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NFLA submarine champion raises concerns over Clyde Tritium contamination

NFLA sub champion raises concerns over Clyde Tritium contamination

The Nuclear Free Local Authorities have written to the Defence Secretary and the Head of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency over recent revelations that radioactive tritium discharges from nuclear subs operating in the Clyde are on the increase.


Investigative journalist Rob Edwards recently published the damning findings in award-winning paper The Ferret[i]. The latest data from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s Scottish Pollution Release Inventory[ii] shows that emissions of the radioactive gas, tritium, from military nuclear operations on the Clyde into the air and sea have more than doubled over the last six years.

His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde in Scotland is home to the Royal Navy’s Submarine Service. When not at sea on patrol, the navy’s four Vanguard and five Astute nuclear powered submarines are berthed at Faslane. Whilst Astute are conventionally armed submarines, the Vanguards are each equipped with Trident missiles with nuclear warheads deployed on a rotational basis as a so-called ‘continuous-at-sea deterrent’.

Eight miles from Faslane across the Gare Loch at Coulport is the shore facility where the missiles and warheads are stored. These are fitted or removed from the submarines at an explosive handling jetty, with warheads being periodically and controversially taken by road convoys to and from Aldermaston for maintenance.

21st November 2024

NFLA sub champion raises concerns over Clyde Tritium contamination

The Nuclear Free Local Authorities have written to the Defence Secretary and the Head of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency over recent revelations that radioactive tritium discharges from nuclear subs operating in the Clyde are on the increase.

Investigative journalist Rob Edwards recently published the damning findings in award-winning paper The Ferret[i]. The latest data from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s Scottish Pollution Release Inventory[ii] shows that emissions of the radioactive gas, tritium, from military nuclear operations on the Clyde into the air and sea have more than doubled over the last six years.

His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde in Scotland is home to the Royal Navy’s Submarine Service. When not at sea on patrol, the navy’s four Vanguard and five Astute nuclear powered submarines are berthed at Faslane. Whilst Astute are conventionally armed submarines, the Vanguards are each equipped with Trident missiles with nuclear warheads deployed on a rotational basis as a so-called ‘continuous-at-sea deterrent’.

Eight miles from Faslane across the Gare Loch at Coulport is the shore facility where the missiles and warheads are stored. These are fitted or removed from the submarines at an explosive handling jetty, with warheads being periodically and controversially taken by road convoys to and from Aldermaston for maintenance.

Emissions of radioactive tritium from the associated Royal Naval Armaments Depot on Loch Long into the air have risen steadily from 1,770 megabequerels (MBq) in 2018 to 4,224 MBq in 2023, whilst the Faslane base discharged over 50,000 MBq of tritium contaminated effluents into the Clyde between 2018 and 2023; this peaked at 16,609 MBq in 2020.

The NFLAs have always been concerned about the long-term impact on human and marine animal health of exposure to radioactive contamination, and have repeatedly challenged the practice by military and civil nuclear authorities of discharges into the air, land and watercourses.

Discharges of tritium are an especial concern. Tritium has been found in sewage, waste and ballast water expelled by the submarines. It is also found in reactors and is an essential component of nuclear warheads. The Vanguard submarines are very old and their crews are being stretched by testing patrols which are getting longer. Old boats are more likely to leak and tired crews are more likely to make mistakes.

Dr Ian Fairlie, an expert on radioactivity in the environment, who has previously advised the UK government, told The Ferret that he found the emissions “worrying”. Dr Fairlie explained why: “First, they are large, more than four billion becquerels per year; second, they are steadily increasing; and third, they are of tritium – which is very hazardous when it’s inhaled or ingested” .

Whilst much of our recent attention has been focused on pushing back against the practices of discharges at Dounreay, Sellafield and Trawsfynydd, the NFLAs’ Spokesperson on Nuclear Submarine issues, Councillor Brian Goodall has used Rob’s revelations to write to Labour’s Defence Secretary, John Healey, and the Chief Executive of the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Nicole Paterson with his questions and concerns.

Most specifically, Councillor Goodall is seeking clarification of the reasons for the increase in tritium discharges and also the steps being taken by the Ministry of Defence to reduce them and – given our previous criticism of the agency’s oversight at Dounreay – by the SEPA to monitor them. 

November 23, 2024 Posted by | radiation, UK | Leave a comment

Hunterston B decommissioning approved

 The UK Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has granted consent to EDF
Energy’s application to start decommissioning the Hunterston B nuclear
power station. This follows a public consultation and a detailed assessment
by ONR specialist inspectors of EDF’s environmental statement.

The
statement included a detailed environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the
proposed decommissioning project at the North Ayrshire site in Scotland,
along with mitigation measures designed to prevent or reduce any
significant adverse environmental impacts.

The EIA identified two
significant impacts during decommissioning: temporary adverse visual impact
of dismantling activities of the power station for local residents and the
socioeconomic effects on the regional employment market and workers at
Hunterston B released from their roles during phases of the project. ONR
said it is satisfied that the environmental statement proposes adequate
mitigation measures to address these factors and considers the statement to
be complete, of the right quality, and in line with relevant good
practices.

 Nuclear Engineering International 19th Nov 2024 https://www.neimagazine.com/news/hunterston-b-decommissioning-approved/

November 23, 2024 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

On Way Out, Reckless Biden Allows Deep Russia Strikes

Biden staked his legacy on Ukraine. He was involved in the 2014 coup, in allegedly shady practices there with his son and then in provoking Russia to invade in 2022. He foolishly believed he would prevail in bringing down Putin with an economic, information and proxy ground war.  [See: Biden Confirms Why the US Needed This War]

All three are now decisively lost as the U.S. — still under Biden — prepares for the end game. Biden’s only face saver is for Ukraine to get back some of its lost territory by trading for it with Russian territory it seized in Kursk this summer. 

November 17, 2024 By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2024/11/17/on-way-out-reckless-biden-allows-deep-russia-strikes/

With his party decisively beat at the polls, the rejected president is gambling with regional security to preserve his ‘legacy’ and to saddle the incoming president, who wants to end the war, with a major new crisis, writes Joe Lauria.

As a parting shot to incoming U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the defeated Joe Biden has defied the Pentagon by risking European and U.S. security with his decision announced Sunday to allow Ukraine to fire U.S. long-range missiles into Russian territory. 

Just two months ago, in September, Biden had bowed to the realists in the Pentagon to oppose allowing long-range British Storm Shadow missiles from being fired by Ukraine deep into Russia out of fear it would lead to a direct NATO-Russia military confrontation with all that that entails.

