Nuclear Regulatory Commission Paves Way for Increase in Production in Commercial Reactors of Tritium for Nuclear Weapons
The U.S. no longer has a Department of Defense, as it has become The U.S. War Department. This article shows that the private nuclear industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy are factotums of The U.S. War Department. We need a list of the people who are pro The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and who sent a letter in favor of expanding nuclear power all over the world to mitigate climate change. They completely forgot how India first developed nuclear weapons. One of these amnesiacs is Ernest Moniz, but I’m not sure of the others who schizophrenically hold both views. They need help seeing the contradictions in these mutually exclusive positions. —Jan Boudart, secretary, Nuclear Energy Information Service, NEIS.org
Expansion of Tritium Gas Production for DOE in TVA’s Commercial Nuclear Reactors Undermines Nuclear Non-Proliferation Norms, Keeps U.S. on Nuclear War Footing.
Tom Clements
Savannah River Site Watch COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, US, February 27, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken a big step forward in allowing expansion of production of tritium, a radioactive gas used to boost the explosive power of all U.S. nuclear weapons. Increased tritium production would take place in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar nuclear power reactors, further undermining nuclear nonproliferation norms by allowing continued production of nuclear weapons materials in commercial nuclear power reactors.
The NRC published a notice in the Federal Register on February 23, 20241 that supports the decision to dramatically increase the production of tritium in the Watts Bar units 1 and 2 reactors in Tennessee. The NRC, a civilian regulatory agency, recommends that the licenses for both reactors be amended to allow for an increase in irradiation of special tritium-producing rods from 1,792 to 2,496 for each reactor in a single operating cycle of about 18 months.
The significant increase in irradiation of Tritium Producing Burnable Absorber Roads (TPBARs) in the reactors’ cores would result in production of much greater amounts of tritium, as requested by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for its client, the Department of Defense. According to NNSA’s 2023 “Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan,” the goal is “to reach maximum tritium production in each of the two Watts Bar reactors by FY 2025.”
“Expansion of tritium production for use in all nuclear warheads reveals that the U.S. aims to keep a massive nuclear weapons stockpile far beyond any level of deterrence,” said Tom Clements, director the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch, Columbia South Carolina. “For the sake of global security, the U.S. must adopt a policy to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons and in parallel halt the production of weapons tritium in civilian nuclear reactors,” added Clements. (See sources here linked in SRS Watch news, Feb. 23, 20242.)
he apparent objective with this larger tritium supply is for the NNSA to fill the tritium “reservoirs” in all warheads to maximum capacity, which could be up to around 5 grams of tritium per warhead. This would allow the weapons to operate with greater flexibility, including at their highest explosive yield, thus keeping the U.S. on a footing to “fight” a nuclear war with maximum destructive effect. Russia and China could react to this US decision, possibly stimulating a “tritium race,” underscoring the risks of enduring reliance on nuclear weapons, according to SRS Watch.
The NRC has documented in an “environmental assessment” (EA) that radiation exposure, tritium release into the environment and nuclear waste production would all increase due to the action but has declined preparation of an in-depth “environmental impact statement” (EIS). The NRC claims the impacts are within earlier-considered bounds and has thus issued a “Finding of No Significant Impact” (FONSI) and recommends that a license amendment be issued by the NRC to allow more tritium rods to be irradiated. The NRC declined to review both the proliferation impacts of the decision and the impacts on a brewing nuclear arms race.
Both the EA and FONSI are included in the text of the short Federal Register notice, revealing that an inadequate analysis was conducted of the proposed action of dramatically increasing TPBAR irradiation. According to SRS Watch, an in-depth EIS, with public meetings, should have been prepared, especially given that tritium leakage from TPBAR irradiation has been documented, with diluted tritium-contaminated water being discharged into the Tennessee River from the “tritiated water storage tank with a capacity of 500,000 gallons.”
…………………………………………………………Due to increased tritium production, TPBAR manufacture at the Westinghouse uranium fuel plant near Columbia, SC would also expand. Production in that commercial nuclear facility of TPBARs used to produce tritium for military use exposes the reality that the Westinghouse facility is a dual use military-commercial facility, thus crossing the imaginary line between civilian and military uses of nuclear technology, as documented by SRS Watch in the 2021 report “Crossing the Line: South Carolina Nuclear Weapons Secrets Exposed3.” https://www.einpresswire.com/article-print/691542118/nuclear-regulatory-commission-paves-way-for-increase-in-production-in-commercial-reactors-of-tritium-for-nuclear-weapons?
Aid Wars over Gaza: Resuming Funding to UNRWA
March 12, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/aid-wars-over-gaza-resuming-funding-to-unrwa/
The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling. The lynchpin in the effort was a thin, poison pen dossier making claims that 12 individuals were Hamas operatives who had been involved in the October 7 attacks. Within a matter of days, two internal investigations were commenced, various individuals sacked, and US$450 million worth of funding from donor states suspended.
As the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, explained at a press conference on March 4, he has “never been informed” or received evidence of Israel’s claims substantiating their assertions, though he did receive the prompt about the profane twelve directly from Israeli officials. Every year, both Israel and the Palestinian authorities were furnished with staff lists, “and I never received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”
Had Israeli authorities signed off on these alleged participants in bungling or conspiratorial understanding? Certainly, there was more than a pongy whiff of distraction about it all, given that Israel had come off poorly in The Hague proceedings launched by South Africa, during which the judges issued an interim order demanding an observance of the UN Genocide Convention, an increase of humanitarian aid, and the retention of evidence that might be used for future criminal prosecutions for genocide.
An abrupt wave of initial success in starving the agency followed, with a number of countries announcing plans to freeze funding. In the United States, irate members of Congress accused the agency of having “longstanding connections to terrorism and promotion of antisemitism.” A hearing was duly held titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures” with Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies frothing at an agency that supposedly incited “violence against Israel, subsidizes US-designated terrorist organizations, denies Palestinians their basic human rights, and blocks the pathways to a sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
The attempt to cast UNRWA into gleefully welcomed oblivion has not worked. Questions were asked about the initial figure of twelve alleged militants. News outlets began questioning the numbers.
The funding channels are resuming. Canada, for instance, approving “the robust investigative process underway”, also acknowledged that “more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians.” The initial cancellation of funding to the agency, charged Thomas Woodley, president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, had been “a reckless political decision that never should have been made.”
The Swedish government was also encouraged by undertakings made by UNRWA “to allow independent auditing, strengthen internal supervision and enable additional staff controls”, promising an initial outlay of 200 million kroner (US$19 million).
The Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Johan Forssell, promised that it would “monitor closely to ensure UNRWA follows through on what it has promised.” Aid policy spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, Gudrun Brunegård, also conceded that, given the “huge” needs on the part of the civilian population, that UNRWA was “the organisation that is best positioned to help vulnerable Palestinians.”
Much the same sentiment was expressed by the European Union, with the Commission agreeing to pay 50 million euros to UNRWA from a promised total of 82 million euros on the proviso that EU-appointed experts audit the screening of staff. “This audit,” a European Commission statement explains, “will review the control systems to prevent the possible involvement of its staff and assets in terrorist activities.” Having been found wanting in her screeching about-turn, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU stood “by the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. Innocent Palestinians should not have to pay the price for the crimes of [the] terrorist group Hamas.”
Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was stiffly bureaucratic in expressing satisfaction at “the commitment of UNRWA to introduce robust measures to prevent possible misconduct and minimise the risk of allegations.” At no point was Israel’s own contribution to the calamity, and its insatiable vendetta against the agency, mentioned.
The bombast and blunder of the whole effort by Israel was further discoloured by claims that UNRWA staff had been victims of torture at the hands of the IDF in drafting the dossier. In a statement released by the agency, a grave accusation was levelled: “These forced confessions as a result of torture are being used by the Israeli Authorities to further spread misinformation about the agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA.” In doing so, Israel was “putting our staff at risk and has serious implications on our operations in Gaza and around the region.”
For its part, the IDF, through a statement, claimed that this was all exaggerated piffle: “The mistreatment of detainees during their time in detention or whilst under interrogation violates IDF values and contravenes IDF [sic] and is therefore absolutely prohibited.”
Increasingly on the losing side of that battle, Israeli authorities decided to cook the figures further, declaring with crass confidence that 450 URWA employees in Gaza were members of militant groups including Hamas. Sticking to routine, those making that allegation decided that evidence of such claims was not needed. Those employees, claimed Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, “are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza”. “This was no coincidence. This is systematic. There is no claiming, ‘we did not know’.”
In the fog of war, mendacity thrives with virile vigour; but the current suggestion on the part of various donor states is that the humanitarian incentive to ameliorate the suffering of the Gaza populace has taken precedence over Israel’s persistently lethal efforts. That, at least, is the case with certain countries, leaving the doubters starkly exposed.
Putin warns again that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty is threatened
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 14, 2024
President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence is threatened, issuing another blunt warning to the West just days before an election in which he’s all but certain to secure another six-year term.
The Russian leader has repeatedly talked about his readiness to use nuclear weapons since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The most recent such threat came in his state-of-the-nation address last month, when he warned the West that deepening its involvement in the fighting in Ukraine would risk a nuclear war.
Asked in an interview with Russian state television released early Wednesday if he has ever considered using battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Putin responded that there has been no need for that. He also noted that he doesn’t think that the world is heading for a nuclear war, describing U.S. President Joe Biden as a veteran politician who fully understands the possible dangers of escalation…………………………….
In an apparent reference to NATO allies that support Kyiv, he also declared that “the nations that say they have no red lines regarding Russia should realize that Russia won’t have any red lines regarding them either.”https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-putin-nuclear-weapons-82ced2419d93ae733161b56fbd9b477d
In pre-election messaging, Putin less strident on nuclear war
Japan Times, 14 Mar 24
President Vladimir Putin of Russia took a less strident tone on the possibility of nuclear war in an interview released Wednesday, an apparent attempt to bolster his domestic image as a guarantor of stability before the Russian presidential election this weekend.
In a lengthy interview released by Russian state television, Putin struck a softer tone than in his state-of-the-nation address last month, when he said that the West risked causing the “destruction of civilization” if it intervened more directly in Ukraine. In the interview, Putin described the United States as seeking to avoid such a conflict, even as he warned that Russia was prepared to use nuclear weapons if its “sovereignty and independence” were threatened.
“I don’t think that everything is rushing head-on here,” Putin said when asked whether Washington and Moscow were headed for a showdown. He added that even though the United States was modernizing its nuclear force, “this doesn’t mean, in my view, that they are ready to start this nuclear war tomorrow.”…………………………………………………………………………………………
Asked in the interview released Wednesday whether he had considered using “tactical” nuclear weapons at that point, Putin said that “there was never such a need.”………………………. more https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/14/world/politics/putin-softer-nuclear-tone/
U.S. Sells ‘Link 16’ Battlefield Communications System to Taiwan
22 February 2024
Taipei, February 22 (EFE).- The United States has approved the possible sale of an advanced military data link system upgrade to Taiwan, the first acquisition of this type following Taipei’s January election, the island’s government confirmed Thursday.
In a statement, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it received formal notification from the US government about the possible sale of the Link-16 system to Taiwan for an estimated value of $75 million.
Link-16 is a standardized communications system used by the armed forces of the US and other countries to transmit and exchange real-time tactical data through the use of links between allied military network participants…………………………………….. https://efe.com/en/latest-news/2024-02-22/us-approves-possible-sale-of-advanced-military-data-link-system-to-taiwan/
After Ukraine, US readies ‘transnational kill chain’ for Taiwan proxy war
It effectively prepares Taiwan to be used as the spear tip and trigger of a multinational war offensive against China.
This discussion includes preparations for a nuclear first strike on China.
The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how.
The US plans on using proxies for war against China: Taiwan, Korea, Japan (JAKUS), Philippines, and Australia (AUKUS).
fight could involve a nuclear first strike. Palestine has shown what it will try to get away with: brazen genocide with the whole world watching.
The issue is no longer war or peace in Ukraine. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell sees Ukraine as a “unified field” of war with China. He revels in the possibility of a “magnificent symphony of death” in Asia.
The coda, of course, will be a deafening fermata of silence across the entire planet. Unless we stop this insane march to war.
