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Atlantic Ocean circulation nearing ‘devastating’ tipping point, study finds

Collapse in system of currents that helps regulate global climate would be at such speed that adaptation would be impossible

Jonathan Watts, 12 Feb 24,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/09/atlantic-ocean-circulation-nearing-devastating-tipping-point-study-finds

The circulation of the Atlantic Ocean is heading towards a tipping point that is “bad news for the climate system and humanity”, a study has found.

The scientists behind the research said they were shocked at the forecast speed of collapse once the point is reached, although they said it was not yet possible to predict how soon that would happen.

Using computer models and past data, the researchers developed an early warning indicator for the breakdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc), a vast system of ocean currents that is a key component in global climate regulation.

They found Amoc is already on track towards an abrupt shift, which has not happened for more than 10,000 years and would have dire implications for large parts of the world.

Amoc, which encompasses part of the Gulf Stream and other powerful currents, is a marine conveyer belt that carries heat, carbon and nutrients from the tropics towards the Arctic Circle, where it cools and sinks into the deep ocean. This churning helps to distribute energy around the Earth and modulates the impact of human-caused global heating.

But the system is being eroded by the faster-than-expected melt-off of Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets, which pours freshwater into the sea and obstructs the sinking of saltier, warmer water from the south.

Amoc has declined 15% since 1950 and is in its weakest state in more than a millennium, according to previous research that prompted speculation about an approaching collapse.

Until now there has been no consensus about how severe this will be. One study last year, based on changes in sea surface temperatures, suggested the tipping point could happen between 2025 and 2095. However, the UK Met Office said large, rapid changes in Amoc were “very unlikely” in the 21st century.

The new paper, published in Science Advances, has broken new ground by looking for warning signs in the salinity levels at the southern extent of the Atlantic Ocean between Cape Town and Buenos Aires. Simulating changes over a period of 2,000 years on computer models of the global climate, it found a slow decline can lead to a sudden collapse over less than 100 years, with calamitous consequences.

The paper said the results provided a “clear answer” about whether such an abrupt shift was possible: “This is bad news for the climate system and humanity as up till now one could think that Amoc tipping was only a theoretical concept and tipping would disappear as soon as the full climate system, with all its additional feedbacks, was considered.”

It also mapped some of the consequences of Amoc collapse. Sea levels in the Atlantic would rise by a metre in some regions, inundating many coastal cities. The wet and dry seasons in the Amazon would flip, potentially pushing the already weakened rainforest past its own tipping point. Temperatures around the world would fluctuate far more erratically. The southern hemisphere would become warmer. Europe would cool dramatically and have less rainfall. While this might sound appealing compared with the current heating trend, the changes would hit 10 times faster than now, making adaptation almost impossible.

“What surprised us was the rate at which tipping occurs,” said the paper’s lead author, René van Westen, of Utrecht University. “It will be devastating.”

He said there was not yet enough data to say whether this would occur in the next year or in the coming century, but when it happens, the changes are irreversible on human timescales.

In the meantime, the direction of travel is undoubtedly in an alarming direction.

“We are moving towards it. That is kind of scary,” van Westen said. “We need to take climate change much more seriously.”

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, oceans | 1 Comment

Worst places in Australia to be if World War Three hits

For Australia, the question isn’t where to hide in the event of a nuclear war. It’s where not to be — and this is the top of the list.

news.com.au Jamie Seidel Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel 12 Feb 24

For Australia, the question isn’t where to hide in the event of a nuclear war. It’s where not to be. And how to cope afterwards.

………………………………………the bomb is back.

And international analysts fear there’s a growing will to use them…………………………………………………………………………….

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists chose to keep their “Doomsday Clock” at 90 seconds to midnight late last month – the closest it has ever been to an apocalypse.

They cited the danger of the Russia-Ukraine war, the slaughter in Gaza, and the worldwide diplomatic, economic and environmental toll associated with 2023 being the hottest year in recorded history.

All it takes is one “incident”. Then the domino effect of “Mutually Assured Destruction” kicks into play.

Those with the largest arsenals – China, Russia and the United States – are still likely to hit strategic targets. At least in the first wave of a nuclear exchange.

Australia in the firing line

……………………………………………………“Once we enter the slippery slope of even limited nuclear exchanges, the end result will be escalation to mutual annihilation — something about which both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping may need reminding,” says ANU emeritus strategic studies professor Paul Dibb.

PINE GAP has long been known to top the list. This highly secret US military installation exists to detect and track nuclear missiles. Removing it early in any war would degrade the ability of the US to defend its own soil.

“In the late 1970s, it was made quite clear to me during talks in Moscow that Pine Gap was a priority Soviet nuclear target,” Professor Dibb said in a recent ASPI critique.

“And in 2016, I was warned: ‘In the event of nuclear war between Russia and America, you Australians will find that nuclear missiles fly in every direction.

HAROLD E HOLT Naval Communications Station at Northwest Cape, near Exmouth, Western Australia, is in a similar category. This enormous communications facility has been built to communicate with submarines at depths of up to 30 metres. Eliminating it would sow confusion among US attack and ballistic missile submarine commanders.

From here, the list gets more controversial.

RAAF TINDAL near Katherine in the Northern Territory has recently been adapted to host nuclear-capable US B-52 bombers. Any nuclear-capable delivery system is a likely nuclear target…………………….

HMAS STIRLING, the naval base in Perth’s southern suburbs, is slated to become a regular pitstop call for US and UK nuclear-powered submarines. Eventually, it is hoped to also house Australia’s own. But such submarines are incredibly high-value targets because they combine immense firepower, globe-circling range and virtual invisibility.

OSBORNE NAVAL SHIPYARD in Port Adelaide could potentially join its US and UK cousins on a nuclear warhead list. The nuclear-powered submarines it is expected to begin assembling are among the most lethal ships in the sea. But also the hardest to build, maintain and repair.

“Armed with nuclear submarines, Australia itself will be a target for possible nuclear attacks in the future,” Communist Party mouthpiece Victor Gao threatened shortly after then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull dropped the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact bombshell in 2021.

“Do you really want to be a target in a possible nuclear war, or do you want to be free from nuclear menace,” he menaced. [ Ed note – “menaced” – I thought it was a fair question]

MARINE ROTATIONAL FORCE – DARWIN is a rotating force of 2500 US Marine troops, aircrew and sailors based in and around Darwin and at RAAF Base Darwin. While small, it does represent the core upon which a much larger force can be built. And it’s a high-profile US presence far from home shores.

