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Nuclear power: An inherent potential for catastrophe

   by beyondnuclearinternational

Nuclear energy should not be an “inalienable right” and isn’t
“peaceful”

This excerpt on nuclear power is taken from Reaching Critical Will’s 2023 NPT Briefing Book. The handbook is being released in advance of the first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which will meet from July 31 to August 11 2023 at the Vienna International Centre in Vienna, Austria.

Nuclear weapons are not the only nuclear risk. Nuclear energy also has inherent risks and the capacity to unleash uniquely horrifying forms of devastation upon human bodies, the environment, and our socioeconomic infrastructure.

In 1953, just a few years after the United States used two nuclear weapons against Japan, US President Eisenhower launched his Atoms for Peace program at the United Nations.

It resulted in the spread of nuclear technology and materials around the world for so-called peaceful uses—energy, medicinal uses, and research. In reality, nuclear technology is anything but peaceful.

Nuclear power is the most expensive and dangerous way to boil water to turn a turbine. It contains the inherent potential for catastrophe. There is no such thing as a safe nuclear reactor. All aspects of the nuclear fuel chain, from mining uranium to storing radioactive waste, are devastating for the earth and all species living upon it. Radiation is long lasting and has inter-generational effects. 

Nuclear energy is not a solution to the climate crisis. It not only is not carbon-neutral, but its other environmental impacts and risks of contamination through accidents and attacks pose grave risks to the world’s ecosystems and living beings. As hundreds of civil society groups said to the UN Climate Conference (COP26), nuclear power is “a dangerous distraction from the real movement on the climate policies and actions that we urgently need.”

Yet the nuclear industry and certain governments continue to promote nuclear energy as clean, safe, and reliable. This has everything to do with capitalism and nothing to do with protecting the planet or its people. 

For the nuclear power industry, the primary motive for operation is profit. History shows us that increasing profit is often best achieved in ways that are not consistent with designing or operating the relevant equipment for the lowest risk to humanity or the planet. 

Profit is less likely to be achieved by honestly exploring alternative sources of energy that might necessitate initial investments, or that might not be eligible for the same government (i.e. taxpayer-funded) subsidies as nuclear is in many countries. 

Profit is also less likely to be achieved by designing economically efficient, need-oriented, and environmentally sound sources of energy. Scientists and activists alike have noted that nuclear power, which produces energy “in large, expensive, centralized facilities” is not useful “for solving the energy needs of the vast majority of [the world’s] population, much less so in a way that offers any net environmental gains.”

In the meantime, the spread of nuclear energy around the world since 1953 has enabled the development of nuclear weapons in several countries, and to the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology that are becoming susceptible to terrorist attack or accidents.

The situation at Zaporizhzhia………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Abolishing all nuclear materials and technologies

Within the NPT context, nuclear energy is upheld by most states as an “inalienable right”. This means that most states laud its perceived benefits and promote its expansion, regardless of the risks to humanity, the environment, and proliferation. 

However, since 1945, many scientists, activists, and government officials have pointed out that nuclear material, technology, and facilities are dangerous whether they are in weapons form or for “peaceful uses”.

Eliminating all nuclear materials and technology, whatever its designated purpose, is the only way to ensure that it is does not result in catastrophe, by accident or design. A few states parties recognize these inherent risks and have chosen not to pursue or to phase out nuclear power as part of their energy mixes. The more states parties that follow this path, the better for us all.

Recommendations

  • Delegations should raise concerns with the health, environmental, safety, and security impacts of nuclear power, including in the context of climate change. While the NPT indicates states can use nuclear power, this does not mean it’s in best interest of humanity or the planet.
  • Delegations should support the 25 May 2011 declaration by the governments of Austria, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, and Portugal, in which they argued that nuclear power is not compatible with the concept of sustainable development and called for energy conservation and a switch to renewable sources of energy worldwide.
  • States should also support the February 2011 call from a group of Hibakusha for phasing out all sources of radiation—from uranium mining, nuclear reactors, nuclear accidents, nuclear weapons development and testing, and nuclear waste—and for investment in renewable, clean energy for a sustainable future.
  • States should commit to working for a sustainable future by reducing the use of energy, investing in renewable and non-carbon emitting sources of energy, phase-out nuclear energy, and not further develop harmful, radioactive technologies.
  • Delegations should call on all states that currently use nuclear energy to abide by all nuclear safety and nuclear security instruments and norms and to end the dangerous transshipment of radioactive waste and nuclear materials.
  • Delegations should condemn armed conflict and military activities at or near nuclear power facilities and abide by and indicate support for the IAEA General Conference decision on the “Prohibition of armed attack or threat of armed attack against nuclear installations, during operation or under construction” (GC(53)/ DEC/13).
  • States must not engage in armed conflict and military activities at or near nuclear power facilities. Russia should end its war against and occupation of Ukraine, along with the withdrawal of its armed forces from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and other related sites and cease military activities at or near nuclear facilities.

Reaching Critical Will is the disarmament programme of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the oldest women’s peace organization in the world. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/07/23/an-inherent-potential-for-catastrophe/

July 24, 2023 Posted by | safety | Leave a comment

‘Oppenheimer’ is a pitch-dark American nightmare. We cannot look away.

America – the Jesuit Review, Ryan Di Corpo, July 21, 2023

Shortly after Little Boy detonated over the morning sky of Hiroshima—choking the city with a plume of dense smoke, scorching the landscape with the white heat of the sun and in a moment banishing tens of thousands of civilians to nothing more than a memory—the 37-year-old Jesuit missionary Pedro Arrupe made his way to the wreckage.

The Basque priest, then appointed as novice master in Hiroshima, had seen the inside of a prison cell years earlier when some Japanese officials wrongly pegged him as a spy. He considered his execution to be a definite possibility, but spared an untimely death, he survived to see Hiroshima transformed into one of history’s largest cemeteries. Father Arrupe wrote that the American bomb exploded “similar to the blast of a hurricane,” and described the scene on the ground.

“I shall never forget my first sight of what was the result of the atomic bomb: a group of young women, 18 or 20 years old, clinging to one another as they dragged themselves along the road.…We did the only thing that could be done in the presence of such mass slaughter: we fell on our knees and prayed for guidance, as we were destitute of all human help.”

In its singular focus on the New York-born, Harvard-educated “father of the atomic bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer, a man both ridiculed for his past and haunted by the future he unleashed, director Christopher Nolan mostly forgoes graphic depictions of the bombings’ aftermath and leaves the audience to envision the human misery wrought by the nuclear strikes. Perhaps taking a cue from the French filmmaker Robert Bresson, who found that “art lies in suggestion,” Nolan asks the audience to imagine the true face of the monster without fully revealing its form.

A heady, visually arresting and ultimately terrifying tour de force, “Oppenheimer” is both a startling re-examination of American history through the piercing eyes of a man who shaped it and a bleak warning about the nuclear age. Shifting between blazing color and stark black-and-white cinematography, the film is bifurcated by Oppenheimer’s leadership of the Manhattan Project, the clandestine government program to build the world’s first atomic weapon, and an infamous 1954 security hearing that saw Oppenheimer railroaded by McCarthyites for his prior left-wing sympathies.

Once venerated as an American sun god who helped usher his country out of World War II, Oppenheimer was later banished from government work for his onetime interest in communist ideology. Cillian Murphy, in an astounding performance as a man convinced of his own greatness and then tortured by his conscience, plays Oppenheimer as a self-assured, remote and intensely clinical physicist firmly committed to his work—and not much else. In the lab, at parties and in the bedroom, he wields his gaunt and nearly gothic visage as a barrier between his public confidence and increasingly unsettling private doubts. He wears a mischievous look, a gleam in his eye, as if perpetually on the verge of some “Eureka!” moment………………………………………………………………………….

In the film’s most disturbing sequence, Oppenheimer addresses a rabid crowd of patriotic Americans after the bombings, whipping them into a nationalistic frenzy and anointing himself as the man who quenched their bloodlust. “I bet the Japanese didn’t like it!” he exclaims to wild cheers and applause. But as he speaks, the sound cuts out and the crowd is suddenly suffocated by a white light. He sees a vision of a young woman (played by Nolan’s daughter) with her face peeling off, and then looks down to see his foot smashed through the charred remains of a bomb victim. He leaves the speech pallid and conscience-stricken.

…………………………………………………………………………. “Oppenheimer” arrives at a moment where concerns over nuclear power are back in the news.

………………………………………. There are two sides that form the film’s moral conundrum. The Pentagon and some scientists at Los Alamos contend that the atomic bomb must be used (and used repeatedly) to avoid further American casualties and bring a definitive end to the war. Critics opposed to the bomb point out that, by the spring of 1945, Hilter is already dead and the Japanese are poised to surrender…………………………………………………………………………  https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2023/07/21/oppenheimer-nuclear-war-245720?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2928&pnespid=tKRjWX9aLbgL1qLZojqyGZWP5w2vX5cmduPg27M2rRxmOVvkgFko42gAhR.7PsVTW8PcIjUblQ—

July 23, 2023 Posted by | media, weapons and war | 2 Comments

USA government – more money, $19 billion, grant for making deadly plutonium

Senate appropriators boost funding for plutonium, uranium production facilities, By Dan Parsons, 21 Jul 23

Nearly $19 billion is included in the Senate Appropriations Committee’s 2024 spending bill for National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear-weapon programs, with funding boosts for planned facilities that will process plutonium and uranium for refurbished…………… (Subscribers only) https://www.exchangemonitor.com/senate-appropriators-boost-funding-for-plutonium-uranium-production-facilities/

July 23, 2023 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | 1 Comment

US Republicans threaten to block AUKUS deal


By Anthony Galloway, The Age, July 21, 2023 

Australia’s AUKUS submarine deal with the United States has hit a hurdle with Senate Republicans threatening to block the sale unless President Joe Biden boosts funding for the domestic production line.

Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday moved to block legislation which would enable the sale of US Virginia-class submarines to Australia.

Under the AUKUS deal, Washington was set to sell Canberra between three and five of its own nuclear submarines in the 2030s before Australia begins building a new class of boat with Britain.

But the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, senator Roger Wicker, said Biden needed to commit more money to guarantee “we have enough submarines for our own security before we endorse that pillar of the agreement”.

Wicker said Australia’s commitment of US$3 billion ($4.4 billion) for the US production line would not be enough to meet the needs of both countries.

“The president needs to submit a supplemental request to give us an adequate number of submarines,” he told US news outlet Politico……………………………………………………..  https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/foolish-us-republicans-threaten-to-block-aukus-deal-20230721-p5dqc3.html

July 23, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Europe’s black hole: How much of the more than $185 billion given by the West to Ukraine has been stolen?

Rt.com By George Trenin, 20 Jul 23

The fate of huge amounts of aid sent to the country is uncertain amid endemic corruption and a lack of accountability.

As a result of last week’s NATO summit in Vilnius, the US-led military bloc promised Ukraine fresh tranches of financial and military aid. This was despite the fact that by the beginning of the summer, Kiev had already received a total of €165 billion ($185.6 billion) from Western countries. Meanwhile, as the spending increases, the number of US and EU citizens who are willing to sacrifice their own comfort for the sake of Kiev appears to be steadily decreasing.

One of the reasons for this is corruption in Ukraine, which – despite some lofty promises – seems to be as bad now as it was before the Western-backed 2014 ‘Maidan’ coup. If not worse. 

Moral compensation 

The NATO summit, despite Ukraine’s hopes, did not bring it a long-awaited timeframe for membership. Instead, Western leaders announced new military aid packages for Kiev. 

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, French President Emmanuel Macron promised to give Ukraine a “substantial number” of SCALP missiles that can hit targets at a distance of 250 kilometers. According to France24, each costs €850,000.

Berlin announced a package amounting to €700 million. Germany plans to supply Ukraine with launchers for the Patriot missile defense system, Marder-type infantry fighting vehicles, UAVs, Leopard 1 A5 tanks, and artillery shells. However, for Berlin, this is not even close to a record gift value. On May 21, the German Foreign Ministry announced the transfer of military aid to Ukraine worth €2.7 billion. 

On July 7, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl spoke about a new package of aid from the US which includes cluster munitions – which are banned in 120 countries. The cost was $800 million.

This is the 42nd delivery of aid that Ukraine has received from the US in the past year and a half. Since the beginning of Russia’s offensive, the US Congress has approved military and economic assistance to Ukraine amounting to over $70 billion – and that’s only counting direct expenses.

According to July data from the Kiel Institute (which tracks the volume of aid allocated to Ukraine), total direct subvention provided by the US and its allies in the period from February 24, 2022 to May 31, 2023 topped €165 billion.

The rate at which new tranches are allocated increases every month. For example, at the end of April, the total amount of aid was €15 billion less than it is now – according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, it was then €150 billion. ……………………………………………………………………………..

the risk of corruption exists not only within state borders but that fraud can also occur when concluding contracts in the US. Furthermore, the theft of weapons or other aid may happen as it travels to the war zone through Europe.

Another official involved in criminal investigations at the Pentagon also told Defense One that his department is “concerned about the potential diversion or legal export, or theft for that matter, of the goods.” 

Many American businesses do not trust the Ukrainian authorities either and believe that aid is being stolen. According to US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, private businesses doubt that the funds allocated to Ukraine for reconstruction will be safe from corruption. 

nternal games 

The corruption issue is acknowledged in Ukraine as well. This spring, the ex-adviser of the office of the president of Ukraine, Aleksey Arestovich, said on his YouTube channel that his old boss, Vladimir Zelensky, has not been able to deal with corruption in Ukraine. 

“Ukraine needs only one thing… To have someone come to power who won’t steal. Someone who won’t do it himself and won’t allow others to do so. Unfortunately, so far we haven’t been lucky,” he said. 

…………………………………………….. “The Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least,” – American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh stated that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his entourage illegally appropriated at least $400 million from funds that were allocated to Kiev for the purchase of diesel fuel. 

…………….. Moreover, Hersh says that CIA Director William Burns was displeased with Zelensky because of the possible theft of Western aid, since “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.” ……………… more https://www.rt.com/russia/579897-europes-black-hole-ukraine/

July 23, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Luck Is Not a Strategy for the Ukraine, The Germans Take the “Evidence-based” Path. 

We Chat with Nuclear Expert Dr. Paul Dorfman

Hot Globe, STEVE CHAPPLE, JUL 20, 2023

“………………………………………………………………………………. HOT GLOBE: It’s always bothered me that Saudi Arabia because of the Trump administration has now got access to the beginnings of nuclear power, and to a future nuclear bomb. The idea of selling small nuclear reactors around the world raises a pretty problematic point.

DORFMAN: That’s absolutely true. Saudi has made no bones about its nuclear ambitions and I mean its military nuclear ambitions. Saudi diplomats have said quite clearly that they’re looking towards Iran and that they’re seriously thinking about both civil and military nuclear. So there’s a potential for an arms race, a military nuclear arms race in the Middle East region. It’s actually even more bad news for the Middle East because in a proxy war if say, for example, Russian and America wanted to have a bit of a go and they didn’t want to absolutely destroy each other’s country where would they be fighting their proxy nuclear war? The first region that comes to mind is the Middle East and Saudi and Iran.

The economies of small nuclear reactors depend absolutely on production to scale.  It’s been proven time and time again that in order to make any money at all, to break even on small nuclear production, you need to sell them abroad. Now, selling them abroad to whom, for what reasons? You’d be selling them to developing nations who may or may not have the capacity to regulate, to protect, to defend in depth, and so therefore you would be significantly expanding the potential for military nuclear risk whether that means a dirty bomb or further nuclear development.

 HOT GLOBE: A slightly different question here, but Germany had ongoing nuclear plants and even though they were still producing electricity, they’ve shut those down. That may be a little puzzling to some Americans. Can you explain that?

DORFMAN: First of all, what Germany does is evidence-based policy. Germany puts out its scientific, technological questions, its energy questions, to well-funded high level research units. They go away and do their research. They come back with their research. They give it to the government departments and then the government makes a decision. So it’s evidence-based policy making. Over the years Germany has said well, we want to get to net-zero and we’re kind of worried about nuclear. Now around 2011 when Fukushima happened–remember Chancellor Merkel is a PhD chemist. She realized like many of us that even in an advanced society things could go badly wrong since accidents are by definition accidental.

HOT GLOBE: Good line

DORFMAN: Yeah, who knew? [laughs] So when Fukushima happened, Merkel and many others in Germany said well, look, we can’t stand the pain of this.  I was having supper with Naoto Kan, the premier of Japan at the time of Fukushima after we both spoke in Westminster. Even then I was shocked when he turned to me and said that if the wind had been in the wrong direction, they would have lost Tokyo. The majority of the pollution went out into the Pacific Ocean. Now to the point about Germany. It’s landlocked so the Germans looked at the possibility of an accident and they came up with the numbers. It would cost trillions and trillions and trillions of Euros if they had a nuclear accident and they said look, we really can’t be doing this. This is just crazy, basically, and so we’re going to do “the German energy transition.” We’re going to try to lead the world on this and we’re going to move stepwise into renewables-plus, that’s renewables solar wind energy storage, interconnection, demand site management, energy management, distributed grids and a significant centralized upgrade of grids, too.

Now clearly Germany has a core problem, a fossil fuel problem, but they didn’t want to go down the fissile fuel route so Germany has said well OK for the time being we’re going to rely on gas but then we’re going to move to a full renewable economy. Well, the war has speeded that up. Since the war Germany has burnt less coal and Germany has shuttered all its nuclear power plants. It’s done this because what Germany says it will do, it does, unlike many other states. It set upon a route to go renewables. Now there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything costs and there’s no perfect solution to the energy crisis, but what Germany is trying to do is to lead the world in this so-called energy transition, and I won’t spout numbers but basically what has happened is you’ve just seen significant renewable deployment, significant storage and a water storage as it were deployment which is sort of integrated into the power system and also integrated into the democratic system whereby by local communities also own the local renewable aspects of the local renewable power generation. It’s basically saying well look yes we can do this rather like Americans, you know, we have a dream, we will try to do this, it will be difficult but we will do our best to get there since the costs and the risks of nuclear are far too great. Let’s find a realistic, sustainable, positive, constructive way through……..
more https://hotglobe.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-is-already-a-climate

July 23, 2023 Posted by | ENERGY, Germany, safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

The Elders publish new policy paper on nuclear weapons

The Elders 21 July 23

The Elders today publish a new policy paper on the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons.

They argue that heightened geopolitical tensions around Russia’s war on Ukraine and Sino-US rivalry, as well as new technological developments such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), make it all the more important that leaders commit to tangible steps towards disarmament and de-escalation…………………………………………………………………………..

n today’s fraught geopolitical environment, The Elders reaffirm their support for the TPNW and the ultimate objective of a world without nuclear weapons, while continuing to advocate for the risk minimisation agenda. They believe this remains the best way to make tangible progress amid the deep divide between nuclear powers and their allies, and the much larger number of states who support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Such progress would deliver a meaningful reduction in both risks and warheads.

The risk minimisation agenda rests on four elements known as the 4 Ds:

  1. Doctrine: Every nuclear-armed state should make an unequivocal “No First Use” declaration.
  2. De-alerting: The highest priority must be given to taking as many weapons as possible off their current high-alert status.
  3. Deployment: More than one-quarter of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is currently operationally deployed. This proportion must be dramatically and urgently reduced.
  4. Decreased numbers: The number of nuclear warheads should be reduced from 12,500 to the lowest possible level, with the US and Russia reducing to no more than 500 each, which should serve as an upper ceiling for any nuclear state.

The Elders also call on nuclear states – the Permanent 5 UN Security Council members of the United States of America, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, as well as India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — and their allies to engage constructively with the TPNW, including through attending states parties meetings as observers, and to build common ground with TPNW states around a shared goal of ultimate nuclear disarmament.

TPNW states should work to help turn the Treaty into a binding and effective reality, including through strengthening the treaty’s verification and enforcement provisions.

All countries should work to strengthen the global non-proliferation architecture, including through:

  • Increasing safeguards to track the flow of materials inside civil reactors;
  • Introducing real penalties for countries that withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT);
  • Strengthening the capacity of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);
  • Ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and bringing to conclusion the long-proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty.

 https://theelders.org/news/elders-publish-new-policy-paper-nuclear-weaponsons

July 23, 2023 Posted by | politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Oppenheimer biographer supports US bill to bar use of AI in nuclear launches

Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus, says technology is ‘too dangerous to gamble with’ and supports senator’s attempt to bar it

Guardian, Martin Pengelly 21 Jul 23

A biographer whose Pulitzer prize-winning book inspired the new movie Oppenheimer has expressed support for a US senator’s attempt to bar the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear weapons launches.

“Humans must always maintain sole control over nuclear weapons,” Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus, said in a statement reported by Politico.

“This technology is too dangerous to gamble with. This bill will send a powerful signal to the world that the United States will never take the reckless step of automating our nuclear command and control.”

In Washington on Thursday, Bird met Ed Markey, the Democratic Massachusetts senator who is attempting to add the AI-nuclear provision to a major defense spending bill………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/21/ai-nuclear-weapons-kai-bird-oppenheimer-author

July 23, 2023 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

  Ontario – Ford government’s electricity plan takes wrong approach

Windsor Star, By Jack Gibbons 21 Jul 23

Having missed the boat on the global green energy boom by crushing the province’s early leadership on renewable energy, Premier Doug Ford is now trying to take another stab at building a future economy by investing in buggy whip manufacturing.

That’s what spending tens of billions of dollars on high-cost, high-risk nuclear power essentially represents — a bet on a technology that has been in decline for decades.

Instead of trying to catch up with a global marketplace that is decidedly all-in on renewable energy — with the International Energy Agency saying 90 per cent of new electricity capacity will come from renewables over the next five years — Ontario wants to go back to the 1960s and ‘70s and embark on another long shot effort to build nuclear power plants.

It’s important to remember the province’s past nuclear projects have been one fiasco after another. Our most recent nuclear new build project — the Darlington nuclear station — went massively over budget.

The huge cost overruns and poor performance of its nuclear reactors essentially bankrupted the old Ontario Hydro. Ontario power ratepayers and taxpayers were left paying off the utility’s massive $19.4-billion stranded nuclear debt.

That hasn’t stopped a government with a strong distaste for solar panels and wind turbines from warmly embracing a technology that has never lived up to its promise.

It is now planning to build a massive new nuclear plant right beside the Bruce nuclear station which is already the largest nuclear station in the world. It also wants to build mythical “modular” reactors along the waterfront at Darlington right next to Toronto.

That the reactors the government is touting for Darlington are, at this point, nothing more than PowerPoint slides in a nuclear PR presentation hasn’t stopped the government from making wild claims that these unproven (and, at this point, unlicensed and physically non-existent) reactors can be built at what it deems to be a reasonable cost.

In 2009, when the nuclear companies wanted to build two new nuclear reactors at Darlington, the Dalton McGuinty government required them to submit fixed-price bids.

Not surprisingly the most competitive bid was 3.7 times higher than the forecast price. As a result, the government suspended the procurement process and the reactors were never built.

But despite repeatedly slamming the “fiscal irresponsibility” of previous Liberal governments, it appears that Premier Doug Ford is only too happy to give the nuclear industry a blank cheque and allow inevitable cost overruns to be passed on to electricity consumers and taxpayers.

That the projected cost for the province’s new dream nuclear projects are more than three times higher than what we would pay today for power from competitively procured wind and solar also doesn’t seem to bother Energy Minister Todd Smith…………………………………………..

New nuclear reactors that will take at least 10 to 15 years to build can not provide the dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas pollution that we need now. To add insult to injury, Doug Ford’s solution to keeping the lights on in the interim is to ramp up use of climate-wrecking gas plants and, even more astoundingly, build new ones.

But what’s truly scandalous about the government’s Powering Ontario plan is prioritizing phantom nuclear technology over what the world wants: smart, integrated and highly efficient renewable power systems………… more https://windsorstar.com/opinion/letters/guest-column-ontario-governments-electricity-plan-taking-wrong-approach

July 23, 2023 Posted by | Canada, politics international | Leave a comment

What We Can Still Learn From J. Robert Oppenheimer

“We believe,” he wrote in 1945, “that the safety of this nation—as opposed to its ability to inflict damage on an enemy power—cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess.”

By Robert C. Koehler / Common Dreams, July 21, 2023

Amere 55 years after his death, the U.S. government has restored J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance, which the Atomic Energy Commission had taken away from him in 1954, declaring him to be not simply a communist but, in all likelihood, a Soviet spy.

Oppenheimer, of course, is the father of the atomic bomb. He led the Manhattan Project during World War II, which birthed Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing several hundred thousand people and ending the war. What happened next, however, was the Cold War, and suddenly commies—our former allies—were the personification of evil, and they were everywhere. The American government, in its infinite wisdom, knew it had no choice but to continue its nuclear weapons program and, for the sake of peace, put the world on the brink of Armageddon.

Hello, H-bomb!

War, the building block of the world’s governmental entities for uncounted millennia, had evolved to the brink of human extinction. Official government policy amounted to this: So what?

Oppenheimer challenged this official policy and shattered his career. Indeed, he saw immediately, as the newly developed bomb was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, that Planet Earth was in danger. A team of physicists had just exposed its ultimate vulnerability and he famously noted, as he witnessed the mushroom cloud, that words of Hindu scripture from the Bhagavad-Gita entered his mind: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

He had not opposed dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as some of the Manhattan Project scientists, such as Leo Szilard, did, but when the war ended he became deeply committed to eliminating all possibility of future wars. One of the first actions he took, a week after the bombings, was to write a letter to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, urging him to embrace common sense regarding further development of nuclear weapons.

“We believe,” he wrote, “that the safety of this nation—as opposed to its ability to inflict damage on an enemy power—cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess. It can be based only on making future wars impossible. It is our unanimous and urgent recommendation to you that, despite the present incomplete exploitation of technical possibilities in this field, all steps be taken, all necessary international arrangements be made, to this one end.”

Making future wars impossible! What if American political forces had sufficient sanity to listen to Oppenheimer? Several months after writing this letter, he paid a visit to President Harry Truman, attempting to discuss the placement of international control over further nuclear development. The president would have none of that. He kicked Oppenheimer out of the Oval Office.

Oppenheimer maintained his commitment to the transcendence of war, working with the Atomic Energy Commission to control the use of nuclear weapons—and standing firm in his opposition to the creation of the hydrogen bomb. He continued his opposition even as the bomb’s development progressed and nuclear tests began spreading fallout over “expendable” parts of the world. But, uh oh. Along came the McCarthy era and the accompanying Red Scare.

…………………………………………………………………. It took them about 16 years. They finally succeeded in clearing his name.

And while I applaud their enormous effort and its result, I also note it isn’t finished yet. This is more than simply a personal matter: the righting of a bureaucratic wrong done to one man. The future of humanity remains at stake. The U.S. government has spent multi-trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons development over the years, conducted a thousand-plus nuclear tests, and is currently in possession of 5,244 nuclear warheads, out of an insane global total of some 12,500. Perhaps it’s time to start listening to—and hearing—Oppenheimer’s words.  https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/21/what-we-can-still-learn-from-j-robert-oppenheimer/

 

July 23, 2023 Posted by | media, PERSONAL STORIES, weapons and war | Leave a comment

“Nuclear Power Is Already a Climate Casualty”

French Rivers Heat Up, Luck Is Not a Strategy for the Ukraine, – We Chat with Nuclear Expert Dr. Paul Dorfman

Hot Globe Substack, STEVE CHAPPLE, JUL 20, 2023

HOT GLOBE:

Paul, thanks for joining us. Let’s talk about nuclear and climate change.

PAUL DORFMAN:

 Thanks, Steve. It’s important to understand that nuclear is very likely to be a significant climate casualty. 

For cooling purposes nuclear reactors need to be situated by large bodies of water, which means either by the coast or inland by rivers or large water courses. Sea levels are rising much quicker than we had thought and inland the rivers are heating up, potentially drying up, and also subject to significant flooding and flash-flooding and inundation. The key issue for coastal nuclear is storm surge, which is basically where atmospheric conditions meet high tide, which is essentially what happens in Fukushima.

HOT GLOBE: The decommissioned nuclear plant in southern California at San Onofre is a case in point with the cans of nuclear waste still stored in a concrete containment box lapped by the rising tide–

DORFMAN: In France where I am right now [the government utility] just today put out once again warnings about their reactors having to power down because of low river flow, heated river flow. Now that’s not simply for reactor cooling. It’s about the water that the reactors are cooled by, which then need to be discharged back into the rivers. This super-heated water would basically kill the ecology. The reactors have to power down so as not to discharge heated waters back.

Nuclear has been touted as a potential ameliorated solution to climate. The problem, of course, is that nuclear will be, and relatively soon, a climate casualty, so coastal nuclear, unfortunately, is likely to flood via storm surge and inland nuclear will struggle more and more to get reactor cooling water and be able to discharge super-heated water to the receiving river waters.

“The notion that nuclear will will help us with climate is fortunately –unfortunately–simply not the case.”

HOT GLOBE: In America there’s an awful lot of new money sloshing around for climate remediation. Do you have an opinion on Small Nuclear Reactors?

DORFMAN: It’s not been simply I, but the former head of the US nuclear regulatory commission, the NRC, who coauthored a key study which says quite clearly that small modular reactors produce significantly more radioactive waste than conventional reactors. The waste issue is absolutely key, but there are other issues as well. I remember being invited to give a talk at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK, basically the governmental intellectual arm of the military. The compact design of small nuclear reactors is not suited to defense in depth of the nuclear island and the military guys really seemed to get and understand this, similar problem to conventional reactors in terms of safety and security as we’re finding out in Ukraine now.

The other issue is what’s known as the “economies of scale.” The bigger the nuclear plant the cheaper. ……….The economics of small nuclear reactors are proving deeply problematic. The cost per MW hour is rising. Already conventional reactors are hugely, massively, 4 to 5 times more expensive than renewables-plus, and it’s looking more and more that small nuclear reactors will have similar economic and finance problems, and of course small nuclear reactors are still in development. There are no functioning small nuclear reactors in the world producing conventional power, and they are many years from deployment.

So given the fact that we now know we have an existential climate crisis, small nuclear reactors and of course certainly conventional nuclear look to be far too costly and far too late to help the climate crisis.”

HOT GLOBE: Tell us a little bit about the situation in Zaporizhia. It comes and goes in the American media, but it seems pretty freaking scary to us over here in California! How do you estimate the dangers in the last month or so?

DORFMAN: We’ve been lucky so far but luck isn’t a strategy. Zaporizhia –6 very large nuclear power plants, the largest station in Europe with a very significant radiological inventory and critically very significant spent fuel, spent high level radiological nuclear inventory–is in the middle of a shooting war. Now there’s no way that any nuclear power plant can survive a concerted military attack. No nuclear power plant in the world is designed to do this. The International Atomic Energy agency has been very quiet about this for the last few decades which is kind of worrying given the fact that it seems obvious. Basically, people like me and many others haven’t wanted to talk about this in the past for fear of putting ideas into people’s heads, but the cat is really out of the bag now, and in an increasingly unstable world, it seems absolutely clear that nuclear risk for conventional civil nuclear plants is ramping up  both in Zaporizhia and elsewhere whether in Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India or any other potential conflict zone. There’s a very real risk that existing and any new nuclear power plants will be in the firing line.

In Zaporizhia the key concern is cooling-–the cooling ponds are open but the reactors themselves are basically open in all these plants, too. They are in cold shutdown but they also need power to keep the internal sort of governance working, so both the reactors in cold shut down, not in active use and certainly the high level radioactive waste, need cooling. If something God forbid goes wrong you’ll see a worst case scenario. You’ll see what happened at Fukushima. Within eight hours you’ll see hydrogen buildup, hydrogen explosion. You’ll then see significant loss of cooling. If the backup diesel generators don’t run within a day or two, you could well see meltdown. The worst case prognosis is very grave.

HOT GLOBE: Oii. Explain the difference between Chernobyl and Fukushima in terms of Zaporizhia.

DORFMAN: Chernobyl was a graphite moderated reactor. Graphite is the kind of thing that you find on the inside of a pencil. When Chernobyl blew, this graphite was distributed high into the atmosphere and could blow far and wide. The kinds of reactors that you find in Zaporizhia are not, thank heavens, of that design. They are slightly newer Russian designed reactors which have gone through certain kinds of safety upgrades post Fukushima, not the spent fueling ponds but the reactors themselves, so if the worst were to happen, you wouldn’t see a Chernobyl. You would more likely see a Fukushima because you wouldn’t see this punch out of the graphite particles into the air, which would carry the radiation far and wide. What you would see, unfortunately, is very severe contamination of the immediate area and of the region, certainly of Ukraine, potentially Russia and certainly middle Europe. Now what’s also critically important post-accident is what would happen to the land. Ukraine is a very significant grain producing nation and other populations including the African population absolutely depend on this grain. So

that’s the thing about nuclear, if something goes wrong you can really start to write off a lot of people’s lives.

The high risk of this form of technology when we have other forms of technology that will lead us to net zero—there really isn’t any significantly good reason to go down the new nuclear route for whole sets of reasons and one of those reasons is we’re living in an increasingly unstable world and nuclear is increasingly, civil nuclear, is increasingly risky………………………………………….
more https://hotglobe.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-is-already-a-climate

July 22, 2023 Posted by | climate change | 1 Comment

Feds digging up nuclear waste in Los Alamos for disposal at Carlsbad-area repository

Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus, 21 Jul 23, https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/2023/07/21/feds-digging-up-nuclear-waste-in-los-alamos-for-disposal-at-carlsbad-area-repository/70426843007/

Workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory dug up buried nuclear waste they planned to dispose of at the federal repository near Carlsbad, amid pressure from State officials that the facility prioritize New Mexico waste.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos Field Office and the lab’s cleanup contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT (N3B) Los Alamos announced Tuesday they began exhuming corrugated metal pipes containing transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste and preparing them for shipment.

At the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, TRU waste is disposed of via burial in a salt deposit about 2,000 feet underground, trucked into the site from DOE facilities throughout the country.

TRU waste is made up of irradiated clothing, equipment and other debris from nuclear research and development activities around the U.S.

Before it can be shipped to WIPP, the pipes must be cut using hydraulic sheers, allowing them to be loaded into waste boxes for shipment and disposal.

The pipes weight about 10,000 to 14,000 pounds, and measure about 20 feet long. They are cut into five pieces, with each piece loaded into a box.

It’s occurring at portion of the lab known as Dome 375, and the waste came from Los Alamos’ former radioactive liquid waste treatment facility operating during the Cold War at Technical Area 21 (TA-21).

There were 158 pipes in total transferred from TA-21, records show, containing cemented waste.

They were buried in 1986, where the waste sat until recently when worked began preparing it for final disposal.

The DOE hoped to finish digging up and preparing the pipes for disposal by spring 2024.

More: No progress to report on nuclear waste site aside from Carlsbad-area repository, feds say

July 22, 2023 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

The US should end its use of nuclear power plants – the intractible problem of dangerous spent fuel rods

Chicago Tribune, Jul 21, 2023 ,  Larry R. Eaton, Chicago

Fifty years ago, as chief of the Illinois attorney general’s Environmental Control Law Division, a relatively new field of law at that time, I had the occasion to tour an Illinois nuclear power plant. I was taken aback to see extensive pools of water containing bundles of spent nuclear fuel rods standing on end just beneath the surface of the water. I was advised that a pilot plant study had indicated that it would have an essentially closed-loop system that would not generate large amounts of spent fuel; however, once the full-scale plant became operational, the system failed to perform as anticipated. Plant workers were left with no good alternative but to store spent fuel rods in pools of water, at least temporarily, pending (hopefully) a better idea.

It appears that the nuclear power industry is still waiting for that better idea. A supporter of nuclear power production now maintains, in essence, that we have nothing to be concerned about regarding spent nuclear fuel because all we need to do is encase it in concrete and then open it up and repackage it in concrete every several decades. (In perpetuity, presumably; the radioactivity will remain unabated for a very long time indeed.) To understand how absurd this proposal is requires little more than to say it out loud.

Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were wake-up calls, but we do not appear to have fully awakened.  It does not help that a nuclear power plant now sits near the front lines of a shooting war between Russia and Ukraine. Hopefully, we will somehow be lucky enough never to have a massive nuclear power plant disaster. But regardless of that, we will have radioactive spent fuel problems with us forever. We can no longer escape that fact. However, we can choose to stop making it worse.

Germany has decided to end its use of nuclear power. The U.S. should do the same. If there is anything worse than having an enormous carbon footprint, it has to be for that footprint to be radioactive too!

July 22, 2023 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

UN proposes elimination of all nuclear weapons as first step under new agenda for peace

Rising geopolitical and geo-economic tensions across the globe need a better, reformed, and updated UN system which reflects the growing multipolarity and is more representative, unbiased, and effective

July 21, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres presented a new policy brief on global security on Thursday, July 20, which calls for the abolition of all nuclear weapons and widespread reforms in the UN structure to make it more representative and efficient. 

The New Agenda for Peace policy brief, based on the discussions during the 75th anniversary celebrations of the foundation of the UN in 2020, is part of the preparations for the UN Summit of the Future to be held in 2024.  

While launching the brief, Guterres acknowledged that “the post-Cold war period is over, and we are moving towards a new global order and a multipolar world.” The changing world is marred by a new set of geopolitical and geo-economic conflicts with rising “insecurity about the threat of nuclear war” and growing skepticism among a large number of member states about the existing forums of multilateralism.    

The brief claims that most of the challenges to global security and peace are interlinked and proposes ways to address this complexity.  

Complex nature of rising conflicts 

The brief notes that increasing geo-strategic tensions and competition across the globe is pushing global military expenditure to an unprecedented level. In 2022, the cumulative global defense expenditure exceeded $2.24 trillion.

The brief also points out that several arms control regimes created during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, which were containing great power rivalries, have been eroded in the last few years, which has increased the risk of regional and global wars and paved the way for an arms race.  ……………………………………………………………….

Five priority areas and 12 steps to achieve collective security 

The brief proposes that trust, solidarity and universality—the well-known principles of the UN charter—would be the basis of its agenda for peace. Guterres emphasized the role of cooperation among nations, saying that it “does not require states to forego their national interest, but to recognize that they have shared goals.”

The brief recommends a 12-point plan of action, divided in five priority areas, to address the growing threats to peace at the global level. 

It calls for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and boosting preventive diplomacy to address strategic risks and geopolitical divisions in the world.  

It also calls for preventing domestic conflicts by adopting sustainable development methods and catering to climate-related issues and social discrimination with increased funding and help to developing countries to achieve their SDGs by 2030. Peacekeeping and peace enforcement, as well as regional initiatives of peace, should also be updated and strengthened. There should also be steps taken to prevent weaponization of emerging domains and technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and promotion of responsible innovation. 

It additionally calls for reforms in the UN system, including in the Security Council to make it more “just and representative,” and talks about countries respecting the impartiality of the UN secretariat so that it can work more effectively as a multilateral forum. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/07/21/un-proposes-elimination-of-all-nuclear-weapons-as-first-step-under-new-agenda-for-peace/

July 22, 2023 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Corruption In Ukraine & The U.S. Mutually Rewarding

The Pentagon failed its 5th consecutive audit last year, appearing to lose track of 61% of its $3.5 trillion in assets.

Substack, LISA SAVAGE, JUL 20, 2023

“…………………………………………………………………………………………. Ukraine’s leaders are so over the top that it’s becoming impossible to ignore. Add in the fact that they have been enriched by U.S. taxpayers more or less directly despite crumbling infrastructure, catastrophic homelessness, apartheid healthcare, and a host of other problems that the U.S. could address with adequate funding.

From RT (whose editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, just survived a second assassination attempt):

On July 7, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl spoke about a new package of aid from the US which includes cluster munitions – which are banned in 120 countries. The cost was $800 million.This is the 42nd delivery of aid that Ukraine has received from the US in the past year and a half.[emphasis mine] Since the beginning of Russia’s offensive, the US Congress has approved military and economic assistance to Ukraine amounting to over $70 billion – and that’s only counting direct expenses..

“Ukraine needs only one thing… To have someone come to power who won’t steal. Someone who won’t do it himself and won’t allow others to do so. Unfortunately, so far we haven’t been lucky,” [Aleksey Arestovich, former advisor to President Zelensky] said. 

Ok, so Arestovich has a motive for trashing the government that used to include him. How about Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh? Hersh does not approve of Russia’s entry into the war but he nonetheless published a piece on rampant corruption in Ukraine, “Trading with the Enemy,” back in April.

Zelensky has been buying fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war………………………………

Then there is President Zelensky, elected on pledges to end corruption and, incidentally, the war on the Donbas. 

Pre-2022, i.e. when corporate media headlines about Ukraine did a 180, even The Guardian found he was part of the problem and not likely to be part of the solution.

Neither is the U.S. government likely to be part of the solution. The Pentagon failed its fifth consecutive audit last year, appearing to lose track of 61% of its $3.5 trillion in assets……………………….. more https://went2thebridge.substack.com/p/corruption-in-ukraine-and-the-us?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1580975&post_id=135301485&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email_medium=email

July 22, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

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