There has of late been something of a global nuclear PR push, but it’s perhaps been oddly timed in that not everything has been going its own way. The USA’s flagship NuScale Small Modular Reactor (SMR) has taken a dive. It was seen as the pioneer for cheap fast-build mini-reactors, a scaled down but otherwise conventional pressurised water reactor. But, despite some speculative funding, it was looking increasingly dodgy financially, with lawyers circling like vultures.
And then the big Idaho Falls NuScale project was cancelled. WIRED said this had been on the cards since ‘the utilities backing the plant were spooked by a 50% increase in the projected costs’. That was not seen as good news for other SMRs further back in development. Some see it all as a bit of a dangerous gamble.
Maybe not the right time then for the UK to launch what amounted to a promotional report ‘Made in Britain: The Pathway to a Nuclear Renaissance’. Produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) it says that the UK government decision to invest in Sizewell C was a turning point. Well yes- it recognises that few others are likely to! Unlike with Hinkley Point C, with China playing a financial support role- although it recently halted that. To that extent, unless the UAE can be enticed to step in, if Sizewell C goes ahead, it will be ‘made in Britain’, though, as with Hinkley, most of the technology will be imported.
However, progress on funding and project contacts is all going rather slowly. Sir John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, said that ‘at the moment, we’re not making any progress really on Sizewell C, there is no deal being done with EDF… so we don’t see nuclear as really having a significant part to play in any new stations other than Hinkley before 2035.’ And, making it even harder for any potential investors, the government wants new tighter Regulated Asset Base funding rules– perhaps they are getting nervous about likely costs to consumers?
Nevertheless, the APPG seem confident that all can be made well soon- with the newly established Great British Nuclear (GBN) organisation seen as playing key role. APPG calls on the government to ‘commit the funding to GBN necessary to build its developer capabilities and to invest directly in at least the first two SMR projects & next large-scale project,’ on the way to 24GW by 2050. It welcomed the £20bn SMR contract value figure that the government mentioned last year, but that’s not been confirmed. And would the big Rolls Royce SMR be chosen to make it all UK? Rolls certainly thinks it will be the winner...
Globally, while there are some new nuclear projects underway or planned, for example in China, it all still mostly looks a bit uncertain. It is true that, ever optimistic, the nuclear lobby keeps talking its future up. Over 20 nations, led by the United States, including the UAE, South Korea, Japan, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK, issued a call at COP28 climate summit in the UAE to triple global nuclear power capacity by 2050.
However, despite that being twenty years after the 2030 target date for renewables to be tripled, as pushed by Bloomberg NEF and also backed at COP28 (see later), several commentators said that, even by then, the triple nuclear target was unlikely to be reached – it would need unprecedented expansion. And the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR), which emerged at more or less the same time as the COP nuclear statement, certainly made clear that nuclear was already being far outstripped by renewables globally.
A significant reversal of its prospects does not seem unlikely. Indeed, as an earlier article in the FT had noted, even the International Atomic Energy Agency has forecasts that, given expected growth energy demand, over the next 20 years, the nuclear industry share in the global energy mix, roughly10% of the world’s electricity generation today, will remain flat, if not decrease slightly, unless there are very ambitious construction plans.
So maybe that’s why are we seeing such optimistic projections- otherwise nuclear will be sidelined. We have been here before with ambitious nuclear projections and plans- which failed to materialise. A recent study has looked back at why earlier scenario model-based predictions had not come true, and it may be that we may be about to see a repeat exercise.
Of late, there have certainly been some scenarios with major expansion of nuclear, for example, in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, with nuclear capacity doubling by 2050. However, it also said renewables were much more efficient at reducing carbon and there are many scenarios with renewables accelerating very rapidly. That’s not surprising given the recent fall in their cost. Though, sadly, aided by inflation pressures due to the rise in the costs of fossil fuels, it seems to be taking a while for new funding patterns to be adopted, and for linked energy demand stabilisation programmes to be introduced. That being so, a recent study has suggested that ‘there is the risk that considerable public and private funds will be invested in developing technologies for the commercial use of nuclear energy despite the fact that other technologies are expected to offer a significantly better cost-performance ratio with fewer economic, technical, and military risks’.
Of course it can be argued that we will need to expand both nuclear and renewables and certainly there are strong lobby pressures to do that- or else, it is claimed, we will face ever expanding fossil fuel use and carbon emissions. But are nuclear and renewables equally valuable and capable of rapid expansion? To many, renewable expansion does look more credible- at COP28 118 countries renewed their pledge to triple renewable power by 2030, a target backed by the EU and shared by IRENA. That, along with investment in energy saving and demand management, should arguably help us to cut global use of fossil fuel, and the consequent carbon emissions, faster than investment in nuclear and at less cost.
However, it won’t be easy, and that’s just for power. And although there are scenarios suggesting that, given careful energy management, 100% of all energy globally could come from renewables by 2050, there’s a long way to go to get to that. Some may be tempted to look to carbon capture to help on the way for a while, although it’s hard to see that being cheap or easy. Like nuclear, with CCS projects failing or stalled, it looks more like another costly dead-end diversion. What’s wrong with accelerating the full range of green energy systems– renewables, energy storage and smart demand management, which of course includes energy efficiency?
Over the past two months, Raytheon/RTX — which develops and sells weapons systems used by the Israeli Defense Forces — has seen stock prices skyrocket and company executives discuss the rise in violence as a financial opportunity.
According to UMass Dissenters organizers, the company is deeply entrenched at the college through recruitment practices and the Isenberg School of Management, which has a close educational and financial partnership with the weapons manufacturer.
A UMass Dissenters organizer discusses the growing youth-led antiwar movement and how they are organizing against weapons manufacturers and the war in Gaza.
