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

Not content with nuclear wastes to the seas, the nuclear lobby now wants floating nuclear power – (for the environment! they say).

New association for maritime nuclear created

OFFSHORE ENERGY , April 3, 2024, by Naida Hakirevic Prevljak

A global group of companies with a common interest in developing nuclear energy solutions for the maritime sector have launched Nuclear Energy Maritime Organization (NEMO).

To be headquartered in London, NEMO will officially start activities in the second quarter of 2024.

By bringing together stakeholders with relevant expertise, NEMO aims to assist nuclear and maritime regulators in the development of appropriate standards and rules for the deployment, operation and decommissioning of floating nuclear power………………………………

Advanced nuclear technologies deployed at sea can reduce environmental impact, enhance social responsibility, and increase economic competitiveness. NEMO aims to provide a platform for its members to network and facilitate a functional connection between regulators to foster development and exchange best practices.

NEMO’s inaugural members are South Korean shipbuilder HD KSOE, the UK-based classification society Lloyd’s Register, American manufacturing and engineering company BWXT Advanced Technologies, American nuclear innovation company TerraPower, Japanese shipbuilder and ship repairer Onomichi Dockyard, American nuclear reactor designer and vendor Westinghouse Electric Company, Anglo-American maritime nuclear innovation company CORE POWER (UK), Fincantieri subsidiary VARD Group, French classification society Bureau Veritas, Italian classification society RINA, and Korean developer, consultant serving nuclear supply chain JEIL Partners.

……………………………………. The organization plans to hold regular events, workshops, webinars, and publications for its members and the wider public. The organization also intends to collaborate with other industry associations, government bodies, academic institutions, and civil society organizations to advance the cause of floating nuclear power.

In related news, Korean industry majors, led by shipping companies HMM and Sinokor, forged an alliance last year to develop nuclear-powered ships.

Under the agreement, the partners aim to develop and demonstrate how small modular nuclear reactors can be used to propel ships. The project will also investigate the development of relevant marine system interface and propulsion technology as well as the production of hydrogen using molten salt reactors (MSR).  https://www.offshore-energy.biz/new-association-for-maritime-nuclear-created/

April 5, 2024 Posted by | oceans, technology | Leave a comment

Nuclear energy cannot lead the global energy transition

With nuclear energy, when things go wrong, they go very, very wrong

Masayoshi Iyoda, Campaigner in Japan for 350.org, 3 Apr 24, ore https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/4/3/nuclear-energy-cannot-lead-the-global-energy-transition

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and a subsequent 15-metre tsunami struck Japan, which triggered a nuclear disaster at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Three of the six plant’s reactors were affected, resulting in meltdowns and the release of a significant amount of radioactive material into the environment.

Today, 13 years later, Japan is still experiencing the impacts of this disaster. Immediately after the earthquake struck, more than 160,000 people were evacuated. Of them, nearly 29,000 still remain displaced.

Disastrous health effects due to exposure to radioactivity are still a serious concern for many, and environmental impacts on land, water, agriculture, and fisheries are still visible. The cost of the damage, including victim compensation, has been astronomical; $7bn has been spent annually since 2011, and work continues.

Last year, Japan’s plan to start releasing more than a million tonnes of treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean sparked anxiety and anger, including among community members who rely on fishing for their livelihoods, from Fukushima to Fiji.

Yet, Japan and the rest of the world appear not to have learned much from this devastating experience. On March 21, Belgium hosted the first Nuclear Energy Summit attended by high-level officials from across the globe, including Japanese Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Masahiro Komura. The event was meant to promote the development, expansion and funding of nuclear energy research and projects.

The summit came after more than 20 countries, including Japan, announced plans to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050 at last year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP28).

All of these developments go against growing evidence that nuclear energy is not an efficient and safe option for the energy transition away from fossil fuels.

Despite advancements in waste-storage technology, no foolproof method for handling nuclear waste has been devised and implemented yet. As nuclear power plants continue to create radioactive waste, the potential for leakage, accidents, and diversion to nuclear weapons still presents significant environmental, public health, and security risks.

Nuclear power is also the slowest low-carbon energy to deploy, is very costly and has the least impact in the short, medium and long term on decarbonising the energy mix. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report pointed out that nuclear energy’s potential and cost-effectiveness of emission reduction by 2030 was much smaller than that of solar and wind energy.

Large-scale energy technologies like nuclear power plants also require billions of dollars upfront, and take a decade to build due to stricter safety regulations. Even the deployment of small modular reactors (SMR) has a high price tag. Late last year, a flagship project by NuScale funded by the US government to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars had to be abandoned due to rising costs.

In addition to that, according to a report released by Greenpeace in 2023, even in the most favourable scenario and with an equal investment amount, by 2050, the installation of a wind and solar power infrastructure would produce three times more cumulative electricity and emit four times less cumulative CO2 compared to a water nuclear reactor in the same period.

And the climate crisis is not just about CO2 emissions. It is about a whole range of environmental justice and democracy issues that need to be considered. And nuclear energy does not have a stellar record in this regard.

For instance, uranium mining – the initial step in nuclear energy production – has been linked to habitat destruction, soil and water contamination, and adverse health effects for communities near mining sites. The extraction and processing of uranium require vast amounts of energy, often derived from nonrenewable sources, further compromising the environmental credentials of nuclear power.

Nuclear energy also uses centralised technology, governance, and decision-making processes, concentrating the distribution of power in the hands of the few.

For an equitable energy transition, energy solutions need not only to be safe, but justly sourced and fairly implemented. While nuclear power plants require kilometres of pipelines, long-distance planning, and centralised management, the manufacturing and installation of solar panels and wind turbines is becoming more and more energy efficient and easier to deploy.

If implemented correctly, regulation and recycling programnes can address critical materials and end-of-life disposal concerns. Community-based solar and wind projects can create new jobs, stimulate local economies, and empower communities to take control of their energy future as opposed to contributing more money to the trillion-dollar fossil fuel industry.

Although the 2011 disaster in Fukushima may seem like a distant past, its effects today on the health of its environment, people and community are reminders that we must not be dangerously distracted with the so-called promises of nuclear energy.

We must not transition from one broken system to another.

Wealthy countries have an ethical historical responsibility to support global finance reform and provide ample funding for renewable energy in lower-income countries. To keep our world safe and fair, not only do we need to tax and phase out fossil fuels immediately, but it is essential that we power up with renewable energy, such as wind and solar, fast, widely, and equitably.

April 5, 2024 Posted by | climate change, Japan | Leave a comment

Israel Keeps Getting More Murderous

In the span of just a few hours we learned that Israel committed a horrific massacre at al-Shifa hospital, struck an Iranian consulate in Syria killing multiple Iranian military officers, and killed a vehicle full of international aid workers in an airstrike. This murderous regime is out of control.

Israel is so dedicated to protecting civilian life that it’s deliberately gunning down unarmed Palestinians whenever they walk within firing range and then adding them to its “Hamas terrorists killed” tally. Haaretz reports that the IDF has set up “kill zones” in Gaza where they just shoot anything that moves, with an IDF reserve officer saying the number of Hamas members Israel claims to have killed is massively inflated because “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.” Haaretz notes that the three escaped Israeli hostages the IDF gunned down in December had wandered into one of these kill zones.

A Doctors Without Borders physician went on Sky News to talk about Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, and the Murdoch shill anchor who was interviewing her asked her if Hamas was active in al-Shifa hospital fighting Israelis. The doctor, Tanya Haj-Hassan, told him “I am just shocked that we’re still having this conversation” and went on to describe how Israel’s assault on Gazan healthcare workers is so methodical that Gazan hospital staff have been changing out of their scrubs before leaving work because Israeli troops are picking off anyone in scrubs.

At the beginning of the year I tweeted, “Gaza is a live laboratory for the military industrial complex. Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies in Gaza (just like has been happening in Ukraine) to be used to benefit the war machine and arms industry.” Since then we’ve learned that the IDF has been experimenting with new military robots in its Gaza assault, and that Israeli startups are now looking to start exporting new AI-powered war machinery marketed as having been “battle-tested” in Gaza………………………………………. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-keeps-getting-more-murderous?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143187375&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Fukushima City: 100 MW solar farm

4 Apr 24,  https://www.pveurope.eu/solar-parks/japan-fukushima-city-100-mw-solar-farm—

Juwi Shizen Energy, the joint venture founded in 2013 between the German project developer Juwi and the Japanese developer of wind and solar parks Shizen Energy, has successfully connected the largest single project in its history to the grid in Fukushima City and has already handed it over to the operator.