RAAF BASE WILLIAMTOWN, 40km north of Newcastle, NSW, is home base to Australia’s small fleet of F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters. But the one thing these aircraft were explicitly designed to do – be invisible to radar – makes attacking their undefended airfields an obvious shortcut.

GARDEN ISLAND NAVAL BASE, Sydney, is already home to a disproportionately large number of Australia’s otherwise limited number of major surface (and subsurface) combat vessels. And while there are no plans for US or UK nuclear attack submarines to visit, Australia’s own will likely operate from this centralised hub. https://www.news.com.au/national/worst-places-in-australia-to-be-if-world-war-three-hits/news-story/1c0180b0a5f8652b024bfc1fe9444313

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

First Small Nuclear Reactor (SMR) domino falls, potentially to start cascade

February 8, 2024, https://beyondnuclear.org/first-smr-domino-falls-potentially-to-start-cascade/—

Same financial risks viewed as generic to entire reactor type

The nuclear industry is rattled by an Opinion piece appearing in the January 31, 2024 edition of the energy trade journal Utility Dive. The article, astutely entitled “The collapse of NuScale’s project should spell the end for small modular nuclear reactors,” is an extensively documented study of yet another nuclear folly.

Its author, M.V. Ramana, the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, carefully focuses on the financial collapse of what was heralded to be the first units of a bow wave of mass produced small commercial power reactors to be constructed and operated in the United States.

NuScale Power Corp, the Portland, Oregon based company that started up in 2007, was supposed to be the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) poster child to mass produce the first US Small Modular Reactors (SMR) owned and controlled by US nuclear giant and thermonuclear weapons manufacturer Fluor Corporation. Instead, on November 9, 2023, NuScale was announced as just another financial causality in a growing tally of nuclear projects stymied by uncontrollable cost and a recurring pattern of delay after delay. In this case, however, NuScale fell victim even before its selected reactor design could be certified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a viable license for the groundbreaking ceremony.

The NuScale pilot project’s initial goal was to license, construct and operate twelve contiguous units, (50 to 60-megawatts electric (MWe) each for a total up to 720 MWe of generating capacity per site), housed in a single reactor building with one control room. On the promise that this would be safer, cheaper and quicker to build and operate, the NuScale SMR is really just a redesign of a decades-old technology for the impossibly expensive and larger (800 to 1150 MWe per unit) commercial pressurized water reactors operating on license extensions today.

Yet, even with this extensive experience going back to the 1960’s, the redesign has not yielded to be any more reliable for estimating cost-of-completion, time-to-completion or affordable operation. In fact, with the industry’s abandonment of the design and construction of new reactors on “economies of scale,” the prospect for generating affordable electricity from small “mirage” reactors has apparently only become more unattainable.

The NuScale pilot reactor construction site was awarded by the DOE on the federally owned Idaho National Laboratory (INL) near Idaho Falls. NuScale worked out a deal for its projected electricity customer base on a contract with the Utah Associated Municipal Power System (UAMPS), an electric cooperative of 50 cities in seven western states incentivized by a DOE federal government payout to would be customers of up to $1.4 billion over ten years.

But despite the federally promised awards to reduce nuclear power’s certain financial risks to customers, Ramana documents the NuScale and UAMPS struggle with first building its power purchase subscriptions from members who would shortly run for the designated “exit ramps” scheduled into the contract.

As these municipalities pulled out of the nuclear project because of financial concerns, UAMPS and NuScale renegotiated the project’s generating capacity down to six units each rated at 77 MWe for a total generating capacity of 462 MWe.

The reactor design’s safety, however, is still problematic and uncertified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now demonstrated to be yet another expensive “house of cards.” Like the previous “nuclear renaissance” initiated by Congress and the nuclear industry in 2005, of the 34 “advanced” Generation III units put forward by industry, only one unit (Vogtle unit 3) is commercially operable today and another unit (Vogtle unit 4) still under construction. The initial $14 billion project in Georgia is now approaching as much as $40 billion to show for it.

In a follow-on article in the February 3, 2024 edition of DownToEarth, M.V. Ramana and Farrukh A. Chishtie are co-authors of “Tripling nuclear energy by 2050 will take a miracle, and miracles don’t happen” which identifies the same dangerous wild goose chase to expand nuclear power that is destined to fail climate change mitigation on the global scale.

Chishtie and Ramana expertly rebut the deluded notion as presented by the United States former Special Envoy on Climate Change John Kerry at the 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) in Dubai, UAE. They cite “the hard economic realities of nuclear power” historically to date as the principal reason nuclear power cannot be scaled up from what can only be termed a preposterous level by 2050. That will be far too late by most accounts to abate an accelerating climate crisis.

“The evidence that nuclear energy cannot be scaled up quickly is overwhelming. It is time to abandon the idea that further expanding nuclear technology can help with mitigating climate change. Rather, we need to focus on expanding renewables and associated technologies while implementing stringent efficiency measures to rapidly effect an energy transition.

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Putin ‘tried everything possible’ to make peace – Ukrainian diplomat

One thing is clear: Kiev has chosen to see itself as literally unable to make peace without Western permission.

Fri, 29 Dec 2023, Rt, https://www.sott.net/article/487425-Putin-tried-everything-possible-to-make-peace-Ukrainian-diplomat—

The possibility of compromise was “very real” in April 2022, a key negotiator from Kiev’s side has said

Russian President Vladimir Putin personally sought a peace agreement with Ukraine in April 2022, according to Ambassador Aleksandr Chaly, a senior member of the Ukrainian delegation. Chaly expressed this perspective during an event at the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP) in early December, where he dissected the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The ex-deputy foreign minister is an associate fellow at the Swiss government-funded foundation. His remarks drew media attention after a video of the event was released on YouTube last week.

Chaly analyzed the roots of the ongoing conflict, which he described as “hard competition” for Ukraine that the US and the EU have with Russia, as well as Kiev’s intention to join the EU and NATO. He stressed that “Russian aggression” was not inevitable since the parties had sufficient tools to resolve their differences.

The diplomat called Putin’s decision to launch the special military operation against Ukraine in February 2022 “a crime” and “a mistake” and claimed that the Russian leader had been misled by “his own propaganda and his intelligence services.”

Approximately a week into hostilities, Chaly believes Putin recognized the unrealistic nature of his expectations and actively pursued a negotiated resolution. He based his analysis on his personal involvement in the peace talks, which were first hosted by Minsk and culminated in Istanbul in late March with a draft truce approved by both sides.

“Putin … tried to do everything possible to conclude [the] agreement with Ukraine,” the diplomat told the audience. The text made concessions to Kiev, compared to Russia’s initial position, and it was Putin’s “personal decision” to accept it, he claimed.

“We’ve managed to find a very real compromise. Putin really wanted to reach some peaceful agreement with Ukraine.”

Chaly mused that “for some reason,” the Istanbul communique did not transform into an actual treaty.

The Ukrainian delegation’s leader, MP David Arakhamia, said in late November that then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson advised Ukrainians to “just continue fighting” during his visit to Kiev after the conclusion of the talks.

Remarks made by senior Russian officials, including Putin, partially back Chaly’s account. The president said during his year-end press conference this month that Russia’s stated goals of demilitarization and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine would have been addressed under the pre-approved treaty.

“Options remain to either achieve them through an agreement or by force,” Putin stressed.

Comment: The article adds to the list of articles that document what the Ukrainians and Russians tried to achieve. Putin talks about de-Nazification. Does that translate to de-NATOification, if what Russia wanted most of all, was for Ukraine to stay neutral and give up on NATO membership?

See also:
November 27, 2023 The Jews and Boris Johnson: Zelensky’s top political ally looking for scapegoats as Ukrainian elites begin to accept the war is lost In this article Tarik Cyril Amar writes:

Regarding the peace negotiations that took place in Belarus at the end of February and the beginning of March 2022, Arakhamia tells Moseichuk that the Russian delegation had one “key aim”: to make Ukraine accept neutrality and give up on NATO membership. In Arakhamia’s own words, “everything else” Russia talked about, such as demands regarding “denazification, Russian-speaking populations, and blah-blah-blah” was merely “cosmetic political seasoning.”

Let that sink in: Here is a prime negotiator for Ukraine and one of the Zelensky regime’s top men stating explicitly that all that peace really required at that very early stage in the large-scale war was Kiev committing to neutrality and giving up on its NATO ambitions. The war could have stopped in the spring of 2022; that is, one-and-a-half very bloody years ago. And for Kiev, this would have come at the price of giving up on a NATO ambition that is based on a false promise encapsulated in the foul compromise of the 2008 Bucharest summit. A pledge which the West has no intention of keeping, as demonstrated again at the 2023 Vilnius summit.

Arakhamia’s admission proves, once more, that there have always been viable alternatives to war. Western information warriors still denying this empirically established fact simply refuse to face their own terrible responsibility for stonewalling negotiations throughout. Likewise, Arakhamia demonstrates that everyone in Ukraine and the West who insisted that Moscow’s war aims were maximalist (whether to obliterate Ukraine as a state or to march right through it to, at least, Berlin) were flat out wrong, whether by mistake or on purpose. At least, that’s if we believe Arakhamia, who had direct experience with real representatives of Russia and not the fantasy creatures populating the minds of all too many Westerners, from Yale to Berlin. And note: Arakhamia has absolutely no reason to embellish Moscow’s record.
[…]
One thing is clear: Kiev has chosen to see itself as literally unable to make peace without Western permission.

After Belarus there were talks in Türkiye:

November 22, 2023 Boris Johnson derailed Ukraine peace deal – key Zelensky ally The article has many links to articles that describe how the peace negotiations were derailed. In the article there is:

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson played a key role in derailing a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev, telling Ukraine to “just continue fighting,” top Ukrainian MP David Arakhamia has said. Arakhamia, the head of President Vladimir Zelensky’s parliamentary faction, was the chief negotiator at the botched peace talks in Istanbul, held early into the ongoing conflict.

The MP made the bombshell revelation on Friday in an interview with the Ukrainian 1+1 TV channel. “Russia’s goal was to put pressure on us so that we would take neutrality. This was the main thing for them,” he said. “And that we would give an obligation that we would not join NATO. This was the main thing.”

However, Kiev did not actually trust Moscow to keep its word and did not want to reach such a deal without third-party “security guarantees,” Arakhamia claimed, while revealing the lead role in derailing the agreement was played by Johnson.

When we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we would not sign anything with [the Russians] at all. And [said] ‘let’s just continue fighting.’

The pivotal role played by Johnson in Ukraine’s decision to scrap the draft agreement with Russia – signed by Arakhamia personally in Istanbul – has long been rumored, with initial reports on the matter emerging in Ukrainian media as early as May 2022. Until now, however, it was neither denied nor confirmed by any of the parties involved.

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief is an unpopular ‘butcher’ – Politico

https://www.rt.com/russia/592184-ukraine-commander-syrsky-unpopular/ 10 Feb 24

Troops are wary of General Aleksandr Syrsky, and reportedly fear that he will throw them into “fruitless assaults”

Ukraine’s new armed forces chief, General Aleksandr Syrsky, is deeply unpopular among the rank and file of the Ukrainian military, who view him as a “butcher” willing to sacrifice waves of troops, Politico reported on Thursday.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky named Syrsky as the new head of the armed forces on Thursday, after firing General Valery Zaluzhny from the post. The switch had been the subject of media rumors for several weeks, and Zelensky hinted in an interview last week that it would form part of a wider “reset” of the country’s military and civilian leadership.

Syrsky is a controversial choice, best known for “leading forces into a meat grinder in Bakhmut [called Artyomovsk in Russia], sending wave after wave of troops to face opposition fire,” Politico said.

The unsuccessful defense of Artyomovsk/Bakhmut last year cost Ukraine dearly, and earned Syrsky the nickname ‘butcher’, an anonymous source within the Ukrainian military told the news site. A captain told the outlet that Syrsky’s appointment is a “very bad decision,” adding that soldiers refer to him as ‘General200’, a nickname that Politico said refers to 200 of his men dying, but could also refer to ‘Cargo 200’, a Soviet and Russian military code used to describe corpses being removed from the battlefield.

“General Syrsky’s leadership is bankrupt, his presence or orders coming from his name are demoralizing, and he undermines trust in the command in general,” an anonymous Ukrainian military officer and frontline intelligence analyst posted on X. “His relentless pursuit of tactical gains constantly depletes our valuable human resources, resulting in tactical advances such as capturing tree lines or small villages, with no operational goals in mind.”

“This approach creates a never-ending cycle of fruitless assaults that drain personnel,” the officer said.

In a group chat of Bakhmut/Artyomovsk veterans, one soldier wrote “we’re all f**ked” upon learning of Syrsky’s appointment, Politico stated.

Syrsky takes over command of a depleted military, with Kiev having lost more than 383,000 men since the hostilities started in February 2022, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Prior to his dismissal, Zaluzhny warned Zelensky that a rapid improvement in Ukraine’s position on the battlefield was unlikely, regardless of who took his place, the Washington Post reported last week.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia’s campaign against Ukraine will not be affected by Syrsky’s appointment, and that Moscow will continue until its objectives are achieved.

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Zelenskiy names new Ukrainian military commander, says it’s time for ‘renewal’

RFE/RL, Fri, 09 Feb 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/488754-Zelenskiy-names-new-Ukrainian-military-commander-says-its-time-for-renewal
—

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appointed Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy as the Ukrainian Army’s commander in chief just minutes after announcing it was time for a “renewal” and “renewed leadership” of the country’s armed forces.

Comment: It’s probably time for a renewal of Ukraine’s political leadership too.

In his statement on February 8, Zelenskiy said Syrskiy “has successful defense experience — he conducted the Kyiv defense operation. He also has successful offensive experience — the Kharkiv liberation operation.”

The Russia-born, 58-year-old Syrskiy, who has served as the commander of Ukrainian ground forces since 2019, replaces General Valeriy Zaluzhniy following reports that Zelenskiy was strongly considering removing him.

Zelenksiy said in a message on X, formerly Twitter, that is he grateful to Zaluzhniy and he appreciates “every victory we have achieved together.” Before announcing the leadership change, Zelenskiy said he had “candidly discussed” with Zaluzhniy issues in the army that require urgent change.

“Starting today, a new management team will take over leadership of the armed forces of Ukraine. I had dozens of conversations with commanders at various levels,” he said, adding that the move “is not about surnames, and surely not about politics.”

The change in leadership is about the management of the military and “about involving the experience of this war’s combat-hardened commanders,” he said, touting Syrskiy’s successful experience, particularly in the defense of Kyiv and his successful offensive experience, particularly in the Kharkiv liberation operation.

Defense Minister Rustem Umerov noted Zaluzhniy’s role in the first two years of the full-scale Russian invasion, saying “our soldiers repelled the onslaught of the aggressor, defended our statehood, and continue to defend our independence every day.”

Comment: After the last two years of this 10-year conflict, Russia controls about 18% of Ukraine that used to be Ukrainian.

He said he was grateful for Zaluzhniy’s achievements and victories, but war changes and demands change.

“The battles of 2022, 2023, and 2024 are three different realities [and] 2024 will bring new changes for which we must be ready,” Umerov said. “New approaches, new strategies are needed.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the move to replace Zaluzhniy was a “sovereign decision” made by Ukrainian leaders. He declined to comment further.

Comment: No one really believes that.

Syrskiy was one of the main commanders who led the Ukrainian armed forces’ fight against the offensives by Russia-backed separatists that started in 2014 shortly after Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea.

Comment: That’s certainly one way of looking at it. But as usual, RFE/RL tries and succeeds in being as wrong as possible.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Syrskiy led the Ukrainian armed forces’ successful counteroffensive to regain control over the Kharkiv region in September of that year.

Comment: A “full-scale invasion” using a small fraction of its military.

…………………………………………………………………………..Tensions between Zaluzhniy and Zelenskiy surfaced in November after the commander in chief published an opinion piece in The Economist saying the war had entered a stalemate and only a technological breakthrough would allow Ukraine to achieve its goals of liberating occupied territory.

Zelenskiy’s office was quick to reject that battlefield assessment.

Polls showed earlier that Zaluzhniy’s popularity in the country is as high, if not more so, than Zelenskiy’s, and some experts suggested that if Zelenskiy ousted Zaluzhniy, it would demoralize some of Ukraine troops and undermine national unity. RT reports:

Ukraine’s new armed forces chief, General Aleksandr Syrsky, is deeply unpopular among the rank and file of the Ukrainian military, who view him as a “butcher” willing to sacrifice waves of troops, Politico reported on Thursday.
…
Syrsky is a controversial choice, best known for “leading forces into a meat grinder in Bakhmut [called Artyomovsk in Russia], sending wave after wave of troops to face opposition fire,” Politico said.

The unsuccessful defense of Artyomovsk/Bakhmut last year cost Ukraine dearly, and earned Syrsky the nickname ‘butcher’, an anonymous source within the Ukrainian military told the news site. A captain told the outlet that Syrsky’s appointment is a “very bad decision,” adding that soldiers refer to him as ‘General200’, a nickname that Politico said refers to 200 of his men dying, but could also refer to ‘Cargo 200’, a Soviet and Russian military code used to describe corpses being removed from the battlefield.

“General Syrsky’s leadership is bankrupt, his presence or orders coming from his name are demoralizing, and he undermines trust in the command in general,” an anonymous Ukrainian military officer and frontline intelligence analyst posted on X. “His relentless pursuit of tactical gains constantly depletes our valuable human resources, resulting in tactical advances such as capturing tree lines or small villages, with no operational goals in mind.”

“This approach creates a never-ending cycle of fruitless assaults that drain personnel,” the officer said.

In a group chat of Bakhmut/Artyomovsk veterans, one soldier wrote “we’re all f**ked” upon learning of Syrsky’s appointment, Politico stated.

Syrsky takes over command of a depleted military, with Kiev having lost more than 383,000 men since the hostilities started in February 2022, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Prior to his dismissal, Zaluzhny warned Zelensky that a rapid improvement in Ukraine’s position on the battlefield was unlikely, regardless of who took his place, the Washington Post reported last week.

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

France: EDF Faces Unprecedented Nuclear Workload in France

Energy Intelligence Group, Fri, Feb 9, 2024, Grace Symes, London

As France faces two major nuclear efforts — the refurbishment and life extension of EDF’s domestic operating fleet and a major nuclear newbuild program — there are already signs that the country’s nuclear workforce is struggling to keep up. With 10-year safety reviews, or decennial visits (DVs), of EDF’s 56 domestic reactors growing ever more complex and time-consuming, EDF anticipates flatlined nuclear output from 2025 to 2026, and beyond that France will need to ramp up an industrial effort not seen in generations if it hopes to successfully launch simultaneous large newbuilds (related).

Energy Intelligence 9th Feb 2024

https://www.energyintel.com/0000018d-7944-d1ef-a5cd-fd647d920000

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | employment, France | Leave a comment

Israel Weaponizes Sympathy And Victimhood

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, FEB 12 2024

There’s a certain particularly toxic personality type which thrives on being hated. They behave in wildly odious and destructive ways, and then when people react to this with hostility they plunge into poor-me victimhood, which they then use to justify more odious and destructive behavior.

You may have been unfortunate enough to have encountered such personalities in your own life. They behave atrociously, and then when people react to it they say “See?? I really AM being persecuted!”

……………………………… A Jewish anti-Zionist Israeli named Alon Mizrahi posted an interesting piece on Twitter a few days ago that’s been rattling around in my head ever since, wherein he argues that Israel is actually intentionally generating hatred towards itself in order to shore up political power.

