GOP lawmaker calls for Trump’s border wall, warns nuclear weapons may be hidden in marijuana Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks told CNN he worries about terrorists using bales of marijuana to smuggle nukes,salon.comSOPHIA TESFAY ,FRIDAY, FEB 24, 2017Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks defended President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall by claiming it could prevent a nuclear weapon from being smuggled into the United States concealed in a bale of marijuana……..
Franks also failed to explain why presumed nuke-smugglers would choose to try to hide their weapon in something the U.S. Border Patrol is already looking for, although The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Franks’s suggestion is one that has been floated by at least one nuclear weapons expert and Democratic congressman in the past…….
David Kay of the International Atomic Energy Agency told “Frontline” in 1996 that concealing a nuclear weapon in a bale of weed would be his “preferred method” of nuke smuggling.
Bill to label nuclear energy as renewable stalls A bill aimed at classifying nuclear power as a renewable energy source in New Mexico stalled Thursday afternoon in committee on a tie vote.
House Bill 406, sponsored by Rep. Cathrynn Brown, R-Carlsbad, would have amended the state’s Renewable Energy Act, which requires energy companies provide a certain amount of electricity from renewable sources…. New Mexico Political Report 24 Feb 17
Nuclear Is Renewable Energy?http://krwg.org/post/nuclear-renewable-energy By CVNM •Santa Fe, N.M. 24 Feb 17 – Today, the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee debated Nuclear Energy as Renewable Energy (HB 406, Brown). The bill was tabled on a tied vote. CVNM Legislative Director Ben Shelton and CVNM Education Fund Western New Mexico Program Director Talia Boyd released the following statements:
“Nuclear energy is part of the problem, not the solution. Proposing to classify nuclear as renewable energy – as Governor Martinez did her in energy plan – disrespects the sacrifice Indigenous communities in western New Mexico have already made and continue to make with their health from the impacts of uranium mining,” says Ben Shelton, CVNM Legislative Director. “In addition, adding nuclear energy to the Renewable Energy Portfolio standard neutralizes its job creating potential because of nuclear assets already held by New Mexico’s two largest electric utilities – something our leaders should not consider a possibility.”
“My community in Gallup and Church Rock have witnessed our health, culture, families, and land be desecrated and sacrificed for uranium – an industry that many in our communities do not want, as demonstrated by a ban on uranium mining passed by the Navajo Nation in 2005,” says Talia Boyd, CVNM Education Fund Western New Mexico Organizer and member of the Diné Nation.
“Communities that have been living with the impacts of poor energy policy need to be at the table shaping our energy future by putting hardworking New Mexicans first with clean, renewable energy jobs, like wind and solar.”
Local consent needed despite OK to restart Oi nuclear plant, Asahi Shimbun February 23, 2017 The Nuclear Regulation Authority on Feb. 22 published a draft safety inspection report saying measures taken at the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors of Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture meet the new stricter anti-disaster standards.
In 2014, however, the Fukui District Court ordered the operator to keep the two reactors offline, raising serious questions about their safety.
Some 160,000 people in Fukui, Kyoto and Shiga prefectures reside within 30 kilometers from the plant. It is also questionable whether local residents can be evacuated quickly and smoothly if a serious accident occurs at the plant.
In a recent Asahi Shimbun survey, 57 percent of the respondents expressed their opposition to the restart of offline nuclear reactors, nearly double the number of those who supported the idea.
Come next month, six years will have passed since the catastrophic accident broke out at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Many Japanese remain unconvinced of the safety of nuclear reactors.
Kansai Electric Power is hoping to bring the two reactors back on line as early as this summer. But we find it difficult to support the plan.
There are multiple faults around the Oi plant. The biggest worry cited in the district court ruling was the possibility that a stronger earthquake than assumed could seriously damage the reactors or the spent fuel pool.
The electric utility has since appealed the ruling. But the company has also raised the estimated maximum ground acceleration that could occur in an earthquake at the location.
The utility will spend 122 billion yen ($1.07 billion) on measures to enhance the safety of the plant.
But Kunihiko Shimazaki, a seismologist and former acting chairman of the NRA, has warned against the plan. Using observation data about the powerful earthquakes that hit areas around Kumamoto Prefecture in April last year, he has argued that the utility’s calculation method may have underestimated the biggest potential shaking of a quake at the location.
After reviewing the data, the NRA dismissed Shimazaki’s argument, with Chairman Shunichi Tanaka calling it “groundless.”
But the scientist’s warning has deepened anxiety among local residents.
The spent fuel pools at Kansai Electric Power’s three nuclear power plants including Oi are almost filled to the brim.
The utility says it will build an interim storage facility outside Fukui Prefecture around 2030 so that used fuel rods can be removed from the pools.
The Trump Nuclear Threat, It’s time to worry about Donald Trump’s control of U.S. nuclear forces. US News, By Louis René Beres | Feb. 21, 2017,
“The man who laughs,” warned the poet Bertolt Brecht, “has simply not yet heard the horrible news.” President Donald Trump’s control of U.S. nuclear forces is no longer a laughing matter.
Further, no longer does such a concerning conclusion have to be extrapolated from this president’s overall indifference to reason, facts and logic. Now, instead, it flows directly and unambiguously from his explicit press conference declaration last week that, regarding a Russian ship off the East coast, “the greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles offshore right out of the water.” There was absolutely no defensible reason for this gratuitous declaration. These are not the musings of an ordinary or normal American president. Rather, extraneous to any other purpose than incessantly bizarre self-promotion, they represent revealingly clinical warnings of deep emotional disturbance, especially when examined together with other blatant and incontestable signs of malignant narcissism. Naturally, all decent and informed U.S. citizens will hesitate to concur offhandedly, or to in any way appear disrespectful to longstanding presidential authority, but there now also exists a much higher citizen obligation: This is the unavoidable responsibility to speak openly and candidly about a plainly emerging existential threat.
To be sure, as I know personally from almost 50 years of scholarship involving core matters of U.S. senior command authority (National Command Authority, or NCA), there are various institutional protections built into any presidential order to use nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, virtually all of these safeguards are prescriptively operational only at lower command levels, and not at the very highest level of decisional authority. In other words, succinctly, there are no permissible or codified legal grounds to disobey a presidential order to use nuclear weapons. This means, inter alia, that if a U.S. president were sometime to issue an irrational nuclear order, the only way for the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and possibly several relevant others to obstruct this unwarranted order would be prima facie illegal. Of course, such informal safeguards might still manage to succeed, but we really ought to inquire, now, about implementing certain other more suitably predictable and formally structural impediments….
…..Thus far, we have witnessed a new president who inappropriately analogizes the conduct of world affairs to real estate haggling, and who confuses personal bluster and bravado for usable strength and power. More than anything else, we must now prepare to speak more openly about this confusion, and also about Trump’s correspondingly dangerous behaviors. American national security can never be properly served by a president who proudly announces his own decisional infallibility (“I alone can fix it”), and who identifies growing international chaos as a distinctly positive negotiation opportunity.http://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2017-02-21/the-existential-threat-of-donald-trump-and-nuclear-weapons
China Nuclear Push Stalled by Next-Generation Reactors, Bloomberg, by Stephen Stapczynski and Aibing Guo, February 21, 2017,
Aims to approve eight new nuclear reactor projects this year
CGN’s Taishan units see further delay in commercial operations
China’s decision to approve its first new nuclear reactors in two years may need to wait for its success starting up the world’s first next-generation units.
Plans to green-light eight reactors this year in the world’s fastest-growing nuclear market, announced last week, could depend on whether it’s able to complete some of the world’s most-advanced facilities, including Westinghouse Electric Co.’s AP1000 and Areva SA’s EPR. The first such reactors may come online as early as the first half, followed by new approvals, according to Karl Liu, an analyst at BOC International Holdings Ltd. in Hong Kong.
