nuclear-news

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

Nuclear news- week to 20th November

  Some bits of good news.   Dominica Creates World’s First Sperm Whale Reserve–for the 200 That Call the Island Home .       Wave-Powered Desalination System Produces 13,000 Gallons of Drinking Water a Day From Each Buoy.    China’s CO2 emissions are forecast to start shrinking next year, with fossil fuel use predicted to head into an era of structural decline, along with surging investment in solar in the country.

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TOP STORIES. *‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 37: Al-Shifa Hospital No Longer Functioning as Israeli Ground Troops Surround the Hospital. 

*Zelensky Headed For DISASTER, Ukraine’s FAILED Counteroffensive COVERED UP: David Sacks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaJCUDOE6UA. 

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

*US, UK to Push Pledge to Triple Nuclear Power by 2050 at COP28. 

*The End of DOE’s Flagship Small Modular Nuclear Reactor (SMR) — A Cautionary Tale.

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Climate. 1.5C Limit ‘Only Option’ For Saving Earth’s Ice And Snow. Is the world warming faster than expected?.

Christina notes. The onslaught formally begins. The ruthless, morally bankrupt nuclear lobby moves to take over the COP 28 climate summit. Nuclear lobby targets young women, in the leadup to their propaganda blitz at COP 28.

AUSTRALIA. Whistleblower David McBride – his Trial Tests Australian Justice. A Duty to Obey: David McBride, Whistleblowing and Following Orders. The Militarised University: Where Secrecy Goes to Thrive. 

AUKUS Submarine Revelations Compel a Rethink. $31m fines, 25 years jail for nuclear submarine safety breaches. 

Barngarla traditional owners win national conservation award for successful radioactive waste campaign news on radioactive waste.

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ART and CULTURE. Art Exhibition inspired by concerns over Sizewell C nuclear plan.

CLIMATE. Frozen fallout: radioactive dust from accidents and weapons testing accumulates on glaciers.

CIVIL LIBERTIES. UK gov’t departments compiling ‘secret files’ on its critics to prevent them speaking at official events.

ECONOMICS.   

EDUCATION. Over 1,200 ‘Educators for Palestine’ Sign Open Letter Demanding Ceasefire. UK nuclear lobby brainwashing young students, especially women.

EMPLOYMENT. Are staff shortages at Sellafield nuclear power plant affecting safety at the site?

ENERGY. Chernobyl, site of world’s worst nuclear disaster, could soon be home to an exciting new project: ‘Tolerable exposure levels for limited periods of time’.

ENVIRONMENT. Frozen fallout: radioactive dust from accidents and weapons testing accumulates on glaciers.         Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant starts 3rd round of wastewater release, potentially impacting seafood quality in U.S.

ETHICS and RELIGION. Wars end in defeat for everyone: A reflection on Gaza. What a Catholic peace studies expert thinks is the way out of war in Gaza.    Birthplace of Jesus dismantling all Christmas decorations ‘in solidarity with our people in Gaza’.     ‘Burn Gaza now’ – top Israeli MP.

HEALTH. Exposure to CT Radiation and Risk of Blood Cancers in Young Patients.

HISTORY. The U.S. Army tried to build a secret military nuclear city under Greenland’s ice.

LEGAL. CND mounts legal challenge against US nuclear weapons storage at RAF Lakenheath.

MEDIA. Israelis Keep Hurting Their Own Public Relations Interests By Talking. How a hasbara group’s sham investigation put Gaza journalists in the firing line. Smearing Photojournalists as Hamas Collaborators – Gets Them Added to a Hit List.

NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY. UK small #nuclear competition: Rolls Royce in, Bill Gates snubbed. U.S. military quietly revokes planned contract for small nuclear plant at Alaska Air Force base.        Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission queried on proposal for untested small nuclear reactors in Ontario. Why the Godfather of A.I.  Fears What He’s Built.             Finland’s OL3 nuclear reactor suffers unexpected outage.

OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Council urged to review plans that could lead to UK hosting US nuclear bombs.

POLITICS. 

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. 

PUBLIC OPINION. Poll: Majority of Americans Support a Ceasefire in Gaza.

SAFETY.

SECRETS and LIES. Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign?               Don’t be fooled. Biden is fully signed up to genocide in Gaza. Biden and Israel Refuse to Provide Proof of Hamas Base at Gaza Hospital. Biden Admin Justifies Israel’s Assault on Gaza Hospitals With Recycled Israeli ‘Intelligence’. Lies Surrounding Al-Shifa Hospital Recall Those Preceding the Iraq Invasion.

