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University of New Mexico Course Expands Understanding of Nuclear Impact

Mirage News, 28 Jul 23

New Mexico found itself at ground zero of a changed world on July 16, 1945 when scientists from the newly created Los Alamos National Laboratory detonated the world’s first atomic bomb, exposing nearby communities to radiation. Just 34 years later to the day, Church Rock, New Mexico became the site of the largest release of radioactive material ever to occur in the United States.

The impact of that history was something Bryan Kendall, who grew up in Albuquerque, hadn’t learned much about prior to enrolling in the Fall 2020 Nuclear New Mexico: Social and Environmental Impacts course at The University of New Mexico.

“It blew my mind that no one was talking about it. It drove a passion in me that has not subsided since,” Kendall said.

The course helped Kendall, who graduated earlier this year with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a minor in sustainability studies, decide he would avoid working for an organization with an ongoing nuclear focus though he doesn’t fault those who do.

Though the name of the class has changed over time, the goal to provide critical, interdisciplinary nuclear education remains the same. Each course includes field trips to key sites around the state, guest speakers from organizations like the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium and Tewa Women United, as well as a final project to apply learning to social or environmental justice.

Eileen O’Shaughnessy, an instructor and Ph.D. Candidate in Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies with an emphasis on nuclear education, has taught the class for several years through Sustainability Studies, the Honors College, and this fall, Women and Gender Studies. Most recently, O’Shaughnessy co-taught with Associate Professor Myrriah Gómez, Ph.D., the author of the 2022 release Nuclear Nuevo México. Gómez has taught a similar course titled Atomic Bomb Cultures in the Honors College for many years. O’Shaughnessy’s upcoming course is titled The Atomic Bomb and Feminism and will explore topics like the hetero-patriarchal nuclear family, notions of apocalypse, anti-nuclear activism, environmental racism, nuclear colonialism, and more.

“I developed this class called Nuclear New Mexico based on my research that was a critical interdisciplinary look at the environmental, social, and cultural impacts of the nuclear industry, specifically on New Mexico, but also the world,” O’Shaughnessy said. “The beginning of the atomic age is located here, but it really rippled out from New Mexico.”

The class explores everything from uranium mining to the disposal and storage of radioactive materials and the outsized impact those processes have had on indigenous communities and communities of color.

…………………………………………….. O’Shaughnessy welcomes students from all disciplines into her class and has had many STEM and nuclear engineering students take the course……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.miragenews.com/unm-course-expands-understanding-of-nuclear-1056101/

July 30, 2023 Posted by | Education, USA | 1 Comment

Funny How The UFO Narrative Coincides With The Race To Weaponize Space

does it really sound like a coincidence that we’re seeing all these news stories about UFOs and aliens at the same time we’re seeing news stories about a race between the US and China and Russia to dominate space militarily? 

Caitlin’s Newsletter CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JUL 28, 2023

If Wednesday’s House Oversight subcommittee hearing on UFOs had happened ten years ago instead of today, it would have shaken the world. Imagine someone from 2013 hearing congressional testimonies about “routine” military pilot encounters with giant flying tic tacs, floating orbs, 300-foot red squares, and cubes in clear spheres zipping around in ways that surpass all known earthly technology by leaps and bounds, or about secret government possession of otherworldly aircraft they’re trying to reverse engineer and the dead bodies of their non-human pilots, or about the possibility that these creatures are not merely extraterrestrial but extra-dimensional. Their jaws would have hit the floor.

Now in 2023 we’ve been getting incrementally drip-fed bits and pieces of these stories for six years, so the scene on Capitol Hill on Wednesday didn’t have the impact it would’ve had in 2013. It’s making headlines and getting attention, but not as much as Sinead O’Connor’s death or people’s thoughts on Barbie and Oppenheimer. The response from the general public could be described as a collective nervous laugh and a shrug.

……………………………………………………. the new UFO narrative wasn’t just cooked up at the last minute to distract from current headlines, it’s been unfolding for six years, and people aren’t even paying that much attention to it. The empire doesn’t tend to orchestrate spectacular events as a “distraction” anyway; the adjustment of public attention tends to take the much more mundane form of agenda setting in the media, where some stories receive more attention than others based on what’s convenient for the oligarchs who own the press.

……………………………………. for me what really stinks about all this UFO stuff is the timing. Here we are in the early stages of a new cold war which features a race to militarize space, and we’re hearing congressional testimony about mysterious vehicles posing a threat to US airspace which have the ability to go up and down between earth and space very quickly. That smells off.

I mean, does it really sound like a coincidence that we’re seeing all these news stories about UFOs and aliens at the same time we’re seeing news stories about a race between the US and China and Russia to dominate space militarily? 

A Foreign Policy article from last year blares the headline “China and Russia Are Catching Up to U.S. in Space Capabilities, Pentagon Warns” with the subheading “The militarization of space is picking up pace.” These warnings are echoed in articles by Defense One and Time. An article on the United Nations website from last year carries the title “‘We Have Not Passed the Point of No Return’, Disarmament Committee Told, Weighing Chance Outer Space Could Become Next Battlefield.” A 2021 report from the war machine-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies titled “Defense Against the Dark Arts in Space: Protecting Space Systems from Counterspace Weapons” warns of the urgent need to build more space weapons to counter US enemies. A Global Times article from last year carries the title “Chinese experts urge avoidance of space weaponization amid commercial space capability deployment in Ukraine.”

………………………………….it just seems mighty suspicious to me how we’re being slowly paced into this UFO narrative (or UAP narrative for those hip to the current jargon) right when there’s a mad rush to get weapons into space. I can’t actually think of any other point in history when the timing of something like this would have looked more suspicious.

So for me the most disturbing parts of the UFO hearing were the parts that could wind up facilitating the agenda to militarize space, like when this phenomenon was framed as a “national security” threat or when it was mentioned that they can transition from earth to space very rapidly.

When asked by congressman Glenn Grothman “do you believe UAPs pose a threat to our national security?”, former Navy commander David Fravor answered with an unequivocal yes. A few minutes later Fravor described these vehicles as being able to “come down from space, hang out for three hours and go back up.”

When asked by congressman Andy Ogles whether UFOs could be “collecting reconnaissance information” on the US military, all three witnesses — Grusch, Fravor, and former Navy pilot Ryan Graves — answered in the affirmative. Asked by Ogles if UFOs could be “probing our capabilities,” all three again said yes. Asked if UFOs could be “testing for vulnerabilities” in US military capabilities, all three again said yes. Asked if UFOs pose an existential threat to the national security of the United States, all three said they potentially do. Asked if there was any indication that UFOs are interested in US nuclear technology, all three said yes.

Ogles concluded his questioning by saying, “There clearly is a threat to the national security of the United States of America. As members of Congress, we have a responsibility to maintain oversight and be aware of these activities so that, if appropriate, we take action.”

When asked by congressman Eric Burlison if “there has been activity by alien or non-human technology, and/or beings, that has caused harm to humans,” Grusch said he couldn’t get into specifics in a public setting (a common theme throughout the hearing), but said that “what I personally witnessed, myself and my wife, was very disturbing.”

Grusch would complicate this cryptic statement a few minutes later by saying that he’s never seen a UFO. How this statement doesn’t contradict his previous statement about having witnessed harmful behavior from non-human technology and/or beings was not made clear.

So you’ve got US policymakers being told that there are vehicles using technology not of this world routinely violating US airspace and posing an existential threat to US national security, and that these craft can go from earth to space and back at will, and that they need to help make sure their nation can address this threat.

What conclusions do you come to when presented with that kind of information? If you’re a lawmaker in charge of facilitating the operation of a highly militaristic empire, you’re probably not going to conclude that it’s time to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. You’re probably eventually going to start thinking in terms of military technology.

One of the most important unanswered questions in all this UFO hullabaloo is, why now? Why are we seeing all this movement on “disclosure” after generations of zero movement? If these things are in fact real and the government has in fact been keeping them secret, why would the adamant policy of dismissal and locked doors suddenly be reversed, allowing “whistleblowers” to come forward and give testimony before congress? If they had motive to keep it a secret this entire time, why would that motive no longer be there?

…………………………………So why now? Why the drastic and sudden shift from UFOs and aliens being laughable tinfoil hat nonsense to the subject of serious congressional inquiries and widespread mainstream media coverage?

Well, the timing of the race to militarize space might provide an answer to the “why now?” question. Is it a coincidence that this new UFO narrative began its rollout in 2017, around the same time as the rollout of the Space Force? Are we being manipulated at mass scale about aliens and UFOs to help grease the wheels for the movement of war machinery into space? How likely is it that by pure coincidence this extraplanetary narrative timed out the way it did just as the US empire makes a last-ditch grab at unipolar planetary domination?

I don’t know. I do know that if I’m assigning degrees of probability, “Extraterrestrial or extradimensional beings are here and take a special interest in us and sometimes crash their vehicles and our government recovered them but kept them a secret but suddenly decided not to be so secretive about them anymore” ranks significantly lower than “Our rulers are lying and manipulating to advance their own interests again.”

I am 100 percent wide open to the possibility of extraterrestrials and otherworldly vehicles zipping around our atmosphere. What I am not open to is the claim that the most depraved institutions on earth have suddenly opened their mind to telling us the truth about these things, either out of the goodness of their hearts or because they were “pressured” by UFO disclosure activists.

I don’t know what the hell is going on with this UFO thing, but I do know the drivers of the US empire have an extensive history of manipulating and deceiving at mass scale to advance imperial agendas. And I do know that at this crucial juncture in history where the empire is clinging to planetary domination with the tips of its fingernails, there are a lot of imperial agendas afoot.  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/funny-how-the-ufo-narrative-coincides?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=135494785&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

July 30, 2023 Posted by | space travel, USA | 1 Comment

The Dangerous and Frightening Disappearance of the Nuclear Expert

The vanishing profession of preventing nuclear war

More than a dozen experts across the ideological spectrum I spoke with — hawks and doves alike — agreed a renaissance is needed to rebuild lost muscle memory and fashion new strategies to deter increasingly belligerent nuclear peers and new wannabe nuclear states. And the emergence of artificial intelligence, some analysts fear, could enhance an aggressor’s nuclear first-strike capability or sow dangerous confusion among atomic adversaries.

Tensions among nuclear powers are rising, but decades of peace have resulted in a dearth of people trained to deal with the continuing threat.

Politico, By BRYAN BENDER, 07/28/2023 

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — At the height of the Cold War, the RAND Corporation crackled with the collective energy of the best brains the Pentagon could find to tackle the biggest threat.

At lunchtime, an eclectic group of physicists, economists and social scientists would play Kriegspeil, a form of double-blind chess modeled on Prussian wargames in which players can’t see their opponent’s pieces and infer their moves from a referee sharing sparse information. Then they would spend the rest of the workday developing the military doctrine, deterrence theory and international arms control frameworks to prevent nuclear war — and if all else failed, how they might win one, or at least avoid total annihilation.

It’s been several decades since the likes of Herman Kahn, the alpha male of the so-called “Megadeath Intellectuals” whose famous book On Thermonuclear War casually contemplated the long-term prospects for a society that had endured the sudden extinction of more than 100 million people, roamed RAND’s halls. The favored lunchtime competition these days seems to be ping pong in the courtyard — if anyone’s around.

One recent morning, I visited RAND’s headquarters here on the scenic California coast. After being escorted past three layers of security, I found Ed Geist, the intellectual heir to those legendary Cold Warriors, holding down the fort in the “Coffee Cove” in the RAND library.

Geist, who holds a Ph.D. in Russian history and is author of the forthcoming book Deterrence Under Uncertainty: Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Warfare, said the Pentagon-funded think tank’s team of dedicated nuclear policy experts and strategists, spread across half a dozen offices worldwide, could barely fill a couple tables in the lunchroom now. And many of the ones who are left, he said, are in the twilight of their careers.

“It is much, much reduced,” he said, framed by obscure periodicals with titles like North Korean Review, Phalanx and Strategic Policy. “We have more work than we can do.”……………………….

This summer, as the public is treated to a rare thriller about the development of the atomic bomb in director Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer, the nation’s leading nuclear policy wonks like Geist are more concerned than ever about the specter of a nuclear war — and warn that we are far less prepared than during the Cold War to deal with a more expansive threat. As Oppenheimer reminds us, the bomb itself was the creation of a relatively small number of geniuses assigned to the New Mexico desert in the waning days of World War II. But once it was unleashed and other major powers followed, an entire nuclear complex employing thousands of weapons engineers and technicians, political and social scientists, and diplomats sprang up to harness a humanity-erasing technology and fashion strategies to prevent the unthinkable.

Over time, however, the pervasive fear that fueled that intellectual apparatus has ebbed — and with it the urgency to restock the ranks of experts. Three decades after the Cold War ended, RAND and the broader network of government agencies, national laboratories, research universities and think tanks are struggling to meet the demands of a new — and many contend, far more dangerous — chapter in the global nuclear standoff.

The discipline’s steady decline, which only accelerated following the Sept. 11 attacks when the military pivoted to the war on global terrorism, is compounded by reduced funding from some of the leading philanthropies that funded nuclear policy studies and the graying of the last generation of practitioners both in and out of government. As for government funding, most of it — to the tune of $75 billion a year over the next decade — is dedicated to overhauling the U.S. arsenal of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers and submarines, far eclipsing investments in the humans who manage them.

More than a dozen experts across the ideological spectrum I spoke with — hawks and doves alike — agreed a renaissance is needed to rebuild lost muscle memory and fashion new strategies to deter increasingly belligerent nuclear peers and new wannabe nuclear states. And the emergence of artificial intelligence, some analysts fear, could enhance an aggressor’s nuclear first-strike capability or sow dangerous confusion among atomic adversaries.

……………………………………………………………….

Joan Rohlfing has been sounding the alarm about the trend for years.

For the last 13 years, the former top nuclear adviser at the Departments of Defense and Energy and staffer for the House Armed Services Committee, has been president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. The nonprofit, founded in 2001 by media mogul Ted Turner, is dedicated to reducing the dangers of weapons of mass destruction. And it has emerged as the standard bearer — and often lead funder — of training programs and policy work that is central to government nuclear strategies.

……………………………………. “That may sound alarming,” Rohlfing acknowledged, “but I have deep concerns that we are underestimating the dangers of the moment. There is a lot more complexity, with more nuclear weapons states, with more lethal weapons, with weapons that fly faster on hypersonic vehicles.

“And on top of all that,” she stressed, “there is a hot war in Europe with nuclear threats being made.”

……………………………………………………………………….. the arms control agreements that Washington and Moscow relied on for decades to bring some measure of stability and transparency to the world’s largest nuclear arsenals —including requiring reciprocal visits of each other’s weapons bases — have become another casualty of degrading relations between the United States and Russia in recent years.

…………………………………………………………………… The Pentagon has estimated that Beijing could quadruple its deployed warheads to 1,000 by 2030, uncomfortably close to the number of nuclear weapons that Moscow and Washington have deployed. But China is not party to any arms control agreements or international limits. “We have not built a good foundation for these discussions with the Chinese,” says Geist, the RAND nuclear expert.

Meanwhile, successive government studies and think-tank reports warn about the threat of cyber-attacks on nuclear command and control systems that could lead to deadly miscalculation.

Add to the mix the uncharted territory of AI, the race to develop new weapons that can destroy early warning or communications satellites in orbit, and the failure of the international community to prevent North Korea and Iran from building up their nuclear weapons complexes.

“All the ingredients are here for a catastrophe,” Rohlfing said. “I think there is a high degree of denial because we have gone so long without nuclear use. We are discounting the warning signs that are right in front of us. In the heat of the moment, all it takes is a miscommunication or miscalculation to create a series of events that spiral out of control.”

Yet the level of the threat is not matched by the brain power needed to confront it, she said.

Rohlfing pointed to a 2019 assessment of the nuclear arms control and disarmament community that painted a decidedly gloomy outlook for a field that was once vibrant. 

………………………………………………………………………………………. “The capacity in the field is shrinking as the threat is expanding,” said Rohlfing. “Nuclear is woefully neglected.”

Mark Bucknam arrived at the National War College in 2010. He discovered the leading academic institution for training military, diplomatic and foreign leaders in national security strategy was bestowing masters degrees without any instruction on nuclear deterrence, which had been a pillar of the curriculum in the years before the 9/11 attacks.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Stephen Schwartz, a senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has been advocating for reductions in nuclear arsenals since the arrival of the nuclear age in 1945, believes the lack of experience and expertise is particularly acute in Congress, where few lawmakers or staff are steeped in arms control, nuclear strategy or deterrence theory.

The debates, in his view, “are almost solely on the cost of nuclear weapons and not their utility.”

…………………………………… Congress is about to get another wake-up call, however, in the form of the bipartisan commission’s upcoming report. 

………………………………………………………………… In the meantime, the paucity of people with the expertise to do that instruction are the guardians of a knowledge that remains far too obscure. Like relics of a distant era.

Ahead of my visit, RAND officials culled some of their nuclear archives, including a palm-sized disc labeled “BOMB DAMAGE EFFECT COMPUTER,” a circa-1958 device that would have been in the desk drawer of anyone who needed to estimate the probable impacts of atomic weapons. Geist rotated the concentric dials that can estimate what a nuclear blast, ranging from a kiloton to 100 megatons, would produce in terms of crater size and “maximum fireball radius.”

These days, Geist sometimes feels like an artifact, too.

“I guess I’m on my own here,” he said. “We have some difficult theoretical and also practical questions that have to be addressed. We can’t just go into the stacks and pull out [the books of] Herman Khan and apply it to today.” https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/28/nuclear-experts-russia-war-00108438
—

July 30, 2023 Posted by | safety, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Project 2025’: plan to dismantle US climate policy for next Republican president

 An alliance of rightwing groups has crafted an extensive presidential
proposal to bolster the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hamstring
the energy transition, it has emerged. Against a backdrop of
record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025,
was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the
Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles
Koch.

Called the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is
meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican
president. Climate experts and advocates criticized planning that would
dismantle US climate policy.

 Guardian 27th July 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president

July 30, 2023 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

US admits to pushing Ukraine into a fight it can’t win

the operative Western definition of “Ukrainian courage”, however, is not hard to discern: a willingness to use Ukrainian soldiers as cannon fodder.

the Ukraine war has already yielded a “triumphal summer” for the NATO alliance.

A US “windfall” in Ukraine comes at an unfathomable cost.

AARON MATÉ, JUL 29, 2023  https://mate.substack.com/p/unlocked-us-admits-to-pushing-ukraine?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=100118&post_id=135529420&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

Nearly one month into Russia’s invasion, the New York Times quietly abandoned any pretense that the US aim was to defend Ukraine and bring the war to a quick end. The White House, the Times reported, “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire without inciting a broader conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary or cutting off potential paths to de-escalation.”

Eighteen months later, the desired quagmire has been achieved. This is due not only to a massive influx of NATO weaponry, but a Western blockade of every tangible path to de-escalation, most notably the April 2022 Ukraine-Russia peace deal that Boris Johnson nixed.

With a Russian quagmire the overriding goal, the US and its partners have adopted an attendant disregard for the tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives sacrificed for the task.

In the war’s early stages, only the most outwardly enthusiastic proxy warriors, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, could candidly admit that US support ensured that Ukraine would “fight to the last person.” With Ukraine now struggling to mount a widely hyped counteroffensive, the prevailing indifference to its human toll is more widely acknowledged.

As the Wall Street Journal newly reports:

“When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t.”

It is unclear how Western officials could have “hoped” that Ukrainian “resourcefulness” would make up for the training and weapons that they did not provide. A war zone, after all, is not an episode of MacGyver or the A-Team, and Ukraine’s adversary happens to be one of the world’s most powerful militaries. The operative Western definition of “Ukrainian courage”, however, is not hard to discern: a willingness to use Ukrainian soldiers as cannon fodder.

“Senior U.S. officials,” the New York Times reports, have “privately expressed frustration that some Ukrainian commanders… fearing increased casualties among their ranks” have recently “reverted to old habits — decades of Soviet-style training in artillery barrages — rather than sticking with the Western tactics and pressing harder to breach the Russian defenses.”

The Times did not ask these same US officials whether it is appropriate to express “frustration” at the decision of another military – the one we claim to support – to avoid “increased casualties” among its ranks. But Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, asked an equally salient question of his US counterparts: “Why don’t they come and do it themselves?”

Frustrated US officials are well aware of Ukraine’s toll. According to the New York Times, Western states now estimate that Ukraine lost about 20 percent of its weaponry in the first weeks of its counteroffensive, a “startling rate of losses… as Ukrainian soldiers struggle against Russia’s formidable defenses.” Oddly, the Times omits any mention of losses in Ukrainian lives – a tacit admission, perhaps, that the human casualties are even more startling.

As is also increasingly admitted, all of this was foreseen. “U.S. Defense Department analysts knew early this year that Ukraine’s front-line troops would struggle against Russian air attacks,” the Wall Street Journal notes. Or as the Washington Post puts it: “Privately, U.S. military officials concede that their expectation from early this year, described in leaked intelligence documents, that Ukraine is likely to make only modest gains in its counteroffensive has not changed, despite public pronouncements seeking to downplay fallout from the disclosure.”

In other words, US “public pronouncements” have entailed lying to the public to “downplay fallout” of fueling a knowingly catastrophic and futile war. The participants in this deception include Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who declared in March that the Ukrainian military had “a very good chance for success,” despite privately being told the opposite.

One reason for Ukraine’s current woes, as President Biden recently admitted to CNN, is that “the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition,” and “we’re low on it” as well. Another major factor, a classified Pentagon assessment noted in February, was Ukraine’s “inability to prevent Russian air superiority.” Or as a senior European official now warns, “everyone worries that the Ukrainians will run out of ammunition and air defenses.”

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” John Nagl, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and professor at the U.S. Army War College, observes. “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

According to the Pentagon, NATO’s latest influx of heavy weaponry will not change the tide. Speaking at a Washington security conference this month, John Kirchhofer, chief of staff at the US Defense Intelligence Agency, claimed that the Ukraine war is at a “stalemate” and that “none of these” newly provided weapons – including Storm Shadow missiles and cluster bombs — “are the holy grail that Ukraine is looking for.”

Accordingly, the Wall Street Journal notes, the unlikelihood of “any large-scale breakthrough by the Ukrainians… raises the unsettling prospect for Washington and its allies of a longer war—one that would require a huge new infusion of sophisticated armaments and more training to give Kyiv a chance at victory.”

For Washington, perhaps that prospect is not unsettling. According to veteran Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, the Ukraine war has already yielded a “triumphal summer” for the NATO alliance.

“The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked,” Ignatius writes. “NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values.”

Accordingly, “for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians).”

Indeed, it is quite easy to reap a “windfall” from 18 months of war when the US is not itself fighting it. It has instead sacrificed future generations of an entire nation, whose worth is so devalued that their unfolding catastrophe is openly reduced to an afterthought.

July 29, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Washington’s looming war against China


SOTT – Signs of The Times, Michael Hudson, The Unz Review, Sat, 22 Jul 2023 

Economic Logic has been Replaced by National Security Overrides

The July NATO summit in Vilnius had the feeling of a funeral, as if they had just lost a family member – Ukraine. To clear away NATO’s failure to drive Russia out of Ukraine and move NATO right up to the Russian border, its members tried to revive their spirits by mobilizing support for the next great fight – against China, which is now designated as their ultimate strategic enemy. To prepare for this showdown, NATO announced a commitment to extend their military presence all the way to the Pacific.

The plan is to carve away China’s military allies and trading partners, above all Russia, starting with the fight in Ukraine. President Biden has said that this war will be global in scope and will take many decades as it expands to ultimately isolate and break up China.


The U.S.-imposed sanctions against trade with Russia are a dress rehearsal for imposing similar sanctions against China. But only the NATO allies have joined the fight. And instead of wrecking Russia’s economy and “turning the ruble to rubble” as President Biden predicted, NATO’s sanctions have made it more self-reliant, increasing its balance of payments and international monetary reserves, and hence the ruble’s exchange rate.

To cap matters, despite the failure of trade and financial sanctions to injure Russia – and indeed, despite NATO’s failures in Afghanistan and Libya, NATO countries committed themselves to trying the same tactics against China. The world economy is to be split between US/NATO/Five Eyes on the one hand, and the rest of the world – the Global Majority – on the other. EU Commissioner Joseph Borrell calls this as a split between the US/European Garden (the Golden Billion) and the Jungle threatening to engulf it, like an invasion of its well-manicured lawns by an invasive species.

From an economic vantage point, NATO’s behavior since its military buildup to attack Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern states in February 2022 has been a drastic failure. The U.S. plan was to bleed Russia and leave it so economically destitute that its population would revolt, throw Vladimir Putin out of office and restore a pro-Western neoliberal leader who would pry Russia away from its alliance with China – and then proceed with America’s grand plan to mobilize Europe to impose sanctions on China…………………..


The US/NATO West has led this global fracture, yet it will be the big loser. NATO members already have seen Ukraine deplete their inventory of guns and bullets, artillery and ammunition, tanks, helicopters weapons and other arms accumulated over five decades. But Europe’s loss has become America’s sales opportunity, creating a vast new market for America’s military-industrial complex to re-supply Europe. To gain support, the United States has sponsored a new way of thinking about international trade and investment. The focus has shifted to “national security,” meaning to secure a U.S.-centered unipolar order.


The world is dividing into two blocs: a post-industrial US/NATO vs the Global Majority

……………………………………………………………………………. By trying to prevent other countries from following this logic, U.S. and European NATO diplomacy has brought about exactly what U.S. supremacists most feared. Instead of crippling the Russian economy to create a political crisis and perhaps breakup of Russia itself in order to isolate it from China, the US/NATO sanctions have led Russia to re-orient its trade away from NATO countries to integrate its economy and diplomacy more closely with China and other BRICS members.

Ironically, the US/NATO policy is forcing Russia, China and their BRICS allies to go their own way, starting with a united Eurasia. This new core of China, Russia and Eurasia with the Global South are creating a mutually beneficial multipolar trade and investment sphere.

By contrast, European industry has been devastated. Its economies have become thoroughly and abjectly dependent on the United States – at a much higher cost to itself than was the case with its former trade partners. European exporters have lost the Russian market, and are now following U.S. demands that they abandon and indeed reject the Chinese market. Also to be rejected in due course are markets in the BRICS membership, which is expanding to include Near Eastern, African and Latin American countries……………………………………………………………………..


Today’s fighting against Russia on the Ukrainian front can be thought of as the opening campaign in World War III.  In many ways it is an outgrowth of World War II and its aftermath that saw the United States establish international economic and political organizations to operate in its own national self-interest. The International Monetary Fund imposes U.S. financial control and helps dollarize the world economy. The World Bank lends dollars to governments to build export infrastructure to subsidize US/NATO investors in control of oil, mining and natural resources, and to promote trade dependency on U.S. farm exports while promoting plantation agriculture, instead of domestic food-grain production. The United States insists on having veto power in all international organizations that it joins, including the United Nations and its agencies.

The creation of NATO is often misunderstood. Ostensibly, it depicted itself as a military alliance, originally to defend against the thought that the Soviet Union might have some reason to conquer Western Europe. But NATO’s most important role was to use “national security” as the excuse to override European domestic and foreign policy and subordinate it to U.S. control. Dependency on NATO was written into the European Union’s constitution. Its objective was to make sure that European party leaders followed U.S. direction and opposed left-wing or anti-American politics, pro-labor policies and governments strong enough to prevent control by a U.S.-client financial oligarchy.

NATO’s economic program has been one of adherence to neoliberal financialization, privatization, government deregulation and imposing austerity on labor. EU regulations prevent governments from running a budget deficit of more than 3% of GDP. That blocks Keynesian-type policies to spur recovery. Today, higher military arms costs and government subsidy of energy prices is forcing European governments to cut back social spending. Bank policy, trade policy and domestic lawmaking are following the same U.S. neoliberal model that has deindustrialized the American economy and loaded it down with debt to the financial sector in whose hands most wealth and income is now concentrated.

Abandoning economic self-interest for “national security” dependence on the US

The post-Vilnius world treats trade and international relations not as economic, but as “national security.” Any form of trade is the “risk” of being cut off and destabilized. The aim is not to make trade and investment gains, but to become self-reliant and independent. For the West, this means isolating China, Russia and the BRICS in order to depend fully on the United States. So for the United States, its own security means making other countries dependent on itself, so that U.S. diplomats won’t lose control of their military and political diplomacy…………………………………………………………………………………………………

The world is dividing into two blocs – with quite different economic philosophies……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

We are witnessing what seems to be an inexorable Decline of the West. U.S. diplomats have been able to tighten their economic, political and military control leadership over their European NATO allies. Their easy success in this aim has led them to imagine that somehow they can conquer the rest of the world despite de-industrializing and loading their economies so deeply in debt that there is no foreseeable way in which they can pay their official debt to foreign countries or indeed have much to offer.


The traditional imperialism of military conquest and financial conquest is ended

……………………………….. The US has only one weapon: Missiles and bombs can destroy, but cannot occupy but not occupy and take over a country.


The second way to create imperial power was by economic power to make other countries dependent on U.S. exports……………………………Control of world oil trade has been a central aim of US trade diplomacy………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.sott.net/article/482853-Washingtons-looming-war-against-China
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July 29, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

NASA solving climate crisis by facilitating escape to Mars?

 NASA will test launch nuclear-powered spacecraft for the first time to try
and get to Mars faster. Nasa has revealed that it plans to use
nuclear-powered spacecrafts to help humanity land on Mars. Whilst it sounds
like the stuff of science fiction, the space agency has been perfecting the
technology for over 60 years and the first rockets could soon be blasting
off. In fact, the insane tech could be tested within the next couple of
years.

 Unilad 27th July 2023

https://www.unilad.com/technology/nasa/nasa-nuclear-powered-rockets-mars-574302-20230727

July 29, 2023 Posted by | space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Old Nuclear Weapons Sites Targeted for Clean Energy Projects.

Daniel Moore, 28 Jul 23 https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/former-nuclear-weapons-sites-targeted-for-clean-energy-projects

  • Agency identifies 70,000 acres at five weapons sites
  • DOE land could host largest US solar farm at Hanford Site

The Energy Department plans to turn some of its Cold War nuclear weapons development sites into grounds for clean energy generation, including what could be the largest US solar project, agency leaders announced Friday.

The department has identified about 70,000 acres at five sites that hosted nuclear weapons development and testing and have since been cleaned up, according to details of the announcement shared in advance with Bloomberg Law. The announcement is part of the agency’s new Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative, an effort to repurpose parts of DOE-owned lands into clean energy generation sites.

“It’s a good deal and a huge opportunity,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at the outset of a daylong event with clean energy industry representatives held in an auditorium space at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

Developers would have a unique opportunity to lease land from the Energy Department, Granholm said. The sites have massive tracts of land whose characteristics are already mapped out. The decades of site analysis and remediation would speed up environmental and permitting reviews, too.

“Therefore, it will take less time to get shovels in the dirt,” Granholm said.

One former nuclear testing facility, the Hanford site in Richland, Wash., has the potential to host the largest solar farm in the country, Granholm said.

Another site, the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho, sprawls 890 square miles and purchased about 50 megawatts of power in fiscal year 2020 to support 5,400 employees, 600 vehicles, and 300 buildings and trailers, according to the agency. The other sites under consideration include: Nevada National Security Site, in Nye County, Nev.; the Savannah River Site, in Aiken, S.C.; and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, N.M.

The agency’s Office of Environmental Management, Office of Legacy Management, Office of Nuclear Energy, and National Nuclear Security Administration all worked to locate the best sites.

The industry officials included those “with proven experience in implementing successful clean electricity projects generating 200 MW or larger,” according to the department.

After the panel, DOE officials told reporters they’re looking forward to project proposals that could power not just DOE facilities but the surrounding region.

Power generators could even propose an arrangement with a customer—a hydrogen producer, semiconductor manufacturer, or other type of facility, said Katy Huff, assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy.

At the Hanford site, the biggest nuclear cleanup site in the country, “there are certainly plenty of developers who have expressed interest” but the department hasn’t made any decisions, said Ike White, who leads the Office of Environmental Management.

“The department is just opening up this for ideas,” White said, adding the agency is open to a range of clean energy technologies.

July 29, 2023 Posted by | renewable, USA | Leave a comment

$45 Billion to Keep Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant Alive?

Outrageous Costs and Deadly Dangers are the Real Risks of Keeping Diablo Open

Independent , By Grant Smith and Anthony Lacey, Wed Jul 26, 2023

California ratepayers might have to foot a staggering $45 billion-plus cost to keep the aging Pacific Gas & Electric, or PG&E, Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant online beyond its slated 2025 closure.

The outrageous price tag is the estimated cost for operating the plant from 2021-2045, or hundreds of millions of dollars every year. And that’s just the expense of prolonging the troubled facility’s life. It doesn’t account for the enormous extra costs that would be incurred following a major disaster like a reactor leak or an earthquake that damages the plant.

EWG used testimony recently filed by The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, in PG&E’s current rate case to parse the capital and operating expenses of the plant. EWG considered PG&E’s estimates for the plant costs, which likely lowball the true expense, and TURN’s assessment of the plant expenses, which may be closer to the actual burden.

EWG estimates it will likely amount to hundreds of millions of dollars every year, for total costs ranging from more than $20 billionto nearly $45 billion from2023 through 2045 — or more.

That’s just the base cost of running the facility. The alarming figure doesn’t account for the additional massive costs that would come from a disaster at the plant, like an earthquake or a nuclear reactor leak, or unanticipated maintenance and security costs that often plague old nuclear power plants.

That cost — reaching tens of billions of dollars — will be passed on to 15.8 million Californians already fleeced by PG&E’s exorbitant electricity bills. According to EWG estimates, keeping Diablo Canyon open could add from $55to $124 a year to the typical utility bill, considering the cost of the facility as a fixed charge over 23 years.

Or it could be even higher because these costs, at the moment, are highly speculative and the older Diablo Canyon gets, the higher the capital and operating costs will become to keep it online and providing electricity.

An extension of the facility’s life for 20 years after its scheduled 2025 shutdown could also generate other large costs just to ensure its ongoing operation. Many aging nuclear power plants are notorious for wasting millions of dollars on unanticipated maintenance and security costs…………………………………………………..

An Unnecessary Nuclear Facility

What’s just as outrageous as the potential $45 billion-plus cost of extending Diablo Canyon’s life is the fact that the state has no need to keep the plant open after the scheduled 2025 closure………………………………………………………………………


The Danger of Diablo Canyon

Diablo Canyon, located on California’s central coast in San Luis Obispo County, sits atop a web of fault lines and rests above a cliff below the Pacific Ocean, putting it at heightened risk of damage from an earthquake, tsunami or both.

The facility was set to close both of its two reactor units by 2025, following a carefully crafted 2018 deal between PG&E, unions and environmentalists. The deal had the support of state regulators and then-Lieutenant Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was elected governor in 2018.

That deal is now at risk of collapsing………………………….. https://www.independent.com/2023/07/26/45-billion-to-keep-diablo-canyon-nuclear-power-plant-alive/

July 28, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Massachusetts rejects request to discharge radioactive water from closed nuclear plant into bay

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station was closed in 2019. Kevin Clark

By MARK PRATT Associated Press  https://www.power-eng.com/ap-news/massachusetts-rejects-request-to-discharge-radioactive-water-from-closed-nuclear-plant-into-bay/

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts environmental regulators have denied a request by the company dismantling a shuttered nuclear power plant to release more than 1 million gallons (3.8 million liters) of radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay.

The state Department of Environmental Protection’s draft decision issued July 26 said it denied Holtec’s request for a permit modification because the discharge from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth would violate a state law that designates the bay as an ocean sanctuary.

The draft will not be finalized until after a public comment period that ends Aug. 25.

Environmentalists and politicians praised the decision.

Release of the treated wastewater would pose a threat to the bay’s environment, human health, the fishing and shellfishing industries, and the economy of the region, Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, said in a statement.

“Holtec sought to profit at the expense of the people, the environment and economy of Cape Cod and, like most corporate bullies, needed to be told no,” he said.

Holtec promised a transparent decommissioning process when it took over the plant after it stopped generating power in May 2019, U.S. Sen. Edward Markey said.  

July 28, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

No new nuclear facilities along vulnerable coasts, Alaska regulators say

By James Brooks, Alaska Beacon-July 26, 2023

You can build a small nuclear reactor in Alaska, but not within 2,700 feet of a house.

On Monday, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom signed a package of regulations that dictate where small nuclear reactors, sometimes called “microreactors,” may be built in Alaska.

The regulations arrive as the U.S. Air Force advances plans to build the state’s first microreactor at Eielson Air Force Base, southeast of Fairbanks. …………………………………………………………………..

The regulations signed this week don’t deal specifically with nuclear safety, only where a reactor could be sited. Among the restrictions: A reactor can’t be built within 2,700 feet of a residence, 300 feet of a national park or game reserve, in a coastal area vulnerable to storm surge, within 100 feet of a public road or trail, or in an area protected because it’s used for drinking water.

Any reactor site must be approved by the local municipal government, and if a reactor is planned for a site outside an organized borough, the Alaska Legislature must approve the site.

Those site restrictions could also apply to a nuclear waste site or a facility that processes nuclear fuel, the regulations state. None have been publicly announced here.

During a public comment period earlier this year, the proposed regulations were opposed by the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Copper Country Alliance and several individual residents who said they were concerned about dangers posed by nuclear power.

“It seems to be that Alaska is going to be a guinea pig for this experimental technology. Seeing all the polluted places the Army left here does not give me any confidence that they would act responsibly here,” wrote Brigitte Jaeger of Fairbanks………………………………………………………  https://alaskapublic.org/2023/07/26/no-new-nuclear-facilities-along-vulnerable-coasts-alaska-regulators-say/

July 28, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

More Warmongers Elevated In The Biden Administration

It’s too soon to draw any firm conclusions, but to see voices of restraint stepping down and proponents of escalation stepping up could be a bad portent of things to come.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JUL 26, 2023 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/more-warmongers-elevated-in-the-biden?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=135458379&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

The Biden administration looks set to become even more warlike than it already was if you can imagine, with virulent Russia hawk Victoria Nuland and virulent China hawk Charles Q Brown now being elevated to lofty positions by the White House.

Nuland, the wife of alpha neocon Robert Kagan, has been named acting deputy secretary of state by President Biden, at least until a new deputy secretary has been named. This places her at second in command within the State Department, second only to Tony Blinken.

In an article about Nuland’s unique role in souring relations between the US and Russia during her previous tenure in the State Department under Obama, Responsible Statecraft’s Connor Echols writes the following of the latest news:

Nuland’s appointment will be a boon for Russia hawks who want to turn up the heat on the Kremlin. But, for those who favor a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine, a promotion for the notoriously “undiplomatic diplomat” will be a bitter pill.

A few quick reminders are in order. When Nuland was serving in the Obama administration, she had a now-infamous leaked call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. As the Maidan Uprising roiled the country, the pair of American diplomats discussed conversations with opposition leaders, and Nuland expressed support for putting Arseniy Yatseniuk into power. (Yatseniuk would become prime minister later that month, after Russia-friendly former President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country.) At one memorable point in the call, Nuland said “Fu–k the EU” in response to Europe’s softer stance on the protests.

The controversy surrounding the call — and larger implications of U.S. involvement in the ouster of Yanukovych — kicked up tensions with Russia and contributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to seize Crimea and support an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Her handing out food to demonstrators on the ground in Kyiv probably didn’t help either. Nuland, along with State Department sanctions czar Daniel Fried, then led the effort to punish Putin through sanctions. Another official at State reportedly asked Fried if “the Russians realize that the two hardest-line people in the entire U.S. government are now in a position to go after them?”

In a 2015 Consortium News article titled “The Mess That Nuland Made,” the late Robert Parry singled out Nuland as the primary architect of the 2014 regime change operation in Ukraine, which, as Aaron Maté explained last year, paved the way to the war we’re seeing there today. Hopefully her position winds up being temporary.

In other news, the Senate Arms Services Committee has voted to confirm Biden’s selection of General Charles Q Brown Jr as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing Mark Milley. A full senate vote will now take place on whether to confirm Brown — currently the Air Force Chief of Staff — for the nation’s highest military office.

Brown is unambiguous about his belief that the US must hasten to militarize against China in the so-called Indo-Pacific to prepare for confrontation between the two powers, calling for more US bases in the region and increased efforts to arm Taiwan during his hearing before the Senate Arms Services Committee earlier this month.

Back in May, Moon of Alabama flagged Brown’s nomination in an article which also noted that several advocates of military restraint had been resigning from their positions within the administration, including Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state who Nuland has taken over for.

It’s too soon to draw any firm conclusions, but to see voices of restraint stepping down and proponents of escalation stepping up could be a bad portent of things to come.

July 27, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Discarding Illusions, Ending Wars

Eighteen months later Ukraine is in ruins. Its latest counteroffensive achieved nothing. In the last three weeks, an estimated 26,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in pointless attacks against world-class Russian defenses  ‘in depth.’

The attempt to extend NATO’s “new globalist world order” to Russia has failed.

 By Colonel (ret.) Douglas Macgregor, US Army, THE KENNEDY BEACON JUL 20, 2023 https://thekennedybeacon.substack.com/p/discarding-illusions-ending-wars?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1712557&post_id=135282964&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

From the moment the war in Ukraine started, Western reporting on the war was a radical repudiation of the truth. Washington and its NATO allies always knew that NATO expansion to Russia’s borders would precipitate an armed conflict with Moscow, but NATO’s ruling globalist class did not care. For them, Russia in 2022 was unchanged from the weak and incapable Russia of the late 1990s. The risk of failure seemed low. Ergo, Russia could be bullied into submission.

Americans and most Europeans did not bother to question or analyze. Widespread strategic ignorance about Russia and Eastern Europe ensured that most Americans and even West Europeans would react quickly and viscerally to the Western media’s distorted images and lies about Russia. At the same time, tolerance for criticism of Washington’s role in fashioning the corrupt and deceitful conduct of the Volodymyr Zelenskyy Regime and its war was disallowed in the press

Washington’s ruling class was cheered when it dismissed Russian proposals for talks on any grounds that did not recognize NATO’s right to transform Ukraine into a base for U.S. and Allied Military Power aimed at Russia. Ukrainian flags sprouted from the lush grounds of America’s wealthier neighborhoods like flowers in an arboretum and wonders in the form of limitless military assistance, miracle weapons, and cash were promised to President Zelenskyy––promises that strategic reality did not justify.

In 2022 the Biden Administration no longer possessed the military and economic strength to wage high-end conventional warfare that it had in 1991. Waging a major war 10,000 miles from home on the Eurasian continent is impossible without the support of truly powerful Allies on the model of the British Empire during WWII. Washington’s NATO allies are military dependencies, not formidable strategic partners.

Whereas Russian Military Power is still structured for decisive operations launched from Russian soil, U.S. Military power is geared to project limited air, naval, and land power thousands of miles from home to the periphery of Asia and Africa. American military power consists of boutique forces designed for safari in Africa and the Middle East, not decisive combat operations against great continental powers like Russia or China.

Eighteen months later Ukraine is in ruins. Its latest counteroffensive achieved nothing. In the last three weeks, an estimated 26,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in pointless attacks against world-class Russian defenses  ‘in depth.’ (Defenses ‘in depth’ mean a security zone of 15 -25 kilometers in front of the main defense, that consists of at least three defense belts twenty or more kilometers deep.)

By comparison, Russian losses were minimal.

Today, more than 100,000 Russian troops are conducting offensive operations along the Lyman-Kupiansk axis. These forces include 900 tanks, 555 artillery systems and 370 multiple rocket launchers. It does not take much imagination to anticipate the breakthrough of these forces to the North where they can encircle Kharkiv.

Once Russian Forces surround the city, they will become an irresistible magnet for Ukraine’s last reserve of 30-40,000 troops. Ukrainian Forces attacking to the East to break through to Kharkov will present the combination of Russian space and terrestrial-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets and Precision Strike Aerospace, Artillery, Rocket, and Missile Systems with a target array that only a blind man could miss.

None of these developments should surprise anyone in the West. Building a Ukrainian army on the fly with a hotchpotch of hastily assembled equipment from a multitude of NATO members and an officer corps of many courageous, but inexperienced officers had little chance of success even under the best of circumstance.

Wars are decided in the decades before they begin. In war, the sudden appearance of “Silver Bullet” technology seldom provides more than a temporary advantage and strong personalities in the senior ranks do not compensate for inadequate military organization, training, thinking, and effective equipment. A new, leaked memorandum from sources inside Ukraine illustrates these points:

“Units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are at such terrible states of degradation that soldiers are abandoning their posts, and whilst not mentioned in these documents, a flood of videos have been published from Russian sources claiming Ukrainian service personnel are surrendering at the first opportunity owing to the belief that they are being treated  as ‘nothing more than cannon fodder.’”

Events on the ground are beginning to overtake the carefully orchestrated charade in Kiev. There is little that pontificating retired generals and armchair military analysts can do to halt the inevitable. Moscow understands that the war will not end without Russian offensive action. Whatever the Washington’s original goals may have been, theybeen they are unrealizable. Russian Forces will soon fall on the Ukrainian forces with the momentum and the impact of an avalanche.

In view of these points, before all of Ukraine’s manpower is annihilated, or a “Coalition of the Willing” from Poland and Lithuania marches into Western Ukraine, Washington can arrest Ukraine’s downward spiral into total defeat, and Washington’s own irresponsible drift into a regional war with Russia for which Washington and its allies are not prepared.

Cooler heads can prevail inside the beltway. The fighting can stop, but a ceasefire, and the diplomatic talks that must proceed from a ceasefire, will not occur unless Washington and its Allies acknowledge three critical points:

First, whatever form the Ukrainian State assumes in the aftermath of the conflict, Ukraine must be neutral and non-aligned. NATO membership is out of the question. A neutral Ukraine on the Austrian model can still provide a buffer between Russia and its Western Neighbors.

Second, Washington and its Allies must immediately suspend all military aid to Ukraine. Doubling down on failure by introducing more equipment and technology the Ukrainian Forces cannot quickly absorb and employ is wasteful and self-defeating.

Third, all U.S. and allied personnel, clandestine or in uniform, must withdraw from Ukraine. Insisting on some form of NATO presence as a face-saving measure is pointless. The attempt to extend NATO’s “new globalist world order” to Russia has failed.

The point is straightforward. It is time for Washington to turn its attention inward and address the decades of American societal, economic, and military decay that ensued after 1991. It’s time to reverse the decline in American national prosperity, and power; to avoid unnecessary overseas conflict;and to shun future interventions in the affairs of other nation states and their societies. The threats to our Republic are here, at home, not in the Eastern Hemisphere.

July 27, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The misguided push to weaken nuclear safety standards is gaining steam

The Hill, BY EDWIN LYMAN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR – 07/25/23

Imagine a future where experimental nuclear reactors are scattered across the U.S. landscape like so many Starbucks, in densely populated and rural areas alike. Also, imagine they are allowed to operate without thoroughly reviewed and validated safety analyses, highly trained personnel at the controls, the protection of armed security officers, any provisions for off-site emergency planning and robust containment structures that would help prevent the release of highly hazardous radioactive materials if the worst happens. 

This is the future that many in the nuclear industry, along with their vocal supporters, are working overtime to achieve.

The only bulwark against the most dangerous proposals is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent federal agency in charge of protecting the public from the radiological hazards of civil nuclear facilities. However, the NRC is facing a coordinated, massive push by the industry to drastically weaken its safety and security regulations and speed up the implementation of its back-to-the-1950s dystopian vision.

NRC critics blame the agency for the slow pace of new nuclear reactor licensing and construction in the U.S. But the NRC should not be scapegoated for the nuclear industry’s own failures. These include repeatedly missing cost and schedule targets for the Vogtle-3 reactor in Georgia, or supplying technically deficient, inadequate applications, such as Oklo’s attempt to apply for a license for a “micro” nuclear reactor, which the NRC justifiably rejected, and NuScale’s application for a standard design approval for its small modular reactor, which the NRC found contained numerous gaps.

The industry’s ire has focused on the NRC’s development of the “Part 53” rule for so-called risk-informed licensing of new reactors, which proponents argue are so much safer than the currently operating fleet that they need far less regulatory oversight across the board. But the fundamental problem is that many of these reactor designs, which introduce new safety and security risks, only exist on paper or have had extremely limited (and not necessarily relevant) real-world experience………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Some may ask why nuclear power still requires stringent regulation given that proponents claim it is already the safest form of energy. But although some nuclear supporters attempt to gaslight the public by playing down the massive health, environmental and economic impacts of the 1986 Chernobyl and 2011 Fukushima disasters, the fact remains that, unlike renewable energy technologies, nuclear power generates vast amounts of uniquely hazardous and long-lived radioactive materials as they operate. Not only are these substances highly carcinogenic, but evidence of their role in cardiovascular disease is growing. 

Keeping these materials isolated from the environment will remain a critical obligation of the nuclear power sector as long as reactors continue to run and nuclear waste persists. NRC’s statutory authority must remain focused on ensuring radiological safety and security……………… https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/4116386-the-misguided-push-to-weaken-nuclear-safety-standards-is-gaining-steam/

July 27, 2023 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Keeping contentious nuclear plant open could cost Californians $45B: report

Th Hill, by Sharon Udasin – 07/25/23

Extending operations of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant through 2045 could cost California ratepayers as much as $45 billion, a new report has found.

The state’s biggest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), is currently in the process of seeking a license renewal that could enable the aging facility to run for another 20 years — with the widespread support of state legislators, but in opposition to environmental activists.

If the plant ends up staying online for two more decades, total costs to run the site could range from more than $20 billion to nearly $45 billion from 2023 through 2045, according to a new analysis from the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

“Keeping Diablo Canyon open past its closure date is a terrible idea for many reasons, including the staggering price tag that unwitting ratepayers will face for keeping the dilapidated and dangerous nuclear plant operating,” EWG President Ken Cook, who is also a Bay Area resident, said in a statement.

While PG&E in 2016 had announced plans to retire the site and decommission its two reactors when their licenses expire — in November 2024 and August 2025, respectively — California enacted legislation last fall seeking to extend operations until 2030.

About six months later, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted PG&E an exemption that enabled the plant to stay open under its current licenses while the agency considers renewal application — whose terms would apply for 20 years……………………………………

The EWG analysis — based in part on testimony filed by the Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocacy group — estimated that keeping the plant open would likely require hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

Because that cost would need to be passed on to the consumer, households could then expect an increase of between $55–124 per year on typical utility bills, according to the analysis.

“It’s clearly a high-cost, no-reward and puzzling scenario for California, given its decades-long leadership on the environment,” a statement from EWG said……………………………………..

The estimated $20 billion–$45 billion cost to ratepayers could be even higher, the EWG analysts argued, stressing that these projections don’t account for expenditures associated with disasters, such as radiation leaks or earthquake damage.

Grant Smith, EWG energy advisor and co-author of the report, argued that the 6-8 percent of California’s electricity that is provided by Diablo Canyon could easily come from cleaner and safer sources.

“California added enough renewables in the past year to match the power output of Diablo Canyon,” Smith said.

“Proven, reliable clean energy choices such as energy efficiency, solar, wind, battery storage and demand response are far safer options than allowing Diablo Canyon to continue operating,” he added.  https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/4117145-keeping-contentious-nuclear-plant-open-could-cost-californians-45b-report/

July 26, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

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