In January 2020, Dissenters — a grassroots, youth-led antiwar movement — began with the mission to connect violence against Black and brown communities in the U.S. to the systems of oppression that fund, arm and enable global militarism. While born from the legacy of the U.S. antiwar movement, Dissenters takes an intersectional approach that connects global wars with corporate elites, local police, border walls, surveillance and prisons. Operating across the country through campus chapters, training fellowships and a strong social media presence, Dissenters has been organizing for college divestment from weapons manufacturers, ending campus recruitment from military-affiliated companies and disbanding campus police departments.
Since Oct. 7, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack and the subsequent siege of Gaza, Dissenters chapters have doubled down on antiwar organizing, holding local and national rallies, sit-ins, student walkouts and training events both on and offline. One campus chapter — at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst — has organized protests, disruptions to sports games, and a sit-in at the chancellor’s office to pressure its university to cut ties with the weapons manufacturer Raytheon, now known as RTX.
Over the past two months, Raytheon/RTX — which develops and sells weapons systems used by the Israeli Defense Forces — has seen stock prices skyrocket and company executives discuss the rise in violence as a financial opportunity. According to UMass Dissenters organizers, the company is deeply entrenched at the college through recruitment practices and the Isenberg School of Management, which has a close educational and financial partnership with the weapons manufacturer.
I spoke with Bre Joseph, a UMass Amherst senior and organizer with the campus chapter of Dissenters. We discussed organizing college students against weapons manufacturers, the radicalizing impact of activist arrests, and the lessons learned from successes and setbacks.
In relation to the siege on Gaza, what are the main goals or demands of the UMass Dissenters chapter?
Number one is that the school must divest and cut ties with weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, but also Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and so on. Our second demand is that the administration must call for an immediate end to Israel’s siege on Gaza and end U.S. funding. A third demand is that the administration must replace weapons manufacturers with jobs working toward a demilitarized future.
I think that third one acknowledges that — while moving away from Raytheon as a campus partner would technically decrease opportunities afforded to UMass students — the onus is on the campus to replace jobs that increase death and violence with jobs that are sustainable and help the earth. We’ve heard students express this on an app called Yik Yak where you can post anonymously. It’s usually unserious, but every now and then I’ll open it and see people say, “I’m an engineering major, and I’m tired of having Raytheon pushed down my throat as an employment option. I don’t want to build bombs. I don’t want to make money for this company that’s killing people. I want better options.” That’s really been our goal from the beginning — get those jobs out and center a demilitarized future instead of militarizing it further.
How does intersectionality both inform and impact Dissenters’ organizing? ………………………………………………………………..
How has UMass Dissenters organized to inform and mobilize students on the connections between the campus and weapons manufacturers?
In terms of education, we have a document that we’ve made public via our Instagram and emails we’ve sent out to interested students really detailing UMass’s connection to Raytheon — and detailing Raytheon’s connection to the IDF and the war on Palestinians. At our weekly meetings, we’ve also had things like teach-ins for interested students. We’ve also crashed Raytheon information sessions to do this thing we call “being the common sense,” where we ask recruiters: “What exactly would students be building? What exactly is making the company money?” We ask the questions they don’t really want to answer but that they need to to be held accountable…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/17/inside-the-youth-led-fight-for-a-demilitarized-future/
Humans inhabit two very different worlds simultaneously: the real world and the narrative world. The world of concrete material reality, and the world of mental stories about reality.
There’s the material reality of presents piled under the Christmas tree, and then there’s the story parents tell small children about how those presents got there. There’s the material reality of military explosives ripping human bodies to shreds, and then there’s the story the powerful tell the world about how and why that’s happening.
What we are seeing with Gaza is manufactured narrative splatting against reality over and over again. The western empire churns out propaganda narratives about what Israel is doing, and those narratives are crashing headlong into raw video footage and concrete facts in ways you don’t often see.
Here are some examples of made-up narratives:
• October 7 was an unprovoked attack
• This a war of defense and Israel has a right to defend itself
• Jewish people can’t be safe unless they have a homeland in which they receive preferential treatment over other ethnic groups
• There cannot be peace until Hamas is eliminated
• All civilian casualties are the fault of Hamas
Here are some examples of objective reality:
• Raw video footage of civilians who’ve been burned, mutilated and ripped apart by Israeli military explosives
• Photos of dead children who’ve been killed in Israeli airstrikes
The former category consists entirely of insubstantial thought fluff; they’re stories people made up to advance their own agendas, and have no objective reality in and of themselves. The latter category consists of the concrete realities of the material world.
Relatively few people are fully aware of just how extensively mental narrative dominates human consciousness, and how this has allowed human civilization to be dominated by whoever can control what our society’s dominant narratives are. The US-centralized empire, of which Israel is a part, has succeeded in establishing a system of narrative control whose sophistication and efficacy has no parallel or precedent.
But in Gaza it isn’t working. It isn’t working because there’s no amount of propaganda spin you can put on raw data that is self-evidently unacceptable and inexcusable. No matter how much propaganda spin you heap on top of a video of a dismembered child, you cannot persuade me that it is fine and acceptable.
This is a very, very big problem for the empire. There is panic happening behind the scenes. What’s happening in Gaza is unspeakably horrific, and Israel’s atrocities must end immediately. But if there’s any silver lining in all this horror, it’s that people are being snapped out of the imperial propaganda matrix like never before.
LAST WEEK, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted a meeting with leaders of human rights organizations to mark the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations. But through subtle stage management, the State Department arranged for Blinken’s praise for human rights to be recorded and promulgated — while the world was not able to hear the retorts from human rights advocates who criticized America’s backing of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The Universal Declaration was a landmark in history. While it was only a statement of principles, and so did not have legal force in itself, it was broadly inspirational and has formed the basis for numerous subsequent treaties and laws. According to Guinness World Records, it’s been translated into more languages than any other document — over 550, from Abkhaz to Zulu.
After the December 7 meeting, the internet exploded in bitter laughter at Blinken, and it’s easy to understand why. At the start of the meeting at the State Department, Blinken informed the assemblage that “the universality of human rights is under severe challenge and rights are being violated in far too many places … And of course we see atrocities in the midst of conflict.” Yes, of course. Just one day later, on December 8, the U.S. vetoed a resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza.
