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United States and Russia are on the verge of a new arms race

Can Russia And The U.S. Agree To Keep A Lid On Their Nuclear Arsenals? Radio Free Europe, December 15, 2019 By Mike Eckel

One major Cold War-era weapons treaty has collapsed. Another, aimed at building trust among the United States, Russia, and other countries, is under severe strain. Washington and Moscow are modernizing their arsenals, building new, more advanced weapons.

By most accounts, the United States and Russia are on the verge of a new arms race, if not already in one.

But last month, something unusual happened: U.S. inspectors traveled to Russia to examine a new missile that Moscow says is super-fast. The demonstration was “aimed at facilitating efforts to ensure the viability and efficiency of New START,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.

The move has arms control observers wondering whether, despite poisoned relations, Moscow and Washington may in fact find a way to agree to extend the biggest — and last — major weapons treaty restraining the holders of the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.

Dmitry Stefanovich, a researcher with the Russian International Affairs Council, said the inspection of the weapon — called Avangard by Russian military designers — was a demonstration that Moscow was eager to extend New START.

“It is more like an offer: See, we will [give] you transparency on some new weapons and probably some more in the future, but we have to extend the treaty for it to work,” he told RFE/RL. “And we expect the same from you, when your modernization of strategic weapons reaches fruition.”

Large Arsenals

Signed in 2010 by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, New START limited the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals by capping the numbers of delivery systems — long-range bombers, silo-based land missiles, and submarine-launched missiles — and deployed warheads.

As of September 1, Russia had 513 deployed strategic launchers with 1,426 warheads, according to State Department figures. The United States deploys 668 strategic launchers with 1,376 warheads, according to the data……

The treaty expires in February 2021, although provisions allow for it to be prolonged by five years if both sides agree. ….. https://www.rferl.org/a/new-hope-for-new-start-can-russia-and-the-u-s-agree-to-keep-a-lid-on-their-nuclear-arsenals-/30326546.html

December 16, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Renewable energy to fight climate change, – NOT Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Renewables – Not Small Modular Nuclear Reactors – Are the Solution to Climate Change, https://cela.ca/renewables-not-small-modular-nuclear-reactors-are-the-solution-to-climate-change/ December 4, 2019 By Theresa McClenaghan, Kerrie Blaise (CELA) and Guest Author Chris Rouse (New Clear Free Solutions) The idea of Small Modular Reactors (“SMRs”) was in the news this week with the federal government being urged to provide even more research money to develop this “new” nuclear power technology. The premise is that SMR’s are a needed, cost effective, safe and realistic solution to climate change.

However, SMRs are not the answer or even part of the answer to climate change given the problematic environmental, social and economic attributes of the proposed technology. Instead, in our view, investment is urgently needed in Canada’s vast and enviable renewable energy resources which are already scalable and provide safer, less costly, and more socially acceptable means of energy generation.

The UN has warned we have just 10 years to get climate change and our emissions under control – the promise of SMR technology provides too little, too late with too many risks. Socially acceptable, cost effective and scalable renewable options are available now.

SMRs are not yet commercially available. Indeed, Canada’s SMR Roadmap, produced by the Canadian Nuclear Association, only sets out a path for having a commercial demonstration unit in the 2030s. To contend that SMR technology can aid in combatting climate change is potentially damaging to climate action, as it misses the 10-year window we have to reverse emissions and decarbonize. It also distracts from the urgent work needed to respond to the climate emergency.

We already have many tools in our renewable energy toolbox. Canada’s electricity grid is 65% renewable, mainly from our vast hydro resources. These resources, used in combination with 30% to 35% wind and solar, makes a renewable grid achievable. Several jurisdictions have already achieved or surpassed this threshold, such as Prince Edward Island, where 43% of its power comes from wind alone. We also have access to other renewable energy resources such as biomass, geothermal, and tidal to assist in our transition to a low-carbon economy.

Studies also continue to demonstrate viable pathways to a renewable grid, which are both technically and economically feasible. One report from Nova Scotia provides a pathway to reach a 90% renewable grid by 2030 and a study from New Brunswick plots a cost effective solution to achieve a 95% renewable grid. While work is needed to achieve the remaining 5% over time, the immediate need – and the focus of governmental efforts – should be on prioritizing the first 90% to 95% shift to renewables.

Despite what appears as widespread interest in SMRs, very few countries have been willing to invest in their construction. Apart from technology’s risks, the problem is one of poor economics: nuclear energy is already known to be expensive and the cost-competitiveness of SMRs is contingent upon their mass fabrication. Hundreds if not thousands of SMRs would need to be deployed in order to be economically viable.

Past experience also dictates this new reactor technology may never become commercially available. For instance, after two decades and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, the two prototype MAPLE reactors were abandoned in 2008 because they could not be safely operated. The Gentilly 1 prototype reactor in Quebec which received similar investment, also failed and after 180 days of operation was mothballed.

Despite public assurances of SMRs’ ‘passive’ and ‘inherent’ safety, SMR operators and suppliers would be protected from liability in the event of an accident under the current rules; the current nuclear liability rules are a concession by governments to the nuclear industry because of the inherent hazard that private nuclear investors do not want to underwrite.

Furthermore, after 50 years of nuclear energy production, we still do not have an approved plan for Canada’s high, intermediate and low-level radioactive waste stockpiles. Because of the diverse range of fuels which can be used by SMRs, new radioactive waste streams will be created, thus increasing the complexity of the used nuclear fuel waste problem, with new types of nuclear waste hazards being introduced.

The touted benefit of SMRs for use in remote and rural regions would also mean increased transport of radioactive substances on roads and railways across the country. This poses unique proliferation risks since the waste from enriched fuels can produce quantities of plutonium that could be attractive for diversion to malicious purposes.

The greater the number of sites and communities with SMRs, the greater the proliferation risks because of challenges in monitoring, keeping track and measuring plutonium in spent fuel, which must be kept secure.

Furthermore, Canada’s nuclear safety regulator advocated with the federal government to remove SMRs from public, more rigorous forms of decision-making under Canada’s new Impact Assessment Act (IAA). Despite requirements for wind and solar farms to undergo environmental assessments, either provincially or federally, SMRs would not trigger an environmental assessment under the current federal IAA Project List regulation. The coming into force of the Impact Assessment Act in June 2019 wholly exempts SMRs from environmental, or impact assessment review.

Investment in nuclear power at the 11th hour is a distraction from real climate action when scalable, cost-effective renewable solutions could and need to be employed. Already climate-burdened future generations should not have new risks imposed on them, due to SMR’s radioactive waste and accompanying proliferation risk. We need to invest in known renewable energy solutions, and not the promise of a hypothetical and risky technology.

December 14, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 1 Comment

Nuclear power the worst, most unsuitable, most expensive power option for Ontario

GIBBONS: Hydro power, not nuclear, is best for Ontario, BY JACK GIBBONS https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/gibbons-hydro-power-not-nuclear-is-best-for-ontario (Regarding Lorrie Goldstein’s column, “Nuclear power key to solving climate change,”Dec. 2.) 12 Dec 19, Using nuclear energy to address climate change is like offering every Toronto commuter a limo ride to work instead of building subways.

It’s simply the most expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Every nuclear project in Ontario’s history has run massively over budget. Remember the debt retirement charge on your hydro bill? You can thank bloated nuclear projects that left the old Ontario Hydro essentially bankrupt.

Ontario is one of the few places left that still sees nuclear as a viable way to keep the lights on. And that’s going to hit you where it hurts – in the wallet.

Ontario Power Generation has stated it needs to double the price it charges for nuclear energy to rebuild the Darlington nuclear station. Ontario has many better ways to simultaneously tackle climate change and lower electricity bills, something Premier Doug Ford has promised, but failed thus far to deliver.

Quebec has the lowest electricity prices on the continent thanks to its cost-efficient, water-power system. It also has a large and growing power surplus and is keen to make export deals.

Quebec has offered to sell Ontario power at half the cost of what we are paying for nuclear power today – one-third the cost of what we will be paying for nuclear power in five years.

Both the Kathleen Wynne and Doug Ford governments have turned up their noses at this offer to protect our high-cost nuclear industry.

Combine Quebec water power with energy efficiency programs in Ontario and you have the lowest-cost option for keeping the fridges humming.

Ontario pays, on average, two cents per kilowatt hour for efficiency measures that reduce the need to generate electricity in the first place. You may have doubts about solar and wind energy, but one thing is certain — prices for these sources are plummeting as costs for nuclear rise.

Quebec, by using its ability to store water, can act as a giant battery to smooth out the peaks and troughs of green energy in Ontario.

It can supply Ontario with plenty of power virtually every hour of the year. And it has that power right now – it doesn’t need to build new dams. In the few hours a year when Quebec’s own demand maxes out, Ontario has plenty of gas-fired power plants that can fill the brief gap.

For a fraction of the cost of rebuilding one nuclear reactor, we can upgrade our transmission links to get even more low-cost power from Quebec.

Instead of banking on phantom solutions like non-existent “small modular reactors” that, if they are ever built, will have all the waste, cost and security problems of conventional nuclear plants, Ontario should make a money-saving deal with Quebec.

As the people of Pickering are now discovering, Ontario has no long-term facility to store the huge pile of radioactive waste that has been built up over 50 years of nuclear operations.

December 14, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

U.S. Democrats cave in to a weak compromise National Defense Authorization Act

Democrats Retreat on Nuclear Policy Defense One, 13 Dec 19, The 2020 authorization bill fails to check Trump’s worst impulses.

Question: How do you go from a National Defense Authorization Act that in July was opposed by every House Republican to one that was approved by more GOP votes than Democratic ones and that President Donald Trump called a huge win that he cannot wait to sign?

Answer: Add Space Force and parental family leave and take out all of the progressive national security provisions.

The House passed the compromise NDAA last night; President Trump has said he will sign it. This final bill is a world apart from the version passed by House Democrats in July. The House version, ably led by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Washington, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, prohibited deployment of Trump’s new “low-yield” nuclear weapon for Trident submarines, which defense experts called “a gateway to nuclear catastrophe.” It prohibited unauthorized U.S. military action against Iran, which Trump came within 10 minutes of ordering in June, and prohibited U.S. military support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. And it supported extension of the New START treaty, which Trump seems to have every intention of sacking even though Russia supports keeping the crucial pact. The list goes on.

In other words, the House bill would have constrained the most dangerous tendencies of an out-of-control White House. This is exactly what you would expect Democrats to do when faced with a President that they firmly believe is a danger to U.S. national security—and are now seeking to impeach on that basis.

Not surprisingly, Republicans do not share this impression of the President, and they deeply opposed the nuclear policy provisions in the House NDAA…….

The outcome was a disaster. The topline budget rose to $738 billion and the major constraints on Trump were ripped out. Others were watered down. The most we can say about the final NDAA is that it includes some useful language on arms control and missile defense, but nothing major. Such weak tea certainly does not justify supporting a bill that funds Trump’s excessive $2 trillion program to rebuild the nuclear arsenal, among other things.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-California, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a vice-chair of the progressive caucus issued a joint statement with Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont, a presidential candidate, calling the final agreement “a bill of astonishing moral cowardice.” Over 30 progressive national security organizations (including Ploughshares Fund) sent a letter to Congress opposing the final bill as doing “almost nothing to constrain the Trump administration’s erratic and reckless foreign policy.” Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren said she would oppose the bill, calling it a “$738 billion Christmas present to giant defense contractors.” …..

Democrats cannot seek to impeach Trump and yet sometimes act as if he is a normal president. They cannot attempt to remove him from office as a danger to national security and yet hand him $738 billion in military spending with no limits on his nuclear weapons development, ability to attack Iran, freedom to abandon arms control treaties, and so much more. Trump is nothing if not a disrupter. The Democrats must give the president a taste of his own medicine. https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/12/democrats-retreat-nuclear-policy/161855/

December 14, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Sound the alarm on deadly US-Russia nuclear threat

Sound the alarm on deadly US-Russia nuclear threat, by Jill Dougherty December 12, 2019 CNN, As I looked around the large square conference table, I watched the faces settle into worried frowns. Russians and Americans, several of whom once had responsibility for their nations’ nuclear weapons, all members of the Dartmouth Conference, the oldest continual bi-lateral dialogue between Americans and Russians, founded almost 60 years ago during one of the darkest periods of the Cold War.

For a long minute, no one spoke. Then, one of them broke the silence: “Someone needs to sound the alarm.”

Now, profoundly concerned that the United States and Russia are on the verge of a new arms race, they are speaking out, issuing an urgent appeal to keep arms control alive:

“… for the first time in our history we are compelled by the urgency of the situation to issue this public appeal to our governments, founded on our view that the clear threat of an uncontrolled nuclear arms race has re-emerged with the collapse in recent years of key elements of the post-Cold War arms control architecture.”

Members of the Dartmouth Conference meet twice a year to discuss ways of improving — and, at this point, salvaging — the US/Russia relationship. Several are former top-level military and diplomatic officials. Some are religious leaders or physicians. All are concerned citizens.

They’ve watched as the arms control agreements, which helped prevent nuclear war between our countries, were dismantled — the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed by former President Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement signed by former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now, the New START agreement — the last remaining arms control agreement between the US and Russia — hangs in the balance. …….

It could get worse, both I and other Dartmouth Conference members believe. Neither country wants to start a nuclear war, which would imperil the entire planet, but it could start by mistake, by misunderstanding, by escalation of tensions, as it almost did during the Cold War……..

In their appeal, Dartmouth members say the dialogue on strategic stability should be broadened to include other nuclear powers. But that doesn’t mean that, in the interim, New START can’t be extended for another five years, as the treaty provides. Extending it beyond 2021 would provide some breathing space to work on future global security agreements. We can do both.

New START not only led to steep reductions of nuclear arsenals on both sides but it strengthened confidence and trust between our countries and our militaries by providing for inspections and data exchanges that verify compliance. Transparency is key; Not knowing what weapons the other side might have can ignite suspicion.

At this very moment both countries are developing new, highly advanced conventional arms and delivery systems.

A cyberattack could knock out early warning systems. Both countries keep most of their nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired within minutes. Our presidents have only a few minutes to decide whether to respond. A missile launched in Russia can hit an American city in less than 30 minutes — and vice versa. A single warhead can kill millions of people.

……… together, we had just written: “The immediate imperative is extension of the New START Treaty … We see this as a paramount moral obligation of both our governments before our own peoples, and the world at large. We respectfully urge our governments to begin discussions immediately to this end.” https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/12/opinions/new-start-treaty-dougherty/index.html

December 14, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Prairie Island Indian Community – nuclear refugees

Environmental, nuclear worries force Prairie Island tribe to seek new lands, MPR News, Catharine Richert, Welch, Minn. December 13, 2019 Schyler Martin’s job calls for him to worry each day about things that could cripple or destroy the Prairie Island Indian Community, but that he can’t control.The nearby Xcel Energy nuclear power plant that towers over the reservation is high on that list, as is an Army Corps of Engineers lock and dam on the Mississippi River that regularly floods tracts of tribal land upstream.

Martin, the tribe’s emergency management director, can rattle off a list of flooding headaches the tribe faces annually — closing roads, building and maintaining berms, diverting water from Prairie Island’s casino and outdoor amphitheater.

This year has been especially difficult with flooding lasting deep into the fall, closing roads to hunting grounds and damaging hay that feeds the tribe’s buffalo herd. “The soil,” said Martin, “is inundated with water.”

Prairie Island leaders understand that the dam, the flooding and the nuclear plant will not be leaving anytime soon, which is why they’re taking an extraordinary step — expanding the reservation inland, away from their home on the Mississippi River.

Prairie Island last year bought 1,200 acres near Pine Island, Minn., about 35 miles south on U.S. Highway 52. The tribe wants Congress to put the land into trust, adding it to the reservation. In return, the tribe would give up rights to sue the government over flooding caused by the lock-and-dam system.

While it’s a logical step for a tribe that continues to grow and prosper, the relocation plan has reopened old wounds over the displacement of Native American people and white encroachment on Native lands. That includes environmental problems on tribal lands created by nonNative people.

……….. Jackson said, the community once again was thrown into upheaval when the Army Corps of Engineers built a lock-and-dam system just downstream to accommodate commercial navigation.

The structure flooded reservation land and shrank its footprint to 300 livable acres.

“You have a federal undertaking that is proposing to take more land and again displace Dakota people,” said Jackson. “It’s just another example of the encroachment the tribe was facing at that time.”

It’s a project that continues to trouble the reservation. The flooding has swamped traditions that help younger generations connect with their history. Floodwaters this year canceled a maple syrup harvesting event for kids.

“This is something that the children’s ancestors have been doing for hundreds of years,” Martin said.

But it’s the threat of a nuclear disaster that keeps him up at night.

Martin said a routine Federal Emergency Management Agency exercise in 2018 opened his eyes to how a mishap at the nuclear power plant could upend the day-to-day operations of the Treasure Island Resort and Casino, the tribe’s primary source of income for years.

“How do you relocate a reservation? These are federal trust lands. How do you relocate that?” he said. “And then how do you make up for the economic viability for the tribe? …..

The nuclear plant’s towers rise about 600 yards away from where Lucy “Lu” Taylor played as a kid. Back then, she didn’t understand the potential dangers of living near the plant. As tribal vice president, she understands it well.

“Now, I’m an elder and I have grandchildren now, and it could be devastating to my grandchildren,” she said. “It’s not right for our kids to grow up here.”

A very powerful thing’

The eye-opening worries that surfaced in the 2018 FEMA drill led Prairie Island to buy the Pine Island property, said Shelley Buck, the tribal council’s president.

“Part of our culture is you’re supposed to look out for the next seven generations. So, as tribal leaders, we have to do that. With every decision, we need to look out for that and have that in the back of our minds,” said Buck, who also counts among Prairie Island’s potential dangers a nearby rail line that regularly carries hazardous materials…….

the Pine Island land and its potential for housing and economic development is so important. Local officials in Pine Island, Rochester and Olmsted County all support Congress putting the land into trust — a necessary step to make the Pine Island land part of the reservation and subject to tribal law.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from Minnesota’s delegation has introduced a bill that would put the Pine Island land into trust. So far, the bill has not been debated in Congress…….

Tribal general counsel Jessie Seim said her research suggested the tribe had strong legal claims against the federal government for both the land lost due to flooding and for siting the nuclear power plant so close to the reservation.

Rather than pursue that, however, the tribe is ready to drop those legal claims to get the congressional approval needed to move forward on the Pine Island plan.

“We wanted to fashion a settlement, sovereign to sovereign,” Seim said. “We wanted the governing bodies of both of these governments to come together and try to resolve the series of wrongs that have happened here at Prairie Island.”………. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/12/13/environmental-nuclear-worries-force-prairie-island-tribe-to-seek-new-lands

December 14, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | indigenous issues, USA | Leave a comment

Muons: probing the depths of nuclear waste

Muons: probing the depths of nuclear waste, physicsworld, 12 Dec 2019

Taken from the December 2019 issue of Physics World. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app.

Having used them to look through rock, physicists are now exploiting muons to peer inside canisters of radioactive waste. The ability could prove very handy for nuclear inspectors, as Edwin Cartlidge reports

……muons – energetic subatomic particles that can pass through thick layers of dense material and which the scientists in Egypt used to look inside the limestone and granite pyramid.

Muons are generated routinely in particle colliders, where physicists use them to identify other, potentially more exotic, particles within the debris. But they are also produced naturally in the atmosphere, and an ever-growing range of researchers are using these commonly occurring muons as highly penetrating probes. Beyond archaeologists, geologists, for example, are developing muon detectors to establish when magma might be on the rise within a volcano……..

Muons offer a way to establish how much waste there is in a container without having to open or move the container in question. That capability would become vital, according to Matt Durham of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, should inspectors or the countries involved ever lose confidence in their monitoring. “This issue is only getting worse as more plutonium piles up around the world,” he says.

Muons offer a way to establish how much waste there is in a container without having to open or move the container in question……… https://physicsworld.com/a/muons-probing-the-depths-of-nuclear-waste/

December 14, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, USA | Leave a comment

USA’s Patriot Act destroys civil liberties

Who Will Protect Us From an Unpatriotic Patriot Act?https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/11/who-will-protect-us-from-an-unpatriotic-patriot-act/ by JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

“It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”– Thomas Paine

While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts.

Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated impeachment drama that continues to monopolize headlines, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law legislation extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which had been set to expire on December 15, 2019.

Once again, to no one’s surprise, the bureaucrats on both sides of the aisle—Democrats and Republicans alike—prioritized political grandstanding over principle and their oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution.

As Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) predicted:

Today, while everyone is distracted by the impeachment drama, Congress will vote to extend warrantless data collection provisions of the #PatriotAct, by hiding this language on page 25 of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that temporarily funds the government. To sneak this through, Congress will first vote to suspend the rule which otherwise gives us (and the people) 72 hours to consider a bill. The scam here is that Democrats are alleging abuse of Presidential power, while simultaneously reauthorizing warrantless power to spy on citizens that no President should have… in a bill that continues to fund EVERYTHING the President does… and waiving their own rules to do it. I predict Democrats will vote on a party line to suspend the 72 hour rule. But after the rule is suspended, I suspect many Republicans will join most Democrats to pass the CR with the Patriot Act extension embedded in it.

Massie was right: Republicans and Democrats have no problem joining forces in order to maintain their joint stranglehold on power. Continue reading →

December 12, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, USA | 1 Comment

Los Alamos National Laboratory lost 250 barrels of nuke waste

State report: LANL lost track of 250 barrels of nuke waste, Santa Fe New Mexican, By Scott Wyland sfnewmexican.com, Dec 9, 2019

The contractor that’s been in charge of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s operations for the past year lost track of 250 barrels of waste, while the company heading the legacy cleanup mislabeled and improperly stored waste containers and took months to remedy some infractions, according to the state’s yearly report on hazardous waste permit violations.

Triad National Security LLC, a consortium of nonprofits that runs the lab’s daily operations, had 19 violations of its permit from the New Mexico Environment Department. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos, also known as N3B, which is managing a 10-year cleanup of waste generated at the lab, was cited 29 times.

Triad’s most notable violation was shipping 250 barrels of mostly mixed waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad without tracking them. Mixed waste contains low-level radioactive waste and other hazardous materials. Inspectors found records still listed the waste at the national lab. …..

A disastrous “kitty litter” incident happened under Los Alamos National Security, in which a waste barrel was packaged in error with a volatile blend of organic cat litter and nitrate salts, causing the container to burst and leak radiation at the Southern New Mexico storage site. WIPP closed for almost three years, and the cleanup cost about $2 billion.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy that oversees the lab, declined to renew LANS’ contract in 2015. Triad took over operations in November 2018. Among Triad’s duties is to dispose of waste at the lab generated from 1999 to the present.

N3B won a $1.4 billion contract in December 2017 to clean up waste produced at the lab before 1999.

The company was cited for a slew of mislabeled waste containers during the year. Inspectors also found some waste barrels, which are stored under tent-like domes, coated with snow or rainwater.

N3B also failed to remedy within 24 hours the flaws that inspectors found in equipment or structures that could present an environmental or human-health hazard, the report said. Inspectors discovered N3B took as long as 18 months to fix cracks in concrete and asphalt surfaces…….. https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/state-report-lanl-lost-track-of-barrels-of-nuke-waste/article_e9de8348-17cc-11ea-bae3-c71a1aadd222.html

December 12, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, USA | Leave a comment

Devastating array of craters on the ocean floor, from nuclear tests

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTk0IH_Y0iY

Enormous Craters Blasted in Seafloor by Nuclear Bombs Mapped for the First Time, Live Science, By Mindy Weisberger – Senior Writer 11 Dec FRANCISCO — Today, all seems quiet in the remote Bikini Atoll, a chain of coral reef islands in the central Pacific. But more than 70 years ago, this region’s seafloor was rocked by powerful atomic bombs detonated by the U.S. Army.

For the first time, scientists have released remarkably detailed maps of this pockmarked seabed, revealing two truly massive craters. This new map shows that the seabed is still scarred by the 22 bombs detonated at Bikini Atoll between 1946 and 1958.

The map was presented yesterday (Dec. 9) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

During the 1946 nuclear weapons test known as “Operation Crossroads,” the U.S. wanted to test the impact of nuclear bombs on warships. To that end, the Army assembled more than 240 ships — some of which were German and Japanese — that held different amounts of fuel and munitions, then deployed two nuclear weapons to destroy them, researcher Arthur Trembanis, an associate professor with the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of Delaware, said in the presentation.

At the time of the tests, Trembanis said, comedian Bob Hope joked grimly:

“As soon as the war ended, we found the one spot on Earth that had been untouched by war and blew it to hell.”……….

But as powerful as the early atomic tests were, they were dwarfed by the later blasts caused by hydrogen and fusion bomb tests in the 1950s. The researchers investigated a crater that was 184 feet (56 m) deep and had an unusual oblong shape; they determined that it was a composite crater from multiple blasts: “Castle Bravo,” a 15-megaton bomb that was the largest ever detonated by the U.S., and “Castle Romeo,” the first deployed thermonuclear bomb.

These tests left behind a uniquely devastating array of shipwrecks and craters, and the first detailed map of their aftermath will help scientists to tell this untold story and connect to “a moment at the dawn of the nuclear age,” Trembanis said. “Our new findings provide insights into previously unknown conditions at Bikini and allow us to reflect on the lasting consequences from these and other tests.” https://www.livescience.com/mapping-reveals-bikini-atoll-nuclear-craters.html

December 12, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | OCEANIA, oceans, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

U.S. Congress members call on Trudeau to stop nuclear waste dumping near Great Lakes

Upton, Dingell, Kildee and Mitchell Appeal to Trudeau: No Nuclear Waste In the Great Lakes Basin, https://whtc.com/news/articles/2019/dec/10/upton-dingell-kildee-and-mitchell-appel-to-trudeau-no-nuclear-waste-in-the-great-lakes-basin/965368/ When U.S. Representatives Fred Upton and Debbie Dingell joined with a handful of other House members last Friday, Dec. 6, 2019, to decry plans by Canadian officials to put a nuclear waste storage site in the Great Lakes basin, they were hoping to shame Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into some kind of protective action.
Tuesday, December 10, 2019

But something else happened, Upton explained.

“We’ve got other members now, on a bipartisan basis, coming to us saying, ‘Hey, we want to sign that same letter,'” he said. “So we’re going to be doing another letter, a little bit later this week, that’ll have broader appeal. Because we were sort of under the gun when we learned the news late Friday afternoon.”

Upton and Dingell joined two other Michigan representatives, Paul Mitchell and Dan Kildee in signing a letter appealing to Trudeau to oppose any nuclear waste storage plans near the Great Lakes.

The complete text of last week’s letter:

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau:

We write to you out of deep concern regarding reports that Canada is moving closer to selecting a permanent national repository for harmful nuclear waste along the shores of the Great Lakes.

Allowing a permanent nuclear waste storage facility anywhere near the Great Lakes basin, for any amount of time, is a risk we cannot afford to take. The recent reporting also has us greatly concerned that the highest levels of radioactive waste would ultimately be stored at the proposed site.

We know that there are other Members of Congress representing districts in the Great Lakes basin who are most concerned by this development and will certainly be joining with us in the days ahead. This is a grave concern. These waters have long united us—they should not divide us.

In November, the Energy and Commerce Committee favorably advanced H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, to the House for final consideration and it included an important bipartisan amendment that expresses the Sense of Congress that the governments of the United States and Canada should not allow permanent or long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel or other radioactive waste near the Great Lakes. This amendment was unanimously supported and adopted.

We stand in strong opposition to any decision by the Canadian government to select or consider a permanent national repository for nuclear waste storage anywhere near the Great Lakes. This is a treasured natural resource each of our countries share and we urge you to stand with us to protect these waters for future generations. Thank you for your consideration of this important request and we look forward to a timely response.

December 12, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, environment, opposition to nuclear, USA, wastes | 4 Comments

Flammable hazard stalls LANL’s plutonium operations, waste shipments

Flammable hazard stalls LANL’s plutonium operations, waste shipments, Sante Fe New Mexican , By Scott Wyland , swyland@sfnewmexican.com

The lab suspended most waste generation and certification at its plutonium facility and halted all waste shipments after officials questioned the accuracy of documentation, particularly on how much calcium-and-salt residue remained in transuranic waste after processing, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent oversight panel, said in a Nov. 15 report that was publicly released Friday.

Calcium is used to help reduce oxidation in plutonium. Traces of the substance typically linger after processing, and if they are too high, they can ignite when exposed to open air, the report says…… https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/flammable-hazard-stalls-lanl-s-plutonium-operations-waste-shipments/article_dad5a96c-186c-11ea-ac96-a345865823f1.html

December 12, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

The Santa Susana nuclear waste scandal

The Nuclear Waste Dump Hiding in LA https://www.nrdc.org/experts/caroline-reiser/nuclear-waste-dump-hiding

December 09, 2019 Caroline Reiser I grew up in Los Angeles and work on nuclear safety, but I just learned recently that a nuclear reactor melted down in our area. In a shocking reminder of the perils of nuclear energy, that radioactive release (and releases from other nuclear work and rocket engine tests at the site) has left behind a toxic legacy. Federally-funded studies have found that contaminants have migrated offsite and there are markedly elevated rates for key cancers associated with proximity to the site.

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory was established seventy years ago as a remote site for work too dangerous to conduct near communities. It’s situated on a rise on the north-west end of the Los Angeles Valley. What was once sparsely inhabited is now a packed community of 150,000 living within five miles of the site and more than half a million people living within 10 miles.

To the north, the community of Simi Valley. To the south-west, Thousand Oaks. And to the east, Chatsworth, Canoga Park, and West Hills. From these suburban streets, the hills around Santa Susana provide a beautiful backdrop of round sandstone and golden grass. But the picturesque view hides a secret—the fact that Santa Susana Field Laboratory is one of the most contaminated sites in California.

The site is no longer active; that doesn’t mean it’s benign. Over the years Santa Susana hosted a variety of activities, including ten nuclear reactors, a rocket engine testing facility, and multiple open-air “burn pits” where radioactively and chemically contaminated items were “disposed of” through burning. These activities left their mark. In 1959, one of the nuclear reactors partially melted down, an incident that scientists estimate may have released more radioactive iodine than Three Mile Island. And rocket-engine testing released toxic chemicals like TCE, dioxins, PCBs, and heavy metals. Wind and rain, and fires like the Woolsey Fire that burned 80 percent of the site in 2018, continue to carry contaminates from the site into the neighborhoods that have grown up around it.

All of this history is known, and really, none of these facts are in dispute. That’s why community members like Melissa Bumstead and Lauren Hammersley (both of whose daughters had rare forms of cancer), community organizations like Physicians for Social Responsibility–Los Angeles and Committee to Bridge the Gap, and celebrities like Kim and Kourtney Kardashian have all been advocating on this issue. The Santa Susana Laboratory must be cleaned up, and cleaned up quickly. But the Trump administration is trying to walk away from its commitments, and that’s a clear danger to nearby residents.

Today, responsibility for the site is shared by Boeing, the Department of Energy, and NASA. Back in 2010, the Energy Department and NASA both signed legally binding agreements with California setting strict levels of cleanup to “background levels.” Essentially, this means cleanup to the condition the site was in before all of the pollution. The agreements also require the federal agencies obtain approval from California for all aspects of the cleanup. This was the right deal to make; NRDC strongly supported the deal then, and still does to this day.

But now the Department of Energy and NASA seem to be trying to shirk their obligations.

First, the Energy Department issued a Final Environmental Impact Statement for remediation of the areas of the Field Lab it is responsible for. This is a legally required document designed to set forth the harms for the public, as well as the plan to mitigate those harms. In this document, the Department acknowledges that most of what it is considering violates its agreement with California, but it provides one-sided assurance that it will negotiate these points with California. Then in September, the Energy Department issued decisions to demolish multiple buildings without California’s consent, directly contradicting the cleanup obligations spelled out in the agreement.

NASA seems to be taking a similar course; in October it published a supplemental environmental impact statement proposing alternatives that would leave most of the contamination not cleaned up, in violation of its agreement with California. Absurdly, NASA argues that each of the alternatives it considers provides the same health benefits even though all but one of the alternatives would abandon in place most of the contaminated soil. It presented this information at “public meetings” in November but called the police when members of the public tried to share their concerns that NASA’s alternatives would breach the agreement to reach the required “background levels.” In short, NASA is setting itself up to violate the binding cleanup standards set by California and doesn’t seem to want the public to know that’s what it’s doing.

But under their agreements with California, and also under the primary hazardous waste law, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Energy Department and NASA don’t have the authority to choose how much they must clean up and how much contamination they can abandon in place. This authority is California’s alone.

Luckily, the state of California is on top of it, closely monitoring the situation. Both the California EPA and the Department of Toxic Substances Control strongly reminded the Energy Department of its obligations and that the state would enforce the cleanup agreement. Should NASA follow through on any of the alternatives it has considered that would ignore its obligations, we are hopeful California stands ready again.

But enough is enough for all of this. The cleanup agreements are well thought out documents, have broad public support, and it’s readily apparent that the neighbors of Santa Susana Field Laboratory will continue to be at risk until the Department of Energy, NASA, and Boeing meet their full obligations to clean up the site. We stand beside California, local organizations, and community members to ensure that these toxic remnants will be removed and the site cleaned up so the nearby residents can live in safety and peace.

December 10, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | 2 Comments

It’s time to reset US nuclear waste policy

Life after Yucca Mountain: The time has come to reset US nuclear waste policy, The Hill, BY DAVID KLAUS AND ROD EWING, 12/09/19 After decades of inaction and stalemate, there are small but significant signs that the U.S. government may finally be ready to meet its legal commitment to manage and dispose of the more than 80,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel at 74 operating and shut-down commercial nuclear reactors sites in 35 states across the country. The signs of progress include:

Only a few weeks ago, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved bipartisan legislation to authorize the storage of used fuel at an NRC-licensed interim storage facility and provide funding for the development of a long-term repository.
Similar legislation has had hearings and is pending in the Senate, and less than a week after the House committee action Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) introduced a parallel bill to the House legislation and called on his colleagues for bipartisan support.
A comparable bill passed the House in the previous Congress by a vote of 340-72.

Congressional leadership on this issue includes Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in the Senate, as well as highly motivated members in the House.
The Trump administration’s last two budget proposals included funding for a spent fuel interim storage site, in addition to funding for Yucca Mountain.
Two private entities have filed license applications with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to construct and operate consolidated interim storage facilities, and the NRC is moving forward to process these applications……..

While the debate over the fate of Yucca Mountain is primarily responsible for the current standoff, pressure for action is increasing at the local level where closed plants and what to do with the spent fuel stored on site has become a particularly hot political issue. Seven U.S. reactors were permanently closed from 2013 through 2018 and an additional 13 are set to close by 2025. There are now 21 “stranded sites” scattered across the country – closed reactor sites with no ongoing reactor operations. Moreover, the number of plant closures is expected to increase as plants age and state regulators refuse to adopt rate structures that value the type of base load power provided by nuclear reactors.

There also is pressure for action at the national level. The failure of the U.S. government to take ownership of the spent fuel has cost the taxpayers $7.4 billion in damages paid to utilities for continued storage at their reactor sites — and costs are projected to increase as more reactors close. With government payments to utilities already running some $600 million per year, the government estimates the total cost may ultimately be as high as $34 billion. Industry estimates are in the range of $50 billion……

Perhaps most significant obstacle is the dysfunction in our current political system. In normal times, political compromise to address the most significant current problem – the growing amounts of spent fuel at closed reactor sites around the country – should be in reach. It is time to reset U.S. policy and accept that the Yucca Mountain site is not going to be licensed and built. Legislators working in good faith should be able to resolve the funding issue, develop a fair, consent-based process for selecting a site for a long-term spent fuel repository and amend federal law to no longer hold the development of a consolidated interim storage facility hostage to that process.

David Klaus formerly served, among other positions, as Deputy Under Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy and Counsel to the Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. He is an Affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Professor Rod Ewing is the co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and led a recent initiative – Reset of America’s Nuclear Waste Management Strategy and Policy. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/473627-life-after-yucca-mountain-the-time-has-come-to-reset#.Xe6gyaz6YH4.twitter

December 10, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Pentagon to get more control over the news? Is this a GOOD idea?

The Pentagon Wants More Control Over the News. What Could Go Wrong?The Pentagon is using a moral panic over “fake news” to gain influence over the domestic news landscape, Rolling Stone

By MATT TAIBBI 9 Dec 19, If there’s a worse idea than the Pentagon becoming Editor-in-Chief of America, I can’t remember it. But we’re getting there:

From Bloomberg over Labor Day weekend:

Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel “large-scale, automated disinformation attacks,” as the top Republican in Congress blocks efforts to protect the integrity of elections.

One of the Pentagon’s most secretive agencies, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is developing “custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips.”

Once upon a time, when progressives still reflexively distrusted the military, DARPA was a liberal punchline, known for helping invent the Internet but also for developing lunatic privacy-invading projects like LifeLog, a program to “gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees, or does.”

DARPA now is developing a semantic analysis program called “SemaFor” and an image analysis program called “MediFor,” ostensibly designed to prevent the use of fake images or text. The idea would be to develop these technologies to help private Internet providers sift through content. …..

Stories about the need for such technologies are always couched as responses to the “fake news” problem. Unfortunately, “fake news” is a poorly-defined, amorphous concept that the public has been trained to fear without really understanding. …….

Fake news has a long history in America. Its most pernicious incarnation is never the work of small-time scam artists. The worst “fake news” almost always involves broad-scale deceptions foisted on the public by official (and often unnamed) sources, in conjunction with oligopolistic media companies, usually in service of rallying the public behind a dubious policy objective like a war or authoritarian crackdown.

From the sinking of the Maine in 1898, to rumors of a union-led socialist insurrection before the Palmer raids in 1919, to the Missile Gap in the late fifties and early sixties (here is the CIA’s own website admitting that one was “erroneous”), to the Gulf of Tonkin lie that launched the Vietnam War, to the more recent WMD fiasco, true “fake news” is a concerted, organized, institutional phenomenon that involves deceptions cooked up at the highest levels. ……

the final, omnipresent ingredient in most major propaganda campaigns is the authoritarian solution. Here, it’s unelected, unsupervised algorithmic control over media. We’ve never had a true news regulator in this country, yet the public is being conditioned now to accept one, without thinking of the consequences.

The most enormous issue posed by the modern media landscape is the industry’s incredible concentration, which allows a handful of private platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Google – to dominate media distribution.

This makes it possible to envisage direct levers of control over the public’s media habits that never existed back when people got much of their news from local paper chains with individual distribution networks. We’ve already seen scary examples of misidentified foreign subversion, from the Washington Post’s repeat editorials denouncing Bernie Sanders as a useful idiot for the Kremlin to the zapping of hundreds of domestic political sites as “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

What if the same people who can’t tell the difference between Truthdig and Pravda get to help design the new fake news algorithms? That’s a much bigger worry than the next Paul Horner or even, frankly, the next Russian Facebook campaign. While Donald Trump is in the White House, progressives won’t grasp how scary all of this is, but bet on it: In a few years, we’ll all wish we paid more attention when the Pentagon announced it wanted in on the news regulation business. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/darpa-fake-news-internet-censorship-879671/