NBC -US sailors sue Japan’s TEPCO for post-quake radiation exposure
“…”The carrier was less than two football fields away from the Fukushima Daiichi when it released a cloud of radiation,” said Garner, speaking to NBC News on Thursday….”
“…The plaintiffs are suffering a variety of symptoms that attorney Paul Garner says were caused by the exposure, including rectal bleeding, thyroid problems and persistent migraine headaches, and all face an increased chance of developing cancer and requiring expensive medical procedures….”
28 December 2012
Nicholas A. Groesch / Reuters file
Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan wash down the flight deck to remove potential radiation contamination while operating off the coast of Japan providing humanitarian assistance in support of Operation Tomodachi on March 22, 2011.
By Kari Huus, NBC News
A group of U.S. Navy personnel involved in the humanitarian effort after Japan’s March 2011 earthquake and tsunami have filed a lawsuit against the Tokyo Electric Power Co. for more than $200 million in compensation, punitive damages and future medical costs for exposure to radiation that leaked from the damaged Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant at the time.
The plaintiffs include eight troops serving on the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier — one of whom was pregnant at the time of the alleged exposure — and her daughter.
They charge that the utility, known as TEPCO, “knowingly and negligently caused, permitted and allowed misleading information concerning the true condition of the (plant) to be disseminated to the public, including the U.S. Navy Department,” according to the complaint filed on Dec. 21 in a U.S. federal court in San Diego.
US, UK against Pak nuclear programme, says Asif Yasin
Posted on December 29, 2012
The Frontier Post
RAWALPINDI (INP): Defence Secretary Lt General (Retd) Asif Yasin Malik on Friday said that the United States and Britain are against Pakistan’s nuclear programme and the CIA uses foreign agencies for its operations in Pakistan.
Image from deshcalling.blogspot.com
Talking to media at the Defence Ministry here on Friday, Asif Yasin said that they had complete information of the CIA agents working in Pakistan. He said Pakistan has been informed by the US regarding presence of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents. He added that no country was allowed to work undercover in Pakistan. “The CIA also uses the agencies of other countries.”
Lawsuit by US Sailors Against TEPCO: “Goshi Hosono,You Lied!” -EXSKF
“..All I can think of is how many bento would this money could buy for Futaba-machi evacuees in that abandoned high school building in Saitama. They could build a mansion for each and every one of them. Many of them, just like Mayor Idogawa, were there in Futaba-machi when Reactor 1 blew up and shiny, white particles were falling on them from the sky…”
Picture, Dalai Lama visits fukushima last year
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2012
EXSKF
It’s very interesting to see the reaction of the Japanese people on Twitter. I’d say the overwhelming majority is highly approving of the US sailors (they were not the helicopter pilots who were actually contaminated with radiation), buying all their arguments and sympathizing with them, particularly with the female sailor who was pregnant at that time.
(What was she doing on a nuclear aircraft carrier, pregnant?)
Anyway, the court paper filed on December 21, 2012 is here, for those who are interested. I’m skimming through it right now. So far, very flimsy.
One of their basis that the TEPCO/Japanese government (they use them interchangeably) lied to them was no other than Goshi Hosono, then a personal advisor to Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
Page 21 of the court document says (emphasis is mine):
94. Upon information and belief, as a further direct and proximate result of Defendant’s negligence, Plaintiffs have been and will be required to undergo further medical testing, evaluation and medical procedures, including but not limiting to chelation therapy and bone marrow transplants in an effort to seek cure, and will be required to employ extraordinary means to achieve cure.
95. As a further direct and proximate result of Defendant’s negligence, the Plantiffs incurred losses and damages for personal injury and property damage, loss of use and enjoyment of life and their property, the need for periodic medical examination and treatment, and economic losses, including wage loss, and the expenditure of time and money, and will continue to incur losses and damages in the future.
96. Plaintiffs also face additional and irreparable harm to their life expectancy, which has been shortened and cannot be restored to its prior condition.