Notably, the Universal Declaration states that “everyone has a right to a nationality.” The Universal Declaration was adopted on December 10, 1948, one day before U.N. Resolution 194 was passed. Resolution 194 famously stated that, in the wake of the establishment of Israel earlier that year, Palestinian refugees “wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” This anniversary has not been commemorated with an event at the State Department.
Indeed, the whole process with Blinken was as distastefully funny as the Russian government’s own recent celebration of the Universal Declaration’s anniversary, in which it spoke of its deep concern over “the human rights situation in Ukraine.” This is where the U.S. government’s stage management comes in.
There were four human rights organizations in attendance, all represented by their top officials: Amnesty International (Agnès Callamard), Human Rights Watch (Tirana Hassan), the Committee to Protect Journalists (Jodie Ginsberg), and Freedom House (Michael Abramowitz).
We know this because all four leaders appeared in the above photo happily tweeted out by Blinken himself. And all four groups confirmed their presence to The Intercept. But when asked, the State Department refused to name who was in attendance because, it explained, this meeting took place in a “private setting.”
In addition to the photo provided by Blinken, you can watch a video of this private setting on the State Department’s publicly available website. At 0:59, as Blinken natters on, you can see one of his bored functionaries glancing at his watch.
What actually happened is that, as the Committee to Protect Journalists puts it, “the State Department made clear that Secretary Blinken wanted to make a statement on the record but the meeting was private.”
In other words, the U.S. government insisted that there be a public section of the meeting at the start, in which Blinken spoke and the human rights leaders would be photographed listening to him. Then, these photographs and Blinken’s words were distributed to the world. But the human rights leaders’ words were not.
Asked about his own experiences in such situations, Kenneth Roth, Hassan’s predecessor as head of Human Rights Watch, says that “there is nothing inherently wrong with having an off-the-record meeting with government officials … but it is odd for the Biden administration to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration with an off-the-record meeting.” Roth explains that the Universal Declaration had modest influence in the decade after its adoption because it was considered undiplomatic for governments to criticize others by name. However, that changed in the 1960s and 1970s. “A commemoration of the Declaration that embraced what has made the document so impactful,” Roth contends, “would have been an on-the-record meeting in which abusive governments were unabashedly singled out by name.”
Human Rights Watch and Freedom House both declined to provide any details about what their officials told Blinken, stating that the post-photo op section of the meeting was off the record.
However, Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International’s national director for government relations and advocacy, did comment. Callamard, she says, “urged Secretary Blinken to seize the current inflection point, be consistent in the US’s attention to human rights, and send the message that human rights apply equally to non-US allies and to its closest friends. She made clear that this is especially urgent today, as Amnesty International has documented that the government of Israel – one of the US’s closest allies – is flagrantly violating international humanitarian law in its attacks on Gaza. She urged him to see the need for an immediate ceasefire and a stop to the transfer and sale of arms to the government of Israel in the existing context.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists was also willing to describe its leader’s remarks. According to CPJ, Ginsberg “most certainly brought our full-range of deep and urgent concerns regarding journalists in Gaza. The ongoing disaster is a top priority for us. Ginsberg underscored that more than 60 journalists have been killed (the vast majority Palestinians in Gaza), the increasingly difficult conditions, and the broader clampdown on the press and arrests including the West Bank. Notably, we strongly reiterated our demand for accountability in the likely targeting of journalists in southern Lebanon. In doing so, we stated our deep concern that the pattern of journalists being killed with impunity by the Israel Defense Forces is a long one.”
Roth, for his part, adds that “we don’t need another symbol of the Biden administration’s commitment to human rights. … A more meaningful way to celebrate the Universal Declaration would have been to visibly enforce it in the human rights black hole that the Middle East has largely become for the Biden administration.”
In a nice touch by the State Department, the meeting was held in its Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room, so the participants were overseen by both a statue and a painting of Jefferson. Jefferson was America’s first secretary of state, as well as the author of the Declaration of Independence — in some ways the progenitor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Jefferson also enslaved 600 people over his lifetime and raped his dead wife’s half-sister, whom he owned. He thus is perhaps America’s greatest exemplar of our history of soaring rhetoric combined with a much grimier reality.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi was at a COP28 event on 1 December 2023 in Dubai. He kicked off the nuke lobby push the IAEA Statement on Nuclear Power as a climate solution .
This slimy, silver-tongued propagandist is adept at couching the nuclear push in mealy-mouthed weasel words that are blandly acceptable to the public. The mantra will be “making use of all low-carbon energy sources”. The theme will be nuclear-not as the major star of climate action, but “part of the energy mix”, – and of course – requiring tax-payer funding.
You’ve got to hand it to Grossi – a master at deceptive language . He will cover himself, mouthing some concerns about proliferation, about the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, but his essential message is that nuclear is safe, clean, and deserves government funding. He minimises nuclear power’s history of accidents.
This UN agency wields huge influence internationally. It was set up – post the Hiroshima bombing, to make the nuclear industry look good.
At the climate summit The UK and USA governments eagerly jumped on the bandwagon, pushing for a tripling of nuclear power by 2050. Another 20 governments joined the push, but 179 other governments did not.
The sad reality is – that Mr Grossi and all these currently powerful politicians do not know how to cope with the obscene costs and horror of scrapping the world’s old toxic crumbling nuclear facilities . So forf thdem, their best option is to push on with the nuclear madness.
After all, they’ll soon retire on their fat superannuations, and leave the next generation with this horrible problem in a heated world.
Since October 7, the day the escalation in Israel/Palestine began (FAIR.org, 10/13/23), American media outlets have persistently described the fighting as an “Israel-Hamas war.” From October 7 through midday on December 1, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have combined to run 565 pieces that use the phrase “Israel-Hamas war.”
