World’s Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is already billions of dollars over budget and decades behind schedule. Not even its leaders can say how much more money and time it will take to complete
Scientific American Charles Seife on June 15, 2023
“……………………………….. ITER is on the verge of a record-setting disaster as accumulated schedule slips and budget overruns threaten to make it the most delayed—and most cost-inflated—science project in history.
………………. Since the 1950s fusion machines have grown bigger and more powerful, but none has ever gotten anywhere near what would be needed to put this panacea energy source on the electric grid. ITER is the biggest, most powerful fusion device ever devised, and its designers have intended it to be the machine that will finally show that fusion power plants can really be built.
The ITER project formally began in 2006, when its international partners agreed to fund an estimated €5 billion (then $6.3 billion), 10-year plan that would have seen ITER come online in 2016. The most recent official cost estimate stands at more than €20 billion ($22 billion), with ITER nominally turning on scarcely two years from now.
Documents recently obtained via a lawsuit, however, imply that these figures are woefully outdated: ITER is not just facing several years’ worth of additional delays but also a growing internal recognition that the project’s remaining technical challenges are poised to send budgets spiraling even further out of control and successful operation ever further into the future.
The documents, drafted a year ago for a private meeting of the ITER Council, ITER’s governing body, show that at the time, the project was bracing for a three-year delay—a doubling of internal estimates prepared just six months earlier. And in the year since those documents were written, the already grim news out of ITER has unfortunately only gotten worse.
Yet no one within the ITER Organization has been able to provide estimates of the additional delays, much less the extra expenses expected to result from them. Nor has anyone at the U.S. Department of Energy, which is in charge of the nation’s contributions to ITER, been able to do so. When contacted for this story, DOE officials did not respond to any questions by the time of publication.
The problems leading to these latest projected delays were several years in the making. The ITER Organization was extremely slow to let on that anything was wrong, however. As late as early July 2022, ITER’s website announced that the machine was expected to turn on as scheduled in December 2025. Afterward that date bore an asterisk clarifying that it would be revised. Now the date has disappeared from the website altogether.
ITER leaders seldom let slip that anything was awry either…………………………………………………………….
In response to this stonewalling, earlier this year I initiated a lawsuit under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act seeking to reveal the extent of ITER’s expected schedule and cost troubles. So far, the lawsuit has been partially successful. It has extracted partially redacted documents revealing that in November 2021 ITER’s internal estimates showed the project already facing about 17 months of delays. By the time of the June 2022 ITER Council meeting, the number had doubled to roughly 35 months of delays—enough to easily add billions of dollars to ITER’s already bloated budget. But this timeline didn’t reflect other events bound to introduce even more delays……………………………………………….
With each passing decade, this record-breaking monument to big international science looks less and less like a cathedral—and more like a mausoleum. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-largest-fusion-project-is-in-big-trouble-new-documents-reveal/
Fukushima, the Hidden Side of the Story
“The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story,” is a just-released film documentary, a powerful, moving, information-full film that is superbly made. Directed and edited by Philippe Carillo, it is among the strongest ever made on the deadly dangers of nuclear technology.
It begins with the words in 1961 of U.S. President John F. Kennedy: “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by an accident, or miscalculation or by madness.”
It then goes to the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plants in Japan after they were struck by a tsunami. Their back-up diesel generators were kicked in but “did not run for long,” notes the documentary. That led to three of the six plants exploding—and there’s video of this—“releasing an unpreceded amount of nuclear radiation into the air.”
“Fukushima is the world’s largest ever industrial catastrophe,” says Professor John Keane of the University of Sydney in Australia. He says there was no emergency plan and, as to the owner of Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power Company, with the accident its CEO “for five nights and days…locked himself inside his office.”
Meanwhile, from TEPCO, there was “only good news” with two Japanese government agencies also “involved in the cover-up”—the Nuclear Industry Safety Agency and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
“Japanese media was ordered to censor information. The Japanese government failed to protect its people,” the documentary relates.
Yumi Kikuchi of Fukushima, since a leader of the Fukushima Kids Project, recalls: “On TV, they said that ‘it’s under control’ and they kept saying that for two months. The nuclear power plant had already melted and even exploded but they never admitted the meltdown until May. So, people in Fukushima during that time were severely exposed to radiation.”
Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and now a principal of Fairewinds Energy Education in Burlington, Vermont, speaks of being told by Naoto Kan, the prime minister of Japan at the time of the accident, that “our existence as a sovereign nation was at stake because of the disaster at Fukushima Daichi.”
Kan then appears in documentary and speaks of “manmade” links to the disaster.
The documentary tells how Kan, following the accident, became “an advocate against nuclear power….ordered all nuclear power plants in Japan to shut down for safety” and for the nation “to move into renewable energy.”
But, subsequently, “a nuclear advocate,” Shinzo Abe, became Japan’s prime minister.
Yoichi Shimatsu, a former Japan Times journalist, appears in the film and speaks of “the cruelty, the cynicism of this government.” He speaks of how in the accident’s aftermath, “nearly every member of Parliament and leaders of the major political parties” along with corporate executives, “moved their relatives out of Japan”
He says “Shanghai is the largest Japanese community outside Japan now…while these same people” had been “telling the people of Fukushima go home, 10 kilometers from Fukushima, go home it’s safe, while their families are overseas in Los Angeles, in Paris, in London and in Shanghai.”
“If it’s safe, why they left?” asks Kikuchi. “They tell us it’s safe to live in Fukushima, and to eat Fukushima food to support Fukushima people. There’s a campaign by Japanese government…and people believe it.”
Gundersen says: “At Fukushima Daichi, the world is already seeing deaths from cancer related to the disaster…There’ll be many more over time.” He adds that there’s been a “huge increase in thyroid cancer in the surrounding population.”
“Unfortunately,” he goes on, “the Japanese government is not telling us al the evidence. There’s a lot of pressure on the scientists and the medical community to distort the evidence so there’s no blowback against nuclear power.”
There is a section in the documentary on the impacts of radioactivity which includes Dr. Helen Caldicott, former president of Physician for Social Responsibility, discussing the impacts of radiation on the body and how it causes cancer. She states: “There is no safe level of radiation. I repeat, there is no safe level of radiation. Each dose of radiation is cumulative and adds to your risk of getting cancer and that’s absolutely documented in the medical literature.”
“The nuclear industry says, well,” Dr. Caldiott, continues, “there are ‘safe doses’ of radiation and even says a little bit of radiation is good for you and that is called the theory of hormesis. They lie and they lie and they lie.”
Maggie Gundersen, who was a reporter and then a public relations representative for the nuclear industry and, like her husband Arnie became an opponent of nuclear power, speaks of how nuclear power derives from the World War II Manhattan Project program to develop atomic weapons and post-war so-called “Atoms for Peace” push.
Gundersen says in becoming a nuclear industry spokesperson, “the things I was taught weren’t true.” The notion, for example, that what is called a containment at a nuclear plant is untrue because radioactivity “escapes every day as a nuclear power plant operates” and in a “calamity” is released massively.
As to economics, she cited the claim decades ago that nuclear power would be “too cheap to meter.” The president of Fairewinds Energy Education, she says: “Atomic power is now the most expensive power there is on the planet. It is not feasible. It never has been.” Regarding the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power, she says “there is literally no technology to do that…It does not exist.”
As to international oversight, the documentary presents the final version of a “Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation” issued in 2014 which finds that the radiation doses from Fukushima “to the general public during the first year and estimated for their lifetimes are generally low or very low….The most important effect is on mental and social well-being.”
Shimatsu says it is not only in Japan but on an international level that the consequences of radioactive exposure have been completely minimized or denied. “We are all seeing a global political agreement centered in the UN organizations, tie IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], the World Health Organization…All the international agencies are whitewashing what is happening in Fukushima. We take dosimeters and Geiger counters in there, we see a much different story,” he says.
In Germany, says Maggie Gunderson, “the politicians chose” to do a study to “substantiate” that no health impacts “happened around nuclear power plants….But what they found was the radiation releases cause significant numbers of childhood leukemia.” A summary of that 2008 study comes on the screen. The U.S. followed up on that research, she says, but recently “the [U.S.] Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was not going to do that study,” that “it doesn’t have enough funding; it had to shut it down.” She said the real reason was that it was producing “data they don’t want to make public.”
Beyond the airborne releases of radiation after the Fukushima accident, now, says the documentary, there is the growing threat of radioactivity through water that has and still is leaking from the plants as well as more than a million tons of radioactive water stored in a thousand tanks built at the plant site. After the accident, TEPCO released 300,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Now there is no land for more tanks, so the Japanese government, the documentary relates, has decided that starting this year to dump massive amounts of radioactive water over a 30-year period into the Pacific.
