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Groups demand broader consent for nuclear waste storage

A petition demands that Ottawa require the Nuclear Waste Management Organization to get consent from other communities, including those along the transportation route.


Gary Rinne, 22 Mar 24  https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/groups-demand-broader-consent-for-nuclear-waste-storage-8471189.

THUNDER BAY — An alliance of Northern Ontario citizen groups wants the federal government to ensure an underground storage site for used nuclear fuel isn’t built without the consent of all impacted communities.

We The Nuclear Free North has launched an online petition asking Ottawa to require the Nuclear Waste Management Organization to demonstrate it has the permission not just of its designated “host community” but also of residents and communities in the region, along the transportation route, and downstream of the proposed repository.

NWMO has narrowed its search to the Ignace area in Northwestern Ontario and South Bruce in Southwestern Ontario, and plans to announce its preferred site before the end of this year.

In a news release Wednesday, North Bay-based Northwatch spokesperson Brennain Lloyd said NWMO has repeatedly stated it will only proceed with “an informed and willing host,” and argued that “the communities along the transportation route are ‘hosts’ to the same risks as Ignace,” but are shut out of the selection process.

“Residents living closer to the site and downstream live with the short-term and long-term risks of nuclear contamination but are not being asked if they are willing,” he added.

The alliance is also wary about five members of Ignace council having the ultimate power to decide if NWMO can label the community as an agreeable host.

“Now is the time for all of us to speak up,” said Dodie LeGassick, nuclear lead for Thunder Bay-based Environment North. “The federal government must intervene to bring some fairness and facts into the siting process. That’s what this petition is all about.”

The petition will be open to all residents of Canada until May 3.

Among other things, it notes that the federal government has affirmed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which requires that no hazardous materials shall be stored on the territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.

March 24, 2024 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

U.S. Troops Are One Mile From The Chinese Border

the most important news, March 21, 2024 [ The original has several substantial quotations from news media]

The U.S. cannot afford a war with China.  The size of our military has been shrinking, and our resources are stretched way too thin.  Today, the U.S. has military bases in 80 different countries, and we have troops stationed in 178 different countries.  That is insane.  No empire in the entire history of humanity has had forces spread all over the planet like this.  Our ammunition levels are extremely low due to major conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and every war game that our leaders have conducted has shown us losing a war to protect Taiwan.  So we should be trying to avoid sparking a war with China, because we are holding a losing hand.

But our politicians seem determined to provoke one anyway.  It is being reported that officials in Taiwan have confirmed that U.S. forces are now permanently stationed “on its islands in the Taiwan Strait”…

Taiwan’s main island is approximately 100 miles from China, but in some places the Kinmen islands and China are “barely more than a mile apart”…

What are our leaders thinking?

This doesn’t make war less likely.

It makes war more likely.

On Wednesday, China sent 32 warplanes toward Taiwan in a 24 hour period…

The Chinese do this sort of thing when they are upset.

And right now they are very, very upset.

And China has been feverishly preparing for the coming war…

When war with China finally erupts, will we be able to handle it?

Of course not.

Our forces are scattered all over the planet, and so many of our resources have already been poured into the war in Ukraine.

Even though there have been efforts to ramp up ammunition production in the U.S., it is being reported that “Russia is producing nearly three times as many artillery munitions as the United States and Europe combined”…

No matter how you feel about the war, that is just embarrassing.

One of the reasons why we won World War II was because the U.S. could simply outproduce everyone else by a wide margin.

But now we just look pathetic.

French President Emmanuel Macron and other western leaders have suggested that NATO troops should be sent into Ukraine if that is what is necessary to keep the Russians from winning.

If that actually happens, U.S. boys and girls will inevitably be sent to die in the trenches of eastern Ukraine too.

In anticipation of a wider war, the Russians are conducting another round of mobilization.

In fact, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has just announced “the creation of 2 new ground armies, with 16 new brigades & 14 new divisions”.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials continue to insist that a major ground operation will happen in Rafah no matter what the Biden administration thinks about such a move…

When the IDF goes into Rafah, that could cause the entire region to erupt.

And so U.S. forces may be called on to intervene in the Middle East as well.

Spreading your resources way too thin is a sure way to lose.

Unfortunately, our politicians don’t seem to understand this, and their very foolish decisions will soon lead to absolutely disastrous consequences.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.  https://themostimportantnews.com/archives/u-s-troops-are-one-mile-from-the-chinese-border

March 24, 2024 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Halting Biden’s Weapon Shipments to Israel

byEDITORMarch 22, 2024

The Chris Hedges Report with attorney Katherine Gallagher and Palestinian plaintiff Ayman Nijim on their lawsuit demanding the Biden administration halt weapons shipments to Israel.

By Chris Hedges / The Real News Network

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed the lawsuit on behalf of the human rights organization, Defense for Children – Palestine; Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group based in the occupied West Bank; and eight Palestinians and US citizens with relatives in Gaza accusing President Joe Biden and other senior officials of being complicit in Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza. The case is being heard in a federal court in California.

Lawyers representing Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, have attended the proceedings along with the plaintiffs who accuse them of “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide.”

Since the October 7 incusrion by Hamas and other resistance groups, which left some 1,200 people dead, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, thousands are missing, some 60,000 have been injured and nearly all of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people have been displaced. Israel’s blocage of humanitarian supplies and food have cause a widespread famine and many are dying of starvation and infectious diseases.

The CCR complaint was filed in November last year. It charges that Biden, Blinken and Austin “have not only been failing to uphold the country’s obligation to prevent a genocide but have enabled the conditions for its development by providing unconditional military and diplomatic support [to Israel].”The CCR is asking the court to “declare that defendants have violated their duty under customary international law, as part of federal common law, to take all measures within their power to prevent Israel from committing genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza”. The group is also calling for the US to use its influence over Israel to end the hostilities against Palestinians in Gaza. Joining me to discuss the case is Katherine Gallagher, a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and plaintiff Ayman Nijim……………………………Transcript……………….  https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/22/the-chris-hedges-report-halting-bidens-weapon-shipments-to-israel/

March 24, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Julian Assange and the Plea Nibble

Barry Pollack, one of Assange’s legal representatives, has not been given any indication that the department would, as such, accept the deal, a point he reiterated to Consortium News: “[W]e have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case.”

March 23, 2024 by: Dr Binoy Kampmark  https://theaimn.com/julian-assange-and-the-plea-nibble/

Be wary of what Washington offers in negotiations at the best of times. The empire gives and takes when it can; the hegemon proffers and in equal measure and withdraws offers it deems fit. This is all well known to the legal team of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who, the Wall Street Journal “exclusively” reveals, is in ongoing negotiations with US Justice Department officials on a possible plea deal.

As things stand, the US Department of Justice is determined to get its mitts on Assange on the dubious strength of 18 charges, 17 confected from the brutal Espionage Act of 1917. Any conviction from these charges risks a 175-year jail term, effectively constituting a death sentence for the Australian publisher.

The war time statute, which was intended to curb free speech and muzzle the press for the duration of the First World War, was assailed by Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert La Follette as a rotten device that impaired “the right of the people to discuss the war in all its phases.” It was exactly in time of war that the citizen “be more alert to the preservation of his right to control his government. He must be most watchful of the encroachment of the military upon the civil power.” And that encroachment is all the more pressing, given the Act’s repurposing as a weapon against leakers and publishers of national security material. In its most obscene incarnation, it has become the US government’s political spear against a non-US national who published US classified documents outside the United States.


The plea deal idea is not new. In August last year, the Sydney Morning Herald pounced upon comments from US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy that a “resolution” to the Assange imbroglio might be on the table. “There is a way to resolve it,” the ambassador suggested at the time. Any such resolution could involve a reduction of any charges in favour of a guilty plea, subject to finalisation by the Department of Justice. Her remarks were heavily caveated: this was more a matter for the DOJ than the State Department or any other agency. “So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think there absolutely could be a resolution.”

The WSJ now reports that officials from the DOJ and Assange’s legal team “have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like to end the lengthy legal drama.” These talks “remain in flux” and “could fizzle.” Redundantly, the Journal reports that any such agreement “would require approval at the highest levels of the Justice Department.”

Barry Pollack, one of Assange’s legal representatives, has not been given any indication that the department would, as such, accept the deal, a point he reiterated to Consortium News: “[W]e have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case.”

One floated possibility would be a guilty plea on a charge of mishandling classified documents, which would be classed as a misdemeanour. Doing so would take some of the sting out of the indictment, which is currently thick with felonies and one conspiracy charge of computer intrusion. “Under the deal, Assange could potentially enter that plea remotely, without setting foot in the US.” Speculation from the paper follows. “The time he has spent behind bars in London would count toward any US sentence, and he would be likely to be free to leave prison shortly after any deal has concluded.”

With little basis for the claim, the report lightly declares that the failure of plea talks would not necessarily be a bad thing for Assange. He could still “be sent to the US for trial”, where “he may not stay for long, given the Australia pledge.” The pledge in question is part of a series of highly questionable assurances given to the UK government that Assange’s carceral conditions would not include detention in the supermax ADX Florence facility, the imposition of notorious Special Administrative Measures, and the provision of appropriate healthcare. Were he to receive a sentence, it would be open to him to apply and serve its balance in Australia. But all such undertakings have been given on condition that they can be broken, and transfer deals between the US and other countries have been plagued by delays, inconsistencies, and bad faith.

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The dangers and opportunities to Assange have been bundled together, a sniff of an idea rather than a formulation of a concrete deal. And deals can be broken. It is hard to imagine that Assange would not be expected to board a flight bound for the United States, even if he could make his plea remotely. Constitutional attorney Bruce Afran, in an interview with CN Live! last August, suggested that a plea, taken internationally, was “not barred by any laws. If all parties consent to it, then the court has jurisdiction.” Yes, but what then?

In any event, once on US soil, there is nothing stopping a grand volte face, that nasty legal practice of tagging on new charges that would carry even more onerous penalties. It should be never forgotten that Assange would be delivered up to a country whose authorities had contemplated, at points, abduction, illegal rendition, and assassination.

Either way, the current process is one of gradual judicial and penal assassination, conducted through prolonged proceedings that continue to assail the publisher’s health even as he stays confined to Belmarsh Prison. (Assange awaits the UK High Court’s decision on whether he will be granted leave to appeal the extradition order from the Home Office.) The concerns will be how to spare WikiLeaks founder further punishment while still forcing Washington to concede defeat in its quest to jail a publisher. That quest, unfortunately, remains an ongoing one.

March 23, 2024 Posted by | legal, USA | Leave a comment

Canadian officials found radiation levels in these northern Ontario homes ‘well above’ the safe limit. Their response: ‘¯\_(ツ)_/¯’ .

Many residents might not be aware they are living atop radioactive infill, which came from nearby, closed-down uranium mines that helped develop atomic bombs during the Cold War.Toronto Star

The number of homes in Elliot Lake affected by buried radioactive waste could top 100 — twice as many as previously thought. 

By Declan Keogh and Masih Khalatbari, Investigative Journalism Bureau, Thursday, March 21, 2024  https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/canadian-officials-found-radiation-levels-in-these-northern-ontario-homes-well-above-the-safe-limit/article_6b68ad20-e605-11ee-9a2a-f72182db65b6.html

In January 2021, a senior official with Canada’s nuclear regulator asked a colleague to do a rough, “back-of-the-envelope” calculation on the amount of potentially deadly radiation that residents in Elliot Lake were exposed to in their homes.

The government had just received a complaint that long-forgotten radioactive mine waste was buried underneath some homes in the northern Ontario city. Ron Stenson, senior project officer at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), wanted to “confirm our assumption that 468 Bq/m3 is not an urgent health concern.”

He did not get the answer he wanted. A senior official with the commission’s radiation protection division replied that those levels of radon are “well above” the public radiation dose limit set by federal authorities.

Stenson’s response came 90 minutes later: “¯\_(ツ)_/¯.”

For too long, shrugging is all the Canadian government has done, as far as local homeowner Lisa Speck is concerned.

The government official’s email is “a true visual representation of the response we’ve received to date,” she says. “It accurately summarizes the respect we’ve been shown.”

Documents show 100+ homes affected

Documents obtained by the Investigative Journalism Bureau show the number of homes affected by buried radioactive waste could top 100 — twice as many as previously thought. Many of the residents might not be aware they are living atop radioactive infill, which came from nearby, closed-down uranium mines that helped develop atomic bombs during the Cold War.

And when faced with calls for action, civil servants make jokes.

Speck, part of a group of Elliot Lake homeowners fighting to get the radioactive mining waste removed from their properties, called the email exchange “disgusting” and “dismissive.”

Despite having spent billions of dollars to clean up similar radioactive waste in Port Hope, federal regulators deny they have any obligation to do the same in Elliot Lake, saying the waste buried beneath the properties is the homeowners’ responsibility.

CNSC declined an interview request. In a statement, the agency said it could not answer detailed questions from the IJB because of ongoing litigation, adding that it’s “dedicated to upholding the highest standards of safety in our work.” Stenson did no respond to a request for comment.

Lawyers representing impacted Elliot Lake homeowners filed an application to Federal Court for a judicial review last July in the hopes of forcing the reversal of the federal government’s position.

The government filed their response in federal court on March 4, reiterating the waste is outside their jurisdiction and stating that the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, which governs the CNSC, does not compel them to act upon demands from the homeowners.

It argues federal legislation does not give the public the right “to file complaints, request inspections, or demand orders be issued as against regulated entities.”

A screen grab from a January 2021 email sent by a senior project officer at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), after being told the levels of radon recorded at homes in Elliot Lake are “well above” the safe limits. Toronto Star illustration

Lawyers representing impacted Elliot Lake homeowners filed an application to Federal Court for a judicial review last July in the hopes of forcing the reversal of the federal government’s position.

The government filed their response in federal court on March 4, reiterating the waste is outside their jurisdiction and stating that the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, which governs the CNSC, does not compel them to act upon demands from the homeowners.

It argues federal legislation does not give the public the right “to file complaints, request inspections, or demand orders be issued as against regulated entities.”

Lawyers representing impacted Elliot Lake homeowners filed an application to Federal Court for a judicial review last July in the hopes of forcing the reversal of the federal government’s position.

The government filed their response in federal court on March 4, reiterating the waste is outside their jurisdiction and stating that the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, which governs the CNSC, does not compel them to act upon demands from the homeowners.

It argues federal legislation does not give the public the right “to file complaints, request inspections, or demand orders be issued as against regulated entities.”

At the crux of the federal government’s refusal to accept responsibility is a technicality: It says that it isn’t responsible for the regulation of naturally-occurring radioactive materials, only those that have been processed in some way. It says that the uranium rock dug up during mining “was never chemically processed” before being trucked to nearby Elliot Lake for use as backfill during the construction of homes. That, the government says, means it’s technically “not considered radioactive waste.”

‘Public perception of a coverup’

The government didn’t always view the radiation blight in Elliot Lake as someone else’s problem, internal documents suggest.

By the 1980s, the government had assumed some role alongside the mining companies that built most of the houses.

The Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) — the predecessor of the CNSC — took responsibility for “about 1,900 private properties and public areas,” according to a 1998 internal report summarizing the ongoing radiation problems in Elliot Lake.

Despite discovering “contaminated materials in structures” as well as “excessive gamma radiation due to the presence of mine waste on private properties,” there had been “minimal effort” to remove the waste, the summary report noted.

Fans and venting had been previously installed in homes to funnel the dangerous gas outside. However, it was likely these remediation efforts had failed, the report stated, possibly because residents didn’t know how to maintain the systems — or that they even existed.

“There is no evidence to suggest that owners were made aware of corrections made, or that they must assume responsibility for maintenance,” the report states.

All of this, the report concluded, created a “public perception of a coverup.”

“The only way to remove the mine waste issue from public perception is to remove the contamination.”

Supplied

As of 1998, it was estimated up to 120 properties were potentially affected by radioactive contamination and, as a result, “increased radiation exposure is likely as is renewed public concern.”

The report also called for a citywide effort to test properties, monitor and remediate excess levels of radiation and clean up the “man-introduced contamination” once and for all. It’s unclear whether those calls were heeded.

At the time, it was assumed that cleanup efforts would be shared between the federal government and the mining companies, with the companies offering financial assistance to remediate the properties they once owned.

Billions spent on remediation in other Ontario communities

In 2001, the federal government signed a deal with the municipalities of Port Hope and Clarington to collect, transport and permanently store as much as 2 million cubic metres of low-level radioactive waste that had been distributed by a government-owned radium and uranium refinery between the 1930s and the 1980s.

The $2.6 billion remediation project, which involves digging up and removing soil around affected houses, the construction of permanent storage facilities and monitoring of radiation levels, is slated to be completed by the end of this year.

Despite the parallels to Elliot Lake, the federal government has said it is not responsible for the cleanup in the northern community because the radioactive contamination came from a private company, not a crown corporation.

In June 2023, lawyers for the residents sent a host of politicians including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and executives of CNSC more than 3,000 pages of evidence and documentation. They called on the government and mining companies to remove the uranium waste in Elliot Lake.

Upon receiving the demands, Patrick Burton, director of CNSC’s uranium mines and mills division, asked two of his colleagues in radiation protection about the claims that residents were getting excess doses of radiation. He also told them to “buy a shovel and get a [travel authorization] for Elliot Lake,” adding a winking face emoji.

“Is that going to get a response?” replied one of his colleagues with a smiling face emoji.

When reached by the IJB, Burton directed questions about the email to CSNC. The agency did not offer further comment. When questioned by lawyers representing the Elliot Lake homeowners, Burton said it was supposed to be a joke among colleagues.

“The intention was never … for the homeowners to become aware of this exchange,” Burton said during his deposition.

Homeowner Speck says the joke was “rude” but says she would welcome the government’s shovels to clean up the uranium on her property.

“The statement sort of lends to the fact that he thinks it’s a small job. If it’s such a small job that he’s just going to go to buy a shovel and fix it … then just do that,” Speck says.

“Everyone in the community would expect better from a government official than to be joking about a matter that could potentially affect … or maybe has affected, a population of people.”

With files from the Toronto Star’s Marco Chown Oved. The Investigative Journalism Bureau is a non-profit newsroom based at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

March 23, 2024 Posted by | Canada, environment, Reference archives | 1 Comment

Disadvantaged Canadian towns look at the $billions promised by nuclear waste hosting

Offended tribal elders formed the Committee for Future Generations and initiated what they called the 7,000 Generations Walk Against Nuclear Waste, which saw participants trudge nearly 1,000 kilometres from Pinehouse to the legislature in Regina.

No local DGR debate has been harder fought than the 30-month marathon of psychological and ground warfare that unfolded in Saugeen Shores, one of several contestant municipalities in Bruce County, between 2011 and 2014.

Inside the race for Canada’s nuclear waste: 11 towns vie to host deep burial site Canada’s nuclear waste will be deadly for 400,000 years. What town would like the honour of hosting it?CHARLES WILKINS TheGlobe and Mail Feb. 26 2015,

“……..There are 11 rural and wilderness municipalities vying for the DGR, survivors of an original roster of 22. The aspirants include veteran northern encampments such as Hornepayne, Ontario, where, as Brennain Lloyd of the environmental education group Northwatch describes it, there is “a really fierce desire” on the part of at least a few municipal administrators to “bring the nuke dump to town.”

And Schreiber, a struggling railway town on the north shore of Lake Superior. And Ignace, another struggler, in the boreal wilds to the west. And, to the east, Manitouwadge.

And Creighton, Saskatchewan, directly across the Manitoba border from Flin Flon (Creighton is a town described by a former resident as “having had its fiscal balls to the wall for half a century”).

And Blind River, Ontario, on the north shore of Lake Huron, where survival has for years depended on the uncertain flow of traffic along the Trans-Canada Highway.

And Elliot Lake, some 50 kilometres north of Lake Huron, where uranium mining was the sustaining industry during the 1950s and ’60s but which these days survives on the pensions of retirees who moved to the town to take advantage of discount housing left over from the boom years.

“What makes it all so attractive to competing municipalities is, of course, the money,” says Tony McQuail.

While billions of dollars will flow directly through the chosen town over a period of four or five decades, Lloyd suggests that most of the money is likely to end up in the pockets of big-city consultants and other outside beneficiaries.

Mainly, the price tag will buy decades’ worth of infrastructure and construction costs, as well as maintenance, monitoring and employment training. It will also pay for the transportation of the waste to the spanking new DGR, which will, by the time it opens, have been a reality for its “willing host” for a quarter of a century or more.

Finishing just the first phase of the preliminary assessment brings $400,000 of NWMO money to candidate towns, so they can “build sustainability and well-being.” It has been speculated that some towns had no intention of staying in the process beyond the early payout.

While some towns applied to participate of their own volition, others were, according to Lloyd of Northwatch, courted by the NWMO. “What bothers me most about the process,” says Lloyd, “is the ‘siloing’ that the NWMO practises on the municipal politicians they choose to target.

“They approach them not in the context of their communities, where the politicians are immediately answerable to their constituencies, but at municipal conferences and conventions where they’re away from home, isolated, perhaps a little unsure of themselves. They wine and dine them and soft-talk them about the unimaginable benefits that could accrue to their towns should they consider hosting the DGR.

“Then they fly them to Toronto and put them up in the best hotels and take them up to the Bruce Power site, or other nuclear generating stations, and show them what of course appears to be secure and flawless waste storage. The politicians are just snowed—they’re made to feel like important players. They take this dream of hope and prosperity and safe science back to their communities and in effect go to work for the NWMO.”

Other northern councils—at Ear Falls, at Nipigon, at Wawa—have been more divided over the DGR and so were eliminated early, or withdrew, from the process. Similarly, Brockton, near the site of Bruce Power, was cut late in 2014 after its residents elected a largely anti-DGR council. (The NWMO says Brockton’s assessment simply didn’t pan out.)

The aboriginal communities of Pinehouse and English River, Saskatchewan, were dropped from the process when community debate over land and water issues, as well as a growing distrust of the NWMO, became irresolvable.

While Pinehouse was still in the running, three community leaders, including a cousin of the mayor, received money from the NWMO. Offended tribal elders formed the Committee for Future Generations and initiated what they called the 7,000 Generations Walk Against Nuclear Waste, which saw participants trudge nearly 1,000 kilometres from Pinehouse to the legislature in Regina.

No local DGR debate has been harder fought than the 30-month marathon of psychological and ground warfare that unfolded in Saugeen Shores, one of several contestant municipalities in Bruce County, between 2011 and 2014………..http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/inside-the-race-for-canadas-nuclear-waste/article23178848/

March 23, 2024 Posted by | Canada, Reference archives, wastes | 3 Comments

To Mars and Back: Will NASA’s Ambitious Endeavor Be Worth It?

A mission to retrieve samples from the red planet is in the works. Some scientists wonder if it’s a wise investment.

UNDARK, BY SARAH SCOLES, 03.20.2024

……………. Mars Sample Return, or MSR, set to launch later this decade. MSR is an audacious plan to collect samples of material from the red planet and send them on a one-way trip to Earth.

……………………………..MSR is also hugely expensive, mired in revision and bureaucracy, and, in some experts’ opinions, lacking adequate scientific value. As the planned 2028 launch date approaches, those tensions are becoming more pressing. Budget uncertainties and possible cuts have put the project in limbo as politicians and scientists alike are questioning how MSR’s cost — currently estimated at $8 billion to $11 billion — and scientific benefit balance, and what it might mean for other NASA missions. “They’re competing for funding,” said Linda Billings, who has been a communication consultant for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and its astrobiology program. “They’re competing for attention.”

MSR is attention-grabbing, impressive, and has already been appropriated about $1.7 billion for development. It’s also, if it succeeds, a political boon for NASA and the U.S. And so, the program, despite doubts and a current stall, continues, at least for the moment……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

LOFTY ambitions come at a steep price — and one that keeps mounting. In April 2023, NASA announced it was convening an independent review board in part to help wrangle MSR’s budget. And in September 2023, its board — which had 16 members, including Hamilton — issued its report.

The authors estimated that the mission may ultimately cost between $8 billion and $11 billion, a far cry from a 2020 independent review that estimated it closer to $4 billion.

A new report from the Office of the Inspector General largely concurs with the independent review board’s findings, stating that NASA should have more realistic estimates for MSR’s cost and timeline, and that it should revisit the mission’s specifics. 

Given that inflation, the Senate last year proposed slashing the mission’s 2024 budget to $300 million, and possibly canceling it or cutting its scope. (The budget request was for $949 million, a figure the House approved.) The final budget, approved this month gives NASA the option to spend as little as the Senate-suggested $300 million and as much as $949 million on the mission. A report that accompanied the budget noted that NASA must submit its own report on the future of MSR to Congress, after its response to the independent review is complete.

At stake aren’t only taxpayer dollars, but also NASA’s other projects. ………………………..

 MSR has a “near zero probability” of launching in 2028 as intended. If the agency wants to launch by 2030, the next window, it can expect to spend more than $1 billion per year between 2025 and 2027……………


ONCERNS ABOUT MSR value, though, aren’t just about money. Some scientists — including a NASA-funded researcher who studies Mars — question the mission’s scientific value……………………

Billings, the NASA consultant, questions whether the mission will benefit members of the general public, who are footing the bill. “If you’re not a Mars scientist, who cares?” she said.

According to a 2023 Pew study, the public believes NASA’s top priorities should be monitoring asteroids and other objects that might hit Earth, and studying the climate — things that aid life on Earth. Several missions NASA is delaying in favor of MSR do, in fact, deal with such terrestrial concerns.

If Billings oversaw NASA’s budget, she said she would focus on science that’s important not just to scientists but to the broader world: “There should be tangible public benefit.”

………………………..Comparing MSR to Apollo is particularly potent at this moment. The dynamics are parallel: China is also planning a sample-return mission, called Tianwen-3. Such competition from an adversary was fuel for NASA during the Cold War, when the agency went up against the Soviets in space. “That was really the reason why we sent people to the Moon,” said Lee. “It wasn’t even about science at all.”

And while science will surely come out of MSR, this mission may owe its continued existence more to political power and international competition — things that tend to resonate with Congress. That is, after all, what appropriators are generally more concerned with, compared to the ages of alien rocks.

……………………..Today, while NASA retools the mission and fashions a response to the independent review, work on MSR has largely been paused….. https://undark.org/2024/03/20/nasa-mars-sample-return/?utm_source=Undark%3A+News+%26+Updates&utm_campaign=12776643e7-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5cee408d66-185e4e09de-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

March 23, 2024 Posted by | space travel, USA | 1 Comment

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s structural path: Let Ukrainians do all the dying in support of US proxy war against Russia

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 22 Mar 24

Early in the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Senator Lindsey Graham gloried in America’s use of Ukrainian soldiers to do all the dying. “I like the structural path we’re on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person.” Anybody but US cannon fodder was just fine for the armchair warrior from South Carolina.

Two years later, with over 400,000 of those hapless Ukrainian soldiers dead from Sen. Graham’s exhortations to die for American exceptionalism, Graham remains unbowed.

During his recent visit to Kyiv, he demanded Ukraine pass a new mobilization law to draft younger cannon fodder to send into the chopper mill of a lost war. Graham is miffed Ukraine draft laws exempt men under 27. “I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27. You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27. We need more people in the line. No matter what we do, you should be fighting.”

Graham remains unconcerned he supported US provocations which led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He’s in denial of his acquiescence in the effort to prevent a negotiated settlement early on that would have preserved Ukraine territory. Now he’s telling Ukraine to send its young men to fill the ranks of the 400,000 dead Ukrainians he exalted to die for US exceptionalism.

It would take a psychiatrist, maybe a team of psychiatrists, to determine the pathology in in Graham’s psyche that leads him to promote mass slaughter of foreigners to prop up American’s collapsing control of European geopolitics. But good luck trying to get the Senior Senator from South Carolina to lie on the couch. His focus remains: ‘So many Ukrainians yet to die…so little time.”

March 23, 2024 Posted by | politics, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

It’s Journalistic Malpractice To Say Gazans Are Starving Without Saying Israel Is Starving Them

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 19, 2024,  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/its-journalistic-malpractice-to-say?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=142753938&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The mass media are printing some amazingly depraved headlines about a new UN-backed report on starvation in Gaza from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, who says half the enclave’s population is now at the highest-possible threat level for starvation.

The mass media are printing some amazingly depraved headlines about a new UN-backed report on starvation in Gaza from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, who says half the enclave’s population is now at the highest-possible threat level for starvation.

At a time when only 20 percent of news readers ever make it past the headline of a given story, this is an extremely destructive and propagandistic act of journalistic malpractice. The editors of The New York Times know exactly what they’re doing packaging a story about Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians like it’s a troubling prediction about the weather.

Contrast the New York Times’ headline with that of Al Jazeera’s report on the same story: “Gaza headed towards famine amid Israeli aid curbs: What to know”. That’s the normal way to present a story about a deliberately inflicted famine upon an imperiled population. If a population was being deliberately starved by siege warfare from a nation like Russia, China or Iran, we may be absolutely certain that the name of that nation would appear in the headline.

But because the western media exist to generate propaganda and not to report the news, we get headlines like “Gaza faces famine during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting” from the BBC, and “Famine in northern Gaza is imminent as more than 1 million people face ‘catastrophic’ levels of hunger, new report warns” from CNN, and “Famine imminent in northern Gaza, says UN-backed report” from Reuters, and “‘Catastrophic levels of hunger’ in Gaza mean famine is imminent, says aid coalition” from The Guardian.

We saw this with Saudi Arabia’s US-backed starvation of Yemen as well. When the mass media talked about Yemen at all (usually they just ignored it), editors consistently obfuscated the fact that this was a population being deliberately starved by a cruel blockade and the deliberate targeting of food infrastructure. The fact that it was being made possible by the United States was almost never mentioned.

This is a very good example of how western propaganda works, by the way. The mainstream western press don’t generally make up whole-cloth lies (though they will uncritically print claims made by western government agencies who have an extensive history of lying); what they do is rely on half-truths, distortions and lies by omission to give their audiences a wildly slanted picture of what’s going on in the world. By always going out of their way to tell you an enemy of the US-centralized empire is committing an atrocity the millisecond it looks like they might be, while being furtive and obfuscatory about the crimes of the US and its allies, they give their audience a skewed understanding of who is and is not committing the real evils in our world.

This doesn’t typically happen as a result of any grand monolithic conspiracy; it’s mostly just the natural consequence of having all the major news platforms controlled by wealthy and powerful people who each have a vested interest in manufacturing consent for the status quo upon which their wealth and power are premised. The oligarchs control the media, and they hire the executives who run the media, and the executives hire the editors who write the headlines and guide the reporters to report a certain way, and this gives rise to a system where everyone working for the outlet conducts themselves in a way that just so happens to suit the powerful people on top.

Then before you know it you’ve got editors at The New York Times — a paper that’s been published by the same family for over a century — packaging a story about starvation caused by an Israeli siege to look like it’s a story about an innocent crop failure. Odds are nobody told them to do that; they just learned over the years that that’s how you rise to the top in an outlet like The New York Times.

March 22, 2024 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

Heavy resistance to Canada’s 1st nuclear waste repository, while Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) says it is safe.

Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO)  reaffirms safety of Canada’s 1st nuclear waste repository but there’s still heavy pushback

Preferred site, in either southern or northwestern Ontario, to be chosen by year’s end

Sarah Law · CBC News  Mar 18, 2024

The body tasked with selecting the future storage site for Canada’s nuclear waste has reaffirmed its confidence in the project’s safety, but others remain concerned about the potential risks of burying spent nuclear fuel hundreds of metres below the earth’s surface.

By the end of this year, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is expected to decide on its preferred site for the country’s first deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel.

The potential locations are:

  • The Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation-Ignace area, about 250 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. 
  • The Saugeen Ojibway Nation-South Bruce area in southern Ontario, about 130 kilometres northwest of London. 

Earlier this month, the NWMO released updated “Confidence in Safety” reports, which say both sites are suitable for the safe, long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel.

However, We the Nuclear Free North and the First Nations Land Defence Alliance, for example, remain concerned about what’s known as the Revell site in northwestern Ontario.

The alliance issued a letter to NWMO president and CEO Laurie Swami on March 5, saying: “Our Nations have not been consulted, we have not given our consent, and we stand together in saying ‘no’ to the proposed nuclear waste storage site near Ignace. We call on you to respect our decision.”

……. “They’re both good sites. We think that both of the sites would be safe,” said Paul Gierszewski,  technical subject matter expert with the NWMO and lead author of the “Confidence in Safety” reports.

Brennain Lloyd is project co-ordinator with Northwatch, which is part of We the Nuclear Free North. Members of the organization feel less confident about the project’s safety, she said.

“I think this newest report from the NWMO tries to put the best face possible on a project which is absolutely loaded with risk and uncertainty, and uses a lot of language that’s difficult for the public, for non-technical leaders to work through,” Lloyd said.

“There are no resources available in any part of this process for the public to be able to get technical assistance from independent third-party peer reviewers.

While Gierszewski says the 2023 reports expand on the previous year’s findings, Lloyd questions whether they contain new information or airbrushed statements that “paint a better picture.” …………………………………

Demand for in-person meetings

Chief Rudy Turtle of Grassy Narrows First Nation, 250 kilometres northwest of Ignace, said no one from the NWMO has met with him in person to discuss the proposed nuclear waste site.

Grassy Narrows has a particular interest in which Ontario site is chose, given the First Nation’s experiences dealing with contaminated fish in the 1960s and ’70s. Mercury from a Dryden pulp and paper mill was dumped into the English Wabigoon River, upstream from the First Nation. Research indicates past mercury exposure continues to impact the health of people in the community.

In the case of a nuclear waste repository, Turtle said, “Should there be any leak or if the containment fails, there is the possibility that [toxic chemicals] can leak downriver again.” 

Turtle would like to see a series of in-person meetings so people can better understand the safety measures being proposed and the potential risks………………………………………..

Chief Michele Solomon of Fort William First Nation said it is unlikely her community’s position against the site will change.

Band council passed a resolution last September calling for the Ontario government to adopt the proximity principle, which means nuclear waste would be stored at the point of generation and not transported elsewhere.

“Anything that has the potential to get into our waterway that would cause harm to the fish or to the animals or to our people … we take that very seriously,” Solomon said.

………………………………………………. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/nuclear-waste-repository-safety-reports-1.7145240
—

 

March 22, 2024 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

US Air Force tests very expensive third-stage rocket motor for next nuclear missile

By Stephen Losey

The U.S. Air Force and two main contractors on the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program on Saturday tested the solid-rocket motor that will power the nuclear weapon’s third stage.

The test, which also involved Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne, took place in a closed chamber at the Arnold Engineering Development Complex in Tennessee. It followed static fire tests of the first and second stages’ rocket motors in March 2023 and January 2024, respectively.

This third stage that was tested is the smallest of Sentinel’s three-stage propulsion system. The Air Force did not offer further details about the test, nor did it identify whether the event was successful.

“This test is the latest in our ground and flight test program and is designed to help us refine Sentinel’s air vehicle design,” Maj. Gen. John Newberry, commander of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center and the service’s program executive officer for strategic systems. “It demonstrates the progress the Air Force is making on modernizing our nation’s strategic land-based nuclear deterrent.”

The Sentinel program is intended to replace the aging LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM, which has been a key part of the United States’ nuclear triad since the Cold War. The Air Force now has roughly 400 Minuteman III weapons in silos spread out across Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska…………………………………………..

The price tag for the Sentinel program has spiked enough to trigger a cost overrun process known as a Nunn-McCurdy breach. Top Air Force leaders have pinned the bulk of the cost growth on its highly complex command and launch segment, which involves securing real estate from hundreds of landowners across the Midwest, building more than 400 launch facilities and 7,500 miles of utility corridors, and laying thousands of miles of fiber-optic networks…………………https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2024/03/20/us-air-force-tests-third-stage-rocket-motor-for-next-nuclear-missile/—

March 22, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Canada to expedite approval of new nuclear projects, energy minister says

Reuters, By Steve Scherer and Rod Nickel, March 1, 2024

OTTAWA, Feb 29 (Reuters) – Canada will expedite the approval process for new nuclear projects, but will not exclude them from the federal environmental review as requested by the province of Ontario, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said.

All new major projects in Canada, including nuclear reactors, have to be reviewed under the Impact Assessment Act (IAA), which the government has promised to revise this spring after the Supreme Court last year ruled it overstepped into provincial jurisdiction.

Wilkinson said the legislative revisions to the IAA will be limited to addressing the concerns of the court because if the government does more than that, it would “have to open up large scale consultations that will take significant time.”

“That being said, we do have some ideas that as to how we can make the process more efficient and respond to the thoughts and aspirations of the provinces,” Wilkinson told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday, adding that accelerating the process will not come at the cost of addressing environmental concerns.

Canada is the world’s second-largest uranium producer, but the long regulatory process has resulted in miners like NexGen Energy having to wait seven years and counting to build the world’s largest uranium mine in Saskatchewan.

“It’s a very long process,” said NexGen CEO Leigh Curyer. “Government and industry working together to bring these projects online more expeditiously, that is absolutely key.”……………………..

Nuclear expansion faces opposition, however, over charges it already doesn’t adequately review risks.

The Sierra Club environmental group opposes development of nuclear fuels because of dangerous waste, high cost and links to weapons, said Sierra’s Canada programs director Gretchen Fitzgerald.

“Canada again and again has failed to create valid environmental assessment processes and arms-length regulation of the nuclear power industry – leaving communities at risk,” Fitzgerald said………………………………

OLD SITES VS NEW ONES

Last month, Ontario said would start work to refurbish aging nuclear reactors at Pickering, located about 45 km (28 miles) east of Toronto, to extend production by 30 years…………………………………………………………..

Ontario is developing what could be the first operating small modular reactor (SMR) in the Western world by the end of the decade, a technology that many countries are looking at as a way of replacing coal-fired plants, Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson said SMRs are “sort of carbon copies of each other” and so should not require repetitive engineering assessments.

The government is also reviewing its entire regulatory process to approve large industrial projects including nuclear by eliminating overlaps between the provincial and federal assessments, he said. The details of that review, which will have a particular impact on mining, will be released in the next few months, Wilkinson said……….https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/canada-expedite-approval-new-nuclear-projects-energy-minister-says-2024-02-29/

March 21, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

New Brunswick’s Point Lepreau nuclear plant ranked as poor performer among international peers

Consultant ranks Lepreau in ‘bottom quartile’ in multiple performance categories

Robert Jones · CBC News ·  Mar 20, 2024

Since 2014 the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station has been one of the poorest-performing reactors among dozens of similar facilities in five countries, a pair of unflinching reports commissioned by N.B. Power about the troubled plant suggest.

The U.S.-based energy consulting firm ScottMadden found N.B. Power spent less on upkeep at Lepreau since it completed a major refurbishment in 2012 than owners of more reliable reactors, and they provided evidence that Lepreau’s troubles may be connected to a failure to invest enough on maintenance.

The reports also suggest Lepreau’s performance may worsen in future years if amounts spent on keeping ahead of trouble are not increased significantly………………………………………………………..

Lepreau, originally commissioned in 1983, had a disappointing production record in its first 25 operational years that has continued over the last decade, despite a major overhaul of its reactor and nuclear components between 2008 and 2012.

In the 11 years from 2013 and 2023, Lepreau suffered 400 more days of downtime than originally projected, costing the utility up to $1 billion in lost production and repair costs that have been battering the utility’s finances…………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-power-point-lepreau-poor-1.7148879

March 21, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Canada | Leave a comment

How Biden’s budget plunged the Aukus submarines pact into doubt

Alarm in Australia as the US suddenly struggles to fortify its own fleet

Matt Oliver, INDUSTRY EDITOR, 18 March 2024 

 A year on from the trio’s meeting, the Aukus partnership is suddenly
looking decidedly more fragile. Inside defence circles, there are growing
doubts about America’s ability and willingness to deliver following a
shock proposal from the Biden administration that cuts to the heart of the
deal.

Amid a row at home over government budgets, the White House this
month suggested halving the number of Virginia-class submarines it builds
next year – the very same type it has promised to Australia under Aukus.
That means the US faces a shortfall itself, raising the prospect it may
refuse to sell its existing vessels and leave Canberra in the lurch.

 Telegraph 18th March 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/18/biden-budget-aukus-nuclear-submarine-doubt-uk-australia

March 19, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

  Musk’s SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say

By Joey Roulette and Marisa Taylor, March 17, 2024

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) – SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.

The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.

The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.

The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.

Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits, and that the spy agency that Musk’s company is working with is the NRO.

Reuters was unable to determine when the new network of satellites would come online and could not establish what other companies are part of the program with their own contracts.

SpaceX, the world’s largest satellite operator, did not respond to several requests for comment about the contract, its role in it and details on satellite launches. The Pentagon referred a request for comment to the NRO and SpaceX.

In a statement the NRO acknowledged its mission to develop a sophisticated satellite system and its partnerships with other government agencies, companies, research institutions and nations, but declined to comment on Reuters’ findings about the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in the effort…………………………………………..

https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-is-building-spy-satellite-network-us-intelligence-agency-sources-2024-03-16/

March 18, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, space travel, USA | Leave a comment

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