Russia unveils a floating nuclear power plant NHK, 19 June 19, A Russian floating nuclear power plant was opened to the foreign media on Tuesday in the Arctic city of Murmansk.
The country’s state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom developed the vessel-like unit. The plant will provide power to sparsely populated regions, mainly in the Arctic circle and the Russian Far East…… https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20190619_26/
Since early 2019 we’ve been hearing about the Green New Deal, a program that did not initially include nuclear power. Then suddenly, after an extensive lobbying effort by the atomic power industry, we heard: Ocasio-Cortez: Green New Deal ‘Leaves the Door Open’ on Nuclear.
How Green are the atomic power reactors proposed by the nuclear power industry? Fairewinds has produced a two minute animation showing that carbon reduction via atomic power reactors is a nuclear industry marketing ploy.
Let’s look at the history of atomic power and the way governments and the atomic weapons and power industries have worked together to promote nuclear power. Nuclear physicists discovered the nuclear chain reaction in 1938, and power has been produced using the atom since the 1940’s beginning with the Manhattan Project for the creation of the atomic bomb. Splitting the atom and creating nuclear weapons and power are old technologies that began more than 80 years ago! During that 80-year timespan, Americans and ratepayers in other capitalist countries were told that using nuclear power as a source of electricity would be “too cheap to meter” if taxpayers would only subsidize more research.
Now we see impending financial collapse of almost all of the US nuclear power plants due to green energy! Solar, wind, wave, battery storage, and even newer technologies have proved that electricity can be created anywhere in the world in a manner that creates jobs, saves billions of dollars, and makes the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink much safer for all of us.
Instead of admitting nukes cannot compete with renewable energy, the atomic industrial complex is now proposing dozens of new designs that it claims on paper will compete in timeliness to successfully impact the growing climate crisis, including atomic reactors utilizing thorium and molten salt and new designs like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), Micro-reactors, Traveling Wave, etc. Once again, the atomic power industry, which is the handmaiden to the nuclear weapons manufacturers, is sending lobbyists to convince your Congressional representatives that the atomic future will be different than the past. Lobbyists now claim that society will be so much better off when taxpayer funds bail out the aged, dangerous, and non-performing nukes and if the atomic power and weapons lobbies are given even more research subsidies.
Since the early 1960s there have been 250 applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its precursor the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to generate electricity for profit using atomic power reactors. None of these 250 proposed atomic reactors have been built on time or within budget. You did not misread; truly, every single proposed nuke went millions and then billions of dollars over budget and have started generating electricity years later if at all.
If a baseball player was at bat 250 times and struck out 250 times, would he still be playing baseball? Yet, the atomic lobbyists marketing nuclear power want us to pay them for more chances to use our money and strike out one more time.
Renewables, storage and conservation already have a well-proven track-record of lower costs, more jobs, and environmental compatibility than any of these newly imagined nukes will ever have – I say newly imagined because I have spent my career life as a nuclear engineer. When I first began my career, I drank the Kool-Aid and believed that nuclear power reactors were the solution to the world’s energy shortages and that atomic power created from the same technology as the atomic bomb was as safe as the nuke power industry claimed. As the 5 commercial meltdowns during the last 40-years have proved, especially the 3 major meltdowns that included explosions at Fukushima, nuclear power is simply not a safe method of generating electricity. The impact of the devastation from three simultaneous meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi to the social culture, environmental legacy, personal health, and financial welfare of Japan in 2011 is not a legacy that should be passed onto future generations.
Why then is the US Congress, including AOC – one of the brightest members of this new Congress and the creator of the Green New Deal (#GND) – “leaving the door open” for the same old atomic power marketing ploys? For more than 80-years, we have witnessed the economic failure, ratepayer bailouts, subsidized atomic meltdown insurance, and actual catastrophic meltdowns.
French Nuclear Power Producer EDF Plans a Turnaround, CFO Xavier Girre is selling assets and trailing new financing tools ahead of a potential reorganization of the company. WSJ By Nina Trentmann June 14, 2019
Aging nuclear reactors, soaring debt and large capital-spending commitments that generate are just some of the problems facing Xavier Girre, the chief financial officer of French electricity supplier Electricité de FranceSA .
The room to maneuver is limited: Key operating decisions must be taken in conjunction with the French government, EDF’s largest shareholder.
“We are not the decision makers,” Mr. Girre told CFO Journal. “With regards to regulation, the state is.”……..
France’s largest energy producer has also sold assets worth €10 billion ($11.24 billion), and assets worth a further €2 billion to €3 billion are to be divested by 2021. The government recently allowed EDF to give shareholders new shares instead of a cash dividend
A planned restructuring of the company’s assets and a new pricing structure for the French energy market could help Mr. Girre make further improvements, said Claire Mauduit-Le Clercq, analyst at S&P GlobalInc.
The plan could allow EDF to separate its nuclear plants—it currently operates 58—from the rest of the business, a move that would enable the company to focus on investments in renewable energy. A large part of the company’s energy production comes from nuclear reactors…….
