Christina MacPherson

Nuclear weapons — they’re illegal

Nuclear weapons — they’re illegal https://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/my_view/nuclear-weapons-theyre-illegal/article_5238752a-5ad4-11eb-932c-2ff8ea90b754.html,By Jay Coghlan, 21 Feb21,

Jan. 22 will go down in history as the day when the tide turned against nuclear weapons. That was the day when theTreaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons went into effect, signed by 122 countries.

It specifically prohibits nations from developing, testing, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons and assisting others in doing so. It reinforces existing international law obligating all states not to test, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.

What immediate impact will it have here, given that the Los Alamos National Laboratory is the birthplace of nuclear weapons and now sole producer of plutonium pit triggers for the expanding U.S. stockpile? The brutally honest answer is no impact, not immediately.

But think about it. Nuclear weapons are now internationally illegal, just as horrendous chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction have long been. But nuclear weapons are the worst WMDs, potentially killing millions more while causing radioactive fallout and famine-inducing nuclear winter. Ask your New Mexican congressional members to explain why nuclear weapons shouldn’t be internationally banned just like chemical and biological WMDs, all of which cause agonizing, indiscriminate suffering and death.

Predictably, our politicians and self-interested nuclear weapons labs will point to the sacred cow of “deterrence.” But we need to honestly examine exactly who needs to be deterred when the U.S. is the only country to have used nuclear weapons and our presidents have repeatedly threatened to use them again (for example, Nixon in Vietnam). Furthermore, we just had an arguably deranged president with the sole authority to start nuclear war.

The fact is that the U.S. and the Soviet Union/Russia have always had a hybrid of deterrence and nuclear war fighting capability that could overkill the planet many times over. That is why both sides have thousands of nuclear weapons, many on hair trigger alert, instead of the few hundred needed for just deterrence. That is why the U.S. has a $1.5 trillion, so-called “modernization” program to completely rebuild all nuclear warheads and acquire new missiles, submarines and bombers to deliver them.

You may be skeptical of a ban treaty, but ask yourself: What have nukes done to protect you from global pandemics and climate change? What are the odds of nuclear war caused by false warnings (as has happened many times) or cyber hacking? How reliable will exorbitantly expensive new nuclear weapons be when they can’t be tested because of the global testing moratorium? Or worse yet may prompt the U.S. back into testing, thereby accelerating the new arms race?

It may seem like an impossible dream to abolish nuclear weapons. But that’s what was once said about the abolishment of slavery. We can learn from the Martin Luther Kings, the Harriet Tubmans, the John Lewises that it can be done. Whereas the nuclear weapons ban treaty will have little if any immediate effect on New Mexico’s two nuclear weapons labs, it will be a game changer.

Remember that when your congressional members pitch expanding nuclear weapons production as jobs programs; you can respond that they are illegal. Tell them they should show visionary leadership and moral courage by helping to create cleanup and green energy jobs instead.

Nuclear weapons are now internationally illegal. The U.S. was among the last major countries to abolish slavery but did so in the end. To modify MLK’s famous quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards [the] justice” of abolishing nuclear weapons. This ban treaty is the beginning of that end and should be celebrated as such.

Jay Coghlan with Nuclear Watch New Mexico has been working on nuclear weapons issues for more than 30 years. For more see nukewatch.org.

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

New books on climate change; Michael Mann versus (nuclear promoter) Bill Gates

Let’s not forget that Bill Gates recommends tax-payer support for new small nuclear reactors, and just happens to be promoting his own nuclear company TerraPower

The rise of the climate dude New Statesman , 17 Feb 21,
Bill Gates’s faith in a technological fix for climate change is typical of privileged men who think they can swoop in and solve the problems others have spent decades trying to fix.

……… How to Avoid a Climate Disaster provides a run-through of all the reasons we need to act on climate change and achieve net zero emissions. Gates insists this will be difficult and expensive to do, but that new and existing technologies can get us there. “I don’t have a solution to the politics of climate change,” he writes, but he acknowledges the importance of “developing new policies so we can demonstrate and deploy those inventions in the market as fast as possible”.

