Christmas Island veterans receive nuclear testing medals
By Isaac Ashe & Steve Beech, BBC News, Derbyshire, 16 May 24
Derbyshire veterans who conducted nuclear tests for the British armed forces in the 1950s have been recognised at a ceremony.
Operation Grapple saw a series of British nuclear weapons tests carried out close to Christmas Island, in the Pacific Ocean, between 1957 and 1958.
The bomb tests assured British military power during the Cold War.
Four members of the armed forces who took part in the testing and one widow were presented with medals on Friday…………………………………………………………. more https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-69028261
ALL reactor-produced plutonium is usable in nuclear weapons.
Gordon Edwards 19 May 4
Whenever plutonium is created in a nuclear reactor, it is always mostly plutonium-239. The higher isotopes – plutonium-240, plutonium-241, plutonium-242 – are always present in diminishing order of importance.
A lighter “burnup” (a shorter residence time in the reactor) will reduce the opportunity for the heavier isotopes to be created (by repeated neutron captures), and so the relative percentage of plutonium-239 will be that much greater.
The important thing to know is that ALL reactor-produced plutonium is usable in nuclear weapons, including the even-numbered isotopes.
See www.ccnr.org/plute_for_bombs_GE_2024.pdf
Plutonium-238 is only a very small fraction of the plutonium in used reactor fuel. By itself, plutonium-238 is the only isotope of plutonium that probably cannot be used for bomb-making, simply because it generates too much spontaneous heat for the bomb to be stable (i.e. the concentniopnal explosive=s needed for detonation will likely melt.)
However the presence of very small amounts of plutonium-238, as in any plutonium extracted from used nuclear fuel, is not a serious problem..
Warning that Dounreay could be facing ‘prolonged’ industrial action over pay dispute
https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/warning-that-dounreay-could-be-facing-prolonged-industrial-350623/— 14 May 24, By Gordon Calder
Two unions at Dounreay are to strike on Wednesday after rejecting a new pay offer from management.
The Unite and GMB unions turned down the revised offer which proposed a one-off £500 payment on top of a basic 4.5 per cent increase. The deal was accepted by Prospect members.
Dounreay management is “disappointed” by the news of the strike but remains “committed to finding a resolution that is fair and affordable”.
Kim Thain, the vice-chair of the Trade Union Co-ordinating Committee at Dounreay, confirmed that GMB and Unite have rejected the new offer and will be on strike on Wednesday.
“There will be picketing at the site, and action short of a strike will commence on Thursday,” she said. “The next strike date of May 29 has been communicated to the company, and future dates will be notified to them over the next few days.
“I can confirm that Prospect has accepted the revised offer and is not taking part in any industrial action.”
US Senators Threaten Criminal Court & Advise Israel to Nuke Gaza
By Thalif Deen, https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/05/us-senators-threaten-criminal-court-advice-israel-nuke-gaza/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=us-senators-threaten-criminal-court-advice-israel-nuke-gaza
UNITED NATIONS, May 16 2024 (IPS) – As the ancient Greek saying goes: those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive them mad. Perhaps destruction is too far-fetched here, but madness is closer home—in Washington DC
With the 7-month-old Israeli-Gaza conflict showing no positive signs of a permanent solution, there is a lingering sense of growing political craziness in Capitol Hill, the seat of the US government, once described as Israeli-occupied territory.
Last week Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican senator from South Carolina, who once chaired the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, implicitly advised Israel it should drop nuclear bombs over Gaza—perhaps ignorant of the fact that a nuclear fallout will also destroy parts of Israel.
In a TV interview, Graham advised Israel: “Do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state”—as he compared Israel’s war on Gaza to the US war with Japan during World War II.
“When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons,” Graham said in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press.
Meanwhile, Tim Walberg, a Republican House member said wiping out Gaza “should be like Hiroshima and Nagasaki” “Get it over quick”, he advised Israel.
Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and Editor of The Palestine Chronicle told IPS: “Sure, Israel is yet to drop a nuclear bomb, but it has dropped enough US bombs over the besieged Strip to create the impact of nuclear weapons.”
He pointed out that 75 percent of Gaza has been destroyed, and about 5 percent of the population have been killed or wounded. This was done by Biden and his supposedly softer approach, if compared to Graham, to the war.
“This is indeed madness, but, in a sense, it also reflects a degree of desperation,” said Baroud.
Meanwhile, 12 US Republican senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have openly threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) with sanctions if they target Israeli officials.
The threat is directed at both ICC officials and their family members — if and when, the Court moves forward with international arrest warrants against Israeli leaders over the war in Gaza.
“Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States,” read the April 24 letter.
“You have been warned,” the letter added.
Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS the goal posts on the USA’s political field have been dragged rightward since last autumn by the combined forces of standard militarism, craven political jockeying, biased mass-media coverage and ferocious pro-Israel messaging.
The countervailing force in the United States is coming from grassroots opposition to Israel’s mass murder and rejection of its support provided by the U.S. political establishment.
Often led by activists in such organizations as Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, the highly visible protests last fall and winter seeded the ground for the upsurge in student-led protests in recent weeks on U.S. college campuses, he said.
This nonviolent grassroots resistance to Israeli genocide and oppression of Palestinian people has shocked the traditional American Zionist establishment and its allies in the leadership of the Democratic Party.
“The growing resistance has also provoked an extreme reactionary response from right-wing media outlets such as Fox News and many dozens of Republicans in Congress who have vocally and mendaciously denounced efforts to end the slaughter, which is subsidized by U.S. taxpayers to the benefit of both the fascistic Israeli government and military contractors based in the United States”, he argued.
“The flagrantly racist and ethnocentric reactions of Republican leaders, combined with the rhetorical Democratic vacillation that continues to support the Israeli-inflicted carnage in Gaza, comprise the two wings of U.S. governance. Most young Americans, in particular, are now emphatically opposed to both wings enabling the genocide,” he noted.
This is an ongoing political struggle over whether the U.S. government will continue to support Israel as it pursues its systematic slaughter of civilians in Gaza, declared Solomon, national director, RootsAction.org and author of, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.”
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/campus-protests-gaza
In their letter to Karim A. Khan, ICC Prosecutor, the 12 Senators say: “We write regarding reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) may be considering issuing international arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and if carried out will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.
By issuing warrants, you would be calling into question the legitimacy of Israel’s laws, legal system, and democratic form of government. Issuing arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel would not only be unjustified, it would expose your organization’s hypocrisy and double standards.
“Neither Israel nor the United States are members of the ICC and are therefore outside of your organization’s supposed jurisdiction. If you issue a warrant for the arrest of the Israeli leadership, we will interpret this not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
Nuclear waste to be buried 650ft under the English countryside.
Swathes of nuclear waste are set to be buried in the English countryside
after ministers agreed to dig a 650ft pit starting this decade. The
facility, which has yet to be allocated a site, will hold some of the 5m
tonnes of waste that was generated by nuclear power stations over the past
seven decades.
This will ease pressure on the 17 nuclear waste disposal
plants currently in operation around the country, which consist of giant
sheds and cooling ponds. The largest facility is the Sellafield site in
Cumbria.
Plans for the 650ft pit will see it house so-called
intermediate-level waste, possibly in a mine on a pre-existing nuclear site
to minimise planning objections. The facility will be separate from the
much deeper geological disposal site that will hold the UK’s most
dangerous waste, such as plutonium, which is unlikely to be built until
after 2050.
The proposals come amid fears Britain’s stockpile of nuclear
waste will grow in the coming decades with nowhere to put it. Concerns are
particularly acute as the Government is currently planning to build at
least three new nuclear power stations. This will put the country at odds
with the 1976 review of nuclear waste policy by the Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution, which warned the UK was accumulating nuclear waste
so fast that it should stop building reactors until it had a solution.
Ministers want to brand nuclear energy as a “green” and
“sustainable” fuel. However, experts on the Government’s own advisory
body, the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, have said such terms
are misleading if there is no safe place to store radioactive waste.
A government spokesman said: “In addition to long-term plans to dispose of
the most hazardous radioactive waste in a geological disposal facility
hundreds of metres underground, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will
explore a facility closer to the surface for less hazardous radioactive
waste. “While a geological disposal facility is not expected to be ready
until the 2050s, a shallower disposal facility – which is up to 200m
below ground – could be available within 10 years.”
Telegraph 16th May 2024
The US a Direct Partner in the Israeli War
By Ramzy Baroud, https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/05/us-direct-partner-israeli-war/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=us-direct-partner-israeli-war
SEATTLE, Washington, May 16 2024 (IPS) – A major mistake we often commit in our analysis of the US political discourse on the Gaza war is that we assume that the US and Israel behave as if they are two political entities with separate agendas and sets of priorities.
Nothing could be further from the truth. From the start of the war, top US officials including President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken saw themselves as the guardians of Israeli interests. Blinken attended Israel’s first War Council meeting as if an Israel official, and Biden carried on reiterating that he is a Zionist.
Despite purported difference on various matters between Tel Aviv and Washington, for example, the nature and size of Israel’s military operation in Rafah, their interests remain identical: defeating Palestinians, restoring Israeli so-called deterrence, returning to the status quo in the region, and reigning in Israel’s enemies, including Iran, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansarullah.
The US is a direct partner in the Israeli war: defeating any UN attempt at calling for immediate, unconditional, and binding ceasefire, arming Israel with billions of dollars of the deadliest weapons and fighting, directly – as in the case of Yemen – or indirectly against Israel’s regional enemies who are showing solidarity with the Palestinians.
That context in mind, the dangerous comments by Senator Graham are consistent with the Biden’s administration actions regarding Gaza.
Sure, Israel is yet to drop a nuclear bomb, but it has dropped enough US bombs over the besieged Strip to create the impact of nuclear weapons. 75 percent of Gaza has been destroyed, and about 5 percent of the population have been killed or wounded. This was done by Biden and his supposedly softer approach, if compared to Graham, to the war.
This is indeed madness, but, in a sense, it also reflects a degree of desperation.
Israel is losing in Gaza. Not ‘losing’ as in failing to achieve its objectives, but losing militarily against Palestinian groups who are employing successful guerrilla warfare tactics.
After over 7 months of war, the fighting is back exactly where it started; and while Palestinians are perfecting their resistance craft, Israel is losing more soldiers at a much higher rate.
Comments about nuclear bombing Gaza comes within this context, that of Israel’s failure, if not desperation. US and Israeli officials know well that the war has been lost, or, at best, cannot be won.
But also losing the war means a fundamental shift in the power paradigm in the Middle East, the kind of change that neither Netanyahu, Graham nor their ilk can afford.
On November 5, Israel’s minister of heritage also spoke about the possibility of nuking Gaza, using Israeli mainstream media to communicate his ideas. Graham is now saying the same thing, using US mainstream media as an outlet to convey the same notion.
There is much to learn here about the nature of the relationship between both countries, but also this language teaches us that top politicians in Tel Aviv and Washington realize that the limits of traditional warfare have been reached yet failed to alter the reality on the ground in any way, aside from massacring tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). The link to his website follows: www.ramzybaroud.net
IPS UN Bureaur
Promising the Impossible: Blinken’s Out of Tune Performance in Kyiv
On May 14, in his address to the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Blinken described what could only be reasoned as a vast mirage…….. This astonishingly irresponsible statement makes Washington’s security agenda clear and Kyiv’s fate bleak: Ukraine is to become a pro-US, anti-Russian bastion, with an open cheque book at the ready.
The gong of deceit and delusion must.. go to Blinken.
May 18, 2024, Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/promising-the-impossible-blinkens-out-of-tune-performance-in-kyiv/
Things are looking dire for the Ukrainian war effort. Promises of victory are becoming even hollower than they were last summer, when US President Joe Biden could state with breathtaking obliviousness that Russia had “already lost the war.” The worst offender in this regard remains the United States, which has been the most vocal proponent of fanciful victory over Russia, a message which reads increasingly as one of fighting to the last Ukrainian.
Such a victory is nigh fantasy, almost impossible to envisage. For one thing, domestic considerations about continued support for Kyiv have played a stalling part. In the US Congress, a large military aid package was stalled for six months. Among some Republicans, in particular, Ukraine was not a freedom loving despoiled figure needing props and crutches. “From our perspective,” opines Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, “Ukraine should not and cannot be our problem to solve. It is not our place to defend them in a struggle with their longtime adversary, Russia.” The assessment, in this regard, was a matter of some clarity for Paul. “There is no national security interest for the United States.”
Despite this, the Washington foreign policy and military elite continue to make siren calls of seduction in Kyiv’s direction. On April 23, the Senate finally approved a $US95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, with the lion’s share – some US$61 billion – intended for Ukraine’s war effort.
On April 24, a press release from US Secretary State Antony Blinken announced a further US$1 billion package packed with “urgently needed capabilities including air defense missiles, munitions for HIMARS, artillery rounds, armored vehicles, precision aerial munitions, anti-armor weapons, and small arms, equipment, and spare parts to help Ukraine defend its territory and protect its people.”
On May 14, in his address to the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Blinken described what could only be reasoned as a vast mirage. “Today, I’m here in Kyiv to speak about Ukraine’s strategic success. And to set out how, with our support, the Ukrainian people can and will achieve their vision for the near future: a free, prosperous, secure democracy – fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community – and fully in control of its own destiny.” This astonishingly irresponsible statement makes Washington’s security agenda clear and Kyiv’s fate bleak: Ukraine is to become a pro-US, anti-Russian bastion, with an open cheque book at the ready.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made the prevention of that vision an article of faith. While Russian forces, in men and material, have suffered horrendous losses, the attritive nature of the conflict is starting to tell. While Blinken was gulling his audience, the military realities show significant Russian advances, including a threatening push towards Kharkiv, reversing Ukrainian gains made in 2022.
There are also wounding advances being made in other areas of the conflict. US and NATO artillery and drones supplied to Ukraine’s military forces have been countered by Russian electronic warfare methods. GPS receivers, for instance, have been sufficiently deceived to misdirect missiles shot from HIMARS launchers. In a number of cases, the Russian forces have also identified and destroyed the launchers.
Russian airpower has been brought to bear on critical infrastructure. Radar defying glide bombs have been used with considerable effect. On the production and deployment front, Colonel Ivan Pavlenko, chief of EW and cyber warfare at Ukraine’s general staff, lamented in February that Russia’s use of drones was also “becoming a huge threat”. Depleted stocks of weaponry are being replenished, and more soldiers are being called to the front.
Despite concerns, one need not scour far to find pundits who insist that such advances and gains can be neutralised. Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace admits to current Russian “material advantage” and holding “the strategic initiative,” though goes on to speculate that this “may not prove decisive.”
The gong of deceit and delusion must, however, go to Blinken. Americans, he claimed, understood “that our support for Ukraine strengthens the security of the United States and our allies.” Were Putin to win – and here, that old nag of appeasement makes an undesirable appearance – “he won’t stop with Ukraine; he’ll keep going. For when in history has an autocrat been satisfied with carving off just part, or even all, of a single country?”
Towards that end, “we do have a plan,” he coyly insisted. This entailed ensuring Ukraine had “the military that it needs to succeed on the battlefield.” Biden was encouraged by Ukrainian mobilisation efforts, skipping around the logistical delays that had marred it. Washington’s “joint task” was to “secure Ukraine’s sustained and permanent strategic advantage”, enabling it to win the current battles and “defend against future attacks. As President Biden said, we want Ukraine to win – and we’re committed to helping you do it.”
Even by the standards of US Secretaries of States, Blinken’s conduct in Kyiv proved brazen and shameless. A perfect illustration of this came with his musical effort alongside local band, 19.99, involving a rendition of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”
Local indignation was quick to follow. “Six months of waiting for the decision of the American Congress” had, fumed Bohdan Yaremenko, legislator and former diplomat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, “taken the lives of very, very many defenders of the free world.” What the US was performing “for the free world is not rock ’n’ roll, but some other music similar to Russian chanson.”
As for the performance itself, the crowd at Barman Dictat witnessed yet another misreading – naturally by a US politician – of an anthem intended to excoriate American failings, from homelessness to “a kinder, gentler machine gun hand.” Appropriately, the guitar, much like the performer, was out of tune.
UK government about to overrule Scotland and impose nuclear stations?
Don’t get above your nuclear power station, Scotland
17th May, By Wee Ginger Dug, https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24325966.dont-get-nuclear-power-station-scotland/—
Scotland, know your place. Our exalted Viceroy General Alister Jack – He Who Must Be Obeyed – has said that the UK Government is considering plans to build a nuclear reactor in Scotland, despite fierce opposition from the Scottish Government and even though planning is a devolved matter.
Jack told a committee in the Lords that he expected a “Unionist regime” to gain power in Holyrood after 2026 and said that he has asked ministers at the Department for Energy and Net Zero to plan for a nuclear reactor to be built in Scotland as part of a UK-wide programme.
Although planning is devolved to Holyrood, energy policy is reserved to Westminster. This means that even though Westminster is committed to an expansion of nuclear energy generation, the Scottish Government has a de facto means of blocking the development of nuclear energy in Scotland as it can refuse planning permission for new nuclear power plants.
Jack’s remarks suggest that the UK Government is preparing to overrule Holyrood and impose new nuclear power plants on Scotland against the will of Scotland’s elected representatives.
The Scottish Government is strongly opposed to new nuclear power plants in Scotland, favouring instead a greater development of Scotland’s vast renewable energy potential which is already capable of supplying more energy than Scotland requires for domestic consumption.
Any new nuclear power stations which the UK Government builds in Scotland will not be built because Scotland needs them, they will be built in order to meet the energy needs of the rest of the UK, but these needs could also be met by greater investment in and development of Scotland’s renewable energy potential.
Moreover, given the years long timescale that is required from the commissioning of a new nuclear power plant, any new nuclear reactor that the UK commissions in Scotland would not be on stream until 2033 at the very earliest. New renewable projects can be brought in stream and contributing power to the grid much quicker.
Hinkley Point C, the UK’s first nuclear plant in more than two decades, was estimated to cost between £25bn and £26bn in 2015. The first reactor will not be in use until at least 2029, two years later than the most recent 2027 goal, and could take until 2031 if electromechanical work runs into problems.
The projected cost is now between £31bn and £35bn in 2015 figures and up to £46bn in today’s money.
This dwarfs the cost of a new wind farm. The British Government has allocated just £800m for investment in offshore wind farms. The massive onshore Whitelee wind farm south of Glasgow cost £1.5bn to construct. It has a total capacity of 539 megawatts and can power over 350,000 homes annually.
Jack’s behaviour is ‘menacing’
Jack has been condemned by John Swinney for keeping his plans for new nuclear plants in Scotland a secret from the Scottish Government.
The First Minister was asked about Jack’s comments by SNP MSP Rona Mackay at FMQs. She said: “This week, the Secretary of State for Scotland confirmed that planning is underway to develop new nuclear reactors in Scotland despite opposition …”
She was interrupted by the boors on the Tory benches cheering at the prospect of the democratically elected government of Scotland being overruled.
After the Presiding Officer hushed the adolescents, she went on: “Despite opposition from the democratically elected Scottish Government. Scotland doesn’t need expensive nuclear power. We already have abundant natural energy resources. Can the First Minister advise if the UK Government has approached Scottish ministers about these apparent plans?”
The First Minister replied: said: “I’m often lectured in this parliament about the importance of good intergovernmental relations. The Secretary of State for Scotland has made no mention of this proposal to the Scottish Government.
“This is utterly and completely incompatible with good intergovernmental working and is illustrative of the damaging behaviour, the menacing behaviour, of the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Scottish Government will not support new nuclear power stations in Scotland.”
He added that “supporting the announcements of formidable investments in the renewable energy potential of Scotland” was “the policy agenda of this government, and we have nothing to do with nuclear power”.
But Jack says – don’t get above your nuclear power station, Scotland.
We’re all right Jack: No need for nuclear in Scotland
Contrary to the call of an out-of-touch, and increasingly out-of-time, Conservative Secretary of State that nuclear must be included in Scotland’s energy mix, the Scottish Nuclear Free Local Authorities remain convinced that renewables represent the only way forward to achieve a sustainable, Net Zero future for the nation.
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack, appearing before the House of Lords Constitution Committee on Wednesday, confirmed that he has approached fellow Scot and Nuclear Minister Andrew Bowie MP to plan for a new so-called Small Modular Reactor north of the border.
The sole operational nuclear plant in Scotland is at Torness, but this will cease generating before the end of the decade. Other reactors at Chapelcross, Dounreay, and Hunterston are in the process of being decommissioned.
Such a plan would put the UK Government at odds with that of Scotland, as the SNP-led Administration has affirmed to the NFLAs that it remains implacably opposed to the construction of any new nuclear fission plants in Scotland. Whilst energy policy is determined by Whitehall, the SNP Government can veto any development as planning authority has been devolved. The Minister is then clearly banking on regime change in 2026 at Edinburgh as both the Conservative and Labour Parties have both expressed support for new nuclear in Scotland.
To the NFLAs, an investment in any nuclear would not only be folly, but a lamentable diversion of effort from achieving the credible goal of supplying 100% of Scotland’s electricity from renewables.
Nuclear power plants are enormously expensive to build and notorious for their cost and delivery overruns. The sole UK gigawatt plant under construction at Hinkley Point C in Somerset is now expected to cost up to £47 billion at current prices, approaching triple its original estimate, whilst wildly optimistic claims by operator EDF Energy that the plant would be generating power ‘to cook British turkeys by Christmas 2017’ have been dampened by a series of damaging delays, with the first reactor expected now to become operational in 2031.
Secretary of State Alister Jack appears to be focused on bringing one of the so-called Small Modular Reactors (or SMRs) to Scotland. There has been previous talk of an SMR being co-located with the Grangemouth chemical plant, a prospect nipped in the bud by an NFLA intercession to the Scottish Minister. However, none of the competing SMR designs has yet received the required approvals from the nuclear regulator to even be deployed in the UK; none have been built; no sites have yet been permissioned for their deployment; the facilities to fabricate the parts have yet to be constructed; the necessary finance has yet to be put in place; and the procedures for their onsite assembly have yet to be perfected. SMRs are estimated to cost £3 billion each, but cost overruns are notorious in the nuclear industry, and the earliest any approved and financed SMR would come onstream would be in the early 2030’s.
Nuclear plants are also incredibly expensive to decommission, and the resultant radioactive waste must be managed at vast expense for millennia. There has been research published that suggests that SMRs will produce more radioactive waste per unit of electricity produced that gigawatt reactors.
Instead of wasting cash and time on nuclear, the Scottish NFLAs believe the money and effort would first be far better spent insulating all domestic properties and public buildings to the highest standard to improve energy efficiency, reduce energy consumption, and minimise or eliminate fuel poverty, as well as investing in more renewable energy generating capacity and battery storage capacity.
Not only does Scotland possess more than sufficient natural resources, in the forms of wind, wave, hydro and geothermal energy to meet its own needs, but it can become a powerhouse where the surplus renewable energy can be exported to its neighbour England and to states in Europe, via interconnectors, generating income for the nation.
To realise this, the Scottish NFLAs would like to see the Scottish Government recommit to establishing a state-owned renewable energy company to invest in this potential and to generate an income for the nation, mirroring the commendable action of the Welsh Government. Maximum pressure needs to be applied to the UK Government to boost the capacity of the National Grid to take Scottish renewable energy from wind turbines to England. At present, constraints mean that the network is often incapable of accepting and transmitting the vast amounts of electricity generated by Scottish wind turbines, leading to them being shut off and generators being awarded huge compensation at taxpayers’ expense for lost revenue.
The NFLAs have also called on the UK Government to back the development of stored pumped hydro projects in Scotland. A report from BiGGAR Economics, commissioned by Scottish Renewables, identified six ‘shovel-ready’ pumped-hydro projects in Scotland which could deliver £5.8 billion Gross Value Added (GVA) and almost 15,000 jobs by 2035.
Scotland has some world leading renewable energy companies, such as the O2 Orbital wave power project based in the Orkney Islands and the Gravitricity gravity storage project born in Edinburgh.
The Scottish NFLAs believe that if the Secretary of State for Scotland genuinely wants to see a sustainable, Net Zero future for Scotland that he should call for the British Government to get behind the Scottish Government in backing this strategy, instead of maintaining his mad delusion for nuclear.
Japan starts 6th discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater
CGTN, 17-May-2024
Japan on Friday started the sixth round of release of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean.
Despite opposition among local fishermen, residents as well as backlash from the international community, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, started releasing the radioactive wastewater in the morning, the second round in fiscal 2024.
The same as the previous rounds, about 7,800 tonnes of wastewater are being discharged from about a kilometer off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture via an underwater tunnel until June 4.
According to the TEPCO, the concentrations of all radioactive substances other than tritium in the water stored in the tank scheduled for release were below the national release standards, while the concentration of tritium that cannot be removed will be diluted with seawater.
The Chinese Embassy in Japan expressed firm opposition to this unilateral move of ocean discharge. While safety and reliability have yet to be ensured, Japan’s dumping of nuclear-contaminated water has repeatedly raised risks to neighboring countries and marine ecology, a spokesperson for the embassy said.
The spokesperson called on the Japanese side to attach great importance to the concerns at home and abroad and to fully cooperate in setting up an independent international monitoring arrangement that remains effective in the long haul and has the substantive participation of stakeholders.
………………………….. In fiscal 2024, the TEPCO plans to discharge a total of 54,600 tonnes of contaminated water in seven rounds, which contains approximately 14 trillion becquerels of tritium. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-05-17/news-1tFIzr3u9Da/p.html
Scotland’s First Minister Swinney condemns Jack’s menacing idea for nuclear plant in Scotland
The First Minister was clear that the Scottish Government will not back the construction of such a facility north of the border.
John Swinney has insisted the Scottish Government will have “nothing to do” with a suggested new nuclear power station – as he hit out at the “menacing” behaviour of the Scottish Secretary.
The First Minister reacted angrily after Alister Jack revealed he has instructed UK ministers to start planning work for a nuclear plant in Scotland.
It comes despite the longstanding opposition from the SNP to the construction of such facilities north of the border.
Jack told a Lords committee on Wednesday he believes there will be a “unionist regime again in Holyrood” in 2026, and with the SNP out of power it will be possible to “move forward” with the construction plan.
Speaking about the prospect of a small nuclear reactor, Jack said he has asked the UK energy minister to “plan for one in Scotland”.
But Swinney told MSPs on Thursday that Jack has “made no mention of this proposal to the Scottish Government” – which has powers over planning north of the border.
The First Minister added: “This is utterly and completely incompatible with good intergovernmental working and is illustrative of the damaging behaviour, the menacing behaviour, of the Secretary of State for Scotland.”
He was asked about Jack’s comments by SNP backbencher Rona Mackay, who noted the UK minister’s suggestion came despite “opposition from the democratically-elected Scottish Government” to new nuclear power.
Speaking at First Minister’s Questions, Swinney was clear: “The Scottish Government will not support new nuclear power stations in Scotland.”
He said his Government instead supports investment in “the renewable energy potential in Scotland”, adding “massive investments” in this sector could “bring jobs and opportunities to the Highlands and islands and deliver green, clean energy for the people of Scotland”.
Swinney said: “That’s the policy agenda of this Government and we will have nothing to do with nuclear power.”
Welsh Nuclear Free Local Authorities welcome Traws abandonment from New Nuclear plans
https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/welsh-nflas-welcome-traws-abandonment-from-new-nuclear-plans/
The Welsh Nuclear Free Local Authorities Forum hope that the decision made by Great British Nuclear to temporarily postpone plans for new nuclear at Trawsfynydd at this time might become a permanent one.
In March, responding to the UK Government consultation on the siting of new nuclear plants after 2025, the Welsh NFLAs said that the Trawsfynydd site was wholly inappropriate for redevelopment as it lies within the beautiful Eryri National Park. Ministers have previously agreed that any Geological Disposal Facility will not be in the Lake District National Park, and the NFLAs have called for this principal to be applied as a blanket ban on new nuclear plants in National Parks, at World Heritage Sites and in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Great British Nuclear has just announced that the site ‘may not be able to deploy quite as quickly as some other sites’, with reports that site was too small and lacked sufficient cooling water to support the deployment of so-called Small Modular Reactors for the foreseeable future.
Trawsfynydd had an operating Magnox nuclear reactor on site until 1991. It was unique in being inland and cooled by the water of an artificial lake, but it is also a brutalist eyesore standing out stark and ugly against the idyllic backdrop of mountains and forest. The plant is now being dismantled by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a British taxpayer funded body responsible for decommissioning redundant nuclear plant and for managing Britain’s radioactive waste inventory.
To the NFLAs, locating a new nuclear power plant in any National Park would be entirely incompatible with the Sandford Principal. From 1971 until 1974, Lord Sandford chaired a committee which examined the future management of National Parks in England and Wales:
‘National Park Authorities can do much to reconcile public enjoyment with the preservation of natural beauty by good planning and management and the main emphasis must continue to be on this approach wherever possible. But even so, there will be situations where the two purposes are irreconcilable… Where this happens, priority must be given to the conservation of natural beauty’.
We want to see the old Trawsfynydd plant decommissioned, and the site cleared and landscaped, as soon as practicable. n our view, any proposed new medical isotope facility would be better located at Bangor University, which has an established academic nuclear faculty and has much better transport links. The activities of the Welsh taxpayer funded Cwmni Egino, which was established to pursue new nuclear at the site, are entirely at variance with the stated ambition of the Welsh Government to source the nation’s domestically consumed electricity from truly ‘green’ sources. The body should be abolished, and its resources used to support the development of Welsh renewable energy projects.
Netflix’s “Turning point. The bomb and the cold war”. Episode 2 – Poisoning the Soil.
This episode mainly covers the period in Russia 1930s through, 1950s, and then the USA, with remarkable pictures and interviews, sometimes very moving ones, with people involved in the events. It shows how the Soviet Union developed into a cruel totalitarian regime, and how in the West, ideas of defence morphed into paranoia about the “red menace”, and the further development of nuclear weapons.
Soviet Union.
Stalin. Russia failed to come to terms with the past Stalin still revered “his glorious accomplishments” “His crimes not well known, not understood“ The most evil person in Russia’s history“
Deep and irreconcilable conflicts between the great powers – for 50 years – out to destroy each other’s way of life – existential struggle between the capitalist world and the communist world
1848 – capitalist industrial society – child labour. Marx and Engels came up with a utopian solution – communism. Lenin in Russia, inspired by Marx and Engels, took power and proclaimed Russia a state run by workers and peasants. Bolsheviks felt besieged, and this brought on the red terror, and a bloody civil war. Stalin, basically a gangster, rises. In 1922 the Soviet Union is established and Stalin takes over.
The promise of equality was not kept. The 1929 collectivisation of agriculture is told in apersonal and dramatic way. It resulted in famine across the Soviet Union. Stalin fixed on Ukraine – a special program of food collection. 1932, Ukrainians were controlled, with borders closed, some 4 million died of starvation – the holodomor
The Soviet Union becomes truly totalitarian – 1937-38 – the Great Terror – great purge trials. Stalin paranoid about secret enemies – many colleagues exterminated. Huge system of concentration camps all across the Soviet Union – the gulags – to punish. to frighten – and also to provide slave labour, 15-20 million people – several million died. .
Stalin was genocidal to his own people – poured toxic materials into the soil. Very personal and heart-breaking testimonials and visuals of this period
1945 – the Soviet army stole everything they could from the conquered lands. Soviet Union had lost 20 million soldiers, and was now occupying lands of Eastern Europe. George Kennan tells Truman that Stalin wants more power, defines Soviet as an adversary, that understands only force and the threat of force. He says that the two world powers would one day fight for dominion over the world. This was the beginning of the Cold War.
The USA and “the West”
In the USA this mood of necessity to defend against the Soviet Union – led to the creation in 1947 of the Pentagon. Air force, Army, Navy all together under the Secretary for Defense, The National Security Council, the CIA. USA transitions into a vast military and intelligence apparatus.
March 1946 Winston Churchill gives his “Iron Curtain” speech. Berlin becomes the centre for the growing divide between the Eastern and the Western blocs. the Soviets trying to take over the whole of Berlin, with a sort of siege, the Berlin blockade, countered successfully by western countries flying in supplies.
1949 NATO established. Moscow formed the Warsaw Pact. Meanwhile in China Mao Zedong takes over with a communist government – furthering the cold war and the feeling that communism was expanding around the globe – kicking off the red hysteria. Then the news that Moscow has the atomic bomb – huge project for Russia. Helped by spies – Klaus Fuchs, who saw Russia as an ally against Nazism, (he got 14 years gaol).
The son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg tells their tragic story. The crimes of Stalin’s Russia were not at that time understood, while capitalism’s injustices and antisemitism were rife in USA and Europe. Ethel was almost certainly innocent. Julius and Ethel refused to give up the names of communists, and therefore were executed, (botched in Ethel’s case) – one of the prosecutors was the zealous young Roy Cohn.
The House Un-American Activities Committee – focussed on the Red Menace in the media, and Senator Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn expanded this persecution to other areas, even the army. This fear of communist spies stoked the cold war – but McCarthy never found a single spy. McCarthy was finally discredited. Roy Cohn went on to later teach “hardball politics” to the young Donald Trump.
Meanwhile Edward Teller comes on the scene in the early 1950s – with his plans for the thermonuclear bomb, and the fear that Russia too is developing this even more monstrous weapon. Daniel Ellsberg copied the papers on the nuclear war plans – strange and horrible” – recognises this project as “institutional insanity”
U.S. rejects China’s proposal to ban first use of nuclear weapons.
People’s World May 16, 2024 BY JOHN WOJCIK, MARK GRUENBERG AND BEN CHACKO
The U.S. has dismissed Chinese calls for a no-first-use treaty between nuclear weapons states, saying it has questions about China’s “sincerity.”
The outright dismissal of China’s proposal followed a major speech in which Biden announced radical tariffs of up to 100 percent, on steel imports from China. That speech follows months of U.S. military buildup in the waters off the coast of China, including the placement of additional nuclear submarines around the Korean peninsula, all in the name of “protecting” Taiwan, which is, of course, a part of China itself.
Undersecretary of State Bonnie Jenkins, the country’s top arms control official, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last night that the U.S. worried China had increased its number of nuclear warheads to over 500, might have 1,000 by 2030, and that this was proof that the country was not “sincere” about its proposal to ban first use of the apocalypse-engendering weapons.
The Biden administration’s claim that China had increased the number of its warheads to 500 is just that – an unverified claim. In addition, the U.S. has 12 times that number with an admitted 3,700 of such warheads.
The U.S. says China refuses to engage in nuclear disarmament talks with it. China actually has engaged in talks, first by discussing with the U.S. the need for the U.S. to reduce its outrageously large number of missiles, as compared to China’s number, to show it is serious about fairness. And now it has added to those talks with its proposal to ban the first use of the weapons.
China’s position is that it has an arsenal that is tiny in comparison with that of the United States and that the size of the arsenals has to be part of serious talks. China has also gotten India to sign a no-first-use deal between those two countries. While all these initiatives by China were underway the U.S. was busy unilaterally canceling nuclear arms deals between the U.S. and Russia and continuing to push expansion of NATO not just up to the borders of Russia but into the Pacific regions near China.
China also stores its warheads and delivery systems separately, to avoid the risk of launches by accident or misunderstanding, as almost happened in 1983, when Soviet lieutenant Stanislav Petrov recognized reports of incoming U.S. missiles as a system malfunction and prevented a retaliatory strike which could have begun World War III.
The new, highest-ever U.S. tariffs on Chinese products were announced by President Biden shortly before the Chinese peace initiatives were rejected by his administration. The tariffs would apply to government-subsidized Chinese steel, aluminum, solar cells, electric vehicles—rising to 100% tariffs this year—and their batteries, semiconductors, and some raw materials.
The Biden tariffs are much higher than the Trump tariffs that Biden opposed when Trump was president……………………………… more https://peoplesworld.org/article/u-s-rejects-chinas-proposal-to-ban-first-use-of-nuclear-weapons/—
Mini-Nukes, Big Bucks: The Interests Behind the Small Modular Reactor Push
Scandal-ridden SNC-Lavalin is playing a major role in the push for SMRs.
Then there’s Terrestrial Energy
the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) no longer makes its membership public, the original coalition included such familiar names as Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jack Ma (Alibaba), David Rubenstein (Carlyle Group), Tom Steyer, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg. Many of those names (and others) can now be found on the “Board and Investors” page of Breakthrough Energy’s website.
Why Canada is now poised to pour billions of tax dollars into developing Small Modular Reactors as a “clean energy” climate solution
by Joyce Nelson, January 14, 2021
https://watershedsentinel.ca/articles/mini-nukes-big-bucks-the-money-behind-small-modular-reactors/—
Back in 2018, the Watershed Sentinel ran an article warning that “unless Canadians speak out,” a huge amount of taxpayer dollars would be spent on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), which author D. S. Geary called “risky, retro, uncompetitive, expensive, and completely unnecessary.” Now here we are in 2021 with the Trudeau government and four provinces (Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Alberta) poised to pour billions of dollars into SMRs as a supposed “clean energy” solution to climate change.
It’s remarkable that only five years ago, the National Energy Board predicted: “No new nuclear units are anticipated to be built in any province” by 2040.
So what happened?
The answer involves looking at some of the key influencers at work behind the scenes, lobbying for government funding for SMRs.
The Carney factor
When the first three provinces jumped on the SMR bandwagon in 2019 at an estimated price tag of $27 billion, the Green Party called the plan “absurd” – especially noting that SMRs don’t even exist yet as viable technologies but only as designs on paper.
According to the BBC (March 9, 2020), some of the biggest names in the nuclear industry gave up on SMRs for various reasons: Babcock & Wilcox in 2017, Transatomic Power in 2018, and Westinghouse (after a decade of work on its project) in 2014.
But in 2018, the private equity arm of Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc. announced that it was buying Westinghouse’s global nuclear business (Westinghouse Electric Co.) for $4.6 billion.
Two years later, in August 2020, Brookfield announced that Mark Carney, former Bank of England and Bank of Canada governor, would be joining the company as its vice-chair and head of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and impact fund investing, while remaining as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.
“We are not going to solve climate change without the private sector,” Carney told the press, calling the climate crisis “one of the greatest commercial opportunities of our time.” He considers Canada “an energy superpower,” with nuclear a key asset.
Carney is an informal advisor to PM Trudeau and to British PM Boris Johnson. In November, Johnson announced £525 million (CAD$909.6 million) for “large and small-scale nuclear plants.”
SNC-Lavalin
Scandal-ridden SNC-Lavalin is playing a major role in the push for SMRs. In her mid-December 2020 newsletter, Elizabeth May, the Parliamentary Leader of the Green Party, focused on SNC-Lavalin, reminding readers that in 2015, then-PM Stephen Harper sold the commercial reactor division of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) “to SNC-Lavalin for the sweetheart deal price of $15 million
May explained, “SNC-Lavalin formed a consortium called the Canadian National Energy Alliance (CNEA) to run some of the broken-apart bits of AECL. CNEA has been the big booster of what sounds like some sort of warm and cuddly version of nuclear energy – Small Modular Reactors. Do not be fooled. Not only do we not need new nuclear, not only does it have the same risks as previous nuclear reactors and creates long-lived nuclear wastes, it is more tied to the U.S. military-industrial complex than ever before. That’s because SNC-Lavalin’s partners in the CNEA are US companies Fluor and Jacobs,” who both have contracts with US Department of Energy nuclear-weapons facilities.”
But, states May, “Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan has been sucked into the latest nuclear propaganda – that ‘there is no pathway to Net Zero [carbon emissions] without nuclear’.”
Terrestrial Energy
Then there’s Terrestrial Energy, which in mid-October 2020 received a $20 million grant for SMR development from NRCan’s O’Regan and Navdeep Bains (Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry). The announcement prompted more than 30 Canadian NGOs to call SMRs “dirty, dangerous, and distracting” from real, available solutions to climate change.
The Connecticut-based company has a subsidiary in Oakville, Ontario. Its advisory board includes Stephen Harper; Michael Binder, the former president and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission; and (as of October) Dr. Ian Duncan, the former UK Minister of Climate Change in the Dept. of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Perhaps more important, Terrestrial Energy’s advisory board includes Dr. Ernest Moniz, the former US Secretary of the Dept. of Energy (2013-2017) who provided more than $12 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. Moniz has been a key advisor to the Biden-Harris transition team, which has come out in favour of SMRs, calling them “game-changing technologies” at “half the construction cost of today’s reactors.”
In 2015, while the COP 21 Paris Climate Agreement was being finalized, Moniz told reporters that SMRs could lead to “better financing terms” than traditional nuclear plants because they would change the scale of capital at risk. For years, banks and financial institutions have been reluctant to invest in money-losing nuclear projects, so now the goal is to get governments to invest, especially in SMRs.
That has been the agenda of a powerful lobby group that has been working closely with NRCan for several years.
The “billionaires’ nuclear club”
The 2015 Paris climate talks featured what cleantechnica.com called a “splashy press conference” by Bill Gates to announce the launch of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) – a group of (originally) 28 high net-worth investors, aiming “to provide early-stage capital for technologies that offer promise in bringing affordable clean energy to billions.”
Though BEC no longer makes its membership public, the original coalition included such familiar names as Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jack Ma (Alibaba), David Rubenstein (Carlyle Group), Tom Steyer, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg. Many of those names (and others) can now be found on the “Board and Investors” page of Breakthrough Energy’s website.
Writing in Counterpunch (Dec. 4, 2015) shortly after BEC’s launch, Linda Pentz Gunter noted that many of those 28 BEC billionaires (collectively worth some $350 billion at the time) are pro-nuclear and Gates himself “is already squandering part of his wealth on Terra Power LLC, a nuclear design and engineering company seeking an elusive, expensive and futile so-called Generation IV traveling wave reactor” for SMRs. (In 2016, Terra Power, based in Bellevue, Washington, received a $40 million grant from Ernest Moniz’s Department of Energy.)
According to cleantechnica.com, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition “does have a particular focus on nuclear energy.” Think of BEC as the billionaires’ nuclear club.
By 2017, BEC was launching Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), a $1 billion fund to provide start-up capital to clean-tech companies in several countries.
Going after the public purse
Bill Gates was apparently very busy during the 2015 Paris climate talks. He also went on stage during the talks to announce a collaboration among 24 countries and the EU on something called Mission Innovation – an attempt to “accelerate global clean energy innovation” and “increase government support” for the technologies. Mission Innovation’s key private sector partners include the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, the World Economic Forum, the International Energy Agency, and the World Bank.
An employee at Natural Resources Canada, Amanda Wilson, was appointed as one of the 12 international members of the Mission Innovation Steering Committee.
In December 2017, Bill Gates announced that the Breakthrough Energy Coalition was partnering with Mission Innovation members Canada, UK, France, Mexico, and the European Commission in a “public-private collaboration” to “double public investment in clean energy innovation.”
Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources at the time, Jim Carr, said the partnership with BEC “will greatly benefit the environment and the economy. Working side by side with innovators like Bill Gates can only serve to enhance our purpose and inspire others.”
Dr. M.V. Ramana, an expert on nuclear energy and a professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at UBC, told me by email: “As long as Bill Gates is wasting his own money or that of other billionaires, it is not so much of an issue. The problem is that he is lobbying hard for government investment.”
Dr. Ramana explained that because SMRs only exist on paper, “the scale of investment needed to move these paper designs to a level of detail that would satisfy any reasonable nuclear safety regulator that the design is safe” would be in the billions of dollars. “I don’t see Gates and others being willing to invest anything of that scale. Instead, they invest a relatively small amount of money (compared to what they are worth financially) and then ask for government handouts for the vast majority of the investment that is needed.”
Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist at Beyond Nuclear, told me by email that the companies involved in SMRs “don’t care” if the technology is actually workable, “so long as they get paid more subsidies from the unsuspecting public. It’s not a question of it working, necessarily,” he noted.
Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, says governments “are being suckers. Because if Wall Street and the banks will not finance this, why should it be the role of the government to engage in venture capitalism of this kind?”
“Roadmap” to a NICE future
By 2018, NRCan was pouring money into a 10-month, pan-Canadian “conversation” about SMRs that brought together some 180 individuals from First Nations and northern communities, provincial and territorial governments, industry, utilities, and “stakeholders.” The resulting November 2018 report, A Call to Action: A Canadian Roadmap for Small Modular Reactors, enthusiastically noted that “Canada’s nuclear industry is poised to be a leader in an emerging global market estimated at $150 billion a year by 2040.”
At the same time, Bill Gates announced the launch of Breakthrough Energy Europe, a collaboration with the European Commission (one of BEC’s five Mission Innovation partners) in the amount of 100 million euros for clean-tech innovation.
Gates’ PR tactic is effective: provide a bit of capital to create an SMR “bandwagon,” with governments fearing their economies would be left behind unless they massively fund such innovations.
NRCan’s SMR Roadmap was just in time for Canada’s hosting of the Clean Energy Ministerial/Mission Innovation summit in Vancouver in May 2019 to “accelerate progress toward a clean energy future.” Canada invested $30 million in Breakthrough Energy Solutions Canada to fund start-up companies.
A particular focus of the CEM/MI summit was a CEM initiative called “Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy (NICE) Future,” with all participants receiving a book highlighting SMRs. As Tanya Glafanheim and M.V. Ramana warned in thetyee.ca (May 27, 2019) in advance of the summit, “Note to Ministers from 25 countries: Prepare to be dangerously greenwashed.”
Greenwash vs public backlash
While releasing the federal SMR Action Plan on December 18, O’Regan called it “the next great opportunity for Canada.”
Bizarrely, the Action Plan states that by developing SMRs, our governments would be “supporting reconciliation with Indigenous peoples” – but a Special Chiefs Assembly of the Assembly of First Nations passed a unanimous 2018 resolution demanding that “the Government of Canada cease funding and support” of SMRs. And in June 2019, the Anishinabek Chiefs-in-Assembly (representing 40 First Nations across Ontario) unanimously opposed “any effort to situate SMRs within our territory.”
Some 70 NGOs across Canada are opposed to SMRs, which are being pushed as a replacement for diesel in remote communities, for use in off-grid mining, tar-sands development, and heavy industry, and as exportable expertise in a global market.
On December 7, the Hill Times published an open letter to the Treasury Board of Canada from more than 100 women leaders across Canada, stating: “We urge you to say ‘no’ to the nuclear industry that is asking for billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to subsidize a dangerous, highly-polluting and expensive technology that we don’t need. Instead, put more money into renewables, energy efficiency and energy conservation.”
No new money for SMRs was announced in the Action Plan, but in her Fall Economic Statement, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland touted SMRs and noted that “targeted action by the government to mobilize private capital will better position Canadian firms to bring their technologies to market.” That suggests the Canada Infrastructure Bank will use its $35 billion for such projects.
It will take a Herculean effort from the public to defeat this NICE Future, but along with the Assembly of First Nations, three political parties – the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Green Party – have now come out against SMRs.
Award-winning author Joyce Nelson’s latest book, Bypassing Dystopia, is published by Watershed Sentinel Books. She can be reached via www.joycenelson.ca.
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