nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

“Hit Iran’s Nuclear Sites First”: Donald Trump’s Advice To Israel

The former president, speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina, referred to a question posed to Democratic President Joe Biden this week about the possibility of Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear program.

Agence France-Presse, Oct 05, 2024,  https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trump-says-israel-should-hit-irans-nuclear-facilities-6719212

Washington:

Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump said Friday he believes Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in response to the Islamic republic’s recent missile barrage.

The former president, speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina, referred to a question posed to Democratic President Joe Biden this week about the possibility of Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear program.

“They asked him, what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran? And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right?” Trump told a town hall style event in Fayetteville, near a major US military base.

Biden was asked on Wednesday whether he would support strikes against Iranian nuclear sites and the US president told reporters: “The answer is no.”

“I think he’s got that one wrong,” Trump said Friday, in response to a participant’s question about the issue. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit? I mean, it’s the biggest risk we have, nuclear weapons,” he said.

“When they asked him that question, the answer should have been, hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later,” Trump added.

“If they’re going to do it, they’re going to do it. But we’ll find out whatever their plans are.”

Biden on Wednesday expressed his opposition to such strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, in response to the firing of nearly 200 Iranian missiles towards Israel.

We’ll be discussing with the Israelis what they’re going to do,” he said, adding that all G7 members agree Israel has “a right to respond, but they should respond in proportion.”

Trump, locked in a tooth-and-nail presidential election battle with US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has spoken little about the recent escalation in tensions in the Middle East.

He issued a scathing statement this week, holding Biden and Harris responsible for the crisis.

October 6, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Corrosion exceeds estimates at Michigan nuclear plant US wants to restart, regulator says

By Timothy Gardner, October 3, 2024, WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (Reuters) –

Holtec, the company wanting to reopen the Palisades nuclear reactor in Michigan, found corrosion cracking in steam generators “far exceeded” estimates, the U.S. nuclear power regulator said in a document published on Wednesday.

President Joe Biden’s administration this week finalized a $1.52 billion conditional loan guarantee to the Palisades plant. It is part of an effort to support nuclear energy, which generates virtually emissions-free power, to curb climate change and to help satisfy rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and digital currency.

Palisades, which shut under a different owner in 2022, is seeking to be the first modern U.S. nuclear power plant to reopen after being fully shut.

A summary of an early September call between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec published on Wednesday said indications of stress corrosion cracking in tubes in both of Palisade’s steam generators “far exceeded estimates based on previous operating history.” It found 1,163 steam generator tubes had indications of the stress cracking. There are more than 16,000 tubes in the units.

Steam generators are sensitive components that require meticulous maintenance and are among the most expensive units at a nuclear power station.

Holtec wants to return the plant to operation late next year. Patrick O’Brien, a company spokesperson, said the results of the inspections “were not entirely unpredicted” as the standard system “layup process”, or procedure for maintaining the units, was not followed when the plant went into shutdown…………………….

Holtec still needs permits from the NRC. “Holtec must ensure the generators will meet NRC requirements if the agency authorizes returning Palisades to operational status,” an NRC spokesperson said.

The NRC said last month that preliminary results from inspections “identified a large number of steam generator tubes with indications that require further analysis and/or repair.”

Steam generator issues can pose problems for nuclear power plants. Parts of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California were shut in 2012 after steam generators that had a design flaw leaked. Problems with new generators led to the closure of the plant in 2013. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-report-says-corrosion-michigan-nuclear-plant-above-estimates-2024-10-02/

October 6, 2024 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Construction of Ontario nuclear reactor should move forward despite incomplete design, ! regulator says

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-though-its-design-is-incomplete-nuclear-safety-regulator-says-the/ Matthew McClearn, 4 Oct 24

Canada’s nuclear safety regulator has recommended that the country’s first new power reactor in decades should receive the go-ahead to begin construction, even though its design is not yet complete.

At a hearing Wednesday, staff from Ontario Power Generation argued that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission should grant a licence to construct a 327-megawatt nuclear reactor known as the BWRX-300 at OPG’s Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington, Ont., about 70 kilometres east of Toronto.

he application received unequivocal support from the CNSC’s staff, despite the fact that several safety questions remain unresolved.

“The level of design information needed for CNSC staff to recommend a licence to construct is not the final design, but the information must be sufficient to ensure that the regulations have been met,” Sarah Eaton, the CNSC’s director-general ofits Directorate of Advanced Reactor Technologies, said before the commission.

It would be the first small modular reactor built in a G7 country and among the first globally – although its output would exceedthe informal 300-megawatt cutoff for SMRs.

The BWRX-300 is currently being developed by U.S. vendor GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. Someaspects of its design are based on the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR), which was licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2014 but never built. The CNSC said the 1,600-megawattESBWR underwent significant testing that is “mostly applicable” to its smaller cousin.

