Last week the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the UK, Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz al Saud, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times which clarified his country’s position on Iran and Syria in no uncertain terms.
“We believe that many of the West’s policies on both Iran and Syria risk the stability and security of the Middle East. This is a dangerous gamble, about which we cannot remain silent, and will not stand idly by. […]
And yet rather than challenging the Syrian and Iranian governments, some of our Western partners have refused to take much-needed action against them. The West has allowed one regime to survive and the other to continue its program for uranium enrichment, with all the consequent dangers of weaponization.
This year’s talks with Iran may dilute the West’s determination to deal with both governments. What price is “peace” though, when it is made with such regimes?
The foreign policy choices being made in some Western capitals risk the stability of the region and, potentially, the security of the whole Arab world. ”
Earlier in December the Gulf Co-operation Council summit in Kuwait issued a final communique which expressed continued concern over Iran’s nuclear programme.
“The GCC, which includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and other Gulf Arab countries, praised Iran’s new rapprochement efforts towards the Gulf’s monarchies, but also expressed concern over reports of intention of new nuclear reactor projects in the country.
“The higher council expressed concern over reports about plans to build more nuclear reactors along the Gulf coast,” Abdellatif al-Zayani, the GCC general-secretary, said at the end of the two-day summit hosted in Kuwait, reading the council’s final communique.”
Despite these and other clear signs of unease among Gulf countries, the BBC continues to report concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear programme as a ‘Western’ issue.
“Israeli and American critics of the Geneva deal say it gives Iran cover to expand the programme.”
Clearly, concerns regarding the the P5+1 deal with Iran are by no means limited to “Israeli and American critics”.
The article also employs the standard equivocal impartiality box ticker, according to which:
“Western nations have long accused Iran of seeking to acquire a nuclear weapon, but Iran says the programme is for solely peaceful ends.”
Beyond the fact that this pro forma statement neglects to provide BBC audiences with the supporting evidence to assessments regarding the military nature of Iran’s nuclear programme and reduces the entire issue to a puerile ‘he said-she said’ level, it also bizarrely paints it as a matter of ‘the West vs Iran’ when in fact the range of countries concerned about Iran’s military nuclear designs in fact includes nations which are not “Western” such as the Gulf States and also Russia and China, which are part of the P5+1 which engaged in talks with Iran precisely because of assessments regarding the military nature of its nuclear programme.
In addition, of course, that programme has been the subject of several UN Security Council resolutions which were backed by numerous countries which cannot be described as “Western nations” and the IAEA – also not a “Western” body – has repeatedly voiced its concerns over the nature of the Iranian nuclear project.
So why does the BBC insist on propagating this misleading “West vs Iran” theme?
The draft of the basic energy plan the government has drawn up as the energy policy outline for the next two decades or so clearly reflects Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s enthusiasm for keeping nuclear power plants running in Japan.
To be sure, the draft contains Abe’s promise to reduce Japan’s reliance on nuclear power as much as possible and references the lessons learned from the accident that crippled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The government has also made sure that the document doesn’t call for building new nuclear power plants or replacing old ones with new ones.
But this policy outline leaves no doubt that the government views nuclear power as an important and basic power source and intends to use it vigorously.
This approach is totally unacceptable.
Toshimitsu Motegi, minister of economy, trade and industry, criticized the Democratic Party of Japan’s policy decision to phase out nuclear power as “an unrealistic strategy.”
Indeed, there were also inconsistencies in the DPJ’s energy policy. But the Abe administration’s vision for the nation’s energy future isn’t any more realistic by any measure, as is revealed by its pledge to “promote steadily” the nuclear fuel recycling program.
The current policy of reprocessing all spent nuclear fuel to extract and use plutonium is effectively unworkable.
Progress has halted at the Monju project to develop fast-breeder reactor technology, the centerpiece of the nuclear fuel recycling program, while the maintenance of the prototype fast-breeder reactor is costing a huge amount of money every year.
The so-called plutonium-thermal (pluthermal) project, which involves processing spent nuclear fuel into mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel to be burned in ordinary reactors, doesn’t seem to have a good chance of success, either. Even before the Fukushima nuclear disaster, only four reactors were being used for the pluthermal power generation.
NARAHA, Fukushima Prefecture–Hideo Matsumoto stares at the surface of the Kidogawa river here, a quiet, tree-lined waterway where salmon have been caught for centuries. A forlorn expression forms on his face.
“I want fishing to make a full comeback soon,” says Matsumoto, the 65-year-old head of the Kidogawa river fishermen’s cooperative. “If we don’t resume fishing, the river won’t have many salmon coming up it.”
Unfortunately, Japan’s greatest salmon runs could see a huge drop in returning fish in two or three years’ time, putting the entire salmon business in Fukushima Prefecture in jeopardy.
Fishermen have been unable to hatch eggs or release young fish on five rivers in the prefecture because the hatcheries are located within the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
In normal times in the town of Naraha, located along the Kidogawa river, salmon are caught in autumn and then their eggs are artificially inseminated. The hatchlings are released the following spring, and return to the river, where they were born, four or five years later to spawn.
But the majority of hatchlings released into the Kidogawa river immediately before the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 are believed to have been wiped out by the tsunami.
Since then, no salmon have been hatched or released because the disaster destroyed hatcheries, which cannot be repaired because they lie within the evacuation zone of the nuclear accident.
If the situation remains unchanged past 2014 or 2015, when the salmon released in 2010 are expected to return, then the number of fish making the run could plummet.
On Nov. 17, 11 members of the fishermen’s cooperative caught about 100 fish using the “combination net fishing” technique, in which they sent a net flowing downstream to meet another net that was set in position.
Fishing in the evacuation zone is generally prohibited by the Fukushima prefectural government. This excursion was a test to study the effects of radioactive substances. Although the levels have never exceeded detection limits since these test catches began last year, it is still not known when fishing can resume.
……After building the reactors, Toshiba would reduce its stake, Tanaka said.
“We are thinking about an exit, but we haven’t decided anything yet. We will reduce our majority stake over time. We are a plant provider, not a nuclear power provider,” he said. Tanaka said revenue from the project, including the reactors, was expected to be around 1.5 trillion yen ($14.4 billion)……
(Reuters) – Toshiba Corp (6502.T) said it is in the final stages of nailing down a majority stake in a British nuclear power consortium after one of the joint shareholders agreed to sell the Japanese company its 50 percent stake.
Securing a long-awaited majority holding in the NuGen consortium would guarantee a $14 billion deal for Toshiba’s Westinghouse unit to supply three reactors for the project, Toshiba’s Chief Executive Hisao Tanaka told reporters in Tokyo.
A deal for majority control, including part of French utility GDF Suez’s (GSZ.PA) 50 percent stake, could be in place as early as January, Tanaka said. That would allow Toshiba to kickstart an ambitious reactor building programme that stalled after countries around the world froze nuclear expansion plans and regulations were tightened in the wake of Japan’s 2011 disaster at Fukushima.
Spanish utility Iberdrola SA (IBE.MC), which is selling assets to reduce debt, said on Monday it has agreed to sell its 50 percent stake in NuGen to Toshiba for 85 million pounds ($139 million), subject to final approvals, terms and conditions.
The Environment Ministry said Thursday that it now aims to complete radiation cleanup activities in the most seriously contaminated areas outside the accident-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex by the end of March 2017.
The ministry had hoped to finish the work at 11 cities, towns and villages in Fukushima Prefecture by the end of next March, or about three years after the nuclear crisis began. But the schedule has been delayed due to the difficulties of securing enough places to temporarily store the contaminated soil and other waste.
“We reviewed the plans so that they will be realistic. We will proceed with the decontamination work, offering a detailed response to local needs,” Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara told a press conference.
Medical experts are critical of the latest UNSCEAR report which plays down health impact of Fukushima nuclear accident
UNSCEAR (the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation) recently published a report titled “Sources, Effects and Risks of Ionizing Radiation” with a special focus on levels and effects of radiation exposure due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East-Japan earthquake and tsunami .
The report has received criticism from medical experts who are researching on health effects of radiation. In the interview with 3Sat, Dr. Alex Rosen, a German pediatrician and member of German IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War), harshly criticizes the playing down of radiation impact by UNSCEAR and the nuclear lobby. Professor Wolfgang Hoffmann, a German epidemiologist and radiobiologist, holds views similar to those of Dr. Alex Rosen. He assumes that those who criticize this report would be officially blamed for panic mongering and that any claims for damages and compensation could also be preempted on the basis of this report.
It seems, however, that the report did not receive unanimous support within UNSCEAR. According to Belgian journalist Marc Molitor, the Belgian delegation to UNSCEAR initially criticized the report, claiming that it is minimizing health effects of radiation after the Fukushima nuclear accident . When contacted by 3Sat, however, Dr. Vanmarcke, Chief of Belgian delegation to UNSCEAR, did not wish to talk about the issue which implicates pressure put on him and his delegation by the international nuclear lobby.
Dr. Keith Baverstock, a former researcher at WHO, also commented on the lack of independence of WHO in the research of the health impact of radiation. The existence of the mutual agreement between IAEA and WHO signed in 1959 hinders independent research of WHO on the health effects of radiation .
“If we take inflation into consideration, even then the cost is very high. We are also answerable to people. Plus, there is a lot of opposition to nuclear projects where we have foreign collaborators. If nothing works out, then we will, perhaps, have to back out because of the high electricity generation cost from the project,” a senior DAE official said.
press trust of india
New Delhi, 25 December
As the cost of electricity generation by nuclear power plants, to be set up with the help of French and American companies, is turning out to be on the higher side, the Department of Atomic Energy is in a fix over how to bring down the cost.
On one hand, it is involved in hard negotiations with the companies and on the other hand, sources said, if the cost per unit turns out to be too expensive, then it may not even pursue the project with collaborators.
The estimated cost by the DAE for Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant (JNPP) in Maharashtra is around Rs 9 per unit while the cost for Mithi Virdhi nuclear power project is around Rs 12 per unit.
Currently, the DAE is in negotiations with French company Areva to build six EPR reactors of 1650 MW each at Jaitapur.
Sources pointed out that initial estimates state the cost of the project to be around Rs 27-30 crore per megawatt and the cost per unit to be around Rs 9 per unit in 2021. Speaking to reporters in Mumbai last month, R K Sinha, DAE Secretary, had said a competitive per unit tariff of Rs 6.50 has been estimated in the year of completion of Jaitapur project in 2020-21.
In the case of Mithi Virdhi project where American company Westinghouse Electric is providing AP-1000 reactors, the cost per megawatt is coming to around Rs 40 crores while the cost per unit is around Rs 12.
Although this project is yet to reach the advanced negotiations stage, the DAE has already signed an Early Works Agreement with Westinghouse Electric.
The DAE is skeptical about the proposal due to its high cost. It states that the cost per unit from the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) unit 1 and 2 is around Rs 3.50 to Rs 4 per unit.
“If we take inflation into consideration, even then the cost is very high. We are also answerable to people. Plus, there is a lot of opposition to nuclear projects where we have foreign collaborators.
If nothing works out, then we will, perhaps, have to back out because of the high electricity generation cost from the project,” a senior DAE official said.
“do most people even realize that a child growing up today will have absolutely no concept of privacy or what it is like to have an “unrecorded, unanalyzed thought”?
“Most of the fish caught within the 30 kilometer radius is thrown into the garbage because it is radiated. And TEPCO is paying to local fishermen for it, so that they’re happy and keep silent on that. Some of it though makes it to stores, but only locally,” economist Hirokai Kurosaki revealed to RT.
Due to radiation fears, Fukushima Prefecture fishermen have to dump most of their catch. Two years into the nuclear disaster, the world is growing weary of Japan’s seafood, with South Korea even banning Japanese fish and seafood imports.
Fish has traditionally not only been an integral part of Japanese food culture, but also one of its prized exports. In 2011, before the Fukushima disaster, Japan maintained one of the world’s largest fishing fleets and accounted for almost 15 percent of global catches, according to Forbes.
However, there are serious concerns now, although the industry seems to be on a slow, but sure recovery route.
The concerns mainly arise over catches made in the waters close to the Fukushima nuclear power plant. After it was established that the hydraulic system at the Fukushima nuclear power plant was severely irradiated, fears grew that the contamination could spread into the Pacific.
“There is significant contamination in the bottom segment, especially in the pond and the river system, where we can find a very high amount of radioactive cesium accumulated,” Yamashike Yosuke, Environmental Engineering Professor at Kyoto University, told RT.
Many Japanese seafood firms are under threat as there are five prefectures possibly affected by contamination in the sea, accounting for almost 40,000 tons of fish per year, RT’s Aleksey Yaroshevsky reports from Soma, a coastal town in the Fukushima prefecture.
Fish factories around the Fukushima prefecture now have to take radiation measurements.
“We’re taking samples from every catch we make and if we ever find even the slightest trace of radiation, we’ll destroy the whole catch. So far there has been none, this fish is safe,” Akihisa Sato assured RT, a worker in a fish laboratory in Soma, Japan.
Almost ten years since he was released from jail, convicted spy Mordechai Vanunu has petitioned the High Court to annul the raft of restrictions placed on him, including a ban on leaving the country.
The former nuclear technician at Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant was convicted in 1988 on charges of treason and espionage, and was sentenced to 18 years in jail – spending much of that time in solitary confinement. He was released in 2004, but security services say he still possesses sensitive information which could compromise state security.
Vanunu, on the other hand, claims that none of the secret information he has poses a security threat, since it is all effectively obsolete nearly thirty years on.
The nuclear spy – who converted to Christianity – refuses to speak in Hebrew and spoke only in English, saying that he did not want to live in Israel and wanted the right to start a new life elsewhere.
“I don’t want to live in Israel,” he said, “I cannot live here as a convicted spy, a traitor, an enemy and a Christian.”
State attorney Dan Eldad challenged the appeal, saying that Vanunu still possessed sensitive, confidential information which was indeed still relevant and therefore would pose a security threat. Prosecutors are concerned that once Vanunu is out of the country and no longer threatened with jail for breaking the terms of his release – which include speaking to journalists – he would reveal more classified information.
….Unfortunately, there have really been no studies in Japan except for one, and that is one that’s being done by the Fukushima Medical University. They haven’t looked at hypothyroidism….
[…]
….They have been monitoring one of these many chemicals from Fukushima called cesium-137, and they’re finding higher levels in the waters in the Pacific Ocean in Alaska. And they estimate that in the end the levels are going to reach the same amounts as they were in the mid-1960s…..
Published on 22 Dec 2013
Nuclear expert and researcher Joseph Mangano explains his research in connecting the increase of hyperthyroidism in newborns on the West coast to the Fukushima nuclear disaster
(MENAFN – AFP) Energy giants Enel and ArcelorMittal will pull out of the construction of two nuclear reactors in Romania after a Chinese company entered the deal, Romanian officials said Monday.
Italy’s Enel and the Romanian subsidiary of ArcelorMittal “have decided to sell their stakes of respectively 9.15 and 6.2 percent in EnergoNuclear,” the project company, said Nuclearelectrica, a Romanian state-owned enterprise holding the remaining 84.65 percent.
Enel said “a change in the shareholder structure, with a company other than Nuclearelectrica set to become the majority stakeholder, is incompatible with its investment strategy,” Nuclearelectrica added.
ArcelorMittal said it was no longer interested in the project, which is estimated to cost more than 5.4 billion.
The announcement came a month after Romanian Energy Minister Constantin Nita said China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) plans to invest in the construction of two new reactors at the Cernavoda plant, in southeastern Romania, alongside Canada’s SNC-Lavalin.
“A consortium has already been set up by Lavalin and the Chinese company,” Nita said during a visit by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Bucharest.
Romania and China signed two nuclear cooperation agreements during Li’s visit but their content was not made public.
Romania has been looking for private investors to finance the extension of Cernavoda since four shareholders of the project company, including CEZ (Czech Republic), RWE (Germany) and GDF Suez (France), pulled out in 2011, complaining of a lack of predictability in Romanian policy.
Two reactors, using the CANDU technology, are currently operating at Cernavoda, providing about 17 percent of the country’s electricity.
PARIS (Reuters) – A rail freight wagon carrying nuclear waste derailed at a depot in Drancy, 3 km (2 miles) northeast of Paris on Monday, the mayor of the town said.
There was no leakage of nuclear waste, Jean-Christophe Lagarde said by telephone.
“Today at 1605 (1505 GMT), a freight car transporting radioactive material derailed in Drancy station,” said the mayor, who is also a member of parliament for the French centrist UDI party.
About 4,000 freight wagons carrying radioactive or chemical waste pass through the station each year, Lagarde said, calling the incident “intolerable”.
France’s “Europe Ecologie Les Verts” (EELV) Green party called for an end to the transportation of radioactive waste through urban areas and busy stations following the incident.
“The slightest accident can have catastrophic effects,” the EELV party said in a statement. “All (nuclear waste) transport is risky and exposes populations to unnecessary danger.”
(Reporting by Marion Douet; Writing by James Regan, editing by David Evans)
…Rice herself recalled feeling “amazement” that it was “so easy” for her to enter the secured site with Boertje-Obed and Walli, who were respectively 57 and 63 at the time….
Megan Rice, an 83-year-old nun in custody in Ocilla, Ga., says she was making a statement.
In an unusual exchange of questions and answers with a reporter, Rice said the peaceful demonstration she staged last year with two other activists inside the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee underscored a need for worldwide disarmament by exposing the danger of nuclear arsenals in stark terms.
Rice and her accomplices each face a possible three-decade prison sentence for their July 2012 action at Y-12, which handles sensitive materials and components for nuclear weapons.
Writing from the Irwin County Detention Center, where she awaits sentencing on Jan. 28 with the two men who joined her in illegally entering Y-12 grounds, Rice said a maximum punishment would only further benefit their cause. It could challenge “consciences to act” critically toward arguments that nuclear weapons are necessary tools for countries to help ensure stability and defend their interests.
“I expect only a life sentence to continue to live in truth, compassion and love for all of God’s creation,” Rice said in her handwritten response, which sounded spiritual themes and spelled out a deeply ideological perspective in response to nearly every question. “Keep your eyes on the prize: a healed, peaceful planet.”
Joined by veteran peace activists Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli, Rice hiked through the woods of the 8-square-mile Y-12 campus, located in eastern Tennessee, in the predawn hours of July 28, 2012.
After cutting through four perimeter fences and entering Y-12’s “Protected Area” — where guards are authorized to use lethal force against intruders — the three activists reportedly focused their protest on the first building they saw: the storehouse where the United States holds highly enriched uranium capable of fueling nuclear bombs.
The group proceeded to spray-paint antiwar slogans, hang mock police tape and throw containers of human blood on the 110,000-square-foot Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility. When a lone guard arrived to investigate, the activists read to him a statement of their antinuclear views and proffered peacemaking items — candles, flowers, a Bible — prior to their arrest.
The news that the unarmed protesters had infiltrated a sensitive nuclear facility intended to withstand a coordinated terrorist assault stunned those who imagined the compound to be virtually impenetrable. Security faults noted years earlier had apparently gone unfixed, possibly helping the trio to reach the uranium storage facility. The structure stands at the northern edge of a 1.3-square-mile cluster of buildings, with little more than a road and several fences dividing it off from the surrounding trees.
More than 1,000 demonstrators marched in the Niger capital Niamey on Saturday to protest against their country’s “unbalanced” partnership with nuclear firm Areva as the French giant negotiates a new uranium mining agreement with the government.
The protesters, including students, rights activists and politicians, chanted “Down with Areva!” and “No to a win-lose contract” as they made their way from the parliament building to the Areva offices, where they were held back by a police cordon.
Areva’s contract to extract uranium in the west African country expires on December 31, after more than four decades of mining at two sites on the southern edge of the Sahara, with a third under development.
The French group and the Niger government are locked in talks to renegotiate the terms for a further 10 years, and Niamey has been pressing for a greater share of revenue from Areva’s activities.
Ali Idrissa from transparency watchdog Rotab, which organised Saturday’s rally, said the contracts between Areva and Niger were “all unbalanced”, noting that the uranium sector accounts for 70 percent of Niger’s exports but only represents five percent of its Gross Domestic Product.
“In France, 35 light bulbs out of 100 are lit thanks to our uranium, while Niger has to use firewood for light,” he said.
Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou said earlier this month that the former French colony wanted to “balance out the relations” with Areva, adding that “the world has changed”.
According to Areva, 70 percent of the revenue from its mining activities in the country went to the Niger state last year, while Areva and other shareholders received 30 percent.
The French state holds a stake of more than 80 percent in Areva.
Globally, Niger is the fourth-ranking producer of uranium, after Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia, according to the World Nuclear Association.
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