Putin warned at the time in that British soldiers on the ground in Ukraine launching the British missiles into Russia with U.S. geostrategic support “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.” 

That was a clear warning that British and U.S. targets could be hit. Biden thus wisely backed off. 

It was the second time that Biden had sided with the Pentagon against the neocons in his administration when it came to avoiding direct war with Russia.

The first time was in March 2022 when his neocon Secretary of State Antony Blinken stepped out of line to announce that the U.S. would give NATO-member Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to enforce a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft.  

Members of Congress and the media then piled the pressure on Biden to approve it until cooler heads at the U.S. Defense Department, the greatest purveyor of violence in history, stepped in to stop it.

Biden ultimately sided with the Pentagon, and he couldn’t be more explicit why. He opposed a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine fighting Russian aircraft, he said, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the time backed him up, saying:

“President Biden’s been clear that U.S. troops won’t fight Russia in Ukraine, and if you establish a no-fly zone, certainly in order to enforce that no-fly zone, you’ll have to engage Russian aircraft. And again, that would put us at war with Russia.”

But now Biden has reversed himself on his sensible positions and is defying the Pentagon to roll the dice that Russia’s warnings, repeated on Monday by Putin’s spokesman, won’t lead to nuclear conflict. 

While he previously would not even authorize British long-range missile attacks into Russia in September, let alone U.S. ATACMS, on Sunday he authorized the ATACMS, risking Russia taking direct action against U.S. targets.

So what changed Biden’s addled mind? 

An Undemocratic Democratic System  

First, the undemocratic U.S. electoral system gave Biden the opportunity. His party was voted out of office on Nov. 5,  but though the demos rejected Democrats in the White House they get to hang on in power for another 11 weeks, enough time to do considerable mischief to tie up the incoming administration that the people chose. (In a parliamentary system the new prime minister takes office on the next day and names the new cabinet well in advance of the election).

After one-term president George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in the 1992 election, Bush used those 11 weeks to invade Somalia, saddling Clinton with a foreign policy crisis that would bog him down and distract him from his agenda. 

What’s happening now is something similar. Biden wants to undermine Trump’s effort to end the Ukraine war. The incoming vice president has floated the idea of Russia holding on to territory it has won in exchange for peace.

Biden staked his legacy on Ukraine. He was involved in the 2014 coup, in allegedly shady practices there with his son and then in provoking Russia to invade in 2022. He foolishly believed he would prevail in bringing down Putin with an economic, information and proxy ground war.  [See: Biden Confirms Why the US Needed This War]

All three are now decisively lost as the U.S. — still under Biden — prepares for the end game. Biden’s only face saver is for Ukraine to get back some of its lost territory by trading for it with Russian territory it seized in Kursk this summer. 

So he is authorizing U.S. soldiers to operate ATACMS missiles from Ukraine to beat back a 50,000-man Russian force seeking to take back all of that Russian territory. Part of that force, according to the Pentagon spokesman, is a contingent of at least 10,000 North Korean troops invited by Moscow, thus operating legally on pre-war Russian territory. 

Yet the presence of these North Koreans has sent the Biden administration and its allied media into paroxysms of near insanity.  The New York Times reported on Sunday:

“Officials said Mr. Biden was persuaded to make the change in part by the sheer audacity of Russia’s decision to throw North Korean troops at Ukrainian lines. He was also swayed, they said, by concerns that the Russian assault force would be able to overwhelm Ukrainian troops in Kursk if they were not allowed to defend themselves with long-range weapons.”

It is not like Biden doesn’t know the potentially grave consequences he is recklessly unleashing.  He was already warned about the no-fly zone and said “that’s called World War III, okay?” He was then warned by the Pentagon against allowing the British missiles and acted like a responsible statesman.

But now, when it comes to his precious legacy, he doesn’t appear to give a damn about anything else. He was deprived of a second term (by traitors within his own party he no doubt thinks) and he will risk a NATO-Russia war to avoid the taint of utter defeat in Ukraine. 

This is what he’s ignoring, according to the Times:

“Some of Mr. Biden’s advisers had seized on a recent U.S. intelligence assessment that warned that Mr. Putin could respond to the use of long-range ATACMS on Russian soil by directing the Russian military or its spy agencies to retaliate, potentially with lethal force, against the United States and its European allies.

The assessment warned of several possible Russian responses that included stepped-up acts of arson and sabotage targeting facilities in Europe, as well as potentially lethal attacks on U.S. and European military bases.”

Where it goes from there, nobody knows. Thanks, Joe.

November 22, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

NY Times killed investigation of Israeli hooligans, internal email reveals

Asa Winstanley Media Watch 18 November 2024,  https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/ny-times-killed-investigation-israeli-hooligans-internal-email-reveals

The New York Times has killed an investigation by one of its own reporters into Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam earlier this month.

In an internal Times email inadvertently shared with The Electronic Intifada, Dutch reporter Christiaan Triebert explained to a manager that he had pitched “a visual investigation I was conducting into the events of [6-8 November] in Amsterdam.”

“Unfortunately, that story was killed,” he wrote. “I regret that the planned moment-by-moment visual investigation was not further pursued.”

“This has been very frustrating, to say the least,” Triebert wrote.

The email was addressed to senior Times manager Charlie Stadtlander – a former senior press officer for the US National Security Agency and for the US army.

Triebert appeared interested in carrying out reporting that would set the record straight, remediating the false narrative insistently advanced by his own newspaper – that the Israeli fans were victims of mob violence motivated by anti-Jewish hatred.

The correspondence between Triebert and Stadtlander on Friday was triggered by The Electronic Intifada’s requests for comment to The Times regarding the paper’s highly misleading reporting of Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam.

As this reporter explained on The Electronic Intifada livestream on Wednesday, the paper actually inverted reality

You can watch the full livestream segment in the video above, where we break down the evidence in detail.

There is still precisely zero evidence that even one anti-Semitic attack took place in Amsterdam – let alone the “pogrom” that Israeli government officials immediately claimed had happened.

The Times has come under fire for using a video of Israeli football hooligan violence in Amsterdam last week to claim the exact opposite of what the video actually showed.

The Times claimed footage shot by a Dutch photojournalist showed “anti-Semitic attacks” on Israelis – even though it actually showed Israeli mob violence against a Dutch citizen.

For several days, the footage was attached to the top of the paper’s 8 November report about events in Amsterdam the night before.

But on Tuesday the paper was forced to issue a correction, after the video’s creator – Dutch photojournalist Annet de Graaf – publicly condemned international media for mislabeling her video as evidence of “anti-Semitic attacks” against Israeli football supporters.