WASTES. Decommissioning. Uncharted waters: Navy navigating first-ever dismantling of nuclear-powered carrier. UK Has £10 Billion Per Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning Bottomless Pit.

WAR and CONFLICT. Israel demolishes Gaza parliament (VIDEO). Netanyahu Says Israel ‘Not Successful’ in Minimizing Civilian Casualties in Gaza. Amnesty International Calls Israel’s War on Gaza a ‘Graveyard of Children’. ‘This Is Not a War, but a Mass Murder Tragedy,’ Says Charles Freeman, Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRb4QhZi2MA&t=860s Mainstream 

Narrative On Ukraine-Russia War CRUMBLING, Conflict Is Unwinnable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S8Kaq0POOs .        Zelensky comments on ‘frozen conflict’ prospects.

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. The U.S.’s Plans to Modernize Nuclear Weapons Are Dangerous and Unnecessary. The Latest Nuclear Boondoggle? The Missiles on Our Land: New Research Reveals Growing Risks of America’s Land-Based Nuclear Missiles. Behind the Scenes at a U.S. Factory Building New Nuclear Bombs. 

Nuclear weapons sharing, 2023. Armed With B61-12 Nuclear Bombs, Dutch F-35A Fighters Get Close To Nuke Strike Mission.         Israel’s Nuclear Weapons in the Spotlight. US Is Quietly Sending Israel More Ammunition, Missiles. EU’s Ukraine weapons goal ‘unattainable’ – Germany .

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

Mainstream Narrative On Ukraine-Russia War CRUMBLING, Conflict Is Unwinnable

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9S8Kaq0POOs%3Fsi%3DnhjKIN7W-LNZQ-7Z

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

‘This Is Not a War, but a Mass Murder Tragedy,’ Says Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, Charles Freeman

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JRb4QhZi2MA%3Fsi%3DB-uCVcjv-ndujn-R

November 18, 2023

Chas Freeman chairs Projects International, Inc.

For more than four decades, Projects International has helped its partner enterprises and clients to create business ventures across borders. It facilitates their establishment of new businesses through the design, negotiation, capitalization, and implementation of greenfield investments, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, franchises, one-off transactions, sales and agencies in other countries. The firm operates on five continents.

Ambassador Freeman is a career diplomat (retired) who was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-94, earning the highest public service awards of the Department of Defense for his roles in designing a NATO-centered post-Cold War European security system and in reestablishing defense and military relations with China. He served as U. S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm). He was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the historic U.S. mediation of Namibian independence from South Africa and Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola. Ambassador Freeman worked as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires in the American embassies at both Bangkok (1984-1986) and Beijing (1981-1984). He was Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981. He was the principal American interpreter during the late President Nixon’s path-breaking visit to China in 1972. In addition to his Middle Eastern, African, East Asian and European diplomatic experience, he had a tour of duty in India.

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Is the world warming faster than expected?

Is the world warming faster than expected? There have been historically
high sea temperatures, worrying lows in Antarctic sea-ice, and extreme
weather events hitting every continent – the latest being an “unbearable”
heatwave in Brazil. It’s now “virtually certain” that 2023 will be the
hottest year on record. That’s something that no major climate science body
expected at the start of the year.

Scientists have long known that
temperatures will continue to rise as humans keep releasing record amounts
of planet-heating greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, mainly through
burning fossil fuels. This is the main cause of global warming. While they
are struggling to fully explain 2023’s “gobsmacking” surge in temperatures,
here are four additional reasons that could be behind the increases. A
‘weird’ El Niño; Cutting aerosols; A large volcanic eruption; An Antarctic
‘radiator’?

BBC 18th Nov 2023

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67360929

November 20, 2023 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Amnesty International Calls Israel’s War on Gaza a ‘Graveyard of Children’

By ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/18/amnesty-international-calls-israels-war-on-gaza-a-graveyard-of-children/

In an appeal to raise funds for Amnesty International, the human rights organization claimed that “Gaza is becoming ‘a graveyard for children,’” citing UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ comments from a press conference on the humanitarian crisis from November 6.

The advertisement goes on to list the myriad reasons why a ceasefire is necessary to stop the bloodshed in Gaza, such as “putting a stop to unlawful attacks by all parties, halting the mounting death toll in Gaza, and enabling aid agencies to get life-saving aid, water and medical supplies into Gaza to address the staggering levels of human suffering.”

The appeal is written below:

Gaza is becoming a “graveyard for children.”

Attacks by the Israeli military are killing or injuring hundreds of girls and boys every day.

More than 2 million Palestinians — half of them children — are trapped, with nowhere safe to hide from Israeli military bombardments, and have little access to food, clean water and medical supplies. Civilian hostages held by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza remain in danger, and ongoing indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel puts civilians at risk.

