https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/amazing-uranium-film-festival-in-portugal-2019, Norbert G. Suchanek and Marcia Gomes de Oliveira,
Founder and directors of the Uranium Film Festival
Those who couldn’t make it to the recent International Uranium Film Festival in Portugal have missed an amazing event at a special place where uranium mining started more than a hundred years ago. From September 13th to September 15th the festival was organised in partnership with ATMU (Former Uranium Mine Workers Association) and former uranium miners and their families in the towns Urgeiriça (Nelas), Viseu and Mangualde in the Dão region of central Portugal.
„We thank especially the former surviving uranium miners and their incredible wives for the warm welcome and their enthusiastic commitment for the festival“, said Uranium Film Festival’s executive director Márcia Gomes de Oliveira from Rio de Janeiro. And the President of ATMU added. „The Uranium Film Festival was, in fact, one of the most interesting cultural and scientific initiatives in which we had the privilege to participate. We extend our most sincere congratulations to the festival directors Márcia Gomes de Oliveira and Norbert G. Suchanek for three days of films, debates and remarkable of all, raising awareness.“
“We confess that we did not know some of the cases we were made aware of: the uncertain future of the Utah Ute people in the Grand Canyon; the scandalous case of Palomares, who lived under the shadow of lies for decades; and the living despair of Jadugoda whose inhabitants, the Adivasi, are sacrificed by uranium mining and under the hollow argument of so called development”, write the two observers Catarina Gameiro Minhoto & João Paiva in their final festival report to ATMU.
“Each case is unique, but the reality is the same. Let us quote a phrase from the Wismut movie (Yellow Cake) which said that uranium mining happened under a web of lies, propaganda and lack of information. Same in Palomares, where in 1966 two US planes crashed and four atomic bombs felt from the sky and where even today the United States and the now democratic government of Spain seem to hide the truth behind that accident and its ongoing consequences. We also mention Jadugoda where the situation is dramatic and where the authorities – like the nuclear industry in Brazil (INB) – insist on ignorance. Worse than natural ignorance, is conscious ignorance, based on the lie about the truth. The consequences of this attitude on the part of the authorities are clear: thousands of people suffering from cancer and other diseases; with terrible social conditions; the surroundings of these mines became ecological time bombs.
To our great shock, we have learned by the film that the main reason why the environmental situation is often untreated and the legacies of uranium mining are not rehabilitated is that the end point of nuclear fuel production is extremely costly. And no profit waiting. The big companies or uranium mills do not want to spend money on this last stage. The final price of this insensitivity is paid by the people of the surrounding areas, is paid by the environment, is paid by all of us.”
Catarina Gameiro Minhoto & João Paiva’s comments show that the documentary movies screened have left a lasting impression on the audience in Portugal, especially the four films: YELLOW CAKE. THE DIRT BEHIND URANIUM(link is external) by Joachim Tschirner, BUDA CHORA EM JADUGODA (BUDDHA WEEPS IN JADUGODA)(link is external) by Shri Prakash, HALF LIFE: THE STORY OF AMERICA’S LAST URANIUM MILL (MEIA VIDA: A HISTÓRIA DO ÚLTIMO MOINHO DE URÂNIO DA AMÉRICA)(link is external) by Justin Clifton and OPERACIÓN FLECHA ROTA. ACCIDENTE NUCLEAR EN PALOMARES (BROKEN ARROW. NUCLEAR ACCIDENT IN PALOMARES) by Jose Herrera Plaza. ………https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/amazing-uranium-film-festival-in-portugal-2019
Input from the public included a strong sentiment that this was a very poor storage location for the spent fuel.
Laird went on to say that while there’s already been half a meter of sea level rise, a meter more, which is predicted to occur within 40 years, will fully inundate the generation station, 101 in that area and cause the dry cask storage area to become an island, until it is eroded away.
Notably, PG&E’s Decommissioning Fund will run out in 2025, a mere 5 years from now, the casks the waste are in only have a shelf life of 40 to 50 years, and the half life of the waste in storage in those casks in PG&E’s custody, is 24,000 years.
NUCLEAR WASTE BEING STORED 115 FT FROM HUMBOLDT BAY AS SEA LEVEL RISES
On January 14th, the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA) was signed into law. According to Jurist Legal News and Research website, NEIMA makes several changes to the licensing process for nuclear reactors. The NEIMA gave the NRC less than a year to “develop and implement a staged licensing process for commercial advanced nuclear reactors.” Continue reading
Unfortunately the Fissionline journal has ceased its publishing and has deleted its content. I have saved some important journals and have added links below to the 3 surviving files left in my possession for you to download for free (as evidence of a well funded nuclear cover up).
