The climate crisis is tied up in the dangers of nuclear weapons in ways that nobody predicted
The Climate Crisis Just Went Nuclear https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29760935/marshall-islands-nuclear-waste-climate-change/ In the Marshall Islands, local residents are reaping what the United States sowed—which includes tons and tons of nuclear and biological waste from Cold War testing.BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
The climate crisis is the one issue that touches all the other issues. For example, the climate crisis is tied up in the dangers of nuclear weapons in ways that nobody predicted, but that the Los Angeles Times spent some time and money examining. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States set off 67 nuclear bombs in and around the Marshall Islands. This had predictable results: there were now lagoons where there were none before; some islands simply aren’t there any more, and there was a lot of deadly stuff left behind. Which brings us to the climate crisis.
Here in the Marshall Islands, Runit Dome holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet — or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools — of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium. Nowhere else has the United States saddled another country with so much of its nuclear waste, a product of its Cold War atomic testing program.
U.S. authorities later cleaned up contaminated soil on Enewetak Atoll, where the United States not only detonated the bulk of its weapons tests but, as The Times has learned, also conducted a dozen biological weapons tests and dumped 130 tons of soil from an irradiated Nevada testing site. It then deposited the atoll’s most lethal debris and soil into the dome. Now the concrete coffin, which locals call “the Tomb,” is at risk of collapsing from rising seas and other effects of climate change. Tides are creeping up its sides, advancing higher every year as distant glaciers melt and ocean waters rise.
When people talk about environmental justice, this is what they’re talking about.
Officials in the Marshall Islands have lobbied the U.S. government for help, but American officials have declined, saying the dome is on Marshallese land and therefore the responsibility of the Marshallese government. “I’m like, how can it [the dome] be ours?” Hilda Heine, the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, said in an interview in her presidential office in September. “We don’t want it. We didn’t build it. The garbage inside is not ours. It’s theirs.” … They blame the United States and other industrialized countries for global climate change and sea level rise, which threaten to submerge vast swaths of this island nation’s 29 low-lying atolls.
The history behind all this is as tawdry as you might have expected it to be—an endless litany of lies, deception, and bureaucratic three-card monte, all of it designed to dodge any responsibility for the nightmares past, present, and future.
Over the last 15 months, a reporting team from the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism made five trips to the Marshall Islands, where they documented extensive coral bleaching, fish kills and algae blooms — as well as major disease outbreaks, including the nation’s largest recorded epidemic of dengue fever. They interviewed folk singers who lost their voices to thyroid cancers and spent time in Arkansas, Washington and Oregon, where tens of thousands of Marshallese have migrated to escape poverty and an uncertain future.
Over the last 15 months, a reporting team from the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism made five trips to the Marshall Islands, where they documented extensive coral bleaching, fish kills and algae blooms — as well as major disease outbreaks, including the nation’s largest recorded epidemic of dengue fever. They interviewed folk singers who lost their voices to thyroid cancers and spent time in Arkansas, Washington and Oregon, where tens of thousands of Marshallese have migrated to escape poverty and an uncertain future.
One example: The United States did not tell the Marshallese that in 1958, it shipped 130 tons of soil from its atomic testing grounds in Nevada to the Marshall Islands. U.S. authorities also didn’t inform people in Enewetak, where the waste site is located, that they’d conducted a dozen biological weapons tests in the atoll, including experiments with an aerosolized bacteria designed to kill enemy troops. U.S. Department of Energy experts are encouraging the Marshallese to move back to other parts of Enewetak, where 650 now live, after being relocated during the U.S. nuclear tests during the Cold War. But many Marshallese leaders no longer trust U.S. assurances of safety.
Can’t imagine why they’d think that.
Adding to the alarm is a study published this year by a team of Columbia University scientists showing levels of radiation in some spots in Enewetak and other parts of the Marshall Islands that rival those found near Chernobyl and Fukushima. Such discoveries could give Marshallese leaders fresh ammunition to challenge the 1986 compact, which is up for renegotiation in 2023, and also to press the United States to honor property and
health claims ordered by an international tribunal. The tribunal, established by the two countries in 1988, concluded the United States should pay $2.3 billion in claims, but Congress and U.S courts have refused. Documents show the U.S. paid just $4 million.
And what in the hell was this?
