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The $91 billion wasted on nuclear weapons last year could transform ecosystem restoration (commentary)

by Melissa Parke on 28 June 2024,  https://news.mongabay.com/2024/06/the-91-billion-wasted-on-nuclear-weapons-last-year-could-transform-ecosystem-restoration-commentary/

  • Nuclear weapons have caused much damage to the environment and are the only devices ever created that have the capacity to destroy all complex life forms on Earth. 
  • Yet every year, the nine nuclear armed-nations divert vast sums of taxpayers’ money into producing, maintaining and modernizing weapons of mass destruction, approximately $91.4 billion in 2023 alone.   
  • “One year of nuclear weapons spending could pay for wind power for more than 12 million homes to help combat climate change, plant one million trees a minute, or clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for 187 years in a row,” argues the director of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, ICAN. 
  • This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

The overwhelming sums of money being wasted on nuclear weapons every year should be spent on conserving our planet instead, argues a new report from my organization, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). We should take the money wasted on these bombs and missiles every single year and instead of setting ourselves up to cause more, possibly irrevocable and irreconcilable damage, clean up the legacy of harm already done and invest in restoring ecosystems and halting biodiversity loss.

Nuclear weapons have already caused so much damage to our environment and they are the only devices ever created that have the capacity to destroy all complex life forms on Earth.  Nuclear war would mean climate disruption with devastating consequences. The world would fall under a nuclear winter, be subject to a deadly global famine and exacerbated effects of global warming.

But contrary to what some would like you to believe, their devastating impact is not just limited to a hypothetical  post-apocalyptic hell, many of them are already being felt today.

Throughout their entire cycle, nuclear weapons have left a devastating environmental legacy around the world: from uranium mining through fuel production at nuclear processing plants to the impacts of the thousands of nuclear tests over the decades. Nuclear weapons facilities have contaminated land and water with radioactive waste that can last many thousands of years. Efforts to clean up the sites have been haphazard or half-hearted, cost billions of dollars over decades – and are still largely unfinished.

For a terrible and terrifying example of how poorly restoration efforts were carried out, we need to talk about the Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands. After exploding  43 nuclear bombs on the Enewetak Atoll between 1948 and 1958, and removing the people who lived there from their homes, the U.S. government did not initiate clean up until the 1970s. This consisted of – as the LA Times put it in a scathing exposé – “burying 33 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of irradiated soil and two Olympic swimming pools’ worth of contaminated debris from islands across the atoll” and dumping it into the crater they created with the detonation, capping it off with a concrete dome.

That dome is showing signs of structural weakness and could crack under the pressure from rising sea levels. The U.S. Government now contends that the crater was built to store the debris, not protect the rest of the nearby environment from its contents.

Of course, it is not only the U.S. that has failed to deal with the environmental effects of its nuclear weapons production, testing, and use. The same can be said for the British in Australia and Kiribati, the French in Algeria and  the Pacific, and the USSR/Russia in Kazakhstan.

It is also important to remember that radiation cannot be contained geographically; it respects no country’s border. Fallout patterns are complex and the full consequences of the fallout of years of particular atmospheric nuclear testing is not known- neither on humans, nor on other animals. Recent scientific studies found that the high radiation levels in wild boars in Ukraine are likely not directly due to the Chernobyl disaster but rather the result of nuclear weapons testing before the disaster occurred, resulting in residual radiation in the surrounding areas for decades.

Yet their destructive capacity does not end there. Nuclear weapons also carry a hefty opportunity cost that prevents us from addressing some of the urgent crises facing our planet.

Every year, the nine nuclear armed-states divert vast sums of taxpayers’ money into producing, maintaining and modernizing weapons of mass destruction.  ICAN puts out the only report tracking this global nuclear weapons spending on an annual basis, our latest edition found that they wasted $91.4 billion on their arsenals in 2023.

Think of what this money could have gone to instead. One year of nuclear weapons spending could pay for wind power for more than 12 million homes to help combat climate change, plant one million trees a minute, or clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for 187 years in a row.

It could also cover the entire annual funding gap ($79 billion) for global efforts to restore ecosystems and halt biodiversity loss. As biodiversity loss continues at unprecedented speeds under the onslaught of environmental degradation and climate change, new studies reveal that conservation efforts to improve or slow the decline of biodiversity are working in two-thirds of the cases. Imagine what could be achieved if these efforts were fully funded.

Anyone concerned about the climate crisis, about environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, should also support the cause of nuclear disarmament with equal passion, as these are interconnected issues.

Every species will be harmed in a nuclear war. Only one species can stop it.

Melissa Parke is Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. She formerly worked for the United Nations in Gaza, Kosovo, New York and Lebanon and served as Australia’s Minister for International Development.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | environment, weapons and war | Leave a comment

WAR OR PEACE: Towards a Ukrainian Peace or a Direct NATO-Russian War

Russian and Eurasian Politicsby GORDONHAHN. June 28, 2024

Introduction

The following is an overview of the recent events and present state of the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War. We observe movement towards the end of the conflict in its present configuration and in two new directions simultaneously—a race to the final resolution of the NATO-Russia question. One direction consists of movement towards peace negotiations. The other is toward escalation into a open, direct NATO-Russia war likely to expand beyond the borders of Ukraine and far western regions of Russia. The race to resolution is on and it remains anyone’s guess whether peace or greater war will win the day.

Russia Proposes Diplomacy…Again

On June 14 Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a roadmap for ending the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War during a speech at Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs………………………………………………………………..

. In particular, he has now offered “simple” conditions for the “beginning of discussions.” They include: the full withdrawal of all Ukrainian troops from Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhia oblasts as they existed as of 1991—that is, Russia would receive all the oblasts’ territories not just those now controlled by Russian troops. Immediately upon agreeing to this condition and a second requiring Kiev’s rejection of any NATO membership (Ukraine’s “neutral, non-bloc, non-nuclear status”), from the Russian side “immediately, literally the same minute there will follow an order to cease fire and begin negotiations” and Moscow “will guarantee the unhindered and safe withdrawal” of Ukrainian units. ……………………………….

To be sure, Putin’s offer was not made under the illusion that it would be taken up within the next few months and was certainly another effort to lay blame for the conflict at Washington’s, Brussels and, less so perhaps, Kiev’s doors. Nevertheless, Putin’s public offering before Russia’s Foreign Ministry personnel is a most authoritative and official statement of a specific proposal from Russia; one that included paths to both a ceasefire and permanent peace, if Washington and/or Kiev choose to take them as Ukraine continues to crumble at the front, in the political sphere, and economically throughout this year. 

………………………………………………………Continued refusal to talk with Moscow and any further Russian gains give Putin flexibility in enticing or threatening Washington, Brussels, and/or Kiev to the negotiating table. Refuse talks and lose non-Novorossiyan lands; accept talks and Kiev gets them back.        

