Mayors call for action against nuclear war
Beyond Nuclear, June 9, 2023
At the close of its 91st Annual Meeting in Columbus, Ohio, on June 5, 2023, the final business plenary of the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) unanimously adopted a new resolution, titled, “Calling for Urgent Action to Avoid Nuclear War, Resolve the Ukraine Conflict, Lower Tensions with China, and Redirect Military Spending to Meet Human Needs.” This is the eighteenth consecutive year that the USCM has adopted a resolution submitted by U.S. members of Mayors for Peace.
The resolution’s lead sponsor, Mayor Frank Cownie of Des Moines, Iowa, (pictured) and U.S. Vice-President of Mayors for Peace, commented: “This resolution carries on the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ proud tradition for nearly two decades of standing for the non-use and global elimination of nuclear weapons.”
Jackie Cabasso, Mayors for Peace North American Coordinator, added: “For the first time, a U.S. Conference of Mayors resolution on nuclear disarmament lends the organization’s support to a specific legislative measure, H. Res. 77, ‘Embracing the Goals and Provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’.”
Res. 77, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) on January 31, 2023, calls on the United States to adopt the Back from the Brink Campaign’s comprehensive policy prescriptions for reducing nuclear risks and preventing nuclear war. More than 70 cities, towns, counties and states have passed Back from the Brink resolutions, and more than 400 organizations have endorsed the Back from the Brink platform………………………………………………… more https://beyondnuclear.org/mayors-call-for-action-against-nuclear-war/
Canada’s controversial nuclear waste disposal design for Chalk River
How safe is the Ottawa River from nuclear waste? Canada’s National Observer April 8th 2019 “……..Nuclear disposal site design
The proposed Near Surface Disposal Facility is not new technology, according to its proponents. The same technology set for Chalk River has also been adopted in the U.K. and Belgium, the company says.
The key component is an engineered containment mound. It is contained by a large cover system designed to keep out rain and other elements. Below the cover, a liner system is meant to collect contaminated water — and alert monitoring systems to leaks — and direct the effluent to treatment systems.
The timeline for the project is monumental. The mound will be filled with low-level nuclear waste that is currently held on site at Chalk River, as well as a small amount of waste that will be transported to the facility from other locations such as hospitals, universities and other nuclear facilities in Canada. Five per cent of the total waste will come from Whiteshell Laboratories in Manitoba, which is undergoing its own decommissioning process.
The waste in the mound would be split into cells according to contaminants or time for decay. A temporary cover would allow time to add radioactive waste for 50 years. When the site is full it would be permanently sealed.
The site would be monitored for 300 years after the permanent cover is installed at which point the radioactive material will have decayed. The facility is designed to last 550 years, the company says.
The radioactive waste inside the mound will break down. The half-life for tritium is around 12 years, and the half-life for strontium-90 is about 29 years. That means half of the tritium or strontium stored on the site decays during that period, with half of the remainder taking a further 12 or 29 years to decay. The process keeps repeating itself until ultimately all the material has broken down.
The engineered containment mound is CNL’s preferred nuclear waste storage option. In its draft environmental impact statement, CNL includes a discussion of the various other types of disposal options and techniques including deep-underground repositories, above-ground cement vaults and different on-and off-site locations.
In an opinion article in the Ottawa Citizen in April 2018, Eva Schacherl, a former executive director of the Canadian Environmental Network, argued the project was “the wrong plan at the wrong site,” and a vault buried hundreds of metres deep below the grounds should have been chosen.
In a draft environmental assessment, the lab did not conduct geological tests far below the surface. Although the deep-underground method provides additional protections against leakage, CNL says there is not enough evidence to outweigh the benefits of its chosen model.
A deep-underground vault would be much more expensive to monitor and maintain over its life cycle, according to CNL’s analysis. CNL has made several changes to the proposal since public consultations began in May 2016, in response to some of the hundreds of initial comments by the public during an ongoing environmental assessment.
Ottawa Riverkeeper advocates a type of facility that does not come into contact with water. “We want a solution that will safeguard all species from the radioactive waste that is currently onsite at Chalk River and Rolphton,” Riverkeeper said in a Nov. 1 update. “We would like to see Canada look to countries like Finland who have constructed siloed geological repositories to safeguard all levels of radioactive waste. We want a disposal facility where radioactive waste does not come into contact with water.”
CNL acknowledged during an interview for this story that it was not transparent enough during the environmental impact statement process in explaining why the particular location near the Ottawa River on the CRL site was the best choice.
Subsequent studies, analyses and updates to the document are part of the delay that will push the delivery of CNL’s final environmental impact statement to the CNSC for approval back to around spring 2020, according to the company. The delay was also caused by technical questions from provincial and government agencies that have required additional study, including a notable point where nuclear waste is discharged into Perch Lake.
The public comment process has led to other significant changes to the project design. The original project was meant to hold predominantly low-level intermediate waste, but also allowed for about one per cent intermediate-level waste or mixed wastes. The company has now decided to restrict the waste going into the storage facility to only the low-level category.
The change was purely driven by feedback from the community, the company representatives said. The site was never intended to hold high-level waste, such as spent nuclear fuel from a reactor.
“It’s in response to concerns from the public or interest groups,” said Meggan Vickerd, director of the nuclear waste facility project for CNL. “Intermediate-level waste was only a fraction of the inventory, plus it was not all of the intermediate-level waste, so we knew we still needed another facility.”
Controversy over near-surface disposal
The company says the project prompted hundreds of public comments during its opening consultation phase. Pat Quinn, CNL’s communications director, says the company is dedicated to transparency and open communication.
Activist organizations and Indigenous groups have raised a number of red flags about the suggested nuclear waste site and the overall security of decommissioning, including its construction about one kilometre away from the river.
Riverkeeper has also emphasized that despite the Canadian government’s rhetoric about the importance of a Nation to Nation relationship, “there has been no consultation with Indigenous Governments to develop a radioactive waste policy on terms that would be acceptable to Indigenous peoples.
“Likewise, there has been no consultation with the Algonquin Anishinaabe people about consolidating all federal radioactive wastes within their traditional, unsurrendered territory.”
Some local farmers have also expressed concern. One is Taylor Hanrath, an organic pork farmer and the owner of Butternutty Farm who lives downstream in Pembroke.
“If there’s a leak at all, in some way, shape, or form it would have the pretty big Ottawa River right beside it to transport it quickly and there’s always going to be the potential for human error, on top of a possible earthquake or tornado.” Hanrath said. “Even right now I don’t know what the plan would be for my farm if a leak were to happen at the current site.”
………The International Atomic Energy Agency indicates better ways to store nuclear waste are to bury it in “caverns, vaults, or silos, at least a few tens of metres below ground level, and up to a few hundred metres below ground level.” It does state, however, that a near-surface facility would be sufficient for low-level waste, such as decommissioned structures, old laboratory materials and soil.
Chalk River: Radioactive Wastes and the Honour of the Crown
Background: May 9, 2023
A consortium of multinational corporations, operating under the banner CNL (Canadian Nuclear Laboratories), is contracted to manage all of the federal government’s nuclear facilities. The contract obliges CNL to “reduce the liability” associated with the multibillion dollar legacy of radioactive wastes created in the name of the Crown by uranium processing (mainly at Port Hope, Ontario) and by nuclear fission (mainly at Chalk River). CNL has been given close to a billion dollars a year for the last five years from Canadian taxpayers.
The Port Hope and Chalk River nuclear facilities are outgrowths of the World War II Atomic Bomb project and the subsequent Cold War era. Canada sold uranium and plutonium almost exclusively for nuclear weapons use from 1941 to 1965. In a very real sense, the “legacy radioactive wastes” at these two sites are in large part leftovers of the American bomb program and the Cold War arms buildup.
How does CNL propose to deal with the radioactive legacy of the nuclear age? At Chalk River, CNL proposes to build a huge earthen mound of “low-level” radioactive and toxic chemical wastes within one kilometre of the Ottawa River. The low-level waste is a minute fraction of the total radio-toxic burden at Chalk River, which includes highly radioactive reactor cores, tanks of reprocessing liquid, plutonium handling facilities, and large quantities of high-level and intermediate-level radioactive wastes for which there is as yet no plan at all. The mound is a cheap and convenient way of dealign with the most voluminous material, clearing the decks for building new facilities that will produce even more challenging forms of nuclear wastes, while ignoring the bulk of the radioactivity that afflicts this “Nuclear Sacrifice Zone”.
The engineered mound – a glorified landfall 5 to 7 stories high – will hold a million cubic metres of toxic waste, on a site that drains into Perch Lake and then into the Ottawa River. Called a “Near Surface Disposal Facility” (NSDF), this megadump is planned to be built on lthe unsurrendered territory of several Algonquin communities that have inhabited the Ottawa Valley for thousands of years.
Canada’s nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) conducted an environmental assessment of the NSDF and held a week of public hearings in February 2022. Since then, two Algonquin communities – the Keboawek First Nation (KFN) and the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg (KZA) community, have demonstrated their strong opposition to the proposed megadump, as have more than a hundred communities downstream from Chalk River, including the 18 municipalities comprising the Montreal City Agglomeration Council. KFN has done outstanding work in documenting several key species inhabiting the proposed site that have been totally ignored by the environmental assessment process.CNL is now asking CNSC to grant CNL a licence amendment to prepare the contested site for the NSDF.
Public hearings will be held remotely on June 27 with no opportunity for intervenors to appear in person before the Commission, despite strong requests from the Indigenous communities to allow face-to-face meetings.
All those who intervened in the February 2022 hearings are allowed no more than 5000 words to give their final input on this issue before CNSC renders its decision. Here is the final submission from the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
Radioactive Wastes and the Honour of the Crown
Final report submitted to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
by Gordon Edwards, president, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
www.ccnr.org/CCNR_CNSC_NSDF_final_2023.pdf
Contents –
1. The Honour of the Crown
2. Protecting the Environment & the Health and Safety of Persons
3. Communicating with Future Genera>ons
4. Safety Culture and the Justification Principle
5. A Tale of Two Dumps
6. List of radioactive poisons
US presidential candidate Nikki Haley says that arming Ukraine is “preventing war”
US presidential candidate Nikki Haley insists on WW3 if Ukraine loses, 9 June 23, https://www.rt.com/news/577539-nikki-haley-ukraine-ww3-cheerleading/
The Republican presidential candidate explained that the only way to prevent war was to “send a message” by fighting one
Allowing Ukraine to lose to Russia on the battlefield will unleash world war, according to US Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. The former South Carolina governor told a town hall audience in Iowa on Sunday that arming Kiev was all about “preventing war” by “sending a message” to America’s rivals.
“When Ukraine wins, that sends a message to China with Taiwan, it sends a message to Iran that wants to build a bomb, it sends a message to North Korea testing ballistic missiles, it sends a message to Russia that it’s over.”
“It is in the best interests of America, it is in the best interests of our national security for Ukraine to win. We have to see this through, we have to finish it,” Haley declared.
Regarding how the war might finish, Haley was less forthcoming. “It would end in a day if Russia would pull out,” she suggested. “If Ukraine pulls out, then we’re all looking at world war.” To prevent that, she explained, Kiev needed weapons – lots of them.
“A win for Ukraine is a win for all of us, because tyrants tell us exactly what they’re gonna do,” Haley continued, claiming “Russia said Poland and the Baltics are next,” should Ukraine fall. “If that happens, we’re looking at a world war,” she repeated.
While much has been written about the possibility of a Russian invasion of Poland or the Baltic states, even most US experts admit these are unlikely. Invading any of those countries would trigger Article 5, NATO’s mutual-defense clause, turning a conflict many have described as a proxy war between Moscow and Brussels into a direct war between nuclear powers.
Haley has been quick to set herself apart on foreign policy matters from Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who quipped earlier this year that it was the US, not Russia, that needed regime change, and from challenger Ron DeSantis, who downplayed the conflict in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.”
During the town hall, she again scoffed at the notion of remaining neutral in the conflict, insisting “This is a war about freedom and it’s one we have to win.”
While Haley served as US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, she made no secret of her interventionist leanings, even announcing an unexpected round of sanctions against Russia that the White House then had to retract. She has urged the Biden administration to give in to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s demands for F-16 fighter jets for months and impose even more sanctions, insisting Washington is too soft on Moscow.
Timeline: The history of radioactive contamination in St. Louis County
The long history of radioactive contamination in St. Louis County began with the Manhattan Project during World War II.
5 on Your Side, Clarissa Cowley, June 8, 2023
FLORISSANT, Mo. — Jana Elementary School has been in the spotlight for months after conflicting reports regarding radioactive pollution at the school. At its root is nearby Coldwater Creek, which was contaminated for years by improperly stored nuclear waste.
In the months since an independent report showed high levels of radioactive lead at the school, parents and community members have called for action to clean up the pollution, and some families said they are even moving out of their homes and away from the Hazelwood School District.
Now the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planned to hold a public meeting Thursday night at Jana Elementary School after it made public the final results of its testing, which conversely found no radiological concerns at the school.
5 On Your Side has created a timeline of the decades-long saga leading up to this point, citing public documents as well as our own records and reporting.
The details below include information about the atomic waste illegally dumped in the Bridgeton Landfill, which sits inside the West Lake Landfill site off St. Charles Rock Road. It was a dumpsite for radioactive material following World War II, and in 2010, a fire broke out underground not far from that dump site that is still burning. In addition, this timeline breaks down the history of chemical pollution alongside Coldwater Creek near Jana Elementary School.
Timeline:
1940
- The Manhattan Project, an American-led effort during World War II to develop a functional atomic weapon, is officially created. The Mallinckrodt Chemical Works plant in St. Louis begins processing uranium oxide used by the Manhattan Project.
- 1947
- Waste from the uranium oxide production is taken and stored at a site north of St. Louis Lambert International Airport from 1947 until the late 1960s.
- 957
- Mallinckrodt moves uranium processing to a Weldon Spring facility, where it would continue until 1966.
- 1960s
- The toxic waste is purchased and moved from the airport site to a site half a mile away on Latty Avenue. This site and the airport site were located near 19-mile-long Coldwater Creek. Radioactive waste would contaminate the creek, which would then carry the contamination into north St. Louis County.
- 1973
- Atomic waste is illegally dumped in the West Lake Landfill.
- A long-time employee of the Mallinckrodt plant, who took radioactive waste to Coldwater Creek in Styrofoam containers in an open-air truck, dies of brain cancer.
- The EPA takes over West Lake Landfill as a Superfund Site.
- 2004
- Mallinckrodt employees, who worked with uranium used in nuclear weapon manufacturing, become eligible for compensation in Weldon Spring and St. Louis. Workers had to prove how much exposure they had to radiation while working for the Mallinckrodt facility.
- 2010
- A smoldering underground fire is found at the Bridgeton Landfill, raising concerns it would threaten the nearby radioactive material.
- Families and workers around the Bridgeton Landfill are burdened by smelly fumes that were emitting from the fire still burning underground. The smoldering accelerated the decay of solid waste at the site, causing excessive gas release and powerful odors that many living nearby said made them sick.
- 2012
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began a detailed investigation of Coldwater Creek and its floodplain areas in October 2012, working downstream from the historical source areas.
- 2013
- Three years after the underground smoldering started at the landfill, then-Attorney General Chris Koster files a lawsuit against Republic Services over ongoing concerns.
…………………………………………………….January 2022
- The Army Corps of Engineers notified the district that there was low-level radioactive pollution at Coldwater Creek, which is on the edge of Jana Elementary’s property boundary. The letter also said the contamination did not pose an immediate risk. The Corps had previously found low-level radioactive contamination on the banks of Coldwater Creek in its soil samples.
- March 2022
- The EPA’s plan for a $205 million clean-up project at Bridgeton’s West Lake landfill is delayed after finding more extensive radioactive waste.
…………………………August 2022: Several details regarding the levels of contamination begin to come to light. Parents are notified that soil sampling showed a presence of low-level radioactive contamination on the banks of Coldwater Creek. The amount of toxins found around Jana Elementary and the two landfills (Bridgeton and West Lake) had to reach a certain threshold, according to CDC guidelines. Based on these findings, parents became concerned about exposure and health risk.
…………………………………………………………………..June 8, 2023
- The Army Corps of Engineers planned to hold a public meeting to discuss the findings of all three reports with the community.
All Army Corps of Engineers reports can be found here.
Washington banned Kiev from signing truce with Moscow – Russian security chief
Prolonging violence in Ukraine at any cost is in the interest of the US, Nikolay Patrushev has claimed.
https://www.rt.com/russia/577700-patrushev-us-truce-ukraine/ 8 June 23
Nikolay Patrushev, one of Russia’s senior security officials, has accused the US and the UK of standing in the way of peace. Unlike the peoples of Russia and Ukraine, the two English-speaking countries are interested in prolonging the violence and do not care about human suffering, he alleged.
“I can identify the nations that are most interested [in continued hostilities] – they are the US and England,” he said on Thursday during a press conference in Belarus. “And one should clearly realize that they do not care about people dying, because it’s not their people, they are not waging the war on their own soil.”
Patrushev, who serves as secretary of the Security Council, reminded journalists that Moscow and Kiev were on the verge of a truce in the first weeks of the conflict. But the Ukrainian government pulled out of peace talks under US pressure, he added.
The official was referring to negotiations in Istanbul, during which Ukraine proposed to pledge neutrality in exchange for security guarantees, to which Moscow provisionally agreed.
“Russia is not the ultimate target [for Western nations],” Patrushev assessed. “Their ultimate target is China. They [intend to] dominate the world, but that is unacceptable and won’t happen.”
Patrushev was visiting the Belarusian capital Minsk for a meeting of security chiefs from members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a regional mutual defense bloc that also includes Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Russian officials have described the hostilities in Ukraine as part of a larger proxy war waged by the US and its allies against Moscow, aimed at preserving Western powers’ hegemony.
Washington has declared the “strategic defeat” of Russia as its goal in Ukraine and pledged to provide military assistance to Kiev for as long as it takes to achieve that objective.
BLINKEN’S BATTLE HYMN
Biden’s favorite hawk calls for no end to the bloodshed in Ukraine
SEYMOUR HERSH, JUN 7, 2023
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in a June 2 speech in Helsinki welcomed Finland as NATO’s newest member state. A career hawk when it comes to Russia, he outdid himself in the fierceness of his commitment to the Ukraine war. Once again he was dismissive of any talk of a ceasefire—something desperately needed by an increasingly besieged Ukrainian army and citizenry.
“Now, over the coming weeks and months,” Blinken explained, “some countries will call for a ceasefire. And on the surface, that sounds sensible—attractive, even. After all, who doesn’t want warring parties to lay down their arms? Who doesn’t want the killing to stop? But a ceasefire that simply freezes current lines in place and enables Putin to consolidate control over the territory he’s seized, and then rest, re-arm, and re-attack—that is not a just and lasting peace. It’s a Potemkin peace. It would legitimize Russia’s land grab. It would reward the aggressor and punish the victim.”
Does America’s secretary of State not know—or want to know—the historical importance and success of international peace-keeping forces? Is he not aware of the work done by the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, controversial as he may have been? In 1995 he negotiated an end to the murderous ethnic violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. Their hatred for each other was as intense as the feelings now simmering among the citizenry and military in Ukraine for their Russian adversaries.
Blinken concluded his speech: “when a free people like the Ukrainians have at their backs the support of free nations around the world—nations who recognize their fates and freedom—their rights and security are inextricably bound together, the force they possess is not merely immense. It is unstoppable.”
His real message might be put more bluntly: I hate the Russians and let the blood flow.
………………. More than fifteen months later, Blinken told the Finnish crowd that there’s a bright side to the continuing carnage: “There is no question: Russia is significantly worse off today than it was before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine—militarily, economically, geopolitically.” The European Union is more united than ever, he asserted, and has supplied more than $75 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. It has also absorbed more than 8 million Ukrainian refugees. (I have written of the growing costs and anxieties of the regional refugee crisis due to the war. Many of Ukraine’s neighbors, while hostile to Russia and to Putin, have been secretly urging the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to seek a ceasefire and an end to the slaughter.)
Russia’s economic growth has diminished due to the cost of the war, but Russia is far from isolated. The Economist’s Intelligence Unit reported in March, one year after Russia attacked Ukraine, that “an increasing number of countries are siding with Russia. . . …………….
One would imagine that an American secretary of State, with his international influence, would have an obligation not to diminish American credibility by misrepresenting the state of the world. Another explanation is that the world that backs American power is the world only he sees.
………………….. Samuel Charap, a Russia scholar, just published an essay in Foreign Affairs about Washington’s strategy in Ukraine. Charap served in the Obama administration and is now at the RAND Corporation. He is no fan of Russia or what he termed America’s “nebulous” notions about an endgame to the war, or lack thereof. He has a lot of ideas about intermediate steps that could lead to serious peace talks or, as he puts it, “facilitating an endgame.” These include an armistice agreement, demilitarized zones, joint commissions for dispute resolution, and third-party guarantees—feel-good moves aimed at allowing bitter enemies to achieve peace without resolving their fundamental differences.
It’s not much but it could be a start. Too bad that the name Antony Blinken never appears in Charap’s article. https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/blinkens-battle-hymn?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1377040&post_id=126473084&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email
US “Doomsday” Plane, Capable Of Surviving Nuclear War, Just Got A Big Revamp
The E-6B Mercury has been called the Pentagon’s deadliest aircraft, even though it doesn’t carry any weapons.
IFL Science, TOM HALE 9 June 23
The US Navy has just received a revamped “Doomsday” plane that has been kitted out with new communications hardware to connect the President’s “big red button” to the nation’s nuclear forces.
Defense contractor Northrop Grumman recently returned the first E-6B Mercury aircraft to the US Navy after installing five new kits onboard that improve its “aircraft command, control, and communications functions,” according to an announcement on the company’s website.
The renovation was all part of a $111 million contract between Northrop Grumman and the US Navy. …………………
What is the E-6B Mercury “Doomsday” plane?
The E-6B Mercury is essentially a flying command post that helps to relay instructions from the National Command Authority – the ultimate authority that decides whether to “push the red button” – and the nuclear forces of the US.
Given its potential role in nuclear war, the aircraft is often nicknamed the “doomsday” plane.
The idea is that an airborne command post is a much more reliable communications outpost for military commands in the event of a crisis like, let’s say, a nuclear war. Even if the worst does happen, the E-6B Mercury fleet will allow decision-makers to maintain communication with their nuclear weapon delivery systems…….. https://www.iflscience.com/us-doomsday-plane-capable-of-surviving-nuclear-war-just-got-a-big-revamp-69321
Energy Northwest nuclear plant failed to properly measure workers’ radioactive exposure, report says
KPVI, Annette Cary Tri-City Herald, Jun 7, 2023
Energy Northwest failed to correctly measure the exposure of workers who inhaled or ingested radioactive material during an incident at the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power plant, said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
On the night shift during the spring refueling and maintenance outage two years ago, some workers received unexpected and significant exposure to radiation, according to the initial report by the NRC.
The NRC issued a “white finding” last week and said it is considering issuing a second white finding after workers were exposed to radiation May 28, 2021, at Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station nuclear power plant, according to documents made public Monday.
A white finding, the second lowest on NRC’s four-step color scale, has low to moderate safety significance and can lead to an additional NRC inspection to make sure issues have been corrected.
The notice of the first white finding was for three violations in the incident — failure to the control the concentration of radiation material in the air, failure to control the activities in a high radiation area and failure to survey areas to evaluate the extent of radiation levels.
But while investigating the incident at the plant near Richland, Wash., the NRC also began questioning whether Energy Northwest correctly measured the internal radioactive exposure of the workers…………………………………………………………………….
Radiation readings ‘off-scale high’
The updated NRC information says that as the two pipefitters left the heat exchanger room, they were frisked by radiation protection staff “and the instrument readings went off-scale high.”
They were then escorted to personnel contamination monitors, which alarmed, indicating there was radioactive material on or in the workers.
After multiple showers and scans on the personnel contamination monitors, Energy Northwest confirmed they had internal uptakes.
The two workers were sent to initiate the whole-body count process, with initial counts confirming they had inhaled or ingested cobalt 58 and cobalt 60 radionuclides.
However, there was indication from checking the pipe that was cut that plutonium 239 and plutonium 240 contamination was possible in the incident, but that information was not used to assess workers.
Energy Northwest’s procedures for internal dose assessment were incomplete, failed to provide clear directions and did not fully address all radionuclides that could have contaminated the workers, according to the NRC report.
Dose is a measure of the amount of radiation absorbed that accounts for the type of radiation and its effects on particular organs.
The two pipefitters had their urine tested only once and no fecal samples were collected.
“In conclusion, not only did the licensee (Energy Northwest) fail to implement the most appropriate sampling methods to detect the level of hard-to-detect radionuclides from the intake, including alpha emitters, but they did not take any additional samples to suitably establish trends and elimination rates of these radionuclides,” according to the most recent NRC inspection report.
Energy Northwest also failed to effectively take air samples in the workers’ breathing space during the incident, the NRC said.
Not only were procedures inadequate, but Energy Northwest did not have the equipment or personnel available to address the level of contamination and assess the dose within workers bodies, according to the NRC report………………… https://www.kpvi.com/news/national_news/nw-nuclear-plant-failed-to-properly-measure-workers-radioactive-exposure-report-says/article_820def90-c6b4-581a-a989-708339c2c32e.html
Canadian Federal Court Upholds Alcohol and Drug Testing at Nuclear Facilities
Mirage News, 7 June 23
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is pleased to confirm that on June 6, 2023, the Federal Court endorsed the Commission’s move to require pre-placement and random alcohol and drug testing of workers in safety-critical positions at high-security nuclear facilities, as mandated by CNSC regulatory document REGDOC-2.2.4, Fitness for Duty, Volume II: Managing Alcohol and Drug Use.
In early 2021, following the legalization of cannabis in Canada, the CNSC provided new regulatory requirements for the pre-placement and random testing of workers as part of a proactive approach to enhance nuclear safety and security at high-security nuclear facilities in Canada.
These new requirements were based on the results of extensive consultations with scientists and other experts, licensees of and workers at high-security nuclear sites, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and the public.
Fitness for duty is one factor that affects human performance. An important element of being fit for duty is being free from the influence of alcohol, legal or illicit drugs, or performance-altering medication while at work………………… more https://www.miragenews.com/federal-court-upholds-alcohol-and-drug-testing-1022447/
Small nuclear reactors for the moon
Westinghouse Electric and Astrobotic are to develop nuclear reactors and
power grids for use in space exploration for NASA and the Department of
Defense. The US-nuclear firm and space land and rover company have agreed
to collaborate on the development of space nuclear technology and delivery
systems.
Last year, Westinghouse was awarded a NASA/DOE contract to provide
an initial design concept for a fission lunar surface power system.
Westinghouse is developing a scaled-down version of the 5-MWe eVinci
microreactor to power spacecraft in orbit or for deployment on the surface
of planetary bodies such as the Moon or Mars.
Aerospace Testing 6th June 2023
Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet super ecstatic over USA govt’s budget deal.
There you have it folks. Galloping defense spending on perpetual warfare and 835 overseas bases, enriching James Taiclet and his defense CEO comrades. Meanwhile every decent, life enhancing aspect of American life gets the scrapes leftover.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coaliton, Glen Ellyn IL 5 June 23
Only American happier than Biden with budget deal
Everyone knows President Biden is ecstatic over the budget deal which prevents another default crisis during his last 2 years
But few knew the guy even happier than Biden, Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet. He’s super ecstatic the deal provided a 3% bump to $886 billion in defense spending, while other areas of discretionary spending are frozen at current year levels.
Taiclet wasn’t bashful about bragging over the victory garnered in part by $13 million Taiclet speeds every year lobbying Congress to keep defense spending racing upwards toward a trillion bucks in blood money.
He told defense investors at the Annual Strategic Decisions Conference after the fix was in for weapons makers:
“The current agreement…is 3 percent growth for two years in defense where other areas of the budget are being reduced. And I think, again, that’s as good an outcome as our industry or our company could ask for at this point.”
Lockheed Martin, America’s largest defense contractor, receives 73% of its $66 billion annual sales net sales from the U.S. government. Taiclet is equally thrilled personally as well as for his shareholders. His $24 million in annual compensating largely consists of performance related bonuses.There you have it folks. Galloping defense spending on perpetual warfare and 835 overseas bases, enriching James Taiclet and his defense CEO comrades. Meanwhile every decent, life enhancing aspect of American life gets the scrapes leftover.
Trump-era officials under fire as nuclear fund for Bikini islanders is squandered
Former staff have criticized the interior department for ignoring the risk of fraud after the Trump administration ceased scrutiny of a $59m fund for nuclear survivors, which is now depleted
Former staff have lashed the US Department of the Interior for failing to predict that a 2017 decision to lift oversight from a $59m trust fund for Pacific Islanders displaced by American nuclear testing would lead to the fund’s exhaustion through mismanagement and alleged fraud.
Tom Bussanich, who in 2017 was a senior official in the department’s Office of Insular Affairs, said that he “would have bet money that there would have been issues with the trust fund and that the money would have been wasted”. Allen Stayman, a former director of the Office of Insular Affairs, dismissed the office as “the agency of acquiescence”.
Meanwhile, confidential bank documents reviewed by the Guardian reveal red flags that could have alerted the department to potential issues had it been scrutinising the fund, including the transfer of millions of dollars to two personal checking accounts over which the fund’s trustees had no oversight……………………………..
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the fund had been whittled down to about $100,000, largely through extravagant spending by Anderson Jibas mayor of the Bikinian council, on projects including land development in Hawaii, new ships and planes, and an apartment complex in the Marshall Islands………………………………………
The release of large sums to checking accounts that trustees could not scrutinise might have attracted concern from American officials, but by then the interior department was no longer receiving information about the fund from the Bikinian council or bank officials. The department declined to comment on the bank documents…………………….
From 2018, Jibas refused to provide the council’s financial documents to the Marshallese auditor-general, forcing Marshallese police to forcibly seize the documents in 2021. In an interview with the New York Times, Jibas admitted he occasionally used money from the fund to pay for personal items.
Jibas told the Guardian that he had also directed between $200,000 and $250,000 from the fund towards the construction of a two-story house for his personal use. He claimed this project had been approved by the Bikinian council…………………………… more https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/05/bikini-atoll-nuclear-fund-interior-department
Ralph Nader: Reverse the Accelerating Warfare State Before It’s Too Late!
when the government talks war, organizes for war, has military bases in a hundred countries and provokes belligerence, wars are likely to happen.
Tell elected officials to stop the arms race and pursue arms control treaties before autonomous weapons of mass destruction and miscalculations lead to World War III – the final world war.
By Ralph Nader / Nader.org https://scheerpost.com/2023/06/05/ralph-nader-reverse-the-accelerating-warfare-state-before-its-too-late/
The Military Budget, which devours over half of the entire federal government’s operational expenditures, has been exempted by Biden and the Congressional Republicans from any reductions in the debt limit deal just reached. Also exempted are hundreds of billions of dollars in yearly diverse corporate subsidies to big business freeloaders.
Most of the cuts will slash the domestic programs that protect the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people. Cuts will also be made to the starved I.R.S. budget, further weakening its capacity to pursue super-rich tax cheats and giant corporate tax escapees. The GOP insisted on continuing its aiding and abetting of grand-scale tax evasion that fuels bigger deficits.
Biden also agreed not to restore any of Trump’s tax cuts on these same plutocrats and corporatists who refuse to pay for the undeclared wars of Empire from which they massively profit.
Welcome to America – Land of the Free, Home of the Brave sleepwalking its way through Sucker Land. It gets worse, People. Not only did the Pentagon, and indirectly the giant munitions corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics get exempted, they were told by both the GOP and the Democrats to get ready, in the coming years, to receive additional tens of billions of dollars that the Generals and Biden didn’t even ask for. Biden wants to increase last year’s Pentagon budget by $48 billion, and the blank-check solons on Capitol Hill are inclined to match him. Except for a few dozen progressives, the support for this Niagara of dollars is bipartisan even though the Pentagon budget is and has been unauditable.
Yet, since 1992, the Department of “Offense” has been violating the federal law that requires DOD to submit an auditable budget to Congress every year. Every Secretary of Defense has admitted this noncompliance and promised to correct it. Yet year after year the violation of law continues. No one can fathom the waste, redundance and gigantic cost overruns by the coddled big business military contractors with their government-guaranteed arrangements. Without Congressional investigatory hearings, without instructing the Congressional watchdog GAO (Government Accountability Office) to do its neglected, underfunded specialized auditing, and without giving voice to budget experts like William Hartung or knowledgeable military professionals like retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson and MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol, the Pentagon has gone unchecked.
The two-Party duopoly has turned Congress into a giant shovel of unaudited money for the military to secure misguided bragging rights for your Representatives and Senators back home about being “strong on defense” rather than watchdogs over your tax dollars.
Meanwhile, back home, schools crumble, existing public transit is dangerously antiquated and in need of repair, as are bridges, roads, clinics, ports, airports, public drinking water systems and waste management facilities. Care for the public lands and national parks suffers massively due to deferred maintenance. Funding to deal with land erosion, toxic water and air pollution is in short supply.
The failure of Congress to provide support for desperately needed programs such as Head Start and other programs to reduce child hunger, homelessness and poverty involving 80 million people, either without health insurance or under-insured, is beyond shameful. Why is the United States, the richest nation on the planet, providing less to its citizens than Western European countries and Canada? Answer: The runaway power of Big Business over public budgets!
Moreover, we are woefully unprepared for the coming pandemics, as we were for COVID-19, and for worsening natural disasters of climate violence perpetuated by the giant fossil fuel companies (e.g. Chevron and Exxon Mobile) that control Congress.
But hey, our war machine can remotely vaporize a cluster of young men idly standing on a dusty road in Yemen with a drone operator pushing buttons in Virginia and Nevada. Over a trillion and a half dollars will be spent on upgrading our nuclear bombs with the same amount being wasted on strategically useless F-35 fighter planes.
And remember citizens, when the government talks war, organizes for war, has military bases in a hundred countries and provokes belligerence, wars are likely to happen.
Not even the money spent on one F-35 is being devoted to waging peace, initiating ceasefire negotiations and launching efforts for international arms control treaties as occurred under former presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
There is no Department of Peace, and the State Department is more bellicose than the Pentagon in its war of words. We’ve been waiting for Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) who has yet to put a bill in the hopper to create such a department – a purported priority of his since long before his election to Congress.
One can hope that the Pentagon Brass – the generals and admirals, some of whom anticipate retiring to become consultants to, or executives of, the corporate weapons industry, would teach the rampaging Congressional Yahoos a lesson in patriotic restraint. Congress must learn to say “no thanks” to more money than requested and use those funds to help save hundreds of thousands of lives in America lost every year to toxic pollution, preventable negligence in hospitals, the opioid epidemic, tobacco, alcohol, occupational hazards and more.
Absent that prospect, the dozens of small citizen peace advocacy groups and organizations such as Veterans for Peace should establish a national “Rein in and Audit the Military Budget and Save American Lives Day” to spark a nationwide grassroots mobilization focused on Congressional offices on Capitol Hill and in the states. There is no time to waste!
Fill the reception rooms of Members of Congress with citizens for peace and justice for a change. Let our elected officials start hearing the rumble from an aroused people conveying irresistible arguments backed by irrefutable evidence. Tell them to stop the arms race and pursue arms control treaties before autonomous weapons of mass destruction and miscalculations lead to World War III – the final world war.
Instagram bans Democratic presidential candidate RFK Jr from creating new campaign accounts
Post Millennial, Jennifer Ackerman, 2 June 23
“Social media is the modern equivalent of the town square. How can democracy function if only some candidates have access to it?”
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr revealed on Thursday that when his campaign uses the TeamKennedy email address to set up accounts on Instagram, they are automatically banned from Instagram for 180 days.
Kennedy Jr praised Twitter for allowing his campaign to have a voice, adding, “To silence a major political candidate is profoundly undemocratic. Social media is the modern equivalent of the town square. How can democracy function if only some candidates have access to it?”
Chet Long, Founder and Senior Partner of Web360 Global, announced he would be hosting the upcoming Twitter Spaces event, calling it a “Presidential Town Hall,” this coming Monday at 2 PM.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced in April that he is running as a Democrat and challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. While Kennedy Jr does have his own personal Instagram account with 11.9 thousand followers, his tweet alleges that Instagram is blocking his campaign email from setting up new accounts. Instagram’s automated reply states: “Your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow Community Guidelines on account integrity and authentic identity.”……………………………. https://thepostmillennial.com/instagram-bans-dem-presidential-candidate-rfk-jr-from-creating-new-campaign-accounts
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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