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Opposition in Suffolk to Sizewell nuclear plan, which hugely threatens wildlife

ITV 15th Sept 2019, RSPB hosts new festival in response to EDF’s plans to build nuclear reactor
at the edges of a nature reserve. A thousand people attended a festival
today organised by the RSPB in response to EDF’s plans to build a nuclear
reactor in Suffolk. Sizewell C will be built on the boundary of the
Minsmere Nature Reserve which is home to more than five and a half thousand
species of wildlife.

The RSPB manages the site and opposes the energy
giants plans. They say building the reactor so close to the nature reserve
could threaten the thousands of different species of wildlife that call
Minsmere home. EDF say that the environmental impact of the new site would
be kept to a minimum, and argue that new jobs for local people will be
provided.

Among the visitors supporting the festival today (Sunday,
September 15) was television presenter, Bill Turnbull, who lives nearby. He
said: There’s no infrastructure or communications for it here. What is
here, is Minsmere – where the RSPB have been trying really hard to get all
these birds to come back. And we are going to risk it all just simply
because it’s a convenient place to build a power station.” The public
consultation into EDF’s proposal for Sizewell C will end on September 27.

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2019-09-15/rspb-hosts-new-festival-in-response-to-edf-s-plans-to-build-nuclear-reactor-at-the-edges-of-a-nature-reserve/

September 17, 2019 Posted by | environment, opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

Russia’s nuclear torpedoes at the bottom of the sea

A Dead Russian Submarine Armed with Nuclear Torpedoes was Never Recovered, National Interest, Robert Farley, September 15, 2019

Key point: She rests at a depth of 15,000 feet —too deep to make recovery practical. 

The Bay of Biscay is one of the world’s great submarine graveyards. In late World War II, British and American aircraft sank nearly seventy German U-boats in the Bay, which joined a handful of Allied and German subs sunk in the region during World War I. On April 12, 1970, a Soviet submarine found the same resting place. Unlike the others, however, K-8 was propelled by two nuclear reactors, and carried four torpedoes tipped by nuclear warheads.

The Novembers (627):

The November (Type 627) class was the Soviet Union’s first effort at developing nuclear attack submarines…….
 The Novembers were too loud to plausibly find their way into close enough proximity to a NATO port to ever actually fire a nuclear torpedo in wartime conditions…….
On April 8, K-8 suffered two fires, resulting in a shutdown of both nuclear reactors. The boat surfaced, and Captain Vsevolod Borisovich Bessonov ordered the crew to abandon ship. Eight crew members, trapped in compartments that were either flooded or burned out, died in the initial incident. Fortunately, a Soviet repair vessel arrived, and took K-8 under tow. However, bad weather made the recover operation a difficult prospect. Much of K-8’s crew reboarded the submarine, and for three days fought a life-and-death struggle to save the boat. Although details remain scarce, there apparently was no opportunity to safely remove the four nuclear torpedoes from K-8, and transfer them to the repair ship.
Unfortunately, the loss of power onboard and the difficult weather conditions were too much for the crew to overcome. On April 12, K-8 sank with some forty crew members aboard, coming to rest at a rough depth of 15,000 feet. The depth made any effort at recovering the submarine, and the nuclear torpedoes, impractical……
R
The loss of K-8 (along with the several accidents that afflicted her sisters) undoubtedly helped the Soviet Navy learn important lessons about distant operations, if only at extraordinary costs in human lives. And her nuclear torpedoes remain at the bottom, an enduring monument to most dangerous missions of the Cold War. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/dead-russian-submarine-armed-nuclear-torpedoes-was-never-recovered-80416

September 16, 2019 Posted by | oceans, Russia, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Japan says TEPCO will dump more than 1 million tons of radioactive water from Fukushima nuclear plant into Pacific Ocean 

 10 Sept 2019 | Japan’s environment minister announced Tuesday that the country will have to dump radioactive water from the Fukushima power plant into the ocean because it is running out of space, Reuters reported. According to Reuters, Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, has collected more than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting since the plant was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. “The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it,” the minister, Yoshiaki Harada, told a news briefing in Tokyo…The government is awaiting a report from an expert panel before making a final decision on how to dispose of the radioactive water. (The Hill, Reuters)

September 14, 2019 Posted by | Japan, oceans | Leave a comment

UK forest to be chopped down for Sizewell C nuclear project, though project approval not yet complete

East Anglian Daily Times 11th Sept 2019, Coronation Wood will now be chopped down to make way for Sizewell C – even though the proposed new twin reactor nuclear power station has not beengiven the go-ahead yet.

The application from EDF Energy, part of major
changes to the Sizewell B estate needed for Sizewell C’s construction,
generated a huge number of objections. However, it was approved by East
Suffolk Council’s (ESC) strategic planning committee by nine votes to
eight. Theberton and Eastbridge Parish Council, supported by a number of
other parish and town councils, will now ask the Secretary of State for
Housing, Communities and Local Government to “call in” the application and
consider it for a planning inquiry.