Also, both subjectively (with Putin’s intent) and objectively (without Putyin’s intent) the proposal undermined Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s ‘disnamed’ ‘peace summit’ in Switzerland which was nothing other than an exercise in rallying support among supporters for the beleaguered Maidan regime. ………………………..

……………………………………………………my sense that the Ukrainian war will end one way or the other this year unless NATO intervenes directly with troops on the ground.

Moscow’s Military Plans: Reject Talks and War You Shall Have

Moscow’s military plans for the remainder of the year can be summed up as continuity in Ukraine and preparations for war beyond Ukraine against the West. Thus, in Ukraine Russia will continue its more offensive strategy of ‘attrit and advance’ upgraded from, an intensification of what Alexander Mercouris calls ‘aggressive attrition’ (https://gordonhahn.com/2024/02/02/russian-strategic-transformation-in-ukraine-from-aggressive-attrition-to-attrit-and-advance/). . Under attrit and advance, Russian forces still emphasize destruction of Ukraine’s armed forces over the taking and holding of new territory. The attrition of massive, combined air, artillery, missile, and drone war supersedes the advances on the ground by armor and infantry in this strategy. Thus, territorial advance is slow, but personnel losses are fewer. 

………………………………………………………………….Despite the calls of some Russian hawks, Putin will never acquiesce to bomb Ukraine, no less Kiev ‘into a parking lot’ or ‘the stone age.’ For Russians, Ukrainians are a fraternal eastern Slavic people, with long-standing ties to Russia. Most Russian families have relatives or friends from or in Ukraine. Kiev is ‘the mother of all Russian cities’, and despite Russia’s possession of precise smart weapons, the risk of destroying Orthodox holy sites and other historical monuments in Kiev is too high. Russia’s overwhelming strength in weapons and manpower, despite Western inputs into Ukraine’s armed forces, could allow Russian attrit and advance to persist for many years—more than will be necessary to force negotiations or seize much of Ukraine.

Boiling the Russian Frog – Escalation by Any Other Name

There has been much talk about the US repeartedly stepping over Russian red lines. The most recent is Washington’s and Brussels’ (NATO’s) grant of permission to Kiev to target the territory of Russia proper (1991 territory) with Western-made weapons. The West itself has drawn many red lines that it said could spark direct war with Russia and, therefore, should not be crossed: offensive weapons, artillery, tanks, aircraft, various types of missiles, cluster munitions, etc., etc. Most recently, Washington crossed two red lines in rapid succession by approving Kiev use of U.S missiles, such as ATACMs to target Russian territory across the border in Kharkov and, presumably Sumy……………………………………………………………………

It then expanded approval of the use of such missiles against any Russian territories from which attacks in Ukraine are being supported  (www.politico.com/news/2024/06/20/us-says-ukraine-can-hit-inside-russia-anywhere-00164261). Days later Ukraine fired 5 ATACMs (4 were intercepted) at Sevastopol which hit beach-goers far from any military target, wounding 46 and killing 3, including 2 children. The potential escalation of the overall war resulting from this Ukrainian target was compounded ……………………………………………………………………….

 Western NATO leaders seem intent on expanding the war beyond Ukraine’s borders and that will require Western public support and thus a vaccum of public discussion of NATO actions and national interests. Even if the constant escalation is ‘simply’ a game of chicken, upping the ante to see if Putin blinks or if the war can be dragged out past the November U.S. elections, there are many in U.S. intelligence and other departments, who are itching for a war against Russia who may escalate or enable Kiev to do so, intentionally or not, such that one is provoked. Unintentionality comes in, as Kiev has been anxious to force NATO or at least NATO member-states into direct involvement in the war. Ukraine has achieved some success in this, but so far such Western involvement has been limited, intially, to secret injections of Western troops and mercenaries, and then to open advisory roles. The summer and fall of 2024 will be a dangerous window in which a spark can detonate the larger war that such mad men and women are playing with.

To the extent that the West remains intent on continuing the escalation of the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War, Moscow will engage in asymmetrical escalation targeting Western forces outside of Europe and prepare for possible full-scale war with NATO or NATO members in and beyond Ukraine……………………………………………………………….

Towards a Eurasian Security Pact: Getting Ready for Direct War with NATO

With war with NATO now firmly in the cards, a distinct possibility, the Kremlin is intensely set on military and military-political preparations. The rejection of Putin’s next peace proposal was likely the last straw that will set in motion the next phase in Russia’s diplomatic offensive in tendem with China aimed at rallying the Rest against the West. …………….

For years, particularly after the Maidan coup, Putin has been conducting Russian diplomacy with the goal of creating a Great Eurasian and global alternative to the West’s ‘rules-based world order’, seeking to base a new, alternative international system of political, economic, financial, and monetary institutions on different rules written by all the great powers – the ‘Rest’ – rather than just the West…………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………. This Greater Eurasia security pact is thus also a mechanism for splitting NATO, particularly Europe from the U.S. This is to be achieved by networking and lobbying all the international organizations in Eurasia that Russia has been building for decades now: ………………………………….

……………………………………………… the train of the Rest’s rejection of the Western worldview has left the station, and, with the danger of escalation in Ukraine, Israel, and elsewhere afoot, it seems more likely that the new Eurasian-South bloc will be an alternative to, possibly a foe of the West’s ‘rules-based world order’ rather than a partner (http://kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/74285). 

Conclusion

         Again, the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War – the current war with militay combat confined largely to Ukrainian and far western Russian territory — will end this year or very early next year. However, a new broader war can take its place, if the peace fails or is never agreed upon. ………………………………………………………

……………..   The hope is that cooler heads will prevail, but the U.S. is in the midst of a deep and potentially explosive political crisis in which bureaucratic politics can become highly cryptic, conspiratorial, chaotic, and irrational, provoking new more dangerous conflict. Similarly, in Kiev a meltdown of the Maidan regime could be imminent and will likely come as a shot in the dark, unexpected by all……………………………………………………..

That Zelenskiy is now broaching peace talks with Putin is a reflection of the opportunity and dangers that are in the offing.   https://gordonhahn.com/2024/06/28/war-or-peace-towards-a-ukrainian-peace-or-a-direct-nato-russian-war/

July 1, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear weapons spending report reveals corporate intervention in UK nuclear policy – CND

“It is time for political parties to determine policy based on the interests of the people, not the arms companies.” Kate Hudson, CND General Secretary

“It is time for political parties to determine policy based on the interests of the people, not the arms companies.” Kate Hudson, CND General Secretary

By the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) ,  https://labouroutlook.org/2024/06/29/nuclear-weapons-spending-report-reveals-corporate-intervention-in-uk-nuclear-policy-cnd/

CND welcomes the release of the “Surge: 2023 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending” report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The report provides a stark and troubling overview of global nuclear weapons expenditure: it has surged by 34% in the past five years, from $68.2 billion to $91.4 billion annually, with a cumulative total of $387 billion during this period.