Within that vast repository of knowledge was information about the British Nuclear Test Veterans campaign for justice because of the health effects on the veterans and their children by the nuclear weapons testing carried out by the UK Government. As well as fighting for justice for these victims, Fissionline also challenged the Ministry of Defense (MoD) and UK nuclear industry for their complicity in covering up the health effects from nuclear reactor disasters such as Fukushima, Chernobyl and Semipalantisk (Soviet Kazakhstan) etc.
Specific to Fukushima Fissionline covered the the most egregious case of the BBC and their Science Media Centre colleagues (Now called Sense About Science after a rebrand because of Journalists, Nuclear Health Physicists, bloggers and others who pushed back against the “charity”/Corporate Lobbyists version of “The right science”) supporting bad science advise and pro military and industry bias.
Fissionline gave Prof. Geraldine (Gerry) Thomas an interview where she made many of her spurious health and safety claims on public broadcasting platforms around the world whilst promoting nuclear energy. This made her one of the prime lobbyists for the nuclear energy and nuclear weapons industries, in fact she was surprisingly appointed as Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to science and public health.[9].
Many nuclear professionals etc, reacted against her incorrect and dangerous advice to the families of Fukushima and the wider world, in a series of official complaints and the BBC had to retract its Fukushima video series (3 videos) of her in Japan discussing Fukushima contamination in set of surreal nuclear marketing propaganda pieces (The BBC did this quietly without even informing the complainants), only one of these videos now exists and is a debunk of one of the videos Goddards Journal on You Tube and I recommend you read the comments on YouTube under the video for a detailed breakdown of the types of reaction from both anti nuclear and pro nuclear experts and activists that all agree she was dreadfully wrong in her calculations and so called expert advice.
In an astounding interview with Dr Keith Baverstock (who worked in the World Health Organisation as a radiological health expert) on Fissionline, we saw that he debunked her claims in a blow by blow during his interview. There were two specific articles in Fissionline issues 44 and 45 (you can download the issues for a limited time on the links) that were evidence to this interaction between the UK MOD “Expert” and ex-WHO expert and his testimony also supported the Complainants to the BBC videos.
The way in which the nuclear and military industries (supported by the various departments secretly working behind the auspices of the UK Home Office) have managed the devastating impact to the nuclear industry from the Fukushima Daichi nuclear disaster in 2011 which has been been impressive in its scope and its costs! At the forefront of this is Prof Geraldine Thomas OBE for the UK and people like Michael Shellenberger for the USA nuclear and military complex.
At the same time as Prof Thomas OBE was receiving her Honours from the Queen of England was she thinking about the fate of her opponent (Prof Chris Busby) at the court case for the British Nuclear Veterans (whose children and grandchildren for another 20 generations would be effected) where she used the same and similar arguments, to argue for the Mod against the victims of the UK`s nuclear testing. These same arguments she used to win the case were challenged by Prof Keith Baverstock in a concise and precise way.
Chris Busby had his house raided in a ridiculous over the top display of the operations of Project Servitor (Home Office Stasi like program) being used to embarrass and frighten Prof Busby with his neighbors and friends as well as the wider public.
He returned home that night to find officers had searched his home laboratory and sealed off his home in Bridge Street.
“They destroyed my experiment. It was most irritating,” he said.
Dr Busby said he felt he was being targeted because of his criticism of the government’s current assessment of radiation risks.
Even though huge funding from the UK Home Office and nuclear industry and massive man power costs by the security and police services etc have failed to save the nuclear industry because of costs, lack of transparency, connection to nuclear weapons, depleted uranium weapons etc, not compatible with climate change energy policies nor compatible with future renewable energy transmission infrastructure. Also, multiple nuclear disasters and costs over runs in building nuclear reactors and dealing with nuclear cleanup and nuclear waste disposal etc.
The only winners are the MoD in saving the cost of having to fully compensate their nuclear victims and TEPCO the Japanese energy company responsible for the Fukushima Nuclear disaster not having to fully compensate the victims of the nuclear meltdown.
In fact TEPCOs CEOs were recently found not guilty (in a surprise decision given the evidence) for their part in the bad governance of their company before , during and after the nuclear disaster. Of course, Prof Thomas OBE got an OBE for helping the UK Mod as well as helping TEPCO and the Japanese Government to reassure everyone (the courts and the media) that everything in Fukushima is just wonderful and dandy. Maybe even the UK Government supported Japans anti disaster marketing #TOKYO2020 Olympics bid? It certainly was a WIn WIn situation in that respect!