A decade later, in 1968, teams from the Department of Defense set up a new experiment. This time, they were testing biological weapons — bombs and missiles filled with bacteria designed to fell enemy troops. According to a 2002 military fact sheet and Ed Regis, the author of “The Biology of Doom,” U.S. government scientists came to Enewetak with “their boats and monkeys, space suits and jet fighter planes” and then sprayed clouds of biologically enhanced staphylococcal enterotoxin B, an incapacitating biological agent known to cause toxic shock and food poisoning and considered “one of the most potent bacterial superantigens.” The bacteria were sprayed over much of the atoll — with ground zero at Lojwa Island, where U.S. troops were stationed 10 years later for the cleanup of the atoll.
I don’t know what happens when the dome gives way, but I feel confident in saying a) it won’t be good, and b) we won’t hear about it for a couple of years, at least.
Frozen nuclear city to ‘seep radiation into environment’ as ice melts
CAMP CENTURY: CLIMATE AND ICE MONITORING
Next Chernobyl? Frozen nuclear city to ‘seep radiation into environment’ as ice melts
A FROZEN underground city could be threatening to seep radioactive materials into the environment as climate change forces the ice to melt. Express UK By CALLUM HOARE Nov 8, 2019
Project Icework was a top secret United States Army programme of the Cold War, aimed at building a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites below the Greenland ice sheet due to its strategic location near the Soviet Union. To study the feasibility of working under the ice, a highly publicised “cover” project, known as Camp Century, was launched in 1960, but six years later it was cancelled due to unstable conditions. The nuclear reactor was removed before the site was abandoned, but hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste remain buried beneath the ice.
Now, climate change is threatening to expose it, as the ice melts at an alarming rate.
YouTube channel Seeker spoke to William Colgan, who is currently running The Camp Century Climate Monitoring Programme, in the hope of preventing the radioactive material from reaching the surface.
He said in 2018: “The people working at Camp Century did not have an understanding of climate change. “They didn’t have solid records, global climate models, these big data sets so you can see an overview of what’s happening to Earth’s climate.
The moving ice sheet started to destabilise the underground tunnels, prompting the US Army to abort Project Iceworm.
“When Camp Century was decommissioned, only the nuclear reactor was taken out for destructive testing, and the rest of the camp was left in place, and they closed the doors.
“It was abandoned on the assumption that climate wouldn’t change, and it would continue to snow at Camp Century forever and the perpetual snowfall would entomb all of the base infrastructures and eventually bury it.”
The narrator of the series explained why Dr Colgan is so invested in the project.
He said: “The climate has changed and temperatures have reached record highs in the Arctic and Greenland’s ice sheet is melting at an unprecedented rate, which could turn Camp Century’s abandoned waste into a major environmental risk.
So a team of scientists, including William, went back to the site.”
Dr Colgan explained what his team is doing.
He added: “In 2017, the government of Denmark, at the request of the government of Greenland, started the Camp Century Climate Monitoring Programme.
“We set up a bunch of instruments that are erected on the ice sheet surface and then we drill in and we put probes into the ice sheet.
“It keeps a real-time data stream coming from the Camp Century site where we monitor a bunch of things, mainly the temperature of the snow, the temperature of the ice and the air temperature…….https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1201199/nuclear-warning-cold-war-camp-century-project-iceworm-radiation-climate-change-spt
Farmers oppose plan for groundwater to be taken for nuclear power
West Valley farmers fight APS attempt to take water for nuclear , RoseLawGroup Reporter, plant https://roselawgroupreporter.com/2019/11/west-valley-farmers-fight-aps-attempt-to-take-water-for-nuclear-plant/ Posted by Staff / November 6, 2019 By Ryan Randazzo | Arizona Republic Arizona Public Service Co. has applied to pump “poor-quality” groundwater from the West Valley that the company says Buckeye farmers are wasting. But the farmers say the water is neither poor nor wasted.
APS wants to take some of the high-saline water from underground and test whether it is cost effective to use at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station about 50 miles west of Phoenix.
Unlike most nuclear facilities that use river or seawater to cool the reactors, Palo Verde uses treated effluent water.
Right now, it gets all of its water from the 91st Avenue Wastewater Treatment Plant. But the cost of that treated effluent water is going to increase over time, so the plant is seeking alternatives.
“If we don’t get some kind of innovative approach to water, 20 or 30 years down the road, the costs would just be prohibitive,” said Jack Cadogan, senior vice president of site operations at Palo Verde for APS. “We’ve always known we would be looking for innovative, cost-effective solutions for water.”…….