The report also highlights a deeply worrying and absolutely inappropriate corporate involvement in UK government policy making. The report found that companies involved in Britain’s nuclear weapons programmes have held meetings with senior government officials in the past year. These manufacturers, along with nuclear-armed states, have also financed – to the tune of millions of pounds – think tanks that shape government policy and public opinion on nuclear weapons.

In terms of spending on nuclear weapons, UK figures are particularly shocking. Over the past five years, Britain’s spending has increased by over 43%. In 2023 alone, Britain spent a staggering £6.5 billion on nuclear weapons, up 17.1% on the previous year. This positions Britain as the fourth-highest spender on nuclear weapons globally, just behind Russia, and marks the second-largest increase in spending after the United States – which spent more than all the other nuclear-armed states combined.

This report comes at a critical time, during Britain’s general election campaign. Both Labour and the Conservatives have pledged to modernise the country’s nuclear arsenal, seemingly at any cost.

CND General Secretary Kate Hudson said:

“The billions of pounds being funnelled into these weapons of mass destruction are a gross misallocation of resources that could be used to address pressing issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty alleviation. It is deeply concerning that our political leaders are prioritizing the expansion of our nuclear arsenal over the well-being of our citizens and the health of our planet.

This report also makes absolutely clear the influence of arms companies in the shaping of defence and foreign policy, their funding of think tanks, and their meetings with government officials. This runs against all democracy and accountability, and must be exposed, investigated and ended.

As we approach the general election on 4 July, we urge voters to elect MPs who prioritise peace, disarmament, and justice. It is time for political parties to determine policy based on the interests of the people, not the arms companies. We want a decent peaceful future that does not include reckless expenditure on nuclear weapons but creates a safer, fairer world for all.”

July 1, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

A vigil behind bars: pair who protested US nuclear bombs in Germany serving time

The judges and prosecutors, as well as the guards in prison, treat us respectfully and politely while at the same time sticking to laws and rules that are unjust and cause suffering. The biggest crime in their eyes is to upset the “order”, even though the order is set up to be criminal. 

By Susan Crane and Susan van der Hijden , 29 June 24  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/06/30/a-vigil-behind-bars/

Here in Rohrbach prison we are awakened by the sounds of doves and other birds, giving the illusion that all is well in the world, until other sounds, keys rattling, doors being shut, and guards doing the morning body check, bring us back to reality.

We are sitting in a prison cell, 123 km from Büchel Air Force Base, where more than 20 U.S. nuclear bombs are deployed. 

At the moment, the runway at Büchel is being rebuilt to accommodate the new F-35 fighter jets that will carry the new B61-12 nuclear bombs that were designed and built in the U.S. 

The planning, preparation, possession, deployment, threat or use of these B61-bombs is illegal and criminal. The U.S., Germany and NATO know that each B61 nuclear bomb would inflict unnecessary suffering and casualties on combatants and civilians and induce cancers, keloid growth and leukemia in large numbers, inflict congenital deformities in unborn children and poison food supplies.

“We have no right to obey,” says Hannah Arendt. 

Although our actions might seem futile, we understand that it is our right, duty and responsibility to stand against the planning and preparation for the use of these weapons. They are illegal under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which both Germany and the U.S. have signed and ratified, and under the the Hague Convention, the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg Charter.

During the international peace camps in Büchel (organized by the G.A.A.A. which consists of, among others, IPPNW, ICAN and DFG-VK; the German War Resisters League), we, together with other war resisters, and with the help of many supporters, went onto Büchel Air Force Base to communicate with the military personnel about the illegality and immorality of the nuclear bombs. We also wanted to withdraw our consent and complicity to their use.

The judges who sentenced us for these actions made a decision to follow some laws and ignore others. It is common sense, and we all know, that even the law against trespass can be broken when life is endangered.

The judges and prosecutors, as well as the guards in prison, treat us respectfully and politely while at the same time sticking to laws and rules that are unjust and cause suffering. The biggest crime in their eyes is to upset the “order”, even though the order is set up to be criminal. 

We wake up every day with determined joy to continue our “vigil behind bars”. A joy constrained by knowing that the other women here have pain, from being separated from their family and children or from constant physical or psychological difficulties or from being locked in a cell all day with nothing to do. 

We are only able to “vigil behind bars” through the immense support of people making sure our Catholic Worker houses can continue, people sending us cards and stamps, organizing visits and money for phone calls, remembering us in their prayers, doing press work and those that continue fighting the death dealing war-makers in the world. 

Susan Crane is serving a 229 day sentence, and Susan van der Hijden a 115 day sentence, for their nonviolent nuclear disarmament actions at Büchel air base. You can write cards and letters to them, individually addressed to each at JVA Rohrbach, Peter-Caesar-Allee 1, 55597 Wöllstein, Germany. Updates can be found here. 

July 1, 2024 Posted by | Germany, Legal, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Do the research and end the nuclear hype in New Brunswick

by Susan O’Donnell, June 29, 2024,  https://nbmediacoop.org/2024/06/29/do-the-research-and-end-the-nuclear-hype-in-new-brunswick/

New Brunswick’s ARC nuclear project is in trouble. This situation highlights the lack of critical knowledge about nuclear reactor designs within NB Power and the New Brunswick government.

The ARC project goal is to design and build a nuclear reactor cooled with liquid sodium metal at the Point Lepreau site on the Bay of Fundy. NB Power also plans a second reactor at the site, the Moltex reactor design cooled with molten salt.

The proposed nuclear reactor designs lack commercial viability

If NB Power and the provincial government reviewed available research, they would learn that both sodium-cooled and molten salt reactors have never operated successfully on a commercial electricity grid.

An expert report from the U.S. National Academies  of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stated that inherent problems with sodium-cooled and molten salt reactors means new builds will have difficulty reaching commercial viability by the year 2050, far later than the federal 2035 deadline for utilities to transition to a net-zero electricity grid.

For sodium-cooled reactors like the ARC design, tens of billions of dollars have been spent over decades trying to make them work in a commercial setting, by companies in other countries with considerable experience building nuclear reactors. The failures are well-documented.

Liquid sodium metal is reactive and burns when exposed to air or water. The first commercial sodium-cooled reactor in the U.S. had a partial meltdown and was quickly scrapped.

In other countries, sodium fires and unpredictable performances led to sodium-cooled reactors being abandoned in France (the Superphénix), Japan (the Monju breeder), Germany (the Kalkar plant), and Scotland (the Dounreay reactor).

All these shut-down sodium-cooled reactors cost far more to decommission than they did to build, partly due to the expense of removing the sodium from the reactors’ radioactive waste material so it could be safely disposed without causing underground explosions due to sodium-water reactions, as happened for Scotland’s Dounreay reactor.

The proposed reactor designs lack financing

The ARC sodium-cooled design is in its preliminary stage. Bill Labbe, the ARC CEO who suddenly left the company recently, said in 2023 that $500 million is needed to develop the ARC reactor design, and a further $600 million in power purchase agreements to move the project forward. The money raised to date for the ARC project is only a tiny fraction of that.

