Decrepit nuclear reactors operate without meaningful inspections or insurance.

Convicted of 92 federal felony manslaughter counts, Diablo’s Pacific Gas & Electric is a criminal operation. Its 2010 negligence at San Bruno gas lines incinerated eight people. Its faulty transmission lines killed 84 people in northern California’s infamous 2017 Camp Fire. No PG&E executive went to prison any of those killings. In 2021 its CEO was paid $51.2 million.

Nuclear Power’s Lethal, Larcenous End Game, BY HARVEY WASSERMAN, 26 Apr 24

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Thus Congress has just extended the 1957 Price-Anderson Act which exempts reactor owners from liability for a major disaster, an official vote of no confidence in the industry’s ability to guarantee the public safety.

With the February 29 passage of the Advanced Atomic Reactor Act, the industry stands to grift billions in public subsidies for decrepit reactors whose licenses they want to extend for 60-80 years while fighting basic safety inspections from federal regulators.

Thus the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—whose financial support comes from the operation of the reactors it supposedly regulates—is infamous for its blind eye to the deep structural and operational holes that could soon doom the aging US fleet.

The NRC is currently green-lighting operations at Diablo’s 40-year-old Unit One despite a dangerously embrittled core that could irradiate all of downwind California. Ohio’s Davis-Besse is riddled with mismanagement and decay. Ohio’s Perry, Virginia’s North Anna and Diablo have all been recently shaken earthquakes. California’s San Onofre shut in 2014 because its newly-installed unfixable steam turbines leaked radiation.

For the public, the costs in health, ecological and economic damage at any US reactor could climb into the trillions, with radioactive clouds and multiple bankruptcies leaving countless victims dead, destroyed, destitute.

According to the US Government Accountability Office, from 2001 to 2006 alone, more than 150 reactor incidents violated acceptable safety guidelines. A 2010 survey of US nuclear accidents showed least 56 by then involved loss of human life or more than $50,000 in property damage.

Said former Vice President Al Gore in 2009:

“Of the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were canceled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage, and 27 percent are operating without having a year-plus outage. Thus, only about one fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating and have proved relatively reliable.^[53]

Yet New York is dumping $7.6+ billion into keeping four decrepit reactors on line (one of which opened in 1969). Ohio’s legislature recently pocketed $61 million in bribes to scam a $1 billion taxpayer bailout for two 40 and 50-year old nukes irradiating Lake Erie. Michigan wants $8 billion to revive the 51-year-old Palisades reactor—which shut two years ago—even though Holtec (the waste management company designated to revive Palisades) has no experience building or operating any nuclear power reactor. Pieces of the reactor have already been sold off for scrap.………………………………………..more https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/26/nuclear-powers-lethal-larcenous-end-game/

April 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, safety, USA | Leave a comment

The US secretly sent long-range ATACMS to Ukraine — and Kyiv used them

The transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems with a nearly 200-mile range ends a yearslong drama between Washington and Kyiv.

By ALEXANDER WARD and LARA SELIGMAN, Politico, 04/24/2024

The Biden administration last month secretly shipped long-range missiles to Ukraine for the first time in the two-year war — and Kyiv has already used the weapon twice to strike deep behind Russian lines.

In March, the U.S. quietly approved the transfer of a number of Army Tactical Missile Systems with a range of nearly 200 miles, said a senior Biden administration official and two U.S. officials, allowing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s forces to put at risk more Russian targets inside Ukrainian sovereign territory.

The administration will include additional long-range ATACMS in a new $1 billion package of military aid President Joe Biden approved on Wednesday, one of the U.S. officials said.

The provision of the long-range version of the ATACMS ends a lengthy drama in which Ukraine clamored for years to receive the weapon, driving a wedge between Washington and Kyiv. The U.S. quietly sent the medium-range version of the missile in October, but Ukraine continued to press for a weapon that would allow it to strike farther behind Russia’s lines.

Ukrainian forces have used the long-range missiles twice, first against a Russian military base in Crimea and more recently against Russian forces east of Berdyansk near the Sea of Azov, the senior administration official said.

The U.S. on Wednesday announced a new $1 billion package of weapons that will quickly be transferred to Ukraine now that Biden has signed off on the long-delayed foreign aid bill that passed the Senate this week. Among other weapons, the tranche will include Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for air defense; 155mm artillery rounds; Bradley Fighting Vehicles; Javelin anti-tank systems; and Claymore anti-personnel munitions, according to a Pentagon press release.

POLITICO first reported in March that the U.S. was sending Ukraine a second round of a different version of ATACMS, one that travels 100 miles and carries warheads containing hundreds of cluster bombs. The senior administration official, who like others was granted anonymity to detail a sensitive decision, said the March shipment also included the long-range version, and that the missiles arrived in Ukraine this month.

Russian military bloggers posted images of a strike on the Dhzankoy airbase last week and speculated that Ukraine used ATACMS.

The U.S. was initially reluctant to send ATACMS — even under sustained domestic and international pressure — due to stockpile concerns and fear of escalating the war. But Russia’s increasingly brutal tactics and more American production of the long-range version convinced Biden to authorize the transfer.

Comment: Perhaps ‘brutality’ is in the winking eyes of the beholders. Biden was always set on this course, provided he created the ‘right’ excuse.

The Biden administration warned Russia that attacking Ukraine’s energy grid and using North Korean-provided missiles would lead the U.S. to reconsider sending ATACMS to Ukraine. Those strikes continued, leading top officials — national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown — to unanimously recommend the weapons transfer.

The Biden administration believes providing ATACMS can give Ukraine some new momentum in the two-year war, forcing Russia to move back critical command and control nodes and other high-value targets such as aviation assets, said the second U.S. official.

Comment: More likely Russia will make quick work of this development.