Construction of the Azuma Kofuji solar park began in August 2020, and the first kilowatt hour of clean electricity was fed into the grid at the end of September 2022. Annually, the solar park, which is spread over several sub-areas, will produce around 107 million kilowatt hours of electricity. This corresponds to the average consumption of around 31,000 Japanese households.

Juwi Shizen implemented the project as EPC service provider. With the largest project in the joint venture’s history, the project volume implemented since its foundation in 2013 now increases to a total of 602 megawatts. Another 140 megawatts of solar capacity is currently under construction.

Renewable energy plants on abondoned former agricultural land encouraged by law

The completed facility covers an area of approximately 186 acres, most of which is unused farmland. The construction of renewable energy plants on such abandoned former agricultural land is encouraged by law in Japan.

The solar park is located in Fukushima Prefecture, about 80 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. There, core meltdowns occurred in several reactor units in March 2011 as a result of an earthquake and a tsunami triggered by it, making it one of the largest nuclear disasters in history. (hcn)

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Japan, renewable | Leave a comment

Portents of a nuclear war on a burning planet

By Andrew Glikson, Apr 3, 2024,  https://johnmenadue.com/oppenheimers-legacy-portents-of-a-nuclear-war-on-a-burning-planet/

The 24 hours media news cycle clouds the minds of people, perpetrators and hapless victims alike, to the future dimension, whether that of future generations or of the natural world itself.

During the 20-21st centuries, as mean global temperature keeps rising toward 4oC, a failed brain neuron or a damaged computer chip can trigger a nuclear catastrophe, while the 24 hours media news cycle can blind humanity to the future. The conditions emerge where the world is largely taken over by the banality of evil, insane mass murders, fake news and artificial intelligence, lately camouflaged by glitzy Oscar-winning orgies attended by billionaires and celebrity actors, such as at the launch of the film Oppenheimer, where the 140 thousand incinerated victims and hibakusha survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bomb are completely ignored

The film, populated by nuclear scientists, decorated military officers and replete with romantic affairs, makes little reference to the looming road to a nuclear abyss herald by the clock of the atomic scientists. Thus “Oppenheimer” does little to challenge the long history of glorifying the work of white men, and risks perpetuating the persistent, often reductive, portrayals of Japanese victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

The world arsenal of 12,500 nuclear warheads, enough to terminate many advanced species on Earth, is hardly mentioned in the film, dominated by the world of good vs evil proclaimed by priests of god’s chosen nations, while the doomsday machine on which civilisation spends $trillions out of the mouth of starving children.

It is a statistical impossibility that this arsenal may not be triggered, at least in part, by accident or design, such as has nearly-happened. The bloodsheds in Ukraine and Gaza herald the onset of a rules-free world where anything is allowable, ultimately toward global death in the name of freedom.

Perched in front of fluorescent screens, oblivious to the unthinkable, the collective is mesmerised by the obscene untruths of the global media, portraying tribal massacres alternating with funeral insurance advertisements, national hubris and vacuous amusement.

How long would it take, if ever, for people to learn that the last thing politicians would tell them is the entire truth, even if they are aware of it.

Sane voices such as of Noam Chomsky and the late John Pilger are no longer heard.

It is not clear to what extent it worries too many people that the oncoming climate catastrophe and mass extinction of species have become statistically inevitable, as the idea that near -200,000 years of evolution may be eliminated belongs to the unthinkable. The idea may hardly enter into the minds of most decision makers, politicians and strategists.

The 24-hours media news cycle renders peoples’ minds oblivious to the future, whether of their offsprings or of the natural world itself.

The biggest lie, conscious or unconscious, used by authorities which are supposed to protect life, is when they use the term “Future” as they repeatedly do, the very future they are betraying by what they are doing and by what they currently are not.

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Kiev has lost more than 80,000 troops since January 

Russian MoD more https://www.rt.com/russia/595275-ukraine-losses-troops-shoigu/ 3 Apr 24

In excess of 1,200 Ukrainian tanks and other armored vehicles have also been destroyed, Sergey Shoigu has estimated.

Ukrainian forces have lost more than 80,000 troops since the beginning of the year, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday, adding that the Russian military is continuing to reduce “the enemy’s combat potential.”

More than 14,000 pieces of military hardware have also been destroyed by Russian forces since January, including 1,200 tanks and other armored combat vehicles. During the same period, Moscow has liberated some 403 square kilometers of Russia’s new territories, Shoigu told a conference call with the country’s military leadership.

Despite Kiev’s lack of success on the battlefield, the Ukrainian leadership “is still trying to convince its Western sponsors of its ability to resist the Russian Army,” he said. To do so, Kiev has resorted to terrorism and long-range strikes on Russian territories, targeting the civilian population, the minister added.

“Our armed forces react asymmetrically to such crimes by Ukrainian militants,” the defense minister said. In March alone, the Russian military carried out 190 group strikes and two massive assaults on Ukraine using precision weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles, which targeted the country’s military and energy infrastructure facilities, he added.

Last month, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that the Ukrainian military had lost a total of 444,000 personnel since the outbreak of the conflict in February 2022, including 166,000 during last year’s failed summer counteroffensive.

However, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claimed in February that only 31,000 of its soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict. He did not reveal how many had been injured or gone missing in action.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian military commanders have repeatedly complained about a significant shortage of manpower, prompting Kiev to seek new ways of replenishing its fighting force. This includes asking Ukraine’s Western supporters to send back draft dodgers who are hiding abroad, and lower the threshold for citizens to be recruited into military service.

Moscow has repeatedly described the Ukraine conflict as a proxy war being waged against Russia by the US and its allies, and has accused the West of using Ukrainians as “cannon fodder” in pursuit of their own interests.

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Media’s sloppy use of the word “conservative” – (when “fascist” would be the accurate one )


paulrodenlearning, 4 Apr 24

I wish the so called “Liberal,” “Failing,” “fake,” “Mainstream News Media,” (MSM) would stop using the word “conservative,” when referring to politicians, organizations, companies and associations that are anti-democratic with a small d, oppose all environmental and safety legislation and regulations, and blindly worship the unregulated “invisible hand of the free-market” as their god & over ridding political ideology.

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.” Eventually the cancer cell will kill it’s host. How much profit is enough? Belief and worship of this “laissez-faire” view of government regulations, oversite and the market place is not sustainable nor ethical. There would be no “checks and balances,” of businesses in the marketplace by the government if businesses where left to their own devices.

Calling them “conservative,” when they want to actively take us back to the 19th Century or earlier is changing things for the worst, not keeping things as the are. The want to regress and go backwards. That is not “freedom,” that is fascism, racism, sexist, xenophobic and wrong.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

TODAY. Why I am really a CONSERVATIVE, and you should be, too.

Years ago, when I was a member of the Australian Labor Party, I was shocked when someone accused me of being really a conservative at heart. Sacrilege! to a Leftie, to be given such an accusation!

Now I know that it is true.

Conservative – “holding traditional values.”

Conservation – “seeking the proper use of nature, a careful preservation and protection of natural resources to prevent exploitation, pollution, destruction, or neglect.”

It is fashionable, and of course, attention-grabbing in the media – to condemn things that are “old” and claim that “youth opinion” and “feelings” (rather than facts) are what matter , to downgrade our institutions of justice, and representative democracy that have served us well over time.

How is it that now there is worldwide acceptance of the idea that Donald Trump, and indeed the USA Republican Party, the Tories in Britain, and the Australian Liberal-National Coalition are CONSERVATIVES?

They are not conservative at all. They are out to wreck the natural environment, in the interests of a few rich corporations. They are out to wreck the social environment in spurning domestic courts and other legal institutions, like the International Court of Justice. They have attitudes of unfairness to non-white people, indigenous people, refugees, at times of suppression of women’s rights, especially, over their own bodies. This is not conservative. This is RADICAL – uprooting Christian values, and the natural world.

Admittedly, there was a time when the Western world held cruel “Christian” values, – like divine right of kings, slavery, racism, severe suppression of women’s rights, of religious and political rights…. Hanging on to those ideas was then conservatism.

But that’s a while back. In Western countries, values like Christian ideas of equal human rights, compassion and fairness, and also proper care of land, water, and animals – have been around for a long time now.

And that’s why we need to be conservatives There’s really no point in being left-wing or right-wing. No point in slavishly supporting your political party. A genuine conservativism is in looking beyond all the guff, and using those common sense traditional values. The political parties seem to get ever closer together, in the radical new doctrine of ever-increasing profit as the main purpose in life.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes | 3 Comments

Holy See: ‘Nuclear deterrence is an illusion’

Addressing the UN Disarmament Commission in New York, the Vatican Permanent Observer to the United Nations reaffirms that the logic of deterrence is illusionary and calls for the adoption of a binding international treaty to regulate artificial intelligence modelled on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

By Lisa Zengarini, 4 Apr, 24,  https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2024-04/holy-see-nuclear-deterrence-is-an-illusion.html

Amid growing military expenditures and rising conflict around the globe, the Holy See has once again reiterated its urgent plea to reject nuclear deterrence which offers only an illusion of peace. “Rather than preventing conflict the availability of weapons encourages their use and increases their production”, create mistrust and divert resources, warned Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations.

A moral duty

In a statement addressed on Monday to the UN Disarmament Commission, the Vatican Nuncio reaffirmed that weapons proliferation, stockpiling and use make disarmament “a moral duty”, which calls upon “all members of the great family of nations, to move from an equilibrium of fear to an equilibrium of trust”,  the only basis, he said, upon which lasting peace can be achieved.

“The illusory logic of deterrence – Archbishop Caccia noted – is often used to justify the unjustifiable, that is the continued possession of nuclear arms, “any use of which would have catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences, which do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.“

He therefore reiterated the Holy See’s call urging all States to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) thereby “contributing to the replacement of a negative conception of security with a positive one.”

The treaty,  which includes a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities, was adopted by 122 States in 2017

Need  for a legal framework for artificial intelligence

In his statement Archbishop Caccia also referred to the urgent need to develop a normative and operational framework regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

In this regard, he reiterated the Holy See’s proposal to consider the creation of an international agency on AI, while simultaneously urging the global community of nations to work together in order to adopt a binding international treaty that regulates the development and use of artificial intelligence in its many forms modelled on the TPNW.

Such a governance regime, he said, “can help ensure that emerging technologies serve humanity as a whole, rather than particular interests.”

“Many parallels can be drawn between the international governance of nuclear technology and the urgent need to develop a normative and operational framework regarding the use of artificial intelligence.”

Peace is not built  with weapons

Concluding Archbishop Caccia, renewed the Holy See’s unceasing “call for arms to be silenced”, and for the path of gradual but complete disarmament to be resolutely pursued insisting that “peace is built not with weapons, but through patient listening, dialogue and cooperation, which remain the only means worthy of the human person in resolving differences.”

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

45 years after Three Mile Island, we need a ‘No Nukes’ comeback

“A tsunami of nuclear power propaganda is sweeping the globe.” According to Gunter, this propaganda is backed by a multi-billion-dollar nuclear promotion campaign funded by taxpayers via the Biden administration’s Department of Energy. “

Billions of dollars in nuclear subsidies were loaded into Biden’s infrastructure bill, with billions more in the Inflation Reduction Act.

As Biden sinks billions into nuclear energy, members of the historic Clamshell Alliance are reuniting to spark a new wave of anti-nuke resistance.

Arnie Alpert , WAGING NON VIOLENCE, March 25, 2024

When a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went from a technological miracle to a pile of radioactive rubble in a matter of moments in 1979, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire office of the Clamshell Alliance became a hive of activity. I was working there at the time, fielding calls from activists and journalists from around the world. Everyone wanted our opinion since — over the previous few years — our nonviolent demonstrations to prevent the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant put us at the forefront of a growing social movement.

From the arrests of 18 New Hampshire residents in our first act of civil disobedience in 1976 to more than 1,400 arrests the following spring to a permitted rally that drew some 18,000 protesters in 1978, the Clamshell Alliance touched off a grassroots anti-nuclear rebellion that brought the “No Nukes” message to communities across the country and into the popular culture.

With that groundwork in place, Three Mile Island took our message to the next level. The idea that “nuclear power is a bad way to generate electricity” soon became accepted knowledge across the United States. Everyone from Wall Street tycoons to congressional staffers to ordinary voters now understood that the nuclear industry’s promise of safe, clean and affordable power was a fraud.

Unfortunately, in recent years this understanding has slowly eroded, as the industry has worked to tout its product as the answer to climate catastrophe. With the Biden administration now sinking billions into nuclear energy — and Congress on the verge of passing legislation to ease regulatory precautions on new reactors — the nuclear fraudsters are aiming for a comeback.