In fact, the video shows a mob of dozens of Israeli hooligans attacking someone, after their team Maccabi Tel Aviv lost an away game 5-0 to Dutch club Ajax on 7 November.

Times manager Stadtlander claimed to The Electronic Intifada in a statement on Friday that after the correction, the newspaper had “removed the video at the creator’s request.”

But de Graaf insisted that was untrue. “I haven’t said that at all,” she told The Electronic Intifada by phone on Friday. “It’s not true what the chief editor [Stadtlander] is saying to you in the email. Not true.”

Asked to comment, Stadtlander declined to respond to that, writing only that “my statement to you last night constitutes our comment on the matter.”

Downplaying genocidal Israeli violence

None of the four authors of the article – John Yoon, Christopher F. Schuetze, Jin Yu Young and Claire Moses – responded to requests for comment from The Electronic Intifada.

Stadtlander denied playing any role in the commissioning or editing of the article.

After The Electronic Intifada received Triebert’s “inadvertently copied” email, Stadtlander sent a follow-up email in what appears to have been an attempt at damage control.

He claimed that “the valuable work Christiaan [Triebert] and others on his team were doing did not become a standalone piece” because “much of the material was incorporated” into another article the Times had published.

But the piece that Stadtlander linked to is yet another whitewash of the Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam – one of a number published by the Times.

It obfuscates or outright reverses cause and effect and downplays the Israeli attacks on Dutch citizens while relying almost entirely on the Israeli hooligans’ claims.

It also downplays a video of Maccabi hooligans returning from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv airport chanting an openly genocidal slogan gloating that there are “no children left” in Gaza as merely “incendiary chants against Arabs and Gazans.”

Anti-Palestinian agenda

That the Times newsroom had a pro-Israel agenda from the outset of its coverage of the incident is apparent from reading the earliest version of the piece still available in online archives.

That version did not include the video by Annet de Graaf, and contained no evidence – or even allegation – of anti-Semitism, aside from the baseless claims of Israeli government officials.

One of the main sources quoted in that version was Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right police minister, who wants to expel all Palestinians. “Fans who went to see a football game encountered anti-Semitism and were attacked with unimaginable cruelty just because of their Jewishness,” the article quoted Ben-Gvir as saying.

However, all references to Ben-Gvir were removed from the article, within less than two hours.

To date, The New York Times has published more than a dozen articles substantially focused on the violence in Amsterdam.

This is an astonishingly high number compared, say, to how the newspaper has ignored or consistently downplayed grave crimes perpetrated by Israelis in Palestine, including systematic and well-documented sexual assaults and rapes of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli forces.

The Times coverage not only includes numerous news articles baselessly spinning the Amsterdam violence as “anti-Semitic,” but opinion columns with inflammatory headlines such as “Amsterdam Is About Jew Hatred – and Gaza,” “A Worldwide ‘Jew Hunt’” and “The Age of the Pogrom Returns.”

The willingness of the Times to falsely portray Israel and Israelis as victims in this case is reminiscent of how it has insistently advanced the debunked narrative of “mass rapes” by Palestinian fighters on 7 October 2023, including false reporting by its star correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman.

Such atrocity propaganda masquerading as journalism has been used to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

A new front in Israel’s genocidal war?

In his internal Times email to Stadtlander, reporter Christiaan Triebert explained that, after a conversation with de Graaf, “I reached out to the authors of the article to address the factual inaccuracies it contained.”

Triebert wrote that he had been unsure “what the rationale was for deleting the video rather than including the detail in the article. I think it would have been helpful to have the video in there with the context that it showed Israeli fans attacking a man.”

De Graaf has repeatedly clarified as much herself, as even the Times’ correction admits.

“What I explained to several media channels is that the Maccabi supporters deliberately started the riot in front of central station returning from the game,” de Graaf wrote on X, also known as Twitter.

And footage of the same incident shared on an Israeli Telegram channel shows the Maccabi hooligans’ attack from a different angle, apparently shot by one of the hooligans themselves.

The channel falsely claimed in Hebrew that the video showed Maccabi Tel Aviv fans being “violently attacked in the last hour by dozens of Palestinian rioters.”

A full video report of the Israeli hooligans’ rampage by popular Dutch YouTuber Bender also shows footage of the same incident.

Israeli football hooliganism in Europe seems to have become Israel’s latest global front in its genocidal war in Gaza.

On Thursday night, Israeli football hooligans attacked supporters of France at a European Nations League match in Paris between the two sides.

British journalist Peter Allen reported witnessing “horrendous violence” by the Israelis. He said he “spoke to three off-duty soldiers who were over from Tel Aviv, while one openly wore” an Israeli army T-shirt.

Based in Paris for many years, Allen is a contributor of reporting to many international media outlets, including occasionally to The Electronic Intifada.

Despite the attendance of French President Emmanuel Macron, the match was heavily boycotted, with Reuters reporting that the Stade de France was barely one-fifth full and protests taking place in Paris against the event.

It was the lowest attendance for any home match in the history of France’s national team.

November 22, 2024 Posted by | EUROPE, Israel, media | Leave a comment

Somerset church would ‘become’ island if ‘ham-fisted’ Hinkley saltmarsh plans go-ahead

Sunday 17th November 

 Somerset church would ‘become’ island if ‘ham-fisted’ Hinkley saltmarsh
plans go-ahead. Steve Bridger (Yatton, Independent), a local councillor for
the village on North Somerset Council, told a full meeting of the council
on November 12 that the plan was “ham-fisted.”

He said: “Landowners
who would be directly impacted by the proposals were sent letters in
September, completely out of the blue, with a rather threatening tone
talking about compulsory purchase of their land.” When Somerset’s new
nuclear power station was granted planning permission, it was told to
install speakers to scare off fish from getting sucked into its cooling
systems.

But EDF now says this would be “dangerous to install,” and
wants to compensate for the 44 tonnes of fish expected to die each year by
creating 340 hectares of saltmarsh along the Severn. Peter Burden
(Portishead South, Conservative) told the council chamber: “It is crazy,
chairman, to destroy habitat to mitigate for killing fish.”

 West Somerset Free Press 17th Nov 2024, https://www.wsfp.co.uk/news/somerset-church-would-become-island-if-ham-fisted-hinkley-saltmarsh-plans-go-ahead-739509

November 22, 2024 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Great British Nuclear to put £1.8bn worth of mini-nuke contracts up for grabs

 Successful bidders will work with winners of delayed SMR design
competition. Nearly £2bn worth of construction contracts for Britain’s
first mini-nuclear power plants will be up for grabs next year as officials
prepare sites for the pioneering energy projects.

