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Nuclear push- will it unravel?

,  https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2023/12/nuclear-push-will-it-unravel.html—

There has of late been something of a global nuclear PR push, but it’s perhaps been oddly timed in that  not everything has been going its own way. The USA’s flagship NuScale Small Modular Reactor (SMR) has taken a dive. It was seen as the pioneer for cheap fast-build mini-reactors, a scaled down but otherwise conventional pressurised water reactor. But, despite some speculative funding, it was looking increasingly dodgy financially, with lawyers circling like vultures.

And then the big Idaho Falls NuScale project was cancelled. WIRED said this had been on the cards since ‘the utilities backing the plant were spooked by a 50% increase in the projected costs’. That was not seen as good news for other SMRs further back in development. Some see it all as a bit of a dangerous gamble. 

Maybe not the right time then for the UK to launch what amounted to a promotional report ‘Made in Britain: The Pathway to a Nuclear Renaissance’. Produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) it says that the UK government decision to invest in Sizewell C was a turning point. Well yes- it recognises that few others are likely to! Unlike with Hinkley Point C, with China playing a financial support role- although it recently halted that. To that extent, unless the UAE can be enticed to step in, if Sizewell C goes ahead, it will be ‘made in Britain’, though, as with Hinkley, most of the technology will be imported. 

However, progress on funding and project contacts is all going rather slowly. Sir John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, said that ‘at the moment, we’re not making any progress really on Sizewell C, there is no deal being done with EDF… so we don’t see nuclear as really having a significant part to play in any new stations other than Hinkley before 2035.’  And, making it even harder for any potential investors, the government wants new tighter Regulated Asset Base funding rules– perhaps they are getting nervous about likely costs to consumers?

Nevertheless, the APPG seem confident that all can be made well soon- with the newly established Great British Nuclear (GBN) organisation seen as playing key role.  APPG calls on the government to ‘commit the funding to GBN necessary to build its developer capabilities and to invest directly in at least the first two SMR projects & next large-scale project,’ on the way to 24GW by 2050. It welcomed the £20bn SMR contract value figure that the government mentioned last year, but that’s not been confirmed. And would the big Rolls Royce SMR be chosen to make it all UK? Rolls certainly thinks it will be the winner... 

Globally, while there are some new nuclear projects underway or planned, for example in China, it all still mostly looks a bit uncertain. It is true that, ever optimistic, the nuclear lobby  keeps talking its future up. Over 20 nations, led by the United States, including the UAE, South Korea, Japan, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK, issued a call at COP28 climate summit in the UAE to triple global nuclear power capacity by 2050. 

However, despite that being twenty years after the 2030 target date for renewables to be tripled, as pushed by Bloomberg NEF and also backed at COP28 (see later), several commentators said that, even by then,  the triple nuclear target was unlikely to be reached – it would need unprecedented expansion. And the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR), which emerged at more or less the same time as the COP nuclear statement, certainly made clear that nuclear was already being far outstripped by renewables globally. 

A significant reversal of its prospects does not seem unlikely. Indeed, as an earlier article in the FT had noted, even the International Atomic Energy Agency has forecasts that, given expected growth energy demand, over the next 20 years, the nuclear industry share in the global energy mix, roughly10% of the world’s electricity generation today, will remain flat, if not decrease slightly, unless there are very ambitious construction plans. 

So maybe that’s why are we seeing such optimistic projections- otherwise nuclear will be sidelined. We have been here before with ambitious nuclear projections and plans- which failed to materialise. A recent study has looked back at why earlier scenario model-based predictions had not come true, and it may be that we may be about to see a repeat exercise. 

Of late, there have certainly been some scenarios with major expansion of nuclear, for example, in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, with nuclear capacity doubling by 2050. However, it also said renewables were much more efficient at reducing carbon and there are many scenarios with renewables accelerating very rapidly. That’s not surprising given the recent fall in their cost. Though, sadly, aided by inflation pressures due to the rise in the costs of fossil fuels, it seems to be taking a while for new funding patterns to be adopted, and for linked energy demand stabilisation programmes to be introduced. That being so, a recent study has suggested that ‘there is the risk that considerable public and private funds will be invested in developing technologies for the commercial use of nuclear energy despite the fact that other technologies are expected to offer a significantly better cost-performance ratio with fewer economic, technical, and military risks’. 

Of course it can be argued that we will need to expand both nuclear and renewables and certainly there are strong lobby pressures to do that- or else, it is claimed, we will face ever expanding fossil fuel use and carbon emissions. But are nuclear and renewables equally valuable and capable of rapid expansion? To many, renewable expansion does look more credible- at COP28 118 countries renewed their pledge to triple renewable power by 2030, a target backed by the EU and shared by IRENA. That, along with investment in energy saving and demand management, should arguably help us to cut global use of fossil fuel, and the consequent carbon emissions, faster than investment in nuclear and at less cost. 

However, it won’t be easy, and that’s just for power. And although there are scenarios suggesting that, given careful energy management, 100% of all energy globally could come from renewables by 2050, there’s a long way to go to get to that. Some may be tempted to look to carbon capture to help on the way for a while, although it’s hard to see that being cheap or easy. Like nuclear, with CCS projects failing or stalled, it looks more like another costly dead-end diversion.  What’s wrong with accelerating the full range of green energy systems– renewables, energy storage and smart demand management, which of course includes energy efficiency?

December 19, 2023 Posted by | spinbuster | 1 Comment

Chris Hedges: The Death of Israel

Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception. https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/17/chris-hedges-the-death-of-israel/

Israel will appear triumphant after it finishes its genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank. Backed by the United States, it will achieve its demented goal. Its murderous rampages and genocidal violence will exterminate or ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Its dream of a state exclusively for Jews, with any Palestinians who remain stripped of basic rights, will be realized. It will revel in its blood-soaked victory. It will celebrate its war criminals. Its genocide will be erased from public consciousness and tossed into Israel’s huge black hole of historical amnesia. Those with a conscience in Israel will be silenced and persecuted. 

But by the time Israel achieves its decimation of Gaza — Israel is talking about months of warfare — it will have signed its own death sentence. Its facade of civility, its supposed vaunted respect for the rule of law and democracy, its mythical story of the courageous Israeli military and miraculous birth of the Jewish nation, will lie in ash heaps. Israel’s social capital will be spent. It will be revealed as an ugly, repressive, hate-filled apartheid regime, alienating younger generations of American Jews. Its patron, the United States, as new generations come into power, will distance itself from Israel the way it is distancing itself from Ukraine. Its popular support, already eroded in the U.S., will come from America’s Christianized fascists who see Israel’s domination of ancient Biblical land as a harbinger of the Second Coming and in its subjugation of Arabs a kindred racism and white supremacy. 

Palestinian blood and suffering — 10 times the number of children have been killed in Gaza as in two years of war in Ukraine — will pave the road to Israel’s oblivion. The tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of ghosts will have their revenge. Israel will become synonymous with its victims the way Turks are synonymous with the Armenians, Germans are with the Namibians and later the Jews, and Serbs are with the Bosniaks. Israel’s cultural, artistic, journalistic and intellectual life will be exterminated. Israel will be a stagnant nation where the religious fanatics, bigots and Jewish extremists who have seized power will dominate public discourse. It will find its allies among other despotic regimes. Israel’s repugnant racial and religious supremacy will be its defining attribute, which is why the most retrograde white supremists in the U.S. and Europe, including philo-semites such as John Hagee, Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, fervently back Israel. The vaunted fight against anti-Semitism is a thinly disguised celebration of White Power.

Despotisms can exist long after their past due date. But they are terminal. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to see that Israel’s lust for rivers of blood is antithetical to the core values of Judaism. The cynical weaponization of the Holocaust, including branding Palestinians as Nazis, has little efficacy when you carry out a live streamed genocide against 2.3 million people trapped in a concentration camp.