97. Solely as the result of the defendant’s negligence, carelessness and recklessness, the Plaintiffs, were caused to suffer severe and serious personal injuries to mind and body, and further, that the Plaintiffs were subjected to great physical pain and mental anguish.
Mr. Paul C Garner, who represents the Plaintiffs, seems to be an attorney from New York, specializing in “General Litigation; Corporate Law; Negligence Law; Medical Malpractice; Wills, Estates and Trusts; International Corporate; Entertainment Law; Business Law; Civil Practice; Environmental Law; Asbestos Litigation; Real Estate” (from Martindale.com)
USS Ronald Reagan’s Facebook post on that day (Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 11:52pm, probably the US time) by Commanding Officer Captain Thom Burke says (emphasis is mine):
RADIOACTIVE JAPAN UNDER LDP: SHINTARO ISHIHARA’S SON TO BECOME MINISTER OF THE ENVIRONMENT
EXSKF
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2012
What an in-your-face insult to citizens of Japan, particularly for people in Kanto and Tohoku contaminated by radioactive materials from the nuclear accident, and even more so for the workers at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.
Nobuteru Ishihara is the eldest son of the irascible ex-Governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara, for now teaming up with the boy-wonder of Osaka City. (He didn’t inherit his uncle (Yujiro Ishihara)’s good looks or charisma, unfortunately.)
In the early days of the nuclear crisis last year, Mr. Nobuteru Ishihara was the one who said that citizens should be banned from measuring radioactivity using their personal survey meter. His ostensible reason was that the survey meters may not be “accurate”. It turned out the government’s monitoring stations have been inaccurate.
In June last year, he was the one who called the anti-nuclear movement as “mass hysteria“.
He was also the one who compared Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant to Aum Shinrikyo, a cult that was responsible for the sarin gas attack on the subway in 1995. Ishihara referred to Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant as “Fukushima I Satyam“. “Satyam” is the word that Aum Shinrikyo followers used to designate their facilities.
(Aum Shinrikyo is alive and well, by the way. The name has been changed, and they are increasing followers in Japan.)
Under the prime minister whose proof of being fit to govern was to gobble up the curry rice with pork cutlet on top, Ishihara will be in charge of decontamination (or lack thereof) and ending the nuclear accident (probably by ignoring it). Needless to say, he is all for restarting nuclear power plants.
It won’t be long that people start thinking fondly about Goshi Hosono and his disaster debris craft dolls. (At least Hosono is better-looking.)
I wonder if Ishihara is going to receive double salaries for the double positions. A minister in a Japanese cabinet makes about 37 million yen (about US$434,000) a year. For many workers in Japan, that would be 10 years worth of salaries.
Even Goshi Hosono declined to receive two salaries for his double duty as Minister of the Environment and the Minister in charge of nuclear plants/Fukushima accident.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/radioactive-japan-under-ldp-shintaro.html
Russia’s new nuclear submarine to be commissioned soon
Souce:Xinhua Published By Thomas Whittle
Updated 29/12/2012 5:54 pm
image courtesy of hobbyboss.com
SAINT PETERSBURG, Dec. 28 — The latest submarine addition to Russia’s ‘Project 955′ upgrading of its nuclear capability, the Yuri Dolgoruky, is due to be commissioned in the northern port of Severodinsk on Sunday, Itar-Tass reported Friday.
The sub, armed with new and improved ballistic missile capabilities, is one of eight major projects due to be completed by 2020 that will form the core of the Russian Navy’s nuclear deterrence strategy over the coming decades.
The total cost of the Yuri Dolgoruky has been estimated at 23 billion rubles (750 million U.S. dollars).
Image courtesy of shipmodels.info
http://www.nzweek.com/world/russias-new-nuclear-submarine-to-be-commissioned-soon-40051/
Toshiba in Talks to Sell Part of Westinghouse Nuclear-Power Unit
- ASIA BUSINESS
- December 27, 2012,
BY MARI IWATA
TOKYO—Toshiba Corp. is negotiating with three parties to sell up to 16% of its Westinghouse Electric Co. nuclear-power unit, Toshiba President Norio Sasaki said.
The three parties “have made very good offers,” but Toshiba is “not in a hurry,” Mr. Sasaki said. The Japanese conglomerate’s forecast for its nuclear-reactor business is positive, despite softer demand after last year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan, he said.
Toshiba paid about $4.2 billion for 77% of U.S.-based Westinghouse six years ago. At that price, the 16% would be valued around $875 million. Toshiba has since sold 10% of Westinghouse to Kazakhstan state-owned NAC Kazatomprom …
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Before the bombs go off: Bellona
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2012/environmental_effects_of_nuclear_production
The advent of nuclear weapons in the 1940s created an environmental Frankenstein, the repercussions of which no nuclear-armed nation on earth has been able to deal with effectively. As the search for nuclear weapons begat the harnessing of the atom’s power for the “peaceful” purposes of energy production, the two are inextricably intertwined in producing an environmental, sociological and economic challenge that they governments of the world are only beginning to comprehend.
Charles Digges, 27/12-2012
And if current progress in dealing with weapons and civilian nuclear waste is any indication, the destructive force of both nuclear arms and nuclear energy – even if they were banned tomorrow by all world governments simultaneously – will continue to linger for generations to come. The simple fact of the matter in both cases remains that, ever since the inception of the atomic chain reaction occurred to Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard as he stood waiting to cross Budapest street in 1933, – according to his memoirs – no scientist, group of scientists or national governments have come up with a way to store nuclear waste for the hundreds of decades it takes to lose its contaminating effects, or mitigate the effects of radiation exposure to human health. Nuclear weapons and their doppelganger nuclear power have thus together achieved the status of a time release weapon of mass destruction even before the red button is pushed in a remote missile silo or a dirty bomb detonated by terrorists.
Haste failed to account for waste
The race to create the world’s most potent weapon of mass destruction in the hopes of ending World War II with Fat Man and Little Boy under Robert Opppenheimer’s Manhattan Project was exactly that – a race that took haphazard chances with then-barley known effects of radiation, and only a theoretical knowledge of how long radioactive contamination remains lethal within the environment.
| Little Boy exploding above Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Fat Man exploding over Nagasaki on Aust 9, 1945 |
| Wikimedia Commons |
On August 6, 1945, the US bomber the Enola Gay unleashed the uranium-235 based Little Boy on Hiroshima with 16 kilotons of force. Three days later, the plutonium powered Fat Man was dropped over Nagasaki by the US bomber Bockscar, yielding 21 kilotons of force.
The rest of the world struggled to catch up, with Russia detonating its first uranium powered nuclear bomb in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan on August 29, 1949 as the result of a massive post-war effort involving some 68,000 people working within the First Chief Directorate, or PGU, headed by Igor Kurchatov. The PGU, through the Soviet period underwent several name changes – many intended to disguise its purpose – and has emerged today as Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation.
 |
| A replica of the first Russian atomic bomb |
| Bellona |
Though an ally of the United States, Great Britain did not develop its own nuclear weapon until the early 1950s, detonating its first uranium-235 powered device under a frigate off the coast of Australia on October 3, 1952, followed by its free fall “Blue Danube” atomic bomb in November of 1953. Secrecy codes adopted by the administration of President Harry Truman, and codified by the McMahon Act of 1946, restricting foreign access to nuclear weapons know-how – despite Britain’s close collaboration in the Manhattan Project.