Alongside Gates’s book comes The New Climate War, by Michael Mann, a well-known American climate scientist. Mann is the genuine article. He started in the field in the early 1990s as a graduate student at Yale University and has never left it. He is less than convinced by Gates’s relatively late conversion to the climate cause.Gates is a classic example of a “first-time climate dude”, believes Mann. This phenomenon is “the tendency for members of a particular, privileged demographic group (primarily middle-aged, almost exclusively white men) to think they can just swoop in… and solve the great problems that others have spent decades unable to crack”. The result is a mess, “consisting of fatally bad takes and misguided framing couched in deeply condescending mansplaining”.

Such doom-mongering fires up Mann. In the “new climate war”, he heads an army that discounts the prospect of failure. “The climate crisis is very real,” he says. “But it is not unsolvable. And it’s not too late to act.” The opposition is no longer the climate deniers of yesteryear, but a more insidious group: “doomsayers” and “defeatists” who push “climate doom porn” and the idea that “climate change is just too big a problem for us to solve”, says Mann. They also peddle the other “Ds”: “disinformation, deceit, divisiveness, deflection, delay”.

That two high-profile books on climate change have been published within a week of each other proves the subject has reached the top of the mainstream agenda. Together, Mann and Gates offer a rounded view of the climate debate, but Mann’s book is the more readable. His prose rattles along, entertaining and horrifying us in equal measure as he exposes scientists, politicians, the conservative media and other supposed experts who have slowed climate action by caring more about the interests of big industry.

Gates, on the other hand, can be irksome. He’s never afraid to name drop, so the book is littered with phrases such as, “I met with François Hollande, who was the president of France,” or, “Warren Buffett and I were talking…” And he loves nothing more than reminding us how much he is investing in fighting climate change. “I’ve put more than $1bn into approaches that I hope will help the world get to zero,” he casually notes.

Mann is correct the world needs to speed up its adoption of existing solutions, end its love affair with fossil fuels and “call out false solutions for what they are”. However, framing climate action as a “war” is more questionable. Mann suggests some of his colleagues are in denial because they dismiss his notion that they are fighting with powerful interests. “The dismissiveness of soothing myths and appeasement didn’t serve us well in World War II, and it won’t serve us well here either,” he says. That may be true, but war can encourage people to retreat further into their own views, meaning greater destruction and a slower pace of change.

….. Gates should pay more attention to Mann’s conclusion that technological innovation is only a part of the solution, and not even necessarily the biggest one. Systemic change “incentivised by appropriate government policy”, and intergovernmental agreements matched with the belief that “there is still time to create a better future” should form the basis of all climate plans. https://www.newstatesman.com/bill-gates-avoid-climate-disaster-michael-mann-new-climate-war-review

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | 2 WORLD, climate change | Leave a comment

The “negaWatt” – the best energy is the energy you don’t use

We Demain 18th Feb 2021, Amory Lovins: “Pursuing nuclear power is madness”. Cheaper, cleaner and more efficient: for the great American energy specialist, renewables have already won the game. Implacable, his demonstration shows up France, which persists in the atom. He is THE energy guru, the one consulted by governments and companies around the world.

But for 73-year-old American Amory Lovins, the best energy is the energy you don’t use. Since the end of the 1980s, this physicist resembling Professor Tournesol, passed through
Harvard and Oxford, has been promoting the concept of “negaWatt”, a theoretical unit of saved energy. According to him, it is possible to achieve collosal savings on the energy necessary for human activities.

https://www.wedemain.fr/dechiffrer/amory-lovins-poursuivre-le-nucleaire-est-une-folie/

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | 2 WORLD, ENERGY | Leave a comment

Significant safety incident at EDF nuclear power plant in Flamanville

La Presse de la Manche 19th Feb 2021, The EDF power plant in Flamanville (Manche) declared, on Friday February 19, 2021, a level 1 event concerning the diesel of production unit n ° 1, still at a standstill. The management of the Flamanville 1-2 nuclear power plant (Manche) declared, on Friday February 19, 2021, a significant safety event at level 1 of the INES scale, with the Nuclear Safety Authority .

https://actu.fr/normandie/flamanville_50184/nucleaire-un-nouvel-incident-a-la-centrale-edf-de-flamanville-2_39650828.html

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | France, incidents | Leave a comment

Bill Gates’undemocratic approach to climate crisis

The Nation 16th Feb 2021, Tim Schwab: Gates proceeds from a precarious position, not just because of his thin credentials, untested solutions, and stunning financial conflicts of interest, but because his undemocratic assertion of power—no one appointed or elected him as the world’s new climate czar—comes at precisely the time when democratic institutions have become essential to solving climate change.