Nations need more than force to survive. They need a mystique. This mystique provides purpose, civility and even nobility to inspire citizens to sacrifice for the nation. The mystique offers hope for the future. It provides meaning. It provides national identity. 

When mystiques implode, when they are exposed as lies, a central foundation of state power collapses. I reported on the death of the communist mystiques in 1989 during the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. The police and the military decided there was nothing left to defend. Israel’s decay will engender the same lassitude and apathy. It will not be able to recruit indigenous collaborators, such as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority — reviled by most Palestinians — to do the bidding of the colonizers. The historian Ronald Robinson cites the inability to recruit indigenous allies by the British Empire as the point at which collaboration inverted into noncooperation, a defining moment for the start of decolonization. Once noncooperation by native elites morphs into active opposition, Robinson explains, the Empire’s “rapid retreat” is assured. 

All Israel has left is escalating violence, including torture, which accelerates the decline. This wholesale violence works in the short term, as it did in the war waged by the French in Algeria, the Dirty War waged by Argentina’s military dictatorship and during Britain’s conflict in Northern Ireland. But in the long term it is suicidal.

“You might say that the battle of Algiers was won through the use of torture,” the British historian Alistair Horne observed, “but that the war, the Algerian war, was lost.”

The genocide in Gaza has turned Hamas fighters into heroes in the Muslim world and the Global South. Israel may wipe out the Hamas leadership. But the past — and current — assassinations of scores of Palestinian leaders has done little to blunt resistance. The siege and genocide in Gaza has produced a new generation of deeply traumatized and enraged young men and women whose families have been killed and whose communities have been obliterated. They are prepared to take the place of martyred leaders. Israel has sent the stock of its adversary into the stratosphere.

Israel was at war with itself before Oct. 7. Israelis were protesting to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s abolition of judicial independence. Its religious bigots and fanatics, currently in power, had mounted a determined attack on Israeli secularism. Israel’s unity since the attacks is precarious. It is a negative unity. It is held together by hatred. And even this hatred is not enough to keep protestors from decrying the government’s abandonment of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Hatred is a dangerous political commodity. Once finished with one enemy, those who stoke hatred go in search of another. The Palestinian “human animals,” when eradicated or subdued, will be replaced by Jewish apostates and traitors. The demonized group can never be redeemed or cured. A politics of hatred creates a permanent instability that is exploited by those seeking the destruction of civil society.

Israel was far down this road on Oct. 7 when it promulgated a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that resemble the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law permits exclusively Jewish settlements to bar applicants for residency on the basis of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.” 

Many of Israel’s best educated and young have left the country to places like Canada, Australia and the U.K., with as many as one million moving to the United States. Even Germany has seen an influx of around 20,000 Israelis in the first two decades of this century. Around 470,000 Israelis have left the country since Oct. 7. Within Israel, human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists — Israeli and Palestinian — are attacked as traitors in government-sponsored smear campaigns, placed under state surveillance and subjected to arbitrary arrests. The Israeli educational system is an indoctrination machine for the military.

The Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned that if Israel did not separate church and state and end its occupation of the Palestinians, it would give rise to a corrupt Rabbinate that would warp Judaism into a fascistic cult. “Israel,” he said, “would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it.”

The global mystique of the U.S., after two decades of disastrous wars in the Middle East and the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, is as contaminated as its Israeli ally. The Biden administration, in its fervor to unconditionally support Israel and appease the powerful Israel lobby, has bypassed the congressional review process with the Department of State to approve the transfer of 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken argued that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale.” At the same time he has cynically called on Israel to minimize civilian casualties.