Of course many would say that any industry or government would not be able to pull off such a coup right in front of our faces? Its a conspiracy theory and fake news but as we see in the field of climate science, good science can be corrupted by bad science if you have enough money and power and control the narrative. Some excellent evidence for this also exists because of brave whistleblowers, publishers and activists and can be found here
Feel free to download the 2 evidential articles that were removed from the internet as proof of the power of PR marketing and ownership of perception while it is available.
Fissionline Journal 44 Download here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TnKjOkZ4drqsAbRIz9wYR4t9SwWOo5T5/view?usp=sharing
Fissionline Journal 45 Download here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rn0KdyHJp6DJXm0bfpogY_p5yeNQrGiS/view?usp=sharing
Fissionline journal 54 (Chris Busby discusses the British Nuclear Test Veterans in this issue-one of the last issues to be produced) https://drive.google.com/file/d/14VMaRQLvMKlXL-DIuOBoIalYOqhWc43a/view?usp=sharing
From Joseph Goebels:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Posted and exclusive to Nuclear-News.net
Posted by Arclight2011 aka Shaun McGee
Posted on 21st September 2019
[in 1992] Baverstock and his colleagues published a letter on their findings in the scientific journal Nature, in which they concluded, “the consequences to the human thyroid, especially in fetuses and young children, of the carcinogenic effects of radioactive fallout is much greater than previously thought.”
Now, after more than 30 years, U.N.-sponsored researchers have backed away from the 1992 UNSCEAR study by concluding that “studies of clean-up workers/liquidators suggest dose-related increases of thyroid cancer and hematological malignancies in adults,” as well as “increases in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. If confirmed, these would have significant public health and radiation protection implications.”
The United States’ involvement with the Chernobyl aftermath was shaped largely, and shamefully, by the desire to avoid potential legal liabilities associated with the 166 U.S. open-air nuclear weapons tests in Nevada and the Marshall Islands. At the time of the Chernobyl accident, compensation radiation claims for injuries and deaths from bomb testing were looked upon by the nuclear weapons program as a dagger aimed at the heart of U.S. national security.
  Why Government Secrecy Is More Damaging to Public Health Than Nuclear Fallout https://washingtonspectator.org/alvarez-nuclear-fallout/?fbclid=IwAR3GipEEqcUnFhvI7hEcKW8_aLhv-ZHGd3JVtLACnjQETGjnZktuXMvaDCU September 11, 2019, By Robert Alvarez Much has been written about the strengths and flaws of Chernobyl—the HBO miniseries nominated for 19 Emmys that chronicles the catastrophe at the eponymous Russian nuclear power plant in 1986. In the mind of this reviewer, it’s a riveting if sobering television gem, and highly recommended. And to this newly enlivened debate over nuclear power we can now add Kate Brown’s book, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, a tour de force about the radiological aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. A science historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown peels away the layers of long-held mythologies—that in the end, the accident only killed 54 people, and that “radiation phobia” among the people who sustained heavy radioactive fallout was a bigger problem than any of the other health outcomes. Brown, who is conversant in Russian, devoted years to extensive archival research (much of which was scattered and hidden from official attempts at confiscation). She conducted interviews with villagers, military officials, factory workers, medical doctors, Soviet nuclear experts, emergency responders, KGB operatives (who assumed control over much of the data from the accident), and international nuclear safety and radiation health experts. The result is a rich and deeply disturbing picture of the environmental perils of extensive and lasting nuclear contamination. She digs prodigiously, much to the disfavor of defenders of nuclear power, into the widespread practice of secrecy and deception regarding the radiological harm from elevated, long-term, chronic exposures. Continue reading |
Getting Julian Assange The Guardian also appears to have been engaged in a campaign against the WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who had been a collaborator during the early WikiLeaks revelations in 2010.
It seems likely this was innuendo being fed to The Observer by an intelligence-linked individual to promote disinformation to undermine Assange.
In 2018, however, The Guardian’s attempted vilification of Assange was significantly stepped up. A new string of articles began on 18 May 2018 with one alleging Assange’s “long-standing relationship with RT”, the Russian state broadcaster. The series, which has been closely documented elsewhere, lasted for several months, consistently alleging with little or the most minimal circumstantial evidence that Assange had ties to Russia or the Kremlin.
How the UK Security Services neutralised the country’s leading liberal newspaper. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-09-11-how-the-uk-security-services-neutralised-the-countrys-leading-liberal-newspaper/ By Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis• 11 September 2019, The Guardian, Britain’s leading liberal newspaper with a global reputation for independent and critical journalism, has been successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the ‘security state’, according to newly released documents and evidence from former and current Guardian journalists.