Toxic effects of uranium mining on indigenous communities
Coconino Voices: Solving Our Toxic Nuclear Legacy, https://azdailysun.com/opinion/columnists/coconino-voices-solving-our-toxic-nuclear-legacy/article_b8e2ef35-31fe-5cb0-a844-6c0fba973c19.html, BRYAN BATES, 30 Oct 19,
-
- When creating any system, whether a building, a community or an energy system, waste products need to be safely managed. This should be true if we’re building an energy system where the waste products can cause cancer and genetic mutations in humans or any organism within range of long-lived radioactive particles. However, it hasn’t been.
First discovered in 1895, radiation was shown to kill bacteria in 1898; however, with a high energy potential and money-making promise, radioactivity was not linked to cancer and genetic change until much later and even then its true health effects were hidden from miners and the public.
Because the geologic Chinle Formation on the Navajo Nation is rich in Uranium, Navajo men were put to work without protection from known hazards. Several hundred Navajos became sick from radiation exposure, many at the same time that other Navajos enlisted in the Marines to become Navajo Code Talkers.
Health effects from mining Uranium persist on the Navajo Nation with numerous pit mines still open and potentially affecting water, plants, livestock and Navajo. The amount of pain, illness, death and cost are still unknown. (See Judy Pasternak, 2011, Yellow Dirt.)
With the geologic uplift of the Grand Canyon upwarp, it’s hypothesized that numerous vertical shafts eroded allowing broken rock carrying Uranium from the Chinle Formation to fall into these “breccia pipes”. Left alone, the Uranium and other metals remain isolated from the biotic world; drilled into, these metals can migrate into interconnected aquifers that discharge into the Colorado River, water often used to grow food. The Grand Canyon upwarp has the greatest concentration of Uranium containing breccia pipes in the world.
This region is sacred to the Hopi, Navajo, Pai and other native people. The Canyon Mine has promised to create jobs; however, tourism and outdoor activities “support over 9,000 jobs, contribute over $938 million annually to (local) economies, and generate over $160 million in annual state and local tax revenues. Uranium mining threatens these economic drivers while possessing little capacity to support the regional economy.” (www.grandcanyontrust.org).
Under President Obama, a twenty-year moratorium on Uranium mining was instituted to allow for compilation and review of scientific information and energy policy. President Trump has requested and will receive a proposal from the nuclear industry to assess opening up mining on the Grand Canyon upwarp.
Mined Uranium would be used to generate nuclear electricity in reactors that are at or nearing their engineered lifespan. Building new nuclear reactors is massively expensive and concrete, the primary component of reactors, is the second largest emitter of climate changing CO2. (United Nations, IPCC report). Claims that nuclear energy is climate neutral only look at the internal nuclear reaction and ignore the entire fuel cycle necessary to keep the nuclear system functioning. Currently, nuclear waste is stored on-site at numerous reactors, several of which have moderate security and leaky infrastructure. The one national nuclear repository, Yucca Mountain, has been mothballed after expending $15Billion of taxpayer money.
To be sure, mining engineers are very intelligent people, and if they can pull Uranium out of breccia pipes, they can pull Uranium out of 1940’s open mining pits and then close off any radiation leakage. These same engineers could pull nuclear fuels from corroding storage bins on-site at nuclear reactors across the country. If a future President decides we need fewer nuclear weapons, future engineers could pull those radioactive elements, though it is questionable whether nuclear power will even be necessary given energy conservation and emerging sustainable energy sources.
In short, our country is not at lack of energy, but our current leadership is at lack of offering practical energy options. The best option is to leave the Uranium in the ground and clean up our country’s toxic nuclear legacy.
Warning on ecological impacts of Sizewell nuclear project
coast will have “significant adverse ecological impacts” which will be very
difficult to mitigate. Creating Sizewell C would mean the loss of
nationally important fen habitat and the Suffolk Wildlife Trust (SWT) says
it could hit water-levels, affect coastal erosion, harm rare bats, and have
a profound impact on wildlife.
consultation as part of its preparations to submit its final plans for the
twin reactor. SWT’s head of conservation, Ben McFarland said the trust had
concerns about the potential impact of Sizewell C on wildlife and a lack of
sufficient information accompanying the plans for the development. The main
areas for concern include loss of rare and protected habitats including
land designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest, a severe impact on
rare bats and a negative impact on birds with noise and lighting during the
10-year construction period likely to displace many specially protected
birds, such as the marsh harrier.