Arnie Gundersen speaks of the cliché that “the solution to pollution is dilution,” but with the radiation from Fukushima being sent into the Pacific, there will be “bio-accumulation”—with vegetation absorbing radiation, little fish eating that vegetation and intensifying it and bigger fish eating the smaller fish and further bio-accumulating the radioactivity. Already, tuna off California have been found with radiation traced to Fukushima. With this planned further, and yet greater dispersal, thousands of people “in the Pacific basin will die from radiation,” he says.
Andrew Napuat, a member of the Parliament of the nation of Vanuatu, an 83 island archipelago in the Pacific, says in the documentary: “We have the right to say no to the Japan solution. We can’t let them jeopardize our sustenance and livelihood.” Vanuatu along with 13 other countries has signed and ratified the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty.
As the documentary nears its end, Arnie Gundersen says that considering the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986, and now the three Fukushima meltdowns in 2011, there has been “a meltdown every seven years roughly.” He says: “Essentially, once every decade the world needs to know that there might be an atomic meltdown somewhere.” And, he adds, the “nuclear industry is saying they want would like to build as many as 5,000 new nuclear power plants.” (There are 440 in the world today.)
Meanwhile, he says, “renewable power is no longer alternative power. It’s on our doorstep. It’s here now and it works and it’s cheaper than nuclear.” The cost of producing energy from wind, he says, is three cents a kilowatt hour, for solar five cents, and for new nuclear power plants 15 cents. Nuclear “makes no nuclear economic sense.”
Maggie Gundersen says, with tears in her eyes: “I’m a woman and I feel it’s inherent for us as women to protect our children our grandchildren, and it’s our job now to raise our voices and have this madness stop.”
Philippe Carillo, from France, who worked for 14 years in Hollywood and who since 2017 has lived in Vanuatu, has worked on several major TV documentary projects for the BBC, 20th Century Fox and French National TV as well as doing independent productions. He says he made “The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story” to “expose the nuclear industry and its lies.” His previous award-winning documentary, “Inside the Garbage of the World,” has made changes regarding the use of plastic.
“The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story” can be viewed at Amazon, Apple TV, iTunes, Google Play and Vimeo on demand. Links are: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-fukushima-disaster/id1672643918?ls=1 Apple TV: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-fukushima-disaster/umc.cmc.3rfome5kj2hfpo2q9fwx5u0y0 Amazon UK: www.amazon.co.uk/placeholder_title/dp/B0B8TLPZ9K/ref=sr_1_1Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/Fukushima-Disaster-Yoichi-Shimatsu/dp/B0B8TLSRN4/ref=sr_1_1 Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details?id=vehqb5ex-L8.P&sticky_source_country=US&gl=US&hl=en&pli=1 Video on demand: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thefukushimadisaster
Also, extra footage and interviews not in the film are at www.exposurefilmstrust.com
‘Exploring Tritium’s Dangers’: a book review
By Robert Alvarez | June 26, 2023 https://thebulletin.org/2023/06/exploring-tritiums-danger-a-book-review/
Over the past 40 years, Arjun Makhijani has provided clear, concise, and important scientific insights that have enriched our understanding of the nuclear age. In doing so, Makhijani—now president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research—has built a solid reputation as a scientist working in the public interest. His most recent contribution to public discourse, Exploring Tritium’s Dangers, adds to this fine tradition.
A radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium is one the most expensive, rare, and potentially harmful elements in the world. Its rarity is underscored by its price—$30,000 per gram—which is projected to rise from $100,000 to $200,000 per gram by mid-century.
Although its rarity and usefulness in some applications gives it a high monetary value, tritium is also a radioactive contaminant that has been released widely to the air and water from nuclear power and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. Makhijani points out that “one teaspoon of tritiated water (as HTO) would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the US drinking water limit; that is enough to supply about 1 million homes with water for a year.”
Where tritium comes from. Since Earth began to form, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen known as tritium (H-3) has been created by interactions between cosmic rays and Earth’s atmosphere; through this natural process, the isotope continues to blanket the planet in tiny amounts. With a radioactive half-life of 12.3 years, tritium falls from the sky and decays, creating a steady-state global equilibrium that comes to about three to seven kilograms of tritium.
Tritium initially became a widespread man-made contaminant when it was spread across the globe by open-air nuclear weapons explosions conducted between 1945 and 1963. Rainfall in 1963 was found in the Northern Hemisphere to contain 1,000 times more tritium than background levels. Open-air nuclear weapons explosions released about 600 kilograms (6 billion curies) into the atmosphere. In the decades since above-ground nuclear testing ended, nuclear power plants have added even more to the planet’s inventory of tritium. For several years, US power reactors have been contaminating ground water via large, unexpected tritium leaks from degraded subsurface piping and spent nuclear fuel storage pool infrastructures.
Since the 1990s, about 70 percent of the nuclear power sites in the United States (43 out of 61 sites) have had significant tritium leaks that contaminated groundwater in excess of federal drinking water limits.
The most recent leak occurred in November 2022, involving 400,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated water from the Monticello nuclear station in Minnesota. The leak was kept from the public for several months. In late March of this year, after the operator could not stop the leak, it was forced to shut down the reactor to fix and replace piping. By this time, tritium reached the groundwater that enters the Mississippi River. A good place to start limiting the negative effects of tritium contamination, Makhijani recommends, is to significantly tighten drinking water standards.
Routine releases of airborne tritium are also not trivial. As part of his well-researched monograph, Makhijani underscores this point by including a detailed atmospheric dispersion study that he commissioned, indicating that tritium (HTO) from the Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant in Illinois has been literally raining down from gaseous releases – as it incorporates with precipitation to form tritium oxide (HTO)—something that occurs at water cooled reactors. Spent fuel storage pools are considered the largest source of gaseous tritium releases.
The largely unacknowledged health effects. Makhijani makes it clear that the impacts of tritium on human health, especially when it is taken inside the body, warrant much more attention and control than they have received until now. This is not an easy problem to contend with, given the scattered and fragmented efforts that are in place to address this hazard. Thirty-nine states, and nine federal agencies (the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Department of Agriculture are all responsible for regulating tritium.
This highly scattered regulatory regime has been ineffective at limiting tritium contamination, much less reducing it. For example, state and federal regulators haven’t a clue as to how many of some two million exit signs purchased in the United States—and made luminous without electric power by tritium—have been illegally dumped. For decades, tritium signs, each initially containing about 25 curies (or 25,000,000,000,000 pCi) of radioactivity, have found their way into landfills that often contaminate drinking water. One broken sign is enough to contaminate an entire community landfill. There are no standards for tritium in the liquid that leaches from landfills, despite measurements taken in 2009 indicating levels at Pennsylvania landfills thousands of times above background.
Adding to this regulatory mess, is the fact that federal standards limiting tritium in drinking water only apply to public supplies, and not to private wells.
In past decades, regulators have papered over the tritium-contamination problem by asserting, when tritium leakage becomes a matter of public concern, that the tritium doses humans might receive are too small to be of concern. Despite growing evidence that tritium is harmful in ways that fall outside the basic framework for radiation protection, agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission remain frozen in time when it comes to tritium regulation.
The NRC and other regulating agencies are sticking to an outdated premise that tritium is a “mild” radioactive contaminant that emits “weak” beta particles that cannot penetrate the outer layers of skin. When tritium is taken inside the body (by, for example, drinking tritiated water), half is quickly excreted within 10 days, the agencies point out, and the radiation doses are tiny. Overall, the NRC implies its risk of tritium ingestion causing cancer is small.
But evidence of harm to workers handling tritium is also growing. Epidemiologists from the University of North Carolina reported in 2013, that the risk of dying from leukemia among workers at the Savannah River Plant following exposure to tritium is more than eight times greater (RBE-8.6) than from exposure to gamma radiation (RBE-1). Over the past several years, studies of workers exposed to tritium consistently show significant excess levels of chromosome damage.[1]
The contention that tritium is “mildly radioactive” does not hold when it is taken in the body as tritiated water—the dominant means for exposure. The Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—which advises the US Energy Department about safety at the nation’s defense nuclear sites—informed the secretary of energy in June 2019 that “[t]ritiated water vapor represents a significant risk to those exposed to it, as its dose consequence to an exposed individual is 15,000 to 20,000 times higher than that for an equivalent amount of tritium gas.”