Since 2018 the provincial government has handed $25 million to ARC and $10 million to Moltex, as ‘seed’ funding to attract private investment. The federal government gave Moltex $50.5 million in 2021 and ARC $7 million in 2023.

However, six years of trying to entice private investors to the ARC and Moltex projects has not yielded results. Globally, private investment in the energy sector is going into renewable – not nuclear – energy.

Misplaced government hype

Despite the ARC company’s financial difficulties, according to news reports both NB Power and the New Brunswick government continue to support the ARC project.

Since the two start-up companies arrived in Canada and landed in Saint John in 2018, the government’s hype around the ARC and Moltex projects at times has been intense, surprisingly so, given that neither company has ever built a nuclear reactor.

In the past, Energy Minister Mike Holland has been the biggest booster of the ARC and Moltex “advanced” reactor designs.

However, in a curious coincidence, Holland quit the cabinet and gave up his MLA seat just days before the troubles at the ARC company hit the news, after previously announcing he would not stand in the upcoming election.

New Brunswick’s money-losing Point Lepreau nuclear plant

NB Power wants to build the ARC reactor near its existing Point Lepreau nuclear reactor, a consistent money loser for the utility.

According to the NB Auditor General, about three-quarters of NB Power’s $5 billion debt is from cost over-runs on the original CANDU reactor build 40 years ago and the re-build more than a dozen years ago.

At the recent Energy and Utility Board hearings, it was clear that the ongoing poor performance of the Lepreau plant is contributing to the utility’s financial difficulties and its request for an unprecedented rate hike.

Nuclear: the most expensive option for generating electricity

New Brunswick’s abysmal prior experience with nuclear reactors raises an obvious question: why is the province intent on trying to develop experimental nuclear reactors as part of its energy transition plans?

Nuclear power is a more expensive way to generate electricity than renewable energy with storage. Nuclear plants take much longer to build than solar or wind farms. These facts are well-known.

Even the right-wing magazine The Economist recognizes the global trend toward renewables and away from nuclear energy, stating in its most recent issue that: “the next ten-fold increase (in solar energy) will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight, in less than the time it typically takes to build one of them.”

New Brunswick: clinging to an outdated vision of electricity production

The challenge for New Brunswick is that our public utility NB Power is stuck, along with Ontario Power Generation, in the Jurassic era, feeding their nuclear dinosaurs while the rest of the utility world is getting on with their renewables and storage rollouts.

Across the globe, countries are focused on technological revolutions in energy efficiency and productivity, building smart grids with demand management and response and distributed renewable energy and storage resources. These offer lower-cost, lower-risk, faster and more flexible pathways for decarbonized electricity grids without large centralized nuclear systems.

Building more nuclear reactors and increasing power rates is not compatible with what many commentators in the province want in our shared economic, social and cultural future. It’s time for New Brunswick to end the nuclear hype.

Susan O’Donnell is the principal investigator with teammates of the CEDAR project, St. Thomas University in Fredericton.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | Canada, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Israeli Defense Minister Vows to Return Lebanon to ‘Stone Age’

President Joe Biden has significant leverage he could use to reign in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but has largely refused to do so. While US officials claim their diplomatic efforts are not stalled, an increasing number of countries worry war will break out and are asking their citizens to leave Lebanon.

The White House reversed course and now says a ceasefire in Lebanon cannot be contingent on a deal in Gaza

by Kyle Anzalone June 27, 2024 ,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/06/27/israeli-defense-minister-vows-to-return-lebanon-to-stone-age/

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was prepared to send Lebanon back to the “Stone Age” with a massive bombing campaign. The White House desperately tries to avert a major war in the Middle East but is not making progress.

After three days of meetings with top officials in Washington, Gallant told reporters that Israel preferred diplomacy but was also willing to utterly destroy Lebanon. “We do not want war, but we are preparing for every scenario. Hezbollah understands very well that we can inflict massive damage in Lebanon if a war is launched,” he said. Israel could bomb “Lebanon back to the Stone Age, but we don’t want to do it.”

Gallant’s remarks come as daily tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel risk escalating into a major war that could see the US, Iran, and other militias across the Middle East enter the fray. After announcing it had “operational plans” ready for an attack, Israel has started to move some military assets from near Gaza to its northern border.

The White House has invested considerable effort into bringing the conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza to a close. However, rather than applying pressure on Tel Aviv to deescalate, Washington has tried to force Hezbollah and Hamas to accept Israeli demands. Last week, American officials told Beirut that Washington was unable to constrain Tel Aviv, in hopes the warning would convince Hezbollah to back down.

President Joe Biden has significant leverage he could use to reign in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but has largely refused to do so. While US officials claim their diplomatic efforts are not stalled, an increasing number of countries worry war will break out and are asking their citizens to leave Lebanon.

Last week, Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein visited Tel Aviv and Beirut, hoping to work on a deal to end the fighting. At the time, Hochstein pushed for a deal to end the war in Gaza, with the belief that it would lead to deeslcation on Israel’s northern border as well.

Hezbollah maintains that it will end operations against Israel once the onslaught in Gaza comes to a close. Israel says it will not stop attacks on Lebanon until Hezbollah withdraws several miles from the border. Tel Aviv has decimated southern Lebanon, turning much of the area within three miles of the border into a “dead zone.”

Now, the Biden administration’s tactics have flipped, with officials telling reporters that the deal to end the fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border must be separate from any Gaza ceasefire. “The logic of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah…is that it is all tied to Gaza, and until there is a cease-fire in Gaza the firing at Israel won’t stop,” the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a senior Biden official. “We frankly, completely reject this logic.”

Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Do thorium reactors prevent nuclear weapons proliferation risks?

Gordon Edwards, 30 June 24.

Many people have been assured, incorrectly, that the use of thorium as a “nuclear fuel” eliminates the danger of nuclear weapons proliferation. That is simply untrue.
The fact is, thorium is NOT a nuclear fuel.

However, a thorium-232 atom can be transmuted into a uranium-233 atom by capturing a stray neutron, and uranium-233 (not generally found in nature) is an excellent nuclear fuel and can also be used to make excellent nuclear weapons. So a “thorium reactor” is really a uranium-233 reactor.

Natural thorium — thorium-232 — is not fissile (i.e. it is not a chain-reacting material). So thorium requires a concentrated fissile material to be added to it, in order to get a chain reaction going and produce the neutrons that are needed to transmute thorium-232 atoms into chain-reacting uranium-233 atoms. 

That concentrated fissile material additive does not have to be enriched uranium, it can equally well be plutonium. It has to be either one or the other, there is no other choice. So, in any event, to get a “thorium reactor” going, you need to use either uranium (enriched to a rather high degree) or plutonium (extracted from used nuclear fuel) as an additive. In either case, you will need to use proliferation-sensitive technologies (uranium enrichment or plutonium extraction) before even embarking upon a thorium reactor program. 

