Federal agencies won’t look at cancer impacts of commercial nuclear facilities
By Cindy Folkers, 12 Mar 23
If you thought the government of the United States, the country with the most nuclear power reactors in the world, might be interested in finding out the cancer impact of nuclear power on our children, you’d be wrong. But, our government is willing to give failed, uneconomic, decaying nuclear power reactors oodles of taxpayer money without first figuring out if and how they harm our children. Assessing potential health damage should be a prerequisite for reactor license renewal.
Citizens and lawmakers from California have been working to revivify a cancelled National Academy of Sciences (NAS) health study originally requested and funded by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2010. The study was to have been carried out in two phases. The first phase “identified scientifically sound approaches for carrying out an assessment of cancer risks” that would inform the study design(s) to be carried out in Phase 2.
Phase 1 recommended examining seven pilot sites, six of which are operating or closed nuclear power plants: Big Rock Point (MI, closed), Dresden (IL), Haddam (CT, closed), Millstone (CT), Oyster Creek (NJ), and San Onofre (CA, closed). The seventh site, Nuclear Fuel Services (TN), is a fuel processing and stockpile conversion facility.
There were also two study designs recommended in the subsequent 2012 Phase 1 report: an ecologic study that would look at a variety of cancers among adults and children over the operational history of the facilities; and a record-linkage-based case-control study examining cancer risks for childhood exposures to radiation during more recent operating histories of the facilities. Because the case-control study would have focused on children, Beyond Nuclear supported this study type over the ecologic study recommendation.
The NAS was preparing to perform the pilot study at the seven sites in order to see which study type had the stronger methodology to be performed nationwide when it was scuttled by the NRC in 2015.
The NRC justified the cancelation by publicly contending that it would cost too much, take too long, and not be able to see any health impact — claims that are still disputed. The NAS health study would have cost an estimated $8 million at the time it was first proposed.
Yet, at the same time that the NRC claimed the cancer study was too expensive, it signed a 20-year lease for a third building at its Rockville, MD headquarters (against the advice of Congress) that will eventually mount to a cost of $350 million. The decision was made in anticipation of the so-called Nuclear Renaissance, which instead fizzled, leaving the NRC scrambling to lease out the new space instead.
The NAS was considering using new ways of examining the health impacts of radioactivity from NRC licensed sites by implementing a more detailed, more thorough, publicly shared research protocol. Such a protocol could have opened up the NRC’s regulatory regime to exhaustive scrutiny, revealing just how inadequate it is for examining health impacts.
Instead of asking the NRC to restart the original study, three members of the U.S. House of Representatives from California have asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to pick up the NAS study where the NRC left off, only to be rebuffed with the jaw-dropping claim by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, that such a study would be “premature”(letter from X. Becerra to Hon. Mike Levin (D-CA), September 12, 2022), despite 60+ years of exposures to radiation from nuclear power. Becerra wants more delays to allow “collaboration” with other agencies, like the U.S. Department of Energy that has historically been sanctioned from involvement in certain health studies.
In fact, such studies done in Europe have shown increases of childhood leukemia around nuclear facilities worldwide. These studies were not “premature”, they were revelatory. Despite these findings, there has never been independent nationwide analysis in the U.S. examining connections between childhood cancer and nuclear power facilities. The NAS case-control study under consideration had a design similar to the European studies that found linkage between living near a nuclear reactor and increases in childhood cancers.
While Bacerra claims it is “premature” to study health impacts from nuclear power, it seems to be just the right time to throw more bailout money down the nuclear bottomless pit in order to keep the current reactor fleet running without knowing what their health impacts have been or will be.
In an ironic twist, the first $1.1 billion nuclear bailout was given to Diablo Canyon in California, a slap in the face for those asking for the health study. This taxpayer largess given to the California nuclear power plant was just a small piece of the $30 billion subsidy (by some estimates, nuclear subsidies could be even higher) earmarked for nuclear power in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The two Diablo Canyon nuclear generating units released 72 curies of tritium gas alone in 2019, part of a suite of radionuclides routinely released by operating reactors. This particular isotope is a radioactive form of hydrogen that can collect in fetal tissue to twice the concentration as it does in maternal tissue. It is well-known that pregnancy development is particularly sensitive to damage from radiation exposure — more so than adults or even children — clearly making this an issue that should interest HHS, as well as one that should help determine whether nuclear power can continue to operate or if its impact on our future generations might be too great. After all, we have readily available, cheaper and safer alternatives.
Despite its published motto — “Protecting people and the environment” — the NRC’s main focus has always been nuclear reactor operations, while downplaying and denying rather than investigating health impacts. The agency’s cancellation of the child cancer study was industry-friendly and tone-deaf; in other words, expected. It had undertaken the study to soothe public anxiety about health impacts. When the NRC learned the study might not accomplish this, or worse, might reveal the agency’s shortcomings as a watchdog agency, it pulled the plug.
From HHS, on the other hand, I expected better. “Health” after all, is in their name.
Cindy Folkers is the Radiation and Health Hazard Specialist at Beyond Nuclear.
In a win for public participation and environmental protection, the United States District Court of South Carolina denied the Department of Energy’s motion to dismiss a 2021 legal action filed by multiple citizen groups.
The suit was prompted by the agency’s failure to take the “hard look” required by the National Environmental Policy Act at its plans to more than quadruple the production of plutonium pits for new nuclear weapons and split their production between the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site.
In her ruling, Judge Mary Geiger Lewis thoroughly rejected the defendants’ arguments that the plaintiffs lacked standing, saying it was “not a close call”.
“We were able to defeat yet another attempt to use standing as a weapon to keep members of the public out of the government’s decision-making process,” said Leslie Lenhardt, Senior Managing Attorney at the South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP).
To date, the Department of Energy (DOE) has refused to fully examine the environmental and safety impacts of their cross-country plan, which would create massive quantities of dangerous radioactive materials, put hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line, risk a new nuclear arms race, and violate the nation’s foundational environmental law.
The Savannah River Site has never produced plutonium pits, the explosive cores of all U.S.nuclear weapons, and currently stores 11.5 metric tons of plutonium, which poses a daunting management and disposal challenge. Pit production will only increase its plutonium burden, along with more waste that needs to be treated, stored and disposed of.