Paul Collins, of Theberton & Eastbridge
Action Group on Sizewell, said: “We strongly oppose ESC’s decision to
approve this application when the DCO request for Sizewell C has neither
been submitted nor approved. If Sizewell C does not go ahead – and there
are many reasons why it might not, including uncertain financing and major
environmental obstacles – the AONB will have been needlessly damaged.”

https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/sizewell-c-coronation-wood-and-visiting-centre-plan-decision-1-6265010

September 14, 2019 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Environmental, health, threats of USA’s zombie uranium mines

When toxic waste piles — either solid rock or liquid confined behind earthen dams — are left unaddressed, the potential increases for “catastrophic failure

WHILE ‘ZOMBIE’ MINES IDLE, CLEANUP AND WORKERS SUFFER IN LIMBO As the governor of West Virginia and other mine owners warehouse their operations and avoid cleanup, the Trump administration stifles attempts to write rules that could restrict the practice. Center for Public Integrity, 8 Sept 19

……….RADIOACTIVE LEGACY

Remnants of America’s nuclear past litter the Grants Mining District in northwest New Mexico: signs warning of radioactivity, a spiked drill bit outside the New Mexico Mining Museum in Grants, businesses offering to help retired miners get U.S. Department of Labor health benefits.

Mount Taylor — “Tsoodzil” to the Navajo Nation — towers over the landscape. At the base of the 11,305-foot-tall inactive volcano sits the Mount Taylor Mine, idled in 1990 and allowed to flood.

The heyday of Southwestern uranium mining lasted just 30 years. Much of the industry, including this mine, has since remained in standby.

The country’s last operational underground uranium mine shut in 2015, and  open-pit mines haven’t produced in decades. Only one mill in Utah and four in-situ-leach operations, in which ore is dissolved belowground and pumped up, are still active. Two other mills and 15 in-situ-leach sites are either officially in standby or not producing. The American uranium industry employed only 372 people last year, down from 1,120 two decades earlier. Production from U.S. uranium mines fell 85 percent during that period, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

At current prices, mining uranium in the Four Corners remains untenable.

But now the Mount Taylor Mine is reopening, at least on paper. 

……  the Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine, once the world’s largest open-pit uranium mine, is now a Superfund site. In the broader Four Corners region, the U.S. Department of Energy is supposed to clean up more than 20 such Cold War relics, from former mills to waste piles. Some leak arsenic, lead, uranium and other toxic substances into groundwater. Recently, hoofprints were found leading from an unfenced pollution control pond near Slick Rock, Colorado, indicating that cattle likely drink from it.

Just inside the southeastern corner of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, an unsettling sign hangs from barbed wire: “DANGER. ABANDONED URANIUM MINE,” a pile of mine waste looming behind it. Residents here in the Red Water Pond Road Community are surrounded by two abandoned uranium mines and a mill…….

Living around or working in uranium mines can worsen, or even trigger, autoimmune disorders, kidney disease, respiratory issues, hypertension and cancer. A study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the University of New Mexico and Navajo agencies found that Navajo Nation citizens, including infants, had elevated levels of uranium in their bodies.

Paul Robinson, Southwest Research and Information Center’s research director, has tracked the industry for more than 40 years. While the New Mexico Mining Act mandates that waste rock and other infrastructure be stabilized before entering standby status, it allows operators to delay reclamation while mining is paused, he said.

“Leaving the wastes that are generated at a mine uncovered is one of the ways to ensure airborne or waterborne release,” Robinson said.

Thompson Bell, a member of the Navajo Nation who spent five years as a mechanic in a uranium mine, grew up here and returned for the study. He said many of his mining coworkers died from lung cancer. The sheep and cattle that used to graze here have all but disappeared, the flocks given up for fear of contamination.

“The thing about uranium, we found out: It destroys humans and land,” Bell said.

Opinion remains split locally about whether the return of relatively high-paying mining jobs — if that ever happened — would be worth the human and environmental consequences. Christine Lowery, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and a commissioner for the county where the Mount Taylor Mine is located, said she welcomes a cleaner economy.

“Those mines were open for one generation,” she said. “The legacy lasts forever…….

The federal government leaves it to the states to impose limits on uranium-mine idling. The resulting patchwork of state rules are largely anchored on a 147-year-old federal law aimed more at promoting mining than managing it.

Over time, uranium production has dropped, stockpiles remained large, nuclear power’s share of the country’s electricity production fell, and power plants bought more uranium from overseas. Still, mine owners hope for a revival…….

 Modern surface mining in Central Appalachia has been linked to health problems ranging from cancer to birth defects. And in a 2012 study, Bernhardt estimated that surface mining impaired about one in three miles of southern West Virginia’s rivers.