Thorium use is therefore not a proliferation-resistant plan of action, not even to begin with.

It gets worse, because subsequently, if the “thorium-impregnated-with-fissile material” is irradiated in a reactor, the thorium atoms will FIRST be transmuted into protactinium atoms (protactinium-233) which will then spontaneously “decay” into uranium-233 atoms. In addition, further neutron captures inside the reactor will also produce a small amount of uranium-232, an undesired pollutant that is a strong gamma emitter.

Thorium enthusiasts often say that the powerful gamma rays from U-232 will make the U-233 unusable for nuclear weapons, which is somewhat of an exaggeration to begin with.

However, if the protactinium-233 is chemically separated out from the irradiated “thorium fuel” outside the reactor, those protactinium-233 atoms will spontaneously decay into pure uranium-233 atoms without any admixture of uranium-232 (because there are no neutrons outside the reactor to create uranium-232 as a result of additional neutron captures),

Since pure U-233 can be produced spontaneously outside the reactor, as outlined above by separating out protactinium-233 first, this procedure can completely avoid the problem of U-232 contaminating the U-233 — which, admittedly, would make nuclear weapons construction more difficult (although not impossible). 

So the complicating factor of U-232 can be circumvented entirely by a would-be proliferator. There is no doubt that U-233 is an extremely powerful nuclear explosive material and, uncontaminated, can be used to make arsenals of nuclear weapons with relative ease. 
Thus thorium reactors do not “eliminate” or even significantly reduce the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | thorium, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK’s Nuclear weapons pose a risk to proposed new homes


By Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporting Service, 28 June 24,  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clddy5kyv64o

Nuclear weapons could pose a risk to plans for almost 500 homes just outside a village, a council has been warned.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) – the only maker of nuclear warheads in Britain – has opposed plans for the development near Spencers Wood in Berkshire.

It told Wokingham Borough Council the residents would live in an area exposed to a “radiation emergency” if something went wrong at its site in nearby Burghfield.

Proposals for the site also include a primary school and green space.

‘Safety concerns’

Development consultants Pegasus Group submitted the plans for up to 475 homes in May.

While not a formal planning application, the submission hopes to determine if a development would affect the environment, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

But in a letter to the council, AWE said the plans raised “significant” safety concerns.

It said the proposed site, between Basingstoke Lane and Sussex Lane, fell within its Detailed Emergency Planning Zone (DEPZ).

This is an area where neighbouring West Berkshire Council must have a detailed plan in place for its response to a nuclear emergency at Burghfield.

AWE said: “Whilst chances of a radiation emergency at AWE B are very low, the potential impact on the local population would be high and an appropriate and proportionate step is, to where possible, avoid new development being located within the DEPZ.”

It added the increased population in the area would also put strain on emergency services’ ability to help existing residents in the event of an emergency.

Wokingham Borough Council’s own emergency planning manager also said he would likely oppose the proposals if developers Richborough applied for planning permission.

He said the new development would have a “detrimental impact” on its emergency plan to help people living within the DEPZ.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

What does Chevron mean for nuclear? The USA courts can now supercede the safety role of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

should we trust the courts to be better arbiters of how nuclear power plants should be regulated than the actual agency set up to regulate them?

In the worst-case scenario, rogue judges are now empowered to issue out-of-pocket decisions on highly technical matters they don’t actually understand.

The NRC was the undisputed final word in what goes for nuclear energy in the United States. Did the overturning of the longstanding Chevron decision now put the courts above the regulatory agency?

Elemental, ANGELICA OUNG, JUN 30, 2024

The US Supreme Court just overturned the longstanding “Chevron deference” This is a move so dramatic that Dahlia Lithwick, senior legal editor at Slate, described it as a “requiem” for the Administrative state.

According to Lithwick in the Slate Podcast on the issue, the Chevron doctrine said that when a statute is unclear, federal courts should defer to a reasonable interpretation by administrative agencies. No more. Courts can now decide from the get-go what a statute means, regardless of what the agency thinks.

Once upon a time, ironically, it was the conservative Justice Scalia who was the Chevron doctrine’s biggest fan. But as it becomes increasingly clear that the conservative justices are going to enjoy a generational hold on the Supreme Court while the party holding the Executive Branch flips and flops, it became an advantageous political project for the court to take out Chevron and transfer power from the “ABC agencies,” which of course includes the National Regulatory Commission (NRC) over to the courts.

“This fundamentally changes the way government governs,” said Lithwick.

So what now? If the court is now the final arbiter for whether, say, a bump stock makes a gun a machine gun, is it also going to become the final arbiter on whether a giant trampoline works as well as a reinforced containment dome for that purpose of protecting a nuclear reactor from the impact of a large commercial aircraft?

In fact, since the Aircraft Impact Assessment (AIA) is a part of the NRC’s regulations, not explicitly mandated by law, the court can even opt to throw the regulation out entirely.

The undercutting of the NRC goes both ways: just as nuclear companies can now challenge what they see as unreasonably onerous NRC regulations in court, they are now also vulnerable to individuals or groups claiming harm, even if the companies followed all the regulatory guidelines, increasing their legal risk.

As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion in the landmark 6-3 ruling, “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan warned that Congress does not have the ability to write perfectly complete regulatory statutes and it would be preferable for the gaps formed by inevitable ambiguities to be filled by the responsible agency, not a court. The decision “is likely to produce large-scale disruption.”………………………………………………………………………………………………

…….should we trust the courts to be better arbiters of how nuclear power plants should be regulated than the actual agency set up to regulate them?

In the worst-case scenario, rogue judges are now empowered to issue out-of-pocket decisions on highly technical matters they don’t actually understand.  https://elementalenergy.substack.com/p/what-does-chevron-mean-for-nuclear

July 1, 2024 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Newly identified tipping point for ice sheets could mean greater sea level rise

 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/25/newly-identified-tipping-point-for-ice-sheets-could-mean-greater-sea-level-rise

Small increase in temperature of intruding water could lead to very big increase in loss of ice, scientists say

A newly identified tipping point for the loss of ice sheets in Antarctica and elsewhere could mean future sea level rise is significantly higher than current projections.

A new study has examined how warming seawater intrudes between coastal ice sheets and the ground they rest on. The warm water melts cavities in the ice, allowing more water to flow in, expanding the cavities further in a feedback loop. This water then lubricates the collapse of ice into the ocean, pushing up sea levels.

The researchers used computer models to show that a “very small increase” in the temperature of the intruding water could lead to a “very big increase” in the loss of ice – ie, tipping point behaviour.

It is unknown how close the tipping point is, or whether it has even been crossed already. But the researchers said it could be triggered by temperature rises of just tenths of a degree, and very likely by the rises expected in the coming decades.

Sea level rise is the greatest long-term impact of the climate crisis and is set to redraw the world map in coming centuries. It has the potential to put scores of major cities, from New York City to Shanghai, below sea level and to affect billions of people.