The long-range strategic missiles will also allow Ukraine to hold key parts of Crimea at risk, the official said. That includes the Kerch Bridge connecting occupied Crimea to Russia, as well as ports and naval facilities in the peninsula from which Russia’s Black Sea Fleet operates.

The official acknowledged that Ukraine is still in a tough fight, and that Russia continues to throw manpower and resources at the battlefield.

The official said:

“There’s no silver bullet weapon that’s going to change the character of the battlefield. Ukraine’s got something in their toolkit that they can use at a time in place of their choosing, that creates impact, that gives them an advantage.”

Biden approved the ATACMS decision in mid-February, the official said, but had to wait for the funding battle over the supplemental to play out in Congress. The House finally green-lighted more than $61 billion in Ukraine funding on Saturday and the Senate followed suit Tuesday, sending it to Biden’s desk for his signature on Wednesday.

In early March, however, Pentagon officials alerted colleagues that cost savings on other weapons contracts and humming production lines allowed the U.S. to deliver long-range ATACMS before the supplemental’s passage.The weapons were then secretly sent as part of a $300 million tranche of military aid announced in March.

Comment: If this was the case, Biden side-swiped Congress.

Biden last year approved sending the medium-range version of the missile but was still reluctant to send the long-range type Ukraine wanted. The U.S. secretly shipped the medium-range weapon, called Anti-Personnel/Anti-Material, and Ukraine used it for the first time last fall.

But now having long-range ATACMS in its arsenal allows Ukraine to threaten Russian assets inside the whole of Crimea as well as the Black Sea Fleet. The transfer could also boost morale among Ukrainian troops increasingly fearful that they have lost the advantage in the fight.

The House Ukraine bill approved on Saturday called on the Biden administration to send long-range ATACMS to Ukraine “as soon as practicable.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

more https://www.sott.net/article/490940-The-US-secretly-sent-long-range-ATACMS-to-Ukraine-and-Kyiv-used-them—

April 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Quickly burying the “Peaceful Atom” and its fossil-fueled partners will be the task of our lifetimes.

According to nuclear expert Lindsay Krall, in conjunction with research conducted by former NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane, SMRs could create thirty times more radioactive wastes per kilowatt-hour than the original light water reactors now reaching oblivion. Like them, the SMRs would emit radioactive carbon while generating planetary heat and threatening major disasters that remain uninsured.

Nuclear Power’s Lethal, Larcenous End Game, BY HARVEY WASSERMAN, 26 Apr 24“…………………………………………………………………………Projected costs are already very far beyond currently available renewables…and rising.

Aside from operating old uninsured reactors in lethal perpetuity, the industry has hyped three options:

X Oft-mentioned thorium-fueled reactor designs have no existing prototypes here in the US, and have no prospects for impacting the American energy picture in the near future.

X Fusion research, centered on the multi-billion-Euro ITER facility in France, has no credible date for a working prototype.

X As for Small Modular Reactors, the industry-leading Wyoming-based NuScale just lost its sole tangible order due to soaring costs and fading deadlines.

Warns Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists: “I think the current hype about SMRs is mostly a bunch of hot air…Most of these startups greatly underestimate the resources and time necessary to develop new nuclear technologies.”

As prices soar, the earliest workable SMR prototypes are years away. Mass deployment—even for Bill Gates’s hugely funded Terrapower and other SMR developers— can’t come significantly on line until well into the 2030s, if then.

Projected costs are already very far beyond currently available renewables…and rising.

Current cost projections show Gates would do far better investing in Wyoming’s abundant wind power than in the SMR factory he wants to begin building there this summer. Proven wind technology is far cheaper to run and quicker to deploy than any new nuclear technology still in speculative development.

.Indeed, amidst all the billions being thrown at yet another “Nuclear Renaissance,” renewable energy far outstrips the risky, unproven SMRs on which the industry is gambling so many public billions.

As you read this, electricity “too cheap to meter” DOES pour from west Texas wind turbines spinning through fierce winter nights as locals charge their house and car batteries, run their computers, lights and washing machines for free.

The first off-shore US wind turbines have opened near Long Island, with cost projections far below nuclear.

Despite persistent official sabotage, wind power may finally come to Lake Erie, one of the world’s most powerful wind resources.

The costs of solar “photovoltaic” cells have recently risen slightly due to interest and supply chain issues

But since their 1953 inception at Bell Labs, PV—and wind power—have soared in direct opposition to atomic power, combining epic price drops with rising efficiency.

Thus renewables are now public enemy number one for a fossil/nuclear industry whose larcenous end game means to grab endless public money while desperately sabotaging Solartopia.

In 2014, Ohio’s corrupt, gerrymandered legislature imposed a “set back clause” that killed $4 billion in wind projects. Ohio’s “North Coast” is ideal for commercial wind, with steady breezes, flat terrain, farmers seeking lease payments, and ample transmission to Toledo, Cleveland, Akron et. al.

Privately funded projects promised trillions of cheap, clean, safe, carbon-free kilowatt-hours along with thousands of jobs and saving hundreds of farms. But with a single sentence the legislature killed it all…while also freezing additional turbine development in Lake Erie’s powerful wind streams.

The lawmakers then pocketed $61 million in bribes to throw a $1 billion lifeline to the dangerously decayed Davis-Besse and Perry nukes…plus two ancient coal burners, one of them in Indiana…while killing the state’s highly successful energy efficiency programs.

Likewise, California is attacking a rooftop solar industry that once employed 70,000 workers installing a PV network producing far more power far more cheaply than the state’s decrepit, uninsured Diablo Canyon atomic reactors. Killing at least 17,000 jobs, the Public Utilities Commission hurled countless solar firms toward bankruptcy.

But Newsom’s legislature is handing a $1.4 billion lifeline to Diablo reactors endangered by earthquakes and riddled with severe structural decay. Diablo produces far less power than the state’s rooftop solar industry, but does it at $1 billion over annual market prices.

Overall the bottom line is this: the United States now gets more usable power from wind and solar than from coal or nuclear. Gas and oil will soon follow.

Because with thousands of square miles of usable rooftops spread throughout the US, and with millions of acres on land and water usable for large-scale wind generation, the fossil/nuclear industry is now facing oblivion.

The ultimate Solartopian threat to King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes, Gas) has arrived. With proven available technology in wind, solar, batteries, efficiency, geothermal, some bio-fuels and more, an era has ended. Within a few short years, our energy picture can be totally dominated by renewables that are cheaper, cleaner, safer, faster to build and more than fossil or nuclear fuels.

For what has been humankind’s biggest business—obsolete energy—it’s a wholly unacceptable image of extinction.

Thus, across the land, bought governors, legislatures and utility commissions are waging a desperate, last-ditch war against renewables while handing billions to dangerously decayed reactors whose half-century history of failure forever deepens.

Renewables’ accelerating cost, safety and reliability breakthroughs join battery and efficiency technologies for a definitive market advantage over the obsolete fossil/nuclear technologies that are destroying our ability to survive on this planet. “We need to massively develop renewable energies,” says France’s Prime Minister Macron, “because it is the only way to meet our immediate electricity needs, since it takes 15 years to build a nuclear reactor.”

But rear-guard bail-outs and the continual demand to run unsafe planet-hearing old reactors until they explode threaten our survival.

So do the nuclear industry’s roots in the weapons production that gave it birth. Said Macron in 2022, “Without civilian nuclear energy there is no military use of this technology – and without military use there is no civilian nuclear energy.”

Thus nuclear power boils, irradiates, threatens and bankrupts us all.

But nuclear weapons and all that “Renaissance” hype aside, the market and Mother Nature are clearly pushing for Solartopia. What’s likely the biggest techno-ecological-economic revolution in human history—the conversion to renewable energy—is very much upon us.

But to get there, quickly burying the “Peaceful Atom” and its fossil-fueled partners will be the task of our lifetimes.

Harvey Wasserman wrote THE PEOPLE’S SPIRAL OF US HISTORY: FROM JIGONSASEH TO SOLARTOPIA. Most Mondays @ 2-4pm PT, he co-convenes the Green Grassroots Election Protection Zoom (www.electionprotection2024). The Mothers for Peace (www.mothersforpeace.org) could use your help in the struggle to shut the Diablo Canyon nukes. https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/26/nuclear-powers-lethal-larcenous-end-game/

April 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | 1 Comment

New Nuclear Energy: Assessing the National Security Risks

https://blogs.gwu.edu/elliott-iistp/research-2/ 26 Apr 24

IISTP Research Professor Sharon Squassoni publishes a comprehensive report assessing the risks of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

Read the complete report: “New Nuclear Energy: Assessing the National Security Risks“.

GWU REPORT: NATIONAL SECURITY RISKS GROW WITH NEW NUCLEAR ENERGY

Drone strikes against Ukraine’s nuclear reactors highlight risks

WASHINGTON, DC – April 23, 2024 – Proliferation of nuclear weapons, nuclear terrorism, sabotage, coercion and military operations – these risks associated with nuclear energy can all be expected to grow as countries seek to implement their new nuclear energy objectives, according to a new report published today by George Washington University’s (GWU) Sharon Squassoni. The aim of 22 countries to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, announced on the margins of COP-28, was adopted with little thought to the national security implications. The promotion of small modular reactors (SMRs)– specifically tailored to developing countries – will heighten, not diminish risks.

The report by GW professor Sharon Squassoni, “New Nuclear Energy: Assessing the National Security Risks,” comes as drone strikes against Ukrainian nuclear power plants highlight nuclear reactor vulnerabilities. Other national security risks will accompany significant nuclear growth as renewed interest in nuclear energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sparks programs across the globe. Squassoni, a professor at GWU’s Elliott School of International Affairs, now researches risk reduction from nuclear energy and nuclear weapons after serving in the State Department, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the Congressional Research Service.

Proliferation and nuclear terrorism are the top two national security risks, but sabotage, coercion and military operations pose other risks. An attempt to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers – a national security risk itself — using nuclear energy could worsen the risk of proliferation by motivating fuel cycle independence. SMRs are still in development, with few restrictions on designs. Reactors fueled with highly enriched uranium or plutonium will increase risks of proliferation and terrorism because those materials are weapons-usable. Reactors designed to include lifetime cores will build up plutonium over time. Fast reactor designs that require reprocessing, especially continuous recycling of fuel, could ultimately confer latent nuclear weapons capabilities to many more states. In sum, the kinds of reactors now under consideration do nothing to reduce known risks, and some pose heightened risks. There appears to be no attempt to forge agreement among suppliers or governments to restrict reactor choices that pose greater proliferation risks.

If the mass production of small modular reactors lowers barriers to entry into nuclear energy, there will be many more states deploying nuclear power reactors, including those with significant governance challenges. Russian and Chinese programs to promote nuclear energy target many of those states. Cooperation among key states essential to minimize the safety, security and proliferation risks of nuclear energy is at an all-time low. The call to triple nuclear energy coincides with the disintegration of cooperation, the unraveling of norms and the loss of credibility of international institutions that are crucial to the safe and secure operation of nuclear power.

April 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 1 Comment

Blinken threatens China over Russia ties (VIDEO)

https://www.sott.net/article/490922-Blinken-threatens-China-over-Russia-ties-VIDEO 26 Apr 24

The US Secretary of State says Washington is prepared to impose more sanctions on Beijing over the alleged transfer of military components.

Washington is ready to introduce more sanctions against China over its alleged transfer of dual-use goods and components, which can supposedly be used by the Russian military industrial complex, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday.

Speaking at a press conference in Beijing following his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the US official recalled that Washington has already imposed sanctions against more than 100 Chinese entities and is “fully prepared to act” and “take additional measures.”

Blinken claimed that China’s alleged support for the Russian defense industry raises concerns not only about the situation in Ukraine, but also about a “medium to long-term threat that many Europeans feel viscerally that Russia poses to them.”

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal had also reported that the US was drafting sanctions that could cut off some Chinese banks from the global financial system unless Beijing severs its economic ties with Russia.

The outlet claimed that US officials believe trade with China has allowed Russia to rebuild its military industrial capacity and could help it defeat Ukraine in a war of attrition.

Beijing has vehemently rejected accusations of “fueling” the Ukraine conflict and has instead blamed NATO for instigating the crisis by continuing its expansion in Europe and refusing to respect Russia’s national security concerns.

Following his meeting with Blinken, President Xi suggested that the US and China “should be partners, not rivals” and should strive towards achieving “mutual success and not harm each other.”

“I proposed three major principles: mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation. They are not only a summary of past experience, but also a guide to the future,” the Chinese leader was quoted as saying.

Beijing has maintained a policy of neutrality on the Ukraine conflict, with Chinese officials repeatedly stating that the country is not selling weapons to either Russia or Ukraine. Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning insisted that China “regulates the export of dual-use articles in accordance with laws and regulations,” urging “relevant countries” not to “smear or attack the normal relations between China and Russia.”

In December last year, US President Joe Biden issued a decree which enabled sanctions on foreign financial institutions that continue to deal with Russia. It targeted lenders outside US and EU jurisdictions that help Russia source sensitive items, which reportedly include semiconductors, machine tools, chemical precursors, ball bearings, and optical systems.

April 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, politics international | Leave a comment

War Parties, the Peace Candidate, and the November Election

On a bipartisan basis, the White House and Congress are driving the world towards a global war. Washington has absolutely no strategy for Ukraine to win the war, but is intent on arming Ukraine to kill as many Russians as possible, even as the war kills vastly more Ukrainians.

By Jeffrey D. Sachs* Other News, 28 Apr 24

The Democrats and the Republicans are outdoing each other to prove who can get us to World War III fastest. Joe Biden and the Congressional Democrats are making a convincing bid to be the leading warmongers. The Congressional Democrats just voted unanimously in a vote of 210 – 0 to extend the Ukraine War with another $61 Billion to kill more Russians and Ukrainians, and by a lopsided majority of 173-37 for another $14 Billion to extend Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Donald Trump weighed in before the vote that Ukraine’s survival and strength is “important to us”, and that Europe should pay more. Republican Speaker Mike Johnson did his part for warmongering by calling Russia, China, and Iran the updated axis of evil. The slur was just in time for Secretary of State Blinken to fly to China to threaten more US sanctions if China trades with Russia in ways the US disapproves.

The strongest Presidential candidate for peace is Jill Stein of the Green Party, who is on track to appear on ballots across the country. The Green Party is well advanced in gaining full national access and is working very hard to complete that task. Cornel West, another passionate candidate for peace, is on the ballot in a few states but as an independent candidate faces prohibitive expenses for ballot access because of an unfair system rigged by the two main parties. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., alas, is only half a peace candidate, strong on ending the Ukraine War through diplomacy, but stridently backing Israel’s war in Gaza rather than the diplomacy that is urgently needed and capable of ending the war.

From the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, I called for a negotiated peace, emphasizing Ukrainian neutrality and an end to NATO enlargement – which is vociferously, and understandably, opposed by Russia as an existential threat. Yet Biden and Congress continue to insist on NATO enlargement to Ukraine and hence on more war. The result? Ukraine has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties and ongoing territorial losses.

At the same time, Biden is now arming Israel to commit unconscionable war crimes, with more support now on the way.

The US complicity in Israel’s slaughter of Gazans is strongly rejected by the American people, especially young people, yet Biden and Congress aren’t listening to the people. The Government of South Africa, in an application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has powerfully asserted that Israel is committing genocide. Yet when US students say the same, they are now being arrested. In fact, the ICJ quickly ruled that Israel’s actions might well violate the 1948 Genocide Convention, pending a final ruling that will take more time.

If all this were not enough, the US continues to escalate its many provocations towards China. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

So, let’s add it all up regarding the alleged “axis of evil.” The US rejects negotiations with Russia because the US wants to use the Ukraine War to weaken Russia, even as the war destroys Ukraine in the process. The US refuses to take any action to rein in Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza. The US flagrantly provokes China in multiple ways. The US punishes Iran for escalation started by Israel. There is no axis of evil. Rather, the US has pushed Russia, China, and Iran ever more tightly together in the face of unrelenting and misguided US militarism.

Americans are profoundly unhappy about all of this warmongering. Only 33 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s foreign policy. Biden is a life-long neocon, supporting NATO expansion, military adventures, and regime change operations for decades. He is also unfit to lead the country for another four years and should not be running for re-election in any event. Meanwhile, Trump as president armed Ukraine, dissed the Minsk II agreement that would have defused the crisis, and went out of his way to antagonize and abandon diplomacy with both China and Iran. The world is closer to nuclear Armageddon than ever, just 90 seconds to midnight according to the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

America’s two main parties offer Americans no real say on the life-and-death issues of war and peace. Both are war parties. Both continue to shovel in more money and munitions to try to hide their past reckless miscalculations. Both parties also serve the same paymasters: Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, and the mega-rich, who fund the two parties to deliver tax cuts and subsidies cuts for the wealthy, and NATO enlargement and arms contracts for the military industries. Peace and economic justice therefore go hand in hand.

The true hope for foreign policy sanity and a fair economy is the lead peace candidate, Jill Stein. The main work for peace activists in the next few weeks is to ensure that Stein is indeed on the ballot in every state in November, despite the brazen attempts by the two major parties to keep the Green Party and peace candidates off the ballot. As Americans in record numbers call for a political choice outside the failed parties of war and Wall Street, and for diplomatic solutions to the wars raging around the world, a voter surge for peace could well occur in November. If Stein is on the ballot across the nation, voters will have that choice.

*Professor at Columbia University, is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as adviser to three UN Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. Article sent to Other News by the author https://www.other-news.info/war-parties-the-peace-candidate-and-the-november-election/

April 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA election 2024 | Leave a comment

Nuclear-waste dams threaten Central Asia heartland

Dams holding large amounts of nuclear waste can be found in Kyrgyzstan’s
scenic hills. However, following a 2017 landslide they have become
unstable, threatening a possible Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster if they
collapse.

Reuters 24th April 2024

April 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ASIA, safety, wastes | Leave a comment

The long path of plutonium: A new map charts contamination at thousands of sites, miles from Los Alamos National Laboratory

Plutonium hotspots appear along tribal lands, hiking trails, city streets and the Rio Grande River, a watchdog group finds

Searchlight New Mexico, by Alicia Inez Guzmán, April 25, 2024

For years, the public had no clear picture of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium footprint. Had the ubiquitous plutonium at LANL infiltrated the soil? The water? Had it migrated outside the boundary of the laboratory itself?

A series of maps published by Nuclear Watch New Mexico are beginning to answer these questions and chart the troubling extent of plutonium on the hill. One map is included below [on original] , while an interactive version appears on Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s website. The raw data for both comes from Intellus New Mexico, a publicly accessible clearinghouse of some 16 million environmental monitoring records offered in recent decades by LANL, the New Mexico Environment Department and the Department of Energy.

Approximately 58,100 red dots populate each map at 12,730 locations, marking a constellation of points where plutonium — a radioactive element used in nuclear weapons — was found in the groundwater, surface water or soil. What’s alarming is just how far that contamination extends, from Bandelier National Monument to the east and the Santa Fe National Forest to the north, to San Ildefonso tribal lands in the west and the Rio Grande River and Santa Fe County, to the south.

The points, altogether, tell a story about the porous boundary between LANL and its surrounds. So pervasive is the lab’s footprint that plutonium can be found in both trace and notable amounts along hiking trails, near a nursing home, in parks, along major thoroughfares and in the Rio Grande.

Gauging whether or not the levels of plutonium are a health risk is challenging: Many physicians and advocates say no dose of radiation is safe. But when questions about risk arise, one of the few points of reference is the standard used at Rocky Flats in Colorado, where the maximum allowable amount of plutonium in remediated soil was 50 picocuries per gram. Many sites on the Nuclear Watch map have readings below this amount. Colorado’s construction standard, by contrast, is 0.9 picocuries per gram.

Nuclear Watch’s driving question, according to Scott Kovac, its operations and research director, concerned a specific pattern of contamination: Had plutonium migrated from LANL dump sites into regional groundwater? The answer, Kovac believes, is yes.

That conclusion began to form when Nuclear Watch compiled data from between 1992 and 2023 for plutonium contamination below the soil, and plotted each point into the organization’s now-sprawling map. Red dots coalesce at LANL dump sites. They also appear in the finger-like canyons surrounding the Pajarito Plateau, namely in Los Alamos Canyon, “the main contaminant pathway to the Rio Grande,” a Nuclear Watch summary says.

Much of the contamination likely occurred from the 1940s to the 1960s, during the lab’s “Wild West,” in Kovac’s words — a time of little environmental oversight when the surrounding plateaus, canyons and the entire ancestral Pueblo of Tsirege doubled as a dumping ground, laboratory and wasteland………………..

A 1999 environmental impact statement and other documents reveal the extent of that contamination and the many places where LANL buried radioactive waste or dumped effluent, including landfills, canyons, drain lines, firing sites and spill locations.
“Plutonium and uranium have been released into canyons…since the Manhattan Project,” according to another 1999 report, this one focused on the lab’s contribution to radioactive contamination in Cochiti Lake. “In Los Alamos Canyon, these contaminants have been carried by flood flows several tens of kilometers” — more than 12 miles — “downstream into the Rio Grande.”

Airborne plutonium releases were also frequent and largely unchecked until the late 1970s, other reports show. The legacy of contamination has been the subject of some piecemeal remediation efforts on lab property and public lands. But the maps stand as forceful arguments for a “genuine cleanup” that is comprehensive and lasting, said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch.

“We need to permanently protect precious, irreplaceable groundwater and the Rio Grande while providing high-paying cleanup jobs for decades,” Coghlan wrote Searchlight in an email. Instead, the lab is focusing on a historic expansion to produce plutonium pits for nuclear weapons. “New Mexicans,” he said, “don’t need more nuclear weapons.”

‘A full reckoning’ of detritus

The lab’s campus is undeniably riddled with plutonium, including beneath the deep groundwater aquifer in certain of its technical areas, the map shows. One concentration appears on the campus’s northern flank, around Material Disposal Area C, a 12-acre site that served as the primary dump for plutonium and other radioactive and toxic waste between 1948 and 1973. The unlined dump comprised seven disposal pits and 108 shafts that workers dug directly into the tuff, burying cyanide, mercury, sulfuric acid, beryllium, plutonium and other wastes four to 25 feet deep……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The lab is juggling this legacy cleanup at the same time that it’s attempting to make 30 plutonium pits per year by 2030, a mission described as the “new Manhattan Project.” Worker shortages and supply-chain bottlenecks have already derailed the timeline; meanwhile, the cleanup of the lab’s Cold War sites is only half complete, the DOE reports. Indeed, as the lab barrels toward a new Cold War, there hasn’t been a full reckoning with the detritus of the last one.

Contamination near Buckman…………………………………………………………………………………………..

more https://searchlightnm.org/the-long-path-of-plutonium-a-new-map-charts-contamination-at-thousands-of-sites-miles-from-los-alamos-national-laboratory/?utm_source=Searchlight+New+Mexico&utm_campaign=17a169b807-4%2F25%2F2024+-+The+long+path+of+plutonium&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8e05fb0467-17a169b807-395610620&mc_cid=17a169b807&mc_eid=a70296a261

April 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Why Iran may accelerate its nuclear program, and Israel may be tempted to attack it

Iran’s nuclear sites will continue to present a tempting target for Israel in any further escalation of the conflict between the two.

The Bulletin, By Darya Dolzikova, Matthew Savill | April 26, 2024

On April 19, Israel carried out a strike deep inside Iranian territory, near the city of Isfahan. The attack was apparently in retaliation for a major Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel a few days earlier. This exchange between the two countries—which have historically avoided directly targeting each other’s territories—has raised fears of a potentially serious military escalation in the region.

Israel’s strike was carried out against an Iranian military site located in close proximity to the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, which hosts nuclear research reactors, a uranium conversion plant, and a fuel production plant, among other facilities. Although the attack did not target Iran’s nuclear facilities directly, earlier reports suggested that Israel was considering such attacks. The Iranian leadership has, in turn, threatened to reconsider its nuclear policy and to advance its program should nuclear sites be attacked.

These events highlight the threat from regional escalation dynamics posed by Iran’s near-threshold nuclear capability, which grants Iran the perception of a certain degree of deterrence—at least against direct US retaliation—while also serving as an understandably tempting target for Israeli attack. As tensions between Israel and Iran have moved away from their traditional proxy nature and manifested as direct strikes against each other’s territories, the urgency of finding a timely and non-military solution to the Iranian nuclear issue has increased.

A tempting target. While the current assessment is that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, the Islamic Republic maintains a very advanced nuclear program, allowing it to develop a nuclear weapons capability relatively rapidly, should it decide to do so. Iran’s “near-threshold” capability did not deter Israel from undertaking its recent attack. But Iran’s nuclear program is a tempting target for an attack that could have potentially destabilizing ramification: The program is advanced enough to pose a credible risk of rapid weaponization and at a stage when it could still be significantly degraded, albeit at an extremely high cost.

Iran views its nuclear program as a deterrent against direct US strikes on or invasion of its territory, acting as an insurance policy of sorts against invasion following erroneous Western accusations over its nuclear program, ala Iraq in 2003. That’s to say, during an attempted invasion, Iran could quickly produce nuclear weapons. This capability allows Iran’s leadership to engage in destabilizing activities in the region with a (perceived) limited likelihood of retaliation against its own territory. Concerns over escalation and a potential Iranian push toward weaponization of its nuclear program may have been one of multiple considerations that contributed to the US refusal to take part in Israeli retaliatory action following Iran’s April 13 strikes on Israel.

Israel sees the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat and has long sought its elimination. For this reason, reports that Israel might have been preparing to target Iranian nuclear sites as retaliation for Iran’s strikes against its territory came as little surprise. Israel’s attack on military installations near Iranian nuclear facilities—and against an air defense system that Iran has deployed to protect its nuclear sites—appears to have been calibrated precisely to make the point that Israel has the capability to directly attack heavily-protected nuclear sites deep inside Iran. Some commentators have speculated that subsequent strikes on Iranian nuclear sites may still be desirable or necessary.

In this context, Iran’s nuclear sites will continue to present a tempting target for Israel in any further escalation of the conflict between the two. Moreover, Israel may also conclude that its own undeclared nuclear capability has failed to act as a deterrent against two major assaults on its territory. The attacks by Hamas on October 7 and Iran on April 13 probably added to Israel’s sense of strategic vulnerability, although that perception may have been partly alleviated by the largely successful defense against Iran’s attempted drone and missile strikes.

Israel has historically targeted Iran’s nuclear program through relatively limited sabotage in the form of cyber-attacks, assassinations of scientists, and bombs placed at Iranian nuclear facilities. This strategy has allowed Israel to repeatedly roll the clock back on Iran’s nuclear progress while maintaining some level of credible deniability and avoiding further military escalation, therefore largely remaining within the “rules” established by Israel and Iran in conducting their shadow war. Now, with both countries openly striking each other’s territory, Israel may see this as an opportunity—or feel compelled—to target Iran’s nuclear facilities directly.

A range of bad options. The possibility of Iranian weaponization and Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites could lead to a serious escalation spiral and, potentially, a wider military conflict in the region……………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/why-iran-may-accelerate-its-nuclear-program-and-israel-may-be-tempted-to-attack-it/

April 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Japan city assembly OKs request for nuclear waste site survey

If the mayor gives the green light, the Saga Prefecture town that hosts Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s four-reactor Genkai Nuclear Power Station will receive up to 2 billion yen ($12.9 million) in state subsidies for allowing the survey,

Three local associations in the construction, restaurant and accommodation sectors submitted separate requests for the survey to the assembly, with some hoping the subsidies and survey activity will prop up the local economy.

April 26, 2024 (Mainichi Japan) https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240426/p2g/00m/0na/027000c

SAGA, Japan (Kyodo) — The municipal assembly of Genkai in southwestern Japan gave the go-ahead Friday for the town to request a preliminary survey by the state to gauge its suitability to host an underground disposal site for highly radioactive waste.

The Genkai assembly is the first in the country hosting a nuclear plant to approve such a survey request. Mayor Shintaro Wakiyama said he plans to make the final decision in May regarding whether to request the survey, the first part of a three-stage, 20-year process to select a permanent storage site for waste from nuclear power generation.

After the nine-member assembly adopted the request by a majority vote, Wakiyama told reporters the decision “reflects the will of the people. I take it seriously.”

Saga Gov. Yoshinori Yamaguchi, meanwhile, expressed reluctance about locating a waste disposal site in Genkai. With the prefecture already hosting a nuclear plant, he told a press conference, “It would be unbalanced for (Saga) to shoulder such a burden.”

The associations called on the town, as a host of a nuclear power plant, to proactively cooperate with the central government.

Japan, like other countries, is struggling to find permanent disposal sites for nuclear waste. Only two municipalities — Suttsu and Kamoenai in Hokkaido in northern Japan — have approved preliminary site surveys, which commenced in 2020.

But the surveys have taken longer than the scheduled two years, and it remains unclear whether either process will move to the second stage as local opposition remains strong.

High-level radioactive waste, produced when extracting uranium and plutonium from spent fuel, must be stored in bedrock at least 300 meters underground for tens of thousands of years until radioactivity declines to levels that are not harmful to human health or the environment.

The waste, solidified by mixing with glass, is currently housed in metal containers stored at the Vitrified Waste Storage Center operated by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture.

April 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, politics | Leave a comment

US nuclear weapons in Poland would be priority military target – Moscow

Warsaw wants to host NATO arms under the bloc’s sharing scheme

https://www.rt.com/russia/596553-ryabkov-nuclear-weapons-poland/

Russia would consider foreign deployments of nuclear weapons in Poland a primary military target, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has warned.

Warsaw is in talks with Washington on potentially hosting nuclear arms as part of a NATO program. President Andrzej Duda reiterated Poland’s willingness to host the weapons in an interview this week.

Moscow considers any expansion of NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangement as “deeply destabilizing” in nature, “and in fact threatening” Russia, Ryabkov was quoted as saying by TASS on Thursday.

This applies to joint missions, where non-nuclear members of the US-led bloc are trained to use American hardware, and even more so to the permanent stationing of such weapons “which hotheads in Warsaw are talking about,” he said.

Polish politicians vying for American nukes on their soil “must understand that any shift in that direction will not provide additional security to Poland, since relevant sites will definitely become targets. Our military planners will consider them a priority,” the senior diplomat added.

Duda told the Fakt newspaper on Monday that he had personally asked the US to station part of its nuclear arsenal in Poland.

”If our allies decide to deploy nuclear weapons as part of nuclear sharing also on our territory to strengthen the security of NATO’s eastern flank, we are ready for it,” he said.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who belongs to a rival political force, downplayed the president’s remarks on the same day, saying he would like Duda to clarify what his intentions were in making them.

”This idea is very massive, I would say very serious,” the prime minister added, explaining that Poland has no specific plans to host foreign nukes.

According to public sources, the US keeps some of its nuclear gravity bombs in five non-nuclear NATO states: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye. Poland’s previous conservative government led by Law and Justice (PiS), to which Duda belongs, has been seeking admission into this club for years. Tusk is the leader of Civic Platform, and returned to power as prime minister last December.

April 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Norman Finkelstein on Israel Palestine

April 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Acknowledging the Horrors of Gaza—Without Wanting to End Them

GREGORY SHUPAK, FAIR, 26 Apr 24

The International Court of Justice in January found it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The next month, in a lawsuit aimed at ending US military support for Israel, a federal court in California ruled that Israel’s actions in the Strip “plausibly” amount to genocide (Guardian, 2/1/24). Shortly thereafter, Michael Fakhri (Guardian, 2/27/24), the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said of Israeli actions:

There is no reason to intentionally block the passage of humanitarian aid or intentionally obliterate small-scale fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards in Gaza—other than to deny people access to food….

Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian. In my view as a UN human rights expert, this is now a situation of genocide. This means the state of Israel in its entirety is culpable and should be held accountable—not just individuals or this government or that person.

In March, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese released a report concluding “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met.” During its campaign in Gaza, Israel’s “military has been heavily reliant on imported aircraft, guided bombs and missiles,” and 69% of Israel’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023 have come from the US (BBC, 4/5/24).

In this context, corporate media, which have long been strong supporters of both the Israeli colonization of Palestine and the US imperial violence undergirding it, face a dilemma. At this stage, corporate media cannot simply conceal the daily horrors that are unfolding, particularly as much of their audience is exposed to it whenever they open a social media app. So media’s challenge is to frame the “plausible” genocide in a way that will not undermine long-term US/Israeli domination of Palestine. In this context, many corporate media analysts acknowledge the grave harm done to the Palestinians in Gaza—without also saying that it must end.

A Washington Post editorial (3/30/24), for example, lamented how “hunger threatens Gaza’s civilians, who, through displacement, disease and death, have already paid a horrible price.” (“Israel is forcing hunger on Gaza with US support” would be better, but I digress.) Subsequently, the paper noted that “objective conditions for the 2 million or so people in Gaza, most displaced from ruined homes, are horrendous.”

The editors’ prescription in “the short run” was “a six-week truce with Hamas, during which the militants would release at least some of their hostages and relief supplies could flow into Gaza more safely.” At that point, Palestinians can resume paying that “horrible price” in “horrendous” conditions, such as having “the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history” (New Yorker, 3/21/24).

‘The weapons it needs

Columnist David French likewise wrote in the New York Times (4/7/24) that “the terrible civilian toll and looming famine in Gaza are a human tragedy that should grieve us all,” but endorsed “giving Israel the weapons it needs to prevail against Hamas.” He favorably compared the Biden’s administration’s lavishing Israel with weapons to Donald’s Trump’s remark that Israel has “got to finish what they started, and they’ve got to finish it fast, and we have to get on with life.” French said:

…………… “Israel,” French asserted, “possesses both the legal right and moral obligation to its people to end Hamas’s rule and destroy its effectiveness as a fighting force.” French’s argument was that the US should keep arming Israel, but ensure that more aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza. The absurdity of this position is that Israel’s use of that “military aid” is what causes “the terrible civilian toll and looming famine in Gaza.”

At the time French was writing, at least 27 Palestinians in Gaza had already starved to death, 23 of them children (Al Jazeera, 3/27/24). As the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System, a hunger-monitoring coalition of multinational and nongovernmental organizations, noted in December:

The cessation of hostilities and the restoration of humanitarian space to deliver…multi-sectoral assistance and restore services are essential first steps in eliminating any risk of famine.

Commenting on the report, famine expert Alex de Waal (Guardian, 3/21/24) said that

Israel has had ample warning of what will happen if it continues its campaign of destroying everything necessary to sustain life. The IPC’s Famine Review Committee report on 21 December authoritatively warned of starvation if Israel did not cease destruction and failed to allow humanitarian aid at scale.

………………………………..A Los Angeles Times editorial (4/9/24) expressed concern for “the level of death and destruction in Gaza” and wrote that, in a February news conference, “Biden was particularly critical—appropriately so—of the inability of humanitarian relief workers to get food and water to Gaza’s 2.3 million people, many of whom face famine.” The piece went on to call for “hostage releases and a lasting ceasefire.”

Yet the article’s penultimate paragraph read: “It is Hamas that keeps the war going by continuing to hold the hostages it brutally kidnapped in its October attack.”

…………………………………..the reality was exactly the opposite of what the LA Times said: The Israeli/US side wanted to take a short break from slaughtering Palestinians, whereas the Palestinian side was insisting on the “lasting ceasefire” that the paper claimed to favor. Whatever the editors purport to want, regurgitating anti-Palestinian propaganda that essentially blames Palestinians for their own genocide, rather than the US/Israeli perpetrators, is hardly an effective way to contribute to ending the killing.

I’ve cited four authoritative sources either saying that Israel is committing genocide, or that there are reasonable grounds for interpreting the evidence that way. Yet none of the opinion articles I’ve analyzed here contained the word “genocide,” even as each one suggested that it was worried about the well-being of Palestinians in Gaza. If corporate media were serious about that, they would accurately name what the US and Israel are doing. Instead, US media outlets are pretending that a genocide isn’t happening and, when the war on Gaza eventually ends, this approach will make it easier to act as if one hadn’t taken place, and as if the US and Israel have a right to rule Palestine. https://fair.org/home/acknowledging-the-horrors-of-gaza-without-wanting-to-end-them/

April 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia is set to witness major developments in nuclear sector: IAEA chief Rafael Grossi

The director general’s visit reaffirms the IAEA’s commitment to supporting Saudi Arabia’s nuclear ambitions and signifies a positive collaboration between international and national institutions

Arab News, December 13, 2023

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is poised to witness significant developments in its nuclear sector, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In his first visit to the Kingdom, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi expressed his delight and admiration for Saudi Arabia’s nuclear capabilities and high professionalism within the sector.

Grossi also acknowledged Saudi Arabia’s imminent entry into nuclear operations, starting with a research reactor and paving the way for more extensive facilities in the future, expressing confidence in the preparedness of the Saudi workforce to embrace this new chapter in the Kingdom’s development.

“Saudi Arabia is on the doorsteps of nuclear operation starting with this research reactor, and later with bigger facilities. …………………………………..

The top official said: “When we talk about the nuclear regulator, it is the institution that must make sure that all these activities will not have any negative impact on the country, that will be a perfect protection of the population.”…………………………………………………………….

The director general’s visit reaffirms the IAEA’s commitment to supporting Saudi Arabia’s nuclear ambitions and signifies a positive collaboration between international and national institutions. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2425281/business-economy

April 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Saudi Arabia | Leave a comment

Unstable nuclear-waste dams threaten fertile Central Asia heartland

By Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/unstable-nuclear-waste-dams-threaten-fertile-central-asia-heartland-2024-04-23/

Summary

Dams unstable following a landslide in 2017
22-25 million euros needed to move the waste to safer areas
16 million could be displaced from region in event of disaster

MAILUU-SUU, Kyrgyzstan, April 23 (Reuters) – Dams holding vast amounts of uranium mine tailings above the fertile Fergana valley in Central Asia are unstable, threatening a possible Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster if they collapse that would make the region uninhabitable, studies have revealed.

Dams holding some 700,000 cubic meters (185 million gallons) of uranium mine tailings in Kyrgyzstan have become unreliable following a 2017 landslide. A further landslide or earthquake could send their contents into a river system used to irrigate Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Tajik farmlands, the studies at the Soviet-era radioactive waste disposal facility showed. That event would possibly displace millions in those three countries.

The studies, part of a project by the European Commission and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to reinforce the facilities, show that the type of waste involved cannot be safely contained in their current locations and needs to be moved away from the banks of the Mailuu-Suu river.

The Fergana valley, where the contaminated water would go, is the most densely populated area in Central Asia with 16 million people, many of whom are involved in the cultivation of cotton, rice, grains, fruit and vegetables.

“If a landslide causes the river to burst, the waste from two mine dumps will enter the water,” says Gulshair Abdullayeva, a manager of the Mailuu-Suu radiology lab.

“The environmental disaster would almost be comparable with Chernobyl.”

Studies have shown that the waste in those dumps is liquid, making it more hazardous, and it could flow into the river in the event of a strong earthquake, says Sebastian Hess, an engineer with German firm G.E.O.S. contracted by the Kyrgyz government.

“That would be a horrible catastrophe,” he said. “This water is used to irrigate fields which means agricultural produce would be contaminated.”

The dams’ foundations were weakened by water during a 2017 landslide which raised the river’s water level, bring it closer to the tailings, engineers have said.

The Bishkek government and G.E.O.S. estimate that 22-25 million euros would be needed to move the waste from the two unsafe locations to one further away from the river.

The area near the town of the Mailuu-Suu, one of the world’s biggest uranium ore dumps, was developed by the Soviet Union between the 1940s and 1960s. A factory in the town also processed uranium ore from other nearby mines.

April 26, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety | Leave a comment

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