Israel has no intention of minimizing civilian casualties. It has already killed 18,800 Palestinians, 0.82 percent of the Gazan population — the equivalent of around 2.7 million Americans. Another 51,000 have been wounded. Half of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the U.N. All Palestinian institutions and services that sustain life — hospitals (only 11 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are still “partially functioning”), water treatment plants, power grids, sewer systems, housing, schools, government buildings, cultural centers, telecommunications systems, mosques, churches, U.N. food distribution points — have been destroyed. Israel has assassinated at least 80 Palestinian journalists alongside dozens of their family members and over 130 U.N. aid workers along with members of their families. Civilian casualties are the point. This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinians. The objective is to kill or remove 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza. 

The shooting dead of three Israeli hostages who apparently escaped their captors and approached Israeli forces with their shirts off, waving a white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew is not only tragic, but a glimpse of Israel’s rules of engagement in Gaza. These rules are — kill anything that moves.

As the retired Israeli Major General Giora Eiland, who formerly headed the Israeli National Security Council, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, “[T]he State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in…Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal.” “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” he wrote. Major General Ghassan Alian declared that in Gaza, “there will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.” 

Settler colonial states that endure, including the United States, exterminate through diseases and violence nearly the entirety of their indigenous populations. Old World plagues brought by the colonizers to the Americas, such as smallpox, killed an estimated 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America. By 1600 less than a tenth of the original population remained. Israel cannot kill on this scale, with nearly 5.5 million Palestinians living under occupation and another 9 million in the diaspora.

The Biden presidency, which ironically may have signed its own political death certificate, is tethered to Israel’s genocide. It will try to distance itself rhetorically, but at the same time it will funnel the billions of dollars of weapons demanded by Israel — including $14.3 billion in supplemental military aid to augment the $3.8 billion in annual aid — to “finish the job.” It is a full partner in Israel’s genocide project.

December 19, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Inside the Youth-Led Fight for a Demilitarized Future

Over the past two months, Raytheon/RTX — which develops and sells weapons systems used by the Israeli Defense Forces — has seen stock prices skyrocket and company executives discuss the rise in violence as a financial opportunity.

According to UMass Dissenters organizers, the company is deeply entrenched at the college through recruitment practices and the Isenberg School of Management, which has a close educational and financial partnership with the weapons manufacturer. 

A UMass Dissenters organizer discusses the growing youth-led antiwar movement and how they are organizing against weapons manufacturers and the war in Gaza.

SCHEERPOST, By Alessandra Bergamin / Waging Nonviolence, 17 Dec 23

In January 2020, Dissenters — a grassroots, youth-led antiwar movement — began with the mission to connect violence against Black and brown communities in the U.S. to the systems of oppression that fund, arm and enable global militarism. While born from the legacy of the U.S. antiwar movement, Dissenters takes an intersectional approach that connects global wars with corporate elites, local police, border walls, surveillance and prisons. Operating across the country through campus chapters, training fellowships and a strong social media presence, Dissenters has been organizing for college divestment from weapons manufacturers, ending campus recruitment from military-affiliated companies and disbanding campus police departments.

Since Oct. 7, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack and the subsequent siege of Gaza, Dissenters chapters have doubled down on antiwar organizing, holding local and national rallies, sit-ins, student walkouts and training events both on and offline. One campus chapter — at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst — has organized protests, disruptions to sports games, and a sit-in at the chancellor’s office to pressure its university to cut ties with the weapons manufacturer Raytheon, now known as RTX. 

Over the past two months, Raytheon/RTX — which develops and sells weapons systems used by the Israeli Defense Forces — has seen stock prices skyrocket and company executives discuss the rise in violence as a financial opportunity. According to UMass Dissenters organizers, the company is deeply entrenched at the college through recruitment practices and the Isenberg School of Management, which has a close educational and financial partnership with the weapons manufacturer. 

I spoke with Bre Joseph, a UMass Amherst senior and organizer with the campus chapter of Dissenters. We discussed organizing college students against weapons manufacturers, the radicalizing impact of activist arrests, and the lessons learned from successes and setbacks.

In relation to the siege on Gaza, what are the main goals or demands of the UMass Dissenters chapter?