OPG, which submitted its application two years ago, is seeking a 10-year licence andplans to build three additional BWRX-300s at Darlington.

A second part of the CNSC hearing, scheduled for January, will hear interventions from the public, including Indigenous communities. OPG has already partly prepared the site – building roads and moving earth – under an earlier licence granted by the CNSC.

David Tyndall, OPG’s vice-president of new nuclear engineering, said the reactor’s design had advanced sufficiently to meet Canada’s regulatory requirements.

One significant unresolved issue, though, is its emergency shutdown systems.

Typically, reactors are required to have two independent shutdown systems. The BWRX-300would have 57 control rods that could be inserted rapidly into its coreby high-pressure water in an emergency to halt reactivity. Should that hydraulic method fail, electric motors would drive them in instead.

Mr. Tyndall assured the commission that the BWRX-300 was designedin such a way that all safety systems “are guaranteed to be fully independent and redundant, which ensureshigh reliability and fail-safe operation.”

CNSC staff, however, questioned whether the shut-off systems were truly independent because both systems rely on the same control rods. That remained unresolved at Wednesday’s hearing.

To address unresolved issues, CNSC staff proposed that the commission impose three “regulatory hold points” during the reactor’s construction at which work would halt until OPG provided sufficient information to satisfy CNSC staff. Ramzi Jammal, the commission’s executive vice-president and chief regulatory operations officer, would administer the hold points.

Throughout an assessmentrunning more than 1,000 pages, published by the CNSC this summer, staff repeatedly noted missing information in OPG’s submission that they vowed to review once it becomes available.

“In many cases, there is a discussion about a topic, and it’s noted that the design is not complete,” commissioner Jerry Hopwood observed at the hearing.

“It’s not entirely clear to what extent the design has been completed in such a way that the conclusions that support a licence to construct are then justified.”

M.V. Ramana, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs who specializes in nuclear power, said the CNSC doesn’t have enough information to answer key safety questions necessary to grant a construction licence. He added that, as the first of its kind, the Darlington SMR’s design is likely to require further significant changes during construction.

“What it does tell me is that OPG really has rushed through this,” he said. “It may be that they don’t feel they know enough about the design and are waiting for information from GE Hitachi, or that OPG is under its own self-imposed deadline to submit this application by a certain date.”

Prof. Ramana said the CNSC’s role as a safety regulatoris in conflict with statements its leadership has made in recent years promoting SMRs.

“The CNSC has acted as a cheerleader for small modular reactors,” he said. “This is completely at odds with what a good regulator ought to be doing.”

October 6, 2024 Posted by | Canada, safety | Leave a comment

Biden Says US and Israel Are Discussing Strikes on Iranian Oil Facilities

The president previously said he wouldn’t support strikes on nuclear facilities

by Dave DeCamp October 3, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/03/biden-says-us-and-israel-are-discussing-strikes-on-iranian-oil-facilities/#gsc.tab=0

President Biden said Thursday that the US and Israel were discussing the possibility of striking Iran’s oil facilities in retaliation for the Iranian missile barrage that targeted Israel on Tuesday, which was a response to multiple Israeli escalations.

When asked by a reporter if he would support Israeli strikes on Iranian oil sites, Biden said, “We’re discussing that. I think that would be a little… anyway.” The comments sent oil prices spiking.

Striking Iran’s oil facilities is supported by the ultra-hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “These oil refineries need to be hit and hit hard because that is the source of cash for the regime to perpetrate their terror,” Graham said in a statement on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Biden said he wouldn’t support Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, but the US is vowing to ensure Tehran faces “severe consequences.” Israeli officials have told Axios that they plan to hit Iran hard and believe their attack could lead to a major regional war.

Options being considered besides striking oil facilities are targeting Iran’s air defenses or carrying out a targeted assassination inside Iran. Israeli officials have said that if Iran responds to their next attack, then any option is on the table, including strikes on nuclear facilities.

Israel is coordinating its plans to attack Iran with the US because it wants the US to come to its defense in the event of another significant Iranian attack. If Israel wants to carry out a significant strike inside Iran, it may also need support from the US military.

Iran fired about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to the Israeli assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and the Israeli killing of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan, an IRGC commander who was killed alongside Nasrallah.

October 6, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Supreme Court to hear nuclear waste storage dispute

By Nate Raymond, October 5, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-hear-nuclear-waste-storage-dispute-2024-10-04/

  • Summary
  • Biden administration appeals lower court ruling
  • Nuclear waste storage facility planned for Texas
  • U.S. agency sued by Texas, New Mexico, oil interests

Oct 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the authority to license nuclear waste storage facilities following a judicial ruling that upended decades of practice by declaring it does not.