K.J.Noh, 1 Mar 24, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/03/01/ukraine-us-kill-chain-taiwan-war/
Washington approved the dangerous sale of the Link 16 communications system to Taiwan. This is the final link of what the US military calls a “transnational coalition kill chain” against China, and signals a commitment to kinetic war.
In many traditions, when you paint or sculpt a Buddha, the eyes are the very last to be painted. It’s only after the eyes have been completed that the sculpture is fully alive and empowered.
The United States has approved a $75 million weapons package to Taiwan province, involving the sale of the Link 16 communications system.
The acquisition of Link 16 is analogous to “painting the eyes on the Buddha”: a last touch, it makes Taiwan’s military systems and weapons platforms live and far-seeing.
It confers deadly powers, or more prosaically, in the words of the US military, it completes Taiwan as the final, lethal link of what the US Naval Institute calls a “transnational coalition kill chain”, for war against China.
What exactly is Link 16? It is a key system in the US military communications arsenal. Specifically, it’s the jam-resistant tactical data network for coordinating NATO weapons systems for joint operations in war.
If this sale is completed, it signals serious, granular, and single-minded commitment to kinetic war. It would signal that the Biden administration is as serious and unwavering in its desire to provoke and wage large-scale war with China over Taiwan as it was with Russia over Ukraine, which also saw the implementation of this system.
More important than any single weapons platform, this system allows the Taiwan/ROC military to integrate and coordinate all its warfighting platforms with US, NATO, Japanese, Korean, Australian militaries in combined arms warfare.
The deadliest link
Link 16 would be the deadliest piece of technology yet to be transferred, because it allows sea, air, and land forces to be coordinated with others for lethal effect.
It permits, for example, strategic nuclear/stealth bombers (US B-1B Lancers, B-2 Spirits) to coordinate with electronic warfare and surveillance platforms (EA Growlers, Prowlers, EP-3s), fighters and bombers (F-16,F-22, F-35s) as well as conduct joint arms warfare with US, French, British carrier battle groups, Japanese SDF destroyers, and South Korean Hyun Moo missile destroyers, as well as THAAD and Patriot radars and missile batteries.
It also allows coordination with low-earth orbit satellites and other Space Force assets.
In other words, Link 16 supplies a brain and nervous system to the various deadly limbs and arms that the Taiwan authorities have been acquiring and preparing on the prompting of the US. It ensures interoperability and US control.
It effectively prepares Taiwan to be used as the spear tip and trigger of a multinational war offensive against China.
To give a shoe-on-the-other-foot analogy, this would be like China giving separatists in a US territory or state (e.g. Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Texas) not just arms and training – already a belligerent act of war, which the US is currently doing – but connecting insurgent militaries directly to the PLA’s surveillance, reconnaissance, and command/control systems.
This coordinates and completes, to borrow the words of the US Naval Institute (USNI), the final link in a “transnational coalition kill chain” for war.
Offsetting peace, sowing dragon’s teeth
The current US doctrine of war against China is based on distributed, dispersed, diffused, network-centric warfare to be conducted along the myriad islands of the archipelagic states encircling China in the Pacific.
These are the “island chains” upon which the US has encircled and sown dragon’s teeth: tens of thousands of troops armed with mobile attack platforms and missiles.
This is to be coordinated with subsurface warfare, automated/autonomous warfare, and longer-range stand-off weapons and attacks.
Powerful think tanks like CSBA, CNAS, CSIS, RAND and the Pentagon have been working out the doctrine, details, logistics, and appropriations for this concept intensively for over a decade while advocating intensely for it.
The sale of link 16 to Taiwan realizes and completes a key portion of this, binding the Chinese island as the keystone of this “multinational kill chain”.
This doctrine of dispersion is based on a “rock-paper-scissors” concept that networked diffusion “offsets” (Chinese) precision.
China’s capacity to defend itself and its littoral perimeter with precision missiles can be undermined with diffuse, distributed attacks from all across the island chains.
Note that this diffusion and dispersion of attack platforms across the entire Pacific gives the lie to the claim that this is some inherently deterrent strategy to defend Taiwan island. Diffusion is clearly offensive, designed to overrun and overwhelm defenses: like Ukraine, this is not to deter war, but to enable it.
This thus signals that aggressive total war against China is being prepared, in granular, lethal fashion on tactical and operational levels.
On the strategic level, currently, at the CFR, CNAS, and other influential think tanks in Washington, the talk is all about “protracted warfare” with China, about pre-positioning systems and munitions for war, about ramping up to an industrial war footing for the inescapable necessity of war with China.
This discussion includes preparations for a nuclear first strike on China.
The US senses that the clock is running rapidly down on its power. If war is inevitable, then it is anxious to start war sooner rather than later.
RAND warned in 2016 that 2025 was the outside window for the US to prevail in war with China. The “Minihan window” also hints at 2025. The “Davidson window” is 2027.
The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how.
Link 16 makes “how” easier, and brings “when” closer.
But the US is still engaged in Ukraine. Can it wage a two-front war?
The current administration has hardline Russophobes who want to continue to bleed Russia out in Ukraine. It wants protracted war with Russia. It firmly believes it can wage ambidextrous, multi-front war.
Many US officials also believe that war with Ukraine and war with China are connected. They see Russia and China as a single axis of “revisionist powers” (i.e., official enemies) conspiring against the US to undermine its so-called “rules-based order” (i.e., US hegemony).
Furthermore, if the US abandons Ukraine, this could weaken the Taiwan authorities’ resolve and willingness to wage war on behalf of Washington.
Earlier in the war, when Russian gains in Ukraine were uncertain, Bi-khim Louise Hsiao (Taiwan’s current vice-president elect) gloated publicly and prominently that Ukraine’s victories were a message to China, as well as proof-of-concept of an effective doctrine for waging and winning war against China. As such, the Taiwan authorities were and are a major supporter of the Ukraine proxy war.
But the converse also holds true. Based on the same premise, if the US abandons and loses Ukraine, it sends a clear message to the people on Taiwan island that they will be the next to be used and abandoned; that their US-imposed war and war doctrine (light, distributed, asymmetrical combined arms warfare) for fighting China is a recipe for catastrophic loss.