Number one is that the school must divest and cut ties with weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, but also Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and so on. Our second demand is that the administration must call for an immediate end to Israel’s siege on Gaza and end U.S. funding. A third demand is that the administration must replace weapons manufacturers with jobs working toward a demilitarized future. 

I think that third one acknowledges that — while moving away from Raytheon as a campus partner would technically decrease opportunities afforded to UMass students — the onus is on the campus to replace jobs that increase death and violence with jobs that are sustainable and help the earth. We’ve heard students express this on an app called Yik Yak where you can post anonymously. It’s usually unserious, but every now and then I’ll open it and see people say, “I’m an engineering major, and I’m tired of having Raytheon pushed down my throat as an employment option. I don’t want to build bombs. I don’t want to make money for this company that’s killing people. I want better options.” That’s really been our goal from the beginning — get those jobs out and center a demilitarized future instead of militarizing it further.

How does intersectionality both inform and impact Dissenters’ organizing? ………………………………………………………………..
How has UMass Dissenters organized to inform and mobilize students on the connections between the campus and weapons manufacturers? 

In terms of education, we have a document that we’ve made public via our Instagram and emails we’ve sent out to interested students really detailing UMass’s connection to Raytheon — and detailing Raytheon’s connection to the IDF and the war on Palestinians. At our weekly meetings, we’ve also had things like teach-ins for interested students. We’ve also crashed Raytheon information sessions to do this thing we call “being the common sense,” where we ask recruiters: “What exactly would students be building? What exactly is making the company money?” We ask the questions they don’t really want to answer but that they need to to be held accountable…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/17/inside-the-youth-led-fight-for-a-demilitarized-future/

December 19, 2023 Posted by | Education | Leave a comment

Biden has the power to rein in the nuclear presidency. He should use it.

By Jon Wolfsthal, December 18, 2023,  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/18/trump-nuclear-weapons-control-president-biden/

Jon Wolfsthal is director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists as well as a former National Security Council senior director under President Barack Obama.

In less than a year, America will elect a president. Whoever is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2025, will immediately be vested with the sole legal authority to order the use of the United States’ nuclear weapons. If a sitting president decides to exercise that authority — for almost any reason — no one can legally stop them. That must change.

This is not a new problem. Two of the 14 presidents in the nuclear age have behaved dangerously enough that their own officials have tried, in legally questionable ways, to insert themselves into the nuclear chain of command.

In President Richard M. Nixon’s final days, then-Defense Secretary James Schlesinger declared that any nuclear order had to be checked with him first. The fact that Donald Trump remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination injects additional concern given his behavior as president. In the last few days of Trump’s term, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley tried to mitigate these risks by telling officers at the National Military Command Center (NMCC) that if they received a nuclear launch order from Trump, they must loop him in. “I’m part of the procedure,” Milley reportedly told subordinates.

We might want to thank both Milley and Schlesinger for did what they did, but they might have broken the law in doing so. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the country’s senior military officer, he is not part of the nuclear-launch process. Nor is the defense secretary, secretary of state or even the commander of U.S. Strategic Command.

To initiate a nuclear strike, the president can issue an order bypassing senior military leaders and advisers. Every president carries with him a sealed card known as the “biscuit.” The president can call the NMCC at any time and use the code from the biscuit to verify his identity — and the weapons get launched. As commander in chief, a president can even order the watch officer not to tell superiors that an order has been given. So even if a concerned chairman of the Joint Chiefs instructs his soldiers to inform him of any such command, the president can simply override that “safeguard” at his discretion.

The chain of command, however, is different for almost every other decision to use military force. For non-nuclear decisions — including conventional military strikes or sending soldiers into combat — the president must give an order to the defense secretary, who then issues written instructions to the relevant combatant commander. It’s a transparent system that encourages accountability.

Why are nuclear weapons procedures different from conventional ones? Because, during the Cold War, speed was seen as essential for deterrence. If a Soviet nuclear bolt from the blue could kill a sitting president before he had time to order a counterattack, adversaries were thought to have an incentive to initiate a first strike. By being able to respond quickly, without having to work through layers of officials, deterrence was thought to be more robust.

But there is no reason today to rely on speedy decision-making during situations in which the United States might launch first. Even as relations with Moscow are at historic lows, we are worlds removed from the Cold War’s dominant knife’s-edge logic. This means checks and balances on a president’s decision to start a nuclear war can be adopted without sacrificing America’s security or the protection of our allies. It’s time our institutions caught up with this strategic reality.

Numerous ideas have been put forward to close this dangerous loophole. None is perfect. The idea of requiring another elected or Senate-confirmed officer such as a vice president, secretary of state or defense secretary to agree to a nuclear launch order has been considered impractical. For one, if senior officials are killed, or are appointed without Senate approval, the United States could be rendered unable to retaliate against a nuclear attack. At the very least, any such change would require a legal remedy and congressional approval by both houses of Congress — something unlikely even in ideal circumstances.

What is left is not a permanent solution but an improvement over the current process nonetheless: President Biden has the authority as commander in chief to change the military chain of command. He can make launching nuclear weapons absent a confirmed nuclear attack on the United States conform to the same procedures required for the use of conventional forces. Adopting such a process would not impact the country’s security, or that of its allies. But it would ensure that no president can act without other senior officials being directly involved in a decision to use America’s most powerful weapons.

Could a future president try to reverse these safeguards? Yes, but doing so would take time and require the work of other senior officials. The formal chain of command is established by law but can be changed through executive order. Requiring White House lawyers to develop a new directive to revert to the older, less-constrained systems would be a time-consuming process. And putting even surmountable speed bumps in place is worth the effort.

There is no perfect system for preventing nuclear use as long as nuclear weapons exist. Yet nuclear procedures have been adjusted many times over the decades, and it is time for yet another change. The Biden administration should be praised for spending a lot of time crafting norms for responsible nuclear behavior — from repeatedly declaring that a nuclear war cannot be won and thus must never be fought, to ensuring that unsupervised artificial intelligence is kept far from decision on the use of nuclear weapons. It should continue this admirable track record by insulating the United States’ nuclear weapons from an unstable future president by adding senior officials into the process.

December 19, 2023 Posted by | politics, weapons and war | 3 Comments

The danger of rising tides to the Dungeness nuclear site, and to planned small nuclear reactors for Sussex

suggestions that Dungeness might become the site of a new nuclear power station featuring Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The UK’s energy infrastructure, as noted by Peter Frankopan, is highly exposed to danger by even modest rises in sea levels, with all 19 of the country’s nuclear reactors located in coastal regions

As climate change increases the frequency and severity of storms, the inhabitants of low-lying Sussex coastal towns face potential danger

Rising Tides and Nuclear Solutions: the urgent call for coastal protection, byChris Wilmott, 16-12-2023

Born in the coastal town of Hastings, I was lucky to grow up in Sussex by the Sea. I recognise that being able to enjoy the proximity of the sound of the waves, with the many wild and warm variations of weather, was a fantastic benefit during my childhood.  However, in recent years, my gaze has shifted somewhat towards a looming threat – the peril that coastal towns now face from climate change and the relentless rise of the tides and adverse weather.

I’ve been doing some research on this and according to NASA there is the potential for lunar cycles to start creating higher tides as soon as 2030, leaving low-lying areas vulnerable to the unforgiving turmoil and rage of the sea.  This makes me very concerned for Dungeness, just across from Hastings in Kent, an iconic region situated in a famously low-lying area. In a recent article published by Sussex Bylines, Susan Kerrison posed the question The rising costs of sea defences – how prepared are we? In my opinion, we’re not prepared at all.

