TODAY. Ethics, intelligence, literature, and nuclear reprocessing
What on Earth has literature got to do with nuclear power? Well, nothing, really, I suppose.
And yet…….
An article today, about nuclear reprocessing, brought to mind the dilemma for Shakespeare’s Macbeth as he continues on the path to his doom.
Macbeth decides to go on, though he knows it is hopeless:
“I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er“
He decides to just keep doing the same thing, rather than to stop, and think about alternatives:
” Strange things I have in head, that will to hand; Which must be acted ere they may be scann’d.”
“They have invested too much money in the program to give up on it halfway“
That’s the reason why the Japanese government will continue with this $97 billion massive white elephant of the Rokkasho nuclear reprocessing plant.
Even if the reprocessing plant is completed, it can treat only 800 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually at full capacity, compared with 19,250 tons of spent fuel stored nationwide.
Calls have grown over the years to abandon the nuclear fuel cycle project. – The Asahi Shimbun.
What has intelligence got to do with it? Well, meaning common sense, (rather than spying) – it would be intelligent to stop this futile project, and take some different actions, such as stopping making this toxic trash.
Finally – what has ethics got to do with this?
Well, everything. The Japanese government won’t face up to the truth. Neither will world leaders. It’s all too hard – leave it to our great-grandchildren to deal with the radioactive trash, and all the environmental, social, and weapons-and war-dangers of this noxious industry.
The $97 billion mess – spent nuclear fuel reprocessing in Japan
The reprocessing plant was initially scheduled for completion in 1997.
Including expenditures for the future decommissioning of the plant, the total budget has reached 14.7 trillion yen. (close to $97 billion)
Even if the reprocessing plant is completed, it can treat only 800 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually at full capacity, compared with 19,250 tons of spent fuel stored nationwide.
“They have invested too much money in the program to give up on it halfway,“
Another delay feared at nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori
By AKI FUKUYAMA/ Staff Writer, April 1, 2024, https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15183716
Long-flustered nuclear fuel cycle officials fear there could be another delay in the project.
In a surprise to hardly anyone, the “hopeful outlook” for completion in June of a spent fuel reprocessing plant, a key component in Japan’s nuclear fuel cycle project, was pushed back in late January.
The facility is supposed to extract plutonium and uranium from used nuclear fuel. The recycled fuel can then be used to create mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, which can run certain nuclear reactors.
But the incompletion of the plant has left Japan with 19,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel with nowhere to go.
The nuclear waste stockpile will only grow, as the administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is turning to nuclear energy to cut Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the country’s dependence on increasingly expensive fossil fuels.
Under the plan, 25 to 28 reactors will be running by 2030, more than double the current figure. Tokyo Electric Power Co. is seeking to restart reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture this year.
31 YEARS AND COUNTING
A sign reading “village of energy” stands near Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd.’s nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture.
The site, which is 159 times the size of Tokyo Dome, is lined with white buildings with no windows.
Construction started 31 years ago. It was still being built in late November last year, when it was shown to reporters.
The reprocessing plant is located on the Shimokita Peninsula at the northern tip of the main Honshu island.
Crops in the area are often damaged by cold humid winds during summer, so Rokkasho village accepted the plant in 1985 for local revitalization in place of agriculture.
Employees of privately-run Japan Nuclear Fuel, which is affiliated with nine major power companies, and other industry-related personnel account for more than 10 percent of Rokkasho’s population.
After repeated readjustments to the schedule, Naohiro Masuda, president of Japan Nuclear Fuel, said in December 2022 that the plant’s completion should come as early as possible during the first half of fiscal 2024, which is April to September 2024. More specifically, he pointed to “around June 2024.”
But at a news conference on Jan. 31 this year, Masuda said it is “inappropriate to keep saying the plant will be completed in June.”
The reprocessing plant was initially scheduled for completion in 1997.
Many insiders at the plant say it will be “quite difficult” to complete the work within the first half of fiscal 2024.
If officially decided, it will be the 27th postponement of the completion.
PROLONGED SCREENING, ACCIDENTS
One of the reasons for the delay of the completion is prolonged screenings by the Nuclear Regulation Authority.
Flaws were identified one after another in the company’s documents submitted to the nuclear watchdog, and around 400 Japan Nuclear Fuel employees are working on the papers within a gymnasium at the plant site.
Mechanical problems have also hampered progress. In 2022, for example, a system to cool high-level radioactive liquid waste broke down.
Masuda visited industry minister Ken Saito on Jan. 19 to report on the situation at the plant.
Saito told Masuda about the construction, “I expect you to forge ahead at full tilt.”
Masuda stressed his company “is fully devoted to finishing construction as soon as possible,” but said safety “screening is taking so much time because we have myriad devices.”
The cost to build the reprocessing plant, including new safety measures, has ballooned to 3.1 trillion yen ($20.57 billion), compared with the initial estimate of 760 billion yen.
Including expenditures for the future decommissioning of the plant, the total budget has reached 14.7 trillion yen. (close to $97 billion)
Even if the reprocessing plant is completed, it can treat only 800 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually at full capacity, compared with 19,250 tons of spent fuel stored nationwide.
Kyushu Electric Power Co. said in January that it would tentatively suspend pluthermal power generation at the No. 3 reactor of its Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture. The reactor uses MOX fuel.
Kyushu Electric commissioned a French company to handle used fuel, but it recently ran out of stocks of MOX fuel.
Kyushu Electric has a stockpile of plutonium in Britain, but it cannot take advantage of it because a local MOX production plant shut down.
HUGE INVESTMENT
Calls have grown over the years to abandon the nuclear fuel cycle project.
Many insiders of leading power companies doubt whether the reprocessing plant “will really be completed” at some point.
But the government has maintained the nuclear fuel cycle policy, despite the huge amounts of time and funds poured into it.
“The policy is retained just because it is driven by the state,” a utility executive said.
Hajime Matsukubo, secretary-general of nonprofit organization Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, said the government’s huge investment explains why the fuel cycle program has yet to be abandoned.
“They have invested too much money in the program to give up on it halfway,” Matsukubo said.
Xi Jinping’s Thoughts on China’s Nuclear Weapons
Xi noted the increased readiness those new silos might provide was necessary to prepare to respond to foreign military intervention. That sounds more defensive than aggressive. ……………….. China’s long-standing commitment not to use nuclear weapons first at any time or under any circumstances.
UCS is concerned about the future direction of Chinese nuclear weapons policy. We agree with Gen. Cotton that “the PRC’s long-term nuclear strategy and requirements remain unclear.” We urge influential US voices, including the media, to refrain from encouraging the public, and especially US decision-makers, to jump to conclusions the available evidence does not support. We also urge the Biden administration, and the US Congress, to wait until they have a clearer understanding of Chinese nuclear thinking before making precipitous decisions about the future of the US nuclear arsenal.
April 1, 2024, Gregory Kulacki, China Project Manager, This blog was co-authored with UCS China analyst Robert Rust. https://blog.ucsusa.org/gregory-kulacki/xi-jinpings-thoughts-on-chinas-nuclear-weapons/
Last month UCS published a critique of a New York Times article that claimed Chinese military strategists, “are looking to nuclear weapons as not only a defensive shield, but as a potential sword — to intimidate and subjugate adversaries.” We examined the evidence and found it did not support that claim.
However, there was one piece of evidence in the article we could not examine; a speech by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to China’s Second Artillery in December of 2012. It operates China’s conventional and nuclear missiles and was renamed the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force in 2016. We’ve since obtained a copy of that speech and found it doesn’t support the New York Times claim either. There is no language in Xi’s speech that suggests he thinks about the purpose of China’s nuclear arsenal differently than his predecessors.
We posted the original Chinese text with an English translation. It is classified as an “internal publication” that should be “handled with care.” It was printed and distributed to all Chinese military officers at the regimental level and above by the General Political Department of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in February 2014.
Why is this speech worth reading?
UCS first learned about the speech ten years ago when a Chinese colleague drew our attention to language in a commentary on the speech by generals Wei Fenghe and Zhang Haiyang, the commander and party secretary of the Second Artillery at the time. Our colleague noticed it contained new language describing the alert level of Chinese missiles. He thought the two officers might be trying to influence Xi’s thinking. UCS took note of that the new language in our 2016 report on a possible change in China’s nuclear posture.
That report concluded China may shift some of its nuclear forces to what is called a “launch on warning” or “launch under attack” alert status that would give Chinese leaders the option to launch those nuclear missiles quickly before they could be destroyed by an incoming attack. Traditionally, China kept its nuclear missile force off-alert, and the Second Artillery trained to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike only after being struck first. Currently, China is believed to keep most of its nuclear warheads in storage, separated from the missiles that carry them, to prevent an accidental or unauthorized launch.
Although China may still be moving to a launch on warning posture, the full text of Xi’s December 2012 speech, and the phrase it contains related to alert levels, reveals Xi did not discuss nuclear strategy or announce an intention to put Chinese nuclear forces on alert. He addresses more general concerns about the combat readiness, ideological orientation, and human qualities of Chinese military officers. Every Chinese head of state since 1842, when the United Kingdom defeated Imperial China in the Opium War, shared the same concerns. Xi did not say anything new, specific, or surprising. There is no language in his speech that justifies the suggestion he communicated aggressive new nuclear ambitions that day.
What did Xi say?
Continue readingAmerica’s Nuclear War Plan in the 1960s Was Utter Madness. It Still Is.
The Final Solution was enacted. The SIOP never has been—not so far. But a similar, still-classified plan exists today. Over the years, its name has changed. It is now simply the Operational Plan (OPLAN).
We rarely consider the dangers these days, but our existence depends on it.
ANNIE JACOBSEN, MARCH 27, 2024, Mother Jones
This article was adapted from Nuclear War: A Scenario, published March 26, 2024, by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright 2024 by Annie M. Jacobsen.
Nuclear war is madness. Were a nuclear weapon to be launched at the United States, including from a rogue nuclear-armed nation like North Korea, American policy dictates a nuclear counterattack. This response would almost certainly set off a series of events that would quickly spiral out of control. “The world could end in the next couple of hours,” Gen. Robert Kehler, the former commander of US Strategic Command, told me in an interview.
We sit on the razor’s edge. Vladimir Putin has said he is “not bluffing” about the possibility of using weapons of mass destruction should NATO overstep on Ukraine, and North Korea accuses the US of having “a sinister intention to provoke a nuclear war.” For generations, the American public has viewed a nuclear World War III as a remote prospect, but the threat is ever-present. “Humanity is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” cautions UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “We must reverse course.”
So far, we haven’t. The Pentagon’s plans for nuclear war remain firmly in place.
The US government has spent trillions of dollars over the decades preparing to fight a nuclear war, while refining protocols meant to keep the government functioning after hundreds of millions of Americans become casualties of a nuclear holocaust, and the annual budgets continue to grow. The nation’s integrated nuclear war plan in the 1960s was utter madness. It almost certainly remains so today. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Atomic bombs were “a threat to mankind and to civilization,” warned the group of admirals, generals, and scientists who authored the report—“weapons of mass destruction” able to “depopulate vast areas of the Earth’s surface.” But they could also be very useful, the group told the Joint Chiefs. “If used in numbers,” they wrote, “atomic bombs not only can nullify any nation’s military effort, but can demolish its social and economic structures and prevent their reestablishment for long periods of time.”……………………………………………….
What America had created presaged its own potential demise. “The United States has no alternative but to continue the manufacture and stockpiling of weapons,” the Joint Chiefs were advised. They took notice and approved……………………………………………………………………….
the atomic bomb—its extraordinary power, its mass-killing capacity—would pale in comparison to what was coming next. American and Russian weapons designers each had radical new plans on their individual drawing boards. What followed was the invention, in 1952, of “the most destructive, inhumane, and indiscriminate weapon ever created,” in the words of a group of Nobel laureates. A climate-altering, famine-causing, civilization-ending, genome-changing, newer, bigger, and even more monstrous nuclear weapon—one that the scientists involved called “the Super.”
Indeed, the Super “works better in large sizes than in small sizes,” its designer, Richard Garwin, told me in an interview, confirming that, yes, “I am the architect of the Super…of this first thermonuclear bomb.” Edward Teller conceived it and Garwin drew it at a time when no one else knew how.
The Super was a two-stage mega-weapon: a nuclear bomb within a nuclear bomb. A thermonuclear weapon, also called a hydrogen bomb, uses an atomic (fission) bomb as its triggering mechanism—as an internal, explosive fuse. The Super’s explosive power is the result of an uncontrolled chain reaction in which the nuclei of hydrogen isotopes combine under extremely high temperatures, releasing tremendous energy.
An atomic bomb will kill tens of thousands of people immediately (and tens of thousands later, from follow-on effects), as did the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whereas a thermonuclear bomb detonated on or over a city like New York or Seoul will kill millions of people in a superheated flash, followed by millions more from blast, firestorms, and radioactive fallout.
Garwin’s 1952 prototype had an explosive power of 10.4 megatons—the near equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs exploding all at once. It was an atrocious weapon. Garwin’s mentor, the Manhattan Project physicist Enrico Fermi, experienced a crisis of conscience at the very thought of such a horrifying weapon being built. Fermi and his colleague I.I. Rabi temporarily broke ranks with their weapons-building colleagues and wrote to President Truman, declaring the Super “an evil thing.”
As they put it: “The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.”
But the president ignored the plea to stop building the Super, and Garwin was given the go-ahead to draw the plans. “If the hydrogen bomb was inherently evil, it’s still evil,” Garwin told me.
The Super was built. Its code name was Mike. The series was Ivy. “So it was the Ivy Mike test,” he said.
On November 1, 1952, it was test-fired on Elugelab island in the Marshall Islands. The Ivy Mike prototype weighed around 80 tons, an instrument of destruction so physically enormous it had to be constructed inside a corrugated-aluminum building 88 feet long and 46 feet wide.
Ivy Mike exploded with an unprecedented yield. The crater left behind was described in a classified report as being “large enough to hold 14 buildings the size of the Pentagon.” And while there is much to say about the inhumanely destructive power of thermonuclear weapons in general, two aircraft photographs—before and after shots of the Ivy Mike bomb test—tell the story.
What happened after America’s war planners saw what 10.4 megatons could instantly destroy simply boggles the mind. What came next was a mad, mad rush to stockpile thermonuclear weapons, first by the hundreds and then by the thousands.
In 1952 there were 841 nuclear bombs. The next year there were 1,169.
“The process became industrialized,” historian McDuff explains. “These were not science projects anymore.”………………………………..
By 1967, it hit an all-time high: 31,255.
One nation. Thirty-one thousand, two hundred and fifty-five nuclear bombs.
Why stockpile 31,255 nuclear bombs when a single bomb the size of Ivy Mike, dropped on New York City or Moscow, could wipe out 10 million people? Why continue to mass-produce such weapons when the use of a single thermonuclear bomb will almost certainly ignite an unstoppable, civilization-ending nuclear war?
As the nuclear stockpile multiplied out of control, so did each of the US military branches’ plans for nuclear war. As crazy as this now seems, before December 1960, each Army, Navy, and Air Force chief had control over his own nuclear stockpile, delivery systems, and target lists. In an attempt to rein in the potential for mayhem from these multiple, competing plans, the secretary of defense ordered them all to be integrated into a single plan, which is how the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) for General Nuclear War got its name.
……………………………… The secret plan that, if activated, would result in the deaths of at least 600 million people on the other side of the world.
The SIOP showed how the entire US military force would be launched at Moscow in a preemptive first strike. How defense scientists had carefully calculated that 275 million people would be killed in the first hour, and that at least 325 million more people would die from radioactive fallout over the next six or so months. Roughly half of these deaths would be in the Soviet Union’s neighboring countries—countries not at war with America, but that would be caught in the crosswinds. This included as many as 300 million Chinese.
………………………………………………………………………………………………….. No one spoke up to object to the indiscriminate killing of 600 million people in a preemptive, US–led first-strike, Rubel wrote. Not any of the Joint Chiefs. Not the secretary of defense. Not John Rubel. Then, finally, one man did: Gen. David Shoup, the Marine Corps commandant, who’d been awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in World War II.
“Shoup was a short man with rimless glasses who could have passed for a schoolteacher from a rural mid-American community,” recalled Rubel. He remembered how Shoup spoke in a calm, level voice when he offered the sole opposing view: “All I can say is, any plan that murders 300 million Chinese, when it might not even be their war, is not a good plan. That is not the American way.”
The room fell silent, Rubel wrote. “Nobody moved a muscle.”
Nobody seconded Shoup’s dissent.
No one else said anything.
According to Rubel, everyone just looked the other way.
Decades later, Rubel confessed that the SIOP had reminded him of the Nazis’ plans for genocide. In his memoir, he referred to a time when a group of Third Reich officials met at a lakeside villa in the German town of Wannsee. It was there, over the course of a 90-minute meeting, that this group of allegedly rational men decided among themselves how to move forward with the genocide in a war they were presently winning—World War II—so as to ensure total victory. Millions of people needed to die, these officials agreed.
Millions of them.
The Final Solution called for the extermination of all of Europe’s millions of Jews and millions more people the Nazis considered subhuman. The plan for General Nuclear War that Rubel and his colleagues signed off on—the SIOP—called for the mass extermination of some 600 million Russians, Chinese, Poles, Czechs, Austrians, Yugoslavians, Hungarians, Romanians, Albanians, Bulgarians, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Finns, Swedes, Indians, Afghans, Japanese, and others whom US defense scientists calculated would be caught in the crosswinds.
The Final Solution was enacted. The SIOP never has been—not so far. But a similar, still-classified plan exists today. Over the years, its name has changed. It is now simply the Operational Plan (OPLAN).
When the SIOP was created, there were just two nuclear-armed nations. Today there are nine: the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. Several of these countries are in direct conflict with one another. There is great instability between Pakistan and India…………………………………………………………….
For the Nuclear Information Project, in consort with the Federation of American Scientists, project director Hans Kristensen and senior researcher Matt Korda have identified the current Operational Plan for nuclear war as OPLAN 8010-12, consisting of “‘a family of plans’ directed against four identified adversaries: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.” But like all the Exceptionally Controlled Information in the nuclear command and control domain, the details of what, exactly, these war plans entail are off limits to the public…………………………………………………….
So here we are. Teetering at the edge—perhaps even closer than ever before……………………………….more https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/03/nuclear-war-scenario-book-siop-weapons-annie-jacobsen/
UK govt lawyers conclude Israel in breach of humanitarian law – media
A view of damaged buildings at Maghazi refugee camp after Israeli attack in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on March 29, 2024.
Sun, 31 Mar 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/490269-UK-govt-lawyers-conclude-Israel-in-breach-of-humanitarian-law-media
British authorities, however, have apparently opted to keep the findings out of the public domain.
Lawyers for the UK government have established Israel has been breaking humanitarian law amid its ongoing conflict in Gaza with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a senior Tory is claiming, according to leaked audio revealed by the Observer newspaper on Saturday.
Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Alicia Kearns, made the remarks earlier this month during a Conservative Party fundraising event. “The Foreign Office has received official legal advice that Israel has broken international humanitarian law but the government has not announced it,” Kearns, a former official with the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, who has been pressing the government on the matter, said during the event.
The legal experts’ assessment effectively makes the UK complicit in the Israeli military’s violations, and defense cooperation should have been severed by London immediately after they produced their evaluation of the situation in Gaza.
“They have not said it, they haven’t stopped arms exports. They have done a few very small sanctions on Israeli settlers and everyone internationally agrees that settlers are illegal, that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing, and the ways in which they have continued and the money that’s been put in,” Kearns stated.
During the event, Kearns insisted that she, like the UK Foreign Secretary James Cameron, strongly believes in Israel’s right to “self defense,” noting however that there were legal boundaries for exercising it.
“The right to self defense has a limit in law. It is not limitless,” she explained, warning that Israel’s approach to handling the escalation may end up putting its own – and Britain’s – long-term security at risk.
The authenticity of the recordings obtained by the Observer appears beyond question, given that Kearns has been rather vocal about her position on the matter. On Saturday, she produced similar remarks as well, once again urging the government to make public its legal assessment of the Israeli actions.
“I remain convinced the government has completed its updated assessment on whether Israel is demonstrating a commitment to international humanitarian law, and that it has concluded that Israel is not demonstrating this commitment, which is the legal determination it has to make,” she stated, arguing that “transparency” was absolutely needed to “uphold the international rules-based order.”
Israel launched the operation in Gaza following an incursion by Hamas militants into the southern part of the country last October. During the attack, over 1,200 people were killed and scores of hostages were taken into Gaza. The Israeli campaign inflicted heavy damage on the Palestinian enclave, causing widespread destruction and leaving at least 32,000 people dead, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Comment: Suppressing findings which are inconvenient is nothing new for Western governments so it’s no real surprise that the findings have not been made public. Whether anything changes now that the findings are public remains to be seen (don’t hold your breath).
WEBINAR 11 April Nuclear exploitation: how uranium mining harms communities
Thur. Apr. 11, 1:30 p.m. ET
To produce nuclear power, uranium has to be mined. But this activity proves devastating for the communities – very often of Indigenous people – working in and living near the mines. As well as immediate and ongoing harms, contamination from uranium mining activity persists for tens of thousands of years, leaving a dangerous legacy for current and future generations. Join CND and Beyond Nuclear for this webinar to discuss how uranium mining for nuclear power production affects communities far away from where the power is consumed.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iThP7xYKRVy6XxQ46hOwpA#/registration
Review: Annie Jacobsen’s ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’ Will Make You Start Worrying And Hate The Bomb
What follows is a stomach-clenching, multi-perspective, ticking-clock, geopolitical thriller rooted in the seeds of our own destruction,
I made the rather poor choice of reading this book while on a beachside vacation and rather than being able to relax, I couldn’t put the thing down, feverishly turning page after page until I finished it on the plane ride home, anxiously wondering if a nuclear exchange would take place mid-flight. By the time the wheels had touched down on the tarmac, I was truly shaken to my core, now a converted advocate for nuclear disarmament.
For most us, the threat of nuclear war — and the irradiated holocaust that follows — is an abstract concept; an antiquated relic of the laughably preposterous “duck-and-cover” days of the Cold War. That couldn’t be father from the truth, as Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen frighteningly outlines in her latest work of non-fiction, Nuclear War: A Scenario (now on sale from Penguin Random House).
The result of all-out atomic conflict between the globe’s nuclear-capable nations would not be the rose-colored, retro-apocalyptic vision put forth by Bethesda’s hit Fallout video games (the series adaptation of which debuts on Amazon’sAMZN+0.3% Prime Video April 11). The idea of “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” by the Ink Spots serenely playing over the visual of ICMBs criss-crossing the globe and bringing about the end to human civilization as we know it certainly makes for a nice filmmaking flourish, but the reality of mutual assured destruction is (and this should come as a shock to no one born since August 1945) unimaginably, uncomprehendingly horrific.
Taking physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s famous quotation of the Bhagavad Gita — “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” — to its logical conclusion, Nuclear War: A Scenario provides a second-by-second, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour (even millennia-by-millennia) rundown of what would most likely happen in the ultimate nightmare scenario: North Korea launches a preemptive, “bolt out of the blue” strike on the United States, causing mass chaos, death, and hysteria by targeting Washington, D.C. and California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
America, of course, returns the favor in kind and the fate of the human race is sealed — not in blood, but in a voracious hell-storm of radioactive particles.
What follows is a stomach-clenching, multi-perspective, ticking-clock, geopolitical thriller rooted in the seeds of our own destruction, planted nearly 80 years ago at the Trinity test site by the scientists of the Manhattan Project who brazenly dared to rip the building blocks of our universe apart.
The sad irony? The weapon supposedly meant to bring about peace at the end of World War II resulted in the development and hectic stockpiling of ever-advancing instruments (these newer models imbued with even more killing power than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) designated for the next global conflict.
In the famous words of Albert Einstein: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Jacobsen expertly delivers a madman’s portrait of Armageddon, one made all the more impactful by the thought that it could literally occur at any moment. Almost novel-like in its presentation, Nuclear War: A Scenario represents the equivalent of an existential gut punch, a sickening and necessary reminder of how fragile every 21st century convenience becomes in the face of a blinding flash of light and near-instantaneous shockwave. Tens of thousands of years of progress are vaporized within an instant. People and objects are turned to ash; birds catch fire and drop out of the sky; unfortunate survivors die in agony from acute radiation sickness. And those who manage to survive all of that receive the consolation prize that is the drastic climatological shift known as nuclear winter.
All it takes is a simple miscommunication, an unforeseen technological malfunction, or the demented whim of someone bereft of all reason — or, in Jacobsen’s parlance, “a mad king” — to blast apart that decades-old veneer of deterrence (a policy as ludicrous as it as brittle). By choosing not to name any of the key players (presidents, dictators, spies, journalists, generals, radar technicians, etc.) in this sordid tale of radioactive vengeance, Jacobsen achieves a timeless, masterful, and Rod Serling-esque allegory for mankind’s shortsightedness and penchant for violence. This scenario can effectively be plugged into almost any place at any time.
I made the rather poor choice of reading this book while on a beachside vacation and rather than being able to relax, I couldn’t put the thing down, feverishly turning page after page until I finished it on the plane ride home, anxiously wondering if a nuclear exchange would take place mid-flight. By the time the wheels had touched down on the tarmac, I was truly shaken to my core, now a converted advocate for nuclear disarmament.
Exhaustively researched and featuring interviews with professionals who truly understand just how close we continue to creep toward thermonuclear annihilation Nuclear War: A Scenario should be required reading for everyone alive today, especially for the politicians and policymakers who literally hold the precarious fate of our species in their hands. This is not some wannabe soothsayer holding a cheap plastic sign yelling “The end is nigh!” on a busy street corner. This is an ominous wake-up call and we better not hit the snooze button.
Any person of influence with a fleeting connection to their country’s nuclear arsenal needs to understand what happens if the proverbial genie is let out of the bottle. Put another way, nuclear weapons are Pandora’s Box made real. As Ms. Jacobsen points out, none of this need ever happen. All we have to do is take the proper steps “to prevent nuclear World War III.” I believe her book has the power to change minds and legislation.
Let’s hope it can change things for the better.
Nuclear War: A Scenario is now on sale from Penguin Random House.
How much will extra decades of nuclear decommissioning work at Dounreay cost?
By Gordon Calder gordon.calder@hnmedia.co.uk, 28 March 2024
The cost of extending the decommissioning work at Dounreay is expected to
be published in the summer, according to a spokeswoman at the site.
She was responding to questions from the John O’ Groat Journal, following last
week’s announcement that the clean up-operation at the nuclear plant will
continue until the 2070s – almost 40 years longer than the previous date of
2033. The cost of the programme was previously said to be about £2.9
billion.
Asked about the estimated cost of extending the decommissioning,
the spokeswoman said: ” The estimate for delivering the revised lifetime
plan to take the Dounreay site to its interim end point, will form part of
the Nuclear Provision, and be published in the NDA (Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority) 2023/24 annual report in the summer. We are committed to
delivering the Dounreay mission as effectively and efficiently as
possible.”
John O’Groat Journal 28th March 2024
Radioactive nuclear waste burial ground in Pittsburgh area to be cleaned up by federal government
By Andy Sheehan, April 1, 2024 ,
https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/radioactive-nuclear-waste-burial-ground-armstrong-county-parks-township/
KISKIMERE, Pa. (KDKA) — An untold number of 55-gallon drums containing radioactive waste are buried in shallow trenches on a 144-acre site in Armstrong County.
They pose a health and safety danger to those who live nearby. But now after decades of lawsuits and public outcry, the federal government is getting ready to finally clean it up.
Debbie Secreto has lived next to the contaminated field in Parks Township all of her life. She played on it as a kid, unaware of the hidden danger. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at 44 years old.
There are 10 shallow trenches filled with haphazardly disposed of radioactive nuclear waste. Though she and other cancer survivors won a class action settlement years ago, she’s remained in her childhood home.
“It’s hard living like this, but what are you going to do? Move? I don’t want to move. I’m 71 years old,” Secreto of Kiskimere said.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the company MUMEC in nearby Apollo produced nuclear fuels for power plants and nuclear submarines and buried the waste in Parks Township. Now, after decades of fighting for it, neighbors like Secreto have won another major victory.
The United States government is finally taking action, now building the needed infrastructure to commence a six-year, $500-million project to excavate all of that nuclear waste to decontaminate and clean the entire 144-acre site.
Beginning next year, contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin the slow and methodical process of excavating an estimated 30,000 cubic yards of contaminated waste. They will unearth a little bit at a time, scanning it with X-rays and radiation detectors before encapsulating it in steel containers.
The waste will then be trucked and shipped by rail to a disposal site in Utah, where it will be permanently buried deep underground.
But while happy the waste is going elsewhere, neighbors are concerned the unearthing could spark a nuclear event, releasing toxins into the air and water.
“Everybody up here is worried about it. It’s going to be dangerous,” said Karen Brenner of Kiskimere.
“I can promise that we are committed to protecting the health and welfare of the community and the environment,” said Steven Vriesen, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In participating in reports like this, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it is committed to transparency with the public and will be holding meetings to assure the community every safeguard to safely remove the waste will be taken.
“We have multiple layers of safety,” said David Romano, deputy district engineer. “From air monitors on the workers that are right on the site, groundwater monitoring, surface water monitoring, air monitors around the perimeter, all to ensure our actions ensure the health and safety of our environment.”
If all goes well, this six-year project will restore the site and make this Armstrong County community a safe place to live again.
U.S. Nuclear Weapons Costs, Projections Continue to Rise
Arms Control Association, April 2024, By Xiaodon Liang
The Biden administration’s $850 billion defense budget request for fiscal year 2025 would increase spending for Defense Department nuclear weapons programs by 31 percent over the current year and projects sharply rising future costs for some key nuclear modernization programs.
The request for National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) weapons-related activities is 4 percent higher than appropriated by Congress for fiscal year 2024. In all, the budget request, unveiled on March 11, calls for $69 billion for nuclear weapons operations, sustainment, and modernization, including $49 billion for Pentagon programs and the rest for the NNSA. The combined budgets would be 22 percent higher than last year.
Three key nuclear rearmament programs are driving increasing costs. The funding request for the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system foresees lifetime research and development (R&D) and procurement costs that are 44 percent higher than anticipated in the 2024 budget request. The Columbia-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine program will consume 30 percent of the Navy’s $32 billion shipbuilding budget under the administration’s spending plan for 2025, up from 17 percent in the budget authorized by Congress for 2024.
Meanwhile, the cost of producing plutonium pits at the 80-unit-per-year rate mandated by Congress is projected to rise to more than $4 billion per year from fiscal years 2027 to 2029.
The administration released the new budget request before Congress completed work on the appropriations bills that actually fund the government for the current fiscal year. Congressional negotiators finalized the fiscal 2024 appropriation figures for the Defense Department in late March……………………………………………….
The cost overruns put the Sentinel program in “critical” breach of the Nunn-McCurdy Act, triggering a mandatory investigation into the root causes of the unanticipated cost increases. By mid-April, the Defense Department is required to give Congress an explanation of the cost increase, changes in the projected cost, changes in performance or schedule, and action taken or proposed to control growth.
The Sentinel program is in “deep trouble,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) of the House Armed Services Committee and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote in a March 14 letter to Kristyn Jones, the acting undersecretary of the Air Force. The lawmakers called for a thorough assessment of alternatives to the Sentinel program, including possibly extending the life of the Minuteman III ICBM to 2030, 2040, or 2050…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-04/news/us-nuclear-costs-projections-continue-rise
U.S. government extends key nuclear power subsidy by another 40 years
Feds extend nuclear power subsidy
The appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed by President Biden extends the Price-Anderson Act through 2065
On March 23rd, President Biden signed an appropriations bill that also included a 40-year extension of a key subsidy to the nuclear industry, the Price-Anderson Act.
Thanks to this policy, should a catastrophic accident happen at one of the 54 nuclear plants operating in the United States, the nuclear industry would be liable for the first $16.1 billion in damages and taxpayers would be on the hook to cover the remainder. The Fukushima nuclear disaster has already been reported to exceed $90 billion. The full value of the Price-Anderson nuclear subsidy is difficult to estimate, but if nuclear operators had to carry the full cost of insurance against a nuclear accident, the plants would most likely become uneconomic to build.
Per dollar of investment, clean energy solutions – such as energy efficiency and renewable resources – deliver far more energy than nuclear power. As of January 2024, the United States has more utility-scale solar capacity than nuclear.
“Despite recent growth, we’re just scratching the surface of America’s renewable energy potential,” said Johanna Neumann, senior director of Environment America’s Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy. “Instead of propping up nuclear power generation through liability limits, Congress should double-down on efforts to drive energy efficiency, solar, wind and geothermal.”
Sprawling Sellafield Nuclear Waste Site Prosecuted for Cybersecurity Failings
UK regulator said that one of the world’s most toxic sites accumulated cybersecurity “offenses” from 2019 to 2023
Dark Reading Staff, Dark Reading, April 2, 2024, https://www.darkreading.com/ics-ot-security/sellafield-nuclear-waste-site-prosecuted-cybersecurity-failings
Sellafield Ltd, the managing company of the Sellafield nuclear site, will be prosecuted by the UK’s independent nuclear safety regulator for alleged cybersecurity offenses.
According to the safety regulator, the infractions were garnered over a four-year period from 2019 to 2023. However, the regulator noted in its announcement that there is nothing to suggest that public safety has been compromised over these “information technology security offenses.” The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) provided little comment regarding what the specific issues are, or the legal proceedings, but noted that “details of the first court hearing will be announced when available.”
This is not the first time the company has been under scrutiny. Its cybersecurity issues were also addressed in the Chief Nuclear Inspector’s annual report on the country’s nuclear industry, released last September. And in December, the Guardian released a bombshell report that advanced persistent threats (APTs) backed by Russia and China have been breaching the Sellafield’s IT systems as far back as 2015 — attacks that the paper alleged have been consistently covered up by senior staff at the site, which holds a vast store of radioactive waste and the world’s largest store of plutonium
Though it’s not currently known whether any senior managers were involved in these security failings and, if so, whether they’ll face charges, if convicted, an individual can face a maximum of two years in prison.
A nuclear reactor is located on the Sellafield grounds. Even though it was closed in 2003, it is still Europe’s largest nuclear site, and the ONR considers it to be “one of the most complex and hazardous nuclear sites in the world.” That’s likely a big part of the reason why the company’s cybersecurity failings are of notable concern.
Though cyberattacks on power plants aren’t necessarily common, they have occurred on rare occasions, such as the 2017 spate of attacks using Triton malware, also known as Trisis and HatMan, that was used to target a Middle East petrochemical facility at the hands of the Russian Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (TsNIIkhM). The threat actor moved through IT and operational technology (OT) networks to gain entry to the safety system and targeted the Schneider Electric Triconex safety instrumented system, which allows initiation of a safe shutdown process in case of emergencies. With the system modified by malware, it could have led to damages to the facility, operational shutdown, and even fatalities.
That said, what kind of damage a cyberattack would cause Sellafield and whether it could have a similar catastrophic fallout is unknown, since the nuclear reactor is no longer operational.
‘Oppenheimer’ finally opens in Japan, the only nation to experience horror of nuclear war
By Chris Lau and Moeri Karasawa, CNN, Mon April 1, 2024
Japanese moviegoers finally got the chance to see “Oppenheimer” this weekend, eight months after the biopic’s worldwide release, following concerns over how it might be received in the only country to directly experience the horror of nuclear weapons.
The Oscar-winning blockbuster by British-American director Christopher Nolan was one of 2023’s most successful films and its joint release on the same weekend as “Barbie” created a global movie spectacle dubbed “Barbenheimer.”
But that framing left many Japanese people feeling uncomfortable — as did the painful content of a movie that centers on the devastating technology unleashed by J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists.
Some in Japan felt that the unofficial “Barbenheimer” marketing campaign trivialized the 1945 nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and studio Universal Pictures opted not to include the country in its global release rollout last July.
The three-hour biopic has broken several records since its release last year, becoming the highest-grossing movie set during World War II, according to Universal.
In Japan, it ranked fourth at the box office following its release Friday, according to industry tracker Kogyo Tsushinsha, raking in 379 million yen ($2.5 million) in its first three days.
As part of its promotional campaign, Universal sought the views of atomic bomb survivor Tomonaga Masao, who is the president of a Nagasaki-based “hibakusha” group — the name survivors call themselves. In quotes published on the movie’s official Japanese website, Masao said could feel the titular character’s struggle in the latter part of the film, when Oppenheimer begins to push back against the nuclear arms race that emerges after the war.
“This is… connected to the fundamental problem of the world today, where a nuclear-free world is becoming more and more distant,” he is quoted as saying
“Here we sense Nolan’s hidden message of pursuing the responsibility of politicians,” he added.
Former Hiroshima Mayor Hiraoka Takashi is meanwhile quoted saying that he saw “a man full of contradictions,” whose scientific work was weaponized by the state and whose warning against downplaying the threat of nuclear war was later ignored by those same authorities.
“The atmosphere of those days still fills our world today,” he said, adding: “I would like to watch it again and think about what a nation that believes in nuclear deterrence is”
……………………………………………………………………………………
Rishu Kanemoto, a 19-year-old student, saw the film on Friday.
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were dropped, are certainly the victims,” he told Reuters.
But he also expressed sympathy for Oppenheimer.
“I think even though the inventor is one of the perpetrators, he’s also the victim caught up in the war,” he added. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/01/style/japan-oppenheimer-release-nuclear-intl-hnk/index.html
Say no to small modular reactors: Stop normalizing the exploitation of nature
The Bulletin, By Erin Hurley | April 1, 2024 Erin Hurley is a fourth-year student at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where she studies Environment & Society and Journalism. She was a research assistant last year on the Plutonium Project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), for which she explored news media discourses on proposed small modular reactors in New Brunswick. This year, she is a research assistant on the SSHRC-funded CEDAR (Contesting Energy Discourses through Action Research) Project, for which she is focusing on news media coverage of energy transitions in the province.
Among other global crises, the worsening impacts of climate change are intensifying every year. Last year was the warmest on record and, beginning in March 2023, raging wildfires filled cities across Canada with smoke for months. This year is already shaping up to be warmer than the last. This is why a lot of young people are questioning the very systems we live under. This is why many of us support a rapid and just transition in energy. But in this process, some governments are promoting an expansion of nuclear power, supposedly to solve climate change. I fear that such an expansion will result in my generation having to confront an equally terrifying set of problems resulting from the nuclear fuel chain.
This is precisely what I already see happening around me in the Canadian province of New Brunswick where I live and study. Over the last few years, the province’s government has advocated for and funded the development of what it calls small modular reactors (SMRs). Even though SMR doesn’t include the word “nuclear,” these are nuclear reactors. Ostensibly, these reactors are meant to decarbonize the Canadian economy. But in 2021, New Brunswick Energy Minister Mike Holland protested the 2030 target for phasing out coal in the province, saying new nuclear reactors would not be ready in time to meet that goal. How will the expansion of nuclear power decarbonize the economy if, meanwhile, New Brunswick is still extracting and burning fossil fuels?
The province has funded two companies—Moltex Energy and ARC Clean Technology—to develop small modular reactors. On their websites, Moltex and ARC market nuclear power as “clean,” “carbon free,” and a “clean energy solution.”
Last year, Moltex CEO Rory O’Sullivan spoke to me, my fellow students, and professors working on the Plutonium Project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in which we explored these small modular reactors being proposed for the province to develop an understanding of the assumptions, claims, and implications of these technologies. I remember O’Sullivan as friendly and well-spoken. He emphasized that a transition away from fossil fuels is necessary and that renewable energy is a key element in this transition. Yet he told us that wind farms, for example, could not generate enough energy to sustain our society, and that battery storage was not advanced enough to help with this, and thus renewables could not be considered an effective climate solution on their own. This is why he advocates for small modular reactors—as a necessary supplement to renewables in the energy transition. But, again, he stressed that, at Moltex, they were working to reduce any potential safety risks.
This made me wonder: What about the highly radioactive waste these reactors will produce?
Even if SMRs produce less waste than past nuclear reactors (although not when weighted by how much electricity they produce), spent fuel will remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. While nuclear proponents have argued that a deep geological repository would be an effective storage space for the waste, there are many uncertainties surrounding this proposal, and the long-term impacts are unknown. The proposed sites for the repository are located on traditional Indigenous lands in the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation-Ignace and Saugeen Ojibway Nation-South Bruce areas in Ontario. Because the safety of the proposed repository is unproven, storing radioactive waste there would jeopardize the health of the local Indigenous communities and their lands.
Moltex and ARC have advertised reprocessing as a way to recycle waste and use it to power other reactors. However, this is also incredibly dangerous, because once plutonium is separated from used nuclear fuel, it can be used much more easily in the production of atomic weapons. If separated plutonium were to fall into the wrong hands, the result would be nuclear proliferation—an increased number of nuclear weapons across the globe.
In addition to the waste and proliferation problems, small modular reactors will not be built and operating in time to be an effective climate solution. Canada’s climate targets involve decreasing greenhouse gas emissions to 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and reaching net-zero by 2050. However, ARC predicts that it will finish building its first small modular reactor by 2028 which will “replace the existing coal generation station in 2030” at Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in Saint John, New Brunswick. And Moltex does not expect to have an “operational reactor” until “the early 2030s.”
This timeline will clearly not help Canada reach its decarbonization goal by 2030, and so the country will not be on track for the 2050 goal either. Given these realities, I find it hard to believe that nuclear power is in the best interest of humans, non-human species, or the planet as a whole.
Capitalist nations that prioritize economic growth above all else, such as the United States and Canada, have normalized the exploitation of nature……………………………………………….. more https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/say-no-to-small-modular-reactors-stop-normalizing-the-exploitation-of-nature/#post-heading
How the myth of the ‘collective Jew’ shields Israel from criticism
What’s Wrong with the ‘New Antisemitism’ Project
Rebecca Ruth Gould, Medium 1 Apr 24
Whatever Happened to Antisemitism?: Redefinition and the Myth of the ‘Collective Jew’ (Pluto Books, 2022), Antony Lerman examines what happened to antisemitism during the past five decades. How did the effort to define antisemitism become aligned with the silencing of Israel-critical speech? The story is complex and has never been told in the detail and depth that Lerman tells it in this book.
Lerman writes as a central figure in the antisemitism debates. In addition to being a lifelong observer of the struggle against antisemitism, he has also been a participant in making this history. He served as Director of the Institute of Jewish Affairs from 1991, in which capacity he founded the Antisemitism World Report, which was published from 1992 to 1998…………………………….. https://medium.com/deterritorialization/whats-wrong-with-the-new-antisemitism-project-3b44ab8c5840
1.This Month
Small Nuclear Reactors Education Task Force: https://stop-smrs.weebly.com/bulletins.ht
24 May. The Vow from Hiroshima film is coming on PBS, this month https://www.thevowfromhiroshima.com/
3 June – FILM. SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy
6-7 July A summit and a rally in Washington D.C. https://nonatoyespeace.org/
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