NORTH AMERICA « nuclear-news

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The site is no longer active; that doesn’t mean it’s benign.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/

December 8, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ontario’s First Nations to vote on nuclear waste plan near Lake Huron

First Nation vote on nuclear waste DGR set for Jan. 31 https://london.ctvnews.ca/first-nation-vote-on-nuclear-waste-dgr-set-for-jan-31-1.4718866 Scott MillerVideographer @ScottMillerCTV Contact

Friday, December 6, 2019 WINGHAM, ONT. — The Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) will decide if nuclear waste is buried along the shores of Lake Huron in a little over a month.The First Nation band of approximately 5,000 will hold a binding vote on Jan. 31, 2020 to find out if their members want Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to bury 230,000 cubic metres of low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste under part of the Bruce Power site near Kincardine, or not.

Officials say whatever the people decide, that will be the band’s position on the proposed Deep Geological Repository (DGR).

If they vote yes, OPG would still require federal government approval to move forward with the project.

If SON votes no, OPG says they’ll start looking for an alternative site in Ontario.

There are over 200 resolutions opposing the project, from municipal councils within the Great Lakes Basin, in Canada and the United States.

Councils in nearby Bruce County have declared their support for the project.

December 8, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

To store Canada’s nuclear wastes close to Lake Huron – the worst of the worst

Site near Lake Huron one of two finalists to store Canada’s nuclear waste, Herald Mail Media, By Keith Matheny Detroit Free Press (TNS), Dec 8, 2019

Canada has narrowed to two communities its list of potential hosts for a permanent national repository for its most radioactive waste — spent fuel from nuclear power generation. And one of those two finalists is on the shores of Lake Huron.

If chosen, Huron-Kinloss/South Bruce, in Bruce County, Ontario, could host a large repository, 1,650 feet or more underground, to which the entire nation’s spent nuclear fuel supply would be transported and stored, essentially forever.

“This is the worst of the worst” waste, said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist with the nonprofit Beyond Nuclear, based in Tacoma Park, Md.

“It’s highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel. It is dangerous forever.”……

Canada has an inventory of almost 2.9 million used nuclear fuel bundles currently stored above-ground in wet pools and dry containers at the nuclear plant sites where the waste is generated. That’s about 128 million pounds of highly radioactive material, a number that is growing.

The site along Lake Huron is in the same county where another underground storage facility — this one for low-to-intermediate-level radioactive waste from Ontario’s 19 nuclear reactors — was proposed. That plan, still under consideration, generated loud opposition throughout the Great Lakes Basin beginning about five years ago, especially in Michigan.

Michigan’s Democratic U.S. senators, who were among those urging a halt to the lower-radiation waste storage on the Great Lakes, expressed alarm that Canada is now considering putting its most dangerous nuclear wastes along the Great Lakes as well.

“This makes no sense,” U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow said.

“Canada has as much at stake as we do in protecting our Great Lakes. There is no justification for a nuclear waste site so close to Lake Huron to even be under consideration.”

Stabenow said she would reach out to the Canadian government regarding the issue.

U.S. Sen. Gary Peters noted that the Great Lakes provide drinking water to 40 million people on the U.S. and Canadian sides.

“That’s why we need to do everything we can to protect the Great Lakes for future generations,” he said. “I am extremely concerned about the possibility of hazardous nuclear waste being stored near the Great Lakes. Any accident could have catastrophic and long-term consequences to the health and well-being of Michigan and the country. I urge the Nuclear Waste Management Organization in Canada to reconsider naming a finalist location so close to the Great Lakes.”

The finalist decision was made by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, which consists of the nation’s generators of nuclear power and its wastes: Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power Corp. and Hydro-Quebec. Under an act of Canada’s parliament in 2002, the organization is tasked with designing and implementing Canada’s plan for the safe, long-term management of used nuclear fuel. ……

The sites were winnowed to five last month, and last week, the organization decided on its two finalists: Huron-Kinloss/South Bruce and Ignace, a rural community in northwest Ontario about 150 miles north of western Lake Superior…..

Bruce County is home to Ontario Power Generation’s Bruce Nuclear Generation Station, which has eight reactors.

“You have a company town, Kincardine Ontario, with one of the largest nuclear plants on Earth,” said Brennain Lloyd, project coordinator for NorthWatch, a regional coalition in northeast Ontario that works on regional issues.Many area residents, with family ties to the nuclear plant, expressed support for the low-to-intermediate radioactive waste repository, and would have an economic interest in the spent fuel disposal site, Lloyd noted.

“Everybody who drinks Great Lakes water is being held hostage to the decision-making of these few thousand people,” she said.

While several nations, including France, Sweden and Finland, are at various stages of designing deep geologic repositories for their spent nuclear fuel, there has not yet been any proof, anywhere, that the concept works over the very long term, said Gordon Edwards, president of the nonprofit Canadian Citizens for Environmental Responsibility, based in Montreal. …..