The hazards of nuclear submarines
In 2019, a new set of nuclear dangers emerged for Southasia. The growing danger was underscored during the military crisis between India and Pakistan in February 2019, when India put one or more of its nuclear submarines on “operational deployment mode.” During the crisis, the Pakistani Navy claimed to intercept an Indian submarine. No one has confirmed if this interception involved an Indian submarine carrying nuclear weapons. With India and Pakistan on an accelerated programme of acquiring and developing nuclear submarines, Southasia needs to pay urgent attention to the risks of nuclear accidents at sea.
The expansion of nuclear operations to the sea also raises issues about who has the ability to authorise the use of these weapons, especially in a crisis. This is of particular concern in the case of India because it has already deployed such weapons. According to a November 2018 announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Arihant nuclear-powered submarine successfully completed its maiden “patrol”.
A further source of concern is the August 2019 announcement by India’s defence minister to the effect that the country’s ‘No First Use’ (NFU) policy – which pledges not to attack with nuclear weapon unless attacked first – “would depend on the circumstances.” His comments, made during a period of increased tension between India and Pakistan following the amendment to Article 370 of India’s Constitution conferring special status to Jammu & Kashmir, underscore these risks.
India’s nuclear submarines……… Strategic competition with China in the Indian Ocean may be another factor. Serving and retired members of India’s Navy publicly express concerns about the deployment of Chinese submarines, warships and tankers in the Indian Ocean.
India’s growing arsenal also makes it a more valuable ally for the United States in its efforts to deal with the growth in China’s political and military power. For some time now, the US and India have been conducting joint naval exercises.
Pakistan’s naval force
Pakistan, for its part, announced the setting up of a Naval Strategic Force Command in 2012. Pakistan’s Navy has started preparing to put nuclear-armed cruise missiles on conventional submarines. The cruise missile is expected to be the 450-kilometer range Babur, which had a successful underwater test launch in 2018. There are reports that Pakistan is seeking to develop or acquire a nuclear-powered submarine…..
Submarine accidents
Almost all the countries operating nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed submarines have experienced accidents, often with significant loss of life and the spread of radioactivity in the environment. There have been over 40 accidents involving nuclear-powered submarines, claiming a total of over 650 lives. Of these accidents, more than half involved Soviet/Russian submarines resulting in over 400 deaths. The United States comes next, with at least a dozen submarine accidents leading to well over 200 deaths.
Two accidents have involved India’s nuclear submarines. …….
It would be unreasonable to expect that no more accidents involving nuclear submarines would ever take place. Nuclear submarines involve many technologies that are susceptible to a range of accidents affecting the submarine, nuclear reactor, missiles and nuclear weapons. All of these are operating under challenging conditions: deep under water, with limited supplies of air and water, possibly under attack. None of these factors is likely to change…….. Should a naval nuclear-reactor accident occur, especially at or near a naval base, coastal city or town the consequences could extend far beyond the vessel and its crew……
Pathways to war
The introduction of nuclear armed submarines, whether diesel or nuclear-fuelled, increases the likelihood of conventional conflicts escalating to a nuclear one. Any use of nuclear weapons would have devastating consequences, especially if the use of nuclear weapons by one country sets off a nuclear response from the other side.
In a military crisis, nuclear armed submarines increase the potential for nuclear war because they open up new risk pathways. The Australian strategist Desmond Ball pointed out in 1985 that “the sea is the only area where nuclear weapon platforms [of adversary states] … actually come into physical contact” and this contact can lead to accidents from several kinds of what seem to be typical naval operations.
There have already been incidents of Indian and Pakistani naval platforms coming into physical contact, for example in 2011, when the Pakistani vessel PNS Babur brushed past India’s INS Godavari. Contact between Navy forces from India and Pakistan might also result from deliberate attempts to attack submarines. Both countries are known to be acquiring anti-submarine warfare capabilities.The consequences of such events could be worse if submarines come into contact with each other during periods of heightened tensions or crises.
During a crisis, there may be inadvertent attacks on submarines carrying nuclear weapons, because these are intermingled with submarines carrying only conventional weapons. One notable instance occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when US ships used practice depth charges against Soviet nuclear-armed submarines. This almost led to the use of nuclear weapons by the Soviet submarine.
