nuclear-news

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

Lawmakers reject bid to audit US aid for Ukraine

House Republicans vowed to try again later after their resolution was narrowly defeated.

The US has been supplying Ukraine with assorted heavy weaponry, including armored vehicles, artillery, rockets and drones, since – and even before – Russia launched its military operation against the neighboring state in late February. The total amount of funds appropriated for Kiev in military and economic aid by the US has already exceeded $100 billion in less than a year.

https://www.rt.com/news/567836-us-lawmakers-ukraine-audit/ 7 Dec 22,

A resolution calling for an audit of US military and economic aid to Ukraine has been narrowly defeated in the House of Representatives. The measure, spearheaded by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and backed by multiple fellow legislators, was rejected by 26 votes to 22 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

The proposed audit had been strongly opposed by House Democrats, who argued that such oversight activities would have sent a wrong signal to Ukraine, which has been strongly supported by Washington in its ongoing conflict with Russia. 

“This is not the time for us to be divided. We’ve held together with NATO, and the EU, and our allies. Let’s not fall into this trap,” the top Democrat on the committee, Representative Gregory W. Meeks (NY), said during the debate.

Republicans rejected such arguments, however, insisting that the measure was about transparency and accountability for Americans, rather than about sending any messages to Kiev. Greene also claimed that House Democrats were “blinded by hate” for her and were making Ukrainian oversight a purely political issue.

Despite the failure of the resolution to get through the committee, the outcome of the vote was hailed as a major win by its sponsors, as it has demonstrated unity among Republicans. Greene vowed to continue her efforts to push through the audit motion, promising to try again when the Republicans gain a slim majority in the House.

“It’s official the Democrats have voted NO to transparency for the American people for an Audit for Ukraine. But we take over in January! This audit will happen!” Greene wrote on Twitter.

While the Republicans have managed to demonstrate unity on the issue of stricter oversight in relation to continued support for Kiev, few have actually spoken against it altogether. Greene is one of few conservative Republicans who have been vocally opposed to sending billions to Ukraine.

The US has been supplying Ukraine with assorted heavy weaponry, including armored vehicles, artillery, rockets and drones, since – and even before – Russia launched its military operation against the neighboring state in late February. The total amount of funds appropriated for Kiev in military and economic aid by the US has already exceeded $100 billion in less than a year.

December 7, 2022 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Will small modular reactors seed a nuclear renaissance?

Corporate Knights does not consider new nuclear power projects to be “green” i

However, big questions remain about SMRs as the technology is largely untested. It’s unclear what the electricity from SMRs will cost and whether the technology can compete with cheap renewable sources like wind and solar backed up by storage. The prospect of micro reactors dotting remote Canadian landscapes also raises serious issues around safety and management of highly radioactive wastes.

Four Canadian provinces are banking on SMRs to help decarbonize their electricity grids, but critics argue the technology is unproven

Corporate Knights, BY SHAWN MCCARTHY, DECEMBER 8, 2022

It’s been more than a decade since Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) pulled the plug on its advanced CANDU reactor – a newly designed mega-reactor that industry said would usher in a “nuclear renaissance.”

Now Canada is seeing yet another promised resurgence for the nuclear industry. And this time, it comes in a size small. On December 1, Ontario Premier Doug Ford participated in a groundbreaking at Darlington nuclear facility, where provincially owned Ontario Power Generation (OPG) plans to build a small modular reactor (SMR).

If the Darlington project gets a green light on the final investment decision, the unit will be the first new reactor built in Canada in nearly 40 years, as other companies are pursuing plans to build SMRs across the country. (The nuclear sector has, however, been buoyed by massive reactor refurbishment projects at Darlington and Bruce Power’s eight-reactor site on Lake Huron.)

The industry’s latest hope, SMRs have a capacity of up to 300 megawatts and modular design features that are meant to keep construction costs under control (nuclear projects are notorious for their multibillion-dollar cost overruns). Micro reactors can be as small as five megawatts and are touted as an energy solution for remote communities and industrial sites like mines.

That’s in sharp contrast with the 1,000-megawatt behemoths that were marketed around the world in the first decade of the century by reactor manufacturers, including then federally owned AECL, Westinghouse Electric Co. and others.

The federal government and four provinces – Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta – are lining up to support the commercial deployment of SMRs as low-carbon sources of electricity.

However, big questions remain about SMRs as the technology is largely untested. It’s unclear what the electricity from SMRs will cost and whether the technology can compete with cheap renewable sources like wind and solar backed up by storage. The prospect of micro reactors dotting remote Canadian landscapes also raises serious issues around safety and management of highly radioactive wastes.

Corporate Knights does not consider new nuclear power projects to be “green” in its Sustainable Economy Taxonomy. In July, the European Union overturned a draft proposal and included nuclear in its taxonomy for the purposes of green investing, though that controversial decision is being challenged in court by Austria, backed by several environmental groups.

In its fall fiscal update, the federal government introduced an investment tax credit of up to 30% for clean energy technologies, including SMRs. Ottawa has also committed $970 million in low-interest financing through the Canada Infrastructure Bank for the Darlington SMR project.

A bad day to go nuclear

Last decade was not kind to the nuclear industry, as Japan’s Fukushima meltdown after a tsunami in 2011 was the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident of 1986 and led to the shutdown of all the country’s reactors. Those safety threats loom large today as Russia has attacked Ukraine’s nuclear energy site.

As well, the economic case for large new reactors has taken a beating over the years, as projects have been plagued by delays and cost overruns………………………….

At the National Energy Roundtable’s conference at the end of November, several speakers argued for the inclusion of nuclear in Canada’s strategy to electrify the economy. Energy ministers from Ontario and New Brunswick touted the benefits of SMRs, saying the technology can provide affordable, continuous, non-emitting power.

The two provinces – in addition to Alberta and uranium-rich Saskatchewan – have agreed to work together on the commercialization of SMRs……………………………….

At Darlington, OPG expects to receive a construction licence in 2024 and will release detailed cost estimates as design and regulatory work proceeds, OPG spokesman Neal Kelly said in an email.

Former mayor of Iqaluit Madeleine Redfern said at the roundtable discussion that SMRs can help northern communities and industry end their reliance on expensive, dirty and often unreliable diesel generators. Small reactors, she said, would be more reliable than intermittent electricity production from wind or solar projects. (Redfern is also chief operating officer of CanArctic Inuit Networks and an Indigenous advisor to nuclear energy developer USNC-Power, which is partnering with OPG on a demonstration reactor project, as it seeks approvals from the federal nuclear regulator.)…………………………………

Critics argue that SMRs pose the same problems of safety and waste disposal that have bedevilled the nuclear industry for decades. The future “lies in capturing the sun and wind, not in splitting atoms,” Greenpeace campaigner Keith Stewart said in an email. “SMRs have been a decade away from deployment for the last 30 years, while wind and solar are actually being deployed.”…………………….

Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith 

aid Ontario is committed to electrification but will need the federal government to be a reliable partner to help keep costs down. “If the price of electricity soars, we’re not going to see electrification unfold,” he said.

However, whether SMRs can be a timely source of cheap and low-carbon electricity for Ontario and beyond remains to be seen.  https://www.corporateknights.com/category-climate/will-smrs-bring-nuclear-renaissance/
—

December 7, 2022 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Another dodgy Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) set up to promote small nuclear reactors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAJTkL99anI&t=22s

Nuclear SMR developer X-energy to merge with Ares Management-backed SPAC, creating $2B company, Utility Dive, Stephen Singer, Dec. 7, 2022

Dive Brief

  • X Energy Reactor Co., a developer of small modular nuclear reactors and fuel technology, is merging with a special purpose acquisition company backed by private equity firm Ares Management Corp., X-energy announced Tuesday. The deal would establish a combined publicly traded company valued at $2 billion.
  • The company will receive about $1 billion in cash in the trust account of Ares Acquisition Corp., the SPAC, assuming no redemptions by shareholders. Investments and financing commitments include $75 million from Ares Management and $45 million from Ontario Power Generation and Segra Capital Management. 

……………………… X-energy, based in Rockville, Maryland, is advancing nuclear generation through a high-temperature gas-cooled small modular reactor, or SMR, the Xe-100, and its fuel, TRISO-X. The reactor is engineered to operate as a single 80-MW unit and optimized as a four-unit plant delivering 320 MW.

……………………. Edwin Lyman, director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, questioned the “fundamental economic justification” for SMRs.

“A small reactor is going to produce more expensive electricity than large ones,” he said.

Backers defend SMRs as benefiting from economies of scale, but that’s not been demonstrated, Lyman said. “It would require a large order book and experience,” he said.

…………………………. At the closing of the deal, which is expected in the second quarter of 2023, the combined company will be named X-Energy Inc. and will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.  https://www.utilitydive.com/news/X-energy-ares-managment-spac-merger-small-modular-nuclear-smr/638097/

December 7, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear lobby continues to capture universities.

From Rust Belt to Green Belt: Penn State leads nuclear research alliance. Pennsylvania State University, 8 Dec 22,

Led by Penn State, academia, national laboratories and industry have formed the Post-Industrial Midwest and Appalachia (PIMA) Nuclear Alliance to harness carbon-free energy while educating and training the future energy workforce……………………………..

Alliance members include foundational partners University of Michigan Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the Westinghouse Electric Company. Additional partners include Pennsylvania College of Technology, Idaho National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Morgan Advanced Materials, Pittsburgh Technical, Energy Driven Technologies and Reuter Stokes. Faculty from University of Central Florida, California Polytechnic State University and Cornell University are also participating………………………………

“We aspire to innovate and accelerate the adoption of microreactors – nuclear batteries – and advanced nuclear reactor technology across the regions of PIMA 

December 7, 2022 Posted by | Education, USA | Leave a comment

No legitimate reason to support the controversial nuclear technology planned for New Brunswick

Producing more plutonium will only exacerbate nuclear proliferation.

This is why a recent report published by the International Panel on Fissile Materials called for a global ban on separating plutonium.

The Canadian government is pushing in the opposite direction, increasing its research capacity to separate plutonium, and funding a company that seeks to export SMRs fuelled by this material.

The nuclear industry’s hope that reactors that can burn plutonium-based fuel will be less expensive has been illusory. Molten salt reactors like the Moltex SMR have a problematic history and investing in them is wasteful.

Separation of plutonium massively increases risk of proliferation, write M.V. Ramana and Susan O’Donnell

 https://nbmediacoop.org/2022/11/26/commentary-no-legitimate-reason-to-support-the-controversial-nuclear-technology-planned-for-new-brunswick/ by M.V. Ramana and Susan O’Donnell, November 26, 2022

NB Power plans to develop new nuclear reactors at Point Lepreau that will use a controversial technology with implications for global security. Provincial and federal government support for this technology–called reprocessing–should end.

At an international conference on nuclear power in Washington, D.C. in October, federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson proclaimed that Canada desires to play a leadership role in nuclear energy and promote its peaceful use around the world. Unfortunately, the leadership role the federal government has chosen involves separating plutonium, which enormously increases the risk of furthering nuclear proliferation.

Earlier in the year, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a federal Crown corporation, broke ground on a large nuclear research facility. The Advanced Nuclear Materials Research Centre, described as “the cornerstone” of the government’s $1.2-billion expansion of AECL’s Chalk River site, is to feature 12 “new shielded hot cells” and “glovebox facilities” for research on fuel associated with proposed small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). The shielding and the glovebox are needed to develop some SMR designs that require plutonium as fuel to operate.

One of those SMR designs is being developed by Moltex, a company based in Saint John that received $50.5-million from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. In his Washington address, Wilkinson took credit for investing in Moltex to develop its plutonium-extraction technology that can “recycle CANDU spent nuclear fuel into new fuel.” He said he would like Canada to export such “technology, goods and services” globally.

Another of these designs is the ARC-100, an SMR that will “breed” plutonium. NB Power is planning to apply for a licence to develop the Point Lepreau site for the ARC SMR in June 2023. Both the Moltex and ARC companies have signed agreements with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories to conduct nuclear fuel research at the Chalk River site.

Both companies have also received funding from the New Brunswick government and NB Power. In 2018, they gave $5M each to ARC and Moltex to bring them to the province and set up offices in Saint John. In 2021, the provincial government announced a further $20M grant to ARC.

Will expanding Canada’s plutonium interests support the peaceful use of nuclear energy?

Plutonium is intimately connected with nuclear power since it is created in all reactors when uranium absorbs neutrons. Using a chemical process called “reprocessing,” this plutonium can be separated from the remaining, highly radioactive, byproducts contained in irradiated nuclear fuel. Once removed, the plutonium could be used as fuel in some nuclear power plants.

But countries and individuals could make nuclear weapons with plutonium. Indeed, most people learned about this material first from news of the Fat Man bomb that flattened Nagasaki. The two uses of plutonium lie at the heart of India’s nuclear program. Set up ostensibly for peaceful purposes, India justified acquiring a reprocessing plant in the 1960s by announcing plans to develop reactors fuelled with plutonium. The source of the plutonium was CIRUS, a research reactor gifted by Canada. However, India’s first use of such plutonium was in the atomic bomb exploded in 1974, yet again demonstrating how plutonium separation and nuclear weapons are connected.

Since then, the United States, the country with the most nuclear reactors anywhere in the world, has stopped civilian reprocessing and the use of plutonium as fuel. Unfortunately, other countries didn’t follow suit—specifically, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia. The result: a stockpile of approximately 545 tonnes of plutonium. The Fat Man bomb exploded over Nagasaki used roughly six kilograms of plutonium. It is easy to do the math and calculate how many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons can be fabricated from this stockpile of separated plutonium.

Producing more plutonium will only exacerbate nuclear proliferation. This is why a recent report published by the International Panel on Fissile Materials called for a global ban on separating plutonium. The Canadian government is pushing in the opposite direction, increasing its research capacity to separate plutonium, and funding a company that seeks to export SMRs fuelled by this material.

In 2021, a group of U.S. non-proliferation experts and former government officials and advisers with related responsibilities penned an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressing concerns about the Moltex project. Moltex responded with the argument that the plutonium that would be produced in their proposed process is “impure” and cannot be used in nuclear weapons.

But the Moltex argument has long been refuted, for example in a 2009 report by safeguards experts from six US national laboratories. The reason is simple: any process that allows plutonium from spent fuel to be cleaned up adequately for use as nuclear fuel will make the material almost good enough for use in nuclear weapons; only relatively cheap and easy processing in a “hot cell” is necessary after that. This is why the International Atomic Energy Agency considers all plutonium (with one exception that does not apply to the process proposed by Moltex) as being “of equal sensitivity” when it comes to safeguards.

The open letter also suggested that the government carry out high-level reviews of the non-proliferation and environmental implications of the project. Instead of commissioning such reviews, the Canadian government has funded building an expensive laboratory to work on plutonium, that too at Chalk River, the site where reprocessing was carried out until 1954.

After India’s nuclear weapons test, separating plutonium b

ecame a political liability, and the nuclear establishment has only considered burying irradiated fuel in a deep geological repository. That changed under Trudeau’s leadership in March 2021, when Moltex received $50.5-million.

There is no legitimate reason to support reprocessing technology

The nuclear industry’s hope that reactors that can burn plutonium-based fuel will be less expensive has been illusory. Molten salt reactors like the Moltex SMR have a problematic history and investing in them is wasteful. Vast stores of separated plutonium sit in storage because nobody has built a reactor that can burn plutonium fuel successfully and economically. Concerns about running out of cheap uranium ore that were common in the early decades of the nuclear age have proven mistaken; there is plenty of uranium ore globally to fuel current and proposed nuclear reactors.

Further, a 2016 report from the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories found that there was no business case for reprocessing CANDU fuel, in part “due to its low fissile content,” and the associated costs and risks. The report also noted “significant upfront investment and numerous investments over a long timeframe,” and that reprocessing in other countries has not been commercially successful. Crucially, the report emphasized that reprocessing “would increase proliferation risk.”

Meanwhile, all Canada’s current and proposed plutonium activities have reduced regulatory oversight. In 2019, the Canadian Parliament approved Bill C-69, which allows some small modular reactors and associated nuclear projects below various thresholds, to move forward without being subject to a federal impact assessment.


This is why the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick has petitioned Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault to require an impact assessment for NB Power’s ARC-100 SMR project. Unless Guilbeault requires it, there will be no federal impact assessment of this new plutonium project.

Over six decades of global experience with building nuclear power plants has clearly demonstrated that they are expensive and take years and years to start operating. Electricity from nuclear plants costs far more than from renewable energy sources. Nuclear power, then, cannot be a viable solution to climate change.

Nuclear reactors are also susceptible—albeit infrequently—to severe accidents that lead to long-lasting radioactive particles contaminating large tracts of land. The risk of accidents will increase as climate change worsens and extreme weather events become more common, or in the event of war—as evidenced by the ongoing situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine. There is also no demonstrated way to safely manage nuclear waste for the millennia the radioactive materials take to decay.

Small modular reactors are not going to solve these problems. On the contrary, adding plutonium separation to the Canadian nuclear industry’s repertoire will create a new global security risk and raise legitimate questions about Canada’s stated goal to be a leader in the peaceful use of nuclear energy. There is no legitimate reason to support technologies that create the potential for new countries to separate plutonium and develop nuclear weapons. The government should stop supporting this dangerous technology.

M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, and the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India. 

Susan O’Donnell is the primary investigator of the RAVEN project at the University of New Brunswick, a member of the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick, and an adjunct research professor in the Environment and Society program at St. Thomas University.

December 5, 2022 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

The complicated politics of nuclear power

Cardinal News, by Dwayne Yancey, December 5, 2022

Feelings about nuclear energy generally split along left-right lines. But while Gov. Glenn Youngkin is pushing nuclear energy in Virginia, it’s left-of-center governments that are now pushing small nuclear reactors internationally and a conservative state legislator in Southwest Virginia who opposes them.

The push to build such small portable reactors – the technical term is “small modular reactor,” or SMR – is pretty widespread, though………………………

It will not surprise you to learn that Americans are politically polarized over nuclear energy the way they are most other things. A Gallup Poll earlier this year found Americans almost evenly split – 51% in favor, 47% against. What’s more interesting, though (or maybe more predictable), is how they split: 60% of Republicans are in favor of nuclear energy, only 39% of Democrats are.

That left-right split is generally true around the world, which a) helps explain why this nuclear proposal is coming from a Republican governor, and b) makes the exceptions so interesting.

Globally, France is an obvious exception. …………….. there has been a general left-right consensus that nuclear energy is an important national priority. Not until the Green Party came along in 1984 was there any significant voice against nuclear power, according to a paper published by Oxford Academic.

Another interesting exception comes just to our north – in Canada, specifically with the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau……… Trudeau has also come down on the side of nuclear power. …………[Four provinces] called for making Canada “a global SMR technology hub” ………………………

Another left-of-center government promoting nuclear energy is our own – the Biden administration.

The Democrats’ so-called climate bill – officially the Inflation Reduction Act – that passed this summer contains numerous provisions promoting nuclear energy. More recently, Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, has been one of the chief proponents.  In November, Kerry made two announcements that haven’t gotten much attention. First, he announced that the United States will partner with Ukraine on a pilot program to build a “secure and safe small modular nuclear reactor” in Ukraine. Second, he announced plans to help Europeans – particularly in central and eastern Europe – convert coal-fired plants to small modular reactors

……… All these exceptions to ideological orthodoxy have come on the left, but there are some on the right, too. I mentioned that the Gallup Poll found 60% of Republicans in favor – but it also found 37% opposed. One of those Republicans who opposes nuclear power – at least in Southwest Virginia – is Del. Marie March, R-Floyd County. She recently posted on Facebook: “Youngkin wants nuclear micro reactors to be placed in SWVA coal mines. I am very concerned about this new technology and prefer that SWVA isn’t used as the lab rat.

For too long NOVA harvests our taxes and our land. Now they want to use us to harvest power. Right now a Nuclear power plant is being targeted in Ukraine to be bombed. Look at the impact of a nuclear meltdown on generations of people and the ecosystem. We don’t need Geiger counters in SWVA!”