Successes in disarmament
US led efforts in the early 1990s via the Nunn Lugar program an others by the US Department of Energy (DOE) – which collectively form the US Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) effort – to decommission tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, submarines, and shut down plutonium producing reactors in the former Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War proved one successful blow in disarmament. This drive was augmented in 2002 by the G-8’s Global Initiative program, which pumped another $20 billion over 10 years into helping fortify the storage and security of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from decommissioned military nuclear weapons like submarines, as well as to augment CTR efforts to rid, or at least safely store, Russia’s vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons. US-led programs also contributed to the safe storage of weapons grade plutonium in Russia, and launched other efforts to help retrain the legions of now-jobless Soviet weapons scientists to apply their skills to peaceful purposes.
 |
| A Russian nuclear submarine being dismantled on Nunn-Lugar funding |
| Bellona Archive |
But many of these programs are now drawing to a close, both because of their own built-in expiration dates, like the G-8 initiative, and the future of US programs, like CTR, have recently become foggy as Moscow’s political system expresses new paranoia about revealing its nuclear secrets – and indeed about western aid in general. This backpedaling to the Soviet cloud of secrecy surrounding issues nuclear – which is by no means the exclusive domain of the Russians – threatens to leave unfinished several critical weapons destruction programs, and has even seen the Kremlin recently state plans to restore its nuclear submarine might under the world’s seas – replacing missile subs decommissioned by CTR and other international efforts – despite the excessive cost overruns that such new lines of nuclear weapons systems imply.
| Nunn-Lugar helps destroy a missile silo in the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine |
| Wikimedia Commons |
But many of these programs are now drawing to a close, both because of their own built-in expiration dates, like the G-8 initiative, and the future of US programs, like CTR, have recently become foggy as Moscow’s political system expresses new paranoia about revealing its nuclear secrets – and indeed about western aid in general. This backpedaling to the Soviet cloud of secrecy surrounding issues nuclear – which is by no means the exclusive domain of the Russians – threatens to leave unfinished several critical weapons destruction programs, and has even seen the Kremlin recently state plans to restore its nuclear submarine might under the world’s seas – replacing missile subs decommissioned by CTR and other international efforts – despite the excessive cost overruns that such new lines of nuclear weapons systems imply.
The uncertainty of CTR’s future efforts – which America insists it will continue – and funding shortfalls by G-8 nations under the Global Initiative cast a shadow over the future of literally tons of nuclear military hardware and irradiated equipment that continues to pose one of the most critical environmental questions of the last, the current and several centuries to come.
Emergent hazards of the nuclear weapons industry and the advent of nuclear energy
USS Ronald Reagan decontamination procedure (Video) and US sailors sue TEPCO
Uploaded on Jan 28, 2012
During our 2011 deployment on the USS Ronald Reagan, we went through a radiation plume after heading to help out Japan after the earthquake/tsunami. This is what we had to go through every time we came back off the flight deck. This was the only entry point from the flight deck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk6Sy1cNgXo&feature=player_embedded
US sailors sue Japanese utility over radiation exposure
“No amount of money would compensate me if I’m 23 years old and I’m bleeding from my [behind] or have thyroid problems,” he said. He added it was about getting justice for people who rushed to aid Japan in its time of need.
The USS Ronald Reagan, which is home-ported in San Diego, the guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville and destroyer USS Preble began supporting search-and-rescue efforts along the destroyed coastline on March 13. The Reagan’s approximate 5,500 sailors remained in the area until the beginning of April.
By MATTHEW M. BURKE
SASEBO NAVAL BASE, Japan — Eight sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan are suing Japan’s nationalized Tokyo Electric Power Co., claiming it lied about dangers from a radiation leak when they helped out after last year’s nuclear plant disaster and that they will almost certainly die prematurely as a result.
Their complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, seeks a jury trial and damages of $40 million each for being “rendered infirm” and their bodies being “poisoned” by radiation. It was filed on behalf of Lindsay Cooper, James Sutton, Kim Gieseking, Charles Yarris, Robert Miller, Christopher Bittner, Eric Membrila and Judy Goodwin.
