Nuclear power funding plan worries Cumbria councillors, BBC, 24 August 2019
Council bosses have raised concerns over government plans to fund large-scale nuclear projects through residents’ electricity bills.
The funding model proposed last month would let energy companies charge consumers a set amount, to be spent on future infrastructure provision.
The government said it was “essential” to attract private finance.
But councillors in Copeland, Cumbria, are worried residents could have to pay for plants that may never be built.
The chairman of the council’s strategic nuclear and energy board, Steven Morgan, was concerned they would be paying for a plant “long before it returns any electricity”.
“This does reduce the financing cost and therefore reduces what you have to pay in the long run,” he said.
“But, in the near term, you are paying for plants that haven’t been built yet and may never be built.”…….
The regulated asset base model is intended to attract investment by shifting risk from developer to taxpayer, following the high-profile collapse of Cumbria’s Moorside project, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.
It would require all UK electricity customers to pay in advance through their bills.
It would also allow investors to receive financial returns before the projects have been completed….
By Jean-Jacques Cornish Led by their former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, South Africans breathed a sigh of relief when President Cyril Ramaphosa scrapped plans to buy a nuclear power plant from Russia that would have been ruinously expensive. But the saga is not over.
Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said this week that South Africa is still in the market for nuclear energy, provided it can be purchased economically.
Regulators approve nuclear transfer over governor, AG protests, MASS LIVE, By Colin A. Young / STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICESTATE HOUSE, BOSTON, AUG. 23, 2019…..Despite the objections of Attorney General Maura Healey, the Baker administration and local advocacy groups, federal regulators approved the transfer of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station license to a company that plans to decommission the plant on an “accelerated basis.”
Entergy, which bought the Plymouth plant from Boston Edison in 1999, is selling it to Holtec International, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been reviewing the requested license transfer since last year. The NRC approved the transfer Friday, announcing that Holtec International will be the owner of the plant and that its subsidary Holtec Decommissioning International will serve as the decommissioning operator.
The NRC said its order approving the license transfer is effective immediately but that the transfer will not actually take place until the sale of the plant is finalized. The transfer includes the dry cask spent fuel storage installation at Pilgrim.
……… The approval comes as Attorney General Maura Healey, Gov. Charlie Baker’s energy and environment secretariat and members of the state’s Congressional delegation mounted an effort to block the transfer until the NRC held a full hearing on concerns over Holtec’s ability to safely decommission the nuclear plant, the company’s financial stability and its alleged involvement in a kickback scheme.
“The Commonwealth does not believe that Holtec has met the NRC’s financial and technical qualification requirements for license transfer approval,” Healey’s office wrote to the NRC this week. “Indeed, the Commonwealth has serious concerns about Holtec’s financial and technical capacity to complete the work at Pilgrm. At a minimum, this history requires a heightened degree of scrutiny by the NRC and its Staff.” ……..
On Friday, Healey’s office said it will review the options it still has to rectify what it called a “misguided decision” by the federal regulators.
“We are deeply disappointed in the NRC’s misguided decision to approve the license transfer and trust fund exemption requests, and its failure to meaningfully consult with our state prior to doing so. We continue to have serious concerns about Holtec’s financial capacity, technical qualifications, and judgment to safely and properly clean up the site, and store and manage Pilgrim’s spent nuclear fuel,” Healey spokeswoman Chloe Gotsis said. “We are reviewing all of our available options to ensure the health, safety and interests of our residents and the environment are protected.”
U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, who sits on a Congressional committee with jurisdiction over the NRC, said the agency “is abdicating any responsibility for protecting public health and safety with its rushed and uninformed license transfer for the Pilgrim nuclear power plant.”
“The opaque process that disregarded local resident and state input reflects the Commission’s choice to prioritize industry timelines over due diligence and transparency. Holtec’s math on how it will pay for decommissioning does not add up. Holtec’s unwillingness to even negotiate an agreement with local stakeholders — the ones who will be living next door to nuclear waste for years to come — is unacceptable,” Markey said. “I have repeatedly called on Holtec to be a good neighbor and for the Commission to be a good regulator, but those calls of concern were ignored.”
