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Shining a light on St Louis’ radioactive waste landfill scandal

ST. LOUIS PREPS FOR “CATASTROPHIC” NUCLEAR EVENT  http://armydotmil.com/st-louis-preps-for-catastrophic-nuclear-event/

BY ARMYDOTMIL ON Beneath the surface of a St. Louis-area landfill lurk two things that should never meet: a slow-burning fire and a cache of Cold War-era nuclear waste, separated by no more than 1,200 feet.
Manhattan Project Fallout: St. Louis’ Nuclear Legacy Unravels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F268n_LcUH0

BY ARMYDOTMIL ON 
RESIDENTS OF ST. LOUIS ARE ONLY BEGINNING TO SEE THE SYMPTOMS OF YEARS SPENT LIVING AMONGST RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL. IT WAS REVEALED THAT NUCLEAR WASTE WAS SECRETLY DUMPED IN THE SUBURBS UNDER A CLOAK OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOLLOWING THE COLD WAR, AND NOW THE EPA IS TRYING TO DOWNPLAY THE POTENTIAL CATASTROPHE THAT SMOLDERS UNDERNEATH THE SURFACE.
EPA Does NOTHING as Nuclear Waste Calamity Inches Closer

BY ARMYDOTMIL ON  TYT Politics Reporter Jordan Chariton spoke with Dawn Chapman and Karen Nickel, two St. Louis-area mothers who are fighting to have nuclear waste removed from a site due to its unknown proximity to an underground chemical fire.

To offer your help, email: westllakemoms@gmail.com    http://armydotmil.com/epa-does-nothing-as-nuclear-waste-calamity-inches-closer/

April 18, 2023 Posted by | safety, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste abandonment risks the dangers of amnesia

Broad-stroke reassurances from supporters of a proposed deep geological repository for Canada’s nuclear waste have failed to allay important environmental and security concerns.

 The Hill Times, BY ERIKA SIMPSON | April 13, 2023

A plan to store Canada’s nuclear waste deep underground in northern Ontario raises serious safety concerns for current and future generations.

In light of this, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO)—which is responsible for developing and implementing the plan—should reconsider other options, such as a rolling stewardship model, which actively plans for retrieval and periodic repackaging of nuclear waste.

From April 4-5, the South Bruce Nuclear Exploration Forum considered the NWMO plan to store all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste in one deep geological repository (DGR). An earlier plan had proposed burying intermediate- and low-level nuclear waste in limestone caverns constructed under the Bruce reactor, but was met with a “no” vote from members of the Saugeen-Ojibway Nation. That led to Bruce Power withdrawing its own proposal in June 2020.

The current proposal for a $23-billion DGR project at Teeswater, Ont., may be constructed 50 km away from the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, the world’s largest operating nuclear site that supplies 30 per cent of Ontario’s power. Whether the proposal goes ahead in partnership with a willing host community will be decided by the Governor in Council. Once one of the two remaining possible host communities—either Teeswater or Ignace, Ont.—is selected, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada will continue to lead decades-long consultation processes…………………………..

the broad-stroke reassurances of the DGR proponents have failed to allay concerns.

There are questions about how 700 engineers and construction workers could possibly be housed. I have written about SNC-Lavalin—an engineering company that was prosecuted internationally for corruption—yet remains the leading contractor and possible steward of Canada’s nuclear wastes. Heavily subsidized by Canadian tax dollars, the company is driven by the quest for money, not the quest for nuclear security. Although no questions were publicly asked about SNC-Lavalin, a project officer from the Wastes and Decommissioning Division at CNSC explained each engineering and closure stage could be halted, if deemed necessary.

There are also questions about impacts on future generations. Would the underground nuclear waste containers be monitored, in perpetuity, and what might be safety concerns about situating any such site in the Great Lakes’ water basin, the world’s largest body of fresh water and the drinking water for up to 40 million people? The hydrogeologists and geologists were confident that the DGR concept—possibly the first or fourth underground nuclear waste site in the world—would not be beyond Canada’s engineering and scientific capabilities.

I asked DGR proponents about four U.S. Senators who asked President Joe Biden to raise the issue with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month. I was told this would be a local decision—made by area residents in next year’s referendum—combined somehow with a municipal town council majority decision, and a possible veto by First Nations—and therefore the United States would have nothing to do with it, even though Canada’s federal cabinet would have the final say.

I asked Tiina Jalonen, the senior vice president of development at Posiva Oy about Finland’s proposed used-fuel disposal facility and her government’s plans for “signage.” It could be important to warn our great-great-great-grandchildren to refrain from curiously digging out whatever leaks into rock formations below.

What about the legacy of strikes on nuclear sites, like the Russian assault on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, that has made evident that nuclear power plants and waste disposal sites could become targets in conflict zones? Nobody publicly asked about terrorist threats, and whether the site could become hostage to nefarious bargaining.

What else might go wrong? I asked two fire chiefs, but they had not heard about the fire at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico that shut down the site in 2014 due to a major radiation release that contaminated workers at the surface. I asked a geologist about Germany’s Asse Salt Mine that still leaks water into radioactive containers.

Perhaps continual monitoring and the ‘rolling stewardship’ concept—that actively plans for retrieval and periodic repackaging—would be most effective, because wholesale abandonment could lead to amnesia.

Erika Simpson is an associate professor of international politics at Western University, the author of Nuclear Waste Burial in Canada? The Political Controversy over the Proposal to Construct a Deep Geologic Repository and Nuclear waste: Solution or problem? and the president of the Canadian Peace Research Association.
https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2023/04/13/nuclear-waste-abandonment-risks-the-dangers-of-amnesia/384800/

April 18, 2023 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Local Indigenous peoples protest possible licence renewal for world’s largest uranium mine.

In June, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will hold hearings about renewing the licence for Cameco’s McArthur River uranium mine, located in the Athabasca basin in Saskatchewan’s rugged far north.

Davis Legree, Apr 13, 2023  https://www.ipolitics.ca/news/local-indigenous-peoples-protest-possible-licence-renewal-for-worlds-largest-uranium-mine

The operator of the world’s largest uranium mine is seeking a new 20-year licence from Canada’s nuclear regulator but some Indigenous peoples in northern Saskatchewan are calling for the application to be rejected or scaled back, citing health concerns.

“The Athabasca River basin is under siege,” said Candyce Paul, outreach coordinator for the advocacy group Committee for Future Generations. “The people here have had enough of this industrial colonialism that is going on.”

In June, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will hold hearings about renewing the licence for Cameco’s McArthur River uranium mine, located in the Athabasca basin in Saskatchewan’s rugged far north.

Paul, a member of English River First Nation, on whose territory several of Cameco’s mining sites are located, said her community is frustrated by the company’s lack of transparency, as well as human health concerns associated with uranium mining.

“Quite frankly, some of the community members are getting really fed up with the footprint this industry is having on the land and there’s been actual talk of blocking the main road from the mine,” said Paul.

Uranium, which ranges in use from atomic weapons to powering nuclear reactors, was initially discovered in the Athabasca Basin in the late 1960s. According to Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, the volume and grade of the deposits found in northern Saskatchewan have led those in the industry to dub the area “the Saudi Arabia of uranium.”

“Canada has the richest uranium mines in the world around the Athabasca Basin,” said Edwards, who explained uranium ‘richness’ refers to the grade and what percentage of uranium there is in a ton of ore.

According to Edwards, uranium in the Athabasca Basin is considerably richer than uranium deposits found elsewhere in Canada, which makes it more lucrative. However, Edwards continued, mining rich uranium deposits can be problematic for the health of local communities.

“When you mine uranium, since it’s radioactive, there’s a chain of progeny, which are radioactive by-products of uranium,” explained Edwards. “These include radium, radon gas, certain isotopes of thorium, and polonium – all highly toxic materials.”

Edwards said that around 85 per cent of the radioactivity in mined uranium ore is left behind in “voluminous sand, like tailings from a mill,” adding that Canada has around “220 million tonnes of this stuff.”

These radioactive and toxic tailings areas should be of concern to communities in the Athabasca Basin, said Edwards, because richer uranium ore means the radioactivity is more concentrated in the waste.

Paul believes her community has been adversely affected from living in close proximity to large-scale uranium mining activities. She cited issues regarding increased cancer rates among English River members, which she said “could be related to radiation exposure.”

Paul said her community has contacted Health Canada, Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Health, and several epidemiologists about conducting health studies in the area, only to be told that their population is too small to justify an assessment.

That being said, Cameco’s licence renewal application to the CNSC referenced a federally funded human health risk evaluation that was conducted in the English River First Nation in 2017.

Regardless, Paul said she would intervene in the upcoming licence renewal hearings, which are scheduled to be held June 7-8 in Saskatoon. Initially, Cameco had requested an indefinite licence term for McArthur River and several other sites, but, following Indigenous consultation activities, the company has since walked back their application to 20 years.

When asked if local Indigenous communities were satisfied with a 20-year term, Cameco spokesperson Veronica Baker said in an email that the application for an indefinite licence was abandoned because “communities expressed uncertainty with what an indefinite licence term means and how it fits within existing regulatory and engagement frameworks.” However, she did not clarify whether these communities approved of the 20-year application.

According to Paul, the CNSC would set a dangerous precedent by granting           Cameco a 20-year licence.

“Twenty years is too long,” she told iPolitics. “It would be nice to see the CNSC reject a 20-year licence and go for something for reasonable, like five or ten years, although even ten is too much.”

Neither Paul nor Edwards has much confidence that the CNSC will reject Cameco’s 20-year application.

“From our perspective, it will look like a rubber stamp,” said Paul.

According to Edwards, the current iteration of the CNSC, which has only existed since 2000, has “never refused to grant a licence to any major nuclear facility in their entire existence.”

“The public has very little opportunity to question the practices going on,” he continued. “There’s a widespread feeling in the NGO community that we have a captured regulator in the CNSC, which reports to the natural resources minister, who is also responsible for promoting uranium mining and exports.”

A review of Lobby Canada’s registry reveals Cameco officials met in recent           months with Rumina Velshi, the CNSC’s president and CEO, and Ramzi Jammal, the regulator’s executive vice-president. However, both Cameco and the CNSC denied that the upcoming licence renewal hearing was discussed.

Edward said Cameco’s initial attempt at securing an indefinite licence term is indicative of an industry trend that is seeing longer licensing periods being granted and, as a result, less public oversight, and [fewer opportunities] for accountability.

“Unfortunately, that’s the direction they’re moving in,” he said.

According to CNSC spokesperson Renée Ramsey, individuals and organizations who want to intervene in the hearing have until April 24 to submit their requests, at which point the submissions from intervenors will be made publicly available. Ramsey also said the CNSC panel that will be leading the upcoming hearing has yet to be appointed.

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, Uranium | Leave a comment

The coming war on China: the real target is the American people

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” – James Madison

ALEX KRAINER, Substack, APR 15, 2023

Empire’s proxy war on Russia is rapidly coming to a head in Ukraine and the imperial guard might urgently need a new war. Their next target is China and once more we witness a relentless escalation of provocations and hostility. In his Wall Street Journal column this week, former National Security Advisor John Bolton laid out his “grand strategy” to confront Russia and China. His genius idea is to give Taiwan “much more military aid” from western nations and “embed Taipei into collective-defense structures.”

Preparations for war

Bolton’s warmongering is only the last in the long sequence of proclamations by US officials indicating the direction of their foreign policy. Last month, U.S. Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) that the United States has “to prepare, to be prepared to fight and win that war” against China. This is not just idle talk: they really are preparing.

On Sunday, 10 January, Lieutenant General James Bierman, the commanding general of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force gave an interview to the Financial Times in which he said that his command is working hard to replicate the empire’s military success (!) in Ukraine. Bierman explained that the US and its allies in Asia were recreating the groundwork that had enabled western countries to support Ukraine’s resistance to Russia in preparing for scenarios such as Chinese invasion of Taiwan:

“Why have we achieved the level of success we’ve achieved in Ukraine? … because after Russian aggression in 2014 and 2015, we earnestly got after preparing for future conflict: training for the Ukrainians, pre-positioning of supplies, identification of sites from which we could operate support, sustain operations. We call that setting the theatre. And we are setting the theatre in Japan, in the Philippines, in other locations.”

In other words, the US is creating the same conditions to draw China into a war over Taiwan in order to replicate the success they’ve had in Ukraine. Truly, whom gods would destroy, they first make them mad.

The war addiction

Jest aside, why is the US establishment ever so keen on waging wars? Consider the finding that, “Since the end of World War II, there have been 248 armed conflicts in 153 locations around the world. The United States launched 201 overseas military operations between the end of World War II and 2001, and since then, others, including Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Stated otherwise, one nation has launched more than 80% of all overseas military operations since WWII. Is this because the American people are so consistently belligerent? That’s clearly not the case: for as long as I’d observed American politics, the people always vote for anti-war candidates. Somehow however, they always get more war. How can that be? In fact, causes of war are systemic and they emanate from the fraudulent money system that’s been foisted on us all. This can’t be explained in just a few paragraphs, but for all who are inclined to explore this relationship further, I summarized it in this article: “Deflationary gap and the west’s war addiction.”

China, China, China!

Alongside military preparations, the imperial guard is also working hard to create consent for war with relentless anti-China propaganda. The unsubtle messaging is that the CCP is coming for our freedoms and has evil designs to dominate the world. Much of the commentariat blames the Chinese for all the dark globalist agendas to enslave humanity.

The relentless fearmongering often resorts to propagating outright fabrications which are then replicated ad nauseum as hard facts. Repetition turns these fabrications into culturally accepted truths. The most dismaying example of this is the western invention of the “Chinese Social Credit System.”……………………………………………………………………………………

China is not the enemy and consenting to a war against China would be the greatest possible gift we could give to the occult oligarchy that rules in the west and has been in charge for over a century. It is they who have given us a century of perpetual wars. The reason why the American people are under such relentless attacks is because they are still one of the most important bulwarks of freedom  https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/the-coming-war-on-china-the-real

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Canada, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Plan for Dumping Nuclear Wastewater Into Hudson River Is Paused

New York Times, By Patrick McGeehan, April 14, 2023

Wastewater from the shuttered Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York will not be dumped into the Hudson River next month as planned, the company that owns the plant said.

The owner, Holtec International, said on Thursday that it would take more time to explain its plan to elected officials and community leaders who have become alarmed about potential harmful effects on the environment.

A Holtec spokesman, Patrick O’Brien, said the company would take a “voluntary pause” in its scheduled release of water from the pools that contained spent fuel rods from Indian Point’s reactors, which stopped generating electricity in 2021.

Why It Matters: Area Residents Feared Contamination of Drinking Water

Releasing water from the spent-fuel pools into the Hudson had always been part of Holtec’s plan for dismantling Indian Point, in Buchanan, N.Y. But a recent notice from the company that it might speed up the process alarmed some environmental activists, who oppose discharging the wastewater because it contains tritium, a radioactive element.

Riverkeeper, an organization that advocates for clean water in New York, opposed the plan, saying: “Ingestion of tritium is linked to cancer, and children and pregnant women are most vulnerable.” Riverkeeper called for the wastewater to be stored in tanks on the site until a safer method of disposal could be devised.

In an April 6 letter to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, New York’s Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, said that Holtec’s “sudden” announcement had “shocked the community” and would increase public opposition and distrust of Holtec as it continues the decommissioning of Indian Point.

On Thursday, Mr. Schumer said in a statement that he was “relieved that Holtec has heeded our call and will put a stop to its hastily hatched plan to dump radioactive wastewater into the Hudson this May.”

………………………………………… Holtec tried to assure community leaders that the safest way to dispose of the wastewater was to put it in the river. But elected officials proposed legislation in Albany that would ban the “discharge of any radiological agent into the waters of the state.”

What’s Next

Holtec has not abandoned its plan to discharge the wastewater. Mr. O’Brien said the company hoped to “further engage” with elected officials and state agencies and that regulators would gain “time to continue explaining the science and regulations” at public meetings. The Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board has scheduled a special online meeting for public comment on April 25.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/14/nyregion/hudson-river-nuclear-waste.html

April 16, 2023 Posted by | USA, water | Leave a comment

U.S. Senate Weighs Big Plans for Small Reactors 

NRC reporting on alternative sources of nuclear fuel, in particular, would be especially noteworthy for SMR developers. Fueling most SMR designs is so-called high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which has a higher uranium-235 content than larger reactors’ fuel. Currently, the world’s only commercial HALEU provider is TENEX, a Russian state-owned company: a source that has become particularly problematic in the wake of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Licensing a more geopolitically tenable HALEU supply chain, then, is a priority for any U.S.-based SMR project.

The Price-Anderson Act’s present iteration expires in 2025, and time is ticking. Lawmakers can certainly renew it elsewhere.

But a failure to renew it would throw the entire nuclear industry into uncertainty—SMRs included—potentially delaying deployment,

The ADVANCE Act could give nuclear SMR developers more than a few advancements

RAHUL RAO, 15 Apr 23 IEEE Spectrum,

Small modular reactors (SMRs) power many of today’s nuclear enthusiasts’ clean-energy dreams. ………….

In the U.S., SMR designers, operators, and fuel suppliers must all pass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the U.S. government’s nuclear arbiter. Unfortunately, SMRs don’t fit neatly into the NRC’s aged regulatory scheme, one built for old and established large reactors. That’s at least part of the reason why, on 3 April, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators unveiled the ADVANCE Act, a bill containing a package of nuclear reforms.

Anyone hoping for total renovation of the NRC will be disappointed; the act retains the philosophy that NRC approval is necessary. But the act would order a platter of small, subtle changes to the NRC’s innards. At least some SMR proponents are optimistic that—if the act passes—those changes could smooth the ways for a growing number of SMR developers.

…………. For one, applicants today must pay around $300 for each hour of the NRC’s time. When a single review can take tens of thousands of hours, these fees pile up. Larger firms like Rolls-Royce might be able to afford them, but smaller SMR developers—more than a few of them nascent startups—may struggle. The act would offset some of those costs: around half, according to an NIA estimate.

The act would also establish prizes. “Those prizes involve the first [developers] going through the different regulatory frameworks that the NRC has,” says Erik Cothron, an analyst at the NIA. For instance, the bill would reward the first reactor designer to receive the stamp of Part 53, a new SMR-specific licensing process that Congress ordered the NRC to create in 2018.

Nuclear-themed prizes may make for a fun day at the fair, but their dividends are more than short-term. The prizes, the NIA analysts say, would also pay back developers who might have to bear with a sluggish NRC whose regulators are themselves still learning how to navigate new regulatory routes.

Additionally, the act would require reports on several NRC-related topics, such as: how to license nuclear reactors for applications beyond electricity (such as heating); how to speed up approvals for reactors at previously developed “brownfield” sites (such as depreciated fossil fuel power plants); and how effectively the NRC might license alternative sources of nuclear fuel.

Reports like these might seem like busywork for bureaucrats, but analysts say they serve an important risk-reducing role, giving SMR developers (and investors) a clearer picture of and more confidence in the path ahead.

NRC reporting on alternative sources of nuclear fuel, in particular, would be especially noteworthy for SMR developers. Fueling most SMR designs is so-called high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which has a higher uranium-235 content than larger reactors’ fuel. Currently, the world’s only commercial HALEU provider is TENEX, a Russian state-owned company: a source that has become particularly problematic in the wake of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Licensing a more geopolitically tenable HALEU supply chain, then, is a priority for any U.S.-based SMR project.

Of course, all speculation is moot unless the ADVANCE Act clears Congress.

The Act isn’t Congress’s first recent recent attempt at nuclear reforms. The ADVANCE Act shares multiple provisions and supporters with an earlier bill called the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act (ANIA), first introduced in 2020. However, ANIA never saw the light of legislative day.

The Act isn’t Congress’s first recent recent attempt at nuclear reforms. The ADVANCE Act shares multiple provisions and supporters with an earlier bill called the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act (ANIA), first introduced in 2020. However, ANIA never saw the light of legislative day.

If the ADVANCE Act followed ANIA’s fate, it wouldn’t deal a mortal wound to SMR developers. But one of the ADVANCE Act’s other provisions is crucial to U.S. nuclear energy as a whole: It would renew the Price-Anderson Act, which mandates civilian nuclear plants carry insurance that would compensate members of the public for severe accidents.

The Price-Anderson Act’s present iteration expires in 2025, and time is ticking. Lawmakers can certainly renew it elsewhere. But a failure to renew it would throw the entire nuclear industry into uncertainty—SMRs included—potentially delaying deployment, according to Adam Stein, an analyst at the Breakthrough Institute think tank, which helped give input on earlier drafts of the bill’s text.  https://spectrum.ieee.org/small-modular-reactors-advance-act

April 15, 2023 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

‘No Business In The Public Domain’: National Security Council spokesman Kirby Warns Journalists Not To Report On Leaked Pentagon Documents

Biden administration and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby addressed the media on Monday, asking in so many words that pretty please would journalists not report on the trove of highly classified documents which were leaked online. 

“This is information that has no business in the public domain… It has no business… on the front pages of newspapers or on television.” But Kirby is a bit late, given already days ago major outlets from the NY Times to Washington Post to foreign outlets like The Guardian and RT have widely reported on them. They classified reports have circulated widely on English-language and foreign social media as well.

Independent media outlets have also widely shared images of the documents, which Pentagon officials claim could have been altered by the Kremlin to make the US look bad……….

Some observers have speculated that given the high number of documents marked SECRET/NOFORN, which literally means Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals (and thus it can’t be shared with even close allied services of the US), this points to the leak originating within the US chain of command. Others have said the leak may have come from the Ukrainians, given the high numbers of Ukraine-related battlefield assessments that were part of the trove that appeared online.

The Pentagon and DOJ meanwhile says they are still “working around the clock” to assess the source and scale of the massive breach of highly classified data. New bombshell documents have continued to trickle out in media stories into Monday and Tuesday, likely with more revelations to come throughout the week.

FT and others have called the breach the “most significant since Edward Snowden released a trove of classified documents about US intelligence activities a decade ago — included apparently highly classified documents.” Officials have also noted they “appear mostly authentic”. 

“These photos appear to show documents similar in format to those used to provide daily updates to our senior leaders on Ukraine and Russia-related operations as well as other intelligence updates,” Meagher explained, though agreeing with other officials that some of them appear doctored. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/kirby-asks-journalists-pretty-please-dont-report-leaked-pentagon-documents

April 14, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | 1 Comment

Leaked documents expose US-NATO Ukraine war plans

Perhaps the most notable piece of information contained in the leaked documents relates to military death tolls, with Ukrainian and Russian losses estimated at about a 4:1 ratio. According to one document, 71,500 Ukrainian troops have been killed in action.

That figure is close to the 100,000 KIA’s cited by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a November 2022 speech, before her comments were retracted.

ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN·APRIL 7, 2023, https://thegrayzone.com/2023/04/07/leaked-documents-us-nato-ukraine-war-plan/

Classified Pentagon documents containing information about US and NATO plans for a Ukrainian offensive and key details of the ongoing war have leaked. And the Biden administration is reportedly demanding they be scrubbed from the internet. Is there a hidden agenda behind the leak?

Update: We have added a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency document at the end of this article outlining potential scenarios in which Israel would provide Ukraine with lethal weapons. [on original]

The New York Times has reported “a significant breach of American intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine” through the leak of classified documents which have been shared on social media. It correspondents cited “senior Biden administration officials” who apparently tipped the outlet off to the story. Documents circulating on Telegram which closely resemble those referred to by the Times are reproduced at the end of this article.

The Times writes, “Military analysts said the documents appear to have been modified in certain parts from their original format, overstating American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed. The modifications could point to an effort of disinformation by Moscow, the analysts said… The analysts warned that documents released by Russian sources could be selectively altered to present the Kremlin’s disinformation.”

Neither the New York Times nor the “military analysts” it cited explain how the documents were altered, or why they have the appearance of tampering. However, because the leaked documents have arrived in the form of photographs of printed documents, rather than original files, the possibility of forgery or alteration must be considered.

The leaked documents claim that Russia has sustained troop losses ranging from 16,000 to 17,500 while Ukrainian losses amount to as many as 71,500 – a staggering differential that stands at odds with the triumphalist narrative projected by Kiev. They are dated March 1 2023 and appear to be part of an ongoing briefing effort to analyze the war’s progress and plan a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Grayzone obtained the documents from a public Telegram channel. Though they resemble those described by the Times, we can not confirm their authenticity.

According to the New York Times, the Pentagon is investigating the leak while the White House is “working to get them deleted.” Twitter owner Elon Musk appears to have confirmed the pressure campaign, sarcastically commenting, “Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”

Perhaps the most notable piece of information contained in the leaked documents relates to military death tolls, with Ukrainian and Russian losses estimated at about a 4:1 ratio. According to one document, 71,500 Ukrainian troops have been killed in action.

That figure is close to the 100,000 KIA’s cited by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a November 2022 speech, before her comments were retracted. It also tracks closely with statements by one of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky’s top advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, who told the BBC in June of last year that Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200 soldiers per day (200 deaths per day over the course of 370 days between the launch of Russia’s military operation and the date of the documents would total 74,000.) 

Other American and EU state officials have offered dramatically different figures placing Russian KIA’s over the six figure mark. For instance, Norway’s defense chief has charted 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead to Russia’s 180,000, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Miley asserted that Russian losses are “significantly well over 100,000.” 

Another key detail in the documents pertains to the size of the front lines in Donetsk: Russia maintains 91 battalions in the “Donetsk axis” with around 23,000 total personnel, while Ukraine maintains eight brigades and 40 battalions, with 10,000 to 20,000 total personnel.

The documents also outline expectations of weapons deliveries to Ukraine from the US and other NATO countries along with training schedules for Ukrainian forces as a Spring counteroffensive approaches. The timeline spans from January through April, detailing twelve Ukrainian brigades under construction and the weapons they have been or will be supplied. Nine brigades are said to be armed and trained by the US and NATO allies, and six are said to be ready by the end of March, while the rest will be in action by the end of April. The brigades are said to require 253 tanks, 381 mechanized vehicles, 480 motor vehicles and more.

While the documents distributed on Telegram contain important details about NATO and Ukrainian military capacity, and highlight the astounding depth of American involvement in the war, their publication raises a number of questions.

If the documents were partially faked, were they disseminated to help Russia advance its public relations goals, perhaps by minimizing their casualty numbers or inflating those of their foe? They certainly would not be fooling anyone at the Department of Defense, since they obviously have the original files on hand. Or could it be that the United States leaked the documents with faulty intelligence strewn throughout their contents to confuse Russia ahead of a Ukrainian offensive? 

There is also the possibility that they are one hundred percent authentic. If so, Ukraine and its Western patrons may have more serious problems than a few leaked documents.

April 14, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Holtec seeking $300M from Michigan to restart Palisades nuclear plant

Beth LeBlanc and Carol Thompson, The Detroit News 13 Apr 23

Lansing — The Florida-based owner of a shuttered nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan is asking the State of Michigan for roughly $300 million in taxpayer assistance to help it restart operations at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station.

Holtec International approached a few regional lawmakers recently about the plan, but a formal request has not yet been made to the state, said Rep. Joey Andrews, a St. Joseph Democrat who represents Covert Township in Van Buren County, where the nuclear plant is located.

“It’s bridge money to help them get from ending the decommissioning process to beginning operating against,” Andrews said of the funding request, which was first reported by The Herald-Palladium.

The more than 50-year-old plan was decommissioned by then-owner Entergy Nuclear last year before the company sold the facility to Holtec. The nuclear power plant shut down last May.

Holtec said it was approached by the state last month to restart the plant to address “the need for zero-emission clean energy.” Representatives for the energy company presented plans last month to resume operations at the plant to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission………………………….

State Rep. Angela Witwer, the Delta Township Democrat who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said she had not yet received a formal request for the funding. The Michigan Economic Development Corp. did not immediately respond to a request for comment……………………….

……..the $300 million inventive request from Holtec would rank among the largest in straight incentive payments the state has given to businesses.

The restart of the Palisades plant would mark the first time an American nuclear plant resumed operations after being decommissioned………..

Holtec currently is using a decommissioning trust funded by Consumers Energy customers to pay the salaries of the roughly 220 workers decommissioning the site. But the money is restricted to decommissioning efforts and can’t be used to restart a plant, Andrews said…………………………

The reopening has met opposition from anti-nuclear groups worried about the challenges of reversing decommissioning.

 https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/politics/michigan/2023/04/12/holtec-seeking-300-million-from-michigan-to-restart-palisades-nuclear-power-plant-lake-michigan/70109338007/

April 14, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Two American brigades close to the Ukrainian border, but no plan, no leadership towards ending the war!

“The problem is Biden and his principal lieutenants—Blinken and Sullivan and their court of worshippers—who see those who criticize Zelensky as being pro-Putin.

the juniors are running the show here,” the official added. “There’s no NSC coordination and the US army is getting ready to go to war. There’s no idea whether the White House knows what’s going on.

If worse comes to worst for the undermanned and outgunned Ukraine army in the next few months, will the two American brigades join forces with NATO troops and face off with the Russian army inside Ukraine? Is this the plan, or hope, of the American president?

TRADING WITH THE ENEMY Amid rampant corruption in Kiev and as US troops gather at the Ukrainian border, does the Biden administration have an endgame to the conflict? Seymour Hersh, Substack, Apr 12
∙
“………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. “There is a total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community,” the intelligence official said. The rift dates back to the fall, when, as I reported in early February, Biden ordered the covert destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. “Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance, by the community,” the official told me. “And there is no strategy for ending the war. ……………………………………

“CIA Director William Burns is not the problem,” the official said. “The problem is Biden and his principal lieutenants—Blinken and Sullivan and their court of worshippers—who see those who criticize Zelensky as being pro-Putin. ‘We are against evil. Ukraine will fight ’til the last military shell is gone, and still fight.’ And here’s Biden who is telling America that we’re going to fight as long as it takes.”

The official cited the little-known and rarely discussed deployment, authorized by Biden, of two brigades with thousands of America’s best army combat units to the region. A brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division has been intensively training and exercising from its base inside Poland within a few miles of the Ukrainian border. It was reinforced late last year by a brigade from the 101st Airborne Division that was deployed in Romania. The actual manpower of the two brigades, when administrative and support units—with the trucks and drivers who haul the constant stream of arms and military equipment flowing by sea to keep the units combat ready—could total more than 20,000.

The intelligence officials told me that “there is no evidence that any senior official in the White House really knows what’s going on in the 82nd and 101st. Are they there as part of a NATO exercise or to serve with NATO combat units if the West decides to engage Russians units inside Ukraine? Are they there to train or to be a trigger? The rules of engagement say they can’t attack Russians unless our boys are getting attacked.”

But the juniors are running the show here,” the official added. “There’s no NSC coordination and the US army is getting ready to go to war. There’s no idea whether the White House knows what’s going on. Has the president gone to the American people with an informative broadcast about what is going on? The only briefings the press and the public get today are from White House spokespeople.

“This is not just bad leadership. There is none. Zero.” The official added that a team of Ukrainian combat pilots are now getting trained here in America to fly US-built F-16 fighter jets, with the goal, if needed, of flying in combat against Russian troops and other targets inside Ukraine.” No decision about such deployment has been made.

The clearest statements of American policy have come not from the White House, but from the Pentagon. Army General Mark A. Milley, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of the war last March 15: “Russia remains isolated. Their military stocks are rapidly depleting. Their soldiers are demoralized, untrained, unmotivated conscripts and convicts, and their leadership is failing them. Having already failed in their strategic objectives, Russia is increasingly relying on other countries, such as Iran and North Korea. . . . This relationship is built on the cruel bonds of repressing freedom, subverting liberty and maintaining their tyranny. . . . Ukraine remains strong. They are capable and trained. Ukrainian soldiers are . . . strong in their combat units. Their tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and armored vehicles are only going to bolster the front line..”

There is evidence that Milley is as optimistic as he sounds. I was told that two months ago the Joint Chiefs had ordered members of the staff—the military phrase is “tasked”—to draft an end-of-war treaty to present to the Russians after their defeat on the Ukraine battlefield.

If worse comes to worst for the undermanned and outgunned Ukraine army in the next few months, will the two American brigades join forces with NATO troops and face off with the Russian army inside Ukraine? Is this the plan, or hope, of the American president? Is this the fireside chat he wants to give? If Biden decides to share his thoughts with the American people, he might want to explain what two army brigades, fully staffed and supplied, are doing so close to the war zone.

 https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/trading-with-the-enemy?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1377040&post_id=114123549&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email

April 14, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Macron speaks out against war with China- the furious USA reaction shows American insecurity?

Confronting Russia and China is an integral part of Washington’s imperial game, as is the American need to subordinate Europe as a colony of vassals.

Macron speaks out in a rare moment of clarity and the American backlash is knee-jerk and nasty… because how dare those European vassals get out of line!

Macron’s musings on Europe’s ‘Strategic Autonomy’: Much ado about nothing, but US insecurity is palpable
Finian Cunningham, Strategic Culture, 2023-04-12

French President Emmanuel Macron has got the Americans in a flap with his comments advocating greater European strategic autonomy and for the old continent to avoid becoming embroiled in a U.S.-China confrontation over Taiwan.

Macron made his remarks while traveling back from China where he appeared to have been well received by President Xi Jinping. The trip reportedly garnered several lucrative trade deals for French businesses at a time when Élysée Palace is assailed with nationwide public protests and strikes over economic woes.

The American chagrin over Macron’s musings about European strategic autonomy is revealing in at least two ways.

The New York Times sniffily accused Macron of playing the “Gaullist card” while the Wall Street Journalcensured the French leader for “blundering on Taiwan”, adding, “He weakens deterrence against Chinese aggression and undermines U.S. support for Europe”.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio was palpably miffed and demanded that Macron should clarify “quickly” whether he was speaking for Europe as a whole or for France alone. In a huff, Rubio said, “You guys [European leaders] handle Ukraine” because the U.S. would henceforth focus its attention on “China’s threats”.

You have to laugh at the misplaced sense of American chivalry. This is the usual American trope of believing that they are once again salvaging Europe from conflict, as in the First and Second World Wars. Uncle Sam, as Rubio suggests, is going to abandon Europe to its bloody squabbling while getting on with “dealing” with purported “Chinese aggression”.

The reality is diametrically opposite. Europe is embroiled in the worst war since the Second World War precisely because its supine leaders are slavishly following Washington’s agenda of waging a proxy against Russia and destroying the strategic Russian-European energy trade. U.S.-led NATO expansionism over decades – under the guise of “protecting Europe – has produced this dangerous juncture. The war in Ukraine is driven by Washington’s need to shore up its unwieldy hegemonic ambitions. Confronting Russia and China are an integral part of Washington’s imperial game, as is the American need to subordinate Europe as a colony of vassals.

It’s an audacious affectation for American politicians and media to project that they are doing Europe some kind of noble favor over Ukraine and saving the European damsels from the “barbarian Russians”. It’s so corny and false, yet thanks to Western media brainwashing the old trope still works.

What the furore over Macron’s comments shows is just how under the American thumb (make that heel) the European leaders are. For a European president to aver that his country and other members of the European Union should make their interests a priority in pursuing independent relations with China and in particular to avoid a conflict over Taiwan is, one would think, a rather mundane matter of common sense, reason and normal prerogative. That the American political class has reacted in such a furious way shows, ironically, just how abjectly subordinate the Europeans really are. Macron speaks out in a rare moment of clarity and the American backlash is knee-jerk and nasty… because how dare those European vassals get out of line!

More importantly, the American anger may be overbearing and bullish but it nonetheless reveals how fragile the sense of insecurity in Washington is.

The American establishment is increasingly sensing that there is a chronic systemic crisis in U.S. global power. The presumed unipolar American order is waning and a multipolar world is ineluctably emerging. The once-mighty U.S. dollar is no longer affording the security it once did. China, Russia, and the Global South are pushing more and more strongly for a multipolar order that will make the American dollar and its unique, arbitrary privileges redundant. When that fully happens, the debt-strapped U.S. capitalist economy and its erstwhile global dominance will crash like so many empires before it.

This is why Washington is so apoplectic about Macron’s “insolent” outburst. American power relies on subservience and adherence to its diktat. Mutterings by vassals of independence must be stamped out ruthlessly so that the idea does not get around or maybe even be adopted………………………

despite his geopolitical impotence and reliable vassalage, the American fury at Macron’s comments is instructive. That’s the real story. The mere whiff of dissent is enough to send Washington into a near-panic because it knows how fragile its imperial power has become.

Macron is irrelevant but the torrid American reaction is notable.  https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/04/12/macron-musings-europe-strategic-autonomy-much-ado-about-nothing-but-us-insecurity-palpable/

April 13, 2023 Posted by | NORTH AMERICA, politics international | Leave a comment

From the Manhattan Project to the Bronx Project: the toxic legacy of the nuclear age

by Alice Slater  Spring 2023 Edition

Recent alarming reports state that the UK is prepared to supply Ukraine with depleted uranium ammunition in the ongoing slaughter in Ukraine. These lethally toxic carcinogens are known to cause illness and death, not only for the victims of war but for the perpetrators as well. Victims who have suffered genetic damage pass it on to their children who are often born with terrible malformations and illnesses. 

 In Metal of Dishonor–Depleted Uranium: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers and Civilians with DU Weapons, published in 1997 by Ramsay Clark and the International Action Center, essays reveal the horrors caused by depleted uranium in the first Gulf War. Although the figures on the nuclear budgets have risen astronomically, with the United States now budgeting over $1 trillion for new bombs, bomb factories and delivery systems, sadly, nothing else has changed much since that time, although civil society did succeed in establishing the International Renewable Energy Agency to promote benign life affirming energy from the sun, wind, and tides. Below is a chapter written for that book in 1996, when the author was president of GRACE, the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment.

he world is awash in radioactive waste. We simply haven’t a clue where to put it. The best we have come up with in the United States is a harebrained scheme to ship the lethal carcinogenic garbage from nuclear weapons and civilian nuclear power plants, by rail and by truck, from the four corners of the continent, and bury it in a hole in the ground in Nevada at Yucca Mountain. Citizens groups, like the proverbial boy with his finger in the dike, have been holding off the onslaught of this devastating disposal solution, preventing the legislation from passing in the Congress. Deadly plutonium remains toxic for 250,000 years and there is no way of guaranteeing that the Yucca site could prevent radioactive seepage into the ground water over this unimaginable period of time. Remember that all of recorded history is only 5000 years old!

The National Academy of Sciences reported last August that most of the contaminated nuclear weapons sites across our land can not be adequately cleaned up because of “insufficient money, technical skill or political will to do the job.” reflecting the skewed priorities of our national leadership. Congress approved Clinton’s last request for $5.1 billion to the Department of Energy’s weapons labs which will fund the design of new nuclear weapons ……………………………………….

We’ve Wasted Precious Resources………….

We’ve Polluted Our Own Environment
We’ve created more than 4,500 contaminated sites, covering tens of thousands of acres that may take 75 years and cost as high as one trillion dollars to ‘clean up.’ ‘Clean up’ of toxic plutonium, which remains lethal for over 250,000 years, is the wrong word. At best, we can only attempt to manage and contain the poisons from seeping into the air and groundwater and visiting further destruction on our people.

We’ve Experimented on Our Own People
Nuclear weapons drove us to the unspeakable act of secretly testing radiation on our own population. 23,000 American civilians were subjected to radiation research in about 1,400 projects over 30 years. The government tested on children with mental disabilities, mental patients, poor women, and US soldiers. More than 200,000 troops were ordered to observe nuclear test detonations and were exposed to radiation.

We’ve Abused Indigenous Peoples
Every nuclear test site in the world is on indigenous land. ……………………

Worst of All—We’re Still Doing It…………………………….

Enchanted by the “hardness” of depleted uranium which can penetrate tank armor, some evil genius in the pay of the Pentagon thought to make bullets from it in a bizarre recycling program which enabled the government to make a dent in the 500,000 tons of depleted uranium waste amassed since the Manhattan Project. Don’t be misled by the term “depleted uranium.” Like “spent fuel” from civilian reactors, depleted uranium is highly toxic and carcinogenic and has a half-life of some 4.4 billion years. 

 “Half life” is another euphemism that distances us through our language from grasping the deadly seriousness of what we are doing to our planet. For example, while the half-life of plutonium is 26,000 years, this lethal poison has a fully toxic life of about 250,000 years until all the radioactivity decays. So you can imagine — or can you — the life span of toxic depleted uranium with its “half life” of over 4 billion years!

While our brilliant military was dreaming up its scheme of penetrating Saddam’s tanks with “hard” depleted uranium (DU), they neglected to calculate the impact this material would have on our own soldiers. “Friendly fire” killed 35 U.S. soldiers and wounded 72 others during the Gulf War while disabling more US tanks than the Iraqis did. Spewing 300 tons of DU ammunition over Iraq, the U.S. left a growing legacy of respiratory problems, liver and kidney dysfunction, and birth defects among the newborn children of U.S. vets (A Veterans Administration study of 251 Gulf War veterans families in Mississippi found that 67 percent of the children born to the vets since the war have severe illnesses, with effects ranging from missing eyes and ears to fused fingers.) And similar medical reports are coming from Iraq with an increase of leukemia and congenital birth defects from 8% before the war to 28% today. Undeterred, similar environmental havoc and dangers to health were created by the use of depleted uranium ammunition in the bombing of Bosnia.

This callous disregard for human well being is sadly typical of government policy during the nuclear age………………………………………………………..

Trying to get our government to admit that radioactive bomb factories and power plants are harmful to living things is like the long battle waged against the tobacco companies who continued to claim that there is no connection between smoking, cancer, and other life threatening diseases. There are current assaults on the permissible level of radiation exposure. Don’t protect the people. Just change the standards…………………………………………………………………..

We need to tell the boys to put away the toys of war and clean up the mess they made. ………………………

Our ability to govern ourselves has been eroding as a result of the unprecedented secrecy and cover-up engendered by the nuclear age…………………………….

A sane informed citizenry would call for an immediate cessation of the production of any new nuclear material, leaving all existing nuclear waste as close to the point where it is generated, as safely as possible, under international guard…………………………….more  https://peaceandplanetnews.org/toxic-legacy-of-the-nuclear-age/

April 12, 2023 Posted by | depleted uranium, USA | 1 Comment

A Cold War Legacy — uranium pollution

Uranium mills dumped their toxic wastes and filled cancer wards

A Cold War Legacy — Beyond Nuclear International

What’s lurking in U.S. groundwater?

By Mark Olalde, Mollie Simon and Alex Mierjeski, video by Gerardo del Valle, Liz Moughon and Mauricio Rodríguez Pons

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed.

Uranium mills that helped fuel the weapons also dumped radioactive and toxic waste into rivers like the Cheyenne in South Dakota and the Animas in Colorado. Thousands of sheep turned blue and died after foraging on land tainted by processing sites in North Dakota. And cancer wards across the West swelled with sick uranium workers.

The U.S. government bankrolled the industry, and mining companies rushed to profit, building more than 50 mills and processing sites to refine uranium ore.

But the government didn’t have a plan for the toxic byproducts of this nuclear assembly line. Some of the more than 250 million tons of toxic and radioactive detritus, known as tailings, scattered into nearby communities, some spilled into streams and some leaked into aquifers.

Congress finally created the agency that now oversees uranium mill waste cleanup in 1974 and enacted the law governing that process in 1978, but the industry would soon collapse due to falling uranium prices and rising safety concerns. Most mills closed by the mid-1980s.

When cleanup began, federal regulators first focused on the most immediate public health threat, radiation exposure. Agencies or companies completely covered waste at most mills to halt leaks of the carcinogenic gas radon and moved some waste by truck and train to impoundments specially designed to encapsulate it.

But the government has fallen down in addressing another lingering threat from the industry’s byproducts: widespread water pollution.

Regulators haven’t made a full accounting of whether they properly addressed groundwater contamination. So, for the first time, ProPublica cataloged cleanup efforts at the country’s 48 uranium mills, seven related processing sites and numerous tailings piles.

At least 84% of the sites have polluted groundwater. And nearly 75% still have either no liner or only a partial liner between mill waste and the ground, leaving them susceptible to leaking pollution into groundwater. In the arid West, where most of the sites are located, climate change is drying up surface water, making underground reserves increasingly important.

ProPublica’s review of thousands of pages of government and corporate documents, accompanied by interviews with 100 people, also found that cleanup has been hampered by infighting among regulatory agencies and the frequency with which regulators grant exemptions to their own water quality standards.

The result: a long history of water pollution and sickness.

Reports by government agencies found high concentrations of cancer near a mill in Utah and elevated cancer risks from mill waste in New Mexico that can persist until cleanup is complete. Residents near those sites and others have seen so many cases of cancer and thyroid disease that they believe the mills and waste piles are to blame, although epidemiological studies to prove such a link have rarely been done……………………………………………………………………………………………

For all the government’s success in demolishing mills and isolating waste aboveground, regulators failed to protect groundwater.

Between 1958 and 1962, a mill near Gunnison, Colorado, churned through 540,000 tons of ore. The process, one step in concentrating the ore into weapons-grade uranium, leaked uranium and manganese into groundwater, and in 1990, regulators found that residents had been drawing that contaminated water from 22 wells………………………………………………………………………………

When neither water treatment nor nature solves the problem, federal and state regulators can simply relax their water quality standards, allowing harmful levels of pollutants to be left in aquifers.

…………………………………………………………………………………………… Layers of Regulation

It typically takes 35 years from the day a mill shuts down until the NRC approves or estimates it will approve cleanup as being complete, ProPublica found. Two former mills aren’t expected to finish this process until 2047.

……………………………………………………………………… “A Problem for the Better Part of 50 Years”

While the process for cleaning up former mills is lengthy and laid out in regulations, regulators and corporations have made questionable and contradictory decisions in their handling of toxic waste and tainted water.

More than 40 million people rely on drinking water from the Colorado River, but the NRC and DOE allowed companies to leak contamination from mill waste directly into the river, arguing that the waterway quickly dilutes it.

Federal regulators relocated tailings at two former mills that processed uranium and vanadium, another heavy metal, on the banks of the Colorado River in Rifle, Colorado, because radiation levels there were deemed too high. Yet they left some waste at one former processing site in a shallow aquifer connected to the river and granted an exemption that allowed cleanup to end and uranium to continue leaking into the waterway……………………………………………………………………………… more https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/04/10/a-cold-war-legacy/

April 12, 2023 Posted by | Reference, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

The Pros And Cons of Modular Nuclear Reactors

By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles – Apr 10, 2023  https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Pros-And-Cons-of-Modular-Nuclear-Reactors.html

  • Customization in nuclear power led to isolated and non-transferable experiences and limited the industry’s growth.
  • Small modular reactors are a new approach that allows for standardization and assembly line efficiency, but also offer logistical and funding challenges.
  • The future of nuclear energy could rely, in part, on the development and implementation of small modular reactors.

Did you ever get the feeling that you’ve seen this movie before, except with another name? The remake, maybe in color this time or with a younger cast? Well, nothing wrong with recycling but not when you get the uncomfortable notion that the actors don’t know that somebody did it before them. 

Take nuclear power What went wrong last time around? We suggest that a principal culprit was customization. Almost every utility wanted a nuke tailored to its needs, site by site. Thus, each site had its own problems, and solving them produced little experience that helped anywhere else.

France, of course, was the main exception. The French state, which owned the utility, settled on one design and repeated it again and again. Of course, the French utility had the scale that U.S. and British’s utilities lacked. And the French never shied from dirigisme, state control of the economy. If the government planned to finance, subsidize and insure the industry, it might as well specify what it wanted. Not so in the USA, where we didn’t want the government to tell utilities what to buy, although we had no problem subsidizing and insuring whatever they built. 

Today, we applaud the efforts to design nuclear power stations of smaller size, which will achieve economies of scale by constructing identical equipment in a manufacturing setting and shipping the modules to the construction site where they will be assembled. We have yet to establish whether the modular units will be substantially cheaper, and we have a good idea that most of the designs will not solve the nuclear waste problem. We are still determining whether the public will accept the new nukes more warmly than the old ones, too. But we are confident that builders will have less money at risk in any one piece of machinery, which is good. 

Here’s our worry. There are at least 21 announced small modular reactor technologies ( as we wrote in a previous report), some with big-name tech backers. It is almost as if some tech entrepreneurs that can no longer find app start-ups to fund have plunged into nuclear energy.

Now, let’s do some rough numbers. There are 439 nuclear power plants in the world (92 in the USA, 56 in France, 54 in China and 37 in Russia, 33 in Japan, and 24 in South Korea). Over the coming 20 years, we believe most of these reactors will have to be retired, some in extreme old age. Figure that the new units might average one-tenth to one-quarter the size of the old ones.

So maybe a requirement for 4000 units over 20 years. Or 200 units per year. Divide that by 20 different designs. If each producer got an equal share, that would mean ten units per year. We don’t know but have to ask whether that number would yield financing for a factory that could achieve economies of scale.

Now add on the nationalism and security issues. Should we expect the USA, France, Russia and China to buy from foreign sources? If they require in-country sourcing, it is more difficult for any manufacturer to achieve real scale. The contestable market for manufacturers might be closer to 100 units per year, maybe less. That might not give room for manufacturing economies of scale. 

We do not expect to see reliable analyses of the manufacturing costs of SMRs for some time, if ever, because the information would be a competitive secret. We are not even sure that current cost estimates are reliable, as opposed to come-ons to bring in generator companies to sign memoranda of interest, which are not contracts but might convince backers to put up money to build a factory.

 However, let’s assume that manufacturing a reactor in a factory is not much different than manufacturing an airplane or automobile. Each facility ( or firm) has a U-shaped or saucer shaped cost curve. That is, cost per unit is high when volume is low, hits a low point at a a given volume, and then, eventually rises as the firm hits diseconomies of scale. [graph on original]

Average cost per unit at given production volumes

Let’s say that the total market per year for the product is 200 units. With the optimal, low-cost-per-unit production point at 50-60 units, the market couldn’t support more than four manufacturers. Whether the nuclear market can support 21 or four manufacturers depends on presently unknown manufacturing cost curves. As good capitalists, you might ask why consumers should care if a bunch of manufacturers put up plants and don’t get enough business to support them and then go under.

Well, there are several reasons. For one, we don’t want manufacturers hard up for orders and profits to skimp on the production process. The nuclear plant had better operate safely. Second, owners of nukes will need decades of service. Would they buy plants from manufacturers that look like they might not be around when needed? 

 Third, considering the financial consequences of outages, would they want to take a chance on a cheaper unit or rather pay up for perceived quality? Fourth, and most importantly, would government watchdogs encourage a proliferation of designs, making their jobs harder?

We don’t expect many of these SMR providers to get off the ground, especially if the government, the real backer of the industry, decides to opt for uniformity in order to get economies of scale in manufacturing and in regulation. In short, we’d put our money on the big names with long years of servicing their products. 

Finally, SMRs, while welcome, neither substantially reduce nuclear costs nor cure the waste disposal problem, although they should reduce the financial burden inherent in big nuclear projects. In other words, they seem like a better way to pursue nuclear energy, which remains the most expensive, environmentally controversial, non-carbon producer. Is there a better way? 

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Law to ban high-level nuclear waste storage facility effective June

“New Mexico can’t just be the convenient sacrifice zone for the country’s contamination,”

Proponents call the ban an ‘important first step’ to limit impacts from radioactive waste

Source New Mexico, BY: DANIELLE PROKOP – APRIL 10, 2023

A state ban on high-level nuclear waste will go into effect in June, blocking a private company’s ability to build a contentious storage facility in southern New Mexico.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed Senate Bill 53 into law March 17. The bill did not have the votes for an emergency enaction, so it goes into effect June 15.

The new law has two provisions.

The first expands the scope and duties for a task force to consult state agencies on nuclear disposal and investigate its impacts on New Mexico.

The second bans storage of high-level nuclear waste. The ban is in effect until two conditions are met – the state agrees to open a facility to handle waste, and the federal government has adopted a permanent underground storage site for nuclear waste.

“We do need a permanent solution. But New Mexico can’t just be the convenient sacrifice zone for the country’s contamination,” said Sen. Jeff Steinborn (D-Las Cruces) in an interview.

High level radioactive waste is extremely toxic. Some types will remain highly radioactive for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. Short doses of exposure can be fatal. If radioactive waste leaches into the groundwater or soils, it can move through the food chain.

The state ban would include regulations on Holtec International’s plans for an underground facility for spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power reactors and other high-level radioactive waste from across the country. 

At its peak, Holtec projected the facility could hold 176,600 metric tons of waste aboveground on more than 1,000 acres between Hobbs and Carlsbad.

“This bill is another major obstacle that will prevent this site from ever receiving any nuclear waste,” said Don Hancock, Nuclear Waste Safety program director and administrator at the nonprofit Southwest Research and Information Center.

The region already hosts the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, an underground site that stores clothes, tools, rags and other items contaminated with radioactive waste. The new law does not impact WIPP……………………………………

Kayleigh Warren, a member of Santa Clara Pueblo and a health and justice coordinator at the nonprofit Tewa Women United, called the four-page bill “an important first step.”

“It’s a way our state can start to communicate to the rest of our county that we’ve done our part,” Warren said. “We’re not interested in being a sacrifice zone for the country’s waste anymore.

Tewa Women United protests the impacts of toxins from Los Alamos National Laboratory on water and land in the Española valley and surrounding Pueblos. Looking forward, a key issue is how tribal governments will participate on the task force.

Native Americans are disproportionately vulnerable from uranium mining on the Navajo Nation or exposed at higher rates to radiation in water supplies.

“I want to see how our voices become part of these conversations moving forward,” Warren said. https://sourcenm.com/2023/04/10/law-to-ban-high-level-nuclear-waste-storage-facility-effective-june/

April 11, 2023 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

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