Nuclear weapons are the only devices ever created with the capacity to destroy all complex life forms on Earth within a relatively short period.
In addition to causing tens of millions of immediate deaths, a regional nuclear war involving around 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons would disrupt the global climate and agricultural production so severely that more than a billion people would be at risk of famine, according to research by IPPNW.
The smoke and dust from a limited nuclear war would cause an abrupt drop in global temperatures and rainfall by blocking up to 10 per cent of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. Sudden global cooling would shorten growing seasons, threatening agriculture worldwide.
Increases in food prices would make food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of the poorest people in the world. For those who are already chronically malnourished, just a 10 per cent decline in food consumption would result in starvation. Infectious disease epidemics and conflict over scarce resources would be rife.
For more on the climate and agricultural effects of nuclear detonations, see Dr Ira Helfand in Unspeakable Suffering: Nuclear famine: A billion people at risk
Danger zones in the air where radiation levels surge could pose an unrecognised health hazard. Airliners may have to avoid these in future, just as they do with volcanic ash clouds, to minimise any risk to travellers and crew.
We have long known that high-altitude flight exposes us to cosmic rays. The radiation dose on a flight from London to Tokyo is roughly equivalent to a chest X-ray.
Now research flights have revealed the existence of “clouds” where radiation levels can be at least double the usual level. They were discovered as a result of the NASA-funded Automated Radiation Measurements for Aerospace Safety (ARMAS) programme, which aims to develop new methods of measuring and monitoring high-altitude radiation.
In 265 flights, radiation levels detected generally followed the expected pattern, but in at least six instances they surged, as though the aircraft was flying through a radiation cloud.
“We have seen several cases where the exposure is doubled while flying through the cloud,” says ARMAS principal investigator W. Kent Tobiska, of Los Angeles firm Space Environment Technologies. “It is quite variable and can easily be more or less than that.”
Even higher levels have been recorded in some cases, but those results remain unpublished while the team considers alternative explanations for the data.
Tobiska says the two main sources of radiation, cosmic rays and the solar wind, can’t account for the surges. “Our new measurements show a third component.”
Freed electrons
The surges coincided with geomagnetic storms. This points the finger at energetic electrons being lost from the outer Van Allen radiation belts, where charged particles mostly from the solar wind are trapped by Earth’s magnetic field.
Tobiska believes that such a storm can liberate electrons trapped in the Van Allen belts. “Those electrons are driven into the upper atmosphere, collide with nitrogen and oxygen atoms and molecules, and then create a spray of secondary and tertiary radiation, likely in the form of gamma rays.” This radiation, he thinks, is what the ARMAS flights are detecting across a wide area.
Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics says this mechanism seems feasible. “It is plausible that the ARMAS results are related to enhanced loss of radiation belt particles from the magnetosphere into the middle and lower atmosphere.”
There are no set standards for radiation safety in US aviation at present, but Tobiska says that regulations are likely in the next few years.
The absolute risk may be low, as a chest X-ray only increases the risk of a fatal cancer by 1 in 200,000, but these must be balanced against the large number of flights and whether risk is avoidable.
“This is mainly for crew members,” says Tobiska, “but would certainly benefit frequent flyers and even fetuses in their first trimester.”
ARMAS work using satellite data and airborne sensors may allow the radiation “clouds” to be tracked. Tobiska says that in future, flights may be diverted or directed to a lower altitude to avoid them.
Journal reference: Space Weather, DOI: 10.1002/2016SW001419
“Freshwater pandas”. Good idea but what about the “pandas” who have lived for over a century on the area now being proposed for three nuclear reactors!? Does anyone really think that the diverse habitats within this 1400 acres site can be “mitigated”? Creation of “alternative habitat” is being suggested by the financially torpedoing developers Toshiba, and to our shame those who are supposed to be looking out for wildlife in Cumbria are going along with this insanity. Where will the freshwater pearl mussels live if this goes ahead? Rivers, Sea and Coasts cannot be “created.” Where will we And the wildlife live, what will we drink?
“Here is what many people are saying:—–This Jewish state ,Israel, what do they want from you?.you are not a Jew any more, they rejected your message against Nuclear Weapons,they make you a traitor, they punished you in 18 years of Isolation, with cruel barbaric treatments, they try to break you for 30 years without success ,What do they want? Let Vanunu go Now.1986-2017.
Enough is enough!
All the world watching this case.and want the only answer,Let vanunu go ,now.“
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp probably suffered a group net loss of about 400 billion yen ($3.52 billion) in the nine months through December, the Nikkei reported on Sunday.
The loss is largely due to a goodwill impairment of around 600 billion yen on a U.S. nuclear unit that came to light in late 2016.
During the year-earlier period, Toshiba lost a similarly significant 479.4 billion yen.
The company hopes to keep the amount it owes from exceeding the value of its assets for the full year through March by selling part of its chip operations and taking other measures.
Toshiba will announce earnings for the April-December period on Tuesday, along with a full-year outlook. The company is also expected to explain the cause of the losses, measures to avoid similar events and plans to rebuild its nuclear business.
The loss comes from the write-down of goodwill of CB&I Stone & Webster, a U.S.-based nuclear plant builder Toshiba acquired through U.S. subsidiary Westinghouse Electric in late 2015. Dwindling global demand for nuclear power and poor project
management have pushed up labor and materials costs at the company to levels far exceeding initial estimates.
In addition, it turns out that Toshiba overestimated the value of the company’s projects at the time of acquisition.
As a result, Toshiba decided to write down the premium it paid for the company, the difference between the acquisition price and Stone & Webster’s net assets, and book it as a group loss for Toshiba’s nuclear operations.
Toshiba, which is trying to hasten the process of spinning off its semiconductor business, plans to seek approval at an extraordinary meeting of shareholders to sell some of the new venture’s shares to boost its capital.
By the first deadline in early February, five groups, including a major foreign chipmaker and a fund, had expressed interest in buying the shares.
By September, Toshiba had 360 billion yen in capital. For the full year, a weak yen is likely to boost the value of its foreign currency-denominated assets.
Profit from brisk chip operations will help boost its capital. Toshiba also plans to sell shares in some listed subsidiaries.
Toshiba is seen considering another goodwill write-down for Landis+Gyr, the world’s leading electric meter maker, which it acquired in 2011.
In this scenario, Toshiba would devalue the company’s premium, which was at 143.2 billion yen at the end of September, in the current fiscal year. Whether Toshiba writes off the entire value or part remains undecided.
Toshiba had expected Landis, a Swiss company, to become a growth engine for its smart grid and smart community thrust, but its hopes have not materialised.
The two-day Washington Nuclear Summit, initiated by US President Obama, came to a close with a final communiqué that commits attending nations to secure all nuclear material in four years.
World leaders agreed to secure or destroy hundreds of thousands of tons of weapons-grade nuclear fuel by 2014, after Obama called on the rest of the leaders “not simply to talk, but to act” to head off the risks of nuclear terrorism and proliferation.
The communiqué spells out 12 obligations of signatories, including a promise to maintain effective security of the nuclear material in their countries. It also commits them to a specific work plan of best practices, it encourages participants to join international efforts to restrict the exchange of nuclear material, and directs nations to make new investments in nuclear security measures.
Earlier, on the second day of the 47-nation Nuclear Security Summit, Obama told attendees that the risk of a nuclear attack was on the rise – despite the Cold War being over – but this time it could be from terrorists rather than an enemy nation. Obama said the current nuclear reality was a “cruel irony of history” and efforts by al-Qaeda to gain access to fissile materials means “the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up”. He added that it was time “not simply to make pledges, but to make real progress for the security of our people. All this, in turn, requires something else, something more fundamental. It requires a new mindset — that we summon the will, as nations, as partners, to do what this moment in history demands.”
Underscoring his point, Obama said dozens of countries had nuclear materials that could be sold or stolen, and that a weapon made from an apple-sized lump of plutonium could kill or injure hundreds of thousands. The document calls on the 47 countries to act together to prevent “non-state actors” — read al-Qaeda, friends and similar — from obtaining nuclear technology.
We reported recently on the mostly censored story on Jihadists acquiring Highly Enriched Fissionable Uranium which was discovered by the Indian police. The reporting of this find was played down and the term “Depleted Uranium” was used instead of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) as the purity of the reported Uranium and high cost revealed. The full article with sources can be found here;
Audiences at the Berlin film festival are submitting themselves to a groundbreaking immersive multimedia project on nuclear war, whose risk its US filmmakers say has soared over the last year.
“The Bomb” by Kevin Ford, Smriti Keshari and investigative journalist Eric Schlosser (“Fast Food Nation”) surrounds cinemagoers with floor-to-ceiling screens, with a live band playing the score.
The 360-degree installation uses the shock and horror that atomic weapons inspire to explore their history, destructive power and rampant proliferation today.
After stunning viewers at New York’s Tribeca festival last year, the filmmakers brought the experience to Berlin, once on the front line of the Cold War and one of the likely first targets of a thermonuclear conflagration.
Running a little less than an hour, it bombards viewers with never-before-seen archival footage and recent images of missile launches and atomic explosions, as well as old television commercials touting the glories of nuclear energy.
The filmmakers say their message could not be more urgent, with nine nations possessing about 15,000 nuclear weapons — 90 percent of them in the United States and Russia — and global politics in a state of upheaval.
– ‘Perverse appeal’ –
Schlosser said the volatile personalities of some of the world’s leaders with their “fingers on the button” haunted his sleep.
He said that while members of the US military involved in the nuclear weapons programme had to undergo a battery of tests insuring their reliability, the same did not apply to the US president.
“So I think it’s safe to say that my current president (Donald Trump) would not be allowed in the Air Force or anywhere near a nuclear weapon,” he said.
“And yet he, right now, he’s the only person in the US authorised to order the use of a nuclear weapon.”
Pedro Gething, a 31-year-old Portuguese man in the audience, called the project “interesting” but admitted it “kind of freaks me out”.
“There was a lot I didn’t know and visually, it was quite an experience, very beautiful,” he said.
Eleonore Clemente, 26, from France, also admired the “aesthetics” of the installation — underlining what the filmmakers call the “perverse appeal” that nuclear weapons can exert.
“Nuclear weapons are the most powerful machines” ever created, Keshari said.
“There is definitely something seductive about them. It is this seduction we wanted to get across.”
She was drawn to the project after reading Schlosser’s 2013 book “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety”.
The producers say that the two biggest threats to humankind are climate change and the atomic bomb.
But while the effects of global warming can be seen, for example, in a proliferation of catastrophic weather events, nuclear weapons remain out of sight and thus often out of mind.
“That may be a way of reaching more people,” Eleonore said.
“Maybe it’s strange to say ‘I liked the film, I found it beautiful’ because it’s talking about awful things. But maybe a more ‘specialist’ approach would have turned people off.”
Lakisha Vergeest, a 19-year-old from the Netherlands, said she was leaving feeling “a little bit down” and even “shocked” by pondering the scope of the global nuclear arsenal.
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – An Italian businessman dumped radioactive nuclear waste in the ocean near Taiwan in the 1990s, according to documents from an Italian intelligence service declassified Wednesday.
The information was contained in 61 documents from SISMI, an Italian military intelligence department, which were submitted to an Italian parliamentary investigation commission, according to the Italian media.
The reports named Giorgio Comerio as a businessman who made a fortune by sending ships loaded with nuclear and other dangerous materials to the bottom of the sea in the Mediterranean and near Somalia and Taiwan.
Comerio began collaborating closely with the government of North Korea around 1995, the documents said. In return for the payment of US$227 million (NT$7 billion), he disposed of 200,000 barrels of radioactive waste, whose final resting place must be the ocean near Taiwan, according to SISMI.
Taiwanese environmental groups demanded the government launch an investigation of its own into the allegations and conduct tests to determine whether the dumping of waste had impacted Taiwan’s environment and the condition of the ocean. The government should also find out the precise location where the Italian company dumped the waste, activists said. The Cabinet’s Atomic Energy Council replied it was not aware of the practice described in the SISMI documents.
Between 1989 and 1995, an estimated 90 ships carrying nuclear waste were sunk in the Mediterranean, and as recently as 2003, the intelligence service presented a report to the Italian government saying that two ships loaded with industrial waste and other toxic materials had arrived in the Somali capital Mogadishu.
Two reporters from Italian state broadcasting network RAI who were investigating similar deals were killed in Somalia, leading to parliamentarians pressuring the government to release more documents about the transportation of dangerous waste products.
Experts warned the fault in the reactor of HMS Trenchant was so serious that the Trafalgar fleet may never sail again. The fracture is being treated as an “irreparable generic fault” that will prevent it from being able to carry out normal duties.
It means Britain may be forced to beg for international support in protecting our four Vanguard submarines, which carry Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent.
Britain deploys seven SSN nuclear-powered hunter-killers. Last week it was revealed that the four older Trafalgar-class submarines, Trenchant, Torbay, Triumph and Talent, were out of action due to repairs and maintenance.
However, sources have confirmed that the Trenchant was docked after engineers discovered a fracture at the heart of its nuclear reactor while at sea. The fracture is on a metal weld connecting a coolant pipe to the reactor pressure vessel. It is currently less than 100mm long, classing it as a critical fault, but if it grows it would be classified “catastrophic”. Because it sits within a tank of water to shield the radiation it is extremely difficult for engineers to get at.
A Navy source said yesterday: “The fracture has appeared in a pipe weld and our safety measures are very high. We will not sail until they are checked.”
The Defence Safety Nuclear Regulator will decide the fate of the vessels, but nuclear engineers warned the fault was likely to be “terminal” – and may also affect the other three vessels because they are so old.
Nuclear engineer John Large, who in 2000 helped to repair a similar but less drastic fault on HMS Tireless, said: “If the fracture is in the reactor pressure valve, it would indicate that it’s on a weld. This would be very difficult to access.
A crack has developed. It is at a critical level and it has been detected
John Large, Nuclear engineer
“It sits in a tank of water, to shield the radiation. Over time the rector pressure vessel becomes increasingly radioactive, and most of these vessels are approaching the end of their lifespan. The probability is that the Trenchant is non-repairable and that would be a disaster. A problem like this is likely to develop in each boat, because they are of similar ages.”
Once such a fracture appears it is only a matter of time before restarting the reactor would make it grow to 100mm.
Under the so-called break preclusion system, the reactor is designed never to require repair and never to fail. If it does fail it can’t be replaced.
Mr Large added: “A crack has developed. It is at a critical level and it has been detected. Like when you have a chip on a windscreen, it is difficult to reliably predict when it will suddenly grow and shatter.”
Sources suggested yesterday that the Royal Navy would be “pulling out all the stops” to deploy the boats once more.
However, deploying any submarine with such a fault will render it a “lame duck”, as it would be forced to avoid the strain caused by sudden shifts in temperature, or risk catastrophic failure.
Mr Large said: “These submarines are hunter killers – they are effectively sports cars required to manoeuvre rapidly. They need to run between ‘State A,’ idling, and ‘State B’, full power battle state, quickly if they are to avoid detection or even torpedo strikes. You cannot do this if there is a crack.”
The Trafalgar submarines have had their service extended by 10 years due to ongoing delays in the construction and delivery of the new Astute class. But of Britain’s three Astutes, two are undergoing trials while the third is being repaired after a collision in Gibraltar.
In 2013 a Ministry of Defence report revealed two Trafalgar class boats had been operating with a safety defect which put the vessels and crew at “serious” potential risk. Rear Admiral Chris Parry warned: “The SSNs are gatekeepers that detect and protect the UK from intrusive patrols by Russia and other opponents. They also provide vital protection for our Vanguard submarines.
Our deterrent is independent so, if our SSNs are not available, there are limits to what we can ask even the US to do because our Vanguard submarines need to maintain the secrecy of their operations. It does not help that the Government scrapped our Nimrod Maritime Patrol aircraft.
“Instead of gatekeepers I suspect that we would have to ask the US to act as linebackers to keep any hostile snooping submarines at a distance.”
An MoD spokesman denied that the submarines would be permanently out of action. He said: “It is untrue to suggest that HMS Trenchant or the rest of the T-class subs are unable to deploy again.”
Detailed pictures of damage and other images on link;
Ministers are poised to admit that taxpayer cash will be used to fund a new fleet of nuclear power stations — reversing years of government opposition to direct public subsidy.
With Britain’s ageing coal plants due to shut by 2025, the government is banking on new nuclear reactors going up at sites including Wylfa in Anglesey, north Wales, and Moorside in Cumbria.
Successive energy ministers have insisted that no public cash will be used to fund this new generation. Yet industry sources say that energy secretary, Greg Clarke, that this hands-off approach an not persist if the plants are to be built. They say that Whitehall is preparing to launch a consultation….. [PAYWALL]
FOLLOW UP NOTES FOR THOSE WITHOUT A SUBSCRIPTION from Shaun McGee aka arclight2011
Posted to nuclear-news.net
12 Feb 2017
There are quiet a few issues that have brought about the UK need get the beleaguered Tax payer to cough up for these nuclear new builds and the writing has been on the wall for some time now. One of the reasons for adding the 2 European nuclear treaties to the list of Brexits (EURATOM and also ESPOO the cross border radiation contamination treaty) is because the UK was not conforming to either fully anyway. And now that the EURATOM directive now includes extra health and safety rules with extra oversight being brought into legislation, the UK did not want to conform to such transparency and certainly did not want to be obliging any further restrictions on the allowable dose to humans from radioactivity sources that are likely because of many new health and environmental studies that have and are being done.
The military application of UK nuclear is intrinsic to the UK nuclear power program and the crony based economic policies to keep this old technology going. The UK`s nuclear new build has to be done to support the existing energy and industrial power elites of the nuclear and fossil fuel industries. Both media and academic institutions are largely bought and paid for in the UK.
So a withdrawal from the EU with a stand alone policy will limit these institutions ability to report or study in any areas that the Government sees fit to announce is of importance to “National Security” and therefore under the remit of the 2014 Secrets Act change that made many thing “official sensitive” (with a possible 2 year sentence) and indeed, with the even newer whistleblower version going through Parliament (that will allow over 10 years imprisonment, we see that the UK has followed Japans lead in attempting to clamp down on any pitiful vestige of free speech and academic freedoms that might be left in the UK even today.
Lastly the UK corporations have one more reason to drain the UK Tax payer out of their money. The issue is with Uranium stocks of which many UK based business is invested in. Not only have these stocks plummeted because the biggest nuclear providers on the global market (Japan up to 2011 and China) are quickly and quietly investing huge amounts in the renewables markets with China employing more people in their renewables sector than the whole world combined.
China recently pulled out of a deal with Areva the French nuclear processor and may well decide to pull out of the UK creating an even bigger Tax burden. It looks like that the UK government will OK the Tax support of some projects and when the inevitable failure of international funding occours the Tax payer will be have to dig deeper into their pockets. The UK Government and their Industry cronies need to get the Tax payer to have some “skin in the game” and then the UK future energy policy will be set on course to make investors wealthy for decades to come.
To support my assertions I will leave a range of posts with source links and posits from recent weeks etc, for your easy perusal. Regards Shaun McGee aka arclight2011
China, The UK`s best nuclear friend will turn the UK into a debt Zombie like Greece one way or the other
A survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing has said she is “horrified” by Donald Trump’s suggestion that Japan might benefit from nuclear weapons and has urged the president to visit the site of the tragedy so he can “educate” himself.
Keiko Ogura was an eight-year-old schoolgirl when US forces flattened Hiroshima with an atomic bomb which slaughtered hundreds of thousands and brought Japan’s role in the Second World War to an abrupt end.
Since then, she has devoted her life to telling her story to future generations so that the inhumane cruelty of nuclear weapons is never forgotten.
Speaking to the Telegraph after a lecture at the Hiroshima Peace Museum, she spoke of her horror at discovering that America’s new president had raised the idea of Japan acquiring nuclear weapons.
“I was horrified by what he said and it made me afraid of what could be happening to Japan,” said Ms Ogura, who is now 79 and the director of Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace.
“I think he does not know the difference between conventional and nuclear weapons, and that horrified me also.”
“He said, ‘why not have one yourself?’ As if he did not even know what happened here.” “He should come to Hiroshima. He should see it, stand in front of it, and try to imagine what it is like to see the burning faces of children.” Ms Ogura was referring to a controversial interview in which Mr Trump said he was in favour of Japan acquiring nuclear weapons to act as a deterrent to threats from North Korea.
“If Japan had that nuclear threat, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing for us,” he said during an interview with the New York Times in March.
The president has since claimed his remarks were misinterpreted. and his current stance on nuclear weapons remains unclear.
“It shows how important it is that everyone, including the president of the United States, is educated on what happened at Hiroshima,” Ms Ogura added.
“Since he became president we have tried to accelerate our process of educating people on what happened- we are speaking to more people, in high schools, in lectures and at the museum.”
Ms Ogura escaped some of the worst effects of the atomic bomb – dubbed “Little Boy” by the Americans – as her father told her to stay at home on August 6 1945.
“My father had a kind of inspiration. He suspected something major was about to happen because there had been so many air raid warnings,” she said.
Their home was situated in Ushita Town, which was roughly one and a half miles away from the hypocenter of the atomic bomb.
She remembers a blinding flash of light, and a huge blast that threw her to the ground. When she returned to her house she found it all but destroyed, with thousands of shards of glass scattered through the rooms.
“My father was so lucky,” she recalled, “he was behind a pine tree and because of that he survived.”
Ms Ogura left the house and climbed a hill to try and see what happened to the city. On the way she passed a shrine that had become a makeshift medical centre for the bomb’s horrifically burned victims, though no doctors were in sight.
“I felt someone grab my leg,” she said. “They said please give me water.”
As a young girl in second grade, she had no idea she was not supposed to give water to severe burns victims. She rushed home to fetch a container of water, in the honest belief she was helping people, and passed it around.
Within minutes, everyone who drank the water “slumped over” and died.
“For 20 years I had nightmares about that, because I killed those people,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion.
Ms Ogura is among around 180,000 Hiroshima survivors still alive today. Many kept their identities as “hibakusha” – atomic bomb survivors – a secret, as victims often faced discrimintion in Japanese society.
This was usually linked to fears that those exposed to the bomb’s radiation would pass on illnesses to their children, and that they were therefore undesirable.
Whereas some of her family members kept their identities as “hibakusha” a secret, Ms Ogura chose to embrace hers, and made it her life’s work to ensure that Hiroshima is never forgotten.
When Barack Obama laid a wreath at the cenotaph at Hiroshima last year – the first sitting president to do so since Jimmy Carter – it marked a major milestone in the efforts of Ms Ogura and her fellow survivors.
Hirotaka Matsushima, the director of Hiroshima’s International Peace Promotion Department, said he would urge Mr Trump to make the same gesture.
It is unclear if Mr Trump will follow the former Democratic president’s lead. When Mr Obama travelled to Hiroshima, Mr Trump attacked him for not mentioning the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour during the visit.
Japanese protesters have rallied outside Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s office in the capital, Tokyo, urging him to shut down nuclear power plants in the country, which was hit by one of the world’s worst nuclear incidents nearly six years ago.
Carrying anti-nuclear signs, the demonstrators on Friday also called on Abe to quit his policy of restarting the country’s nuclear reactors.
The Japanese government sought to greatly reduce the role of nuclear power since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
On March 11 that year, a huge tsunami caused by a nine-magnitude earthquake wreaked heavy damage on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s cooling systems that led to three meltdowns and the release of vast amounts of radiation into the surrounding environment.
The incident, considered the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, also prompted the evacuation of 160,000 people from areas near the power plant.
Of course, the Syrian regime committed and is committing and will continue to commit human rights violations but this is about the Amnesty International report on Syria. Western human rights organizations–specifically Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch–don’t have any credibility among most Arabs about human rights.
Their reputation has sunk far lower ever since the Arab uprisings in 2011, where they have been rightly perceived as propaganda arms of Western governments. So I saw the report yesterday and read the Methodology section and immediately felt that it is not credible: given the mention of unnamed sources (not one of them willing to be identified and the reference to countries which host Syrian opposition groups).
But I am not an expert on those details and specifics. I don’t trust the Syrian regime (and its sponsors) and I don’t trust the Syrian rebels and their sponsors in the West and East. How to judge the report? I asked a well-known Syrian dissident who, due to his leftist underground activities, served years in Syrian jails and was subjected to torture by the regime. His name is Nizar Nayouf. He wrote me those responses, and I can’t judge the validity of the specific answers but given that there is no scrutiny by Western media to anything coming out which is in sync with Western government propaganda on Syria, I thought it would be useful. These are my (rush) translations (edited) of his answers: ” The white prison is the one in the shape of a Mercedes.
It is the main building (the old and big). As for the red prison, it is the new and small [structure], and contrary to what is contained in the report–which it seems does not distinguish between the two.
The first was inaugurated in 1988 while the second was not inaugurated until 2001. As for the main White building, it is quite impossible for it to accommodate 10,000 prisoners. We know it inch by inch, and know how much it can accommodate, at maximum, and assuming you put 30 prisoners in a cell like pickles (or Syrian style pickles, makdus), it can’t accommodate more than 4500 prisoners (in fact it was designed for 3000 prisoners).
The red building is much smaller and is exclusive to public defendants among the military members (traffic, desertion, various criminal offenses, etc), and can’t accommodate more than 1800 prisoners, and even if you put 3 on top of one another. Yes, paying money to achieve release is true. I personally documented tense of cases, in which `Ali Haydar (minister of national reconciliation) was the mediator.
The talk of rape is lie on top of lie. It has no basis in truth. I challenge them…to show once case, not only now but also from the beginning of the era of Hafidh Al-Asad, whether with women or with men. Yes, there were rape cases with tools (like raping around ten young women from Communist Action Party, and others, with soft drink bottles. There is nothing in official papers which prisoners sign something called Sidnaya prison. This is the popular name and not the official name*. And this reveals the lies about them signing papers indicating that they were “from Sidnaya prison”.
Prisoners are not moved from prisons to On-site Courts in Al-Qabun. The on-site courts move to prisons and hold its trials there, especially now as the Al-Qabun area is targeted by the fire of the rebels and is not safe at all. As for the length of the trials, it is one minute or two, and that is true since the 1980s till now. They admit that on-site trials’ rulings require the signature of the president or the Minister of Defense and yet they say in another section that execution is approved only by the members of the court and officers with it.
They claim that the second on-site court was formed to accommodate after the crisis, and this is a lie and show ignorance or fabrication. The on-site court (first and second) have been in existence since 1968, and the Palestinian colonel, Salah ad-Din Al-Ma`ani, was chief of the second on-site courts since the 1980s. He was the one who was in charge of trial of Muslim Brotherhood, along with Sulayman Al-Khatib.
As for the requirement of confessions by prisoners while they are blindfolded, this was ended by an order from Hafidh Al-Asad in 1998 or 1999, as far as I can remember, but I don’t know if this practice was resumed. There is no representative of the mukhabarat in the Hay’at Al–Mahkamah Al-Maydaniyyah, and thus he does not sign on any ruling, contrary to what is claimed by the report.
There is a mess in what they say that the head of the on-site court is the military prosecutor, (p. 20) and this is real rubbish. The military prosecutor job is quite different from the chief of the on-site court, and is the chief military prosecutor in the military district administration.
They say that those who are on death row are gathered in the red building (section B). But they said that the red boiling (p. 12) which is on the shape of a Mercedes, which is in fact the old building, and is thus baseless as I indicated above.
And in the old building there are no cells except solitary confinement cells (one meter by two meters) under ground. And they are for punishment and is limited in numbers. As for the section B, it is like other sections (10 beds on the right and 10 on the left, three stories over ground). The thing that most got my attention was “the transfer of the prisoners form the red building and white building in trucks and cars”.
When one hears this one thinks that the distance between the two buildings is in kilometers when they are less than 120 meters apart. The report says (p. 2) that the “commander of the southern front group (firqah) attends the executions. There is nothing in the Syrian Army which is called “commander of the Southern Group 13 or northern or Western or any other direction. On page 32, it says that the picture is of the cemetery of martyrs south of Damascus.
The report says that it was expanded substantially between 2014 and 2016 and that long tunnels were dug in them, implying that they were used to bury those who were executed. This is silly beyond silly. In the martyrs cemetery no one can be buried there except the martyrs of the army, even if there is an intercession by Muhammad or Jesus or Hafidh Al-Asad himself. And contrary to what they say, and the picture damns them, because it shows the increase in the number of victims of the army. On p. 35, and elsewhere, they talk about forcing “prisoners to rape one another”.
This is despicable fabrication which is baseless, and is psychologically impossible under those conditions. (Is it possible for any person in the world to get an erection to rape another person who is tied and is under torture?) If the lying witness were too say that he was raped with sticks, i would have believed it because this happened sometimes with public defense prisoners as I indicated above.
On page 43, there is a copy of certificate of death which reveals that it belongs to the Minister of Interior, but the certificate says that death was in “Military Tirshrin Hospital”, which belongs to the Ministry of Defense. This didn’t happen, and can’t happen. In cases of death in a military hospital or in detention centers belonging to Military Intelligence, the certificates show “Army or Armed Forces, Directorate of Military Medical Services”, or hospital x.
One of the most amusing–if there is amusement in tragedies–contents of the report is what appears on page 44, where it talks about “tens of thousands” (i.e. over 30,000 or at least 18,000) who died under torture or for other reasons in Sidnaya prison in five years but it says: “but we only were able to obtain the names of 375 people only”.
What the report says about the kinds of mistreatment and torture and criminality is generally true. The world has not seen more savage prisons than the 18 prisons of the Iraqi (Saddamist) and Syrian prisons since the times of Nazism and Fascism in WWII. And anything which is reported in this context can be simply believed. We have seen it with our own eyes and lived it personally, although there were orders to–to be fair–that the torture of leftists and nationalists be less severe than the savage torture of Islamists.”
* I pointed to Nizar this morning that the official Syrian regime statement issued today used the name of Sidnaya prison, and he said that it was the first time as they did not want to use the official name of First Military Prison.
3:39 — Why don’t they adjust the ship data down? Because it makes absolutely no difference to the result but takes a lot more man hours. I wrote to Dr. Zeke Hausfather with this question and he replied: “NOAA adjusted buoys up to match the ship record in version 4 of their ocean temperature record simply because ships make up 90% of our ocean record, with buoys only available in recent years. In response to folks getting confused about this, NOAA will be adjusting ships down to buoys in their upcoming version 5, but this makes no difference on the resulting temperature trends.”
4:13 – “Extended Reconstruction Sea Surface Temperature Version 4 (ERSSTv4). Part 1: Upgrades and Intercomparisons” – Huang et al, Journal of the American Meteorological Society 2015
6:00 — David Rose’s previously challenged “quote” was from Murari Lal in 2010.
Russia is now embarking on a new push for solar and wind, Mr. Teksler told us, in order to develop its own supply chain and expertise with an eye toward technology export. He estimated that approximately 6 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity would be enough to launch a viable domestic supply chain.
TriplePundit is in Abu Dhabi this week where global energy leaders are meeting for the seventh IRENA Assembly and the World Future Energy Summit.
The gathering provides an up-close look at the challenges involved in accelerating the pace of decarbonization. The two-day event is packed with activity, so it’s difficult to pick out just one bit of standout news. But so far it looks like the contribution of the Russian Federation could be among the most interesting in terms of future impact.
TriplePundit had an opportunity to speak with Russia’s First Deputy Energy Minister Mr. Alexey Teksler, who laid out the country’s plans for the renewable energy field. Setting aside other news involving the U.S. and Russia, our conversation revolved around the growth of global demand for innovative energy technology.
A head start for Russia on renewables…
In terms of energy resources, Russia has been in the public eye mainly on account of its vast fossil fuel reserves. However, the country’s energy profile also includes a healthy dose of renewable energy, primarily in the form of hydropower.
The former USSR cemented Russia as a global hydropower leader in the 1960s, Mr. Teksler explained, and hydro now accounts for 17 percent of the country’s energy mix. (For those of you interested, the International Hydropower Association provides a handy timeline of global hydropower development.)
The latest global hydropower rundown from the International Energy Agency places Russia as one of the top five producers in the world. The other four are China, U.S., Brazil and Canada.
Interestingly, Russia and the other top hydro producers far outstrip the next five by a wide margin in terms of hydropower potential. EIA puts the hydro potential for the top five countries at 8,360 terawatt hours per year. The next five — DR Congo, India, Indonesia, Peru and Tajikistan — only hit a combined total of 2,500 TWh annually.
Russia has ample room to expand its hydro sector, but an increase in output is also possible without building new hydro dams. The country’s hydro power generator, RushHydro, has embarked on a modernization initiative that includes a number of innovative R&D projects to boost efficiency.
Mr. Teksler also mentioned that the USSR was an early adopter of wind energy, but those former efforts involved technology that has been surpassed by the turbines available in today’s market.
As a side note, the USSR was host to one striking example of very early wind turbine technology. The turbine began operating near Yalta in 1931. It was designed with a horizontal axis and had a capacity of 100 kilowatts with a 32 percent load factor — not shabby by today’s standards!
…and a new push
At several points during our conversation, Mr. Teksler emphasized that Russia has sufficient capacity to fulfill its needs through its traditional power sources.
Mr. Teksler said, though, that in global terms the world is entering “a new period of energy, a new history of new energy.”
“We see growth globally … technology growth is driving the decision to develop renewable resources.”
Although Russia does not need the additional capacity from renewables, the country’s policymakers have recognized that the global demand for renewable energy is accelerating, Mr. Teksler claimed. For countries with the expertise, that translates into new opportunities to develop and export renewable energy technology.
In that regard, it’s worth noting that RushHydro’s recent R&D efforts have resulted in several patents, including improvements in spillway technology, geo-technical materials (aka clay or bentonite mats) for hydropower structures, and monitoring systems.
Russia is now embarking on a new push for solar and wind, Mr. Teksler told us, in order to develop its own supply chain and expertise with an eye toward technology export. He estimated that approximately 6 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity would be enough to launch a viable domestic supply chain.
In 2015, PV Magazine reported on several new developments in Russia — including an advanced, high-efficiency photovoltaic cell and the construction of a wind and solar microgrid to enable a remote village in the Bashkortostan region to go off the central grid. The project was undertaken as a more economical alternative to replacing aging power lines.
Mr. Teksler noted additional large-scale renewable energy projects Russia will soon deploy. Two major onshore wind farms are slated for development in the next two years. In a demonstration of how new wind turbine technology has matured commercially, these are no small potatoes. A 35-megawatt wind farm is getting under way this year in the Volga region, and next year a 150-megawatt farm is on the table in the south.
Offshore wind could also be in the works. A proposed wind farm off the coast of Karelia has made the news recently, though Mr. Teksler said plans for this project have not yet firmed up.
Our conversation also touched on two areas closely related to renewable energy technology: energy efficiency and advanced manufacturing. These sectors also provide Russia with opportunities to develop and export new technologies.
New opportunities for business
A statement Mr. Teksler contributed to the IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency) Assembly underscores Russia’s historical perspective on the demand for renewable energy technology:
“… The world is changing rapidly. Today renewables should stop being seen as an “alternative,” should be developed side by side with traditional energy and become mainstream instead.”
The statement also emphasized Russia’s interest in applying its technology sector to renewables:
“… The Russian Federation is a huge country with great technologic potential. Not only are renewables crucial in terms of supplying energy to isolated and remote areas of the country, but it is also extremely important for us to build up our own competencies in the area of ‘energy of the future,’ to develop and test technologies and equipment.”
That could translate into a significant new employment sector for Russia. Last year, TriplePundit noted that renewable energy employment in some countries was beginning to show signs of slowing. That hitch was evident in countries that have already developed a renewable energy sector large enough to shrink. With the exception of its hydro sector, Russia is just getting started, so it has room to grow even when other countries experience cutbacks.
As for the potential impact of Russia’s new technology initiative, consider that the last time Russian scientists embarked on a cutting-edge mission with global, historic implications, the result was the first satellite launched into space, the Sputnik in 1957.
That event galvanized the U.S. scientific community into action, resulting in the creation of NASA, the planting of the U.S. flag on the moon and the routine deployment of solar technology in aerospace, a niche dominated by the U.S. solar industry for many years.
The “space race” also lead directly to the establishment of the International Space Station, which kicked off in 1998 with the launch of Russia’s Zarya control module, funded by an international coalition representing the U.S., Europe, Canada and Japan.
In terms of private-sector opportunities, the space station supported numerous innovations that have steadily trickled into commercial use.
That brings us back to IRENA and its mission of supporting the transition to renewables.
One key takeaway from the IRENA Seventh Assembly in Abu Dhabi is nations and businesses are moving too slowly toward decarbonization. Part of the slow pace has to do with regulatory environments, financial markets and other structural factors, but an equally important factor is the technology gap between what exists and what is needed.
If the story of international cooperation in space is any guide, Russia’s decision to compete in the global renewable energy marketplace could be the spark that helps accelerate another historic transformation.
Image (screenshot): International Space Station via NASA
Readers please note: This interview took place with the help of translators.
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