The unfolding humanitarian catastrophe makes the need for an immediate ceasefire more and more urgent with every hour.

More than one million people — people like you — have already signed Amnesty’s global petition demanding a ceasefire to end bloodshed. We need to continue to raise our voices.

A ceasefire is crucial and has the potential to achieve many things, including: putting a stop to unlawful attacks by all parties, halting the mounting death toll in Gaza, and enabling aid agencies to get life-saving aid, water and medical supplies into Gaza to address the staggering levels of human suffering.

It would allow hospitals to receive life-saving medicines, fuel and equipment they desperately need, and to repair damaged wards.

It would provide an opportunity to negotiate the release of hostages held in Gaza and enable independent investigations into violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by all parties.

In this crisis and always, Amnesty International is relentlessly focused on protecting civilian lives and ensuring international humanitarian law and human rights law are respected. We have teams on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel working to expose war crimes and work towards accountability.

We are investigating mass summary killings, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, hostage taking and siege tactics. What is happening in Gaza, the wider Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Israel must be documented and those responsible must be held to account.

…like many of us, you might be feeling helpless right now — but I want you to know one powerful way you can make a difference for civilians caught in this escalating conflict is by joining our call for an immediate ceasefire.

Tonight, you and I will go to sleep in the safety of our homes. In Gaza, the bombardment is non-stop, nowhere is safe, and more blood is being shed. And it’s civilians — especially children — who are suffering the most.

Please, join us today. Sincerely,
Elizabeth Rghebi
Advocacy Director, Middle East North Africa
Amnesty International USA

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden Admin Justifies Israel’s Assault on Gaza Hospitals With Recycled Israeli ‘Intelligence’

In November alone, official Israeli social media accounts have been forced to walk about at least a half-dozen false assertions

The same week, Israel’s main government account on Twitter had to delete its false claim that “AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre”

As Israel assaults Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, the Biden administration claims that “Hamas does use hospitals” as military bases. Once again, Washington appears to be relying on dubious Israeli propaganda rather than independent analysis.

By Wyatt Reed / The Grayzone,  https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/19/biden-admin-justifies-israels-assault-on-gaza-hospitals-with-recycled-israeli-intelligence/

With Israeli troops storming Gaza’s Al-Shifa and Al-Rantisi hospitals, the United States and Israel are doubling down on discredited claims that Hamas has been maintaining “command centers” out of the basements of hospitals in Gaza, even after so-called evidence produced by Tel Aviv was thoroughly debunked.

“I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.

Kirby’s claim echoed the assertion by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who maintained that “open-source reporting” shows “Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.”

On November 14, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that US intelligence had no “boots on the ground,” nor any intelligence assets capable of independently gathering intelligence from or about Shifa. When asked if the declassified intel briefing spun out by Kirby and Sullivan arrived through Washington’s “Israeli counterparts,” she refused to answer. But she strongly suggested the intelligence dump was politically motivated.

“This is newly-downgraded information that we felt was important to get out today, because there have been a lot of questions about the hospital and how Hamas operates, and so it was important to get out there,” Singh insisted.

Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes, and both local healthcare workers and international humanitarian organizations back that up. “I’m sick and tired of these [Israeli] claims that there are Hamas command centers [in hospitals],” Norwegian physician Dr. Mads Gilbert told Al-Jazeera on November 12. Having performed life-saving procedures for several weeks inside Shifa during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, Gilbert noted, “As I’ve said 100 times… we’ve never seen high-ranking Hamas people in Al-Shifa,” adding “we’ve been able to roam freely.”

But that did little to prevent Israeli troops from waging an all-out assault on the facilities. As Israeli forces surrounded Shifa hospital on Tuesday with the full-throated support of the Biden administration, arresting journalists outside the facility and violently clearing displaced people from its grounds, doctors inside were forced to move babies in intensive care from one wing of the hospital to another to save their lives. A lack of fuel had already forced many of those infants off vital oxygen supply units.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have been unable to find any presence of hostages inside or around the hospital. As Israeli Army Radio reported on November 15, “There is no indication of the presence of abductees inside the hospital.”

Systematic Israeli misinformation campaign dismissed by US as “fog of war”

Israeli and American officials have yet to produced any proof that Hamas operates a “command center” under Al-Shifa. Video published by the Israeli military purporting to prove Hamas kept hostages in the basement of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, Gaza’s last remaining medical center with a pediatric cancer ward, was less than convincing.

In that video performance, top Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claims that what appears to be a bomb shelter for young children is actually a Hamas torture chamber, citing objects as unlikely as a baby bottle and a woman’s clothes. In one particularly memorable and widely panned moment, Hagari insisted the days of the week written in Arabic on a calendar were actually the names of the “terrorists” meant to guard captive Israelis ostensibly being held there.

The Israeli military has since attempted to downplay the deception as a “mistake in translation.”

It was hardly the first round in Tel Aviv’s fake news campaign. In the weeks since Palestinian resistance groups launched their shock assault on October 7, native Arabic speakers have taken to social media to mock the audio recordings Israel regularly publishes which purport to show Hamas members gleefully discussing carrying out war crimes.

In November alone, official Israeli social media accounts have been forced to walk about at least a half-dozen false assertions. A video showing a crying woman describing how she retrieved her son’s decomposing body from the streets of Gaza was transformed by Israel’s embassy to the US, which used fake captions to falsely claim she was blaming Hamas for the siege. When questioned, the embassy subsequently deleted the post.

The same week, Israel’s main government account on Twitter had to delete its false claim that “AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre” – a lie which the New York Times condemned as “reckless” and said put its journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza “at risk.”

Days later, Israel’s official Arabic-language Twitter account deleted footage of a woman dressed in nursing scrubs who claimed to work as a nurse in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital denounced Hamas for supposedly stealing fuel and medicine. Other doctors and nurses at the medical center reportedly told journalist Younis Tirawi: “We don’t know this woman; she has never worked here before & we’ve never seen her at the hospital.”

Social media users claimed the woman was Israeli actress Hannah Abutbul, who moonlights as a social media manager of an Israeli company named Aish International that works alongside the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Abutbul denies appearing in the video.

On November 10, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) claimed Hamas was “INSIDE the Indonesian hospital last night,” citing a video which appeared to show a firearm being displayed. An observer who pointed out that the object was actually a billy club had their reply ‘hidden’ by the official Israeli account.

Throughout the blood-spattered onslaught on the Gaza Strip, US officials have consistently taken Israeli claims at face value, even parroting Tel Aviv’s excuses when prompted. Following Biden’s now-retracted claim to have seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” US officials continue to exhibit a remarkable willingness to side with the Israeli government and echo its talking points.

During a November 14 press briefing, a reporter asked State Department spokesman Matthew Miller about the Israeli government’s habitual spreading of “misinformation.” Miller responded by brushing off Israel’s parade of fabrications as an inevitable feature of the “fog of war.”

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Netanyahu Says Israel ‘Not Successful’ in Minimizing Civilian Casualties in Gaza

By Kyle Anzalone / Antiwar.com https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/19/netanyahu-claims-israel-not-successful-in-minimizing-civilian-casualties-in-gaza/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Israel was “trying to [minimize] civilian casualties. But unfortunately, we’re not successful.” The prime minister’s statement comes as the UN warns that the Israeli fuel embargo of Gaza could cause widespread starvation in the besieged enclave.

In an interview with CBS News on Thursday, the Israeli Prime Minister said Tel Aviv was trying to wipe out Hamas with minimal civilian casualties. He stated, “That’s what we’re trying to do: minimal civilian casualties. But unfortunately, we’re not successful.”

Netanyahu went on to blame Hamas for the high civilian death toll in Gaza. “Any civilian death is a tragedy. And we shouldn’t have any because we’re doing everything we can to get the civilians out of harm’s way, while Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm’s way,” he argued.

The Israeli leader says his forces have taken steps to warn civilians of upcoming strikes. “So, we send leaflets, [we] call them on their cell phones, and we say: ‘leave’. And many have left,” Netanyahu said.

In the first weeks of the Israeli military campaign, Tel Aviv instructed Gazans to move to the southern half of the strip. However, at least some who fled their homes were killed while trying to evacuate. After fleeing, numerous Gaza residents have been unable to locate basic resources and were forced to return to their homes.

On Wednesday, Israel began instructing Palestinians in southern Gaza to evacuate. It is unclear where the people could go.

Since Israel started bombing Gaza six weeks ago, at least 11,000 civilians, including 4,500 children, have been killed. The UN reports,  The UN reports “One in every 57 people living in the Gaza Strip has been killed or wounded.” Dozens of journalists and doctors are among the dead. Over 100 UN staff members have been killed.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, told the UN Security Council the Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza has decimated the healthcare infrastructure. “WHO has recorded at least 137 attacks on health care in Gaza, with especially severe impact on Al-Shifa Hospital in recent days, where newborns on life support are dying due to power, oxygen, and water cuts, while many other patients of all ages are at risk – as well as medics, and people sheltering on the hospital grounds,” he said.

Netanyahu attempted to justify the two-day raid on the al-Shifa Hospital by claiming Israel believed it would find hostages in the facility and that Hamas was using the building as a headquarters. He told CBS News there were “strong indications” that Israeli hostages were being held there, and this was “one of the reasons we entered.” However, none were found.

The Israeli Prime Minister went on to say Tel Aviv had “concrete evidence” that there were “terrorist chieftains and terrorists” in the hospital, but that these fled as Israel’s forces advanced. Israeli forces who entered Al-Shifa found a small number of guns and uniforms.

After a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, Tel Aviv cut off all food, aid, water, and fuel into Gaza. The Israeli government has relaxed the embargo and allowed small amounts of food and water into the besieged enclave. However, the lack of fuel has now completely halted all aid shipments. While Netanyahu says he is attempting to take a moral path and save Palestinians’ lives when possible, the international aid agencies warn that there is now a risk of mass starvation in Gaza.

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK gov’t departments compiling ‘secret files’ on its critics to prevent them speaking at official events


‘Shocking’ scale of UK government’s secret files on critics revealed

Dossiers were compiled by 15 departments after scouring social media activity to vet people invited to speak at official events

Guardian Anna Fazackerley 19 Nov 23

Fifteen government departments have been monitoring the social media activity of potential critics and compiling “secret files” in order to block them from speaking at public events, the Observer can reveal.

Under the guidelines issued in each department, including the departments of health, culture, media and sport, and environment, food and rural affairs, officials are advised to check experts’ Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. They are also told to conduct Google searches on those individuals, using specific terms such as “criticism of government or prime minister”.

The guidelines are designed to prevent anyone who has criticised the government in the previous three to five years from speaking at government-organised conferences and other events.

In September, the Observer revealed how three early-childhood education experts discovered that the Department for Education tried to cancel invitations for them to speak at government-funded events because they were judged to have been critical of government policy. Many more education experts and school staff have since uncovered files of their critical social media posts held by the department.

However, it has now become clear that the practice is widespread across government and is probably targeting large numbers of individuals. The scale of the monitoring was uncovered by human rights experts at law firm Leigh Day and shared with the Observer.

The revelations will be hugely embarrassing for a Conservative party that regularly claims to champion free speech and has slammed universities for allowing students to “no platform” experts with whom they disagree.

Tessa Gregory, partner at Leigh Day, who is pursuing legal action against the government on behalf of at least two experts, said: “This is likely to have impacted large numbers of individuals, many of whom won’t know civil servants hold secret files on them. Such practices are extremely dangerous.”

Gregory maintains that these hidden checks are unlawful, running contrary to data protection laws and potentially breaching equality and human rights legislation.

Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert, was disinvited in April from giving a keynote speech at a UK defence conference after officials found social media posts criticising Tory ministers and government immigration policy. He told the Observer this weekend that he knows of 12 others who have uncovered evidence of similar government blacklisting, most of whom are frightened of speaking out. But he said far more will be unaware they ever failed secret vetting.

He said: “The full extent of this is shocking and probably not fully known. I was lucky enough to be given clearcut, obvious evidence. It’s truly awful……………………………………………………………………

Caroline Wilson Palow, legal director at Privacy International, which has been investigating social media monitoring by the government for many months, said: “If the government is blacklisting people for using their right to free expression in a very valid way then that is very dangerous.”
 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/18/shocking-scale-of-uk-governments-secret-files-on-critics-revealed

November 20, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Greenpeace installs radiation sensors in Ukraine and calls for EU sanctionsagainst Rosatom.

Greenpeace Germany, Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe,
and Ukrainian environmental group SaveDnipro have installed sensors to
provide vital information on radiation levels in Ukraine in the event of
major nuclear contamination.

Following a visit to Chornobyl, Zaporizhzhia
and other frontline regions in southern Ukraine, Greenpeace and SaveDnipro
installed sensors on schools, hospitals and nuclear sites which aim to
provide early warning of increasing gamma radiation in case of another
nuclear disaster in Ukraine.

Greenpeace 17th Nov 2023
https://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/issues/climate-energy/46835/greenpeace-installs-radiation-sensors-in-ukraine-and-calls-for-eu-sanctions-against-rosatom/

Greenpeace installs radiation sensors in Ukraine and calls for EU sanctions against Rosatom

November 20, 2023 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

1.5C Limit ‘Only Option’ For Saving Earth’s Ice And Snow

Allowing global temperatures to rise two degrees Celsius above
pre-industrial levels will be catastrophic for the world’s ice sheets,
glaciers, polar seas and permafrost, a new report warned Thursday.

The assessment of the global “cryosphere” — parts of the Earth covered in ice
and snow for at least some of the year — urges upcoming climate talks to
commit to keeping warming below 1.5C. “Because of what we have learned
about the cryosphere since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, 1.5C is
not merely preferable to 2C. It is the only option,” the report argues.
“This continued rise in carbon dioxide is unacceptable. The melting point
of ice pays no attention to rhetoric, only to our actions.”

Barrons 16th Nov 2023

https://www.barrons.com/news/1-5c-limit-only-option-for-saving-earth-s-ice-and-snow-b8f8e1ef

November 20, 2023 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Chernobyl, site of world’s worst nuclear disaster, could soon be home to an exciting new project: ‘Tolerable exposure levels for limited periods of time’

Jeremiah Budin, November 20, 2023 ,  https://news.yahoo.com/chernobyl-world-worst-nuclear-disaster-213000130.html

Chernobyl, the site of the world’s most well-known nuclear disaster, has been essentially abandoned since the infamous reactor meltdown of 1986 — with good reason, as the site has been contaminated by radiation.

Nonetheless, Ukraine now plans to give Chernobyl a makeover that will have it generate power once again. But this time, it’s going to be a massive wind farm.

The current plan, according to a report from Popular Mechanics, is to turn Chernobyl into a one-gigawatt wind farm, which would be one of the largest in Europe. At full capacity, the wind farm could power up to 800,000 homes in nearby Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, according to the report.

As for whether it will actually be safe for workers to spend time in the radiated zone, the answers are somewhat unclear. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there is still radioactive material in the atmosphere, but it exists at “tolerable exposure levels for limited periods of time.”

However, there were also reports of Russian soldiers experiencing radiation sickness as recently as last year after digging into the dirt near the power plant. Russian forces seized the Chernobyl site during its invasion of Ukraine and held it for several weeks before abandoning it.

The Ukrainian government and Notus Energy, the German company that has been brought on to build out the project, are reportedly still assessing how to move forward safely. While there are certainly concerns around the projects, the Chernobyl site also comes with big upsides, as there is already a lot of power plant infrastructure in place. Furthermore, no residents will be displaced by the project, as the radiation zone is still basically a ghost town.

There is also a nice symmetry to the site of one of the world’s worst-ever power-related disasters being rehabilitated into a modern power plant that can produce clean, renewable energy that allows Ukraine to transition away from harmful dirty energy sources.

It could “become a symbol of clean, climate-friendly energy, providing Kyiv with green electricity,” said Oleksandr Krasnolutskyi, Ukraine’s deputy ecology minister.

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Belarus, renewable | Leave a comment

  Jill Stein’s Ominous Warning on Growing Threat of Nuclear War

NewsWeek, Nov 19, 2023, By Jason Lemon

Green Party presidential hopeful Jill Stein warned that President Joe Biden and U.S. leaders are “absolutely” risking the possibility of nuclear war by their actions in support of Israel.

Stein, who previously ran for president in 2012 and 2016, announced on November 9 that she is once again throwing her hat in the ring for the 2024 cycle. The long-shot candidate blasted Biden, Democrats and Republicans for their response to the Israel-Gaza War in an exclusive interview with Newsweek on Thursday, warning that the response could be pushing the world to a point of no return………………………………..


The U.S. government, which classifies Hamas as a terrorist group, has reiterated its support and solidarity with Israel. Fourteen U.S. Navy ships have been positioned in the Mediterranean to assist Israel with intelligence gathering and to deter other regional actors from getting involved in the conflict. Additionally, an Ohio-class nuclear-powered submarine has been sent to the region, according to a November 5 CENTCOM statement.

“I would just note that the U.S. has sent a nuclear submarine there now aside from two battleship or two missiles groups,” she said. “In a nuclear submarine, you have enormous firepower as a rule that’s equivalent to about four or 5,000 Hiroshima bombs packed into one nuclear submarine.”

“The world won’t survive this,” she warned. “And yes, we’re not at nuclear war now, but could a nuclear war be triggered? Absolutely. And we’re seeing this become more dangerous every day.”

The Times of Israel reported on November 6 that it’s unclear whether the nuclear-powered submarine in the Mediterranean is carrying nuclear warheads. The aquatic military vessel is, however, capable of carrying such warheads. The submarine can carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Stein, who is Jewish, described Israel’s actions towards Gaza as “genocide.” She also accused Israel of being an “apartheid” state.

“Israel doesn’t have a future if this violence is allowed to continue. I don’t mean just violence from Hamas. There will be violent resistance to apartheid and occupation so you can wipe out Hamas, and then you’ll have the next generation of Hamas, which is going to be even more vicious and brutal,” she said.

Israel rejects claims that it’s committing “genocide” and that it’s an “apartheid” state. Israeli leaders and U.S. leaders routinely describe the country as a “beacon of democracy” in a troubled region of the world. They also often dismiss such criticism as “antisemitic.”

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said Israel’s treatment of Palestinians amounts to “apartheid.” Pro-Palestinian activists, including some progressive anti-Zionist Jewish groups, have accused Israel of perpetuating a “genocide” in Gaza.  https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-jill-stein-warning-nuclear-war-1844899

November 20, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Finland’s OL3 nuclear reactor suffers unexpected outage

Reuters, November 20, 2023,  https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/finlands-ol3-nuclear-reactor-suffers-unexpected-outage-2023-11-19/

OSLO, Nov 19 (Reuters) – Finland’s Olkiluoto 3, Europe’s largest nuclear power generator as measured by output, suffered an unexpected outage on Sunday due to a turbine problem, Nordic power bourse Nord Pool said in a statement.

The 1.6 gigawatt (GW) unit, known as OL3, was expected to reconnect on Monday at around 1000 GMT, an extension of the outage by 11 hours compared to the initial estimate, according to the regulatory statement.

Plagued by construction delays, OL3 began regular electricity output in April this year, some 14 years behind schedule.

Finland has said the nuclear reactor, Europe’s first in 16 years, is expected to meet around 14% of the country’s electricity demand, boosting energy security.

Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by David Holmes and Chris Reese

November 20, 2023 Posted by | safety | Leave a comment

Why the Godfather of A.I.  Fears What He’s Built

Geoffrey Hinton has spent a lifetime teaching computers to learn. Now he worries that artificial brains are better than ours.

New Yorker, By Joshua Rothman 13 Nov 23

In your brain, neurons are arranged in networks big and small. With every action, with every thought, the networks change: neurons are included or excluded, and the connections between them strengthen or fade. This process goes on all the time—it’s happening now, as you read these words—and its scale is beyond imagining. You have some eighty billion neurons sharing a hundred trillion connections or more. Your skull contains a galaxy’s worth of constellations, always shifting.

Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist who is often called “the godfather of A.I……………………

New knowledge incorporates itself into your existing networks in the form of subtle adjustments. ……………………………small changes create the possibility for profound transformations.

………………………………………For decades, Hinton tinkered, building bigger neural nets structured in ingenious ways………………………………………………. He didn’t anticipate the speed with which, about a decade ago, neural-net technology would suddenly improve. Computers got faster, and neural nets, drawing on data available on the Internet, started transcribing speech, playing games, translating languages, even driving cars. Around the time Hinton’s company was acquired, an A.I. boom began, leading to the creation of systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, which many believe are starting to change the world in unpredictable ways.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Earlier this year, Hinton left Google, where he’d worked since the acquisition. He was worried about the potential of A.I. to do harm, and began giving interviews in which he talked about the “existential threat” that the technology might pose to the human species. The more he used ChatGPT, an A.I. system trained on a vast corpus of human writing, the more uneasy he got. 

One day, someone from Fox News wrote to him asking for an interview about artificial intelligence. Hinton enjoys sending snarky single-sentence replies to e-mails—after receiving a lengthy note from a Canadian intelligence agency, he responded, “Snowden is my hero”—and he began experimenting with a few one-liners. Eventually, he wrote, “Fox News is an oxy moron.” Then, on a lark, he asked ChatGPT if it could explain his joke. The system told him his sentence implied that Fox News was fake news, and, when he called attention to the space before “moron,” it explained that Fox News was addictive, like the drug OxyContin. Hinton was astonished. This level of understanding seemed to represent a new era in A.I.

There are many reasons to be concerned about the advent of artificial intelligence. It’s common sense to worry about human workers being replaced by computers, for example. But Hinton has joined many prominent technologists, including Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, in warning that A.I. systems may start to think for themselves, and even seek to take over or eliminate human civilization. It was striking to hear one of A.I.’s most prominent researchers give voice to such an alarming view.

……………………………………………….Hinton thinks that “large language models,” such as GPT, which powers OpenAI’s chatbots, can comprehend the meanings of words and ideas

……………………………Hinton argues that the intelligence displayed by A.I. systems transcends its artificial origins.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… How useful—or dangerous—will A.I. turn out to be? No one knows for sure, in part because neural nets are so strange. In the twentieth century, many researchers wanted to build computers that mimicked brains. But, although neural nets like OpenAI’s GPT models are brainlike in that they involve billions of artificial neurons, they’re actually profoundly different from biological brains. Today’s A.I.s are based in the cloud and housed in data centers that use power on an industrial scale. Clueless in some ways and savantlike in others, they reason  for millions of users, but only when prompted. They are not alive. 

They have probably passed the Turing test—the long-heralded standard, established by the computing pioneer Alan Turing, which held that any computer that could persuasively imitate a human in conversation could be said, reasonably, to think. And yet our intuitions may tell us that nothing resident in a browser tab could really be thinking in the way we do. The systems force us to ask if our kind of thinking is the only kind that counts.

……………………………..As a scientific enterprise, mortal A.I. might bring us closer to replicating our own brains. But Hinton has come to think, regretfully, that digital intelligence might be more powerful………………………. he says, suggests that “we should be concerned about digital intelligence taking over from biological intelligence.”

How should we describe the mental life of a digital intelligence without a mortal body or an individual identity? In recent months, some A.I. researchers have taken to calling GPT a “reasoning engine”—a way, perhaps, of sliding out from under the weight of the word “thinking,” which we struggle to define…………………………………………………………………………

 Precisely because he thinks that A.I. is truly intelligent, he expects that it will contribute to many fields. Yet he fears what will happen when, for instance, powerful people abuse it. “………………………..He believes that autonomous weapons should be outlawed—the U.S. military is actively developing them—but warns that even a benign autonomous system could wreak havoc. “If you want a system to be effective, you need to give it the ability to create its own subgoals,” he said. “Now, the problem is, there’s a very general subgoal that helps with almost all goals: get more control. The research question is: how do you prevent them from ever wanting to take control? And nobody knows the answer.” (Control, he noted, doesn’t have to be physical: “It could be just like how Trump could invade the Capitol, with words.”)

………………………………………………… If the U.N. really worked, possibly something like that could stop it. Although, even then, A.I. is just so useful. It has so much potential to do good, in fields like medicine—and, of course, to give an advantage to a nation via autonomous weapons.”………………………………………………………………………..

more https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/geoffrey-hinton-profile-ai?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Science_111823&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d23d24c17c6adf3bf435&cndid=30183386&hasha=432fc0d0ad6543e820e2dfcd39f76c35&hashb=e1c24f6a6459c7d1d625eb2ea55d9dfbbb4633bf&hashc=ac5a1f5526e7292c73f49dfa8fb6d5d0cb87d8773cec3b9b03d38a4ce482d7c8&esrc=subscribe-page&mbid=CRMNYR012019&utm_term=TNY_Science_Tech—

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission queried on proposal for untested small nuclear reactors in Ontario.

to the question of whether it is appropriate to propose the siting of up to four untested reactors

No BWRX-300 reactors are operating anywhere in the world

Submission Concerning the Proposed Development of BWRX-300 reactors at the Darlington Site

November 19,2023 by Evelyn Gigantes

I am submitting my response to the proposed development by Ontario Power Generation of 4 BWRX-300 reactors on the existing site of the Darlington CANDU nuclear reactors.

Apparently this project has been given a CNSC license to” Prepare the Site” based on the CNSC’s decision that OPG has met the recommendations of the 2011 Environmental Assessment Report by the Joint Review Panel.  However nowhere is evidence available that the recommendations of the JRP have been addressed by OPG, or required by the CNSC.

It is critical that the many environmental concerns raised by the JRP in 2011 – everything from the  existing geographic and soil structure of the site, the possible air and water contaminants, the surrounding housing, noise, and potential shoreline alteration, must be addressed by OPG, and approved by the CNSC, before OPG is permitted to prepare the Darlington site for additional reactors. The same is true of recommendations by the JRP concerning a decommissioning financial guarantee which should include the cost of rehabilitating the site if the project does not proceed beyond site preparation.

If the CNSC has, in fact, required OPG to meet these recommendations, the material associated with that requirement should be made easily available to outside organizations and individuals who wish to take part in public discussion concerning these matters.

Now to the question of whether it is appropriate to propose the siting of up to four untested reactors next to the 4 existing CANDUs at Darlington, and their stored nuclear waste.

No BWRX-300 reactors are operating anywhere in the world. The proposed design and operation of a BWRX-300 is entirely different from the CANDU design and involves a structure and a method of operating which is, in large part, below ground level. Again the many issues of the quality of the soil and rock structures and how the physical and operating structures of 4 new BRWX-300 reactors might affect, or be affected by, the issues raised by the JRP recommendations concerning the physical attributes of the Darlington site, need to be openly addressed by OPG and considered publically by the CNSC.

This is the very least that is required before the CNSC begins to examine whether it might permit OPG to begin building even one untested BRWX-300 SMR at the Darlington location.

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

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