The justices took up appeals by President Joe Biden’s administration and a company that was awarded a license by the NRC to build a waste storage facility in western Texas of the lower court’s ruling. The license was challenged by the states of Texas and New Mexico, as well as oil industry interests.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case in its new term, which begins on Monday, and a decision is expected by the end of June.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has shown skepticism toward the authority of federal regulatory agencies in several major rulings in recent years.

The NRC, the federal agency tasked with regulating nuclear energy in the United States, issued the license in 2021 to Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of France-based Orano and Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists.

While two other federal appeals courts rejected legal challenges to the license, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and decided that the NRC lacked authority under a federal law called the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to issue the license at all.

The administration has said the ruling would disrupt the nuclear energy sector.

The NRC has issued licenses like the one at issue in this case for the temporary storage of spent fuel produced by nuclear reactors since 1980 in recognition that the nuclear-power industry would need more space for the off-site storage of the radioactive waste.

It did so pursuant to its authority under the Atomic Energy Act to issue licenses to possess nuclear material. Such sites have continued to be licensed, with a proposal to permanently store the nation’s radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain north of Las Vegas stalled following decades of opposition in Nevada.

In the 5th Circuit ruling against the license, Judge James Ho, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, cited a different law, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, that was amended in 1987 to designate Yucca as the sole permanent storage site for such radioactive waste.

Interim Storage Partners planned to operate its nuclear storage facility in Andrews County, Texas. The plan drew opposition from oil- and gas-related organizations because the facility would be operated within the Permian Basin, the highest-producing oil field in the country.

Texas and New Mexico were joined in the litigation challenging the license by Fasken Land and Minerals, a Texas-based oil and gas extraction organization, and a nonprofit group called the Permian Basin Coalition Of Land And Royalty Owners And Operators.

The plaintiffs argued that allowing the proposed facility to be built posed environmental risks to watersheds covering nearly all of New Mexico and Texas, and that a radiation leak could be economically disastrous for oil and gas operations.

“For years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and two private corporations have attempted to force Texas and New Mexico into accepting stockpiled radioactive waste,” Monica Perales, an attorney for Fasken Oil & Ranch, said on Friday.

The commission “lacks the authority to issue licenses for consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear fuel in a region hundreds and even thousands of miles away from the reactors that generated the waste,” Perales added.

October 6, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Glenn Greenwald: Who is Really Dragging the US Into Israel’s Wars?

October 6, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden says he would not back Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites

Any Israeli response to Iran’s missile barrage should be ‘proportional’, says the US president.

By Al Jazeera Staff, 2 Oct 2024  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/2/biden-says-he-would-not-back-israeli-strike-on-irans-nuclear-sites

United States President Joe Biden has voiced opposition to any strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in response to Tehran’s missile attack on Israel.

When asked by reporters on Wednesday whether he would back such retaliation, Biden stated “the answer is no”.

Biden’s comments come a day after Iran fired some 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, its second attack on the country since April. Iran’s most recent attacks on Israeli military sites have come in response to the assassination of key Iran-allied figures, including Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Iran would “pay” for the strike, which reportedly did not cause any serious casualties in Israel but killed one Palestinian in the occupied West Bank.

Analysts warned Israel may seize the chance to launch attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a target its leaders have long eyed.

“The risk of an [Israeli] attack on the nuclear programme is particularly high because Iran’s defensive shield Hezbollah is on its knees,” Ali Vaez, the Iran Project director at the International Crisis Group think tank, told Al Jazeera.

“US forces are already in the region shielding Israel, and for Israel, this is potentially a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take care of a major threat that it has perceived from Iran over the past few decades,” he said.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett explicitly called for such an attack in a post on X, saying Israel must “act now to destroy Iran’s nuclear program”.

“We have the justification. We have the tools”, Bennett said.

Biden calls for ‘proportional’ response

In the wake of Iran’s attack, Biden emphasised that the US is “fully supportive of Israel”.

Other US officials warned Iran would face “severe consequences”, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller telling reporters he was not “ruling anything out”.

On Wednesday, after Biden spoke with allied leaders, he said he would not support an attack on Iran’s nuclear facility. Any Israeli response to Iran, he told reporters, should be “proportional”, a position shared by all nations part of the G7 grouping, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The White House also said Biden and G7 leaders spoke about coordinating a new round of sanctions against Iran.

Whole Middle East at risk

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that the attack was warranted, but that Tehran did not seek war with Israel.

Iran’s armed forces warned that Israel would face “vast destruction” if it retaliated.

The escalation between two of the Middle East’s strongest militaries – while war continues to rage in Gaza and Lebanon – has stoked fears of an even broader conflict in the region.

“The idea of Iran and Israel going after each other under the auspices of the United States will burn everyone in the Middle East and beyond,” said Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.

October 5, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Donald Trump encourages Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear sites

 https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/united-states/donald-trump-encourages-israel-to-strike-irans-nuclear-sites/video/1b46af245863dc258fdbfce60160c1a8 5 Oct 24

During a rally in North Carolina, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump took the opposite approach to Joe Biden, encouraging Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear sites.