…………………………………………….Dungeness B is a nuclear power plant that even as far back as 2014 caused serious concerns over its safety and is now closed and in the process of de-fuelling.  EDF privately acknowledged to the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) that the shingle bank protecting the reactors from the sea was “not as robust as previously thought.”  This revelation sparked worries among environmentalists, with Greenpeace’s Doug Parr highlighting the lack of transparency about serious safety concerns over flooding.

My interest in this site is heightened by suggestions that Dungeness might become the site of a new nuclear power station featuring Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The UK’s energy infrastructure, as noted by Peter Frankopan, is highly exposed to danger by even modest rises in sea levels, with all 19 of the country’s nuclear reactors located in coastal regions – the UK Office for Science has acknowledged this threat.

Apart from the potential fall out of power stations failing, one must consider the localised impact of families having to relocate and businesses losing their premises, potentially at short notice. Hastings has suffered two floods so far this year, with sandbags a common sight and businesses forced to close. 

Onwards and Upwards for the sea

Ocean scientist Eelco Rohling warns that the combination of global sea-level rise and increased storm intensities could spell doom for exposed coastal regions. The threat of flooding extremes looms large, even with a sea-level rise of 20 centimetres.  Twenty centimetres may seem like a modest rise, the corresponding storm surge of two metres would cause considerable damage. Picture then a sea-level rise of say, 80 centimetres, and one can only imagine the destruction that would be caused by a corresponding storm surge of eight metres. ……………………………………………more https://sussexbylines.co.uk/news/environment/rising-tides-and-nuclear-solutions/—

December 19, 2023 Posted by | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

Fukushima: Japan’s Triple Threat in Spades

BY JOHN LAFORGE, CounterPunch ,15 Dec 23

“………………………… Dumping prompts major seafood import bans

Japan intends to disperse over 1.34 million tons of the contaminated wastewater to the Pacific. The government and international regulators have declared that the pollution will have a “negligible” impact on sea life and human health. Skeptical governments in 15 countries maintain import restrictions on Japanese fish and other seafood. China fully banning imports of fishery products from Japan from Aug. 24 when the wastewater discharge started. According to Food Navigator online, five states with the strictest bans are geographically close to Japan and fiercely oppose the radioactive waste dumping. They are South Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, and Macau. Ten others — Indonesia, French Polynesia, the U.S., the European Union (27 states), Iceland, Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Russia, and Singapore — require certification, inspections, etc. before allowing imports.

China’s ban has had a serious impact on Japan’s fishery. According to the BBC, China imported over 100,000 tons of scallops from Japan last year. The South China Morning Post reports that China had been the world’s biggest buyer of Japanese seafood, but now “says its ban is due to food safety fears.”

Another micro dosing of mushrooms

Mushrooms grown in Yamahashi prefecture, 172 miles southwest of Fukushima, were found with high levels of radioactive cesium, Japan’s Ministry of Health reported. The edible mushrooms had 150 becquerel of cesium-per-kilo, but the state allows 100 “Bq/kg”. The United States is more at ease with people eating cesium, and allows 1,200 Bq/kg. The U.S. doesn’t even make an exception for baby food.

Fisheries minister apologizes for stating fact

Information control and media manipulation by Japan’s government was on display in August, after Minister of Fisheries Tetsuro Nomura said publicly that Tepco was dumping “contaminated water” into the Pacific.  Nomura was immediately attacked by editors, industry, and politicians for his “error” in not speaking of “treated water” — the state’s official term of art. In fact, the wastewater is poisoned with radioactive tritium, carbon-14, and (before “treatment”) some 62 radioactive elements picked up through contact with mounds of melted uranium and plutonium reactor fuel. The minister publicly apologized for his “gaffe” after being scolded by the Prime Minister himself, Fumio Kishida.

Third round of wastewater dumping protested

In November, Tepco began its third major discharge. The group Korean Peoples’ Action Against Japan’s Ocean Dumping of Radioactive Wastewater said problems with the process include clogged wastewater filters, and an increase in the concentration of radioactive material in the third discharge compared to the second. Likewise, the Pacific Collective on Nuclear Issues, composed of civil society groups, NGOs, and others in the Pacific region, said in a statement, “If the Japanese government and Tepco believe the radioactive wastewater is safe, they should be prepared to safely dispose of it within terrestrial Japan.”