But idling poses other risks, Bernhardt said. When toxic waste piles — either solid rock or liquid confined behind earthen dams — are left unaddressed, the potential increases for “catastrophic failure,” she said, even as opportunities to use the land for new purposes are delayed…..

Regulators in Virginia have few options. Justice mine cleanup liabilities in Virginia total as much as $200 million, and taxpayers could get stuck with a large share of that if the state takes over. That’s because those companies have put up only about $51 million for cleanup if the operations are abandoned. Half of that amount would likely be worthless in that scenario because, state records show, it is backed against the value of the companies. A pool of money Virginia set up to close gaps like this at 150 permits across the state, including some of Justice’s, has less than $10 million in it. ……..https://publicintegrity.org/environment/while-zombie-mines-idle-cleanup-and-workers-suffer-in-limbo/?fbclid=IwAR1PsslGwAV0UPxPBIn4qv1JTypoGVk1

September 10, 2019 Posted by | environment, health, Uranium, USA | 6 Comments

Radioactive pollution of beaches and abandoned boats, following Russian nuclear explosion

Russian Nuclear Blast Debris Is Still Emitting Radiation, Reports Say, Moscow Times, Sep. 4, 2019 Journalists in northern Russia have measured high levels of radiation near two abandoned boats that were brought ashore following last month’s mysterious accident during a test at a military site that has raised international concerns and safety fears……

Background radiation levels near the two pontoons towed ashore in the White Sea were several times above the norm, journalists based in the Arkhangelsk region reported in a video published Monday.

“This beach should be decontaminated,” Bruno Chareyron, a research director at the French radiation-monitoring NGO CRIIRAD, told the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) news outlet.

“The authorities should collect the radioactive debris [and] monitor the contamination of the water, sand sediments, fauna and flora,” Chareyron was quoted as saying. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/04/russian-nuclear-blast-components-still-emit-radiation-reports-say-a67131

September 9, 2019 Posted by | environment, Russia | Leave a comment

The radiation poisoning of Iraq lingers on

“The destruction of a society”: First the U.S. invaded Iraq — then we left it poisoned      Scientist: Bombs, bullets and military hardware abandoned by U.S. forces have left Iraq “toxic for millennia”, Salon.com  DAVID MASCIOTRA  7 Sept 19

The political and moral culture of the United States allows for bipartisan cooperation to destroy an entire country, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process, without even the flimsiest of justification. Then, only a few years later, everyone can act as if it never happened.

In 2011, the U.S. withdrew most of its military personnel from Iraq, leaving the country in ruins. Estimates of the number of civilians who died during the war in Iraq range from 151,000 to 655,000. An additional 4,491 American military personnel perished in the war. Because the bombs have stopped falling from the sky and the invasion and occupation of Iraq no longer makes headlines, Americans likely devote no thought to the devastation that occurred in their name.

With the exception of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is currently polling at or below 2 percent, no candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination has consistently addressed the criminality, cruelty and cavalier wastefulness of American foreign policy. Joe Biden, the frontrunner in the race, not only supported the war in Iraq — despite his recent incoherent claims to the contrary — but as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee acted as its most effective and influential salesman in the Democratic Party.

The blasé attitude of America toward the death and destruction it creates, all while boasting of its benevolence, cannot withstand the scrutiny of science. Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan and recipient of the Rachel Carson Prize, has led several investigative expeditions in Iraq to determine how the pollutants and toxic chemicals from the U.S.-led war are poisoning Iraq’s people and environment. The health effects are catastrophic, and will remain so long after the war reached its official end.

I previously interviewed Savabieasfahani about her initial research, and recently acquired an update regarding her team’s latest discovery that there is a close correlation between proximity to a U.S. military base and birth defects in Iraqi children.

Average Americans, even many who opposed the war in Iraq, seem to believe that once the military campaign is over the casualties of war stop accumulating. What is the purpose of your general research regarding the toxicity of the Iraqi environment resulting from American bombs, munitions and other materials? How does the American invasion and occupation continue to adversely affect the health of Iraqis?

Bombs and bullets have been used on an extreme scale in Iraq. Dropping tons of bombs and releasing millions of bullets leaves toxic residues the in air, water and soil of the targeted population. These pollutants continue to poison those populations years after the bombing stops

What’s more, the United States imported thousands of tons of military equipment into Iraq to use in their occupation. They include, tanks, trucks, bombers, armored vehicles, infantry weapons, antiaircraft systems, artillery and mortars — some of which are coated with depleted uranium, and much more. These eventually find their way into U.S. military junkyards which remain across Iraq.

There are unknown numbers of military junkyards scattered across the Iraqi landscape.

Fluctuations in temperature facilitates the rusting and weathering of military junk, releasing toxic pollutants [including radioactive uranium compounds, neurotoxic lead and mercury, etc.] into the Iraqi environment.

Uranium and its related compounds remain toxic for millennia and poison local populations through food, air and water contamination.

The exposure of pregnant mothers to the pollutions of war, including uranium and thorium, irreversibly damages their unborn children. We found thorium, a product of depleted uranium decay, in the hair of Iraqi children with birth defects who lived in Nasiriyah and Ur City, near a U.S. military base. 

The destruction of a society does not stop after U.S. bombs stop falling. Environmental contamination which the U.S. leaves behind continues to destroy our environment and poison our people decades after the bombs have stopped falling. The U.S. has a long history of irreversibly destroying human habitats. That must end…….

Forty-four years after U.S. forces left Vietnam, there are still Vietnamese babies born with birth defects from the American military’s use of Agent Orange. How long do you believe Iraqis will continue to suffer from the American-led war?

If left unmitigated, the population will be permanently exposed to elevated toxic exposures which can impact the Iraqi gene pool.

Through the use of the scientific method, you are gaining the ability to identify a severe problem in Iraq. Considering that the problem is a result of the U.S. invasion, what could the U.S. do to solve or at least mitigate the problem?

The U.S. must be held responsible and forced to clean up all the sites which it has polluted. Technology exists for the cleanup of radiation contamination. The removal and disposal of U.S.-created military junkyards would go a long way towards cleaning toxic releases out of the Iraqi environment.

You are a scientist, not a political analyst, but you must have some thoughts regarding the political implications of your work. How do you react to the lack of substantive conversation about the consequences of war in American politics and the press, and the American establishment’s evasion of responsibility on this issue?

I expect nothing from the American political establishment or their propaganda machines which masquerade as “news media” and feed uncritically off State Department press briefings.

Fortunately, there is a movement to criminalize environmental contamination caused by war. Damage to nature and the human environment must be considered a war crime.

Scientists are currently asking international lawmakers to adopt a fifth Geneva Convention which would recognize damage to nature as a war crime, alongside other war crimes. I hope that will make a difference in our ability to protect human lives and our environment. ……  https://www.salon.com/2019/09/07/the-destruction-of-a-society-first-the-u-s-invaded-iraq-then-we-left-it-poisoned/

September 9, 2019 Posted by | environment, Iraq, radiation, social effects, USA | Leave a comment

Japan nowhere near solving the problem of Fukushima nuclear waste water

Japan briefs diplomats on Fukushima nuclear water concerns,   https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/japan-briefs-diplomats-fukushima-nuclear-water-concerns-65376017  Japan tried to reassure foreign diplomats Wednesday about safety at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant amid concerns about massive amounts of treated but radioactive water stored in tanks.

Diplomats from 22 countries and regions attended a briefing at the Foreign Ministry, where Japanese officials stressed the importance of combating rumors about safety at the plant, which was decimated by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, while pledging transparency.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, said last month that it would run out of storage space for the water in 2022, prompting South Korea to raise safety questions amid tensions with Japan that have intensified over trade and history. South Korea was among those represented at Wednesday’s briefing.

Water must be continuously pumped into the four melted reactors at the plant so the fuel inside can be kept cool, and radioactive water has leaked from the reactors and mixed with groundwater and rainwater since the disaster.

The plant has accumulated more than 1 million tons of water in nearly 1,000 tanks. The water has been treated but still contains some radioactive elements. One, tritium — a relative of radiation-emitting hydrogen — cannot be separated.

Tritium is not unique to Fukushima’s melted reactors and is not harmful in low doses, and water containing it is routinely released from nuclear power plants around the world, including in South Korea, officials say.

The water has been a source of concern, sparking rumors about safety, especially as Japan tries to get countries to lift restrictions on food imports from the Fukushima area ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Import restrictions are still in place in 22 countries and regions, including South Korea and China.

“In order to prevent harmful rumors about the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant from being circulated, we believe it is extremely important to provide scientific and accurate information,” Yumiko Hata, a Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry official in charge of the Fukushima accident response, said at the briefing. “We appreciate your understanding of the situation and continuing support for the decommissioning work at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.”

Officials said there were no complaints from the diplomats Wednesday about Japan’s handling of the water.

More than eight years after the accident, Japan has yet to decide what to do with the radioactive water. A government-commissioned panel has picked five options, including the controlled release of the water into the Pacific Ocean.

As disputes between Japan and neighboring South Korea escalated over export controls and colonial-era labor used by Japanese companies, Seoul last month announced plans to step up radiation tests of Japanese food products, and asked about the contaminated water and the possibility of its release into the sea.

Experts say the tanks pose flooding and radiation risks and hamper decontamination efforts at the plant. Nuclear scientists, including members the International Atomic Energy Agency and Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority, have recommended the water’s controlled release into the sea as the only realistic option scientifically and financially. Local residents oppose this, saying the release would trigger rumors of contamination, which would spell doom for Fukushima’s fishing and agriculture industries.