The study addresses a key question of why current models underestimate the sea level seen in earlier periods between ice ages. Scientists think some ice sheet melting processes must not be yet included in the models.

“[Seawater intrusion] could basically be the missing piece,” said Dr Alexander Bradley of the British Antarctic Survey, who led the research. “We don’t really have many other good ideas. And there’s a lot of evidence that when you do include it, the amount of sea level rise the models predict could be much, much higher.”

Previous research has shown that seawater intrusion could double the rate of ice loss from some Antarctic ice shelves. There is also real-world evidence that seawater intrusion is causing melting today, including satellite data that shows drops in the height of ice sheets near grounding zones.

“With every tenth of a degree of ocean warming, we get closer and closer to passing this tipping point, and each tenth of a degree is linked to the amount of climate change that takes place,” Bradley said. “So we need very dramatic action to restrict the amount of warming that takes place and prevent this tipping point from being passed.”

The most important action is to cut the burning of fossil fuels to net zero by 2050.

Bradley said: “Now we want to put [seawater intrusion] into ice sheet models and see whether that two-times sea level rise plays out when you analyse the whole of Antarctica.”

Scientists warned in 2022 that the climate crisis had driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, including the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap and the collapse of a key current in the north Atlantic, disrupting rains upon which billions of people depend for food.

Research in 2023 found that accelerated ice melting in west Antarctica was inevitable for the rest of the century, no matter how much carbon emissions are cut, with “dire” implications for sea levels.

The new research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, found that some Antarctic ice sheets were more vulnerable to seawater intrusion than others. The Pine Island glacier, currently Antarctica’s largest contributor to sea level rise, is especially vulnerable, as the base of the glacier slopes down inland, meaning gravity helps the seawater penetrate. The large Larsen ice sheet is similarly at risk.

The so-called “Doomsday” glacier, Thwaites, was found to be among the least vulnerable to seawater intrusion. This is because the ice is flowing into the sea so fast already that any cavities in the ice melted by seawater intrusion are quickly filled with new ice.

Dr Tiago Segabinazzi Dotto, of the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, welcomed the new analysis of the ocean-ice feedback loop under ice sheets.

“The researchers’ simplified model is useful for showing this feedback, but a more realistic model is highly needed to evaluate both positive and negative feedbacks,” he said. “An enhancement of observations at the grounding zone is also essential to better understand the key processes associated with the instability of ice shelves.”

June 30, 2024 Posted by | ANTARCTICA, climate change, oceans | Leave a comment

Enduring Media Lies And Myths About Julian Assange: DEBUNKED

June 30, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

The Suspect Body Count: The Death Toll in Gaza is Much Higher Than We’re Being Told


Seymour Hersh Substack Thu, 27 Jun 2024  https://www.sott.net/article/492600-The-Suspect-Body-Count-The-Death-Toll-in-Gaza-is-Much-Higher-Than-We-re-Being-Told

The number of slain Palestinians in Gaza, including those believed to be Hamas cadres, has gone through a series of public recalibrations in recent weeks, as Israel’s reshuffled war cabinet has struggled to minimize international rage at the slaughter there. The reduced body count was little more than a sideshow because the Israeli offensive is continuing in Gaza with no signs of the ceasefire that the Biden administration has been desperately seeking.

Hamas triggered the war last October 7 with a surprise attack — there is so far no official explanation for Israel’s security failure that day — that killed 1,139 Israelis and injured 3,400 more. Some 250 soldiers and civilians were taken hostage.

Comment: There is plenty of evidence to strongly suggest that Israel allowed the incursion on Oct. 7th to happen and that parties unknown carried out most of the killing. This strategy fits with Israel’s decades-long goal of creating the right ‘conditions’ to justify implementing a final solution to their ‘Palestinian problem’.

The expected Israeli response began within days, with the bombing of the Gaza Strip. Some Israeli ground operations inside Gaza began on October 13, and two weeks later the expected full-scale offensive began. The war still rages, with one estimate concluding that by the beginning of April 70,000 tons of explosives had been dropped on targets throughout the 25-mile long Gaza, more tonnage than was dropped by Germany on London and by America and the United Kingdom on Dresden and Hamburg in World War II, combined.

The Gaza Health Ministry, which is under Hamas control, estimated as of Tuesday that the death toll from the Israeli attacks stood at 37,718, with more than 86,000 Gazans wounded. Last month the Israeli government issued a much lower estimate of the casualties, stating that its planes and troops had killed 14,000 “terrorists” — Hamas fighters — and no more than 16,000 civilians.

The Biden administration, on the eve of the first presidential debate, has said nothing about the new numbers, but there are many senior analysts in the international human rights and social science community who consider these numbers to be hokum: a vast underestimate of the damage that has been done to a terrorized civilian population living in makeshift tents and shelters amid disease and malnutrition, with a lack of sanitation, medical care, and medicines as well as increasing desperation and fatigue.

In days of telephone and email exchanges with public health and statistical experts in America I found a general belief that the civilian death toll in Gaza, both from the bombings and their aftermath, had to be significantly higher than reported, but none of the scientists and statisticians — appropriately — was willing to say so in print because of a lack of access to accurate data. I also asked one well-informed American official what he thought the actual civilian death count in Gaza might be and he answered, without pause: “We just don’t know.”

One public health expert acknowledged: “No clear and definite body count is possible, given the continuing Israeli bombing.” He added, caustically, “How many bombs does it take to kill a human being?”

Gaza was an ideal target for an air attack, he said. “No functioning fire department. No fire trucks. No water. No place to escape. No hospitals. No electricity. People living in tents and bodies stacked up all over . . . being eaten by stray dogs.

“What the fuck is wrong with the international medical community?” he asked. “Who are we kidding? Without a ceasefire, a million people are going to starve. This is not a debating point. How can you count something when the system is biting its own tail.” He was referring to the fact that the health system in Gaza — its hospitals and service agencies — “is being targeted and shattered” by Israeli aircraft and those responsible for the counting of the dead and injured “are themselves dead.”

The expert added that the lack of better casualty statistics is not only the fault of Israel. “Hamas has a vested interest in consistently minimizing the number of civilians killed “because of a lack of planning over the years when it was in charge of Gaza.” He was referring to ordinary Gazan citizens’ lack of access to Hamas’s vast underground tunnel complex that could have served as a bomb shelter for all. In Gaza during the Israeli bombing raids, “Is Hamas going to say that Israel” was able to kill all in Gaza “because we started a war without being able to fully protect our people?” His point was that Hamas has every reason, as does Israel, to minimize the extent of innocent civilians who have become collateral damage in the ongoing war.

Comment: Hamas did not start this most recent round of mass slaughter by Israel on Oct 7th. Hamas has never provided Israel with the justification it always sought to massacre Gazans wholesale. On Oct. 7th, Israel provided itself with that justification.