This paradigm has been a dominant way of covering the violence, even though Israel has been clear from the start that its assault has not been narrowly aimed at Hamas. At the outset of the Israeli onslaught, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Times of Israel, 10/9/23) said: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Oxfam later said that such restrictions on Palestinians’ ability to eat—which left 2.2 million people “in urgent need of food”—mean that Israel is deploying a policy wherein “starvation is being used as a weapon of war against Gaza civilians.”
A day later, Israeli military spokesperson Adm. Daniel Hagari (Guardian, 10/10/23) said that “hundreds of tons of bombs” had already been dropped on the Gaza Strip, and admitted that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”
The indiscriminate nature of Israel’s assault is clear. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on November 24 that “over 1.7 million people in Gaza, or nearly 80% of the population, are estimated to be internally displaced.” On November 25, the Swiss-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor reported that Israel had killed 20,031 Palestinians in Gaza, 18,460 of whom (or 92%) were civilians, since October 7.
Thus, while Israel has openly acknowledged that it is carrying out indiscriminate violence against Palestinians, US media outlets do Israel the favor of presenting its campaign as if it were only aimed at combatants. “Israel-Gaza war” comes closer to capturing the reality that Israel’s offensive is effectively against everyone living in Gaza. Yet “Israel-Gaza war” appears in 265 pieces in the three papers, exactly 300 fewer than the obfuscatory “Israel-Hamas war.”
Consider also the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor finding that Israel has slaughtered 8,176 children. If 41% of all the Palestinians Israel has killed in the first seven weeks of its rampage have been children, and 8% have been combatants, then it is less an “Israel-Hamas war” than an Israeli war on Palestinian children.
Characterizing what has happened since October 7 as an “Israel-Hamas war” fails to adequately capture the scope and the character of Israel’s violence. Describing the bloodbath in Palestine this way obscures that grave violence is being visited upon virtually all Palestinians, whatever their political allegiances and whatever their relation to the fighting.
Cognitive dissonance
Corporate media have often stuck to the “Israel-Hamas war” approach even when the information the outlets are reporting shows how inadequate it is to conceive of Israel’s attacks in that way. For instance, the New York Times (10/20/23) ran a story about Israel ordering 1.2 million Gaza residents to evacuate their homes, and still classified the evacuation as part of the “Israel-Hamas war.” The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, is estimated to have 30,000–40,000 fighters (Axios, 10/21/23).
The Wall Street Journal published a short piece (11/6/23) that noted:
The United Nations said that the Israel-Hamas war has killed the highest number of UN workers in any single conflict. The UN said that over 88 workers in its Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA], the largest humanitarian organization in the Gaza Strip, have been killed since October 7.
But UNRWA did not itself use the “Israel-Hamas war” narrative in the report to which the Journal referred, instead opting for “escalation in the Gaza Strip.” Indeed, Israel killing UN workers at a rate of almost three each day would seem to fall outside the bounds of an “Israel-Hamas war,” but that’s how the paper categorizes the violence. (“Israel’s war on the UN” falls well outside the bounds of the ideologically permissible in the corporate media.)……………………………… more https://fair.org/home/israel-hamas-war-label-obscures-israels-war-on-palestinians/
The following is a statement from Extinction Rebellion, UK, in light of misrepresentations of their movement by a former team member now working for a pro-nuclear front group.It alleges that Environmental Progress, its new employee, Zion Lights, its founder, Michael Shellenberger, and the group’s predecessor, Breakthrough Institute (still operating as well) have ties to big corporations and to climate denial.
There have been a number of stories in the press in the last few weeks with criticisms about Extinction Rebellion by Zion Lights, UK director of the pro-nuclear lobby group Environmental Progress. It appears that Lights is engaged in a deliberate PR campaign to discredit Extinction Rebellion.
For any editors who might be considering platforming Lights, we would like to make you aware of some information about the organisation she works for and her employer, Michael Shellenberger.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS & MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
Environmental Progress is a pro-nuclear energy lobby group. While the group itself was only established in 2016, its backers and affiliates have a long and well-documented history of denying human-caused climate change and/or attempting to delay action on the climate crisis. A quick look at groups currently promoting Zion Lights through their social media channels include climate deniers and industry lobbyists such as The Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Genetic Literacy Project (formerly funded by Monsanto).*
The founder of Environmental Progress, Michael Shellenberger, has a record of spreading misinformation around climate change and using marketing techniques to distort the narrative around climate science. He has a reputation for downplaying the severity of the climate crisis and promoting aggressive economic growth and green technocapitalist solutions.
Shellenberger appeared on the Tucker Carlson Show on Fox News just last week to say that the forest fires currently raging in California are due to “more people and more electrical wires that they’ve failed to maintain because we’ve focused on other things like building renewables” and we’ve been “so focused on renewables, so focused on climate change.”
In his recent book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts us All, Shellenberger argues that there are no limits to growth and that environmental problems can be solved by everyone getting richer. The book has been widely criticised by many respected scientists both for its central premise and its misunderstanding, misinterpretation and misuse of the facts. (See here and here.)
His stance on fundamental and vitally important points of scientific consensus around the climate crisis is flat out wrong. In his essay promoting his book published in June of this year on the Environmental Progress website and The Australian – ‘On behalf of environmentalists, I apologise for the climate scare’ –he claims that “climate change is not making natural disasters worse” and that “Humans are not causing a ‘sixth mass extinction”. He also argues that “fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003,” and, “The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California.” These claims contradict reports from the IPCC and misrepresent the discussion taking place in the scientific community.
One science advisor with Environmental Progress, respected MIT climate expert Professor Kerry Emanuel, spoke publicly about being “very concerned” about the essay, and felt unsure whether he would remain involved with the organisation.
The article was published in Forbes, before being pulled offline the same day for violating its code of ethics around self-promotion.
A key tactic from the climate delayer playbook used in the essay is that of the repentant environmentalist, according to investigative journalist, Paul Thacker. After gaining credibility by aligning themselves with a section of the environmental movement, the repentant environmentalist then performs a volte face and attacks their former position.
This tactic has also been used by Zion Lights, who first overstated her role within Extinction Rebellion (she was a member of the media team, not ‘co-lead’ as stated on the Environmental Progress website) and then denounced the movement following an apparent change of heart.
BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE
Shellenberger is co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute, a lobbying group masquerading as a “think tank”. The Breakthrough Institute has “a clear history as a contrarian outlet for information on climate change [which] regularly criticises environmental groups”, according to Paul Thacker. Breakthrough has also been described as a “program for hippie-punching your way to fame and fortune.”
Shellenberger co-founded the Breakthrough Institute with Ted Nordhaus, nephew of economist, William Nordhuas. William Nordhaus features in Merchants of Doubt – Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s examination of the PR strategies used both by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries. His interventions in the 1990s helped set back essential action on climate change by decades.
Other figures associated with Shellenberger and the Breakthrough Institute include:
Owen Paterson, one of the UK’s most prominent climate deniers who helped with the UK launch of the group’s Ecomodernist manifesto in 2015.
Matt Ridley, coal mine owner, once hereditary Conservative Peer and famous climate delayer / ‘lukewarmist’ who spoke at the UK launch event. (more…)
The future of nuclear energy in Estonia will be decided next year. Universities in Estonia are ready to train specialists in this field, but this requires new curricula, recruiting expensive lecturers from abroad and years of preparation. Due to Estonia’s small population, the pool of nuclear specialists for Estonia must be trained internationally to ensure impartiality in decision making processes.
If Estonia decides to build its own nuclear power plant, it will probably also have to set up a radiation safety and nuclear security authority, similar to as in other nuclear countries.
While the agency could hire a few dozen professionals before the facility is operational, it should eventually employ 60-80 experts. We can compare ourselves to our northern neighbors.
“We have over 100 workers in the nuclear reactor regulation department and roughly 25 in the nuclear waste department in charge of nuclear safety, so about 130-140 people in total,” Tomi Routamo, deputy director of the Finnish radiation protection center, said.
The first reactor is the most expensive for the country, both financially and in terms of the demand for experts. The question of how many experts the plant needs is much more complicated.
“The number of persons in the preliminary phase is about 50-60, while during construction it reaches a few hundred, 200-300. It is expected to be 400 or more throughout the operational period,” Siim Espenberg, the head of the center for applied social science research at the University of Tartu, said.
Since Estonia is the only nuclear country with a small population, predicting the need for experts is impossible. There are few reactors in the world that are a reasonable size for Estonia. However, building a nuclear power facility in Estonia would require 10 or more classes of nuclear experts in additional to the current ones.
There is also a concern characteristic of small population countries that officials from a regulatory body and nuclear plant managers could be past classmates. The agency must be objective and rigorous. This implies that the expert community cannot be too small. It is also critical that nuclear workers have actual expertise in order to deal with unanticipated scenarios……………………………………………………………………………
“Certainly, people should be brought in from overseas, and in my opinion, some people from Estonia should be trained abroad. This type of curriculum, which can span years, can be used to teach professionals at a specific level, but it is also possible for a small number of specialists, perhaps five or ten, to be trained abroad,” Aune Valk, vice-rector of the University of Tartu, said.
These top researchers are quite expensive, particularly if they are recruited from the western Europe or the Nordic countries.
“We are talking about a wage bill of around €150,000 per year. Also, such a top specialist would be expecting investment funding for the establishment of laboratories, a research group, and the recruitment of PhD students. These are very significant investments,” Hendrik Voll, vice rector of Tallinn University of Technology, said.
The new curricula could take seven to 10 years to produce Estonia’s own nuclear engineers, possibly up to 15 years if they are required to obtain practical experience with an employer. Universities are hesitant to start on such costly and time-consuming projects until Estonia has made a solid decision to build a nuclear power plant.
“We might end up educating highly expensive professionals for western Europe, the Nordic countries, or certain eastern European countries if we don’t develop nuclear energy here,” Voll said.
Universities agree that the future of the nuclear power plant in Estonia will require the creation of a school of nuclear engineers…………………
“The use of liquid sodium has many problems. It’s a very volatile material that can catch fire if it’s exposed to air or water,” Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists science advocacy nonprofit, told Fortune previously
“at centre stage”? “clean” ?”
Bill Gates’ nuclear reactor company signs a clean energy deal with the UAE, as nuclear power takes center stage at COP28
A nuclear reactor company cofounded by Bill Gates signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates to explore building advanced reactors in the Gulf country.
On Monday, TerraPower and the UAE’s state-owned nuclear company Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding to collaborate on developing new nuclear power plants that would ? combat climate change. The preliminary deal comes as nuclear power increasingly takes ? center stage at the United Nations’ COP28 conference in Dubai, which started last week. ……………………………………………………
The UAE’s partnership with TerraPower would allow the country to “collaborate across a range of areas including technical design and commercial viability” related to nuclear power, according to a press release. The UAE will have access to TerraPower’s Natrium technology, which uses sodium instead of water to cool nuclear reactors,…
………………………The new partnership could also mean that Emirati engineers will be dispatched to TerraPower’s U.S. headquarters to learn about its work. “Our new agreement with TerraPower will facilitate cooperation in taking nuclear energy technology to the next level, by accelerating its deployment and its use for innovating new solutions including the production of clean molecules and hydrogen,” ENEC CEO Mohamed Ibrahim Al Hammadi said in a statement.
…The United States led the coalition of countries that pledged to triple the world’s nuclear power capabilities by 2050. Other major countries to sign on include France, which has long been at the vanguard of nuclear power; Japan, which suffered a devastating nuclear meltdown in 2011 after an earthquake struck a plant in Fukushima; and South Korea, whose second-largest company SK Group, is an investor in TerraPower.
…………………………..“Now, we need to take what looks very promising and scale it up, build the pilot plants, and prove those out,” Gates said on Friday.