Great British Nuclear(GBN), the government body tasked with spearheading the development of small modular reactors (SMRs), expects to put the work out for tender
between February and July 2025, according to official documents.

The biggest jobs available will be at least two £800m “delivery partner”
contracts to manage the construction of the SMRs over a period of 10 years.
Smaller contracts for an “owner’s engineer”, “foundation project
management” and “foundation engineering” will also be open to
bidding.

They will work with technology companies designing the reactors
which will be selected in GBN’s ongoing SMR design competition, which has
been delayed multiple times.

 Telegraph 18th Nov 2024 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/18/great-british-nuclear-to-put-18bn-worth-mini-nuke-contracts/

November 22, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

High-Precision, Long-Range NATO Missiles Against Russia: Why Now?

Joe Quinn, Sott.net, Wed, 20 Nov 2024,  https://www.sott.net/article/496207-High-Precision-Long-Range-NATO-Missiles-Against-Russia-Why-Now

Russia announced a change to its nuclear doctrine several months ago, where it can now respond with nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear attack on Russia by an enemy, either directly from enemy territory or from the territory of a third party. A notable caveat however is that such a response would only occur in the event that the attack “threatened the very existence of the Russian state”.

The changes were officially signed into law yesterday with the wording relevant to the conflict in Ukraine being “where the aggression creates a critical threat for the sovereignty and/or territorial integrity [of Belarus or the Russian Federation].

In this context, the Russians have also said that the use of nuclear weapons would also be permissible if an enemy attacked Russian forces in the context of the SMO in a way that definitively threatened the achievement of the objectives of the SMO.

In Sept. Putin said that NATO’s plan to allow Ukraine to use longer range Western precision weapons against Russian targets inside Russia would be evidence of direct NATO involvement in a war against Russia. And that Russia would respond appropriately.

Three days ago, “Biden” approved the use of longer range Western precision weapons against Russian targets inside Russia.

Two days ago, Ukraine fired 5 US-made longer range Western precision weapons (supersonic ATACMS ballistic missiles) at a military base 130kms into Southern Russia. According to the Russians, all 5 missiles were shot down, with one falling on the periphery of the missile base, starting a fire but doing no material or personnel damage.
While many have interpreted this attack as fulfilling the requirements for a Russian nuclear response, that is obviously not the case, for four reasons:

1) The attack did not, in any way, threaten the very existence of the Russian state

2) The attack did not, in any way, threaten the achievement of the objectives of the SMO.

3) The Biden admin has less than 2 months left in power.

4) Trump and his incoming team have made no secret of their intention to negotiate a near-future settlement to end the war in Ukraine.

What then, at this late stage, was the point in the ‘Biden’ admin authorizing the use of long range precision weapons against Russia and why do EU leaders continue to make repeated reference to EU citizens needing to prepare for a potential “war with Russia” and sending EU/NATO military forces to Ukraine, if there’s a reasonable chance of a peaceful settlement of the conflict under the Trump admin?

The problem is how any ‘settlement’ would play out.

First (see map) Russia will not settle for anything less than the four regions it has already incorporated into its territory (including the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”). In addition, a demilitarized buffer zone (of some distance) would be necessary extending out from these regions and away from the Russian and Belarusian borders to the North.

NATO and EU nations would, undoubtedly, insist on militarily occupying (“peacekeepers”) the rest of Ukraine beyond these zones, but such a presence would create an uneasy, and potentially dangerous, peace for some time to come. Hence the talk of sending their military forces to Ukraine and possible/eventual ‘war with Russia’.

Of note in this respect is yesterday’s announcement that the ‘Biden’ admin will begin sending anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine to “blunt the advancement of Russian troops”. Interestingly, the mines are said to be “nonpersistent” design, meaning they become inactive within weeks of deployment. Why now? Russian troops have been advancing, in one form or another, for most of the war. Why would NATO/Ukraine want to deploy anti-personnel mines that last for only a few weeks?

Much like the use of precision long-range weapons, the use of “non-persistent” anti-personnel mines now is more likely to be part of a strategy for a negotiation settlement, than to effect any significant change on the current battlefield.

The point of authorizing (and using) both NATO long range precision weapons against Russia and anti-personnel mines now is in preparation for expected negotiations after Jan 6th.

By using these weapons and calling Russia’s ‘nuclear bluff’, (while also being careful not to push too far) NATO expects that Russia will be forced to accept them as a de facto (rather than theoretical) part of Ukraine/NATO’s arsenal against Russia, and thereby provide NATO with a more favorable basis for negotiations.

November 21, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Why EDF’s Hinkley C nuclear power plant will probably not be running before 2035

David Toke. Nov 20, 2024, https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/why-edfs-hinkley-c-nuclear-power

There is a broad relationship between the time it takes to build nuclear power stations and their cost. That is apparent from looking at what has happened in the past, with nuclear costs escalating as construction times have increased. A study of this relationship leads to the conclusion that the commercial operation of Hinkley Point C (HPC) will almost certainly not happen before 2035.

The model being built at Hinkley C is the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR). The only two EPRs to have been (more or less) completed in the West have involved major cost overruns. They have taken much longer to build than expected. In Finland, the plant at Olkiluoto took nearly 17 years to come into commercial operation from its construction start in 2005. The EPR at Flamanville in France has so far taken 17 years to (not quite as yet) come into commercial operation since the concrete for the reactor was first poured in 2007.

When I was writing a book about nuclear power, safety, and costs I did an (anonymised) interview with a British-based nuclear industry consultant who commented:

‘the point at which you do the first concrete pour, the organisation starts hemorrhaging money.  That is when you have to build as rapidly as possible with minimum delays and commission as quickly as you can’. (anonymous interview with nuclear consultant, 01/06/2018) (page 133 see book link HERE ). It’s a simple relationship really. The longer the construction period is, then the longer you have to employ staff to do the job. Hence costs increase almost as night follows day.

You can see the relationship between costs and construction time in Figure 1 below [on original]. Please note these are so-called ‘overnight’ costs and do not include interest payments to debtors or equity holders. This, in reality, pushes up costs greatly, which is why these ‘overnight’ costs greatly understate nuclear costs. However, I use the overnight costs for comparison purposes, and also because their interpretation is much more transparent and unarguable compared to making assumptions about the cost of capital.

In a post earlier this year I explained how Flamanville 3’s construction time had been part of a trend towards increasing nuclear construction times in France. This is shown in Figure 2 below [on original]. The bar on the right represents Flamanville 3 whose construction began in 2007.

