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UK’s National Trust says new Sizewell C nuclear power station poses threat to rare birds

Times 27th May 2020, New Sizewell C nuclear power station poses threat to rare birds, says
National Trust. A new nuclear power station planned for the Suffolk coast
would threaten rare wildlife on protected heathland, according to the
National Trust.
It has condemned EDF’s application, expected to be
submitted to the Planning Inspectorate tomorrow, to build twin reactors at
Sizewell in a project that the French state-controlled company says would
supply enough low carbon electricity for six million homes, or 7 per cent
of UK power.
The trust owns Dunwich Heath, 140 acres of lowland heathland
that is one of Britain’s rarest habitats and is home to a breeding
population of endangered stone curlews. It has written to the leaders of
East Suffolk council and Suffolk county council to raise concerns about the
proposed £18 billion plant, which EDF would build with the Chinese nuclear
power company China General Nuclear (CGN). Stop Sizewell C, a local
campaign group, said the power stations “would be an expensive bridge to
nowhere: it will suck vital funds away from the technologies and projects
that are more capable of truly transforming our energy landscape”.
Last month a group of celebrities with homes in the area or links to it,
including the actors Bill Nighy and David Morrissey and the painter Maggi
Hambling, called on the government to step in to delay consideration of the
proposal until the coronavirus restrictions were lifted. Mr Nighy, who used
to live in Theberton with his former partner, the actress Diana Quick,
said: “It is beyond belief that EDF is pressing forward during these
terrible and uncertain times with a project so misguided, and which even
the government’s own advisers find deeply concerning.
“If Sizewell C is allowed to go ahead we will be left with an outdated form of energy that
will not fit to any degree in our new world, and this internationally
famous environment will be desecrated. This is a time to protect our
ecosystems, not shatter them.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-sizewell-c-nuclear-power-station-poses-threat-to-rare-birds-says-national-trust-97vpn059f

May 27, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

Move to prevent dumping of Hinkley radioactive mud on the South Wales coast

WANA, 18 May 2020 As Electricité de France once more plans to dredge contaminated mud from the Severn Estuary near Hinkley Point and dump it on the South Wales coast, the Welsh Anti Nuclear Alliance (WANA) is asking you to help stop them. Political and legal action is the only hope and it’s urgent because the Welsh Government is setting up an “Expert Group”.

The background shows that the Welsh Government believes concerns about the mud are irrational and are driven by “liars and scaremongers” (as the Environment Secretary said in 2018).

In fact, in order to comply with the law, they need to address uncertainties and knowledge gaps and that is why we are recommending selection of members with a wide range of relevant knowledge. Please write to your elected representatives and circulate this widely, bearing in mind that Wales is not the only part of the UK affected. What little information the Welsh Government has issued suggests that announcement of the Expert Group’s membership may be imminent, so please act now. They will not want to look as if they’re backing down later.  https://wanaarticles418353382.wordpress.com/category/hinkley-mud/

May 19, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

Campaigners condemn transport of nuclear weapons from AWE this week during lockdown

Campaigners condemn transport of nuclear weapons from AWE this week during lockdown

By Naomi Herring  @, 15 May 20,   ANTI-NUCLEAR campaigners have criticised the decision to transport nuclear warheads from the south of England to Scotland during the pandemic.A convoy carrying the weapons is understood to have left the Atomic Weapons Establishment site at Burghfield, Berkshire, on Wednesday morning and arrived at the storage facility at the Royal Naval Armaments Depot Coulport in Argyll and Bute that evening.

Nukewatch UK claims the convoy would have involved at least 50 personnel, including a crew change, and said it travelled along the M6 and on the M8 through Glasgow city centre……. https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/18452947.campaigners-condemn-transport-nuclear-weapons-awe-week-lockdown/

May 16, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

wide and growing coalition of real concern about EDF’s Sizewell C nuclear project

East Anglian Daily Times 9th May 2020. NFLA, Cllr David Blackburn Councillors are right, EDF should delay its Sizewell C application. I warmly welcome the joint letter of opposition
councillors on Sizewell County Council calling on the Government to halt
EDF moving forward with a Development Consultation Order for Sizewell C
(EADT, 28th April).

The letter mirrors our own concerns noted last week in
our own letter to the EADT, and that of many parish, town and East Suffolk
District Councillors as well. Democratic discussions have to be put on hold
at the moment as the country deals with the worst public health emergency
in living memory.

It suggests an arrogance and a desperation within EDF to
want to move forward with the Sizewell C development at the moment. The
four rounds of local consultation on EDF’s Sizewell C plans showed a large
level of concern and opposition from across local government, much of which
stating that EDF have not provided adequate information to explain how they
would mitigate many of the harmful environmental effects of the
development. Indeed, all local environmental groups have raised huge
concern on its impact, particularly to the likes of wildlife gems like the
RSPB Minsmere site.

Just today, 60 prominent local people have added
similar concerns in a joint letter to The Times. It is clear there is a
wide and growing coalition of real concern about Sizewell C. EDF should not
just halt the DCO application, it should listen to local opinion and cancel
the project altogether. There is no need for Sizewell C. It is time EDF
listened to its critics and halted it.

https://www.eadt.co.uk/home

May 11, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

“Get the Hell Off”: The Indigenous Fight to Stop a Uranium Mine in the Black Hills

An unidentified member of AIM Native American woman sits with her rifle at ready on steps of building in Wounded Knee, South Dakota, March 2, 1973. Indians still have control of town having seized it on Tuesday. Eleven hostages they had taken were finally released. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Get the Hell Off”: The Indigenous Fight to Stop a Uranium Mine in the Black Hills

Can the Lakota win a “paper war” to save their sacred sites?

Mother Jones,  BY DELILAH FRIEDLER; PHOTOS BY DANNY WILCOX FRAZIER, MARCH/APRIL 2020 ISSUE, Regina Brave remembers the moment the first viral picture of her was taken. It was 1973, and 32-year-old Brave had taken up arms in a standoff between federal marshals and militant Indigenous activists in Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Brave had been assigned to guard a bunker on the front lines and was holding a rifle when a reporter leaped from a car to snap her photo. She remembers thinking that an image of an armed woman would never make the papers—“It was a man’s world,” she says—but the bespectacled Brave, in a peacoat with hair pulled back,   was on front pages across the country the following Sunday……..

Today, Brave and other Lakota elders are staring down yet another encroachment on their historic lands: a 10,600-acre uranium mine proposed to be built in the Black Hills. The Dewey-Burdock mine would suck up as much as 8,500 gallons of groundwater per minute from the Inyan Kara aquifer to extract as much as 10 million pounds of ore in total. Lakota say the project violates both the 1868 US-Lakota treaty and federal environmental laws by failing to take into account the sacred nature of the site. If the mine is built, they say, burial grounds would be destroyed and the region’s waters permanently tainted.
A legal win for the Lakota would represent an unprecedented victory for a tribe over corporations such as Power­tech, the Canadian-owned firm behind Dewey-­Burdock, that have plundered the resource-rich hills. And it could set precedents forcing federal regulators to protect Indigenous sites and take tribes’ claims more seriously. The fight puts the Lakota on a collision course with the Trump administration, which has close ties to energy companies and is doubling down on nuclear power while fast-tracking new permits and slashing environmental protections—even using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to further roll back regulations. All of this makes Black Hills mineral deposits more attractive than they’ve been in decades.
For Brave, the Dewey-Burdock mine is just the latest battle in a long war to stop settlers’ affronts to Lakota lands and sovereignty. “They’re taking so much from [the earth] and not giving anything back,” Brave tells me, a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from her fingers. “I’m thinking we should say to them, ‘Get the hell off. Your rent is over.’”
“……..
When the gold rush petered out, mining companies pivoted to silver, tungsten, iron, and limestone. In 1951, uranium was discovered. Within 20 years, there were more than 150 uranium mines centered on a small boomtown called Edgemont, in Paha Sapa’s southern foothills, where the Oglala once made their winter camp………
The southern foothills are rocky and quiet, but just north, bikers and families in RVs clog the highways to visit abandoned gold mines, old-timey saloons, and the main attraction, Mount Rushmore, which was carved into a sacred mountain known to the Lakota as the Six Grandfathers. “We call it the Shrine of Hypocrisy,” says Tonia Stands, an Oglala Lakota who has been one of Pine Ridge’s most persistent voices against uranium mining.
For decades, Lakota activists have raised alarms about the risks uranium mining poses to their communities. In 1962, radioactive material seeped from a broken dam into the Cheyenne River, upstream from Pine Ridge. Mining ceased in 1973, but the reservation continues to grapple with epidemic levels of birth defects, cancer, and kidney disease. Today, Pine Ridge has the lowest life expectancy of any US county. The rampant health issues help explain why reservation leaders took swift action to stem the spread of coronavirus before they even confirmed their first case.
While no evidence has definitively linked their health problems to mining, many Lakota believe that uranium contamination is partly to blame, and they point to the Environmental Protection Agency’s settlements in response to the effects of mining in the Navajo Nation, which acknowledged links between high levels of uranium in soil and drinking water and cancer, kidney disease, and reproductive issues on the reservation…….
Stands wears her hair in a single black braid reaching all the way down her back. Her grandmother was a “uranium fighter,” as was her late uncle Wilmer Mesteth, who helped found the Oglalas’ Tribal Historic Preservation Office. In 2010, three years after Powertech began the process of licensing Dewey-Burdock, Mesteth and the tribe filed a petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which oversees uranium mine permitting, to stop construction. They argued that the project was moving forward in violation of their sovereign will as well as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the landmark 1970 law requiring federal agencies to document the impacts of all projects they build or license. According to the tribe and local geologists, Powertech failed to collect enough data to prove that the mine would not contaminate groundwater, and did not adequately assess how it would affect sites of cultural importance. …..
Adding a layer of oddity to the whole situation, Powertech is so far a mining company only on paper. It has never produced an ounce of ore and can only keep litigating as long as investors remain convinced that footing its bills will eventually pay off. Powertech anticipates the mine will net about $150 million, yet it says it’s already sunk $10 million into the NRC license, not including litigation or staffing costs. Its parent company, Azarga Uranium, trades as an underregulated penny stock; investment firm Haywood Securities rates its risk factor as “very high.”…..
 today, Powertech is just one of several companies applying to open new mines, anticipating that an administration bent on deregulation, and the appeal of nuclear power as a climate-friendly energy source, could increase profitability……
Trump’s proposed 2021 budget would allocate $150 million to stock a new reserve with domestically mined uranium. The share prices of US mining companies jumped after the report’s release, while factors related to COVID-19 caused the global price of uranium to surge throughout March and April.
Trump has found other ways to boost mining and energy interests in and around reservations and sacred Native sites.  …..
He’s also waging war on the cornerstone of environmental law: …..
Last August, Brave and a dozen tribal members gathered in a hotel ballroom in Rapid City for the latest hearing in their case. The NRC judges, three white men, sat at one end of the room, a photo of Mount Rushmore at their backs. Having lost their claims about environmental harm, the tribe’s lawyers are still trying to convince regulators that the uranium mine would irreparably damage Lakota burial grounds, places of ceremony, and other sacred sites………
Energy and mining companies are treated “like clients instead of regulated entities,” says Jeff Parsons, one of the tribe’s lawyers. The NRC and its permittees “are in absolute lockstep, opposed to citizen and tribal involvement” in a process designed to protect exactly that.
It’s not just the NRC. After the agency rejected the tribe’s environmental arguments, Parsons filed an appeal with the DC Circuit Court. In 2018, the court agreed that the NRC violated the law by licensing Dewey-­Burdock even after its own review panel found “significant deficiency” in the cultural review. But the court declined to vacate the license, citing Powertech’s lament that its stock price “would plummet.”……
After the hearing, Brave and Stands met in a nearby park with the other Lakota who’d driven from Pine Ridge. Sharing their huge pot of stew with homeless people there, most of the group concurred that their case looked strong. But the judges were unmoved: In December, they ruled that the NRC had satisfied NEPA’s requirement to take a “hard look” simply by making a “reasonable effort,” resolving the last objection to the license. “The system is set up to fail our people,” Stands says.
When Brave was just a kid, her grand­father made her memorize the text of the violated 1868 treaty. That came in handy when tribes and the Army Corps of Engineers, which issues permits for projects that cross waterways, were fighting over the Dakota Access pipeline. “When we were at Standing Rock, they said, ‘This is Army Corps of Engineers land.’ And I said, ‘Bullshit. This is treaty territory. The Army Corps of Engineers is not a country and cannot make a treaty with us. We’re sovereign.’”
For the Lakota, sovereignty means the right to determine for themselves what happens on their lands. ……
A shift from merely consulting tribes to making projects contingent on tribes’ involvement and input, a central tenet of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, would represent a monumental change. Under such a policy, the Keystone XL pipeline would likely be blocked by the tribes whose lands it would cross. In 2019, the state of Washington became the first to require the “free, prior, and informed consent” of recognized tribes on any project that “directly and tangibly affects” their people, lands, or sacred sites. In both federal and state supreme courts, tribes are beginning to win more rulings in favor of their long-­forgotten treaty rights…….
A shift from merely consulting tribes to making projects contingent on tribes’ involvement and input, a central tenet of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, would represent a monumental change. Under such a policy, the Keystone XL pipeline would likely be blocked by the tribes whose lands it would cross. In 2019, the state of Washington became the first to require the “free, prior, and informed consent” of recognized tribes on any project that “directly and tangibly affects” their people, lands, or sacred sites. In both federal and state supreme courts, tribes are beginning to win more rulings in favor of their long-­forgotten treaty rights………..

In October, Brave spoke at Magpie Buffalo Organizing’s inaugural “No Uranium in Treaty Territory” summit, which offered a crash course on tribal sovereignty. The activists are closely tracking the various Keystone XL permits, which the Rosebud Sioux Tribe is challenging in court as a treaty vio­lation. As the threat of both uranium and gold mining looms, there’s talk of occupying land in the Black Hills, as the American Indian Movement did in 1981.

For most of her life, Brave hadn’t understood why her grandfather made her memorize the treaty. It didn’t stop the Black Hills gold rush in the 19th century or the uranium boom in the 20th. Nobody knows how many sacred sites were destroyed—but now there’s a chance to protect those that remain……….
 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/05/the-black-hills-are-not-for-sale/

May 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | indigenous issues, opposition to nuclear, Uranium, USA | 4 Comments

Beyond Nuclear opposes Holtec nuclear waste plan: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not above the law

Group Plans To Fight Effort To Build Nuclear Waste Dump In New Mexico   https://www.krwg.org/post/group-plans-fight-effort-build-nuclear-waste-dump-new-mexico

By BEYOND NUCLEAR • APR 28, 2020  Commentary: In an astounding ruling on April 23, 2020, the four-member U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) acknowledged that an application by Holtec International/Eddy-Lea [Counties] Energy Alliance to store a massive quantity of highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico violates federal law – and yet ruled that the unlawful provisions of the license application could be ignored and would not bar approval.

Beyond Nuclear has challenged the NRC’s authority to approve Holtec’s license application because it contemplates that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) may become the owner of the irradiated reactor fuel. The federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) prohibits federal ownership of spent fuel, however, unless and until a federal repository for permanent disposal is operating.

The NRC Commissioners acknowledged that Federal law prohibits federally-sponsored storage of irradiated reactor fuel unless and until a repository for permanent disposal is in operation. Nevertheless the NRC threw out Beyond Nuclear’s legal challenge to the project on the ground that Holtec could be depended on not to implement the unlawful provision if the license were granted.

The Commissioners’ decision affirms an earlier ruling by the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that the storage facility may be licensed despite the illegal license terms contemplating federal ownership of the irradiated fuel. The Licensing Board accepted arguments by Holtec and the NRC’s technical staff that the license containing illegal provisions could be approved as long as it also contained a provision that would allow private ownership of the spent fuel.

Mindy Goldstein, a lawyer for Beyond Nuclear, stated, “the NRC’s decision flagrantly violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits an agency from acting contrary to the law as issued by Congress and signed by the President.” Goldstein also stated that “the Commission lacks a legal or logical basis for its rationale that the illegal provisions could be ignored in favor of other provisions that are legal, or that an illegal license could be issued in ‘hopes’ that the law might change in the future. The APA gives the NRC no excuse to ignore the mandates of federal law.”

Diane Curran, also a lawyer for Beyond Nuclear, said the group will pursue a federal court appeal of the NRC decision. “Our claim is simple,” she declared. “The NRC is not above the law.”

Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear, called the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act “the public’s best protection against an interim storage facility becoming a de facto permanent, national radioactive waste dump at the surface of the Earth.” According to Kamps, “Congress knew, in passing the NWPA, that the only safe long-term strategy for care of irradiated reactor fuel is to place it in a permanent repository for deep geologic isolation.

Congress acted wisely in refusing to allow nuclear reactor licensees to transfer ownership of their irradiated reactor fuel to the DOE until a repository was up and running.  The carefully crafted Nuclear Waste Policy Act thus protects a state like New Mexico from being railroaded by the powerful nuclear industry, its friends in the federal government, and other states looking to off-load their mountain of forever deadly high-level radioactive waste.”

Kamps added: “A deep geologic repository for permanent disposal should meet a long list of stringent criteria. These include legality, environmental justice, consent-based siting, scientific suitability, mitigation of transport risks, regional equity, intergenerational equity, and non-proliferation, including a ban on reprocessing. This is why a coalition of more than a thousand environmental, environmental justice, and public interest organizations, representing all 50 states, have opposed the Yucca Mountain dump targeted at Western Shoshone Indian land in Nevada for 33 years.”

“On behalf of our members and supporters in New Mexico, and across the country along the road, rail, and waterway routes in most states, that would be used to haul the high risk, high-level radioactive waste out West, we will appeal the NRC Commissioners’ bad ruling to the federal court,” Kamps added.

Beyond Nuclear is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization. Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic. The Beyond Nuclear team works with diverse partners and allies to provide the public, government officials, and the media with the critical information necessary to move humanity toward a world beyond nuclear. Beyond Nuclear: 7304 Carroll Avenue, #182, Takoma Park, MD 20912. Info@beyondnuclear.org. www.beyondnuclear.org.

April 30, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

Taiwan environmentalists mark Chernobyl nuclear disaster anniversary, call for renewables not nuclear

Anniversary of Chernobyl sees anti-nuclear appeals. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2020/04/28/2003735431

Two environmental groups issued online statements over the weekend to mark the 34th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on Sunday and call for the abolition of nuclear power in Taiwan.

The government should bolster safety mechanisms at the nation’s nuclear power plants, safely handle nuclear waste and educate the public on the risks of nuclear energy ahead of a referendum next year on whether to resume work on the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, the National Nuclear Abolition Action Platform wrote on Facebook on Saturday.

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, which was caused by an explosion at the plant’s No. 4 reactor during maintenance, resulted in several thousand deaths, and the area around the plant would remain uninhabitable long into the future, it said.

The anniversary of the 1986 disaster should highlight the dangers of using nuclear power, it added.

Taiwan’s three operating nuclear power plants have been in operation for nearly 40 years, the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

“Can the plants still safely operate, or should they be decommissioned? Policies on the plants are a major compromise between power needs and hopes for decommissioning,” it said.

Some people are concerned that the plants could be contaminating the air or the water supply, it added.

Radioactive waste from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan has still not been completely cleaned up, showing that coping with nuclear disasters is beyond human capability, the union said.

The dangers of nuclear power — as evidenced by the atomic bombs used in World War II, and the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters — should not be overlooked in favor of the economy’s demand for power, it said.

The government should focus its efforts on energy transformation and push for the development of renewable energy, it added.

There is a pressing need to combat climate change, but nuclear power is not a viable alternative, the union said.

“There is a cheaper, faster and safer option to reduce carbon emissions, and that is for the government to put all of its effort into energy efficiency and the development of sustainable energy,” it said.

April 28, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, Taiwan | Leave a comment

Piscataway Community Energy Aggregation (PCEA) program DOES NOT INCLUDE NUCLEAR ENERGY

Clearing the Air on the PCEA: Nuclear power NOT included By ANN BASTIAN
April 19, 2020 

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/piscataway/sections/green/articles/clearing-the-air-on-the-pcea-nuclear-power-not-included    The Piscataway Community Energy Aggregation (PCEA) program, just rolled out for township residents, does NOT include nuclear power as one of its “renewable energy” sources.  The referendum voters passed last November required that the PCEA use only Class 1 Renewables: wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and other sustainable sources.

We passed the PCEA in order to move our town and state away from dirty power, from the air pollution of fossil fuels and the radioactive wastes of nuclear power.  Bulk purchasing as a community also gives us cost savings, along the way to addressing the climate crisis.

nd that’s what we’re getting: a win-win.  Residents can access 30% clean electricity by automatically staying in the basic plan, with a savings on their electric bill.  If residents want to “opt UP”, they can choose to go immediately to 50% Class 1 Renewables or to 100% Class 1 Renewables, at reasonable rates.  The whole town will move forward in stages, reaching 100% clean renewables in 2035.  Individual households can also opt out at any time, and businesses can opt in.

Still, there may be some confusion about how the PCEA will work:

1) SOURCING: The energy provider, EnergyHarbor, is a diversified power company, with some nuclear and fossil fuel holdings.  But its PCEA contract with the Township is only for clean energy.

(2) SHADE: The Mayor has always knocked the referendum, which let voters decide town policy, not the insiders.  OK, the people have spoken, 64%-36%, let’s move on.

(3) INFORMATION: The town website, which is hard to navigate for basic information, is nearly impossible to navigate for PCEA facts and options, including the choice to opt out.  We do need to inform ourselves. Here’s an upcoming forum for residents who have questions:

his Wednesday, April 22 at 6 pm: the town’s PCEA administrator, Good Energy LP, is holding an online Q & A session: https://www.tapinto.net/towns/piscataway/events/facebook-live-piscataway-community-energy-aggreg

And Piscataway Progressive Democrats, who endorsed the PCEA referendum, did a special segment explaining the PCEA and your PSE&G bill last Saturday, April 18:

https://www.facebook.com/pwayprogressivedems/?epa=SEARCH_BOX

Let’s celebrate this Earth Day by making Piscataway cleaner and greener! 

 

April 21, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

Formal petition to close Fermi 2 nuclear reactor in Michigan, from coalition of watchdog groups

Watchdog groups file safety concerns on Fermi 2 nuclear reactor, Dave Battagello  Windsor Star  20 Apr 20, A coalition of watchdog groups have filed a formal petition to stop Fermi 2 nuclear reactor in Michigan from further operations, claiming long-required repair work needs to be fully completed in order to avoid a potential “major nuclear accident.”

Groups that include Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan have asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to halt reopening within the next week or so of Fermi 2 — currently shut down for routine scheduled maintenance.

The petition was filed Thursday and requires an NRC review board to make an emergency decision on the application over the next week on whether the groups have valid concerns or that Fermi 2 be allowed to resume operations when its current outage for “refuelling” is completed.

“It is a very high-risk situation,” said Michael Keegan of Don’t Waste Michigan. “It is dangerous since the plant, should it reopen, will be operating in a compromised position. They have got a problem that could be a major nuclear accident.”

A spokesman for DTE, which owns and operates the nuclear generating station, said Sunday that proper maintenance and repairs are being conducted and that the facility is safe.

Thousands of residents in Amherstburg and Boblo Island are among those at greatest risk of a nuclear accident at Fermi — which sits across Lake Erie — but there are also potential health risks for thousands more stretching through LaSalle and into Windsor, as well as Michigan, should a Fermi 2 incident occur.

The petition calls on NRC to take enforcement action to inspect Fermi 2 and make full repairs to what’s known as the “torus,” a donut-type structure at the base of the reactor. …….  https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/watchdog-groups-file-safety-concerns-on-fermi-2-nuclear-reactor/

April 21, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, safety, USA | Leave a comment

Ordinary people can beat the nuclear establishment: it’s been done before

Housewives and Fishmongers Defeat the U.S. Nuclear Establishment  https://allthingsnuclear.org/gkulacki/housewives-and-fishmongers-defeat-the-u-s-nuclear-establishment

GREGORY KULACKI, CHINA PROJECT MANAGER AND SENIOR ANALYST | APRIL 8, 2020  One of the enduring lessons from the COVID-19 crisis may be that simple acts from enough ordinary people can make an enormous difference. We can apply it to other large and seemingly intractable problems. Sixty years ago concerned citizens got together to protect their health by demanding an end to nuclear testing.

It was the height of the McCarthy era. The nuclear arms race was just beginning and opposing it was called un-American. But a crew of Japanese fishermen and a small group of Japanese housewives would change the debate. Their signature campaigns set off a chain reaction of global awareness that eventually led the United States to sign an international agreement banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, under water, and in outer space.

Castle Bravo

On March 1, 1954 the United States tested a nuclear weapon 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The blast over the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands left a crater on the ocean floor 6,500 feet wide and 250 feet deep. Radioactive debris from the blast rained down over a 7,000 square mile area.

This wasn’t the first U.S. nuclear weapon tested in the Marshall Islands—an impoverished nation of scattered coral atolls close to the equator in the central Pacific Ocean—nor would it be the last. Between 1946 and 1958 the United States conducted 67 explosive nuclear weapons tests there.. The United States took control of the islands from Japan during WWII and administered them as part of a Trust Territory of the Pacific under a mandate from the United Nations until 1986.

It’s hard to imagine a more egregious betrayal of that trust. Several hours after the test—code named Castle Bravo—radioactive debris began falling on the unsuspecting inhabitants of the Rongelap atoll 150 km to the east of the crater. Children ran out to play in the snow-like powder that covered the island. Some ate it. The United States waited two days before evacuating the endangered islanders to a safer atoll more than 650km to the southeast.

Lucky dragon

A Japanese fishing boat called the Daigo Fukuryū Maru—the Lucky Dragon No. 5—got caught in a dirty rain of radioactive fallout from the Castle Bravo test. It pelted the fisherman for hours, stuck to their exposed skin and got into their eyes, noses and mouths. By the time they returned to Japan two weeks later their skin was burned, their hair was falling out, and their gums were bleeding. Six months after returning home, Aikichi Kuboyama, the ship’s radio operator, died from his exposure.

The Japanese media was fascinated and appalled by their story, which was reported around the world. Memories of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were revived and amplified. But this time the Japanese public, and people throughout Asia, began to realize the potential danger was not confined to the site of the explosion. They could all become victims of the atomic bomb. Indonesia’s President Suharto put it this way in his opening address to the first ever international conference of the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia in the city of Bandung in April 1955:

“The food that we eat, the water that we drink, yes, even the very air that we breathe can be contaminated by poisons originating from thousands of miles away. And it could be that, even if we ourselves escaped lightly, the unborn generations of our children would bear on their distorted bodies the marks of our failure to control the forces which have been released on the world.”

The Suganami appeal

Japanese fishmongers saw their businesses crippled by widespread public fear of eating “A-bombed tuna.” Five-hundred of them met in Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji Market and decided to launch a signature campaign against atomic and hydrogen bombs. Their efforts inspired the Suganami City Assembly to pass a supportive resolution.

Six months earlier a group of housewives had begun meeting in the newly opened Suganami Community Center to read books and discuss social issues, including the causes of war, with the center’s part-time director, Kaoru Yasui. After the Castle Bravo test, they joined with neighbors to form the Suganami Council and launched an appeal to the people of Japan, and the world, to ban hydrogen bombs.

The housewives, fishmongers and many other groups who collected signatures were not part of an organized movement. They were ordinary people. Within a month, 250,000 had signed. By the end of 1955 it was 20 million. According to some accounts, nearly a third of the population of Japan eventually signed the appeal.

The notoriety of the Japanese campaign, along with increased scientific investigation of the distribution and consequences of radioactive fallout, created global public health concerns and inspired people to press the nuclear weapons states to stop testing. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories were strongly opposed to any agreement on testing. But President Eisenhower joined the Soviets in a testing moratorium in 1958 and negotiations on a treaty began in Geneva. This eventually led to the entry into force the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere as well as underwater and in space.

This year the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago have launched an appeal to ban nuclear weapons. You can do your part to advance the process of nuclear disarmament by lending your signature to the cause.

April 9, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, history, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

277,700 Vietnamese support “Appeal of the Hibakusha ” – call to eliminate nuclear weapons

Over 277,700 signatures collected in Hanoi supporting elimination of nuclear weapons  https://en.vietnamplus.vn/over-277700-signatures-collected-in-hanoi-supporting-elimination-of-nuclear-weapons/171278.vnp  

 Hanoi (VNA) – Over 277,700 signatures have been collected in Hanoi in the first phase of a campaign called “Appeal of the Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors)”, which calls for the elimination of nuclear weapons.  VNA Monday, April 06, 2020

Collected by the Hanoi Union of Friendship Organisations (HUFO), the signatures have been handed over to the Vietnam Peace Committee (VPC), HUFO said on April 6.

According to HUFO Vice President Tran Thi Phuong and Hanoi Peace Committee President Tran Thi Ngoc Thanh, the signatures were collected from people at government offices and residential zones as well as at bus stations and public spaces around Hanoi.

They expect to gain more signatures from students in the capital during subsequent phases, when local schools and universities re-open after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. VPC Secretary General Dong Huy Vuong spoke highly of HUFO and the Hanoi Peace Committee’s contributions to the campaign./.

April 7, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, Vietnam, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 in gaol for 2 years, awaiting sentence for their protest action against nuclear weapons

‘He’s Got Eight Numbers, Just Like Everybody Else’: An Anti-Nuclear Activist Behind Bars, Common Dreams, by  Kathy Kelly  3 Apr 20

Trident nuclear disarmament activist Steve Kelly, a Jesuit priest, begins his third year imprisoned in a county jail as he and his companions await sentencing.  On April 4, 2020, my friend Steve Kelly will begin a third year of imprisonment in Georgia’s Glynn County jail. He turned 70 while in prison, and while he has served multiple prison sentences for protesting nuclear weapons, spending two years in a county jail is unusual even for him. Yet he adamantly urges supporters to focus attention on the nuclear weapons arsenals which he and his companions aim to disarm. “The nukes are not going to go away by themselves,” says Steve.

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 now await sentencing for their action, performed two years ago inside the Kings Bay Trident Submarine base in southern Georgia. They acted in concert with many others who take literally the Scriptural call to “beat swords into plowshares.”  Commenting on their case, Bill Quigley, a member of their legal team, told me “their actions speak louder than  their words and their words are very powerful.” Bill encourages us to remember each of them in our thoughts, prayers, and, hopefully, through our actions. “The legal system is not big enough for the hearts, minds and spirits of these folks,” he adds. “The legal system tries to concentrate all of this down to whether you cut a fence or sprayed some blood.” Bill believes we should instead look at the impending disaster nuclear weapons could cause, and the continuing disaster they do cause by wasting crucially needed resources to potentially destroy the planet.

“You’ve got eight numbers just like everybody else.” Jailers sometimes use this line to subdue or humiliate a prisoner who complains or seems to ask for special treatment. I learned this during a two-month stint in a Missouri county jail, (for planting corn on top of nuclear missile silo sites).

Once inside the prison system, your number is more useful to the Bureau of Prisons than your name, and you grow accustomed to responding when your number is called. The eight numbers help blur personalities and histories……….https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/03/hes-got-eight-numbers-just-everybody-else-anti-nuclear-activist-behind-bars

April 4, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, Legal, opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES | Leave a comment

Protesters call for Capenhurst Urenco nuclear plant to be closed down

Protesters call for Capenhurst nuclear plant to be closed down   https://www.cheshire-live.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/protesters-call-capenhurst-nuclear-plant-17873816  Demonstration held as Urenco celebrated its 50th birthday By

David HolmesChief reporter 6 MAR 2020   

Urenco’s nuclear plant at Capenhurst this week celebrated 50 years since the government-owned international company was founded .

But outside protesters lamented the damage to human health and the environment caused by disasters like Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan.

Close Capenhurst campaigners argued the sector was unsafe from uranium mining to nuclear power production and the transportation and storage of highly radioactive waste.

Concerns have been raised about the Urenco plant itself which enriches uranium for use as fuel in nuclear reactors with the depleted uranium – a low level radioactive and toxic byproduct of the process – stored on site.

Marianne Birkby, an anti-nuclear campaigner from Cumbria, speaking at the small demonstration outside the plant, said: “The start of the nuclear fuel cycle is here and where it ends up is Sellafield in Cumbria and every day, virtually, there’s nuclear waste transported on the roads, rail, sea and nobody wants the waste.

“It’s all very well for Urenco to say ‘enriching the future’ and how fantastic it all is but nobody wants nuclear waste at the end of the day. And nuclear waste is the product of nuclear power.”

Japanese campaigner Kaori Mikata-Pralat read out a statement on behalf of a group pursuing legal action against the Tokyo Electric Power Company over the 2011 Fukushima disaster when a tsunami swamped the plant leading to the release of radioactive contamination.

Explaining that Fukushima had alerted her to the dangers, she told CheshireLive: “I wasn’t quite aware of the scale of the problem of this nuclear industry.”

She has met victims of nuclear accidents, adding: “What they want is this tragedy should not be repeated any where in the world. Fukushima people suffered a lot.”

Kaori said the ocean had also been poisoned. Even nuclear power stations functioning normally affected the eco-system as sea and river water was used to cool the reactors with the hot water put back, harming fish and plant life.

Pointing at the sun, fellow protester Philip Gilligan said: “That nuclear power station up there is supplying the energy. It’s the only nuclear power station we want. So the energy coming to earth could easily be used with zero carbon output and zero nuclear. The problem is we need a bomb. And it’s hidden in statements like ‘energy as cheap as water’ which was current when Sellafield went critical in the ‘70s.”

Urenco highlights the alleged green credentials of nuclear because there are no CO2 emissions during energy generation but the protesters claim the carbon footprint is ‘enormous’ after taking into account uranium mining, transport and the manufacture of thousands of tons of concrete for the installations.

But what of the job losses if plants like Capenhurst, which employs 550 people, were closed? The campaigners argue the Government should reskill the workforce to produce renewable technology like solar panels.

March 6, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, UK, Uranium | Leave a comment

Anti nuclear activists break into France’s Tricastin nuclear station

Reuters 21st Feb 2020. Activists from Greenpeace broke into the Tricastin nuclear power plant in southern France in order to demand its closure, the environmental pressure group said on Friday. “Some 50 Greenpeace activists gained access to several points at the Tricastin nuclear power plant this morning,” said Greenpeace spokeswoman Cecile Genot. “We are protesting and drawing attention to an aging nuclear power plant that is dangerous and should be shut down.” Officials for French state-controlled power group EDF, which runs Tricastin, had no immediate comment on the situation.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-edf-nuclearpower-greenpeace/greenpeace-activists-break-into-edfs-tricastin-nuclear-power-plant-in-france-idUSKBN20F0WB?rpc=401&

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February 22, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Bruce County, Ontario, protest against nuclear waste dump plan

Nuclear tanks, no thanks,’ say Bruce County protesters, Scott MillerVideographer@ScottMillerCTV Contact

https://london.ctvnews.ca/nuclear-tanks-no-thanks-say-bruce-county-protesters-1.4820155 Thursday, February 20, 2020  LONDON, ONT. — About 40 Bruce County residents protested outside Bruce County council chambers in Walkerton this morning.They’re protesting plans to bury Canada’s used nuclear fuel under 1300 acres of farmland north of Teeswater. South Bruce is one of two communities in Canada left in the running to host the country’s high level nuclear waste.

A 1300 acre site just north of Teeswater has been identified as a potential underground site for the multi-billion dollar project, that would house approximately 5.2 million used fuel bundles, that remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization says they’ll pick one site between South Bruce and Ignace, in Northern Ontario, by 2023.

Michelle Stein lives near the proposed site in South Bruce. She organized today’s protest.  “Burying your problems to get them out of site is never the answer. I don’t want this underground mess to be the heritage that I leave for my children and grandchildren.”

Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau is the one bringing forward today’s motion to support DGR’s to store nuclear waste. “There’s an international scientific consensus that the best way to store waste materials from nuclear power production is through passive isolation in a Deep Geological Repository.”

The protest comes as Bruce County council debates a motion to reinforce its support for a permanent solution to the country’s nuclear waste, specifically the Deep Geological Repository model that encases the waste in copper containers, encased in clay “buffer boxes”.

 

February 22, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

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