The panel recently added a sixth option of long-term storage.

September 5, 2019 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, water | Leave a comment

The radioactive fallout from Chernobyl continues to impact lives.

The legacy of Chernobyl: Zombie reactors and an invisible enemy  ABC News,  Foreign Correspondent  By Europe correspondent Linton Besser, Mark Doman, Alex Palmer and Nathanael Scott, 3 Sep 2019,   As the Soviet Union grappled with the scale of the disaster unfolding at Chernobyl, radioactive material spewed into the environment.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1986 explosion inside reactor number four of the nuclear power plant, dozens of first responders received fatal doses of radiation, forests surrounding the reactor were poisoned, and nearby waterways were contaminated.

Despite attempts to douse the fire in the core with sand, boron and lead, the reactor burnt for 10 days, releasing huge amounts of radioactive materials beyond the plant’s perimeter.

Three decades on from what is considered to be one of the worst nuclear accidents in history, the fallout from Chernobyl continues to impact lives.
Carried in the prevailing weather patterns, the radioactive particles pouring out of reactor four spread rapidly.

The vast majority of particulates fell over parts of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine where more than 5 million people now live in contaminated areas. But modelling by the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, shows how, within two days of the disaster, the radioactive plume was transported more than 1,000 kilometres.

In fact it was a nuclear facility in Forsmark, Sweden that first detected unusually high levels of radiation in the atmosphere and began investigating the cause. Until this point, the disaster at Chernobyl had been kept under wraps by the Soviet Union.
In all, an area of more than 200,000 square kilometres was contaminated by a significant amount of radiocaesium (Caesium-137) — a by-product of nuclear fission which can take centuries to decay completely and is known to cause cancer.  Mapping of the ground deposits of Caesium-137 after the accident shows just how widely the particulates spread and eventually settled across Europe.  Areas where it rained as the plume passed over were more likely to see higher levels of deposited radiocaesium.
Closer to the site of the disaster, parts of the area still remain so heavily contaminated that a 2,600-square-kilometre “zone of alienation” remains in place around the reactor.
Data captured as part of the global citizen science project Safecast shows high levels of radiation remain more than three decades later.
In Pripyat, a ghost town on the outskirts of the reactor, pockets of radiation can be found which are among the highest levels recorded in the dataset.
At Pripyat hospital No. 126, where first responders dumped contaminated clothing, spikes in radiation around 700 microsieverts per hour (µSv/h) have been recorded, with an average of about 36µSv/h in the area. Prolonged exposure at these levels can be dangerous. In general background levels of radiation are usually around 0.1µSv/h.
There’s also the highly contaminated Red Forest to the south and west. It got its name from the colour the trees turned as they died after the blast. Here researchers continue to uncover highly radioactive pockets of soil. Access to this area is largely restricted, but the Safecast data shows areas inside the forest reaching an average of around 30µSv/h.  Then of course there’s the reactor itself. A place so irradiated it sits entombed in a giant sarcophagus made of steel and concrete. Some estimates suggest the core will remain radioactive for thousands of years.

There’s no data at the core because access to the area is heavily restricted for safety reasons.  Azby Brown, the lead researcher with Safecast, said many of the hardest-hit areas, like the abandoned town of Pripyat, will remain unsafe to live “for generations”.

“If you just look at the half life of Caesium-137, it’s 30 years. So it’s been through one half life, meaning naturally half of it has decayed, so anywhere you went 30 years ago in Chernobyl was twice [as radioactive] as what it is today,” he said.

“Some of it gets moved by weathering, by wind, by rain etcetera … but often a rule of thumb is it takes 10 half lives for something to really be considered gone, which would mean like 300 years.

The ‘invisible enemy’

Despite the lingering risks, there are some who’ve chosen to ignore the warnings and return to live inside the exclusion zone.

Sofia Bezverhaya was living just 30 kilometres from the plant in the village of Kupovate when the plant exploded.

The breach of reactor number four occurred on a Saturday. But Sofia, the local council administrator, heard nothing of it.

“It was only on the Monday that we’ve found out there’d been an accident,” she told Foreign Correspondent. That day, she took a phone call from a Communist Party official. “There’s been an accident,” she was told. “Prepare for the evacuation.”

“They kept telling us, it’s just for three days … [but] all of us had that uneasy feeling creeping into our souls, that we might just leave our homes and never ever come back. And that’s what came to be.”

This fallout was an “invisible enemy”, Sofia said. Although she “neither saw it nor felt it [and] it had no colour and no taste”, it would go on to take the lives of many of those close to her.But the then 40-year-old was determined to return home. One year after the meltdown, amid confusion over the precise dimensions of the exclusion zone being established by Soviet authorities, she and several-hundred others did just that.

“Our grand- and great grandparents are buried here. And we also want to be buried here, in our village. It’s our dream.”

The official death toll from Chernobyl is disputed, but a UN report into the “true scale of the accident” found as many as 4,000 people could die as a result of radiation exposure.

Once Sofia returned, despite official warnings to avoid locally grown produce, she had little choice but to continue to plough her own yard for food. And more than three decades later, she’s still doing it.

From the garden bed, which runs beside the length of her blue weatherboard home, she grows tomatoes, zucchinis, pumpkins, capsicum, sorrel, potatoes and onions.

“For me, my resort is my work in the garden … where I can watch a squirrel collecting nuts, and hear the singing of nightingale.”

Kupovate is firmly within the boundaries of the exclusion zone around the reactor. But once a year, Sofia Bezverhaya said, her garden vegetables are tested, and the results are within acceptable limits.

It’s an anomaly which demonstrates the caprice of the fallout; the red lines of the exclusion zone simply do not prescribe the limits of the contamination……… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-03/chernobyls-radioactive-legacy-zombie-reactors-an-invisible-enemy/11432430

September 3, 2019 Posted by | environment, Ukraine | Leave a comment

UN warns on need for global action – treaty – as the world’s oceans are in dire trouble

INTERVIEW-Ocean treaty needed to tackle ‘deep trouble’, says UN envoy,  http://news.trust.org/item/20190831063635-oygwk/, by Adela Suliman | @adela_suliman | Thomson Reuters Foundation, Saturday, 31 August 2019 The oceans are increasingly threatened by global warming, acidification and pollution, and the impacts will affect us all, warned the U.N. oceans envoy. By Adela Suliman

STOCKHOLM, Aug 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The world’s seas are increasingly threatened by global warming, acidification and pollution, making it crucial to agree on a global treaty to protect them, the U.N. oceans envoy said.

Peter Thomson warned in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the oceans were “in deep trouble”.

“It is worse than we think and there are no easy solutions,” he said at World Water Week in Stockholm this week, as the latest round of talks on a treaty wound up in New York.

The first global ocean treaty is due to be agreed in the first half of 2020. But on Friday environmental group Greenpeace said the negotiations were “disappointing” so far, blaming a lack of political will to secure a “progressive outcome”.

Thomson said a “comprehensive global regime” was needed to accelerate action to protect waters beyond national jurisdictions.

“It is critical in these challenging times for planetary environmental conditions that we develop a binding treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in the ocean,” he said.

A flagship scientific report warned this year that two-thirds of the ocean area was already affected by growing human impacts, primarily from stressors linked to global warming.

Climate change and the oceans were “intimately linked”, Thomson said, adding humanity was on a “totally irresponsible course” by not tackling global warming urgently enough.  In 2015 nearly 200 nations signed up to the Paris Agreement that aims to keep the rise in average global temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times, and ideally to 1.5C.

“(Climate change) is going to have huge human impact and there will have to be a change of occupations, a change of domiciles,” Thomson warned.

Fishing communities and coastal dwellers would be worse off and needed support to adapt in a warmer world, he added.

A set of global development goals to be met by 2030 include conserving and using oceans, seas and marine resources wisely.

Much of the planet’s rainwater, drinking water, food and weather systems are provided or regulated by the sea.

“Every second breath you take comes from oxygen from the ocean,” said Thomson, a Fijian diplomat.

But seawater warming and acidification could change the chemical composition of the oceans, with profound effects for humans, he warned.

TURNING THE TIDE?

Pollution, including plastic, industrial waste, sewage and fertiliser, poses a serious threat to marine life, Thomson said.

“There are over 500 ‘dead zones’ all over the world where actually no life exists because of what’s coming down those rivers by way of pollution,” he said.

Meanwhile, irresponsible fishing practices have depleted fish stocks and are “part of the human tragedy of ending biodiversity”, he added.

Billions of people depend on oceans for their food and livelihoods, but the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has said nearly 90% of fish stocks are over-fished or fully exploited as global demand rises.

Thomson said, however, that pollution and over-fishing were “very fixable” with better environmental management.

Individual action had begun to make inroads – from public beach clean-ups to how people shop and vote.

Climate change, on the other hand, was a more “pernicious” threat to the Earth’s water, he said.

The U.N. climate science panel is due to publish a special report in late September on how climate change is affecting the world’s oceans and frozen water. Thomson said it would be a “guiding light” for future international protection efforts by providing scientific insight on how global warming is affecting life in the sea.

“The report will no doubt provide further support for dramatic scaling up of political ambition (to act),” he said.

“It’s no time to be sitting around philosophising … The changes have to be made now

September 3, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, oceans | Leave a comment

Expert on birds warns of environmental catastrophe if UK’s planned Sizewell nuclear station goes ahead

Daily Mail 1st Sept 2019 , BBC Birdwatch presenter Chris Packham warns of environmental ‘catastrophe’
if plans for new nuclear power station on wetland nature reserve go ahead.
Chris Packham and campaigners warn against nuclear plant on nature reserve.
French energy firm EDF wants to build Sizewell C with two more giant
reactors. The firm last year axed plan to build a jetty to bring in
materials for site by sea. It is a wetland nature reserve of such beauty
and importance that it became home to the BBC’s popular Springwatch
series for three years.
But campaigners fear that Minsmere, a 2,500-acre
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds site on the Suffolk coast, faces
catastrophe under plans put forward by French energy firm EDF to build a
new nuclear power station. The site, which attracts numerous species of
rare birds including marsh harriers, lies close to an existing nuclear
power station, Sizewell B – but EDF now wants to build Sizewell C, which
comprises two more giant reactors.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7415401/Chris-Packham-warns-environmental-catastrophe-nuclear-power-station-plan-nature-reserve.html

September 1, 2019 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Climate change is destabilising the Earth’s marine environment

August 31, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, oceans, Reference | Leave a comment

MEDIA MATTERS finds that mainstream news is practically ignoring Amazon fires

 

The Notre Dame fire garnered wall-to-wall cable news coverage. The Amazon fires are barely breaking through.  https://www.mediamatters.org/msnbc/notre-dame-fire-garnered-wall-wall-cable-news-coverage-amazon-fires-are-barely-breaking   LIS POWER 23 Aug 19

When a fire broke out at the Notre Dame Cathedral earlier this year, the tragic event garnered wall-to-wall coverage on cable news outlets. But as a record number of wildfires burn through Brazil’s Amazon rainforest — an event that will have dire consequences for the global environment — the story is receiving significantly less attention and struggling to break through the media cycle. None of the Sunday shows substantially mentioned it at all.

The current fires raging in the Amazon aren’t garnering anywhere near the same level of coverage on cable news, despite the effects the wildfires will have on the global environment.

As noted in The Washington Post, the Amazon “serves as the lungs of the planet by taking in carbon dioxide,” and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service is warning that “the fires have led to a clear spike in carbon monoxide emissions as well as planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, posing a threat to human health and aggravating global warming.”

Despite the serious implications, the Amazon fires haven’t gotten even close to the amount of coverage Notre Dame’s fire received. So far, coverage has peaked at 11 segments that mention the fires per day on cable news networks combined — as opposed to around 150 segments a day that mentioned the cathedral fire during the peak of Notre Dame coverage — according to Media Matters’ internal database. Additionally, the coverage has often come via short headline reads or passing mentions rather than thorough, in-depth analysis about the events and global consequences.

The disparity in coverage is glaring and raises serious questions about cable news priorities when it comes to covering our environment.

Media Matters’ internal database includes weekday cable news programming on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC between the hours of 6 a.m. and midnight. Segments are coded in near-real time by analysts for pertinent information. We searched our database for segments during the week of April 15 that included “Notre Dame” in the segment notes and segments during the week of August 18 that included “Amazon” in the segment notes. 

August 26, 2019 Posted by | climate change, environment, media, USA | Leave a comment

International concern growing over Fukushima’s radioactive contamination of surface-level soil

The danger of sourcing food and material from the Fukushima region   Ground-level nuclear disasters leave much more radioactive fallout than Tokyo is willing to admit 　 Hankyoreh  By Seok Kwang-hoon, energy policy consultant of Green Korea   Aug.25,2019 International concerns are growing over the Japanese government’s plans to provide meals from the Fukushima area to squads participating in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The starting point for the Olympic torch relay, and even the baseball stadium, were placed near the site of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. It seems to be following the model of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, where Japan’s rise from the ashes of the atomic bombs was underscored by having a young man born the day of the Hiroshima bombing act serve as the relay’s last runner. Here we can see the Shinzo Abe administration’s fixation on staging a strained Olympic reenactment of the stirring Hiroshima comeback – only this time from Fukushima.