March’s concern about coal country effectively being used as a sort of “sacrifice zone” to generate energy for urban areas isn’t that different from what some liberal groups might say. ……………………

Now, none of this is meant to make a case one way or another on the wisdom of splitting atoms and whether some of that should be done in Southwest Virginia. It is meant to put the proposed SMR in Southwest Virginia in a global context and to show that the politics of nuclear are not always clear-cut. We in Virginia will get to see this play out in the General Assembly (and perhaps beyond). Youngkin has proposed $10 million to go toward research and development of innovative energy technologies, with half of that devoted to nuclear research. That may be exactly what we should expect of a conservative governor. Meanwhile, the liberal government in Canada has invested more than $18 million toward its own nuclear research. Who would have thought that Glenn Youngkin and Justin Trudeau had so much in common, or that Marie March would wind up aligned with Greenpeace?  https://cardinalnews.org/2022/12/05/the-complicated-politics-of-nuclear-power/—

December 5, 2022 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Pursuing Assange in a US court could cause even more embarrassment than the WikiLeaks’ publications. 

It’s possible that pursuing Assange in a US court could cause even more embarrassment than the WikiLeaks’ publications. As the years have passed, we have learned that a Spanish security firm recorded his every move and those of his visitors and legal counsel in the Embassy of Ecuador. This was passed to the CIA, and was used in the US case for his extradition. The trial of Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers failed because his psychiatrist’s records were stolen by investigators, and this should set a precedent for Assange.

Enough is enough for Albanese on Assange: our allies may respect us if we say this more. https://johnmenadue.com/enough-is-enough-for-albanese-on-assange-our-allies-may-respect-us-if-we-say-this-more/ By Alison Broinowski, Dec 2, 2022

The Prime Minister’s surprise revelation that he has raised the case against Julian Assange with US officials and urged that charges of espionage and conspiracy be dropped opens up many questions.

Mr Albanese thanked Dr Monique Ryan for her question on Wednesday 31 November, giving what appeared to be a carefully prepared and timed answer. The Independent MP for Kooyong sought to know what political intervention the government would make in the case, observing that public interest journalism is essential in a democracy.

The news flashed around between Assange supporters in and outside Parliament, and reached the Guardian, the Australian, SBS, and Monthly online. Neither the ABC nor the Sydney Morning Herald carried the story, even the next day. SBS reported that Brazil’s president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expressed support for the campaign to free Assange.

But two days earlier, on Monday 29 November, the New York Times and four major European papers had printed an open letter to the US Attorney-General Merrick Garland, deploring the assault on media freedom which the pursuit of Assange represented.

The NYT, the Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El Pais were the papers which in 2010 received and published some of the 251,000 classified US documents provided by Assange, many revealing American atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning gave them to Assange, who redacted names of people he considered could be harmed by publication. A senior Pentagon serving officer later confirmed that no-one had died as a result. Manning was imprisoned, and then pardoned by Obama. Assange spent seven years in diplomatic asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador in London before British police removed him and he was imprisoned for breach of bail condition.

Assange has been in Belmarsh high security prison for three years, in poor physical and mental health. Court proceedings against him over extradition to face trial in the US have been farcical, biased, oppressive, and excessively prolonged.

In Opposition, Albanese said ‘Enough is enough’ for Assange, and he has at last done something about it in Government. What exactly, with whom, and why now, we don’t yet know. The PM’s hand may have been forced by the major dailies’ letter to Attorney-General Garland, which made Australian politicians and media appear to be doing nothing. Or he may have raised the Assange case in his recent meetings with Biden, at the G20 for example.

Another possibility is that he was talked into it by Assange’s barrister, Jennifer Robinson, who met with him in mid-November and spoke about the case at the National Press Club. When I asked if she could say if she and Albanese discussed Assange, she smiled and said ‘No’ – meaning she couldn’t, not that they didn’t.

Monique Ryan made the point that this is a political situation, requiring political action. By raising it with US officials, Albanese has moved away from the previous government’s position that Australia couldn’t interfere in British or American legal processes, and that ‘justice must take its course’. That wasn’t the approach Australia took to secure the freedom of Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, imprisoned for espionage in Iran, or of Dr Sean Turnell from jail in Myanmar. It isn’t Australia’s approach in China either, where a journalist and an academic remain in detention.

By taking up Assange’s case, Albanese is doing nothing more than the US always does when one of its citizens is detained anywhere, or than the UK and Canada quickly did when their nationals were imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. Australia allowed Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks to spend much longer in US custody before negotiating their release. We might gain more respect from our allies if we adopted their speedy approach to these cases, than we do by subservience to British and American justice.

It’s possible that pursuing Assange in a US court could cause even more embarrassment than the WikiLeaks’ publications. As the years have passed, we have learned that a Spanish security firm recorded his every move and those of his visitors and legal counsel in the Embassy of Ecuador. This was passed to the CIA, and was used in the US case for his extradition. The trial of Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers failed because his psychiatrist’s records were stolen by investigators, and this should set a precedent for Assange.

Even though Biden once called Assange a ‘hi-tech terrorist’, as President he is now an advocate of human rights and democratic freedoms. This might be a good time for him to put them into practice. Doing so would make both Biden and Albanese look better than their predecessors.

December 5, 2022 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

‘Guinea Pig Nation’- Lax rules for new reactors deliberately endanger communities

“Make no mistake about it—while NRC is doing its part to serve nuclear industry needs, we should not lose sight of the fact that it is the aggressive pro-nuclear agenda of the Biden Administration that has unleashed a juggernaut of financial and PR support for new nuclear reactors. Everything from the tens of billions of dollars allocated for new nuclear in the Infrastructure Act and the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act, which establishes a nuclear power production tax credit], to the national dog-and-pony show [the recent U.S. tour promoting nuclear power] of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, demonstrates the administration’s intentions to run roughshod over the objections of the public. We have a hard fight ahead of us.”

‘Guinea Pig Nation’ — Beyond Nuclear International NRC will weaken regulations for new “advanced” reactors says scientist
By Karl Grossman
“Guinea Pig Nation: How the NRC’s new licensing rules could turn communities into test beds for risky, experimental nuclear plants,” is what physicist Dr. Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists, titled his presentation last week.

The talk was about how the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is involved in a major change of its “rules” and “guidance” to reduce government regulations for what the nuclear industry calls “advanced” nuclear power plants.

Already, Lyman said, at a “Night with the Experts” online session organized by the Nuclear Energy Information Service, the NRC has moved to allow nuclear power plants to be built in thickly populated areas. This “change in policy” was approved in a vote by NRC commissioners in July. 

For a more than a half-century, the NRC and its predecessor agency, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, sought to have nuclear power plants sited in areas of “low population density”—because of the threat of a major nuclear plant accident.

But, said Lyman, who specializes in nuclear power safety, nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, the NRC in a decision titled “Population-Related Siting Considerations for Advanced Reactors,” substantially altered this policy. 

The lone NRC vote against the change came from Commissioner Jeffery Baran who in casting his ‘no’ vote wrote “Multiple, independent layers of protection against potential radiological exposure are necessary because we do not have perfect knowledge of new reactor technologies and their unique potential accident scenarios….Unlike light-water reactors, new advanced reactor designs do not have decades of operating experience; in many cases, the new designs have never been built or operated before.” 

He noted a NRC “criteria” document which declared that the agency “has a longstanding policy of siting nuclear reactors away from densely populated centers and preferring areas of low population density.”

But, said Baran, under the new policy, a “reactor could be sited within a town of 25,000 people and right next to a large city. For reactor designs that have not been deployed before and do not have operating experience, that approach may be insufficiently protective of public health and safety…And it would not maintain the key defense-in-depth principle of having prudent siting limitations regardless of the features of a particular reactor design—a principle that has been a bedrock of nuclear safety.”

That is just one of the many reductions proposed in safety standards.

“The central issue,” commented Lyman in an interview following his November 17th presentation, “is that the NRC is accepting on faith that these new reactors are going to be safer and wants to adjust its regulations accordingly, to make them less stringent—on faith.”

The key motivation, he said, behind the nuclear industry’s push to significantly weaken safety standards is that the line of smaller nuclear power plants the nuclear industry is now pushing—including what it calls the “small modular nuclear reactor”— are going to be “much more expensive” than the existing light-water nuclear power plants, the most common type of nuclear power plant, which are large and are cooled by plain water. Thus, he said, these “advanced” nuclear plants would be more costly to operate than using energy alternatives, “certainly wind and solar.”

And the NRC is complying with the nuclear industry.

It’s a demonstration of one of the alternatives for the acronym for the NRC—Nuclear Rubberstamp Commission.

The list of proposed safety reductions in the PowerPoint portion of Lyman’s presentation under “Cutting corners on safety and security to cut costs,” and what the nuclear industry “wants” in what the NRC calls its “Part 53” assemblage of changes, included, in addition to the already completed alteration of

siting criteria:

  • Allowing nuclear power plants to have a “small containment—or no physical containment at all.” Containments are the domes over nuclear plants to try to contain radioactive releases in an accident.
  • “No offsite emergency planning requirements.” The NRC has been requiring emergency planning including the designation of a 10-mile evacuation zone around a nuclear power plant.
  • “Fewer or even zero operators.” The nuclear industry would like advanced nuclear plants to operate “autonomously.”
  • Letting the plants have “fewer” NRC “inspections and weaker enforcement.”
  • “Reduced equipment reliability reporting.” 
  • “Applications” for an advanced reactor “should contain minimal information.”
  • “The NRC’s review standards should be lenient.”
  • Letting the plants have “fewer inspections and weaker enforcement.”
  • “Fewer back-up safety systems.”
  • “Regulatory requirements should be few in number and vague.”
  • “Zero” armed security personnel to try to protect an advanced nuclear power plant from terrorists. 

What the industry wants

from Part 53

  • Regulatory requirements should be few in number and vague. – details should go in non-binding guidance.
  • Applications should contain minimal  detail. 
  • The NRC’s review standards should be lenient. 
  • Fewer inspections and weaker enforcement.

The Nuclear Energy Information Service’s summary of his presentation stated: “Under the direction of Congress, the NRC is developing new regulations to facilitate licensing of experimental reactors by relaxing safety security standards and by relying on safety demonstrations that utilize computer simulations rather than experimental data. The major focus of this effort, known as ‘Part 53,’ is being written with an unprecedented level of industry involvement. If ‘Part 53’ is enacted, first-of-a kind reactors would be located in densely populated urban areas without any promise for emergency evacuation, planning, without security forces to protect against terrorist attack, and without highly trained operators—and all without meaningful opportunities for public input.”

These “are sometimes referred to as ‘advanced reactors.’ However, that is a misnomer for most designs being pursued today…largely descend from those proposed many decades ago,” the report continued.  

“In part,” it went on, “the nuclear industry’s push to commercialize NLWRs is driven by its desire to show the public and policymakers that there is a high-tech alternative to the static, LWR-dominated status quo: a new generation of ‘advanced’ reactors. But a fundamental question remains: Is different actually better? The short answer is no. Nearly all of the NLWRs currently on the drawing board fail to provide significant enough improvements over LWRs to justify their considerable risks.”

In the report, Lyman extensively examines issues involving each of the NLWR (Non Light Water Reactors) or “advanced” reactors. 

David Kraft, director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, after Lyman’s talk said in an interview: “Dr. Lyman warns us all once again how largely beholden to the nuclear industry the NRC is. NRC is willing to twist and contort even reasonable safety regulations in ways that cater to nuclear industry desires to a degree that would rival a toy balloon-dog at a children’s party. It is this kind of almost institutionalized acquiescence to industry wants that has led many to believe that NRC stands for Not Really Concerned.”

Kraft continued: “Make no mistake about it—while NRC is doing its part to serve nuclear industry needs, we should not lose sight of the fact that it is the aggressive pro-nuclear agenda of the Biden Administration that has unleashed a juggernaut of financial and PR support for new nuclear reactors. Everything from the tens of billions of dollars allocated for new nuclear in the Infrastructure Act and the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act, which establishes a nuclear power production tax credit], to the national dog-and-pony show [the recent U.S. tour promoting nuclear power] of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, demonstrates the administration’s intentions to run roughshod over the objections of the public. We have a hard fight ahead of us.”

Founded in 1981, Nuclear Energy Information Service is among the safe-energy, anti-nuclear organizations that are challenging the NRC’s effort to change its “rules” and “guidance” to boost “advanced” nuclear plants. It plans to soon post through its website a recording of Lyman’s Zoom presentation.

December 5, 2022 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Weapons company Raytheon continues to be the winner in the Ukraine war, with new $1.2 billion surface-to-air missile contract .

Raytheon wins $1.2 billion surface-to-air missile order for Ukraine, By Jen Judson, Defense News, 1 Dec 22

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army awarded Raytheon Missiles and Defense a contract worth as much as $1.2 billion to deliver six National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System batteries for Ukraine.

The contract is part of the fifth Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative package and includes training and logistical support to Ukraine’s military and security forces, the Army said in a a Nov. 30 statement.

Raytheon, the world’s second-largest defense contractor, won a contract in August to deliver to NASAMS batteries to Ukraine as part of the third USAI package. The new contract is a follow-on…………………

The work to award Raytheon a contract was led by the Army’s Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space, along with others across the Defense Department.

Ukraine has requested an integrated air and missile defense system that the U.S. and other allies are striving to fulfill. The system would be made up of short-range, low-altitude systems; medium-range, medium-altitude systems; and long-range, high-altitude systems that together would neutralize the threat of Russian aircraft and missiles.

Ukrainian forces had been using Russian-made SA-6 and SA-8 air defenses. In addition to NASAMS, the country also asked for Cold War-era Hawk systems – a medium-range, medium-altitude system, that’s considered to still be effective.  https://www.defensenews.com/land/2022/12/01/raytheon-wins-12-billion-surface-to-air-missile-order-for-ukraine

December 2, 2022 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

No place for nuclear in New York’s clean energy future

syracuse.com, by Joseph J. Heath & Betty Lyons 2 Dec 22

As New York energy demand and prices spike heading into winter, the state’s Climate Action Council (CAC) works on its final Scoping Plan for implementing New York’s landmark climate legislation, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). The Scoping Plan will lay out the details of how the state will accomplish the transition to clean energy, and how the transition will serve environmental justice.

Justice is a cornerstone of New York’s climate law, which stipulates that actions must not disproportionately burden disadvantaged communities. In a recent meeting, CAC members proposed strengthening Scoping Plan language to explain exactly why such burdens are unacceptable, and why climate and environmental justice must include every community in the state, including serious consultation with Indigenous Nations.

Continued reliance on nuclear plants — both existing and untested “advanced” nuclear or “small modular reactors” — violates these priorities. The Onondaga Nation, Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force and the American Indian Law Alliance concluded that nuclear power is not viable in combating climate change. The CAC should reach the same conclusion.

The CAC’s Climate Justice Working Group has called on the CAC to draft a serious plan to phase out Oswego County’s three aging nuclear plants (on the traditional territory of the Onondaga Nation): Nine Mile Point (NMP) Unit 1, NMP 2 and FitzPatrick. So far, CAC has not responded to that call.

All three plants are old and obsolete. NMP Unit 1 is the oldest operating U.S. reactor, commissioned in 1969; FitzPatrick in 1975. These two are already past the 40-year lifespan they were designed for. However, their operating licenses are dangerously extended — through 2029 for NMP Unit 1, 2034 for FitzPatrick and 2046 for NMP Unit 2 (commissioned in 1988). These plants require increasing repair and replacement as components age, and, since they cannot compete in an unrigged market, rely on massive state and federal subsidies taken from ratepayers.

The three Oswego plants have GE Boiling Water Reactors, the same flawed design as Fukushima: weak containment vessels and highly radioactive spent fuel stored on an upper floor. The vulnerable pools are packed with more fuel rods than they were designed to hold. If the pools leak or water circulation fails, risk of fire and major radiation rises significantly. Water levels at Lake Ontario in recent years came within one foot of flooding these cement pools, a major problem at Fukushima. With rain events increasing due to climate change, flooding-related catastrophes increase in likelihood…………

The longer the Oswego plants run, the worse their impacts will be. The plants’ day-to-day operation kills millions of fish, causes thermal pollution, withdraws 13 million gallons of water from Lake Ontario a year, and releases tritium (a non-filterable radioactive hydrogen isotope) into air and water, to be absorbed by plants and our skin, lungs and GI tracts.

A leading point in CAC’s consideration of how to serve justice through the Scoping Plan should be that the whole nuclear lifecycle disproportionately harms Indigenous Nations and Peoples.

Seneca Nation citizens living on the Cattaraugus “Reservation” have already been impacted by the West Valley nuclear fuel reprocessing facility south of Buffalo. Tritium and lethal isotopes Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 contaminate the soil, groundwater and surface waters including Cattaraugus Creek, which flows into Lake Erie…………………..

Impacts from existing and proposed nuclear plants are not trivial or dismissible. New York should not waste resources in so-called advanced nuclear plants or even riskier small modular reactors. This is no better than existing technology: They have the same life-cycle impacts, accident risks, high costs and toxic waste. The growing dangers of continuing spent fuel rod accumulation, with no safe storage mechanism and no plan, is enough of a reason for reasonable CAC members to refuse money for new nuclear plants.

Not only is new nuclear not a just option, the state should cease subsidizing Nine Mile Point Units 1 and 2 and FitzPatrick. Nuclear energy harms the environment and public health and violates Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Investing in any nuclear energy goes against New York’s commitment to environmental justice and climate justice.

Joe Heath has served as General Legal Counsel for the Onondaga Nation since 1982. He was a leader in the effort to ban fracking in New York state. Prior to law school, Heath served as an officer on nuclear submarines.

Betty Lyons is the president and executive director of The American Indian Law Alliance (AILA) and an Onondaga Nation citizen. AILA was founded in 1989; it is an Indigenous, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works with Indigenous nations, communities and organizations for sovereignty, human rights and social justice for Indigenous Peoples.

 https://www.syracuse.com/opinion/2022/12/no-place-for-nuclear-in-nys-clean-energy-future-guest-opinion-by-joseph-j-heath-betty-lyons.html

December 2, 2022 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

Secrecy on USA’s new nuclear stealth bomber, and of course, secrecy on its cost to taxpayers.

The fact that the price is not public troubles government watchdogs.

Pentagon unveils new nuclear stealth bomber after years of secrecy The HillBY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS VIA NEXSTAR MEDIA WIRE – 12/02/22

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s newest nuclear stealth bomber is making its public debut after years of secret development and as part of the Pentagon’s answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China.

The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years. Almost every aspect of the program is classified. Ahead of its unveiling Friday at an Air Force facility in Palmdale, California, only artists’ renderings of the warplane have been released. Those few images reveal that the Raider resembles the black nuclear stealth bomber it will eventually replace, the B-2 Spirit.

The bomber is part of the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China’s rapid military modernization………………………………….

Six B-21 Raiders are in production; The Air Force plans to build 100 that can deploy either nuclear weapons or onventional bombs and can be used with or without a human crew. Both the Air Force and Northrop also point to the Raider’s relatively quick development: The bomber went from contract award to debut in seven years. Other new fighter and ship programs have taken decades.

The cost of the bombers is unknown. The Air Force previously put the price for a buy of 100 aircraft at an average cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars — roughly $753 million today — but it’s unclear how much the Air Force is actually spending.

The fact that the price is not public troubles government watchdogs.

“It might be a big challenge for us to do our normal analysis of a major program like this,” said Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight. “It’s easy to say that the B-21 is still on schedule before it actually flies. Because it’s only when one of these programs goes into the actual testing phase when real problems are discovered. And so that’s the point when schedules really start to slip and costs really start to rise.”

The Raider will not make its first flight until 2023. However, using advanced computing, Warden said, Northrop Grumman has been testing the Raider’s performance using a digital twin, a virtual replica of the one being unveiled.

…………………… Given advances in surveillance satellites and cameras, the Raider will debut very much under wraps and will be viewed inside a hangar. Invited guests including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will witness the hangar doors open to reveal the bomber for its public introduction, then the doors will close again.  https://thehill.com/homenews/3759575-pentagon-unveils-new-nuclear-stealth-bomber-after-years-of-secrecy/

December 2, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The coming Sinophobic calamity

Expect to see such China-hating maniacs back in government in the unlikely event that Trump regains the white house.

powerful Dems like Biden and Nancy Pelosi went out of their way prior to the election to prove that they, too, are tough on China; Pelosi with her idiotic and inflammatory jaunt to Taiwan last summer and Biden, with his many pronouncements that Washington backs Taipei to the hilt and will go to war to prove it.

there are people in his administration who walk back his bellicose yowls….. they ARE oblivious. They aim to drag the Ukraine war out as long as possible

 https://johnmenadue.com/the-coming-sinophobic-calamity/ By Eve Ottenberg, Nov 24, 2022,

Neither the red wave nor the blue one materialised in the latest USA election, which removes some of the impetus for the coming congressional Sinophobic rampage.

Some, not all. The relatively good results for Biden mean that for the moment he no longer needs the Beijing boogeyman and could afford to be gracious toward China’s leader, Xi Jinping at the G20 summit. But the GOP won by enough last week to say that so did Sinophobia. The Dems may be, quite despicably, all about World War III with Moscow, but it is a partisan endeavour, because a recent poll revealed that 48 percent of Republicans think we spend too much on the Ukraine war. And the congressional GOP responds to its base.

But war with Beijing, the GOP project, is not a partisan effort; it is bipartisan, and the Republicans are quite proud of and open about that. So their House win last week means one thing: the military and the security state will push ferociously for the assault on China that they have long lusted for, though they are happy, for now, for that assault to remain economic. But don’t be fooled. There is real danger afoot. Those Dems who really want to avert World War III with Beijing will have to be very nimble. And they will have to go about it in a relentless, low-profile manner, because anyone perceived as standing up to the bash-China juggernaut will be crushed, regardless of the lull in Biden’s incendiary rhetoric.

At the top of the GOP foreign affairs agenda is economic war with China – no matter what price we pay (and it will be high) in inflation. Because you can’t slap economic sanctions on your biggest trading partner with impunity. You can’t even slap economic sanctions on any major economy, like Russia’s, without them backfiring badly, as Biden and birdbrain Eurocrats found out when their precious sanctions on Moscow started destroying western economies. Regardless, an economic fight to the death with Beijing is the first item on the GOP to-do list. The second item is actual, all-out, military hot war with China, if it makes any hostile move on Taiwan. Or, for some congressional Neanderthals, even if it doesn’t.

GOP congressmen are all keyed up about confronting Beijing militarily and have been since the Trump administration, with its Sinophobic fanatics like his trade advisor Peter Navarro and Trump national security council member, a foaming-at-the-mouth China-basher, Matt Pottinger, both egging Trump on to heights of folly that could have culminated in a planet-killing nuclear war. Navarro and Pottinger hyped the insane hysteria that China deliberately created covid in a lab and unleashed it (on its own population, an oddity that these two geniuses never bothered to explain), with Navarro proclaiming the arrant nonsense that the “virus was a product of the Chinese Communist Party.” Expect to see such China-hating maniacs back in government in the unlikely event that Trump regains the white house.

According to Trump’s NSC advisor H.R. McMaster, quoted by the Washington Post in April 2020, Pottinger is “central to the biggest shift in U.S. foreign policy since the cold war, which is the competitive approach to China.” So, not to put too fine a point on it, Pottinger bequeathed us disaster. And don’t forget Trump secretary of state Mike Pompeo, no slouch in the anti-China psychosis department, jetting into Taiwan last year to inflame the separatist movement by lauding the Chinese territory as a great “nation,” and hectoring Europeans, as he did in 2020, to sever economic ties with Beijing. This crabby approach to Europe’s Chinese links is now de rigueur in Washington.

And when the Exceptional Empire gets crabby, watch out! The empire carped and groused about Nordstream 1 and 2 for years. Then came the imperial news – from Biden of course – that if Russia invaded Ukraine, Washington would stop Nordstream 2. When asked how this would happen, he said, “I promise you, we will be able to do it.” No one speculated back then that this pronouncement might mean Washington was ready to go full-on Don Corleone. Because Biden didn’t specify how. But barely a year later – voila! Some mysterious somebody blew up both pipelines. Whoever could it be?

So it’s time for imbecile Eurocrats to wake up. The gangsters who exploded their gas pipelines now eye their trade with China, though admittedly blowing up tankers shipping manufactured goods is a more complicated affair. But the Empire is nothing if not creative when it comes to destroying what it perceives as a threat. Assassinations, riots, coups, curating Nazi movements, bombing pipelines – and I’m sure the list includes things we haven’t even thought of or don’t know about. So who knows what could be afoot. Who knows? I’ll tell you: Bipartisan anti-China thugs, led by the GOP, the same GOP whose senator Ted Cruz made a cause celebre out of blocking Nordstream.

Knowing all this, powerful Dems like Biden and Nancy Pelosi went out of their way prior to the election to prove that they, too, are tough on China; Pelosi with her idiotic and inflammatory jaunt to Taiwan last summer and Biden, with his many pronouncements that Washington backs Taipei to the hilt and will go to war to prove it. But at least the election soothed and lowered the temperature of Biden’s bullying, and at least there are people in his administration who walk back his bellicose yowls. They know what a global nuclear catastrophe such a war would be, even if they appear oblivious to the same thing in Ukraine. And they ARE oblivious. They aim to drag the Ukraine war out as long as possible, something Moscow, with its repeated warnings that more NATO weapons only prolong the war, seems not to have taken note of.

Thus the two hydra heads of the bipartisan war party, demonstrating that if indeed the next stage of development after imperial, late-capitalist oligarchy is outright fascism (and if it is, we better figure out a way to stop it, fast), the death wish remains the same. Because no, fascists are not pacifists, no matter how much they demur over the cost of Washington’s abominable proxy war with Moscow in Ukraine. Biden risks global conflagration in Europe, while whoever the GOP vomits up to replace him will simply refocus the nukes onto East Asia.

Expect the worst. “House Republicans plan to put sharp scrutiny on China next year if they win the majority, including establishing a select committee to take on Beijing on a range of economic and military issues,” led an article in the Hill October 28. The GOP believes this work would largely be bipartisan. Gee, I wonder how they got that idea? Could Biden’s war whoops directed at Beijing have anything to do with it? If those whoops and hollers were cynical politics as usual (I suspect they were), this is a very dangerous game. They may box the white house into a policy it didn’t really mean to adopt and one that could leave tens of millions of Americans and an equal number of Chinese, uh, radioactive. But Biden’s played that game before. During the Reagan years and after, while in congress, he tacked right, leaving a ghastly legislative legacy that the great cowards in the progressive caucus would do well to ponder.

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has long wanted a China select committee, the Hill reports, and “tried to work with Democrats to create one in 2020.” But Pelosi pulled Dems out of this potential quagmire – quite surprisingly, considering her characterisation of the very violent and brutal Hong Kong riots as “beautiful” and her later incitement of Taiwan’s independence, that is, incitement of war – with a foresight she has since lost and one can only hope she quickly recovers.

But intermittent Dem common sense isn’t the only hope. Hard at work to avert the coming debacle between the U.S. and China has been Code Pink. This organisation currently runs campaigns to urge the senate to oppose the Taiwan Policy Act, which would arm Taiwan to the teeth and end the One China policy – a huge blow to peace prospects; to tell congress to stand for peace with China; and condemning “the escalating U.S. militarisation of Guam and the wider Asia-Pacific region.” Code Pink does great work to contain the U.S. anti-China lunacy. But that’s only one organisation.

The GOP wants war with China. The Dems want – and have got – war with Russia, one they intend to drag out for years. Either way, ordinary people all over the globe lose badly. If there’s anyone in government with the sense and the power to stall or, better yet, undo Washington’s coming confrontation with Beijing, now would be a good time to get cracking.

First published in COUNTERPUNCH Nov 19

November 28, 2022 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Why small modular reactors are a climate liability, not a solution, (but good for nuclear weapons development)

Touted as a solution to global heating – small nuclear reactors have zero usefulness

Beyond Nuclear International, By Linda Pentz Gunter, 27 Nov 22

“……………………………………………………. SMRs will be needed in their hundreds if not thousands, requiring up front investment in factories and a known source of readily available fuel. None of this is in place. The typical timeframe for even a known reactor design is more than a decade — sometimes several decades. We don’t have that kind of time.

. 

Small modular reactors would deliver electricity that is more expensive than that provided by traditional large reactors today

SMRs will actually produce more radioactive waste per unit of electricity generated than today’s reactors, waste for which there is still no safe and permanent solution.

Every dollar sunk into new small modular reactor plans could have reduced more carbon faster if invested instead in renewable energy and energy efficiency. It’s a no-brainer simple equation that an elementary school kid could work out. But not, apparently, our leaders. Why not?

See above (follow the money) and then there’s the weapons link.

“A strong domestic supply chain is needed to provide for nuclear Navy requirements,” said the Energy Futures Initiative in its report — The U.S. Nuclear Energy Enterprise: A Key National Security Enabler. “This supply chain has an inherent and very strong overlap with the commercial nuclear energy sector and has a strong presence in states with commercial nuclear power plants.”

SMRs would keep that supply chain — and the civil nuclear sector — alive. A 2019 Atlantic Council report — The Value of the US Nuclear Power Complex to US National Security — agrees. “Civil nuclear underpins military nuclear,” it said. “The lack of a civilian nuclear sector would present an immediate and significant economic shock (and impact on the labor force) — which, in turn, would have immediate and longer-term budgetary implications for the US government.”

At least two of the companies striving to develop SMRs in the US have direct links to the nuclear weapons sector. Bill Gates’s TerraPower — whose reactor can be modified to “dual purpose” for weapons and power — has research and development partnerships with Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex, both of which design and test nuclear weapons. NuScale is majority owned by Fluor Corporation, which operates the U.S. Pantex and Y-12 nuclear weapons complexes. 

Furthermore, SMRs are largely destined for export, and hardly for any domestic use at all. That hands proliferation-friendly materials, technology and know-how to countries not presently in possession of this relatively straightforward pathway to nuclear weapons.

If we are to understand the blind obsession with SMRs, the weapons connection offers one of the only plausible explanations. The stranglehold in the halls of power is the other — sound science, economics and our future be damned.

Only we can change this. Please use this latest edition of our Talking Points [Our newest edition — Unfounded Promises: Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) solve none of the challenges of nuclear power and make climate change and proliferation worse ] to contribute to a tsunami of our own — decrying the reckless waste of precious time and taxpayer money that would favor an elusive SMR program. These funds must urgently be directed to renewable energy, an industry that is here now, growing fast and one that can both reduce carbon emissions and provide good, long-term jobs into the future.

Note: In the interest of brevity, the Talking Points do not include footnotes. However, the sources and references used for the SMR Talking Points can be found in a separate document here.  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2022/11/27/no-use-in-the-climate-crisis/

November 28, 2022 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

USA government forks out a $billion to keep uneconomic Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant going.

U.S. Ponies Up $1B to Keep California’s Last Nuclear Plant Humming

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant was scheduled to close in 2025, but federal backing will now prolong its (half) life indefinitely

Los Angeles Magazine, By Julius Miller, November 27, 2022,

The Biden Administration announced this week that it had reached preliminary approval to allocate at least $1.1 billion in an effort to keep California’s sole remaining nuclear power plant running.

The Energy Department says that it is negotiating final terms for the Diablo Canyon Power Plant on the central coast of California to remain open and avoid its 2025 end date, according to the Associated Press. The plant was selected in the first round of funding for the administration’s new civil nuclear credit program, which is intended to help owners or operators of the nation’s last nuclear plants help cover the costs of preserving the existing U.S. reactor fleet. 

 Applicants must not only demonstrate that closure of their plant could directly lead to economic suffering, but also that carbon emission and air pollutant levels will rise without their continued operation………………………

“This investment creates a path forward for a limited-term extension of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant to support reliability statewide and provide an onramp for more clean energy projects to come online,” Newsom said……………

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant produces nine percent of California’s electricity. For comparison, the wind power provides roughly seven percent of the state’s electricity, while solar makes up nearly 14 percent of the total.  https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/u-s-ponies-up-1b-to-keep-californias-last-nuclear-plant-humming/

November 28, 2022 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

USA’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) cleverly worded so it could be a bonanza for small nuclear plant developers

Advanced Nuclear Plants Poised to Benefit from Inflation Reduction Act, Retiring Coal Plants

American Power Association, November 27, 2022 Peter Maloney “………………………………… The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) provides production tax credits (PTC) for existing nuclear power plants but, more importantly, for new nuclear power plants and specifically for advanced reactors and small modular reactors – the type NuScale Power is working on. The IRA amends the definition of a qualified facility eligible for a “clean PTC” to mean any plant placed into service after Dec. 31, 2024, that produces zero greenhouse gas emissions.


The IRA also amends the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules on qualifying for a clean energy investment tax credit (ITC) by changing the language in the code to allow investments for advanced reactors to qualify for the credit. The change provides a tax credit of 30 percent of the cost of building a zero-emission advanced nuclear power plant that is placed in service after 2025.


“If you design and plan to put in a small modular reactor at the site of a retired coal plant, there is a further 10 percent ITC available, and if you use domestic content there is another 10 percent ITC added on,” Colbert said. “That can add up to a 50 percent reduction in costs.”

In September, the Department of Energy (DOE) released a study that found that hundreds of coal power plant sites across the country could be converted to nuclear power plant sites……………………..


Each NuScale small modular reactor (SMR) is designed to generate 77 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Up to 12 SMRs can be combined to make a 924-MW VOYGR™-12 power plant. In addition to their compact design, which makes them scalable and cost competitive, …………………………..


NuScale is now looking forward to reaching another milestone in the regulatory process.

In July, the NRC directed its staff to issue a final rule certifying NuScale’s SMR design.

The rulemaking would amend NRC regulations to incorporate NuScale’s SMR standard plant design, which would allow applicants intending to build and operate an SMR plant to reference the design certification rule.

“If approved, the certification would be published in the Federal Register and have the effect of law,” Colbert said.

The rulemaking is on the docket for the NRC to make a decision in November.

November 28, 2022 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »