Germany, France, Italy, conserve energy, but the UK government rejects energy conservation
In Germany, shops must keep their doors closed to avoid heat escaping on
cold days, illuminated advertising boards have to be switched off by 10pm,
and in some public swimming pools only cold showers are available.
In France, there will be no “temeparture police”, energy transition
minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher has promised, but the country’s
“sobriety” energy-savings push asks that homes and offices are not
heated above 19 degrees centigrade. Commuters are also being asked to
car-share, and mountain resorts have pledged to reduce the speed of ski
lifts at off-peak times.
Italy has launched what has been dubbed
“Operation Thermostat” – limits to the temperature that public
buildings can set the air conditioning at in the summer and the heating
during winter. People have also been encouraged to limit the duration of
showers, the time ovens are switched on, and to use the dishwasher and
washing machine only when fully loaded.
In Britain, it is sometimes easy to
forget that there is an energy crisis. As the nation grapples with yet
another implausible leap in household bills, the festive lights started
going up on London’s Oxford Street at the end of September – almost three
months before Christmas Day. That the lights have been replaced by LED
versions this year is perhaps somewhat overshadowed by the fact that there
will still be 300,000 individual bulbs on display.
As one shopper reportedly remarked: “Lights already? We don’t even know if we’ll be able
to turn ours on this Christmas.” At the heart of this strange disconnect
is the Government’s ongoing refusal to even talk about the concept of
conserving energy, never mind encourage people to turn down the thermostat.
Not even a warning of winter power cuts from the National Grid is enough to
convince the Cabinet of the merits of promoting energy conservation.
Telegraph 14th Oct 2022
Europe is still quietly importing Russian nuclear energy
CNBC, Sam Meredith @SMEREDITH19 14 Oct 22,
- Russia’s nuclear fuel industry remains conspicuously untouched by European sanctions more than seven months into the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine
- Despite eight rounds of sanctions, shipments of nuclear fuel to EU member states continue to make their way from Russia.
- Ariadna Rodrigo, EU sustainable finance manager at environmental group Greenpeace, told CNBC that it is “absolute madness” for the bloc to continue bankrolling the Kremlin by ignoring Russian nuclear trade.
………………………………………………. Russia’s energy influence goes beyond oil and gas
In April, a European Parliament resolution called for an “immediate” embargo on Russian imports of nuclear fuel and urged member states to stop working with Russia’s state-run nuclear giant Rosatom on existing and new projects.
But Russia is a dominant player in the global nuclear fuel market and any move to break the EU’s reliance on its services would likely be far from pain-free, particularly with Rosatom at the heart of Europe’s dependency……………
There are 18 Russian nuclear reactors in Europe, in countries including Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. All of these reactors rely on Rosatom for the supply of nuclear fuel and other services.
Underlining the scale of Russia’s nuclear energy influence in some member states, even as the Kremlin’s onslaught in Ukraine continues, Hungary in late August announced the construction of two new nuclear reactors by Rosatom.
Moscow accounted for almost one-fifth (19.7%) of the EU’s uranium imports last year, according to the latest available data from the Euratom Supply Agency. Only Niger (24.3%) and former Soviet republic Kazakhstan (23%) were bigger suppliers of uranium to the bloc. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/14/ukraine-war-europe-is-still-quietly-importing-russian-nuclear-energy.html
France’s national embarrassment: half of its nuclear reactors to remain out of action for months
France’s nuclear reactors will not work as normal any time soon. The
trouble will persist well into next year. when edf, the French energy giant,
warned in May that nuclear-electricity production this year would be lower
than previously forecast because half its reactors were out of action, the
timing could not have been worse.
Thanks to its nuclear industry, France is
usually Europe’s biggest net exporter of electricity. The closures turned
the country into a net power importer for the first time, just as the
continent faced an energy crunch. When in September edf then announced that
even by 2024 output would still be well below normal levels, the problem
became a national embarrassment.
France’s current nuclear troubles are
partly due to routine maintenance of the country’s 56 reactors, half of
which are about 40 years old. Each ageing reactor needs periodically to be
shut down, on a rotating basis, for inspection. During the pandemic,
scheduled maintenance was interrupted by lockdowns. The real crunch,
though, came after corrosion issues were detected in late 2021 at one
pressurised-water reactor. By this September no fewer than 25 reactors were
out of action: ten for routine maintenance, the rest for corrosion analysis
or repairs.
Economist 13th Oct 2022
Japan preparing the way for continued extension of the operating lifetime of its nuclear reactors
Amid an energy crunch that served a severe blow to Japan’s economy, the
government in Tokyo is considering extending the lives of the country’s
nuclear power plant fleet beyond the maximum current lifespan of 60 years.
According to local reports cited by Reuters, the plan is to remove the
limits on nuclear power plants’ lifetimes as a whole, which would open the
door to serial extensions of these lifetimes. The changes will need to be
approved by the Nuclear Regulation Authority.
Japan has 33 nuclearreactors, of which four have received approval to operate for a period of
60 years. This represents an extension on their original 40-year lifespans,
as stipulated in the current nuclear power regulation that was implemented
after the Fukushima tragedy. Currently, the regulations only allow one
20-year extension after the original 40-year period.
Oil Price 14th Oct 2022
Ukraine gets highly anticipated arms from Germany – Spiegel
https://www.rt.com/russia/564488-ukraine-germany-iris-system 13 Oct 22,
Kiev has received the IRIS-T air defense system even before Berlin’s own military.
Ukraine has received the first of four IRIS-T SLM air defense systems from Germany, Der Spiegel reported on Tuesday. With its own weapons stockpiles seriously depleted, Germany is gifting this ultra-modern system to Kiev before its own forces.
The system – which comprises a command vehicle, a radar vehicle, and a truck-mounted launcher capable of firing eight missiles – was handed over to the Ukrainian military next to the Polish-Ukrainian border on Tuesday, the German magazine reported.
The handover took place four days after German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht made an unannounced visit to Ukraine, where she promised her Ukrainian counterpart, Aleksey Reznikov, that his country would receive the IRIS-T “in a few days.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to provide this system to Ukraine back in June, with delivery initially slated for November.
In an update on Monday, Lambrecht said that Russia’s devastating missile strikes on Ukrainian military and infrastructure targets that morning showed “how important it is to supply Ukraine with air defense systems quickly.”
Berlin has promised Ukraine at least four IRIS-T systems, each of which can supposedly strike incoming missiles up to 40 kilometers (25 miles) away. Ukraine has reportedly asked Germany for at least a dozen of these systems, and offered to purchase them directly from the manufacturer, Diehl Defense.
Germany’s own military has yet to field a single ground-based IRIS-T system, with the remaining three pledged to Ukraine yet to be manufactured, Der Spiegel reported. Germany has faced persistent criticism from Kiev for its supposed hesitance in donating sufficiently heavy weaponry, but the arms it has sent have left its own stocks depleted.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned of “absolute deficits” in Germany’s weapons stocks in August, and a report by Business Insider on Saturday revealed that the Bundeswehr (German Army) has only enough ammunition for two days of warfare.
Russia open to talks with West: Lavrov
Canberra Times, 12 Oct 22, Moscow is open to talks with the West on the war in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Moscow says, which Washington has dismissed as “posturing” because Russia continues to strike Ukrainian cities.
In an interview on state television, Lavrov said Russia was willing to engage with the United States or with Turkey on ways to end the war, now in its eight month, but had yet to receive any serious proposal to negotiate……………………..
Lavrov said officials, including White House national security spokesman John Kirby, had said the United States was open to talks but that Russia had refused.
“This is a lie,” Lavrov said. “We have not received any serious offers to make contact.” https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7938759/russia-open-to-talks-with-west-lavrov/?cs=14264
We’re Being Pushed Toward Nuclear War On A Fiction: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
the empire depends on keeping its activities obfuscated and unseen while we’re all working to make its machinery visible and transparent. That’s why Assange is in prison.
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/were-being-pushed-toward-nuclear?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=78305448&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email Caitlin Johnstone, 14 Oct 22,
We’re being driven toward nuclear war on the completely fictional claim that Putin is a Hitler-like megalomaniac who’s just invading countries completely unprovoked, solely because he is evil and hates freedom, and won’t stop invading and conquering until he’s stopped by force.
The news media aren’t telling people about the western aggressions which led to this war. They’re not telling people the US is keeping this war going with the stated goal of weakening Russia and is rejecting peace talks and refusing to push for peace. All people are being told is that Putin is another Hitler who won’t listen to reason and only understands violence. The world’s two nuclear superpowers are being pushed closer and closer to direct military confrontation based on a complete fiction which omits mountains of facts.
To participate in this madness is indefensible. It is indefensibly immoral to foist a fictional version of events upon a trusting populace in order to manufacture consent for more and more aggressive acts of brinkmanship with a nuclear superpower. These people are depraved.
Continue readingPreparing for COP27 Climate Summit – an urgent shake-up of international finance system is needed
COP26 President Alok Sharma will today (Friday 14 October, 2022) deliver a
major keynote address at the Wilson Center think-tank in Washington, D.C.,
outlining key climate finance priorities ahead of COP27 next month. Mr
Sharma is expected to address how the international system – including
multilateral development banks, businesses, central banks, finance
ministries and regulators – must reform to support faster climate action in
line with the Paris Agreement and the Glasgow Climate Pact, which was
agreed by nearly 200 countries at COP26 last year.
Cabinet Office 13th Oct 2022
German Greens lay out nuclear power extension position amid coalition infighting
DW 15 Oct 22, The Green Party decided to support reserve operation of nuclear power plants in Germany, but rejected procurement of new fuel rods. Their party conference coincides with a conflict in the coalition on the issue.
…………………………………………. No to new nuclear fuel
The issue has also put Habeck in a difficult position with the party grassroots, given the Green Party’s longstanding objection to German nuclear power and the pride it took in being part of the first government to declare that the country would stop using it altogether.
The Greens said their red line on any nuclear extension would be the procurement of new nuclear fuel elements. The Greens would not agree to any legal regulation in the Bundestag that would procure new nuclear fuel.
Party co-leader Ricarda Lang said in the debate that new fuel rods or a return to nuclear power “will not happen with us.” Renewable energies need to be expanded, and “nuclear power is not the future,” Lang said.
Habeck also described a return to nuclear power as “wrong”, adding: “There’s no way that’s going to happen to us.”
As for the reserve operation of the two nuclear power plants, he said that “we shouldn’t rule out this contribution from the outset” because of the emerging gap in the energy supply…………………………….. more https://www.dw.com/en/german-greens-lay-out-nuclear-power-extension-position-amid-coalition-infighting/a-63449846
Stockpiling iodine tablets in Europe, as fears rise over dangers in Zaporizhzhia nuclear station
The war in Ukraine has heightened fears about nuclear exposure – and
interest in iodine pills that can help protect the body from some
radiation. Concerns have grown in recent weeks over periodic power cuts to
the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that have increased the risk of a meltdown.
And threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will use “all
means necessary” to win the war in Ukraine has raised the specter of
nuclear warfare.
Some countries in Europe have started stockpiling the
tablets and pharmacies in Finland began to run low on the pills after that
country’s health ministry recommended households buy a single dose in case
of emergency.
Daily Mail 13th Oct 2022
Nuclear Power Isn’t Clean — It Creates Hellish Wastelands of Radioactive Sewage
If you want to remove plutonium from a radioactive wasteland, what do you do so that it doesn’t create another radioactive wasteland? And what does that say about the 90,000 tons of high-level waste sitting at more than 50 U.S. commercial reactor sites?
If you want to remove plutonium from a radioactive wasteland, what do you do so that it doesn’t create another radioactive wasteland? And what does that say about the 90,000 tons of high-level waste sitting at more than 50 U.S. commercial reactor sites?
Harvey Wasserman, Truthout October 12, 2022,
Joshua Frank’s brilliant Atomic Days, from Haymarket Books, takes us deep into the horrific clogged bowels of the failed technology that is nuclear power.
Frank’s excursion into the radioactive wasteland of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, in eastern Washington State’s Columbia River Valley, is the ultimate real-world nightmare.
Unfortunately, it serves as a wailing siren for what faces us with the atomic wastes from our commercial reactors, now joined at the toxic hip to the global weapons industry.
“Like a ceaseless conveyer belt,” Frank writes, “Hanford generated plutonium for nearly four long decades, reaching maximum production during the height of the Cold War.”
It is now, he says “a sprawling wasteland of radioactive and chemic sewage … the costliest environmental remediation project the world has ever seen and, arguably, the most contaminated place on the entire planet.”
Current cost estimates to clean up the place, says Frank, “could run anywhere between $316 and $662 billion.”
But that depends on a few definitions, including the most critical: What does it mean to “clean up” a hellhole like Hanford? If you want to remove plutonium from a radioactive wasteland, what do you do so that it doesn’t create another radioactive wasteland? And what does that say about the 90,000 tons of high-level waste sitting at more than 50 U.S. commercial reactor sites?
To put it in perspective, we spend $2.6 billion each year just to preserve Hanford as it is. The clean-up estimate, according to Frank, has roughly tripled in the past six years, leaving us to believe that in another six years it could easily be over $6 trillion.
The environmental consequences are colossal. As Frank abundantly documents, Hanford is an unfathomable mess. Giant tanks are leaking. Plutonium and other apocalyptic substances are rapidly migrating toward the Columbia River, which could be permanently poisoned, along with much more. Local residents have been poisoned with “permissible permanent concentration” of lethal isotopes on vegetables, livestock, and in the air and drinking water.
Such exposures have even included a deliberate experiment known as the “Green Run” in which Hanford operatives “purposely released dangerous amounts of radioactive iodine.”
Such emissions are especially damaging to embryos, fetuses and small children, whose thyroids can be easily destroyed (as we are now seeing at Fukushima). But back then the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wanted to know how fallout would flow in wind currents.
The product was a “death mile” stretching from the Columbia River basin to the ocean, filled with casualties of radioactive poisoning.
After decades of devastating leaks from defective storage tanks, the Los Angeles Times reported that more radioactivity was stored at Hanford “than would be released during an entire nuclear war.”
Thousands of such tanks at Fukushima may soon be given a governmental green light to dump their poisons in the Pacific, with potentially apocalyptic results.
At Hanford, “the waste was so hot it would boil … for decades to come,” i.e., right up to the present day, writes Frank.
Despite official denials, Frank documents a terrifying range of catastrophic leaks into the soil, water tables and streams throughout the reservation. By 1985, he writes, “despite $7 billion spent over the previous ten years, no progress had been made in ridding the aging tanks” of their deadly offal.
To this day “Hanford remains the most complex environmental mess in the United States,” riddled with problems that provide huge profits for corporations that land clean-up contracts and then fail to deliver, exceeding the complexity even of the infamous waste dump at West Valley, New York, and the highly radioactive fallout zone at Santa Susana, California, just north of Los Angeles.
But Hanford’s not alone. Frank also takes us to Chelyabinsk, the site of a Soviet era disaster, and to another wasteland around Kyshtym. Like the 1000-square-mile “dead zone” around Chernobyl, Hanford is full of areas where human life is perilous at best. ………………………………………………….. more https://truthout.org/articles/nuclear-power-isnt-clean-it-creates-hellish-wastelands-of-radioactive-sewage/
Young girls up to 10 times more vulnerable to ionizing radiation, especially girls up to 5 years old.
Nuclear Radiation Risk Impacts One Group Far More Than Any Other. Young girls could be up to 10 times more vulnerable to nuclear radiation thanother members of society, with girls aged up to five twice as likely to develop cancer as boys of the same age.
Understanding the risk posed by radiation exposure has been catapulted into public consciousness since
February, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Talk of nuclear war has simmered ever since, with rhetoric ramping up on October 6 when President Joe Biden warned of “Armageddon,” despite the U.S. having no new intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning a nuclear strike.
Today, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission bases its evaluations of the impact of ionizing radiation on the public, and thus its decisions on nuclear licensing and regulation, on a subset of data which describes the “Reference Man.”
The Reference Man, as defined by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, is 20 to 30 years old, weighs 154 pounds, is 5 foot and 6 inches tall, and is Caucasian with a Western European or North American lifestyle. This one-size-fits-all approach describes only a small subset of society.
Newsweek 10th Oct 2022
https://www.newsweek.com/newsweek-com-nuclear-radiation-risk-impacts-one-group-more-other-1750413
MSN 10th Oct 2022
Plutonium and high-level nuclear waste
About plutonium and the “reprocessing” or “recycling” of used nuclear fuel. Gordon Edwards, 12 Oct 22
Plutonium is less than 1/2 of one percent of the used nuclear fuel, but it is a powerful source of energy that can be used for military or civilian purposes (nuclear bomb or nuclear reactors). To get the plutonium out of the used fuel is a very messy operation. The places where reprocessing has been done on a large scale are among the most radioactively contaminated sites in the world. Although NWMO says that plutonium use is not on their agenda, it is included, in writing, as one of their options. Today, in New Brunswick, government funding is going to Moltex Corp. to proceed with plans that require plutonium use. Chalk River is just beginning to build a billion-dollar brand new research facility that will be dealing with plutonium as a priority. A large nuclear industry mural painted on the walls of the Saskatoon Airport states that reprocessing used fuel to get the plutonium out is the last step in the “Nuclear Fuel Cycle”.
(1) Nuclear fuel can be handled with care before it goes into a nuclear reactor. But used nuclear fuel will never be handled by human hands again, at least for several centuries, because of the hundreds of newly-created radioactive materials inside each fuel bundle. These are (a) the broken pieces of uranium atoms that have been spit, (b) the newly-created “transuranic” (heavier than uranium) materials that are produced, and (c) the so-called “activation products” (non-radioactive materials that have been de-stabilized and so are now radioactive). See “Nuclear Waste 101” https://youtu.be/wD2ixadwXW8
(2) Radioactivity is not a thing, but a property of certain materials that have unstable atoms. Most atoms are stable and unchanging. Radioactive atoms are unstable. Each radioactive atom is like a tiny little time bomb, that will eventually “explode” (the industry uses the word “disintegrate”). When an atom disintegrates it gives off projectiles that can damage living cells, causing them to develop into cancers later on. These projectiles are of four kinds: alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays, and neutrons. These damaging emissions are called “atomic radiation”. No one knows how to turn off radioactivity, so they remain dangerous while they exist.
(The danger lasts for tens of millions of years)
(3) Used nuclear fuel is so radioactive that it can give a lethal dose of gamma radiation and neutrons to any unshielded humans that are nearby. Even the “30-year old” used fuel that NWMO wants to transport to a “willing host community” is still far too dangerous to be handled without massive shielding and robotic equipment. The job of repackaging the used fuel bundles requires the use of shielded “hot cells” — which are specially constructed airtight rooms with thick windows (4 to 6 feet thick) and large robot arms like those used in outer space to protect the workers from being overexposed to radiation. Any damage to the outer metal coating on the fuel bundles will allow radioactive materials to escape from inside the fuel in the form of radioactive gasses, vapours, or dust. That’s why the hot cells have to be air-tight, and why these rooms themselves will eventually become radioactive waste.
See https://youtu.be/g8EPo8BntPQ (below)
(3) Nuclear proponents often point out that the used nuclear fuel – the stuff that NWMO wants to “bury” underground – still has a lot of energy potential and could be “recycled”. That’s because one of the radioactive materials in the waste, called “plutonium”, can be used to make atomic bombs or other kinds of nuclear weapons, and it can also be used as a fuel for more nuclear reactors. But to get plutonium out of the fuel bundles they have to be dissolved in some kind of acid or “molten salt”, turning the waste into a liquid form instead of a solid form. This allows radioactive gasses to escape from the fuel, and makes it much more difficult to keep all the other radioactive materials (now in liquid form) out of the environment of living things. Any plutonium extraction technology is called “reprocessing”.
4) Although NWMO says that reprocessing is not their intention, it has always been considered a possibility and has never been excluded. It is stated in all NWMO documentation that reprocessing remains an option. Once a willing host community has said “yes” to receive all of Canada’s used nuclear fuel, the government and industry can then decide that they want to get that plutonium out of the fuel before burying it. That means opening up the fuel bundles and spilling all the radioactive poisons into a gaseous or liquid medium so they can separate the plutonium (and maybe a few other things) from all the rest of the radioactive garbage. Canada has built and operated reprocessing plants in the 1940s and 1950s at Chalk River. AECL tried but failed to get the government to build a commercial-scale reprocessing plant in the late 1970s. Canada did some experimental reprocessing in Manitoba, when AECL built the “Underground Research Laboratory” to study the idea of a DGR for used nuclear fuel in the 1980s and 1990s. Read http://www.ccnr.org/AECL_plute.html .
(5) The big reprocessing centres in the world include Hanford, in Washington State; Sellafield, in Northern England; Mayak, in Russia; La Hague, in France; and Rokkasho, in Japan. There is also a shut-down commercial reprocessing plant at West Vallay, New York. These sites are all environmental foul-ups requiring extremely costly and dangerous cleanups.
HANFORD: over $100 billion needed to clean up the sitehttps://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/hanfords-soaring-cost-of-radioactive-waste-cleanup-is-targeted-as-nw-governors-seek-more-funding/
SELLAFIELD: over 200 billion pounds ($222 billion) for cleanuphttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-nuclear-waste-cleanup-decommissioning-power-stations
MAYAK: severe environmental contamination but no cost estimateshttps://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/radwaste-storage-at-nuclear-fuel-cycle-plants-in-russia/2011-12-russias-infamous-reprocessing-plant-mayak-never-stopped-illegal-dumping-of-radioactive-waste-into-nearby-river-poisoning-residents-newly-disclosed-court-finding-says
LA HAGUE: widespread contamination, no detailed dollar figure providedhttps://ejatlas.org/conflict/la-hague-center-of-the-reprocessing-of-nuclear-waste-france
ROKKASHO: years of cost overruns and delays – $130 billion for starters
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsjapans-rokkasho-reprocessing-plant-postponed-again-8105722
WEST VALLEY: only operated for 6 years, about $5 billion in cleanup costhttps://www.ucsusa.org/resources/brief-history-reprocessing-and-cleanup-west-valley-ny
(6) Newer reprocessing technologies are smaller and use different approaches – but basically, any time you are going to open uo the fuel bundles, you are “playing with fire” and it is much harder to keep all the radioactive pioisons in check once they are out of the fuel bundle.
Read http://www.ccnr.org/paulson_legacy.html
(7) My feeling is that any “handling” or “repackaging” or “reprocessing” of used nuclear fuel should NOT be done in a remote community that does not have the economic or political “clout” to demand that things be done properly. If It is to be dine at all, this should be done back in the major population centres where the reactors are located and people living there can raise a fuss if things are not done safely.
(8) Also, my feeling is that the fuel should not be moved at all until the reactors are all shut down. The radioactive wastes can be very well packaged and carefully guarded where they are. Since NWMO will only move 30-year old used fuel, there will ALWAYS be 30 years worth of unburied waste right at the surface, right beside the reactors, ready to suffer a catastrophe of some sort, no matter HOW fast they bury the older fuel. In fact, the nuclear indusrtry does not really want to “get rid” of nuclear waste at all, but just move some of the older stuff out of the way so that they can keep on making more. The best place to take the waste is where there are no reporters or TV broadcasters or influential wealthy people to blow the whistle if things go badly. Maybe I’m a little over-suspicious, but given the history of waste management, you can’t be too careful.
9) In Germany, they buried radioactive waste in an old salt mine as a kind of DGR for a very long time. When radioactive contamination kept leaking into the ground water and the surface waters, the nuclear scientists in charge did not tell the government or the public for almost 10 years. Then, when it became clear that the environment was being severely affected, the German government decided to take all the waste OUT of the DGR – a difficult and dangerous operation that will take 15-30 years and cost over 3.7 billion euros ($5 billion Canadian equivalent.)
Read https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featureclearing-out-asse-2/
Any potential willing host community would be well advised to insist that all “handling” of individual fuel bundles, of any kind whatsoever, whether repackaging or reprocessing, should not be part of the plan for the willing host community to accept. But it would have to be in writing and legally enforceable.
Of course the decision is entirely up to the willing host community, not me – and hopefully, not the industry either.
WE ARE ON A PATH TO NUCLEAR WAR
WAR ON THE ROCKS, JEREMY SHAPIRO, 12 Oct 22, In war, nothing is inevitable and not much is predictable. But the war in Ukraine has a direction that observers can see and that we should name. What began as a criminal Russian aggression against Ukraine has become a proxy war between Washington and Moscow. The two sides are locked in an escalatory cycle that, along current trends, will eventually bring them into direct conflict and then go nuclear, killing millions of people and destroying much of the world. This is obviously a bold prediction and certainly an unwise one to make — in part because if I’m right, I’m unlikely to be around take credit for it.
President Joe Biden has named this danger, to great criticism, apparently because he believes that acknowledging the danger increases the chances of avoiding such a terrible outcome. Indeed, much can change the current trajectory, but doing so will require purposeful action by both sides specifically intended to avoid direct confrontation. At the moment, neither side seems willing or politically able to take such steps. On the contrary, in Russia nuclear threats are a prominent part of the Russian war strategy. In the United States, commentators condemn those who even name this danger, fearing that doing so will weaken Western resolve. Any mention of such considerations on Twitter, where it is always 1938, inevitably provokes accusations of appeasement and references to Neville Chamberlain.
Despite the opprobrium, not naming the danger is unlikely to reduce it. Think tank analysts prefer instead to talk in terms of “scenarios,” wherein we can bury the most likely outcome amongst a few other less likely possibilities. Such exercises are useful for planning purposes, and they appropriately reflect our general inability to predict events on the ground. But scenarios also serve to hide the relative likelihood of the various outcomes. Here I present just the central scenario of nuclear escalation. I take as a starting point that, although we may experience long periods of relative stalemate and we may never arrive at such a horrific outcome, uncontrolled escalation is the path that we are currently on.
Testing the Red Lines
No rational or even sane leader plans to start a nuclear war. And for all of the Russian regime’s risk taking, it does not show signs of suicidal tendencies. The essence of the problem is more insidious than mere insanity: Once an escalatory cycle begins, a series of individually rational steps can add up to a world-ending absurdity. In Ukraine, both sides have publicly pledged that they cannot lose this war. They hold that doing so would threaten their very way of life and the values that they hold most dear. In the Russian case particularly, a loss in Ukraine would seem to threaten regime survival and even the territorial integrity of the country.
As the war has moved against the Russians, they have drawn numerous red lines to warn the West against escalation. The Russians called the provision of long-range rocket systems near the Russian border “intolerable,” warned against the admission of Sweden and Finland to NATO, and threatened that any attack on Crimea would “ignite judgment day.” In each case, the crossing of these Russian red lines by Ukraine, the United States, or Europe generated some sort of response but fell well short of Russian threats.
As Russian red lines have proven very pink, they are increasingly questioned in the West. Numerous Western commentators now assert that Russia is a paper tiger and dismiss Russian nuclear threats as “bluster.” The most recent Russian red line warns against the provision of long-range missile systems to Ukraine. The Russian government says that if the United States crosses this line, it would become “a direct party to the conflict.” Given all of the red lines already crossed, however, it is doubtful that U.S. decision-makers see such threats as very meaningful.
The problem that the Russians have had in their signaling is that their decision to escalate likely revolves around the progress that the Ukrainians make on the ground, not on any discrete action (such as the provision of new weapons systems) that the West might take. The likelihood of escalation, in other words, has stemmed from developments on the battlefield, not from the crossing of some arbitrary red line. Experts on the Russian military have long suspected that Russian nuclear signaling is an elaborate bluff meant to instill fear and caution in a weak-willed Western enemy. But events in Ukraine and the possibility of a catastrophic military loss may have changed that calculation. Nobody really knows. It is likely that the Russians don’t know either.
What is clear is that both sides have consistently escalated in Ukraine when they fear that they might lose. The United States and its European partners have continually upped their military assistance to Ukraine, in both quality and quantity, regardless of red lines. Under the pressure of war, they decided to deliver weapons and intelligence that just a few months ago they believed carried too great an escalation risk to provide. They have similarly incrementally increased economic sanctions to the degree that they now appear intended to permanently weaken Russia and destroy the Russian regime, as Biden has said is necessary to end the war.
The Russians have consistently responded to battlefield setbacks with their own escalations including energy cut-offs to Europe, increased bombing of civilian targets, and recently through the formal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces and the partial mobilization of Russian manpower reserves. This last step carries obvious risks for the Russian regime, as the multiple protests against it across Russia testify, but the leadership preferred those domestic risks to losing the war.
In taking these escalatory steps, both sides have also increased the domestic and geopolitical costs of compromise, thus increasing the incentive for further escalations. Thus, for example, the Russian annexations are intended to signal to foreign and domestic audiences that the occupied parts of Ukrainian territory will now be defended as if they were Russia itself. But it is not just a signal, it also genuinely reduces Russia’s ability to back down and abandon these provinces. This is essence of an escalatory cycle — it contains a logic of its own wherein previous escalations make future ones more likely.
Of course, wars have often escalated but no war since 1945 has ended in nuclear use. Nuclear powers have at times considered their use for warfighting, notably in Korea in 1953 and in Israel in 1973, but have always stepped back from the brink. In the current situation, both sides have many more steps to take before direct confrontation: ………………………………………………………………………..
This is only a scenario. None of it is inevitable, of course. But this is the path that we are currently on and the likelihood of it coming to pass grows by the day as one side or the other becomes more desperate. The consequences of this path are deeply ruinous. It should be named. https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh/
Crimean Bridge Attack: Ukraine’s Sabotage Teams Take Orders From Washington, Senior Official Reveals
https://sputniknews.com/20221010/crimean-bridge-attack-ukraines-sabotage-teams-take-orders-from-washington-senior-official-reveals-1101698419.html Ilya Tsukanov, 12 Oct 22, The 19-km bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula to the Russian mainland sustained serious damage following the detonation of a truck bomb on one of its road sections on Saturday morning. Ukrainian officials boasted to US media that Kiev was responsible.
Ukrainian officials keep their US counterparts abreast of Kiev’s sabotage ops and other anti-Russian actions, Sergey Pashinsky, the head of the Association of Ukraine’s Defense Enterprises, accidentally revealed.
“We are planning several operations. My position is: we must and are obliged to inform our American partners about them. And those operations which I am conducting right now – I have the opportunity to conduct operations myself, I http://cut channels this is also the CIA http://cut have their own intentions. Because I understand that the US also carries responsibility for them and has the right to veto all of our operations,” Pashinsky said, speaking to infamous Russian pranksters Vladimir ‘Vovan’ Kuznetsov and Alexei ‘Lexus’ Stolyarov, who posed as US officials.
Pashinsky clarified that he has been in charge of some major Ukrainian military actions, including operational planning on Zmeiny (‘Snake’) Island – the small but strategically significant island situated off the western coast of Romania in the Black Sea, and which saw heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces earlier this year.
“I planned the Zmeiny Island operation, I carried it out personally [using] Ukrainian Bohdan and French Caesar [howitzers]. Yes, this was my operation in its entirely,” the official said.
Pashinsky indicated that operations against a piece of infrastructure like the Crimean Bridge became possible only once the US gives the green light.
“As soon as you tell me that the US approves the sabotage of the Crimean Bridge, the situation can move forward. [Laughs]. A verbal message is enough for me. We don’t want to take responsibility of this scale for ourselves, while Mr. Zelensky – I don’t know, I don’t even want to know about this situation,” Pashinsky said.
“The Crimean Bridge is an important artery, but on the other hand I think you know [Vladimir] Putin better than I do. That is, who can analyze Putin’s actions in the event of sabotage against the Crimean Bridge? Who?” the official asked.
The pranksters did not clarify whether the interview with Pashinsky was conducted before or after Saturday’s sabotage attack.
Two senior Ukrainian officials told the New York Times on Sunday that Ukrainian intelligence were behind the attack on the bridge, one of them grading the success of the attack as “excellent” and saying that the operation “showed the failure of the Russian system to guarantee the security even of the most significant and sacred targets.”
Ukrainian officials also publicly gloated over the act of terror, with presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak saying the bridge attack was only “the beginning” and that “everything illegal must be destroyed” and “everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine.”
“Today was not a bad day and mostly sunny on our state’s territory. Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea. Although it was also warm,” President Vladimir Zelensky said in a sarcasm-laden address to the nation on Saturday night.
Russia launched a series of missile strikes deep into Ukraine on Monday in the wake of the bridge attack after confirming Ukrainian special forces’ involvement, with the strikes targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure and military command and communications posts across the country. President Putin warned that strikes would be followed up if Ukrainian attacks against Russian infrastructure continue.
1 This Month
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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