Challenges to controlling nuclear weapons
A significant new challenge resulting from the deployment of nuclear weapons at sea is managing command and control. To the extent that such things are publicly known, India and Pakistan were believed to keep their nuclear weapons on land separate from the delivery vehicles, be they missiles or aircraft. This separation makes it harder for the weapons to be used without proper authorisation. With submarines armed with nuclear weapons at sea, this separation may not be possible and so the risk of unauthorised use is greater.
At the same time, one purpose of the nuclear-armed submarine is to be a final fail-safe means of nuclear attack even if a country’s political leadership is killed and its cities destroyed. To serve this role, the nuclear weapons on the submarine cannot rely on timely launch orders from political authorities. A further problem for submarines is that they are supposed to remain hidden from the enemy. Constant communication from the submarine to the military or civilian leadership may make it easier to detect. All of this means that during the time of a crisis, the personnel in a nuclear submarine might be the ones making decisions on whether or not to use nuclear weapons.
Southasians need to consider how they feel about trusting their lives in some future crisis to the restraint of Indian or Pakistani submariners far from home and fearful that their vessel is under attack, trying to decide about launching their nuclear missiles in a ‘use them or lose them’ scenario. The consequences would be devastating.
~Zia Mian is co-director of Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, where he also directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia.
~M V Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the Liu Institute for Global Issues in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
~Abdul H Nayyar is a physicist and a founder and former President of the Pakistan Peace Coalition, a national network of peace and justice groups. https://himalmag.com/nuclear-dangers-of-the-naval-kind-2019/?fbclid=IwAR0G8NZSV5ANg7Ag7KcuJU_80iv3pNJiqb6E_T12sylV9BaJWIvcZ3Vb_j0
 |
ReplyForward
|
Brexit’s threat to Scotland’s environmental protection
Environment Protection Agency, the national regulator, said there was a
need for a “new and coherent” governance system to act as a safeguard once
EU protections and oversight disappear after Britain’s departure from the
bloc. Last year, The Herald revealed Scottish Environment LINK’s concerns
that Scotland’s rarest species north of the Border face being obliterated
in the fall-out from Brexit unless urgent new laws and funding are brought
in to safeguard vital conservation work.https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17996856.scots-natural-environment-risk-inadequate-brexit-plans/
Worrying legacy of radioactive trash under planned Moscow roadway
|
Locals fear radiation spikes as Moscow plans road across nuclear waste dump: ‘Everything is very bad’ Greenpeace claims radiation levels at the site are already many times above natural levels – and higher than the levels now seen in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, Independent Oliver Carroll, Moscow @olliecarroll 27 Oct 19,
Up a small hill from the Moskvorechye commuter station in southeastern Moscow, there is a hole in a green corrugated fence. Radioactive warning signs, fly-posted by a group of local activists, are a clue to the mystery on the other side. Equipped with rubber boots, air masks and radiation counters, a motley crew is carrying out an inspection of the radioactive waste dumps behind the fence, on the perimeter of Moscow’s decommissioned Polymetal factory. It’s part of a last-gasp attempt to stop local authorities from building a bridge and eight-lane motorway across part of the site – controversial plans, the activists say, that run the risk of releasing buried radioactive material into the air and adjacent Moskva river. Campaigning group Greenpeace has recently published results from new tests of topsoil from the area immediately affected by the highway construction. Those tests showed radiation levels dozens of times above permissible levels, and pose a cancer risk to local residents, the group claimed. Samples at 0.5 metres below the surface showed significantly higher levels of radiation.
|
|
|
High Radiation Along Planned Moscow Highway Route
Greenpeace Finds High Radiation Along Planned Moscow Highway Route, Moscow Times, Oct. 21, 2019, Soil samples taken along the route of a planned highway in Moscow are emitting radiation levels that pose cancer risks to residents, Greenpeace Russia said Monday.
Activists have warned that the eight-lane highway, which authorities hope to start building next year and finish by 2024, will release buried radioactive dust into the air and the Moscow River.
“We now have official proof that radioactive waste lies on the route and not somewhere nearby,” Greenpeace Russia said Monday.
Greenpeace demanded in July that construction be halted, months after state-run safety tests revealed radiation levels near the planned highway 200 times higher than the norm.
The NGO and hired experts found five locations on the highway route between the Moscow Polymetals Plant and the Moskvorechye commuter rail station where topsoil emitted up to eight times the normal level of radiation.