Within days of the March 11, 2011, earthquake, tsunami and subsequent radiation leak from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, the USS Ronald Reagan was aiding in the search for survivors and bodies from just off Japan’s devastated east coast.
Six of the eight sailors worked on the flight deck during the operation and two worked in the air contamination department. Gieseking is also suing on behalf of her daughter, Autumn, who was born shortly after the deployment.
The sailors allege a host of medical conditions, from headaches and difficulty concentrating to rectal bleeding and thyroid problems, as a result of the exposure and say they will have to undergo more medical tests and expensive treatments in the future, their lawyer Paul Garner said Thursday. The sailors also want TEPCO, which has an office in Washington, D.C., to establish a $100 million fund to pay for any of their future medical expenses.
While the utility has settled with the families of Japanese citizens who died during evacuations from the affected region, and the Japanese government has guaranteed payments, this appears to be the first lawsuit involving American servicemembers, Garner said. The suit’s allegations include negligence and being a public nuisance.
UK asked to investigate spyware firm… Spying on activists and bloggers -RT
Shehabi said she welcomed the step to impose some controls on the export of surveillance software, but that stricter controls were needed. “I expect this type of treatment from the Bahrain government, which is reduced to lawlessness and doesn’t believe in human rights, but if they have been serviced by a British company that really angers me,” she said. “There shouldn’t have to be another victim like me to come along before these exports stop.”
Published: 27 December, 2012, 16:34
RT
Privacy rights activists are calling on HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to investigate spyware firm Gamma International and its exports of surveillance software to repressive regimes, such as Bahrain, calling the transactions “criminal” and “illegal”.
The campaign group Privacy International (PI) confirmed in a press release that Gamma International is selling surveillance technology to regimes with horrific human rights records without a proper license.
The software being sold is powerful enough to intercept text messages, phone and Skype calls, remotely turn on cameras and microphones, log keystrokes and copy files, The Guardian reported.
The activist group sent a 186-page report to HMRC, saying that that technology sold is being used to spy on activists, who are later targeted by repressive regimes and “amounts to criminal conduct”.
In April 2011, Egyptian protesters found documents from Gamma International inside Egypt’s secret police office. One of the documents contained an offer dated June 29, 2010, which said to provide ‘FinSpy’ software, hardware,installation and training for 287,000 euro.
Gamma International denied supplying software to Egypt, but did confirm that it has demonstrated such products to the government.
Bahraini prodemocracy activists also were subjected to Gamma International’s surveillance products.
In spring and summer of 2012 activists received emails containing malware. After the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab investigated the case, it found evidence connecting the malware to FinSpy, which is part of the commercial FinFisher intrusion kit.
Citizen Lab managed to extract ‘digital DNA’, from the infected emails that matched that of FinFisher and published the results.
Activist and writer in Bahrain Ala’a Shehabi, 30, was one of the victims targeted by FinSpy malware emails.
She claims to have received the total of four emails from what looked like authentic email accounts.
She later forwarded them to her colleague Bill Marczak, a computer science doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, who then connected the malware in the email to an internet address in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, which triggered the rest of the investigation.
Shebani told The Guardian that situation in Bahrain at the time was “very charged”.
“I was banned from traveling and forced to stop work,” she added. “I essentially worked on the assumption that everything I did or said was being watched.”
Facebook and Twitter accounts started disappearing, forcing the opposition to go underground.
Gamma International, on the other hand, stated that it had no knowledge of this.
Bahrain’s human rights situation remains “critical in the wake of the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that erupted in February 2011,” reports Human Rights Watch.
Police regularly use violence to disperse crowds of protesters, while Bahrainis, led by the country’s Shiite Muslim majority, are continuing to protest, demanding greater rights and freedoms from the ruling Sunni minority. More than 80 people have died in the unrest since the pro-democracy protests begun.
Gamma International’s spy software was also discovered being used in Ethiopia and Turkmenistan, PI reported.
