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Harris admits to US/Israeli genocide in Gaza….then says ‘Oops, never mind’.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL

At a campaign stop in Milwaukee, Kamala Harris was confronted by a protester who charged the Biden administration “invested “billions of dollars in genocide in Gaza that has resulted in massive child casualties.”

Before Harris could consult her scripted genocide denial playbook, she blurted out “What he’s talking about, it’s real. That’s not the subject that I came to discuss today, but it’s real.”

Mainstream news didn’t cover Harris’ US genocide agreement comment. But just to be safe her campaign issued a statement that Harris “doesn’t agree with defining the war as a genocide, and she has not expressed such a stance in the past, as this is not her position.”

Perhaps the guilt of participating in the most grotesque genocide in this century is beginning to weigh on the conscience of Kamala Harris. If so campaign protesters, keep holding up the mirror of Biden/Harris genocide enabling in Gaza to Kamala at every campaign stop. She must be constantly reminded she cannot escape the depravity into which she has sunk to achieve the US presidency.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL

October 25, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

US authorizes CIA mercenaries to run biometric concentration camps in Gaza Strip

A private intelligence corporation billed as “Uber for war zones” is preparing to create what Israel hopes will be the model for supplanting Hamas rule in Gaza.

Uncaptured Media, Dan Cohen, Oct 22, 2024

The Biden administration has approved the deployment of 1,000 CIA-trained private mercenaries as part of a joint U.S.-Israeli plan to turn Gaza’s apocalyptic rubblescape into a high-tech dystopia.

Starting with Al-Atatra, a village in the northwestern Gaza Strip, the plan calls to build what the Israeli daily Ynet calls “humanitarian bubbles” – turning the remains of villages and neighborhoods into tiny concentration camps cut off from their environs and surrounded and controlled by mercenaries.

This comes as Israel carries out daily massacres and ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, enacting the proposal known as The Generals’ Plan, originally crafted by former national security chief Giora Eiland to turn Gaza into “a place where no human being can exist.”

The plan, approved by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, calls for the Israeli military to clear out pockets of Palestinian resistance, which it has failed to achieve, demonstrated by the recent killing of Israeli Colonel Ehasn Daksa, the highest ranking officer to lose his life in the year long war.

48 hours after stamping out resistance, they plan to erect separation walls around the neighborhood, forcing its residents, and no one else, to enter and exit using biometric identification under the CIA contractors’ control. Those who do not accept the biometric regime would be refused humanitarian aid…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://open.substack.com/pub/uncaptured/p/us-authorizes-cia-mercenaries-to

October 25, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Mini-Nukes, Big Bucks: The Interests Behind the SMR Push

The “billionaires’ nuclear club”

The 2015 Paris climate talks featured what cleantechnica.com called a “splashy press conference” by Bill Gates to announce the launch of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) – a group of (originally) 28 high net-worth investors, aiming “to provide early-stage capital for technologies that offer promise in bringing affordable clean energy to billions.”

Though BEC no longer makes its membership public, the original coalition included such familiar names as Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jack Ma (Alibaba), David Rubenstein (Carlyle Group), Tom Steyer, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg. Many of those names (and others) can now be found on the “Board and Investors” page of Breakthrough Energy’s website.

Why Canada is now poised to pour billions of tax dollars into developing Small Modular Reactors as a “clean energy” climate solution

by Joyce Nelson, January 14, 2021, story. Mini-Nukes, Big Bucks: The Interests Behind the SMR Push | Watershed Sentinel

Back in 2018, the Watershed Sentinel ran an article warning that “unless Canadians speak out,” a huge amount of taxpayer dollars would be spent on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), which author D. S. Geary called “risky, retro, uncompetitive, expensive, and completely unnecessary.” Now here we are in 2021 with the Trudeau government and four provinces (Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Alberta) poised to pour billions of dollars into SMRs as a supposed “clean energy” solution to climate change.

It’s remarkable that only five years ago, the National Energy Board predicted: “No new nuclear units are anticipated to be built in any province” by 2040.

So what happened?

The answer involves looking at some of the key influencers at work behind the scenes, lobbying for government funding for SMRs.

The Carney factor

When the first three provinces jumped on the SMR bandwagon in 2019 at an estimated price tag of $27 billion, the Green Party called the plan “absurd” – especially noting that SMRs don’t even exist yet as viable technologies but only as designs on paper.

According to the BBC (March 9, 2020), some of the biggest names in the nuclear industry gave up on SMRs for various reasons: Babcock & Wilcox in 2017, Transatomic Power in 2018, and Westinghouse (after a decade of work on its project) in 2014.

But in 2018, the private equity arm of Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc. announced that it was buying Westinghouse’s global nuclear business (Westinghouse Electric Co.) for $4.6 billion.

“If Wall Street and the banks will not finance this, why should it be the role of the government to engage in venture capitalism of this kind?”

Two years later, in August 2020, Brookfield announced that Mark Carney, former Bank of England and Bank of Canada governor, would be joining the company as its vice-chair and head of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and impact fund investing, while remaining as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

“We are not going to solve climate change without the private sector,” Carney told the press, calling the climate crisis “one of the greatest commercial opportunities of our time.” He considers Canada “an energy superpower,” with nuclear a key asset.

Carney is an informal advisor to PM Trudeau and to British PM Boris Johnson. In November, Johnson announced £525 million (CAD$909.6 million) for “large and small-scale nuclear plants.”

SNC-Lavalin

Scandal-ridden SNC-Lavalin is playing a major role in the push for SMRs. In her mid-December 2020 newsletter, Elizabeth May, the Parliamentary Leader of the Green Party, focused on SNC-Lavalin, reminding readers that in 2015, then-PM Stephen Harper sold the commercial reactor division of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) “to SNC-Lavalin for the sweetheart deal price of $15 million.”

May explained, “SNC-Lavalin formed a consortium called the Canadian National Energy Alliance (CNEA) to run some of the broken-apart bits of AECL. CNEA has been the big booster of what sounds like some sort of warm and cuddly version of nuclear energy – Small Modular Reactors. Do not be fooled. Not only do we not need new nuclear, not only does it have the same risks as previous nuclear reactors and creates long-lived nuclear wastes, it is more tied to the U.S. military-industrial complex than ever before. That’s because SNC-Lavalin’s partners in the CNEA are US companies Fluor and Jacobs,” who both have contracts with US Department of Energy nuclear-weapons facilities.”

But, states May, “Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan has been sucked into the latest nuclear propaganda – that ‘there is no pathway to Net Zero [carbon emissions] without nuclear’.”

Terrestrial Energy

Then there’s Terrestrial Energy, which in mid-October 2020 received a $20 million grant for SMR development from NRCan’s O’Regan and Navdeep Bains (Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry). The announcement prompted more than 30 Canadian NGOs to call SMRs “dirty, dangerous, and distracting” from real, available solutions to climate change.

The Connecticut-based company has a subsidiary in Oakville, Ontario. Its advisory board includes Stephen Harper; Michael Binder, the former president and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission; and (as of October) Dr. Ian Duncan, the former UK Minister of Climate Change in the Dept. of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Perhaps more important, Terrestrial Energy’s advisory board includes Dr. Ernest Moniz, the former US Secretary of the Dept. of Energy (2013-2017) who provided more than $12 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. Moniz has been a key advisor to the Biden-Harris transition team, which has come out in favour of SMRs, calling them “game-changing technologies” at “half the construction cost of today’s reactors.”

In 2015, while the COP 21 Paris Climate Agreement was being finalized, Moniz told reporters that SMRs could lead to “better financing terms” than traditional nuclear plants because they would change the scale of capital at risk. For years, banks and financial institutions have been reluctant to invest in money-losing nuclear projects, so now the goal is to get governments to invest, especially in SMRs.

That has been the agenda of a powerful lobby group that has been working closely with NRCan for several years.

The “billionaires’ nuclear club”

The 2015 Paris climate talks featured what cleantechnica.com called a “splashy press conference” by Bill Gates to announce the launch of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) – a group of (originally) 28 high net-worth investors, aiming “to provide early-stage capital for technologies that offer promise in bringing affordable clean energy to billions.”


Though BEC no longer makes its membership public, the original coalition included such familiar names as Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jack Ma (Alibaba), David Rubenstein (Carlyle Group), Tom Steyer, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg. Many of those names (and others) can now be found on the “Board and Investors” page of Breakthrough Energy’s website.

“As long as Bill Gates is wasting his own money or that of other billionaires, it is not so much of an issue. The problem is that he is lobbying hard for government investment.”

Writing in Counterpunch (Dec. 4, 2015) shortly after  BEC’s launch, Linda Pentz Gunter noted that many of those 28 BEC billionaires (collectively worth some $350 billion at the time) are pro-nuclear and Gates himself “is already squandering part of his wealth on Terra Power LLC, a nuclear design and engineering company seeking an elusive, expensive and futile so-called Generation IV traveling wave reactor” for SMRs. (In 2016, Terra Power, based in Bellevue, Washington, received a $40 million grant from Ernest Moniz’s Department of Energy.)

According to cleantechnica.com, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition “does have a particular focus on nuclear energy.” Think of BEC as the billionaires’ nuclear club.

By 2017, BEC was launching Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), a $1 billion fund to provide start-up capital to clean-tech companies in several countries.

Going after the public purse

Bill Gates was apparently very busy during the 2015 Paris climate talks. He also went on stage during the talks to announce a collaboration among 24 countries and the EU on something called Mission Innovation – an attempt to “accelerate global clean energy innovation” and “increase government support” for the technologies. Mission Innovation’s key private sector partners include the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, the World Economic Forum, the International Energy Agency, and the World Bank.

An employee at Natural Resources Canada, Amanda Wilson, was appointed as one of the 12 international members of the Mission Innovation Steering Committee.

In December 2017, Bill Gates announced that the Breakthrough Energy Coalition was partnering with Mission Innovation members Canada, UK, France, Mexico, and the European Commission in a “public-private collaboration” to “double public investment in clean energy innovation.”

Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources at the time, Jim Carr, said the partnership with BEC “will greatly benefit the environment and the economy. Working side by side with innovators like Bill Gates can only serve to enhance our purpose and inspire others.”

Dr. M.V. Ramana, an expert on nuclear energy and a professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at UBC, told me by email: “As long as Bill Gates is wasting his own money or that of other billionaires, it is not so much of an issue. The problem is that he is lobbying hard for government investment.”

Dr. Ramana explained that because SMRs only exist on paper, “the scale of investment needed to move these paper designs to a level of detail that would satisfy any reasonable nuclear safety regulator that the design is safe” would be in the billions of dollars. “I don’t see Gates and others being willing to invest anything of that scale. Instead, they invest a relatively small amount of money (compared to what they are worth financially) and then ask for government handouts for the vast majority of the investment that is needed.”

Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist at Beyond Nuclear, told me by email that the companies involved in SMRs “don’t care” if the technology is actually workable, “so long as they get paid more subsidies from the unsuspecting public. It’s not a question of it working, necessarily,” he noted.

Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, says governments “are being suckers. Because if Wall Street and the banks will not finance this, why should it be the role of the government to engage in venture capitalism of this kind?”

“Roadmap” to a NICE future

By 2018, NRCan was pouring money into a 10-month, pan-Canadian “conversation” about SMRs that brought together some 180 individuals from First Nations and northern communities, provincial and territorial governments, industry, utilities, and “stakeholders.” The resulting November 2018 report, A Call to Action: A Canadian Roadmap for Small Modular Reactors, enthusiastically noted that “Canada’s nuclear industry is poised to be a leader in an emerging global market estimated at $150 billion a year by 2040.”

At the same time, Bill Gates announced the launch of Breakthrough Energy Europe, a collaboration with the European Commission (one of BEC’s five Mission Innovation partners) in the amount of 100 million euros for clean-tech innovation.

Gates’ PR tactic is effective: provide a bit of capital to create an SMR “bandwagon,” with governments fearing their economies would be left behind unless they massively fund such innovations.

NRCan’s SMR Roadmap was just in time for Canada’s hosting of the Clean Energy Ministerial/Mission Innovation summit in Vancouver in May 2019 to “accelerate progress toward a clean energy future.” Canada invested $30 million in Breakthrough Energy Solutions Canada to fund start-up companies.

A particular focus of the CEM/MI summit was a CEM initiative called “Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy (NICE) Future,” with all participants receiving a book highlighting SMRs. As Tanya Glafanheim and M.V. Ramana warned in thetyee.ca (May 27, 2019) in advance of the summit, “Note to Ministers from 25 countries: Prepare to be dangerously greenwashed.”

Greenwash vs public backlash

While releasing the federal SMR Action Plan on December 18, O’Regan called it “the next great opportunity for Canada.”

Bizarrely, the Action Plan states that by developing SMRs, our governments would be “supporting reconciliation with Indigenous peoples” – but a Special Chiefs Assembly of the Assembly of First Nations passed a unanimous 2018 resolution demanding that “the Government of Canada cease funding and support” of SMRs. And in June 2019, the Anishinabek Chiefs-in-Assembly (representing 40 First Nations across Ontario) unanimously opposed “any effort to situate SMRs within our territory.”

Some 70 NGOs across Canada are opposed to SMRs, which are being pushed as a replacement for diesel in remote communities, for use in off-grid mining, tar-sands development, and heavy industry, and as exportable expertise in a global market.

Whether SMRs work or not, Mission Innovation members will be throwing tax-dollars at them like there is no tomorrow.

On December 7, the Hill Times published an open letter to the Treasury Board of Canada from more than 100 women leaders across Canada, stating: “We urge you to say ‘no’ to the nuclear industry that is asking for billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to subsidize a dangerous, highly-polluting and expensive technology that we don’t need. Instead, put more money into renewables, energy efficiency and energy conservation.”

No new money for SMRs was announced in the Action Plan, but in her Fall Economic Statement, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland touted SMRs and noted that “targeted action by the government to mobilize private capital will better position Canadian firms to bring their technologies to market.” That suggests the Canada Infrastructure Bank will use its $35 billion for such projects.

It will take a Herculean effort from the public to defeat this NICE Future, but along with the Assembly of First Nations, three political parties – the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Green Party – have now come out against SMRs.

Award-winning author Joyce Nelson’s latest book, Bypassing Dystopia, is published by Watershed Sentinel Books. She can be reached via www.joycenelson.ca.

October 24, 2024 Posted by | Canada, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Nuclear lobby propagandises to kids AGAIN!

They did this in the past – with rather pathetic little comics and posters

Like this one, from Canadian uranium company Cameco

Department of Energy Goes Nuclear with New Comic Book – Office of Nuclear Energy, 23 Oct 24

What does dodgeball have to do with nuclear power?

You can find out in a new comic book released by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that’s geared toward young readers.

The Spark Squad Nuclear comic book follows middle schoolers Jasmine, Aria and Thomas on their quest to collect enough “joules” to qualify for the regional power fair.

The students quickly find out just how “energy dense” uranium fuel is after meeting Aria’s old friend Dakota at a nearby coal facility, which was recently converted to a nuclear power plant.

Dakota then asks for the Spark Squad’s help to initiate a chain reaction by getting enough uranium particles to play dodgeball with “neutron balls” to split apart other Uranium-235 atoms.

This epic game of dodgeball results in a sustained nuclear reaction AND more than enough joules for the students to qualify for regionals!………….

Spark-ing Interest in Nuclear Energy 

The Spark Squad comic book and video were created by DOE to make nuclear power more accessible to younger audiences.  

We developed a special activity called “Dodgeball Fission” and also worked with our national labs to create a STEM toolkit for the comic book to help engage learners of all ages. It can be used both in-school and out-of-school with standards-aligned, ready-to-use activities for educators.

Nuclear and STEM 

The United States operates the largest fleet of reactors in the world with 94 units located at 54 sites across the country. 

And, if you don’t live near one of these plants, then you might not know just how good of a neighbor nuclear can be. 

These plants support thousands of high-paying jobs with salaries that are typically 30 percent higher than the local average. 

Nuclear plants also contribute millions of dollars each year to their communities through federal and state taxes that are used to improve local infrastructure projects and schools.

DOE estimates our nuclear capacity could triple by 2050 to help meet our rising energy demand with clean power. 

That means hundreds of thousands of new jobs could be created in the sector as current nuclear plants work to extend their operations and new plants come online. 

To help cultivate this future workforce, it’s important to engage youth at an early age with activities like this comic book and the accompanying activities to spark their interest in future STEM careers. 

You can also check out earlier Spark Squad comic books as the team explores hydropower.

The Spark Squad comic books were produced through a collaborative effort between the Office of Nuclear Energy, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Chromosphere Studio.  

 To explore more STEM activities related to nuclear power, check out our Navigating Nuclear Curriculum or visit our full suite of DOE STEM resources.  

 https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/department-energy-goes-nuclear-new-comic-book?fbclid=IwY2xjawGFBF9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdLM-idQxTS1kErOBso5ag3kYlNAjm1qHoCTt38mVxDrlqgf8IBwP-haUA_aem_Yd7COpwP3grZbyEr2-gLSg

October 24, 2024 Posted by | Education, USA | Leave a comment

Three Mile Island nuclear plant gears up for Big Tech reboot

Reuters, By Laila Kearney, October 23, 2024

Summary

Companies

Activists say they will challenge licensing for the plant

Restart work is expected to begin in Q1 2025

Constellation has ordered major equipment

Microsoft would consider similar contracts to restart nuclear power plants

Work includes refurbishing cooling towers and millions of feet of scaffolding

THREE MILE ISLAND, Pennsylvania, Oct 22 (Reuters) – Giant cooling towers at Constellation Energy’s (CEG.O), opens new tab Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania have sat dormant for so long that grass has sprung up in the towers’ hollowed-out bases and wildlife roam inside.

Armed guard stations at an entrance to the shut concrete facility, surrounded by barbed wire, sit empty. The plant, which would run so loud when operating that workers were required to wear hearing protection, is nearly silent.

“It’s still eerie walking in here and it’s, just, quiet,” Constellation regulatory assurance manager Craig Smith said during a tour of the plant last week. Smith, who worked at Three Mile Island when Constellation shut the site’s remaining reactor in 2019, is now preparing for a restart.

Constellation announced last month that it would revive the half-century-old Three Mile Island with the purpose of fueling Microsoft’s (MSFT.O), opens new tab data centers. Microsoft is expected to pay at least $100 a megawatt-hour, nearly double the typical cost of renewable energy in the region, as part of the 20-year power contract.

The agreement shows the dramatic lengths Big Tech is willing to go to procure electricity for its artificial intelligence expansion and the undertaking by the U.S. power industry to meet that demand.

The effort to restore Unit 1 at Three Mile Island is expected to take four years, at least $1.6 billion, and thousands of workers to complete the unprecedented task of restarting a retired nuclear plant.

Constellation has already ordered costly equipment for the site and identified fuel for the unit’s reactor core, with work expected to start early next year, according to Reuters’ interviews with company executives, contractors and a tour of the site.

Successfully resurrecting Three Mile Island, which is widely known for a 1979 partial meltdown that cast a pall over the U.S. nuclear sector for decades, would put the plant at the front edge of an industry revival…………………………………………………..

A restart of the plant, however, is not certain. Three Mile Island, which will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Complex, still requires licensing modifications and permitting. Local activists have also vowed to fight the project over safety and environmental concerns.

If the plan suffers the same lengthy delays and cost overruns that have plagued nearly every nuclear build in the country’s history, it could stymie other deals and set back Big Tech’s quest to rapidly expand, power experts say.

………………………………………………………………..The company has commissioned the fuel design for the reactor’s core, said Constellation Chief Generation Officer Bryan Hanson. The core holds the enriched uranium, the fuel source for the plant, stacked in pellets and sealed in tubes.

Constellation, which is the biggest U.S. operator of nuclear plants, will tap into fuel from its existing enriched uranium reserves as one of the final steps before starting up.

………………………………………………Not everyone is enthused about the prospect of a nuclear comeback. The power plants produce waste that can remain radioactive for thousands of years.

About a tennis court-size amount of spent nuclear fuel from Unit 1 is stored on Three Mile Island, which sits on a strip of land in the Susquehanna River. The decommissioning of Unit 2 is still underway about 45 years after the partial meltdown.

Local activist Eric Epstein, who remembers the March 1979 incident, said he will fight Constellation’s request to resume operating and water use licenses.

“It’s going to be a protracted battle,” Epstein said.

The first chance for the challenges comes on Oct. 25, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled its initial public hearing on Constellation’s plan to restart Unit 1.
Reporting by Laila Kearney Editing by Marguerita Choy
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/three-mile-island-nuclear-plant-gears-up-big-tech-reboot-2024-10-22/

October 24, 2024 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

Ontario town starts voting today on willingness to host ‘forever’ nuclear waste storage site

$418 million in subsidies from Canada’s nuclear industry

“When you look at the money, I don’t think it’s really significant when you look at the scope of this project,“

Teeswater, north of London, and northern Ontario site being considered for massive facility

Andrew Lupton · CBC News · Posted: Oct 21, 2024 

The small farming community of Teeswater, Ont., faces a massive decision. Starting today, its 6,000 residents will vote in a referendum on whether or not they’re willing to host Canada’s largest underground storage facility of spent nuclear fuel.

For Anja Vandervlies, who operates a 1,300-goat dairy farm nearby, it’s a monumental decision for her town in the municipality of South Bruce, and an easy choice for her. 

“If we vote yes, we’re stuck with this nuclear waste in the ground forever,” said Vandervlies, a member of the opposition group Protecting Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste. “This is the only time that we, as residents, are going to get a say in this whole process.” 

A two-hour drive from London but less than 45 minutes from the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station on Lake Huron, Teeswater is one of two locations being considered to host Canada’s largest permanent underground storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. 

Also under consideration is Ignace, a community of about 1,200, located 245 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. Voters there have already said they’re willing hosts; now it’s Teeswater’s turn to have its say. 

Voting will be conducted online and by phone over seven days. To be binding, a yes vote of 50 per cent plus one is required. If Teeswater votes yes, the board of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) will make a final decision between Teeswater and Ignace, likely before the end of this year. 

Once the site is decided, the $26-billion storage facility would be built in stages, with plans to begin accepting waste in the 2040s and continue storing it away underground for the next 175 years. 

The process also requires consultation from First Nations groups in both communities. Neither has officially made a decision. The Wabigoon Lake Ojibway First Nation will vote in November. Opposition from Indigenous groups to the northern Ontario site is growing. 

Wherever it’s located, the facility, which the NWMO calls a “deep geological repository” that would be located 600 metres underground, will take spent nuclear fuel from Canadian Candu reactors located as far away as Winnipeg. 

Running counter to the safety concerns is the significant windfall awaiting whichever of the two communities winds up hosting the storage facility. 

The host town would not only benefit from high-paying jobs, but also $418 million in subsidies from Canada’s nuclear industry over the the course of the project. 

South Bruce Coun. Ron Schnurr didn’t want to say how he’s voting, opting instead to give the community its say this week.

However, he said the money would be a massive boost to a rural community with big infrastructure needs and a small tax base to pay for them. ……………………….

To Vandervlies and others in the group opposing the facility, the risk far outweighs the potential reward of hosting the site. 

“When you look at the money, I don’t think it’s really significant when you look at the scope of this project,” she said. 

The question

Voters will decide yes or no to the following question: 

  • Are you in favour of the Municipality of South Bruce declaring South Bruce to be a willing host for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s proposed Deep Geological Repository (DGR)?

Information about how to vote, how to get on the voters list and where to find a voter assistance centre is posted here. Voting closes on Oct. 28 at 8 p.m. ET.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/teeswater-nuclear-waste-storage-site-vote-1.7356267

October 24, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

Navy ‘Innovation’ Center  for “warfighting capabilities” will harm the Monterey Peninsula and ocean

Nina Beety
California Carmel Pine Cone, Monterey 23 Oct 24

The planned Navy Innovation Center for “warfighting capabilities” will
cause irreparable harm to the Monterey Peninsula and ocean. The Navy’s
track record of environmental damage is well-known – wanton disregard
for life, health, and safety, including its own personnel, maiming and
killing whales and dolphins, poisoning ocean, land, and drinking water –
while refusing accountability and transparency.

In its scant environmental assessment for the center, the Navy refused
to evaluate coastal zone management, hazardous materials and waste,
public health and safety, or recreation impacts, or existing local
impacts – [Navy] groundwater contamination from the airport flowing into
Laguna Grande, radioactive contamination under NPS, killing historic
trees along Del Monte Avenue, sonar, new 5G on the beach, and violating
federal laser limits. Its microwave emissions harm surrounding
residential areas and forests, and those emissions will increase with
the new center. The Navy’s nuclear waste dumps near the Farallons and
Half Moon Bay impact the bay.

This center is incompatible with the viability and health of this
community and the Earth. Please oppose it.

October 24, 2024 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Video. Gordon Edwards on Nuclear Fuel Waste Abandonment (South Bruce)

Canada’s nuclear waste producers want to bury and eventually abandon all of their high-level radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel) in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR). For this purpose they need to find a “willing host community” that will accept the waste. Accordingly, in 2005 the waste producers created a Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) that has given many millions of dollars to a small number of “candidate communities” over the last 14 years, in addition to meeting on a monthly basis with the members of a Citizens’ Liaison Committee (CLC) chosen for each candidate community, in a program called “Learn More”.

The idea is that each community would learn about how safe the management, transport, packaging and burial of this intensely radioactive material will be, so that they are “fully informed” about the proposed project. Now NWMO has narrowed down the original list of 22 candidate communities to just two: one near Revell Lake north of Lake Superior, between the Ontario towns of Ignace and Dryden, and the other near Teeswater, South Bruce, a small farming community a few kilometres west of Lake Huron. 

Unfortunately, NWMO withheld information about the individual radioactive constituents of used nuclear fuel (like radioactive iodine, radioactive caesium, radioactive strontium, and plutonium) and the biomedical dangers they pose. NWMO also erroneously affirmed that the used fuel pellets are solid ceramics that can not leak, which is untrue. Until recently, NWMO neglected to tell the communities that the used fuel will have to be “repackaged” before burial, an elaborate and potentially dangerous operation. In addition NWMO withheld information about the specific risks associated with “reprocessing” – the option of extraction of plutonium from the used fuel before burial, which requires the destruction of the nuclear fuel matrix, thereby releasing a very large quantity of radioactive solids, vapours and gases that are difficult to contain.

The Ignace town council has already signed an agreement with NWMO to proceed, and we are awaiting the decision of Wabigoon Lake First Nation – one of the closest indigenous communities to the Revell Lake site. The citizens of South Bruce will be voting in a referendum near the end of October whether or not to give their approval, after which the nearby Saugeen Ojibway First Nation will render its decision whether or not to support the project. In both cases, the decision of the indigenous peoples will be of great importance. Canada has accepted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as a fundamental component of federal decision-making. UNDRIP asserts that no toxic waste shall be stored or disposed of o indigenous lands without the Free, Prior, Informed Consent of those indigenous rights-holders.

October 21, 2024 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Widening the War: The US Sends Troops to Israel

October 20, 2024,  Dr Binoy Kampmark,  https://theaimn.com/widening-the-war-the-us-sends-troops-to-israel/

The dangers should be plastered on every wall in every office occupied by a military and political advisor. Israel’s attempt to reshape the Middle East, far from giving it enduring security, will merely serve to make it more vulnerable and unstable than ever. In that mix and mess will be its greatest sponsor and guardian, the United States, a giant of almost blind antiquity in all matters concerning the Jewish state.

In a measure that should have garnered bold headlines, the Biden administration has announced the deployment of some 100 US soldiers to Israel who will be responsible for operating the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. They are being sent to a conflict that resembles a train travelling at high speed, with no risk of stopping. As Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant promised in the aftermath of Iran’s October 1 missile assault on his country, “Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all – surprising.” It would be of such a nature that “They will not understand what happened and how it happened.”

In an October 16 meeting between the Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Gallant, the deployment of a mobile THAAD battery was seen “as an operational example of the United States’ ironclad support to the defense of Israel.” Largely meaningless bits of advice were offered to Gallant: that Israel “continue taking steps to address the dire humanitarian situation” and take “all necessary measures to ensure the safety and security” of UN peacekeepers operating in  Lebanon’s south.

The charade continued the next day in a conversation between Austin and Gallant discussing the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. THAAD was again mentioned as essential for Israel’s “right to defence itself” while representing the “United States’ unwavering, enduring, and ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.” (“Ironclad” would seem to be the word of the moment, neatly accompanying Israel’s own Iron Dome defence system.)

A statement from the Pentagon press secretary, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, was a fatuous effort in minimising the dangers of the deployment. The battery would merely “augment Israel’s integrated air defense system,” affirm the ongoing commitment to Israel’s defence and “defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks from Iran.”

The very public presence of US troops, working alongside their Israeli counterparts in anticipation of broadening conflict, does not merely suggest Washington’s failure to contain their ally. It entails a promise of ceaseless supply, bolstering and emboldening. Furthermore, it will involve placing US troops in harm’s way, a quixotic invitation if ever there was one.

As things stand, the US is already imperilling its troops by deploying them in a series of bases in Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Iran’s armed affiliates have been making their presence felt, harrying the stationed troops with increasing regularity since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7 last year. A gradual, attritive toll is registering, featuring such attacks as those on the Tower 22 base in northern Jordan in January that left three US soldiers dead.

Writing in August for The Guardian, former US army major Harrison Mann eventually realised an awful truth about the mounting assaults on these sandy outposts of the US imperium: “there was no real plan to protect US troops beyond leaving them in their small, isolated bases while local militants, emboldened and agitated by US support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, used them for target practice.” To send more aircraft and warships to the Middle East also served to encourage “reckless escalation towards a wider war,” providing insurance to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he could be protected “from the consequences of his actions.”

Daniel Davis, a military expert at Defense Priorities, is firmly logical on the point of enlisting US personnel in the Israeli cause. “Naturally, if Americans are killed in the execution of their duties, there will be howls from the pro-war hawks in the West ‘demanding’ the president ‘protect our troops’ by firing back on Iran.” It was “exactly the sort of thing that gets nations sucked into war they have no interest in fighting.”

Polling, insofar as that measure counts, suggests that enthusiasm for enrolling US troops in Israel’s defence is far from warm. In results from a survey published by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in August, some four in ten polled would favour sending US troops to defend Israel if it was attacked by Iran. Of the sample, 53% of Republicans would favour defending Israel in that context, along with four in 10 independents (42%), and a third of Democrats (34%).

There have also been some mutterings from the Pentagon itself about Israel’s burgeoning military effort, in particular against the  Lebanese Iran-backed militia, Hezbollah. In a report from The New York Times, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., is said to be worried about the widening US presence in the region, a fact that would hamper overall “readiness” of the US in other conflicts. Being worried is just the start of it.

October 21, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

“Goodbye Lebanon” – High Israeli Official. Biden Says OK, So Far.

By Ralph Nader / Nader.org, October 18, 2024

Biden’s bombs and missiles, dropped daily on Lebanon, a U.S. ally, by his puppet master Netanyahu, is wreaking havoc in this small defenseless country. The Israeli genocidal machine is waging an incinerating assault on fleeing civilians and critical facilities. The scorched-earth Israeli strategy is the same as what we have seen in Gaza. Attack in Lebanon anyone who moves or anything that stands – whether a hospital, a dense residential area, a café, a municipal building, a market, a school, or a Mosque – and allege there was a Hezbollah commander or a Hezbollah site here or there. Two recent New York Times headlines express some of the impact of this latest Israeli war: “In Just a Week, a Million People in Lebanon Have Been Displaced” and “Lebanon’s Hospitals Buckle Amid an Onslaught: ‘Indiscriminate’ Strikes Overwhelm Health System, U.N. Says.”

Historical note: Hezbollah, also a political Party and social service organization, was created to defend impoverished Shiite Muslims in southern Lebanon in 1982 right after the Israeli army once again invaded Lebanon and badly mistreated the residents during an 18-year-long military occupation.

No matter what or who the Israeli Air Force’s American F-16 fighter aircraft bomb, no matter the deaths and injuries to thousands of Lebanese families, many of them children and women, Biden keeps unconditionally and savagely shipping weapons of mass destruction. He is violating six federal laws requiring conditions be met – such as not violating human rights or not obstructing U.S. humanitarian aid. Netanyahu is violating these and other conditions and mocking his major benefactor, the United States government.

Israel has long had designs on a slice of Lebanon going up to and including the Litani River area. Water is valuable. Over the years, Israel has routinely violated Lebanese air space, executed incursions into Lebanon and has used forbidden cluster bombs and white phosphorous. According to Aya Majzoub, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, “It is beyond horrific that the Israeli army has indiscriminately used white phosphorous in violation of international humanitarian law.”

The White House knows all this. It doesn’t care. Wherever Israel invades, bombs, assassinates, or boobytraps pagers and walkie-talkies, Bibi-Biden continues his servility to the Israeli terror regime and its genocidal leader Netanyahu, who is despised by three out of four Israelis for his domestic policies and is under indictment by Israeli prosecutors for corruption.
Despite reports that Biden steams in private against Netanyahu, and considers him a liar and a supporter of Trump’s re-election, Biden knows that that this foreign authoritarian has the big card: CONGRESS. Most of the legislators who attended his noxious address to a joint congressional session last June gave him a record-breaking 52 standing ovations. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation in the House Chamber today was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.”

Biden, who is known to conduct foreign and military policy without any authorization by Congress, doesn’t want to offend the powerful “Israel government can do no wrong” Lobby in the U.S. – to which he has been indentured for his entire fifty-year political career. This includes Israel’s current destruction of Lebanon, where tens of thousands of Americans are residing. The Washington Post reports that the Biden White House “has so far given full backing to Israel’s ground operations in Lebanon, even amid a growing international outcry over the civilian toll … and Israeli clashes with United Nations peacekeepers,” who have been assigned there for decades.

Having full U.S. government backing, and now backed by U.S. warships, Marines and logistics, plus 100 U.S. soldiers arriving this week in Israel, Netanyahu knows he has a free hand to attack Iran and drag the U.S. into a regional war.

Both Netanyahu and Bibi-Biden have been briefed about the possibilities of “blowback” (the CIA’s term) against the U.S. These concerns come from U.S. intelligence agencies who study scenarios like future 9/11s or the recent inexpensive armed drones that can be constructed and deployed anywhere. Militarists and corporatists in the U.S. aren’t that concerned because whenever “blowback” occurs they can concentrate more power, with bigger military budgets and profits, in another “war on terror,” silencing dissent and subordinating or sidelining critical domestic priorities.

That is the lethal fix and fate that America has been subjected to by its cowardly, Constitution-violating politicians from both Parties. The power structure – the corporate state – or what Franklin Delano Roosevelt once called in a 1938 message to Congress “fascism,” is telling the American people: “Heads we win, Tails you lose.”

Here is how bad Biden has gotten. Recently, two letters signed by 65 American doctors and health workers back from the horrors, the killing fields of Gaza, to President Joe Biden, have gone unanswered. (See, “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza” by Feroze Sidhwa, New York Times Sunday, October 13, 2024). Their letters plead for a ceasefire and immediate humanitarian aid for the starving, dying people of Gaza. They request a meeting with President Biden, who has often met with the pro-Israeli lobby. Scranton Joe says no way.

These brave physicians and nurses also are requesting that Joe Biden demand that Netanyahu allow children in Gaza who are seriously burned or are amputees be air-lifted to America to be treated by compassionate specialists in ready American hospitals. Biden, a practicing Catholic, has no interest.

President George Washington warned his country about avoiding foreign entanglements in his farewell address. Were he possessed of more prescience; he would have added the word “surrenders.”

October 21, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Years after nuclear fiasco soaked ratepayers, leaders look at restarting VC Summer project .

The State, BY SAMMY FRETWELL OCTOBER 15, 2024

Seven years after two power companies abandoned a failing nuclear construction project, a report has concluded that the equipment and existing buildings on the site are in “excellent’’ condition — and it would be worth a look at restarting construction.

A Sep. 16 report by two members of the Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council said partially completed buildings show “no degradation, corrosion’’ or chipped concrete at the V.C. Summer site northwest of Columbia. The report, discussed Tuesday at the council’s quarterly meeting, said nuclear parts that had already been installed showed some surface rust, but that was not unexpected or a substantial problem.

The V.C. Summer nuclear expansion project marked what many consider the biggest construction failure in South Carolina history. The project to build two reactors to complement an existing one cost $9 billion, soaked ratepayers with higher utility bills and left thousands of employees out of work. Utilities walked away from the project in 2017 because of excessive costs and delays.

But there has been renewed talk of restarting the effort to meet growing energy needs, and the Advisory Council report examined what kind of shape the buildings and equipment were in………………….

The reality of restarting the project is unknown without more study and finding a way to pay for it. Doing so would make for an additional cost, beyond the more than the $9 billion Santee Cooper and SCE&G spent on the V.C. Summer project before it was shelved seven years ago.

Lee and Little’s report recommended a more extensive study of the equipment, buildings and possibility of finishing the project.

Considering the costs to customers — many are still paying for the failed project as part of their monthly energy bills — beginning work on the abandoned reactors could be unpopular with the public, said Tom Clements, a nuclear safety watchdog and critic of the V.C. Summer expansion. As of late last year, ratepayers were still being charged more than 5 percent on their Dominion energy bills for the failed project.

At the same time, SCE&G, which was acquired by Dominion Energy, terminated the federal license to build the plant. Getting a new one for the work could be an extensive process, taking possibly years to complete, he said. “It would take a tremendous amount of effort and financial resources that would make restart of the project highly impractical,’’ Clements said………………………………………………………………

Meanwhile, Santee Cooper is not interested in owning or operating nuclear reactors at V.C. Summer, if they were completed, a spokeswoman said. A Dominion spokesman offered similar comments. The Virginia-headquartered power company “has no plans to restart construction of additional units at V.C. Summer,’’ spokeswoman Rhonda O’Banion said in an email…………………………………………………………

Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, also has mentioned that the infamous Three Mile Island site in Pennsylvania was under consideration for restart of a nuclear reactor. Davis suggested Lee and Little put together the report discussed Tuesday at the council meeting. Efforts are underway to crank up a unit that shut down in 2019 so that the plant can accommodate a Microsoft data center, Reuters reported. Data centers are tremendous users of energy. The Three-Mile Island site is home to what’s considered the nation’s worst nuclear accident, a meltdown in the 1970s. The reactor to be restarted is not the one in which the 1979 accident occurred.

……………………………………………………………………… Dominion Energy and Santee Cooper jointly own the V.C. Summer property, but Santee and Westinghouse own the equipment. When the V.C. Summer expansion project shut down, SCE&G ratepayers had been charged more than $1 billion for the construction, prompting a public and political outcry. Top utility executives were accused of withholding information about the project’s problems, charged criminally for their actions and sentenced to prison……………………….  https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article293978684.html

October 20, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear Fever: War Mongering on Iran

In Foreign Policy, Matthew Kroenig, generously self-described as a national security strategist, blusters for war. “Indeed, now is an ideal opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” he asserts with childish longing.

In a report authored by both Democrats and Republicans for the Council, a warning of chilling absurdity is offered: “The United States needs to maintain a declaratory policy, explicitly enunciated by the president, that it will not tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon and will use military force to prevent this development if all other measures fail.”

Iran can never have nuclear weapons, because the United States and Israel say so

October 18, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,  https://theaimn.com/nuclear-fever-war-mongering-on-iran/

The recent string of exaggerated military successes – or at least as they are understood to be – places Israel in a situation it has been previously used to: prowess in war. Such prowess promises much: redrawing boundaries; overthrowing governments; destroying the capabilities of adversaries and enemies. Nothing, in this equation, contemplates peace, let alone diplomatic resolution. It’s playground pugilism that rarely gets out of the sandpit.

In Washington, a fever has struck regarding Israel’s advances. The outbreak has stirred much enthusiasm in a doctrine that has been shown, time and again, to be wretchedly uncertain and grossly dangerous. With no concrete evidence of imminent harm to US interests, it featured in the highest policy planning circles that oiled an invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the stated objective was the disarming of Saddam Hussein’s regime for having Weapons of Mass Destruction it turned out not to have, the logic was one of pre-emptive strike: we attack the madman in Baghdad before he goes nuclear and loses it.

The establishment wonk on empire and espionage at The Washington Post, David Ignatius, offers a fairly meaningless assessment in terms of claimed Israeli dominance over Iran and its proxies. After a year of conflict, Israel had “gained what military strategists call ‘escalation dominance’.” The implication: a decisive attack on Iran is imminent.

The point here (at this juncture, the mind lost seeks sanctuary in a mental asylum of lunatic reassurances), is that attacking Iran in toto will not result in much by way of retaliatory detriment. Some bruising, surely, but hardly lingering flesh wounds. Israel has, it would seem, been working some magic, spreading its own view that Iran has a gruesome plan in its military vault: eliminating Israel by 2040.

In Foreign Policy, Matthew Kroenig, generously self-described as a national security strategist, blusters for war. “Indeed, now is an ideal opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” he asserts with childish longing. The reason for such an attack lies in a presumption. Yet again, the doctrine of pre-emption, one hostile to international law and the UN Charter, plays out its feeble rationale. Evidence, in such cases, is almost always scanty. Kroenig, however, is certain. Iran will secure one bomb’s worth of weapon-grade material within a matter of weeks. The rest is obvious. No evidence is offered, nor does it even matter, given Kroenig’s longstanding zeal in wishing to rid Iran of its nuclear facilities.

The Atlantic Council has also suggested a policy that what is good for the goose of Christian-Jewish freedom is not good for the gander of Persian Shia ambition. It is exactly this full-fledged hypocrisy that the despots of the secular tyranny in North Korea realised in dealing with Washington. Beware the nostrums against nuclear armament.

In a report authored by both Democrats and Republicans for the Council, a warning of chilling absurdity is offered: “The United States needs to maintain a declaratory policy, explicitly enunciated by the president, that it will not tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon and will use military force to prevent this development if all other measures fail.”

Instead of resisting belligerent chatter, the authors suggest that the US threaten Iran through announcing “yearly joint exercises with Israel, such as Juniper Oak and seek additional funding in the next budget cycle to speed research and development of next-generation military hardware capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear program

Kroenig shows his usual stuffing. Iran can never have nuclear weapons, because the United States and Israel say so. (The Sunni powers, for their own reasons, agree.) This form of perennial idiocy could apply to all the powers that have nuclear weapons, including Israel itself. At one point, no state should have had that relic of sadism’s folly. Then they came in succession after the United States: the Soviet bomb, the Britannic bomb, the Gallic bomb. Throw in China, India, Pakistan, Israel. Plucky, deranged North Korea, was wise to note the trend, showing lunacy to be eternally divisible.

It is precisely that sort of logic that has drawn such comments as this from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a May interview: “Iran’s level of deterrence will be different if the existence of Iran is threatened. We have no decision to produce a nuclear bomb, but we will have to change our nuclear doctrine if such threats occur.” This month, almost 40 legislators penned a letter to the Supreme National Security Council calling for a reconsideration of current nuclear doctrine. The greater the fanatic’s desire to remove a perceived threat, the more likely an opponent will give basis to that threat.

For all the faux restraint being officially aired in Washington regarding Israel’s next round of military assaults, there is enormous sympathy, even affection, for the view that wrongs shall be righted, and the mullahs punished. Bedding for a more hostile response to Iran also features in the inane airings of the presidential election. Vice President Kamala Harris, in an interview with 60 minutes, remarked that, “Iran has American blood on its hands, okay?” In making that claim, she suggested that Tehran was somehow Washington’s greatest adversary.

In response to this fatuous remark, Justin Logan of the Cato Institute offers an ice-cold bath of reason: “This is not the Wehrmacht in 1940.” The path to dominating the Middle East hardly involves such tools as propaganda, proxy operations and psychological warfare “much less becoming the greatest threat to the United States.”

The nuclear option is now available to governments that should never have had them. But acquiring the dangerously untenable followed. To assume that brutal, amputation loving theocrats in Tehran should not have them defies the trajectory of a certain moronic consistency. The Persian bomb is probably imminent, and it is incumbent on the murderous fantasists in Israel and the United States to chew over that fact. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the fetish against acquisition risks expanding a conventional conflict through testing the will and means of a power that, while wounded, hardly counts as defeated.

October 20, 2024 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US opens applications for $900 million for small nuclear reactors (article includes a note of caution)

By Timothy Gardner, October 17, 2024

WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (Reuters) – The U.S. on Wednesday opened applications for up to $900 million in funding to support the initial domestic deployment of small modular reactor nuclear technology…………………………

 no U.S. commercial SMR has been built yet. Critics say they will be more expensive to run than larger reactors because they will struggle to achieve economies of scale. Like the large reactors, they will also produce long-lasting radioactive waste for which there is no final depository in the U.S.

HOW WILL THE MONEY BE DISTRIBUTED?

The funds come from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and the Energy Department anticipates offering it in two tiers.

Up to $800 million will go to milestone-based awards for support of first mover teams of utility, reactor vendor, constructor, end users and others.

………………..Up to $100 will spur additional SMR deployments by addressing gaps that have hindered the domestic nuclear industry in areas such as design, licensing, supplier development, and site preparation, the department said. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/us-opens-applications-900-million-small-nuclear-reactors-2024-10-16/

October 20, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Plutonium just had a bad day in court

In a major decision whose consequences are still being assessed, a federal judge declared that plutonium pit production — one ingredient in the U.S. government’s $1.5 trillion nuclear weapons expansion — has to be performed in accordance with the nation’s strongest environmental law

SEARCHLIGHT NEW MEXICO, by Alicia Inez Guzmán, October 17, 2024

Most Americans don’t seem aware of it, but the United States is plunging into a new nuclear arms race. At the same time that China is ramping up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Russia has become increasingly bellicose. After a long period of relative dormancy, the U.S. has embarked on its own monumental project to modernize everything in its arsenal — from bomb triggers to warheads to missile systems — at a cost, altogether, of at least $1.5 trillion.

Los Alamos National Laboratory plays a vital role as one of two sites set to manufacture plutonium “pits,” the main explosive element in every thermonuclear warhead. But as a recent court ruling makes clear, the rush to revive weapons production has pushed environmental considerations — from nuclear waste and increases in vehicular traffic to contamination of local waterways, air and vegetation — to the wayside. 

That just changed dramatically. On Sept. 30, United States District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis of South Carolina ruled that the federal government violated the National Environmental Policy Act — the “Magna Carta” of federal environmental law — when it formulated and began to proceed with plans to produce plutonium pits at LANL and the Savannah River Site, in Aiken, South Carolina. 

“[T]he Court is unconvinced Defendants took a hard look at the combined effects of environmental impacts of their two-site strategy,” Lewis wrote of the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which together oversee America’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

The ruling was momentous for the anti-nuclear community. But it was also mystifying, because Judge Lewis didn’t provide a roadmap for how to move forward with this extraordinarily complicated policy dispute. Rather than bringing pit production to a halt — which plaintiffs argued for in their original complaint, filed in 2021 — the judge instead ordered the parties to reach some sort of “middle ground” among themselves and submit a joint proposal by Oct. 25. What that will consist of is anybody’s guess. The judge was clear on one point, though — she’ll be keeping a close eye on the matter by maintaining jurisdiction over the case. Injunctive relief, she added, could still be in the cards. 

NEPA’s rules require that agencies take a “hard look” at potential environmental impacts. NEPA does not, however, dictate what decision should be made once those impacts are identified. 

Previous impact statements have spelled out a vast array of potential hazards for nuclear facilities. These have included an “inadvertent criticality event,” which happens when nuclear material produces a chain reaction and a pulse of potentially fatal radioactivity. Another risk is fire igniting inside a glovebox — the sealed enclosure where radioactive materials like plutonium are handled — and then resisting suppression, leading to widespread contamination. Other possibilities: a natural gas explosion at vulnerable nuclear sites or a wildfire on LANL’s sprawling campus, which is bounded on all sides by the towns of Los Alamos and White Rock, the Pueblo of San Ildefonso, the Santa Fe National Forest and Bandelier National Monument.

“Perhaps more significantly,” Judge Lewis stated, those impact statements “provide a springboard for public comment,” a kind of mechanism for citizens to express criticism and concern and, in some cases, identify a project’s blindspots — risks to people and places that have not been properly taken into account. 

An announcement from the DOE the following day was telling, if not defiant: The first plutonium pit manufactured as part of this modernization program was ready to be deployed into the stockpile. That pit — made at LANL but the product of multiple facilities across the nation’s nuclear weapons complex — is intended for a new warhead, which will be strapped into a new intercontinental ballistic missile called the Sentinel. The Sentinel program, at $140 billion, is one of the costliest in the history of the U.S. Air Force……………………………………………………………………….

Now, almost 40 years later, the court found that the agencies charged with reviving the nuclear weapons complex have not properly evaluated the perils that could come with turning out plutonium pits at two different sites, thousands of miles apart. For the plaintiffs in this case — which include Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition — Lewis’s decision to intervene is a milestone.

“We’ve had a pretty significant victory here on the environmental front,” said Tom Clements, the director of Savannah River Site Watch. “Nonprofit public interest groups are able to hold the U.S. Department of Energy accountable.” 

………………………………………………………………………………………………….. For LANL, which sits on the kind of forested land typical of the Pajarito Plateau, wildfire is a major risk. …………………………………………………..

A “parade of horribles”

The array of sites that play some role in this latest phase of pit production goes well beyond LANL and SRS, and includes existing facilities in Amarillo, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Livermore, California. Hypothetically, if the feds ever produce the kind of environmental impact statement plaintiffs demand, it could potentially cover this entire constellation, requiring public hearings at each location and in Washington, D.C………………………………………… more https://searchlightnm.org/federal-judge-ruling-plutonium-pits-environmental-impact/?utm_source=Searchlight+New+Mexico&utm_campaign=ae33d0dc0a-10%2F15%2F2024+%E2%80%93+Plutonium&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8e05fb0467-ae33d0dc0a-395610620&mc_cid=ae33d0dc0a&mc_eid=a70296a261

October 19, 2024 Posted by | - plutonium, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

The Energy Department just made one plutonium pit. Making more is uncertain

Bulletin, By Dylan Spaulding | October 10, 2024

Two conflicting developments arose this month in US efforts to produce new plutonium pits for its nuclear weapons: The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced it had produced a warhead-ready pit—the explosive core of a nuclear weapon—for the first time in decades, and a federal court ruled that NNSA will be required to consider the cumulative environmental and health impacts of its pit production program.

Overshadowing these events is a vigorous debate over the necessity for new pits at all. Previous analyses have found that plutonium pits have viable lifespans well beyond the expected service life of the current stockpile, whereas production of pits for new weapons is part of a sweeping US nuclear modernization that raises concern over the future of arms control and any possibility for stockpile reductions at a time of deteriorating international relations.

The two most recent developments illustrate a critical tension in the US nuclear weapons program: New pit production demonstrates a doubling down of US reliance on nuclear weapons for the 21st century. The failure to adhere to environmental policy in doing so highlights the unwitting cost that US citizens may bear for this policy choice—as they have repeatedly in the past………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

…….Production challenges. Despite any fanfare, demonstrating the ability to certify one plutonium pit doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing toward Los Alamos’s mandated production goals.

The Los Alamos’ Plutonium Facility at Technical Area 55 (PF-4) is conducting the dangerous and difficult work of pit production while also undergoing construction and modernization, with work happening round-the-clock—several other plutonium-related missions are pursued under the same roof. The facility has been criticized for deficiencies in personal safety and safety-related engineering, including recent glovebox fires, floods, worker exposure to plutonium and beryllium, and violations of criticality safety rules. The likelihood of such incidents increases as a result of fast-paced work in close-quarters with a mostly new  workforce. In 2013, the PF-4 facility was shut down for three years following a severe criticality safety violation; a repeat could prove fatal, literally and figuratively.

…………………………………………… Regardless of Los Alamos’ success, the congressionally mandated quota of 80 pits per year remains impossible to meet by NNSA’s own admission. This number relies on completion and commissioning of a second production facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which won’t be operational until the mid-2030s at the earliest.

Just as the future rate of plutonium pit production is uncertain, the missile these pits are intended for—the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile—is also not likely to be completed on schedule. The troubled Sentinel project remains vastly over budget and behind schedule, putting its future at risk and making coordination of the warhead and missile difficult to foresee. Problems or changes in scope for either program will affect the other.

A federal court ruling.  Coinciding with NNSA’s announcement of the first diamond-stamped pit, a US District Court ruled that the Energy Department and the NNSA violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with pit production, requiring the agency to conduct a programmatic environmental impact assessment.

This was a victory for transparency and the community groups—among them, Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition—who, for years, have been asking for such an assessment.

Reestablishing pit production on the scale now contemplated is potentially the biggest investment in the nuclear weapons complex since the Manhattan Project. With it comes hiring and training of thousands of new employees, increased transportation between sites, new construction, safely handing radioactive material, and the generation of new nuclear waste. The cumulative nature of these activities, occurring across many Energy Department’s sites, demands that the impacts of pit production be considered holistically in the form of a programmatic environmental impact assessment.

The environmental impact statements issued by the national laboratories offer perhaps the best public-facing analyses of whether their plans comply with standards for protection of public safety and the environment, including the likelihood of specific scenarios and associated risk of public exposure to hazards such as chemicals or radiation. Still, the NNSA has—until now—resisted issuing such a programmatic statement.

The agency clearly recognizes that pit production involves much of the US nuclear weapons complex. The press release announcing the first diamond-stamped pit thanked workers in Kansas City, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Los Alamos, and the Pantex plant in Texas. But the NNSA has so far relied on a series of addenda and supplements to a 2008 environmental impact statement for work at Los Alamos and considers Savannah River separately. These assessments largely ignore the cross-complex collaboration required and the subsequent risks, including impacts on the potentially overburdened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico that must absorb the prolific—and complex—waste stream from the pit production process.

The court ruling—which holds that the Energy Department and the NNSA did not follow environmental requirements in pursuing two production sites—will require the NNSA to conduct a new review, bringing renewed public scrutiny and allowing a new opportunity for input from concerned opponents.

An unclear horizon. A programmatic environmental impact statement can take years before it’s finalized. The judge in the case declined to halt construction at NNSA’s second pit production site at Savannah River while the new assessment is being carried out, and the two parties have until October 21st to seek an agreement.  It’s likely that the NNSA will argue that stopping pit-production work would be too expensive, too disruptive, and too damaging to national security to consider. It remains unclear what the potential consequences could be if the NNSA decides to challenge the ruling.

While work at Los Alamos is likely to continue amid a programmatic assessment, design choices are still underway at the Savannah River Site, where the NNSA is attempting to retrofit the troubled former mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication plant which never reached productivity despite more than $7 billion of investment. This site is years away from being active and will require extensive transformation that may cost as much as $25 billion. Given this enormous investment, a programmatic environmental impact statement can ensure that this transformation better addresses the actual hazards and better protects communities, workers, and the environment.

Reestablishing pit production in the United States is a massive undertaking. It involves resurrecting a lost capacity that requires complicated engineering, construction, and extremely hazardous work processes that will be carried out by a largely new work force with little to no prior experience. NNSA and its contractors must manage safety risks across multiple sites where new hazardous waste will be generated in communities that don’t want it and where the Energy Department has a poor historic track record of environmental stewardship.

Congress and the Biden administration should eliminate the mandated 80 pit per year requirement while the NNSA conducts a new, thorough environmental assessment that would go a long way toward promoting increased safety and public protection—a challenge that the NNSA and the labs should take seriously.  https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/the-energy-department-just-made-one-plutonium-pit-making-more-is-uncertain/

October 18, 2024 Posted by | - plutonium, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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