But in terms of radiation damages, there is a world of difference between Hiroshima and Fukushima. Beyond the initial mass casualties and the aftereffects suffered by the survivors, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima resulted in little additional radiation exposure. Nuclear technology being as crude as it was back then, only around one kilogram of the Hiroshima bomb’s 64kg of highly enriched uranium actually underwent any reaction, resulting in a relatively small generation of nuclear fission material.
Whereas ground-based nuclear testing results in large quantities of radioactive fallout through combining with surface-level soil, the Hiroshima bomb exploded at an altitude of 580m, and the superheated nuclear fission material rose up toward the stratosphere to spread out around the planet, so that the amount of fallout over Japan was minimal. Even there, most of the nuclides had a short half-life (the amount of time it takes for half the total atoms in radioactive material to decay); manganese-56, which has a half-life of three hours, was the main cause of the additional radiation damages, which were concentrated during the day or so just after the bomb was dropped. The experience of Nagasaki was similar. As a result, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were able to fully resume as functioning cities by the mid-1950s without additional decontamination efforts.
Ground-level nuclear disasters leave much more radioactive fallout than Tokyo is willing to admit
nternational concerns are growing over the Japanese government’s plans to provide meals from the Fukushima area to squads participating in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The starting point for the Olympic torch relay, and even the baseball stadium, were placed near the site of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. It seems to be following the model of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, where Japan’s rise from the ashes of the atomic bombs was underscored by having a young man born the day of the Hiroshima bombing act serve as the relay’s last runner. Here we can see the Shinzo Abe administration’s fixation on staging a strained Olympic reenactment of the stirring Hiroshima comeback – only this time from Fukushima.But in terms of radiation damages, there is a world of difference between Hiroshima and Fukushima.
Beyond the initial mass casualties and the aftereffects suffered by the survivors, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima resulted in little additional radiation exposure. Nuclear technology being as crude as it was back then, only around one kilogram of the Hiroshima bomb’s 64kg of highly enriched uranium actually underwent any reaction, resulting in a relatively small generation of nuclear fission material. Whereas ground-based nuclear testing results in large quantities of radioactive fallout through combining with surface-level soil, the Hiroshima bomb exploded at an altitude of 580m, and the superheated nuclear fission material rose up toward the stratosphere to spread out around the planet, so that the amount of fallout over Japan was minimal. Even there, most of the nuclides had a short half-life (the amount of time it takes for half the total atoms in radioactive material to decay); manganese-56, which has a half-life of three hours, was the main cause of the additional radiation damages, which were concentrated during the day or so just after the bomb was dropped. The experience of Nagasaki was similar. As a result, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were able to fully resume as functioning cities by the mid-1950s without additional decontamination efforts…… http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/907055.html

August 26, 2019 Posted by | environment, Japan, Reference | Leave a comment

Life on Earth threatened by climate change – loss of Amazon Forests

Without the Amazon, the planet is doomed    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/bolsonaros-wish-to-chop-away-at-the-amazon-is-everyones-problem/2019/08/05/edab2204-b243-11e9-8f6c-7828e68cb15f_story.html?fbclid=IwAR0KjWqVZQUiP5hGINNQQI3Opz5rROgSbJ0_IpFCg5X3JUyprWIDjADUu1A    By Editorial Board  August 5

ONE OF the easiest ways to combat climate change is to stop tearing down old trees. This is why it is everyone’s problem that new Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro seems determined to chop away at the Amazon rainforest, the world’s greatest reserve of old-growth forest.

According to a recent analysis in the New York Times, “enforcement actions by Brazil’s main environmental agency fell by 20 percent during the first six months of the year, compared with the same period in 2018.” Fines, warnings and the elimination of illegal equipment from preservation zones are among the measures Brazil’s authorities are doing less often. “The drop means that vast stretches of the rain forest can be torn down with less resistance from the nation’s authorities.” The result has been a loss of 1,330 square miles of rainforest since January, a loss rate that is some 40 percent higher than a year previous, according to Brazilian government records.

Mr. Bolsonaro has called his own government’s information “lies,” stripped the environment ministry of authorities and slashed the environmental budget. When eight former environment ministers protested in May, current environment minister Ricardo Salles allegedthat there is a “permanent and well-orchestrated defamation campaign by [nongovernmental organizations] and supposed experts, within and outside of Brazil.”

In its reality denial, Mr. Bolsonaro’s brand of right-wing populism closely resembles that of President Trump. Both leaders stoke unfounded suspicions that environmental concerns represent foreign plots to undermine the domestic economy. Both are committed to breakneck resource extraction while dismissing expert warnings. And both lead nations with special responsibilities in the global fight against climate change. Global warming cannot be successfully addressed without the engagement of the United States, the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases and erstwhile leader. The Brazilian Amazon, meanwhile, is a unique natural treasure, its abundance of plant life inhaling and storing loads of planet-warming carbon dioxide day and night. Without “the world’s lungs,” life on the planet is doomed.

Earlier this month, the journal Science published a paper finding that, if world leaders made reforestation a priority, the planet’s ecosystems could accommodate massive numbers of new trees — perhaps hundreds of billions more. True, reforestation advocates would no doubt have to compete with those who would use land for other purposes, particularly as the world population increases. Even so, the paper’s authors note, their work “highlights global tree restoration as our most effective climate change solution to date.”

This is not to say that the fight against global warming is as easy as planting a few, or even billions, of trees, if such a thing were politically or logistically feasible. As long as humans depend on carbon-emitting sources of fuel for energy, the atmosphere’s chemistry will continue to change and the climate will be in peril. But it does suggest that leaders such as Mr. Bolsonaro, who are leading in the opposite direction, can do particularly extreme damage to the effort to restrain climate change.

August 26, 2019 Posted by | Brazil, climate change, environment, politics | Leave a comment

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