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Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant reports shelling by Ukraine army

Reuters, March 14, 2024,  https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-controlled-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-says-was-shelled-by-ukraine-2024-03-14/

MOSCOW, March 14 (Reuters) – The Russian-controlled management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, said on Thursday that the Ukrainian army had shelled a critical infrastructure facility at the plant.

An explosive device was dropped near a fence where diesel fuel tanks are located, the plant reported.

“Such attacks are unacceptable,” it said.

It was not immediately clear when the attack had taken place. Reuters was unable to immediately verify battlefield reports from either side.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi has repeatedly warned of the danger of attacks on the plant.

Russia and Ukraine, at war for more than two years, have blamed each other for past shelling that has downed power lines and endangered generators.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | incidents, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Northwestern Ontario First Nations Chiefs Unite Against Nuclear Waste Proposal

By NNL Digital News Update, March 14, 2024

Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug – Environment – Leaders from five First Nations communities in Northwestern Ontario have voiced a resolute opposition to the prospect of nuclear waste storage within their territories.

In a concerted message to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), these chiefs have articulated a clear rejection of any plans to introduce nuclear waste facilities into the region.

A Firm Stand on Environmental Protection

The stance against nuclear waste storage is captured in a letter addressed to Laurie Swami, President and CEO of the NWMO, an industry-funded body tasked with managing Canada’s nuclear waste. The letter outlines grave concerns about the potential for spills or leaks that could irreversibly harm the environment, disrupt the natural way of life, and have lasting impacts on future generations.

Letter to Nuclear Waste Management Organization

Signed by chiefs from Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows), Wapekeka, Neskantaga, and Onigaming, the letter embodies the collective apprehension of these communities.

These leaders, forming part of the First Nations Land Defence Alliance, are standing firm in their resolve to protect their lands and waters from the risks posed by nuclear waste.

Concerns Over Potential Environmental Impact Chief Donny Morris of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug highlighted the risks associated with disturbing the Canadian Shield rock to construct an underground storage facility.

Morris emphasized the importance of environmental preservation over financial compensation and stressed the right of all regional First Nations to be involved in the consultation process.

Calls for Consideration of Alternative Sites In a pointed critique of the proposed locations for the nuclear waste repository, Steven Chapman, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug’s lands and environment director, suggested that such facilities should first be considered in areas closer to Canada’s political centers, such as Toronto or Ottawa.

This suggestion underscores a broader call for equity and responsibility in the siting of facilities that pose environmental risks.

The NWMO has narrowed its search to two potential sites, one near Ignace and another in Southern Ontario, with a final decision expected later this year. The chiefs’ letter firmly states their lack of consultation and consent, urging the NWMO to respect their collective decision against the proposed site near Ignace.

Chiefs in the Ottawa region have also rejected the plans to store nuclear waste in their traditional territories.

As these communities stand united in their opposition, the debate over nuclear waste management in Canada continues to raise important questions about environmental stewardship, indigenous rights, and the principles of equitable decision-making in the context of national infrastructure projects.

Text of the Letter Written by Chiefs………………………………… https://www.netnewsledger.com/2024/03/14/northwestern-ontario-first-nations-chiefs-unite-against-nuclear-waste-proposal/

March 16, 2024 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

The ideology of war in Ukraine and Israel

by Thierry Meyssan,  https://www.voltairenet.org/article220527.html 14 Mar 24

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are more similar than you might think, at least if you know their histories. The Ukrainian war didn’t start with the Russian military operation, but with the massacres in the Donbass, while the Gaza war didn’t start with the Al-Aqsa deluge, but 75 years earlier with the Nakhba. In the long term, those responsible for both wars share the same ideology.

Generally speaking, every war defines who “we” are and who “they” are. “We” are Good, while “they” are Evil.

Western leaders, while declaring that war itself is bad, claim that it is indispensable today in the face of aggression from Russia and Hamas. According to them, Russia, or rather its president Vladimir Putin, dreams of seizing our property and destroying our political system. After invading Ukraine, he will invade Moldavia and the Baltic states, then continue westwards. Hamas, on the other hand, is a hate-filled sect that begins by raping and beheading Jews out of anti-Semitism, and will continue by invading the West in the name of its religion.

It’s worth noting that both Israel and the USA were founded by their armies, the Haganah and the Continental Army. Today, the vast majority of their political leaders have spent their careers in the armed forces or secret services. But they’re not the only ones, since Xi Jinping is a military man and Vladimir Putin is a former member of the Soviet secret service (KGB).

One wonders what feeds the phantasms of the political West and how they prevent us from grasping reality. Russia didn’t invade Ukraine any more than France invaded Rwanda. Moscow and Paris stopped the massacre of Ukrainians in the Donbass and Rwandan Tutsis. Both were driven by their “responsibility to protect” and implemented Security Council resolutions. Palestinians don’t rape and behead anyone for pleasure, even if some of them belong to a secret society that does. They don’t fight the Jews out of anti-Semitism, except for the historic branch of Hamas, but against the apartheid system of which they are victims.