The US plans on using proxies for war against China: Taiwan, Korea, Japan (JAKUS), Philippines, and Australia (AUKUS). Thus it cannot signal too overtly its perfidious, unreliable, and instrumental mindset.
Washington has to keep up the pretense. It cannot be seen to overtly lose in or abandon Ukraine. It needs a “decent interval”, or a plausible pretext to cut and run.
Still, the US is stretched thin. For example, it is relying on Korean munitions to Ukraine, and South Korea has provided more munitions than all of the EU combined.
Moreover, the US is currently at war with itself. The fracturing of its body politic can only be unified with a common war against a common enemy. Russia is not that enemy for the US. China is. The Republicans want war with China now.
Eli Ratner and Elbridge Colby have been fretting for years about the need to husband weaponry, arms, and munitions in order to wage war against China.
Since the outbreak of Ukraine, Ratner has been working hard to pull India into the US defense industry’s supply chain, and claims to have been successful.
South Korea’s considerable military-industrial complex is being pulled into sub-contracting for US war with China.
Since many of its major Chaebol corporations got their start as subcontractors for the war in Vietnam (for example, Hyundai was a subcontractor for Halliburton/Brown & Root), the Korean economy is simply reverting back to its corporate-martial roots.
South Korea’s economy is currently tanking due to US-forced sanctions on China. Major Korean electronic firms have lost 60 to 80% of their profits due to US-imposed chip sanctions.
Under those conditions, military manufacturing and/or subcontracting looks to be the only way forward.
In this way, the US is forcing a war economy onto its vassals.
The business of the US is war
Continue readingSaying “Hamas Just Needs To Surrender” Is Saying “We’ll Kill Kids Until We Get What We Want”
“It’s heartbreaking,” added Biden, referring to the genocide that he himself is actively backing and could choose to end at any time.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 9, 2024
Of the many awful warmonger comments President Biden made in his State of the Union address Thursday night, arguably the worst was when he reiterated the US empire’s position that it is fine and good for the IDF to keep murdering Gazan civilians until Hamas bows to all of Israel’s demands.
Biden did this by lamenting the “heartbreaking” death and starvation of civilians in Gaza while in the same breath stating that Hamas could end all of this violence by laying down arms and surrendering those responsible for the October 7 attack.
“Israel has a right to go after Hamas,” Biden said. “Hamas ended this conflict by releasing the hostages, laying down arms — could end it by — by releasing the hostages, laying down arms, and surrendering those responsible for October 7th.”
“This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined,” Biden went on to say. “More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands of innocents — women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned. Nearly 2 million more Palestinians under bombardment or displacement. Homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin. Families without food, water, medicine.”
“It’s heartbreaking,” added Biden, referring to the genocide that he himself is actively backing and could choose to end at any time.
(Democrats love babbling about how “heartbreaking” Gaza is. It’s their favorite thing to do. They love nothing more than to weep publicly over the death and starvation and unfathomable human suffering they themselves are directly responsible for, as though it’s some kind of natural disaster and not a US-backed genocide that is only happening because this Democrat-run administration actively facilitates it.)
We don’t talk enough about how horrifyingly evil it is that the actual, stated position of Israel and its immensely powerful allies is that all of the killing and starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is entirely the fault of Hamas, because Hamas has not acquiesced to the military demands made by Israel. In effect, it is saying “We will kill thousands and thousands of children until you give us everything we want.”
I mean, imagine if Russia did that. Imagine if Putin started raining military explosives on parts of Ukraine known to be densely packed with children, and then saying the mass-scale child-killing will continue until Ukraine surrenders and that all of the child deaths are actually the fault of the Ukrainians because they still haven’t given Putin everything he wants.
I think we all know that if such a thing were to happen it would be the subject of worldwide condemnation, and justifiably so. Such a tactic is not meaningfully different from lining up children on their knees on the battlefield and shooting them one by one in the back of the head until the enemy unconditionally surrenders.
They’re not just doing this with airstrikes and bullets — they’re doing it with food as well. Aaron Maté has a new article out titled “The Biden doctrine in Gaza: bomb, starve, deceive” which picks apart statements from White House officials about the temporary pier this administration is planning to build on Gaza’s coast over the next several weeks, ostensibly to allow for the arrival of more aid into the enclave………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Maté explains that Vice President Kamala Harris recently gave a speech in which she said Hamas needs to agree to a hostage deal in order to “get a significant amount of aid in,” which is the same as saying Israel and its allies will help starve Gazan civilians until Hamas capitulates to their demands.
“The very fact that the delivery of ‘a significant amount’ of aid is conditional on Hamas accepting Israeli demands underscores that Israel, with US backing, is using that aid as a tool of coercion,” Maté writes, noting that this directly contradicts Biden’s admonishment to Israeli leaders in his State of the Union address that “Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.”
Washington’s role in the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza makes a lot more sense when you stop looking at it as a reluctant passive witness to Israel’s crimes and begin viewing it as an active participant. US officials will occasionally wag their fingers at the Netanyahu government and act like Israel’s worst atrocities are being carried out against the beneficent humanitarian wishes of the United States, but if you mentally mute all the narrative spin that’s being placed on this thing you just see a giant concentration camp packed full of children being murdered at mass scale by the most powerful empire that has ever existed. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/saying-hamas-just-needs-to-surrender
Israel Accused Of Torturing UN Workers To Obtain False Testimony About UNRWA
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 9, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-accused-of-torturing-un-workers
A recent UNRWA document says its staff report having been tortured while detained by Israeli forces, who pressed them to provide false statements about ties between the agency and Hamas.
“The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members,” Reuters reports, saying UNRWA workers “reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks.”
This is another one of those stories about Israeli offenses that are so stunning that at first you can mistakenly believe you must not be reading it correctly — especially since the western political-media class haven’t been treating it like the jarring news that it is. If we had anything remotely like an objective news media in the western world, reports that Israel tortured United Nations staff to get them to make false statements against a UN aid agency would be the top story everywhere for days.
Many, including myself, speculated that torture was involved in obtaining the Israeli “intelligence” behind initial claims of UNRWA staff involvement in the October 7 attack when this narrative first surfaced back in January. A senior Israeli official told Axios at the time that Israeli intelligence agencies came upon the information about the UNRWA staffers largely through “interrogations of militants who were arrested during the Oct. 7 attack.” Israel has an extensive history of using torture in its interrogations, and there’s no reason to believe such methods haven’t been used on captured Hamas fighters in recent months — but reports that it was actual UN staff being tortured are something new.
We may be certain that if it was Hamas being accused of torturing workers for international aid agencies in order to extract false confessions, we’d never hear the end of it. To this day unsubstantiated rumors of mass systemic sexual violence on October 7 continue to dominate the headlines resulting in scandalous instances of journalistic malpractice, despite the Israeli spinmeisters behind those reports having a much worse track record than UNRWA in the truth-telling department and UNRWA standing much less to gain than Israel by lying.
But that’s what the information ecosystem looks like in the shadow of the empire. The flimsiest allegations against enemies of the US-centralized power alliance are spun as gospel truth and kept in the headlines for months, while even the most damning evidence against the empire never gets anything better than a cursory nod from the mass media and is then promptly memory-holed as the daily news churn moves on.
Biden is building for Israel a super weapon to replace the Iron Dome
U.S. Department of Defense
Contracts For Feb. 10, 2023
MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY
InTSI LLC,* a Joint Venture, Huntsville, Alabama, is being awarded a competitive, cost-plus-fixed-fee, level-of-effort contract with a total value of $637,123,220. Under this new contract, the contractor will support the layered Missile Defense System (MDS) and help advance concepts for future MDS inclusion.
Activities will include supporting the government with: threat systems engineering; advanced technology; directed energy; hypersonic defense engineering; space systems engineering; U.S-Israeli Cooperative Program engineering; cybersecurity systems engineering; test analyses and reporting; lethality, hit assessment/kill assessment, and collateral effects and consequence management; and, concurrent test, training, and operations engineering.
The work will be performed at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama; Fort Belvoir, Virginia; Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico; Tel Aviv, Israel; and Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado. The performance period is from February 2023 to August 2030. This contract was competitively procured via publication on the SAM.gov website with two proposals received. Fiscal 2023 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $8,302,098.15 are being obligated at time of award. The Missile Defense Agency, Huntsville, Alabama, is the contracting activity (HQ0858-23-C-0001).
Why the EU could be the biggest loser from the Ukraine conflict
SOTT, Fyodor Lukyanov, RTSat, 09 Mar 2024 , https://www.sott.net/article/489640-Fyodor-Lukyanov-Why-the-EU-could-be-the-biggest-loser-from-the-Ukraine-conflict
As alarms bells ring in the West, Emmanuel Macron’s talk of NATO troops in Ukraine reflects a fear of failure
French President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged that the Fifth Republic will not send its troops to Ukraine in the near future. Earlier, he had stated that Western leaders had discussed the issue but failed to reach an agreement.
The evolution of the Ukraine crisis has had paradoxical consequences. Two years since the most acute phase began, Western Europe has found itself at the spearhead of the confrontation. Not only in terms of the costs it has incurred – which have been discussed from the very beginning. Now the possibility of a military conflict with Russia is being raised much more loudly in the Old World than on the other side of the Atlantic, and France is the instigator. Macron’s statement on the possibility of sending NATO troops into the war zone seemed spontaneous to many. But a week later, Paris insisted it was deliberate and well thought-out.
…………………………………………It seems that previously the constant incantation was to prevent NATO from being drawn into a direct, nuclear conflict with Russia. And now, suddenly, Paris is talking about “strategic ambiguity,” about a cunning game to confuse Russian President Vladimir Putin and make him afraid to take decisions because of possible irreversible consequences. Let him be afraid of the next steps, not us.
This is not yet being repeated in other major capitals, but a group of countries ready to cross swords with Moscow is beginning to take shape.………………………………
Western European ambiguity is likely to mean stepping up the substantial military assistance to Ukraine without announcing it, but also without hiding the growing signs. The risks are considerable because there is no reason to believe that Russia would somehow refrain from responding if it saw reason to do so.
The fear of Russia is not new in Western Europe, and is in its own way historically very sincere, so we should not write it off. All the more so because, after the Cold War, Europe collectively believed we could forget the previous problems with a clear conscience. But here we are again.
However, we dare to suggest that the current Western European reaction and the escalation of the Russian threat are also linked to another factor: the realisation that it is the EU that could be the main loser in the ongoing conflict. The gap between the demands of the population and the priorities of the political class is widening, according to opinion polls. Added to that, it’s unclear what to expect from the senior partner over in Washington. It turns out that ambiguity is everywhere, and there is nothing left but to make it the core of one’s policy. And insist on it.
On the eve of the Russian presidential election, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov invited EU ambassadors to a meeting, but they refused.
Comment: It appears as if Europe hasn’t learned important lessons of history which seriously puts us all in danger. It is clear though that the European leaders are making these decisions without consulting the people in their countries who are more interested in the domestic problems within EU. As always, war and/or the fear of war in a climate of engineered hysteria works wonders in distracting people towards an enemy ‘out there’ and thus protecting the real enemy ‘inside’.
See also:
Coalition Kill Chain for the Pacific: Lessons from Ukraine
U.S. Naval Institute, By Majors Dylan Buck and Steven Stansbury, U.S. Marine Corps, July 2023
Proceedings Vol. 149/7/1,445
Russia’s war in Ukraine offers a critical case study on why—and how—to build a more robust kill chain that leverages partners’ and allies’ capabilities. A more expansive satellite communications (SATCOM) network that enables a real-time integrated common operational picture (COP) will be necessary to generate the relative combat power advantage over the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Russia initiated combat operations in Ukraine with cyberattacks on SATCOM to disrupt Ukraine’s kill chain—the methodology for finding, fixing, targeting, tracking, engaging, and assessing (F2T2EA) an adversarial objective.
Ukraine’s kill chain—the methodology for finding, fixing, targeting, tracking, engaging, and assessing (F2T2EA) an adversarial objective. The United States, alongside partners, allies, and industry, was able to blunt Russia’s invasion by reconstructing Ukraine’s SATCOM network and sharing critical intelligence. However, the kill chain architecture leveraged against Russia does not exist in the first island chain of the western Pacific.
…………… To achieve the capability required to deter the PLA, the Department of Defense (DOD) must further develop SATCOM architecture in the first island chain and expand partners and allies’ access to the COP to build a coalition kill chain that can mass fires.
……….. the United States had to create more permissive policy for intelligence sharing for more effective targeting. Furthermore, kill chains in the Pacific are more dependent on SATCOM as submarine internet cables are more vulnerable and likely already compromised by China.
……. First, to enhance U.S. SATCOM architecture, the DoD could begin to supplement geosynchronous orbit satellites by proliferating low-earth-orbit and medium-earth-orbit satellites. This would reduce vulnerabilities related to adversarial space operations and expand SATCOM range and resiliency. SpaceX’s Starlink functions off the same principle of a mesh networks of low-earth-orbit satellites.
Second, the United States could use partner and allies’ satellite networks and make policy more permissive with intelligence sharing. In March 2022, the Department of Defense announced its Joint All-Domain Command and Control Implementation Plan with the 5th line of effort to “Modernize Mission Partner Information Sharing.” The intent is to enhance the ability to integrate partner and allies’ data for all-domain coalition operations. After all, the value in integrating systems is only as good as the real-time tracks being shared. To build a coalition kill chain, U.S. policy will have to become more permissive with intelligence sharing among partners and allies.
Structure of the Multinational Kill Chain
The United States will also need to create a methodology for building a multinational COP and integrated fires network. Tactical-level forces across the partner and ally network must evolve to contribute more to operational and strategic-level fires and effects. This effort is twofold: first, the joint force could expand partners and allies’ access to Type-1 Link-16 cryptography, so they are built into the operational tasking link; and second, it could reduce constraints on protocols and pathways for sharing information.
The first effort would integrate partners and allies into the tactical data link router used by the U.S. joint force, also known as the Joint Range Extension Applications Protocol. This would require access to the joint Link 16 architecture by assigning partners and allies a cryptographic variable logic label via an operational tasking data link (OPTASK LINK). Access to the Link 16 architecture would provide a shared COP capable of integrating national technical means for finding and fixing targets and cuing assets to track them.
……………………………………………Once the multilateral kill chain is built, it must be rehearsed with common understanding of joint war-at-sea terminology among partners and allies. War-at-sea, zones of action, and zones of fire must be standardized in planning to achieve a common lexicon. The Global Area Reference System is also key to orientation and understanding the battlespace. Rehearsing multilateral plans for fire, specifically including protocols for authorities, and collaborating on battle damage assessments are necessary to achieve true integration………………………………………………….. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/july/coalition-kill-chain-pacific-lessons-ukraine
Ralph Nader: Stop the Worsening Undercount of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza
By Ralph Nader, March 5, 2024
Since the Hamas raid penetrated the multi-tiered Israeli border security on October 7, 2023 (an unexplained collapse of Israel’s defensive capabilities), 2.3 million utterly defenseless Palestinians in the tiny crowded Gaza enclave have been on the receiving end of over 65,000 bombs/missiles plus non-stop tank shelling and snipers.
The extreme right-wing Netanyahu regime has enforced its declared siege of, in its genocidal words, “no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, no medicine.”
The relentless bombing has destroyed apartment buildings, marketplaces, refugee camps, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, roads, electricity networks, critical water mains – just about everything.
The U.S.-equipped Israeli war machine has even uprooted agricultural fields, including thousands of olive trees on one farm, bulldozed many cemeteries and bombed civilians fleeing on Israeli orders, while obstructing the few trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt.
With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With five thousand babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted.
Netanyahu and Hamas, which he helped over the years, have a common interest in lowballing the death/injury toll. But for different reasons. Hamas keeps the figures low to reduce being accused by its own people of not protecting them, and not building shelters. Hamas grossly underestimated the savage war crimes by the vengeful, occupying Israeli military superpower fully and unconditionally backed by the U.S. military superpower.
The Health Ministry is intentionally conservative, citing that its death toll came from reports only of named deceased by hospitals and morgues. But as the weeks turned into months, blasted, disabled hospitals and morgues cannot keep up with the bodies, or cannot count those slain laying on roadsides in allies and beneath building debris. Yet the Health Ministry remains conservative and the “official,” rising civilian fatality and injury count continues to be uncritically reported by both friend and foe of this devastating Israeli state terrorism.
It was especially astonishing to see the most progressive groups and writers routinely use the same Hamas Health Ministry figures as did the governments and outside groups backing the one-sided war on Gaza. All this despite predictions of a human catastrophe in the Gaza Strip almost every day since October 7, 2023, by arms of the United Nations, other besieged international relief agencies on the ground, eyewitness accounts by medical personnel, and many Israeli human rights groups and brave local journalists in that Strip, the geographic size of Philadelphia. (Unguided Western and Israeli reporters and journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza by the Israeli government.) (See the open letter titled, “Stop the Humanitarian Catastrophe” to President Biden on December 13, 2023, by 16 Israeli human rights groups that also appeared as a paid notice in the New York Times.)
Then came the December 29, 2023, opinion piece in The Guardian by the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Devi Sridhar. She predicted half a million deaths in 2024 if conditions continue unabated. (See her piece here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/29/health-organisations-disease-gaza-population-outbreaks-conflict).
In recent days, the situation has become more dire. In the March 2, 2024, Washington Post, reporter, Ishaan Tharoor writes: “The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known. Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis. Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid.”
Tharoor quotes Jan Egeland, chief of the Norwegian Refugee Council: “We must be clear: civilians in Gaza are falling sick from hunger and thirst because of Israel’s entry restrictions.” “Life-saving supplies are being intentionally blocked, and women and children are paying the price.”
Martin Griffiths, the United Nations lead humanitarian officer, said “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, according to the Post, warned of an “‘unknown number of people’ – believed to be in the tens of thousands – lying under the rubble of buildings brought down by Israeli strikes.”
Volker Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said “All people in Gaza are at imminent risk of famine. Almost all are drinking salty and contaminated water. Health care across the territory is barely functioning.” “Just imagine what this means for the wounded, and people suffering infectious-disease outbreaks. …many are already believed to be starving.” UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, the Palestinian Red Crescent, and Doctors Without Borders are all relating that the same catastrophic conditions are getting worse fast.
Yet, and get this, in this article, the Post still stuck with the “more than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the ongoing war began.”
Just like the entire mass media, many governments, even the independent media and critics of the war would have us accept that between 98% and 99% of Gaza’s entire population has survived – albeit the sick, injured and more Palestinians about to die. This is lethally improbable!
From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.
Imagine Americans, if this powerful U.S.-made weaponry was fired on the besieged, homeless, trapped people of Philadelphia, do you think that only 30,000 of that city’s 1.5 million people would have been killed?
Daily circumstantial evidence of the deliberate Israeli targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructures requires more reliable epidemiological estimates of casualties.
It matters greatly whether the aggregate toll so far, and counting, is three, four, five, six times more than the Health Ministry’s undercount. It matters for elevating the urgency for a permanent ceasefire, and direct and massive humanitarian aid by the U.S. and other countries, bypassing the sadistic cruelty against innocent families of the Israeli siege. It matters for the columnists and editorial writers who have been self-censoring themselves, with some, like the Post’s Charles Lane fictionally claiming that Israel’s military doesn’t “intentionally target civilians.” It matters for accountability under international law.
Above all, it lets weak Secretary of State Antony Blinken and duplicitous President Joe Biden be less servile when Netanyahu dismisses the low death toll by taunting them: what about Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
As a percentage of the total population being killed, Gaza can expose the Israeli ruling racist extremists to a stronger rebuttal for ending U.S. co-belligerent complicity in this never-to-be-forgotten slaughter of mostly children and women. (The terrifying PTSD on civilians, especially children will continue for years.)
Respecting the more accurate casualty toll of Palestinian children, mothers and fathers presses harder for permanent ceasefires and the process of recovery and reparations for the survivors of their Holocaust.
The Biden doctrine in Gaza: bomb, starve, conceal, deceive
The White House unveils a new PR stunt for Gaza aid while hiding US arms transfers to Israel.
AARON MATÉ, MAR 9, 2024
At his State of the Union address Thursday night, President Biden announced that the US military will install a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver emergency aid to the besieged enclave, where more than 2.2 million Palestinians face a humanitarian crisis, including starvation. The pier, which will take weeks if not months to complete, will be built by US soldiers.
The US, Biden claimed, “has been leading international efforts to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza” and believes that “protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.”
In reality, the emergency project underscores Biden’s real priority: to prolong Israel’s rampage in Gaza, the US is even willing to deploy its own military for face-saving public relations stunts.
With criticism of Biden’s Gaza complicity increasing inside the Democratic Party, and threatening him at the ballot box, the pier is the latest in a series of token gestures aimed at feigning concern for Gazans while providing unfettered support to the Israeli government that is indiscriminately attacking them.
The White House has carried out air drops over Gaza that amount to a few trucks’ worth of aid – compared to the thousands of trucks that Israel is blocking with US support. “The food, water, and medical supplies so desperately needed by people in Gaza are sitting just across the border,” Doctors Without Border said Friday. “Israel needs to facilitate rather than block the flow of supplies.”
Even those trucks that can enter Gaza have been unable to make safe deliveries after Israel attacked their Hamas police escorts and crowds of desperate civilians lining up to receive aid. One air drop has even killed five Palestinian civilians and wounded others when a parachute failed to open.
The US military pier, Biden claimed, “will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.” His own aides acknowledge that this is a ruse. According to the Washington Post, administration officials quietly concede that “only by securing the opening of additional land crossings would there be enough aid to prevent famine.” And given that the pier will take at minimum 30 days to complete, that “[raises] questions about how famine in Gaza will be staved off in the critical days ahead,” the New York Times notes.
The White House has given the answer: rather than compel Israel to open those land crossings and prevent famine, it is instead adopting the Israeli position that the land crossings can be used as a tool of leverage against Hamas — and that Israel can control everything that gets in. In ceasefire talks, Israel has demanded that Hamas release hostages in exchange for, at best, a six-week pause to the massacre………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
it would be incongruent for the Biden administrating to publicly rebuke the Israeli government while privately rushing it weapons to help exterminate the Gazan “animals.”
Which explains why, five months into Israel’s genocidal campaign, the White House’s empty gestures have extended beyond mere empty words to costly, empty stunts by sea and air. https://www.aaronmate.net/p/the-biden-doctrine-in-gaza-bomb-starve?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=100118&post_id=142435082&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
F-35A aeroplanes officially certified to carry thermonuclear bomb
The designation marks the first time that a stealth fighter can carry a nuclear weapon, in this case the B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb.
Breaking DEFENSE, By MICHAEL MARROW, March 08, 2024
WASHINGTON — The F-35A Joint Strike Fighter has been operationally certified to carry the B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb, a spokesman for the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) tells Breaking Defense.
In a statement, JPO spokesman Russ Goemaere said the certification was achieved Oct. 12, months ahead of a pledge to NATO allies that the process would wrap by January 2024. Certain F-35As will now be capable of carrying the B61-12, officially making the stealth fighter a “dual-capable” aircraft that can carry both conventional and nuclear weapons.
“The F-35A is the first 5th generation nuclear capable aircraft ever, and the first new platform (fighter or bomber) to achieve this status since the early 1990s. This F-35 Nuclear Certification effort culminates 10+ years of intense effort across the nuclear enterprise, which consists of 16 different government and industry stakeholders,” Goemaere said. “The F-35A achieved Nuclear Certification ahead of schedule, providing US and NATO with a critical capability that supports US extended deterrence commitments earlier than anticipated.”
Responding to follow-up questions from Breaking Defense, Goemaere said US disclosure policy prohibits the release of information on dual-capable aircraft among NATO partners. According to analysis by the Federation of American Scientists, as of 2023 approximately 100 older variants of B61 bombs are housed by NATO allies Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, who share the alliance’s nuclear strike mission. The first four nations are all planned F-35 operators, with the need to have a nuclear-capable aircraft a key reason for Germany signing onto the program.
The F-35A is certified to only carry the newer B61-12 variant, which will replace the older models………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, noted the announcement is another milestone in America’s ongoing nuclear modernization effort.
“The stage is set for the tactical nuclear weapons upgrade in Europe with full-scale production of the B61-12 and four NATO allies and the US fighter wing at Lakenheath upgrading to operate the bomb on the F-35A,” he said……………….. more https://breakingdefense.com/2024/03/exclusive-f-35a-officially-certified-to-carry-nuclear-bomb/—
Plutonium pit ‘panic’ threatens America’s nuclear ambitions
The Hill, BY BRAD DRESS – 03/06/24
This is the second story in a series about Sentinel, the Air Force’s nuclear missile modernization project. Other stories touch on the challenges in the surrounding communities near Sentinel construction and with the Air Force’s budget issues.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the U.S. built its first nuclear bomb, work on a key component of the next generation of nuclear missiles is already underway.
Workers have begun laying the groundwork for the first production later this year of plutonium “pits” — hollow spheres the size of a half grapefruit, made from the rare chemical element. They fit inside a warhead and create a nuclear explosion when compressed by explosives.
These pits are crucial: As a source of nuclear fuel, they will transform the Air Force’s new, modernized nuclear missiles, called Sentinel, into weapons of mass destruction. Sentinel is scheduled to be fielded in the Western rural U.S. in the 2030s, though that is likely to be delayed.
The pit work will first unfold at the nation’s only fully operational plutonium pit production facility, the Plutonium Facility at Technical Area 55, in a building known as PF-4 at Los Alamos.
Overseeing the production is the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is pushing to get Los Alamos whirring to life this year to start making plutonium pits, with the hopes of eventually producing 30 per year at the site. The agency also plans to open a brand-new plutonium pit production plant in South Carolina, known as the Savannah River site, to meet an ultimate target goal of 80 pits a year.
But the NNSA hasn’t done large-scale pit production since the early 1990s, creating unease about restarting the process after decades of inactivity. And the agency is plagued by schedule delays, workforce challenges and budget concerns.
Sébastien Philippe, a research scientist at Princeton University who has closely tracked the Sentinel project, said the NNSA is struggling to meet its goals and raised concerns about the lack of a specific cost estimate for pit production.
“At this point, the deadline keeps moving, and the cost keeps growing,” he said.
The pit production is part of a U.S. scramble to modernize its entire triad after delaying such efforts for years due to the war on terrorism. The total modernizing effort is expected to exceed more than a trillion dollars.
Washington will replace its aging Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and build new submarines and bomber planes capable of carrying nuclear weapons, with the latest 10-year projection cost putting the modernization effort at $750 billion……………………………………………………………..
The NNSA pit production effort has been flagged for several years by a government watchdog group, the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO in a 2020 report said history has “cast doubt on NNSA’s ability to produce the required number of plutonium weapon cores on schedule.”
“We found NNSA’s plans for re-establishing pit production do not follow best practices and run the risk of cost increases and delays,” GAO said in an updated report last year. “The re-establishment of pit production capabilities is one of the most complex and potentially costly efforts presently operated by NNSA.”
The NNSA budget for pit production proposed in Congress for the next fiscal year is around $3 billion. The overall NNSA budget is expected to be boosted by 8 percent to $24 billion, based on congressional budget documents.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, grilled NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby in a 2022 hearing over budget and schedule concerns………………….
n last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law in December, lawmakers inserted several amendments due to concern about NNSA’s work.
Congress noted that reports have flagged the management and oversight of the plutonium modernization program with “serious deficiencies,” and required the NNSA to develop a master schedule and a life-cycle cost estimate. ……………………………………………………..
NNSA facing workforce challenges, lawsuit
…………………………………………………………..With the NNSA restarting pit production after so long, others are concerned about the potential for contamination and leakage from the hazardous practice.
Rocky Flats looms large over the debate. In 1957 and 1969, fires broke out at the facility and nearly created an environmental catastrophe on par with the meltdown in Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant.
The site was also known to have leaked barrels of radioactive waste into nearby fields. The FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency raided Rocky Flats in 1989 over environmental concerns.
The facility stopped production in 1992 and officially shut down in 1994. The Department of Energy took 10 years to clean up the area, which was designated as a hazardous waste site.
And Los Alamos itself has shut down in the past, from 2013-16, over safety concerns at PF-4.
The shaky history has spurred concerns in the communities around Los Alamos, where the “downwinders” — those who were affected by the winds carrying radioactivity after the Trinity test — have long kept a critical eye on NNSA operations.
As part of the new pit production, remaining plutonium after conversion to a new pit will be stored as waste. That waste will be sent to a disposal plant in Carlsbad, N.M.
Los Alamos said the facility has upgraded fire suppression systems and checked nuclear containers to ensure safety in case of an accident. Additionally, plutonium pits are handled inside of sealed compartments, which technicians insert gloves into to prevent harmful exposure.
But Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, wasn’t convinced the safety measures were sufficient.
“Los Alamos has a very checkered nuclear safety track record,” he said, and “production always causes more contamination and more radioactive waste.”
Coghlan sued the NNSA in 2021 for violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires an environmental review and public input for government projects. He said the NNSA has not conducted a robust town hall or environmental review on the pit production.
“That is not just a paper document. It requires public hearings. It requires NNSA to essentially make its case,” he said. “It requires NNSA to respond to public comment.”……………………………………
Questions linger over Savannah River
At the Savannah River site in South Carolina, the NNSA will have to start up a facility that has never produced plutonium pits……………………………………………………………
The new Savannah site is only half-designed and is estimated to finish construction sometime between 2032 and 2035 — missing the goal of the Air Force, which wants to field its 400 Sentinel missiles in 2030.
At the same time, the budget for the site to complete construction has ballooned from about $3 billion in 2017 to an estimated cost of $11 billion.
Von Hippel, the nuclear policy scientist, and Curtis Asplund, an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy at San José State University, said it would be better to focus on small-scale pit production at Los Alamos first.
“Trying to build a second pit production facility at the Savannah River Site in a building designed for another purpose while simultaneously re-equipping Los Alamos’s plutonium facility and crowding it with hundreds of trainees for both facilities is a prescription for a fiasco,” they wrote in an opinion last year………………………………………………….
With the challenges facing the NNSA, critics question if the pits are even needed, given the tens of thousands made during the Cold War period. The pits used today are about 40 years old, and while around 100 years is considered the end of a pit’s life, that’s a best guess…………………………………………….. more https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4510010-plutonium-pits-us-nuclear-ambitions-sentinel/
1 This Month
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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