High-Paying Jobs in Nuclear Power Aren’t Looking So Safe Anymore
A wave of plant closings has workers—even highly trained engineers—on edge, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Erin Ailworth, Dec. 28, 2018 “………As large employers, these plants are often economic anchors for the smaller, sometimes rural communities in which they were built. When they disappear, so too can a significant portion of the tax base—a big blow for many. Each plant shuttered equals hundreds of jobs lost; combined, the nine slated to retire employ more than 7,000.
After a plant closes, those employees are left playing musical chairs, hoping to land a spot at another nuclear plant even as that job pool shrinks. Federal labor data for nuclear and other electric power generation shows the number of workers has dropped to about 63,000 in October from roughly 158,000 in 1990. At least 3,000 of those jobs vanished since the start of 2013………
Federal forecasts show that employment among nuclear power reactor operators, who tend to have a high school or equivalent education, is expected to fall by just over 10% from 2016 to 2026. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade association, estimates that of 100,000 nuclear workers—including those with jobs outside power plants—it expects about 23,000 people to retire from or quit the industry over the next five years.
……. The latest nuclear job losses occurred at Oyster Creek, a 49-year-old plant owned by Exelon Corp. in New Jersey, that went offline in September. Next to go will be Entergy Corp.’s Pilgrim nuclear plant in Massachusetts, which is scheduled to shut down in May. Three Mile Island’s shuttering is slated for September 2019.
Christopher Crane, chief executive of Exelon, said his company is doing what it can to absorb workers displaced by Oyster Creek’s retirement, even as it works to avoid further closures by lobbying for policies that recognize nuclear power as a carbon-free resource akin to solar and wind farms.
The public can comment on the U.S. Department of Energy’s proposed changes to Hanford nuclear waste cleanup rules until Jan. 9,Tom Carpenter
After almost 30 years of a program to clean up dangerous defense waste at the Hanford nuclear site in southeastern Washington, the Department of Energy now wants to change the rules to make the job easier and save money. If approved, the proposal poses new dangers to the health and safety of people and the environment — not just in southeastern Washington, but at nuclear sites around the country.
In 1943, the U.S. government built the massive complex at Hanford to manufacture plutonium for nuclear weapons. When defense production ceased in 1986, its nine reactors had produced enough material for 60,000 atomic bombs. What remains is North America’s most contaminated site — more than half a billion gallons of nuclear waste and toxic chemicals stored in leaking tanks and dumped into the ground.
The most dangerous material is classified as “high-level waste.” The U.S. government has long recognized that because it poses such an extraordinary risk to human health and the environment, it requires special handling. A report prepared for the Atomic Energy Commission in 1957 called for disposal of high-level nuclear waste in a “deep underground formation, where it would remain isolated from human beings” for hundreds of thousands of years. That recommendation became law in 1982 when Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Responsibility for the mess at Hanford falls to the U.S. Department of Energy. The plan includes mixing 56 million gallons of high-level waste with molten glass so it can be safely transferred to a permanent underground disposal site.
The cleanup effort began in 1989. It has not gone well. More than $45 billion has been spent, but no high-level waste has been processed. Hanford workers have received more than $1 billion in compensation for exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals. Companies working on the cleanup have pleaded guilty to criminal charges and paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and settlements. Radioactive waste is leaking into the groundwater and flowing toward the Columbia River.
Not to worry! The Energy Department has come up with an alternate approach for dealing with high-level nuclear waste — give it a new name and leave it where it is.
This past summer, the agency announced its intention to reclassify high-level nuclear waste in 16 partially emptied tanks as low-level waste and cover what remains with grout. Now DOE is going big, and proposing to give itself the authority to relabel waste as it sees fit anywhere in the nation.
Even under ideal conditions, the waste will slowly leach through the grout and into the surrounding soil. That assumes it doesn’t fail catastrophically due to fractures caused by changes in temperature, stress, or imperfections — all possible, even likely.
The danger extends beyond Hanford. Once the Energy Department grants itself the authority to redesignate dangerous nuclear material, it can do the same with hundreds of millions of gallons of high-level waste stored in 161 other tanks or simply dumped into the ground at Hanford. It sets a dangerous precedent that will place millions of people at risk — not just downwind and downriver from Hanford, but near facilities in South Carolina, Idaho and upstate New York, where millions more gallons of high-level waste are stored.
Why consider such an unsound plan? Money. By absolving itself of its legal obligation to handle high-level waste safely, the Energy Department expects to save $40 billion.
The proposal is not only irresponsible and dangerous, it violates the law and flies in the face of longstanding legal precedent. “High-level radioactive waste” was clearly defined by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1970 and the courts have repeatedly turned back attempts to reclassify it. In 2003, for example, the U.S. District Court in Idaho confirmed that what’s in tanks at Hanford is, in fact, high-level waste and made clear that the Energy Department cannot simply come up with an alternative way to treat it just because it is “too expensive or too difficult.”
Although it is profoundly shortsighted, deeply irresponsible and clearly illegal, this proposal isn’t surprising — it is entirely consistent with the Department of Energy’s history of cutting corners at Hanford and saddling future generations with a problem that requires our urgent attention today.
The Energy Department is taking public comments on this proposal through Jan. 9. Clearly, this plan must be rejected.
‘The existential threat of our time’: Pelosi elevates climate change on Day One, Politico, By ANTHONY ADRAGNA and ZACK COLMAN , 01/03/2019
Democrats put climate change back on the forefront of their governing agenda Thursday, portraying the issue as an “existential threat” even as the caucus remains split over how forcefully to respond.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi brought up the issue in her opening address while touting a new select panel to come up with ideas on how to solve it, and the Energy and Commerce Committee announced that climate change would be the subject of its very first hearing this year……..
Progressives, led in part by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), are tugging the caucus into a more urgent posture that they say best reflects what scientists have called for to avert climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last year that the world has 12 years to put policies in place to avoid irreversible, catastrophic effects of climate change. ……..https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/03/nancy-pelosi-climate-change-congress-1059148
Bill Gates shelves nuclear reactor in China, citing U.S. policy, Axios, Amy Harder, Dec 30
TerraPower, a nuclear-energy company founded by Bill Gates, is unlikely to follow through on building a demonstration reactor in China, due largely to the Trump administration’s crackdown on the country.
Why it matters: This is a blow to America’s attempts to commercialize advanced, smaller scale nuclear technology and, separately, further evidence of soured relations between the U.S. and China under President Trump.
Driving the news: In a year-end blog post covering various topics published Saturday night, Gates said of TerraPower: “We had hoped to build a pilot project in China, but recent policy changes here in the U.S. have made that unlikely.”
Details: The Trump administration, led by the Energy Department, announced in October that it was implementing measures to “prevent China’s illegal diversion of U.S. civil nuclear technology for military or other unauthorized purposes.”
Those measures have made it nearly impossible for TerraPower’s project to go forward, according to multiple people familiar with the development.
TerraPower had pursued plans to build a pilot reactor in China because that country has two things America doesn’t — growing electricity demand and a long-term strategic energy plan — a top TerraPower executive told me last year.
Morning Consult and, separately, an analyst for the think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies, covered the impacts of the October policy change shortly after it occurred, with brief mentions of the likely negative impact on TerraPower………
What’s next: “We may be able to build it [the reactor] in the United States if the funding and regulatory changes that I mentioned earlier happen,” Gates said in his post, although he didn’t specify which funding or regulations.
Four arrests at Pentagon during Holy Innocents witness The Nuclear Resister – Nonviolent Resistance for a Peaceful and Nuclear-Free Future December 28, 2018 from Art Laffin, Dorothy Day Catholic WorkerFrom December 27-28, about 20 members from the Atlantic and Southern Life communities, and other peacemaking friends, gathered for a retreat at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church in Washington, D.C., and a nonviolent witness at the Pentagon to commemorate the Massacre of the Holy Innocents – past and present. ……..
Braving a heavy steady rain, the community gathered early the next morning at the Pentagon’s southeast entrance with signs and banners. ……… A litany was offered (see below) interspersed with the refrain: “War Hurts Children—Help Us End War.” And a prayer and blessing was given by Janice, one of the four about to risk arrest.
Carrying copies of the “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” with the intention of delivering it to a Pentagon official and requesting that the U.S. ratify it, four members of the community made their way to the police check point closest to the building where they encountered Pentagon police. They were told by the officers that they must leave or face arrest. While the first several paragraphs of the Treaty were read, a Pentagon worker passed by and said “Thank you for keeping us honest.” After arrest warnings were given they were placed under arrest. As the four were being escorted to police vehicles, the rest of the community, from a distance sang “The Cry of Ramah!” The witness concluded with everyone singing “Vine and Fig Tree” as the community processed down the escalator and into the Pentagon metro station lobby…….
The four who were arrested were taken to the Pentagon Police center where they were processed and charged with “Disobeying A Lawful Order.” All were released and given a March 21 court date at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. However, the group will request a new court date as several people will not be able to make the assigned court appearance.
Since 1980, the Nuclear Resister has provided comprehensive reporting on arrests for anti-nuclear civil resistance in the United States, with an emphasis on providing support for the women and men jailed for these actions. In 1990, we expanded our work to include reporting on anti-war arrests in North America, plus overseas anti-nuclear and anti-war resistance with the same emphasis on prisoner support.
Through the publication of a newsletter every three months, and other education and outreach, the Nuclear Resister serves to network this nonviolent resistance movement while acting as a clearinghouse for information about contemporary nonviolent resistance to war and the nuclear threat. We believe that in any significant movement for social change, many committed individuals are imprisoned. Behind bars, they are physically isolated from their supporters and their own resistance activity is limited. Broader awareness of their actions and support for the imprisoned activist are essential to the movement for a peaceful, nuclear-free future.
The Nuclear Resister provides the names and jail addresses of currently imprisoned anti-nuclear and anti-war activists. People are encouraged to provide active support by writing letters to those behind bars and in other ways requested by the prisoners.
Since 1980, Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa have been co-coordinators of the Nuclear Resister and co-editors of the newsletter. Hundreds of people have helped over the years by distributing newsletters, helping staff a Nuclear Resister booth at various events, doing artwork and writing articles for the newsletter, helping at mailing parties, providing information about actions and legal updates, sending photos, helping with the website and blog, and writing letters of support to imprisoned activists. http://www.nukeresister.org/about-us/
SC utility watchdog wants regulators to declare SCE&G lied about nuclear project, The State, BY TOM BARTON AND AVERY G. WILKS, DECEMBER 28, 2018, COLUMBIA, S.C.
South Carolina’s utility watchdog has asked the S.C. Public Service Commission reconsider its decision not to rule that SCE&G intentionally misled regulators years ago about its doomed nuclear plant construction project.
The S.C. Office of Regulatory Staff filed a petition late Friday asking the PSC for an explicit finding that SCE&G imprudently moved ahead with construction of the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station expansion in March 2015 despite warnings about the project’s cost and flaws.
Earlier this month, the PSC issued a ruling allowing Virginia-based Dominion Energy to buy SCE&G’s parent company, SCANA, and slash SCE&G’s nuclear-bloated electric rates by about $22 a month. But after some internal debate, the PSC stopped short of calling out SCE&G for withholding important information to win rate-hike cases and keep the foundering project alive.
Regulatory Staff wrote Friday “it is beyond dispute that SCE&G failed to disclose any iteration of the Bechtel Report to ORS or the Commission.” The agency said the “Commission cannot side-step the issue of prudence or imprudence” but instead must “make a clear finding” that SCE&G could have acted to anticipate, avoid or minimize nuclear construction costs.
Regulatory Staff Director Nanette Edwards said such a finding is needed “to restore public trust and hold the utility accountable.”
A SCANA spokesman said the utility would need to review the petition and would not comment Friday night.
“The commission’s thoughtful, well-reasoned order speaks for itself,” Dominion Energy spokesman Ryan Frazier said.
Ratepayers have paid more than $2 billion in higher power bills for the unfinished reactors in Fairfield County. And SCE&G’s roughly 730,000 customers will pay another $2.3 billion for the failed project over the next 20 years under the approved Dominion deal.
Regulatory Staff also want the PSC to clarify that Dominion must track and pass down to customers all of its savings from the recent federal tax cuts. It also is pushing the PSC to lower slightly how much profit Dominion can earn while paying down the nuclear debt, and return close to $400 million previously collected from customers for costs that are now disallowed.
Regulatory Staff wrote that it wants the PSC to impose conditions requiring a review prior to any possible expansion by Dominion’s of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline into South Carolina.
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan tells the Brattleboro Reformer that Holtec International adopted a new design for its steel and concrete casks without a written evaluation, violating federal safety regulations. Officials say the company made changes after it discovered a loose bolt at San Onofre nuclear power plant in California.
Holtec said Friday that the NRC has confirmed the safety of the canisters. It says it doesn’t agree with the severity level of the apparent violation.
The casks are used at other nuclear plants to store spent fuel.
Last month, regulators approved the sale of Vermont Yankee to NorthStar. The company plans to start decommissioning the plant no later than 2021.
Inside the hurried effort to find a buyer for Santee Cooper, Herald Sun, BY AVERY G. WILKS, DECEMBER 30, 2018 , COLUMBIA, SC
A day before state regulators approved Dominion Energy’s bid to buy SCANA Corp., representatives from at least six firms gathered in a secret meeting in North Charleston to discuss a possible solution to the other half of South Carolina’s $9 billion nuclear construction fiasco.
The gathering revolved around the possible sale of Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility that racked up more than $4 billion in debt before abandoning a joint effort with SCANA to expand a nuclear power plant in Fairfield County.
ICF International — a Virginia-based firm hired by the General Assembly — hosted the invitation-only meeting as part of a hurried, ongoing effort to solicit and study bids from some of the largest names in the utility industry.
There to ask questions about Santee Cooper’s assets and operations — and to scout out the competition — were two dozen legal and financial experts representing Charlotte-based Duke Energy, Florida-based NextEra Energy, Virginia-based Dominion, Greenville-based Pacolet Milliken Enterprises, New York-based LS Power and South Carolina’s electric cooperatives — who together buy three-fifths of Santee Cooper’s electricity.
SCANA’s chapter of the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station debacle is winding down with the Cayce-based company’s impending sale to Dominion. But 17 months after the project’s collapse, the buzz surrounding Santee Cooper’s future is only now ramping up.
This summer, S.C. lawmakers slashed the nuclear-bloated electric rates for customers of SCANA’s electric subsidiary, SCE&G. That $22-a-month rate cut was made permanent by state regulators earlier this month.
Now, the nearly 2 million S.C. residents who get their power from Santee Cooper — either directly or through one of the state’s 20 electric co-ops — are wondering whether they will get a rate cut, too. That will be one of the biggest questions facing the General Assembly when it reconvenes in Columbia in January.
……….. The presentation on Santee Cooper’s assets and operations, and a question-and-answer period were scheduled to last all day. But with each of the bidders hesitant to ask a question that could tip their hands, the event wrapped up about lunchtime instead, sources said.
ICF declined to comment through a public relations agency.
State Rep. Murrell Smith, the Sumter Republican who co-chairs the Legislature’s Santee Cooper sale study committee, told The State in a recent interview he is confident in the timeline set for the process.
ICF told Smith’s committee there would be enough time for “meaningful and thorough bids,” particularly since potential buyers have known for more than a year that Santee Cooper could be on the auction block, he said.
America’s Mad Scientists Wanted to Use Nuclear Power to Create Tunnels in a Shocking Way,
In the 1970s, Los Alamos National Laboratory explored a science-fiction approach to tunneling: using nuclear power to literally melt holes through rock and turn the melted rock into tunnel lining. National Interest by Steve Weintz 30 Dec 18, Digging out deep underground complexes or undersea bases could be expedited the Atomic way, in an alternate universe where the wildest ideas of the 1950s, 60s and 70s came to pass. Although our own timeline relies on mega-engineering for transportation, energy and architectural infrastructure, for the past half-century we’ve mostly relied on conventional power sources and design principles……..
in the 1970s, Los Alamos National Laboratory explored a science-fiction approach to tunneling: using nuclear power to literally melt holes through rock and turn the melted rock into tunnel lining. One product of the lab’s research was a patent for a nuclear subterrene—a machine which could theoretically move through rock the way a submarine moves through water. ……..
besides a bit part in a TV pilot, the nuclear subterrene didn’t get much farther. In 1975, the project was transferred from the NSF to the new Department of Energy and quietly disappeared. The concept resurfaced in the 1980s as a way of digging tunnels for bases on the Moon and other worlds but remained a concept. Advances in conventional excavation equipment since the 1970s make modern TBMs perform as well or better than Los Alamos’ conceptual nukes. …..https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/americas-mad-scientists-wanted-use-nuclear-power-create-tunnels-shocking-way-40072
Connecticut commits to nuclear power, ending debate over Millstone’s future, By STEPHEN SINGER, HARTFORD COURANT| DEC 28, 2018 “……….The state’s portfolio of energy used by utilities and sold to consumers and businesses will include power from Millstone and the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in New Hampshire……….
$500 million Pennsylvania NUMEC toxic cleanup restarts by Grant SmithDecember 27, 2018In 2015 the intelligence community acknowledged that it had a “duty to warn” U.S. persons of impending threats of “serious bodily injury.” The objective of that “duty” – which has many loopholes – is to compel intelligence agencies to warn individuals or organizations of threats so they can take evasive measures. It affirms a moral obligation intelligence agencies have to those funding – willingly or not – their operations. The duty to warn demands they no longer stand idly by – or worse attempt to exploit credible threats to Americans – as leverage or for other, secret intelligence purposes.Last fall the US Army Corps of Engineers announced it was finally ready to resume a $500 million toxic waste cleanup of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) dump. An earlier attempt at the Pennsylvania site to excavate was stopped after the discovery of unexpected materials. NUMEC’s plant sites in Apollo and Parks Township have long been the subject of litigation over wrongful mass deaths and illnesses caused by toxic pollution.
NUMEC was launched and managed by Zalman Shapiro, a nuclear chemist credited with solving engineering issues for naval nuclear propulsion in the 1950s. His partner, David Luzer Lowenthal was a smuggler with murky ties to Israeli intelligence and industrialist. Luzer organized the emergence of NUMEC from a complicated merger and acquired facilities for NUMEC in a defunct steel mill in the middle of Apollo, Pennsylvania. The Zionist Organization of America, originally chartered to “do any and all things that may be necessary” to support Israel, supplied three of NUMEC’s executives. Zalman Shapiro, Pittsburgh region president of ZOA, Morton Chatkin and Ivan J. Novick who became ZOA’s national president.
Officially NUMEC was a startup supplier of highly-enriched fuel for the US Navy. But two Central Intelligence Agency officials claimed NUMEC’s true purpose was to amass and divert US government-owned highly enriched uranium into Israel’s nuclear weapons program. 300 kilograms of highly enriched uranium disappeared from NUMEC between 1957-1978, with most of it gone by 1966. Material stolen from NUMEC would have been the most likely source for Israel’s ability to ready nuclear weapons for use during the 1967 Six-Day War.
CIA Tel Aviv Station Chief John Hadden, who performed field operations to sample the environment around Dimona for highly enriched uranium – material Israel was incapable of producing on its own – claimed NUMEC was “an Israeli operation from the beginning.” CIA Directorate of Science and Technology Deputy Director Carl Duckett testified that “NUMEC material had been diverted by the Israelis and used in fabricating weapons.” There were other telltale signs.
Inside NUMEC’s underfunded, ramshackle facilities an Israeli scientist, Baruch Cinai, learned to handle samples of plutonium, a skill subsequently useful to plutonium production at Israel’s Dimona facility. Israeli covert operatives Raphael Eitan, Avraham Bendor and Ephraim Beigun all visited the facility at Shapiro’s invitation in 1968 undercover as various Israeli energy specialists, in the company of Avraham Hermoni, chief of Israel’s nuclear weapons development program. The FBI’s investigation of NUMEC-related activities ultimately shook loose eyewitness testimony that Shapiro was collaborating in the illicit diversion of highly enriched uranium from NUMEC’s U.S.-government owned stockpile to Israel. Under increasing pressure, NUMEC’s regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission, subsequently engineered NUMEC’s corporate buyout and the exit of its management team to save face, after many years of denial and providing easily refuted excuses for NUMECs extreme and inexplicable material “losses.”
That NUMEC was a front operation, following in the footsteps of Israel’s 1940s-era conventional weapons smuggling operations from the US such as Martech, Service Airways, and the Sonneborn Institute, is well-known by the FBI and CIA. Both have released extensive archives of intelligence reports and surveillance photographs of Israeli conventional weapons smuggling from the United States through overseas networks. But both FBI and CIA have fought attempts at full disclosure of clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons related activities in the US, ostensibly because such smuggling has been unpunished and unabated. It is also US policy, under penalty of prosecution, that no federal agency may admit that Israel has nuclear weapons or release information about its program.
Documents grudgingly released by the FBI so far reveal the intelligence community likely knows that cost-cutting at NUMEC to achieve its smuggling aims was what made it such a toxic polluter. On May 5, 1969, Shapiro discussed a major toxic spill caused by such shortcuts, most likely with David Lowenthal, since the acquisition of other US companies was also part of the conversation. Shapiro ordered NUMEC workers – who often worked with no protective gear of any kind – to dampen down the spill with picks and shovels to avoid the spread of toxic dust and rain runoff carrying away the waste. Shapiro’s call was wiretapped by the FBI.
The full phone call summary reveals how Shapiro – who commuted every day from Pittsburgh – considered NUMEC workers as mostly replaceable and expendable.
“It’s not only a bad spill but ‘actually they are operating outside compliance.’ They had the drums all together. They have about 200 drums and estimate that about six a day will corrode through. The trouble lay with a fluoride which was put in to help the decay, and this was not checked. CENSORED said they are also about $230,000 over on their construction costs for the scrap plant. Z [Zalman Shapiro] said if they could get other people, there would be a lot of firing.”
NUMEC workers and town residents, exposed to radiation levels hundreds of times higher than health standards allowed, continue to suffer fallout and death from NUMEC. In addition to residents, the US Army Corps of Engineer contractors restarting the cleanup could benefit greatly from knowing what material is likely present – as well as what is not – at the site. Residents and the cleanup crew would also benefit from knowing of any intelligence on the potential threat that materials stolen decades ago might be returned or buried under cover of the cleanup at the site for crews to “find.”
Legal precedents suggest such toxic exposure as occurs at NUMEC could amount to “oppression, fraud, or malice” and be sufficient for victims to recover damages from polluters. However, neither the CIA nor the FBI have met their current obligations under “duty to warn” to officially alert the victims of NUMEC and contractors precisely what dangers they are still facing as the cleanup recommences.
Such overdue disclosures could also allow NUMEC’s victims to pursue claims against the perpetrator and beneficiary of the fraud and pollution – the Israeli government. Evidence stored away in FBI and CIA files could fully reveal ZOA’s NUMEC involvement. If ZOA did more than unwittingly provide key members of management, ZOA’s $40 – plus million in current assets could go a long way toward compensating the long-suffering Pennsylvania victims of Israeli nuclear smuggling and partially shift the burden of paying to clean up after NUMEC away from American taxpayers.
Nuclear Winter Is Coming: Nuclear ‘War’ To Hit Washington In 2019, Investor’s Business Daily , GILLIAN RICH, 12/18/2018
Nuclear weapons are about to explode as an issue on Capitol Hill, because partisan warfare is threatening to consume debates over nuclear procurement and policy in 2019.
Two events are converging that will blow up an already tenuous give-and-take deal between Republicans and Democrats. The first is the Trump administration’s threat to leave the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty early next year if Russia doesn’t come into compliance. The second is the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives next month.
There has been a “fragile bipartisan consensus” on nuclear weapons, according to Frank Rose, a senior fellow for security and strategy at the Brookings Institution.
During the Obama administration, a deal was brokered under which Republicans supported the New START treaty to reduce nuclear weapons while Democrats backed the modernization of the U.S.’ nuclear arsenal, he said.
All-out partisan warfare on the issue would come at a bad time for the Pentagon. In 2017, the Congressional Budget Office put the price tag of sustaining and modernizing the full nuclear triad of land-, air- and sea-based weapons at $1.2 trillion in constant dollars through 2046.
But, like other things that happened under Obama, the Republican-Democratic deal on nuclear weapons is starting to unravel under Trump.
Nuclear Weapons Treaties
In early December, the Trump administration gave Russia 60 days to come into compliance with the INF treaty or the U.S. will leave.
Trump’s threat raises questions about whether he will renew the New START treaty, which expires in 2021. Without the arms-control treaties, Democrats could block the funding of nuclear weapons in the 2020 budget with their new majority in the House.
“They can’t build a consensus to do something new or different — the Senate or president might not go along — but they can stop things from happening,” Tom Collina, director of policy at the Ploughshares Fund, which is focused on reducing nuclear weapons. “The power of ‘no’ is a significant force.”……….
Nuclear Weapons That May Go Boom Or Bust
To modernize the air-based leg of the nuclear weapons triad, the Air Force awarded the B-21 contract to Northrop Grumman (NOC) in 2015 to replace Cold War-era Boeing (BA) B-52s. The eventual procurement price tag is estimated at $80 billion.
Cancian believes that this new stealth bomber will survive upcoming procurement battles because of its ability to deliver conventional munitions as well.
New Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines will modernize the sea-based leg of the nuclear triad and replace Ohio-class “boomers.” General Dynamics’ (GD) Electric Boat is building them with total acquisition costs expected to hit $128 billion.
Cancian also believes that the Columbia-class submarine program will continue, saying ballistic subs are most likely to survive a nuclear attack because they are hidden underwater.
Then there are two missile programs without contract awards yet that have been more controversial. Lockheed and Raytheon (RTN) are competing for the Long-Range Standoff weapon (LRSO), a nuclear cruise missile to be launched from strategic bombers.
Northrop and Boeing are competing to build the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program to replace Boeing’s aging land-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system.
Former Defense Secretary William Perry and retired Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs, argued last year that ICBMs and nuclear cruise missiles carry greater risks of accidentally setting off a nuclear war because they can’t be recalled once launched.
Canceling them would also save billions of dollars that could be used for other pressing national security needs, they said. ………
High Anxiety Over Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons
The U.S. already has about 500 low-yield airdropped nuclear weapons in its arsenal. And Smith is extremely critical of the low-yield warheads for Lockheed’s Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile.
“It makes no sense for us to build low-yield nuclear weapons,” Smith said at a Ploughshares conference in November. “It brings us no advantage and it is dangerously escalating. It just begins a new nuclear arms race with people just building nuclear weapons all across the board in a way that I think places us at greater danger.”……….
Pentagon Budget Uncertainty
Amid the policy and procurement debates, another source of uncertainty on defense spending is coming from Trump himself.
The Green New Deal Promises Peace and Progress. Will Nuclear Advocates Undermine it? The environmental policy centerpiece of the incoming Democratic House of Representatives has ignited tremendous grassroots enthusiasm.by Harvey Wasserman, The Progressive December 27, 2018
he environmental policy centerpiece of the incoming Democratic House of Representatives is what’s now known as “The Green New Deal.” But it’s already hit deeply polarizing pushback from the old-line Democratic leadership. And it faces divisive jockeying over the future of nuclear power.The Green New Deal’s most visible public advocate, newly elected twenty-nine-year-old U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, has laid out a preliminary blueprint advocating an energy economy meant to be based entirely on “renewable” and “clean” sources. According to a report in The Hill, fossil fuels and nuclear power are “completely out” of her plan.
The draft proposal has ignited tremendous grassroots enthusiasm, with massively favorable poll readings, even among some Republicans. Substantial grassroots pressure has grown on presumptive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to form a Green New Deal Committee chaired by Ocasio-Cortez.
But on December 20, the Democratic leadership announced it will not support a separate House Committee on the deal. Instead, it will proceed with a panel on climate change, to be chaired by Florida Representative Kathy Castor, who has taken substantial funding from the fossil fuel industry. It remains unclear whether Ocasio-Cortez will even get a seat on the committee.
But the grassroots push for a Green New Deal is clearly not going to go away. The youthful Sunrise Movement has vowed to fight for it, along with a wide range of others, including Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, a likely 2020 presidential contender………..
nuclear reactors do emit trace quantities of radioactive Carbon-14. The fuel rods that power reactor are produced with significant carbon in mining, milling, and enrichment. They pump huge quantities of waste heatdirectly into the eco-sphere, operating far less efficiently even than coal burners. They yield large quantities of radioactive waste, directly related to nuke weapons production. And five of them (Chernobyl 4 and Fukushima 1-2-3-4) have blown up.
Reactor enthusiasts like Senator Barrasso invariably conjure visions of a “new generation” of small, modular nukes, and other techno-variants like molten salt and thorium, alleged to be safe, cleaner and cheaper that the current fleet. But there are few tangible indications such alternative reactors can come on line anytime soon, or beat the price of wind and solar, which continue to plummet. The criticism that renewables are intermittent is also losing its sting as large-scale battery arrays are also dropping in price while rising in efficiency and capacity………..
outspoken peace groups like Code Pink are eager to move the money out of the military and into the social/infrastructure programs that can rebuild the nation. High-profile campaigns led by activists Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin were integral to the shocking defection of seven Republican Senators to deny the Trump Administration funding to support the Saudi war in Yemen.
George H.W. Bush: Dirty Tricks and Regime Change in Nuclear-Free Palau, LA Progressive 29 Dec 18 Amidst all the presidential pomp, on Dec. 5 George H.W. Bush’s casket was lifted off the black-shrouded bier that had carried Abraham Lincoln after the 16th president’s assassination and driven from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington National Cathedral. But as far as I’m concerned George H.W. Bush went from lying for the state to lying in state. ………..
Much was made about “regime change” in Iraq because of Saddam’s purported WMDs by Pres. Bush 43. But scant attention has been paid to the tragic tale of regime change in a Pacific Island of 15,000 indigenous people who dared oppose U.S. nukes – and to Bush 41’s connection to Palau. George W. Bush may ballyhoo “spreading democracy”, but while Bush Sr. was in the Executive Branch, Palauans were compelled to vote about 15 times in around as many years on self-rule and their nuclear free status. Palauans could vote – but their vote didn’t count unless it favored U.S. policy. Palauans had to keep casting their ballots until Washington attained its desired result: Rescinding the Palau constitution’s antinuclear clauses. It was a unique form of voter suppression.
During this display democracy, Palau was gripped by a reign of terror. On June 30, 1985, Pres. Haruo Remeliik was assassinated, which reopened the then-deadlocked treaty negotiations. Shortly after the liquidation, then-Vice Pres. Bush personally flew to Saipan in the Northern Marianas, located north of Palau and where the Trust Territory administration was HQ-ed, to reopen stalled status parleys, and struck a new deal.
However, antinuclear activists defeated the treaty in a tribunal, where Palau’s High Court ruled a 75% vote favoring a proposed Compact of Free Association was required in order to override the small nation’s antinuclear laws. In 1987, terrorists firebombed and shot Pacific pacifists, and besieged Palau’s congress. A U.S. Congressional General Accounting Office investigation found a $2 million U.S.–derived slush fund financed political violence. In 1988, Palau’s second elected president, pro-U.S. puppet Lazarus Salii, also mysteriously had his head blown off. Although this was officially declared a suicide, the elimination of Salii – who was unable to pass the Compact – untied the Gordian knot that led to the elimination of Palau’s nuclear bans.
Other high ranking U.S. officials during the Reagan-Bush era with links to Palau include: Secretary of State George Shultz, who secured Palauan beachheads as a Marine sergeant during WWII. Shultz returned to Palau in 1986 during the Compact re-negotiation process. In the late 1970s, Admiral William Crowe surveyed land in Palau for U.S. bases, and became CINCPAC Commander and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman 1985-1989. President Bush Sr. appointed Brent Scowcroft – who’d arranged the Kissinger-ordered surveillance of Micronesian status negotiations – National Security Adviser.
Black Ops in Paradise
Paris was Washington’s colonial partner in Oceania, and in the 1960s Moruroa atoll, at French-occupied Polynesia, became France’s South Pacific nuclear testing site for atmospheric and underwater N-blasts. On Jan. 12, 1985, Eloi Machoro, a militant leader of the Kanak indigenous people fighting for independence from France was killed by French police snipers. On March 2, 1985, shortly after he’d returned from meeting anti-nuke activists at Auckland, New Zealand, Tahitian activist Charlie Ching was arrested walking to a pro-independence, antinuclear rally in Papeete, Tahiti. On June 30, 1985 the first president of the world’s first national nuclear free zone was gunned down in Palau. Ten days later French General Directorate for External Security secret agents bombed the Rainbow Warrior at nuclear free New Zealand on July 10, 1985, as Greenpeace prepared to protest France’s nuclear testing near Tahiti. The DGSE saboteurs of the Rainbow Warrior were captured and convicted; the implicated chiefs of France’s military and intelligence services resigned.
The above appear to be part of a coordinated counterinsurgency program to defeat the nuclear free and independent Pacific movement. French state terrorism was indisputably responsible for bombing Greenpeace’s ship. Is it farfetched to think the assassination of Palau’s president(s) and reign of terror was American state terrorism? Inquiring minds want to know.
As former CIA chief, Bush headed what LBJ called “Murder, Inc.,” and, as mobsters say: “The fish stinks from the head down.” The Pentagon had motive: relocating bases from the Philippines (closed after Marcos’ overthrow) to Palau – but the world’s first nuclear free constitution thwarted this aspiration. To find out who commits a crime, see who benefits from it: The IPSECO debt and political violence finally wore Palauans down; in the 1990s their antinuclear framed rules lost at the polls. Palau was, in effect, annexed by Uncle Sam, as was the rest of Micronesia – which, as Bush knew from his WWII days, had vital strategic value. ……….
If MSM spent 1% of the time investigating Bush’s ties to the covert actions in Palau as they did extolling his virtues during their funereal coverage, the case of who shot Pres. Remeliik might actually get solved. Instead of ballyhooing and worshipping a golden calf, MSM should mobilize at least some resources to look behind the curtain at the real record of George H.W. Bush and investigate what role, if any, he played in whacking the president of nuclear free Palau and subsequent events in the remote isles of Micronesia.
Ed Rampell Ed Rampell covered Palau during Bush’s vice presidency for AP, Reuters, Newsweek, Radio New Zealand, Radio Australia, Gannett Press, Pacific Islands Monthly, etc. He initiated and was the investigative reporter for ABC News’ “20/20” segment, “The Puzzle of Palau,” which aired in July 1987 and proved three young men related to the opposition leader convicted of assassinating President Remeliik were framed political prisoners. Within two weeks of the Barbara Walters-introduced report, they were fully exonerated of the murder by Palau’s Supreme Court. Rampell went on to report for the Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s “Background Briefing” two-part expose that directly resulted in the conviction of Palau’s pro-Washington Minister of State for soliciting the homicide of President Remeliik. The newest books Rampell co-authored are “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book” and “Conversations with W.S. Merwin.” https://www.laprogressive.com/george-bush-dirty-tricks/
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