As it decays, tritium emits nearly 400 trillion energetic disintegrations per second. William H. McBride, a professor of radiation oncology at the UCLA Medical School, describes these disintegrations as “explosive packages of energy” that are “highly efficient at forming complex, potentially lethal DNA double strand breaks.” McBride, underscored this concern at an event sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, where he stated that “damage to DNA can occur within minutes to hours.” [2]
“No matter how it is taken into the body,” a fact sheet from the Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory says, “tritium is uniformly distributed through all biological fluids within one to two hours.” During that short time, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board points out that “the combination of a rapid intake and a short biological half-life means a large fraction of the radiological dose is acutely delivered within hours to days…”
A new approach to tritium regulation. Makhijani pulls together impressive evidence clearly pointing to the need for an innovative approach that addresses, in addition to cancer, a range of outcomes that can follow tritium exposure, including prenatal and various forms of genomic damage. In particular, he raises a key point about how physics has dominated radiation protection regulation at the expense of the biological sciences.
It all boils down to estimation of a dose as measured in human urine based on mathematical models. For tritium, dose estimation can be extraordinarily complex (at best) when it is taken inside the body as water or as organically bound, tritide forms. So the mathematical models that can simplify this challenge depend on “constant values” that provide the basis for radiation protection.
In this regard, the principal “constant value” holding dose reconstruction and regulatory compliance together is the reliance on the “reference man.” He is a healthy Caucasian male between the age of 20 to 30 years, who exists only in the abstract world.
Use of the reference man standard gives rise to obvious (and major) questions: What radiation dose limit is necessary to protect the “reference man” from serious genomic damage? And what about protection of more vulnerable forms of human life?
According to the 2006 study by the National Research Council, healthy Caucasian men between the age of 20 and 30 are about one-tenth as likely to contract a radiation-induced cancer as a child exposed to the same external dose of gamma radiation while in the womb.
In his monograph, Makhijani underscores the need to protect the fetus and embryo from internal exposures to tritium—a need largely being side-stepped by radiation protection authorities. “Tritium replaces non-radioactive hydrogen in water, the principal source of tritium exposure,” Makhijani writes, pointing to unassailable evidence that tritium “easily can cross the placenta and irradiate developing fetuses in utero, thereby raising the risk of birth defects, miscarriages, and other problems.”
He is not alone in such an assessment. According a 2022 medical expert consensus report on radiation protection for health care professionals in Europe, “The greatest risk of pregnancy loss from radiation exposure is during the first 2 weeks of pregnancy, while between 2-8 weeks after conception, the embryo is most susceptible to the development of congenital malformations because this is the period of organogenesis.”
In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s efforts to reduce exposure limits and protect pregnant women and their fetuses is best described as foot-dragging. By comparison, the required limit for a pregnant worker in Europe to be reassigned from further exposure is one-fifth the US standard—and was adopted nearly 20 years ago.
Long-term environmental retention. A 2019 study put forward the first ever empirical evidence of very long-term environmental retention of organically bound tritium (OBT) in an entire river system, deposited by fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons explosions.
When released into the environment, tritium atoms can replace hydrogen atoms in organic molecules to form organically bound tritium, which is found soil, and river sediments, vegetation, and a wide variety of foods. It’s been more than a half century since the ratification of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and tritium released through nuclear weapons testing has undergone significant decay. Yet because of the long retention of organically bound tritium, in greater than expected concentrations, it still remains a contaminant of concern.
For instance, despite its 12.3-year half-life, a much larger amount of organically bound tritium from nuclear tests than previously assumed is locked in Arctic permafrost, raising concerns about widespread contamination as global warming melts the Arctic. Organically bound tritium can reside in the body far longer than tritiated water, to consequently greater negative effect.[3]
Nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and tritium. The tritium problem has several dimensions that relate directly to the world’s current and future efforts vis a vis nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
Now that nuclear power reactors are closing down, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident, the disposal of large volumes of tritium-contaminated water into lakes, rivers, and oceans is becoming a source of growing concern around the world. The Japanese government has approved the dumping of about 230 million gallons of radioactive water, stored in some 1,300 large tanks sitting near the Fukushima nuclear ruins, into the Pacific Ocean. Once it incorporates into water, tritium is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to remove.
Protests in Japan by a wide segment of the public and in several other nations—including Russia, the Marshall Islands, French Polynesia, China, South Korea and North Korea—object to the disposal of this large volume of contaminated water into near-shore waters.
Then there’s the matter of boosting the efficiency and destructive power of nuclear weapons with tritium gas—a use that has dominated demand for this isotope. Because five percent of the tritium in thermonuclear warheads decays each year, it has to be periodically replenished. Over the past 70 years, an estimated 225 kilograms of tritium were produced in US government reactors, principally at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina. Those reactors were shuttered in 1988. Since 2003, tritium supplies for US nuclear warheads are provided by two Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power reactors. The irradiation of lithium target elements in the reactors has fallen short of meeting demand because of excess tritium leakage into the reactor coolant.
The hazards of tritium production for weapons are far from trivial.
For instance, since June of 2019, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board has taken the Energy Department to task for its failure to address the risk of a severe fire involving tritium processing and storage facilities at the Savannah River Site. According to the Board, such a fire may have a 40 percent chance of occurring during 50 years of operation and could result in potentially lethal worker doses greater than 6,000 rems—1,200 times the annual occupational exposure limit. Doses to the public would not be inconsequential. Meanwhile, the Energy Department is under pressure from the nuclear weapons establishment to step up demand for tritium. Unless there is “a marked increase in the planned production of tritium in the next few years,” the 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review concluded “our nuclear capabilities will inevitably atrophy and degrade below requirements.”
The Energy Department estimates it will take 15-20 years to achieve a major multibillion overhaul of its tritium production infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the quest for fusion energy highlights a startling fact: The amount of tritium required to fuel a single fusion reactor (should an economic, fusion-based power plant ever be created) will likely be far greater than the amount produced by all fission reactors and open-air bomb tests since the 1940s. A full-scale (3,000 megawatt-electric) fusion reactor is estimated to “burn” about 150 kilograms of tritium a year.[4]
The cost for a one-year batch of tritium fuel for a fusion reactor, based on the current market price, would be $4.5 billion. An annual loss to the environment from a single fusion reactor could dwarf the release of tritium from all nuclear facilities that currently dot the global landscape.
The tritium overview. Evidence is mounting not just in regard to increased health risks from tritium-contaminated water and from organically bound tritium, but also as relates to the harm tritium can visit on the unborn. At the same time, it has become clear that regulation of tritium in the United States is grossly insufficient to the current risk from tritium contamination, not to mention future risks that could arise if tritium production, use, and associated leakage rise. Arjun Makhijani provides a useful roadmap for sparing workers and the public from the dangers this pernicious contaminant will pose in the future, absent more effective regulation that includes lower limits for human tritium exposure.
Notes
[1] See: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004200050272; https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/10/2/94; https://www.jstor.org/stable/3579658; http://www.rbc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db/Literature/THO-Occupational.html; and https://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2016/UNSCEAR_2016_Annex-C.pdf
[2] William MacBride, UCLA School of Medicine Vice Chair for Research in Radiation, Principal Investigator of UCLA’s Center for Medical Countermeasures Against Radiation — National Institutes of Health, Jan 27, 2014. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEH72v-yN9A
[3] See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47821-1
[4] Advocates assume that only the initial loading of 150 kg will be needed, as the reactor will “breed” the remaining amount of tritium to run the plant after a year of operation.
Cover up? Did atom bosses collude to ‘manage message’ of Japanese plan to poison Pacific?
Disturbing documentary evidence has been seen by the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities which appears to suggest collusion between the Japanese nuclear industry, government ministries and the UN International Atomic Energy Authority to ‘manage the message’ over the ocean dumping of 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive water held over from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The purported IAEA-letterheaded document titled ‘IAEA REVISION PROPOSAL FOR THE FINAL REPORT OF HANDLING ALPS TREATED WATER AT TEPCO’S FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER STATION’ may not sound very exciting, but, if genuine, amounts to a clear admission that the international agency has been keen to collaborate at the highest level with the Japanese nuclear industry and ministry officials to downplay the dangers associated with discharging millions of barrels of water which remain contaminated with highly toxic tritium.
The document, seemingly issued by the Department of Nuclear Safety at the IAEA, was posted to the website/blogsite dunrenard[i] by an anonymous whistle-blower on 28 June 2023 and then forwarded to renowned marine radiation expert and campaigner Tim Deere-Jones, who brought it to the NFLA’s attention. In response to the release of the document, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi has condemned it as a ‘forgery’. This document can be found at the end of this media release.
Operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Fukushima Plant was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami on 11 March 2011. A disaster unfolded with three nuclear meltdowns, three hydrogen explosions and a release of radiation from three reactors, and Government authorities were forced to evacuate 154,000 people from the surrounding area over a 20-mile radius.
Since the disaster, seawater water used to cool the destroyed reactors, along with rain- and groundwater that has leached into the damaged plant, has accumulated on site with over 1.3 million tons now being stored in barrels. Last year, the Japanese government confirmed its intention to build an underwater pipe 1km out to sea to discharge the radioactive water there, and now this work has been completed the dumping is scheduled to begin imminently, despite massive domestic and international opposition.
Opponents are fearful that although the contaminated water is treated by a process known as ALPS (the Advanced Liquid Processing System) this cannot remove deadly tritium, a beta-emitting radioactive isotope of hydrogen, and other radioactive materials, which if ingested can trigger cancers and appeals to stop this process citing the health risks and environmental damage that will result have been expressed by the local fishing and farming community, civic leaders, the Pacific Islands Council, regional governments, and anti-nuclear activists everywhere.
The NFLA has itself objected in letters to Japanese Ministers, TEPCO officials and the United Nations on two occasions and recently signed a partnership agreement with its Japanese equivalent, Mayors for a Nuclear Power Free Japan, in part to collaborate in opposing the plan.
In the released document, the IAEA supports the discharge of the radioactive water ‘even though the activity concentrations of some radionuclides above the [permitted] discharge limits are reported’ and agrees not to conduct a full radioactive analysisof every batch of the waterheld‘due to the concerns of [operator] TEPCO and relevant authorities [the Japanese Government]’.
More worryingly, the report clearly advises that ‘data and results that could be viewed negatively by the public should be removed from the final report’ and thatIAEA Director General Raphael Grossi has instructed that ‘positive conclusions supporting ALPS treated water discharging shall be included in the executive summary of the Final Report’.
The NFLA’s source was Mr Tim Deere-Jones, a graduate in Marine Studies from Cardiff University. Tim, an independent marine pollution researcher and consultant since 1983, is highly regarded by the many international organisations who have engaged him in their campaigns against the damage caused to our oceans and inland waterways by radioactive and other contaminants. Amongst his recent notable achievements, Mr Deere-Jones provided an invaluable professional advice to the successful Greenlandic campaign to ban the mining of Uranium and Rare Earths at Kuannersuit, which led to his report being translated into Kalaallisut, the official Inuit based language of Greenland.
Here Tim gives his analysis of the alleged IAEA document:
‘Documentary evidence of deep collusion between the IAEA, Japanese Government Ministries and TEPCO intended to suppress, “fudge” and spin evidence related to the scientific data related to the treatment, monitoring and sea-discharge of ALPS treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster site.
Preliminary analysis:
Language of origin of the document is uncertain, the extent English language copy appears to have been either translated from the original or compiled by someone with English as a second language.
The document reports that the original draft “Notional Plan for Source and Environmental Monitoring associated with IAEA LPS Safety Review” was presented to the Japanese government in March 2023, and that the original Notional Plan proposed that environmental monitoring of the ALPS treated water should be based on “rapid analysis” of all batches of treated water and “full analysis” of selected batches of treated water.
While it appears to be clear that the proposed “rapid analysis” would not have been as thorough or detailed as the proposed “full analysis”, in the event the Document has confirmed that the Final Report has recommended the “rapid analysis” but that the “full analysis” of selected batches will not be recommended in the Final Report “due to the concerns of TEPCO and relevant authorities” (presumably the ministries of the Government of Japan).
The document confirms that, in May 2023, the IAEAs Director and Co-ordinator of Nuclear Safety & Security Department and the head of the IAEAs task force on the Fukushima releases, shared the IAEAs Draft Report on the releases with the GoJ (Government of Japan) and TEPCO officials.
The IAEA document notes that it’s Draft Report on the handling of ALPS treated water concludes with the finding in favour of the proposed discharge of the treated water to sea “even though the activity concentrations of some radionuclides above the discharge limits are reported”
The document comments on “The public’s captiousness on radioactivity issues”. (“Captiousness” is defined in dictionaries as “the disposition to find and point out trivial issues or faults”)
In the context of the above the document recommends that “data and results that could be viewed negatively by the public should be removed from the final report ……. Issued in later June.”
The document reports that, following negotiations with the GoJ, IAEA Director General Grossi, instructed that “positive conclusions supporting ALPS treated water discharging shall be included in the executive summary of the Final Report”
And that “the Final Report will highlight that TEPCO’s discharge plan is in accord with international safety standards to address public concerns and doubts. The IAEA will conduct discussions with all task force experts, but their recommendations will not be reflected in the Report”
The document confirms that the IAEA has agreed to make revisions to the Report on the basis of feedback from the Japanese Ministries of Economy/Trade and Industry, Foreign Affairs, Environment and TEPCO because TEPCO and the Ministries had “expressed concerns regarding the potential public opposition to some data and results. The IAEA fully understands these concerns and would make revisions”
The document reports that the GoJ “requested to fudge” responses to the Pacific Island Forum’s demand for a full analysis of ALPS treated water, and questions raised by neighbouring countries about Organically Bound Tritium (OBT). In that context the document reports that, presumably in response to the request, “the concerns were not included in the ALPS safety review”
My submissions on behalf of the Pacific Islands Forum
Despite the evidence reported above, the document confirms that the GoJ “recommended to stress the fact that Japanese Authorities never interfered with IAEAs safety review” and that “the independence of the Report is guarantee as no political elements involved”’
Commenting on the shocking revelations, Mr Deere-Jones said:
“Since the original Fukushima disaster, I have made multiple submissions to, and on behalf of, the Pacific Islands Forum, Japanese Citizens Groups, Environmental NGOs, and Commercial Fishermen’s Associations. My submissions have repeatedly called for full analysis of the ALPS treated water and the sludges at the bottom of the ALPS treated water holding tanks, and referenced the peer reviewed scientific evidence demonstrating that marine Organically Bound Tritium posed a greater health risk through multiple dose delivery pathways than was recognised by the nuclear establishment (Japanese Govt ministries and agencies, TEPCO and the IAEA)”.
In response to the release of this alleged document, Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi was quick to condemn it as a forgery and to refute any suggestion of Japanese government collusion, issuing the following statement to Associated Press:
“The IAEA is aware of the existence of the forged documents. The IAEA’s comprehensive final report is a document prepared under the responsibility of the IAEA, and the Japanese government is not in a position to manipulate its contents. “I would like to stress that we are firmly opposed to any attempt to undermine the independence and neutrality of the IAEA with false information.”[ii]
Tim Deere-Jones retorted: “Such a response is exactly what we would expect from the IAEA when such information is leaked to the public. To suggest that the document is fraudulent is clearly intended to imply that concerned scientists, campaigners, marine stakeholders, and communities are implicated.
“However, the matters disclosed in the leaked document are very much in accord with the experience of scientists and campaigners who have been raising these concerns since the Fukushima disaster and its subsequent botched response first occurred.
“Since that time, we have submitted numerous fully scientifically referenced documents highlighting the issue of Organically Bound Tritium, the multiple other radionuclides not removed from the ALPS treated water, the failure to discuss the radioactive solids that have settled on the bottom of the holding tanks, the behaviour and fate of these multiple radioactive materials once discharged to sea and their impact on marine ecologies and the health of coastal communities.
“The submission of such information has been consistently met by the IAEA and nuclear industry with hostility, contempt, dismissal, and a refusal to engage with the issues raised.
“The leaked document is on IAEA headed paper and typeface, bears the imprint of the relevant department, is couched in language characteristic of the IAEA, and refers to the ‘The public’s captiousness on radioactivity issues’; captiousness being defined in dictionaries as “the disposition to find and point out trivial issues or faults”. Such language is a precise reflection of our long-term experience and understanding of the IAEA and nuclear industry attitude and response to our concerns.
“I would remind readers that the IAEAs Founding Statutes state that its principal objective is as follows ‘The Agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy’.”
In conclusion, NFLA Chairman, Councillor Lawrence O’Neill said:
“The contents of this report, if true, are deeply disturbing and suggest a plan in which, at the highest level, officials from the international agency responsible for nuclear safety, the Japanese nuclear industry and the Japanese government have colluded to underplay the dangers posed to Pacific marine life and the world community by the expedient, but irresponsible, discharge of tritium-contaminated water.
“Most bitterly disappointing is that this document suggests that such a plan has the tacit endorsement of IAEA Director-General Grossi; for Mr Grossi is the man in which the world community has placed its faith to put safety before political considerations to prevent a nuclear disaster at the imperilled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.”