Arms firm support for University College London institution rapped
image courtesy of TokenLibertarianGirl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9dPuuBke9Q
Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at UCL, raised questions about the support provided for the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies (ISRS) by Ultra Electronics, which is set up by Labour’s former home and defence secretary John Reid, The Guardian reported.
“It does look like a bit of a throwback to the Bush years. It’s right that UCL should be a broad church, but there must be real openness to a range of views and perspectives, real transparency about funding sources, and real academic activity. Otherwise it will be seen as little more than a front offering a patina of academic respectability to one set of views,” Sands said.
This summer, as part of a $2 million contract, Ultra delivered fuel cells to the US military for its deadly drones.
The ISRS, whose inaugural conference was addressed behind closed doors last month by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has an 11-person “advisory board”, that includes arms manufacturers and politicians who are accused of promoting an illegal war against Iraq.
Earlier in November, anti-war campaigners took part in a demonstration called “War criminals & arms dealers out of our universities”, which was held against ex-UK Prime Minister’s invitation as a speaker to the conference of the UCL ISRS.
Britain’s former Labour leader is globally discredited for his war crimes, as in his 10 years as Prime Minister, hundreds of thousands were killed and injured in illegal interventions, and hundreds of thousands more were made refugees.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/26/280212/arms-firm-support-for-uks-ucl-rapped/
Independent WHO forum ”Nuclear Free Now” – December 2012 -Koriyama, Japan (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM-1bDfVfxo
Video has English introduction and then in French language
A cons-forum was organized by the group “Nuclear Free Now” in Koriyama, a city 55 km from Fukushima, from 12 to 17 December 2012, in response to the ministerial meeting on nuclear safety organized on the same dates in this city by the Japanese government and the IAEA.
Against the organizers of the forum, a member wishing to make a presentation “Independent WHO” the agreement WHO / IAEA and collective activities, Christophe Elain has participated in various events organized by “Nuclear Free Now.”
In this video Christophe Elain intervention during the press conference at the event on Friday 21 December 2012.
Thank you to Kna for mounting the video and the subtitles
WHO Report on Fukushima a Travesty
8 – DECEMBER – 2012
The World Health Organisation has failed in its obligation to protect the public and guilty of the crime of non-assistance. World Health Organisation subservient to nuclear lobby. The World Health Report (May 2012) entitled “Preliminary dose estimation from the nuclearaccident after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami” [1] is a public relations exercise to reassure the world that WHO is fulfilling its role in the area of radiation and health. Following the preliminary dose estimation, WHO will complete a health risk assessment to “support the identification of needs and priorities for public health action.” But this report [ Read More ]
Pentagon Held Secret Meeting With Nuclear Industry 2003 -Veterans Today
“Moreover, because these “smaller” tactical nuclear weapons have been reclassified by the Pentagon as “safe for the surrounding civilian population,” thereby allegedly “minimizing the risk of collateral damage,” there are no overriding, built-in restrictions to prevent their use, Chossudovsky writes. Stockpiled tactical nuclear weapons, he concludes, are now considered to be an integral part of the battlefield arsenal, “part of the tool box,” so to speak, used in conventional war theaters.”
Veterans Today
Tuesday, December 25th, 2012
Image courtesy of http://www.publicdeception.net
U.S. corporations that reap billions from making nuclear weapons have “a direct voice” as to “their use and deployment,” a distinguished political scientist warns.
On August 6, 2003, a secret meeting was held at U.S. Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, Neb., that brought together more than 150 “senior executives from the nuclear industry and military-industrial complex,” writes Michel Chossudovsky, Professor Emeritus at the University of Ottawa and Founder of the Centre for Research on Globalization, of Montreal.
According to a leaked draft of the agenda, the secret session included discussions on “mini-nukes” and “bunker-buster” bombs with nuclear warheads “for possible use against rogue states,” Chossudovsky writes in his new E-book, “Towards a World War III Scenario,”(Global Research.)