The UK security services targeted The Guardian after the newspaper started publishing the contents of secret US government documents leaked by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in June 2013.
Snowden’s bombshell revelations continued for months and were the largest-ever leak of classified material covering the NSA and its UK equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters. They revealed programmes of mass surveillance operated by both agencies.
According to minutes of meetings of the UK’s Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, the revelations caused alarm in the British security services and Ministry of Defence. Continue reading
All around the world, Assange’s treatment seems to have given the green light to governments to intimidate and hassle journalists. Australian police, for instance, recently conducted a raid on journalist Annika Smethurst’s home. Smethurst had not long before that revealed that the Government had been secretly requesting permission to spy on its own citizens.
He must not be extradited’ – Vivienne Westwood on Julian Assange
The media blackout on Julian Assange’s imprisonment https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/the-media-blackout-on-julian-assanges-imprisonment,13094 By Mint Press News | 11 September 2019, The same media that has spent years dragging Assange’s name through the mud is now engaging in a blackout on his treatment.
If you are waiting for corporate media pundits to defend freedom of the press, you’re going to be disappointed.
The role of journalism in a democracy is publishing information that holds the powerful to account — the kind of information that empowers the public to become more engaged citizens in their communities so that we can vote in representatives that work in the interest of “we the people.”
There is perhaps no better example of watchdog journalism that holds the powerful to account and exposes their corruption than that of WikiLeaks, which exposed to the world evidence of widespread war crimes the U.S. military was committing in Iraq, including the killing of two Reuters journalists; showed that the U.S. Government and large corporations were using private intelligence agencies to spy on activists and protesters; and revealed how the military hid tortured Guantanamo Bay prisoners from Red Cross inspectors.
It’s this kind of real journalism that America’s First Amendment was meant to protect but engaging in it has instead made WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange the target of a massive smear campaign for the last several years — including false claims that Assange is working with Vladimir Putin and the Russians and hackers, as well as open calls by corporate media pundits for him to be assassinated.
The allegations that Assange conspired with Putin to undermine the 2016 Election and American democracy as a whole fell completely flat earlier this month when a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed this case as ‘factually implausible’, with the judge noting that at no point does the prosecution’s ‘threadbare’ argument show ‘any facts’ at all, and concluding that the idea that Assange conspired with Russia against the Democratic Party or America is ‘entirely divorced from the facts’.
Perhaps the brazen character assassination was priming the public to become apathetic towards Assange in preparation for his brutal fate, which would land him in the hands of U.S. and British authorities after spending years isolated inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Today, Assange sits behind bars in a London prison under shocking conditions even a murderer wouldn’t expect. Renowned filmmaker and journalist John Pilger visited him there and fears for Assange’s life, noting he is held in isolation, heavily medicated and denied the basic tools needed to fight his charge of extradition to the United States.
The United Nations has consistently condemned the actions of the U.S., U.K. and Swedish governments, and called for Assange’s immediate release.
Their special rapporteur on torture and ill-treatment visited him in May, declaring:
[Assange has been] deliberately exposed, for a period of several years, to progressively [more] severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture …The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now.
On May 23, Assange was charged under the U.S. Espionage Act for the possession and dissemination of classified information given to him by army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, marking the first time the Espionage Act has been used against a journalist for publishing classified information.
He now faces a sentence of 175 years in gaol if found guilty.
But you may not have known any of this because it seems clear the very media that spent years dragging Assange’s name through the mud are deliberately engaging in a media blackout on his treatment. So if you were waiting for the corporate media or their lapdog pundits to defend freedom of the press and freedom of speech, you’d be disappointed.
It is important to ask ourselves what Julian Assange’s real crime is. In an era, dubbed the “Information Age”, where the strategy of the powerful appears to be to know as much as possible about the rest of us while ensuring that we know as little as possible about them and how they operate, Assange worked to prevent that imbalance from becoming a rout and stuck like a bone in the throat of the mighty.
A double chorus of voices across the mainstream media spectrum cheered the destruction of the First Amendment. The New York Times applauded Trump, claiming he’d ‘done well’ to charge Assange with an ‘indisputable crime’. CNN demanded that Assange finally “face justice,” while others claimed the day in court of the “narcissistic” “internet troll” who attacked America with his “vile spite” was “long overdue“.
All around the world, Assange’s treatment seems to have given the green light to governments to intimidate and hassle journalists. Australian police, for instance, recently conducted a raid on journalist Annika Smethurst’s home. Smethurst had not long before that revealed that the Government had been secretly requesting permission to spy on its own citizens. Meanwhile, independent media everywhere are being marginalised by the crackdown on internet freedom.
In a clear sign to the world, Assange held up Gore Vidal’s book The History of the National Security State to the cameras while being dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy. The book warns of an increasingly powerful and unaccountable authoritarian government taking over the country.
Part of that is silencing dissent and limiting or destroying the freedoms centuries of struggle have won us.
If Assange is successfully prosecuted it will send a message to the world that the era of freedom to speak and publish is well and truly over. He will not be the last to be persecuted. The more a power oppresses and takes away rights, the more it needs to oppress and take away rights, until the last vestiges of opposition are destroyed or driven far underground.
We cannot expect corporate media to stand up to the corporate state. We have to do it ourselves, or any citizen of the world can be next. Will you heed this warning?
Mnar Muhawesh is founder, CEO and editor in chief of MintPress News, and is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism, sexism, neo-conservativism within the media and journalism start-ups.
This article was originally published by MintPress News and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.
Today, in further flagrant and conscious censorship, no British, Australian or American newspaper is carrying a report on Waters’ initiative and the rally.
Roger Waters and John Pilger make powerful defence of Julian Assange in London, WSWS 3 September 2019
Up to 1,000 people gathered last night in central London to hear internationally acclaimed musician Roger Waters deliver a musical tribute to imprisoned WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange.
Performing outside the UK Home Office, just miles from Belmarsh Prison where Assange is being held as a Category A prisoner, Waters sang Pink Floyd’s iconic song “Wish You Were Here.” He was accompanied by guitarist Andrew Fairweather Low.
Supporters filled the forecourt and pavement on both sides of Marsham Street, many carrying banners and placards demanding Assange’s freedom and the release of imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Spontaneous chants rang out, “Free, Free Julian Assange!” and “There’s only one decision: No extradition!”
John Pilger, a veteran filmmaker and investigative journalist and a personal friend of Assange, opened the event with an impassioned speech. Pointing in the direction of the Home Office, Pilger told the crowd: “The behaviour of the British government towards Julian Assange is a disgrace. A profanity on the very notion of human rights. It’s no exaggeration to say that the treatment and persecution of Julian Assange is the way that dictatorships treat a political prisoner.”
John Pilger, a veteran filmmaker and investigative journalist and a personal friend of Assange, opened the event with an impassioned speech. Pointing in the direction of the Home Office, Pilger told the crowd: “The behaviour of the British government towards Julian Assange is a disgrace. A profanity on the very notion of human rights. It’s no exaggeration to say that the treatment and persecution of Julian Assange is the way that dictatorships treat a political prisoner.”………
Pilger warned that Assange’s condition was a matter of grave concern. “I worry a great deal about him if he spends many months in Belmarsh,” he said. “The regime there is imposing a kind of isolation on him that is deeply psychologically wounding. He’s in a small cell in the hospital ward. They seem not to know what to do with him. Of course, what they should be doing is letting him out. He certainly should not be in a maximum-security prison.”…….
Underscoring the point made by Kristinn Hrafnsson about the mainstream media, no major British television station reported on the event on their evening news broadcasts. Today, in further flagrant and conscious censorship, no British, Australian or American newspaper is carrying a report on Waters’ initiative and the rally.
Via social media and publications such as the WSWS, however, reports and video of Waters’ performance, Pilgers’ speech and the statements of Gabriel Shipton are circulating widely and will be viewed by hundreds of thousands of people internationally over the coming days.