The Baker administration said it “believes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff should not have made the decision to approve the license transfer prior to the Commission ruling on the concerns raised by the administration and Attorney General.”
“Both offices remain deeply committed to ensuring the Pilgrim Nuclear Power station is decommissioned in a manner that protects the safety of the public and environment,” Energy and Environmental Affairs spokeswoman Katie Gronendyke said.
Late Thursday, four state senators and six state representatives — Sens. Viriato deMacedo, Julian Cyr, John Keenan and Patrick O’Connor along with Reps. William Crocker, Josh Cutler, Dylan Fernandes, Sarah Peake, Kathleen LaNatra and Tim Whelan — issued a statement in support of Healey and the administration. They asked the NRC to give the issue a full hearing before acting on the license transfer application……… https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/08/regulators-approve-nuclear-transfer-over-governor-ag-protests.html
Nuclear rethink: A change in India’s nuclear doctrine has implications on cost & war strategy
A nuclear doctrine states how a nuclear weapon state would employ its nuclear weapons both during peace and war. Economic Times ET Bureau|, Aug 17, 2019,
“…….. revoking the NFU would have its own costs. First, India’s image as a responsible nuclear power is central to its nuclear diplomacy. Nuclear restraint has allowed New Delhi to get accepted in the global mainstream. From being a nuclear pariah for most of the Cold War, within a decade of Pokhran 2, it has been accepted in the global nuclear order. It is now a member of most of the technology denial regimes such as the Missile Technology Control regime and the Wassenaar Arrangement. It is also actively pursuing full membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Revoking the ‘no first use’ pledge would harm India’s nuclear image worldwide.
Parting away with NFU would also be costly otherwise. A purely retaliatory nuclear use is easier to operationalize. Nuclear preemption is a costly policy as it requires massive investment not only in weapons and delivery systems but also intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) infrastructure. The latest estimates of India’s nuclear weapons by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists point to a small arsenal of 130-150 nuclear warheads even though it has enough militarygrade plutonium to produce 200 warheads.
In fact, when compared with the estimates a decade earlier of 70 nuclear warheads, there has only been a modest increase in India’s nuclear inventory. If India does opt for first use of nuclear weapons and given that it has two nuclear adversaries, it would require a far bigger inventory of nuclear weapons particularly as eliminating adversaries’ nuclear capabilities would require targeting of its nuclear assets involving multiple warheads. The controversy around the supposed low yield of its Hydrogen weapon test in 1998 further complicates this already precarious calculation.
Similarly, first use of nuclear weapons would require a massive increase in India’s nuclear delivery capabilities. There is yet no evidence suggesting that India’s missile production has increased dramatically in recent times. Moreover, India is yet to induct the Multiple Reentry Vehicle (MRV) technology in its missiles, which is fundamental to eliminating hardened nuclear targets. Finally, India’s ISR capabilities would have to be augmented to such a level where India is confident of taking out most of its adversary’s arsenal. According to a senior officer who had served in the Strategic Forces command, this is nearly an “impossible task”. Finally, India would have to alter significantly its nuclear alerting routine. India’s operational plans for its nuclear forces involve a four-stage process. Nuclear alerting would start at the first hints of a crisis where decision-makers foresee possible military escalation. This would entail assembly of nuclear warheads and trigger mechanisms into nuclear weapons. The second stage involves dispersal of weapons and delivery systems to pre-determined launch positions. The third stage would involve mating of weapons with delivery platforms.
The last and final stage devolves the control of nuclear weapons from the scientific enclave to the military for their eventual use. Canisterization of missiles has combined the dispersal and mating of weapons into a single step, cutting down the effort required for achieving operational readiness. Even then, this model does not support first use of nuclear weapons as it gives ample warning to the adversary of India’s intentions. There is certainly a need for a reappraisal of India’s nuclear doctrine.
14 Aug 19,by Conrad DuncanDonald Trump was immediately shut down by experts after he suggested the US had “more advanced” nuclear missile technology than Russia.
