“Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around,”
Got it? In Ukraine people die from bombs because Russia launched Russian airstrikes and killed them very Russianly, whereas in Gaza people get hurt by explosions because they got too close to some type of explosive material.
“…………………… “In the war of propaganda it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media,” Putin replied, adding, “The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media are American financial institutions.”
… Putin is definitely correct about the strength of the American propaganda machine. Of all the fronts one could possibly choose to challenge the United States on, propaganda is surely the least favorable. The US empire has by far the most sophisticated and effective propaganda machine ever to have existed, operating with such complexity that most people don’t even know it exists.
…………………………………………………………………In reality the nature of the US-centralized empire allows it to run a massive, nonstop international propaganda campaign through mass media platforms which are mostly privately owned. A diverse network of factors feeds into this dynamic which I’ve detailed in my unusually lengthy article “15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists”, but the gist of it is that anyone who’s wealthy enough to control a mass media platform is going to have a vested interest in preserving the status quo upon which their wealth is premised, and they will cooperate with establishment power structures in various ways toward that end.
The fact that these mass media outlets look independent but function as propaganda organs for the US empire allows its propaganda to fly into people’s minds without triggering any gag reflex of critical thinking or skepticism, which wouldn’t be the case if people knew those outlets were feeding them propaganda. Propaganda only really has persuasive power if you don’t know it’s happening to you.
The invisibility of US propaganda is further aided by the subtle methods by which it is administered, which we’ve seen exemplified beautifully in the coverage of Israel’s ongoing US-backed mass atrocity in Gaza.
“Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around,” The Intercept’s Adam Johnson and Othman Ali report. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”
This is the sort of manipulation that a casual news consumer wouldn’t notice. Unless you’re on alert for bias and are keeping track of what words are and aren’t being used where, you’re probably not going to notice the absence of emotionally-charged words when reporting on Palestinians who are killed by Israelis.
It’s easy to spot the difference when they’re placed next to each other like I just did, but unless you’re really watching out for it and have a good background on what’s going on here you’re likely to miss what’s happening. If you’re like most people and don’t read past the headline, you’d never know from the imperial media headlines that the child was killed by Israel, and you’d certainly never know about her terrified phone call for help while trapped by IDF fire and surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives. If you look to the legacy media and its algorithmically-boosted online iterations for information about the world, you went one more day with a distorted perspective of what’s happening in Gaza.
The western press constantly write headlines like this when trying to minimize the impact of someone’s death at the hands of a party they sympathize with, particularly with regard to Palestinians. Last month the BBC published an article titled “Record number of civilians hurt by explosives in 2023”, as though they were mishandling fireworks or something instead of being actively killed by Israeli bombs. The BBC later revised their atrocious headline, but revised it in the opposite direction, replacing “Record number” with “High number” to further minimize the impact.
Got it? In Ukraine people die from bombs because Russia launched Russian airstrikes and killed them very Russianly, whereas in Gaza people get hurt by explosions because they got too close to some type of explosive material.
Last week The Washington Post ran an opinion piece titled “Is America complicit in Israel’s bloody war in Gaza?”, which is already a ridiculously skewed headline because the answer is self-evidently yes — implying that there’s any question of this skews things in America’s favor. But even this was too much for the Post’s editors, who re-titled the piece “Has the Israel-Gaza war changed your feelings about being American?” to keep Americans from thinking too hard about Israel’s bloody war in Gaza and their country’s complicity in it.
In a Wednesday article titled “Biden Tries Again With Arab Americans in Michigan”, New York Times editorial board member Farah Stockman wrote the absolutely insane line “The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel seems to be affecting Biden’s election prospects.” And then The New York Times actually printed it.
Read that line again. She’s saying Arab Americans are rejecting Biden because of the October 7 Hamas attack, which is of course absurd; they’re rejecting Biden because he’s backing a genocide in Gaza. She wrote this nonsensical line because in the New York Times you can’t say things like “Israel’s genocide in Gaza” or “the president’s facilitation of crimes against humanity”, and you won’t be hired if you’re the sort of person who’d be inclined to. Instead we’re pretending that for some inexplicable reason Arab Americans are just hopping mad at Biden because October 7 happened.
But again, these little manipulations fly under the radar if you’re not on the lookout for them. Such is the brilliance of the US empire’s invisible propaganda machine. That’s why it’s very difficult to win a propaganda war against the United States, that’s why westerners have been so successfully manipulated into accepting a status quo of endless war, ecocide, injustice and exploitation, and that’s why the world looks the way it looks right now.
The entire logic that has been built up for small modular reactors is with the background of climate change emergency. That’s the big problem we have………………… Climate change emergency contains the notion of urgency. And so we are talking about something where the time factor needs to kick in………………….. And if we are talking about SMRs picking up any kind of substantial amounts of generating capacity in the current market, if ever, we’re talking about the 2040s at the very earliest.
Now, we’re talking of tens of $billions that are going into subsidizing nuclear energy, especially as I said existing nuclear power plants.
The pledge was worded as a commitment “to work together to advance a global aspirational goal of tripling nuclear energy capacity from 2020 by 2050″………… “This pledge is completely, utterly unrealistic.”…………………….“It’s like Trumpism enters energy policy.”
Last week, a group of independent energy consultants and analysts released the much-anticipated 2023 edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023 (WNISR). In over 500 pages, the report provides a detailed assessment of the status and trends of the international nuclear industry, covering more than 40 countries. Now in its 18th edition, the report is known for its fact-based approach providing details on operation, construction, and decommissioning of the world’s nuclear reactors. Although it regularly points out failings of the nuclear industry, it has become a landmark study, widely read within the industry. Its release last week was covered by major energy and business news media, including Reuters (twice) and Bloomberg.
On December 2, the United States and 21 other countries pledged to triple the global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. The declaration, made during the UN climate summit of the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, sought to recognize “the key role of nuclear energy in achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions-carbon neutrality by or around mid-century and in keeping a 1.5-degree Celsius limit on temperature rise within reach.” The pledge was worded as a commitment “to work together to advance a global aspirational goal of tripling nuclear energy capacity from 2020 by 2050.” It was aspirational—and ambitious.
To discuss this pledge against the nuclear industry’s current trends and status, I sat down with Mycle Schneider, lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report.
………… Diaz-Maurin: It’s undoubtedly a landmark report. With over 500 pages, it’s also massive. In a nutshell, what should our readers know about the main developments in the world nuclear industry over the past year?
Schneider: It really depends on from which angle you approach the issue. I think, overall, the mind-boggling fact is that the statistical outcome of this analysis is dramatically different from the perception that you can get when you open the newspapers or any kind of media reporting on nuclear power. Everybody gets the impression that this is kind of a blooming industry and people get the idea that there are nuclear power plants popping up all over the world.
But what we’ve seen is that some of the key indicators are showing a dramatic decline. In fact, the share of nuclear power in the world commercial electricity mix has been dropping by almost half since the middle of the 1990s. And the drop in 2022 was by 0.6 percentage points, which is the largest drop in a decade, since the post-Fukushima year 2012.
We have seen a four percent drop in electricity generation by nuclear power in 2022, which, if you take into account that China increased by three percent and if you look at the world, means that the drop was five percent outside China. So it’s significantly different from the perception you can get, and we can dig into some of the additional indicators. For example, constructions [of new reactors] give you an idea what the trends are and what the dynamic is in the industry. And so, when you look at constructions you realize that, since the construction start of Hinkley Point C in the United Kingdom in late 2019 until the middle of 2023, there were 28 construction starts of nuclear reactors in the world. Of these, 17 were in China and all 11 others were carried out by the Russian nuclear industry in various countries. There was no other construction start worldwide.