“The ruling is a significant loss for the DOE in its efforts to dodge its legal obligations under NEPA,” said Tom Clements, Director of SRS Watch. “We will push forward in court to make sure that the DOE conducts the mandated environmental analysis of impacts of plutonium pit production at all involved DOE sites, including sites at which plutonium waste would be disposed.”
Despite outdated analyses failing to account for significant changes in circumstances, the U.S. government has ignored the repeated calls from the public, including the plaintiffs specifically, to conduct the legally required “hard look” at this major shift in policy that will only exacerbate the already documented waste of taxpayers’ money.
“It’s critical that the public understands that no future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile,” said Jay Coghlan, Executive Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “Instead, it is for speculative new designs that can’t be tested because of the international testing moratorium. Or worse yet, it could prompt the U.S. to resume testing, which would have severe proliferation consequences. This is the kind of needed public discussion that the Department of Energy seeks to shut down while spending enormous sums of taxpayers’ money on expanding nuclear weapons production.”
SCELP filed the lawsuit on behalf of Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Tri-Valley CAREs and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition in June of 2021 after the DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) concluded it was unnecessary to conduct a broad, nationwide review of this two-site strategy. Instead, the agency is relying on a supplemental analysis of an outdated Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) completed more than a decade ago, along with a separate review done for SRS alone.
“We are thrilled that the Court ruled in our favor and that this landmark environmental case can now proceed toward a final decision,” said Marylia Kelley, Executive Director of the Livermore-based Tri-Valley CAREs. “What’s at stake in our litigation is nothing less than the question of whether the federal government will be allowed to run roughshod over affected communities like mine all across the country.
“We believe the Court will ultimately agree with Plaintiff groups that the National Nuclear Security Administration must produce a nationwide Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and hold public hearings at all of the locations that will be actively involved in these dangerous plutonium bomb core activities, including Livermore, CA. The analysis of risks must precede implementation of the project in order to forestall serious environmental degradation and potential loss of life, “Kelley concluded.
Energy Department Announces Funds for Nuclear Power Plants
MARCH 12, 2023
Both existing operational and closed facilities are receiving assistance.
The Department of Energy has announced a $1.2 billion fund dedicated to extending the life of America’s aging nuclear power plants or potentially reopening plants that have closed, expanding the reactors eligible for aid.
Secretary Jennifer Granholm said, “Preserving the domestic fleet is critical to reaching America’s clean energy future.” She said that expanding the scope of funding “will allow even more nuclear facilities the opportunity to continue operating as economic drivers in local communities that benefit from cheap [??], clean[??] and reliable power.” …………………… https://www.presidentialprayerteam.org/2023/03/12/energy-department-announces-funds-for-nuclear-power-plants/—
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A former executive utility who gave rosy projections on the progress of two nuclear power plants in South Carolina while they were hopelessly behind will spend 15 months in prison for the doomed project that cost ratepayers billions of dollars.
Ex-SCANA Corp. Executive Vice President Stephen Byrne apologized in court Wednesday, saying he thinks about how he let down customers, shareholders, employees, taxpayers and his family almost every day.
The two nuclear plants, which never generated a watt of power despite $9 billion of investment, were supposed to be “the crowning achievement of my life,” Byrne said. “But I failed.”
Byrne is the second SCANA executive to head to prison for the nuclear debacle. Former CEO Kevin Marsh was sentenced to two years in prison in October 2021 and released earlier in March after serving about 17 months.
Two executives at Westinghouse, which was contracted to build the reactors, are also charged. Carl Churchman, who was the company’s top official at the Fairfield County construction site at V.C. Summer, pleaded guilty to perjury and is awaiting sentencing. Former Westinghouse senior vice president Jeff Benjamin faces 16 charges. His trial is scheduled for October.
The White House unveiled its budget request for the 2024 fiscal year Thursday, with the largest ever proposed spending on the military. It is a $1 trillion budget for world war. The Biden administration wants the resources to fight Russia in Ukraine, intensify its buildup towards war with China in the Far East and sustain US military aggression in the Middle East.
Besides $842 billion for the Pentagon, which will undoubtedly be pushed even higher in Congress, there is $24 billion for the Department of Energy, which maintains the US nuclear arsenal, and $20 billion for military-related programs in the State Department, CIA and other agencies, bringing the total official military spending to $886 billion.
To this must be added the real cost of the war in Ukraine, which is listed as only $6 billion for the 2024 fiscal year, which begins October 1. In the previous fiscal year, the Biden administration requested $6.9 billion but ended up spending $114 billion. Given that there is no sign of the war ending—on the contrary, it is escalating rapidly—the cost of US support for the otherwise bankrupt regime in Kiev is likely to surpass the current level. This would swell total military outlays well above the $1 trillion mark.
Since Biden took office, the budget for the Pentagon alone has jumped from $718 billion in fiscal 2022, the first full year of his administration, to $816 billion last year. The $842 billion requested for this year could rise past the $900 billion mark once Congress and lobbyists for the weapons manufacturers have their say. Congressional Republicans have already denounced the budget for providing too little funding for the military.
The name “Department of Defense” is itself a gross distortion since there is not an inch of American soil that needs to be defended against an external enemy. It is rather the world which is under threat from the Pentagon. The US government maintains a global military presence without precedent in history, with more than 700 US bases worldwide, while its main targets, Russia and China, have only one base each outside their own borders.
The department should be renamed the Department of Maintaining America’s Global Empire, or perhaps more simply, the Department of World Destruction. Some $38 billion of the Pentagon budget will go to nuclear weapons modernization, bringing the total spending this year on the US nuclear arsenal, to carry out the worldwide annihilation of civilization and perhaps all life on the planet, to more than $60 billion.
Much of the “non-military” budget also contributes to the US capacity to wage war around the world. ………………………………………………………..
The proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is only the antechamber to an even greater conflict with China, which now takes the form of a rapid military buildup towards what one top general suggested would be open warfare by 2025. The corporate media is doing its part to suppress popular opposition to these wars, seeking to shift public opinion with a propaganda blitz over Russia’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine, and whipping up hysteria over alleged Chinese “spy balloons” and the social media app TikTok, depicted as a nefarious scheme by Beijing to collect intelligence on ordinary Americans………………………………………… https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/10/pers-m10.html
Christian Davenport, The Washington Post, Wed, March 8, 2023
Ukraine’s use of commercial satellites to help repel the Russian invasion has bolstered the U.S. Space Force’s interest in exploiting the capabilities of the private sector to develop new technologies for fighting a war in space.