Both the power plant compared in Figure 1 (Flamanville 3 and Olkiluoto 3) cost much more than expected. However the alarming thing about the British nuclear programme is that they are still only about half as expensive as the projected costs of Hinkley C. Whereas Olkiluoto 3 and Flamanville 3 have overnight costs of around 8.7 to 8.1 billion euros per GW, Hinkley C has projected costs, according to EDF, of around double this amount (ie over 16 billion euros per GW) when EDF’s median projected costs are translated into 2024 euro prices. (See HERE for costs in 2015 £s, as reported by ‘World Nuclear News’).

This does imply that Hinkley C is going to take even longer to come online than these power plants in Finland and France did. Hinkley C’s reactor construction began at the end of 2018, and the cost estimates made then were broadly in line with the sort of costs we have seen in the cases of Fimamanville and Olkiluoto. However, projections of cost overruns for HPC have escalated since then.

Even if EDF ‘only’ took as long to build as Flamanaville and Olkiluoto, HPC will not be online until 2035. But the costs of HPC are much higher, around double, compared to either of these other EPRs. Of course, we cannot say, for definite, now how long for sure completion of HPC will take. But we can do an estimate by working backward from the cost. That is if there is a simple linear relationship between construction time and cost then we could say that if HPC is going to cost twice as much as Flamanville 3 or Olkiluoto 3 then HPC will take twice as long as these plants – that is well over 30 years. On that basis, HPC would not be finished until around 2050. You can see this calculation in Figure 3. [on original] HPC is in the third set of columns.

Maybe it will not take quite as long as 2050 to finish HPC – I cannot say – but what these simple calculations do suggest that EDF’s (most recently) projected completion dates of 2029-2031 look hopelessly optimistic. Even if HPC ‘only’ takes as long as Flamanville 3, we shall still be looking at a start no earlier than 2035. The CEO of EDF is famously quoted as saying that people would be cooking their turkeys by the xmas of 2017. We could be lucky to be cooking our turkeys using HPC power by 2037!

The prospect of HPC not being online in 2029 automatically triggers penalty clauses in the contract that was agreed between the UK Government and EDF in 2013. If EDF does not meet this deadline then it loses a year of its premium price guarantee for every year that it fails to start generating. The premium price of £92.50 per MWh in 2012 prices which equates to £129 per MWh in 2024 prices. No doubt pressure will grow on the UK Government to relax the penalty clause.

All of this does not bode well for Sizewell C. This is a carbon copy of the design of HPC, we are told. Except that it is not, It is on a different site with its own, different, challenges. There can be no confidence that the costs will be much less than HPC – as Amory Lovins puts it, nuclear power seems to have an ‘unlearning curve’ – ie it gets more expensive over time in a given country. It is unlikely that EDF will have much capacity to do much on Sizewell C until HPC is more or less completed, and as Sizewell C is likely to take at least 15 years to build (based on experience with EPRs) it seems unlikely that Sizewell C will be generating this side of 2050. I have one good reason to hope to see the day when Sizewell C is generating. It means that I shall live a very long time and be very old indeed!

Otherwise, it would not be wise to persevere with Sizewell C. Sizewell C is likely to come online when it is even more technologically uncompetitive than it is now with other green energy sources and techniques. Indeed the approach of the Government has altered dramatically since the Hinkley Point C contract was signed. Then there were penalty clauses imposed on EDF to encourage good performance. Now, with Sizewell C, EDF will be able to rely on the consumer to pay the tens of billions of pounds of cost overruns that will inevitably occur. A sort of reverse logic has been applied. It has been realized that nuclear power is too uneconomic to be built by offering a long-term contract to buy electricity. But instead of walking away from the technology, we will now take on a massive uncapped financial obligation for the next project.

November 21, 2024 Posted by | technology, UK | Leave a comment

Big batteries and EVs to the rescue again as faults with new nuclear plant cause chaos on Nordic grids

Giles Parkinson, Nov 19, 2024  https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-batteries-and-evs-to-the-rescue-again-as-faults-with-new-nuclear-plant-cause-chaos-on-nordic-grids/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGqC8xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHadLKvCjeIJudeDt86k27LkV53Q1FcfYmtcRSA_HGcWU1b1TmW7voTgIOA_aem_wwFpyxMordh4V_FbOJ3lfw

The newest and most powerful nuclear reactor in Europe that was delivered more than a decade late and nearly four times over budget is also proving to be a headache for grid operators now that it is finally up and running.

On Sunday, the 1,600 megawatt Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor tripped again, the latest in a series of faults and outages that have plagued the new facility and caused the market to reach out for back-up power to fill the gap.

Olkiluoto owner TVO says the reactor tripped on Sunday due to a turbine malfunction in the generator’s seal oil system. “The repair is taking longer than expected, and based on the current information, the plant is estimated to return to electricity production in approximately two days,” it said in a statement.

It’s not the first time the unit has failed. In October, it was forced to reduce power suddenly when one of the reactor’s control rods unexpectedly dropped into the reactor. 

Its sister reactor, Olkiluoto 2, was off line for three weeks due to a faulty water-cooled rotor that had to be replaced and will run for months at reduced output because of the fear of failure.

But on Sunday, when the entire 1,600 MW capacity of Olkiluoto 3 was taken out of the system with no notice, it had a big impact on the grid, sending frequency plunging to 49.55 Hz, well outside the normal band.

“Olkiluoto is starting to compete with the Swedish nuclear power plant, Forsmark, for being the leading cause of major (loss of generation) disturbances in the Nordic power system,” writes Andreas Barnekov Thingvad, a Denmark-based trading systems director at battery company Hybrid Greentech.

He says his company contributed to the market response to stabilise frequency (see graph on original ) and the grid with its portfolio of batteries and virtual power plants, including electric vehicles.

Olkiluoto was finally connected to the grid last year, at an estimated cost of €11 billion ($18 billion) compared to the original budget of €3 billion. That cost blowout forced its developer, the French company Areva, to be bailed out by the French government.

When it did come online, nuclear boosters in Australia hailed it as being responsible for a steep fall in electricity prices. They failed to mention the fact that the reactor was more than a decade late, and Finland was forced to turn to highly expensive Russian gas in the interim to make up the shortfall.

Indeed, TVO, the reactor owner, says now that the new reactor has been commissioned, there is often too much production on the Finnish grid, and the reactor has to be dialled down, or curtailed, in much the same way that renewables often are. It is still not allowed to run at full capacity.

“The electricity system in Finland faces on an increasingly frequent basis a situation where more down-regulating production capacity is needed because there is too much production,” TVO notes.

The new reactor has also spent large periods off line (see the graph above from TVO’s most recent interim report). Its annual outage was supposed to last 37 days, but stretched to double that, to 74 days. TVO blamed “defect repairs and technical problems with inspection equipment took more time than had been planned.”

The point of this story is to highlight another bit of nonsense from the nuclear lobby, who like to claim that renewable sources such as wind and solar require back up, while nuclear does not.

That is simply not true, and the world’s big investment in pumped hydro in the 1970s and 1980s was principally designed to provide back up to nuclear reactors then in vogue. Ontario has ordered some of the world’s biggest batteries to support its nuclear fleet, most of which will be offline for several years for upgrades and maintenance.

Thingvad noted the multiple recent outages that had occurred in both the Finnish and Swedish nuclear reactors over the last few months:

  • – On November 17th, at 15:25:51, Olkiluoto 3 had another turbine failure, tripping all 1600 MW of generation and causing the Nordic system frequency to drop to 49.59 Hz. The failure is expected to last several days.
  • – On September 3rd, Olkiluoto 3 experienced a fault that caused it to drop 640 MW, leading the Nordic frequency to fall to 49.77 Hz.
  • – On June 10th, Forsmark Block 3 experienced a reactor trip of 1172 MW, causing the Nordic system frequency to drop to 49.61 Hz.
  • – On June 3rd, 2024, Olkiluoto 3, with 1600 MW, suddenly tripped due to a turbine malfunction. The Nordic system frequency dropped to 49.58 Hz.
  • – On May 13, 2024, the Forsmark Block 1 nuclear power plant in Sweden, which has a capacity of 1 GW, tripped due to a grid failure. Forsmark experienced multiple outages – each of at least a gigawatt – in 2023.
  • The scale of such outages would be significant in a grid like Australia, where the biggest single unit – at the Kogan Creek coal fired generator in Queensland – is 750 MW.

If, as the federal Coalition proposes, it wants to put in units sized at a gigawatt or more, then the market operator will have to invest in more standby capacity in case of the inevitable trips and outages.

The bigger the unit, the more back up power that is required. Wind and solar may be variable, but those variations are easily and reliably predicted. The sudden loss of a 1,600 MW facility is not.

The Australian Energy Market Operator has already made clear that its biggest headache is managing the unexpected outages of big generators, such as the ageing and increasingly unreliable coal fired power stations that the federal Coalition wants to keep open while it waits for nuclear to be rolled out and commercial SMRs to be invented.

“The repeated outages at Olkiluoto and Forsmark nuclear plants are a stark reminder of the critical need for grid resilience and diversification in our energy systems,” noted Eric Scheithauer-Hartmann, a German-based energy executive.

“It’s encouraging to see companies like Hybrid Greentech stepping up to support the Nordic power grid with advanced battery storage and intelligent energy solutions.

“As we continue to face challenges with traditional power generation, investing in smart grid technologies and renewable integration isn’t just beneficial—it’s essential for maintaining stability and meeting future energy demands.”

November 21, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, Finland | Leave a comment

Reading road sees suspected nuclear warhead convoy

 A military convoy believed to be carrying nuclear warheads has been
spotted moving along a road in Reading. The convoy was made up a large
police presence and umarked trucks – typical of nuclear material
transportation operations – moving along the Bath Road towards the Atomic
Weapons Establishment in Burghfield.

 Reading Chronicle 18th Nov 2024 https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/24731286.reading-road-sees-suspected-nuclear-warhead-convoy/

November 21, 2024 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Regulators update guidance on contamination of ground and water on nuclear licensed sites

by Practical Law Environment 18 Nov 24

 The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), Environment Agency (EA), Natural
Resources Wales (NRW) and Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA)
published updated guidance on expectations on the prevention and management
of radioactive and non-radioactive contamination of the ground and water on
nuclear licensed sites, on 14 November 2024.

 Practical Law 18th Nov 2024
https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/Document/I8b889a97a5a011efb5eab7c3554138a0/View/FullText.html

November 21, 2024 Posted by | Legal, UK | Leave a comment

Report: Biden Allows Ukraine To Strike Russia With Long-Range US Missiles

 November 18, 2024 , By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/17/report-biden-allows-ukraine-to-strike-russia-with-long-range-us-missiles/

The New York Times reported on Sunday that President Biden had authorized Ukraine’s use of long-range US-provided missiles in strikes on Russian territory, an escalation Moscow has made clear risks nuclear war.

US officials told the paper that Ukraine can now use Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles, to strike Russian territory. The ATACMS are fired by US-made multiple rocket launch systems, including the HIMARS. Ukraine can only fire the HIMARS with coordinates provided by or confirmed by the US and its allies, meaning the US will now directly support strikes deep inside Russia.

The US officials said the ATACMS will likely initially be used to hit Russian troops fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Ukraine and the US have also said North Korean troops are deployed in Kursk. The US has said the North Korean troops are engaged in combat, but that hasn’t been confirmed by Moscow.

Earlier this year, President Biden gave Ukraine the greenlight to strike Russian border regions with US-provided weapons, including shorter-range rockets fired by the HIMARS. A few months later, Ukraine launched its invasion of Kursk, and Ukrainian officials began pushing hard for the US to support longer-range strikes inside Russia.

In response to those calls and comments from Western officials supporting the idea, Russian President Vladimir Putin said if NATO supported long-range strikes in Russia, it would put the Western military alliance “at war with Russia.”

Putin then ordered changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. Under the new doctrine, an attack on Russia by a non-nuclear armed state that was supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack.

The Kremlin said the changes to the nuclear doctrine were meant as a message to the West. “This is a message that warns these countries of the consequences should they participate in an attack on our country by various means, not necessarily nuclear,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

The US appeared to back down on supporting long-range strikes in Russia, but now the Biden administration is looking to escalate the proxy war as much as possible for its last few months in power. President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on ending the proxy war, and the Biden team and officials in Ukraine fear he will just do that. However, some of Trump’s cabinet picks favor escalation in Ukraine, including his National Security Advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL).

In a recent interview with NPR, Waltz was asked how Trump could end the war, and he suggested an escalation of sanctions and supporting long-range strikes in Russia.

“First and foremost, you would enforce the actual energy sanctions on Russia. Russia is essentially a gas station with nukes. Putin is selling more oil and gas now than he did prewar through China and Russia. And you couple that with unleashing our energy, lifting our LNG ban, and his economy and his war machine will dry up very quickly,” Waltz said. “So I think that will get Putin to the table. We have leverage, like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well. And then, of course, I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelensky to get them to the table.”

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Starmer – meet us before it’s too late,’ nuclear test veterans say

Dominic Casciani, 18 Nov 24, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4ng2873jro

When 18-year-old John Morris stood for the first time on the Pacific’s Christmas Island in 1956, he had no idea that the destructive forces of nature he would witness, harnessed for military power, would hang like a mushroom cloud over his life forever.

Now 86, Mr Morris is one of the last few of 22,000 personnel who witnessed the UK’s nuclear bomb tests – and those that are able to are still fighting to find out what it did their bodies.

A BBC film, to be broadcast this Wednesday, details their battles for what the dwindling band of men believe is a hidden truth: that the UK’s military knew at the time it was subjecting them to radiation that would damage them and their descendants forever.

Thousands of the men have suffered cancers and other conditions that other nuclear states have recognised as probably linked to the now-banned testing.

But not the UK. It has paid no compensation at all.

In Mr Morris’s case, as the film reveals, he believes the death of his first child, Steven, in 1962, was the result of the radiation damage he suffered during Operation Grapple – the name given to a series of British nuclear weapons tests.

Steven was four months old when he died in his cot. The coroner suspected the baby’s lung had not properly formed. Why? Nobody knows…………………………..

“I blame the Ministry of Defence and the experiments they did on us for Steven’s death – and I always will.”

John Morris’s story is one of many testimonies in the film, which also covers what happened to Indigenous communities who lived in the nuclear bomb test areas in Australia.

All of them believe they were lab rats, subjected to live human experimentation as the British raced to join the USA and Russia as a nuclear power.

And they are appealing to Sir Keir Starmer to meet them – to make good on what they believe was a pledge made by the Labour party.

The campaign for disclosure and damages for ill health began decades ago as the veterans linked health conditions, cancers and birth defects in children to the nuclear testing that began in 1952.

But in 2012, the Supreme Court ended the campaign for damages, saying the men could not prove the link – and they had also long run out of time.

The campaign, however, was relaunched last year thanks to potentially crucial new evidence discovered in what is known as the “Gledhill memo”.

The 1958 report from Christmas Island to the nuclear programme’s secret UK headquarters says that there were blood tests for Squadron Leader Terry Gledhill showing “gross irregularity”.

The memo, says the campaign, is proof that blood tests were being taken from personnel – and that there was a continuing but secret plan to monitor them.

The circumstantial evidence has grown since. This year, 4,000 pages of documents from the Atomic Weapons Establishment were declassified after a long Freedom of Information fight.

Those documents are still being analysed but the campaign says they show there were standing orders for repeated blood and urine tests of military personnel and Indigenous communities at the test sites.

The language in some of the documents is unambiguous. One, from 1957, says that “all personnel selected for duty at Maralinga [the Australian test site] may be exposed to radiation”.

Many of the men have obtained their personnel and medical files – but say they have gaps that correspond to when they were stationed on the operations.

John Morris’s military medical file, for instance, is missing regular blood tests from Christmas Island that he says were part of the regime.

Then the campaign discovered, again by chance, what could be an official order to destroy medical records.

The widow of one veteran who had died of multiple cancers obtained her late husband’s personnel records, hoping the medical records would help with her claim for a war pension.

The bundle she received included a slip of paper, dated 1959, which marks where officials had removed pages. That was when her husband had been part of the testing programme.

And the slip says the material had been removed under a “special directive regarding prompt disposal”, on the then orders of the ministerial office for the Royal Air Force.

What was that “special directive”? Nobody knows.

So was there a cover-up decades ago?

A 2008 government filing, in one part of the then legal battle, shows officials assured their in-house lawyers that “no individual monitoring of servicemen” had taken place during the tests.

But that does not make sense given the Gledhill memo shows personnel were being tested – and men remember it, too.

Another government document, from the 1990s, shows officials discussing their “concerns” that judges at the European Court of Human Rights had been told that there were no classified records concerning the monitoring of personnel.

The men say something stinks, and they have relaunched their legal fight, but time – and age – is against them.

The men’s lawyers believe they have a case for a failure to disclose medical records and, at worst, may have had glimpses of a cover-up locked in the bowels of military archives.

If they sue, the case could take years that the men do not have. So they have proposed an alternative time-limited one-off tribunal to find answers.

And that is why the men now want to meet Sir Keir Starmer – to get it done.

In 2019, the Labour Party, then led by Jeremy Corbyn, pledged £50,000 for each surviving British nuclear-test veteran.

Sir Keir met the veterans in 2021 but made no promises – and the 2019 offer was not in the 2024 manifesto.

But the prime minister has pledged to introduce the so-called “Hillsborough law” that places a duty on public officials to come completely clean when faced with an allegation of cover-up or misconduct.

That law could be in force within a year and it could help the men get answers, assuming they are there to be found.

“Keir Starmer, meet us,” says John Morris. “All I want is to meet him and get a pathway forward. They have let me down for 70 years.”

Ministers ‘looking hard’ at veterans concerns

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said it recognised the “huge contribution” of the veterans and the government was committed to working with them and “listening to their concerns”.

“Ministers are looking hard at the issue – including the question of records,” said the spokesperson.

“They will continue to engage with the individuals and families affected and as part of this engagement, the Minister of Veterans Alistair Carns has already met with parliamentarians and a Nuclear Test Veteran campaign group to discuss their concerns further.”

Both Labour and Conservatives governments have maintained no records have been withheld from the veterans, including from the court cases.

The MoD says research has found no link between the nuclear tests, ill health and genetic defects in children. That’s contradicted by a respected study from New Zealand that showed its personnel suffered genetic damage from attending the British tests.

Whatever the government chooses to do, the impact of what the men witnessed will be with them forever.

When John Folkes was 19 years old, he was on board a plane ordered to fly through four atomic bomb mushroom clouds.

It was like being “microwaved”, he tells the BBC film, as his body was exposed to the raw power of a nuclear weapon. And he has suffered ever since from PTSD and a permanent tremble.

Some 14 months of his medical records are missing, despite him remembering radiation tests.

“It’s weighed heavily on my conscience,” the 89-year-old tells the BBC’s film.

“I’m a part of something that should never have happened.

“There exists within our society some dark forces that suppress the truth. I firmly believe that we’ve been betrayed. Shamefully betrayed.”

Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story airs on Wednesday 20 November at 21:00 on BBC Two and on iPlayer

November 20, 2024 Posted by | health, UK | Leave a comment

Germany and US Are in a Race to the Bottom on Suppressing Pro-Palestine Speech

Both countries are adding to the transnational toolkit used to crack down on activists speaking out against genocide.

