Bolton: US has plan to dismantle NK nuclear program in year , WP ,By Matthew Pennington and Lolita C. Baldor | AP, July 1 Washington The United States has a plan that would lead to the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in a year, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Sunday, although U.S. intelligence reported signs that Pyongyang doesn’t intend to fully give up its arsenal.
John Bolton said top U.S. diplomat Mike Pompeo will be discussing that plan with North Korea in the near future. Bolton added that it would be to the North’s advantage to cooperate to see sanctions lifted quickly and aid from South Korea and Japan start to flow.
Bolton’s remarks on CBS’ ”Face the Nation” appeared to be the first time the Trump administration had publicly suggested a timeline for North Korea to fulfill the commitment leader Kim Jong Un made at a summit with President Donald Trump last month for the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.
Holtec International has proposed placing used fuel rods from all U.S. nuclear reactors in a shallow burial site near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Recently, The New Mexican reprinted a Carlsbad Current-Argusarticle featuring the point of view of Holtec executives, who painted too rosy a view of the safety issues this proposed facility could present.
There is pressure from the public to move used fuel rods away from their current locations — the reactor sites — especially when reactors have been shut down. The risks of storage in casks are low, the risks of transport are higher; in either case, the failure of a single cask, whether through natural degradation processes or terrorism, could release more radiation than did the accidents at Chernobyl or Fukushima.
After removal from a reactor, the fuel rods are placed in pools of water, which allow this high-level waste to cool. After several years of cooling, they are placed into casks. Radioactivity given off by these fuel rods remains dangerous to all life for at least 10,000 years. They are much more radioactive than the waste at WIPP.
The canister design approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Holtec proposes is a thin-walled design, with an interior five-eighth-inch stainless-steel cask holding fuel rods. That is placed into another stainless-steel cask, with lead and boron in between to abate radiation. Two vent holes in the exterior cask allow cooling air to flow. Casks need to cool to 400 degrees Celsius to allow safe transport.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates very low risk of cask failure for at least 20 years. However, it will take 20-30 years for the casks to cool enough for transport. Given that cask cracking has been observed after 10 years, ultimate failure seems likely.
The long-term solution is likely to be underground burial at a well-researched location. It is unlikely that this high-level waste will be cool enough for a long-term underground repository until about 60 years after it is removed from the reactor.
The proposed Holtec interim storage facility has numerous fatal procedural and structural flaws. Alkaline soils there are corrosive. Fencing the site will not protect the area from armor-piercing artillery launched by terrorists from either of the two roads surrounding the site. There will be no continuous monitoring program to detect leaks. There is no plan on how to deal with leaking canisters. The data on radiation exposure to workers is proprietary. Transport vibration could cause cracking of the fuel rods, after which they cannot be safely transported at all. The best transport is via rail at low speeds, but the railroads have not been contracted. The transportation casks have not been tested to failure: What about a head-on collision of two trains, or trains falling off of a bridge?
The storage plan should be an integrated one, which industry experts admit is not the current approach. The movement of casks should be minimized. Unless a permanent repository is developed, the proposed interim site could become permanent. WIPP was studied as a transuranic radioactive waste site, not a high-level waste site, and no high-level waste repository exists.
It is no wonder that pecan farmers, dairy farmers and the oil, gas and tourism industries are worried. One accident could shut down the entire region. After 10,000 canisters have been sent to southeast New Mexico, at least one serious accident is likely to occur, based on Department of Energy analysis performed by Sandia engineers regarding shipping high-level waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Your grandkids might never get to visit Carlsbad Caverns. Are the 50-100 jobs that Holtec would bring worth the risk of 10 centuries of contamination?
The deadline for comments to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is July 30. Submit comments to: Holtec-CISFEIS@nrc.gov
For further information, go to riograndesierraclub.org/holtec. John Buchser of Santa Fe is the immediate past chairman of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club. He is interested in seeking solutions to sustainable use of our water in New Mexico and West Texas.
Nuclear Gravity Bomb Completes First Qual Tests on B-2 Bomber ,Military.com 30 Jun 2018 By Oriana Pawlyk
The B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb has gone through its first series of tests on the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
The Air Force, together with the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, earlier this month released a B61-12 non-nuclear test assembly from the Spirit. The kit included a NNSA-designed bomb assembly and the Air Force’s acquired tail-kit to be used on the B61-12 variant of the bomb, according to a Department of Energy release……….
Using the B61-12 will help consolidate and replace the existing B61 bomb variants in the U.S.’s nuclear stockpile, the release said. The first completed bomb kits are scheduled to debut sometime in fiscal 2020.
In May, top Air Force officials announced trials with the B61-12 were progressing successfully.
“We’ve already conducted 26 engineering, development and guided flight tests,” said Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration. “The program’s doing extremely well.”
The B61-12 modification program, which has been in the works for at least seven years, is slated to be carried by the B-2, as well as the future B-21 Long Range Strategic Bomber, known as the Raider.
The F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office has also been working on integrating the latest modification into its weapons arsenal.
The F-35 was designed with a requirement to carry a nuclear payload. In 2015, an F-35 flew with the B61-12 to measure its vibration in the aircraft’s weapons bay.
David Lowry’s Blog 29th June 2018, Article I of the NPT starts with the following commitment on Russia, the US
and UK: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to
transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear
explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices
directly, or indirectly”
Extraordinarily, just two days earlier in
Washington, the US hosted a bilateral meeting with the UK to celebrate the
60th anniversary – from July 3, 1958 – of a hugely significant nuclear
defence agreement (commonly called the US–UK Mutual Defense
Agreement,(MDA) with defence spelled with an ‘s’ even in the official
UK version, hinting at the origin of its drafting). http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.com/2018/06/naked-nuclear-hypocrisy.html
James Hansen and the whale, a tragi-comedy in four chapters, The Reality Based Community, By James Wimberley
“………..[James Hansen] he said : Nuclear, especially next-generation nuclear, has tremendous potential to be part of the solution to climate change. The dangers of fossil fuels are staring us in the face. So for us to say we won’t use all the tools [such as nuclear energy] to solve the problem is crazy.
At this stage, the position is harmless crankiness. Nuclear reactors, with their negative learning curve, regular delays, uncertainty, and long-tail risks drove off almost all private investors decades ago. There is no good reason to think new nuclear is essential or even useful to the energy transition. “Next-generation nuclear” doesn’t exist. The economics of the nuclear reactors that can be built, poor as they are, depend on use as “baseload”, a concept that cheap but variable wind and solar as primary generators have rendered obsolete. What these need is flexible despatchable backup, which can be supplied far more cheaply by storage, gas turbines, more trade (eg with Quebec or Norway), or paid-for demand response. On energy blogs like MIT Technology Review or GTM you can find a vociferous band of loyal pro-nuclear commentators, but they do not represent anybody with power or money. …..
Another group of prophets deserves to be honoured. ……… I cited earlier the fall in the cost of renewables as one key element in making possible the Paris Agreement and the energy transition it requires. This did not happen by accident or the magic of the free market. The slope of the learning curves of technologies like wind and solar power and batteries may be exogenous. But it’s a relationship between cost and volume, and depends on growth in volume and an appropriate level of R&D. Until wind and solar broke through cost parity with coal, oil and gas a few years ago, progress down the leaning curve depended on subsidised deployment and research. Car batteries are not quite there yet.
These crucial policy and technical developments were the fruit of a fairly small number of enterprising, determined and lucky individuals. They included:
Researchers on solar: Becquerel, Willoughby Smith, Fritts, Einstein, Czochralski, the Bell Labs team of Chapin, Fuller, and Pearson. On wind: Poul La Cour and Johannes Juul in Denmark. On batteries: John Goodenough, who coming up to his 96th birthday still unprized in Stockholm, has just announced a research breakthrough on a high-density solid-state lithium battery.
Politicians and bureaucrats: NASA in the 1960s, MITI in the 1970s; Hans-Josef Fell and Hermann Scheer, leaders of the Energiewende in Germany and instigators of the 2000 Renewable Energy Act (EEG); Jerry Brown of California; Barack Obama (through targeted ARRA funding and the bilateral deal with China that made Paris possible).
Businessmen: Tokuji Hayakawa of Sharp in Japan; Elon Musk of Tesla; Wang Chuanfu of BYD.
This is an incomplete list, and no doubt unfair from my lack of knowledge. But it is near-certain that without these 18, and the then leaders of MITI and NASA, renewable energy and electric transport would not be where they are today.
In Trump’s Russia Summit, Putin Holds All the CardsBy Jonah Shepp New York Magazine, 30 June 18President Donald Trump’s scheduled summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on July 15 is being billed by the White House as an opportunity to reduce diplomatic tensions, begin repairing relations, and address a number of international issues of concern to both the U.S. and Russia, such as Iran, Syria, and Ukraine. Moscow is already managing expectations, saying they hope the meeting will rekindle a dialogue between the two governments but not to expect any “breakthroughs.”
Then again, Putin doesn’t need any breakthroughs; he’s already getting most of what he wants out of Trump, and given our president’s oft-expressed admiration for authoritarian strongmen in general and for his Russian counterpart in particular, Putin surely aims to cross a few more items off his wish list in Helsinki.
American-Russian relations at this moment are somewhat schizophrenic. On paper, Trump’s government is continuing and even going above and beyond many of the tough policies pursued by the Obama administration, including sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, the sale of weapons to Ukraine to combat the ongoing Russian-backed insurgency, and the expulsion of Russian agents.
Yet no world leader has been so much a beneficiary of Trump’s “dictator envy” as Putin. The president has publicly flattered him and even congratulated him (against the advice of literally everyone) on his victory in a transparently rigged election in March. The two men’s previous contacts have been friendly and often advantageous to Putin; they even spent an hour alone together, with no other U.S. advisers or officials and only Putin’s translator present, on the sidelines of last year’s G20 meeting. Trump takes Putin at his word when he says Russia did not meddle in the 2016 election, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, and even as Russian state TV gloats about it.
With Trump, all business is personal, and deals are made or broken on the basis of his feelings about the people he is making them with. Earlier this month, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un — whose crimes against human rights include forced labor, torture, and murder — made such a good impression on Trump at a summit in Singapore that the president gifted him a unilateral halt to joint U.S.–South Korean war games, blindsiding both Seoul and the Pentagon. Calculated measures are for eggheads and losers; Trump’s gut trumps all. ……..
he is actively working to destabilize the European Union, encouraging key members to quit the organization and saying at a rally this week that the E.U. “was set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank” — an absolutely bonkers statement even if it were not based on an exaggeration of the U.S-E.U. trade deficit. Considering that Russia meddled in the Brexit referendum just as it did in our elections, it’s clear that weakening or dismantling that union is high on the Kremlin’s agenda.
Trump’s bootlickers like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may lamely spin Trump’s antagonism toward our allies as some kind of “disruptive” “reset” in service of U.S. interests, but no administration official has made a remotely persuasive case for why chipping away at these institutions is good for America. For a revanchist Russia, on the other hand, the upsides are crystal clear. With his bad relationships with European allies fresh in his mind, it’s easy to imagine Trump letting Putin talk him into taking more steps to undercut these alliances.
Whether Putin has some kind of kompromat or other form of personal leverage over Trump (a terrifying possibility that becomes more believable the more we learn about the depth of Russia’s machinations in the 2016 campaign), or whether the two men just so happen to agree that the transatlantic liberal order is better off discarded, Putin is already getting what he paid for from this president.
Pompeo tells China continued North Korea sanctions enforcement neededDavid Brunnstrom WASHINGTON (Reuters)29 June 18 – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has stressed to China the importance of continued enforcement of sanctions on North Korea to press it to give up its nuclear weapons, after warning of signs of backsliding by Beijing.
The State Department said Pompeo had spoken to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Thursday and discussed efforts “to achieve our shared goal of the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
Pompeo reiterated that North Korea would have a bright future if it denuclearized and emphasized “the continued importance of full enforcement of all relevant UN Security Council resolutions related to North Korea,” the department said in a statement.
It said this was especially important when it came to preventing North Korea’s illegal export of coal and imports of refined petroleum through ship-to-ship transfers prohibited by the United Nations.
……… Pompeo also spoke with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on Thursday to discuss the next steps on engagement with North Korea, the State Department said. It said they agreed on the need to maintain pressure until North Korea denuclearizes.
In a recently published fact sheet, OSHA reminds contractors, subcontractors, and licensees of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and contractors and subcontractors of the Department of Energy (DOE) that their employees are protected from retaliation for reporting potential violations of the Energy Reorganization Act (ERA) or the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) to their employers or to the government.
According to OSHA, retaliation comprises a wide range of actions, including firing or laying off, blacklisting, demoting, denying overtime or promotion, disciplining, denying benefits, failing to hire or rehire, intimidation, reassignment affecting promotion prospects, reducing pay or hours, and making threats.
Affected employers
Under the ERA, employees of the following employers are protected from retaliation for engaging in protected activity:
NRC licensees and applicants for licenses, including the Tennessee Valley Authority;
NRC contractors and subcontractors;
Contractors and subcontractors of NRC licensees and applicants for licenses;
Agreement state licensees and applicants for licenses from agreement states, including their contractors and subcontractors; and
Certain DOE contractors and subcontractors.
Protected actions
Employees of the above entities may not be discharged or otherwise retaliated against because the employee:
Notified the employer of an alleged violation of the ERA or the AEA;
Refused to engage in any practice that is unlawful under the ERA or the AEA if the employee has identified the alleged illegality to the employer;
Testified before Congress or at any federal or state proceeding regarding any provision (or proposed provision) of the ERA or the AEA;
Commenced a proceeding, caused a proceeding to be commenced, or is about to commence or cause to be commenced a proceeding under the ERA or the AEA;
Testified, assisted, or participated in or is about to testify, assist, or participate in a proceeding under the ERA or AEA; or
Assisted, participated in, or is about to assist or participate in any other action to carry out the purposes of the ERA or the AEA.
Filing requirements
The major burden for an employee seeking redress for alleged illegal retaliation is that the complaint must be filed with OSHA within 180 days after the employee was notified of the action taken against her or him. Otherwise the process is relatively simple. The employee or his or her representative can file an ERA complaint with OSHA by visiting or calling his or her local OSHA office, sending a written complaint to the closest OSHA office, or filing a complaint online. No particular form is required, and complaints may be submitted in any language. Also:
Written complaints may be filed by fax, electronic communication, hand delivery during business hours, U.S. mail (confirmation services recommended), or other third-party commercial carrier.
The date of the postmark, fax, electronic communication, telephone call, hand delivery, delivery to a third-party commercial carrier, or in-person filing at an OSHA office is considered the date filed.
What OSHA will do
If the complaint is filed on time, OSHA will investigate it according to procedures at 29 CFR Part 24.
“If the evidence supports an employee’s complaint of retaliation, OSHA will issue an order requiring the employer to, as appropriate, put the employee back to work, pay lost wages, restore benefits, and provide other possible relief,” states OSHA. “The exact requirements will depend on the facts of the case. If the evidence does not support the employee’s complaint, OSHA will dismiss the complaint.”
After OSHA issues a decision, the employer and/or the employee may request a full hearing before an administrative law judge of the Department of Labor (DOL). The judge’s decision may be appealed to DOL’s Administrative Review Board. The employee may also file a complaint in federal court if the Department does not issue a final decision within 365 days.
DOE’s program
Also, the DOE has established regulations at 10 CFR Part 708 to protect employees of DOE contractors against reprisal by the employer for specific employee actions that largely mirror OSHA’s protected actions listed above.
Procedures for filing a complaint under Part 708 differ from OSHA’s procedures and are generally considered more difficult to navigate. For example, the complaint must be filed within 90 days of the alleged retaliation; the complaint must be filed in writing; and the complaint may not be filed if it is based on the same facts for which the employee already requested a remedy from OSHA, under Federal Acquisition whistleblower protection regulations for contract employees, or from a state government.
In July 2016, the Government Accountability Office reported on DOE’s Part 708 program and recommended improvements.
Toronto’s public school board — and its elementary teachers — are urging officials to provide schools within 50 kilometres of the Pickering nuclear plant with a supply of anti-radiation pills in case of an incident.
The boundary would encompass almost all of the city’s schools and goes well beyond the current distribution radius of 10 kilometres, said Trustee Jerry Chadwick, who was part of committee that made the recommendation recently approved by the Toronto District School Board.
“All of our schools east of Morningside Ave. have had the potassium pills for years,” said Chadwick, who represents Ward 22 in the southeast end of Scarborough. “The TDSB did not have to request them, they were provided as part of the range covered by Pickering.
“Now we are asking them to cover schools in the 50-kilometre radius, which covers most of our schools.”
The issue of schools being provided with stockpiles of potassium iodide, or “KI” pills — which protect the thyroid in case of radiation exposure — dominated hearings held on the future of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, said attendee Shawn-Patrick Stensil of Greenpeace.
In Greater Toronto, there are two plants — Pickering, about 30 kilometres from Toronto’s Yonge St., and Darlington, which is about 60 kilometres away.
,In order to remove 1 metric ton of defense plutonium from South Carolina within two years, as a federal court has required, the U.S. Department of Energy is considering the plutonium’s nuclear weapon uses.
According to a June 13 progress report, the DOE and its National Nuclear Security Administration are re-examining the possibility of repurposing some Savannah River Site plutonium for “future defense programs.”
“Approximately 1 metric ton was identified for possible use by the weapons production program,” the report reads. “The amount of candidate programmatic material at SRS is limited; most of the surplus material is not suitable for weapons program use.”
The DOE’s prospective plan would shift the plutonium from SRS to another site, either for interim storage or plutonium pit production.
Plutonium pits are nuclear weapon cores, often referred to as triggers.
Potential out-of-state relocation sites for the 1 metric ton of plutonium have been identified, according to the DOE.
The June report did not specify where. Site studies concluded in April.
Environmental impact assessments for moving the plutonium, required by the National Environmental Policy Act, are already underway and could be completed by the end of 2018, the report notes.
In 2017, a U.S. District Court judge ordered the DOE to remove 1 metric ton of plutonium from the state within two years, the result of a lawsuit launched by S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson. At the time, Wilson celebrated the ruling as a major win.
The DOE has stated disposing 1 ton of plutonium via downblending, also known as dilute-and-dispose, would take until fiscal year 2025 to complete at current funding and operation levels. A court-received declaration made by Henry Allen Gunter, then a plutonium program manager and technical adviser at SRS, reinforced the DOE’s claim.
More funding and more trained personnel, according to the June report, would speed things up.
But planning related to dilute-and-dispose – mixing plutonium with inert material for burial at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico – ceased in June due to another court order that protected the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
The defense- and weapons-use option, according to the DOE’s report, vastly undercuts the 2025 estimate: “Indeed, the department believes that it is possible that, if successful, this option might allow the department to meet the current two-year timeline imposed by the district court,” the report reads.
According to the DOE, the plutonium is “safe and secure in its present location.” Moving it costs money and poses radiological, safety and security concerns, all of which are listed at the end of the report.
Eventually, the plutonium would have to be moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory or back to SRS for pit production.
On May 10, the DOE and the U.S. Department of Defense recommended a pit production mission for SRS, which muddies the waters a bit. Those plans have not yet been finalized.
Los Alamos currently does not have enough room for the 1 metric ton, the DOE report states. Holding it at an interim location incurs additional costs.
More information and detail, including timing, will be made available in December, the June report states.
Reuters 28th June 2018, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Thursday that bailing out
struggling coal and nuclear power plants is as important to national
security as keeping the military strong, and that the cost to Americans
should not be an issue. https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-gas-conference-perry-grid/nuclear-coal-bailout-worth-any-cost-to-keep-america-free-u-s-energy-chief-idUKKBN1JO2J
Nuclear testing during the Cold War sent radioactive fallout far away from the actual test sites. Politicians are moving to expand who can be compensated by the government for getting sick after exposure to that fallout.
The tests mostly happened in Nevada but winds sent radioactive materials far and wide. Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo said one detonation in 1952 was particularly memorable to his constituents.
“Idahoans that I’ve spoken to in Emmett and elsewhere have shared their memories of waking to find their pastures and orchards covered with a fine grey-white dust that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. It looked like frost, yet it was not cold to touch,” Crapo said in a Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing Wednesday.
In 1990 Congress created a program to compensate people who became seriously ill after radiation exposure.
According to the Department of Justice, since the programstarted more than $2 billion has been given in compensation. People like miners who worked directly with radioactive materials can get $100,000, people who were on site during nuclear tests get $75,000 and people who lived downwind of a major test site in Nevada get $50,000. So-called “downwinders” have to have lived in certain counties within Utah, Nevada and Arizona at the time of testing to be considered eligible.
“Unfortunately, the science at the time failed to recognize that radioactive fallout is not restricted by state lines,” said Crapo.
According to the National Cancer Institute, some of that fallout landed on fields across the country and especially in the Mountain West. It was consumed by animals like cows and eventually made it into milk cartons. Because of that, people who were milk-drinking children at the time are considered to have a higher risk of thyroid cancer.
Senators, including Crapo, have sponsored a bill that would expand the group of eligible “downwinders” to people who lived in parts of Idaho, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico and Guam at the time that tests were conducted.
The bill would also establish a grant program for further research into the health impacts of uranium mining and would extend the deadline for filing claims from 2022 to the late 2030s.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, Yellowstone Public Radio in Montana, KUER in Salt Lake City and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado.
The Trump administration just sent a tsunami through America’s electrical energy world when a leaked memo revealed that it had a new plan to shovel millions of dollars to the coal and nuclear power industries.
The memo, leaked to Bloomberg News and written by a member of Trump’s National Security Council, said that the nation faced a “grid emergency” because so many coal and nuclear power plants had shut down. The memo argued that the government could simply order private utility companies to buy high-cost electric power, because “national security” concerns mandated using “fuel-secure” sources to protect national security.
The memo claimed that “resources that have a secure, on-site fuel supply, including nuclear and coal fired power plants … are essential to support the nation’s defense facilities and critical energy infrastructure.” And it added that “due largely to regulatory and economic factors, too many of these fuel-secure facilities have retired prematurely.”
Prematurely? There is no shortage of electric power generation in the United States. The historic shift in this country toward cleaner, renewable energy is driven by national and international energy markets, not by tax breaks or government regulations. Countries around the world are investing in cheaper solar and wind power to address climate change and air pollution. One might think that free-market conservatives would be delighted to see competitive markets providing abundant, low-cost electricity from diverse sources to American consumers — all without interference from government. But apparently this case is different.
As for any threats to our national security, Vermont Law School professor Peter A. Bradford has pointed out: “We have no military crisis and no threats to our system reliability or resilience that require this drastic and expensive governmental intervention. The facts are being fixed around the desired end result.”
A political explanation seems like the real reason behind the administration’s determination to prop up coal. Trump’s staff has found a way to fulfill his campaign promise to rescue the dying coal industry, whose production has dropped 38 percent in the last decade. Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, who gave Trump $300,000 for his inauguration, presented Energy Secretary Rick Perry with an “action plan” last March that included ending pollution controls on coal plants and stopping the rapid shift toward wind and solar energy.
Perry tried to direct federal subsidies to coal, only to be blocked last September by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The leaked National Security Council memo noted that the Trump administration could use laws, such as the Federal Power Act and the Defense Production Act, to force utilities to buy high-cost power from coal and nuclear plants, though neither act has been used for these purposes before.
The memo also stated that natural gas is vulnerable to “cyber attacks” that make its supply unreliable, though record supplies of natural gas exist throughout the country. What the memo ignores is the reality that wind and solar, which make up about a quarter of power generation in this country, are abundant resources — nowhere near scarce.
Ever since horizontal drilling — fracking — transformed the oil and gas industry, this country has been producing large amounts of natural gas. Prices have dropped dramatically, and many coal-burning plants have converted to natural gas. Natural gas, however, is also a potent contributor to global climate change, and the continued flaring of methane during gas production is a significant, largely uncalculated source of pollution.
The Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a nonprofit that supports nuclear-free renewable energy, estimates that the coal and nuclear plant subsidies proposed in the memo could cost consumers up to $35 billion per year. Tim Judson, the group’s executive director, said, “Betting on old, increasingly uneconomical nuclear and coal power plants as a national security strategy is like gold-plating a Studebaker and calling it a tank. It could destroy the booming renewable energy industry, which is already employing more Americans than coal and nuclear combined.”
At a Senate hearing on June 11, Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell characterized the proposal as nothing more than “political payback” for the coal industry, and members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who testified agreed that there is no “grid emergency.” Citing market interference, even the American Petroleum Institute testified against subsidizing coal and nuclear power.
Trump, who apparently developed his ideas on energy policy back in the 1970s, has shown little interest in any of the major changes to America’s energy picture since then. His effort to turn back the clock to fulfill his campaign promises to coal miners and repay political contributions could throw tens of thousands of people out of work, forfeit America’s leadership in energy technology, and worsen global warming.
America’s environmental and energy future depends upon a vigorous public pushback against this wrongheaded move.
(CNN) — On Wednesday, the North Korea watchers at 38 North released satellite imagery that shows North Korea making improvements to the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center. While this report is unsettling, it is not at all surprising.
More unsettling than the report is the possibility that President Donald Trump believed that the North Korean nuclear threat could be solved by a handshake. In the immediate aftermath of the Singapore Summit, Trump said that, “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” That statement was false, and the North Korean activity at Yongbyon proves it.
But North Korean nuclear activity is not in violation of the terms of the summit, since Trump and Kim Jong Un did not sign paperwork regarding immediate and complete denuclearization. Instead, they signed an agreement that includes a vague statement that North Korea will “work toward” denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
So far, the Trump administration is the only side moving in that direction — by agreeing to suspend joint military exercises with South Korea in exchange for vague promises. The improvements at Yongbyon, however, do not even violate Kim’s vague promise, which was only to stop nuclear and ballistic missile testing.
But, more importantly, Kim has little incentive to cease nuclear activity, and for that he can thank the incoherent strategy of Trump. The “maximum pressure” campaign of ever-tightening, crippling sanctions against North Korea is all but forgotten by Washington, and even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says, “I am not going to put a timeline on [denuclearization].”
Additionally, Trump’s statements that the problem is solved gives China little incentive to apply pressure on its southern ally and gives America little leverage over China. Historically, China has been reluctant to apply too much pressure on Pyongyang for fear of a North Korean collapse that would both inundate China with refugees and potentially bring US troops to the Chinese border. It was Kim’s nuclear program that brought China into the sanctions regime. If, as the President said, the nuclear program is solved, then Washington has little recourse if China chooses to resume trading with North Korea.
CNN reports that the upgrades at Yongbyon were long-planned. These upgrades and further actions to strengthen Pyongyang’s nuclear deterrent will continue overtly in absence of an explicit agreement to stop them. And if such an agreement is reached, upgrades to the nuclear program and further research and development will likely continue in underground facilities. North Korea is not likely to give up its nuclear weapons for any reason or for any price.
Trump may think that a warm handshake and a few shared laughs will solve the North Korean problem, but Kim is not so naive. One of the world’s most brutal and repressive dictators, according to Human Rights Watch, is not going to be won over by Trump’s public remarks that he “got along great with Kim Jong Un, who wants to see wonderful things for his country” or that the two leaders share a “special bond.” Kim is going to take advantage of Trump’s pathological desire for praise and promise him the world, while continuing to develop his weapons programs.
The new developments at Yongbyon are not, on their face, cause for concern. But there are reasons to worry about the 38 North report. If Trump thinks that Kim agreed not to continue with his program, then this report (if discussed on his preferred news network) might cause Trump to return to his previous belligerent rhetoric vis-a-vis North Korea. If Trump thinks that this report makes him look weak, then he may be susceptible to John Bolton’s argument that there is a “legal case” to mount a preventive strike against North Korea.
Trump may think that the summit in Singapore prevented a war, but that is only true in the sense that it stopped him from starting one. That said, the summit does not need to be futile — it could also be the start of a genuine and serious set of arms control and limitation negotiations. These negotiations would require patience and skill without an obvious or immediate photo-op or half-clever tweet.
But since Trump is neither known for his patience nor his restraint on social media, we can expect North Korean nuclear research and facilities upgrades to continue apace.
Tell Congress: Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe in Iran
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.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