………………………………………………………………………………..The point is that we have had actually an increasing capacity that generates less. And, for obvious reasons, the most dramatic drop was in France. The French reactor performance has been in decline since 2015. That is, to me, one of the really remarkable outcomes in recent years. If you compare the year 2010 to 2022, in France, the drop [in electricity generated] was 129 terawatt hours. What happened is basically that, from 2015 onward, the trend line was toward a reducing electricity generation due to an accumulation of events, which are important to understand.
It’s not so much the stress corrosion cracking [in reactor vessels] that everybody has been talking about or another technical phenomenon that hit the French nuclear power plants worst, although it’s true it had a significant impact and was totally unexpected. So, it’s not an aging effect, although you do have aging effects on top of it because a lot of reactors are reaching 40 years and need to pass inspections and require refurbishment, etc. But you had climate effects in France too. And strikes also hit nuclear power plants. You don’t have that in other countries. So, it’s the accumulation of effects that explain the decline in electricity generation. This unplanned and chaotic drop in nuclear power generation in France compares with the loss of nuclear generation in Germany of 106 terawatt hours between 2010 and 2022, but in this case due to a planned and coordinated nuclear phaseout.
Diaz-Maurin: That is an interesting way to look at the data. What is the biggest risk of keeping existing reactors operating up to 80 years, as some suggest, or even more?
Schneider: Well, nobody knows. This has never been done. It’s like: “What’s the risk of keeping a car on the street for 50 years?” I don’t know. It’s not the way you do things, usually. First, I should say that we’re not looking at risk in that Status Report. This is not the subject of the report. But the lifetime extension of reactors raises the questions of nuclear safety—and security, which has always been a topic for the Bulletin.
If you have a reactor that has been designed in the 1970s, at the time nobody was talking or even thinking about drones or hacking, for example. People think of drones in general as a means to attack a nuclear power plant by X Y, Z. But in fact, what we’ve seen in the past are numerous drone flights over nuclear facilities. And so, there is the danger of sucking up information during those overflights. This raises security risks in another way. So, this idea of modernizing nuclear facilities continuously is obviously only possible to some degree. You can replace everything in a car, except for the body of the car. At some point, it’s not the same facility anymore. But you can’t do that with a nuclear power plant.
Diaz-Maurin: Talking about old facilities, Holtec International—the US-based company that specializes in nuclear waste management—say they want to restart the shutdown Palisades generating station in Michigan. Is it good news?
Schneider: To my knowledge, the only time that a closed nuclear power plant has been restarted was in Armenia, after the two units had been closed [in 1989] after a massive earthquake. We don’t have precise knowledge of the conditions of that restart, so I’m not so sure that this would be a good reference case. One has to understand that when a nuclear reactor is closed, it’s for some reason. It is not closed because [the utility] doesn’t like to do this anymore. In general, the most prominent reason [for closing reactors] over the past few years was poor economics.
This is, by the way, one of the key issues we’ve been looking at in the 2023 report: These entirely new massive subsidy programs in the US in particular didn’t exist [a year ago]. There were some limited programs on state level. Now these state support programs have been increased significantly and they are coupled in with federal programs, because the reactors are not competitive. So we’re talking really about a mechanism to keep these reactors online. That Palisades would restart is unique, in Western countries at least. For a plant that has been set to be decommissioned to restart, this has never been done. And, by the way, Holtec is not a nuclear operator. It is a firm that has specialized in nuclear decommissioning.
Now, that companies like Holtec can actually buy closed nuclear power plants and access their decommissioning funds with the promise to dismantle faster than would have been done otherwise, this is an entirely recent approach with absolutely no guarantee that it works. Under this scheme, there is no precedent where this has been done from A to Z. And obviously, there is the risk of financial default. For instance, it is unclear what happens if Holtec exhausts the funds before the decommissioning work is complete. Holtec’s level of liability is unclear to me prior to the taxpayer picking up the bill.
Diaz-Maurin: At Palisades, Holtec’s plan is to build two small modular reactors.
Schneider: Holtec is not a company that has any experience in operating—even less constructing—a nuclear power plant. So having no experience is not a good sign to begin with. Now, when it comes to SMRs—I call them “small miraculous reactors”—they are not existing in the Western world. One must be very clear about that. There are, worldwide, four [SMR] units that are in operation: two in China and two in Russia. And the actual construction history [for these reactors] is exactly the opposite to what was promised. The idea of small modular reactors was essentially to say: “We can build those fast. They are easy to build. They are cheap. It’s a modular production. They will be basically built in a factory and then assembled on site like Lego bricks.” That was the promise.
For the Russian project, the plant was planned for 3.7 years of construction. The reality was 12.7 years. In China, it took 10 years instead of five. And it’s not even only about delays. If you look at the load factors that were published by the Russian industry on the Power Reactor Information System (PRIS) of the IAEA, these SMRs have ridiculously low load factors, and we don’t understand the reasons why they don’t produce much. We know nothing about the Chinese operational record.
Diaz-Maurin: Last month, NuScale, the US-based company that develops America’s flagship SMR, lost its only customer, the Utah Associated Municipal Power System, a conglomerate of municipalities and utilities. This happened allegedly after a financial advisory firm reported on NuScale’s problems of financial viability. Have you followed this demise?
Schneider: Yes, of course. What happened there is that NuScale had promised in 2008 that it would start generating power by 2015. We are now in 2023 and they haven’t started construction of a single reactor. They have not even actually a certification license for the model that they’ve been promoting in the Utah municipal conglomerate. That’s because they have increased [the capacity of each module] from originally 40 megawatts to 77 megawatts.
Diaz-Maurin: Why is that? Is it a matter of economy of scale?
Schneider: Yes, of course. You need to build many modules if you want to get into economies of scale by number, if you don’t get into it by size. This is actually the entire history of nuclear power. So NuScale sought to increase the unit size in Utah. But then the deal with the municipalities collapsed after the new cost assessment in early 2023 showed that the six-module facility NuScale had planned would cost $9.3 billion, a huge increase over earlier estimates. It’s about $20,000 per kilowatt installed—almost twice as expensive as the most expensive [large-scale] EPR reactors in Europe.
Diaz-Maurin: Is it the same with the waste generated? Some analysts looking at the waste streams of SMRs conclude that smaller reactors will produce more radioactive materials per unit of kilowatt hour generated compared to larger reactors.
Schneider: That’s the MacFarlane and colleagues’ paper, which is pretty logical if you think about it. If you have a small quantity of nuclear material that irradiates other materials, then it’s proportionally more per installed megawatt than for a large reactor in which there is a larger core.
,………………Schneider: many technologies have been supported under the Inflation Reduction Act and many others will continue to receive significant support. But the problem here is different. The entire logic that has been built up for small modular reactors is with the background of climate change emergency. That’s the big problem we have.
Diaz-Maurin: Can you explain this?
Schneider: Climate change emergency contains the notion of urgency. And so we are talking about something where the time factor needs to kick in. If we look at how other reactor technologies have been introduced, a lot of them were supported by government funding, like the EPR in Europe or Westinghouse’s AP-1000 in the United States. Comparatively, the current status of SMR development—whether it’s NuScale, which is the most advanced, or others—corresponds to that of the middle of the 1990s [of the large light-water reactors]. The first EPR started electricity generation in 2022 and commercial operation only in 2023. And it’s the same with the AP-1000. By the way, both reactor types are not operating smoothly; they are still having some issues. So, considering the status of development, we’re not going to see any SMR generating power before the 2030s. It’s very clear: none. And if we are talking about SMRs picking up any kind of substantial amounts of generating capacity in the current market, if ever, we’re talking about the 2040s at the very earliest.