On Thursday, five Russian nuclear engineers were killed in a rocket engine explosion, which is thought to be linked to tests for a nuclear-powered cruise missile announced by Vladimir Putin in March 2018.
In his typically tactless style, Trump shared his thoughts on the explosion yesterday by claiming the US was “learning much” from the blast and had even more advanced technology.
Trump’s tweet caught the attention of national security experts because it meant one of two things:
Trump had just revealed a secret US nuclear-powered cruise missile programme
He was bluffing about a missile programme that the US does not have
It doesn’t exactly take, ahem, a rocket scientist to know that both of those explanations are quite bad.
For example, Michael McFaul, who worked both for the US National Security Council and as Barack Obama’s Ambassador to Russia, had no idea what Trump was talking about.
Michael McFaul @McFaul
We have similar technology? Nuclear-powered cruise missiles? I wasn’t read into that program when I worked at the National Security Council. Can anyone shed more light?
Other experts on nuclear weapons couldn’t find public evidence for Trump’s claim either.
Joe Cirincione @Cirincione
This is bizarre. We do not have a nuclear-powered cruise missile program. We tried to build one, in the 1960’s, but it was too crazy, too unworkable, too cruel even for those nuclear nuts Cold War years
David Burbach@dburbach
It is a bad idea for the President to tell the world the U.S. has secret nuclear powered super-weapons and that we’ve been lying about that for years. Especially if we don’t actually have them, which we almost certainly do not.
Stephen Schwartz @AtomicAnalyst
If the United States truly has a “similar, though more advanced” nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile in development, it must be a highly classified program because there’s nothing on the public record. So are you baselessly boasting or divulging secrets?
In fact, there was once a programme to develop a nuclear-powered cruise missile during the Cold War, called Project Pluto, but the US abandoned it because it was believed to be too dangerous – potentially creating missiles for which there was no known defence.
So if the US does have “more advanced” technology than Russia on this, the president should definitely not be tweeting about it. Of course, there’s a good chance that Trump is bluffing again about matter that he doesn’t fully understand. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Carlisle News & Star 14th Aug 2019 NUCLEAR chiefs in Copeland are split on the creation of controversial
storage vaults for radioactive waste amid “moral” concerns.
The Government launched its search for a host community before Christmas,
prompting the council to come up with a statement that was broadly
supportive of the project but also non-committal in terms of the
authority’s involvement.
But it emerged at a meeting of the borough
council’s Strategic Nuclear and Energy Board (SNEB) this week that panel
members disagreed over the council’s current position. The board heard
that some councillors were “fundamentally” opposed to the very idea of
a multi-million-pound underground Geological Disposal Facility (GDF).
Speaking at the meeting, councillors Sam Pollen and David Banks both
criticised the GDF plans. Mr Pollen said he was not in a position to argue
with experts over the facility but stressed that “morality and ethics”
should also be considered. He questioned the “rush” to develop a GDF
amid concerns over safety and the lack of “retrievability” of the waste
once deposited. The councillor, who works at Sellafield, said the waste was
now stored “extremely safely” on the Sellafield site which he described
as a “big tick in a box for me”.
In reality, these Games are about forgetting the nuclear accident itself and with it “the victims of the nuclear accident”
Refugees are currently to be forced by financial pressure to return to areas that have been evacuated after the 2011 triple disaster, despite still significantly increased levels of radiation, as retired nuclear physicist Hiroaki Koide is pointing out. According to him, the fact that even children or pregnant women have to live with a twenty-fold increased limit for annual radiation exposure (from 1 millisievert per year before and up to 20 mSv after the incident), “is something that cannot be accepted at all”.
The Olympics are being organised “so that people in Japan forget the responsibility of the state for the nuclear accident,”
“What’s really dangerous, is that “the athletes will tell the world that Fukushima is safe”
‘Bad for Fukushima, bad for democracy’, Play the Game, By Andreas Singler, 7 Aug 19
One year before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo there is considerable resistance to the so-called ‘Reconstruction Games’ in Japan that critics fear will remove focus from the Fukushima disaster and undermine democratic values.