“Borehole measurements half a meter deep showed greater [radiation] values than on the surface,” Greenpeace said…….https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/10/21/greenpeace-finds-high-radiation-along-planned-moscow-highway-route-a67834
The “water footprint”of solar and wind power is far less than for coal and nuclear
|
Solar, wind power can alleviate water stress https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/energy-commodities/solar-wind-power-can-alleviate-water-stress, MON, OCT 21, 2019 –
SOLAR and wind power could be in for another boost once policy makers begin accounting for the vast volumes of water needed to keep the lights on.
That’s the conclusion of research published this week by the European Union’s Joint Research Centre, which is urging the bloc’s leaders to pay closer attention to the amount of water used by traditional coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants. It takes more than 1,300 litres of water – enough to fill four bathtubs – to generate the electricity each European resident uses each day. “For the EU, to decarbonise and increase the share of renewables of its energy supply, it needs to formulate policies that take the water use of energy sources into account,” wrote water and energy researchers led by Davy Vanham. Solar, wind, geothermal and run-of-river hydropower account for a “small fraction” of water used compared with what is consumed by biofuels and traditional thermal plants, they said. The findings focus attention on the rising competition for water resources among households, industry and agriculture, exacerbated by a string of heatwaves and lower rainfall levels that have prompted shutdowns at power plants across the continent during periods of peak strain. Some of those incidents have been traced back to climate change. The issue has been replicated in the US, India and China, underscoring how policies that touch on water, energy and food supplies tend to have impacts in all three spheres. Coal, oil and nuclear plants account for about 30 per cent of the water needed to produce the electricity that Europeans consume. That compares with a 1.7 per cent share for all renewables combined, including solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower combined. “The choice of which renewables to promote is essential to alleviate water stress and maintain ecosystems and their services,” the peer-reviewed paper said. “Policies on future energy investments therefore need to consider which renewables have low unit water footprints.” Thermal power plants need water to cool reactions and use the steam to turn giant turbines for electricity. Solar panels and wind turbines can turn sunshine and air currents directly into electricity without producing the residual heat. The researchers looked at energy consumption and generation data from the 28 EU nations, overlayed with information on climate change and water resources. They pinpointed areas in France, Poland and Spain where big power plants rely on large volumes of water. “Recent summer droughts and heatwaves, such as in 2003, 2006, 2015 and 2018, which will only become more frequent due to climate change, have already led to water being a limiting resource for energy production throughout the EU,” they wrote. BLOOMBERG |
|
|
Marshall Islands’ nuclear clean-up workers concerned about radiation leaking
|
Nuclear warning: Toxic waste equivalent to 2,000 Hiroshima bombs could be leaking in sea https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1191538/nuclear-waste-cold-war-cleanup-hiroshima-us-news-nuclear-bomb
A CONCRETE dome filled with nuclear waste could be leaking into the ocean, with experts urging the US government to act urgently as humans “cannot wait”.By SEAN MARTIN, Wed, Oct 16, 2019 |Enewetak Atoll is a series of small islands in the South Pacific which the US government used to test its nuclear weapons following World War 2 from 1948 to 1958. Over a ten year period, 30 megatons of weapons – equivalent to 2,000 Hiroshima bombs – were dropped on the islands during the Cold War. When the US had finished its testing, it built a concrete barrier known as the Runit dome to store the debris of 43 nuclear explosions in a clean-up operation lasting from 1977 to 1980.
However, employees who worked on the clean-up believe the dome could be leaking radioactive waste into to the ocean.
In response, the US has invested $1,689,000 (£1.32m) in a mission to analyse the dome, but there are claims that it could be too late as the waste could have seeped into the ocean, which would have an effect on the marine ecosystem.
Paul Griego, a former radiochemist who worked on the cleanup operation from June 1977 to October 1978, said: “We need the very same funding and for the very same analysis – the dome can wait for radiochemical analysis but we are human and we cannot wait.
While the US government said staff were subjected to just low-levels of radiation and wore all the necessary protective gear, Mr Griego has said this was not the case. The 62-year old added: “We are certain we have the very same radionuclides in our bodies that that would be found in the dome. “We were bombarded with radiation while building the dome, we drank the contaminated water, inhaled the dust-filled air, absorbed contaminates though our skin, ate the fish we caught and more. “We are not only denied the diagnostic resources, we are denied healthcare to cover our radiation and toxin-related illnesses.