Perhaps the first function of collective blindness is to erase our previous crimes: it was the “democracies” of the United States and members of the European Union who organized the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014. It was Germany and France that signed the Minsk Accords to guarantee peace for Ukrainians in Donbass (2015), but never intended to implement them and, according to the confessions of Chancellor Angela Merkel and President François Hollande, used them to arm Ukraine against Russia. This violation of our word and signature constitutes, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, the gravest of all crimes, that “against peace”.

Similarly, it is the “greatest democracy in the Middle East”, Israel, which has stolen, metre by metre, by occupation and nibbling, most of the Palestinian Territories established by Security Council resolution 181 (1947).

These conflicts are not about resources, but territories. Since 1917, Dmytro Dontsov’s Ukrainian integral nationalists have consistently claimed sovereignty over Nestor Makhno’s anarchist Novorossia and the Bolshevik Donbass and Crimea. Of course, these territories were merged into Soviet Ukraine by Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev, but Kiev cannot invoke recent history to claim them as its own. Similarly, since 1920, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s revisionist Zionists have claimed sovereignty over the whole of Palestine, and eventually over the Egyptian Sinai, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria – in short, all the territories from the “Nile to the Euphrates”. Of course, the ancient kingdom of Jerusalem consisted of the city and its suburbs, but that doesn’t allow them to evoke history for all these conquests.

It is often said that the age pyramid determines the aggressiveness of states. States with a majority of young people between the ages of 15 and 30 would by nature be inclined to war. But this is neither the case in Ukraine, nor in Israel. What’s more, it’s Palestine, not Israel that the age pyramid could push towards war.

The ideological question is probably the most important. Dmytro Dontsov and his henchman Stepan Bandera glorified the Ukrainian fighters, heirs to the Swedish Vikings, the Varegues, who had to slaughter the “Muscovites” to be able to feast in Valhalla. Today, it’s the “White Führer”, Andriy Biletsky, who has commanded the troops of the Azov Division in Mariupol, the 3rd Assault Brigade in Bakhmut/Artiomovsk and most recently in Avdeyevka/Avdiyevka. Similarly, Benjamin Netanyahu, son of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s private secretary, has not hesitated to compare the Palestinians to the ancient Amalekites. The implication is that they must all be exterminated as Yahweh commands, or else their race will re-emerge against the Hebrews. In the same way, the IDF has systematically destroyed all the universities and schools in the Gaza Strip and massacred 30,000 civilians under the pretext of fighting Hamas.

Dmytro Dontsov formed an alliance with Adolf Hitler as early as 1923, i.e. before he came to power, and became one of the administrators of the Reinhard Heydrich Institute, responsible for carrying out the Final Solution of the Jewish and Gypsy question. Vladimir Jabotinsky, who had formed an alliance with Dontsov in 1922, founded the Betar cadre school in Civitavecchi (Italy) with the help of Duce Benito Mussolini in 1935. He was unable to play a major role in the Second World War, dying in August 1940. There can be no doubt about the adherence of Ukrainian integral nationalists to Nazism and revisionist Zionists to fascism.

Incidentally, we find the territorial logic of fascist and Nazi regimes in the current discourse of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At the same time, the Russian and Palestinian presidents, Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Abbas, constantly claim to be defending their peoples.


 To find out more about Dmytro Dontsov’s integral nationalism, read:
“Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists?“, by Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, November 15, 2022.
 For more on Volodymyr Jabotinsky’s revisionist Zionists read:
“The veil is being torn: the hidden truths of Jabotinsky and Netanyahu“, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, January 23, 2024.
and “In Jerusalem, the ’Conference for the Victory of Israel’ threatens London and Washington“, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, February 13, 2024.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | culture and arts, history, Israel, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Ralph Nader: Open Letter to President Biden 3.12.24

The United States is aiding and abetting mass starvation and war crimes in Gaza.

By Ralph Nader / Nader.org 14 Mar 24, https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/14/ralph-nader-open-letter-to-president-biden-3-12-24/

President Joe Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Re: United States aiding and abetting mass starvation and war crimes in Gaza

Dear Mr. President:

Willful avoidance does not exculpate your responsibility. There is no exception for the Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel is bound by the Geneva Conventions to provide for the health and safety of 2.3 million Palestinians in Israeli-occupied Gaza. Geneva Convention IV, Article 55, specifically stipulates: “To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.” A violation of Article 55 is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

In open and notorious violation of Article 55, Israel is thwarting rather than assisting desperately needed humanitarian aid to Palestinian infants, women, and men. Starvation levels are likely to reach 500,000 within a few short months. Israelis are blocking humanitarian aid trucks from border crossings with little or no interference by the IDF. Let the abbreviated life of Sahar al-Zebda speak for the voiceless and defenseless. As reported in The Washington Post (“In Gaza, young lives cut short—by hunger,” March 8, 2024), Sahar was born in a hospital without electricity and died 47 days later. Malnutrition was a material cause. Her parents had been displaced five times over five months since October 7.

Sahar was born on January 11, delivered by Caesarean section under battery-powered lights. She was underweight, suffering from a chest infection. There was no room for her to remain in the hospital.

Food was dwindling while prices were soaring. Sahar’s father secured three cartons of formula during the seven weeks she lived. The mother was able to breastfeed fitfully and then not at all.

Sahar’s weight plunged. Her facial features became distorted. Her lips became blue. Her eyes bulged. Her immune system was badly compromised. Her chest infection worsened. Doctors recommended prayer. Sahar died a few days later.

Sahar is but the tip of the genocide. Her death is not a statistic. It is a moral and legal reproach of the United States.

You and your administration have aided and abetted the starvation of Sahar and her likes by unconditionally supplying Israel, the occupying power in Gaza, with military, financial, and diplomatic assistance in its misnamed war against Hamas. The Washington Post reported on March 8, 2024 (“Israel’s war zone awash in U.S. arms”), that your administration has “approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began Oct. 7, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms, and other lethal aid.”

October 7 was viewed as a pretext for Israel to seek to exterminate Palestinians not only in Gaza but the West Bank. The evidence is in plain view. Ministers or Knesset members of the government histrionically and regularly sally forth with statements that Palestinians are subhuman and that Israel should annex the twin Palestinian territories.

Your public exhortations to Israel to comply with international law, to endorse a two-state solution, to lift punishing restrictions on humanitarian aid to Gaza, and to renounce Israeli sovereignty in the territory have been notoriously repudiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with impunity. Your unconditional military weapons shipments, (in violation of five federal laws: https://truthout.org/articles/us-is-breaking-at-least-6-laws-with-assistance-to-israel-veterans-group-says/), and financial, and diplomatic assistance to Israel remains undiminished. Your words are contradicted by your daily deeds.

If you want to be remembered as the President who orchestrated the starvation deaths of Sahar and thousands of other newborns in collaboration with Israel, continue to do what you are doing. If you wish for a superior memory, however, qualified by your decisions to date, you need to stand by your words and immediately force Israel to operate in compliance with international law, including the Geneva Conventions.

For every hour little lives are expiring!

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader, Esq.
Bruce Fein, Esq.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

War Games in Arctic: What’s Driving the West’s New Passion?

“Now, that Finland and Sweden are becoming active NATO members, this opens the possibility for the US to deploy nuclear weapons in the Far North.” 

“because of the Arctic’s sparsely located population, collateral damage from the use of nuclear weapons there will be less noticeable.” 

Bruce K. Gagnon , MARCH 15, 2024 https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2024/03/war-games-in-arctic-whats-driving-wests.html

Two unprecedented military exercises are being conducted by the US and its NATO allies simultaneously in various parts of the Arctic, signaling a new aggressive stance by the West in the region. 

Thirteen NATO countries participated this week in the Nordic Response 2024 exercise held in Finland and Sweden, near the border with Russia. Additionally, the US Army recently conducted a training event near Fairbanks, Alaska, also close to Russia’s borders. 

The US exercise was conducted within the framework of the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) and involved 8,000 American servicemen from the 11th Airborne Division and an unspecified smaller number of “foreign allies.” 

The Nordic Response exercises in Finland and Sweden are even bigger in scope, since they involve 20,000 service members from 13 NATO member countries, 50 warships and 100 military aircraft. The United States and Norway contributed their F-35 fifth-generation fighter jets to the organizers of the Nordic Response drills. Additionally, the UK agreed to send several of its own F-35s from the Royal Air Force, stationed on the British aircraft carrier, Prince of Wales. 

“We just want to beef up our presence in the Far North,” said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who came to inspect the Nordic Response 2024 war games. “This is the biggest and the most important NATO exercise in 40 years,” he contended.

German submarines, along with troops from new NATO members Finland and Sweden, also participated in the military exercises. However, the majority of the fighting force consisted of Americans, who openly expressed their intention to “rebuild their capacity to fight in the Arctic”, a capability that had somewhat weakened since the end of the Cold War.

The presumed adversary in both Alaska and the Finnish forests was the same: Russia and its possible ally China. The American newspaper Business Insider reported that the new “Arctic Strategy” of the US Army is pivoted towards “regaining Arctic dominance.” The new strategy has been operational since 2021. 

However, Business Insider noted that the rivalry with Russia now is not limited to the military sphere, as it was during the Cold War era. The economy has a role to play, too. “Rapidly melting sea ice in the Arctic Circle, warming twice as fast as the rest of the world is opening up new opportunities for natural resource extraction, shipping routes, and commercial fishing, as the Arctic becomes navigable,” the publication wrote. 

Vladimir Vasilyev, the chief research associate at the Institute of the US and Canada at the Russian Academy of Sciences, suggests that the Americans may be interested in gaining control over the North Sea Route. This route is considered the shortest maritime connection between the growing economies of Southeast Asia and Europe. Russia has extensive experience in utilizing the North Sea Route, which goes along the country’s northern shores. As the ice continues to melt, this sea route is becoming increasingly accessible to commercial vessels. 

“The United States is striving to ‘rediscover’ the Arctic region militarily,” a member of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences Alexander Bartosh told Sputnik. “Now, that Finland and Sweden are becoming active NATO members, this opens the possibility for the US to deploy nuclear weapons in the Far North.” 

The goal of the US beefing up its military force in the region, in Bartosh’s opinion, is two-fold. The first is to leverage their superiority at sea and in the air for potential strikes against Russia. And secondly, they seek to exploit the region’s untapped natural resources, primarily focusing on oil and gas.

Vladimir Vasilyev notes the historic roots of the ‘military side’ of American interest in the Arctic. “The Arctic region plays an indispensable role in the long-time US strategy of encircling Russia,” Vasilyev highlighted. He also did not exclude the deployment of American nuclear weapons in the region. “In the Arctic, nuclear accidents are easier to cover up,” Vasilyev noted and added: “Also, for a very long time Americans had an illusion that because of the Arctic’s sparsely located population, collateral damage from the use of nuclear weapons there will be less noticeable.” 

March 16, 2024 Posted by | ARCTIC, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Paves Way for Increase in Production in Commercial Reactors of Tritium for Nuclear Weapons

The U.S. no longer has a Department of Defense, as it has become The U.S. War Department.  This article shows that the private nuclear industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy are factotums of The U.S. War Department.  We need a list of the people who are pro The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and who sent a letter in favor of expanding nuclear power all over the world to mitigate climate change.  They completely forgot how India first developed nuclear weapons.  One of these amnesiacs is Ernest Moniz, but I’m not sure of the others who schizophrenically hold both views.  They need help seeing the contradictions in these mutually exclusive positions. —Jan Boudart, secretary, Nuclear Energy Information Service, NEIS.org

Expansion of Tritium Gas Production for DOE in TVA’s Commercial Nuclear Reactors Undermines Nuclear Non-Proliferation Norms, Keeps U.S. on Nuclear War Footing.

Tom Clements
Savannah River Site Watch COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, US, February 27, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken a big step forward in allowing expansion of production of tritium, a radioactive gas used to boost the explosive power of all U.S. nuclear weapons. Increased tritium production would take place in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar nuclear power reactors, further undermining nuclear nonproliferation norms by allowing continued production of nuclear weapons materials in commercial nuclear power reactors.

The NRC published a notice in the Federal Register on February 23, 20241 that supports the decision to dramatically increase the production of tritium in the Watts Bar units 1 and 2 reactors in Tennessee. The NRC, a civilian regulatory agency, recommends that the licenses for both reactors be amended to allow for an increase in irradiation of special tritium-producing rods from 1,792 to 2,496 for each reactor in a single operating cycle of about 18 months.

The significant increase in irradiation of Tritium Producing Burnable Absorber Roads (TPBARs) in the reactors’ cores would result in production of much greater amounts of tritium, as requested by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for its client, the Department of Defense. According to NNSA’s 2023 “Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan,” the goal is “to reach maximum tritium production in each of the two Watts Bar reactors by FY 2025.”

“Expansion of tritium production for use in all nuclear warheads reveals that the U.S. aims to keep a massive nuclear weapons stockpile far beyond any level of deterrence,” said Tom Clements, director the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch, Columbia South Carolina. “For the sake of global security, the U.S. must adopt a policy to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons and in parallel halt the production of weapons tritium in civilian nuclear reactors,” added Clements. (See sources here linked in SRS Watch news, Feb. 23, 20242.)

he apparent objective with this larger tritium supply is for the NNSA to fill the tritium “reservoirs” in all warheads to maximum capacity, which could be up to around 5 grams of tritium per warhead. This would allow the weapons to operate with greater flexibility, including at their highest explosive yield, thus keeping the U.S. on a footing to “fight” a nuclear war with maximum destructive effect. Russia and China could react to this US decision, possibly stimulating a “tritium race,” underscoring the risks of enduring reliance on nuclear weapons, according to SRS Watch.

The NRC has documented in an “environmental assessment” (EA) that radiation exposure, tritium release into the environment and nuclear waste production would all increase due to the action but has declined preparation of an in-depth “environmental impact statement” (EIS). The NRC claims the impacts are within earlier-considered bounds and has thus issued a “Finding of No Significant Impact” (FONSI) and recommends that a license amendment be issued by the NRC to allow more tritium rods to be irradiated. The NRC declined to review both the proliferation impacts of the decision and the impacts on a brewing nuclear arms race.

Both the EA and FONSI are included in the text of the short Federal Register notice, revealing that an inadequate analysis was conducted of the proposed action of dramatically increasing TPBAR irradiation. According to SRS Watch, an in-depth EIS, with public meetings, should have been prepared, especially given that tritium leakage from TPBAR irradiation has been documented, with diluted tritium-contaminated water being discharged into the Tennessee River from the “tritiated water storage tank with a capacity of 500,000 gallons.”

…………………………………………………………Due to increased tritium production, TPBAR manufacture at the Westinghouse uranium fuel plant near Columbia, SC would also expand. Production in that commercial nuclear facility of TPBARs used to produce tritium for military use exposes the reality that the Westinghouse facility is a dual use military-commercial facility, thus crossing the imaginary line between civilian and military uses of nuclear technology, as documented by SRS Watch in the 2021 report “Crossing the Line: South Carolina Nuclear Weapons Secrets Exposed3.” https://www.einpresswire.com/article-print/691542118/nuclear-regulatory-commission-paves-way-for-increase-in-production-in-commercial-reactors-of-tritium-for-nuclear-weapons?

March 16, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Dounreay workers vote on strike action after pay talks stall

 https://www.gmbscotland.org.uk/newsroom/gmb-scotland-ballot-at-dounreay.html 13 Mar 24

Workers at Dounreay nuclear site are being balloted on industrial action after long-running pay talks stalled.

Members of GMB Scotland and other unions are voting on industrial action including working to rule, overtime bans and strikes after a pay offer was overwhelmingly rejected.

Discussions with management at the Caithness site have been continuing for 18 months and Keir Greenaway, GMB senior organiser in public services, said workers cannot be expected to wait any longer for a fair offer.

He said: “This delay would be unacceptable at any time but when our members have been enduring an unprecedented cost of living crisis, it is beyond the pale.

“Managers insist they are bound by civil service rules but have chosen not to seek exemption from those rules for their own reasons.

 “We have heard a lot of words but seen no action by management and words do not pay our members’ bills.

“They deserve to see a fair pay offer urgently and will take whatever action is necessary to secure one. Enough is enough.”

Dounreay joined Magnox Ltd last year and then became part of Nuclear Restoration Services, which is responsible for the clean-up of the Caithness site and 11 others across the UK.

A ballot on industrial action by GMB Scotland, Unite and Prospect members is now open and will continue for three weeks.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s Spring budget a ‘myopic sop’ to nuclear obsessives

 https://cnduk.org/spring-budget-a-myopic-sop-to-nuclear-obsessives/ 14 Mar 24

CND Vice-President Dr Ian Fairlie writes for us on the purchase of the Wylfa nuclear site in last week’s budget.

On March 6, as part of the Spring Budget, the Chancellor announced a deal with the Japanese multinational Hitachi to purchase the defunct and closed Wylfa and Oldbury nuclear sites for £160 million. Hitachi suspended the much larger Wylfa project in 2019 and then abandoned it in September 2020 due to the massively rising costs of building nuclear plants.

Many nuclear enthusiasts read into the Chancellor’s statement that the government was going to build new plants at these sites. However a careful reading of the Budget statement reveals no such commitment. Instead, several independent commentators drily remarked that if Hitachi had decided the Wylfa nuclear plant was commercially untenable, why would anyone in Government think it was.

In fact, it is likely the £160 million land purchase was little more than a sop to myopic nuclear obsessives in the Conservative Party. The reality is that, in energy strategy terms, this sum is a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated £46,000 million (£46 billion) which Hinkley C nuclear plant would cost if it ever were completed. And, in another comparison, the Chancellor confirmed that the budget for the 2024 Contracts for Difference (CfD) auctions mainly for wind and solar projects will be set at over £1,000 million (£1 billion).

The environmental group People Against Wylfa B called the Chancellor’s statement a cynical move to try to support Tory Virginia Crosbie MP to keep her Ynys Môn parliamentary seat. Not much chance of that happening as her majority is under 2,000, and several recent by-elections have shown that Tory majorities of even 20,000 or more are now unsafe.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

NuScale nuclear power is among Top 5 Industrials Stocks That May Fall Off A Cliff In Q1

As of March 15, 2024, five stocks in the industrials sector could be flashing a real warning to investors who value momentum as a key criteria in their trading decisions.

The RSI is a momentum indicator, which compares a stock’s strength on days when prices go up to its strength on days when prices go down. When compared to a stock’s price action, it can give traders a better sense of how a stock may perform in the short term. An asset is typically considered overbought when the RSI is above 70, according to Benzinga Pro.

Here’s the latest list of major overbought players in this sector………………………………………………………

NuScale Power Corporation (NYSE:SMR)

  • On March 14, NuScale Power posted downbeat quarterly sales. “Over the course of 2023, we made significant progress towards commercializing our SMR technology, including continued activities to ensure readiness for manufacturing of our first NuScale Power Modules, building traction amongst data centers and further developing industrial applications for SMRs, such as process heat, hydrogen, and ammonia production,” said John Hopkins, President and Chief Executive Officer of NuScale Power. The company’s stock gained around 55% over the past five days and has a 52-week high of $9.27.
  • RSI Value: 84.89
  • SMR Price Action: Shares of NuScale Power gained 2.3% to close at $7.24 on Thursday…………………………………………………………………………..

General Electric Company (NYSE:GE)

  • On March 7, General Electric said that GE Aerospace reaffirmed its guidance, presenting a longer-term financial outlook, including achieving operating profit worth $10 billion in 2028. The company’s stock jumped around 12% over the past month and has a 52-week high is $175.81.
  • RSI Value: 72.30
  • GE Price Action: Shares of General Electric fell 2% to close at $166.75 on Wednesday.

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March 16, 2024 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

Radioactive waste, baby bottles and Spam: the deep ocean has become a dumping ground

The ocean’s depths are not some remote alien realm, but are in fact intimately entangled with every other part of the planet. We should treat them that way

by James Bradley. Guardian 12 Mar…….

“…………………………………………………………………………………………..The ocean’s depths have also been used as the final resting place for large amounts of nuclear material.

A 2019 study found at least 18,000 radioactive objects scattered across the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, many of them dumped there by the Soviet Union. These objects include vessels such as the K-27, the 110-metre nuclear submarine powered by an experimental liquid-metal-cooled reactor, which was scuttled in 1982 with its reactor still on board (when the explosive charges that were supposed to sink the K-27 failed to fully detonate, it had to be rammed with a tug); the wreck of the K-141 Kursk, which sank in the Barents Sea in 2000 during a naval exercise, killing all 118 on board and bearing its reactor and fuel to the bottom; and the K-159 attack submarine, which sank while being towed near Murmansk in 2003 with 800kg of spent uranium fuel on board. The head of Norway’s Nuclear Safety Authority says it is only a matter of time before these objects begin to release their toxic legacy into the water; others have called the situation a “Chornobyl in slow motion on the sea floor”.

While the Soviet Union dumped more nuclear waste on the sea floor than any other country, it was certainly not alone. Between 1948 and 1982, the British government consigned almost 70,000 tonnes of nuclear waste to the ocean’s depths, and the US, Switzerland, Japan and the Netherlands are just a few of the nations that have used the ocean to dispose of radioactive material, albeit in much smaller quantities. And while international treaties now prohibit the dumping of radioactive material at sea, the British government is exploring plans to dispose of up to 750,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste, including more than 100 tonnes of plutonium, beneath the sea floor off Cumbria. British officials argue this sort of geological disposal offers a way of keeping waste stable and secure over hundreds of thousands of years, although incidents such as the 2014 leak of radioactive material at a waste disposal facility half a kilometre beneath salt beds in New Mexico suggests that like many of the assurances offered by the nuclear industry, this claim should be approached with great caution.

The dumping of nuclear waste in the ocean is only one part of a far larger story of carelessness and greed. Human waste in the form of plastics and other objects is everywhere in the deep ocean, a fact that is made brutally apparent by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology’s Deep-sea Debris Database, which documents the presence of tyres, fishing nets, sports bags, mannequins, beach balls and baby’s bottles spread across the sea floor at depths of many thousands of metres. In some regions, the number of such objects exceeds 300/sq km.

This tide of garbage has even reached the deepest and most remote parts of the ocean: …………………………………………………………………………………….

Possibly more disturbing, though, is the growing accumulation of microplastics in the ocean depths………………………………………………..

Nor is plastic the only thing that drifts downwards. In 2019 Chinese scientists discovered radioactive carbon-14 from the detonation of nuclear bombs in the 1940s and 50s in the bodies of amphipods living at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, borne into the deep not by ocean circulation, but in the rain of organic matter from above. More recent studies have found radioactive caesium from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in sediment more than 7,000 metres down in the Japan Trench……………………………………………………….. more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/12/radioactive-waste-baby-bottles-and-spam-the-deep-ocean-has-become-a-dumping-ground

March 15, 2024 Posted by | oceans, wastes | Leave a comment

Aid Wars over Gaza: Resuming Funding to UNRWA

March 12, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark  https://theaimn.com/aid-wars-over-gaza-resuming-funding-to-unrwa/

The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling. The lynchpin in the effort was a thin, poison pen dossier making claims that 12 individuals were Hamas operatives who had been involved in the October 7 attacks. Within a matter of days, two internal investigations were commenced, various individuals sacked, and US$450 million worth of funding from donor states suspended.

As the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, explained at a press conference on March 4, he has “never been informed” or received evidence of Israel’s claims substantiating their assertions, though he did receive the prompt about the profane twelve directly from Israeli officials. Every year, both Israel and the Palestinian authorities were furnished with staff lists, “and I never received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”

Had Israeli authorities signed off on these alleged participants in bungling or conspiratorial understanding? Certainly, there was more than a pongy whiff of distraction about it all, given that Israel had come off poorly in The Hague proceedings launched by South Africa, during which the judges issued an interim order demanding an observance of the UN Genocide Convention, an increase of humanitarian aid, and the retention of evidence that might be used for future criminal prosecutions for genocide.

An abrupt wave of initial success in starving the agency followed, with a number of countries announcing plans to freeze funding. In the United States, irate members of Congress accused the agency of having “longstanding connections to terrorism and promotion of antisemitism.” A hearing was duly held titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures” with Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies frothing at an agency that supposedly incited “violence against Israel, subsidizes US-designated terrorist organizations, denies Palestinians their basic human rights, and blocks the pathways to a sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

The attempt to cast UNRWA into gleefully welcomed oblivion has not worked. Questions were asked about the initial figure of twelve alleged militants. News outlets began questioning the numbers.

The funding channels are resuming. Canada, for instance, approving “the robust investigative process underway”, also acknowledged that “more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians.” The initial cancellation of funding to the agency, charged Thomas Woodley, president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, had been “a reckless political decision that never should have been made.”

The Swedish government was also encouraged by undertakings made by UNRWA “to allow independent auditing, strengthen internal supervision and enable additional staff controls”, promising an initial outlay of 200 million kroner (US$19 million).

The Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Johan Forssell, promised that it would “monitor closely to ensure UNRWA follows through on what it has promised.” Aid policy spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, Gudrun Brunegård, also conceded that, given the “huge” needs on the part of the civilian population, that UNRWA was “the organisation that is best positioned to help vulnerable Palestinians.”

Much the same sentiment was expressed by the European Union, with the Commission agreeing to pay 50 million euros to UNRWA from a promised total of 82 million euros on the proviso that EU-appointed experts audit the screening of staff. “This audit,” a European Commission statement explains, “will review the control systems to prevent the possible involvement of its staff and assets in terrorist activities.” Having been found wanting in her screeching about-turn, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU stood “by the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. Innocent Palestinians should not have to pay the price for the crimes of [the] terrorist group Hamas.”

Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was stiffly bureaucratic in expressing satisfaction at “the commitment of UNRWA to introduce robust measures to prevent possible misconduct and minimise the risk of allegations.” At no point was Israel’s own contribution to the calamity, and its insatiable vendetta against the agency, mentioned.

The bombast and blunder of the whole effort by Israel was further discoloured by claims that UNRWA staff had been victims of torture at the hands of the IDF in drafting the dossier. In a statement released by the agency, a grave accusation was levelled: “These forced confessions as a result of torture are being used by the Israeli Authorities to further spread misinformation about the agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA.” In doing so, Israel was “putting our staff at risk and has serious implications on our operations in Gaza and around the region.”

For its part, the IDF, through a statement, claimed that this was all exaggerated piffle: “The mistreatment of detainees during their time in detention or whilst under interrogation violates IDF values and contravenes IDF [sic] and is therefore absolutely prohibited.”

Increasingly on the losing side of that battle, Israeli authorities decided to cook the figures further, declaring with crass confidence that 450 URWA employees in Gaza were members of militant groups including Hamas. Sticking to routine, those making that allegation decided that evidence of such claims was not needed. Those employees, claimed Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, “are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza”. “This was no coincidence. This is systematic. There is no claiming, ‘we did not know’.”

In the fog of war, mendacity thrives with virile vigour; but the current suggestion on the part of various donor states is that the humanitarian incentive to ameliorate the suffering of the Gaza populace has taken precedence over Israel’s persistently lethal efforts. That, at least, is the case with certain countries, leaving the doubters starkly exposed.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Hollywood stars put their name to a good message, but it’s the messengers who are problematic.

Nuclear Threat Initiative’s CEO is, yes, Ernest Moniz, the former US Energy Secretary, who is at the forefront of promoting nuclear power to anyone and everyone who wants it

Moniz is one of the chief architects behind the pro-nuclear infiltration of the COP28 climate summit

Make (some) nukes history, Hollywood stars put their name to a good message, but it’s the messengers who are problematic

By Linda Pentz Gunter,  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/03/11/make-some-nukes-history/

A handful of Hollywood celebs, some highly recognizable including Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Lily Tomlin, Emma Thompson and Michael Douglas, as well as musicians such as Jackson Brown and Graham Nash, just signed their names to a letter published in the LA Times urging that we “Make Nukes History”.

Hooray, right? Well, only half hooray.

The Hollywood letter was part of a quickly launched campaign to coincide with the Oscar buzz around the successful feature film, Oppenheimer, in order to leverage attention for the need to abolish nuclear weapons. The Make Nukes History campaign aims to raise public awareness about the civilization-ending risks posed by today’s nuclear arsenals. It reminds us that while Oppenheimer is a history lesson, nuclear weapons are very much still with us, but that we can put an end to what J. Robert Oppenheimer started.

So far, all so good. Far too few of us are thinking about nuclear weapons and the threat they pose, let alone doing something about getting rid of them. It’s an important message that needs reiterating.

Meanwhile, Oppenheimer duly swept seven Academy Awards on Sunday. We waited hopefully for one of the winners to say something about the effect of Oppenheimer’s bomb down the ages. It came only from Cillian Murphy at the end of his Best Actor acceptance speech. “We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb and for better or for worse we are all living in Oppenheimer’s world so I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers, everywhere,” Murphy said.

The Make Nukes History message did not make it to the Oscar stage and the LA Times letter was surprisingly skimpy, failing to get at the heart of the two key takeaways missed in the Oppenheimer film: the unwilling, unrecognized and still uncompensated victims of Oppenheimer’s original Trinity bomb; and the on-going harm down generations to all peoples whose lands were seized and used for atomic tests.

The letter includes a quote from President John F. Kennedy, then states:

“At a time of great uncertainty, even one nuclear weapon—on land, in the sea, in the air, or in space—is too many. To protect our families, our communities, and our world, we must demand that global leaders work to make nuclear weapons history—and build a brighter future.”

Demand indeed. Some of us have been doing this for decades. And we have a treaty for that. But thank you for waking up.

But what does “build a brighter future” actually mean? That, it turns out, is the slogan of the organization behind the orchestration of the Hollywood letter and Oscar campaign — the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Let’s first take a look at who actually signed the letter. With two exceptions, all the signatories are white. There are no Native Americans on there. No US Marshall Islanders. Almost none of the Oppenheimer film cast and crew signed it.  The last four signatures belong to the board of NTI.

NTI was the brainchild of Fonda’s ex, Ted Turner. NTI’s CEO is, yes, Ernest Moniz, the former US Energy Secretary, who is at the forefront of promoting nuclear power to anyone and everyone who wants it. Turner is also a firm supporter of nuclear power (I know because I tried to challenge him on it in person and was quickly deflected by a very large gentleman in possession of an impressive set of muscles.)

Moniz is one of the chief architects behind the pro-nuclear infiltration of the COP28 climate summit and its ridiculous “let’s triple global nuclear power capacity by 2050” proclamation. He will be in Brussels later this month, headlining the International Atomic Energy Agency’s propaganda-fest, billed as the First Ever Nuclear Energy Summit. So will Charles Oppenheimer, Robert Oppenheimer’s grandson and another signatory to the LA Times letter.

So here we have a slightly star-studded short-lived campaign to proclaim an end to one kind of nuke, while behind the scenes the same organization is working hard to promote the other kind of nuke, thus ensuring that the door to nuclear weapons development stays firmly open.

So sorry, no two thumbs up for this bit of Hollywood theatre.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. All opinions are her own.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | media, spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

Putin warns again that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty is threatened

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 14, 2024

President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence is threatened, issuing another blunt warning to the West just days before an election in which he’s all but certain to secure another six-year term.

The Russian leader has repeatedly talked about his readiness to use nuclear weapons since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The most recent such threat came in his state-of-the-nation address last month, when he warned the West that deepening its involvement in the fighting in Ukraine would risk a nuclear war.

Asked in an interview with Russian state television released early Wednesday if he has ever considered using battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Putin responded that there has been no need for that. He also noted that he doesn’t think that the world is heading for a nuclear war, describing U.S. President Joe Biden as a veteran politician who fully understands the possible dangers of escalation…………………………….

In an apparent reference to NATO allies that support Kyiv, he also declared that “the nations that say they have no red lines regarding Russia should realize that Russia won’t have any red lines regarding them either.”https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-putin-nuclear-weapons-82ced2419d93ae733161b56fbd9b477d

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Film RADIOACTIVE: The women of Three Mile Island will start streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video from March 12

This film, more than many, brings the destructive impacts from nuclear technology into the hearts of a community of women who suffered from becoming Radioactive in Harrisburg, PA when the Three Mile Island reactor had its accident.

RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island will also be featured in Asheville NC, March 24 as part of the International Uranium Film Festival offerings here that weekend.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Nuclear power and artificial intelligence: the perfect marriage

DAVID MORRISON, THE GLOBE AND MAIL David Morrison is the chief executive officer of Eight Capital, one of the largest independent investment banks in Canada.

“AI will eat software” is the mantra driving the technology industry – but where will it get its power?

Recently, the world’s most valuable chip maker, Nvidia Corp. reported a blow-out quarter with revenues surging 265 per cent, pushing the company’s market capitalization beyond US$2-trillion. Chief executive officer Jensen Huang highlighted the soaring demand for accelerated computing and generative artificial intelligence (AI) worldwide.

AI will drive the next wave of GDP productivity growth. And the next infrastructure race will revolve around the global competition to house data centres. Governments will prioritize securing the data of their citizens and businesses while facilitating the increased domestic utilization of AI.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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