July 24 – one year to go until the opening of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo – may have been a day of joyful anticipation for many who embrace the Olympic Movement. But not all people anticipate this event as cheerfully as the organisers in Japan, a large part of the media and the Government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would appreciate. There was and still is much opposition against the hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2020 in Tokyo. Opponents call it both “bad for democracy” and “bad for Fukushima” – the area hit by a nuclear power plant disaster on 11 March 2011 and a devastating earthquake and tsunami.
For those critics, July 24 was a reason to take to the streets against Tokyo 2020. They had announced a rally for this memorable day followed by a demonstration in Shinjuku, one of the most crowded hubs in Tokyo. A leaflet even suggested that the Olympics could be “given back even a year before”. The protest in Tokyo was part of a so-far unique international gathering of ‘NOlympics’ activists from several countries. For eight days, opponents from Tokyo, Pyeongchang, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Los Angeles discussed the dark sides of the Olympics with critical scholars and alternative media. A press conference was held at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
The motto ‘the Reconstruction Games’, that the organisers and the Government chose after the 2011 East Japan triple disaster, sounds like sheer mockery, opponents say. Organisers as well as the International Olympic Committee (IOC), including President Thomas Bach, often talk about reconstruction, but hardly ever mention the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster as one of the main reason for the need of such rebuilding. Continue reading →
Bad for Fukushima, bad for democracy’, Play the Game, By Andreas Singler, 7 Aug 19″…….Undermining democratic values
Japanologist and literary scholar Donald Keene, who passed away earlier this year aged 96 and who became a Japanese citizen after ‘March 11’ in solidarity with the suffering country, sharply criticised the media for their Olympic coverage of Rio de Janeiro in his Tokyo Shimbun column. Keene mentioned – “as if living in a totalitarian state” – mass media’s nationalistic approach and lack of journalistic distance. “From the very beginning, I was opposed to Tokyo Olympics,” Keene wrote. He was, according to Satoshi Ukai, one of the few public figures in Japan who could still be allowed such a clear-cut opinion. Keene, by birth a US citizen, was a legend among international Japanologists as an annalist, translator and intimate connoisseur of Japan’s golden generation of post-war writers.
“The longer one reflects about Olympics, the bigger the problems appear,” says Ukai. The fact that big celebrations and major disasters both can fuel nationalism and undermine the democratic culture of a country is one of the issues touched upon by US political scientist Jules Boykoff in his lecture on ‘Celebration Capitalism’ during a symposium at Waseda University in Tokyo on 21 July. His theoretical approach that refers on Naomi Klein’s term ‘disaster capitalism’ and covers Olympics in general appears like a blueprint on the conditions in ‘post-Fukushima’ Japan, where there are only a few years between catastrophe and festival event.
A larger number of laws have been adopted in recent years, partly as so-called anti-terrorism measures in the name of Olympic security. Critics call it an attack on the freedom of press, of expression, and of assembly. Those laws, one by one, caused mass protests driven by various social movements. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Joseph Cannataci, criticised an Anti-Conspiracy Act of 2017 in an open letter to Prime Minister Abe. And in a report to the UN Human Rights Committee, Special Rapporteur David Kaye sounded the alarm over the country’s eroding freedom of the press. It is hardly possible to report freely about sensitive issues of Japanese history such as Japan’s role in World War II, the ‘comfort women’ issue or, yet, about the real situation in Fukushima, Kaye reported. In just a few years, Japan dropped from number 11 in 2010 to 72 in 2018 and 67 in the current ranking of ‘Reporters Without Borders’.
