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Link between unexploded munitions in oceans and cancer-causing toxins determined

by Anisa S. Jimenez, Phys Org, February 18, 2009

During a research trip to Puerto Rico, ecologist James Porter took samples from underwater nuclear bomb target USS Killen, expecting to find evidence of radioactive matter – instead he found a link to cancer. Data revealed that the closer corals and marine life were to unexploded bombs from the World War II vessel and the surrounding target range, the higher the rates of carcinogenic materials.

“Unexploded bombs are in the ocean for a variety of reasons – some were duds that did not explode, others were dumped in the ocean as a means of disposal,” said Porter. “And we now know that these munitions are leaking cancer-causing materials and endangering sea life.”

Data has been gathered since 1999 on the eastern end of the Isla de Vieques, Puerto Rico – a land and sea area that was used as a naval gunnery and bombing range from 1943-2003. Research revealed that marine life including reef-building corals, feather duster worms and sea urchins closest to the bomb and bomb fragments had the highest levels of toxicity. In fact, carcinogenic materials were found in concentrations up to 100,000 times over established safe limits. This danger zone covered a span of up to two meters from the bomb and its fragments.

According to research conducted in Vieques, residents here have a 23% higher cancer rate than do Puerto Rican mainlanders. Porter said a future step will be “to determine the link from unexploded munitions to marine life to the dinner plate.”…..  https://phys.org/news/2009-02-link-unexploded-munitions-oceans-cancer-causing.html

August 4, 2024 Posted by | health, oceans, Reference, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

Burying radioactive nuclear waste poses enormous risks

by David Suzuki, July 31, 2024,  https://rabble.ca/environment/burying-radioactive-nuclear-waste-poses-enormous-risks/
The spent fuel will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, and contamination and leaks are possible during storage, containment, transportation and burial.

As the consequences of burning dirty, climate-altering fossil fuels hit harder by the day, many are seizing on nuclear power as a “clean” energy alternative. But how clean is it?

Although it may not produce the emissions that burning fossil fuels does, nuclear power presents many other problems. Mining, processing and transporting uranium to fuel reactors creates toxic pollution and destroys ecosystems, and reactors increase risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and radioactive contamination. Disposing of the highly radioactive waste is also challenging.

In this case, the NWMO has already paid Indigenous and municipal governments large sums to accept its plans — ignoring communities that will also be affected along transportation routes or downstream of burial sites.

According to Canadian Dimension, industry expects to ship the wastes “in two to three trucks per day for fifty years, in one of three potential containers.” None of the three containment methods has been subjected to rigorous testing.

Even without an accident, trucking the wastes will emit low levels of radiation, which industry claims will produce “acceptable” exposure. Transferring it from the facility to truck and then to repository also poses major risks.

Although industry claims storing high-level radioactive waste in deep geological repositories is safe, no such facility has been approved anywhere in the world, despite many years of industry effort.

Canadian Dimension says, “a growing number of First Nations have passed resolutions or issued statements opposing the transportation and/or disposal of nuclear waste in northwestern Ontario, including Lac Seul First Nation, Ojibway Nation of Saugeen, Grassy Narrows First Nation, Fort William First Nation, and Wabaseemoong Independent Nations.”

Five First Nations — including Grassy Narrows, which is still suffering from industrial mercury contamination after more than 60 years — have formed the First Nations Land Alliance, which wrote to the NWMO, stating, “Our Nations have not been consulted, we have not given our consent, and we stand together in saying ‘no’ to the proposed nuclear waste storage site near Ignace.”

Groups such as We the Nuclear Free North are also campaigning against the plan.

All have good reason to be worried. As Canadian Dimension reports, “All of Canada’s commercial reactors are the CANDU design, where 18 months in the reactor core turns simple uranium into an extremely complex and highly radioactive mix of over 200 different radioactive ingredients. Twenty seconds exposure to a single fuel bundle would be lethal.”

The spent fuel will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, and contamination and leaks are possible during storage, containment, transportation and burial. Industry, with its usual “out of sight, out of mind” approach, has no valid way to monitor the radioactive materials once they’re buried.

With 3.3 million bundles of spent fuels already waiting in wet or dry storage at power plants in Ontario, New Brunswick, Quebec and Manitoba, and many more to come, industry is desperate to find a place to put it all.

Even with the many risks and no site yet chosen for burial, industry and governments are looking to expand nuclear power, not just with conventional power plants but also with “small modular reactors,” meaning they could be spread more widely throughout the country.

Nuclear power is enormously expensive and projects always exceed budgets. It also takes a long time to build and put a reactor into operation. Disposing of the radioactive wastes creates numerous risks. Energy from wind, solar and geothermal with energy storage costs far less, with prices dropping every day, and comes with far fewer risks.

Industry must find ways to deal with the waste it’s already created, but it’s time to move away from nuclear and fossil fuels. As David Suzuki Foundation research confirms, renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar is a far more practical, affordable and cleaner choice.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.

August 4, 2024 Posted by | Canada, wastes | 1 Comment

US nuclear plant unfit for quick resurrection, former lead engineer says

By Timothy Gardner, WASHINGTON, Aug 2 2024, (Reuters)

– The first U.S. nuclear plant to ever try reopening after undergoing preparations for permanent closure is not fit to restart anytime soon because it sidestepped important safety work for years before retirement, a former official at the reactor said.

Power company Entergy (ETR.N), opens new tab closed the Palisades reactor in Michigan in 2022, after the plant generated electricity for more than 50 years. Privately-held Holtec International bought Palisades shortly after and has since secured a $1.52 billion conditional U.S. loan guarantee to restart. Holtec seeks to open the plant in about a year.

The fate of Palisades is closely watched by the nuclear industry as at least two other shuttered plants, including a unit at Constellation Energy’s (CEG.O)
, opens new tab Three Mile Island, consider reopening…………

“I’m pro-nuclear, but they selected the wrong horse to ride to town on,” said Alan Blind, who was engineering director at the Palisades plant from 2006 to 2013 under Entergy.

Blind said the plant got exemptions from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the nuclear safety regulator, allowing it to fall short of safety design standards that more modern plants must adhere to because it was nearing retirement.

Those safety standards include prevention of cooling systems being clogged by the breakdown of insulation on pipes, defense against earthquakes, and reduction of risks to fires, Blind said, adding he had been monitoring the plants’ exemption requests since his retirement.

“I’m worried that the NRC will not insist that the generic safety issues be the fixed before they allow Palisades to restart,” Blind told Reuters………………………………………………………..

The Biden administration’s Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy issued Holtec a conditional $1.52 billion loan guarantee in March to restart Palisades. … https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-nuclear-plant-unfit-quick-resurrection-former-lead-engineer-says-2024-08-02/

August 4, 2024 Posted by | safety, USA | 2 Comments

The Folly of Atomic Power

by Ron Jacobs, 2 Aug 24,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/02/the-folly-of-atomic-power/

This past June, a couple of my sisters and I drove from California to Minnesota. One of the states we traveled through was Idaho. We gassed up in a town called Atomic City, which advertised itself as the first city in the United States to have nuclear-powered electricity. This town is inside what grounds of the Idaho National Laboratory, an 890 square mile research site run by the Department of Energy together with various commercial and military interests. Its website currently touts its scientific expertise and its mission devoted to carbon-free nuclear energy, alternative energy and military security. There are currently over 6000 employees working at the various sites of the laboratory, which includes over fifty nuclear reactors and has an annual budget of $1.6 billion dollars. The laboratory and its web page provide a perfect example of how the business of nuclear energy as described by author M. V. Ramana in his brilliant new book Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change actually works.

Indeed, the laboratory’s work is a physical and very real representation of the triple threat Ramana describes in the text: the development of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and, almost as an afterthought, alternative energy sources like solar and wind. Ramana, who holds the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and is a Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, is a longtime opponent of the nuclear power industry and the government that collaborate and support it. His scientific background provides a solid rebuke to those in the industry and those who shill for it who repeat the same half-truths and lies whenever nuclear energy is brought up. In addition, this book is a convincing response supported by solid science (and a bit of political economy) to those who want the public to believe that nuclear power is a reasonable and affordable alternative to fossil fuels and the global climate crisis.

Chapter by chapter, Ramana addresses the health risks, the economics of, and the unbreakable link between nuclear power and the nuclear war industry. Instead of talking in terms of possibility, he focuses on the existing circumstances. To those who would try and sell the public a new nuclear plant by suggesting that the possibility of a nuclear accident at the plant is infinitesimal, Ramana writes:

“Theoretical predictions of stupefyingly low accident probabilities do not square with the empirical evidence of severe accidents at nuclear reactors.”(26)

In other words, believe what you see, not what the industry says. In another chapter, Ramana questions the method by which the private power utilities socialize the costs while privatizing the profits. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this phenomenon is the contracts and laws that force utility companies to pay for plants that never go online (and, in some cases, are never even built.) I recall this occurring when I lived in North Carolina. South Carolina Electric & Gas Company (SCE&G) lobbied for and received the go-ahead to build two nuclear reactors. As costs mounted, the company asked the Public Utilities Commission to allow the firm to charge customers for the costs associated with building the plants. To make a long story short, customers are still paying for the plants, and the plants were never built. Ramana provides a detailed account of this story in a chapter he titles “Private Profits, Social Costs: Industry Strategies” as a perfect example of how the industry works.

In his chapter on the links between nuclear power and the nuclear war industry, the author is equally scathing. When discussing the claim made by some environmentalists who support nuclear power that the nuclear power industry and the nuclear war industry are two different things, Ramana is clear: any separation is simply an illusion. In fact, he argues that one reason governments are so willing to support the nuclear power industry is because it produces the essential element plutonium for nuclear weapons as a supposed by-product. In fact, it appears more likely that plutonium is not a mere by-product but one of the primary reasons for the ongoing governmental support for the industry.

Nuclear is Not the Solution discusses the nuclear industry in a frank and honest manner. There are no questionable claims about nuclear energy or fantastic excuses made for the industry’s mistakes and its questionable premises. The text details the industry’s lies, mistakes and cover-ups, reminding the reader that they should focus on the historical and empirical facts, not fanciful advertising and promises. He describes an industry rife with corruption and hungry for profits. Although his primary focus is on the industry in the United States, Ramana does not spare other nuclear powers from his reasoned and well-informed exposé. Those who think nuclear energy should be the future would do well to read his book. It should convince one the opposite is more likely the truth.

Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. He has a new book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation coming out in Spring 2024.   He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com

August 4, 2024 Posted by | media, resources - print | Leave a comment

Kamala: We need a ceasefire and arms embargo NOW!

 https://www.codepink.org/kamalastopisrael 2 Aug 24

Over the past weeks, we’ve seen Vice President Kamala Harris’s image being portrayed as more sympathetic to Palestinians in comparison to Joe Biden. But in reality she repeats so many of the same anti-Palestinian talking points and hasn’t done anything to move us towards a ceasefire. It’s time to put pressure on the VP! Sign the petition below!

Vice President Kamala Harris, 

As Vice President of the United States, your job is to serve the people, and the majority of Americans want a permanent ceasefire and an end to U.S. arms sales to Israel. We are disgusted with how our hard-earned money is being used to annihilate innocent people in Palestine! 

You have strategically presented yourself as distinct from President Biden, especially with regard to Israel’s genocide campaign in Gaza, though you are part of the same administration. We have not been fooled, and we know you are not powerless. We know you can take significant action to stop Israel’s genocide, and you haven’t.

We will not blindly praise you — as others have — for calling for a ceasefire “for at least six weeks” in March of 2024. At that point, 30,000 Palestinians had already been murdered by Israel and we were five months into the genocide. 

In the past, you have had no problem meeting with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), taking in hundreds of thousands of Zionist campaign contributions, and speaking at their events. We understand the true purpose of this lobby group is to ensure continued U.S. funding of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and imperialism in the Middle East. We reject the influence of foreign governments in American politics and see your relationship with AIPAC as a stark contradiction to your supposed support of a ceasefire in Gaza. 

Most recently, you condemned protests in D.C. opposing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Congress — the man spearheading the worst genocide we’ve seen in recent history. Policing Americans who are rightfully angry about war crimes and the mass murder of innocent children was a true display of your immorality, and proved your alignment with Biden’s policies on Israel. What’s worse is that you characterized these protests as anti semitic, showing us your complete lack of understanding for what’s really happening. 

Sharing stories of how you as a young girl helped plant trees for Israel is a deliberately tone-deaf attempt at greenwashing Israel’s occupation, given the ecological devastation the IOF have waged on the Palestinian people, land, water and vegetation for 76 years, culminating in the utter devastation of Gaza in recent months. How can you be so selfishly blind to the reality on the ground?

Considering your stances, we have no reason to believe you are not following Biden’s policies on Israel. In order to salvage what political credibility you may have left, it is imperative that you use your capacity as Vice President to push for a ceasefire and an end to U.S. arms sales to Israel. We demand you release a statement explicitly distancing yourself from Biden’s support for genocide, and call for an arms embargo on Israel. 

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

Generic Design Assessment Step 1 of the Holtec SMR: statement of findings

 Holtec International’s SMR-300 small modular reactor design has
completed Step 1 of the UK’s generic design assessment (GDA) process and
will now progress to Step 2, which is expected to last for 14 months. The
Environment Agency, the Office for Nuclear Regulation, and Natural
Resources Wales announced on 1 August that they are progressing to the next
phase of their assessment of the design.

Holtec has now launched a comments
process, enabling anyone to submit comments and questions about the reactor
design to the company for its response.

 Nucnet 1st Aug 2024

https://www.nucnet.org/news/holtec-s-smr-300-nuclear-plant-completes-first-step-of-generic-design-assessment-8-4-2024

August 4, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Is Manitoba willing to accept nuclear waste risks? 

ANNE LINDSEY. 2 Aug 24.

ANYONE driving Highway 17 from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay will pass through Ignace a couple of hours east of Dryden.

A modest Canadian Shield town with about 1,300 inhabitants, Ignace was built on the forest industry, but like so many northern Ontario towns, today actively seeks other economic opportunities.

The alert traveller will also notice many roadside signs between Kenora and Thunder Bay, proclaiming “No Nuclear Waste in Northwest Ontario.” The issue has reached a critical juncture recently in this area.

Hosting Canada’s high-level nuclear waste repository is one of the economic development opportunities being explored by Ignace.

On July 10, Ignace Town Council voted in favour of being a “willing host” for this massive storage hole in the ground and the accompanying transfer facility for the highly radioactive and toxic “spent” fuel from existing and future reactors.

The taxpayer-funded Nuclear Waste Management Organization or NWMO (consisting of the owners of Canada’s nuclear waste and charged by the federal government to find a repository site) provided Ignace a half-million dollar signing bonus, in addition to NWMO’s many donations and monetary contributions to local initiatives leading up to the vote.

Problems abound with this “willingness” declaration, not the least of which is that the site in question is not even in Ignace or in the same watershed. The Revell batholith site, 45 kilometres west of Ignace, lies on the watersheds of both theRainy River which flows into Lake of the Woods, and thence to the Winnipeg River and Lake Winnipeg, and the English River which flows north through Lac Seul and into Lake Winnipeg.

The waste will remain dangerous for literally millennia. Burying irretrievable nuclear waste in an excavated rock cavern that is deep underground where groundwater flows through the rock and eventually links to surface bodies has never been tested in real life. The industry relies on computer models to persuade us that future generations will not be at risk.

The waste will have to be transported to Revell, mostly from southern Ontario and New Brunswick — several massive shipments daily for 40 years for the existing waste — along the often-treacherous route skirting Lake Superior. It must then be “repackaged” in a surface facility into burial canisters.

Little is publicly known about what this entails, but any accidents and even routine cleaning will result in radioactive pollution to the surrounding waters posing a more immediate risk.

First Nations along the downstream routes have expressed their opposition to this project. Chief Rudy Turtle of Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) was clear in his letter to the CEO of NWMO: “The water from that site flows past our reserve and into the waters where we fish, drink, and swim. The material that you want to store there will be dangerous for longer than Canada has existed, longer than Europeans have been on Turtle Island, and longer than anything that human beings have ever built has lasted. How can you reliably claim that this extremely dangerous waste will safely be contained for hundreds of thousands of years?”

His views are echoed by neighbouring chiefs, and other Treaty 3 First Nations have rejected nuclear waste transportation and abandonment through and in their territories. Wabigoon First Nation, the closest to the Revell site, will hold its own community referendum on willingness to host the site this fall. It’s not known how much money or other inducements NWMO has offered for a signing bonus.

In 1986, a citizens group in the Eastern Townships of Quebec successfully lobbied politicians on both sides of the border to reject a U.S. proposal for a massive nuclear waste repository in Vermont, on a watershed flowing into Canada.

Around the same time, Manitoba citizens convinced our government to oppose another proposed U.S. nuclear waste site — with potential for drainage to the Red River. And eventually, the NDP government of Howard Pawley passed Manitoba’s High-Level Radioactive Waste Act, banning nuclear waste disposal in this province.

Where does Manitoba stand today? We don’t know, even though the Revell site is not far from Manitoba and the water is flowing this way.

No single town should be making decisions with such profound risks to all of our health and futures. People who depend on Manitoba rivers and lakes (including Winnipeggers, via our water supply from Shoal Lake) should be part of this decision. Now is the time for our elected officials on Broadway and Main Street to become active stakeholders and demand a voice in the nuclear waste “willingness” question.

Anne Lindsey is a longtime observer of the nuclear industry and a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Manitoba Research Associate. This article was written in collaboration with the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition.

August 4, 2024 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

First NATO F-16’s delivered to Ukraine (nuclear capable)

 Bruce K. Gagnon, 2 Aug 24, https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2024/08/first-nato-f-16s-delivered-to-ukraine.html

Reports indicate that six F-16’s have been sent to Ukraine (UAF) from the Netherlands to be used against Russia. 

Doesn’t this mean that US-NATO are fully at war with Russia? Of course the US-NATO deny that fact but we are surely used to their endless lies by now!

It appears the war planes will be based in western Ukraine – far from the front lines in eastern Ukraine which is closest to the Russia border.

Previously, a number of NATO states, including the US, France, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden, formed a so-called ‘F-16 coalition’, pledging to provide Kiev with 79 of the American-made fighter jets as well as to train Ukrainian pilots to operate the aircraft.

While Ukraine is pinning high hopes on the fighter jets, the truth is that NATO is only supplying them to make up for the heavy losses of the UAF and prolong the conflict.

In addition the US-NATO war mongering ‘coalition’ must supply the weapons for the planes as well as the maintenance crews since Ukraine does not have the technical capacity to keep the planes in the air by themselves. The west will also likely need to supply the repair parts and the jet fuel for the planes.

Because it takes years to properly train pilots some have speculated that US-NATO pilots (wearing Ukraine military uniforms) might end up being the ones flying in combat against Russia. Especially after the first six planes get shot down and the Ukrainian F-16’s crews might be quickly erased.


There are reports that Moldova could be used as the main base for F-16 fighters. This will allow NATO countries to avoid becoming targets for Russian missiles, but at the same time provoke the Kremlin to a harsh reaction. (Any F-16 that enters Ukraine from a NATO country and continues to fly on to its combat area will be seen as an attack by NATO enabling Russia to legally attack the country of origin. Theoretically, this could start WW III – with a nuclear power no less. Note, however, that Moldova is not a NATO member. At any rate, the West is courting disaster.) This will increase the escalation and take the conflict in Ukraine to a new level, using Moldova for this purpose.

These planes will have the capability to carry US supplied nuclear weapons and fire them from a distance at ‘Russian targets’ that often means nothing more than population centers as Ukraine has been doing since the war began in 2014 after the US orchestrated coup d’état in Kiev. Moscow has said that it must conclude that any F-16’s in the air heading toward Russia could be carrying nukes and will respond accordingly.

The US long ago positioned nuclear weapons throughout Europe as you can see in the graphic just below. [on original]

Out of their complete desperation, as the US-NATO lose the war in Ukraine, they very well could decide to use these nukes now deployed in Europe. If that decision is made (and it would be made in Washington) then we are without a doubt off to the nuclear war races.

Now is the time for people not suffering from terminal imperial insanity to speak loudly – publicly and with determination – if we hope to survive the decline of the US-NATO killing project

August 4, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Thoughts about High Level Radioactive Waste – Dr. Gordon Edwards

August 4, 2024 Posted by | wastes | Leave a comment

Extreme ‘heat dome’ hitting Olympics ‘impossible’ without global heating

 The “heat dome” causing scorching temperatures across western Europe
and north Africa, and boiling athletes and spectators at the Olympic Games
in Paris, would have been impossible without human-caused global heating, a
rapid analysis has found. Scientists said the fossil-fuelled climate crisis
made temperatures 2.5C to 3.3C hotter. Such an event would not have
happened in the world before global heating but is now expected about once
a decade, they said. Continued emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide
will make them even more frequent, the researchers warned.

 Guardian 31st July 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/31/extreme-heat-dome-hitting-olympics-impossible-without-global-heating

August 4, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Japan, U.S. urged to work for nuclear abolition at symposium

By NAOKI NAKAYAMA/ Staff Writer, July 28, 2024

NAGASAKI–Japan and the United States have a “special responsibility” to lead efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, the head of a U.S. nongovernmental organization told a 30th international peace symposium.

Ivana Hughes, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, was speaking at the “International Symposium for Peace: The Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition” held at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum on July 27.

She said damage from radiation is still an issue in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean 70 years after the largest U.S. hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll.

“After all, although for different reasons, the United States and Japan both have a special responsibility to not only join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, but to lead efforts toward its full and complete implementation and total elimination of nuclear weapons,” Hughes said as she wound up her keynote speech.

Many speakers felt that the global situation surrounding nuclear weapons has deteriorated over the past 30 years, with nuclear disarmament stalled, and expressed concerns about growing international tensions, citing Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“We should think about nuclear abolition from the perspective of the security of ‘mankind,’ not of nations,” said Mitsuru Kurosawa, an expert on nuclear disarmament and professor emeritus at Osaka University.

Batyrkhan Kurmanseit, minister-counselor at the Kazakhstan Embassy in Japan, said Kazakhstan is the only former Soviet republic that ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. He said an international framework for nuclear abolition has never been more needed than right now.

The Asahi Shimbun has been a co-sponsor of the annual symposium, which has alternately been held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the municipal governments and local peace organizations every summer since 1995.

Terumi Tanaka, a hibakusha atomic bomb survivor and co-chair of the Japan Federation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization (Nihon Hidankyo), and Seiko Mimaki, an associate professor at Doshisha University’s graduate school specializing in U.S. politics and diplomacy, also participated in the symposium’s panel discussion.

In a speech, Kan Sang-jung, president of Chinzei Gakuin University in Nagasaki Prefecture, emphasized the importance of listening to hibakusha, saying that many lives have been lost as countries clash over what they believe is just amid the post-Cold War rise of nationalism.

Hibakusha Shizuko Mitamura read a hand-made picture card show that tells the story of what happened to her on Aug. 9, 1945, when the city of Nagasaki was leveled by atomic bombing, and the loss of her daughter to cancer in 2010, when she was 39.

August 4, 2024 Posted by | Japan, opposition to nuclear, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear plant trips due to fire, and battery storage steps in to stabilises the grid

What happens when a giant nuclear power station
suddenly goes off line? It’s a question that market operators have to ask
themselves all the time.

The biggest units on the grid are generally
nuclear, in those countries that have them, and a considerable amount of
planning and expense needs to make sure that the back-up is on hand,
despite the insistence by some of the whackier pro-nuclear spruikers in
Australia that no storage or gas is needed.

According to Grid Status, which
monitors grid operations in the US, the frequency excursion was arrested by
a rapid response from the state’s rapidly growing portfolio of big
battery projects. “Immediately, grid frequency declined,” Grid Status
noted in a post on LinkedIn and X. “An excursion below critical levels
required a fast response by ERCOT to ensure stability of the grid. In this
case, ERCOT swiftly deployed ancillary services, including a significant
amount of batteries providing ECRS, to boost the frequency back to
normal.” ERCOT is the Electricity reliability Council of Texas, which
manages the grid. ECRS refers to the contingency reserve service. The big
batteries were back in action a few days later when one of the state’s
coal fired power station units also tripped.

Texas is expected to more than
double its battery storage capacity in 2024, adding around 6.4 GW of
battery capacity (with varying levels of storage), to the 5.5 GW that
existed before.

 Renew Economy 1st Aug 2024

https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-plant-trips-due-to-fire-and-battery-storage-steps-in-to-stabilises-the-grid/

August 4, 2024 Posted by | safety | Leave a comment

‘True horror’: Japan’s Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor campaigns for a nuclear-free world

Bun Hashizume, 93, who has written poems about her descent into ‘hell’ after the bombing, has travelled the world to spread her message

Norman Aisbett, SCMP, 3 Aug 24,

What I feel the most about these days is human stupidity,” says 93-year-old Bun Hashizume, from her home in the Japanese temple city of Kamakura.

“I was a victim of the first atomic bomb in human history and I have advocated throughout my life for the abolition of nuclear weapons, but the world leaders still do not understand their true horror.

“Even my poems cannot describe it.”

Rewind to 8.15am on August 6, 1945 in the final throes of World War II.

A US atomic bomb named “Little Boy” was dropped from a B-29 aircraft and exploded at low altitude over the city of Hiroshima. With a blast force equal to 16 kilotons of TNT, it destroyed most buildings and caused mass death and injury.

Then aged 14, Hashizume was a war-mobilised school student working in the four-storey reinforced-concrete Savings Bureau building about 1.5km from the hypocentre of the blast.

Looking back, she recalls a third-floor window being filled “with a sudden flash of light that was so bright I thought the sun had fallen at my feet. A thousand rainbows all at once seemed to explode before my eyes”. And how, after being briefly unconscious and bleeding heavily from a head wound, she staggered downstairs among other workers looking “like a parade of ghosts with wildly dishevelled hair and sooty bodies”.

Once outside the building, it was a regular employee, Tomoyanagi, who “half-carried” her to a nearby Red Cross Hospital, where more shocking scenes and high drama followed.

Hashizume is today the author of The Day the Sun Fell – Memoirs of a Survivor of the Atomic Bomb – translated by Susan Bouterey – which closely details her and her family’s horrific experiences and also explains her present-day opposition to “dangerous” nuclear power plants, which she emphasises during this Australian writer’s long-distance interview with her, via a Japanese interpreter-admirer.

Her drive was such that, at age 70, she began her solo pilgrimages to many countries over 15 years to “become a citizen of the world” and share her anti-nuclear views. With only her aged pension to buy airline tickets and stay in youth hostels, she spoke to anyone or group willing to listen, including schoolchildren. Everywhere, people were also touched by her genuine personal warmth and quiet charm. A small booklet she handed out was entitled, “Fellow Humans! Let Us Foster Love and Wisdom.”

Right now, though, she is homebound due to A-Bomb-related health issues that have plagued her life. She tells of having endured “lifelong” rheumatism, chronic kidney disease, thyroid cancer and more. The past 20 years have also brought numerous breaks of radiation-weakened ribs, collarbones and three compressed fractures of her spine after a fall in Norway in 2003.

She is unable to go outside alone. There are twice-weekly visits to a hospital and three transports per week to a rehabilitation clinic. “Otherwise I’m on my bed reading the newspapers, with care from my eldest son and his family, who live with me.”

Her activist spirit nevertheless endures. She cites recent-times threats of nuclear strikes by North Korea if threatened; by Russia amid the Ukraine war; and an Israeli cabinet minister’s suggestion to nuke Hamas in Gaza The minister was promptly sacked by his embarrassed government which has never admitted that it has nuclear weapons – and subsequent high tensions and conflict between arch-enemies Israel and Iran.

{I believe that nuclear weapons should never be used, stockpiles should be completely abolished, and the Japanese government should join and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as soon as possible,” she says. “It’s no wonder they are being been used as a threat.” She further notes that nine nations have nuclear weapons, but the warheads of only two nations – Russia (5,890) and the US (5,224) – “are enough to destroy all life on Earth several times over”.

A major disappointment for her was the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop28) in Dubai when 23 nations including the US and Japan declared they would triple the generation of their nuclear power plants to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

“It is shocking that Japan joined this dangerous proposal despite the fact that the world’s pervasive emphasis on economic growth, baseless absolute trust in science and technology, and limitless pursuit of energy collapsed in Fukushima in 2011,” she says…………………………………………

After Tomoyanagi left to find her own family, a 16-year-old boy Yoshiaki Iida, who was unknown to Hashizume, helped her outside just before flames engulfed the whole building.

However, she later heard that her brother, Hideo, seven, had died after his back caught fire in an instant when hit from behind by the scorching A-Bomb blast in a school playground. Her other family members survived but with bad injuries and other health problems. Younger sister Shizuko, nine, had been evacuated to a temple when she was struck by the blast wave. Years of radiation sickness caused her suicide at age 19. Older sister Mitsuko, 19, suffered “ghastly” facial wounds at her grandmother’s house.

What does Hashizume remember most after the explosion? She replies: “The complete silence and the smell of burnt corpses that filled the air.”………………………………………………………………………………………………

The Day the Sun Fell – Memoirs of a Survivor of the Atomic Bomb by Bun Hashizume (translated by Susan Bouterey) is published by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd and also available on Kindle.  https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3273031/true-horror-japans-hiroshima-atomic-bomb-survivor-campaigns-nuclear-free-world

August 3, 2024 Posted by | Japan, PERSONAL STORIES, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump could win back the nuclear codes. Biden should put guardrails on the nuclear arsenal—now.

By Tom Z. Collina | July 30, 2024, https://thebulletin.org/2024/07/trump-could-win-back-the-nuclear-codes-biden-should-put-guardrails-on-the-nuclear-arsenal-now/?utm_source=Newsletter+&utm_medium=Email+&utm_campaign=ThursdayNewsletter08012024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_GuardrailsNuclearArsenal_07302024

On January 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump inspired a mob attack on the US Capitol to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration. Not only was this an unprecedented attack on American democracy, but it represented a serious national security threat. Many saw and see this as one of many examples of an unstable President Trump acting in dangerous, irrational ways. And throughout his time in office, Trump—like all presidents in the nuclear age—had the unilateral authority to launch the US nuclear arsenal.

At any moment, Trump could literally have ended the world with a phone call. Congressional approval is not needed, and the secretary of defense cannot stop a presidential order to unleash the US nuclear arsenal. The system is built for speed, not deliberation. The whole process, from presidential order to the launch of one or hundreds of nuclear warheads, would take just minutes.

The danger that Trump would do something catastrophic was so acute that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi desperately looked for ways to prevent the “unstable president from … accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike,” according to a letter Pelosi wrote in January 2021 to House Democrats in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was convinced that Trump had suffered “serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election” and took the extraordinary step of ordering his staff to come to him if they received a nuclear strike order from the president. “No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure,” Milley reportedly told the officers. “You never know what a president’s trigger point is.”

Pelosi and Milley had plenty of reasons to worry that Trump could start a nuclear war. In August 2017, in a thinly veiled nuclear threat, Trump warned North Korea that it would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” Trump mocked Kim Jong Un, the North’s leader, writing “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” According to then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Trump privately discussed the idea of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and suggested he could blame a US strike on another country.

Actually, however, Milley was not correct when he told his staff that he was part of the formal procedure to launch nuclear weapons. As former Defense Secretary William J. Perry and I wrote in our 2020 book, The Button, policy established during the Cold War puts decisions about the use of nuclear weapons solely in the hands of the civilian president, not Congress and above all not the military. All the president need do is call the Pentagon’s War Room—using the nuclear “football” or some other means—and identify himself and give the order to launch. The president may choose to consult with senior advisors such as Milley but is not required to.

Milley broke these rules, as others broke them before him. During the Watergate crisis, then-Defense Secretary James Schlesinger was so concerned about President Richard Nixon’s mental state and alcohol consumption that he told military commanders that if Nixon ordered a nuclear strike, they should check with him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger first. Sen. Alan Cranston phoned Schlesinger, warning him about “the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust.”

Should Milley, Schlesinger, or any military leader, let a clearly unstable president start a nuclear war just to follow protocol? Of course not. But officials should not have to break the rules to do the right thing. The United States needs to change the policy that put Milley and Schlesinger in an impossible spot.

With just six months left in office, President Biden can fix the system for himself and all future presidents. To do so, Biden should announce the White House will share authority to use nuclear weapons in any first strike with a select group in Congress. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war, not the president. The first use of nuclear weapons is clearly an act of war. In a situation where the United States has already been attacked with nuclear weapons, the president would retain the option to act unilaterally.

President Biden would have to make such a policy change by executive order. Passing congressional legislation would be more durable but is unlikely in the current political environment. If Trump wins the election, he would likely reverse Biden’s order. But if Vice President Kamala Harris wins, the new policy could be strengthened over time with legislation.

Such a policy would provide clear directives for the military to follow: A launch could be ordered only if the United States had already been attacked with nuclear weapons or if Congress had approved the decision, providing a constitutional check to executive power. This would be infinitely safer than our current doctrine.

As an important part of his legacy, President Biden must put guardrails on presidential authority to start nuclear war now before the next dangerous leader gets elected—whomever and whenever that may be. We must never again entrust the fate of the world to just one fallible human. This is not about whose finger should be on the button. This is about making good policy that can keep Americans—and people around the world—alive, regardless of whom US voters happen to put in the White House.

August 3, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Will ‘Certainly’ Defend Israel If Attacked By Iran In Wake Of Haniyeh Killing

by Tyler Durden, Aug 01, 2024,  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-says-hamas-chiefs-killing-had-us-involvement-blinken-denies-foreknowledge

More dangerous escalation coming from the Pentagon, at least in terms of declared ‘commitments’… how many wars or proxy conflicts does Washington want to be in at once? 

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated Wednesday, just hours after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s death, “If Israel is attacked, we certainly will help defend Israel.“

He issued the words aboard the USNS Millinocket during a visit to the Philippines. “You saw us do that in April; you can expect to see us do that again,” he said, in reference to the prior Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack in retaliation for the previous Israeli attack on Tehran’s embassy in Damascus.

Multiple Iranian officials have told the New York Times in a breaking story that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered retaliation against Israel for the brazen assassination by missile strike of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh which took place on Iranian soil in the early morning hours.

Officials referenced the “humiliating security failure” and that Iran must once against show “strength against the risk of escalation” in exacting revenge on Israel.

Khamenei has, according to the report, “issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s leader” – three Iranian sources who were briefed on the matter said.

Russia is one among several nations urging calm and raising the alarm over a major regional conflagration:

Russia warned Wednesday that the assassination in Iran of visiting Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh threatened a full “global conflict” — as the terror group called it “a grave escalation” and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei threatened “harsh punishment” for Israel.

“We resolutely condemn the attack that led to Mr. Haniyeh’s death,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said soon after Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike while in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president.

“We believe that such action is aimed against attempts to establish peace in the region, and could significantly destabilize the already tense situation,” he said.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has issued a fiery statement saying that Washington must also bear responsibility for the Israeli attack which killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in the overnight and early morning hours of Wednesday.

“This terrorist act is not only a flagrant violation of the principles and rules of international law and the United Nations Charter, but also a serious threat to regional and international peace and security,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry statement began.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran emphasizes the responsibility of the US government as a supporter and accomplice of the Zionist regime in the continuation of the occupation and genocide of the Palestinians, in committing this heinous act of terrorism,” it added.

The vague language of general ‘support’ to Israel leaves open the question of whether Tehran believes the US had an actual direct operational role in Haniyeh’s killing.

However, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations issued a more specific denunciation in tandem: “This act could not have occurred without the authorization and intelligence support of the U.S.,” it said in a letter submitted to the UN. According to fresh details of the strike:

HAMAS SENIOR OFFICIAL AL-HAYYA SAYS A MISSILE HIT HAMAS LEADER ROOM AND ‘STRUCK HIM DIRECTLY‘

Hours before the accusation, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken definitively stated Washington had no involvement in the attack. 

“This is something we were not aware of or involved in. It’s very hard to speculate,” Blinken told a regional outlet while on an official trip to Singapore. He had been asked about what he thinks will happen next in the region.

Iran will more than likely retaliate in a big way, possibly with another wave of drones and missiles on Israel, but this time less telegraphed (compared to the initial April 13 attack, largely intercepted by Israel’s anti-air defenses)…

The aforementioned UN letter has also called for the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting over the Hamas chief’s killing. But likely the US and its allies will see this as a legitimate killing of a designated terrorist responsible for the atrocities against Israel on Oct.7.

Meanwhile as Israel appears to be on an ‘assassination spree’, the body of Hezbollah’s military commander Fuad Shukr (and close advisor to Nasrallah) has been pulled from the rubble in Beirut.

Regional sources say the death toll from the Tuesday strike on a southern neighborhood of the Lebanese capital has risen to five with at least 70 injured. Among the casualties were women and children.

August 3, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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