Ends://…
American, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians gather in Vienna to call for peace
By Medea Benjamin, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/07/02/coming-together-for-peace/
During the weekend of June 10-11 in Vienna, Austria, over 300 people representing peace organizations from 32 countries came together for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine to demand an end to the fighting. In a formal conference declaration, participants declared, “We are a broad and politically diverse coalition that represents peace movements and civil society. We are firmly united in our belief that war is a crime against humanity and there is no military solution to the current crisis.”
To amplify their call for a ceasefire, Summit participants committed themselves to organizing Global Weeks of Action—protests, street vigils and political lobbying—during the days of September 30-October 8.
Summit organizers chose Austria as the location of the peace conference because Austria is one of only a few neutral non-NATO states left in Europe. Ireland, Switzerland and Malta are a mere handful of neutral European states, now that previously neutral states Finland has joined NATO and Sweden is next in line. Austria’s capital, Vienna, is known as “UN City,” and is also home to the Secretariat of the OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), which monitored the ceasefire in the Donbas from the signing of the Minsk II agreement in 2015 until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Surprisingly, neutral Austria turned out to be quite hostile to the Peace Summit. The union federation caved in to pressure from the Ukrainian Ambassador to Austria and other detractors, who smeared the events as a fifth column for the Russian invaders. The ambassador had objected to some of the speakers, including world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs and European Union Parliament member Clare Daly.
Even the press club, where the final press conference was scheduled, was canceled at the last minute. The Austrian liberal/left newspaper Der Standard piled on, panning the conference both beforehand, during and afterwards, alleging that the speakers were too pro-Russian. Undaunted, local organizers quickly found other locations. The conference took place in a lovely concert center, and the press conference in a local cafe.
The most moving panel of the conference was the one with representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, who risked their lives to participate in the Summit. Yuri Sheliazhenko, secretary-treasurer of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, is unable to leave the country and therefore spoke to attendees from Kyiv via Zoom.
“Like many Ukrainians, I am a victim of aggression of Russian army, which bombs my city, and a victim of human rights violations by the Ukrainian army, which tries to drag me to the meat grinder, denying my right to refuse to kill, to leave the country for my studies in University of Münster … Think about it: all men from 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving the country, they are hunted on the streets and forcibly abducted to the army’s serfdom.”
Sheliazhenko told the Summit that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had tried to deny conscientious objector status to Ukrainian war resisters, but relented when international pressure demanded that the Ukrainian military recognize rights secured under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Several groups at the Summit pledged to provide support for conscientious objectors from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, and also took up a collection for Ukrainian families lacking access to clean water following the recent destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
Highlights of the Summit also included remarks by representatives from the Global South, who came from China, Cameroon, Ghana, Mexico and Bolivia. Bolivia’s Vice President David Choquehuanca inspired the crowd as he spoke of the need to heed the wisdom of Indigenous cultures and their mediation practices.
Many speakers said the real impetus to end this war will come from the Global South, where politicians can see the widespread hunger and inflation that this conflict is causing, and are taking leading roles in offering their services as mediators.
Almost all of Europe was represented, including dozens from Italy, the country mobilizing the continent’s largest peace demonstrations, with over 100,000 protesters. Unlike in the United States, where the demonstrations have been small, Italian organizers have successfully built coalitions that include trade unions and the religious community, as well as traditional peace groups. Their advice to others was to narrow and simplify their demands in order to broaden their appeal and build a mass anti-war movement.
The eight-person U.S. delegation included representatives from CODEPINK, Peace in Ukraine, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Veterans for Peace. U.S. retired colonel and diplomat Ann Wright was a featured speaker, along with former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who joined remotely.
Despite the uniform bottom line of the participants, which was a call for peace talks, there were plenty of disagreements, especially in the workshops. Some people believed that we should continue to send weapons while pushing for talks; others called for an immediate end to weapons transfers. Some insisted on calling for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops, while others believed that should be the result of negotiations, not a pre-condition. Some put more blame on the role of NATO expansion and the interference of the U.S. in Ukraine’s internal affairs, while others said the blame belongs exclusively at the doorstep of the Russian invaders.
Some of these differences were reflected in discussions surrounding the final declaration, where there was plenty of back and forth about what should and should not be mentioned. There were strong calls to condemn NATO provocations and the role of the U.S./UK in sabotaging early attempts at mediation. These sentiments, along with others condemning the West, were left out of the final document, which some criticized as too bland. References to NATO provocations that led to the Russian invasion were deleted and replaced with the following language:
“The institutions established to ensure peace and security in Europe fell short, and the failure of diplomacy led to war. Now diplomacy is urgently needed to end the war before it destroys Ukraine and endangers humanity.”
But the most important segment of the final document and the gathering itself was the call for further actions.
“This weekend should be seen as just the start,” said organizer Reiner Braun. “We need more days of action, more gatherings, more outreach to students and environmentalists, more educational events. But this was a great beginning of global coordination.”
Especially in USA, nuclear reactors are getting very old – past their use-by dates
When will the world wake up to the unaffordable cost of this industry?
They’re keeping creaky old nuclear reactors going, so that our grandchildren will cop the astronomic costs of getting rid of the radioactive dead reactors.
So the current nuclear power industry people can get out of this problem!
Notably, 88 of the 92 reactors in the U.S. have received approvals to operate for up to 60 years, and some have applied for additional 20-year extensions to operate for up to 80 years
How Old Are the World’s Nuclear Reactors?, Elements, June 27, 2023, By Govind Bhutada
“………………………………………………… The Age Distribution of the Global Reactor Fleet
Nuclear power saw a building boom in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s as countries expanded their energy portfolios and sought to capitalize on the advancements in nuclear technology. As a result, the majority of the world’s nuclear reactors began operating during this period.
Of the total of 422 reactors, 262 reactors have been in operation for 31 to 50 years. In other words, about 62% of all current nuclear reactors were connected to the grid between 1973 and 1992.
Nuclear power’s growth slowed down at the turn of the 21st century, with decreasing public support and increasing concern over nuclear safety. As a result, only a small number of reactors fall into the 11-to-20-year-old age group.
The oldest operating reactors (five of them) are 54 years old and entered commercial service in 1969. Two of these are located in the United States, two in India, and one in Switzerland.
How Long Can Nuclear Reactors Last?
Although specific lifespans can vary, nuclear reactors are typically designed to last for 20 to 40 years.
However, reactors can operate beyond their initially licensed periods with lifetime extensions. Extending reactor lives requires rigorous assessments, safety evaluations, and refurbishments.
Some countries have granted license renewals for aging reactors. Notably, 88 of the 92 reactors in the U.S. have received approvals to operate for up to 60 years, and some have applied for additional 20-year extensions to operate for up to 80 years…… https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-old-are-the-worlds-nuclear-reactors/
“The Doomsday Machine”: Confessions of Daniel Ellsberg, Former Nuclear War Planner
Democracy Now, JULY 03, 2023
As we remember Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who died in June, we look at how he was also a lifelong anti-nuclear activist, stemming from his time working as a nuclear planner for the U.S. government. In December 2017, he joined us to discuss his memoir, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. “This was an actual war plan for how we would use the existing weapons,” he noted, “many of which I had seen already that time.”
“……………………………………… I was given the job of improving the Eisenhower plans, which was not a very high bar, actually, at that time, because they were, on their face, the worst plans in the history of warfare. A number of people who saw them, but very few civilians ever got a look at them. In fact, the joint chiefs couldn’t really get the targets out of General LeMay at the Strategic Air Command.
And there was a good reason for that: They were insane. They called for first-strike plans, which was by order of President Eisenhower. He didn’t want any plan for limited war of any kind with the Soviet Union, under any circumstances,……………………………….. however it got started, Eisenhower’s directed plan was for all-out war, in a first initiation of nuclear war, assuming the Soviets had not used nuclear weapons.
And that plan called, in our first strike, for hitting every city — actually, every town over 25,000 — in the USSR and every city in China. A war with Russia would inevitably involve immediate attacks on every city in China. In the course of doing this — pardon me — there were no reserves. Everything was to be thrown as soon as it was available — it was a vast trucking operation of thermonuclear weapons — over to the USSR, but not only the USSR. The captive nations, the East Europe satellites in the Warsaw Pact, were to be hit in their air defenses, which were all near cities, their transport points, their communications of any kind. So they were to be annihilated, as well.
………………………………………………….. If we were defending West Europe — Germany, for example — we were planning to destroy the continent in order to save it.
Six hundred million, that was a hundred Holocausts. And when I held the piece of paper in my hand that had that figure, that they had sent out unembarrassedly, you know, proudly, to the president — “Here’s what we will do” — I thought, “This is the most evil plan that has ever existed. It’s insane.”
………………………………. To start with, even if it were only the president, no one man — really, no one nation — should have the ability — the ability even — to threaten or to carry out a hundred Holocausts at his will. That machinery should never have existed. And it does exist right now, and every president has had that power, and this president does have that power.
But the recent discussions of that, which emphasize his sole authority to do that, don’t take account of the fact that he has authority to delegate. And he has delegated. Every president has delegated. I don’t know the details of what President Trump has done or since the Cold War. Every president in the Cold War, right through Carter and Reagan, had delegated, in fact, to theater commanders in case communications were cut off. That means that the idea that the president is the only one with sole power to issue an order that will be recognized as an authentic authorized order is totally false.
How many fingers are on buttons? Probably no president has ever really known the details of that. I knew, in ’61, for example, that Admiral Harry D. Felt in CINCPAC, commander-in-chief of Pacific, for whom I worked as a researcher, had delegated that to 7th Fleet, down to various commanders, and they, in turn, had delegated down to people. So when you say, “How many altogether feel authorized?” if their communications are cut off — and that happened part of every day in the Pacific when I was there — communications got better, but the delegations never changed. There’s — we’ve never allowed it to be possible that an enemy could paralyze our retaliation by hitting our president or our command and control.
And neither did the Russians. When President Carter and then President Reagan advertised the fact that their plans emphasized decapitation, hitting Moscow, above all, which the French and British always planned to do, by the way, with their smaller forces — and when that became clear, the Russians instituted what they called a dead hand, a perimeter system, in Russian, which assured that if Moscow was destroyed, other commanders would have the power and would be told to launch their strikes…………………………….
AMY GOODMAN: Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, speaking on Democracy Now! in December 2017 about his book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/7/3/the_doomsday_machine_confessions_of_daniel
TODAY. IAEA hypocrisy, and the little Fukushima nuclear radiation mill
Do you remember the old Norwegian folk story? In this, the little salt mill is thrown into the sea, because it won’t stop producing salt. That’s why the sea is salty.
Well, the not-so-little damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor will soon be releasing radioactively-contaminated water (equivalent in volume to about 500 Olympic-size swimming pools) into the sea – and that’s just the start.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director General Rafael Grossi will visit Japan from Tuesday to deliver a final report on the safety of the process.
That is just a formality. Despite the perilous situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Rafael Grossi and the rest of the well-paid IAEA troop, and Japan’s political big-wigs, and TEPCO -all are happy to release irradiated water ad infinitum into the world’s oceans.
This really should be a wake-up call for the world. The International Atomic Energy Agency doesn’t give a damn about your health, your children’s health, your grandchildren’s health, your great-grandchildren’s health – and so on ad infinitum.
The religious belief that nuclear reactors, and especially small nuclear reactors will save the world from global heating – that is a load of codswallop, and the IAEA knows this.
There are safer alternatives for dealing with the Fukushima nuclear wastewater, and with wastes from other nuclear reactors.
This “permission” – from the ultimate authority whose real job is saving the nuclear industry, this “permission” should be a wake-up call to the world.
Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.
The U.S. public has been conned, once again, into pouring billions into another endless war.
The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.
The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, although one that was provoked by NATO expansion and by the United States backing of the 2014 “Maidan” coup which ousted the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych wanted economic integration with the European Union, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia. The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.
But this proxy war in Ukraine is designed to serve U.S. interests. It enriches the weapons manufacturers, weakens the Russian military and isolates Russia from Europe. What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant.
“First, equipping our friends on the front lines to defend themselves is a far cheaper way — in both dollars and American lives — to degrade Russia’s ability to threaten the United States,” admitted Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
“Second, Ukraine’s effective defense of its territory is teaching us lessons about how to improve the defenses of partners who are threatened by China. It is no surprise that senior officials from Taiwan are so supportive of efforts to help Ukraine defeat Russia. Third, most of the money that’s been appropriated for Ukraine security assistance doesn’t actually go to Ukraine. It gets invested in American defense manufacturing. It funds new weapons and munitions for the U.S. armed forces to replace the older material we have provided to Ukraine. Let me be clear: this assistance means more jobs for American workers and newer weapons for American servicemembers.”
Once the truth about these endless wars seeps into public consciousness, the media, which slavishly promotes these conflicts, drastically reduces coverage. The military debacles, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue largely out of view. By the time the U.S. concedes defeat, most barely remember that these wars are being fought.
The pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos migrate from administration to administration. Between posts they are ensconced in think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, The Atlantic Council and The Brookings Institution — funded by corporations and the war industry. Once the Ukraine war comes to its inevitable conclusion, these Dr. Strangeloves will seek to ignite a war with China. The U.S. Navy and military are already menacing and encircling China. God help us if we don’t stop them.
…………………………………………………………………………………… And what of the Ukrainian democracy we are fighting to protect? Why did the Ukrainian parliament revoke the official use of minority languages, including Russian, three days after the 2014 coup? How do we rationalize the eight years of warfare against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region before the Russian invasion in Feb. 2022? How do we explain the killing of over 14,200 people and the 1.5 million people who were displaced, before Russia’s invasion took place last year?
How do we defend the decision by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ban eleven opposition parties, including The Opposition Platform for Life, which had 10 percent of the seats in the Supreme Council, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, along with the Shariy Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc? How can we accept the banning of these opposition parties — many of which are on the left — while Zelenskyy allows fascists from the Svoboda and Right Sector parties, as well as the Banderite Azov Battalion and other extremist militias, to flourish?
How do we deal with the anti-Russian purges and arrests of supposed “fifth columnists” sweeping through Ukraine, given that 30 percent of Ukraine’s inhabitants are Russian speakers? How do we respond to the neo-Nazi groups supported by Zelenskyy’s government that harass and attack the LGBT community, the Roma population, anti-fascist protests and threaten city council members, media outlets, artists and foreign students? How can we countenance the decision by the U.S and its Western allies to block negotiations with Russia to end the war, despite Kyiv and Moscow apparently being on the verge of negotiating a peace treaty?
I reported from Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 during the breakup of the Soviet Union. NATO, we assumed, had become obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed security and economic agreements with Washington and Europe. Secretary of State James Baker in Ronald Reagan’s administration, along with the West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured Gorbachev that NATO would not be extended beyond the borders of a unified Germany. We naively thought the end of the Cold War meant that Russia, Europe and the U.S., would no longer have to divert massive resources to their militaries.
The so-called “peace dividend,” however, was a chimera……………………
It was universally understood in Eastern and Central Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO expansion was unnecessary and a dangerous provocation. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War is a business.
In a classified diplomatic cable — obtained and released by WikiLeaks — dated Feb. 1, 2008, written from Moscow, and addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NATO-European Union Cooperative, National Security Council, Russia Moscow Political Collective, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, there was an unequivocal understanding that expanding NATO risked conflict with Russia, especially over Ukraine………………………………………………………..
The Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if the western alliance had honored its promises not to expand NATO beyond Germany’s borders and Ukraine had remained neutral. The pimps of war knew the potential consequences of NATO expansion. War, however, is their single minded vocation, even if it leads to a nuclear holocaust with Russia or China.
The war industry, not Putin, is our most dangerous enemy. https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/02/chris-hedges-they-lied-about-afghanistan-they-lied-about-iraq-and-they-are-lying-about-ukraine/
International community cannot tolerate Japan’s nuclear-contaminated water dumping.
By Global Times, Jul 03, 2023 , https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202307/1293596.shtml
Japan is making final preparations for dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea. According to local media reports, Japan’s nuclear regulator finished inspecting a newly completed system to release radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the sea, presenting a posture that everything is ready. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will visit Japan from Tuesday to Friday, and the IAEA’s final assessment report on Japan’s dumping plan will soon be released. Will Grossi’s attitude, or the IAEA’s final assessment, change Japan’s decision to dump wastewater into the sea? It seems unlikely.
In fact, the Japanese side officially approved the dumping plan as early as July 22 last year. Since then, it has been working intensively on implementing the plan. At the same time, it has been spending a lot of effort on public relations, never taking seriously of the strong concerns at home and abroad, and failing to conduct adequate and well-intentioned consultations with stakeholders. And the IAEA is being targeted by the Japanese side as a priority in networking. Although the organization cannot give Japan a “license” and a “talisman” for dumping nuclear-contaminated water into the sea, the Japanese side may make an issue of how the IAEA writes its assessment report and draws its conclusions.
We still urge the IAEA to uphold the principles of objectivity, professionalism and impartiality, develop an assessment report that can stand the test of science and history, and not endorse the Japanese side’s dumping plan. Tokyo’s calculation is to force the international community to accept that what’s done is done. Japan hopes that after resisting the pressure for some time, perhaps the international community’s attention will turn to other areas, and the opposition to dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea will weaken. We cannot let such a scheme succeed.
Now we need to be particularly vigilant that some governments and the Japanese side have reached a political deal over the issue of the wastewater dumping plan, which is a colluded betrayal of the public interest of mankind and marine ecology. Washington was the first to give Tokyo the green light for geopolitical reasons and then persuaded its other allies. The South Korean government has also started to release ambiguous messages frequently despite strong opposition from the public. To dispel the public’s doubts, some lawmakers from the South Korean ruling party even went to the seafood market in groups to drink seawater from the breeding pond, and “even the fish in the pond found it ridiculous.” Some European governments have also relaxed their attitude over the issue.
There have been concerns, objections, and questions about the discharge of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea from ASEAN countries, Pacific Island countries, and others including Japan. Although the US and Japanese governments have tried to marginalize such voices, they have never disappeared. China’s position as a major power is clear and has remained unchanged. The discharge of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea is a matter of common interest for the international community, not a private matter for Japan. So China urges the Japanese side to stop pushing forward with the dumping plan, effectively dispose of the nuclear-contaminated water in a scientific, safe and transparent manner, and accept strict international supervision. This is a voice from a scientific and all-human perspective, which is justified and couldn’t be alone.
In order to promote the safety of seafood from Fukushima, the Japanese government once attempted to use Fukushima’s seafood in the meals of primary and secondary schools in the prefecture. However, all schools in Fukushima prefecture rejected this proposal. According to reports, content of Cs-137 in fish recently caught in the harbor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is 180 times that of the standard maximum stipulated in Japan’s food safety law, which is extremely alarming.
In this situation, claiming that the contaminated wastewater is safe is nothing but a lie. As officials from Pacific island countries have said, if the so-called “treated water” meets the standards and can be discharged, why doesn’t Japan use this contaminated wastewater in its own country, especially in its agricultural sector?
Japan does have other more appropriate choices. The Japanese government has considered five different treatment options, but it ultimately chose the cheapest and easiest one, which is to discharge the contaminated wastewater into the ocean. From a technical standpoint, this is the solution with the lowest economic cost to Japan, but it releases the highest amount of radioactive substances into the global environment. Japan is unwilling to spend money on safely treating the contaminated wastewater but is willing to invest in public relations. According to recent reports from South Korean media, Japanese officials made political donations worth over EUR 1 million to the staff of the IAEA Secretariat and there has been no response to this matter so far.
According to a German marine scientific research institute, with the world’s strongest currents along the coast of Fukushima, radioactive materials could spread to most of the Pacific Ocean within 57 days from the date of discharge. However, Japan has failed to provide a comprehensive and systematic monitoring plan for the disposal of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea. The current monitoring scope is small, with few sampling points and low frequency, making it difficult to timely detect abnormal situations such as discharging pollutants in levels that exceed the stipulated standards. In short, Japan’s forceful disposal of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea is illegal and violates a series of international legal obligations, constituting a crime against all of humanity. China and the international community’s forces of justice stand together against such behavior and will never compromise or tolerate it.
Japan Set to Pour Fukushima Water Into Pacific, Irking China
- IAEA to give decision on proposal to discharge Fukushima waste
- Ocean isn’t “Japan’s private sewer”: China’s foreign ministry
By Shoko Oda and Isabel Reynolds, July 3, 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-02/japan-is-set-to-pour-fukushima-wastewater-into-pacific
Japan is set to win approval to discharge more than a million cubic meters of treated water from the Fukushima nuclear disaster site into the Pacific Ocean, a contentious plan that’s soured ties with neighbors including China.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director General Rafael Grossi will visit Japan from Tuesday to deliver a final report on the safety of the process and meet with officials including Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi. A domestic nuclear regulator is also set to issue a crucial assessment.
Both studies are poised to give backing to Tokyo Electric Power Co. to begin releasing the water — equivalent in volume to about 500 Olympic-size swimming pools — into the sea, a step that’s needed to allow full decommissioning of the Fukushima site following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that triggered the world’s worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl.
Japan has assured other nations that the release of the water is safe, is in line with standard industry practice and that it’s necessary, because about 1,000 storage tanks at Fukushima will hit capacity early in 2024. Other countries with nuclear plants already safely discharge similar diluted waste offshore, according to the IAEA.
It also comes as Japan joins a wider global reappraisal of nuclear power, with several nations seeking to boost energy self-sufficiency by reviving idled reactors, adding plants or investing in new technology. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is aiming to build on improving domestic support for the energy source, and Japan’s efforts to complete the closure of the Fukushima site are seen as a crucial in inspiring confidence.
Despite Japan’s diplomatic push, the discharge plan is complicating some global relationships.
The ocean is “not Japan’s private sewer,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said last month, warning the proposed release carries risks for the country’s neighbors and Pacific Island nations. Wang called it a selfish move “that puts the common interests of all humanity in jeopardy.”
Japanese cosmetics brands have been targeted by a viral campaign tied to the issue that spread unproven safety allegations on Chinese social media platforms. In South Korea, demand for sea salt has rocketed as consumers stockpile the condiment amid worries the release of wastewater could taint future supplies.
While the central government in Seoul hasn’t pushed back against Japan’s plans publicly, a survey by the Yomiuri newspaper and South Korea’s Hankook Ilbo conducted in May found 84% of respondents opposed the discharge. A separate poll found almost three-quarters of South Koreans surveyed didn’t trust a delegation of experts sent from Seoul to review Japan’s preparations.
The Pacific Islands Forum, a group of 18 nations including Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Australia, has urged Japan to consider alternatives and called for additional discussions on the risks.
“People’s fears and uncertainties in the region are real, however safely the release will be handled, and however minimal the risk is,” said Nancy Snow, a reputation security consultant in Tokyo and author of a book on Japan’s public diplomacy. “Their concerns cannot be taken lightly or dismissed.”
Japan announced in 2021 it planned a gradual release of about 1.3 million cubic meters of treated wastewater from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant that has accumulated at the site since 2011. Tepco cycles in water to keep debris and fuel at the wrecked nuclear reactors cool, and the contaminated liquid — along with other groundwater and rain — is processed to remove most radioactive elements. The treated water, which still contains tritium, has been collected and stored.
Tepco expects the fleet of about 1,000 storage tanks to reach maximum capacity between February and June next year and the utility has argued it cannot continue to clear space for additional vessels because that’s needed for other parts of the decommissioning process. Storing the water also carries risks of leaks, which are amplified by the nation’s status as one of the most earthquake-prone countries.
In one of its preliminary reports in April, the IAEA said Tepco had taken into account issues raised in previous safety reviews and had “made significant progress to update its plans,” signaling the agency is likely to grant final approval. Grossi will visit Fukushima during his trip to Japan and open an IAEA office at the site, the agency said Friday.
Tepco plans to mix the treated fluid with seawater to dilute the concentration of tritium to “well below” both Japanese government and World Health Organization guidelines, before discharging it into the ocean over the course of as long as 40 years through an undersea tunnel. Tritium has a radioactive half-life of a little over 12 years, according to the IAEA.
Japan’s government has not yet set any specific date to begin releasing the water, and has said it will continue to hold talks with local communities, including the fishing sector, to try to alleviate their concerns.
Releasing water from nuclear power plants is a standard practice and most operations globally release small amounts of tritium and other radioactive material into rivers and oceans, the IAEA said previously.
— With assistance by Ben Westcott
IAEA debunks Ukrainian claim about Europe’s largest nuclear plant
https://www.rt.com/russia/578480-iaea-zaporozhye-nuclear-mines/ 26 June 23
There are no mines at the cooling pond of the Zaporozhye NPP, the UN watchdog has said
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), denied on Tuesday claims made by the Ukrainian government that the cooling pond of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) had been rigged with explosives.
“The IAEA is aware of reports of mines having been placed near the cooling pond. No mines were observed at the site during the Director General’s visit, including the cooling pond,” Grossi said in a report on the situation at Europe’s largest atomic power facility.
There were mines outside the perimeter and “at particular places inside,” which the security personnel at ZNPP explained were for defensive purposes, the IAEA head said.
“Our assessment of those particular placements was that while the presence of any explosive device is not in line with safety standards, the main safety functions of the facility would not be significantly affected,” added Grossi.
His report comes after claims by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his aide Mikhail Podoliak that Russia had prepared a “terrorist attack” on the facility it has controlled since March 2022.
Ukrainian intelligence has received information that Russia is planning “a terrorist attack with radiation leakage,” Zelensky said in a tweet on Thursday morning, adding that “the world has been warned, so the world can and must act.”
Podoliak claimed that Russia was “considering a large-scale terrorist attack at the ZNPP to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive and create a depopulated sanitary gray zone,” and was mining the cooling pond, demanding that “the global world” should announce consequences “not tomorrow. Today.”
Zelensky’s claims are “yet another lie,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday, noting that Russia has fully cooperated with the IAEA. Moscow has insisted that Kiev was behind the destruction of the Kakhovka dam earlier this month, which the IAEA described as a potential threat to the ZNPP’s supply of cooling water.
According to Russia, Ukraine has also repeatedly attacked the ZNPP, including an attempted commando raid in September 2022, as the IAEA mission was en route to the site. The most recent attack was on June 9, when Russian air defenses reported bringing down three drones headed for the plant.
The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant has six reactors and is located in Energodar, on the right shore of the Dnieper River. It is currently operated by Rosatom in standby mode. The surrounding region officially became part of Russia last September.
Small nuclear reactors are unaffordable, and Rafael Grossi and the IAEA know this!
Minireactor cost surge threatens nuclear’s next big thing, BY JONATHAN TIRONE, (BLOOMBERG), Japan Times 2 July 23
High inflation and rising interest rates are driving up the cost of a new generation of miniature atomic reactors that the nuclear industry is relying on to lift sales and help meet climate targets.
Nuclear-company executives and regulators met this week at the International Atomic Energy Agency to negotiate potential manufacturing and technology standards, a key step the industry needs to take in order to make prices competitive with other emissions-free energy sources. There are currently more than 80 unique small modular reactor, or SMR, designs under development, resulting in sprawling supply chains and caps on scaling up production.
“With higher interest rates to deal with and inflation pushing up the cost of steel, copper wire and just about everything else that goes into building an SMR, we know that even the most promising projects are having to tell their investors and buyers that prices have risen substantially,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said at the meeting in Vienna. “Avoiding, or at least mitigating, cost rises and delays is now even more crucial.”………………
Nuclear energy costs in the U.S. currently level out to an average of $373 a megawatt hour, according to the latest estimates by BloombergNEF. That’s significantly higher than solar or onshore wind at $60 and $50 a megawatt hour, respectively.
Enter companies like NuScale Power Corp., the first U.S. SMR developer with a licensed design, and which wants to begin generating at the end of the decade. NuScale originally foresaw average generation costs of $55 a megawatt hour in 2016, which was slightly lifted to $58 five years later.
But new estimates show costs surged to almost $120 a megawatt hour this year, according to company data analyzed by the Institute for Energy Economics. Skyrocketing prices of commodities including steel, carbon fiber and copper drove the increase, according to the report. NuScale’s stock has tumbled a third a third this year………..
The IAEA’s Grossi chided delegates that they need to work together to develop industry standards, lest they contribute to the industry’s “reputation of unfulfilled promises.” https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/07/03/business/mini-nuclear-reactor-cost-surge/
Even the science engineering big-wigs don’t seem too enthusiastic about nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion breakthrough: Decades of research are still needed before fusion can be used as clean energy, The Conversation June 28, 2023, Kristen Schell Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Carleton University. Ahmed AbdullaAssistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Carleton University
“…………………………………………….. The efficiency of a potential fusion energy power plant remains to be seen. The reported fusion net gain actually required about 300 megajoules of energy input, which was not included in the energy gain calculation. This energy input, needed to power 192 lasers, came from the electric power grid.
In other words, the experiment used as much energy as the typical Canadian household does in two days. In doing so, the fusion reaction output enough energy to light just 14 incandescent bulbs for an hour.
The same is true of nuclear fission, which is the reaction inside current nuclear power plants. The complete fission of one kilogram of Uranium-235 — the fissile component of nuclear fuel — can generate about 77 terajoules. But we cannot convert all of that energy into useful forms like heat and electric power.
Instead, we have to engineer a complex system that can control the nuclear fission chain reaction and convert the generated energy into more useful forms.
This is what nuclear power plants do — they harness the heat generated during nuclear fission reactions to make steam. This steam drives a turbine connected to an electric power generator, which produces electricity. The overall efficiency of the cycle is less than 40 per cent.
In addition, not all of the uranium in the fuel is burned. Used fuel still contains about 96 per cent of its total uranium, and about a fifth of its fissile Uranium-235 content.
Increasing the amount of uranium spent in our current fleet is possible — it’s an ongoing sphere of work — but it poses enormous engineering challenges. The huge energy potential of nuclear fuel is currently mitigated by the engineering challenges of converting that energy into a useful form.
From science to engineering
Until recently, fusion has been seen primarily as a scientific experiment, not as an engineering challenge. This is rapidly changing and regulators are now investigating how deployment might unfold in the real world.
Regardless of the efficiency of a future fusion power plant, taking energy conversions from basic science to the real world will require overcoming a multitude of challenges………………….
The science of fusion energy, as with nuclear fission, is rooted in efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Notably, several nuclear physicists who helped develop the nuclear bomb wanted to “prove that this discovery was not just a weapon.”
The early history of nuclear power was one of optimism — of declarations the technology would advance and be able to meet our need for ever-increasing amounts of energy. Eventually, fusion power would come along and electricity would become “too cheap to meter.”
Lessons learned
What have we learned over the past 70 years since the onset of nuclear power? First, we’ve learned about the potentially devastating risk of technology lock-in, which occurs when an industry becomes dependent on a specific product or system.
Today’s light-water fission reactors — reactors that use normal water as opposed to water enriched with a hydrogen isotope — are an example of this. They were not chosen because they were the most desirable, but for other reasons.
These factors include government subsidies that favoured these designs; the U.S. Navy’s interest in developing smaller-scale pressurized water reactors for submarines and surface warships; advances in uranium enrichment technology as a result of the U.S. nuclear weapons program; uncertainties regarding nuclear costs that led to the assumption that large light-water reactors are simply scaled-up versions of smaller ones; and conservatism regarding design choices given the high costs and risks associated with nuclear power development.
We have been struggling to move to other technologies ever since……………………………………………
Large infrastructure projects are extremely complex systems that rely on enormous work forces and co-ordination. They can be managed, but they usually go over-budget and fall behind schedule. Modular technologies exhibit better affordability, cost control and economies, but micro and small nuclear reactors will also be economically challenged.
……………………………………………….. Fusion reactors generate large amounts of waste, though not the same kind fission does.
………………………………………..Billions of dollars are needed to advance nuclear fission technology, and we have far more experience with fission than with fusion. An appetite for funding must be demonstrated by governments, electric utility companies and entrepreneurs……………….. https://theconversation.com/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-decades-of-research-are-still-needed-before-fusion-can-be-used-as-clean-energy-196758
2 important Russo Ukraine war stories: 1 covered 24/7; 1 covered up
It would be so nice for me to think (as a good, genuinely conservative, Christian Westerner and patriotic Australian) , – that this Walt Zlotow story is a pack of lies, (obviously from a paid stooge of Putin)
My problem is: that everything that I see, read, hear, on Australian corporate media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – just happens to tally with what he is saying.
Good on Walt Zlotow for having the guts to speak out.
I’m just sorry that I think that he is not going to be believed. The end result? We might find a small group of (?)wealthy individuals presiding over a nearly dead planet.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 27June 23
Mainstream news got the figurative memo from the US State Dept. and military Friday: Full media press coverage of the mini insurrection against Russian President Putin that could potentially have toppled him. But not one word on the apparently failing Ukrainian counteroffensive the US was counting on before even considering negotiations to end the 17 month war.
That coverage simply continues the 487 days of media compliance with US not so subtle demands that the war be reported as Ukraine largely defeating a Russia hopelessly unable to secure control of Donbas and keep NATO off its doorstep.
If the American people were informed on Ukraine’s near complete inability to repel the Russian invaders, they might push back against the squandering of over a hundred billion dollars in US treasure on a futile cause not affecting US national security in the least.
If they knew we’re sending cluster bombs, prohibited by most countries, that can kill long after the war ends, if ever, they might call for negotiations, not more weapons.
If they knew we’re sending long range missiles to strike deep in Russia, possibly triggering nuclear confrontation, they might protest this madness.
But most Americans don’t know any of this. Like the apparently failing Ukrainian offensive, only good news, justifying America’s ghoulish demand this war goes on endlessly, gets on mainstream news.
If the US had that insane approach to diplomacy and negotiations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. We’d have all been blown away 61 years ago. more at https://www.antiwar.com/blog/author/walt_zlotow/
1 This Month
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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