But the possible reliance on private companies, and the revolution in technology that has made satellites smaller and more powerful, is forcing the Defense Department to wrestle with difficult questions about what to do if those privately owned satellites are targeted by an adversary.
White House and Pentagon officials have been trying to determine what the policy should be since a top Russian official said in October that Russia could target the growing fleet of commercial satellites if they are used to help Ukraine.
Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department for nonproliferation and arms, called the growth of privately operated satellites “an extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of outer-space technologies and has become apparent during the latest developments in Ukraine.”
He warned that “quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.”
In response, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated earlier comments from her counterpart at the Pentagon that “any attack on U.S. infrastructure will be met with a response, as you’ve heard from my colleague, in a time and manner of our choosing.”
But what that response will be is unknown, as officials from a number of agencies try to lay out a policy framework on how to react if a commercial company is targeted…………………………………
The discussions come as the Pentagon is investing in more systems that were originally developed for civilian use but also have military applications. In the National Defense Strategy released late last year, the Pentagon vowed to “increase collaboration with the private sector in priority areas, especially with the commercial space industry,
leveraging its technological advancements and entrepreneurial spirit to enable new capabilities.”
Several companies are developing small rockets that would launch inexpensively, and with little notice. SpaceX, meanwhile, has launched its Falcon 9 rocket at a record cadence, firing it off 61 times last year
The company is on track for even more launches this year.
“We think in a few years we’ll be in the 200, 300, 400 range,” Space Force Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy Jr. said during a conference this month, referring to total space launches. “There’s a massive increase in commercial launch.”
He said the Space Force would like to get to the point where “we’re constantly launching, and there’s a schedule. There’s a launch in two hours, and there’s launch in 20 hours. Your satellite is not ready? Okay, get on the next one.”
For its next round of national security launch contracts, the Space Force has proposed an approach specifically designed to help small launch companies compete.
One track of contracts will be reserved for the most capable rockets – those able to hoist heavy payloads to every orbit the Pentagon wants to plant a satellite. Stalwarts such as SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, would probably compete for those. Blue Origin, the venture owned by Jeff Bezos, could also potentially bid its New Glenn rocket, though it has yet to fly. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
But the Space Force has proposed offering a second track for smaller rockets, allowing start-ups to enter one of the most reputable and lucrative space marketplaces that could be worth billions of dollars over several years. Those companies include Rocket Lab, which has recently christened its launch site on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, adding to its facility in New Zealand, and Relativity, which is scheduled to launch the world’s first 3D printed rocket on Wednesday…………..
Steele-John, the Australian senator, called Richardson and other American consultants “inherently biased” and said they were primarily representing U.S., not Australian, interests
In its quest to build nuclear-powered submarines, the government of Australia recently hired a little-known, one-person consulting firm from Virginia: Briny Deep.
Briny Deep, based in Alexandria, Va., received a $210,000 part-time contract in late November to advise Australian defense officials during their negotiations to acquire top-secret nuclear submarine technology from the United States and Britain, according to Australian contracting documents. U.S. public records show the company is owned by John M. Richardson, a retired four-star U.S. admiral and career submariner who headed the U.S. Navy from 2015 to 2019.
Richardson, who declined to comment, is the latest former U.S. Navy leader to cash in on the nuclear talks by working as a high-dollar consultant for the Australian government, a pattern that was revealed in a Washington Post investigation last year. His case brings to a dozen the number of retired officers and former civilian leaders from the U.S. Navy whom Australia has employed as advisers since the nuclear talks began in September 2021, documents show.
The former U.S. Navy officials are profiting from a web of sources with sometimes divergent interests. One retired U.S. admiral charges $4,000 per day to consult for the Australian government while simultaneously advising other foreign defense clients and collecting his U.S. military pension, according to records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The overlapping arrangements cast doubt on whether the U.S. consultants can provide impartial advice and raise questions about whose interests they are representing, said Jordon Steele-John, a member of the Australian Senate whose Green Party opposes the nuclear talks and has been critical of the government’s dependence on American advisers. “If you’re on the payroll of a foreign government, your advice is by definition not independent,” he said.
Under federal law, retired U.S. military personnel must obtain approval from the Pentagon and the State Department before they can accept money or jobs from foreign powers that could compromise their sworn allegiance to the United States. The law applies to retirees — generally those who served at least 20 years in uniform — because they receive a U.S. pension and can be recalled to active duty……………………………………………………………..
Vice Adm. Jonathan Mead, (above) the chief of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine task force, told an Australian parliamentary committee last month that Richardson had been hired to provide guidance “on stewardship — that is, how to safely and securely manage nuclear technology” and on the training of naval personnel. “When we have specific tasks, questions or complex problems which come our way that we don’t have the subject matter expertise for, we reach in for his assistance,” Mead said during a Feb. 15 hearing.
……………………………….. Since his retirement from active duty, Richardson also has served on the board of directors for major companies in the defense and nuclear sectors, including Boeing, Constellation Energy and BWX Technologies. In 2021, he received more than $900,000 in compensation for his services on corporate boards, records show, plus a six-figure U.S. military pension.
……… “We’ve been very careful to make sure his advice is very specific to the questions that remain within the guidelines,” Mead said.
Steele-John, the Australian senator, called Richardson and other American consultants “inherently biased” and said they were primarily representing U.S., not Australian, interests. “Our government has been paying them handsomely for their advice,” he said. But he added that the arrangement “calls into question” any collaboration between Australia and the United States on military matters.
……………………………. One of the most prominent former officers is retired Vice Adm. William Hilarides, a career submariner who commanded the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command until 2016. Since then, he has received consulting contracts from the Australian government worth $1.3 million, according to Australian defense officials.
He charges $4,000 per day for his consulting services, according to documents that the U.S. Navy recently released in response to The Post’s FOIA lawsuits. He has also worked for Fincantieri Marine Group, a Wisconsin shipyard company that is majority owned by the government of Italy. He did not respond to an email seeking comment.
As for Julian Assange, the urgency behind bringing attention to the case is justified. According to Shenkman, “We tried to dig through the history to see if a publisher has ever been charged for anything like Julian Assange has been accused of. And the answer is no. This is the first case in U.S. history of its kind. And it would set a precedent that would open the floodgates for prosecuting the press.”