A prominent American public health official who spoke to me acknowledged that he was also concerned about the numbers of unreported dead in Gaza. In a crisis, he said, “we can start with a name-by-name count, but pretty soon the numbers of killed and missing exceed the capacity of any such approach, especially when the counters are being killed and the records [are] at risk.” He said that various postwar academic studies of mortality during the siege of Mosul — when a US-led coalition fought a door-to-door fight in 2017 against the Islamic State in Iraq, killing as many 11,000 civilians — “showed the large loss of life from the use of high-velocity weapons in urban areas. So we should expect similar in Gaza.”

Other data suggest that the published death figures are seriously misleading. Save the Children, an international child protection agency, issued a report this month estimating that as many as 21,000 children in Gaza are “trapped beneath rubble, detained, buried in unmarked graves, or lost from their families.” Other children, the agency said, “have been forcibly disappeared, including an unknown number detained and forcibly transferred out of Gaza” with their whereabouts unknown to the families “amidst reports of ill-treatment and torture.”

Comment: As if the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza is not enough, it is highly likely that a large number of Palestinian children have been abducted by Zionist state forces, likely to be tortured and killed or otherwise used for the depraved pleasures of some of the people that inhabit that “shitty little country”.

Jeremy Stoner, the charity’s regional director for the Middle East, said: “Gaza has become a graveyard for children, with thousands of others missing, their fates unknown. . . . We desperately need a ceasefire to find and support the missing children who have survived, and to prevent more families from being destroyed.”

Warnings about the inevitability of far more deaths among the ordinary citizens of Gaza have been around since last winter. In December, Devi Sridhar, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in the Guardian that the Gaza war was “the deadliest conflict for children in recent years” with as many as 160 children being killed daily. The surviving children do not have “the basic needs that any human, especially babies and children, need to stay healthy and alive. . . . Unless something changes, the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population — close to half a million human beings — dying within a year.

“It’s a crude estimate,” Sridhar wrote, “but one that is data-driven, using the terrifying real numbers of death in previous and comparable conflicts.”

The New York Times and the Washington Post reported Wednesday that a new study endorsed by the United Nations found that as many as half a million Gaza residents are facing imminent starvation because of “a lack of food.” The study also said that more than one half of the surviving residents of Gaza “had to exchange their clothes for money and one-third resorted to picking up trash to sell.”)

One of the most avid early critics of the official statistics published by the Gaza Health Ministry and accepted by most in the American media, has been Ralph Nader. On March 5, he wrote a column in the Capitol Hill Citizen, a monthly newspaper he founded, about what he called “the undercount” of Palestinian casualties in Gaza. He quoted Martin Griffiths, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs: “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”

In my years as a journalist, I have often found an oddball story that says more with each retelling. Something like that happened in February when Al Jazeera ran an interview with a 64-year-old Gazan undertaker named Saadi Hassan Sulieman Baraka, whose nickname is Abu Jawad. He complained of working almost constantly since the Israeli invasion of Gaza began.

“I’ve buried about ten times more people during this war than I did across my entire 27 years as an undertaker,” he said. “The least was 30 people and the most was 800. Since October 7, I’ve buried more than 17,000 people.” He especially remembered the day he buried the 800 dead. “We collected them in pieces; their bodies so riddled with holes it was like Israeli snipers used them for target practice; Others were crushed like . . . like a boiled potato, and many had huge facial burns.

“We couldn’t really tell one person’s body from the other, but we did our best. We made one big deep grave, probably 10 meters (30 feet) deep and buried them together.”

It could be propaganda — of course, it could. But Abu Jawad made no mention of anyone from the Gaza Health Ministry coming to collect the names of the dead. He made no mention of any government official being involved in the process at all.

June 30, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors cost concerns challenge industry optimism

Reuters, Paul Day, Jun 27, 2024

Concerns over the potential cost of small modular reactors (SMRs) and the electricity they produce continue to cast a shadow over growing optimism for new nuclear.

Proponents say that the recent faltering history of large nuclear projects missing schedules and running over budget are just teething problems for a new industry in the midst of a difficult economic climate.

However, critics claim it as proof that nuclear is not economically viable at all, and it will take too long faced with pressing climate issues.

There is little doubt that new nuclear will, at least initially, be more expensive to develop, build, and run than many are hoping. 

New Generation IV reactors, such as SMRs, are likely to produce hidden costs inherent in the development of first-of-a-kind technology, while high commodity and building material prices, stubbornly high inflation, and interest rates at levels not seen for decades are adding to mounting expenses for the new developers.

NuScale’s cancelled deal to supply its SMRs to a consortium of electricity cooperatives due to rising power price estimates prompted The Breakthrough Institute’s Director for Nuclear Energy Innovation Adam Stein to write that advanced nuclear energy was in trouble.

Speaking during an event at the American Nuclear Society (ANS) 2024 Annual Conference in June, Stein said nothing had changed to fix the fundamental challenges nuclear faces since he wrote that in November, but there was a greater sense of urgency.   

“Commodity prices have come down slightly, though interest rates are largely still the same and those are risks, or uncertainties, that are outside of the developer’s control,” Stein said during an event at the American Nuclear Society (ANS) 2024 Annual Conference.

“Until those can be considered a project risk, instead of unknown uncertainties, they are not going to be controlled at all and can drastically swing the price of any single project.”

Enthusiastic hype

These criticisms clash with growing enthusiasm (critics say ‘hype’) surrounding the new technology.

Twenty two countries and 120 companies at the COP28 conference in November vowed to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050, and developers are making sweeping promises about the capabilities and affordability of their latest creations, many of which will not be commercially available in North America or Europe until the early 2030s.   

SMRs, defined as reactors that generate 300 MW or less, cost too much, and deployment is too far out for them to be a useful tool to transition from fossil fuels in the coming 10-15 years, according to a recent study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

“SMRs are not going to be helpful in the transition. They’re not going to be here quick enough. They’re not going to be economic enough. And we really don’t have time to wait,” says co-author of the study Dennis Wamsted.

Existing SMRs in China (Shidao Bay), Russia (floating SMR such as the Akademik Lomonosov), and in Argentina (the still under-construction CAREM) have all cost significantly more than originally planned, the IEEFA says in the study ‘Small Modular Reactors: Still too expensive, too slow, and too risky.’

Construction work on the cutting-edge CAREM project has been stalled since May due to cost-cutting measures by Argentina’s President Javier Milei, the head of National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) told Reuters.  

The billions of dollars the U.S. and Canadian governments are pouring into nuclear power through subsidies, tax credits, and federally funded research, would be better spent on extra renewables, Wamsted says.

Some 260,000 MW of renewable energy generation, mostly solar, is expected to be added to the U.S. grid just through to 2028, the study says citing the American Clean Power Association, way before any new nuclear is expected to be plugged in.

“Federal funds to nuclear is, in our opinion, a waste of time and money,” says Wamsted.

High uncertainty…………………………………………….

https://www.reutersevents.com/nuclear/smr-cost-concerns-challenge-industry-optimism

June 30, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 1 Comment

Save Ukraine from American meddling

COMMENT. While the fatuous mainstream media focusses on nan unintelligent TV debate between two US presidential candidates – we increasingly look for some intelligent news.