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Aaron Patrick, senior correspondent with the Australian Financial Review (AFR), is the latest journalist to enter the nuclear culture wars with some propaganda that’s indistinguishable from that served up in the Murdoch tabloids. There’s lots of misinformation in Patrick’s articles. For example he uncritically promotes a dopey Industry Super Australia report, described by RenewEconomy editor Giles Parkinson as “one of the most inept analyses of the energy industry that has been produced in Australia”. (I’ve asked the authors of the Industry Super report if they intend to withdraw or amend it. No response.) The focus here ‒ and the focus of Patrick’s recent articles ‒ is on small modular reactors (SMRs), which he describes as new, small, safe, cheap and exciting (and he continues to make such claims even as I continue to feed him with evidence suggesting alternative SMR adjectives … non-existent, overhyped, obscenely expensive). Some history is useful in assessing Patrick’s claims. There’s a long history of small reactors being used for naval propulsion, but every effort to develop land-based SMRs has ended in tears. Academic M.V. Ramana concludes an analysis of the history of SMRs thus: “Sadly, the nuclear industry continues to practice selective remembrance and to push ideas that haven’t worked. Once again, we see history repeating itself in today’s claims for small reactors ‒ that the demand will be large, that they will be cheap and quick to construct. “But nothing in the history of small nuclear reactors suggests that they would be more economical than full-size ones. In fact, the record is pretty clear: Without exception, small reactors cost too much for the little electricity they produced, the result of both their low output and their poor performance. … “Worse, attempts to make them cheaper might end up exacerbating nuclear power’s other problems: production of long-lived radioactive waste, linkage with nuclear weapons, and the occasional catastrophic accident.” Patrick quotes an SMR company representative saying that SMRs have been “researched and developed for the best part of 50 years”. Fine … but surely AFR readers ought to be informed that every single attempt to commercialise SMRs over the past 50 years has failed. According to the Coalition’s energy spokesperson (p.34), “new-generation reactors with maximum safety features are now coming into use”. That was 30 years ago, and the spokesperson was Peter McGauran. A wave of enthusiasm for SMRs came and went without a single SMR being built anywhere in the world, and there’s no reason to believe the current wave of enthusiasm will be more fruitful. Diseconomies of scaleInterest in SMRs derives primarily from what they are not: large reactor projects which have been prone to catastrophic cost overruns and delays. Cost estimates for all reactors under construction in western Europe and north America range from A$17.5 billion to A$24 billion, and the twin-reactor V.C. Summer project in South Carolina was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least A$13 billion, forcing Westinghouse into bankruptcy and almost bankrupting its parent company Toshiba. But SMRs will cost more (per megawatt and megawatt-hour) because of diseconomies of scale: a 250MW SMR will generate 25 per cent as much power as a 1,000MW reactor, but it will require more than 25 per cent of the material inputs and staffing, and a number of other costs including waste management and decommissioning will be proportionally higher. So the nuclear industry’s solution to its wildly expensive and hopelessly uncompetitive large reactors is to offer up even-more-expensive reactors. Brilliant. Small wonder that nuclear lobbyists are lamenting the industry’s crisis and pondering what if anything might be salvaged from the “ashes of today’s dying industry“. Aaron Patrick claims in the AFR that SMRs are “likely” to be installed in North America and Europe. No, they aren’t. William Von Hoene, senior vice-president at Exelon ‒ the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the US ‒ said last year: “Right now, the costs on the SMRs, in part because of the size and in part because of the security that’s associated with any nuclear plant, are prohibitive.” The prevailing scepticism is evident in a 2017 Lloyd’s Register report based on the insights of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers. They predict that SMRs have a “low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive”. Likewise, American Nuclear Society consultant Will Davis said in 2014 that the SMR “universe [is] rife with press releases, but devoid of new concrete.” And a 2014 report produced by Nuclear Energy Insider, drawing on interviews with more than 50 “leading specialists and decision makers”, noted a “pervasive sense of pessimism” resulting from abandoned and scaled-back SMR programs. Independent economic assessmentsSMRs are “leading the way in cost” according to Tania Constable from the Minerals Council of Australia. NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro claims that SMRs “are becoming very affordable”. But every independent economic assessment finds that electricity from SMRs will be more expensive than that from large reactors. A study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff prepared for the 2015/16 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission estimated costs of US$127‒130 per megawatt-hour (MWh) for large reactors, compared to US$140‒159 for SMRs. The Royal Commission’s final report identified numerous hurdles and uncertainties facing SMRs. A December 2018 report by CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator concluded that “solar and wind generation technologies are currently the lowest-cost ways to generate electricity for Australia, compared to any other new-build technology.” It found that electricity from SMRs would be more than twice as expensive as that from wind or solar power with storage costs included (two hours of battery storage or six hours of pumped hydro storage). A report by the consultancy firm Atkins for the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found that electricity from the first SMR in the UK would be 30 percent more expensive than that from large reactors, because of diseconomies of scale and the costs of deploying first-of-a-kind technology. A 2015 report by the International Energy Agency and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency predicted that electricity from SMRs will be 50−100 percent more expensive than that from large reactors, although it holds out some hope that large-volume factory production could reduce costs. An article by four pro-nuclear researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy, published in 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, considered options for the development of an SMR industry in the US. They concluded that it would not be viable unless the industry received “several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies” over the next several decades. That’s billion with a ‘b’: several hundred billion dollars.
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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
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.
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Spinning conspiracy theories won’t help us prevent another Chernobyl,Guardian,
Despite the TV show and the author’s landmark book, the truth about Chernobyl is still contested |
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CN LIVE! Mark Davis Wikileaks Revelations
While the Internet was meant to democratise the transmission of information we see a few giant technology companies, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have near total control of what is seen and shared.
The situation is even worse in Australia with two or three media companies and the same technology giants having control. And the Government of Australia has granted them ever wider market access to extend their monopolies.
Slowly, instance by instance, the malicious and deceitful smears of Julian Assange’s character have been exposed for what they are; an effort to destroy trust in a system of anonymous leaking that will educate everyone.
WikiLeaks’ threat to the powerful was recognised and every effort was, and is, being made to criminalise anonymous leaking, which would be akin to criminalising Gutenberg’s printing press, but there is not much chance this criminalisation will succeed.
It’s time to bring Julian Assange home. Torturing and punishing him has never been legitimate and serves absolutely no purpose.
Media dead silent as Wikileaks insider explodes the myths around Julian Assange, Michael West, by Greg Bean — 16 August 2019 – It is the journalists from The Guardian and New York Times who should be in jail, not Julian Assange, said Mark Davis last week. The veteran Australian investigative journalist, who has been intimately involved in the Wikileaks drama, has turned the Assange narrative on its head. The smears are falling away. The mainstream media, which has so ruthlessly made Julian Assange a scapegoat, is silent in response.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the cutting room floor https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-on-the-cutting-room-floor/ By Thomas Gaulkin, August 5, 2019 Seventy-four years after nuclear weapons were first and last used in war, it can be challenging to conceive of the devastation they cause. But even in the immediate months after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, news accounts offered a view of ingenuity and destruction that often elided the human cost.
The newsreels below [on original] were mainly screened to audiences in 1946 and 1947 and detail the destructive force of the explosions almost entirely through excited accounts of the structural damage to the cities. There’s occasional mention of the lost city populations and the scientific knowledge to be gained from studying their casualties, but hardly any description of what people actually suffered, let alone personal accounts. It’s instructive to look at and listen to these reports today, and contemplate what is missing.
The 12-minute reel below was produced by the US War Department in 1946. “Tale of Two Cities” makes selective use of film that was confiscated from a Japanese filmmaker, Akira Iwasaki—though you wouldn’t know that from the narration, which boasts that “army cameramen have found and filmed pictorial evidence that tells in twisted steel and stone the effect of death-dealing atomic power.” (Some twenty years later, historian Eric Barnouw obtained more of Iwasaki’s footage and produced a remarkably different narrative that documented the horrible physical impact of the attacks on Hiroshima’s citizens.)
Contrasted with the triumphant tone of the news/propaganda made for 1940s audiences, silence changes everything. Made public only decades later, the two films below —one beginning with footage of wounded victims, the other, a full-color glimpse of survivors picking up the pieces of the ruined city—report what those above do not, without a single word.
Nagasaki And Hiroshima (1945)
Harrowing Accounts from Hiroshima Survivors
Adani protest: French journalists arrested while filming anti-coal activities, Guardian
Journalists charged with trespassing after filming Frontline Action on Coal activists include Hugo Clément, Ben Smee@BenSmee, Mon 22 Jul 2019 Four journalists working for the public television network France 2 have been charged with trespassing for filming a protest near the Abbot Point coal terminal, in north Queensland, targeting the operations of the Adani group.
I watched the “Chernobyl” miniseries, and I was struck by the accuracy. The scene on the roof of the reactor as depicted in the fictional episode, was accurate in so much detail, compared to the 1986 real film.
The Soviet film maker who filmed his own death at Chernobyl https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/the-soviet-film-maker-who-filmed-his-own-death-at-chernobyl/news-story/b06e971263baff167fdeab00061d9e9c
There were many who risked their lives after the Chernobyl disaster — but none more so than a man desperate to show the world what happened, LJ Charleston, 21 July 19 When Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko took his camera onto the roof of Chernobyl’s reactor four in the aftermath of the fatal explosion, he had no idea he was right in the middle of what was — in April 1986 — the most dangerous place on earth.
He also had no idea that his chilling documentary Chernobyl: Chronicle of Difficult Weeks, about the clean-up of the radioactive material at Chernobyl, would be his very last.
He died of acute radiation sickness a year later.
The award-winning film director, who was working for Ukrainian TV at the time, was said to have been quite unaware of the dangers he was putting himself in when he agreed to film from the roof next to reactor four.
He’d been hired to film in the exclusion zone. But his gravest error was agreeing — along with two assistants — to climb up to the most lethal area of all, just days after one of the worst man-made disasters of all time.
Even 33 years after the explosion, Shevchenko’s film is still an eerie reminder of the sacrifices made by those who risked their lives in the clean-up efforts at Chernobyl.
Today, as the world focuses once again on those events due to HBO’s series Chernobyl, it’s worthwhile putting the spotlight on the courageous Shevchenko.
He gave his life so that we could see with our own eyes what went on during the clean-up. It was, at times, incredibly basic and put so many lives at risk.
And, by doing so, Shevchenko was unknowingly filming his own death……
Shevchenko, who was the first and only film maker allowed on location in the exclusion zone of Chernobyl, is best known for Chernobyl — Chronicle of Difficult Weeks. You can watch the full cut of his film here.
The film is entirely in Russian, although it’s believed people are currently working on English subtitles. It includes interviews with beleaguered scientist Valery Legasov, now famous due to the HBO series in which he’s played by Jared Harris.
Legasov committed suicide two years after the disaster, on the anniversary, due to the horror of his experiences and the lies he had to tell the International Atomic Agency in Vienna to cover up Soviet mishandling of the event.
Shevchenko’s footage of Chernobyl has not been widely seen and the fact he lost his life a year after the explosion has been completely obscured, as his name isn’t listed on official records of deaths. At the time, his two assistants were receiving hospital treatment, but there is no word of what became of them.
Sydney archaeologist Mr Robert Maxwell, the only archaeologist who has worked in Chernobyl across two field excursions, told news.com.au Shevchenko was well-respected and trusted to film the clean-up efforts, as it was such a highly sensitive time for the Soviets.
“He was granted permission to film the clean-up, including the incredibly dangerous work of the ‘biobots’,” Mr Maxwell said, referring to the name given to the workers sent in to clean up……..
THE ‘BIOBOT FOOTAGE’
One of the most memorable and unbelievable scenes in the TV series Chernobylfeatures liquidation workers on the roof, using shovels to throw highly radioactive material back into the core.
If it wasn’t for Shevchenko’s 1986 footage, we would not know that this happened. The men could only work in frantic 90 second shifts; any longer and their exposure to the radiation would be fatal.
What makes the footage so compelling is that we can clearly see some men picking up the radioactive graphite with gloved hands. We also see Shevchenko filming from the roof top, wearing only a flimsy mask and cap for protection. Then we can see how badly damaged the footage is as the radiation makes an impact on the film itself.
It’s harrowing to see how much work the men are doing with their hands.
This is Shevchenko’s footage focusing on the rooftop clean-up.
Chernobyl. Cleaning the roofs. Soldiers (reservists). 1986.
Critics Accuse Russia of Covering Up Nuclear Sub Fire, Compare to Chernobyl. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/03/critics-accuse-russia-of-covering-up-nuclear-sub-fire-compare-to-chernobyl-a66267 3 July 19 Russian commentators have challenged officials for not releasing full details about an accident on board a military submarine that killed 14 sailors.
The incident took place on Monday, according to the Defense Ministry, but was not officially disclosed until late on Tuesday. Nearly two days on, there was still no word on whether the submarine was nuclear-powered.
Some Russian media accused officials of starving the public of details and drew parallels with the dearth of official information during the meltdown of a Soviet nuclear reactor in Chernobyl in 1986.
The type of vessel was not specified by the ministry and there were few details of the circumstances beyond the fact that it had been in Russian territorial waters and the fire had been extinguished.
“Absolutely nothing is known at the moment — who, what… I don’t understand one thing: why did a day go by and only then did they make the statement about the deceased?” said Yevgeny Buntman, an anchor for the Ekho Moskvy radio station. “Why don’t we know their names? Is this normal?”
The Bell, a news site often critical of the government, wrote: “Nearly a day without information about the accident in a nuclear facility and the need to look out for Norwegian statements about the level of radiation should have given a shudder to those who remember the Chernobyl nuclear power station.”
Secret sub Norway’s authorities said on Tuesday they had not detected any abnormal radiation.
Asked on Wednesday if the vessel had a nuclear reactor on board, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov referred the question to the Defense Ministry.
He told reporters in a conference call that details of the submarine were classified, but that information had been provided in good time. Several hours before the official statement, blogger Yevgeny Karpov reported a fire on a vessel belonging to the Northern Fleet, but he then took down the report at the fleet’s request, he told the Meduza news site.
The fire is one of the deadliest submarine accidents since August 2000, when the nuclear-powered Kursk sank to the floor of Barents Sea, killing all 118 men aboard.
Authorities then, and in particular President Vladimir Putin, who was at the beginning of now almost two decades as president or prime minister, came under fire for their slow response and shortcomings in the rescue operation.
23 April – WEBINAR – Why new nuclear reactors are the wrong tools for decarbonization Thursday, April 23 • 1 AM – 2 AM AEST
World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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