Ohio Community Faces Cancer Crisis from Radioactive Contamination
PIKETON, OH – A growing health crisis in Pike County, Ohio, has brought national attention to a region plagued by some of the highest cancer rates and premature death rates in the country. Decades of uranium enrichment and ongoing demolition at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant are now being linked to the troubling health trends impacting this community and six surrounding counties.
A recent study by Joseph J. Mangano, epidemiologist and executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project, paints a stark picture of the consequences of radioactive contamination in Pike County. Released last summer, the study highlights significant increases in cancer, infant mortality, and premature death rates in communities located downwind of the former uranium enrichment plant.
Cancer Rates and Premature Deaths
The numbers are alarming. Between 2021 and 2023, Pike County’s premature death rate for individuals under 74 years old was 107% higher than the national average, a sharp rise from 85% above the national average between 2017 and 2020. Over 750 premature deaths occurred during this period in a county with a population of just over 27,000.
Cancer rates in Pike County and six neighboring counties—Adams, Gallia, Jackson, Lawrence, Scioto, and Vinton—were 17.5% above the national average between 2015 and 2019. Infant mortality rates in the region were also 31.9% higher than the U.S. average between 1999 and 2020, and middle-aged adults saw mortality rates more than double the national average.
A School at the Center of Controversy
In 2019, concerns about radioactive contamination reached a tipping point when Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon was permanently closed after radioactive isotopes, including enriched uranium and neptunium-237, were discovered inside the building. The school, located just a few miles from the Portsmouth plant, became a symbol of the community’s struggle with the health impacts of the site. Over the years, several students and staff members at Zahn’s succumbed to rare cancers, further heightening concerns.
Recently, the school district sold the building to a Christian ministry, which plans to reopen it as a STEM academy. While the sale marks a new chapter for the facility, it has reignited fears about whether the site is truly safe, given the radioactive materials previously found within its walls.
Radioactive Contamination and Ongoing Demolition
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, operational from 1954 to 2001, enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors, releasing radioactive particles such as Americium-241, Plutonium-238, and Uranium-235 into the environment. These isotopes, which remain hazardous for thousands of years, have contaminated the air, water, and soil in the surrounding area.
Although uranium enrichment operations ceased in 2001, the plant remains active with demolition and decommissioning projects. Experts have raised concerns that open-air demolition of contaminated buildings is releasing additional radioactive particles into the environment. Critics argue that the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) air monitoring, which detects only “background” levels of radiation, fails to capture the full extent of the contamination.
Community Devastation
The impact on the community has been profound. Families across Pike County and neighboring areas have experienced unusually high rates of rare cancers and aggressive diseases, particularly among children and young adults. Many residents believe these illnesses are tied to decades of exposure to radioactive materials released by the plant.
The closure of Zahn’s Corner Middle School and the deaths of students and staff members have become a grim reminder of the broader crisis affecting the region. Parents and advocates continue to demand answers about the plant’s role in the contamination and the steps being taken to ensure the safety of current and future generations.
A Call for Accountability
Despite mounting evidence of health risks, the DOE has proposed new projects at the Portsmouth site, including uranium purification and experimental reactors. These plans have fueled further concerns among residents, who argue that additional activities could exacerbate the environmental and health challenges they already face.
Advocates and researchers are calling for independent investigations into the health impacts of the Portsmouth plant and comprehensive public health monitoring for affected communities. Many argue that stricter oversight is urgently needed to prevent further harm.
A Community Demanding Justice
The study by Mangano highlights the devastating and long-lasting effects of radioactive contamination in Pike County. The ongoing health crisis, coupled with incidents like the closure of Zahn’s Corner Middle School, underscores the urgent need for accountability and meaningful action to address the region’s toxic legacy. For residents of Pike County and surrounding areas, the fight for answers—and justice—continues.
The Atlas Network has eugenicist roots
January 8, 2025 Lucy Hamilton, https://theaimn.net/the-atlas-network-has-eugenicist-roots/
We don’t expect the free market’s ad men to understand their movement’s deep integration with eugenicist ideas. It is worth knowing that fact, however much they will deny the relevance of their origin stories.
Peter Kurti, of the Atlas Network’s Centre for Independent Studies, wrote an opinion piece for The Australian recently called “Citizenship based on rights can’t replace the glue of civil society.” There he posits “social cohesion” as more important than rights. He blames “multiculturalism” for the reluctance of Australians to volunteer. These are baseless tropes common to the Atlas Network, and also to Viktor Orbán’s junktank space where Kurti is a feature.
British investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed has just published a book tracking the tight integration of the same American eugenics movement that fed the Nazi death camps into the “science” of free market economics. The integration of “former” Nazis and fellow travellers into the movement around libertarianism is made quite clear in his account. The same donors that fund the Atlas Network also funded the “science” of class and racial difference.
It is not surprising that a movement designed to serve the rich should emerge out of racist beliefs. The upper classes of the early 20th century tended to be eugenicist and many supported the Nazis. The 19th century Social Darwinist idea that success, in society or business, reflected genetic fitness never went away.
The Mont Pelerin Society (that later birthed the Atlas Network to act as the self-replicating advertising agency for its oligarch donors’ policy goals) was established in 1947 to fight the threat of communism. Property had to be protected from the masses. Keynesian government involvement in the market and society was just another form of theft for these economist-servants of the upper echelons.
At the same time, Ahmed explains, the proto-CIA was integrating former Nazi spies into the Western intelligence gathering circuit where they fostered anti-Soviet hysteria for their own purposes. William Casey was one of the key OSS figures in that era and later director of the CIA under Reagan.
Casey also worked with the creator of the Atlas Network Sir Antony Fisher, co-founding together Fisher’s first American junktank, the Manhattan Institute.(1)
Race, empire and capitalism have deeply intertwined roots. Part of the monumental global violence of the Cold War involved empires and capitalist forces rejecting the colonised people’s demand for freedom. One of the Atlas Network’s roles has been to deploy disgruntled local elites to foster a more convenient definition of “freedom” that protects the local (lighter skinned) aristocracy’s property, alongside the (foreign) corporations’ investments and profits.
The Cold War struggle against redistribution came to demarcate the “communist” enemy in any group that wanted equal rights. Old racisms were recast as factual detection of communist subversion. The Civil Rights movement was depicted by the propagandists entrenching privilege as a communist threat.
Many amongst the moneyed class in America belonged to the notorious John Birch Society through the 1950s into the 70s. Charles Koch, one of the key Atlas Network donors and strategists later in the century bought a lifetime membership. His father had been a founding member. Birch was an hysterical conspiracist organisation that fought communism but was also explicitly racist.
So the fact that key Atlas donors like the Mellon-Scaifes, Bradleys and Olins were also funding research to establish that “science” could shore up the Evolutionary Ladder is not surprising. They wanted the proof that Black people were genetically inferior.
It had the adjunct benefit of establishing that the White working class was inferior also.
Atlas junktanks and Rupert Murdoch, who was a junktank director at Atlas’s Cato Institute in the 90s, fostered the career and disseminated the writing of figures like Charles Murray who gave them the (discredited) science to fight “welfare.” There was no value in helping the poor, of any skin colour, if they were genetically trapped in their suffering.
Many of the same donors funded the transition of the race biology industry into the Islamophobia industry after 9/11. They needed a new enemy, now that Russia was White and Christian again. Creating a sense that there was an integral “clash of civilisations” with the Islamic “world” was as useful as the certainty that the Soviets were an existential threat and that Black people were genetically inferior.
Many of same figures and families continue to work now in this movement that gradually flipped Western society from a Keynesian understanding of political economy to a neoliberal one.
In the wake of the shooting of a CEO in New York, there have been many musings on the “ruthless arithmetic” of neoliberal capitalism, the implicit knowledge that some lives have no value for the shareholder.
The same old idea of the fungibility of the lower orders underpins the Atlas Network’s Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) hosting Jay Bhattacharya in Australia during the pandemic to promote his easily debunked research fighting public health measures. The massive death toll amongst (darker skinned) “essential workers” in the USA was a small price to pay for quarterly profit protection.
One of the reasons such tools argued that schools must remain open (despite the unwillingness to allow investment in the improvements that would make schools safer during a pandemic) is because the CEOs needed them as childminding.
Atlas Network junktanks fight any regulation that translates into making workplaces and products safer. Their workers, neighbours and customers can die if the shareholder is happy.
The demonisation of “welfare” by Atlas Network junktanks over the decades created the space for Alan Tudge’s threats towards the battlers in the rhetoric around Robodebt. It provides the context for the individual cases that Tudge had extracted and provided to “friendly” media to ruin the reputation of people complaining about the illegal program.
The rich are on tax strike, one of the Atlas Network’s key goals. Much of the common wealth that is collected is funnelled up to the investors in industries such as the weapons sector, or just gifted as Jobkeeper overpayments were. This limits the money available for social goods.
That means that Kurti’s emphasis on volunteering becomes even more important. If the oligarchs have ensured that there is very little money available for the community, we need volunteers to compensate. The neoliberal project also partly works to fan up “family values” because they need women to provide the care for the family unit that they have prevented society making available.
And the enemy must be depicted as the Other. Whether it is the Black rights activist who must be portrayed as “communist” or the multicultural society that Kurti singles out as undermining “social cohesion,” the enemy cannot be the oligarch whose propaganda has enabled making our lives more precarious. Viktor Orbán is the guiding light of those who want ethnostates, the only way they can imagine cohesion.
The alleged socialism of anyone who wants their rights protected continues in random allegations of “socialism” by Atlas Network operatives. They rant against the trope of “woke” which they claim is the product of “cultural marxism,” a fevered furphy that is both an allegation of socialism and an antisemitic slur.(2)
The roots of the racism and desired inequality that underpinned the creation of the Atlas Network continue in its talking points now. We need to help those around us see those ghostly echoes for the dangerous entrenchment of privilege that they are.
- Atlas’s Manhattan Institute now has Christopher Rufo as a Senior Fellow. This is the man who took the academic legal study of residual racist laws from past eras – Critical Race Theory – and turned it into a frenzied effort by the MAGA base to prevent the teaching of accurate history in schools. His work to return American education to a White mythologised version of the nation’s history has been very effective at mobilising – and distracting – the radicalised base. Rufo followed up that work with a second toxic campaign to erase the existence of LGBTQIA+ people from education. Rufo is one of the connections between the acknowledged Atlas junktanks and Viktor Orbán’s junktank sphere.
Jack Posobiec was a 2019 Fellow at Atlas’s Claremont Institute. Claremont was a more reputable right-wing junktank but has become radicalised. It has many personnel connections with an “extremist fraternal order” with Christofascist goals. It hosted senior personnel connected to the plot behind Donald Trump’s insurrection attempt in 2021. It appeared to be promoting a new civil war. Jack Posobiec has written a book that labels anyone not belonging to the radicalised Right a “socialist” threat and an Unhuman. The violence likely to follow that label has clear historical precedents.
Iran has absolutely no intention to build nuclear weapons, president says
Jan 7, 2025 https://www.iranintl.com/en/202501076906
Tehran has no plan to acquire a nuclear bomb since Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has forbidden it on religious grounds, Iran’s president said on Tuesday.
“The Islamic Republic has absolutely no intention of utilizing its nuclear capabilities for military purposes based on its ideological beliefs and a fatwa by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,” Masoud Pezeshkian said in a meeting with Britain’s new ambassador to Tehran.
For two decades, the Supreme Leader’s so-called nuclear fatwa has been repeatedly cited by senior officials as proof of Iran’s peaceful intentions. But even supporters of that view say the decree could be amended.
The nuclear engineer went on to say that if Khamenei’s opinion changed, Iran would have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.
Tehran ready for return to JCPOA
Pezeshkian’s comments came one day after French President Emmanuel Macron warned Tehran’s nuclear program is nearing the point of no return.
Iran says its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes but has accelerated activity since US President-elect Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – during his first term and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.
“The Islamic Republic is fully prepared for all parties to return to the 2015 agreement and fulfill their mutual commitments,” Pezeshkian added on Tuesday.
Last month, European powers France, Germany, and Britain warned that Iran’s actions had further eroded the agreement, noting that Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium has no credible civilian justification.
In December, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog reported that Iran was dramatically advancing enrichment close to the 90% purity needed only for weapons-grade material.
The three European nations, co-signatories of the 2015 accord, had brokered the deal under which Iran agreed to limit enrichment in exchange for the lifting sanctions.
“According to the Leader’s opinion, going in this direction is now forbidden, because he is a religious authority; (but) maybe he will change his opinion tomorrow,” Shahid Beheshti University President Mahmood-Reza Aghamiri said recently in an interview.
Nuclear energy groups race to develop ‘microreactors’
Companies vie to create small plants for deployment to sites from data centres to oil platforms
Ft.com Malcolm Moore and George Steer in London, 9 Jan 25
Nuclear energy companies are trying to shrink reactors to the size of shipping containers in a bid to compete with electric batteries as a source of zero-carbon energy. Led by Westinghouse, the race to develop “microreactors” is based on the notion they can replace diesel and gas generators used by everything from data centres to remote off-grid communities to offshore oil and gas platforms.
Microreactors have a much smaller output of up to 20MW, enough to power roughly 20,000 homes, and are likely to operate like large batteries, with no control room or workers on site. The reactors would be transported to a site, plugged in and left to run for several years before being taken back to their manufacturer for refuelling. Westinghouse in December won approval from US nuclear regulators for a control system that will eventually allow the 8MW eVinci to be operated remotely. The reactor, which has minimal moving parts, uses pipes filled with liquid sodium to draw heat from its nuclear fuel and transfer it to the surrounding air, which can then run a turbine to produce electricity or be pumped into heating systems.
“Our goal is to be able to operate autonomously from a central location where we can just simply monitor a fleet of reactors that are deployed around the world,” said Ball…………………………………………
Ball said two of the target markets for eVinci reactors were data centres and the oil and gas industry, both on and offshore. He said the ability to run several microreactors side by side would make data centres more resilient than with a single source of energy.
…………………………………………………………………. But J Clay Sell, chief executive of X-energy, said the market for microreactors was “still emerging”. “We’ve probably invested as much as anyone in the sector,” he said. “But when you go down in size, the economics become much more challenged. You have to get to a greater level of scale for microreactors to become economic.”
………………………………………. there are questions over how to build, transport and run microreactors safely, said Ronan Tanguy, programme lead for safety and licensing at the World Nuclear Association. Regulators still have to draw up rules around whether microreactors can be operated remotely and how to make them safe from cyber attacks. Rules are also needed around transporting them, especially across national borders, and whether they should be fuelled in a factory or on site. Given their smaller size, they may also pose an easier target for nuclear fuel theft…………………. https://www.ft.com/content/a4c98cb2-797a-4943-9643-2fd75accfd59
Japanese crime boss admits to conspiring to sell nuclear material to Iran
Takeshi Ebisawa faces a maximum punishment of life in prison after pleading guilty to six counts in a Manhattan court.
A Japanese crime boss has pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell nuclear material from Myanmar to Iran along with drug trafficking and weapons offences, authorities in the United States have said.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, a member of the yakuza, entered a guilty plea to six counts in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.
He is set to be sentenced on April 9.
According to prosecutors, Ebisawa in 2020 told an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and a DEA source that he had acquitted a large quantity of thorium and uranium that he wished to sell.
In response to Ebisawa’s repeated inquiries, the undercover agent agreed to help Ebisawa broker the sale of the nuclear materials to an associate who was posing as an Iranian general, prosecutors said.
Ebisawa then offered to supply the undercover associate with plutonium that would be even “better” and more “powerful” than uranium for making nuclear weapons, according to prosecutors.
A powdery yellow substance that Ebisawa’s co-conspirators showed to undercover agents was later determined in a laboratory analysis to contain detectable quantities of uranium, thorium and plutonium, the Justice Department said.
Ebisawa also conspired to broker the purchase of US-made surface-to-air missiles and heavy-duty weaponry to arm multiple ethnic armed groups in Myanmar, and to accept large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine as partial payment for the arms, according to prosecutors.
US officials said they conducted Ebisawa’s arrest and prosecution in cooperation with law enforcement partners in Indonesia, Japan and Thailand.
“Today’s plea should serve as a stark reminder to those who imperil our national security by trafficking weapons-grade plutonium and other dangerous materials on behalf of organized criminal syndicates that the Department of Justice will hold you accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Ebisawa, who was previously charged in 2022 with international drug trafficking and firearms offences, faces possible life imprisonment for the most serious of the charges.
No more buckets and spades – would nuke dump end West Cumbrian tourism?
NFLA 7th Jan 2025
The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities fear the siting of a Geological Disposal Facility in the South Copeland Search Area could lead to irrecoverable damage to the tourist economy and the loss of many local jobs.
Local campaigners in Millom and District against the Nuclear Dump have always been aware of this possibility. One of their first posters in a nod to Fifties tourism flyers urged visitors to ‘Come holiday at Britain’s first nuclear waste dump’, with the tagline ‘Its radiant’.
The most recent statistical analysis published by Cumbria Tourism shows that day trippers and holidaymakers brought in almost £300 million in annual revenue to South-West Cumbrian coastal resorts, helping to sustain over 2,300 full-time jobs…………………………………………….. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/no-more-buckets-and-spades-would-nuke-dump-end-west-cumbrian-tourism/
University of Cumbria’s central role in new £4.9 million nuclear robotics and AI cluster.
University of Cumbria is part of a consortium with
UK Atomic Energy Authority, University of Oxford and University of
Manchester to develop a new nuclear robotics and AI cluster linking Cumbria
and Oxfordshire. Awarded £4.9 million, the cluster is the largest of seven
new projects supported through an overall funding package of £22 million
from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Place Based Impact Acceleration Account
(PBIAA) scheme to strengthen emerging and existing research and innovation
clusters to kickstart economic growth and address regional needs.
University of Cumbria 6th Jan 2025
https://news.cumbria.ac.uk/news/university-of-cumbrias-central-role-in-new-gbp-4-9-million-nuclear-robotics-and-ai-cluster
Iran Condemns US Threats to Nuclear Facilities, Calls for UN Accountability
Latifa Ferial Nail, 6 Jan 25, https://nbmediacoop.org/2025/01/06/first-nations-chiefs-shouldnt-be-duped-by-nuclear-is-green-deception/
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, has condemned recent remarks by US national security adviser Jake Sullivan regarding potential military action against Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.
Baghaei urged the UN Security Council to hold the United States accountable for its threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, emphasizing that such actions violate the United Nations Charter.
Sullivan reportedly presented US President Joe Biden with options for strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, should Tehran allegedly pursue a nuclear weapon—a claim Iran has repeatedly denied.
Baghaei noted that these threats had been made multiple times and stressed that the international community must address this issue to maintain global peace and security. The spokesman reaffirmed Iran’s determination to defend its sovereignty and dignity.
State of the Cryosphere Report 2024
Lost Ice, Global Damage
In the State of the Cryosphere 2024 – Lost Ice, Global Damage report, over 50 leading cryosphere scientists warn of vastly higher impacts and costs to the global economy given accelerating losses in the world’s snow and ice regions. Current climate commitments, leading the world to well over 2°C of warming, would bring disastrous and irreversible consequences for billions of people from global ice loss.
Based on the most recent cryosphere science updates from 2024, the authors underscore that the costs of loss and damage will be even more extreme, with many regions experiencing sea-level rise or water resource loss well beyond adaptation limits in this century if our current level of emissions continues – leading towards a rise of 3°C or more. Mitigation will also become more costly due to feedbacks from thawing permafrost emissions and loss of sea ice.
For the first time, the report notes a growing scientific consensus that melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, among other factors, may be slowing important ocean currents at both poles, with potentially dire consequences for a much colder northern Europe and greater sea-level rise along the U.S. East Coast.
Reviewed and supported by over 50 leading cryosphere scientists, this is the latest report in the State of the Cryosphere series, which takes the pulse of the cryosphere on an annual basis. The cryosphere is the name given to Earth’s snow and ice regions and ranges from ice sheets, glaciers, snow and permafrost to sea ice and the polar oceans – which are acidifying far more rapidly than warmer waters. The report describes how a combination of melting polar ice sheets, vanishing glaciers, and thawing permafrost will have rapid, irreversible, and disastrous impacts worldwide.
Energy efficiency, the forgotten tool for dealing with climate change
How to keep warm when budgets are squeezed.
Sub-zero temperatures are hitting the UK just as gas and electricity prices have risen for millions of households. Energy bills are about 50% higher than pre-Covid levels,
leaving many struggling to cover the cost alongside other financial
demands.
So what can you do to stay warm while keeping costs down? Before
having an argument between family or flatmates about the heating, try
touring the property to work out how to save energy. That may include
turning off radiators in unused rooms, switching lights off when they are
not needed, and not leaving electrical appliances on standby. Curtains
should be open during the day, then drawn at dusk. Manage your draughts by
putting a black bag with scrunched up paper up an unused chimney, or try
limiting other draughts around the home. You can easily make your own
draught excluders. Cold, hard floors can be covered by a rug if you have
one. Layer up with clothes, safely use a hot water bottle, and make sure
you have warm nightwear.
BBC 3rd Jan 2025
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd6084l4zx6o
TODAY. The polar playground for a suicidal species?
https://theaimn.net/the-polar-playground-for-a-suicidal-species/ 7 January 25
Where to begin on this mind-boggling story about epic changes on a very small planet?
Well, let’s begin on the fun part. The Australian Antarctic Program encourages some pretty innocuous recreational activities, plus of course, encouragement for tourists to come, and to learn about the polar world. So that’s OK, I suppose. But lately, in the news, there is growing concern that tourists, Australians in particular, are taking such a playful attitude to Antarctica, that they are risking their personal safety.
Interesting that the video above puts the blame on TikTok for encouraging the fun and danger. But tourism itself is good for increasing education about Antarctica. As long as individuals personally behave safely, that’s fine, isn’t it?
But what about planetary safety?
What Australians, and most of the world, learn about Antarctica, is that it’s pretty, and has penguins, Oh, and the ice is melting a bit, too. And that’s about it. The media does not trouble our complacent little minds with information about the thermohaline ocean circulation, the atmospheric circulation patterns, the carbon-sequestration of krill, the polar vortex…. Much too hard for us, in this cricket-tennis season.
Right now, Northern Europe and parts of the USA are experiencing extreme cold weather. No doubt some people would say that this disproves global heating, climate change. Alas, these extremes, emanating from the Arctic, by the polar vortex, are exacerbated by global heating. The polar vortex is a complex system, difficult to grasp, for the average news reader, so it is part of the whole poorly known, global climate system.
Antarctica is at the other end of the world – not connected to all this? Well, not if you ignore the global thermohaline circulation, among other things like sea level rise.
Global thermohaline circulation
Professor Elisabeth Leane, Professor of Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania says – What happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay in Antarctica. Its future will shape the future of the planet
Which brings me to the question of safety in relation to Antarctica – planetary, not just personal.
And here’s what the University of Tasmania says about it – Antarctica’s tipping points threaten global climate stability.
The map above is from the University of Tasmania’s report by international climate scientists . It identifies the various cascading tipping points and their interactions and pressures on the ecosystem.
For those who care about the climate change issue, and about Australia and the Antarctic, I would urge them to watch, and persist with, this brilliant report by climate researcher Paul Beckwith – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WccDhnM8R8
Beckwith explains the potential tipping points identified by the study and their interrelationships , and adds the issue of sea ice loss. Critical issues are ice sheets, ocean acidification, ocean circulation, species redistribution, invasive species, permafrost melting, local pollution, chemical impacts, social impacts, local pollution and the Antarctic Treaty System. He goes on to explain with excellent graphics, the global thermohaline circulation, and then, in-depth, the records on sea ice, and then on to his detailed study on the tiny krill or light shrimp, and their global importance. Finally, Beckwith outlines the politics, the various national claims in the Antarctic Treaty System. The scientists’ conclusion – the urgent need for action on climate. Heavy stuff. Fascinating stuff. He finishes with a reminder of the unique role of that amazing critter the krill.
If you want a more concise discussion of the University of Tasmania’s December remarkable workshop of international marine scientists – go to Radio Ecoshock – World-changing Tipping Points – In Antarctica !
The “mainstream media” rarely covers climate change in any depth. For decades, the public has been informed very superficially on this life and death matter for our survival. The dedicated scientists produce their research results, but the media seem to find these too difficult, or too “political” to bother to report on them properly. The December 2024 “emergency summit” of international polar scientists in Tasmania barely got a mention in the Australian or international press.
You have to go to alternative media, to get any real insight into what is happening to the climate of our planet home. For decades now, Paul Beckwith has being producing his highly informative and wonderfully illustrated videos, on Youtube. Meanwhile Alex Smith has been doing the same sort of thing on radio and podcast, and print, – on Radio Ecoshock, which is heard in Australia on Community Radio 3CR.
In 2025, it is ever more urgent for people to wade through the morass of “social” media, and corporate media, and “alternative” media, to find the facts on climate change. Paul Beckwith and Radio Ecoshock are two examples of a rare and endangered human species – journalists who do their homework on climate change.
An overlooked Supreme Court case could decide the future of nuclear power
Miles Mogulescu, 6 Dec 24, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/01/05/a-double-edged-sword-of-damocles/
Although barely mentioned in the mainstream media, in granting cert to Interim Storage Partners, LLC v. Texas, a case about the storage of spent radioactive fuel from nuclear power plants, the U.S. Supreme Court may have taken on potentially the most consequential case of its new term.
SCOTUS will decide whether or not to uphold a Fifth Circuit decision that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not have the legal power to license a private corporation to construct an off-site storage facility to hold deadly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.
Depending on the legal rationale for SCOTUS’ decision, it could further enhance the power of courts to overturn decisions of regulatory agencies.
The case could determine whether artificial intelligence companies like Microsoft and Google can build a new generation of nuclear power plants to service the voracious hunger of artificial intelligence for electricity. Depending on its rationale, it could also impact the ability of regulatory agencies to function efficiently without being second guessed by courts.
The issues in the case have brought together an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, Texas Republicans, New Mexico Democrats, and the oil and gas industry against an equally unlikely grouping of the Biden administration, the nuclear power industry, and AI tech companies like Microsoft and Google.
The Legal Substance Issues
The environmental and legal issues in the case have a long history. The nuclear power industry has accumulated nearly 100,000 metric tons of radioactive waste that need to be deposited in a place that could be safe for millions of years. Most of the waste is now stored in temporary facilities adjacent to the power plants that create them, but such sites are running out of space and may not be safe long-term. During the 1980s Congress passed and amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act providing for a permanent waste site and then designating Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the sole site. But plans for the site were abandoned due to environmental and political opposition, leaving no permanent site for disposable nuclear waste.
In response, for the first time the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began to grant licenses for “interim” storage facilities which were off-site (and often hundreds of miles away) from the power plants which generated the waste, claiming authority under the Atomic Energy Act. One such license was for an off-site storage facility in the Permian Basin, Texas. Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and a private oil and gas company sued, claiming that the federal government lacked the statutory authority to issue a license for interim off-site storage.
The conservative Fifth Circuit agreed with the plaintiffs, opining “Texas is correct. The Atomic Energy Act does not confer on the commission the broad authority it claims to issue licenses for private parties to store spent nuclear fuel away-from-the-reactor. And the Nuclear Waste Policy Act establishes a comprehensive statutory scheme for dealing with nuclear waste generated from commercial nuclear power generation, thereby foreclosing the commission’s claim of authority.”
The Fifth Circuit vacated the license. The U.S. Supreme Court just granted cert and will hear the case this term. Its decision will likely be highly consequential, both for environmental and AI development reasons, and for legal reasons.
Environmentally, the building of new nuclear power plants has been stalled for decades, both because of cost and because of environmental catastrophes like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima and anti-nuclear films like Mike Nichols’ Silkwood starring Meryl Streep.
The Role of High-Tech Companies in Expanding Nuclear for AI
But largely under the radar, the voracious demand for electricity to power AI is leading top high-tech companies like Microsoft and Google to reinvigorate nuclear energy. Goldman Sachs analysts say it takes nearly 10 times the energy to power a ChatGPT than a Google search—data center power center demand will grow by 160% in the next five years. Morgan Stanley projects global data center emissions to accumulate 2.5 billion metric tons carbon-dioxide equivalent by then.
Microsoft has contracted for the currently mothballed Three Mile Island plant to reopen and access its entire output for Microsoft’s data centers. The operator is seeking hundreds of millions in tax breaks from the federal government under President Joe Bidens’s Inflation Reduction Act, which it says are necessary to make the reopening economically feasible. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said in the past that federal subsidies could cut the cost of bringing a new plant online by as much as half.
In March an Amazon affiliate purchased a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania for $650 million.
It will be highly consequential if SCOTUS simply upholds the Fifth Circuit’s result, which would greatly slow high tech’s attempts to kick start nuclear power without time to reexamine the environmental dangers.
Google has already announced that it will support building seven small nuclear-power reactors in the U.S., to help power its growing appetite for electricity for AI and jump-start a U.S. nuclear revival.
The tech companies claim that reviving nuclear power will decrease CO2 emissions and help with global climate change. But they ignore the long-standing warnings of environmentalists of the potentially catastrophic dangers of nuclear power.
If SCOTUS upholds the Fifth Circuit decision outlawing the licensing of off-site nuclear waste dumps, it could considerably slow the renewed push for nuclear power, particularly by high-tech companies. That might give more time to evaluate the potential dangers of widespread renewal of nuclear power.
But depending on the legal rationale for SCOTUS’ decision, it could further enhance the power of courts to overturn decisions of regulatory agencies.
The Fifth Circuit used several rationales to block the license of temporary off-site nuclear waste facilities. The first, and least concerning, is its statutory holding that the Atomic Energy Act is “unambiguous” and “nowhere authorizes issuance of a materials license to possess spent nuclear fuel for any reason, let alone for the sole purpose of storing such material in a standalone facility.” If SCOTUS upholds the Fifth Circuit purely on statutory interpretation grounds, it would create few problematic precedents for regulatory agencies in general.
The Major Questions Doctrine
But the Fifth Circuit unnecessarily went further, holding that “even if the statutes were ambiguous, the [government’s] interpretation would not be entitled to deference by the courts” pursuant to the Chevron Doctrine, under which for previous decades, until recently rejected by the Roberts Court, judges deferred to the expertise of regulatory agencies when reasonably interpreting ambiguous statutes.
The Fifth Circuit cited SCOTUS’ precedent-setting 2022 decision in West Virginia v. EPA, in which, for the first time, a conservative majority of SCOTUS justices relied on the “major questions” doctrine to overturn a major Environmental Protection Agency rule. Under the newly invented “major questions” doctrine, SCOTUS ruled that courts should not defer to agencies on matters of “vast economic or political significance” unless the U.S. Congress has explicitly given the agencies the authority to act in those situations.
Citing West Virginia v. EPA, the Fifth Circuit held that “[D]isposal of nuclear energy is an issue of vast ‘economic and political significance.’ What to do with the nation’s ever-growing accumulation of nuclear waste is a major questions that—as the history of the Yucca Mountain repository shows—has been hotly contested for over half a century.”
It’s questionable whether the Fifth Circuit needed to reach the issues concerning the major questions doctrine in order to block the waste depository. It had already decided that the statutes were “unambiguous” and therefore it was not necessary to decide what would happen if they were “ambiguous,” which is the only situation in which the major questions doctrine might arguably apply. If SCOTUS wants to affirm the Fifth Circuit’s result, it can simply agree that the statutes were unambiguous and treat the parts of the decision involving the major questions doctrine as mere dicta. That would set no additional precedent for when courts can question the expertise of regulatory agencies.
What Party Has the Right to Sue?
There’s also a procedural issue in the case, that depending on SCOTUS’ rationale, could set precedent allowing a wider range of entities to legally challenge regulatory agency decisions. Under the Hobbs Act, a “party aggrieved” by an agency’s final order may seek judicial review in a federal appeals court.
The NRC argued, however, that the plaintiffs were not parties aggrieved by the NRC’s licensing order because they were not parties to the underlying administrative proceeding. The Fifth Circuit cited its own precedent asserting that the Hobbs Act contains an “ultra vires” exception to the party aggrieved requirement when the petitioner attacks the agency action as exceeding its authority and therefore the plaintiffs had a right to sue.
In granting cert SCOTUS agreed to rule on two questions. First is the substance issue on whether the government exceeded its authority in granting the off-site nuclear storage license. The second is the procedural issue of whether an allegation of ultra vires can override statutory limitations on jurisdiction, as the Fifth Circuit held. If SCOTUS rules that the Fifth Circuit was wrong to grant jurisdiction to the plaintiffs, the likely result would be that the licenses for off-site nuclear waste facilities would go forward and expand.
It will be highly consequential if SCOTUS simply upholds the Fifth Circuit’s result, which would greatly slow high tech’s attempts to kick start nuclear power without time to reexamine the environmental dangers. At the same time, if SCOTUS also rules that the plaintiffs had an ultra vires right to sue, it could further cripple the ability of regulatory agencies to act to protect the public interest under broad grants of power.
Miles Mogulescu is an entertainment attorney/business affairs executive, producer, political activist and writer.
Could AI soon make dozens of billion-dollar nuclear stealth attack submarines more expensive and obsolete?
By Wayne Williams, 5 Jan 25, https://www.techradar.com/pro/could-ai-soon-make-dozens-of-billion-dollar-nuclear-stealth-attack-submarines-more-expensive-and-obsolete
Artificial intelligence can detect undersea movement better than humans.
AI can process far more data from a far more sensors than human operators can ever achieve
But the game of cat-and-mouse means that countermeasures do exist to confuse AI
Increase in compute performance and ubiquity of always-on passive sensors need also be accounted for.
The rise of AI is set to reduce the effectiveness of nuclear stealth attack submarines.
These advanced billion-dollar subs, designed to operate undetected in hostile waters, have long been at the forefront of naval defense. However, AI-driven advancements in sensor technology and data analysis are threatening their covert capabilities, potentially rendering them less effective.
An article by Foreign Policy and IEEE Spectrum now claims AI systems can process vast amounts of data from distributed sensor networks, far surpassing the capabilities of human operators. Quantum sensors, underwater surveillance arrays, and satellite-based imaging now collect detailed environmental data, while AI algorithms can identify even subtle anomalies, such as disturbances caused by submarines. Unlike human analysts, who might overlook minor patterns, AI excels at spotting these tiny shifts, increasing the effectiveness of detection systems.
Game of cat-and-mouse
AI’s increasing role could challenge the stealth of submarines like those in the Virginia-class, which rely on sophisticated engineering to minimize their detectable signatures.
Noise-dampening tiles, vibration-reducing materials, and pump-jet propulsors are designed to evade detection, but AI-enabled networks are increasingly adept at overcoming these methods. The ubiquity of passive sensors and continuous improvements in computational performance are increasing the reach and resolution of these detection systems, creating an environment of heightened transparency in the oceans.
Despite these advances, the game of cat-and-mouse persists, as countermeasures are, inevitably, being developed to outwit AI detection.
These tactics, as explored in the Foreign Policy and IEEE Spectrum piece, include noise-camouflaging techniques that mimic natural marine sounds, deploying uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) to create diversions, and even cyberattacks aimed at corrupting the integrity of AI algorithms. Such methods seek to confuse and overwhelm AI systems, maintaining an edge in undersea warfare.
As AI technology evolves, nations will need to weigh up the escalating costs of nuclear stealth submarines against the potential for their obsolescence. Countermeasures may provide temporary degree of relief, but the increasing prevalence of passive sensors and AI-driven analysis suggests that traditional submarine stealth is likely to face diminishing returns in the long term.
First Nations chiefs shouldn’t be duped by ‘nuclear-is-green’ deception
Commentary
by William Eric Altvater, January 6, 2025, : https://nbmediacoop.org/2025/01/06/first-nations-chiefs-shouldnt-be-duped-by-nuclear-is-green-deception/
Some First Nation Chiefs are victims of shenanigans, not unlike the swindle behind the purchase of Manhattan. The federal government needs the support of Indigenous peoples to expand nuclear power generation capacity in Canada.
For millennia, the cornerstones of the Indigenous people that inhabit Turtle Island, now known as North America, held all that is essential to life, in reverence. Every decision considered the next 7 generations. These cornerstones are crumbling.
Newcomers, armed with the Colonizing tool, “The Doctrine of Discovery” and their mentality of superiority, invaded the land of those they called “Savages,” almost totally exterminating Skicinuwok, People of The Earth.
Determined to bestow Christianity and civility to this wild untamed population, old growth forests were cut, rivers and streams were dammed to power sawmills, roads and railroads were built, bridges erected. All to create an infrastructure for capitalism, a system to make a profit, that morphed into greed, a word of foreign root. This unbridled desire for progress has ruined what was once called Paradise.
Now most water is not fit to drink, clean air is scarce, deforestation is rampant, biodiversity loss out of control, plants genetically modified, food manufactured with unpronounceable chemicals, caged fish starved of oxygen while being fed chicken feathers and pig parts, cancer cases in the millions, the list goes on.
As the population increased over this continent the available sources for power generation have not been able to satisfy the insatiable desires of the “bigger, better, faster, more is never enough” mentality. Some have finally acknowledged the fact that fossil fuels are not the golden egg they were once deemed to be.
So-called “Green Energy” is required to slow the blind drive to extinction of man; man, who is considered by some to be the most intelligent creature to ever roam Earth. Unfortunately, the lure of riches and the corruption of self-serving purposes have led man to stray from practices that nurture everything required to sustain life on this tiny blue marble floating through the universe.
Nuclear power is now being touted as being “Green.” It is not. Big money corporations are lobbying legislators to convince them and the public that it is. They are also lobbying to convince the public that they should foot the bill in the form of taxes and rate hikes, for a process that pollutes from the day it starts. Water is life. As soon as uranium is mined from the earth it begins to contaminate the water in surrounding aquifers.
When the uranium is processed sufficiently, it is used as fuel for reactors where it generates heat while delivering electricity, not just for essential needs, but also for many things once considered luxuries. This fission generated heat is then dumped into nearby waters where it kills thousands, if not millions of small beings that form the basis of life itself.
After this radioactive fuel is depleted, it is stored in various containers where it will stay radioactive for eons. Indigenous Grandmothers have labelled it “Forever Dangerous.”
The power generated during the fission process benefits only those who exist today as the process occurs, not those born tomorrow or next week or next month. All the radioactive waste and the inherent danger it creates is left to future generations, kicking the can down the road.
What better place to dump this waste than in an area with a population that has witnessed Newcomers enrich themselves for hundreds of years? Yes, what better place than a population that has been targeted for assimilation, suffered theft of lands, witnessed the taking of naturally bestowed rights? A population that has been subjected to racial Indian Act legislation essentially stripping away all that sustained this population for thousands of years.
Yes, let us give the Indians some more shiny beads and trinkets so that they willingly agree to care for our radioactive garbage. How do we do this? Let’s talk to the Chief and Council. Let’s wine and dine them. Let’s give them some money, take them to dinner, buy some drinks and make them feel all festive and most of all make them think we are looking out for their best interests. Some Chiefs have taken the bait.
Egregious as it may be, this is exactly what is happening in some Indigenous communities contrary to the will of the majority. Elected Chiefs are continuing the deception as they are blinded and professing the “Nuclear is Green” mantra. They have lost connection with the Spirit of Ancestors and traditional values. They need to have a serious introspection and realize that looking forward, we need only look back at what has sustained us to this point in time. We need not do any more than that.
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