“The government’s refusal to provide radiochemical resources is malicious and feeds into the status quo. “It places the burden of proof of an illness on the individual rather than the moral responsibility of our government.” The mission saw more than 1,000 employees tasked with collecting contaminated soil and radioactive debris, which was then mixed with concrete and placed in a nuclear test crater, which was sealed in a concrete dome.
However, people who were on the scene said that the dome was not lined with concrete, and warn it could be seeping into the ocean. For this reason, the US will embark on an 18 month mission to analyse the dome to see if needs to be reinforced or perhaps completely removed. Doug Domenech, Assistant US Secretary of the Interior for Insular and International Affairs, said: “The US Departments of the Interior and Energy are partnering on this important analysis of Runit Dome so that we can be responsive to both Congress and concerns expressed by the Enewetak community in the Marshall Islands.”
|
|
Radioactive chlorine from nuclear bomb tests still present in Antarctica
|
Radioactive chlorine from nuclear bomb tests still present in Antarctica, Phys Org, by Abigail Eisenstadt, American Geophysical Union 16 Oct 19, Antarctica’s ice sheets are still releasing radioactive chlorine from marine nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s, a new study finds. This suggests regions in Antarctica store and vent the radioactive element differently than previously thought. The results also improve scientists’ ability to use chlorine to learn more about Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists commonly use the radioactive isotopes chlorine-36 and beryllium-10 to determine the ages of ice in ice cores, which are barrels of ice obtained by drilling into ice sheets. Chlorine-36 is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope, meaning it has a different atomic mass than regular chlorine. Some chlorine-36 forms naturally when argon gas reacts with cosmic rays in Earth’s atmosphere, but it can also be produced during nuclear explosions when neutrons react with chlorine in seawater. Nuclear weapons tests in the United States carried out in the Pacific Ocean during the 1950s and the 1960s caused reactions that generated high concentrations of isotopes like chlorine-36. The radioactive isotope reached the stratosphere, where it traveled around the globe. Some of the gas made it to Antarctica, where it was deposited on Antarctica’s ice and has remained ever since. Other isotopes produced by marine nuclear bomb testing have mostly returned to pre-bomb levels in recent years. Scientists expected chlorine-36 from the nuclear bomb tests to have also rebounded. But new research in AGU’s Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres finds the Vostok region of Antarctica is continuing to release radioactive chlorine into the atmosphere. Since naturally produced chlorine-36 is stored permanently in layers of Antarctica’s snow, the results indicate the site surprisingly still has manmade chlorine produced by bomb tests in the 1950s and in the 1960s……… https://phys.org/news/2019-10-radioactive-chlorine-nuclear-antarctica.html |
|
Bags of debris from Fukushima disaster swept away in typhoon
|
Bags of debris from Fukushima disaster swept away in typhoon http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201910140036.htmlBy TARO KOTEGAWA/ Staff Writer, October 14, 2019 Flexible bulk bags containing waste produced from decontamination work around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant were swept away in flooding during Typhoon No. 19 in Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture. (Hideyuki Miura) TAMURA, Fukushima Prefecture–Bulk bags filled with greenery collected during decontamination efforts after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant were swept into a river during Typhoon No. 19 on Oct. 12. According to the Tamura city government, the bags were among 2,667 that have been stored temporarily at a site in the Miyakoji-machi district here. The facility was flooded after heavy rains brought by the typhoon, and the water carried an unknown number of the bags to a river about 100 meters away. A city government official received a phone call at around 9:20 p.m. on Oct. 12 from a nearby civil engineering firm, saying six of the bulk bags had been recovered from the river. Each of the bulk bags was 1 cubic meter in size. No sheets had been placed over the bags as a precaution against the rain and wind from the typhoon. A city official said consultations will be held with the Environment Ministry to determine possible effects on the environment. The decontamination effort involved removing debris, such as soil, leaves and plants, containing radioactive substances released after the 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 plant. |
|
US govt to fund study of Marshall Islands nuclear dome water
However, Marshall Islands officials say the lagoon water is already more contaminated than the dome itself, which has been leaking.
The money announced last week will fund a radiochemical analysis of the water surrounding the crater, and an engineering survey of the structure.
Will Brexit mean a race to the bottom, in UK’s environmental protection standards?
Russell MSP has now written to Michael Gove demanding to know why the Government wishes to move away from these alignment regulations.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17934543.fears-uk-government-race-bottom-environment-protection/
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- May 2026 (102)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 