The Collective also reminded the 52nd meeting of Pacific Island Forum states in Cook Island that the panel of scientific experts commissioned by the Forum found that “data provided so far, to support Japan’s claim that the treated wastewater is safe, is inconsistent, unsound, and therefore far from reliable.” Additionally, the Polynesian bloc attending the Forum (including Niue, Cook Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, Tuvalu and Tonga) demanded a pause in Japan’s dumping.

Wastewater accident contaminates five workers

Tepco has reported that five workers accidentally came in contact with radioactive “fluid” while cleaning ocean dumping discharge pipelines. Two of them were contaminated enough to be kept under medical observation, China Daily reported November 6. According to Tepco, a doctor said there was a possibility the two men sustained burns due to radiation exposure. The Daily, which has been highly critical of Japan’s wastewater discharging, demanded to know: “[S]ince four of the five workers ‘were wearing protective gear and full-face masks, which prevented ingestion of the fluid,’ how could the ‘fluid’ splash and burn the ‘lower body and both arms’ of one of them, and why the other worker, whose  ‘entire body was found to be exposed,’ was allowed to do the dangerous work without wearing any protective gear?” The Daily’s editors declared that the “Accident proved Japan’s toxic water plan dubious.”

Editors plaster “safe” over risky discharge

“IAEA confirms safe tritium levels in latest ALPS treated water release at Fukushima,” was the November 7 headline Nuclear Engineering International magazine used in its report on Tepco’s wastewater dumping. However, the article itself had no such confirmation. IAEA experts monitoring the discharge only said that the concentration of radioactive tritium in the waste was “far below Japan’s operational limit.” The word “safe” did not appear in the article or the IAEA report. The article’s text was factually accurate since there is no safe level of radioactive contamination. Like hundreds of others in the sane position, the magazine’s editors put the word “safe” into the IAEA’s mouth and turned the reporter’s story into a lullaby.

Area forests are a re-contamination source

Editors plaster “safe” over risky discharge

“IAEA confirms safe tritium levels in latest ALPS treated water release at Fukushima,” was the November 7 headline Nuclear Engineering International magazine used in its report on Tepco’s wastewater dumping. However, the article itself had no such confirmation. IAEA experts monitoring the discharge only said that the concentration of radioactive tritium in the waste was “far below Japan’s operational limit.” The word “safe” did not appear in the article or the IAEA report. The article’s text was factually accurate since there is no safe level of radioactive contamination. Like hundreds of others in the sane position, the magazine’s editors put the word “safe” into the IAEA’s mouth and turned the reporter’s story into a lullaby.

Area forests are a re-contamination source

Jim Smith, a Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Portsmouth, wrote in The Conversation October 23, that “Radiocaesium [cesium-137], which is the most important long-lived radioactive element emitted by the accident in terms of radiation dose, adheres to soil particles very strongly. Consequently, the decontamination of agricultural land primarily involved removing the top 5cm [about 2 inches] of topsoil. In urban areas, decontamination efforts entailed the removal of soil from sports fields”, school yards and other public areas.

However, as much as 71% of Fukushima Prefecture is covered by forest, and most of it remains contaminated. “Restrictions on the consumption of forest products have lasted for decades following the 1986 Chernobyl incident. And they are expected to persist in many forested areas of Fukushima too,” Prof. Smith wrote. Rainwater runoff from these forests creates routine downstream re-contamination of previously decontaminated areas. Additionally, forest fires can redistribute radioactivity still on trees and the forest floor creating inhalation risks — the same way fire regularly plagues the radioactive exclusion zone around the Chernobyl wreckage in Ukraine. https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/15/fukushima-japans-triple-threat-in-spades/

December 19, 2023 Posted by | environment | Leave a comment