H.R. 9495 is just one new development in a transnational string of crackdowns on the activists and groups that dare to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And while Democrats quibble over terminology, we don’t need to look to fascist regimes to see how quickly civil rights can be eroded. Even under democratic systems, pro-Palestine activists are suppressed and branded as terrorist-supporters. Germany, in particular, offers a playbook — and a mirror.

the German parliament overwhelmingly voted to pass a resolution that would ban public funding for any group that “spreads anti-Semitism, calls into question Israel’s right to exist or calls for a boycott of Israel.”

By Schuyler Mitchell , Truthout, November 18, 2024

Last week, 52 Democrats voted to embolden a fascist.

Let’s back up. For the past year, leading members of the Democratic Party have increasingly called attention to Donald Trump’s authoritarian ambitions.

He tried to overturn an election. He’s threatened to prosecute his political rivals. He’s sowed distrust in the democratic process, deemed the press an “enemy of the people” and pledged to use the National Guard to squash protests and conduct mass deportations of millions of people.

“We cannot allow Donald Trump and the rise of fascism and authoritarianism to take root in America,” Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said in a July statement. “To allow Trump to become president and control all three branches of government puts our democracy and freedoms at great risk.”

Democrats are right to name the imminent draconian threat of a second Trump presidency. But such rhetoric stands at odds with their business-as-usual approach to transferring power. For a glaringly obvious example of Democratic doublethink, look no further than the 52 votes from party members, including Landsman, on H.R. 9495: the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”

The fast-tracked House bill died on November 12 after it failed to secure support from the necessary 2/3 majority. Widely condemned by human rights groups, the resolution would allow the Treasury secretary — a presidentially appointed position — to strip any nonprofit organization it deems to be “terrorist supporting” of its tax-exempt status. Free speech and civil rights advocates noted how easily the law could enable an authoritarian ruler to weaponize accusations of “terrorism” to unilaterally silence dissent, particularly against groups that support Palestinian liberation. As of this writing, Israel has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023, a number the United Nations says is likely an undercount.

H.R. 9495 is just one new development in a transnational string of crackdowns on the activists and groups that dare to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And while Democrats quibble over terminology, we don’t need to look to fascist regimes to see how quickly civil rights can be eroded. Even under democratic systems, pro-Palestine activists are suppressed and branded as terrorist-supporters. Germany, in particular, offers a playbook — and a mirror.

Just days before the House voted down H.R. 9495, a parallel legislative measure moved through the German government. On November 7, the parliament overwhelmingly voted to pass a resolution that would ban public funding for any group that “spreads anti-Semitism, calls into question Israel’s right to exist or calls for a boycott of Israel.” The resolution was opposed by more than 103 civil society organizations, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, who wrote in an open letter that “branding legitimate criticism of Israel’s human right record as anti-Semitic also undermines the fight against genuine anti-Semitism.”

While Germany’s resolution is more direct, it shares the same goal as the House Republicans’ bill: shut down organizations that critique Israel. It’s important to note that, while the German constitution includes protections for freedom of expression, it has broad carve-outs for language that is considered a danger to the state, and several laws on the books ban hate speech. 

This is, of course, understandable given Germany’s abhorrent past. But amid the genocide in Gaza, Germany has thrown about accusations of Nazism and antisemitism to assuage itself of its own national guilt and shield Israel from anything remotely approaching accountability.

Such a practice, Daniel Denvir wrote in Jacobin earlier this year, “involves demonizing and suppressing expressions of Palestinian identity and anti-Zionism in the guise of Holocaust remembrance.” In Berlin, for instance, officials authorized schools to ban Palestinian flags and keffiyehs, and police have responded with repeated brutality towards Palestine solidarity protests, which have been heavily limited by the state. “Meanwhile, far-right politics are ascendant, with the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, making terrifying gains in the polls fueled by an anti-migrant politics that’s increasingly echoed across the political spectrum,” Denvir continued.

German politicians do not shy away from making explicit that their opposition to antisemitism is often a cover for racist, anti-immigrant policies. “It is very clear to us that Islamist agitators who are mentally living in the Stone Age have no place in our country,” Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a member of the governing center-left Social Democratic Party, told reporters.

In fact, another draft German law would deport anyone promoting “terrorist crimes.” The resolution includes “liking” a single post on social media as an example of something that could constitute support for terrorism……………………………………. more https://truthout.org/articles/germany-and-us-are-in-a-race-to-the-bottom-on-suppressing-pro-palestine-speech/?utm_source=feedotter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FO-11-18-2024&utm_content=httpstruthoutorgarticlesgermanyandusareinaracetothebottomonsuppressingpropalestinespeech&utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=07ed4ae08b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_11_18_10_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-07ed4ae08b-650192793

November 20, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties, Germany, USA | Leave a comment

Power Out at Ukraine Atomic Plants After Russian Missile Strikes

By Jonathan Tirone, November 17, 2024,
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/11/17/power-out-at-ukraine-atomic-plants-after-russian-missile-strikes/

(Bloomberg) — Ukraine powered down most of the remaining operational nuclear reactors under its control following a massive overnight Russian missile and drone attack. 

Staff from the International Atomic Energy Agency stationed at plants in Ukraine reported that only two of nine reactors were generating electricity at full capacity on Sunday. Generation was dialed down to between 40% and 90% of capacity at the other units, according to a statement from the UN’s nuclear watchdog. 

“The country’s energy infrastructure is extremely vulnerable, directly impacting nuclear safety and security,” said IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi. He added that inspectors are evaluating he full extent of the damage. 

Russia launched one of its largest missile barrages against Ukraine on Sunday as the full-scale invasion of its neighbor nears the 1,000-day mark. About 120 cruise, ballistic and aeroballistic missiles and 90 drones were fired by Kremlin forces operating from bomber jets and ships, Ukraine’s air force said. 

An IAEA team based at the Khmelnytskyy Nuclear Power Plant reported hearing a loud explosion, while others stationed at the Rivne site reported that high-voltage power lines were unavailable. Both facilities are in western Ukraine. 

Ukraine has warned that air strikes against critical power substations could trigger an emergency at one of the three operating nuclear power plants still under Kyiv’s control. 

Substations maintain stability by regulating high-voltage transmission on power grids. Unlike fossil fuel or renewable plants, nuclear generation needs a constant flow of electricity to keep safety systems running. Without it, fuel inside a reactor’s core risks overheating, potentially resulting in a dangerous release of radiation.

Ukraine has thousands of electricity substations. But at stake are ten crucial nodes linked to atomic power plants, whose destruction could plunge the country into darkness and provoke a radiological emergency, Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko told Bloomberg News in a September interview. 

“The IAEA teams visited seven substations – located outside the nuclear power plants across the country – in September and October to assess the damage from attacks in August, and will assess whether further visits are required following today’s military activities,” Grossi said on Sunday. 

November 19, 2024 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

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