Making nuclear power plants look great, World Nuclear News, 01 December 2023
They must be desperate. They’ve tried – renewable, -clean, – safe – cheap, – nothing-to-do-with weapons
They’re still lying their heads off about –fixes climate change
Nobody believes them. Now they’re going for beautiful and feel-good.
Good luck with that.
Amber Rudd, a previous UK Minister for Energy tried that, years ago, and it went down like a lead balloon.
We hear from an award-winning architect on the benefits of designing nuclear power plants that make people feel good ....
Technology and function, ensuring their reliable and safe operation have long been the priorities when designing nuclear power plants. But why can’t they look beautiful too? Dutch architect and designer Erick van Egeraat says that part of the way to continue to build public support for nuclear energy is to make nuclear power plants look good, “to make people feel good” when they see them.
The award-winning professor and director of Design Erick van Egeraat outlined his thinking at World Nuclear Symposium, explaining the background to the work he is doing at Akkuyu nuclear power plant, which is being built in Turkey.
Hundreds of academics from universities and institutions of higher learning (as well as public school K-12 teachers) from across North America have signed on to a joint letter, calling on their governments to demand an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, where the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians since the start of October.
As of Sunday evening, the document has more than 1,200 signatures, available to view here. The signers, calling themselves “Educators for Palestine,” are Palestinian academics and their allies who denounce Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as governments complicit in the genocide, including the United States.
The letter calls for such governments to “stop funding the genocide and instead call for a ceasefire, an end to the blockade of humanitarian aid, and restoration of access to water, electricity, and medicine in Gaza.”
“We demand that all potential war crimes be investigated,” the academic letter-writers state. “We demand an end to Israel’s military occupation and regime of apartheid, and a long-term political solution led by the Palestinian people that is based on justice, equality, and responsibility for one another’s mutual well-being.”
“We believe education can be a powerful place for this work,” Educators for Palestine add.
The letter also expresses deep concern over the ways that students and staff of universities are being silenced by their own institutions. “Forced silence through repression of dissent and retribution by powerful institutions against students, staff, and faculty have been the norm and must be loudly rejected,” the letter states, describing the actions to suppress dissent as “McCarthyian” in nature.
“In this historical moment, we reaffirm our commitments to interrogating the ways in which systems such as racism, ableism, settler colonialism, and imperialism are fundamentally intertwined with one another, both at home and abroad,” the letter adds.
Organizers of the letter spoke to Truthout about why it is critical for academics in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and beyond to speak out against the genocide in Gaza and the widespread suppression of dissent in academia.
“We watched in horror as the attacks on Gaza unfolded and wanted to say unequivocally that we reject this collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” the signatories told Truthout.
Organizers also condemned international governments and mainstream media for downplaying Israel’s killing of Palestinian children while using the killing of Israeli children by Hamas as justification for war crimes. The IDF has killed more than 4,500 children in Gaza since October 7.
“As both Palestinian educators and non-Palestinian educators in solidarity, we were particularly concerned with the framing of only one group of children as innocent and using their innocence as justification for war crimes,” the organizers of the letter said.
The organizers explained two sets of goals: one in the short-term and one for the longer-term.
“Our immediate goal is to speak out and bear witness as educators to the horrors that the Israeli state’s assault on Gaza has unleashed, once again, on Palestinian children and their families — horrors that our politicians are actively supporting, and that the institutions where many of us work (universities and schools) are steadfastly refusing to acknowledge,” they said. “Our long term goal is to build a stronger base for solidarity with Palestinians, understanding how the movement for justice in Palestine is essentially interwoven with the movements for justice for racialized and colonized peoples across the globe.”
The organizers of the letter told Truthout that academia was being used to further apartheid and genocide.
“[The] bombs being dropped on homes and schools and hospitals and bakeries in Gaza are often devised within our STEM classrooms and university departments,” they said, adding that the “words used to distort reality within our media, as well as the forms of truth-telling and poetry that assert Palestinian dignity and self-determination, are birthed in the spaces where our students learn to write.”
Science Fair connecting students to a future in nuclear, UK government 17 Nov 23
Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) and Women in Nuclear (WiN UK) hosted an event for young people to promote and showcase career opportunities in the nuclear industry
Around 150 students attended the first ever Nuclear Connection Science Fair in Oxford, hosted by NWS and Women in Nuclear (WiN UK) on 10 November.
The event was an opportunity for young people to learn more about the career prospects in the nuclear sector, and provided the opportunity to interact with successful professionals working in the industry today.
Nuclear Waste Services is part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) group with a vision and mission that is vitally important to the UK today and for future generations………………………….
Students, teachers, parents and guardians from four secondary schools (Eden Girls Slough, Greyfriars, Didcot Girls and The Abbey) attended the fair in Oxsrad Sports and Leisure Centre in Headington, open to pupils from Year 9 to Sixth Form.
It was an opportunity for students to engage with presentations and have conversations to discover everything they want and need to know about nuclear science, and about the places it could take their future careers.
The event included interactive games and activities with nuclear professionals, talks by key industry figures and a student poster exhibition and prizegiving. Students participated in a poster competition that was opened ahead of the event, with the winners announced on the day. It also provided the opportunity to arrange work experience placements with significant nuclear industry players.
Louise Honeyman, Event Organiser, Co-leader for WiN UK Central England and Business Manager at NWS, said:…………………………………………………………..
The event was a great success, it was fantastic to see so many young people eagerly engaged and keen to learn about a career in the nuclear industry – and we are keen to attract them!
There are a huge range of careers on offer in the sector, looking for a variety of different skill sets. It’s an exciting, expanding and rewarding industry to work in…………………………………………………………..
After Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, IDF forces responded with airstrikes, leveling Gazan buildings. The violence so far has claimed the lives of more than 2,500 people. Western media, however, show far more interest and have much greater sympathy with Israeli dead than Palestinian ones and have played their usual role as unofficial spokespersons for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS, ZERO EVIDENCE
One case in point is the claim that, during their incursion into southern Israel, Hamas fighters stopped to round up, kill and mutilate 40 Israeli babies, beheading them and leaving their bodies behind.
The extraordinary assertion was originally reported by the Israeli channel i24 News, which based it on anonymous Israeli military sources. Despite offering no proof whatsoever, this highly inflammatory claim about an enemy made by an active participant in a conflict was picked up and repeated across the world by a host of media (e.g., in the United States by Fox News, CNN, MSN, Business Insider, and The New York Post).
Meanwhile, the front pages of the United Kingdom’s largest newspapers were festooned with the story, the press outraged at the atrocity and inviting their readers to feel the same way.
Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence, and a story like this should have been met with serious skepticism, given who was making the claim. The first question any reporter should have asked was, “Where is the evidence?” Given multiple opportunities to stand by it, the IDF continually distanced itself from the claims. Nevertheless, the story was simply too useful not to publish.
The decapitated baby narrative was so popular that even President Biden referenced it, claiming to have seen “confirmed” images of Hamas killing children. This claim, however, was hastily retracted by his handlers at the White House, who noted that Biden was simply referencing the i24 News report.
The story looked even more like a piece of cheap propaganda after it was revealed that the key source for the claim was Israeli soldier David Ben Zion, an extremist settler who had incited race riots against Palestinians earlier this year, describing them as “animals” with no heart who needs to be “wiped out.”
Manipulating the U.S. public into supporting the war by feeding them atrocity propaganda about mutilating babies has a long history. In 1990, for instance, a girl purporting to be a local nurse was brought before Congress, where she testified that Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein’s men had ripped hundreds of Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and left them to die. The story helped whip the American public up into a pro-war fervor. It was later revealed that it was a complete hoax dreamed up by a public relations firm.
THE MURDERED GIRL WHO CAME BACK TO LIFE
Another piece of blatantly fake news is the case of Shani Louk. Louk attended the Supernova Festival, ambushed by Hamas. It was widely reported that Hamas murdered her (e.g., Daily Mail, Marca, Yahoo! News, TMZ, Business Insider), stripped her, and paraded her naked body trophy-like through the streets on the back of a truck. Louk’s case incited global anger and calls for an overwhelming Israeli military response.
There was only one problem: Louk was later confirmed to be alive and in hospital, a fact that suggests the videos of her on the back of a truck were actually images of people saving her life by taking her to seek medical assistance.
Few of the outlets irresponsibly publishing these wildly incendiary stories have printed apologies or even retractions. . The Los Angeles Times was one exception: after publishing a report claiming that Palestinians had raped Israeli civilians, it later informed readers that “such reports have not been substantiated.”
LIONIZING ISRAEL, DEHUMANIZING PALESTINIANS
Few readers, however, see these retractions. Instead, they are left with visceral feelings of anger and disgust towards Hamas, priming them to support Western military action against Palestine or the wider region.
In case their audiences did not get the message, op-eds and editorials in major newspapers hammered home this idea. The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed entitled “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas”, which insisted to readers that “Israel is entitled to do whatever it takes to uproot this evil, depraved culture that resides next to it.” Thus, the outlet implicitly gave Israel a free pass to carry out whatever war crimes it wished on the civilian population, whether that is using banned chemical weapons, cutting off electricity and water, or targeting ambulances or United Nations officials.
The National Review’s editorial board was of a similar mind, stating that “Israel needs a long leash to destroy Hamas.” This long leash, they explained, meant giving Israel far more time to carry out the destruction of Gaza. Western leaders would have to refrain from criticizing Israel or calling for calm and peace.
The message was clear: international unity was paramount at this time. Mere trifles such as war crimes must be overlooked. And while Israel and its people were treated with special sympathy (e.g., Washington Post), the other side was written off as bloodthirsty radicals. While the phrase “Palestinian terrorists” could be found across the media spectrum (e.g., Fox News, New York Post, New York Times), its opposite, “Israeli terrorists” was completely absent from corporate media. This, despite casualties on the Palestinian side outnumbering Israelis.
Underlining the fact that Israeli lives are deemed more important is the way in which deaths from each side are reported. The BBC, for example, told its readers that Israelis have been “killed” while people in Gaza merely “died,” removing any agency from its perpetrators and almost suggesting their deaths were natural.
CONTEXT-FREE VIOLENCE
Missing from most of the reporting was the basic factual background of the attack. Few articles mentioned that Israel was built upon an existing Palestinian state, and that most of the inhabitants of Gaza are descended from refugees ethnically cleansed from southern Israel in order to make way for a Jewish state. Also left unmentioned was that Israel controls almost every aspect of Gazan’s life. This includes deciding who can enter or leave the densely populated strip and limiting the import of food, medicine and other crucial goods. Aid groups have called Gaza “the world’s largest open-air prison.” The United Nations has declared the conditions in Gaza to be so bad as to be unlivable.
One of the principal reasons that this crucial context is not given is that it could influence Western audiences into sympathizing with Palestinians or supporting Palestinian liberation. Giant media corporations are largely owned by wealthy oligarchs or by transnational corporations, both of whom have a stake in preserving the status quo and neither of whom wish to see national liberation movements succeed.
Some media outlets make this explicit. Axel Springer – the enormous German broadcaster that owns Politico – requires its employees to sign its mission statement endorsing “the trans-Atlantic alliance and Israel” and has told any staff members that support Palestine to leave their jobs.
Other outlets are slightly less overt but nonetheless have Israel red lines that employees cannot cross. CNN fired anchor Marc Lamont Hill for calling for a free Palestine. Katie Halper was fired from The Hill for (accurately) calling Israel an Apartheid state. The Associated Press dismissed Emily Wilder after it became known that she had been a pro-Palestine activist during her college years. And The Guardian sacked Nathan J. Robinson after he made a joke mocking US military aid to Israel. These cases serve as examples to the rest of the journalistic world. The message is that one cannot criticize the Israeli government’s violent apartheid system or show solidarity for Palestine without risking losing their livelihoods.
Ultimately, then, corporate media play a key role in maintaining the occupation by manipulating public opinion. If the American people were aware of the history and the reality of Israel/Palestine, the situation would be untenable. For those wishing to maintain the unequal state of affairs whereby an apartheid government expels or imprisons its indigenous population, the pen is as important as the sword.
In the end, however, the poor economics of nuclear technology raise doubts that any labeling of nuclear energy as “clean” or “green” will spur private sector investment. Today, despite the industry’s self-proclaimed nuclear renaissance, private investment in nuclear technologies is minimal, and nuclear proponents are pinning their hopes on massive public sector handouts.
As calls are increasing for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to release the government’s “transition taxonomy” of energy sources aligned with climate goals, misinformation is circulating about the role of nuclear energy in the European Union’s taxonomy.
The Canadian government is expected to identify technologies for priority private sector investment to help Canada meet its “net-zero” targets.
An Oct. 13 letter to MPs from the Canadian Nuclear Association, a nuclear lobby group, states that “The European Union (EU) formally voted to include nuclear energy in its EU taxonomy.” This statement is partially true, but misleading.
On May 16, at a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee, Bloc Québécois MP Mario Simard asked if Canada was one of the only countries that considers nuclear to be clean energy. In response, Mollie Johnson, assistant deputy minister of Natural Resources, said “under the taxonomy of the European Union, they have classified it as clean energy as well.” This statement is incorrect.
The European Commission (EC) established its Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance to develop scientific guidelines for the taxonomy. The group was asked to develop recommendations for technical screening criteria for economic activities that can make a major contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation, while at the same time avoiding significant harm to sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, transition to a circular economy, address pollution prevention control, and protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems.
After the report excluded nuclear because of the generated toxic radioactive waste, the lobby group convinced the EC to commission another report by the nuclear-friendly Joint Research Centre which concluded that nuclear was eligible. After weeks’ more lobbying, a slight majority of the European Parliament voted in favour of adding nuclear and fossil gas in the taxonomy only as “transitional technologies”—definitely neither as green, clean, nor sustainable. Also, the members of the European Parliament did not approve any public investments in nuclear energy.
The transitional technology classification requires a country seeking funding for nuclear energy to fulfill stringent safety criteria. This means having solid plans within five years, including financing, for an operational deep geological disposal for used fuel and high-level waste in 2050. This criteria will be a huge challenge for states other than Sweden, France and Finland. The Onkalo used nuclear fuel repository in Finland was built at a cost of 5-billion euros, and after some 40 years, is still not licenced. Most other countries do not have those funds available, meaning that potential nuclear power-plant operators would have to contribute to the costs, making nuclear even less competitive in the energy market.
A similar political power play lacking wider environmental considerations surrounds another recent document, the Net-Zero Industry Act. The aim is to promote investments in the production capacity of products key to meeting the EU’s climate neutrality goals, and, again, nuclear was initially not included. Once again, strong lobby efforts won the reintroduction of nuclear, first as a “non-strategic” technology due to its long build times and staggering costs—factors that push any tangible climate benefits far into the future, as opposed to “strategic” climate mitigation options such as solar panels, batteries, and heat pumps. In the latest text, however, any distinction between different technologies is gone. As the Greens in the European Parliament commented, the Act has lost the initial focus, and it’s now for just about any technology.
Given that nuclear energy is not considered “green” in the EU taxonomy, financial analysts have questioned its value as a global “gold standard” because investors might prefer to use other taxonomies that value their real green investments. Canada has the opportunity to learn from these blunders.
In the end, however, the poor economics of nuclear technology raise doubts that any labeling of nuclear energy as “clean” or “green” will spur private sector investment. Today, despite the industry’s self-proclaimed nuclear renaissance, private investment in nuclear technologies is minimal, and nuclear proponents are pinning their hopes on massive public sector handouts.
However, aside from the Canada Infrastructure Bank’s $970-million ‘low-interest loan’ for Ontario Power Generation to develop an American design for a small modular nuclear reactor, the public funds for new nuclear proponents from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada have been just under $100-million in the past three years. Those funds require matching private sector funding that has not materialized. This is a far cry from the billions of dollars required to develop just one small modular nuclear reactor, and where that money will come from is still an open question. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Susan O’Donnell, PhD, is lead investigator for the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University. Madis Vasser, PhD, is senior expert on SMRs for Friends of the Earth Estonia.
NASA Seeks Students to Imagine Nuclear Powered Space Missions
NASA 8 Nov 23
The third Power to Explore Student Challenge from NASA is underway. The writing challenge invites K-12th grade students in the United States to learn about radioisotope power systems, a type of nuclear battery integral to many of NASA’s far-reaching space missions, and then write an essay about a new powered mission for the agency.
For more than 60 years, radioisotope power systems have helped NASA explore the harshest, darkest, and dustiest parts of our solar system and has enabled many spacecrafts to conduct otherwise impossible missions in total darkness. Ahead of the next total solar eclipse in the United States in April 2024, which is a momentary glimpse without sunlight and brings attention to the challenge of space exploration without solar power, NASA wants students to submit essays about these systems.
Entries should detail where students would go, what they would explore, and how they would use the power of radioisotope power systems to achieve mission success in a dusty, dark, or far away space destination with limited or obstructed access to light. Submissions are due Jan. 26, 2024.
“The Power to Explore Student Challenge is part of NASA’s ongoing efforts to engage students in space exploration and inspire interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This technology has been a gamechanger in our exploration capabilities and we can’t wait to see what students – our future explorers – dream up; the sky isn’t the limit, it’s just the beginning.”……………………………..
The Power to Explore Student Challenge is funded by the NASA Science Mission Directorate’s Radioisotope Power Systems Program Office and managed and administered by Future Engineers under the direction of the NASA Tournament Lab, a part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-seeks-students-to-imagine-nuclear-powered-space-missions/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes #radioactive
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