“They ask him (Joe Biden) what do you think about Iran? Would you hit Iran? And he goes as long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff – that’s the thing you want to hit,” Mr Trump said.

“I think he’s got that one wrong – isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit?”

October 5, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Hey Australia, Ontario is no model for energy and climate policy

Energy and climate strategy should prioritize options with lowest economic, environmental, technological and safety risks. Ontario’s does the opposite.

by Mark Winfield October 4, 2024,  https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/october-2024/ontario-energy/

Over the past few weeks, word has begun to reach Ontario of a series of stories in the Australian media in which the province is being held up as a model for climate and energy policy Down Under.

It seems that Peter Dutton, the leader of the federal opposition Liberal (the conservative party in Australian politics), has been promoting Ontario’s nuclear heavy energy plans as a pathway for Australia.

For those in the province familiar with the ongoing saga of its energy and electricity policies, the reactions to the notion of Ontario being an example of energy and electricity policymaking have ranged from “bizarre” to “you couldn’t make this up.”

Poor maintenance and operating practices led to the near-overnight shutdown of the province’s seven oldest reactors in 1997, leading to a dramatic rise in the role of coal-fired generation and its associated emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and smog precursors. The refurbishment of the “laid-up” reactors themselves went badly. Two ended in write-offs, and the others ran billions over budget and years behind schedule, accounting for a large portion of the near doubling of electricity rates in the province between the mid-2000s and 2020.

Towards a $100-billion nuclear binge?

Only two other provinces followed Ontario’s lead on nuclear. Quebec built two reactors and New Brunswick one, each of them completed in the 1970s or the early 1980s. The Gentilly-1 facility in Quebec was barely ever operational and closed in 1977. The Gentilly-2 facility was shut down in 2012, and assessed as uneconomic, particularly in light of Ontario’s experiences in attempting to refurbish its own. The construction and then refurbishment of the Point Lepreau facility has repeatedly pushed New Brunswick Power to the brink of bankruptcy.

The current government of Ontario, led by Conservative Premier Doug Ford, has seemed determined to ignore the nuclear experiences of these provinces, and its own history of failed nuclear megaprojects. The government’s July 2023 energy plan includes the refurbishment of six reactors at the Bruce nuclear power facility (owned by OPG), and four reactors at the OPG’s Darlington facility. It subsequently added the refurbishment of four more reactors at OPG’s Pickering B facility, an option that had previously been assessed as unnecessary and uneconomic. The plant had originally been scheduled to close in 2018. There are also proposals for four new reactors totaling 4,800 MW in capacity at Bruce and four new 300MW reactors at Darlington. (The current capacity is 6,550 MW at Bruce, and 3,512 MW at Darlington.)

The total costs of these plans are unknown at this point, but an overall estimate in excess of $100 billion would not be unrealistic:

  • $13 billion for the refurbishment at Darlington;
  • approximately $20 billion for the refurbishment at Bruce;
  • $15 billion for Pickering B (based on Darlington costs and plant age for both this case and Bruce);
  • about $50 billion for the new build at Bruce, based on previous new build proposals;
  • and the Darlington new build (unknown, but likely $10 billion or more).

Even this 100$-billion figure would assume that things go according to plan, which rarely happens with nuclear construction and refurbishment projects.

The government’s ambitious nuclear plans have not been subject to any form of external review or regulatory oversight in terms of costs, economic and environmental rationality, or the availability of lower-cost and lower-risk pathways for meeting the province’s electricity needs. Rather, the system now runs entirely on the basis of ministerial directives that agencies in the sector, including the putative regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, are mandated to implement.

The province’s politically driven policy environment is very advantageous to nuclear proponents. When previous nuclear expansion proposals had been subject to meaningful public review, the plans collapsed in the face of soaring cost estimates and unrealistic demand projections. This was the case in the early 1980s with the Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning – aka the Porter commission, at the turn of the 1990s with the Ontario Hydro demand and supply plan environmental assessment, and in the late 2000s, with the Ontario Power Authority’s integrated power system plan review.

A halt to renewable energy

There is a second dimension to Ontario’s electricity plans that also should not be overlooked. Upon arriving in office the Ford government promptly terminated all efforts at renewable energy development,  including having completed wind turbine projects quite literally ripped out of the ground at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. It then scrapped the province’s energy efficiency strategy for being too effective at reducing demand. Repeated offers of low-cost electricity from the hydropower-rich neighbouring province of Quebec were ignored. The results of studies by the province’s own electricity system operator on energy efficiency potential and the possible contributions of distributed generation, like building and facility-level solar photovoltaics (PV) and storage, have been largely disregarded.

These choices have left the province with no apparent option but to rely on natural gas-fired generation to replace nuclear facilities that are being refurbished or retired. With existing facilities dramatically ramping up their output, and new facilities being added, GHG and other emissions from gas-fired generation have more than tripled since 2017, and are projected to continue to increase dramatically over the next years. On its current trajectory, gas-fired generation will constitute a quarter of the province’s electricity supply, the same portion provided by coal-fired plants before their phase-out, completed in 2013. The province has recently announced a re-engagement around renewable energy, but the seriousness of this interest has been subject to considerable doubt.

Given all of this, it would be difficult to see Ontario as a model for Australia or any other jurisdiction to follow in designing its energy and climate strategy. The province has no meaningful energy planning and review process. Its current nuclear and gas-focussed pathway seems destined to embed high energy costs and high emissions for decades to come. And it will leave a growing legacy of radioactive wastes that will require management of timescales hundreds of millennia.

A rational and transparent process would prioritize the options with the lowest economic, environmental, technological and safety risks. Higher-risk options, like new nuclear, should only be considered where it can be demonstrated that the lower-risk options have been fully optimized and developed in the planning process. Ontario’s current path goes in the opposite direction. To follow its example would be a serious mistake.

October 5, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

Trial in New Hampshire of protesters against Elbit Systems – supplier of weapons for Israel.

(the above video  is actually from a few months ago when Bruce (alone) was arraigned. 

Here’s a link to the video about this week’s trial of all the Elbit 8: https://www.wmur.com/article/protesters-guilty-elbit-systems-merrimack-100124/62474455)

Space for Peace – Organizing Notes, Thursday, 3 Oct 24 Bruce Gagnon – Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

On Monday eight of us stood trial before a judge in a New Hampshire District Court. The nature of our charges (Trespass and Resisting Arrest) under N.H. law do not allow a jury trial.

The first several hours of the trial were dominated by local, county and state police officers testifying about the nature of the March 22 action by our protest group that blocked the entrance of Elbit Systems. The early morning blockage, prior to workers arriving, lasted about five hours before cops (from various N.H. police departments) cleared the protest.

(Elbit makes weapons for Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine, Lebanon and others. Elbit has weapons facilities in dozens of nations around the world. This is likely done to create jobs in the host country in hopes of ‘buying international support’ for Israel’s colonial apartheid system.)

After lunch the defense team began our case. The judge would not allow the full testimony of one expert witness who tried to make the case about the rights and impacts of protest movements

Then came the testimony of an Iraqi immigrant young doctor who attended medical school in New Hampshire and now works in Portland, Maine. Yusuf was arrested with us at Elbit and spoke beautifully about the human toll of Israeli’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people – thus his reason for joining the action. Surprisingly the judge let him talk so Yusuf was able to make many strong moral statements.

I testified next and talked about my role that day as police liaison. I described how I had previously taken this role at large protests in Portland and at the BIW naval shipyard (the destroyers built there are attacking Yemen in support of Israel).  I noted that the Portland Chief of Police thanked me for playing that role in a protest where arrests were made. Sadly the Merrimack police had no interest in communication with me once I introduced myself.  I was quickly arrested, hours before the others were.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………. I closed by saying that I know that the Nuremberg Law Principles have been adopted as international law. This legal framework resulted from Hitler’s WW2 army having committed genocide against the Jewish people across Europe. Nuremberg proclaims that all citizens have the legal right and duty to intervene to prevent such crimes when they are happening before our eyes. Still on the witness stand, I turned to the judge and said ‘Even this court is required to honor Nuremberg Law’. The judge didn’t buy this offer to join the resistance against US-UK-Israel-NATO war crimes.

Another of our expert witnesses (Lisa Savage was to talk about what Elbit does at the Merrimack facility) was pulled when the judge made it clear that he didn’t wish to listen to another expert witness.

Once the closing statements were done, by the state prosecutor and our defense lawyer, the judge took a 15 minute break. When he returned to the courtroom the verdicts were announced. He held all of us guilty of trespass and declared that three of us were not guilty of Resisting Arrest (RA) but the other five were. I was one of the three that beat the RA rap.

We will have a sentencing meeting with the judge via zoom-type tech on October 7. We are facing considerable fines to cover costs of Merrimack police on the day of the protest event.

Since I was the first arrested (early in the protest) I sat in a cop car hands cuffed behind my back for two hours listening to the police radio and heard calls for the ‘bomb squad’, paddy-wagons to take protesters away and reports of more police arriving from other nearby cities. During my testimony I described how I counted at least 50 cops and our attorney asked what they did. I answered that they stood around enjoying the ‘show’ and often laughing. One local reporter in Merrimack once told me that he’d worked for his media outlet for 20 years, ‘but had never seen anything like this [protest] before’. ……………………………………
https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2024/10/elbit-systems-protest-trial-in-new.html

October 5, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Hurricane Helene sends a warning

 https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/10/01/hurricane-helene-sends-a-warning/

A nuclear plant, fortunately closed, was inundated, but we may not get so lucky next time, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

As no one can have failed to notice, our country has been ravaged once again by violent weather extremes, most recently by Hurricane Helene, which left areas in the south submerged and destroyed, and led to a significant number of deaths.

The press has routinely been describing the extreme flooding, especially in places such as North Carolina, as “Biblical. But, as my partner and colleague at Beyond Nuclear Paul Gunter points out, it is nothing of the sort. As should be obvious by now, our ever more frequent climatic disasters are entirely human-caused. 

Acts of God, whether you are a believer or not, have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Try telling that to our political leaders. No matter who wins in November, we are looking at drilling (Trump) or fracking (Harris) or possibly both. And, of course, more nuclear power!

The fact that all of these will obviously make the climate crisis far worse far faster does not pass these people by. They know it. But they push both fossil and fissile energy anyway, submitting willingly to the bidding of their corporate paymasters who would rather celebrate near-term greed and gain than leave a livable world to their children and grandchildren.

This means we are led by climate criminals who go not only unpunished, but who are routinely re-elected.

The push for license extensions for our aging reactor fleet is particularly heinous.  The lapdog nuclear regulator, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has been exposed by the Government Accountability Office in a damning report as entirely uninterested in how the ravages of the climate crisis might jeopardize the safety of nuclear power plants.  

“NRC doesn’t fully consider potential increases in risk from climate change,” wrote the GAO. “For example, NRC mostly uses historical data to identify and assess safety risks, rather than data from future climate projections.”

Instead, the NRC is intent on colluding with the nuclear industry to sell us nuclear power as some sort of answer to the climate crisis.

Apart from the fact that nuclear power is too expensive and too slow, as we have argued here countless times, it is actually a hazard under climate chaos conditions. And we got the perfect demonstration of this from Hurricane Helene.

First of all, because of the extreme radiological risks, some nuclear power plants in the path of the hurricane were shut down as a preemptive precaution including Hatch in Georgia. This makes them completely useless in the wake of the storm’s onslaught when people are desperate for electricity. 

Then take the case of the Crystal River nuclear power plant on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Floodwaters swamped the site. Fortunately the plant has been shuttered since 2013 but all of the high-level irradiated radioactive fuel waste is still stored there.

“The whole site was flooded, including buildings, sumps, and lift stations. Industrial Wastewater Pond #5 was observed overflowing to the ground due to the surge,” read a report filed by plant owner, Duke Energy.

Given the present enthusiasm for extending the licenses of the still operating US nuclear reactor fleet — and they are talking about out to 80 or even 100 years for reactors that were never designed or intended to run that long — Crystal River might easily still have been operating. 

Under today’s rush to relicense — and even reopen the country’s most dangerously degraded reactors including Palisades in Michigan — it probably would be.

Did nuclear waste escape as a result of the Crystal River nuclear site flood? 

“We are still in the process of obtaining access and assessing the damage, but due to the nature of this event we anticipate difficulty with estimating the total discharge amount of wastewater, and impacts are unknown at this time,” wrote Duke in its report.

In other words, we may never know.

The implication of a nuclear plant inundated by a massive storm surge does not have to be imagined. We saw it at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, when a 50-foot tsunami swept over the inadequate sea wall and knocked out the backup onsite power after the earlier earthquake had already severed the offsite power connection.

Meanwhile, Crystal River owner Duke is the very same company that is trying to secure a license extension for its three Oconee reactors in South Carolina that sit downstream from not one but two dams!

The three reactors are sited 300 feet below the water level in Lake Jocassee behind Jocassee Dam and five feet below the water level in the immediately adjacent Lake Keowee.

  

What could possibly go wrong? Nothing, argues Duke, for whom the idea of a dam overtopping or breaking, sending a wall of water directly at the plant — effectively an inland tsunami — just isn’t a credible possibility. 

Out of our scope, declares the NRC, which contends it cannot include an assessment of likely climate change impacts on Oconee operations within its environmental review for license renewal. 

Beyond Nuclear and the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club have been fighting this through legal channels and will continue to do so. 

After last week, you might expect such a blinkered view of current — never mind future — climatic conditions to change. But it won’t. 

Retrofitting an old nuclear plant to adequately protect it against the impacts of a climate crisis never prepared for, costs money.

October 4, 2024 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

The Anishinaabe community fighting nuclear waste dumping, one step at a time‘

‘There’s more fresh water in this part of the country than there is in the Great Lakes, and they want to destroy that’

Ricochet, Crystal Greene, September 23 2024

Every September long weekend for the past five years, Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies have walked together along the TransCanada Highway 17 to peacefully protest the proposed dumping of nuclear waste on Treaty 3 lands in northwestern Ontario.

Among the walkers at the annual Walk Against Nuclear Waste was an Anishinaabe grandmother, who started the walk in hopes that more people will “wake up” to what’s at stake with the possibility of a deep geological repository (DGR) that would contain all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste within their watershed.

“This is my last year and I feel like I’m gonna miss it, but it was a good awareness. I’m okay with that,” Darlene Necan, told Ricochet Media as vehicles zoomed by on TransCanada Highway 17, many beeping their horns in support throughout the roadside interview. 

On September 1, two groups left from Ignace and Wabigoon at the same time. Over two days the group of about 30 participants walked about 40 kilometres from each direction. 

They all met up at a rest stop near Revell Lake, the site where the Nuclear Waste Management Organization has done exploration drilling for the potential $26-billion DGR, which would sit at headwaters of the Wabigoon River and Turtle River watersheds. The underground facility would be used to bury and abandon millions of bundles of spent fuel from Canadian nuclear power plants.

“We cannot foresee the future, but what if it does happen? What if there’s a leak?” Necan said.  “The creator gifted us this beautiful land for all of us to live, but who are these people to come here and economically destroy it? Money is never going to last.”

Necan, 65, is also known for asserting Anishinaabe title by building a cabin on her traditional territory at Savant Lake, Ontario, without permits, after she grew tired of waiting for housing from her band, Ojibway Nation of Saugeen #258. She was charged under the Public Lands Act with​​ construction on so-called Crown land.

It’s no surprise that she took on the responsibility to alert others about the NWMO’s plan to transport, bury and abandon the waste.

There is a strong sense of urgency as the NWMO is set to finalize its chosen waste site, narrowed down from a list of 22 locations in Canada, a process that began in 2010.

By the end of the year, NWMO will choose either the Revell Lake site, near where the walk ended, or a Bruce County site in southwestern Ontario. 

Rather than having the radioactive waste shipped by truck or train for the next 50 plus years —which they foresee is an accident waiting to happen — walkers say they want to see the waste all kept where it originated from, and for Canada to stop producing nuclear energy altogether.

The NWMO is an industry-funded organization made up of representatives from Canada’s nuclear power industry who’ve been looking for a way to deal with the approximately 100,000 tonnes of waste they’ve produced that will be radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

In a report to the Standing Committee on Environmental and Sustainable Development, a northwestern Ontario coalition “We the Nuclear Free North” describes the flaws and weaknesses of the DGR project along with the serious risks expressed by experts.

“Numerous experts in the fields of geology, chemistry and physics warn of the insufficiency of current scientific knowledge to guide a project of the nature and magnitude of the NWMO’s proposed plan,” the coalition wrote .

Their report broke down NWMO’s “conceptual” plan.

The waste would be transported by truck and received at a fuel packaging plant where it would be placed into containers. 

The water used during the process to decontaminate the devices used for the waste in-transit would become contaminated with radionuclides and moved into a tailings pond, and be contained as a low-to-medium level radioactive liquid waste.

The waste in containers would be lowered to the DGR underground storage facility, made up of rooms blasted out of precambrian rock, 500 to 1000 metres below the Earth’s surface. 

Since there is no way for the high-level radioactive nuclear fuel to deactivate, except for time,  it would continue to generate heat, years after being stored. It could lead to pressure build-up, causing fractures in the DGR walls, where the groundwater would seep in and mix with water-soluble radionuclides. 

Eventually, the free-moving contaminated water would reach the two watersheds, through cracks in the DGR, and a sump pump would need to be used to bring liquid to a surface tailings pond. 

Another risk to hosting a DGR in the Revell Lake area are low magnitude earthquakes that have been documented by Environment Canada. A quake could fracture the DGR and increase flow of water into the facility and send contaminated water into the watersheds…………………………………………………………. more https://ricochet.media/indigenous/the-anishinaabe-community-fighting-nuclear-waste-dumping-one-step-at-a-time/

October 4, 2024 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

DOE Plutonium Pit Plan Found To Violate Environmental Law

By Daniel Wilson (September 30, 2024,) — A South Carolina federal judge on Monday backed antinuclear groups’ challenge to a U. S. Department of Energy plan to boost production of plutonium cores used in nuclear weapons, saying the DOE hadn’t properly considered the potential environmental impact of the plan. . . …….. (Subscribers only) more https://www.law360.com/articles/1884130/doe-plutonium-pit-plan-found-to-violate-environmental-law

October 2, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

US government provides $1.52 billion loan to resurrect Michigan nuclear plant

US closes $1.52 billion loan to resurrect Michigan nuclear plant, By Timothy Gardner October 1, 2024

WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. on Monday said it closed a $1.52 billion loan to resurrect Holtec’s Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, and a senior Biden administration official said it could take two years to reopen the plant, which is longer than the company predicted.

President Joe Biden’s administration has called for a tripling of U.S. nuclear power capacity as U.S. power demand surges and worries about climate change mount.

The push could include the potential reopening of some commercial reactors that have been shut for decommissioning, including one at Three Mile Island, site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. Restarting shut nuclear plants is a complicated and expensive process never before accomplished in the country.

“Palisades is a climate comeback story,” Ali Zaidi, the White House climate adviser, told reporters in a call, adding that nuclear power supports high-paying union jobs

The $1.52 billion in financing from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, was accompanied by funding for nonprofit electric cooperatives to purchase power from Palisades. Deputy U.S. Energy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small announced more than $1.3 billion in public funding to power cooperatives Wolverine and Hoosier Energy.

Nuclear reactors generate virtually emissions-free power, which is valued as electricity demand soars for the first time in decades on growth in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and cryptocurrencies. Nuclear critics, however, point out that the U.S. has not agreed on a permanent place to bury radioactive nuclear waste.

Palisades still needs licensing from regulators and the senior U.S. official said that means it could take “a couple of years to turn back on”. Holtec has estimated a comeback in the fourth quarter next year…………….

O’Brien has said Holtec does not expect delays or additional costs.  https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-closes-152-billion-loan-resurrect-michigan-nuclear-plant-2024-09-30/

October 2, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Question for the candidates: Will the United States sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons?

By Alicia Sanders-Zakre | September 20, 2024 Alicia Sanders-Zakre is the Policy and Research Coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.  https://thebulletin.org/2024/09/will-the-united-states-sign-and-ratify-the-treaty-on-the-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFoiE5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXWHz4dPKx6qA6gXNV_3JCT1LqSA4SpW4InKnv6GP0M0A5RzBvtaJMfokw_aem_nT8dnPTOYgkrNFm4kOHKTA

Before the 2016 US presidential election, Princeton physicist Zia Mian wrote an essay asking then-candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the Bulletin whether they would be ready to start talks to ban nuclear weapons. Eight years and two presidents later, both the Trump and Biden administrations have rebuffed the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and chosen instead to persist with current US policies to maintain and upgrade nuclear weapons—despite a legal obligation to disarm, public support for the TPNW, and the existential threat to humanity of adherence to the debated theory of nuclear deterrence.

The TPNW is the first international treaty banning all nuclear weapons activities, including nuclear use and threat of use, testing, stationing, and development. The treaty’s Article 4 provides a verifiable pathway for nuclear-armed states to join and disarm. And Articles 6 and 7 create the first international regime to provide assistance and remediation to people and environments harmed by nuclear weapons use and testing; an effort led by countries that have been bombarded by Soviet and British nuclear detonations. This treaty currently has 93 signatory states and 70 states parties from every region of the world.

The United States—like other nuclear-armed countries—has chosen to undermine and dismiss this good faith effort by nearly half the world’s governments, including US allies, to rid the world of nuclear weapons. In 2020, the Trump administration even urged states to withdraw their instruments of ratification. Meanwhile, the United States has failed to implement the obligation it undertook more than half a century ago under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to pursue nuclear disarmament and instead spent $51.5 billion in 2023 alone to upgrade its nuclear arsenal. The continued investment of nuclear powers in maintaining and rebuilding their nuclear arsenals, while paying mere lip service to disarmament, is a source of contention within the NPT and undermines the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

Foreign policy goals aside, US presidential candidates should adhere to democratic principles and align their policies with public opinion and support for the treaty among local governments to join the TPNW: According to a 2022 study, 65 percent of the US population supports joining the TPNW. Cities and towns across the country—from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles to Yellow Springs, Ohio—have adopted local resolutions calling on their government to join, alongside five US states. Members of the US Congress, as well as local and state politicians, have also called on the United States to join the ban treaty.

Support for the TPNW is based on a clear-eyed assessment of the risks that nuclear weapons pose as long as they exist—and an understanding of the naiveté of relying on the rationality of statemen like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, or former US president Donald Trump to decide the fate of humanity.

Scholars have shown that the reason humanity has escaped nuclear annihilation since the dawn of the nuclear age may have more to do with sheer luck than with any successful strategy.

No one will want to be around when luck runs out.

We know all too well what that would look like and the incapacity of humanitarian organizations to respond. A new report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons documents in gut-wrenching detail the harm that nuclear weapons have done to children and the threat they continue to pose to them, including those bombed by the United States in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some of those children survived and now give testimony to—and remind leaders of—the urgent need to abolish these weapons. This report adds to the robust body of literature on the devastating humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons.

Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States and the world have continued to face the threat of accidental or intentional nuclear annihilation, a threat that has continued to grow in recent years. It is time to chart a new course and to eliminate nuclear weapons, which is the only fail-safe way to eliminate the threat of their use.

Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump should be asked: If elected President, will you sign and submit to the Senate for ratification the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons?

October 2, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »