for the foreseeable future.

According to my models, a concerted nuclear attack on the existing U.S. silo fields—in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana and North Dakota—would annihilate all life in the surrounding regions and contaminate fertile agricultural land for years.

Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas would also probably face high levels of radioactive fallout. Acute radiation exposure alone would cause several million fatalities across the U.S.—if people get advance warning and can shelter in place for at least four days. Without appropriate shelter, that number could be twice as high. Because of great variability in wind directions, the entire population of the contiguous U.S. and the most populated areas of Canada, as well as the northern states of Mexico, would be at risk of lethal fallout—more than 300 million people in total. The inhabitants of the U.S. Midwest and of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario in Canada could receive outdoor whole-body doses of radiation several times higher than the minimum known to result in certain death.

Even if there is no nuclear war, people in communities near the missile fields will continue to face serious risks that are also not discussed in the environmental impact statement. One is the accidental release of radioactive materials, such as plutonium, in the warheads by a mechanical shock, fire or explosion. A second is the accidental detonation of a warhead leading to a nuclear explosion. The history of the U.S. nuclear missile program provides several examples of silos or missiles catching fire and of missiles exploding in their launch tubes. One time, in 1964, a warhead fell from the top of its missile to the bottom of its 80-foot-deep silo. Nuclear weapon accidents are not always discussed publicly. The air force hasn’t disclosed, for example, the nature of a 2014 “mishap” that occurred while personnel were troubleshooting a Minuteman. The episode caused $1.8 million in damages to the missile, which had to be removed from its silo.

The air force needs to be far more transparent about the true risks of its land-based nuclear missile fleet so the U.S. public can make informed decisions about living with this danger for another half a century.

HOW FALLOUT AND FATALITIES SHIFT WITH THE WINDS

A concerted nuclear attack on the missile silos in the U.S. heartland would generate radioactive dust that travels with prevailing winds……………………………………………………………………………………  Depending on wind directions, a nuclear attack on the missile silos could kill several million people.

[excellent maps and charts]

………………………………………………  the average outdoor radiation dose across North America after four days of exposure. Communities living closest to the silos could receive several times more than 8 Gy, which scientists regard as lethal. Most inhabitants of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota would get average doses greater than 1 Gy, causing fatalities from acute radiation syndrome, especially among children. The U.S. population would receive average doses greater than 0.001 Gy per year, which is the current annual limit for exposure to the public.

Fatality Count: For a simulated attack on any day of 2021, the scientists computed the resulting fatalities……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

WHICH LOCATIONS ARE THE RISKIEST?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Communities living closest to the silos could receive several times more than 8 Gy, which scientists regard as lethal. Most inhabitants of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota would get average doses greater than 1 Gy, causing fatalities from acute radiation syndrome, especially among children. The U.S. population would receive average doses greater than 0.001 Gy per year, which is the current annual limit for exposure to the public. 

THE WORST-CASE SCENARIOS

Sifting through simulations for each day of 2021, the Princeton researchers computed the worst possible outcome at each location from a concerted nuclear attack on the missile silos. This map [on original]shows all the worst-case scenarios across North America. Not all locations would experience the worst outcome from the same attack; which areas would be impacted depends on wind patterns on the day of the attack. …………………………………………………………….  Depending on wind directions, a nuclear attack on the missile silos could kill several million people……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/who-would-take-the-brunt-of-an-attack-on-u-s-nuclear-missile-silos/

November 17, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How the United States and its NATO allies sabotaged a peace between Russia and Ukraine.

A Son of the New American Revolution, 14 November 2023 by Larry Johnson 

We now know that the United States played the primary role in sabotaging the March 29, 2022 tentative peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine thanks to the recently published article by Hajo Funke and Harald Kujat, HOW THE CHANCE WAS LOST FOR A PEACE SETTLEMENT OF THE UKRAINE WAR — AND THE WEST WANTED TO CONTINUE THE WAR INSTEAD. The United States persuaded its NATO allies that pursuing the war against Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, offered a legitimate opportunity to destroy Russia. You want a definition of evil? This is it. Instead of helping end the war between Russia and Ukraine, the United States and its NATO puppets condemned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers to death in a war with Russia they could not win.

In the course of strong arming Ukraine’s Zelensky into rejecting the peace agreement, the West prepared and launched a propaganda campaign that claimed that Ukrainian military forces defeated the Russian forces and compelled them to retreat. It was a lie. As you will read in the timeline below, Putin ordered the withdrawal of Russian forces starting on April 1, 2022 as a good faith gesture about Russia’s seriousness in complying with the 29 March Istanbul Agreement.


Chalk this up as one more massive war crime by the United States and NATO. They are accessories to murder. I have summarized the timeline presented in the Funke/Kujat article if you do not have time to read it in its entirety. I also am republishing their piece for your convenience. All of the death and destruction experienced in Ukraine and Russia could have been avoided. But the West was intent on dethroning Putin and carving up Russia. Once you understand this point I think you will appreciate that Putin and his Generals are no longer of a mind to give the West the benefit of the doubt. Destroying NATO’s designs on Ukraine is now their chief aim in my view.

March 4, 2022 — Putin and Naftali Bennet speak via phone.

March 5, 2022 — At Putin’s invitation, former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett flew to Moscow. Putin, Bennett said, had made some substantial concessions, in particular, he had renounced his original wartime goal of demilitarizing Ukraine. … .In return, the Ukrainian president agreed to renounce joining NATO. The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”

March 6, 2022 — Bennett and Scholz met in Berlin; on March 7, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany discussed the issue in a videoconference; on

March 8, 2022 — Macron and Scholz spoke on the phone; on

March 10, 2022 — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met in Ankara; on

March 12, 2022 — Scholz and Zelensky and Scholz and Macron spoke on the phone; and on

March 14, 2022 — Scholz and Erdogan met in Ankara.

March 15-19, 2022 — Only a month after the outbreak of the war, Ukraine and Russia agreed on the broad outlines of a peace settlement. Ukraine promised not to join NATO and not to allow military bases of foreign powers on its territory, while Russia promised in return to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to withdraw all Russian occupation troops. Special arrangements were made for the Donbas and Crimea.” 

March 24, 2022 — NATO decided at a special summit on March 24, 2022, not to support these peace negotiations.

March 27, 2022 — Zelensky defended the results of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in public before Russian journalists

March 28, 2022 — Putin, as a sign of goodwill and in support of the peace negotiations, declared readiness to withdraw troops from the Kharkov area and the Kiev area

29 March, 2002 — Turkiye’s President Erdogan hosted a Ukrainian-Russian peace conference in Istanbul and an armistice agreement was approved in principle.

April 1, 2022 — Putin orders Russian troops to initiate withdrawal from Kiev and Kharkiv in show of good faith in accordance with the armistice agreed to in Istanbul.

April 5, 2022 — NATO was firm in its position that continuing the war is preferred to a cease-fire and negotiated settlement: “For some in NATO, it’s better for Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or at too high a price for Kiev and the rest of Europe.”

April 6, 2022 — Russia completes withdrawal from Kiev suburbs and Kharkiv.

April 9, 2022 — Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kiev and told the Ukrainian president that the West was not ready to end the war.

April 25, 2022 — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. wants to use the opportunity to permanently weaken Russia militarily and economically in the wake of the Ukraine war.

April 26, 2022 — Meeting with defense ministers from NATO members and other countries convened by Austin in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate/ Germany, the Pentagon chief declared the military victory of Ukraine as a strategic goal.

April 28, 2022 — According to Britain’s Guardian, PM Johnson “instructed” Ukrainian President Zelensky “not to make any concessions to Putin.”

HOW THE UNITED STATES AND ITS NATO ALLIES SABOTAGED PEACE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

14 November 2023 by Larry Johnson 127 Comments

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We now know that the United States played the primary role in sabotaging the March 29, 2022 tentative peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine thanks to the recently published article by Hajo Funke and Harald Kujat, HOW THE CHANCE WAS LOST FOR A PEACE SETTLEMENT OF THE UKRAINE WAR — AND THE WEST WANTED TO CONTINUE THE WAR INSTEAD. The United States persuaded its NATO allies that pursuing the war against Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, offered a legitimate opportunity to destroy Russia. You want a definition of evil? This is it. Instead of helping end the war between Russia and Ukraine, the United States and its NATO puppets condemned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers to death in a war with Russia they could not win.

In the course of strong arming Ukraine’s Zelensky into rejecting the peace agreement, the West prepared and launched a propaganda campaign that claimed that Ukrainian military forces defeated the Russian forces and compelled them to retreat. It was a lie. As you will read in the timeline below, Putin ordered the withdrawal of Russian forces starting on April 1, 2022 as a good faith gesture about Russia’s seriousness in complying with the 29 March Istanbul Agreement.

Chalk this up as one more massive war crime by the United States and NATO. They are accessories to murder. I have summarized the timeline presented in the Funke/Kujat article if you do not have time to read it in its entirety. I also am republishing their piece for your convenience. All of the death and destruction experienced in Ukraine and Russia could have been avoided. But the West was intent on dethroning Putin and carving up Russia. Once you understand this point I think you will appreciate that Putin and his Generals are no longer of a mind to give the West the benefit of the doubt. Destroying NATO’s designs on Ukraine is now their chief aim in my view.

March 4, 2022 — Putin and Naftali Bennet speak via phone.

March 5, 2022 — At Putin’s invitation, former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett flew to Moscow. Putin, Bennett said, had made some substantial concessions, in particular, he had renounced his original wartime goal of demilitarizing Ukraine. … .In return, the Ukrainian president agreed to renounce joining NATO. The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”

March 6, 2022 — Bennett and Scholz met in Berlin; on March 7, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany discussed the issue in a videoconference; on

March 8, 2022 — Macron and Scholz spoke on the phone; on

March 10, 2022 — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met in Ankara; on

March 12, 2022 — Scholz and Zelensky and Scholz and Macron spoke on the phone; and on

March 14, 2022 — Scholz and Erdogan met in Ankara.

March 15-19, 2022 — Only a month after the outbreak of the war, Ukraine and Russia agreed on the broad outlines of a peace settlement. Ukraine promised not to join NATO and not to allow military bases of foreign powers on its territory, while Russia promised in return to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to withdraw all Russian occupation troops. Special arrangements were made for the Donbas and Crimea.” 

March 24, 2022 — NATO decided at a special summit on March 24, 2022, not to support these peace negotiations.

March 27, 2022 — Zelensky defended the results of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in public before Russian journalists

March 28, 2022 — Putin, as a sign of goodwill and in support of the peace negotiations, declared readiness to withdraw troops from the Kharkov area and the Kiev area

29 March, 2002 — Turkiye’s President Erdogan hosted a Ukrainian-Russian peace conference in Istanbul and an armistice agreement was approved in principle.

April 1, 2022 — Putin orders Russian troops to initiate withdrawal from Kiev and Kharkiv in show of good faith in accordance with the armistice agreed to in Istanbul.

April 5, 2022 — NATO was firm in its position that continuing the war is preferred to a cease-fire and negotiated settlement: “For some in NATO, it’s better for Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or at too high a price for Kiev and the rest of Europe.”

April 6, 2022 — Russia completes withdrawal from Kiev suburbs and Kharkiv.

April 9, 2022 — Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kiev and told the Ukrainian president that the West was not ready to end the war.

April 25, 2022 — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. wants to use the opportunity to permanently weaken Russia militarily and economically in the wake of the Ukraine war.

April 26, 2022 — Meeting with defense ministers from NATO members and other countries convened by Austin in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate/ Germany, the Pentagon chief declared the military victory of Ukraine as a strategic goal.

April 28, 2022 — According to Britain’s Guardian, PM Johnson “instructed” Ukrainian President Zelensky “not to make any concessions to Putin.”

BEGIN FUNKE AND KUJAT ARTICLE

Berlin, October 2023

In March 2022, direct peace negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations and mediation efforts by the then Israeli Prime Minster, Naftali Bennet created a genuine chance for ending the war peacefully only four to five weeks after Russia had invaded Ukraine. However, instead of ending the war through negotiations as Ukrainian President Zelensky and his government appeared to have wanted, he ultimately bowed to pressures from some Western powers to abandon a negotiated solution. Western powers wanted this war to continue in the hope to break Russia. Ukraine’s decision to abandon negotiations may been taken before the discovery of a massacre of civilians in the town of Bucha near Kiev.

In the following is an attempt of a step-by-step reconstruction of the events that led to the peace negotiations in March and their collapse in early April 2022…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

CONCLUSION: MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Based on the publicly available reports and documents, it is not only plain that there was a serious willingness to negotiate on the part of both Ukraine and Russia in March 2022. Apparently, the negotiating parties even agreed on a draft treaty ad referendum. Zelensky and Putin were ready for a bilateral meeting to finalize the outcome of the negotiations. Fact is that the main results of the negotiations were based on a proposal by Ukraine, and Zelenskyy courageously supported them in an interview with Russian journalists on March 27, 2022, even after NATO decided against these peace negotiations. Zelensky had already expressed similar support beforehand in a sign that proves that the intended outcome of the Istanbul negotiations certainly corresponded to Ukrainian interests. This makes the Western intervention, which prevented an early end to the war, even more disastrous for Ukraine. Russia’s responsibility for the attack, which was contrary to international law, is not relativized by the fact that responsibility for the grave consequences that Ukraine’s Western supporters that ensued must also be attributed to the states that demanded the continuation of the war. The war has now reached a stage where further dangerous escalation and an expansion of hostilities can only be prevented by a cease-fire. It may now be the last time that a peaceful resolution through negotiations could be achieved. There are peace proposals from China, the African Union, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and a proposal developed at the invitation of the Vatican as early as June 2022. On 3 October this year, we presented the German Government our own peace proposal that tried to incorporate all other peace proposals made earlier. See Ending the war by a negotiated peace – Legitimate self-defense and the quest for a just and lasting peace are not contradictory HERE.

Since the failed Istanbul negotiations The course of the war and the current extremely critical timing should be reason enough for a responsible world community and UN member states to rethink and press for a ceasefire and peace negotiations.  https://sonar21.com/how-the-chance-was-lost-for-a-peace-settlement-of-the-ukraine-war/

November 17, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Don’t be fooled. Biden is fully signed up to genocide in Gaza

what the Biden administration really needs is a cover story to justify the fact that it is continuing to supply the weapons and funding needed by Israel to carry out its crimes in broad daylight

The White House needs a cover story to obscure its complicity. In desperation, it is once again resurrecting the long-dead two-state solution

JONATHAN COOK, NOV 15, 2023, [First published by Middle East Eye]

The White House faces a dilemma. It has the power to stop the death and destruction in Gaza in its tracks, at any time of its choosing. But it chooses not to.

The US is determined to back its client state to the hilt, giving Israel licence to wreck the tiny coastal enclave, seemingly whatever the cost in Palestinian lives.

But the optics – and that is all that concerns Washington – are disastrous. 

TV images have shown hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their destroyed homes, on a scale unseen since Israel’s earlier mass ethnic cleansing operations of 1948 and 1967.

Even the western media is struggling to obscure the veritable mountain of crushed and bleeding bodies in Gaza. The known death toll has now surpassed 11,000, with thousands more buried under rubble. Those who survive face a genocidal policy, starving them of food, water and power.

By the weekend, Israel’s declared war on Hamas had shifted into an open war on Gaza’s hospitals. Medicins San Frontieres reported that al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City had been bombed repeatedly and its power cut off, with horrific scenes of premature babies dying after their incubators had stopped functioning. Staff who tried to evacuate, as Israel had ordered them to, were shot at. Similar scenes unfolded at al-Rantisi hospital.

Western publics are growing increasingly incensed. Protest marches have attracted numbers not seen since the mass demonstrations against the Iraq war 20 years ago.

Western allies are finding it harder to obscure and justify their complicity in what are indisputable Israeli crimes against humanity. French President Emmanuel Macron broke ranks at the weekend. His message was summed up bluntly by the BBC: “Macron calls on Israel to stop killing Gaza’s women and babies.”

In private, US allies in the Middle East are pleading with the US to use its leverage to restrain Israel.

Meanwhile, Washington is only too aware of how quickly Israel’s regional opponents could get dragged in, dangerously expanding and escalating the conflict.

Its immediate response has been desperate, and preposterous, stop-gaps to ease the criticism, including from 500 administration staff who submitted a letter to Biden on Tuesday protesting the White House’s blanket support for Israel.

Those measures have included the president calling for “less intrusive action” from Israel towards the hospitals, shortly before Israeli forces were reported storming al-Shifa, and rumours that Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who joined the US attack on Iraq in 2003 in violation of international law, might serve as the West’s “humanitarian coordinator” in Gaza.    

Never-ending occupation 

But what the Biden administration really needs is a cover story to justify the fact that it is continuing to supply the weapons and funding needed by Israel to carry out its crimes in broad daylight. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken set out his stall last week at the G7 summit. The goal is to shift the focus away from Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza, and Washington’s backing for them, to a purely theoretical discussion about what might happen after the fighting ends…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The no-state solution

The truth is that Washington formally abandoned the so-called two-state solution years ago, aware that Israel would never allow even the most circumscribed of Palestinian states. 

Over the past three decades, Israel has gone from the pretence – maintained during the Oslo process – that it might one day concede a sham, demilitarised Palestinian state, cut off from the rest of the Middle East, to outright rejection of Palestinian statehood on any terms at all. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The goal is transparent: to expel Gaza’s population into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai. And given Israel’s previous form, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that Gaza’s refugee families – some of them about to be exiled by Israel for a second or third time – will never be allowed to return to the ruins.

The Biden administration can pretend to be resurrecting a non-existent two-state solution. But the reality is that Israel has had just such an expulsion plan – called the Greater Gaza Plan – on the drawing board for decades. 

According to reports, Washington has been signed up to the creation of a Palestinian enclave in Sinai since at least 2007…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

No eradicating Hamas

But perhaps the most fraudulent of the White House deceptions is the assumption that Hamas – and by extension, all Palestinian resistance – can be eradicated from Gaza……………………………………………………………………….

Israel’s genocidal policies – unless it intends to wipe out every Palestinian in Gaza – will not moderate that impulse for resistance. Israel will simply inflame more anger and resentment, and a stronger motive for vengeance. ……………………………………………..

Israel and the US know all this, too. History is crammed full of such lessons taught to greedy, arrogant colonisers and occupiers. 

But their goal, whatever they claim, is not a solution or a resolution. It is permanent war. It is perpetuating the “cycle of violence”. It is greasing the tank treads of the West’s profitable war machine by spawning the very enemies that western publics are told they need protecting from.

Whether Palestinians are returned to the Stone Age in Gaza, as Israeli military commanders have long desired, or expelled to live in refugee camps in Sinai, they will not accept a fate in which they are treated as “human animals”.

Their fight will go on. And Israel and Washington will have to keep inventing new, ever more fanciful stories to try to persuade us that the West’s hands are clean.  https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/dont-be-fooled-biden-is-fully-signed?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=476450&post_id=138886737&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email

November 17, 2023 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

A small modular reactor’s demise calls for big change in Energy Department policy

By Henry Sokolski | November 14, 2023, https://thebulletin.org/2023/11/a-small-modular-reactors-demise-calls-for-big-change-in-energy-department-policy/

NuScale Power Corp., which is developing America’s flagship small modular reactor (SMR), has lost its only firm utility customer, the Utah Associated Municipal Power System. That utility pulled the plug last week on the project just days after Iceberg Research, a financial advisory firm, urged investors to short sell NuScale (that is, to bet the value of its shares will decrease). Shares, worth $14.87 in August, plummeted more than 85 percent, closing Monday at $2.23.

Regrettably, the US Energy Department has already given NuScale hundreds of millions in grants, and the US Export Import Bank and the US Development Finance Corporation have promised NuScale another $4 billion in financing toward a plant in Romania. NuScale’s latest loss could cast a financial pall over its parent company, the Fluor Corporation, and other Energy Department-backed SMR projects, X-Energy and Oklo.

How could this happen? Simple: The Energy Department overrode market signals, went all in with SMRs and NuScale, and stuck US taxpayers with the tab. Sadly, this is nothing new. Think Solyndra, ethanol mandates, Fisker automobiles, fast breeder reactors, and synthetic fuels.

The NuScale case, however, is worse. In the Energy Department’s zeal to sell SMRs so the country can get to net zero carbon dioxide emissions, the department failed to focus on its primary missions. These include setting energy cleanliness and efficiency standards, assuring nuclear security, spotlighting energy market trends, and conducting basic energy research to validate unproven energy concepts—e.g., fusion power—rather than commercializing systems we know already work — e.g., fission reactors. That failure of focus raises obvious questions.

Did the Energy Department do due diligence in assessing NuScale’s financial health and integrity? Did it properly weigh independent analyses that questioned the economic and environmental viability of small modular reactors more generally?Also, what of the nuclear security issues that building these plants in war zones raise?

The State and Energy departments have been pushing federal financing to export SMRs to Ukraine, its immediate neighbors, and East Asia. All of the proposed projects are within shooting distance of Russian, Chinese, and North Korean missiles. Worse, officials in Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang have all threatened to attack such plants.

Japan’s prime minister and Ukrainian officials have called for increased hardening and military protections for their reactors (including installing missile defenses as Belarus has at its reactor). The Energy Department, however, has yet to offer any narrative on how it might keep US-exported reactors safe against such assaults.

Then there are the nuclear weapons proliferation headaches that the exporting of small fast reactors present. One of the Energy Department’s favorite SMR projects, Bill Gates’ Natrium fast reactor, is largely a knock off of the Prism fast breeder reactor. It was designed to produce plutonium, much of which would be super weapons-grade plutonium (i.e., even easier to make into weapons than what our military uses). TerraPower, which is developing Natrium, says it plans on exporting Natrium plants. One would think the Energy Department could have explained how such reactor technology can be shared without spreading fissionable material to make nuclear bombs. So far, it has not.

Some argue that providing nuclear alternatives to Russian natural gas and preventing global warming should overshadow such proliferation concerns. Yet, most of Russia’s top gas customers are now buying elsewhere. As for fighting global warming, victory is only possible by reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the cheapest, quickest fashion. SMRs are neither quick nor cheap.

Both the nuclear industry and its critics have long favored using marginal abatement cost models to determine which energy fixes to make first to curb carbon emissions at the lowest cost. Using these models, it’s clear that making natural gas substitutions for coal-fired plants, increasing efficiencies, reducing energy demand, improving electrical transmission and storage systems, and tapping renewables all should come well before building new nuclear plants. Unfortunately, the Energy Department has yet to reference any of these models in its public statements about SMRs.

So how is the misplaced confidence in SMRs best remedied?

First, Congress should wind down the funding of Energy Department schemes to commercialize energy “winners,” nuclear or nonnuclear. Instead, the department and Congress should focus on setting energy and cleanliness goals and deadlines. To incentivize industry to meet them, the Energy Department should consider offering industry prizes.

Second, the Energy Department should make the most favored greenhouse gas cost abatement models, such as the popular McKinsey Company package, publicly available for all to use and improve. To feed better data into these models, Congress should require the Energy Department to report annually on the real costs (including subsidies) of different types of electrical generation, distribution, transmission, and storage systems.

Finally, before the United States exports any small modular reactors, the Energy Department and the Pentagon should clarify what can (and can’t) be done to protect them against military assaults and what the nuclear proliferation dangers are in the various nations that would operate them. It’s bad enough that Energy Department-backed reactors are burning holes in taxpayers’ pockets. At the very least, the Energy Department and the Pentagon should make sure that they don’t blow up in everyone’s face.

November 17, 2023 Posted by | politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Behind the Scenes at a U.S. Factory Building New Nuclear Bombs

The workers who make pits face these risks every day

The U.S. is ramping up construction of new “plutonium pits” for nuclear weapons

Scientific American, BY SARAH SCOLES 1 Dec 23 [excellent illustrations]

This article is part of “The New Nuclear Age,” a special report on a $1.5-trillion effort to remake the American nuclear arsenal.

Within every American nuclear weapon sits a bowling-ball-size sphere of the strangest element on the planet. This sphere, called a plutonium pit, is the bomb’s central core. It’s surrounded by conventional explosives. When those explosives blow, the plutonium is compressed, and its atoms begin to split, releasing radiation and heating the material around it. The reaction ignites the sequence of events that makes nuclear weapons nuclear.

In early nuclear bombs, like the ones the U.S. dropped on Japan in World War II, the fission of plutonium or uranium and the fatal energy released were the end of the story. In modern weapons, plutonium fission ignites a second, more powerful stage in which hydrogen atoms undergo nuclear fusion, releasing even more energy. The U.S. hasn’t made these pits in a significant way since the late 1980s.

But that is changing. The country is modernizing its nuclear arsenal, making upgrades to old weapons and building new ones. The effort includes updated missiles, a new weapon design, alterations to existing designs and new pits. To accomplish the last item, the National Nuclear Security Administration has enacted a controversial plan to produce 50 new pits a year at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and 30 pits a year at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the bomb. The first pits will be designed for a weapon called W87-1, which will tip the new intercontinental ballistic missile, called Sentinel. After that the complex will produce pits for other bomb designs.

Not everyone believes this work is necessary. Pit production foments controversy because it’s costly and potentially risky and because the existing pits might still work for a while. The physics of plutonium is complex, and no one knows when the original pits will expire. The details of how the pits are made and how they work are among America’s most closely guarded secrets. Yet in June 2023 Los Alamos officials invited a group of journalists to tour the facility for the first time in years.

We were there as the lab and the broader National Nuclear Security Administration Complex were embarking on a charm offensive to support the new plutonium work. They have to win over the tax-paying public and recruit some 2,500 new employees for the job. Some of those workers must do high-hazard work that requires expertise the country has largely let slip since the last days of the cold war. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

…………………..The plutonium used for weapons exists only because people made it.

……………………………………………….. …….Plutonium’s genesis was repeated in reactors for decades. In fact, scientists made so much that no new plutonium is required for the new pits at Savannah River and Los Alamos—the current supply can be repurposed, reshaped, reborn.

None of those actions, though, will be simple because plutonium is not simple……………………………………………………………………………………….. Its most famous trick, of course, is its propensity for radioactive decay, through which it transforms itself out of existence.

This tendency is also what makes it so dangerous. Inhaled plutonium decays in the body, releasing alpha particles (helium nuclei) that can wreak havoc. The isotope plutonium 238, used as a heat and power source but not in weapons, exhibits other strange behaviors. “If you spill it in the laboratory, it will move around on its own,” Martz says. The oomph from a plutonium atom’s decay sends it shooting across a surface. “It can get everywhere,” he adds.

Plutonium’s strangeness comes from its arrangement of electrons……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

In the excitement of these early scientific discoveries, the point of the work would sometimes get lost: it was all in the service of creating a deadly superweapon. In 1945 the U.S. dropped a uranium fission bomb on Hiroshima and then sent a plutonium bomb—essentially a pit encased in explosives—to devastate Nagasaki. The bombs killed tens of thousands of people immediately and more after the fact. As Manhattan Project physicist I. I. Rabi had feared, according to a quotation in the 2005 book American Prometheus, “the culmination of three centuries of physics” was a weapon of mass destruction.

Soon after the war, production of plutonium pits migrated to a facility outside Boulder, Colo. Called Rocky Flats, it could churn out thousands of pits a year—a level of productivity perhaps enabled by its violation of environmental regulations, which in 1989 resulted in a federal raid and then a permanent shutdown. “The public wasn’t considered at the time,” says Bob Webster, deputy director of weapons at Los Alamos. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

How aging affects a pit is the subject of contention, but some things are certain: As the plutonium atoms in a pit decay, their products damage the crystal structure of the plutonium that remains, creating voids and defects. These decays also contaminate the pit with helium, americium, uranium and neptunium, among other things. In 50 years a kilogram of plutonium will amass around 0.2 liter of helium. As pits change, their performance and safety in any conditions—including just sitting on a shelf—become questionable.

Scientists still don’t know the lifetime of a plutonium pit. …………………………………………………….. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s own studies have suggested the pits will last at least 150 years but also that their degradation could result in surprise defects. And scientists may never know exactly what those defects do or how they would affect an explosion because the ostensible point of nuclear weapons is to never use them.

So far restarting American pit production is proving challenging. Los Alamos’s efforts are at least a year behind schedule, and Savannah River’s are more like five years delayed.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and other critics have claimed that PF-4 isn’t resilient enough against the kind of earthquake geologists now know could occur in Los Alamos. Such significant shaking and the fires it could cause, the board alleged at a hearing last year, could result in plutonium contamination that reaches the public.

……………………… Other safety concerns have come up recently, though. In May the National Nuclear Security Administration released an investigation about four 2021 incidents: one criticality safety violation, one breach that resulted in skin contamination for three workers, and two flooding events that sent water toward fissionable materials. The agency determined that the contractor that manages Los Alamos had violated safety, procedural, management and quality-assurance rules.

………………………………………………………………………………………….. On the tour, we are forbidden from setting our notebooks down lest potential contamination stick to them. Should we drop them, a radiological control technician—who has been following us the whole time and scans our hands and feet for radioactivity anytime we leave a room—would measure each page before returning them.

……………………  In some rooms, radioactive waste is packaged and waiting to go to a storage facility, with the dosage one might receive from standing near it written on the ground. We are never allowed to forget that this is a dangerous place.

The workers who make pits face these risks every day………………………………………………………………………………

All of this effort and investment is being made in the hopes that the pits never serve their active purpose. The U.S., like all nuclear nations, stockpiles weapons in a delicate game of deterrence, the idea being that the existence of our equally or more capable weapons will stop others from using theirs. In this strategy, the pits’ true purpose is to sit idly as a threat. But for the strategy to work, the country must be willing to follow through on that threat.

…………………………………….  The fear people feel when confronted with plutonium has degraded over time. But the atomic age is renewing, and we will all have to grapple afresh with the coiled terror of these powerful weapons. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/behind-the-scenes-at-a-u-s-factory-building-new-nuclear-bombs/

November 17, 2023 Posted by | - plutonium, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Uzbek nuclear endeavour: Boon or bane for Central Asia?

Eu Reporter, NOVEMBER 13, 2023

In the shadow of the Uzbek-Kazakh border, in a region prone to seismic tremors, Uzbekistan has unveiled plans to construct a nuclear power plant with significant help from Russia. This decision, given Russia’s current war in Ukraine and its resultant sanctions by Western nations, stirs unease and scepticism, writes Alan Kosh in International Policy Digest.

Beyond geopolitical ramifications, there are substantial concerns that this project might disrupt the environmental equilibrium and investment climate throughout Central Asia, further exacerbating regional security tensions. One of the glaring consequences of this alliance is not merely its economic implications but the potential for Uzbekistan to be ensnared in a “strategic dependency” on Russia.

In this geopolitical chessboard, Moscow, already wielding influence through avenues like labour migration, natural gas, and petrochemical products, stands to gain control over nuclear fuel production and the upkeep of the upcoming nuclear facility.

The proposed plant’s location is by Lake Tuzkan, part of the Aydar-Arnasay lake system, a mere 40 kilometres from the Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan border. Alarmingly, Tashkent, a bustling city home to three million residents, is just 140 kilometres away. Experts have voiced concerns over the plant’s positioning without proper windrose calculations and in an earthquake hotspot, where magnitudes can range from 6.0 to 6.5 and even higher.

Furthermore, Uzbekistan’s seismic activity is widespread. Several towns, including Jizzak and settlements near the proposed plant, lie in earthquake-sensitive zones, with some tremors potentially hitting a catastrophic 9 on the Richter scale.

Some posit that the mountainous terrain would shield Uzbekistan from any airborne radioactive emissions in the event of a nuclear disaster. However, the ensuing contaminated water would invariably flow towards the Kazakh plains, infiltrating deep into the earth.

Kazakh ecologist Timur Yeleusizov articulates the anxieties many share: the consequences of potential contamination of water bodies in an accident scenario. “Seismological activity in the area of the selected NPP site raises many questions. Who will be responsible for everything that happens in the event of accidents or leaks? After all, rivers and lakes, including underground streams, will also be contaminated with toxic substances.”………………………………………………………..

Rosatom’s claim regarding the VVER-1200 reactor’s safety post-Fukushima has been challenged by European nuclear safety experts, pointing to significant design and safety flaws. This, coupled with a lack of licensing in Western nations, raises red flags.

Despite public petitions against the nuclear power plant, spearheaded by Uzbek activist Akzam Akhmedbaev, the movement hasn’t gained significant traction. Anvarmirzo Khusainov, a former Uzbek minister turned environmentalist, opines on Russia’s strategic manoeuvring in Central Asia, highlighting the long-term maintenance and security implications of such plants.

…………………………… While Kazakhstan contemplates a national referendum on nuclear energy, Uzbekistan’s decision circumvented public consultation. This sidestepping is concerning, especially given the inherent risks and costs associated with nuclear power.

As the plant’s blueprint progresses, environmental concerns loom large, notably the potential drop in water levels in the Aydar-Arnasay Lake system, crucial for cooling the reactors. Yeleusizov emphasizes the region’s acute water scarcity, arguing that water concerns overshadow energy needs and thus warrant project reconsideration.

Uzbekistan’s nuclear aspirations, set against the backdrop of Central Asia’s quest for unity and peace, present a conundrum. The presence of a Russian-backed nuclear facility amidst escalating global conflicts raises alarms. Wilder Alejandro Sánchez’s contemplative piece, “Does Uzbekistan Need a Nuclear Power Plant?” mirrors these anxieties. As the world teeters on the brink of potential nuclear calamity, the urgency to address these concerns and the associated regional ramifications cannot be understated. https://www.eureporter.co/world/uzbekistan/2023/11/13/the-uzbek-nuclear-endeavor-boon-or-bane-for-central-asia/

November 17, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, safety | Leave a comment

USA’s Energy Department’s nuclear commercialization ‘small nuclear’ adventures are burning holes in the taxpayers’ pockets.

“A small modular reactor’s demise calls for big change in Energy Department policy,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

November 14, 2023  Nuclear Power Economics and Security, Op-Eds & Blogs, RESOURCE Author: Henry Sokolski

Late last week, NuScale Power Corp., which is developing America’s flagship small modular reactor (SMR), lost its only firm utility customer, the Utah Associated Municipal Power System. Once selling at nearly $15 a share, NuScale stock yesterday sold for $2.31.

Experts are now speculating on whether or not NuScale will go bankrupt. Given the Department of Energy (DoE) overrode market signals and plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into this nuclear commercialization project, though, there is much more to ponder.

As I note in the  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists piece, “A small modular reactor’s demise calls for big change in Energy Department policy,” it isn’t just NuScale that needs attention, but DoE and its policy of pushing nuclear commercialization projects at the expense of focusing on its key missions. These include setting energy cleanliness and efficiency standards, assuring nuclear security, spotlighting energy market trends, and conducting basic energy research to validate unproven energy concepts — e.g., fusion power — rather than commercializing systems we know already work — e.g., fission reactors.

The department’s inattention to these matters seems inversely proportionate with its zeal to spend on questionable nuclear commercial ventures.

Did the Energy Department do due diligence in assessing NuScale’s financial health and integrity? Did it properly weigh independent analyses that questioned the economic and environmental viability of small modular reactors more generally?

Is it properly assessing the nuclear security issues that building these plants in war zones in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia will surely raise? What of the nuclear weapons proliferation risks that would arise from exporting advanced small fast reactors (which are capable of producing extremely high-grade weapons plutonium)? Has the Energy Department publicly worked the emissions cost abatement models that industry and environmental communities use to determine which energy fixes to make first to curb carbon emissions at the lowest cost?

So far, the answer to each of these questions is no.

This is worrisome. Before DoE commits billions more to commercialize more small modular reactors, it needs to refocus on setting energy economic and cleanliness goals and deadlines. Instead of betting taxpayers’ dollars in advance on hunches as to who might meet them, it should consider creating rewards for those who actually do.

It also should make the most favored greenhouse gas cost abatement models that industry currently exploits publicly available for all to use and to improve upon. To give these models proper data, it also should report annually on the real costs (including subsidies) of different types of electrical generation, distribution, transmission, and storage systems.

Finally, before the United States sends any small modular reactors overseas, the Energy Department and the Pentagon should clarify what can (and can’t) be done to protect them against military assaults and what the nuclear proliferation dangers might be.

It is bad enough that the Energy Department’s nuclear commercialization adventures are burning holes in the taxpayers’ pockets. At the very least, the Department of Energy and the Pentagon should make sure these projects don’t also blow up in our faces.

November 17, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

US Is Quietly Sending Israel More Ammunition, Missiles

  • Supplying shells for Apache gunships, bunker-buster munitions
  • Arms arrive on a ‘near-daily basis,’ Defense Department says

Bloomberg, By Anthony Capaccio,

The Pentagon has quietly ramped up military aid to Israel, delivering on requests that include more laser-guided missiles for its Apache gunship fleet, as well as 155mm shells, night-vision devices, bunker-buster munitions and new army vehicles, according to an internal Defense Department list

The military aid to Israel goes beyond the widely known provision of Iron Dome interceptors and Boeing Co. smart bombs. Despite increasing caution from Biden administration officials, advising Israel to minimize civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip, the supply of weapons continues.

The document reviewed by Bloomberg News indicates that the arms requested by Israel in its conflict with Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by the US and European Union, are either in the process of being shipped or the Defence Department is working to make them available from stockpiles in the US and Europe…………….. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-14/pentagon-is-quietly-sending-israel-ammunition-laser-guided-missiles#xj4y7vzkg

November 17, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

U.S. Bets on Small Nuclear Reactors – But major obstacles loom.

U.S. Bets on Small Nuclear Reactors to Help Fix a Huge Climate Problem.
The dream of reviving nuclear power in the U.S. rests on a new generation
of smaller reactors meant to be easier to build.

But major obstacles loom.
Nearly a dozen companies are developing reactors that are a fraction of the
size of those at Vogtle, betting that they will be quicker and cheaper to
build. As the United States looks to transition away from fossil fuels.

But the push to expand nuclear power, which today supplies 18 percent of
electricity, faces enormous hurdles. In a major setback last week, the
first serious effort to build small reactors in the United States was
abruptly cancelled amid soaring costs. While other projects are still
moving forward, the industry has consistently struggled to build plants on
time and on budget. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the
safety of the nation’s nuclear fleet, is less experienced with novel
reactor technologies.

And the problem remains of how to dispose of
radioactive waste. “These nuclear megaprojects had just gotten way too
complex,” said Jay Wileman, president of GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, which
is designing a slimmed-down version of its boiling-water reactor that is
only 300 megawatts — one-quarter the size of the 1,117-megawatt units at
Vogtle. Ontario Power Generation plans to deploy four of them in Canada,
hoping to bring down costs as it builds the same design again and again.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is considering at least one.

Other companies
are exploring radically new reactor designs that, in theory, can’t melt
down and don’t require big containment domes or other expensive
equipment. Some might be manufactured in factories and assembled on-site,
potentially lowering costs.

The approval process can be slow. To date, the
N.R.C. has certified only one small reactor design, developed by NuScale
Power. NuScale’s light-water technology is similar to existing plants,
but the company argued that smaller reactors required different safety
rules, such as smaller evacuation zones in case of accidents.

Securing approval took a decade and cost $500 million.

Last week, NuScale announced
it was cancelling plans to deploy six 77-megawatt reactors in Idaho by
2030, which would have been the nation’s first small nuclear plant. The
problem was that it couldn’t sign up enough customers. Soaring costs
didn’t help: In January, NuScale said the price of building the reactors
had jumped from $5.3 billion to $9.3 billion, citing higher interest rates
and materials costs. On a per-megawatt basis, the project had become as
expensive as Vogtle.

“The small reactors being hyped by the nuclear
industry and its allies are simply too late, too expensive, too uncertain
and too risky,” said David Schlissel, an analyst for the Institute for
Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, who has urged utilities to pursue
alternatives like solar and geothermal power. Other challenges loom. The
United States isn’t yet producing enough of the specialized fuel for
advanced reactors. There’s no long-term plan for nuclear waste. Siting
new plants can be contentious: Last year, officials in Pueblo County,
Colo., withdrew plans to replace a retiring coal plant with a reactor after
local backlash.

 New York Times 12th Nov 2023

November 17, 2023 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

French government, EDF agree on €70 MWh for nuclear power

The French government and EDF have struck a deal on nuclear electricity prices to shield consumers from increases and enable the state-owned utility to fund new reactor construction, drawing criticism from energy-intensive businesses.

NOVEMBER 15, 2023 GWÉNAËLLE DEBOUTTE, more https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/15/french-government-edf-agree-on-e70-mwh-for-nuclear-power/

The French government and utility EDF have reached an agreement on the price of nuclear energy after “long, sometimes difficult negotiations,” according to Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. The new average price for nuclear power was set at €70 ($76.10)/MWh for a period of 15 years starting from 2026.

The new pricing scheme will replace the so-called Regulated Access to Incumbent Nuclear Electricity (ARENH) mechanism, which requires EDF to sell 100 TWh per year of nuclear production to its competitors at €42/MWh. EDF currently owns and operates most of France’s nuclear power fleet and sees the current price as two low, given current market prices for electricity.

The government and EDF determined €70/MWh by modeling prices over 15 years, considering capture and redistribution mechanisms, bilateral power purchase agreements (PPAs), and medium-term contracts. Two levels were established: if the average price surpasses €78.80/MWh, 50% of the additional income beyond this threshold goes to the state budget; exceeding €110/MWh results in a 90% capture, with surpluses returned to consumers.

“If this agreement secures EDF – the armed arm of our energy policy – over the long term, it also sets the non-negotiable conditions for electricity produced in France at a price competitive,” said Agnès Pannier-Runacher, minister of energy transition.

Yann Dolbeau, co-founder of consulting firm Enoptea, said that the mechanism would successfully disconnect the electricity price from gas prices. Consequently, there won’t be any more capping, and the portion of nuclear power in supply prices will increase, leading to lower costs.

CLEEE, the French association of energy-intensive businesses, has defined the new measure as “a big step backwards” for French companies. “The new system will guarantee EDF an expected income well above the full production cost, with a retrocession threshold to consumers equal to almost double the production cost,” said CLEEE.

CRE, the French regulator, estimated the full cost of existing nuclear power at €60/MWh between 2026 and 2030. Compared to the threshold of €110/MWh, it is almost double.

“If we share the need to give EDF the means to invest, we regret an arbitration made for budgetary reasons to the detriment of price stability and the protection of French industry. A bill must soon be tabled by the government and detractors still hope to be able to influence certain aspects of the reform,” the association stated.

November 17, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Something fishy: Welsh Councils excluded from latest Hinkley Point C Consultation. 

 The Welsh capital of Cardiff may lie less than 20 miles as
the fish swims from the site of the huge Hinkley Point C nuclear power
station now under construction on the coast in Somerset, but French-owned
EDF is choosing not to consult with the City Council on its latest plan to
vary its Development Consent Order (DCO).

Cardiff is not the only Welsh
council excluded from the list of consultees that the operator has agreed
with the UK Government should be solicited for their views on the changes,
for in fact most of the local authorities in South Wales which border onto
the Severn Estuary – Bridgend, Newport, Port Talbot, Swansea, and the
Vale of Glamorgan – are excluded.

To the Welsh Nuclear Free Local
Authorities, the exclusion of these Councils as statutory consultees
appears illogical for one of the changes that EDF is seeking is the
‘removal of the requirement to install an acoustic fish deterrent (AFD)
system’, which many campaigners believe will have a massively detrimental
impact on the marine life of the Severn Estuary.

 NFLA 13th Nov 2023

Something fishy: Welsh Councils excluded from latest Hinkley Point C Consultation

November 17, 2023 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Uncharted waters: Navy navigating first-ever dismantling of nuclear-powered carrier

The challenges for the Navy to dispose of the former USS Enterprise have driven the service to stand up a new office to deal both with “The Big E” and the pipeline of Nimitz-class carriers to come.

Breaking Defense, By   JUSTIN KATZon November 15, 2023 

WASHINGTON — For more than a decade, the US Navy has considered the former Enterprise (CVN-65) no longer operational. In fact, since 2018, the 1,101-foot behemoth has been mostly floating pier side in Newport News, Va., awaiting final dismantlement and disposal.

Ships come and go in the Navy, but their disposal is not usually such a prolonged and complicated affair. They can be used as target practice for what the Navy calls a “SINKEX” or handed over to scrapping and salvaging companies, among other options.

But for a host of reasons, those routes are non-starters for the service’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Instead, after studying the problem for years, the service has finally settled on a path forward: enlisting commercial industry for a job it has historically done itself, and likely creating a new norm for how all nuclear-powered carriers will be disposed of going forward.

To lead that charge, Breaking Defense has learned the Navy has set up a new office just to focus on the inactivation and disposal of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers…….

Whatever the service ends up doing, both analysts and the Navy have said it will likely set precedents for future carriers facing disposal, and the clock is ticking. The longer it takes, the more likely it is the Pentagon will risk a buildup of older carriers taking up various private and public ports around the country.

Even if everything goes according to the Navy’s preliminary plans, time is not on the service’s side. Public Navy documents show that Enterprise will not begin dismantlement until 2025, and the work will continue through 2029 — meaning even if everything stays on track, the work will be ongoing when the second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Nimitz (CVN-68), is scheduled to leave the operational fleet in 2026. The USS Eisenhower (CVN-69) will follow suit not long after.

“The Navy has really had a tough time figuring out … what’s the process we’d go about dismantling this thing,” said Bryan Clark, a fellow at the Hudson Institute and retired submariner. “That’s why the Enterprise in particular has been sitting around waiting to be dismantled. And we’re going to have the same problem with the Nimitz.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://breakingdefense.com/2023/11/uncharted-waters-navy-navigating-first-ever-dismantling-of-nuclear-powered-carrier/

November 17, 2023 Posted by | decommission reactor | 1 Comment