Analysts say the challenge for EDF will be to fund the turnaround given its hefty debt load. EDF’s net debt—a measure of total loans and financial liabilities less cash and liquid assets—was €33.38 billion at the end of 2018, up from €33.01 billion at the end of 2017.
Further complicating the picture is EDF’s large capital spending program. The company committed in 2014 to spending up to €45 billion by 2025 to extend the lifespan of its nuclear reactors fleet from around 40 to 50 years. The average age of an EDF nuclear power plant currently stands at 33 years.
New plants under construction, for example in Britain’s Hinkley Point, are adding to that cost burden. Total capital expenditures were about €14 billion in 2018. “EDF would not have to sell business after business to fund new investments if this was a viable business model,” AB Bernstein’s Ms. Becker said.
Meanwhile, the company’s net income slumped to €1.17 billion in 2018 from €3.17 billion a year earlier. Fluctuating energy prices, mean “the company lacks visibility into its future earnings,” said Ms. Mauduit-Le Clercq.
“You have a company that faces major investment needs, that has a negative cash flow equation and that has high debt levels—this creates tension in the balance sheet,” she said.
But the company’s financial standing is more vulnerable when other obligations, such as pension liabilities, future obligations to retire certain assets and costs for managing nuclear waste, are factored in. Adjusted net debt was €70 billion at the end of 2018, S&P Global said. https://www.wsj.com/articles/french-nuclear-power-producer-edf-plans-a-turnaround-11560526991
“My position and that of the state of Nevada remains identical to the position of Nevada’s past five governments,” the letter says. “I am totally opposed to any legislative effort to restart the Yucca Mountain project.”
He said this latest piece of legislation, “would seriously weaken Nevada’s current due process rights to challenge documented safety concerns and adverse environmental impacts in the legally-mandated licensing proceeding.”
The result, he said, will be to waste billions of additional ratepayer and taxpayer dollars in an attempt to, “force an unsafe site on an unwilling state.”
“The proposed legislation only exacerbates the erosion of trust and confidence caused by the federal government’s recent secret shipments of weapons-grade plutonium into our state,” Sisolak wrote.
He said he intends to keep his promise to Nevadans not one ounce of nuclear waste will be delivered to Yucca Mountain while he’s governor.
The letter was sent to committee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey, and Ranking member Greg Walden, R-
In written testimony prepared for that hearing, Bob Halstead, director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, reiterated Nevada’s long standing conclusion Yucca Mountain is unsuitable because of its geology and hydrology, its proximity to military aircraft training and testing (Nellis Air Force Base) and its distance from existing railroads.
“The proposed repository emplacement drifts would be located in fractured rock above the water table and would inevitably leak dangerous radionuclides into the groundwater where they would be transported to an aquifer,” Halstead wrote.
He said that aquifer provides water for drinking, agriculture, food processing and Native American religious ceremonies.
Halstead also charged the proposed legislation, “fails to honestly address the cost of Yucca Mountain.” He said Nevada’s estimate for future costs of the dump are “at least $100 billion in 2019 dollars.”
Dave Toke’s Blog 15th June 2019 Labour’s proposals to take the national and regional energy grid back
into public ownership may give a boost to workers’ interests over
shareholder profits, but the way the proposals are set out produces an
increased risk of nuclear power being given priority over renewable energy.
Put simply that is because the way the proposals are structured means more
power to the GMB in particular, a body which is very pro-nuclear and which
is relatively hostile to renewable energy and a smart energy network.
Labour announced the plan, in May, to take the transmission and
distribution energy structure into public ownership, as well as plans to
set up a ‘National Energy Agency’ (to run the National Grid), Regional
Energy Agencies (to run regional distribution), and give opportunities for
municipal ownership of distribution on a local basis.
This plan can achieve traditional Labour Movement objectives, but its impact on pushing forward a
green agenda is doubtful. Put bluntly, the more that power is given to
bodies that will be influenced by organisations like the GMB (who favour
centralised power station solutions), the less useful will be the outcome.
The proposals make a gesture in favour of municipalisation, but for most
places the reality will be central control.
Control over the grid should be
given to local authorities as a matter of course, perhaps in consortia
(certainly at a national, transmission, level). Local authorities are
influenced by the local electorate and local citizen groups. They will be
sympathetic to green energy priorities. On the other hand centrally owned
quangos will be insulated from such democratic input and will be under the
thumb of the existing industrial establishment. Innovation will go out of
the window.
Janet Tauro June 14, 2019 After decades of warning that the continued operation of the nation’s nuclear plants would leave behind mountains of atomic waste that would remain highly radioactive for tens of thousands of years, the day of reckoning has arrived.
As older nuclear plants around the country close for economic and age-related reasons, we are moving away from the age of nuclear generation to the age of handling and storing nuclear waste.
Private companies are emerging, like Camden-based Holtec International, which apparently view dinosaur nuclear plants and atomic waste as a good business opportunity. They are buying shuttered nuclear reactors, and the purchase includes hefty decommissioning funds.
The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey is one of those dinosaurs whose day is done, but its toxic legacy of over 1.2 million pounds of highly radioactive waste lives on.