The meeting was intended to set the stage for creation of a new generation of “smaller,” “safer,” and “more usable” nukes for use in “in-theater nuclear wars” of the 21st Century, Chossudovsky writes. No members of Congress representing the public were in attendance.
Barely a week prior to this meeting, the National Nuclear Security Administration(NNSA) disbanded the advisory committee that had “independent oversight” over the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including the testing and/or use of new nuclear devices.
The nuclear industry—which makes both nuclear devices and their missile delivery systems—Chossudovsky writes, is controlled by a handful of defense contractors, led by Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing.
Meanwhile, “the Pentagon has unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use of nuclear weapons for the ‘defense of the American homeland,” Chossudovsky writes. He points out:
Hitachi President protests nuclear-free future in Japan -Quote of the week
http://enformable.com/2012/12/hitachi-president-protests-nuclear-free-future-in-japan/
Hiroaki Nakanishi, the president of Hitachi, told reporters that even in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, it would “be impossible” for Japan to reduce dependence on nuclear power, and used the importance of “protecting the environment” as one of his arguments.
“It is impossible to end nuclear power generation and do everything with renewable energy such as solar and wind power generation,”
India is on the cusp of a solar energy revolution. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) kick-started the development of large, mega-watt scale, solar plants….
Training under way for new nuclear plant operators – Old nuclear is finished!
By Ray Henry Associated Press Posted December 26, 2012 at 4 a.m.
While the nuclear industry had earlier proposed a larger building campaign, low natural gas prices coupled with uncertainty after last year’s disaster at a Japanese nuclear plant have scaled back those ambitions.
“This is where nuclear power is going,” said Jason Hayes, who is training to become asenior reactor operator for the new reactors at Plant Vogtle. He left a job as a control room supervisor at a nuclear plant in Mississippi because he wanted to tie his career to the emerging technology. “If there is going to be a nuclear power industry, I figured I’d go to where it’s going to be.”
“The biggest difference is the digital aspect of it,” said Greg Crosby, a training coordinator for Southern Co. “We’re almost totally digital.”
WAYNESBORO, Ga. — Utility companies are preparing a new wave of workers to run first-of-their-kind nuclear plants, a process certain to influence how workers are trained on the new technology for decades to come.
Southern Co. in Georgia and SCANA Corp. in South Carolina are the first to prepare new workers to run a recently approved reactor design never before built in the United States. Training like it will be repeated over the decades-long lifetime of those plants and at other new ones that may share the technology in years to come.
Both power companies are building pairs of Westinghouse Electric Corp. AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and SCANA Corp.’s Summer Nuclear Station northwest of Columbia, S.C. While the nuclear industry had earlier proposed a larger building campaign, low natural gas prices coupled with uncertainty after last year’s disaster at a Japanese nuclear plant have scaled back those ambitions.
EDF declines comment on China nuclear probe report – Reuters
PARIS | Wed Dec 26, 2012 11:11am GMT
(Reuters) – Electricite de France (EDF.PA) on Tuesday declined to comment on a report of a probe into its recent partnership with a Chinese utility to develop a new type of nuclear reactor.
Several French news websites cited a forthcoming article in satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine, due to appear on Wednesday, as saying that French finance-ministry inspectors had begun an inquiry into the terms of the China agreement.
“We have no reaction,” a spokeswoman for EDF said, adding she had not seen the forthcoming article. The French finance ministry was unavailable for comment.
EDF had said in November that the agreement with China Guangdong Nuclear PowerCorporation Holding GDNCP.UL was to develop a concept for a 1,000-MW reactor. This would be cheaper and smaller than the 1,600-MW EPR reactor blamed for the loss of a landmark project in Abu Dhabi in 2009.
(Reporting by Lionel Laurent and Gerard Bon; editing by Patrick Graham)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/12/26/uk-edf-china-nuclear-idUKBRE8BO03K20121226
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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