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/bill-gates-climate-book/

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | 2 WORLD, climate change, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Lobbyists from West Cumbria Mining appointed to Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM)

Radiation Free Lakeland 19th Feb 2021, Letter sent today to MP Tim Farron from Radiation Free Lakeland. We haven been looking at West Cumbria Mining’s lobbying over the last several years. While WCM class themselves as a “small company” in order it seems to avoid full filing of company finances, they have been afforded incredible access to key government departments. Access that other Cumbrian small businesses could only dream of.

Meetings have taken place between West Cumbria Mining and at least three government departments including BEIS – the dept which is responsible for CoRWM appointments. The public would rightly assume that CoRWM and other government departments in the interests of transparency and ethics would not ever consider public appointments of individuals who have previously and continue to repeatedly lobby government departments to advance their business interests.

Especially when those business interests include the most controversial coal mine in UK history which coincidently is in the area where the UK government have repeatedly tried to progress Geological Disposal plans despite cumulative scientific evidence that the plan is dangerous (we
wonder how CoRWM expect Mark Kirkbride’s business interests of a coal mine in the same area will make the already complex and faulted geology in the Eastern Irish Sea area safer?)

https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/government-appointment-of-coal-mine-ceo-to-uk-nuke-dump-plans-not-dodgy-at-all/

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | politics, UK | 1 Comment

Problems in decommissioning legacy nuclear waste silos

Machinery Market 19th Feb 2021, Decommissioning legacy nuclear waste silos on the former UK power generating site at Sellafield requires a large number of bins to be machined to close geometrical tolerances to ensure they can be stacked afely. They are three-metre-cube, double-walled, box fabrications that are highly resonant and, to make their production even more difficult, they are made from 6mm thick Duplex stainless steel plate that tends to induce vibrations when it is milled.

One of the firms leading the Sellafield decommissioning work, Stillington-based Darchem Engineering, had been taking delivery of machined bins from contract machinists BEL Engineering in Newcastle-upon-Tyne since 2017. The problem was, in the words of CEO
Jonathan Lamb: “We wanted to increase productivity but realised that further improvements to the machining process were impossible using conventional machinery and fixturing.

https://www.machinery-market.co.uk/news/29278/Kingsbury-awarded-a-patent-covering-novel-fixture-for-machining-nuclear-waste-containers

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Lies in Texas, as Republicans blame renewable energy for cold weather traumas

Pressenza 19th Feb 2021, Forget Ted Cruz, What’s Really Missing in Texas Is the Green New Deal. While Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is under fire for fleeing to Cancún for a vacation as his constituents endure devastating power outages as well as food and water shortages due to rare winter weather, climate campaigners are pointing to the compounding crises in the Lone Star state as proof of the need for a Green New Deal.

As dozens of people have died and millions have spent days without electricity, some right-wing news outlets and lawmakers—including GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who’s facing calls to step down—have lied about the state’s power problems, blaming renewable energy, even though the outages are largely tied to issues with gas, coal, and nuclear facilities. Abbott even claimed Tuesday on Fox News that “this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly
deal for the United States of America.”

https://www.pressenza.com/2021/02/forget-ted-cruz-whats-really-missing-in-texas-is-the-green-new-deal/?s=09

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | politics, renewable, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

U.N. nuclear watchdog found uranium particles at two Iranian sites

Reuters 19th Feb 2021, The U.N. nuclear watchdog found uranium particles at two Iranian sites it inspected after months of stonewalling, diplomats say, and it is preparing to rebuke Tehran for failing to explain, possibly complicating U.S. efforts to revive nuclear diplomacy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-iaea-idUSKBN2AJ269

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

City giant Legal and General will not be funding Sizewell nuclear project

Telegraph 20th Feb 2021, Sizewell C proves to be a turn-off for City giant Legal & General. Legal & General has ruled out helping to fund the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant, dealing a blow to EDF as it seeks backers for the £20bn project.

EDF is in negotiations with the government about taxpayer support for the planned plant in Suffolk bues of a reactor’s life.

It will also need institutional investors, which it argues can make stable returns over the decad
L&G has not spoken publicly about its plans but in a written response to a pension-holder, one of its investment service consultants said: “I have had it confirmed that Legal & General will not be investing in the Sizewell C nuclear power plant.” L&G declined to comment further. It comes after Aviva Investors expressed concerns about the potential ESG (environmental, social and governance) risks of nuclear power. It said the ESG impact of nuclear was “far from clear at this time.” L&G’s boss Nigel Wilson reportedly described Hinkley in 2016 as a “£25bn waste of money”. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/02/20/sizewell-c-proves-aturn-off-city-giant-legal-general/

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Trump: Exactly What Republicans Always Wanted — limitless life

FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditShare Former President Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican Party despite being disgracefully impeached twice, and that is because he’s just what they’ve always wanted. For all his destruction, George W. Bush wasn’t cruel and bigoted enough for them; George H. W. Bush, same. Reagan authored the blueprint for this grand destruction, which Trump […]
Trump: Exactly What Republicans Always Wanted — limitless life

February 22, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Texas tantrums and anti-wind strawmen — daryanenergyblog

Recently there’s been some blackouts in Texas caused by unseasonably cold weather. In fact its the sort of extreme weather we’d be expecting due to climate change (which doesn’t just lead to hotter weather, it can also cause shifts in weather patterns leading to more extremes of weather, such as more intense rainfall, hurricanes and […]
Texas tantrums and anti-wind strawmen — daryanenergyblog

February 21, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear lobby planning to take over the U.N Climate Change Conference

Meet the Young Generation Network and its group of nuclear schills who will lead the attempted nuclear takeover of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 1 – 12 November 2021.

The team is mainly targeting the UN-controlled ‘blue zone’ at the conference, which is where the many international policymakers, government officials and legislators will be concentrated.

Just by chance? They all happen to be ambitious young people who hope to have a big career in the nuclear industry. Well, you can’t blame them for that. But let’s be wary of their advice on nuclear power as the solution for global heating.

Arun Khuttan. End States Engineer at Magnox Ltd.UKAlice Cunha da Silva. Latin America Nuclear Leader | Westinghouse Electric Company.

Hannah Paterson, Technology Manager at Sellafield Ltd UK

Matthew Mairinger Technical Engineer with Ontario Power Generation, Canada

Miguel Trenkel-Lopez Assistant Engineer at Magnox Ltd,Bristol, UK

Saralyn Thomas Formerly at AREVAnuclear company, now at Abbott Risk Consulting (ARC) Risk Management consultancy services to the Nuclear Industry

Vicki Dingwall of EDF nuclear company

February 21, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | 2 WORLD, climate change, spinbuster | 1 Comment

Water leaks indicate new damage at Fukushima nuclear plant

Water leaks indicate new damage at Fukushima nuclear plant

By MARI YAMAGUCHI TOKYO (AP) — Cooling water levels have fallen in two reactors at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant since a powerful earthquake hit the area last weekend, indicating possible additional damage, its operator said Friday.

New damage could further complicate the plant’s already difficult decommissioning process, which is expected to take decades.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Keisuke Matsuo said the drop in water levels in the Unit 1 and 3 reactors indicates that the existing damage to their primary containment chambers was worsened by Saturday’s magnitude 7.3 quake, allowing more water to leak.

The leaked water is believed to have remained inside the reactor buildings and there is no sign of any outside impact, he said.

In 2011, a powerful magnitude 9.1 earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima plant’s cooling systems, causing three reactor cores to melt and nuclear fuel to fall to the bottom of their primary containment vessels.

TEPCO will monitor the water and temperatures at the bottom of the containment vessels, Matsuo said.

Since the 2011 disaster, cooling water has been escaping constantly from the damaged primary containment vessels into the basements of the reactor buildings. To make up for the loss, additional cooling water has been pumped into the reactors to cool the melted fuel remaining inside them. The recent decline in the water levels indicates that more water than before is leaking out, TEPCO said……..

TEPCO initially reported that there was no abnormality at the plant from Saturday’s quake.

Matsuo said the cooling water level fell as much as 70 centimeters (27 inches) in the primary containment chamber of the Unit 1 reactor and about 30 centimeters (11 inches) in Unit 3. TEPCO wasn’t able to determine any decline in Unit 2 because indicators have been taken out to prepare for the removal of melted debris, it said.

Increased leakage could require more cooling water to be pumped into the reactors, which would result in more contaminated water that is treated and stored in huge tanks at the plant. TEPCO says its storage capacity of 1.37 million tons will be full next summer. A government panel’s recommendation that it be gradually released into the sea has faced fierce opposition from local residents and a decision is still pending.

Meanwhile, the Tokyo High Court on Friday held the government as well as TEPCO accountable for the 2011 nuclear disaster, ordering both to pay about 280 million yen ($2.6 million) in compensation to more than 40 plaintiffs forced to evacuate to Chiba, near Tokyo, for their lost livelihoods and homes.

Friday’s decision reverses an earlier ruling by the Chiba district court that excluded the government from responsibility. Judge Yukio Shirai said the government could have foreseen the risk of a massive tsunami and taken measures after a long-term assessment in 2002 of seismic activities.

Lawyers representing the plaintiffs welcomed the decision and said it would affect other pending cases.

“The case raises the question of whether we should tolerate a society that prioritizes economic activities over people’s lives and health,” said Izutaro Mangi, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs. https://apnews.com/article/water-leaks-fukushima-new-damage-a7ecf765d0233b1cad7332ff9fed5ffe

February 20, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment

On nuclear power as climate solution, Bill Gates shows alarming ignorance

David Lowry’s Blog 16th Feb 2021 The multi-billionaire Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, in his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”, is sceptical of the Green New Deal.(Allen Lane/Penguin) published on 16 February. Gates secured much pre-publication publicity for his new tome, including an interview in the Guardian Weekend Magazine, which wrote “Of the Green New Deal, the proposal backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [the Congresswoman who has promoted the merits of the GND in the US] that raises the goal of carbon neutrality in a decade, he is flatly dismissive, with Gates telling the interviewer. “Well, it’s a fairytale. It’s like saying vaccines don’t work – that’s a form of science denialism. Why peddle fantasies to people?”

Gates also opined: “I’m not a survivalist.” Instead his version of survivalism is to fund innovation, the reporter noted. “I’m putting money into carbon capture and nuclear fission” Gates told her. (Bill Gates: ‘Carbon neutrality in a decade is a fairytale. Why peddle fantasies?’, Guardian, 13 February 2021; https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/15/bill-gates-carbon-neutrality-in-a-decade-is-a-fairytale-why-peddle-fantasies)

Indeed, his book is laced with positive, if inaccurate, mentions of nuclear power. For example, he asserts on page 84, in a section on “Making Carbon-Free Electricity”, uns der a sub-section titled ‘ Nuclear Fission’ he writes: “”Here’s the one sentence case for nuclear power: It’s the only carbon-free energy sources that can reliably deliver power day and night, through every season.”

Later on page 190, he repeats the fake fact, asserting “Nuclear is the only carbon-free energy source we can use almost anywhere. It is worrying that Gates can be so poorly informed he can believe such demonstable fake information, and repeat is, using it as a cornerstone for his pro-nuclear arguments. His editors at Allen Lane surely should have told him when he presented draft text that this information is incorrect, and should be removed. Gates should have known the following: Nuclear power will not provide any useful dent in curbing harmful emissions, when the carbon footprint of its full uranium ‘fuel chain’ is considered- from uranium mining, milling, enrichment ( which is highly energy intensive), fuel fabrication, irradiation, radioactive waste conditioning, storage, packaging to final disposal. Recent analysis by Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, in a detailed study “Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security (https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/ReviewSolGW09.pdf) demonstrates nuclear power’s CO2 emissions are between 10 to 18 times greater than those from renewable energy technologies.

Gates should read it pronto. Gates is not an energy specialist (evidently), but clearly cares hugely about the global threat of climate change. He is, however, an enormously wealthy philanthropist, and says in his new book (on pages 8-9 ) “I put several hundred million dollars into starting a company [ TerraPower] to design a next-generation nuclear plant that would generate clean electricity.” Beforehand, he says, he “met with experts” (unnamed). Clearly the wrong ones. For a man who must have the contact phone numbers of presidents and premiers on speed dial, it is a pity this commendable venture into solutions to the climate change challenge, is so poorly founded. On Gates’ Breakthrough Energy web site, he says that he has assembled “analysts, experts and advocates working to advance smart public policy.” On nuclear, Gates’ approach is just dumb! http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.com/2021/02/green-new-deal-and-nuclear-politics.html

February 20, 2021 Posted by Christina MacPherson | 2 WORLD, climate change, ENERGY, PERSONAL STORIES, politics, spinbuster | Leave a comment