Claiming that “Israel and American Jewish organizations took it upon themselves to keep Jews afraid and isolated” in a “strategy of intentional paranoia,” Mizrahi opines that when October 7 hit, “the right wing, nationalistic, paranoid section of the Jewish political spectrum, realized it could be translated into political gold.”

“It doesn’t seem like Israel is trying to be hated globally. It is actually what it’s doing,” Mizrahi writes. “It is intentionally airing its cruelty and barbarity so that it will remain closed up to the world, thus guaranteeing the continued rule of the paranoia camp.”

“Palestinians are just crash test dummies in this scenario,” he adds. “Their deaths are used to get people angry and Israel hated, so it becomes even more paranoid.”

Whether you accept or reject Mizrahi’s perspective, you can’t deny that Israel’s apologists have been seizing on the outrage its actions in Gaza have caused as evidence of anti-semitic persecution. The Anti-Defamation League has started categorizing pro-Palestine rallies as anti-semitic incidents, including rallies organized and attended by Jewish groups, leading to the Israel-friendly mass media reporting a massive spike in “anti-semitism” in the wake of October 7. Common pro-Palestine chants like “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” have been deceitfully labeled calls for the genocide of Jews, and any criticism of Israel’s actions is met with a deluge of accusations of anti-semitism.

Once Israel and its western supporters succeeded in framing any opposition to to the Israeli government as evidence of anti-semitism, it was guaranteed that any time Israel does something evil it will cause a new wave of “anti-semitism” per those standards. This perceived hatred and persecution could then be cited as evidence for why Israel needs to be even more violent, militaristic and tyrannical than it already was, and why its brutal treatment of Palestinians is justified and correct. This in turn could be used by western governments to justify pouring more weapons into Israel and providing military support against its neighbors.

In this dynamic, anything Israel does causes more people to hate Israel both in the middle east and around the world, to which Israel responds by tearfully proclaiming “See?? They hate us! We must defend ourselves against their hostilities!”

This is not the sort of behavior you would accept from someone in your life, and it shouldn’t be the sort of behavior we accept from nuclear-armed ethnostates. As with any other widespread dysfunction, the key to dismantling this one is to spread awareness of what it is that Israel is doing

And what Israel is doing, ultimately, is weaponizing sympathy and victimhood. When somebody is using a weapon to hurt others, you take their weapon away. The world needs to stop giving Israel sympathy and stop buying into its victimhood narratives, because those narratives are only ever used to justify more and more western-backed atrocities.

This won’t happen until enough awareness has spread of what’s really going on here. For there to be a movement toward health, a lot of eyes need to open to the unwholesomeness of this manipulative dynamic — both inside and outside of Israel.

Luckily that does appear to be the case. More and more people are recognizing the unwholesomeness of the pro-Israel victimhood narrative, just as you’d eventually recognize the unwholesomeness of someone in our own life who keeps behaving terribly and then playing the victim. It’s going to be a messy, two-steps-forward-one-step-back slog, but I think we’ll find our way out of this mess eventually. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-weaponizes-sympathy-and-victimhood?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=141592147&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email—

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Citing World Court, Japan Firm Cuts Ties With Israel Arms Maker

The ICJ’s ruling on Israel potentially committing genocide in Gaza is already showing substantive consequences for Israel’s arm industry.

By Ali Abunimah / The Electronic Infitada, 10 Feb 24

Amajor Japanese industrial conglomerate is cutting ties with Israeli arms maker Elbit, citing the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel may be committing genocide in Gaza.

Itochu Corporation said its aviation division would terminate its partnership with Elbit by the end of February.

Tsuyoshi Hachimura, Itochu’s chief financial officer, said that his company’s partnership with Elbit was “based on a request from the Japan’s defense ministry for the purpose of importing defense equipment for the Self-Defense Forces necessary for Japan’s security, and is not in any way related to the current conflict between Israel and Palestine.”

But the decision to end the relationship clearly is.

“Taking into consideration the International Court of Justice’s order on 26 January, and that the Japanese government supports the role of the Court, we have already suspended new activities related to the MOU [memorandum of understanding], and plan to end the MOU by the end of February,” Hachimura added.

The deal signed less than a year ago was hailed at the time by Israel’s ambassador in Tokyo as evidence of the “deepening relations between Israel and Japan, relations that are based on mutual interests and shared values.”

Action against Israel in Belgium, Spain and Switzerland

This is one of the first signs that the ICJ decision is already prompting companies and governments to cut ties with Israel – perhaps fearing that they too could become legally implicated in genocide.

This week the government of Wallonia, one of Belgium’s three federal regions, suspended arms export licenses to Israel, also citing the ICJ decision…………………………………………………

And on Tuesday, Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares told Al Jazeera that Madrid had suspended all arms exports to Israel since 7 October.

Albares said that the events of that day “made us realize the importance of a just and lasting solution to the issue of the Palestinian people.”

US arms genocide

While these steps are important and necessary, the reality remains that Israel’s chief arms supplier, the United States, shows no signs of slowing down its airlift of the bombs and other weapons Tel Aviv is using to methodically exterminate Palestinians in Gaza.

Last week, US President Joe Biden said he held Iran responsible for the deaths of three American soldiers in a drone attack on a base in Jordan because, he alleged, “they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”

Biden has also previously acknowledged that Israel has engaged in “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza – a war crime.

By his own standards, therefore, Biden is effectively confessing to his own guilt for war crimes that a growing number of companies and governments around the world refuse to support. https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/citing-world-court-japan-firm-cuts-ties-israel-arms-maker

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Israel, Japan | Leave a comment

NATO-Russia confrontation ‘could last decades’ – Stoltenberg

Rt.com 10 Feb 24

The US-led bloc urgently needs to increase production of ammunition, the secretary-general has said

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has called on the bloc’s members toincrease defense production in anticipation of “a confrontation” with Russia “that could last decades.” Stoltenberg has repeatedly warned that Western economies are ill-prepared for such a conflict.

With Ukraine’s counteroffensive fizzled out and Russian forces poised to capture the key Donbass stronghold of Avdeevka, media reports have for weeks highlighted the worsening shortage of men and ammunition facing Kiev. Amid warnings of “a cascading collapse along the front,” Stoltenberg told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper that NATO members must increase arms production to meet Ukraine’s demand.

“We need to restore and expand our industrial base more quickly so that we can increase supplies to Ukraine and replenish our own stocks. That means switching from slow production in times of peace to fast production, as is necessary in conflicts,” he said.

NATO recently signed contracts worth $1.2 billion to produce around 220,000 155-millimeter artillery shells, bringing to more than $10 billion the amount spent by the bloc on ammo deals in the past six months. However, the latest contracts will not be fulfilled until the end of 2025, and earlier ammo pledges to Ukraine – like the million artillery shells promised by the EU – have not been met. Meanwhile, American stockpiles have been depleted by Washington’s effort to arm both Ukraine and Israel, and a $61 billion military aid package promised by the White House remains stalled in Congress……………………………..

Aside from the fact that attacking NATO territory would enter Russia into a war with the entire alliance, Russian officials have repeatedly stressed that Moscow has no geopolitical, economic, or military interests in Poland or the Baltic states.

“It is absolutely out of the question,” Putin told American journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this week. “You just don’t have to be any kind of analyst, it goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of global war. And a global war will bring all of humanity to the brink of destruction. It’s obvious.”

Putin argued that Western leaders are “trying to intimidate their own population with an imaginary Russian threat.” These predictions, he said, “are just horror stories for people in the street in order to extort additional money from US taxpayers and European taxpayers” to keep weapons and ammo flowing to Ukraine. https://www.rt.com/news/592235-stoltenberg-prepare-war-russia/

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Call to withdrawal from Holderness nuclear waste site talks amid tourism and farming ‘fears’

South East Holderness’ Cllr Lyn Healing and Cllr Sean McMaster said the area had already experienced creeping industrialisation in recent years

Hull Live, Joseph Gerrard, Local Democracy Reporter, 10 Feb 24

Local politicians have called for East Riding Council to walk away from talks on proposals for a site to house radioactive nuclear waste deep beneath south Holderness.

South East Holderness’ Cllr Lyn Healing and Cllr Sean McMaster said most Holderness people did not want a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) amid fears for tourism and of creeping industrialisation. Beverley and Holderness MP Graham Stuart said he was backing the councillors’ call after he previously said a local referendum should be held on the proposals.

The call follows the unveiling of the proposals in January and the announcement that the council had joined the South Holderness Working Group to explore the proposals. East Riding Council Leader Cllr Anne Handley said it was the first stage in seeing whether a GDF would be right for the area……………………………. more https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/call-withdrawal-holderness-nuclear-waste-9087294

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear regulator raps EDF over safety flaws

The nuclear industry regulator has demanded improvements are made in at Dungeness B power station after a maintenance worker suffered an electric shock.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has served an improvement notice on Energy Nuclear Generation Ltd (EDF Energy) following an incident at Dungeness B power station in Kent.

An employee suffered an electric shock from a portable heater while undertaking maintenance work at the site. The worker suffered injuries on 5th November 2023, which required medical treatment.

The ONR stressed that there was no risk to nuclear safety, the public or the environment as a result of the incident.

Mike Webb, ONR’s superintending inspector for operating reactors, said: “Our investigation found that EDF had failed to ensure the electrical systems involved in the incident were constructed and maintained in a way that prevented danger to their workers, so far as is reasonably practicable. We will engage with EDF during the period of the improvement notice to ensure positive progress is made to address the shortfall.”……………………………….

Construction Index 12th Feb 2024

https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/nuclear-regulator-raps-edf-over-safety-flaws

February 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Rich men with the wrong answers – nuclear power has no future and yet they persist

None of these realities deter the pro-nuclear lobby, now led most shamefully by the International Atomic Energy Agency itself. Even as its chief, Rafael Grossi, wrings his hands over the immense dangers posed by Ukraine’s 15 reactors embroiled in a war, he and his agency are planning what it boasts is the “first-ever” Nuclear Energy Summit, to be held in late March in Brussels in partnership with the Belgian government.

By Linda Pentz Gunter February 11, 2024 https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/02/11/rich-men-with-the-wrong-answers/

Pro-nukers warned coal use would rise as reactors closed in Germany. The opposite happened.

Remember all those doomsayers from the pro-nuclear mythology unit who cast Germany’s Energiewende — or green energy revolution — as a catastrophic failure? They claimed, totally erroneously or deliberately misleadingly, that the country’s choice to close all its nuclear power plants guaranteed an increase in fossil fuel use and especially coal.

Germany vehemently denied those false predictions since they clearly knew that the country’s renewables were more than able to replace nuclear and fossil fuels. And so it has come to pass.

Germany’s use of lignite, or brown coal, dropped to its lowest level in 60 years in 2023. Even more dramatically, its hard coal use is at the lowest level since 1955. All of this happened at the same time as Germany was closing its last three reactors.

Meanwhile, according to reporting by Clean Energy Wire (CLEW), and citing an analysis (in German) from the research institute, Fraunhofer ISE, renewables “contributed a record share of more than half of the country’s power consumption” in 2023.

“The country sourced nearly 60 percent (59.7%) of its net power production from renewables, which generated a total of 260 terawatt hours (TWh), an increase of 7.2 percent compared to 2022,” the report said.

The 2022 uptick of coal production in Germany was entirely driven by high gas prices and a shortfall of French nuclear power production. The French nuclear sector was so unreliable that 50% of its reactors were out of action in April 2022, and again in November 2022, just as winter electricity usage began to rise.

Consequently, France had to import electricity to keep the lights on and the heat running.

Far from eating crow, the pro-nuclear boosters like Ted Nordhaus, who co-founded the Breakthrough Institute (BTI), are still crowing about the benefits of nuclear power. Nordhaus couldn’t wait to take ownership of his latest scheme, apparently long in the plotting, to dismantle the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to eliminate the industry’s most burdensome (i.e. costly) hassle of having to worry about inconvenient things like reactor safety. Efforts to do just that are now underway in Congress.

“Through years of rigorous research and engagement with the NRC, BTI has pinpointed crucial opportunities to modernize the regulatory framework that will lay the foundation for streamlined and efficient nuclear reactor licensing,” boasts the company’s website.

Meanwhile, we learn that the struggling Vogtle 3 and 4 new reactor project in Georgia, already 20 billion dollars over budget and years late, is set once again to further gouge ratepayers for the mistakes and failures of Georgia Power. And across the pond that the UK twin EPR project will likely top $59 billion with a completion date originally set for 2017 now pushed back to “after 2029”.

The IAEA has now become possibly the world’s most aggressive marketer of nuclear power and is still crowing about what it sees as a triumph at COP28, a veritable nuclear coup d’etat. In reality, this encompassed a miserable 24 countries signing onto an absurd fantasy propaganda statement that the world can and must triple global nuclear capacity by 2025.

Is there any point to the COP anymore? (Was there ever?) It has become one big carbon footprint junket, taken over by the oil companies, and hijacked by the nuclear industry and the IAEA, while making pledges rarely kept. The next one, in Azerbaijan, is chaired by yet another oil executive and has precisely zero women on its 28-member organizing committee.

The COP28 triple nuclear declaration was followed by an outrageously presumptuous assertion, by former U.S. energy secretary, Ernest Moniz (with Armond Cohen) in a Boston Globe oped, that, quote, “The world wants to triple nuclear energy.” (The Globe published our reply on January 17.)

Are we tired yet of absurdly rich, mostly White men pronouncing what they have decided the world wants from the comfort of their ivory towers? We are one such elitist down now with the retirement of 80-year old multi-millionaire John Kerry as US climate envoy. As of January 2024, Kerry’s net worth was $250 million, but that’s after divesting himself from his shares in fossil fuel, nuclear power and nuclear weapons companies.

Kerry has been replaced by, yes, drumroll, another old, rich, White man in the person of perennial White House advisor, John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress. Podesta, a stripling at 75, is a mere pauper compared to Kerry with a net worth of just $10 million-$13 million depending on sources, none of which are fully reliable.

Where Podesta might stand on nuclear power is a little murky, although one assumes he will tow the Biden/Kerry line and evangelize accordingly. He is on the record as considering nuclear power as a producer of hydrogen, telling Cipher in a September 2023 interview: “I think the questions around how to utilize existing nuclear and the production of hydrogen are definitely on the table.”

And then there’s Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the UK, who, together with his even richer wife, has a net worth of $670 million. Despite all the evidence of extreme costs, rising sea-levels and agonizingly slow timelines, on January 11, Sunak’s government announced its plan for the country’s “biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years to create jobs, reduce bills and strengthen Britain’s energy security.”

Nuclear power of course can achieve none of these. The electricity even of the current new nuclear reactors nearing completion at Hinkley Point will be almost triple the price Britons are currently paying. Promised new jobs will evaporate along with the new reactor plans, as we have already seen elsewhere — the V.C Summer and NuScale projects being prime examples.

To achieve so-called energy security and get off its reliance on imported Russian reactor fuel, Sunak’s government also announced it would invest $381 million to produce the fuel domestically.

This is all a colossal betrayal of working people and their needs, with money squandered on illusory, expensive and irrelevant nuclear projects whose only purpose is to sustain the UK’s nuclear arsenal, one that could destroy the world many times over.

What Moniz, Kerry, Grossi, Sunak and other nuclear-promoting leaders need to understand is what the world actually wants, alongside peace, is fast, affordable and safer renewable energy, not another Chornobyl.

February 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster | 1 Comment

“In The War Of Propaganda, It Is Very Difficult To Defeat The United States”

Got it? In Ukraine people die from bombs because Russia launched Russian airstrikes and killed them very Russianly, whereas in Gaza people get hurt by explosions because they got too close to some type of explosive material.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, FEB 11, 2024

“…………………… “In the war of propaganda it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media,” Putin replied, adding, “The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media are American financial institutions.”

… Putin is definitely correct about the strength of the American propaganda machine. Of all the fronts one could possibly choose to challenge the United States on, propaganda is surely the least favorable. The US empire has by far the most sophisticated and effective propaganda machine ever to have existed, operating with such complexity that most people don’t even know it exists.

…………………………………………………………………In reality the nature of the US-centralized empire allows it to run a massive, nonstop international propaganda campaign through mass media platforms which are mostly privately owned. A diverse network of factors feeds into this dynamic which I’ve detailed in my unusually lengthy article “15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists”, but the gist of it is that anyone who’s wealthy enough to control a mass media platform is going to have a vested interest in preserving the status quo upon which their wealth is premised, and they will cooperate with establishment power structures in various ways toward that end.

The fact that these mass media outlets look independent but function as propaganda organs for the US empire allows its propaganda to fly into people’s minds without triggering any gag reflex of critical thinking or skepticism, which wouldn’t be the case if people knew those outlets were feeding them propaganda. Propaganda only really has persuasive power if you don’t know it’s happening to you.

The invisibility of US propaganda is further aided by the subtle methods by which it is administered, which we’ve seen exemplified beautifully in the coverage of Israel’s ongoing US-backed mass atrocity in Gaza.

In an article titled “Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows,” The Intercept reports that a review of 1,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times about Israel’s war on Gaza found that the outlets consistently used word choices which served Israeli information interests.

“Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around,” The Intercept’s Adam Johnson and Othman Ali report. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

This is the sort of manipulation that a casual news consumer wouldn’t notice. Unless you’re on alert for bias and are keeping track of what words are and aren’t being used where, you’re probably not going to notice the absence of emotionally-charged words when reporting on Palestinians who are killed by Israelis.

This type of slant shows up in all sorts of ways, like today’s headlines about the IDF killing a six year-old Palestinian girl named Hind Rajab along with her family. Reliable propaganda organs of the empire like CNN, The New York Times and the BBC have respectively gone with the headlines “Five-year-old Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped in car under Israeli fire”, “Missing 6-Year-Old and Rescue Team Found Dead in Gaza, Aid Group Says,” and “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help”. In contrast, Al Jazeera reports on the same story with the headline “Body of 6-year-old killed in ‘deliberate’ Israeli fire found after 12 days,” and Middle East Eye goes with “Hind Rajab: Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped under Israeli fire for days”.

It’s easy to spot the difference when they’re placed next to each other like I just did, but unless you’re really watching out for it and have a good background on what’s going on here you’re likely to miss what’s happening. If you’re like most people and don’t read past the headline, you’d never know from the imperial media headlines that the child was killed by Israel, and you’d certainly never know about her terrified phone call for help while trapped by IDF fire and surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives. If you look to the legacy media and its algorithmically-boosted online iterations for information about the world, you went one more day with a distorted perspective of what’s happening in Gaza.

The western press constantly write headlines like this when trying to minimize the impact of someone’s death at the hands of a party they sympathize with, particularly with regard to Palestinians. Last month the BBC published an article titled “Record number of civilians hurt by explosives in 2023”, as though they were mishandling fireworks or something instead of being actively killed by Israeli bombs. The BBC later revised their atrocious headline, but revised it in the opposite direction, replacing “Record number” with “High number” to further minimize the impact.

Contrast this with the BBC’s headlines when it’s reporting on Ukrainians killed by Russian airstrikes . Here’s a recent one titled “Ukraine war: Russian air strikes claim five lives in Kyiv and Mykolaiv”, and another titled “Ukraine war: Baby killed in Russian strike on Kharkiv hotel”.

Last week The Washington Post ran an opinion piece titled “Is America complicit in Israel’s bloody war in Gaza?”, which is already a ridiculously skewed headline because the answer is self-evidently yes — implying that there’s any question of this skews things in America’s favor. But even this was too much for the Post’s editors, who re-titled the piece “Has the Israel-Gaza war changed your feelings about being American?” to keep Americans from thinking too hard about Israel’s bloody war in Gaza and their country’s complicity in it.

In a Wednesday article titled “Biden Tries Again With Arab Americans in Michigan”, New York Times editorial board member Farah Stockman wrote the absolutely insane line “The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel seems to be affecting Biden’s election prospects.” And then The New York Times actually printed it.

Read that line again. She’s saying Arab Americans are rejecting Biden because of the October 7 Hamas attack, which is of course absurd; they’re rejecting Biden because he’s backing a genocide in Gaza. She wrote this nonsensical line because in the New York Times you can’t say things like “Israel’s genocide in Gaza” or “the president’s facilitation of crimes against humanity”, and you won’t be hired if you’re the sort of person who’d be inclined to. Instead we’re pretending that for some inexplicable reason Arab Americans are just hopping mad at Biden because October 7 happened.

But again, these little manipulations fly under the radar if you’re not on the lookout for them. Such is the brilliance of the US empire’s invisible propaganda machine. That’s why it’s very difficult to win a propaganda war against the United States, that’s why westerners have been so successfully manipulated into accepting a status quo of endless war, ecocide, injustice and exploitation, and that’s why the world looks the way it looks right now.

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/in-the-war-of-propaganda-it-is-very?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=141567310&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email
—

February 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear Fusion- costly and too late

‘the costs of electricity from a fusion reactor are likely to exceed those from fission by a factor of ten or more.’

The timescale for fusion is such that it has no relevance for the reduction of climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions’.

It is surprising that this company, which has prospered for 25 years, is advocating a technology that many experts say can never work’.

10 Feb 24, https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2024/02/fusion-costly-and-too-late.html

A new report by a retired nuclear expert for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) says there are ‘intrinsic concerns for commercial fusion’, as currently being explored by the large scale ITER device being built in France. It says issues included:

• excessive cost compared to fission, because of its enormous size and complexity;

• low operational availability due to the necessity to frequently replace components damaged by neutron irradiation;

• scarcity of tritium fuel, requiring regeneration in operations and probably supplies for start-up from a fleet of fission reactors.

The GWPF report ‘Nuclear fusion- should we bother?’ goes on to look in detail at the issues ITER and the mainstream approach face. It is pretty damning. As the author Dr John Carr says in the press release ‘there is a litany of technical difficulties, from degradation of materials due to radiation damage, to lack of tritium fuel supply. Progress towards a working reactor has been dismal, and the problems may be insuperable’. Even if it can be done, he says, ‘the costs of electricity from a fusion reactor are likely to exceed those from fission by a factor of ten or more.’

His main focus is ITER, but, in the report he notes that there are a some alternative projects, mostly privately funded. He says that ‘some private companies have possible remedies for the first two points [in his issues list above], through use of high temperature superconductors. However, these solutions raise new challenges and it is highly likely that the timescales to develop the new technologies will be very much longer than the commercial promises’.

Nevertheless, there are evidently many willing to try their luck. The report notes that ‘by 2023 there were a total of 43 major companies involved, of which 24 had declared funding of more than $10 million. The majority of these companies (15/24) are pursuing alternative concepts, while some (9/24) are building toroidal magnetic confinement devices, such as compact tokamaks, which are variants on the mainstream approach. A few of the companies (5/24) are proposing the use of alternative fuels. Many were founded by frustrated academic researchers, and all obviously want to avoid the pitfalls of mainstream fusion’.

It goes on ‘The arrival of the private fusion companies, making claims for commercial fusion power stations to be connected to the electricity grid in the early 2030s, has the potential to dramatically change the prospects for the technology. This commercial optimism will compete with technological reality during the next 10 years; the oldest private fusion companies, including TAE, have already passed the original dates for which they promised commercial fusion. Such claims must therefore be taken with a pinch of salt. In parallel with these private company claims, ITER will have to readjust to a new schedule for fusion reactions after 2035. So, should these private companies succeed, it will be difficult to see why the ITER/ DEMO programme would continue’.

Well yes, it could be overtaken, but, given the problems it identifies, the report does not in fact see the alternative fusion options as developing rapidly or effectively, so that, it concludes that overall ‘there is no reason to bother with fusion. It will almost certainly have no advantages over fission and will come – at best – a hundred years later than the Calder Hall milestone [i.e. 2056], costing vastly more. The timescale for fusion is such that it has no relevance for the reduction of climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions’.

That may be too conservative, even for the GWPF! John Carr may be right about ITER. And also some of the alternatives. He is certainly pretty dismissive about most of them. For example, he notes that ‘TAE is studying the use of proton-Boron to replace D-T, because Boron is both abundant and the reaction produces no neutrons. The snag is that this fuel requires 6 times the reaction temp. of D-T (> 1 bn degrees). Critically, the radiation losses in the plasma are higher, to the point where an energy gain is impossible, according to calculations. It is surprising that this company, which has prospered for 25 years, is advocating a technology that many experts say can never work’.

He looks at Commonwealth Fusion System’s ARC tokamak design, which uses high-temperature superconductors (HTS), in the form of the new rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) material, rather than the usual superconductor of niobium-tin and niobium-titanium used in ITER. Using HTS allows ARC to use higher magnetic fields and thus be smaller- half the physical size of ITER for a similar fusion power output. That would reduce costs. CFS gives a cost estimate for ARC at about $6 bn, compared with ITER’s $60 bn.

However, the report says ‘The REBCO superconductor is brittle – being a ceramic rather than a metal. In addition, the use of higher magnetic fields results in greater mechanical stresses, so constructing reliable magnets is more difficult. Further, the smaller size means the same fusion power output must be extracted through smaller breeder blanket systems and divertors, requiring these devices to sustain higher temperatures and radiation doses – another major challenge’. It says it’s similar for the UK’s spherical STEP.

Well maybe, but what about some of inertia/laser systems being developed in the USA- there’s almost no mention of them. There is certainly a lot of hype about imminent breakthroughs with laser ignition, but, arguably, at some point, there might be some real progress in this area- or in others. However, in addition to costs and safety, the key thing is when? We need to deal with climate change now, not in many decades times. In that sense then Carr may be right- forget fusion for now. It’s not as if there are not other arguably much better (and urgent) things to spend the money on, although, given its hostility to almost all things green, the GWPF is probably not the best outfit to rely on for advice as to what the focus should be!

February 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology | Leave a comment

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