And today – to my amazement, today – “The Hill” actually does give us an analysis of the Ukraine situation. And it’s not from the mega-paid lackeys of the military-industrial-corporate-media complex, but from the respected economist Jeffrey Sachs.

BY JEFFREY SACHS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR – 06/27/24   https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4741597-save-ukraine-from-american-meddling/

Ukraine can only be saved at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield. Sadly, this point is not understood by Ukrainian politicians such as Oleg Dunda, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, who recently wrote an oped on this site against my repeated call for negotiations.

Dunda believes that the U.S. will save Ukraine from Russia. The opposite is true. Ukraine actually needs to be saved from the U.S.

Ukraine epitomizes Henry Kissinger’s famous aphorism, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Thirty years ago, Ukraine was embraced by America’s neoconservatives, who believed that it was the perfect instrument for weakening Russia. The neocons are the ideological believers in American hegemony, that is, the right and responsibility of the U.S. to be the world’s sole superpower and global policeman (as described, for example, in the Project for a New American Century’s 2000 report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”).

The neocons chose three methods to push U.S. power and influence into Ukraine: first, meddle in Ukraine’s internal politics; second, expand NATO to Ukraine, despite Russia’s red line; and third, arm Ukraine and apply economic sanctions to defeat Russia.

The neocons whispered a sweet fantasy into Ukraine’s ear back in the 1990s: Come with us into the glorious paradise of NATO-land and you’ll be safe ever after. Pro-European Ukrainian politicians, especially in Western Ukraine, loved the story. They believed that Ukraine would join NATO just as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had in 1999.

The idea of expanding NATO to Ukraine was fatuous and dangerous. From Russia’s perspective, the NATO expansion into Central Europe in 1999 was deeply objectionable and a stark violation of the solemn U.S. promise that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward,” but it was not deadly to Russia’s interests. Those countries do not border the Russian mainland. NATO enlargement to Ukraine, however, would mean the loss of Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet at Sevastopol and the prospect of U.S. missiles minutes from the Russian mainland.

There was, in fact, no prospect that Russia would ever accept NATO enlargement to Ukraine. The current CIA Director, William Burns, said as much in a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when he was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 2008. The memo was famously entitled “Nyet means Nyet.”

Burns wrote, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

The neoconservatives never described this Russian redline to the American or global public, then or now. Senior diplomats and scholars in the U.S. had reached the same conclusion about NATO enlargement more generally in the 1990s, as has been recently documented in detail.

Ukrainians and their supporters insist that Ukraine has the “right” to join NATO. The U.S. also says so repeatedly. NATO’s policy says that NATO enlargement is an issue between NATO and the candidate country, and that it is no business of Russia or any other non-NATO country.

This is preposterous. I’ll start to believe that claim when Adm. John Kirby declares from the White House podium that Mexico has the “right” to invite China and Russia to put military bases along the Rio Grande, based on the same “open door policy” as NATO. The Monroe Doctrine has said just the opposite for two centuries.

So Ukraine was set up for disaster by the neocons. Actually, the Ukrainian public sensed the truth, and overwhelmingly opposed NATO membership until the 2014 uprising that overthrew Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Let’s retrace the chronology of this shockingly misguided American policy. In the early 2000s, the U.S. began to meddle intensively in Ukraine’s politics. The U.S. spent billions of dollars, according to Victoria Nuland, to build Ukraine’s “democracy,” meaning to turn Ukraine to the U.S. and away from Russia. Even so, the Ukrainian public remained strongly against NATO membership, and elected Viktor Yanukovych, who championed Ukrainian neutrality, in 2010.

In February 2014, the Obama team actively sided with neo-Nazi paramilitaries, which stormed government buildings on February 21 and overthrew Yanukovych the next day, cloaked as a “Revolution of Dignity.” The U.S. immediately recognized the new government. The astounding intercepted call between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, where they talk about who should be in the new Ukrainian government several weeks before the rebellion, demonstrates the level of American involvement.

The post-uprising government in Ukraine was filled with Russia-haters, and was backed by extremist right-wing paramilitaries like the Azov Brigade. When the ethnically Russian Donbas region broke away from the uprising, the central government aimed to retake the region by force. A peace agreement was reached between Kyiv and the Donbas in 2015, known as Minsk II, that would end the fighting by extending autonomy to the ethnically Russian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Alas, Ukraine and the U.S. undermined the treaty even while publicly endorsing it. The treaty was a mere temporizing measure (according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel) to give Ukraine time to build its army. The U.S. shipped armaments to Ukraine to build up its military, make it interoperable with NATO and support the retaking of the Donbas by force.

The next diplomatic opportunity to save Ukraine came in December 2021, when Vladimir Putin proposed a U.S.-Russia Treaty on Security Guarantees, calling for an end to NATO enlargement, among other issues (including the urgent question of U.S. missile placements near Russia). Instead of negotiating, Biden again flatly said no to Putin on the question of ending NATO enlargement.

Yet another diplomatic opportunity to save Ukraine arose in March 2022, just days after the start of Russia’s “special military operation,” launched on February 24. Russia said that it would stop the war if Ukraine would agree to neutrality. Zelensky agreed, documents were exchanged and a peace deal was nearly reached. Yet, according to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the U.S. and other NATO allies, notably the U.K., stepped in to block the agreement, telling Ukraine to fight on. Recently, Boris Johnson said that Ukraine should keep fighting to preserve “Western hegemony.”

Ukraine can still be saved through neutrality, even as hundreds of thousands of lives have been squandered by the failure to negotiate. The rest of the issues, including boundaries, can also be resolved through diplomacy. The killing can end now, before more disasters befall Ukraine and the world. As for the United States, 30 years of neoconservative misrule is long enough.

June 30, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Labour plans for nuclear expansion in Scotland are flying under radar.

George Kerevan: LABOUR are planning a big expansion of nuclear power in the
UK … and in Scotland. Of course, as with much else in the party’s
intentions, this is being sneaked in under the political radar. However, a
close reading of the manifestos of both UK Labour and its Scottish branch
office clearly gives the game away.

And prominent candidates – such as
Douglas Alexander in Lothian East – are being very vocal in support of
nuclear energy when speaking at election hustings.

Why is this worrying?
Because apart from the undemocratic secrecy involved, Labour’s nuclear
fixation is expensive for the taxpayer and the electricity consumer. And
because this strategy compromises the safety of everyone living in
Scotland.

Reason: Labour is dicing with new, unproven nuclear generating
technology – called small modular reactors, or SMRs. Scotland could be the
guinea pig for SMRs at the existing nuclear plant at Torness in East
Lothian. Which is why Scottish Labour have to come clean on its plans for
new nukes.

The National 26th June 2024

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24411664.labour-plans-nuclear-expansion-scotland-flying-radar/

June 30, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

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