Paving the Way for a Shift? Evidences from China’s Nuclear Documents, International Policy Digest, Lorenzo Termine, 9 Aug 19, The historical roots of the Chinese nuclear doctrine dates back to the traumatic experiences of the Korean War and the Taiwan Strait crises during the 1950s when the United States, then bound to South Korea and Taiwan, kept on the table a nuclear option against Beijing. After testing their first A-bomb in southern Xinjiang in October 1964, Beijing stated that, given the power of annihilation, “China will not at any time or under any circumstances employ atomic weapons first.” The no first use (NFU) policy is, then, congenitally rooted in China’s nuclear doctrine………
The main concern for the U.S. and its allies in Asia is whether China is modernizing its nuclear arsenal solely to secure a credible and effective second-strike capacity or if it is overhauling its nuclear policy toward a completely new approach. If the above-analyzed documents were meant to pave the way for more meaningful shift away from the traditional Chinese nuclear posture, then, Asia’s security environment would be significantly altered and global peace could be sorely tested. https://intpolicydigest.org/2019/08/09/paving-the-way-for-a-shift-evidences-from-china-s-nuclear-documents/
The arguments against nuclear as an energy solution are overwhelming, Irish Examiner, 5 Aug 19, “……….Tony Lowes, director of Friends of the Irish Environment, accepts that the nuclear question can provoke impassioned responses. “It hits some fundamental terror in people,” he says.
But he says the arguments against nuclear as an energy solution are overwhelming.
“It’s not a renewable fuel for a start — it’s a fossil fuel because you have to mine for uranium — and any efforts made to bring in nuclear energy would be at the expense of actually solving our problems which we have to do through wind and solar.”
Off-shore wind farms are the real answer, Lowes says, both because of the enormous amount of energy available to be harnessed off Ireland’s coasts and because of the growing opposition among local communities to the proliferation of onshore turbines and solar farms.
He is critical of the delays in overhauling the planning and licencing system needed to support offshore. Currently, developers face a mountain of bureaucracy with a multitude of national and local agencies to work through, with sometimes overlapping or duplicated processes.
In late July, the Government finally approved the general scheme of the Marine Planning and Development Management Bill 2019 which promises to clarify and streamline the procedures but, as the official announcement itself pointed out, this replaces the Maritime Area and Foreshore Amendment Bill of 2013.
Six years on and we still have only a general scheme of a bill with a long way to go before legislation is enacted and processes change accordingly.
Meanwhile investors have a number of large-scale project proposals on hold awaiting legislative clarity.
“We’ve known for a long time that off-shore wind is essential. It’s a no-brainer. The blockages to it are just so reprehensible,” Lowes says.
“We don’t have a very clear picture of how the rules for offshore will work and we haven’t addressed it with anything like the urgency we need to which is why we’re talking about nuclear energy. But I think it would be a really fatal mistake to make nuclear part of the energy mix in the long-term.”……
Off-shore wind and solar at times produce a surplus of energy. Battery storage facilities — often looking like a cluster of large office cabinets — can be installed in open spaces to store excess power but already plans for some in this country are facing local opposition.
The excess can also be processed to produce hydrogen that could be used for heating and fuelling vehicles which would take the pressure off the electricity supply at times when the sun is down and winds are light.
The idea works at the experimental level but the challenge is to get it working on a large scale and cheaply enough to make it worthwhile. A breakthrough on that front is imminent, so the energy industry says, but the proof is awaited……
Oisin Coghlan, director of the Friends of the Earth Ireland, however, doesn’t believe a debate on nuclear is necessary or justifiable.
“I think it’s a massive distraction,” he says. “You’d have to change the law and even if Friends of the Earth changed our position and said, you know what, we think nuclear is the solution and we’re going to drop everything and campaign for it for the next 10 years, I don’t think it would make the slightest bit of difference……
Coghlan believes nuclear has as much to do with psychology as technology. “Nuclear appeals to engineers and it appeals to politicians who want big solutions and macho solutions,” he says. ……
“Lagging every attic and double-glazing every window would be far more efficient and far quicker and have none of the hassle but engineers and politicians have been very resistant to this kind of approach.
“They don’t like starting small — putting solar panels on every school and house — because that’s lots of little people doing little things.
But that’s what makes this a societal journey where we all change together. When every school has solar power, while that won’t be enough on its own, it will mean that maybe the parents are less likely to oppose the solar farm planned for down the road because they start to feel like they’re part of the solution.
“I think nuclear is a red herring that appeals to a certain mindset and I think that mindset is outdated. We need to look at decentralised, renewable electricity that many of us are involved in owning, that many of us are involved in supplying and all of us are involved in supporting.”……
For Tony Lowes, here is no argument — nuclear is not an answer. “We were ahead of the game in wind energy 10-15 years ago and we got stuck but we can still transform the energy picture if we get moving again,” he says.
“Bringing nuclear into the conversation is just going to slow us down even more and we don’t have any more time to lose.”
STEVE SEBELIUS: Nuclear power will ‘lumber into extinction,’ ex-regulator says, By Steve SebeliusLas Vegas Review-Journal, August 3, 2019 For Gregory Jaczko, the nuclear power question comes down to a basic quandary: For a nuclear reactor to be designed, built and operated safely, it has to be small, too small to make it useful as a commercial source of electricity.And given that other, less complicated and risky sources of renewable energy are available, spending time and money on solving the large-scale nuclear issue isn’t necessary, he argues.
Jaczko’s conclusions are controversial, especially in the energy industry, where he ruffled feathers as a former member and chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But Jaczko, who holds a doctoral degree in theoretical particle physics from the University of Madison-Wisconsin, is convinced the equation is relatively simple.
“The longer you operate nuclear power plants, the more accidents are going to happen,” he said. “The more power plants you upgrade, the more accidents you’re going to have.”……
Jaczko, whose rocky tenure atop the NRC is discussed in his book, “Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator,” documents his opinions carefully, and suggests that even if nuclear plants could be designed more safely to avoid catastrophic accidents, the expense wouldn’t be worth it because of the availability of cheaper, renewable alternatives such as solar power, wind farms, geothermal plants and the like.
“Today, there’s not a debate anymore because you can solve the climate problem without nuclear,” he said. “So you don’t have to deal with any of these other issues anymore. And you can solve them with things that are cheaper. They do not create the same kinds of challenges.”
And the challenges aren’t just in designing, building and operating nuclear plants safely, or in finding a way to dispose of or reuse the spent fuel from those reactors. They’re also political, he says.
“In hindsight, the Fukushima incident revealed what has long been the sad truth about nuclear safety: the nuclear power industry has developed too much control over the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and Congress,” Jaczko writes in his book. “In the aftermath of the accident, I found myself moving from my role as a scientist impressed by nuclear power to a fierce nuclear safety advocate. I now believe that nuclear power is more hazardous than it is worth.”
Other countries are moving away from nuclear power: Countries such as Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Italy have decided to phase out nuclear power, although it remains the largest source of power in France. After the Fukushima disaster, Japan shut down all of its nuclear power plants, although some have since been restarted.
China, however, is building new plants and adding to its overall nuclear capacity.
Jaczko also makes the point that continued use of nuclear power puts pressure on regulators and the government to find a place to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. Currently, there’s only one target, the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, which has seen renewed interest from Republicans during the Trump administration.
But that site has long been opposed by most state officials out of concerns about safety, concerns that have been increased after recent California earthquakes. Not only that, but revelations that the government secretly shipped plutonium for temporary storage to the Nevada National Security Site, and may have mixed in reactive waste products with lower-level waste in other shipments, have stirred serious concerns among Nevada officials.
“As waste piles up, we leave behind dangerous materials that later generations will eventually have to confront,” Jaczko wrote in his book. “The short-term solution — leaving it where it is — can certainly be accomplished with minimal hazard to the public. But such solutions require active maintenance and monitoring by a less-than-willing industry.”
He adds: “There is only one logical answer: We must stop generating nuclear waste, and that means we must stop using nuclear power. I wish that as chairman (of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) I’d had the courage to say this, but my courage had its limits. I knew the backlash that would come if the chairman of the NRC were to admit our country should stop producing nuclear power.”
But now, like many former elected officials or political appointees, he’s freed from the shackles that responsibility imposed upon his candor. He predicts that nuclear power will “lumber into extinction” in favor of cheaper, safer, cleaner and more readily viable technologies and that “we will likely begin to think of electricity much as we do hot water; as something we make in our homes on demand.”
Expert says 2020 Tokyo Olympics unsafe due to Fukushima | 60 Minutes
Fukushima: Despite health threats, the Japanese government urges residents to return https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1161500/fukushima-japanese-government-encourages-residents-returnFAMILIES who fled nuclear meltdown in Fukushima are being urged to return to their homes ahead of the Tokyo Olympics., By DAVID PILDITCH, Aug 4, 2019Alarming levels of radiation up to 20 times higher than official safety targets have been recorded in areas where locals are being encouraged to go back. We found ghost towns eight years after three reactors went into meltdown at Daiichi power plant 140 miles north east of Tokyo in March 2011. Tokyo 2020 is being hailed as the “Reconstruction Olympics” signalling new hope following the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the disaster and left more than 18,000 people dead.
Now evacuees are being urged to return as the global spotlight focuses on the recovery of the region. The government has lifted most evacuation orders and all but a handful of hot spots have been declared safe.
But parents believe their children are in danger, saying officials are downplaying the dangers and safety is compromised in a cynical attempt to convince the world the crisis is over.
Families have accused the government of speeding up their return to showcase safety standards ahead of the Olympics.
We found once-vibrant communities now post apocalyptic wastelands like something from a Hollywood movie after the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Schools, shopping malls, supermarkets, libraries and petrol stations lie decaying along with thousands of homes. Many are set behind guarded barricades in exclusion areas known officially as “difficult to return to zones”.
Others lie in areas which the government says are safe to live in but whose few residents – wild boar and monkeys – demonstrate signs of mutation. Along roadsides sit giant black bags containing contaminated soil.
In Tomioka, five miles from the power plant, a school sports hall is scattered with footballs left when children fled.
It’s in stark contrast to arenas being built for the £20billion Games. Fukushima is hosting the first event, a softball match on July 22, two days before the opening ceremony.
The Japanese leg of the torch relay starts on March 26 at a soccer training centre 12 miles south of the crippled plant. The J Village, a base for emergency workers, only fully reopened last month.
In Okuma our Geiger counter sounded furiously, recording four microsieverts an hour. The government safety target is 0.23 microsieverts per hour.
It came days after evacuation orders were lifted for parts of the town which had 10,000 residents. The centre remains a no-go zone and just 367 former residents have registered to go back.
Ayako Oga, 46, who suffered a miscarriage, says: “The Olympics are putting lives in danger. The government is forcing people to leave the public homes they have been in. They are putting a heavy burden on people still suffering mentally and financially.”
In Namie, which had 21,000 residents, evacuation orders were lifted in 2017. It is said 800 people returned but we found desolation, only traffic lights working.
The Wild Boar bar last served a drink on disaster day. Owner Sumio Konno, in a group legal action against the government, says his son, who was five, still suffers nosebleeds. “He is sick all the time,” he says. “Every month he needs to go to the doctor.”
Ryohei Kataoka, of the Citizens Nuclear Information Centre, says: “The government’s insistence in lifting evacuation orders where heightened radiation-related health risks undeniably exist, is a campaign to show that Fukushima is ‘back to normal’ and to try to make Japan and the world forget the accident ever happened.”
Warren’s pledge to avoid first nuclear strike sparks intense pushback, The Hill
BY REBECCA KHEEL – 08/04/19Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is taking heat from all sides over her proposal to make it official U.S. policy not to be the first to use a nuclear weapon.
Republicans slammed the proposal as sending a dangerous signal to both allies and enemies about a lack of U.S. resolve — previewing a potential attack line from President Trump should the two face off in the general election.
Some Democrats do back the idea. But others say a “no first use” policy like the one Warren proposed is too simplistic for a complex world……
The United States has long reserved the right to be the first country to launch a nuclear weapon in a conflict.
Former President Obama reportedly thought of declaring a no first use policy toward the end of his tenure, but was talked out of it by advisors who argued it would worry allies and embolden adversaries.
“No first use. To reduce the chances of a miscalculation or an accident, and to maintain our moral and diplomatic leadership in the world, we must be clear that deterrence is the sole purpose of our arsenal,” she said in a November foreign policy speech.
Arms control advocates hold that declaring a no first use policy would improve U.S. national security by lowering the risk for miscalculation.
Warren made no first use a key part of her foreign policy early on in her run.
The speech was delivered before she officially jumped in the race but was considered an early sign she was running.
In January, she introduced the Senate version of a bill to make no first use official U.S. policy. The bill has six co-sponsors, including follow presidential contenders Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Kirsten Gillibrand
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), a longtime no first use advocate, also introduced the bill in the lower chamber. The House version has 35 co-sponsors, including presidential candidates Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Tim Ryan (D-Ohio.).
Only Warren, though, was asked to defend the policy at this week’s Democratic debates.
“We don’t expand trust around the world by saying, ‘You know, we might be the first ones to use a nuclear weapon,’” Warren said Tuesday night from the stage in Detroit.
“That puts the entire world at risk and puts us at risk, right in the middle of this,” she said.
She also noted that Trump’s policies, including pulling out of a nuclear deal with Iran, had gotten the world “closer and closer to nuclear warfare.”
“We have to have an announced policy that is one the entire world can live with,” she concluded……..
n response to criticism of the policy, Warren’s campaign sent The Hill seven tweets and articles from nonproliferation advocates in support of Warren. The support included former Defense Secretary William Perry, who tweeted that “our nuclear arsenal is intended to deter a nuclear attack, not to initiate a nuclear war.”
Iran has two nuclear options, The Islamic republic can go either the Israeli way or the Egyptian way. Aljazeera, 4 Aug 19,
” ………. The Israeli option
Iran could choose to follow Israel’s example and develop nuclear weapons in defiance of international agreements on denuclearisation. It could withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and build with haste a nuclear arsenal to match Israel’s. The Iranians have the knowledge, the technology, and the raw materials. Whatever they do not have, they can adopt the Israeli approach to acquire it illicitly………
The Egyptian option
The second option, the one that a peaceful and sane world would prefer and propose, is the Egyptian one. Iran should follow in the footsteps of Egypt and mobilise other countries in the region to launch a global quest for a nuclear-free Middle East.
Back in 2015, Egypt proposed that then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon convene a regional conference to explore the possibility of imposing a ban on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East………
Today the world is becoming increasingly insecure, as global powers – including the US, Russia and China – disregard international agreements and choose proliferation of WMDs over peace and cooperation. Iran and other regional powers can be part of the solution by leading the way in calling for a nuclear-free world. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/iran-nuclear-options-190729112714738.html
Sanders rejects ‘national security advice from a Cheney’
Congresswoman is daughter of Iraq war architect Dick Cheney Lois Beckett@loisbeckett 4 Aug 2019 Bernie Sanders has defended his rival for the Democratic presidential 2020 nomination, Elizabeth Warren, after her policy against pre-emptive use of America’s nuclear weapons was attacked by the daughter of one of the architects of the Iraq war.
Warren reiterated her support for a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons during the second round of Democratic presidential debates this week.
“It makes the world safer,” the Massachusetts senator said during the debate. “The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively, and we need to say so to the entire world.”
Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, attacked Warren’s policy on Twitter, asking “which American cities and how many American citizens are you willing to sacrifice with your policy of forcing the US to absorb a nuclear attack before we can strike back?”
Cheney is the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, a key advocate of the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies.
The Bush administration’s primary justification for the pre-emptive war, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that his regime presented an escalating threat, was discredited after the invasion.
“Taking national security advice from a Cheney has already caused irreparable damage to our country,” Sanders wrote on Friday, in response to Cheney’s attack on Warren.
The Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was 13 years old when the Iraq war began in 2003, also responded to Cheney’s attack on Warren, criticizing Cheney for offering hawkish foreign policy advice “as if an entire generation hasn’t lived through the Cheneys sending us into war since we were kids”.
nuclear-news 