Belfadhel said the completed repository site would have on-site monitoring for “over 100 years.” Edwards said that’s a pittance of what will be needed.

“The pyramids of Egypt are only 5,000 years old; the Great Lakes are only about 10,000 years old, created by the last Ice Age,” he said. “The idea that we can create structures that can last longer than the lifetime of the Great Lakes since they were first created is very presumptuous.”

Another problem is transporting highly radioactive spent fuel to the site, Kamps said.

“Are they going to use barges on the Great Lakes? What if they sink?” he said.

“If not barges, are they going to use trains and trucks? What if they crash? What if they are attacked by terrorists? If there are releases, it’s probably going into the lakes.

“You’re talking about concentrating 22 reactors’ worth of spent fuel. If you’re going to concentrate that much radioactivity in one place, terrorists might consider attacking it for the ultimate dirty bomb on the planet. ……

The proposal to store the most dangerous waste in the world near the Great Lakes should not even be considered, Edwards said.

“The people who previously expressed themselves against the low and intermediate-level waste dump need to rise up again,” he said. “All of the high-level waste from all of Canada’s nuclear reactors, it’s ridiculous to put it right beside the Great Lakes. It’s millions of times more radioactive than the low and intermediate level waste.” https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/nation/site-near-lake-huron-one-of-two-finalists-to-store/article_a98ff7b8-3b2f-52e7-b55c-c21a6e9d12ca.html

December 8, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Magical thinking of the nuclear lobby as it jumps on the Green New Deal bandwagon

Unfortunately, the case for nuclear as a green technology is not so simple—the technology faces a spate of environmental and economic challenges, while its track record as a bridge fuel shows it may be more rivalrous than concomitant with renewables. In fact, it may be the nuclear industry that needs the Green New Deal, not the other way around.

For as long as it’s existed, nuclear has been an aspirational technology as much as an extant one

the magical thinking of the nuclear industry has taken different forms. Over decades, breeder reactors, salt reactors, large-scale fusion have all been the nuclear future just over the horizon. “The industry that people talk about is a theoretical industry,” says Jaczko. “The actual industry is not that.”

So the enthusiasm for the public investment of the Green New Deal is primarily a tactical one, with the promise of a massive outlay of public funds enticing an industry in need of a lifeline.

The Tantalizing Nuclear Mirage, Many see nuclear power as a necessary part of any carbon-neutral mix. The reality isn’t so simple. The American Prospect, BY ALEXANDER SAMMON DECEMBER 5, 2019

It took seven months on the campaign trail for Cory Booker to emerge as the Democratic Party’s foremost champion of nuclear power. In September, after he unveiled a signature climate plan replete with “$20 billion dedicated to research, development and demonstration of next-generation advanced nuclear energy,” he embraced the technology with unprecedented ardor. “I didn’t come to the United States Senate as a big nuclear guy,” Booker told Grist in an interview. “But when I started looking at the urgency of climate change … nuclear has to be a part of the blend.”

To hear Booker tell it, his evolution on the subject was the product of scientific rigor and anti-ideological clarity on decarbonization. He related this narrative during a media blitz, comparing anti-nuclear Democrats to Republican climate deniers over their rejection of an incontrovertible science, while pledging to usher in a nuclear future that no right-minded person could deny. “Where the science is going, to me, at first sounded like science fiction … new nuclear actually portends of exciting things where you have no risk of the kinds of meltdowns we’re seeing,” he proclaimed at CNN’s climate town hall.

Grandiosity aside, Booker isn’t alone in his nuclear embrace. He’s part of an unlikely pro-nuclear political alliance, an emergent accord that spans the centrist think tank Third Way, Andrew Yang, Jay Inslee, environmental activists, and progressive commentators alike. “The left should stop worrying and learn to love existing nuclear power plants,” wrote New York’s Eric Levitz in a subsequent send-up of Bernie Sanders’s and Elizabeth Warren’s twin commitments to phase out the technology.

In a world where the rapid deployment of zero-carbon energy production is urgent, nuclear power, the argument goes, represents the only proven bet.

……..With 11 years, per the U.N.’s 2018 IPCC report, to overhaul our energy system, to be serious about decarbonization is to find a place at the table for nuclear.

It’s an alluring idea. Already, this logic has been embraced in states like Ohio and Booker’s New Jersey, which have been allocating green tax subsidies to nuclear projects. And while it’s largely played out in the background, the question of what to do about nuclear has vexed Green New Dealers since the rollout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s framework in February. While plane travel and hamburgers raised hackles in the press, one of the first clauses to be deleted from the initial proposal pledged to phase out the technology altogether.

So does the Green New Deal need nuclear to achieve its lofty goals? Does zero-carbon energy infrastructure necessitate a nuclear buildout, or at least an embrace of already-existing nuclear as a bridge fuel, as countries like Sweden have done? Unfortunately, the case for nuclear as a green technology is not so simple—the technology faces a spate of environmental and economic challenges, while its track record as a bridge fuel shows it may be more rivalrous than concomitant with renewables. In fact, it may be the nuclear industry that needs the Green New Deal, not the other way around.

DESPITE THE NEWFOUND exigency of overhauling the country’s energy mix, this is not the first time America’s energy system has arrived at a crossroads in the last ten years, nor is it the first time nuclear has been trotted out as its last, best hope. In the late aughts, with oil prices soaring and production stagnant, policymakers made a commitment to expanding American nuclear generation. An era of so-called “nuclear renaissance” began, with four next-generation reactors commissioned at two plants, one in Georgia and the other in South Carolina.

Now, over a decade later, that project managed to bankrupt its construction company, Westinghouse, nearly taking down the entire Toshiba conglomerate, Westinghouse’s parent company, with it. The two reactors in South Carolina were abandoned, while the Southern Nuclear and Georgia Power utility companies assumed control of the remaining two reactors in Georgia, the Vogtle 3 and 4. But even a cash infusion from Georgia ratepayers, who began subsidizing the completion of the project in 2011, was not enough to keep the project close to its budget or timeline. Initially expected to come online in 2016-2017, the Vogtle plant has run some $14 billion over budget. Its completion dates have been deferred to 2021-2022. There’s currently no other active nuclear development in the United States.

That timeline should be particularly alarming for nuclear enthusiasts………

WHEN DID NUCLEAR get this environmental rebrand? Until very recently, the industry hadn’t led with its environmental chops. In fact, for years, nuclear buddied up with the coal industry, courting the Trump administration for subsidies, while the Nuclear Energy Institute supported the Department of Energy’s failed coal and nuclear bailout, and lauded Ohio’s controversial coal and nuclear subsidy package earlier this year.

For as long as it’s existed, nuclear has been an aspirational technology as much as an extant one. Since Eisenhower first announced nuclear energy generation as a civilian project in 1953, its promises of worldwide abundance have far outpaced its production. Twenty years later, in 1973, Richard Nixon pledged to have 1,000 nuclear plants online by 1980, a goal that never approached realization. Since then, the magical thinking of the nuclear industry has taken different forms. Over decades, breeder reactors, salt reactors, large-scale fusion have all been the nuclear future just over the horizon. “The industry that people talk about is a theoretical industry,” says Jaczko. “The actual industry is not that.” Since the development of nuclear weapons, the non-military nuclear energy program has always been a PR charge as much as it was a serious proposal. “Historians have determined that the rollout of civilian nuclear power in the 1960s had as much to do with Cold War PR as the need for electricity,” says Brown.

Nuclear’s pivot to unlikely environmental champion and running mate of the Green New Deal is far from a happy accident. It’s a deliberate posture, informed as much by shrewd marketing as Booker’s data-driven rationale. With the rapid development of solar and wind, nuclear is now far more expensive to produce in terms of dollars per kilowatt hour. With the rapid growth of renewables, nuclear now finds itself on the wrong side of free-market forces, in dire need of public subsidy to stay afloat.

So the enthusiasm for the public investment of the Green New Deal is primarily a tactical one, with the promise of a massive outlay of public funds enticing an industry in need of a lifeline. “Of course the nuclear industry is trying new alliances; they are desperate.” says Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. Cutting them in would be an unforced error for GND legislation—the money that would be spent making nuclear viable, shielding it from an array of climate disasters, and figuring out what to do with its waste would be much better spent figuring out battery storage or something else to stitch in the gaps in renewable generation.

Looking closer at Booker’s proposal, it’s not clear even he believes the sales pitch he’s making. Despite his lofty pronouncements, the climate plan, which sums to $3 trillion, allocates just two-thirds of 1 percent to nuclear development. The $20 billion is barely enough to cover the cost overruns of the two reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle plant. The notion that such a paltry sum would finally put the industry over the top after decades of malaise, indeed, sounds like science fiction. https://prospect.org/greennewdeal/the-tantalizing-nuclear-mirage/

December 7, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | election USA 2020 | Leave a comment

Florida nuclear station gets license for 80 Years

FPL’s Turkey Point first US nuclear plant to get license out to 80 years, Utility Dive, By Kavya Balaraman Dec. 7 2019,

Dive Brief:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Wednesday authorized a subsequent license renewal for two units of the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating facility in Florida, marking the first time a reactor’s lifespan has been extended from 60 to 80 years.
Units 3 and 4 of the nuclear facility, located 20 miles south of Miami, are now licensed until July 19, 2052, and April 10, 2053, respectively.
Nuclear advocates hailed the decision as a “significant milestone” in the industry’s history, and an important part of decarbonization efforts. But a spokesman for Friends of the Earth called the decision “an example of the complete failure of the regulator to do its job.”

The majority of nuclear power plants in the U.S. are currently on a renewed license — extending their initial 40-year operational lifespan to 60 — but as more reach the 60-year mark, the NRC is gearing up for “subsequent license renewals,” which would authorize the plants to operate for another two decades. …….

Damon Moglen, senior strategic advisor of the Climate and Energy Program at Friends of the Earth, called the development “a licensing disaster waiting to happen.” The Turkey Point facility remains vulnerable to climate change, he said, and the region is expected to experience rising sea levels by the 2050s.

This decision in no way serves the public and the environment, it only serves the interest of a very precise industry looking to protect its profits,” he said. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/fpls-turkey-point-first-us-nuclear-plant-to-get-license-out-to-80-years/568593/

December 7, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Paducah, Kentucky – its nuclear waste tragedy is compounded by climate change

“I never said a bad thing about the plant the whole time I was growing up,” Lamb said. “It made the economy good. But then we got sick.”

“People who were not highly educated could make really good money working in these industries

“Not only that but the government was saying, this is your patriotic duty. We need this. So everybody just went along because the compensation was pretty good.”

a GAO report released in November showed that 60 percent of U.S. Superfund sites are at risk from the impacts of climate change.

Instead of focusing on cleanup plans, some state lawmakers and federal agencies are loosening regulations on hazardous sites…… Last year, the DOE also moved to relax restrictions on the disposal and abandonment of radioactive waste

Nuclear waste in Paducah, Kentucky poses extra threat to region facing historic flooding, Scalawag, Austyn Gaffney, 4 Nov 19, “…….. the 750-acre Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Built in a horseshoe bend of the Ohio River, the plant was the last uranium enrichment facility for nuclear fuel and weaponry in the U.S. before it shuttered its 50-year operation in 2013. It turned a solid — uranium — into a gas called uranium hexafluoride, or UF-6, which was then shipped off to facilities like Oak Ridge in Tennessee (infamous for its role in the Manhattan Project). Due to the presence of hazardous and radioactive wastes contaminating soil, groundwater and surface water, the Environmental Protection Agency added the plant to its Superfund National Priorities List in 1994. ……..

For over half a century, the plant was Paducah’s main employer, providing up to 7,000 jobs in a place where nearly a quarter of people now live in poverty. But poor working conditions and unregulated waste disposal also harmed Paducah residents. The legacy of these problems have cost the town and taxpayers. Despite multiple recommendations from a watchdog government agency, the Department of Energy is decades behind schedule on cleanup efforts.

Some experts say the federal government doesn’t know the full cost or scope of what cleaning them up will entail, and that becomes more complicated with more frequent extreme weather. It’s a problem Superfund sites — and especially nuclear waste sites — around the country face.Lynn said there’s a lot of secrecy surrounding the cleanup, as well as the health risks that may be associated with it. He’s just one Paducah resident, along with a slew of former workers, who say they’ve been left in the dark about problems with a complex cleanup. ….

There are 16 nuclear sites still managed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) across the country — from Vermont to Washington, Nevada to South Carolina — most of them built between the 1940s and 1950s. Some created nuclear defense materials like plutonium — a core ingredient in atomic bombs that is 100,000 times as radioactive as uranium and can cause liver, lung, and bone cancer.

The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant was one of the smallest projects in the U.S. When the plant was built in 1952, the town proudly adopted a new moniker: “Atomic City.” While gaseous diffusion was the public face of the plant, there were other operations, including programs with NASA, storing defunct materials from Oak Ridge, and work for Sandia, a nuclear security laboratory. By the early 1990s, many of the plants, including Paducah, had started transitioning to produce uranium for the nuclear power reactors that now provide a fifth of U.S. electricity generation.

“People who were not highly educated could make really good money working in these industries so you could have a good house, a boat, a couple of cars, raise your kids and send them to college,” said Mark Donham, who used to manage the DOE’s Citizens Advisory Board, which helps the agency monitor the plant’s environmental remediation. “Not only that but the government was saying, this is your patriotic duty. We need this. So everybody just went along because the compensation was pretty good.”

However, a 1999 investigation by The Washington Post revealed the federal government used the plant to illegally recycle over 103,000 tons of used nuclear reactor fuel containing plutonium and other transuranics — man-made heavy metals derived from splitting atoms. The same year, workers filed a $10 billion class action lawsuit against three federal government contractors that led to the passage of a federal law intended to compensate current and former employees (or their survivors) for exposure to cancer-causing radiation.

Greg Landhorff, a utilities worker at the plant for 30 years, wasn’t involved in the lawsuit, but said he was exposed to “all kinds of different chemicals.” He said the exposure was an open secret, and workers weren’t given proper equipment or training. He claims operators told him about the exposure when he was hired, but didn’t report it because they didn’t want to lose their jobs. Landhorff now rattles off his health issues like a grocery list: beryllium disease, COPD, chronic bronchitis, and skin cancer.

Although the plant closed in 2013, hundreds of people still work on site. Nuclear sites often function like small towns, with wastewater treatment and steam plants, sewers, landfills and lagoons, administrative offices, enormous water towers, and medical centers. David Trimble, director of the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, said 30 to 60 percent of the DOE’s cleanup budget goes toward these “recurring activities.” The same is true for Paducah: Dawn Harris-Young, a spokesperson for the southeast regional EPA, said that only a “small fraction” goes toward environmental cleanup post-closure. This means that until the site is torn down, day-to-day operation often takes up more of the DOE’s cleanup budget than the necessary environmental remediation.

The DOE has demolished 84 facilities, removed over 66 million pounds of contaminated scrap material, and dug up over a million cubic feet of contaminated soil. While there is no official estimation of how much contaminated material remains, at least 400 buildings — and everything inside them — still need to be decontaminated and demolished at the Paducah site.

The DOE requested $277 million specifically for Paducah in 2020, despite its budget for nuclear cleanup shrinking by $50 million in the last five years. But it’s still a small fraction of the budget DOE will need: cleanup isn’t expected to be completed until 2065, and the EPA has said it could take even longer because of the lack of knowledge about sources of contamination and the vast size of the facility. The waste at Paducah includes the gaseous diffusion plant, buried radioactive disposal sites, and waste leftover from neighboring nuclear sites in Ohio and Tennessee. It also includes over 52,000 cylinders of uranium hexafluoride, or spent uranium fuel, much of it from Oak Ridge.

But there is still no solution for how to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, except to bury it. In recent decades, federal and state regulators have strategized for the remediation of these sites. But some have faced major problems like fires, radioactive leaks, and spills. According to Rodney Ewing, nuclear security expert at Stanford University, “there’s no path forward” to dispose of uranium hexafluoride, either. “That’s why they’re still stored in tanks out back,” he said.

When the leaves fall on Ronald Lamb’s property, he can see the water tower and the grey siding of facility buildings at the Paducah plant just two miles away. On the road near Big Bayou Creek, which runs through both the plant and his 120-acre property, signs warn against getting in the water. His well is padlocked because of groundwater contamination from trichloroethylene, or TCE — a degreaser used to clean uranium equipment — which can impact childhood development, damage the central nervous system, and is linked to cancer. Lamb said the well water left his family with severe gastrointestinal problems.

“I never said a bad thing about the plant the whole time I was growing up,” Lamb said. “It made the economy good. But then we got sick.”

DOE officials report that the agency has cleaned over four billion gallons of contaminated groundwater through a pump and treat system, but two toxic plumes of TCE still flow through four miles of groundwater that lead to the Ohio River.

The DOE lacks a national strategy for nuclear cleanup, instead relying on site managers to contract with companies that manage, operate, and cleanup nuclear facilities. The Paducah cleanup is now being managed by Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership, a conglomeration of companies hired by the DOE for soil and groundwater remediation. One of them is Jacobs Engineering, a contractor that was sued for exposing hundreds of workers to toxic substances during cleanup of the nation’s largest coal ash spill in Tennessee; more than 40 have died. At least three other nuclear sites — Oak Ridge, Hanford in Washington, and Savannah River in South Carolina — have also contracted with Jacobs. (Jacobs Engineering declined an interview for this story.)

The DOE also declined to answer questions but said the agency was committed to the safe remediation of the plant and that they “look forward to continuing successful cleanup efforts in the future.” The agency works with the Citizens Advisory Board — a group of community members who apply and are appointed as well as liaisons from Kentucky and the regional EPA office — on environmental management at the Paducah site, including the monitoring of groundwater and planning for the site’s future use. Lamb advocated for the board many years ago, and the bi-monthly meetings are supposed to serve as a public comment period.

The board doesn’t have any power beyond giving recommendations to the agency, and current and former members are divided about its effectiveness. Lesley Davis joined for about a year in 2016; her grandfather had worked at the plant and died of cancer. “It was informational at times, but it didn’t feel like it was making much of a difference,” she said. “In hindsight, it felt like they were trying to keep a good public face.”……..

In February, Paducah put up its floodgates, families stacked sandbags, and the bridge over the Ohio River to Illinois closed as floodwaters as rains drowned the region. According to local news stations, highway crews reported so much water they had trouble setting up warning signs. Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin declared a statewide emergency due to heavy rainfall and flooding.

The Ohio River, three miles north of the Paducah plant, had record flooding in 2018 and 2019. Record flooding this year across the Midwest hit eight Superfund sites, and a GAO report released in November showed that 60 percent of U.S. Superfund sites are at risk from the impacts of climate change. By mid-century, there will be heavier rainfall, increased flooding, and more intense hurricanes in the Southeast, which has nearly a quarter of the 1,335 active Superfund sites on the EPA’s National Priority List.

……… The Green New Deal resolution, which has not yet passed through the U.S. House of Representatives, identified cleaning up brownfields — contaminated sites previously used for development — and hazardous waste sites like Paducah as a key priority in restoring the American landscape — but there’s not yet a road map for that plan. While underground waste repositories may provide a solution, Ewing said that over the long term, the changing climate could make it more challenging: in a wetter environment, the amount of water leaking through the rock over the repository could be expected to increase.

Instead of focusing on cleanup plans, some state lawmakers and federal agencies are loosening regulations on hazardous sites. In 2017, Kentucky passed a bill lifting a nuclear moratorium, a move that some hope will turn the site into a research facility or nuclear reactor; the law loosens the requirements for toxic waste management. Last year, the DOE also moved to relax restrictions on the disposal and abandonment of radioactive waste………..https://www.scalawagmagazine.org/2019/12/nuclear-waste-paducah-kentucky/ .

December 5, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, investigative journalism, Reference, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors – many pitfalls, including security risks

‘Many issues’ with modular nuclear reactors says environmental lawyer, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/many-issues-modular-nuclear-1.5381804

Three premiers have agreed to work together to develop the technology, Jordan Gill · CBC News Dec 03, 2019 Modular nuclear reactors may not be a cure for the nation’s carbon woes, an environmental lawyer said in reaction to an idea floated by three premiers.

Theresa McClenaghan, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association, said the technology surrounding small reactors has numerous pitfalls, especially when compared with other renewable energy technology.

This comes after New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Ontario Premier Doug Ford agreed to work together to develop the technology.

Small modular reactors are easy to construct, are safer than large reactors and are regarded as cleaner energy than coal, the premiers say. They can be small enough to fit in a school gym. Designs have been submitted to Canada’s nuclear regulator for review as part of a pre-licensing process.

The premiers say the smaller reactors would help Canada reach its carbon reduction targets but McClenaghan, legal counsel for the environmental group, disagrees.

“I don’t think it is the answer,” said McClenaghan. “I don’t think it’s a viable solution to climate change.”

McClenaghan said the technology behind modular reactors is still in the development stage and needs years of work before it can be used on a wide scale.

“There are many issues still with the technology,” said McClenaghan. “And for climate change, the risks are so pervasive and the time scale is so short that we need to deploy the solutions we already know about like renewables and conservation.”

Waste, security concerns: lawyer

While nuclear power is considered a low-carbon method of producing electricity, McClenaghan said the waste that it creates brings its own environmental concerns.

“You’re still creating radioactive waste,” said McClenaghan.

“We don’t even have a solution to nuclear fuel waste yet in Canada and the existing plans are not taking into account these possibilities.”

McClenanghan believes there are national security risks with the plan as well. She said having more reactors, especially if they’re in rural areas, means there’s a greater chance that waste or fuel from the reactors could be stolen for nefarious purposes.

“You’d be scattering radioactive materials, potentially attractive to diversion, much further across the country,” said the environmental lawyer.

December 5, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Chaos ahead in international relations due to Trump’s chaotic nuclear weapons policies

Trump runs dangerous and chaotic approach toward nuclear weapons, https://thehill.com/opinion/international/472841-trump-runs-dangerous-and-chaotic-approach-toward-nuclear-weapons

BY LAURA KENNEDY, — 12/03/19 The decision to abruptly withdraw United States forces from Syria is one of the most recent dangerous illustrations of the flawed foreign policy of President Trump and the chaos it has generated abroad. As a diplomat who served for nearly 40 years and under seven presidents, I am aware of how these impulsive and undisciplined actions have left allies reeling with American interests hobbled. His approach toward nuclear weapons and arms control is similar, but with even graver possible consequences.

His nuclear agenda reflects the same pattern of alliance mismanagement, American unreliability, and chaotic decision making. Instead of bailing on bilateral and multilateral arms control efforts, the United States should preserve remaining treaties like the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the observation regime offered by the Open Skies Treaty, which promote our interests abroad and avoid introducing destabilizing and unnecessary nuclear weapons in a heated international competition.

The Iran nuclear deal was the first nonproliferation agreement to be axed by Trump, followed by the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. By recklessly withdrawing from the successful limits imposed on the Iranian nuclear program, Trump undercut our reliability with some of our closest allies and raised global tensions. Withdrawing from the latter agreement rather than continuing efforts to resolve violations by Moscow has shifted the onus away from Russia while removing constraints. The insecurity from withdrawal of these agreements is exacerbated by the prospect of blowing up the other key foundations of our arms control architecture.

Next may be the Open Skies Treaty. It is a useful transparency regime which was instituted by the United States and 33 other nations. The agreement allows these nations to conduct observation flyovers of the territories of each of the signatories, providing critical insight into military deployments and possible military buildups. While some might argue that new technology makes such flyovers unnecessary, that overlooks the advantage offered by the framework. It is difficult to ignore evidence when all states have access to the same intelligence. Leaving this deal would end those benefits, poorly serve Ukraine, and send yet another message to our allies and adversaries of our diplomatic unsteadiness.

Such a counterproductive step would be massively compounded if the United States does not extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which caps American and Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons and is set to expire in early 2021. The predictability, transparency, and access it provides is unparalleled.While some might argue that new technology makes such flyovers unnecessary, that overlooks the advantage offered by the framework. It is difficult to ignore evidence when all states have access to the same intelligence. Leaving this deal would end those benefits, poorly serve Ukraine, and send yet another message to our allies and adversaries of our diplomatic unsteadiness.

Such a counterproductive step would be massively compounded if the United States does not extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which caps American and Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons and is set to expire in early 2021. The predictability, transparency, and access it provides is unparalleled. Its regime of notifications, information exchange, and onsite inspections has been lauded on both sides of the aisle and by numerous military and civilian officials. In addition to losing this level of certainty on Russian strategic nuclear weapons, the United States could face an expensive and destabilizing arms race, beyond the major $1 trillion nuclear program already authorized by President Obama.

In fact, the Trump administration has called for the development of a new “low yield” submarine launched ballistic missile deemed more “usable” for the military. Critics argue it would be difficult to distinguish from existing high yield variants and would increase the risk of nuclear miscalculation. The House has included a provision in the annual defense authorization bill earlier this year that prohibits the deployment of such a submarine weapon. As the conference negotiations continue, the Senate ought to recognize the risks of this unnecessary and destabilizing addition to our already massive nuclear arsenal and ensure it remains in the final bill.

Russia and China indeed pose risks, and we must seek to have serious strategic dialogues with both. But as we pursue such talks, we should use them to build on existing agreements, most notably the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and not scrap historical agreements in favor of a complex new effort to include additional weapons and actors such as China. Such a comprehensive deal, which the Trump administration says it is pursuing, would take years to negotiate. Russia does not believe there is time to negotiate a new arms control agreement prior to the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and China has emphatically rejected joining such a trilateral endeavor. Any potential negotiations are further complicated by the fact that the State Department has dumped its under secretary and assistant secretary in charge of arms control policy.

When it comes to international agreements, ignoring legislative, military, and civilian expert advice and picking fights with American allies leads to chaos, frayed alliances, and increased instability, as we have witnessed in Syria, Ukraine, Turkey, and across the world. The United States simply cannot afford to let that happen when it comes to nuclear weapons.

Laura Kennedy is a member of the board of directors of Foreign Policy for America. She served as United States permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, was a diplomat for the United States Mission to International Organizations, and served as the deputy assistant secretary for European Affairs with the Department of State.

December 5, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

NRC Approves Transfer of Nuclear Plant Operating Licenses From FirstEnergy Solutions to Energy Harbor,

NRC Approves Transfer of Nuclear Plant Operating Licenses From FirstEnergy Solutions to Energy Harbor, On November 25, FES announced that it will change its corporate name to Energy Harbor when its restructuring process is completed.AKRON, Ohio, Dec. 4, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — FirstEnergy Solutions (FES) announced today that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved the transfer of the operating licenses for the Davis-Besse, Perry and Beaver Valley nuclear power stations from the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) to Energy Harbor Nuclear upon the company’s successful emergence from restructuring.

On November 25, FES announced that it will change its corporate name to Energy Harbor when its restr

completed…..https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nrc-approves-transfer-nuclear-plant-140000164.html

December 5, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Support candidates in 2020 who will work for nuclear disarmament

Support candidates in 2020 who will work for nuclear disarmament, https://www.thetimesnews.com/opinion/20191202/letter-support-candidates-in-2020-who-will-work-for-nuclear-disarmament?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter Anne Cassebaum It was good to hear Mikhail Gorbachev given some air time to speak of the unspoken. Current tension and permanent war, he warned, make the danger of nuclear weapons “colossal.”Nuclear weapons rarely make the news; recent worry about ours in Turkey was fleeting, so the danger is pushed back in many Americans’ consciousness. The result: Pentagon spending balloons, and the Trump administration carries forward President Obama’s plan to modernize our nuclear forces.

Modernization may sound good and even inevitable; it is neither. In fact, it will set off a new arms race of smaller nuclear weapons that are, imagine, “more usable.” And smaller means reduced to Hiroshima and Nagasaki-sized bombs that killed more than 200,000 people.

The price tag for this 30-year modernization is $1.2 trillion and rising. The beneficiaries will be weapons producers, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, for whom the Pentagon budget acts as an ATM, as one researcher quipped.

We could be pursuing disarmament treaties and diplomacy. Money siphoned for endless oil wars and weapons buildup could instead create jobs in green energy and deal with climate change, which, like radioactivity, respects no borders.

Any nuclear exchange would be a climate crisis of its own. As Gorbachev put it, ” … nuclear weapons should be destroyed. This is to save ourselves and our planet.”

The 2020 elections offer a time to consider candidates who see a new arms race as insanity, not security.

December 3, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | election USA 2020 | Leave a comment

Prominent Americans to wage ‘World War Zero’ against climate change

John Kerry Launches Star-Studded Climate Coalition, NYT, By Lisa Friedman, Nov. 30, 2019 WASHINGTON — John Kerry, the former senator and secretary of state, has formed a new bipartisan coalition of world leaders, military brass and Hollywood celebrities to push for public action to combat climate change.

The name, World War Zero, is supposed to evoke both the national security threat posed by the earth’s warming and the type of wartime mobilization that Mr. Kerry argued would be needed to stop the rise in carbon emissions before 2050.

The star-studded group is supposed to win over those skeptical of the policies that would be needed to accomplish that.

Former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are part of the effort. Moderate Republican lawmakers like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, and John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio, are on the list. Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sting and Ashton Kutcher round out the roster of more than 60 founding members.

The star-studded group is supposed to win over those skeptical of the policies that would be needed to accomplish that.

“We’re going to try to reach millions of people, Americans and people in other parts of the world, in order to mobilize an army of people who are going to demand action now on climate change sufficient to meet the challenge,” Mr. Kerry said in an interview.

The launch of the new group on Sunday comes as diplomats gather in Madrid on Monday for global climate negotiations aimed at strengthening the 2015 Paris Agreement, from which President Trump has vowed to withdraw next year. Earlier this week the United Nations found that the world’s richest countries, responsible for emitting more than three-fourths of planet-warming pollution, are not doing enough to keep Earth’s temperature from rising to dangerously high levels. Net carbon emissions from the two largest polluters, the United States and China, are expanding……….. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/climate/john-kerry-climate-change.html?smid=tw-nytclimate&smtyp=cur

December 2, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

USA will send no senior government official to COP25 climate conference

US will ‘protect its interests’ at COP25 climate conference, No senior members of Donald Trump’s administration will attend COP25. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/us-will-protect-its-interests-at-cop25-climate-conference 2 Dec 19, The US will send a diplomatic team but no senior members of Donald Trump’s administration to a global climate change conference starting in Spain on Monday, according to a statement.However, in an effort to raise the US profile in Madrid, House speaker Nancy Pelosi will led a 15-member congressional delegation to “reaffirm the commitment of the American people to combating the climate crisis”.

The US, at Mr Trump’s direction, is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, which set a goal of limiting global temperature rises to well within two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

Spain stepped in to host the COP25 meeting, which seeks to boost commitments to fight climate change, after Chile pulled out due to civil unrest.

“The United States will continue to participate in ongoing climate change negotiations and meetings – such as COP25 – to ensure a level playing field that protects US interests,” the US State Department said Saturday.

The US team will be headed by ambassador Marcia Bernicat, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs.

Ms Pelosi, calling climate change “the existential threat of our time,” announced a delegation of Democrats drawn from both the House and the Senate, with no members of Mr Trump’s Republican party.

The president has cast the Paris climate accord as elitist and unfair to the US, saying when announcing his decision to withdraw that he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris”.

But scientists say the accord is vital to check the worst damage from global warming, such as increasing droughts, rising floods and intensifying storms.

The US is the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, and is the only country to pull out of the Paris agreement.

The final US withdrawal from the landmark accord is scheduled for 4 November, 2020, a day after the next presidential election.

Several Democratic presidential aspirants have said that, if elected, they would immediately return to the agreement.

December 2, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

No president should have the absolute authority to launch nuclear weapons

No president should have the absolute authority to launch nuclear weapons, WP, Joseph Cirincione , Dec. 2, 2019

Joseph Cirincione is a nuclear weapons policy expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation.

Impeachment has a way of bringing out a president’s worst instincts — and the world could end up paying the price.

As impeachment hearings intensified, an increasingly erratic president appeared to finally snap. “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone,” he told visiting lawmakers, “and in 25 minutes, 70 million people will be dead.”

It was 1974, and the president was Richard Nixon. He was right. U.S. policy, then and now, gives the president absolute authority to launch nuclear weapons whenever they want, for whatever reason. No consensus is required. No one else need approve.

Indeed, no other official even need know. The president, on their own, can simply summon the “nuclear football,” open binders of attack options and relay orders to the National Military Command Center. The orders would be sent down to missile control officers — where intercontinental ballistic missiles are primed on “hair-trigger” alert — and 30 minutes later you’d have nuclear explosions over the targets, just as Nixon claimed.

Procedures adopted in the fearful days of the Cold War — including the first use of nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict, the sole authority of the president to fire these weapons and keeping our missiles ready to launch in minutes — combine now to present an unacceptable risk of nuclear disaster.

Little can be done now to reduce these risks. If we do escape catastrophe, it should be the first order of business in a new administration to declare new nuclear guidance and adjust nuclear alert postures accordingly.

Legislators, including House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), have already introduced bills to prevent presidents from acting solely on their own to launch nuclear weapons and to make it official policy that America will never initiate a nuclear war. These provide a sound basis for a new president to revamp nuclear doctrine and to prevent, as President John F. Kennedy said, that slender thread holding the nuclear sword of Damocles from being cut by “accident or miscalculation or madness.” We must prepare to do all we can to ensure that no one individual — sane or insane — can ever start a nuclear war on their own.

This column was produced in collaboration with The WorldPost, a publication of the Berggruen Institute. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/01/no-president-should-have-absolute-authority-launch-nuclear-weapons/

December 2, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries Next Entries »

1 This Month

Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.