Diaz-Maurin: And that’s exactly where I want to turn the discussion now: nuclear and climate. At the COP28 last week in Dubai, 22 countries pledged to triple the global nuclear energy capacity of 2020 by 2050. What do these countries have in common when it comes to nuclear energy? In other words, why these 22 countries and not others?
Schneider: Most of them are countries that are already operating nuclear power plants and have their own interest in trying to drag money support, most of which by the way would go into their current fleets. Take EDF [France’s state-owned utility company], for example. Through the French government, EDF is lobbying like mad to get support from the European Union—European taxpayers’ money—for its current fleet. It’s not even for new construction, because the French know that they won’t do much until 2040 anyway. There is also another aspect that is related and that illustrates how this pledge is completely, utterly unrealistic.
The pledge to triple nuclear energy capacity is not to be discussed first in terms of pros or cons, but from the point of view of feasibility. And from this point of view, just looking at the numbers, it’s impossible. We are talking about a target date of 2050, which is 27 years from now. In terms of nuclear development, that’s tomorrow morning. If we look at what happened in the industry over the past 20 years since 2003, there have been 103 new nuclear reactors starting operation. But there have been also 110 that closed operation up until mid 2023. Overall, it’s a slightly negative balance. It’s not even positive. Now if you consider the fact that 50 of those new reactors that were connected to the grid were in China alone and that China closed none, the world outside China experienced a negative balance of 57 reactors over the past 20 years.
………………………………………….Now, if we look forward 27 years, if all the reactors that have lifetime extension licenses (or have other schemes that define longer operation) were to operate until the end of their license, 270 reactors will still be closed by 2050. This is very unlikely anyway because, empirically, reactors close much earlier: The average closing age over the past five years is approximately 43 years, and hardly any reactor reached the end of its license period. But even if they did, it would be 270 reactors closed in 27 years.
You don’t have to do math studies to know that it’s 10 per year. At some point it’s over. Just to replace those closing reactors, you’d have to start building, operating, grid connecting 10 reactors per year, starting next year. In the past two decades, the construction rate has been of five per year on average. So, you would need to double that construction rate only to maintain the status quo. Now, tripling again that rate, excuse me, there is just no sign there. I am not forecasting the future, but what the industry has been demonstrating yesterday and what is it is demonstrating today shows that it’s simply impossible, from an industrial point of view, to put this pledge into reality. To me, this pledge is very close to absurd, compared to what the industry has shown.
Diaz-Maurin: Based on your report, just to replace the closures, the nuclear industry would need to build and start operating one new reactor of an average size of 700-megawatt per month. And tripling the global capacity would require an additional 2.5 new reactors per month.
Schneider: Exactly; it’s a little less if you talk in terms of capacity. The capacity to be replaced by 2050 of those 270 units would be 230 gigawatts. Now, if small modular reactors were to be a significant contributor to this pledge, hundreds or even thousands of these things would need to be built to come anywhere near that objective. It’s impossible. We should come back to reality and discuss what’s actually feasible. Only then can we discuss what would be the pros and cons of a pledge.
But there was another pledge at the COP28, which is to triple the output of renewable energies by 2030. That’s seven years from now. To me, this pledge on renewable energy, if implemented, is the final nail in the coffin of the pledge on nuclear energy. It is very ambitious. Don’t underestimate that. Tripling renewables in seven years is phenomenally ambitious.
Diaz-Maurin: Is it feasible?
Schneider: Very difficult to say. But one important thing is that it’s not 22 countries. It’s over 100 countries that have already pledged their commitment to this objective. Also, a key player—if not the key player—is China. An important finding of our Status Report is that China generated for the first time in 2022 more power with solar energy than with nuclear energy. And this happened despite China being the only country to have been building [nuclear capacity] massively over the past 20 years. But still, the country is now generating more power with solar than with nuclear. The good news for the [renewable] pledge is that China is more or less on track with that tripling target. The rest of the world would have to speed up on renewables in a dramatic way to achieve this pledge. But at least China’s example shows that it’s feasible. That’s the interesting part. Because, on the contrary, there is no country—not even China—demonstrating that the nuclear pledge is possible.
Diaz-Maurin: If it’s not feasible, does the nuclear pledge impede other climate actions that are urgently needed then?
Schneider: That’s a good question. I think it’s a terrible signal, indeed. It’s like Trumpism enters energy policy: It’s a pledge that has nothing to do with reality, and it doesn’t matter. It is giving you the impression that it is feasible, that it is possible. And all that completely dilutes the attention and capital that are urgently needed to put schemes into place that work. And it doesn’t start with renewables, that’s very important to stress. It starts with sufficiency, efficiency, storage, and demand response. Only later comes renewable energy.
But these options are all on the table. They’re all demonstrated to be economic and competitive. That’s not the case with nuclear energy. It’s a pledge that has no realistic foundation that is taking away significant funding and focus. It used to be negligible funding. Up until a few years back, we were talking at most tens of millions of dollars. Now, we’re talking of tens of billions that are going into subsidizing nuclear energy, especially as I said existing nuclear power plants………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Schneider: What really has motivated most of my work over the past decades is that I can’t stand what you would call today “fake news.” All my work since the 1980s has been actually driven by the attempt to increase the level of information in—and having some kind of impact on—the decision-making process. To offer a service to civil society so it can take decisions based on facts, not beliefs. When I see what happens in terms of misinformation around nuclear power, it’s scary.
I think, today, the Status Report is probably more important than ever. Because there’s such an unbelievable amount of hype out there. It’s almost becoming an issue for psychologists. It has less and less to do with rationality because the numbers are clear. They are utterly clear: The cost figures are clear; the development is clear; the trend analysis is clear. So it is clear, but it doesn’t matter. It’s like the claim of stolen elections of Trump supporters. All court cases have shown that this was not the case. But, for half of the US population, it doesn’t matter. And I find this absolutely scary. When it comes to issues like nuclear power, it’s fundamental that decisions are made on the basis of facts.
Diaz-Maurin: Why is that?
Schneider: Because the stakes are incredibly high. First because of the capital involved. Researchers studying corruption cases know that the size of large projects’ contracts is a key driver for corruption. And the nuclear industry has been struggling with all kinds of mechanisms that are fraud yields. Financial corruption is only one issue.
Another is falsification. For a long time, we thought Japan Steel Works [JSW] was the absolute exemplary industry. Japanese factories used to build high quality and highly reliable key forged parts for nuclear power plants. It turns out, they have been falsifying quality-control documentation in hundreds of cases for decades. Corruption and falsification are two of the issues affecting the nuclear industry.
And, of course, the Bulletin has had a long focus on military issues related to nuclear energy. When we are talking about issues like SMRs, the key issue is not whether they are going to be safer or not, because there are not going to be many around anyway. So, safety is not the primary issue. But once you start signing cooperation agreements, it opens the valves to the proliferation of nuclear knowledge. And that is a big problem, because this knowledge can always be used in two ways: One is military for nuclear explosives, and the other is civilian for nuclear electricity and medical applications. Opening these valves on the basis of hype or false promise is a disaster. And the ones most actively opening these valves are the Russians. They are educating thousands of people from all around the world in nuclear materials and nuclear technology. In the United States, part of the thinking appears to say: “Oh, for God’s sake, better we train these people.” https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/nuclear-expert-mycle-schneider-on-the-cop28-pledge-to-triple-nuclear-energy-production-trumpism-enters-energy-policy/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter12182023&utm_content=NuclearRisk_TripleNuclear_11182023
Thus, nothing prevents relaunching the nuclear reactor in Gentilly, according to the very words of a study commissioned by Hydro-Québec .
Nothing. Otherwise money. A lot of money.
Nothing. Otherwise common sense.
It would not be before 2035, we are told. Given the time it takes to get this type of operation underway, it’s tomorrow.
The study was carried out by AtkinsRéalis. A firm previously known as SNC-Lavalin. They are the prime contractors for Canada’s CANDU nuclear reactors. Basically, it’s a bit like asking the oil industry to comment on the appropriateness of oil wells.
When will the day come when foxes will be invited, for their part, to explain to us what we should think of henhouses?
In August 2023, the new management of Hydro-Québec affirmed, against all expectations, that it would be “irresponsible at this time” not to closely consider the relaunch of nuclear power on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Irresponsible?
Minister Fitzgibbon, the man who claims not to be buyable for only $100, immediately gave several signs of satisfaction, while formulating considerations favorable to nuclear power.
It is difficult to imagine that, in the name of reason, we are not totally mobilized against the absurdity of such nuclear energy production programs in Quebec. Are we to believe that the idea of progress, at least for some, does not necessarily lead to progress of the mind?
The reactors have improved, they say. However, accidents or incidents are always possible, as current events have continued to prove to us. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are not nothing. In Japan, more than a million cubic meters of contaminated water have just been thrown into the ocean, due to a lack of space to store it ad vitam aeternam . What will be the consequences on marine life?
In May 1977, the Gentilly 1 reactor was shut down due to a breakdown. Ten tons of heavy water, loaded with 31,000 curies of tritium, escaped from the power plant into the St. Lawrence River. After only five years of activity, Gentilly 1 was finished. However, it was necessary to wait until 1984 to remove the fuel, without resolving the issue of radioactive waste. In all, Gentilly 1 only operated for the equivalent of 183 days. This plant cost $128 million to build, the equivalent of more than $900 million in 2024.
The new power plant, Gentilly 2, will replace it. Small iodine tablets are distributed to the surrounding population. Until 2012, citizens were instructed to swallow them, in the event of a problem, to try to save at least their thyroid gland… Too expensive, the site was finally closed in 2012. But it would be necessary to wait until 2060 for it to be completely secure. Here again, the question of radioactive waste proves to be an impossible puzzle.
In Ontario, in Chalk River, the green light has just been given, despite objections, to the construction of a facility to manage nuclear waste . There, two serious nuclear accidents occurred in 1952 and 1958. They required the intervention of the army. It was close for everything to slide towards the worst. Among the specialists rushed to the site was a future president of the United States: Jimmy Carter. More than half a century later, the soldiers who worked, like Carter, on the decontamination of Chalk River were offered by Ottawa — as long as they were still alive — a large check for… $24,000.
Justified in pirouettes in the name of the fight against climate change , the enthusiasm for nuclear energy is not about to diminish. Neither are its risks. At what price ? In the summer of 2023, the Canadian government indicated that it wanted to revise upwards the compensation regime adopted in 2016 in the event of a nuclear accident. Ottawa now committed to paying $1 billion as a compensation ceiling rather than the $75 million initially planned. An increase commensurate with awareness of the risks.
An irradiated body, shaken by nausea, doomed to wither from the conjunction of cancers, how is it truly “compensated”?
Nuclear power constitutes a danger and a burden on the future of humanity that Quebec can very well do without.
I hear from here saying this: “Oh! Mr. Nadeau… You are exaggerating so much! Civilian nuclear power plants, after all, are not to be confused with nuclear weapons. Let’s see, Mr. Nadeau! »
Radiations do not know whether they are military or civilian. They always put us within death’s reach, no matter in the name of which flag they are produced. Who will deny today that the nuclear technology transferred by Canada to India allowed this country to develop bombs? Has Canada therefore become friends with New Delhi?
The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is not a military site. Despite disregard for life, she nevertheless serves as a target in the conflict with Russia.
Who will tomorrow be the new leaders capable of contemplating, like those of today, the destruction of humanity without flinching? Should we ignore the fact that Nero, Genghis Khan and Napoleon have constantly found themselves reincarnated until today?
Even complete strangers can have designs that are dangerous to say the least. In 1982, an Israeli-Swiss engineer, Chaïm Nissim, launched an attack on a nuclear site in France. He was armed with a rocket launcher. What could happen like this now, at a time when low-cost drones make it possible to discreetly carry fire and death everywhere from a clear blue sky?
Being responsible does not mean bowing down or being intimidated in favor of nuclear power in front of hired engineers or passing politicians.
Ontario to include nuclear power projects in its green bonds, JEFF GRAYQUEEN’S PARK REPORTER, TORONTO, 2 Feb 24
Ontario has rewritten the rules for its multibillion-dollar green bond program and will now for the first time be able to use the proceeds for nuclear-power projects, the latest in a series of pro-nuclear moves made by the Progressive Conservative government.
The Ontario Financing Authority, which issues the province’s bonds, unveiled a new framework on Thursday for green bonds, which Ontario offers when it borrows money to finance capital projects that advance environmental goals.
While the program previously funded a range of infrastructure, it specifically excluded nuclear power. The new framework now includes a provision for “the deployment of nuclear energy to generate electricity and/or heat.”…….
The province has just pledged several large, and costly, expansions of nuclear power as it seeks to expand its electricity grid to meet future demand. This week, it announced the refurbishment of four 40-year-old reactors at Ontario Power Generation’s aging Pickering power station east of Toronto. That project is expected to take more than a decade and cost billions, although the government released no total cost estimate and a feasibility study is not being released to the public……………
The change made on Thursday is not the first time a debt issuer has tested whether the global market for so-called green bonds is willing to embrace nuclear power. Privately held Bruce Power, which operates the province’s largest nuclear power plant, on the shores of Lake Huron, in Tiverton, Ont., issued what was billed as the world’s first nuclear green bond back in 2021, as it sought financing for a massive refurbishment project. Provincially owned Ontario Power Generation has also recently issued a nuclear green bond.
The federal government moved to include nuclear in its green bond program late last year, after objections from the nuclear industry when Ottawa initially failed to include the sector. The European Union has made similar changes, and is being challenged over them in court by the environmental group Greenpeace.
Ontario, which is among the largest sub-sovereign debt issuers in the world, has issued green bonds for a decade. It is the largest issuer of these bonds in Canadian dollars, outstripping the federal government and all other provinces combined, at $16.5-billion. It is expected to issue its first green bonds under the new regime before March 31………………….
Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, said nuclear power should not be considered green enough for green bonds, the way renewable solar and wind power are. He noted that there is still no permanent solution for the radioactive waste it produces.
“If you are getting some kind of a bonus for being green, you should have really high standards for that,” he said.
Bulls, bears and ignorant nuclear propagandists. Detailed response to a barrage of nuclear nonsense from Zion Lights.
Jim Green, 27 Jan 24
This is a response to Zion Lights’ January 2024 article ‘Bulls and bears: a nuclear update’. Lights is a British nuclear power advocate who previously worked for self-confessed liar, climate denier and MAGA lunatic Michael Shellenberger. You can read more about Lights here and Shellenberger here.
Lights’ comments below are prefaced with her initials and placed in quote marks and in bold, and my responses are prefaced with my initials (JG ‒ Jim Green). I haven’t responded to everything in Lights’ article, which you can read in full here.
ZL: “In a world-first, 22 nations signed up to triple nuclear energy generation by 2050 at COP28 in Dubai this year, which illustrates how strongly the tide has turned in favour of the technology. Should they follow through on these commitments, the world could enter a new era of energy abundance and growth.”
JG response:
* 22 countries signed up to the nuclear pledge, 170 chose not to.
* The goal of tripling nuclear power by 2050 is laughable. David Appleyard, editor of Nuclear Engineering International, did the math: “Now 2050 still sounds like a long way off, but to triple nuclear capacity in this time frame would require nuclear deployment to average 40 GW [gigawatts] a year over the next two and half decades. The cruel reality is that’s more than six times the rate that has been seen over the last decade.”
* The nuclear renaissance of the late-2000s was a bust due to the Fukushima disaster, catastrophic cost overruns with reactor projects, and nuclear power’s inability to compete economically with renewables. The latest renaissance is heading the same way, i.e. nowhere. Nuclear power went backwards last year. There was a net loss of 1.7 GW of capacity.
* There were just six reactor construction starts in 2023. Only one outside China. One!
* The number of operable power reactors is 407 to 413 depending on the definition of operability, well down from the 2002 peak of 438.
*Nuclear power’s share of global electricity generation has fallen to 9.2%, its lowest share in four decades and little more than half of its peak of 17.5% in 1996.
* Over the two decades 2004-2023, there were 102 power reactor startups and 104 closures worldwide: 49 startups in China with no closures; and a net decline of 51 reactors in the rest of the world.
* Despite the drop in the number of operable reactors, and the sharp drop in nuclear power’s share of electricity generation, nuclear capacity (GW) and generation (TWh) have remained stagnant for the past 20 years due to increased capacity factors and reactor uprates (360 GW capacity in 2003, 374 GW in 2022; 2505 TWh in 2003, 2487 TWh in 2022). Thus it is possible, as Lights states (citing the International Energy Agency ‒ IEA), that nuclear power generation will reach an all-time high globally by 2025. If that happens, and it may not, it will be a pyrrhic victory for the industry, and it will be increasingly difficult to sustain, because of the ageing of the global reactor fleet. In 1990, the mean age of the global power reactor fleet was 11.3 years. Now, it is nearly three times higher at 31.4 years. The mean age of reactors closed from 2018‒2022 was 43.5 years. The problem of ageing reactors is particularly acute in two of the three largest nuclear power generating countries: the US reactor fleet has a mean age of 42.1 years, and in France the mean age is 37.6 years.
* Due to the ageing of the reactor fleet, the IAEA anticipates the closure of 10 reactors (10 GW) per year from 2018 to 2050. Thus the industry needs an annual average of 10 reactor construction starts, and 10 reactor startups (grid connections), just to maintain its current output. Over the past decade (2014-23), construction starts have averaged 6.1 and reactor startups have averaged 6.7. Former World Nuclear Association executive Steve Kidd noted in 2016 that “the industry is essentially running to stand still.” In the coming years and decades, the industry will have to run faster just to stand still ‒ it will have to build more reactors than it has been just to replace ageing reactors facing permanent closure. Growth ‒ even marginal, incremental growth ‒ becomes increasingly difficult and Lights’ nonsense about tripling nuclear power is thus seen as the nonsense that it is.
* The International Energy Agency (IEA) has just released its ‘Renewables 2023’ report and it makes for a striking contrast with the nuclear industry’s malaise. Nuclear power suffered a net loss of 1.7 GW capacity in 2023, whereas renewable capacity additions amounted to a record 507 GW, almost 50% higher than 2022.
* Nuclear power accounts for a declining share of global electricity generation (currently 9.2%) whereas renewables have grown to 30.2%. The IEA expects renewables to reach 42% by 2028 thanks to a projected 3,700 GW of new capacity over the next five years in the IEA’s ‘main case’ (while the IEA’s ‘accelerated case’ envisages growth of 4,500 GW). To put those numbers in context, global nuclear power capacity is 372 GW. There is little to no chance of nuclear power regaining a 10% share of global electricity generation.
* Solar and wind combined have already surpassed nuclear power generation and the IEA notes that over the next five years, several other milestones will likely be achieved: in 2025, renewables surpass coal; also in 2025, wind surpasses nuclear; and in 2026, solar PV surpasses nuclear.
* An estimated 96% of newly installed, utility-scale solar PV and onshore wind capacity had lower generation costs than new coal and natural gas plants in 2023, the IEA states. (Wind and solar became cheaper than nuclear power about a decade ago and the gap continues to widen.)
Ed note. Jim Green goes on to demolish Zion Lights’ arguments on a number of fronts: – South Korea’s nuclear “success” - China’s supposed nuclear progress – India’s nuclear ambitions – Japan supposedly rushing back into nuclear power – France’s grand nuclear plans – UK’s nuclear projects – USA’s nuclear projects - Sweden’s efforts………………………………………………………………………………… more https://jimkgreen1.substack.com/p/bulls-bears-and-ignorant-nuclear
The federal government recently endorsed two similar nuclear fantasies.
This month, Natural Resources Canada published a statement endorsing a plan to work with other countries to “advance a global aspirational goal of tripling nuclear energy capacity from 2020 by 2050.” The global nuclear declaration attracted endorsements from only 22 countries. In contrast, the official COP28 pledge to triple renewable energy by 2030 was signed by 123 countries and adopted by consensus as the official COP declaration.Earlier, in 2023, the Canadian energy regulator projected a tripling of Canadian nuclear generation capacity by 2050.
Why is Canada engaged in a nuclear fantasy?
Nuclear power plants operate in only two provinces. About 60% of Ontario’s electricity is produced by 18 nuclear power reactors. New Brunswick’s one power reactor produces about 19% of the electricity used in that province, when it’s not shut down. The federal energy regulator models envision tripling nuclear capacity by building small modular nuclear reactors in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is promising that its SMR design will be the first in the world to be deployed commercially starting in 2030, although the design has not yet been licenced to build in Canada or anywhere else.
Assuming that this unit is chosen for widespread deployment in Canada, nearly 90 would need to be built and operating effectively on the grid between 2030 and 2050 to achieve the proposed tripling. Given the known construction time overruns for nuclear power plants, this is impossible.
Environment and Climate Change Canada published the official COP28 statement that does not mention nuclear energy. Instead, it highlights “groundbreaking goals to triple renewable energy, double energy efficiency, and, for the first time ever… a historic consensus to move away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”
Tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 is sensible and doable, as long as the requisite political will is present. It is past time to get real about the energy generation technologies we need to be supporting.
– Dr Richard Dixon. The UK Government is trying to create the impression that it’s all go for nuclear. It isn’t. The UK’s nuclear enthusiasts have been on another PR offensive, with announcements of new reactors and possible life extensions to old reactors.
All of it denying the reality that nuclear is much too slow to build and much too expensive to be part of our future energy strategy. Globally nuclear is in terminal decline. In the last five years more renewable electricity has been generated by just new schemes around the world than by all the world’s nuclear reactors. And twice as much again is expected to be constructed in the next five years, taking renewables output to five times that of nuclear.
Of course the motivation for this burst of co-ordinated PR is clear, the $20bn for Sizewell C hasn’t been raised so the UK Government is desperately trying to give the impression that it’s all go for nuclear in the UK. When it clearly isn’t.
This week we had big fanfares and a major ceremony to “mark the start” of construction at Sizewell C.
But what did it all mean?
In one sense construction has already started. Land has been dug up, mature trees have been cut down, and one of the new entrances to the site is being cleared.
However, the Final Investment Decision (FID), the point at which the various parties are committed to building the station is still, apparently, several months away – so Monday’s ceremony really does look like nothing but a piece of political theatre.
What is clear, though, is that there is clear political will for this project to go ahead. The Government and the official opposition are both committed to it whatever the cost they may be exposed to.
I can understand that. I still don’t think it makes a great deal of economic sense – but given the uncertainties across the globe and the need to move to carbon zero energy I can see why they want to proceed with nuclear whatever the cost.
Personally I don’t have any concerns about the potential safety of the plant – while there are potential dangers with nuclear generation the experience over the last 60 years in this country suggests it can be operated safely.
And given that there are already two nuclear plants at Sizewell that need to be protected from the sea, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to put the new plant next to them so the protection can be shared.
I still have serious concerns with EDF and the government – who must be seen as equal partners in the project – over the way it is going to be built and the devastating impact it will have on local communities.
By adopting a “bull in a china shop” attitude towards its construction, EDF and the government are planning to cause substantial environmental damage to some of the most precious parts of the Heritage Coast that are closely linked in with Minsmere and Dunwich Heath……………………………………
Creating a new nature reserve two miles inland is great – but it can’t replace a massive area that’s directly linked to the coast.
But I fear that battle is lost now. With both the current government and the likely future government keen on the project, the best we can hope for is that some new habitats will make up for the lost treasures………………….
Get Your Armies Off Our Bodies is the inaugural series of Peace Pod.
Wage Peace is beyond proud to present our latest creation: a podcast featuring the stories, passions and insights of some of our most treasured collaborators. Tune in, subscribe and immerse yourself in the journeys of artists, activists and academics campaigning for peace on the stolen lands of this continent and further afield.
Peace Pod features some of the foremost academics, journalists and activists for peace on this continent, such as Michelle Fahey, Mujib Abid, Izzy Brown, Ned Hargreaves and Aunty Sue Coleman Haseldine, along with international luminaries such as Anthony Feinstein and Matthew Hoh.
Dr Miriam Torzillo has put together high quality teaching resources for students in years 10-12. Dr Torzillo has included a guide to curriculum placement:
Curriculum Areas
General Capabilities
Australian Cross Curriculum Priorities and
Key Concepts
The Teachers Resource sits with the Podcast here, in one easily accessible page
There is a huge resurgence in interest in the role of the weapons companies because of the genocide in Palestine. Young people are trying to make sense of militarism and peace. The podcast introduces militarism against First Nations people in both Australia and West Papua and the way STEM is being used by weapons corporations to reproduce militarism in the classroom.
So far, federal and provincial taxpayers have been footing the bill for Small Nuclear Reactor development in Canada, with little private sector investment—meaning the investor scrutiny and cost controls that torpedoed the NuScale project are muted at best.
Would Canadian taxpayers be OK with continuing to shell out up to a trillion dollars for a technology with no proven track record of producing reliable, affordable electricity?
So far, federal and provincial taxpayers have been footing the bill for SMR development in Canada, with little private sector investment—meaning the investor scrutiny and cost controls that torpedoed the NuScale project are muted at best. Would Canadian taxpayers be OK with continuing to shell out up to a trillion dollars for a technology with no proven track record of producing reliable, affordable electricity?
Near the end of 2023, the government published its second nuclear fantasy of the year. The December statement declares that Canada will work with other countries to “advance a global aspirational goal of tripling nuclear energy capacity from 2020 by 2050.”
In a sprinkling of public relations fairy dust, the declaration is labeled “COP28”, although written well before the two-week climate summit in Dubai. The nuclear declaration managed to attract only 25 endorsing countries, in contrast to the official COP28 pledge to triple renewable energy and energy efficiency by 2030, signed by 123 countries and eventually adopted by consensus in the final COP declaration.
The currently operating power generating capacity of all nuclear plants in the world is 365 gigawatts. Tripling that total by 2050, in the next 26 years, will mean reaching close to 1,100 gigawatts. Looking back 26 years, the power capacity of the global nuclear fleet has grown an average of 0.8 gigawatts each year. At that rate, nuclear capacity in 2050 will be a mere 386 gigawatts.
And tripling today’s nuclear capacity would require the industry to overcome the significant setbacks and delays in new reactor construction that have plagued it forever with no solution in sight, while building an additional large number of reactors to replace old ones shut down over the same period.
Earlier last year, the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) published the country’s previous nuclear fantasy document, with scenarios that also projected roughly a tripling of nuclear generation capacity by 2050. Canada’s six nuclear plants currently produce about 13 gigawatts of power; a tripling would bring that to 39 GW. The CER report envisions this new nuclear capacity coming from so-called small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).
Only two public utilities in Canada are proposing to build SMRs: NB Power in New Brunswick, and Ontario Power Generation (OPG). The most authoritative report to date on SMRs, from the U.S. National Academies, found that the designs planned for New Brunswick—a molten salt reactor and a sodium-cooled reactor—are unlikely to reach commercial deployment by 2050.
OPG is promising that its SMR design, a 300-megawatt boiling water reactor, will be the first in the world to be deployed commercially starting in 2030, although the design has not yet been licenced to build in Canada or anywhere else. Assuming that this unit is chosen for widespread deployment in Canada, nearly 90 would need to be built and operating effectively on the grid between 2030 and 2050 to achieve the proposed tripling. Given the known construction time overruns for nuclear power plants, this also is impossible.
The news on the SMR front from around the world has been bleak—especially in the United States, which has been trying to commercialize SMR designs for more than a decade. The flagship SMR design in the U.S., the NuScale light-water reactor, was the first to receive design approval by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. However plans to build an array of NuScale reactors were shelved in November when the estimated construction costs ballooned to US$9.3-billion (C$12.8-billion) for 462 megawatts and potential customers fled. Earlier this month, NuScale laid off nearly half of its work force.
Assuming the NuScale construction costs of $27.7 million per megawatt would be an acceptable price range to customers in Canada, that would give the OPG design, also a light-water reactor, a cost of $8.3 billion per unit. If 90 units were built as a way to triple nuclear energy capacity, the total price tag would be $747 billion. That assumes that costs won’t go up during construction, as has been the case with the majority of nuclear projects in Canada and around the world.
So far, federal and provincial taxpayers have been footing the bill for SMR development in Canada, with little private sector investment—meaning the investor scrutiny and cost controls that torpedoed the NuScale project are muted at best. Would Canadian taxpayers be OK with continuing to shell out up to a trillion dollars for a technology with no proven track record of producing reliable, affordable electricity? Particularly when the energy efficiency, solar, and wind technologies explicitly favoured by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the quickest path to emission reductions are already proven, affordable, and ready for prime time?
Last month’s bogus “COP28” nuclear declaration is posted on the Natural Resources Canada website. Like its counterpart in the United States, the Department of Energy, NRCan is the department responsible for promoting the interests of the nuclear industry. In both the United States and Canada, that industry has been failing for decades, and one of its strategies for securing government support has been to appeal to geopolitical interests. In recent years, that appeal has usually involved pointing out how Western countries are falling behind Russia, the largest exporter of nuclear power plants, and China, which has built more nuclear plants than any other country over the past decade.
The U.S. government has responded by using its diplomatic clout to promote nuclear energy, especially small modular reactors. In Washington, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson delivered Canada’s statement on nuclear energy that linked Canadian exports of uranium and nuclear technology to energy security in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This geopolitical context explains why Russia and China were conspicuously missing from the list of signatories to the declaration to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
The nuclear industry’s other argument to stay alive is the bogus claim that it can help solve climate change. But as veteran energy modeller and visionary Amory Lovins pointed out: “To protect the climate, we must abate the most carbon at the least cost—and in the least time—so we must pay attention to carbon, cost, and time, not to carbon alone.” The climate crisis is urgent. The world has neither the financial resources nor the luxury of time to expand nuclear power.
Meanwhile, the website of Environment and Climate Change Canada, the department truly responsible for the country’s international climate commitments, has a genuine COP28 statement that does not mention nuclear. Instead, it highlights “groundbreaking goals to triple renewable energy, double energy efficiency, and, for the first time ever… a historic consensus to move away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”
Tripling nuclear energy by 2050 is a nuclear industry fantasy and complete make-believe. Tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 is sensible and doable, as long as the requisite political will is present. It is past time to get real about the energy generation technologies we need to be supporting.
Susan O’Donnell is Adjunct Research Professor and leader of the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. M.V. Ramana is Professor and Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the University of British Columbia.
At COP28, the latest United Nations Climate gathering, nuclear power received more attention. Saudi Arabia committed to developing nuclear electrical generation. China is constructing 21 large nuclear reactors. Some people believe a massive nuclear build out will avert the climate crisis. The 436 reactors now operating produce about 10 percent of the global electricity. It would take 10,000 additional reactors to completely decarbonize the global economy.
It is true that an operating reactor produces no greenhouse gases (GHG), but when the whole life cycle of a reactor is analyzed, including construction and fuel enrichment, a standard 1,000MW reactor releases GHG comparable to a natural gas power plant. Even that evaluation is incomplete, as it excludes complete decommissioning of a large nuclear plant (never been done), and long-term storage of high level nuclear waste (not yet done even after 70 years).
Nuclear corporations were blackmailed into business. After the atomic destruction in Japan, the US government wanted a happy face for the atom, so Atoms For Peace promoted “power too cheap to meter.” The electrical industry was told to develop nuclear power, or the government would do it, putting them out of business. This was a bluff, but nobody knew it then.
Economically, nuclear power is a bust. Reactors are large, expensive, and centralized, making construction more an art than manufacturing. Costs consistently comes in over budget and behind schedule, making nuclear power more expensive than solar or wind, even including storage. Even operating an existing nuclear reactor is more costly than building renewable projects. While solar, wind, and battery costs are dropping every year, nuclear costs keep increasing. Small modular reactors (SMR), heralded as the salvation of the nuclear industry, suffer the same cost problems, plus a lack of customers. The only SMR project in the US was just canceled due to cost overruns.
Uranium is a finite commodity, and used inefficiently. A reactor core contains tons of highly processed enriched uranium. After a few years, when only 5 percent of the uranium has been consumed, the core must be replaced. When fission byproducts build up, performance degrades to the point of economic inefficacy. Millions of tons of highly radioactive “spent” fuel are stored at reactor sites. The best uranium deposits have already been developed, leaving only poorer quality ore. Most low level enriched uranium comes from Russia.
But the real economic costs come when a reactor breaks. Designed to last for 40 years, decisions were made in the beginning with incomplete information, with multiple units built on those designs in order to make nuclear construction seem profitable. So far, the worst US designed reactor failures were the 40 year old units at Fukushima, in 2011. Complete cleanup cost estimates are over $1T. Actual repairs have yet to begin, because radioactivity is too high for even robots to function for very long, let alone humans.
The only reactors still operating in California are the 40 year old pair at Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo. Heavy radioactivity embrittles metal, making it more prone to shock failure. Several earthquake faults have been identified near the site, including one right through the plant. PG&E has done embrittlement tests, but refuses to release the results to the public, claiming “proprietary rights”. The Diablo Canyon reactors were recently granted a 5-year extension, with no changes required to the existing, aging equipment.
A reactor failure due to a seismic event could affect a large area of central California, from LA to San Francisco and inland to Nevada, depending on which way the wind blows. But PG&E would not be liable for any damages beyond $13B, due to the Price Anderson Act, a sweet heart deal the US made when the nuclear industry began. Every liability insurance policy written has an exclusion for nuclear damages. This all helps the nuclear industry seem profitable.
Nuclear power highlights a fundamental capitalist problem: the conflict between safety and profits. Each reactor is so powerful, that any accident can become catastrophic faster than humans can react. It is so expensive, that the incentive is enormous to cut costs to be more profitable. Add in limited corporate financial liability, and you get a recipe for disaster.
Fukushima shows the “small probability, high impact” nature of a failed nuclear reactor. The economics of even a properly operating reactor fail basic capitalist reasoning. To leave a habitable planet for our descendants, we have to do better.
Crispin B. Hollinshead lives in Ukiah. This and previous articles can be found at cbhollinshead.blogspot.com.
Both CNN and The Washington Post have been caught engaging in some pretty shady journalistic malpractice with their Israel reporting in recent days.
In a new article titled “CNN Runs Gaza Coverage Past Jerusalem Team Operating Under Shadow of IDF Censor,” The Intercept reports that all of CNN’s reporting on Israel and Palestine is funneled through a bureau in Jerusalem which slants reporting to benefit Israeli information interests and is subject to regulation by Israeli military censors. The Intercept also reports that last year CNN “hired a former soldier from the IDF’s Military Spokesperson Unit to serve as a reporter” at the onset of the war on Gaza.
Unnamed CNN staff told The Intercept that CNN’s iron-fisted protocols for regulating information related to the Israel-Palestine issue have had a “demonstrable impact on coverage of the Gaza war”.
“‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the anonymous CNN staff member said. “Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.”
The Intercept reports that the former IDF spinmeister has been bylined in dozens of CNN stories since the attack on Gaza began, with one report being “little more than a direct statement released from the IDF.”
Kind of makes you wonder why CNN doesn’t just cut out the middleman and run all its reporting directly through IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv. Seems like it would be a bit more efficient, and certainly a lot more honest.
Meanwhile The Washington Post has been caught assigning a reporter with a history of anti-Palestinian bias to write a smear piece on independent media outlets Electronic Intifada and The Grayzone for their critical reporting on Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza.
As Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah highlighted on Twitter, when Dwoskin was at Columbia University twenty years ago she was authoring Nakba denialist claims that Palestine never existed and that prior to Israel’s formation the land was inhabited only by “desert Bedouins without a sense of national identity as we know it today.”
It’s bad enough for The Washington Post to be attacking independent media for asking the critical questions and doing the real journalism the Post itself should also be doing, but to assign someone with a public history of egregiously anti-Palestinian rhetoric to the task is especially lacking in journalistic integrity.
“If I’m following, a reporter that has denied the fact that Palestinians existed before the state of Israel is allowed to cover Israel/Palestine and write about ‘misinformation’ for Washington Post?” tweeted award-winning journalist Laila Al-Arian of Abunimah’s revelation.
Neither of these instances will come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying critical attention to the amazingly awful reporting the western mass media have been churning out about the Gaza assault these last three months, but they do offer some rare insight behind the curtain into how the sausage gets made.
The biggest misconception about propaganda is that it is something that happens to other people, and is done by other countries. Westerners like to think of themselves as free-thinking people whose worldviews are formed by facts and truth, contrasting themselves with nations like North Korea and China where populations are viewed as being subjected to conformity-enforcing propaganda. They believe that if propaganda does occur in the west, it comes here from nations like Russia trying to corrupt our minds and weaken our trust in our institutions, or if the propaganda is domestic in origin it only affects people in other political parties.
In reality the typical western mind has been marinating in domestic propaganda throughout its entire life, and its worldview has been manufactured for it by powerful manipulators who benefit from its intellectual compliance with their interests. The indoctrination into the mainstream western worldview began in school, and it continues throughout adulthood with the help of mainstream media outlets like CNN and The Washington Post.
If we’re ever to have a healthy civilization, we’re going to have to wake up from the propaganda-induced coma we’ve been placed in so we can begin pushing against the cage walls we’ve been indoctrinated our whole lives into ignoring and start using the power of our numbers to force real change in the systems which govern our world. Luckily the atrocities that have been taking place in Gaza have been rapidly waking people up, because it turns out there’s only so much propaganda spin you can put on the murder of thousands of children.
The more people become aware that our civilization is built on deception and everything we’ve been told about the world is a lie, the closer we get to living in a truth-based society where nothing like the Gaza massacre would ever be permitted to occur.
“…………………………………………………………………………………………………… Eighty-seven years after I got here the blue dot is now in serious trouble. Not the dot itself, but all of us creatures riding on it. My eighty-seven year ride coincides precisely with the time we have been living with the knowledge about nuclear fission. As I have contemplated it most of my life I have been compelled to conclude that nuclear electricity, so-called nuclear power, has never been a normal economic activity, it has never paid its way, and still does not, it has always relied on vast injections of money and resources from taxpayers and electricity users, decreed by governments.
Civil nuclear power has been in effect a cover story, to disguise the true reason for pouring so much of our wealth into this dangerous sinkhole. In the eyes of governments, the key nuclear activity has been to stockpile terrifying quantities of nuclear explosives for use as weapons, nuclear political power, in which someone says, in effect, unless you do what I want, or give me what I want, I’ll obliterate this blue dot.
As climate change makes more and more of the blue dot uninhabitable, conflicts are breaking out world-wide. We have to hope that some people, some of our fellow dot-riders, some states-people, can find a way to defuse the nuclear threat.
If there’s one thing Blinken and his cohorts understand, it’s that you’re not supposed to describe the evil things you want to do in evil-sounding language. You’ve got to tapdance gracefully around the actual depravity you intend to inflict, uttering flowery prose about humanitarian concerns and compassion for both sides to keep everyone dazzled and hypnotized while the killing machines are quietly rolled out in the background. You’ve got to be eloquent and elusive about your murderousness.
“The United States rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible. We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately.
“We have been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel. That is the future we seek, in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, the surrounding region, and the world.”
The offending statements by Ben Gvir and Smotrich promoted the idea of “encouraging” Palestinians to flee Gaza en masse, absurdly referring to this hypothetical outcome as “voluntary migration” despite the fact that Israel has been doing everything in its power to make living in Gaza impossible.
You will note, probably without surprise, that the statement contains nothing but empty scolding. No mention is made of the faintest possibility of any consequence of any kind being brought to bear should Israeli officials continue to openly advocate for eliminating the Palestinian population of Gaza and replacing it with Jewish settlements. This is because the US has no intention of actually doing anything to hinder Israel’s ethnic cleansing agendas.
And make no mistake, that absolutely is Israel’s agenda. The State Department can claim all it wants that “such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government” and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has assured Washington that there are no plans to resettle Palestinians outside of Gaza, but Netanyahu himself has been publicly contradicting this claim with increasing brazenness.
Just last week at a Likud party meeting Netanyahu explicitly said that his government is working on finding countries who would be willing to “absorb” Palestinian refugees from Gaza, claiming that the world is “already discussing the possibilities of voluntary immigration.”
Indeed, it’s fair to say that the extreme-right ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich are not actually saying anything on this front that is significantly different from what Netanyahu himself has been saying. Bibi’s just a bit more polite about it, with Ben Gvir openly thumbing his nose at the State Department’s remarks saying “we aren’t another star on the American flag” and “facilitating the relocation of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow those in the Israeli Gaza border communities to return home and live securely while safeguarding the IDF soldiers.”
In fact, one could easily argue that Netanyahu as well as Ben Gvir and Smotrich have been entirely in alignment with the State Department’s own language on this subject. The idea of “voluntary immigration” does not contradict the position asserted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the US vision for Gaza involves “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza — not now, not after the war.”
Notice Blinken’s careful insertion of the word “forcible” there. His wording makes it clear that the US would only object if Palestinians were actually forced onto ships or marched across the Egyptian border at gunpoint, as middle east analyst Mouin Rabbani recently observed on Twitter:
“Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be ‘no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza’. Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of ‘voluntary’ displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open.”
So contrary to its self-righteous moral posturing, the State Department is not actually upset with Ben Gvir and Smotrich for advocating the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They’re just upset they said the quiet part out loud.
If there’s one thing Blinken and his cohorts understand, it’s that you’re not supposed to describe the evil things you want to do in evil-sounding language. You’ve got to tapdance gracefully around the actual depravity you intend to inflict, uttering flowery prose about humanitarian concerns and compassion for both sides to keep everyone dazzled and hypnotized while the killing machines are quietly rolled out in the background. You’ve got to be eloquent and elusive about your murderousness. Like Obama.
The US war machine is every bit as depraved as the state of Israel, and the Biden administration is just as culpable for the horrors being unleashed in Gaza as Netanyahu and his goons. Ignore their words and watch their actions. Don’t let them dazzle you with their feigned concern for human rights.
Australians should be wondering why the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), one of the country’s proudest think tanks, has just established a body promoting nuclear energy that appears to have little to justify it. If the CIS truly believes in the project, surely it would have sought a leader with a stellar resumé?
Earlier this year, environmental journalist George Monbiot warned that the chance of simultaneous harvest failures in the world’s major breadbaskets was “much worse than we thought.” He poured his fury onto the old industries deploying as many Atlas Network-style “junktanks (‘thinktanks’), troll farms, marketing gurus, psychologists and micro-targeters as they need to drag our eyes away from what counts, and leave us talking about trivia and concocted bullshit instead.”
The 500+ global “partner” bodies of the Atlas Network have, for decades, been forming metastasising entities such as “think” tanks to create the sense of a chorus of academic or public support for the junk science and junk political economies that serve their funders. The primary goals have been to liberate plutocrats from any tax or regulation, and fossil fuel bodies have been amongst their most prolific donors.
By contrast with the billions spent to “stop collapse from being prevented,” the effort to prevent Earth systems collapse is led by people “working mostly in their own time with a fraction of the capacity.”
The Atlas strategy involves networking promising ultra-free market spruikers with the astonishing sums of money that fossil fuel and similar industries spend to promote their goals. The spruikers can be trained and cross-connected. Some are helped to create benign-named bodies that describe themselves as think tanks or academic institutes (beachheads) in universities. They found fake grass roots bodies (astroturfing) to pressure politicians into believing that there is public support for a policy. Youthful scholars or strategists co-opted and funded by the machine go on to export the work into politics and the media.
One Australian example is the founder of the Australian Taxpayer Alliance, Tim Andrews. He was a graduate of the Koch Associate Program, a year-long training program at the Charles Koch institute, and worked at the Atlas-partnerAmericans for Tax Reform for two years. Koch is one of the most significant figures in the Atlas Network’s spread. Andrews is now a member of the UK Atlas Partner, the Taxpayer Alliance Advisory Council.
High profile mining figures in particular unite many of these bodies. In Australia, Hugh Morgan’s name, for example, is present in many of their histories. He assisted Greg Lindsay in turning the CIS from a “part-time hobby” into the more serious institution that it became. Morgan was described in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1985 as “the most important conservative figure in Australia. He is not merely an outspoken captain of industry, he is at the centre of a large and growing network of activists who are seeking to reshape the political agenda in this country.”
In America there is an extensive web of such networks and bodies that interact together. The Atlas Network is important for its international forays into 100 countries, working to infect debate with this American ideology that overwhelmingly promotes the right of corporations to extract resources at any cost to the nation exploited.
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