The use of the century old Espionage Act in the Julian Assange case continues to set the chilling precedent of a bleak future in American journalism, a precedent that endangers even those outside US borders.
arey Shenkman, attorney, author, and litigator specializing in civil and human rights, joins Robert Scheer for this week’s Scheer Intelligence, where Shenkman offers a sobering analysis on one of the most chilling attacks on press freedom exhibited in the Julian Assange case. Using his recently published book, A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press, Shenkman details the history of the Espionage Act and how civil liberties have continued to be eroded as a result of the existence of this law and the lack of revision.
Shenkman talks about the bipartisan disdain towards the Espionage Act in legal circles yet its continued use by bipartisan presidents brings the conversation to its flaws and disreputability: “Over the decades, you have folks that are coming out with law review articles saying that it’s vague, verbose, that it makes no sense, and that ambiguity in the law is being exploited now to go after Julian Assange, to go after government whistleblowers. So there have actually been serious calls for its reform and repeal in recent years.” Assange faces 175 years in a U.S. maximum security prison after being indicted with 17 charges relating to the Espionage Act.
Going back to its inception during World War I, Shenkman explains what its true purpose was and how within the law, “you get a sense that this language of promoting disloyalty, of promoting opposition to the war, was actually used to go after conscientious objectors and folks that opposed entry into World War I.”
As for Julian Assange, the urgency behind bringing attention to the case is justified. According to Shenkman, “We tried to dig through the history to see if a publisher has ever been charged for anything like Julian Assange has been accused of. And the answer is no. This is the first case in U.S. history of its kind. And it would set a precedent that would open the floodgates for prosecuting the press.”
Shenkman says if Assange is extradited, it will make his case a law school case for all the wrong reasons. Despite all the concern surrounding the overreaching power of the United States, this case could also open the door to countries around the world to extradite citizens from foreign countries for exposing their wrongdoings. As Shenkman mentions, “Assange is not a U.S. government employee. He’s not even a U.S. citizen. And somehow the U.S. government says it has jurisdiction.”
Koeberg Thin Walled Holtec Nuclear Waste Canister In S. Africa Leaked After 17 Years, More Holtec Canister Problems That Threaten Massive Radiological Releases, Explosion & Criticality Risks From Holtec Canisters, Potential Canister Problem At Diabalo Canyon After 2 Years.
List of other thin walled nuclear canisters vendors who threaten life on Earth listed at https://sanonofresafety.org in addition to Holtec. Where is the media? The vaunted “free press”?
In his farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the “military-industrial-congressional complex” where one hand fed the other in a vicious cycle of self-aggrandizement at public expense. Of the expenses paid since 1960, none has been dearer than the habitable climate of Earth.
………………………………………………………………………. Direct Air Capture, Small Modular Reactors, and Fusion Energy — all are pwnings of solar by the National Laboratories, set in motion by Edward Teller.
National Labs make some sense if you are trying to solve some gargantuan problem that humanity faces — it would be good to have one for climate change, for instance — but today they mainly exist to keep engineers and physicists fully employed.
It is easy for the labs to lobby their funders, ultimately taxpayers, for ungodly sums for national security reasons, to prevent a brain drain, to advance basic science — even if the work being proposed is not only useless but mindlessly destructive, as long as it costs a lot and employs millions of little Edward Tellers. It will be good for the economy and will advance the cause of democracy, right?
History Rhymes
Edward Teller is commonly thought of as the “father of the hydrogen bomb” although he did not like the sobriquet. Born in Hungary in 1908, Teller came to the United States in the 1930s as one of the many so-called “Martians”, physicists being rescued from Europe to join what would become the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb. After the war, having successfully pwned his rival, Robert Oppenheimer, as a pinko, Teller co-founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and was its director for many years. He was author of the Red Scare, the Cold War expansion of nuclear arsenals, the Reagan “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative, posthumously the Trump Space Force, and some hare-brained plans that thankfully never came to fruition, such as nuclear-powered airplanes and a plan to excavate an artificial harbor in Alaska using H-bombs.
In a recent Pugwash podcast, Professor Frank von Hippel, Co-Director of the Science and Global Security program at Princeton, explained how Teller was so masterful at pwning presidents and secretaries of Energy and Defense. In the 1990’s, von Hippel was an advisor to President Clinton, and later Obama. In the ’80s, he advised Gorbachev on how to wind down the Soviet nuclear threat. He reveals that Reagan and Gorbachev had agreed, mano a mano at the Reykjavik summit, to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth only to have Reagan backpedal when the weapons labs balked. Reagan was pwned. Von Hippel tells how it later went during the Clinton years:
… the emphasis has been on energy but the research really was done for nuclear weapons design purposes … and the issue was a Nuclear Weapons Test Ban and where the weapons lab directors were insisting that they needed to do 15 more tests… there were reasons of safety or reliability that required them.
And the labs presented the tests that they wanted to do in this meeting that was called by the Secretary of Energy [Hazel Henderson] and I was not convinced so I brought along a retired weapons designer who was also not convinced. And it turns out the Secretary of Energy wasn’t convinced either.
And one of them [the directors] said, well if you would give us as much money for not testing as you’ve been giving us for testing we might be able to see it your way. And so that was the beginning of the science-based stockpile stewardship program and it was basically the budgets — some billions of dollars a year — that were offered to the weapons labs basically to do what they wanted.
This month’s issue of Wired magazine gushes over one outcome:
In December 2022 — a solid century since physicists first identified fusion as the source of star power — American scientists at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, where ignition is a way of life, had a breakthrough – [much touted laser fusion experiment]…………………………………
……………………………………. they’ve been trying to ignite these little pellets for decades now and they finally got to the point where [for 80 nanoseconds] they got as much energy out of of the pellet from fusion energy as they put into it from laser energy and that was a breakthrough.
To get to a power plant is an enormous, enormous extrapolation. You’d have to do this many times a second — hundreds of times a second. You’d have to have affordable lasers that would do this repeatedly many hundreds of times a second and in the end, whether that would compete with other sources of energy is a stretch. Even a very simple nuclear power plant can’t compete with solar and wind power anymore, so whether this extravagant contraption could is extremely unlikely.
I watched the press conference where US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm [above] took to the stage and announced this world-changing breakthrough with visions of unlimited energy that would have no climate consequences. I could barely fathom how people could be so gullible as to believe it. Even when one of the lab directors got up and said that the breakthrough would really help their weapons research, apparently no-one saw through the ruse. Astonishing.
Wired’s head exploded in technocornucopian orgasm:
Fusion will, of course, rescue the environment and decarbonize planet Earth in a cool afternoon.………………………..
That 80-nanosecond burst was estimated to have cost $3.5 billion, which is likely an underestimate. It resulted in nuclear waste — principally tritium, which will linger for some 240 years as a lethal isotope. Gordon Edwards, President of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, replied to von Hippel that:
I think we have been we have been manipulated and a lot of people fell for it because you don’t think that the Secretary of Energy is going to go on public airwaves and simply give a false account of what actually happened. And that’s what we’re seeing. I think that the the scramble for money for fusion research, and even for fission research in terms of small modular reactors, is impelling people to misrepresent their product as a way of of getting governments to invest in it and the public to support it.
………………………………………………………. Rather than disguising a fundamentally military project like the Lawrence Lawrence Livermore Lab experiment as a peaceful energy thing when in fact it’s a military maintenance project, we have to restart the debate over nuclear weapons policy.
And thus we all drift, pwned like Granholm, stocked to the gills with horrific weaponry and new threats to unleash it out of MRGA (Make Russia Great Again) rage. Every new reactor built is both a bomb component factory and a wartime target. It makes plutonium. We gave up a critical 50 years chasing the peaceful atom myth — unlimited energy that’s safe, clean, too cheap to meter — when we could have had cheap, safe, clean renewable energy with no explosive potential and a tamer climate all that time. Maybe it is time we stop listening to Edward Teller’s ghost and listened to Justin Trudeau’s dad, Maybe it’s time we did something different for a change. https://medium.com/the-shadow/jennifer-granholm-was-pwned-301c2a3c657a
As small modular nuclear reactors come closer to reality in the U.S., managing and disposing of their highly radioactive waste should be a national priority. Forty years after the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, there is, “no clear path forward for the siting, licensing, and construction of a geologic repository” for nuclear waste, according to a recent U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine report.
The good news is that there is already a clear strategy for managing and disposing of this highly radioactive material. The bad news is that the U.S. government has yet to seriously follow that plan.
The National Academies report tells us that new or advanced reactor designs—the hoped-for saviors of the nuclear industry—will not save us from the need to build geologic repositories, deep-mined facilities for permanent nuclear waste disposal. In some cases, these new reactors may make it worse by creating more waste that’s more costly to manage, new kinds of complex waste, or just more waste, period. Before we face that onrush, we first need to deal with the large volume of waste we’ve already produced.
The U.S., which led the way on managing nuclear waste in the 1980s and 1990s, has now fallen to the back of the pack. About 88,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors remain stranded at reactor sites, and this number is increasing by some 2,000 metric tons each year. These 77 sites are in 35 states and threaten to become de facto permanent disposal facilities. Without a geologic repository, there is no way forward for the final disposal of this highly radioactive material. Storing it in pools and dry casks at reactor sites is a temporary solution; it is safe for decades, but not the millennia needed to isolate this radioactive material from the environment. The present U.S. policy of indefinite storage at a centralized site is not a viable solution, as it shifts the cost and risk to future generations.
Beginning now, the nation needs to follow a pathway already set out for a national nuclear waste repository. Both a 2012 presidential Blue Ribbon Commission and an international expert panel organized by Stanford and George Washington Universities in 2018 recommended a new, independent, waste management and disposal organization with funding outside of the annual Congressional appropriations and restrictive budgetary rules. The Blue Ribbon Commission called for creation of a new federal corporation, like the Tennessee Valley Authority, for this organization, while the Stanford/GWU panel looked to replicate not-for-profit, utility-owned, but independent, organizations modeled on successful programs in other countries, such as Sweden and Finland.
Charges to nuclear-power-produced electricity fund these organizations, and they remain regulated by independent nuclear regulators. Both panels agreed on the need for an independent organization and finances………………………………………………………………
Assured finances are also key. In the U.S., Congress hasn’t appropriated funds for its Yucca Mountain nuclear waste program since 2010. In fact, Congress has so badly mangled the process of collecting and appropriating the ratepayers fund, now over $40 billion, that it has rendered these funds essentially inaccessible. Outrageously, this money, actually collected from electricity ratepayers, not taxpayers, is being used to offset the national debt.
Even if the U.S. starts today, it will take decades to site, design and build a facility for disposal of its nuclear waste stockpile. That process must accelerate now, before the reactors we need for their electricity run out of room for their growing inventories of highly radioactive waste. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-is-piling-up-does-the-u-s-have-a-plan/
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) – Two Republican state representatives from Wentzville are seeking a full accounting of the contamination and potential caused by the nuclear weapons work that took place in the St. Louis region decades ago.
Additionally, they hope to get the state to press the federal government for compensation for people who developed rare cancers and diseases that were likely caused by radiation exposure.
Representative Tricia Byrnes filed House Concurrent Resolution number 21 last week, and Representative Richard West filed the companion House concurrent Resolution number 22. The legislation calls for a joint investigation by various departments of state government.
“We hope to get the state of Missouri and its agencies to stand up and ask the federal government to step in with some kind of legislative remedy,” said Byrnes.
“We’ve been fighting this as singular battles, St. Louis City, St. Louis County, St. Charles County. And I think if all the leaders come together, we approached the federal government and say, look, we want to be made whole,” said West.
Uranium was processed in the 1940′s and 1950′s at Mallinckrodt Chemical Works at a facility downtown for atomic bombs. Some of the waste was stored along Banshee Road near Lambert St. Louis International Airport and contributed to the contamination of nearby Coldwater Creek. Some of the waste was also stored in the 9200 block of Latty Avenue and eventually was illegally buried at West Lake Landfill.
Uranium was also processed at the Weldon Spring Chemical Plant along Highway 94 in St. Charles County from 1957-1966. After the plant closed and before it became a Superfund Cleanup site, children were known to play in the abandoned buildings. People also swam in a nearby quarry where radioactive waste and remnants of the downtown St. Louis site were dumped.
Both Byrnes and West have relatives who’ve been diagnosed with rare cancers and diseases that are associated with exposure to radiation.
“The victims of this are starting to become numerous,” said West.
In 2018 the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services found elevated levels of cancer in the zip codes that Coldwater Creek runs through. And the CDC concluded that contamination in the creek was the likely cause.
The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) was set up to compensate nuclear weapons workers who develop one of about two dozen types of cancer associated with radiation exposure. A similar program called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was set up to compensate people who lived downwind from nuclear bomb tests and also developed one of the cancers on the government list.
West and Byrnes are seeking to get the State of Missouri to advocate, on behalf of residents of the region with radiation-related cancers and illnesses, to be compensated similarly.
Both pieces of legislation have been assigned to the General Laws committee, which will hold a hearing on the legislation Tuesday, March 7, at 4 p.m. Byrnes and West are requesting that anyone who was diagnosed with radiation-related cancer or illness which may have been caused by the local work on the nuclear weapons program, to attend the hearing and tell their story.
Le Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie (ROEE) is a voluntary association of Quebec groups with a fine professional team:
ROEE is funded to intervene in hearings of the Régie de l’Énergie on matters related to energy and the environment and toeducate the public on such matters in a regular way. The ROEE was founded in 1997 following a public debate on energy policy in Quebec that led to the creation of the
Régie de l’Énergie on matters related to energy and the environment and to educate the public on such matters in a regular way.
The ROEE was founded in 1997 following a public debate on energy policy in Quebec that led to the creation of the Régie.
The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, known in Quebec as le Regroupement pour la surveillance du nucléaire, is one of the founding members of the ROEE.
The ROEE is a champion of “soft energy paths” based on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, and has recently decided to adopt a policy on nuclear power although Quebec phased out of nuclear power in 2012 with the closure of the only operating nuclear power reactor in Quebec called “Gentilly-2”. (Gentilly-1 was retired many years beforehand).
Quebec also adopted a one-year moratorium on uranium mining in 2014, leading to a year-long series of hearing in Quebec conducted by the BAPE (Bueau des audiences publiques sur l’environnement), who recommended in 2015 that the moratorium on uranium exploration and mining be made permanent. So far this has not been done but uranium exploration has been terminated in the province of Quebec – hence we have an informal moratorium in effect.
Membres du ROEE (2023)
Association madelinienne pour la sécurité énergétique et environnementale Canot Kayak Québec Écohabitation Fondation Coule pas chez nous Fondation Rivières Nature Québec Draft Policy on nuclear power (English original and French translation are copied below).
ROEE does not support the expansion of nuclear power based on the fissioning of uranium or plutonium as an energy source. The unsolved problems associated with nuclear fission technology are far more significant than any benefits it is supposed to offer, and there are now more affordable alternatives such as energy efficiency and renewable energy sources that are easier and faster to deploy than nuclear.
Background
•Nuclear fission inevitably creates a long-lived legacy of human-made radioactive wastes that will continue to challenge the health and safety of humans and the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. By far the most intensely radioactive wastes are contained in the used nuclear fuel. These wastes cannot be eliminated or neutralized but only contained, and safe containment over such long time periods cannot be assured.
•Materials such as stainless steel and concrete in the core area of a nuclear reactor also become long-lived radioactive wastes and therefore cannot be recycled. This debris cannot be decontaminated, it must be kept out of the environment for many generations after dismantling the reactors, which is delayed for decades to protect workers from excessive exposure. Canada has no strategy for dealing with these wastes over the very long term.
The risk of catastrophic nuclear accidents cannot be eliminated. Even if the risk is small, the consequences can be unacceptable, leading to radioactive contamination of large land areas and large volumes of water, as well as the permanent evacuation of large populations.
• The risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons using plutonium created in nuclear reactors, as India did in 1974, is not negligible. Such proliferation remains a significant danger for thousands of years after the last reactor is shut down.
• The proliferation risk becomes more acute when “advanced” nuclear reactors require the extraction of plutonium from used nuclear fuel to create more nuclear fuel – an operation called “reprocessing”. Reprocessing is now being considered by the Canadian government in coinnection with new reactors proposed for New Brunswick.
• ROEE supports the movement to ban reprocesssing – plutonium extraction – in Canada. Non-proliferation experts are agreed that ready access to plutonium should not be encouraged. In 1977, US President Carter banned reprocessing in the USA because of the proliferation risk.
• ROEE opposes uranium mining as well. The only significant uses of uranium are as an explosive for nuclear weapons and as a fuel for nuclear reactors. ROEE is opposed to both.
• Uranium mining also leaves a long-lived radioactive waste legacy. Canada currently has over 120 million tonnes of radioactive waste left over from uranium mining. These wastes will rmain danberous for hundreds of thousands of years.
• Uranium wastes, called “tailings”, contain some of the deadliest naturally occurring toxic materials known to science, such as radium, polonium, and radon gas. Mining brings these materials to the surface and makes them much more accessible to the environment.
ROEE Positions
ROEE disagrees wth the promotion of a new generation of nuclear reactors to deal with the climate emergency. Compared with energy efficiency and renewables such as solar and wind, nuclear power is at least 4 to 7 times more costly and much too slow to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a timely fashion. In contrast to the proven performance and declining price of alternatives, new nuclear reactors are uncertain in performance and sometimes are completely unusable, while experience has shown a pattern of major price escalations and construction delays for nuclear projects.
ROEE applauds the decision to close down the Gentilly-2 reactor at Bécancour in 2012, thereby phasing out nuclear power in Québec. ROEE urges government to make this phase-out permanent by banning the construction of any new nuclear power reactors in the province.
A severe nuclear accident in either Ontario or New Brunswick can have serious airborne and water-borne consequences in Quebec as well as in those provinces. ROEE urges the government to encourage the phaseout of nuclear power in neighbouring provinces for safety reasons, while continuing to offer them sales of excess hydroelectric power from Quebec.
ROEE welcomes the 2015 recommendation of the BAPE for the government to declare a permanent moratorium on uranium mining in Quebec. ROEE urges the government to accept this recommendation fully by passing a law that bans uranium exploration and mining in the province, similar to the law passed by Nova Scotia on the same matter.
ROEE supports Quebec’s determination not to accept the import of long-lived radioactive waste from other jurisdictions for permanent storage in Quebec.
In addition, ROEE opposes current federal plans to construct a permanent radioactive storage facility on the surface at Chalk River, just one kilomete from the Ottawa River, close to the Quebec border. This landfill operation is intended to house one million cubic metres of radioactive wastes and other toxic materials such as asbestos and lead, some of it imported from as far away as Manitoba. As of 2022, over 130 municipalities, including the members of the Montreal Agglomeration Council, have opposed the planned Chalk River dump. ROEE supports their efforts to prevent it also urges the government of Quebec to do likewise.
This campaign is inextricably tied to war. Assange is being persecuted for exposing war crimes, under conditions where the US and its allies are preparing even greater horrors through their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and their confrontation with China.
In a feature article published last Thursday, the well-known German weekly magazine Der Spiegel pointedly asked whether the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was “hunting” associates and supporters of Julian Assange.
The persecuted WikiLeaks publisher remains in Britain’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison while the UK authorities seek to facilitate his extradition to the US. There, Assange faces 175 years’ imprisonment for exposing the war crimes committed by American imperialism and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Over recent years, a wealth of material has been published laying bare the scope of the US campaign against Assange and its gross illegality. In October 2021, Yahoo! News issued an article, based on the statements of 30 former and current US officials. It asserted that the CIA and the Trump administration had plotted to kidnap or assassinate Assange while he was an internationally-recognised political refugee in Ecuador’s London embassy.
There are well-documented allegations that UC Global, the security company contracted by the Ecuadorian authorities to provide security to the embassy, was secretly collaborating with the US authorities. UC Global whistleblowers have attested to this, and the unlawful surveillance material, including videos of Assange’s privileged discussions with his lawyers, has been publicly released.
The Der Spiegel article provides additional information. It paints a picture of a global dragnet established by the US government and its agencies to target not only Assange, but also his collaborators. Much of the material is anecdotal, but the standing of those providing it, together with the context of established US state operations against WikiLeaks, makes for a persuasive case.
Summarising the material it collected, Der Spiegel writes: “At one point, a lawyer in London lost her laptop; at another, a journalist researching Assange’s case had medical data stolen. The office of Assange’s Spanish defence lawyers was broken into in a bizarre way. In Ecuador, a Swedish software developer has been held in the country for nearly four years on flimsy grounds. Elsewhere, Assange supporters who prefer to remain anonymous reported similar spooky incidents.
“That they are connected cannot be proven. Nor has it been possible to determine the authors beyond doubt in any case so far. It could be a matter of coincidences. ‘But who is to believe that?’ asks Assange’s lawyer Aitor Martínez, who is certain that it is a concerted campaign by U.S. authorities, whose often dubious methods WikiLeaks has exposed quite a few times. ‘It’s a vendetta against Julian Assange,’ says the Spaniard. And the focus is not only on companions and family members of Assange, but also on lawyers and journalists, who by law should be particularly protected from wiretapping.”
everal case studies are provided.
One concerns Andy Müller-Maguhn, a German collaborator of Assange and a computer expert. In addition to having met frequently with Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, Müller-Maguhn plays a pivotal role in WikiLeaks’ operations by managing funds for the organisation donated through the German Wau Holland Foundation.
The Der Spiegel report recounts that Müller-Maguhn discovered in March 2018 a high-powered spying device in a Southeast Asian apartment where he sometimes resides. The small surveillance implant had been expertly soldered into one of Müller-Maguhn’s secure mobile phones. Der Spiegel commented: “It is equipped with U.S. made chips and cannot be detected with a normal frequency locator.”
Other incidents followed, with Müller-Maguhn describing the situation as the “edge of surreality.” In one instance, “in June 2019, he was waiting for his wife in Milan when he spotted an ‘unkempt guy’ across the street pointing a telephoto lens at him through a plastic bag. ‘When he sees me looking at him,’ he takes off.”
In another incident…………………………….
The German citizen has filed a legal case against the spying in the German federal courts. His account is lent substantial credence by the fact that the US government has openly admitted to targeting him.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigations named Müller-Maguhn as a potential WikiLeaks courier in the 2016 Mueller report…………………………..
Lawyer targeted
Aitor Martínez, one of Assange’s Spanish lawyers, also appears to have been targeted. Der Spiegel pointedly notes: “For him, too, the series of oddities apparently began in the spring of 2017, when CIA chief Pompeo declared WikiLeaks an enemy intelligence agency.”
Pompeo made that declaration in response to WikiLeaks’ publication of Vault 7, a trove of CIA documents proving that the agency was running a global hacking operation aimed at gaining access to smartphones, televisions and even electric vehicles. The agency was also developing technologies to falsely ascribe its own illegal actions to other nations, such as Russia and Iran. The clear implication of Pompeo’s assertion was that WikiLeaks would be treated as an enemy state or a terrorist organisation.
…………………………………………..
In the most serious attack, masked men broke into Martínez’s Spanish legal office on the night of December 16, 2017. They appeared to be looking for something, which the lawyer suspects was a computer server that they did not find.
The timing suggests coordination with UC Global, along with the US authorities………………………………………………………………….
…………….the Justice Department, which is now overseeing Assange’s attempted extradition, was potentially tag-teaming with spying agencies in criminal operations such as attempted burglaries.
Significantly, Martinez stated that his apartment was broken into last year, but nothing was stolen. That would suggest that this gangster campaign against Assange’s associates continues, despite his imprisonment and the extradition proceedings.
Another individual whose story is recounted by Der Spiegel is Ola Bini, a Swedish computer expert. He was arrested in Ecuador, where he was working, almost simultaneously with the Ecuadorian government’s expulsion of Assange from its London embassy on April 11, 2019. Bini, who says he has never worked for WikiLeaks, but did meet with Assange at the embassy, was accused of hacking into Ecuadorian government communications and attempting to destabilise its government.
Bini has been subjected to a years-long legal ordeal. While an Ecuadorian court acquitted him in January, prosecutors have filed an appeal, so he cannot leave the country.
Der Spiegel recounted some of his experiences with surveillance:………………………………………..
Reports since 2019 have indicated that the Ecuadorian campaign against Bini has been coordinated with US officials.
The spying and dirty tricks perpetrated against WikiLeaks’ associates, including lawyers, underscores the fact that the persecution of Assange is the spearhead of a broader assault on democratic rights, with global implications.
This campaign is inextricably tied to war. Assange is being persecuted for exposing war crimes, under conditions where the US and its allies are preparing even greater horrors through their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and their confrontation with China. As in the 20th century, war is incompatible with fundamental civil liberties, which governments erode in a bid to suppress widespread opposition to militarism among workers and young people.
The lawless campaign against WikiLeaks is yet another exposure of the fraud of Washington’s claims to be defending “democracy” and “human rights” in Ukraine or anywhere else. What emerges is an imperialist regime that will use all methods, including criminal, to stamp out opposition to its illegal wars and interventions.
How is it that this evil woman, Nuland, is allowed to drive the US towards nuclear war with Russia?
There are two key signals of a possible US-NATO change in strategy that are perceptible if we understand that NATO, at least so far, does what the US says it needs to do.
New deliveries of special types of long-range ammunition to Kiev are the first signal. The second is the publicized switch by
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland to favoring a refocus on retaking Crimea in a new Ukrainian offensive.
US-NATO response to fall of Bakhmut is likely an assault on Crimea, which in turn will spark Russian attacks on Eastern Europe
Ukrainian forces are pulling out of Bakhmut and the battle for the small Donetsk city is nearly finished. So what happens next?
There appear to be two stages to the Bakhmut pullout. The first started perhaps a month ago, though that isn’t certain. The troops pulled out comprised foreign fighters and Yellow Armband troops.
The Russians say they have not seen any foreign fighters for about a month. Most of these were said to be from Georgia and Abkhazia. (Abkhazia is the area in Georgia carved out by the Russians and declared an independent entity.)
The Yellow Armband troops are professional and well-trained Ukrainian “heavy” military units. They have mostly been used on the flanks protecting the city of Bakhmut, trying to stop the Russian encirclement.
Within the city are so-called Green Armband troops. They are not well trained and are mostly recent conscripts. Mainly they carry small arms, which they fire from buildings and other covered positions. Many of them are underage or, alternatively, overage.
According to Yevgeny Prighozin, head of the Wagner Group paramilitary organization, the Green Armbands are starting to leave the city, having already pulled out from most of the eastern parts. Reports say they are either using a country road or walking across farm fields.
As it now stands, the end of the battle is at most a few days away, although the Ukrainians have launched a counteroffensive to the west and south of a town called Ivanivske. The operation may be meant to hold off a wider encirclement of Ukrainian forces that the Russians appear to have launched.
The Yellow Armband Ukrainian forces trying to relieve Ivanivske are deploying a number of infantry fighting vehicles, but so far few if any tanks. Whether Ukraine’s army can actually hold off a wider Russian operation remains to be seen.
But the Ukrainians are low on soldiers and ammunition, so it isn’t clear they can sustain a hard hit if that’s what the Russians intend to launch.
Up next: Crimea
The US and NATO likely see the handwriting on the wall if the Ukrainians continue to try and hold territory in the Donbas region.
While the US thinks that Russia failed to succeed in its original objectives in the Donbas and in forcing a governmental change in Kiev, the long-term picture looks troublesome as the Russians have not only improved their tactics but also appear willing to pay the price and grind down Ukraine’s army.
Likewise, it is by now clear that it will take more than a few years in the US and Europe to rebuild ammunition and equipment stocks, while the Russians seem to have put their defense manufacturing on a full-time, day-and-night basis to bring supplies to the front.
There are two key signals of a possible US-NATO change in strategy that are perceptible if we understand that NATO, at least so far, does what the US says it needs to do.
New deliveries of special types of long-range ammunition to Kiev are the first signal. The second is the publicized switch by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland to favoring a refocus on retaking Crimea in a new Ukrainian offensive.
“[W]e will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Ukraine is fighting for the return of all of its land within its international borders. We are supporting them, including in preparing a next hard push to regain their territory…Crimea must be—at a minimum, at a minimum—demilitarized.”US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland
Nuland’s view is not supported fully by the State Department or the Pentagon, largely because of concern Russia may choose to attack Western supply lines in retaliation, leading to a broader war in Eastern Europe, starting with Poland and Romania.
Both Poland and Romania, one should recall, are historical Russian stomping grounds. Joseph Stalin decided to support the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact in August 1939 because the Soviet leader saw it as giving him part of Poland and Romania’s oil fields.
There is a famous story that circulated during the Cold War about a Polish soldier facing an invasion by Russian tanks on one axis and German tanks on the other. Standing there with one antitank weapon, what should he choose? Deciding to fire on the Russian tanks, the Polish soldier supposedly says, “Business before pleasure.”
Fast forward to the present, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is known to worry about a wider conflict but may well have lost out to Nuland, a major proponent of the Ukraine war who wants at a minimum regime change in Moscow.
The evidence that Nuland has won the argument starts with the fact Biden has announced a new long-range weapons program for Ukraine and is also sending mobile bridging equipment that could help the Ukrainian army attack Russian forces in a Crimea offensive.
The operational problem is that this scenario would require fighter planes that can fly to high altitudes of around 30,000 feet before launching JDAMS, kits that fit on “iron” bombs to give them GPS guidance. But a bomb glides to its target, so to achieve standoff range high-flying aircraft are required.
This would require Ukraine to use its MIG-29s, but it has few of the fighters left. Thus the latest arms deliveries may include, in some form or another, Western aircraft probably flown by NATO pilots.
This would amount to a direct declaration of war, as both Blinken (who is against it) and Nuland (who is for it) understand. To launch such an offensive, for example as soon as this May, there’s no alternative to using Western aircraft.
The Nuland threat to Crimea appears more and more to be a foregone conclusion: a US policy with existential implications for Europe and perhaps also for America.
The issue was decided by the new arms shipments (two separate announcements as late as March 3 US time). While no published decision has been made and Biden has been silent, the equipment being sent could only be intended for Nuland’s offensive on Crimea.
If there were a public announcement of a decision supporting Nuland, Blinken would likely have a heart attack – but the US is sending long-range bombs and artillery as well as bridging equipment essential to attack Crimea. If such an attack is not envisioned, the Ukrainians don’t need this kit.
Meanwhile, there seems to be very little coherent US opposition to the unfolding scenario of what could quickly become a general war in Europe.
nuclear-news 