Whether they call it a ‘nuclear renaissance’ or a ‘nuclear enlightenment,’ nukes aren’t the answer to the climate crisis,” said Paul Gunter, who was one of the first 18 Clamshell members arrested at Seabrook in 1976.

Now the co-director of Beyond Nuclear, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Takoma Park, Maryland, Gunter says “Nukes are just too expensive, take too long to build and feature too many pathways to catastrophic accidents.” What’s more, as he maintains, their continued use — along with building costly new reactors — make climate change worse and the world less safe.

With this in mind, “seasoned Clams,” as we jokingly call ourselves, have been holding regular meetings over Zoom — and occasionally in person — to strategize on how to bring our anti-nuclear message to younger generations, as well as fellow boomers, for whom Three Mile Island has become a faded memory. We ultimately want to refute the nuclear industry’s claims that it has solved the problems posed by the old reactors.

In a statement on our new website, we assert: “A tsunami of nuclear power propaganda is sweeping the globe.” According to Gunter, this propaganda is backed by a multi-billion-dollar nuclear promotion campaign funded by taxpayers via the Biden administration’s Department of Energy. “They even have a plan to convert coal-fired power plants to nuclear generation,” he said.

Billions of dollars in nuclear subsidies were loaded into Biden’s infrastructure bill, with billions more in the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Advancement Act — which sailed through the U.S. House 365-36 last month — extends nuclear subsidies further by continuing the $16.6 billion cap on liability from nuclear accidents for the next 40 years.

“The still unrealized total damage costs of a severe nuclear accident, as evidenced by ongoing nuclear catastrophes at Fukushima (13 year ago) and Chernobyl (38 years ago), are already running into the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Gunter said, adding that Congress didn’t even hold a public hearing on the liability cap extension.

As the new Clamshell website maintains, new nukes are not needed to avert a climate crisis. “Far better options are being built much faster than nuclear power plants, at a fraction of the cost and without the grave hazards. They include solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, efficiency and conservation.”………………………………………………………….. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/03/three-mile-island-45th-anniversary-no-nukes-comeback-clamshell-alliance/

April 4, 2024 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

‘Obscene’: Biden Quietly OKs More 2,000-Pound Bombs, Warplanes for Israel

U.S. support for Israel—which already included nearly $4 billion in annual military aid—has continued unabated, with the Biden administration seeking an additional $14.3 million in armed assistance and repeatedly bypassing Congress to fast-track emergency weapons shipments.

“Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal,” one critic admonished the U.S. president.

BRETT WILKINS, Mar 29, 2024,  https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-military-aid-to-israel-2667634511

Despite growing worldwide calls for an arms embargo, the Biden administration in recent days has approved the transfer of billions of dollars worth of new weapons shipments to Israel, including warplanes and 2,000-pound bombs that have been dropped on densely populated areas of Gaza with devastating results.

The Washington Postreported Friday that the administration has “quietly” authorized arms shipments including more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, as well as 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines worth approximately $2.5 billion. The transfers are the latest of more than 100 arms shipments authorized by the Biden administration since the October 7 attacks on Israel.

“‘Quietly,'” Palestinian American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer scoffed in response to the report. “This is cowardly from the administration. If you are going to be full backers of genocide, own it. We see you and history sees you as well.”

“It is scary to think of the world U.S. support for Israel is creating. A world with no rules, no limits in war, where norms don’t exist, and where genocide is supportable,” he added. “Good luck getting anyone to listen to you about international law after this.”

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said in a statement: “We strongly condemn the Biden administration’s unbelievable and unconscionable decision to secretly send hundreds of new 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons to support Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide. Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal.”

According to the Post:

The 2,000-pound bombs, capable of leveling city blocks and leaving craters in the earth 40 feet across and larger, are almost never used anymoreby Western militaries in densely populated locations due to the risk of civilian casualties.

Israel has used them extensively in Gaza, according to several reports, most notably in the bombing of Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp October 31. U.N. officials decried the strike, which killed more than 100 people, as a “disproportionate attack that could amount to war crimes.” Israel defended the bombing, saying it resulted in the death of a Hamas leader.

The Biden administration’s arms shipments to Israel continue despite urgent pleas from United Nations officials, international human rights groups, and some progressive U.S. lawmakers to stop arming Israel’s 175-day Gaza onslaught, during which Israeli bombs and bullets have killed more than 32,600 Palestinians—mostly women and children—while wounding over 75,000 others and damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, and other structures.

