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Boys fight over nuclear space toys. Jeff Bezos sues NASA over its contract with Elon Musk

Moon race moguls: Bezos sues US government over SpaceX lunar lander contract, The Age, By Christian Davenport, August 17, 2021 Washington: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space company is suing NASA to force it to fund a second spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the moon.

The suit, filed in the Court of Federal Claims on Tuesday AEST, seeks to allow the space company to win a slice of the lucrative $US2.9 billion ($3.96 billion) Human Landing System contract awarded solely to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

It comes about two weeks after the US Government Accountability Office rebuffed Blue Origin’s protest of that decision.

In a statement, the company said it was “an attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA’s Human Landing System. We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America.”

The contract is one of the most significant NASA programs in some time and has been a target for Blue Origin for years. In 2017, before there was even a formal request for proposals, the company pitched NASA on a lunar lander for cargo.

Blue Origin subsequently teamed up with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper, traditional players in the American defence business, to bid for the program. And last year NASA awarded the Blue Origin-led team the biggest award in the initial phase of contracts.

But in April, NASA selected a single winner, SpaceX, to develop the spacecraft for what would be the first human landing on the moon since the last Apollo mission, in 1972. Given the funding for the initial round, the award was considered a major upset…..

Since then, Blue Origin has tried every lever at its disposal – lobbying Congress, filing the suits and waging a public relations war – to overturn the SpaceX award.

Blue Origin has claimed that SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft that would become the lunar lander is an “immensely complex and high risk” path for NASA to take since it would involve as many as 16 flights to fully fuel the spacecraft for a lunar landing.

Many in the space community have bristled at that bare-knuckles approach, especially since it was aimed at SpaceX……………. https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/moon-race-moguls-bezos-sues-us-government-over-spacex-lunar-lander-contract-20210817-p58jfb.html

August 19, 2021 Posted by | Legal, space travel, USA | 1 Comment

President Biden Can Reduce Nuclear Dangers Without Congress 

How President Biden Can Reduce Nuclear Dangers Without Congress   https://breakingdefense.com/2021/08/how-president-biden-can-reduce-nuclear-dangers-without-congress/

“Biden is sending a clear message: he will take on nuclear issues only as long as they do not undermine his top legislative priorities,” write Tom Collina and Doreen Horschig. By   TOM Z. COLLINA and DOREEN HORSCHIG

With razor-thin majorities in Congress, it is no surprise that the Biden administration has had to set strict priorities for its legislative agenda. The administration’s focus on pandemic relief, infrastructure, voting rights and climate leaves little room to negotiate on other pressing issues.

The good news is there’s one top-tier issue on which President Biden can make significant progress without arm-twisting legislators: reducing the risk of nuclear war.The Biden team sees the crucial need to address nuclear threats, and has already taken major steps: it extended the 2010 arms control treaty with Russia, New START, and agreed to talks on additional reductions; it is negotiating in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal to keep Iran away from the bomb; and it has begun a comprehensive review of US nuclear policy, called the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

Notably, none of these steps requires congressional approval, at least not yet. Instead, in areas where Hill support is needed now, the administration has gone out of its way to avoid fights. For example, Biden’s Pentagon budget supports all the new and unnecessary nuclear weapons proposed by the Trump administration. Biden is sending a clear message: he will take on nuclear issues only as long as they do not undermine his top legislative priorities.

This approach fails to recognize that preventing nuclear war is not just another political issue. Nuclear weapons are the only threat humanity faces that could end civilization as we know it in a day (climate change will take much longer, though with the same potential impact). Spending billions of dollars on new weapons the United States doesn’t need, like the new $264 billion intercontinental ballistic missile, will only feed an arms race with Russia and China — even if it helps win votes for a bipartisan infrastructure deal. Better roads will not be of much help if the world slides into nuclear catastrophe.

Yet even under President Biden’s constrained approach, he can set far-reaching nuclear weapons policies using his extensive executive authority. Presidents enjoy greater control over nuclear policy than almost any other area of government — and Biden should use it.For example, as part of the NPR process, the President can make good on his pledge to limit the role of nuclear weapons. 

As vice president, Biden said: “I strongly believe we [the United States] have made enough progress that deterring — and if necessary, retaliating against — a nuclear attack should be the sole purpose of the US nuclear arsenal.”Such a “sole purpose” declaration would be a welcome and important shift away from current policy that allows nuclear weapons to be used to deter other types of lesser threats, such as biological or conventional attacks. US conventional superiority can be used in these cases.

In particular, Biden should end the Trump policy of threatening the use of nuclear weapons in response to cyberattacks. As damaging as cyber strikes can be, threatening to retaliate with nukes increases the risk of nuclear war, weakens deterrence, and would violate international law in nearly all scenarios.

Biden should make it harder to use the most devastating weapons ever created. A sole purpose policy would limit nuclear weapons to one job only: preventing their use by others.Such a policy should include two other important elements: that the United States will not use its nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike (before an adversary launches a suspected attack) or on warning of attack (before a reported attack arrives). These launches would dangerously increase the risk of starting nuclear war by mistake in response to bad intelligence or a false alarm.

The United States has made both types of mistakes before and could do so again.Skeptics state that a US sole purpose policy would undermine the confidence of allies in extended deterrence. But extended deterrence is not based on meeting all threats with nuclear war.

The United States should deter conventional attacks with conventional weapons and nuclear attacks with nuclear weapons. The Biden administration can find ways to reassure allies without giving them veto power over US policy

.A second concern of critics is that the United States could not make sole purpose credible as adversaries and allies alike would not trust such a declaratory policy. Critics have a point, which is why to show that it practices what it preaches, the United States would have to make doctrinal and operational changes. These including adopting a less threatening nuclear posture, eliminating first-strike postures, preemptive capabilities, and other destabilizing warfighting strategies. This would signal restraint in alert levels of deployed systems, targeting, and launch-on-warning.

Joe Biden, as a senator, vice president and presidential candidate, has consistently promoted a more limited role for nuclear weapons. Now that he has the power of the presidency, he must follow through—and he can without undermining his crucial congressional agenda. Now is the time for bold action, and Biden has the chance to create a lasting legacy on nuclear matters.Tom Z. Collina is director of policy at Ploughshares Fund. He is co-author of The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump. Doreen Horschig, PhD is the current Roger L. Hale Fellow at the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. She studies nuclear policy, specifically norms contestation, public opinion, and counter-proliferation.

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August 19, 2021 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Whistleblowers Like Daniel Hale are Vital Checks on Government

Whistleblowers Like Daniel Hale are Vital Checks on Government  https://portside.org/2021-08-17/whistleblowers-daniel-hale-are-vital-checks-government

Daniel Hale provided his fellow citizens a service. We owe it to him—and people like him—to encourage and protect whistleblowers.
August 17, 2021 Abigail R Hall and Nathan P Goodman  LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS lmost four years—that’s how long Air Force veteran Daniel Hale will spend in prison thanks to a recent court decision. He pled guilty on a single charge related to disclosing classified documents related to the U.S. government’s drone assassination program.

Hale joins a long list of whistleblowers that have been charged and incarcerated under the Espionage Act. Passed in 1917 shortly after the U.S. entered WWI, the act prohibited any activity that could “injure” the United States.

While one could understand penalizing the distribution of things like troop movements, the Espionage Act has become a favorite weapon against whistleblowers in the intelligence community. Whistleblowing—when an insider reveals wrongdoings in an organization—is a vital check on government.

In an ideal world, government serves the best interests of the citizenry. Checks and balances exist to hold elected officials and public employees accountable. Congress can cut an agency’s budget if it fails to do its job, citizens can vote an unscrupulous politician out of office, etc.

But government doesn’t work this way. The checks and balances placed on government may be weak or altogether ineffective. Ideally, elected officials, public servants, and voters all know the same information and are aware of what the other groups know. In this case, we’d say information is “symmetric.” In reality, however, information in politics is highly “asymmetric.” Public employees know more about their actions than elected officials do. Elected officials know things about government actions that voters do not know. This creates room for opportunism, waste, fraud, and abuse.

This is particularly the case in the national security state, where officials can declare information classified or otherwise maintain a monopoly over information. This intensifies the problem of asymmetric information and makes it difficult—if not impossible—for citizens and other oversight bodies to check the behavior of government officials.

Whistleblowers expose government malfeasance.

Daniel Hale and the U.S. drone assassination program illustrates these concepts well. Public officials portrayed drone strikes as “surgical” in their accuracy, claiming that the program had all but eliminated collateral damage in the form of civilian deaths. Since security state officials were the only ones with access to the true data, those meant to act as the checks and balances were unable to assess the veracity of these claims.

That is until Hale’s disclosures were published. “The Drone Papers,” exposed the reality of the drone program. Contrary to claims of “surgical precision,” during one five-month period in Afghanistan, nearly 90 percent of those killed in strikes were not the intended targets. Hale also exposed that any military-aged male in a strike zone was deemed an “enemy” unless it could be proven otherwise.

He also exposed the “kill chain,” the process by which officials selected targets for drone assassination. Relying on signals intelligence, metadata, and government watchlists, information on prospective targets was condensed into a “baseball card.” Officials, serving as judge, jury, and executioner, decided who would be killed with minimal oversight.

Hale’s revelations illustrated other abuses as well. In one unclassified document, he showed that the government’s “No Fly List,” was not based on credible security threats, but instead on arbitrary and illogical “criteria.” Numerous Americans, particularly Muslim Americans, had their freedom of movement restricted without any sort of process. Hale’s revelations allowed many of the individuals on the No Fly List to mount effective legal challenges.

Many are quick to argue that people like Daniel Hale should have used the “proper” channels to express their concerns. But this is easier said than done. Many of the laws designed to protect whistleblowers do not apply to the security state. Those that do, like the Presidential Policy Directive 19, signed by President Obama in 2012, apply to intelligence community employees—but not contractors. Daniel Hale and other whistleblowers, like Edward Snowden, were both contractors and, therefore, would not have been protected under current law. But there are other problems. Though not accessible to the public, the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community analyzed 190 cases of alleged retaliation against whistleblowers at six different intelligence agencies. In just a single case did agencies “internal reviewers” find in favor of the whistleblower.

Whistleblowers perform a vital service. As insiders with an understanding of day-to-day intelligence operations, they can determine what is appropriate and what is abuse better than your average citizen. They can release important information that may otherwise be kept secret for the personal gain of government officials.

It’s time to get serious about protecting whistleblowers. Amending the Espionage Act to allow for better legal defenses is a start. Expanding protections to intelligence contractors and true external review of retaliation claims is another.

Daniel Hale provided his fellow citizens a service. We owe it to him—and people like him—to encourage and protect whistleblowers.

Abigail R Hall is an Associate Professor of Economics at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. She is the coauthor of “Manufacturing Militarism: U.S. Government Propaganda in the War on Terror.”  Nathan P. Goodman is a recent PhD graduate from George Mason University and will soon become a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics at New York University.

August 19, 2021 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Small nuclear reactors – questionable on safety, on toxic wastes, and on costs.

Nuclear Energy 101: What Exactly Are Small Modular Reactors? Bridget Reed Morawski  EcoWatch Aug. 18, 2021 ”’……………………… While advanced reactor designs like small modular reactors are applauded by some for their potential to dramatically lower the costs and siting requirements for nuclear energy facilities, not everyone is throwing their support behind the technologies.


Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists counts himself among the SMR skeptics. As the non-profits’ nuclear power safety director, Lyman doesn’t believe that small modular reactor developers have “made the safety case that they don’t need a large structure,” even if the federal nuclear regulation agency “seems to be going along with their approach.”

………. Greg Rzentkowski, the IAEA’s nuclear installation safety division director, notes on the forum’s website that “SMRs are in general less dependent on safety systems, operational measures and human intervention than existing reactors,” adding that “the usual regulatory approach, which is based on overlapping safety provisions to compensate for potential mechanical and human failures, may not be appropriate and new ideas should be considered.”

Lyman doesn’t believe that the regulatory approach should be altered for new designs.

“I would say that any of these concepts aren’t necessarily safer and a big part of overall safety is not simply intrinsic aspects of the design, but also what is the set of safety requirements that you impose on that [design]?” said Lyman.

In Lyman’s opinion, “if the [U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission] grants exemptions and allows small modular reactors to take credit for these inherent safety features to reduce other aspects of operation that add layers of safety […] the overall outcome may be no better or even worse.” He explained that owners of conventional reactors are required by the NRC to draw up emergency evacuation plans that cover a 10-mile zone around the plant, for example, but that developers argue they don’t need such a plan for small reactors.

“But if they’re wrong, if there’s some unexamined accident sequence that can lead to a worse event than they contemplate, then you don’t have that extra layer of safety by being able to evacuate people,” he said.

The topic of nuclear waste disposal is among Lyman’s other concerns about small modular reactors. Although these smaller reactors may require fewer refuelings, he says that “it doesn’t matter what kind of reactor you have, there is no long-term strategy for nuclear waste disposal in this country, and most other countries in the world.” He added that more research needs to be done on storing certain small modular reactor fuel types in the long-term.

Some SMR developers also point to the added sustainability factor that comes from their recycling of nuclear waste. However, Lyman says “there’s no such thing as a reactor that consumes radioactive waste; what they’re really talking about is reprocessing spent fuel,” another term for nuclear waste.

As Lyman wrote in a March 2021 report, “any nuclear fuel cycle that utilizes reprocessing and recycling of spent fuel poses significantly greater nuclear proliferation and terrorism risks than” reactors that don’t reprocess such waste. Reprocessing “provides far greater opportunities for diversion or theft of plutonium and other nuclear-weapon usable materials.”

Lyman also questions the claims that small modular reactors are lower cost, saying that “it’s a situation where these reactors might be more affordable, but not more economical.” Procuring kilowatts of power from a small modular reactor might be cheaper in terms of how much money the overall facility costs but not in terms of how much it costs to produce a kilowatt of power compared to a much larger facility.

Think about it like your last trip to the grocery store: a single can of soda might have cost $1.50, but an entire 12-pack was priced at $10. That single soda might have a lower price than the entire pack, but you’re also getting a lot less soda per dollar spent. Similarly, Lyman believes the price per unit of electricity generated by a fleet of small modular reactors can’t actually be lower than the cost of a group of larger nuclear reactors generating the same amount of power.


Either way, small modular reactor development has attracted investment dollars from the federal government and private companies alike. Bill Gates, for example, is the main financier behind TerraPower, which plans to locate small modular reactors at the site of a former Wyoming coal plant in partnership with PacifiCorp, an investor-owned utility that operates in the intermountain west.

A competing company, the Oregon-based small modular nuclear reactor developer NuScale, has received roughly $192 million so far this year alone from private companies and investors. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy announced an up to $1.4 billion cost-share agreement with NuScale for a demonstration project in Idaho. At the time, Rita Baranwal, the DOE’s then-assistant secretary for nuclear energy, called the project “instrumental in the deployment of SMRs around the world.”  https://www.ecowatch.com/nuclear-energy-101-2654710991.html

August 19, 2021 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Exelon Prepares to Shutter Illinois Nuclear Plants

Exelon is a profitable corporation: the latest SEC filings show its CEO, Chris Crane, was compensated to the tune of more than $14 million.

 the Illinois Chamber of Commerce is skeptical of another Exelon bailout.

“We become very concerned when a profitable company seeks to lock in profits through the Illinois General Assembly, when those profits are going to be paid for by ratepayers,” said Alec Messina with the chamber’s Energy Council.

And critics of nuclear energy say Exelon’s threats are akin to ransom.

Exelon Prepares to Shutter Illinois Nuclear Plants, wttw,  August 17, 2021  Illinois legislators may be back in Springfield soon for another summer special session, to try once again to pass a massive energy package that thus far has proven elusive.

The result – be it passage of a new law, or a continued stalemate — will impact everything from Illinois’ role in climate change to your energy bill.

But the stakes are particularly high in one northern Illinois town. 

Byron, Illinois – about 11 miles outside of Rockford — has had various identities since its founding in 1849. It’s been home to canning plants, railroad stops and a milk depot.

Mayor John Rickard says all of those have come and gone. But since 1985, Byron has had a new identity: It’s home to a pair of nuclear generators…………….

“We’re preparing right now to shut down these reactors forever,” Hanson said. “That means shutting the plant down, turning the turbines off, the generators off, shutting down the reactor.”……..

Property taxes from the nuclear plant comprise a whopping 74% of the district’s budget — some $19 million that would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace.

The next few weeks will determine whether it’s a reality Byron will have to face.

Exelon executives say they have no choice, and they’re preparing employees at the station for that possibility…….

The Chicago-based corporation has 21 reactors at a dozen sites nationwide. Nearly half are in Illinois.

Exelon is a profitable corporation: the latest SEC filings show its CEO, Chris Crane, was compensated to the tune of more than $14 million.

But due in part to energy market particulars and cheap natural gas prices, Exelon says its Byron and Dresden stations are losing money.

It’s not just Exelon that says so. The state commissioned a study and found that while they could be profitable in the future, “Byron and Dresden do face real risk of becoming uneconomic in the near term.”

Exelon is moving to close them (in energy parlance, “retire” the plants, decades ahead of their scheduled retirement) unless the Illinois legislature comes through.

A proposal floated in the statehouse would have ratepayers — as in, anyone who uses and pays for electricity in Illinois — pay a subsidy to keep them open. It would take the form of an extra charge on your electric bill, worth nearly $700 million, that Exelon would use to keep the plants open for at least the next five years.

It’s a big ask, especially considering what happened last July, when Exelon subsidiary Commonwealth Edison was charged with bribery.

Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan — repeatedly referenced in court documents as “Public Official A” — has denied any knowledge of a bribery scheme but helped steer through legislation that helped ComEd.

Exelon benefitted too, by way of a law that currently has electricity customers paying a subsidy for two of its other Illinois plants, in Clinton and the Quad Cities……..

 the Illinois Chamber of Commerce is skeptical of another Exelon bailout.

“We become very concerned when a profitable company seeks to lock in profits through the Illinois General Assembly, when those profits are going to be paid for by ratepayers,” said Alec Messina with the chamber’s Energy Council.

And critics of nuclear energy say Exelon’s threats are akin to ransom.

“Exelon first started what we’ve dubbed the nuclear hostage crisis. It’s a pattern where a utility will for whatever reasons threaten closure, which gets the workers very upset, then the local community whose tax base depends on it gets upset, they pressure their legislators, and then the legislators grant bailouts,” said Dave Kraft, head of the Nuclear Energy Information Service.

Kraft said rather than continuing to support nuclear energy, Illinois needs to redouble its commitment to wind and solar……….

August 19, 2021 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Shareholders of Georgia Power Co now at greater risk for Vogtle nuclear station’s escalating costs?

 Shareholders of Georgia Power Co. may be at more risk of shouldering the
utility’s share of cost overruns for the two new nuclear reactors being
built at Plant Vogtle. The Georgia Public Service Commission on Tuesday
approved an agreement between the unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. and
commission staff that says the commission won’t agree that any expenses
above a $7.3 billion cap imposed in 2017 are “reasonable” until the end
of the project. “Since the company has exceeded the approved revised
capital cost of $7.3 billion, it is no longer appropriate for the
commission to verify and approve the dollars invested in the project,”
states the agreement approved by all five commissioners.

 News & Observer 17th Aug 2021

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article253546369.html

August 19, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

What were the USA’s costs for the Afghanistan war ?

The Costs of War,  WATSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Since invading Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has spent $2.26 trillion on the war, which includes operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Note that this total does not include funds that the United States government is obligated to spend on lifetime care for American veterans of this war, nor does it include future interest payments on money borrowed to fund the war.

The Costs of War Project also estimates that 241,000 people have died as a direct result of this war. These figures do not include deaths caused by disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war.

The figures for Afghanistan are part of the larger costs of the U.S. post-9/11 wars, which extend to Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. The numbers are approximations based on the reporting of several data sources. 

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2021

August 17, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The War On Afghanistan Was A $2 Trillion Scam

Americans will hate whoever they’re told to—Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, China. After a while they don’t even remember why they hate them, they just do. Getting the war machine going is easy, just throw the press a few bones about ‘terrorism’ and soon enough there’s bones in the ground. The New York Times will even make terrorism up. CNN will film the bombs raining down. It’s a great, hateful show.

It’s important to understand Afghanistan not as a $2.26 trillion failure of good intentions but a $2.26 trillion success of bad. This is what America does. This is who Americans are. They have reduced war to its most crass objective, a way to profit from misery. Afghanistan was no mistake. It was a very successful scam.–

America just pumped-and-dumped an entire country,  https://indi.ca/the-us-military-is-a-deadly-scam/

The American war on Afghanistan was a $2.26 trillion scam. Somebody pocketed all that money, and it certainly wasn’t the people of Afghanistan. That amount is 115 years of Afghan GDP, and it mostly went to arms dealers, the corrupt US military, and corrupt US politicians. Meanwhile the Taliban gets to keep the weapons. This wasn’t just a waste, it was a gigantic fraud. 

Afghanistan was not an isolated incident. This is the American war machine, working as intended, grinding bones and printing blood money. America has reduced war to one simple fact: war costs money and somebody’s gonna get paid. This is their galaxy brain idea, starting wars with no objective just to make money for arms dealers. You don’t even have to win. In fact, it’s better if you spend 20 years losing. That’s the beauty of the scam.

Just follow the money. American taxpayers have been defrauded well over $6.4 trillion in their wars ‘of’ terror alone. People keep saying this money was ‘lost’ or ‘wasted’ but it didn’t go nowhere. American people had their pockets picked while saluting the flag. This is what America does. This is who they are. The vaunted American military is a fraud.

A Simple Scam

It’s a simple scam, really. 

  1. Pick some random poor country (and get your people to hate it)
  2. Attack it
  3. Profit

The entire war machine is an endless grift. Donors throw a little money at Congressmen, Congressmen throw infinite money at the military, and some poor person ends up crushed under a $25,000 bomb. What does it accomplish? Who cares? We made money on the bomb.

In Afghanistan, the waste was insane(ly profitable). The American military transported fuel via helicopter. They kept every single car, truck, and tank idling 24 hours a day. They spent $1 million dollars per soldier shipping Burger Kings, gyms, and bottled water across the Arabian Sea. Nobody cared. The government just kept giving money and the military kept spending it. War machine go brrrr. It wasn’t their money and it’s wasn’t their lives. It was all a bloody scam. 

The original article here posts  a 2019 Afghanistan document dump which everyone has forgotten about

America invading Afghanistan was just like the mafia taking over a legitimate business and bleeding it dry. The American military is just a global racket of torturers and thugs, doing bust-outs on an international scale.

Suckers And Losers

Continue reading →

August 17, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | 2 Comments

New research on baby teeth will show the impact of nuclear bomb testing, and the connection with later cancers

Three decades later, [after the 1950s] Washington University staff discovered thousands of abandoned baby teeth that had gone untested. The school donated the teeth to the Radiation and Public Health Project, which was conducting a study of strontium-90 in teeth of U.S. children near nuclear reactors.

Now, using strontium-90 still present in teeth, the Radiation and Public Health Project will conduct an analysis of health risk, which was not addressed in the original tooth study, and minimally addressed by government agencies.  Based on actual radiation exposure in bodies, the issue of how many Americans suffered from cancer and other diseases from nuclear testing fallout will be clarified.

Baby teeth collected six decades ago will reveal the damage to Americans’ health caused by US nuclear weapons tests  https://peaceandhealthblog.com/2021/08/16/baby-teeth-collected-six-decades-ago-will-reveal-the-damage-to-americans-health-caused-by-us-nuclear-weapons-tests/ AUGUST 16, 2021 by Lawrence Wittner by Lawrence Wittner and Joseph Mangano

In 2020, Harvard University’s T. C. Chan School of Public Health began a five-year study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, that will examine the connection between early life exposure to toxic metals and later-life risk of neurological disease. A collaborator with Harvard, the Radiation and Public Health Project, will analyze the relationship of strontium-90 (a radioactive element in nuclear weapons explosions) and disease risk in later life.  

The centerpiece of the study is a collection of nearly 100,000 baby teeth, gathered in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information.

The collection of these teeth occurred during a time of intense public agitation over the escalating nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Soviet governments that featured the new hydrogen bomb (H-bomb), a weapon more than a thousand times as powerful as the bomb that had annihilated Hiroshima.  To prepare themselves for nuclear war, the two Cold War rivals conducted well-publicized, sometimes televised nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere—434 of them between 1945 and 1963.  These tests sent vast clouds of radioactive debris aloft where, carried along by the winds, it often traveled substantial distances before it fell to earth and was absorbed by the soil, plants, animals, and human beings.  

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August 17, 2021 Posted by | radiation, Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Reclassifying nuclear wastes, and other ethical and technical problems at Hanford

“DOE sort of granted itself the authority to do that reclassifying,”

“We’re not convinced of any need to reclassify any of the high-level wastes,” said Ecology Department spokesman Randy Bradbury.

“We believe this rule lays the groundwork for the department to abandon significant amounts of radioactive waste in Washington State precipitously close to the Columbia River,”

Reclassifying a significant amount of high-level waste into low-activity waste is key to reaching that 80%, the report said.

Ultimately, this project, originally scheduled to be finished this decade, will likely be completed in the latter half of this century. In other words, it could take 70 to 75 years (mid-1990s to 2069) to deal with the 56 million gallons of radioactive tank waste created by 42 years of manufacturing plutonium.

A plan to turn radioactive waste into glass logs has raised a lot of questions, many of which don’t appear to have public answers. CrossCut, by John Stang, August 16, 2021”……………………..Whistleblower alarm

Red flags have also been raised over the quality of construction of the new treatment facilities.

In 2010, Walt Tamosaitis, a senior manager at a subcontractor designing the pretreatment plant, URS Corp., alerted his superiors and managers at lead contractor Bechtel to a risk of hydrogen gas explosions that could bend and burst pipes in the plant, spraying radioactive fluids. He also pointed out that radioactive sludge could clog the pipes and tanks in the plant, increasing the chance of uncontrolled releases of radiation. And he raised the issue of corrosion causing leaks in the pretreatment plant.

Tamosaitis’ superiors told the Energy Department that the design problems were fixed as of July 1, 2010 — over Tamosaitis’ protests, but in time for Bechtel to collect a $5 million bonus from the department.

For raising the alarm, he was demoted and exiled to an insignificant offsite job, Tamosaitis alleged in a lawsuit against Bechtel. He alleged illegal retaliation, eventually reaching a $4.1 million settlement with the company. Meanwhile, in 2011 and 2012, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a technical advisory body monitoring DOE, plus the Government Accounting Office, confirmed Tamosaitis’ concerns.

In 2015, the Energy Department announced that it would not have the entire complex operational by 2022, the deadline at the time. Department officials pointed to the same issues Tamosaitis had identified in 2010.

Also on hold is construction of the pretreatment plant — a prerequisite to the high-level waste glassification project, which is scheduled to begin production in 2023, according to the current state and federal agreement.

What the future holds

The U.S. Department of Energy has been giving contradictory signals about new plans for dealing with some of the high-level waste. 

Continue reading →

August 17, 2021 Posted by | - plutonium, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Secrecy, delays, budget problems as USA tries to clean up Hanford, the most radioactively polluted site in the nation.

Hanford has 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in those 177 underground tanks at this remote decommissioned nuclear production site near the Columbia River in Benton County. 

Those leak-prone tanks are arguably the most radiologically contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere.

At least 1 million gallons of radioactive liquids have leaked into the ground, seeping into the aquifer 200 feet below and then into the Columbia River, roughly seven miles away. Since the mid-1990s, Hanford’s plans involve mixing the waste  in the tanks with benign melted glass and then storing it in glass logs.

Today, the project’s budget is at least $17 billion, and the first glassification plant for low-activity waste is scheduled to start up in late 2023. So far, the federal government has spent $11 billion on the glassification project, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative agency of Congress.

That one plant, however, will only handle 40% to 50% of the low-activity wastes, depending on who is doing the estimating. A second low-activity waste plant or a stil-to-be-determined new approach is needed to the remaining wastes.is What will happen to the rest of the waste is still up for debate.

All of the single-shell tanks and the majority of the double-shell tanks are way past their design lives

Cleaning up nuclear waste at Hanford: Secrecy, delays and budget debates

A plan to turn radioactive waste into glass logs has raised a lot of questions, many of which don’t appear to have public answers. CrossCut, by John Stang, August 16, 2021 Stephen Wiesman has worked for about three decades on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s project to convert the radioactive waste in its huge underground tanks into safer glass logs.

Although he’s retired now and involved in an advisory capacity, he understands the project — and its ongoing challenges — better than almost anyone.

Wiesman sees this task with a mix of cautious optimism, frustration, sympathy for the people dealing with its complexities, and a deep belief that the tank wastes must be dealt with. “There isn’t an emotion that I haven’t felt,” he said.

The project faces a cluster of challenges: financial, technical and political. And the secrecy around the plans to solve these issues makes it difficult for anyone to gauge whether the most polluted spot in the nation will ever become a benign stain on the landscape of eastern Washington.  

Continue reading →

August 17, 2021 Posted by | - plutonium, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

Canada’s Moltex small nuclear reactor project -its plutonium process brings danger of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Diane Francis: Trudeau’s multi-million dollar nuclear deal called out by non-proliferation experts   https://financialpost.com/diane-francis/diane-francis-trudeaus-multi-million-dollar-nuclear-deal-called-out-by-non-proliferation-experts ,

Scientists fear that the technology used to extract plutonium from spent fuel could be used to make nuclear bombs, Diane Francis Aug 12, 2021  In May, the Geneva-based International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) called out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government over a deal he has approved and funded that critics say will undermine the goal of nuclear non-proliferation, according to an article published in the Hill Times and recently republished in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Moltex Energy was selected by NB Power and the Government of New Brunswick to develop its new reactor technology and locate it at the Point Lepreau nuclear plant site by the early 2030s. Moltex is one of several companies that are promoting small, “next generation” nuclear reactors to replace fossil fuels in the production of electricity.

Moltex, a privately owned company that is based in the United Kingdom and has offices in Saint John, N.B., says it will “recycle nuclear waste” from New Brunswick’s closed Point Lepreau nuclear plant for use in its small-scale nuclear reactor. Federal funding and approval was announced on March 18 by Dominic LeBlanc, a  New Brunswick MP who serves as minister of intergovernmental affairs.

The scientists dispute the claim that this is “recycling” and are concerned because the technology Moltex wants to use to extract plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, from spent fuel could be used by other countries to make nuclear bombs. Decades ago, the U.S. and many of its allies, including Canada, took action to prevent this type of reprocessing from taking place.

“The idea is to use the plutonium as fuel for a new nuclear reactor, still in the design stage. If the project is successful, the entire package could be replicated and sold to other countries if the Government of Canada approves the sale,” reads the article.

On May 25, nine high-level American non-proliferation experts sent an open letter to Trudeau expressing concern that by “backing spent-fuel reprocessing and plutonium extraction, the Government of Canada will undermine the global nuclear weapons non-proliferation regime that Canada has done so much to strengthen.”

The signatories to the letter include senior White House appointees and other government advisers who worked under six U.S. presidents and who hold professorships at the Harvard Kennedy School, Princeton University and other eminent institutions.

The issue of nuclear proliferation dates back to 1974, when Canada got a black eye after India tested its first nuclear weapon using plutonium that was largely extracted using the CIRUS reactor, which was supplied by Canada for peaceful uses. Shortly after, other countries attempted to repurpose plutonium from reactors and were stopped — except for Pakistan, which, like India, succeeded in creating atomic weapons.

The Hill Times pointed out that, “To this day, South Korea is not allowed to extract plutonium from used nuclear fuel on its own territory — a  long-lasting political legacy of the 1974 Indian explosion and its aftermath — due to proliferation concerns.”

The letter to Trudeau concluded: “Before Canada makes any further commitments in support of reprocessing, we urge you to convene high-level reviews of both the non-proliferation and environmental implications of Moltex’s reprocessing proposal including international experts. We believe such reviews will find reprocessing to be counterproductive on both fronts.”

The scientists’ letter has not yet been answered by the government. However, Canadians deserve to be fully briefed on all this and its implications. They deserve to know who owns Moltex, what the risks are to non-proliferation and why taxpayers are sinking millions of dollars into a project that’s morally questionable and potentially hazardous.Read and sign up for Diane Francis’ newsletter on America at dianefrancis.substack.com.

August 16, 2021 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, weapons and war | Leave a comment

America’s ground-based nuclear missile silos – expensive and unnecessary

New report questions the necessity of ICBM silos in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota   https://dailymontanan.com/2021/07/28/new-report-questions-the-necessity-of-icbm-silos-in-montana-wyoming-and-north-dakota/

Researchers question whether America can afford to spend money on new system

BY: DARRELL EHRLICK – JULY 28, 2021   A massive recent report by the Federation of American Scientists calls into question whether ground-based nuclear missiles, like the ones siloed in Montana, are still necessary to the country’s safety.

The question of nuclear missiles is not new, but lead author Matt Korda, a research associate at the Nuclear Information Project of the federation, said the issue needs revisiting since the war system that was created at the beginning of the Cold War has outlived the Soviet Union, and the world’s political system has rapidly changed.

Korda explained that new security threats have presented themselves, which means that America’s defenses must adapt. For example, terrorism from small groups instead of threats from countries are a reality that was unlikely during the height of the Soviet-America conflict. Also, economic inequality and social unrest within the country have also changed the conversation. Furthermore, global warming and the effects of climate change and the new threat of pandemics mean that America must re-think its priorities.

A massive recent report by the Federation of American Scientists calls into question whether ground-based nuclear missiles, like the ones siloed in Montana, are still necessary to the country’s safety.

The question of nuclear missiles is not new, but lead author Matt Korda, a research associate at the Nuclear Information Project of the federation, said the issue needs revisiting since the war system that was created at the beginning of the Cold War has outlived the Soviet Union, and the world’s political system has rapidly changed.

Korda explained that new security threats have presented themselves, which means that America’s defenses must adapt. For example, terrorism from small groups instead of threats from countries are a reality that was unlikely during the height of the Soviet-America conflict. Also, economic inequality and social unrest within the country have also changed the conversation. Furthermore, global warming and the effects of climate change and the new threat of pandemics mean that America must re-think its priorities.

Korda’s research questions whether the assumptions – like trying to make a snap-judgment decision – isn’t more of a liability than a strength.

“There’s a bias in this system toward launching them really quickly,” Korda said.

Moreover, because anyone looking to launch an attack on America wouldn’t necessarily know the location of bombers or submarines, it would make the stationary missiles in places like Montana a target.

“It would invite a devastating attack,” Korda said.

In other words, in the event of a nuclear attack, Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota may be the first places to be wiped off the map.

He said part of the report’s purpose was to dive into the theories that have become a sort of gospel in the defense world – that America’s enemies would be forced to attack the ground-based silos first before targeting larger population centers like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles or New York City.

He said with countries like China and North Korea developing nuclear missiles with quick flight times, the idea that they would target a place like Montana or Wyoming before more populated West Coast targets isn’t logical.

“We have always assumed that ground-based missiles would deter an attack, but there’s no evidence that would happen,” Korda said.

Instead, Korda argues in the report, the entire system and the next generation of missiles, estimated at a lifetime cost of more than $260 billion, is based on the idea that an enemy would have to target the ground-based system first.

Moreover, because of the quick launch decisions, the ability to recall the nuclear missiles would be nearly impossible, raising the chances that a false alarm could trigger an accidental nuclear war.

Korda’s study also calls into question whether as many nuclear warheads are necessary. For example, China currently has around 300, with plans not to exceed 600. Its current stockpile of nukes is less than 10 percent of the United States’ inventory. Korda said that if a threat like China only needs 600, then that would seem to indicate America may not need as many to be safe.

“The U.S. nuclear posture and policy kind of presumes that escalation (of a nuclear attack) can be controlled after they go off, but I don’t think that’s the case,” Korda said.

He pointed out that even the conservative-leaning RAND Corporation has stated that America’s nuclear arsenal is two to three times as much as the country likely needs.

The new study doesn’t just call into question the military strategy and history of the ground-based nuclear missiles, it also links it to an economic question: Whether America can afford to update and continue the program with emerging threats.

“Is the money better spent in missiles or would it be better to put it toward action on  climate change or even disinformation?” said research assistant Tricia White.

August 16, 2021 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The importance of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and of coming to terms with USA’s nuclear history.

When Nuclear Fallout Comes Home.   Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (NM03) spoke on the importance of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and coming to terms with our nuclear history.   https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/when-nuclear-fallout-comes-home-191720by Harry Tarpey      Whether in New Mexico, Guam, or the Marshall Islands, the consequences of uranium mining, atmospheric testing, and nuclear weapons manufacturing continue to impact communities around the world, with little awareness from the international community.

I know people who have been impacted by uranium mining, and by the fallout and nuclear testing, so this is not abstract,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico’s 3rd District, who recently sat down for an interview with Press the Button. “These are people I know, these are families I know—you can’t ignore it.”

Leger Fernández is a leading advocate in Congress for the extension and expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), reforms that would establish a more robust and easier to navigate compensation program for the victims of nuclear radiation in the United States and its territories.

RECA is a federal statute established in 1990 as a mechanism to compensate individuals whose health or livelihood was affected by unintended radiation exposure due to our nuclear weapons complex. To date, it has compensated over $2.2 billion to tens of thousands of claimants suffering from health ailments caused by exposure to radiation.

 These include atomic veterans, downwinders, and individuals working on atmospheric nuclear tests and in uranium mines.

Though many of these recipients have undoubtedly benefited from the program, Leger Fernández and her colleagues are recommending several improvements to the statute to expand its impact.

One such change she is championing is an increase in the amount of compensation provided per individual grant. “Right now, [RECA payments] are $50,000. That’s not sufficient, so we’re going to raise it to $150,000.” The legislation she will be co-sponsoring, if passed, would expand the limited scope of eligibility that RECA currently maintains to include geographic areas and age groups not currently covered by the statute.

When RECA was first designed, “it had a very limited area where, if you happen to be exposed in these certain counties, you got compensation. But we know that it’s not just a few counties that were impacted,” argues Leger Fernández, “we need to make sure they are all entitled to the compensation.”

Although this expansion would no doubt have a positive impact within her district, Leger Fernández views it as an issue that resonates well beyond her constituency: “I want to take on this fight because this impacts not just New Mexicans, but people elsewhere, who were exposed to radiation from testing, from the development of the weapons, through no fault of their own are

now suffering the consequences. We as a government who inflicted this harm cannot stand back and say ‘too bad’—we must act.”

With RECA set to either expire or be reauthorized in July 2022, Leger Fernández views the year ahead as an important opportunity to reassess and refine RECA to ensure its continued effectiveness. “We need to take this moment and re-authorize the act,” she told guest host Lily Adams, “but also, when we look at it, ask ‘where is [RECA] efficient, and what do we need to do to make it better?”

August 16, 2021 Posted by | employment, health, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Join the fight against climate change and nuclear war

Join the fight against climate change and nuclear war Louis Brendan Curran, Baltimore   https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/readers-respond/bs-ed-rr-climate-change-nuclear-war-letter-20210814-r4zlhppx7rcsfegznkhgkp4k6a-story.htmlAUG 14, 2021   We face two existential threats: climate change and nuclear war. We must fight both.

I salute President Joe Biden and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s dedication of $3.8 billion to directly combat the effects — if not the causes — of climate change (”Biden announces record amount of climate resilience funding,” Aug. 6). But we would be complete fools if we guard against an existential threat that will be years in reaching maximum effect and we do not also make an equal effort to end the threat of nuclear annihilation, something that could happen accidentally or intentionally in only a matter of hours.

This month marked the 76th anniversary of two other “dates that live in infamy”: the Aug. 6 and 9th atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The devastation wreaked there, while truly horrific, claiming well over 250,000 lives, pales in comparison to what any single nuclear weapon could do today. Despite some gradual reduction in the world’s nuclear arsenal over the past couple decades, there are now way more than 1,000 nuclear warheads spread out among 13 countries. This is literally a potential nuclear apocalypse just waiting to happen.

……….. the Baltimore City Council passed a “Back From The Brink” resolution urging our federal government to do everything possible to make progress toward disarming and eliminating all nuclear weapons worldwide. Other cities and towns have done so as well.

More significantly, 86 nations have signed, and 55 (and counting) countries have become, state parties to the U.N. Treaty for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a treaty that now binds all state parties to forswear all nuclear weaponry. One country, South Africa, has disarmed its nuclear arsenal,q but the United States and the other Nuclear Dozen nations have not.

The battle to belatedly address climate change will cost way more than the $3.8 billion that FEMA now plans to spend. The United States alone spends exponentially more than that maintaining our current nuclear arsenal, and even is budgeting a multibillion dollar “updated-replacement” arsenal, to continue this expensive insanity.

What can we do? First, Baltimore can get off its duff and post large “Nuclear Free Zone” signs at all city gateways, as required by law. Second, we can insist that our state’s two U.S. senators and eight representatives prioritize working to end the nuclear threat — and we can elect replacements for those who won’t or don’t. Third, we can insist that our president prioritize nuclear arms reduction treaties with all other nuclear nations at once or elect one who will in 2024. Fourth, we can support the nonprofit organizations that amplify our voices in this effort to dismantle this coequal threat to life on earth.

And lastly, we can divert the billions of taxpayer dollars that we spend on maintaining a weapons system that we will never use to instead fight climate change. Two threats. Two battlefronts. We have no choice. We must fight both until we succeed.

August 16, 2021 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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