Its decommissioning fund, generated through surcharges on ratepayer bills, contains about $980 million. The fund would be transferred from Exelon Corp. to Holtec International if the pending sale is approved by federal officials.
Congress has taken notice. Bills are pending for transportation of nuke waste to consolidated interim storage (CIS) facilities. Discussions also have been revived about a central repository at Yucca Mountain. One proposed CIS facility would be owned and operated by Holtec in New Mexico. Holtec’s board of directors includes former Republican Congressman James Saxton and South Jersey Democratic party leader George Norcross III. The other CIS is in Texas.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham reportedly opposes the proposed Holtec project.
Holtec has put together a complex, layered limited liability corporate structure to take it through the Oyster Creek decommissioning, which would happen on an accelerated time frame. The speedy timetable seems attractive for redevelopment of the site. But, is haste safe? Will safety corners be cut to get the job done quickly? With limited liability in place, who will take care of emergency response and planning if there is a mishap? Who will be financially responsible?
Holtec has proposed removing the radioactive waste from the elevated fuel pool within three and a half years rather than the usual five, packing it into concrete casks, and eventually shipping it offsite to the company’s proposed storage facility thousands of miles away.
Holtec has been cited by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for safety problems at the San Onofre nuclear plant in California. In New Jersey, a state task force is reportedly investigating economic development awards to the company. It might be prudent for the NRC to delay a license transfer until any investigation and cask safety considerations are fully vetted and completed.
A permanent solution to nuclear waste storage has never been found and is unlikely to occur in the near future. We are left with choosing a least=bad option, which could be hardened on-site storage to higher ground, away from rising seas and worsening storm surges until a permanent repository is established. Moving the waste by truck, barge and rail thousands of miles out west to a temporary facility from which it would have to be moved again doubles the risk of a catastrophic accident.
On-site storage includes a berm around storage casks, concealing them from possible terrorist attack, which makes sense and increases public safety. The current plan at Oyster Creek calls for about 30 casks to be lined up like bowling pins near Route 9.
Maximizing safety must be a congressional focus, particularly since the NRC has allowed Exelon, or any future owner of Oyster Creek, to discontinue emergency planning around the plant once the fuel pool is emptied. Exelon tested its warning sirens for the last time only two weeks ago.
Local, state, and federal representatives should determine whether the emergency planning reductions include disbanding the plant’s fire brigade, leaving a nuclear fire to local volunteer fire departments unequipped and untrained to handle such a catastrophe. If that’s the case, Lacey’s elected representatives should use every ounce of their authority and power to reverse it.
Congress should also scrutinize whether it is a national security risk for any private company to be in possession of vast quantities of nuclear materials, rather than the federal government.
The unadulterated, unfortunate truth is that a permanent solution for storage of deadly, highly radioactive nuclear waste does not exist. It never did during the past half century it was being produced and generating corporate profits.
Janet Tauro is New Jersey board chair for Clean Water Action.
The miniseries follows the power plant workers, first responders, Soviet Union officials, scientists, soldiers and the locals of Pripyat, Ukraine (formerly the Soviet Union) in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploding.
As with most historical dramas, the show has been critiqued for taking liberties with the truth in service of the story. And these departures are somewhat ironic for a show whose tagline is “the cost of lies”.
But the function of historical dramas isn’t pinpoint accuracy: the best ones work as allegories.
And as an allegory for our times, Chernobyl could not be more fitting.
Moscow has a long history of ‘fake news’
The lies start early on. While most of the town sleeps through the nuclear explosion, in the control room of the power plant, denial is in full swing.
The assistant chief engineer, Anatoly Dyatlov (Paul Ritter), tells his men to pump water to the core, insistent the problem can be fixed.
An engineer tells Dyatlov: “there is no core”.
Dyatlov insists the core is intact. From the earliest moments, the truth is in flux.
The radiation leak has already begun to kill these workers; we’re in the company of the living dead.
But despite the horror of watching these men slowly die, as if a needle is untethering the fabric of their DNA, it’s the words of a Soviet Union official (Donald Sumpter) that shock the most.
“When the people ask questions that are not in their own best interests,” he tells his men, “they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labour and leave matters of the state to the state.”
The next step is to seal the city and cut the phone lines to prevent the spread of misinformation.
The speech is met with applause.
Over the course of the series it becomes clear the Chernobyl disaster was caused by the cost-cutting measures of the Soviet Union, but the state was structured perfectly to work their way out of the problem and contain the truth.
Miners and soldiers are conscripted to clean-up the mess, despite the risk to their health. Scientists are told to do their job and not ask any questions.
All the while, Soviet officials work to compartmentalise the tragedy to hide the horrors of a nuclear meltdown.
For scientists Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) to understand what caused the meltdown they must be critical of the Soviet Union.
The most intense moments are the conversations where characters weigh up the risk of telling the truth.
The war on the truth continues
Decades later, Moscow continues to tightly control the flow of information both at home and abroad — its “troll farms” set up to spread misinformation and propaganda are just the latest iterations.
But Australia is not immune to attempts by government to conceal and manipulate the truth.
Chernobyl focuses on what happens when government policy is put before human lives.
The scientists investigating Chernobyl repeatedly attempted to sound the alarm, warning Soviet Union officials that the problem was bigger than one reactor as poison spread across Eastern Europe (one study predicts by 2065 the disaster could cause 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers).
Today, scientists are trying to warn us of an existential threat to our health and safety: climate change. Once again, government drags its feet.
If we take anything from Chernobyl, it should be this: put science before politics.
In 2019, we may have grasped the extreme dangers of radiation, but the war on the truth is ongoing — it’s eternal.
As we face another environmental catastrophe, the question will be: what is the cost of lies?
World Nuclear News 13th June 2019 Nuclear power reactors in Japan that have resumed operation could be forced
to temporarily shut down again if back-up safety measures are not in place
by specified deadlines under new rules approved by the country’s Nuclear
Regulation Authority (NRA). Operators of restarted units have already said
they expect delays in the completion of such facilities.
Adrian C Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus June 14, 2019The U.S. Department of Energy moved forward with its plans to adjust how it classifies high-level nuclear waste, potentially bringing more waste streams to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeast New Mexico.
The DOE published a notice in the Federal Register on June 10, updating a request for comment made in October 2018 to address comments received and adjustments to the initial proposal.
No plans to propose any changes to current policies or legal requirements regarding high-level waste (HLW) were made, but the Department but will address how its interpretation of HLW will apply to existing waste streams and whether or not they be managed as HLW.
The interpretations of HLW was revised in the notice following 5,555 comments received, which the Department broke down to about 360 distinct comments, read the notice.
Comments came from stakeholders, members of the public, Native American tribes and lawmakers, along with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Previously, any nuclear waste generated directly from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, including any liquids or solid material was classified as HLW, records show. But the DOE amended that definition to specify that waste can be determined as non-HLW if it does not exceed radioactivity levels for Class-C low-level radioactive waste, or required disposal in a deep geological repository.
Re-interpreting the definition could reduce the length of time nuclear waste is held onsite at DOE facilities, read a news release from the Department’s Office of Environmental Management, potentially increasing safety for workers and the public. It could also allow for the removal of reprocessing waste from generator sites where it’s been held for decades, the release read, by allowing the waste to go disposal sites, such as WIPP, designed for non-HLW.
The proposal would also align the U.S. with international guidelines that call of management and disposal to be based on the actual radiological risk, and shorten mission completion schedules – saving taxpayer dollars, read the release.
TRU waste is typically clothing items such as gloves or vests that are used during nuclear activities at various laboratories, but if other waste streams could be downgraded from HLW to TRU waste they could be sent to WIPP.
There is no permanent repository for HLW, as the facility proposed in Yucca Mountain, Nevada was blocked by state lawmakers and the federal government cut its funding.
The proposal did not mention WIPP specifically.
But John Heaton, chair of the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance said the change could increase the time frame for WIPP’s mission, keeping the facility open longer and accepting more kinds of waste.
He said the proposal would ultimately classify nuclear waste based on its level of radioactivity, not its origin.
“A lot of would pass the waste acceptance criteria at WIPP,” Heaton said. “It would extend the life of WIPP for sure. They’re spending billions of dollars on this stuff a year. The only risk reduction that’s happening is in what’s coming to WIPP.”
The DOE also published a notice on June 10 of its intent to develop and environmental assessment of plans to dispose of about 10,000 gallons of waste water from the Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) in South Carolina.
That waste would be disposed of at a commercial low-level radioactive waste (LLW) disposal facility outside of South Carolina.
“The DWPF recycle wastewater would be treated, characterized, and if the performance objectives and waste acceptance criteria of a specific disposal facility are met, DOE could consider whether to dispose of the waste as LLW under the Department’s high-level radioactive waste (HLW) interpretation published elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register,” read the notice.
But Don Hancock, director of the Nuclear Waste Program at the Southwest Research and Information Center said the DOE has no right to rewrite federal law and regulations passed by Congress.
He said reclassifying the waste as less dangerous was intended to move it from the generator sites, but if it is truly less dangerous, Hancock said, it could be left where it is.
“What it seems like they’re proposing is illegal,” Hancock said. “They say they get to rewrite the law, not Congress. They’re a lot of opposition to this nationally.”
Bipartisan Virginia pair to be lead sponsors of NELA BY JACQUELINE TOTH, June 11, 2019
A bipartisan House version of key Senate nuclear legislation could be introduced by a Democratic representative, alongside at least one co-sponsor, as soon as next week.
Freshman Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) will introduce the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act, according to multiple people familiar with the bill’s pending introduction.
Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), also a freshman, will be the lead Republican co-sponsor on the House version, his spokesman confirmed by email.
One person with knowledge of the matter said the House version could include additional co-sponsors.
The Senate version of the bill calls on the Energy Department to create a 10-year strategic plan for nuclear energy and to demonstrate at least two advanced reactor projects by the end of 2025, as well as two to five additional advanced reactor designs by the end of 2035.
We had been told not to expect any really large, substantive changes” from the Senate version, and that while there could be some minor tweaks, “substantial portions would be identical,” said the person with knowledge of the matter. The person also expects that provisions in the bill would be referred not solely to the House Energy and Commerce Committee but also to others, including House Science, Space and Technology — a dispersion that could require further effort ahead of passage.
Luria, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who served 20 years in the Navy, worked as a nuclear engineer and surface warfare officer in combatant ships and subsequently started a small business. Her district includes Virginia Beach and Naval Station Norfolk.
“As an engineer who operated nuclear reactors on aircraft carriers, I know that ensuring a thriving civilian nuclear industry is vital not only for our economy, but for our national security,” Luria said through a spokesman via email. “Nuclear energy must be part of any solution to transitioning to a clean energy future because nuclear power provides over 55% of our carbon-free energy. That’s why I’m proud to introduce this critical bill.”
“This bill will help position the United States as a global energy leader in a responsible and bipartisan way and break down barriers to the development necessary to achieve that goal,” Riggleman said through a spokesman by email.
NELA is popular across much of the U.S. nuclear community, which would like to see clear-cut goals enshrined in law for the federal government to help commercialize new nuclear technology.
“Republicans and Democrats recognize that nuclear energy is a critical national asset to provide clean, reliable and affordable electricity to Americans,” Nuclear Energy Institute President and Chief Executive Maria Korsnick told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee at an April 30 hearing on the measure. Committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) re-introduced the Senate bill in March, and the bill now has nine Republican and eight Democratic co-sponsors in the chamber.
Advocates of the current Senate version of the bill say it would help bring about the next generation of nuclear reactors, not only through demonstrations but also by creating a potential customer in the federal government. NELA would extend the allowable length of federal power purchase agreements and attempt to secure an initial supply of high-assay low-enriched uranium — blends of uranium with higher concentrations of fissionable uranium, which multiple new nuclear designs will require to operate.
Passage of NELA would build on several legislative victories for the nuclear energy community since the start of last year, including the extension and expansion of a production tax credit for nuclear energy and enactment of two other nuclearbills.
An industry person familiar with the matter said that a markup of the Senate measure is projected for late June.
US President Donald Trump recently took another step toward bringing Saudi Arabia into the nuclear club. While Israeli-Saudi ties have warmed in recent years, helping the desert kingdom go nuclear – with its ongoing support for the most extreme Islamic radicals in the world – can hardly be good for the Jewish state.
Secret negotiations with the US Energy Department over many months have led Washington to “transfer highly sensitive US nuclear technology, a potential violation of federal law,” to Saudi Arabia, according to House Oversight Committee sources cited by The Washington Post.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) revealed last week that at least two transfers were approved since the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The Saudis say they want to begin building their own nuclear power plants with their own enriched uranium, even though it could be purchased elsewhere more cheaply. That raises suspicions that their real goal isn’t producing electricity. By enriching their own uranium, they could begin diverting it to highly enriched weapons grade, especially if they bar international inspectors, as they’ve insisted.
Given its record of obeisance to Saudi demands for top technology and weapons, it is unlikely the Trump administration would object, but instead continue helping to conceal the kingdom’s plans. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler, has said that the kingdom would build nuclear weapons if the Iranians did. He may have taken encouragement from a speech in the UAE last month by Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton.
The Iranians are threatening to leave the nuclear pact with the major powers – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – in the wake of the Trump administration’s unilateral exit last year and imposition of sanctions to tighten the economic screws on Tehran.
There’s “no reason” for Iran to walk away from JCPOA, “unless it is to reduce the breakout time to nuclear weapons,” said Bolton, a decades-long advocate of regime change in Iran. Bolton offered no evidence to back his claim.
That should give MBS the rationale he seeks to develop his version of the bomb.
When he turns to Trump for help, he will remind the president that if America won’t sell it to him, there are others who will. Trump is a sucker for that pitch.
North Korea would be a good place to go shopping, since they tried helping Syria build nukes until the Israeli Air Force stopped the plan, something it had done earlier in Iraq. Then there’s Pakistan, which is believed to have built its own nuclear weapons stockpile with Saudi financial help.
THERE MIGHT BE some resistance on Capitol Hill, where Saudi support is low and sinking, but Trump has shown himself more responsive to the wishes of the Saudis than the US Congress.
Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina may moan and groan and make threatening sounds toward Riyadh, but he and majority leader Mitch McConnell are Trump’s poodles, and will make sure the president gets what he wants.
All US administrations – Republican and Democratic – have indulged the Saudi appetite for top technology and weapons. They’ve been driven by pressure from industry and its friends in the Pentagon to sell, sell, sell – and an inexplicable attitude that we need the Saudis far more than they need us. Trump has just raised this to a new level.
Trump’s latest selling spree includes 120,000 conversion kits to produce smart bombs. It is part of an $8.1 billion package that Trump labeled “emergency” to bypass Congressional review.
Most alarming is the Trump administration’s approval for the transfer of highly sensitive weapons technology and equipment to Saudi Arabia so the kingdom can produce electronic guidance systems for Paveway precision-guided bombs, according to congressional sources cited by The New York Times.
The administration assured Congress that it is confident in the Saudi ability to protect the technology, that the need is urgent and that it won’t alter the balance of power in the region – which is exactly what it is intended to do.
Look for Trump to justify massive sales to the Saudis and the UAE as also helping protect Israel from Iran. Historically, all administrations have justified arms sales around the Middle East as harmless to Israel’s qualitative military edge. But they aren’t. Especially when the US is selling the Arabs the same planes, missiles and technology it sells Israel. Trump values his oil-rich customer so much that he has rejected the findings of his own CIA that the crown prince was complicit in Khashoggi’s murder.
Saudi Arabia is the Pentagon’s favorite cash cow. Arms sales are a lucrative business for the US Defense Department, which charges commissions and other fees, and gets economies of scale for its own purchases while selling off old inventory to help pay for replacements. Military attachés around the world are top salesmen for defense contractors as they lay the groundwork for post-uniform careers. Then there are the former – and possibly future – defense industry executives at the highest levels of the Pentagon, starting with the Secretary of Defense.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) said the administration “has effectively given a blank check to the Saudis – turning a blind eye to the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi and allowing their ballistic missile program to expand.”
The United States is not allowed to sell ballistic missiles, so the Saudis have turned to China. CNN reported last week that American intelligence believes Beijing is helping enhance the kingdom’s strategic missile program. In the 1980s, it secretly bought Chinese DF-3 missiles and based them within range of Israel. It bought more advanced missiles in 2007 with the approval of then-president George W. Bush. Unconfirmed published reports suggest they also bought other missiles from Pakistan, which produces a version of the North Korean Nodong missile.
If the Saudis decide to pursue nuclear weapons, they can turn to Trump’s dear friend Kim Jong Un, whose cash-strapped regime has developed its own and the missiles to deliver them.
With Trump looking for business that will create jobs he can claim credit for – and with John Bolton rattling sabers and B-52s, and calling for regime change in Iran – can Saudi Arabia be knocking on an open door to the nuclear club?
DOE’s Perry: Coal, Nuclear Must Be Saved, Power, 06/12/2019 | Darrell Proctor Energy Secretary Rick Perry said coal and nuclear power must be part of the nation’s “all of the above” energy strategy, but the Department of Energy (DOE) does not have the “regulatory or statutory ability” to establish economic incentives for struggling U.S. coal and nuclear plants.Perry, who addressed the Edison Electric Institute’s (EEI’s) annual convention in Philadelphia on June 11, said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) would take the lead on creating incentives for any energy resource. Perry spoke with media after his address to convention delegates…….
Federal Bailout Still an Option
Perry’s comments Tuesday came after the White House Council of Economic Advisors in March released a report to the president calling for a strategic electricity reserve that could provide support to financially struggling power plants. Perry earlier that month reiterated his position that a federal bailout of coal and nuclear plants was still an option, though he said state incentives might be a better path forward.
“Each state has their own economic right to either put tax credits, tax breaks [or] incentives in place,” Perry said in response to a question about House Bill 6 in Ohio, which would provide $190 million in subsidies for nuclear power each year through 2026 …..
Perry also said he supports a nuclear bailout bill in Pennsylvania. He said the measure would bring “thoughtful, competitive programs where states don’t have to rely upon the federal government to support a particular industry sector.”… https://www.powermag.com/does-perry-coal-nuclear-must-be-saved/
Akron’s bankrupt FirstEnergy (FE) owns the Perry nuke, east of Cleveland, which in 1986 became the first US reactor damaged by an earthquake. Critical pipes and concrete were cracked, as were nearby roads and bridges. A top-level state study showed soon thereafter that evacuation amidst a major accident would be impossible.
FE’s uninsured Davis-Besse nuke, near Toledo, is a 42-year-old Three Mile Island clone. In 2002, boric acid ate through its head, threatening a Chernobyl-scale accident irradiating Toledo, Cleveland, and the Great Lakes. At FE’s request, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has exempted Davis-Besse from vital regulations for flooding, fire protection, earthquake vulnerability, and security. Its radiation shield building is literally crumbling.
In 2003, when nearby power lines sagged onto tree limbs, FirstEnergy blacked out some 50 million people throughout the northeast and well into Canada.
By then, FE had scammed Ohio for some $9 billion in “stranded cost” bailouts. The utility said “open market competition” would lower rates … after it pocketed the public’s money.
Now FE says its subsidized nukes can’t compete with gas and wind power. It wants $190 million/year or more from all Ohio ratepayers, even though most get zero nuke electricity.
FE first said the money was for “clean air” and “zero emission reactors.” But all nukes emit heat, chemicals, radiation, Carbon 14, and more. Their cooling towers kill birds, their waste hot water kills marine life, their cores (at about 300 degrees Centigrade) heat the planet.
The bailout bill, called HB6, attacks renewable and efficiency programs that have saved Ohio ratepayers billions of dollars and created thousands of jobs. A single sentence in the Ohio Code is blocking some $4 billion in turbine development.
The breezy “North Coast” region along Lake Erie is crisscrossed with transmission lines and good sites near urban consumers. Farmers throughout the flat, fertile agricultural land desperately want the income turbine leases could provide. The new projects would create thousands of construction and maintenance jobs. They would feed Ohio’s manufacturing base, which produces a wide range of wind and solar components. By lowering electric rates, they would restore a competitive position long lost to high electric rates. Indiana, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania all have at least double Ohio’s installed wind capacity. Texas has twenty times more. By 2022, Germany will be totally nuke-free.
Ohio has just been shaken by findings that significant radiation has leaked from a dead uranium plant in southern Ohio, contaminating schools and terrifying local residents.
Like that old “stranded cost” scam, FE’s new bailouts would suck desperately needed capital from Ohio’s faltering industrial base. The reactors are obsolete. The workforce is aging. The nukes will shut anyway … if they don’t blow up first.
FE is really protecting its huge executive salaries. In 2018, it spent $3 million on “lobbying.” Its top seven officers, who bankrupted the company, were collectively paid more than $20,000,000, more than 10% of the proposed bailout:
The bill now moves to the Senate and its gerrymandered GOP majority. Ohio’s corporate-owned governor has assured FE he’ll approve their bailout.
Ohio consumers may then join lawsuits against similar bailouts in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere. A referendum, which they might well win, is also possible.
Meanwhile, millionaire utility execs everywhere will see if the Buckeye State can be suckered again into bailing out two obsolete, cash-sucking nukes on the brink of catastrophic collapse.
Fight over Ottawa River nuclear waste dump getting political, but Liberals downriver standing behind the project—or staying quiet, The HillTimes, By PETER MAZEREEUW, BEATRICE PAEZJUN. 10, 2019 Aplan to bury low-level nuclear waste at a site near the Ottawa River is raising opposition from municipalities and environmentalists. The company behind the project, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, says it’s safe. The Near Surface Disposal Facility proposal is in year three of an environmental assessment handled by a regulator the Liberal government is on the verge of stripping of that responsibility.
A proposed dump for low-level nuclear waste near the Ottawa River has stirred up opposition from community groups, environmentalists, and municipalities worried the waste could leach into the river that flows past about 50 federal ridings, including Ottawa Centre, the home of Parliament Hill and Canada’s environment minister, Catherine McKenna.
Members of Parliament from riverside ridings closest to the site of the proposed dump at thesprawling nuclear laboratories at Chalk River, Ont., are largely staying out of the fray. That includes Ms. McKenna, who has the final say over an environmental assessment for the project that is being conducted through a Harper-era assessment process, which she and an independent review panel have discredited………
Several Liberal MPs from ridings just downstream of the site declined to comment on or be interviewed about the proposed project, as did Natural Resource Minister Amarjeet Sohi (Edmonton Mill Woods, Alta.), , while two others organized or held information sessions on the subject for their constituents.
Ms. McKenna told The Hill Times during a press conference that she “heard” concerns from her constituents about the project, but didn’t say whether she shared them. Her office did not respond to numerous interview requests on the subject.
The Ottawa Riverkeeper environmental group and the NDP candidate in Ottawa Centre, Emilie Taman, are among those who say they will raise the issue during the upcoming election campaign. Municipal politicians in Montreal and Gatineau have already expressed their opposition. CNL staff, meanwhile, are trying to spread the word about the safety and safeguards planned to keep the proposed dump, which is located less than one kilometre from the Ottawa River, from harming the environment, or people around and downstream from Chalk River.
No ‘public trust’ in assessment system
The Near Surface Disposal Facility to hold the low-level nuclear waste is being proposed by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL). It is part of a complicated arrangement of private and public organizations created under the previous Conservative federal government, which privatized the operation of the Chalk River nuclear facilities that had been run by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), a Crown corporation, in 2013.
Under the new model, the part of AECL that ran the labs was shrunk down to a shell of its former self, with most of its employees transferred to CNL. The government pays CNL to run the Chalk River facilities, and AECL—and by extension, the federal government—keeps both the assets and liabilities tied to the site.
CNL is owned by a consortium of companies that mounted a bid for the right to run Chalk River. It includes Quebec’s SNC-Lavalin and U.S. engineering firms Fluor and Jacobs, which call themselves the Canadian National Energy Alliance.
The Near Surface Disposal Facility, commonly abbreviated as NSDF, is three years into an environmental impact assessment overseen by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, a regulator for the nuclear industry.
It started the assessment in 2016, months after Ms. McKenna was given a mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) that tasked her with reviewing the process immediately “to regain public trust and help get resources to market.”
Ms. McKenna struck an expert review panel that same year, which spent seven months surveying environmental groups, project proponents, academics, government officials, and other stakeholders about the environmental assessment process established by the previous Conservative government in 2012. Some said that CNSC should continue to be responsible for conducting assessments, given the technical expertise of its staff, but others said it was too close to industry, creating an “erosion of public trust” in the process and its outcomes. The panel recommended that CNSC be stripped of its role conducting assessments on nuclear projects.
Ms. McKenna tabled a bill in Parliament, C-69, which did just that. An omnibus bill that has been subject to criticism by Conservative politicians, industry, and some environmentalists, C-69 would put the power over assessments into the hands of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, which it would rename to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada. CNSC officials would still play a role, occupying some of the seats on review panels struck to guide assessments of nuclear projects. The Senate sent Bill C-69 back to the House last week with nearly 200 amendments, including those that would put more power over reviews back into the hands of CNSC officials.
In the meantime, however, the NSDF nuclear dump proposal is being evaluated under the old assessment system. Isabelle Roy, a spokesperson for CNSC, said in an email statement that the projects currently being examined “would not be subject to Bill C-69 if it passes,” and that the decision will ultimately be made by its independent commission. Ms. Roy said CNSC is awaiting CNL’s response to public comments regarding concerns about the project. ………
More transparency needed on what CNL considers low-level waste, experts say
In the face of public concerns that one per cent of the waste in the engineered mound would be intermediate-level waste, Ms. Vickerd said, CNL has since tweaked its proposal, limiting it to low-level waste.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a near-surface disposal facility doesn’t have the capacity to safely contain and isolate intermediate-level waste, which, by its definition, has long-lived radionuclides. Such waste, it says, has to be buried underground, by up to a few hundred metres.
Michael Stephens is a former AECL employee whose career in the nuclear industry spanned 25 years, including 16 years at the Chalk River labs, where he helped oversee the decommissioning of nuclear waste. He is one among several retired AECL employees who have decried the project as environmentally unsound.
Mr. Stephens said his main contention with NSDF is the criteria CNL is using to determine what the mound can hold. “What bothered me from the outset was originally the proposal [called] for intermediate-level waste [to be dumped],” he said. “That, by definition, is a non-starter.”
Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, a non-profit organization that aims to educate the public on nuclear-energy issues, said the lab seems to be trying to push the limits of what it can reasonably get away with. “If you put forward an outrageous, totally unacceptable proposal, you can trim it and see how far you can go,” Mr. Edwards said. “CNL [was urged by the Harper government] to act quickly, to find a timely remediation to reduce Canada’s nuclear liability, in a … cost-effective manner. That’s code for relatively quickly, cheaply.”
Mr. Edwards has worked as a nuclear consultant; in 2017, he was hired by the federal auditor general’s office to consult for its performance audit of CNSC.
He said scrapping the idea of adding intermediate-level waste only goes “a little way” to addressing the larger issue. “What we’re talking about is a mound of literally hundreds of radioactive materials. All have different chemistries, and have different pathways to the environment, to the food chain,” he said………
Another concern for him is the plan to transport and dump the waste of other decommissioned plants, including from Whiteshell Laboratories in Pinawa, Man. “How do they know what’s in those containers? As far as we know, if they get the go-ahead to drive those containers right into where the mound will be, they’ll simply put them there, bury them … without having properly identified what’s in there,” he said.
Mr. Stephens echoed Mr. Edwards’ concerns about what, he said, could conceivably wind up in the dump. CNL, he argued, hasn’t been transparent about whether, for example, it would dump packaged solid waste, which could have varying degrees of toxicity, or building rubble that’s just been slightly contaminated…………
House defense bill sets stage for contentious nuclear debate, The Hill BY REBECCA KHEEL – 06/10/19The House version of the annual defense policy would require an independent study on the United States adopting a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons.Nuclear issues are shaping up to be among the most contentious issues as Congress debates this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with Republicans already coming out strongly against what’s in the bill.
The bill, a summary of which was released Monday morning, does not go as far as Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) has opined about in the past. But it does seek to “start that debate” about the appropriate size and cost of the nuclear arsenal, staffers told reporters ahead of the bill’s release.
“The chairman feels strongly that the nuclear arsenal is too large, that we spend too much money on legacy weapons systems when we have emerging requirements like cyber, like [artificial intelligence], like space, which aren’t getting the kind of focus that’s required, and he wants to reevaluate where we’re spending money, if we’re going to have another money to spend on these emerging things that are coming out,” a staffer said.
Smith, who has long lambasted the price tag for nuclear modernization, pledged to make the issue a priority when he took control of the gavel after Democrats won back the House.
In hearings and speeches, he has questioned the need for the nuclear triad, said he wants to “kill” the low-yield warhead and blasted Trump for casting aside nuclear treaties.
n late January, Smith also reintroduced his No First Use Act that would make it U.S. policy not to use nuclear weapons first. Right now, U.S. policy leaves open the possibility of being the first to use a nuclear weapon in a conflict.
Rather than incorporating that bill, the NDAA requires the independent study on the implications of adopting such a policy.
Staffers also stressed the bill would not eliminate a leg of the triad, which refers to the three methods of delivering nuclear warheads. ……..
huge proposed bailout of two Chernobyl-in-progress Ohio nukes (plus two old coal burners) would put $20 million directly into the pockets of seven utility executives. Their bankrupt company last year spent $3 million “lobbying” the legislature.