The International Court of Justice in January found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza and ordered the country to prevent genocidal acts. However, Israel has been accused of ignoring the ICJ order, and amid ongoing atrocities—including the forced starvation of Palestinians—the court on Thursday issued another order demanding that Israel allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Last December, when the death toll in Gaza stood at approximately 18,000, President Joe Biden implored the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Palestinian civilians in the embattled enclave.

However, U.S. support for Israel—which already included nearly $4 billion in annual military aid—has continued unabated, with the Biden administration seeking an additional $14.3 million in armed assistance and repeatedly bypassing Congress to fast-track emergency weapons shipments.

“The U.S. cannot beg Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and the next send him thousands more 2,000-pound bombs that can level entire city blocks,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on social media Friday. “This is obscene. We must end our complicity: No more bombs to Israel.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told the Post that “the Biden administration needs to use their leverage effectively and, in my view, they should receive these basic commitments before greenlighting more bombs for Gaza. We need to back up what we say with what we do.”

Biden administration officials have claimed they don’t have any leverage over Israel, drawing ridicule from observers who point to the indispensable military and diplomatic support the U.S. provides.

The staggering death and destruction wrought by Israel’s assault on Gaza has drawn criticism from even staunch supporters of the key U.S. ally.

Referring to the worsening famine in Gaza—which one U.S. State Department official acknowledged anonymously to Reuters on Friday—New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on social media: “Really, POTUS? With Gaza facing starvation and Netanyahu defying you over Rafah, you ship billions of dollars in additional weapons to Israel, including 2,000-pound bombs, without end-use restrictions? Bibi is rolling you.”

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April 4, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

April 29 – May 2 Free public events during Not-the-Nuclear-Lobby Week in Ottawa

 https://stop-smrs.weebly.com/not-nuclear.html

Monday, April 29, 6:30 PM (pay what you can)
Film Screening Radioactive – The Women of Three Mile Island​
Tuesday, April 30, 7 PM (free)
Workshop reading of the play The Children
Wednesday, May 1, 7 PM (free)
Community Forum: Canada’s Nuclear Future – Renaissance or Relic?

April 4, 2024 Posted by | opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Dennis Kucinich: the US engineered a coup to drag Ukraine into a conflict

by Donald A. Smith, PhD, 3 Apr 24, https://progressivememes.org/ukraine/Dennis-Kucinich-on-Ukraine.html

In this April 2, 2024 interview with Judge Napolitano, Dennis Kucinich says: “What’s happened is that the U.S. State Department and U.S. Government basically engineered a coup in Ukraine and used that to drag Ukraine into a conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas and ignited this war which Russia has been horrible in the way they have come in and attacked. There’s been six hundred thousand people, the flower of Ukraine, who have been killed. This thing is heartbreaking. But we cannot ignore the role that the U.S. has played in helping to impel it, and we cannot ignore the fact that, as you point out, there was a chance to resolve this two years ago.”  (He’s referring to how in March of 2022 the U.S. forced the Zelensky government to step back from a peace deal that was being negotiated with Russia.)

Kucinich says that it will be impossible for the U.S. and NATO to defeat the Russian military.  “There needs to be an end to this war, an effort to repair Ukraine.”  Stop this “vainglorious effort to build up NATO.” Napolitano said that the neocons Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Joe Biden think they can use Ukraine as a battering ram to weaken Russia, but Putin is popular and the Russian economy is thriving.  Napolitano says, “The war was started in 2014 by the United States with the coup, as you pointed out.”   (For more details about how the U.S. engineered the war, see this.  The CIA was deeply involved. Numerous senior U.S. diplomats warned that aggressive NATO expansion would lead to a war. RAND Corporation recommended arming Ukraine as the best way to weaken Russia. The U.S. government always lies about its wars.)

Napolitano asks Kucinich why all the Dems in Congress are behind the war in Ukraine. Kucinich replies that it’s partly due to the desire not to be shunned by their caucus and partly due to a desire to support the incumbent Democratic president.

Kucinich said that Senator Biden supported the disastrous war in Iraq, and the same sort of thinking that led to that war exists in the U.S. government today. Indeed, many of the same people are making  policy. They’re leading us to war with Russia and in the Middle East (Gaza and possibly Iran) and are preparing for war with China. “It’s madness. It’s against the interest of the American people. It’s against the taxpayers of this country. It’s driving our national debt. It’s leading to the collapse of America, not the collapse of Russia, not the collapse of China.” Instead of trying to rule the world by military force, we should take care of our own needs.

Kucinich also condemns U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza and calls what Israel is doing “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Syria, also a crime according to international law.  On the one hand, President Biden  says Israel should not invade Rafah and should respect Palestinian lives. On the other hand, Biden gives billions of dollars of weapons. Netyanahu has got the “Biden government over a barrel because of the politics of this. And he knows that and will keep going on.”  “You can’t give someone a gun who has a record of killing innocent people and say, ‘Don’t kill innocent people'” (without being complicit).

“We cannot afford to be the policeman of the world”  with a $34 trillion debt.

Naopolitano (who has been interviewing a lot of lefty peace activists) ends by calling Kucinich a “fierce defender of civil liberties, constitutional government and peace.”

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics, Ukraine, USA, USA elections 2016 | Leave a comment

I Could Not Stay Silent: Annelle Sheline Resigns from State Dept. over U.S. Gaza Policy

DEMOCRACY NOW, MARCH 28, 2024

A State Department official working on human rights issues in the Middle East resigned Wednesday in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Annelle Sheline, who worked as a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, was not planning on publicly resigning, but her colleagues asked her to “please speak out” against the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel. “At the end of the day, many people inside [the State Department] know that this is a horrific policy, and can’t believe that the United States government is engaged in such actions that contravene American values so directly, but the leadership is not listening,” says Sheline.

“I’m trying to speak on behalf of those many, many people who feel so betrayed by our government’s stance.” Sheline describes being moved by the words of Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty U.S. airman who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in protest of the war on Gaza, who implored everyone to take a stand against genocide. “I have a young daughter, and I thought about, in the future, if she were to ask me, ‘What were you doing when this was happening? You were at the State Department.’ I want to be able to tell her that I didn’t stay silent.”

Transcript…………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/28/annelle_sheline

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Lawsuit challenges $1 billion in federal funding to sustain California’s last nuclear power plant

BY MICHAEL R. BLOOD, 10, April 4, 2024

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An environmental group has sued the U.S. Energy Department over its decision to award over $1 billion to help keep California’s last nuclear power plant running beyond a planned closure that was set for 2025. The move opens another battlefront in the fight over the future of Diablo Canyon’s twin reactors.

Friends of the Earth, in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, argued that the award to plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric last year was based on an outdated, flawed analysis that failed to recognize the risk of earthquakes or other serious events.

The complaint called the safety assessment “grossly deficient” and accuses the Energy Department of relying on a 50-year-old environmental analysis.

“The environmental impacts from extending the lifespan of this aging power plant at this point in time have not been adequately addressed or disclosed to the public,” the complaint said.

An email seeking comment was sent to the Energy Department.

Diablo Canyon lies on a bluff overlooking the Pacific midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It began operating in the mid-1980s and supplies up to 9% of the state’s electricity on any given day.

In 2016, PG&E, environmental groups and unions representing plant workers agreed to close the facility by 2025. But the Legislature voided the deal in 2022 after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom reversed his position and said the power is needed to ward off blackouts as the state transitions to renewables and climate change stresses California’s energy system.

Since then, disputes have swirled about the safety of Diablo Canyon’s decades-old reactors, whether taxpayers might be saddled with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs and even if the electricity is needed in the age of solar and other green energy.

PG&E has long said the twin-domed plant is safe, an assessment endorsed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Biden administration approved $1.1 billion in Energy Department funding in January. The financing came through the administration’s civil nuclear credit program, which is intended to bail out financially distressed owners or operators of nuclear power reactors as part of the administration’s effort to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.

PG&E has said it wants to keep the plant open to “ensure statewide electrical reliability and combat climate change” at the direction of the state.

The utility is seeking a 20-year extension of its federal licenses, typical in the industry, but emphasized the state would control how long the plant actually runs. A state judge has conditionally approved a blueprint to keep it operating for an additional five years, until 2030.

California is the birthplace of the modern environmental movement and for decades has had a fraught relationship with nuclear power. The fight over Diablo Canyon is playing out as the long-struggling nuclear industry sees a potential rebirth in the era of global warming. Nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but it leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

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