“There are indications that Chinese policy makers want to wait for the AP1000s and EPRs under construction to come online and see how they do operationally before approving new projects,” said M.V. Ramana, a professor at the University of British Columbia. “I am not entirely sure that this plan will actually translate into reality.”
China is seeking to be the first country to bring online either an AP1000 or EPR, so-called generation III+ reactors, which have suffered costly delays in the U.S. and Europe. The world’s second-biggest economy, and largest energy consumer, is aiming to boost its nuclear power capacity and develop its own next-generation technology for export.
Construction delays for third-generation units are among reasons the Chinese government approved no new reactors last year, according to BOC’s Liu.
“The country wants to wait until the first AP1000 reactor successfully starts commercial operations before approving reactors using the same or similar technologies,” he said. …….
Originally designed to be cheaper and safer than earlier technology, growing complexity and new safety requirements of third-generation reactors are among cost issues that contributed to Westinghouse’s parent company Toshiba Corp. taking a multi-billion dollar writedown this year and Areva seeking a government bailout.
A Florida Senate bill filed this week would allow property owners to generate and distribute solar energy to residents and tenants.
Senator José Javier Rodríguez, D-Miami, this week filed a series of energy-related bills aimed at protecting the environment and protecting consumers’ pocket books.
SB 456, allowing property owners to generate and distribute solar energy to residents and tenants on their own property. The bill is supported by a broad range of groups including business groups, agricultural interests, and consumer advocates.
SB 974, if passed, would create a mechanism to prevent utilities from passing on to customers the cost of remediating environmental damage the utility caused, offered in response to the water contamination issues at Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point nuclear power plant in Miami-Dade County.
SB 976, if passed, would create a progressive rate schedule for utilities customers by requiring utilities to charge residential customers a 25 percent lower rate for the first 500 kilowatt hours consumed, benefitting low-income and fixed-income residents.
SB 1100, if passed, would repeal advanced nuclear cost recovery in Florida, dubbed the “nuclear tax” since it allow utilities to charge for nuclear power plants that may never be built. FPL wants to build two more nuclear reactors at Turkey Point, but has not been granted a license yet.
“Consumers in Florida continue to subsidize an outdated energy system in Florida that stifles innovation, shuts out competition and hurts our environment — the bills I have filed will address those issues while giving consumers a much-needed break,” Rodriguez said.
Their letter prompted another, from Dr Allen Frances, professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Duke University Medical College, who happens to be the expert psychiatrist who defined narcissistic personality disorder.
He rebuked the authors, arguing that to claim that Trump is mentally ill is an insult to those who truly are. But he also had this to say – Trump may be a “world-class narcissist”.
But the debate has taken off. Another psychologist weighed in last month, telling US News and World Report that Trump displays a malignant narcissism, characterised by grandiosity, sadism and anti-social behaviour.
Americans take an anxious journey to the centre of Donald Trump’s mind, The Age,Paul McGeough, 20 Feb 17 Washington: Flip references by reporters – mine included – to Donald Trump not taking his meds have been criticised as offensive to the mentally ill. But Trump’s unhinged behaviour, as in his erratic press conference on Thursday, ensures that the President’s mental state is the stuff of debate.
Rick Wilson, a Republican Party strategist and Trump critic, saw the Thursday press conference as a turning point – instead of a divide between left and right, the split he sees in America is between those who saw the spectacle as a “success” and those who are “terrified” for the future of the country.
“[His press conference] could have been evidence in a mental competency hearing,” he told The Washington Post. “It was really pretty disturbing and terrifying to watch this guy and think: ‘What happens when the stakes are higher?’”
On Saturday, The New York Times‘ conservative columnist David Brooks wrote in similar language about the press conference: “President Trump’s mental state is like a train that long ago left freewheeling and iconoclastic, has raced through indulgent, chaotic and unnerving, and is now careening past unhinged, unmoored and unglued.”
It’s not just the commentariat in the “fake press”, on which Trump has upped the ante, denouncing them as “the enemy of the American people”. Mental health professionals are weighing in.
In a letter to the editor of The New York Times last week, 35 psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers acknowledged they were in breach of professional rules against evaluating public figures, but to remain silent, they wrote, denied journalists and members of Congress the value of their expertise at this critical time.
Here’s their diagnosis: “Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behaviour suggest a profound inability to empathise. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists).
“In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.”
Their letter prompted another, from Dr Allen Frances, professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Duke University Medical College, who happens to be the expert psychiatrist who defined narcissistic personality disorder.
He rebuked the authors, arguing that to claim that Trump is mentally ill is an insult to those who truly are. But he also had this to say – Trump may be a “world-class narcissist”.
But the debate has taken off. Another psychologist weighed in last month, telling US News and World Report that Trump displays a malignant narcissism, characterised by grandiosity, sadism and anti-social behaviour.
Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio observes: “He lives inside his head, where he runs the same continuous loop of conflict with people he turns into enemies for the purposes of his psychodrama.”
The press conference was Trump unleashed. As though he couldn’t help himself, he seized the lectern at the end of a first chaotic month that had prompted this assessment from General Tony Thomas, head of the military’s Special Operations Command: “Our government continues to be in unbelievable turmoil. I hope they sort it out soon, because we’re a nation at war.”
In casting aside the usual filters and talking heads such as Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, Trump signalled an attempted reset. After weeks of leaks, he is determined to rewrite the agenda – he was doing it again at a Boeing factory in South Carolina on Friday and at a campaign-style rally in Florida on Saturday.
Instead of being confronted by pesky, fake journalists, Trump was hungry for the adoring fans who turned out to both events, described by presidential historian Timothy Naftali as “an attempt to inject some adrenaline into his administration and shake a perception of loserdom“.
At the Florida bash, Trump basked in the glow of a 9000-strong crowd, forgetting his plummeting polls as he re-ran a string of well-worn campaign promises and whacked the media again before reaching his crescendo.
After serial exaggerations and misrepresentations of all that his administration has achieved, or not, he declared: “It’s a new day in America – this will be change for the ages, change like never before.”
But back in the real world, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was probably earning a presidential rebuke by acknowledging Trump’s frustration with media reporting, as she explained the Florida gig was likely to be the first to put Trump out front more often.
“There’s definitely frustration that the media makes up stories and reports things that aren’t true,” she told the Post. The Florida rally, she said, was an attempt “for the President to speak directly to the American people and not have his message filtered through a biased media.”………
As he basked in the limelight at Boeing on Friday, Associated Press dropped an exclusive – an internal administration document outlining a plan for the National Guard to be drafted to round up undocumented migrants. Despite its conformity with all that Trump said in the election campaign, the White House claimed it had been discarded.
Also on Friday, Trump hit a new low in opinion polls – confirming his standing as the least popular new president in American history, Gallup found that just 38 per cent of Americans approve his performance, against 56 per cent who disapprove.
Amidst a constant sense of crisis, two emerging patterns work against Trump – the Republican establishment figures who might save his administration are increasingly reluctant to work for him and he is being hemmed in by the checks and balances of the American democratic process.
Also working against him is the toxic brew he has concocted in the White House – factions divided by ideology and new hires defeated by their youth and inexperience.
Obama’s top science adviser’s guide to navigating the Trump era John Holdren: “We can be in for a major shift in the culture around science.” Vox News, Brian Resnick@B_resnickbrian@vox.com Feb 18, 2017 BOSTON — If there’s a subtext to this year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest gathering of scientists of the year, it’s anxiety for the future.
John Holdren, the top science adviser to President Barack Obama who spoke Friday at the conference, summed it up like this:
“I’m worried — based on early indications — that we can be in for a major shift in the culture around science and technology and its eminence in government. We appear to have a president now that resists facts that do not comport to his preferences. And that bodes ill on the Obama Administration’s emphases on scientific integrity, transparency, and public access.”
Trump has yet to select people for several top science jobs in the administration — such as NASA administrator, director of the CDC, and director of the NIH.
But with the appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, he’s signaled that his administration will be making big changes to environmental regulation. One of the first bills he signed as president killed an Obama era rule that made it harder for coal companies to dump waste in streams.
One of the names floated for Trump’s science adviser is Will Happer, a former Princeton physics professor who recently told ProPublica the science on global warming was “very, very shaky.”……
Trump and U.S. Nuclear Power Find Common Ground in Jobs Push, Bloomberg by Jonathan Crawford February 8, 2017,
Early signs suggest Trump is eager to keep reactors open
Obama gave a higher priority to wind and solar power: NEI
Nuclear power providers, battered by low prices and competition from cheap natural gas, say they can help President Donald Trump fulfill a campaign promise to put more people to work.
Trump will throw more support behind nuclear power than the Obama administration, which gave a higher priority to wind and solar power, Maria Korsnick, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said in an interview Tuesday at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. The industry’s goal of expanding the number of U.S. nuclear reactors dovetails into Trump’s campaign promise to add jobs and boost investment in infrastructure.
Profits for U.S. nuclear operators are falling with the collapse of wholesale power prices amid a boom in gas production and rising supplies of renewables. Five nuclear plants will close by 2025, bringing the total number of retirements to 10 since 2009 when the shale boom was just getting underway. ………
Korsnick said. “The previous administration was a bit more in love with renewables.”
Early indications suggest that Trump may be supportive of nuclear power and receptive to the concerns of the industry. In a document obtained by Bloomberg, Trump’s transition team asked the Energy Department how it can help keep nuclear reactors “operating as part of the nation’s infrastructure” and what it could do to prevent the shutdown of plants.
Regulatory Support
The administration can help at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees wholesale U.S. power markets. …….Korsnick is pushing for more states to follow New York and Illinois, which approved measures to prevent the premature closing of money-losing nuclear plants.
In December, Illinois approved annual payouts of about $235 million for 10 years to keep Exelon Corp.’s Quad Cities and Clinton reactors open. In August, New York regulators approved subsidies totaling about $500 million a year for the R.E. Ginna and Nine Mile Point nuclear plants owned by Exelon, and the James A. FitzPatrick plant it is purchasing from Entergy Corp.
Australia’s chief scientist compares Trump to Stalin over climate censorship Alan Finkel warns that forcing EPA data to undergo political review before publication will ‘cause long-term harm’, Guardian, Gareth Hutchens, 7 Feb 17, Australia’s chief scientist has slammed Donald Trump’s attempt to censor environmental data, saying the US president’s behaviour was comparable to the manipulation of science by the Soviet Union.
Speaking at a scientific roundtable in Canberra on Monday, Alan Finkel warned science was “literally under attack” in the United States and urged his colleagues to keep giving “frank and fearless” advice despite the political opposition.
“The Trump administration has mandated that scientific data published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency from last week going forward has to undergo review by political appointees before that data can be published on the EPA website or elsewhere,” he said.
“It defies logic. It will almost certainly cause long-term harm. It’s reminiscent of the censorship exerted by political officers in the old Soviet Union.
“Every military commander there had a political officer second-guessing his decisions.”
The communications director for Trump’s transition team at the EPA, Doug Ericksen, said the review also extended to content on the federal agency’s website, including details of scientific evidence showing the Earth’s climate was warming and human-induced carbon emissions were to blame.
Finkel compared the Trump administration’s attempt to censor science to the behaviour of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Should we really be so afraid of a nuclear North Korea? https://theconversation.com/should-we-really-be-so-afraid-of-a-nuclear-north-korea-71855The Conversation,Markus Bell, Anthropologist and Lecturer in Korean and Japanese studies, University of Sheffield , Marco Milani, Postdoctoral Scholar, Korean Studies Institute, University of Southern California February 6, 2017The common thinking is that North Korea’s nuclear programme poses a threat to global peace and diverts economic resources from an impoverished population. North Korean leaders are depicted in the Western media as a cabal of madmen who won’t be satisfied until Washington, Seoul, or some other enemy city is turned into a “sea of fire”.
Successive US governments have used a range of carrots and sticks to entice or pressure the North Korean leadership to give up its nuclear programme. The North’s missile launches and nuclear tests in 2016 make plain that these efforts have failed; in short, the West has to accept that it is now a nuclear power and focus instead on limiting the risks a nuclear North Korea presents.
But it also pays to consider what sounds like a perverse question: could a North Korean bomb actually benefit both the country’s people and the world at large?
First, a reality check: the North Korean nuclear programme is less a madcap scheme than a clear and deliberate strategy. Its leaders have closely watched what’s happened to other countries that have backed away from nuclear arsenals, and two in particular: Ukraine and Libya.
Ukraine gave up its massive Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in 1994 when it signed the Budapest Memorandum with Russia, the US and the UK, on whose terms it traded nuclear weapons for a formal reassurance to respect its sovereignty; 20 years later, Moscow invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula, and a pro-Russian insurgency in the east is still rumbling. As for Libya, Muammar Gaddafi renounced his weapons of mass destruction programme as part of an opening to the West only to be forcibly removed from power by the same countries some eight years later.
Along with the Iraq War, these spectacles taught the North Korean regime that it’s hard for a relatively small, isolated country to survive without the military hardware to guarantee it. Pyongyang has duly shown great diplomatic skill in drawing out nuclear negotiations, buying itself both time and financial aid as its programme moves forward.
In 2016 alone, it testedtwo nuclear weapons, sent a satellite into orbit, and made advances in both submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) technology. In his New Year’s address at the start of 2017, Kim Jong-un emphasised that the country’s nuclear forces are central to its self-defence capability: “We will defend peace and security of our state at all costs and by our own efforts, and make a positive contribution to safeguarding global peace and stability.”
The long view
A nuclear North Korea obviously worries the international community for several reasons. Kim might in theory actually use nuclear weapons on his enemies, a threat he periodically makes. His country’s admission into the “nuclear club” might spark a regional arms race. It could share or sell technologies of mass destruction to hostile states. And then there’s the danger of a full-blown nuclear accident with all the attendant regional repercussions.
These risks aren’t trivial, but they should be viewed with some perspective. For starters, a nuclear attack from Pyongyang appears highly unlikely. The government is fully aware that it would incur an overwhelmingly destructive military response from the US and South Korea. It’s also worth remembering that while the programme has been underway for 25 years, there is still no sign of a regional nuclear arms race.
As for proliferation or accidents, these demand not isolation but co-operation and communication. Keeping Pyongyang cut off from the world will not help; if its nuclear facilities are to be kept safe and their products not used to bring in illicit foreign revenue, they must be properly monitored rather than kept hidden.
Meanwhile, a nuclear North Korea might well see fit to downsize its enormous and costly conventional military forces, which are among the world’s largest. As it transitions away from what it calls a “Military First” policy to something more deterrent-centric, it makes sense to encourage it to reduce its conventional military forces. (Better still, if it did, heavily-armed South Korea might follow suit.)
With a smaller conventional military to maintain, Pyongyang might be able to channel scarce state funds away from defence and towards raising the standard of living for ordinary North Koreans. This point is in line with its stated strategy of growing the economy and developing the nuclear deterrent in parallel, a policy known as the Byungjin line, and with Kim’s mooted five-year economic plan. His plans demand dramatic shifts in North Korean state policy, which could destabilise the regime. The calculation is that the security provided by nuclear capabilities would offset the shock of sudden domestic change.
Most paradoxically of all, North Korea’s nuclear “arrival” might make for a positive turn in inter-Korean relations. International efforts to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear programme isolated the country, in turn greatly undermining the chances of a rapprochement with the South, whose efforts to defrost relations have lately come to nothing. The pace of the North’s nuclear development meant that the now-impeached President Park’s policy of reconciliation – “Trustpolitik” – was doomed before it began.
As far as Pyongyang is concerned, its militaristic strategy has worked: It has kept the Kim government internally stable, the population dependent on the government, and the country’s enemies at bay. Accepting the country’s nuclear status, rather than trying to head it off with sanctions and threats, could bring it back to the diplomatic bargaining table.
Brexit bill prompts Anglesey nuclear power plant concerns, BBC, 7 February 2017 Plans to build a nuclear plant on Anglesey will face big challenges if the UK leaves a European nuclear cooperation institution due to Brexit, according to an expert.
Prof Dr Glyn O Phillips said leaving Euratom would make it difficult to get staff for projects like Wylfa Newydd.
The UK will leave the body if the bill to trigger Article 50 to start the process of leaving the EU is approved……
Prof Phillips, winner of international science awards, said that withdrawal from Euratom “will be destructive to any nuclear work in the UK” as European resources have been centralised at Cern in Geneva, Switzerland.
“They are trying to build a centre now in Manchester, to bring some kind of training but, in the end, all our researchers go back and forth to Cern,” he said in an interview BBC Cymru Fyw.
“If that link is cut and we can’t keep the connection, then I can’t see how we could ever produce the workforce that is vital to maintain the new power stations that they are talking about.”
He said training is “crucially important” to staff the next generation of plants, and that doing so is dependent on “working with other people”.
Inside the Arms Control Association 1 February 2017 We bring to the attention of GR readers this important text by Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director of The Arms Control Association
With the inauguration of Donald J. Trump—with his confrontational style, disdain for expert advice, and penchant for Twitter-based policy making—several key foreign policy and nuclear security challenges have become more daunting.
As commander-in-chief, Mr. Trump now has the authority to decide whether to use nuclear weapons in a crisis, despite entering the White House with no discernable strategy for managing today’s nuclear challenges.
“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” When questioned on this the next day in an MSNBC interview, he responded “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them…and outlast them all.”
In the coming weeks and months, there will be policy reviews on nuclear weapons strategy and force requirements; missile defense; and options to deal with Iran and North Korea. This week, Roll Call reported that a blue-ribbon Pentagon advisory panel has urged the Trump administration to consider making the U.S. arsenal more capable of “tailored nuclear options for limited use.”What does this mean?
Among other things, hard-won nonproliferation and arms control successes secured under past Republican and Democratic administrations will be reconsidered and are at risk.
The U.S. nuclear testing moratorium, the policy against new types of nuclear weapons, the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and key U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction treaties cannot be taken for granted. The danger of possible confrontations over with China in the South China Sea, Iran in the Persian Gulf, North Korea, and even Russia in Europe are even higher.
Our team is working with urgency and determination to defend past gains, strengthen ties with coalition partners, exploit opportunities for progress, and raise public awareness in ways that hold our elected leaders to one of their most important responsibilities: preventing proliferation and avoiding nuclear catastrophe.
If you find our efforts important, please become a member or help us with a special donation at this critical time. We can’t do this without our members and supporters.
Last week, Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, who’s been called many things including a white supremacist, a misogynist and an anti-Semite, was give a permanent seat on the National Security Council. Experienced military and intelligence leaders were immediately outranked. Of course, there has been protest by lawmakers and the public over this appointment. Some claim this action is illegal. But like many of Trump executive orders and actions post Election Day and then post Inauguration Days, mass protests and outrage are getting fused into a whirling plethora of alleged corruption. Asawin Suebsaeng with Daily Beastwrites:
It’s a habit that will likely continue into his time in the executive branch. The New York Times reported that last week’s avalanche of Trump of executiveorders was primarily hatched by Bannon and his team, and doubled as an effort “at disorienting the ‘enemy.’”
What may be of more concern, is learning about Bannon’s dangerous obsession with war. The problem right now is that America seems to be Bannon’s “enemy” he wishes to disorient. Countless Americans remain scared, confused and on edge. Besides wanting to disorient, Bannon wants to destroy. Here is a quote by Bannon from 2013 that has been circulating social media for several months, but is all to real right now.
“Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” —Steve Bannon
There are some who are not surprised with Bannon’s aggression. Julia Jones, Bannon’s former friend and longtime Hollywood writing partner told Daily Beast that she recalls often seeing him “lovingly talk about” and “excitedly flip through” two of his favorite books, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, about ancient Chinese text on military strategy. She added Bannon owned many books on war and battle. Jones, who calls herself a “Bernie Sanders liberal” ended her friendship with Bannon after observing his participation in Trumps presidential campaign and said it absolutely “disgusted” her.
Steve is a strong militarist, he’s in love with war—it’s almost poetry to him,” Jones told The Daily Beast in an interview last year, well before Trump won the election and Bannon landed his new job. “He’s studied it down through the ages, from Greece, through Rome… every battle, every war… Never back down, never apologize, never show weakness… He lives in a world where it’s always high noon at the O.K. Corral.”
The Daily Beast writer relays a quote from another former Bannon colleague, who has asked to remain anonymous.
“He constantly used military terms, used military terms to describe people who worked for him… like, ‘grunts,’” one former Breitbart staffer recalled. “He always spoke in terms of aggression. It was always on-the-attack, double down… macho stuff. Steve has an obsession with testosterone.”
Separately, here is a video via Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman discussing Stephen K. Bannon just last week. You can read the transcript if full on YouTube.
If there ever was a time to seek impeachment of a president, it is here and now. Let’s hope all of the Democrats step up — before it’s too late.
House GOP Quietly Shields Lawmakers Records from Ethics Probes, Fiscal Times, By Eric Pianin January 9, 2017 The new rule states that records created, generated or received by the congressional office of a House member “are exclusively the personal property of the individual member” and that the member “has control over such records,” according to a report by OpenSecrets.org.
While the rule change might seem relatively benign on the surface, it has severe and troubling implications for future ethical oversight and investigations of members of Congress as the Republicans fully take charge of Congress and the White House.
Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said Monday that the rules change “is not good” and threatens to erode ethical oversight in government further. She said it leads to a situation where “There’s no cop on the beat – that we’ve lost a critical element of independent oversight” over government records and members’ activities.
“Why on earth would Congress now create barriers to investigation and subpoenas of a member’s spending records?” she added. “This only benefits the incumbent politicians who passed this rule and those who would flout it, not the system and certainly not the public.
Related: Conflicts of Interest With Trump’s Businesses Are Already Occurring ………
For sure, there will be a need for heightened vigilance of Congress and the incoming Trump administration in the coming years, as congressional Republicans continue to try to soften ethical oversight rules and Trump and his wealthy cabinet members seek to navigate past media and public watchdog concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
Chaka Fattah (D-PA) was convicted on 23 counts of racketeering, fraud and other corruption charges last year. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on December 12.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) has been under a review by the Office of Congressional Ethics for the past year for allegations that he siphoned off tens of thousands of dollars of campaign fund for personal use, including his children’s private school tuition and lunches, trips to Disney Land and SeaWorld, jewelry and sporting goods. The San Diego Union-Tribune, which has been aggressively covering the case, reported last week that Hunter used campaign funds to pay for $600 of airline fees to fly a pet rabbit.
