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Target China

The UNZ Review, MIKE WHITNEY • AUGUST 3, 2023

The Biden Administration is implementing a plan to draw Taiwan into a direct military confrontation with the People’s Republic of China. The plan bears many similarities to the strategy that was used in Ukraine where Russia was goaded into invading the country in response to emerging threats to its national security. In this case, Beijing is expected to react to mounting challenges to its territorial integrity by US proxies and their political allies operating in Taiwan. These incitements will inevitably lead to greater material support from the United States which has stealthily worked behind the scenes (and in the media) to create a crisis. 

The ultimate objective of these machinations, is to arm, train and provide logistical support for Taiwanese separatists who will spearhead Washington’s proxy war on China. According to a number of independent reports, there is already growing operational collaboration between the Taiwanese Army and US Armed Forces. That collaboration will undoubtedly deepen after hostilities break out and the island is plunged into war.

The plan to confront China militarily was outlined in the 2022 National Security Strategy in which the PRC was identified as “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge” who expressed its “intent to reshape the international order.” This NSS analysis was followed by an explicit commitment to prevail in the struggle to control the “Indo-Pacific” region which “fuels much of the world’s economic growth and will be the epicenter of 21st century geopolitics.”...(“No region will be of more significance to …everyday Americans than the Indo-Pacific.”) Biden’s NSS emphasizes the critical role the military will play in the impending confrontation with China: “We will…modernize and strengthen our military so it is equipped for the era of strategic competition with major powers”… “America will not hesitate to use force to defend our national interests”.

Drawing China into a Taiwan quagmire is the first phase of a broader containment strategy aimed at preserving America’s top spot in the global order while preventing China from becoming the region’s dominant economy. The plan also includes economic, cyber and informational elements that are designed to work in concert with the military component. In its entirety, the strategy represents Washington’s best effort to roll-back the clock to the heyday of the unipolar world order when America set the global agenda and the United States had no rival.

Trouble in Taiwan

Taiwan is not a country. Taiwan is an island off the coast of China much like Santa Catalina is an island off the coast of California. No one disputes that Santa Catalina is part of the United States, just as no one disputes that Taiwan is a part of China. The issue was settled long ago, and the US agrees with the results of that settlement. For all practical purposes, the issue has been resolved.

The United Nations does not recognize Taiwan’s independence nor do the 181 countries that have established diplomatic relations with China. In fact, the UN adopted a General Assembly Resolution back in 1971 acknowledging the “People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government representing the whole of China.”

The One-China policy explicitly relates to the status of Taiwan. Taiwan is part of China, that’s what the One-China policy means. Nations that want to have relations with China must agree on the status of Taiwan; it is the foundational principle upon which all relations with China are based. The issue is not debatable. One can either accept that ‘Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory’ or take their business elsewhere. There is no third option.

The United States claims that it is committed to the One-China policy. In their recent visits to Beijing, all three senior-level officials from the Biden Administration (Anthony Blinken, Janet Yellen and John Kerry) publicly stated their unwavering support for the One-China policy. This is an excerpt from an article at Forbes:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the U.S.’ position on its One China policy as he met with China’s leader Xi Jinping Monday, saying it does not support Taiwanese independence and that containing China’s economy was not an American goal….

Blinken said the U.S. held a “One China” policy and does not support Taiwanese independence, but is concerned about China’s “provocative actions” along the Taiwan Strait. Blinken Tells Xi Jinping U.S. Does Not Support Taiwanese Independence, After Meeting To Quell Tensions, Forbes

President Joe Biden has also stated his support for the One-China principle on many, many occasions, which is what you would expect since it is the official position of the United States government. Here’s a short recap on the issue from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

The US made the following commitments to China regarding the one-China principle in the three China-US joint communiqués.

In the Shanghai Communiqué released in 1972, the US explicitly stated that “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position”.

In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations released in 1978, the US clearly stated that, “The Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”.

In the August 17 Communiqué released in 1982, the US unequivocally stated that “In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations on January 1, 1979, issued by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the United States of America, the United States of America recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China, and it acknowledged the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China”, and that “it has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, or interfering in China’s internal affairs, or pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan’”. (China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

The western media would like their readers to think there is some “gray area” here and that the issue regarding China’s sovereign territory has not been settled. But—as we have shown—it has been settled. Taiwan is China. We must assume therefore that the media is being intentionally misleading in order to garner support for an “independence” movement that serves only one purpose; to legitimize the arming and training of US assets and insurgents that will be used in a bloody conflagration with China. In truth, the United States is laying the groundwork for a proxy-war on China, and Taiwan has been designated as the frontlines in that war. The independence movement is merely the cover Washington has chosen to conceal its real objectives.

This is why Taiwan has become a flashpoint in US-China relations. This is why numerous US-led delegations have visited Taiwan expressing their tacit support for Taiwan independence. This is why Congress has allocated millions of dollars to provide lethal weaponry for the Taiwanese military. This is why the US Navy has sent warships through the Taiwan Strait and conducted massive military drills on China’s perimeter. This is why Washington continues to provoke Beijing on the one issue that it is most sensitive. All of these incitements were conjured-up with one goal in mind: War with China. This is from Politico:

The Biden administration announced a $345 million weapons package for Taiwan on Friday, the first tranche in a total of $1 billion the U.S. has allotted to be transferred directly from Pentagon stockpiles to the island this year…..………………………………………………..

Repeat: “The move is sure to anger China.”

Indeed, the move was designed to anger China. That was clearly the point. But, why? Why is Washington challenging China on an issue on which there is virtually universal agreement?

Two reasons come to mind:

  1. To goad China into overreacting and thus alienating itself from its allies and regional trading partners.
  2. To turn public opinion against China by portraying the country as a violent aggressor that poses a clear threat to its neighbors.

Here’s more from the World Socialist Web Site:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Preparing for war with China, US provides $345 million in arms to Taiwan, 

Imagine if China sent millions of dollars of lethal weapons to a budding secessionist movement in Texas. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

And, ask yourself this: Haven’t we seen this drill before? Didn’t this same scenario unfold in Ukraine following the CIA-backed coup in 2014 after which the US armed and trained Ukrainian forces to dig-in and provoke hostilities with Russia?……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Let’s summarize:

  1. The Indo-Pacific is now America’s top foreign policy priority because that is the area that will experience the most growth
  2. The US will lead with its military and with the allies who share US interests
  3. “We will…modernize and strengthen our military” to prevail in our “strategic competition with major powers.”
  4. America’s Number 1 enemy is China; “the PRC presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge ….The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it…”
  5. “The post-Cold War era is over” but the United States is prepared to preserve the “rules-based order” whatever the cost in blood and treasure.

This is America’s foreign policy in a nutshell. US leaders and their globalist allies are fully committed to prevailing in today’s great power struggle with Russia and China. They have a clear grasp of the objectives they want to achieve and they are prepared to risk anything, including nuclear war, to achieve them. Any developments in Taiwan must be seen through the lens of Washington’s geopolitical ambitions which are clearly driving events.…. more https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/target-china/

August 9, 2023 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Democracy Needs Healthy Debates About War And Peace

To top it all, the Pentagon has never passed a financial audit! It’s the only major federal agency that hasn’t passed an audit, despite getting more discretionary dollars than any other. That means that we don’t know where our tax money is going. 

Who benefits from this lack of transparency? Exactly who you’d think — contractors who profit off war. Around half of the military budget goes to for-profit contractors who make excessive profits at the expense of taxpayers and peace.

by EDITOR, August 7, 2023  https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/07/democracy-needs-healthy-debates-about-war-and-peace/

Congress spent the last “military spending” debate rehashing the culture wars — not the nearly $1 trillion Pentagon budget itself.

By  Jyotsna Naidu / OtherWords

If there’s one thing that should be subject to rigorous debate and the will of the people, it’s decisions about war and peace. Unfortunately, that’s not what we got with the huge military policy bill recently passed by the House and Senate.

Somehow, the annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA — which can bring war or peace, and which now costs nearly $1 trillion — never sees much serious debate in Congress about those issues.

Before this year, the NDAA passed easily for 61 years straight. The process is intentionally rushed. Hundreds of amendments are filed and voted at once, leaving little room for serious discourse.

This year was a partial exception. Lawmakers did debate the bill, which passed the House only narrowly. But they debated all the wrong things. 

Representatives provoked hate with countless culture war amendments. Ignoring issues of war and peace, far-right members of Congress debated cutting funding for service members’ abortions and diversity programs on military bases.

Here’s what they should have discussed.

In 2021, the Congressional Budget Office published a report detailing three ways to cut military spending by $1 trillion over 10 years without compromising national security. Instead, Congress has given the military even more money each year.

This year, Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) called to shift $100 billion of the defense budget toward urgent domestic needs. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a similar amendment in the Senate, which would have cut the Pentagon budget by 10 percent.

An American Friends Service Committee poll released earlier this year showed 56 percent of Americans would support cutting military spending to reinvest in those funds in public programs. 

And amendments efforts would have exempted troops’ pay and benefits from any cuts, targeting the bloated military contractorsinstead.

In the House, the amendment was never allowed for debate — and never got a vote. In the Senate, the Sanders amendment got just 11 votes.

To top it all, the Pentagon has never passed a financial audit! It’s the only major federal agency that hasn’t passed an audit, despite getting more discretionary dollars than any other. That means that we don’t know where our tax money is going. 

Who benefits from this lack of transparency? Exactly who you’d think — contractors who profit off war. Around half of the military budget goes to for-profit contractors who make excessive profits at the expense of taxpayers and peace.

With these robber baron-like profits, contractors have funded think tanks to produce favorable research and “expert” mediacommentary supporting higher military budgets — while lobbying politicians to keep spending on contractors. 

In the House, this year’s NDAA lost its usual broad bipartisan support because of Democrats’ opposition to its far-right culture war amendments, not because there was suddenly political will to address war spending. The Senate simply passed the NDAA without the controversial amendments. 

Culture wars aside, we can’t let lawmakers go back to idly voting for pro-war and pro-contractor interests.

I do have hope. People are already winning when they fight. In 2016, for example, activists successfully pressured the Massachusetts company Textron to stop producing cluster munitions, which disproportionately hurt civilians.

And as the congressional opposition to those nasty amendments showed more recently, lawmakers can still respond to public pressure. The onus is now on us to demand our lawmakers have a real democratic debate on war, peace, and the military budget.

Democracy is at stake.

August 9, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Carcinogens found at Montana nuclear missile sites as reports of hundreds of cancers surface

The Air Force has detected unsafe levels of a likely carcinogen in samples taken at a Montana missile base where a striking number of men and women have reported cancer diagnoses

By TARA COPP Associated Press, August 8, 2023  https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/carcinogens-found-nuclear-missile-sites-reports-hundreds-cancers-102087696

WASHINGTON — The Air Force has detected unsafe levels of a likely carcinogen at underground launch control centers at a Montana nuclear missile base where a striking number of men and women have reported cancer diagnoses.

A new cleanup effort has been ordered.

The discovery “is the first from an extensive sampling of active U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile bases to address specific cancer concerns raised by missile community members,” Air Force Global Strike Command said in a release Monday. In those samples, two launch facilities at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana showed PCB levels higher than the thresholds recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency.

PCBs are oily or waxy substances that have been identified as a likely carcinogen by the EPA. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a blood cancer that uses the body’s infection-fighting lymph system to spread.

In response, Gen. Thomas Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, has directed “immediate measures to begin the cleanup process for the affected facilities and mitigate exposure by our airmen and Guardians to potentially hazardous conditions.”

After a military briefing was obtained by The Associated Press in January showing that at least nine current or former missileers at Malmstrom were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare blood cancer, the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine launched a study to look at cancers among the entire missile community checking for the possibility of clusters of the disease.

And there could be hundreds more cancers of all types, based on new data from a grassroots group of former missile launch officers and their surviving family members.

According to the Torchlight Initiative, at least 268 troops who served at nuclear missile sites, or their surviving family members, have self-reported being diagnosed with cancer, blood diseases or other illnesses over the past several decades.

At least 217 of those reported cases are cancers, at least 33 of them non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

What’s notable about those reported numbers is that the missileer community is very small. Only a few hundred airmen serve as missileers at each of the country’s three silo-launched Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile bases any given year. There have been only about 21,000 missileers in total since the Minuteman operations began in the early 1960s, according to the Torchlight Initiative.

For some context, in the U.S. general population there are about 403 new cancer cases reported per 100,000 people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma affects an estimated 19 of every 100,000 people annually, according to the American Cancer Society.

Minutemen III silo fields are based at Malmstrom, F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

Missileers are male and female military officers who serve in underground launch control centers where they are responsible for monitoring, and if needed, launching fields of silo-based nuclear weapons. Two missileers spend sometimes days at a time on watch in underground bunkers, ready to turn the key and fire Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles if ordered to do so by the president.

The Minuteman III silos and underground control centers were built more than 60 years ago. Much of the electronics and infrastructure is decades old. Missileers have raised health concerns multiple times over the years about ventilation, water quality and potential toxins they cannot avoid as they spend 24 to 48 hours on duty underground.

The Air Force discovery of PCBs occurred as part of site visits by its bioenvironmental team from June 22 to June 29 in the Air Force’s ongoing larger investigation into the number of cancers reported among the missile community. During the site visits a health assessment team collected water, soil, air and surface samples from each of the missile launch facilities.

At Malmstrom, of the 300 surface swipe samples, 21 detected PCBs. Of those, 19 were below levels set by the EPA requiring mitigation and two were above. No PCBs were detected in any of the 30 air samples. The Air Force is still waiting for test results from F.E. Warren and Minot for surface and air samples, and for all bases for the water and soil samples.

August 9, 2023 Posted by | health, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Rapid Dragon: the US military game-changer that could affect conventional and nuclear strategy and arms control negotiations

Bulletin, By George M. Moore | August 4, 2023

The United States Air Force recently announced the successful test of its Rapid Dragon system in a major Pacific exercise.[1] This followed an earlier successful test during an exercise in Norway in late 2022.[2]

………………..In standard English, Rapid Dragon converts cargo aircraft into weapons carriers that can deploy cruise missiles (and potentially other standoff or self-defense weapons) by releasing them on pallets via the planes’ rear cargo ramps. Such a system makes a cargo aircraft into the equivalent of a bomber. Potentially the cargo aircrafts’ weapons load is limited only by how many pallets will fit in the cargo bay.

………………………………………………………The potential to develop Rapid Dragon so it can deliver nuclear weapons does not seem to have received any attention. The AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) is nuclear capable and currently deliverable by the B-52. It appears that nothing would prevent the Rapid Dragon deployment of the ALCM, turning any cargo aircraft capable of using Rapid Dragon into a nuclear delivery aircraft.

The potential to use Rapid Dragon for nuclear weapons delivery (and eventually this will occur) will create new issues when serious nuclear weapons limitation resume. 

……………………………………..The potential for nuclear launch from cargo aircraft creates new tactical problems that could affect survivability and deterrence concepts. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

more https://thebulletin.org/2023/08/rapid-dragon-the-us-military-game-changer-that-could-affect-conventional-and-nuclear-strategy-and-arms-control-negotiations/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter08072023&utm_content=NuclearRisk_RapidDragon_0804202

August 9, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Do right by the whales

Beyond Nuclear International 6 Aug 23

No environmental study has ever been conducted of the impact of the North Atlantic right whales’ protected birthing waters being occupied by the massive Kings Bay naval station

Nuclear sub base expansion ignores precious species; missiles could destroy us all

Background: The U.S. Navy has released a Draft Environmental Assessment for the homeporting of the Columbia Class submarines at Naval Submarine Base (NSB) Kings Bay.

The Navy proposes to establish facilities and functions at NSB Kings Bay to support the homeporting of Columbia Class submarines as replacements for the retiring Ohio Class submarines currently homeported at NSB Kings Bay. Under the Proposed Action, the Navy would construct eight facilities, modify five facilities, and demolish three facilities across three locations on NSB Kings Bay. 

Facility changes and development activities would be phased over a period of five years and completed coincident to the first Columbia Class submarines in 2028. 

Nuclear Watch South has prepared comments opposing this development. The following article is drawn from their statement and comments recently submitted to the U.S. Navy.

Georgia’s 100 miles of Atlantic Ocean coastline is a globally unique, fertile, and fragile marshland environment of barrier islands, freshwater tidal forests, maritime forests, and endangered longleaf pine forest. Georgia’s vast salt marshes support a staggering diversity of plant and animal life nurturing the eggs and hatchlings of countless sea creatures and providing significant nesting and migration habitat for 200 bird species.

Kings Bay, near the Georgia-Florida state line, is home base for six Trident submarines and deploys 25% of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. A Trident submarine is the most expensive and deadly nuclear weapons system on Earth. The only other nation to possess a similarly powerful system is the United Kingdom, a longtime United States ally. The Trident has been controversial since its inception as it upsets the so-called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) power balance, fueling a dangerous and costly international arms race.

The Navy conducted an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in 1977 when Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base was first proposed. The EIS was performed to fulfill environmental and public accountability requirements of the newly instituted National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) of 1969. 

In 1979, construction began on Kings Bay. In 1984, it was first discovered that the base had unwittingly intruded upon the (previously unknown and apparently only) birthing waters for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales in the Cumberland Sound.

Kings Bay base began operations in 1989. The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. At the same time, the U.S. nuclear weapons manufacturing complex, occupying vast reservations in more than a dozen states from Washington to South Carolina, was shuttering its reactors and facilities amidst revelations of widespread nuclear contamination and vast inventories of poorly managed radioactive wastes. 

The nuclear weapons complex suddenly and belatedly became subject to environmental law and NEPA has since proved to be a difficult filter through which to permit new nuclear weapons manufacture. 

For example, the U.S. Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Agency have failed in five attempts over the past 30 years to establish a plutonium pit production facility at the Savannah River Site (SRS) on the South Carolina/Georgia state line.

Nuclear weapons manufacturing has languished since 1990 in all nuclear-armed nations and limited nuclear treaties have greatly reduced nuclear stockpiles. All nuclear testing ceased in 1992. Trident submarines now carry fewer nuclear weapons, but each Trident submarine currently can deploy the explosive power of 1,825 Hiroshimas.

In 2021, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force, presently counting 68 nations as parties. The treaty begins by expressing the parties’ concern for “the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons, and recognizing the consequent need to completely eliminate such weapons, which remains the only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used again under any circumstances.”

This landmark, game-changing treaty sets forth as international law that it is illegal to “develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”

The North Atlantic right whale population rebounded from near extinction when hunting the whales was outlawed in 1935. The whales encountered new hazards, however, with the industrialization of shipping and fishing. Ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are held responsible for mortality events which are now decimating the whale population. 

The current population of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale has crashed to fewer than 350 animals. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates 50 births per year are required to avoid extinction of these ancient, magnificent marine mammals. In 2022, only 15 North Atlantic right whales were born. 

No environmental study has ever been conducted of the impact of the North Atlantic right whales’ protected birthing waters being occupied by the massive Kings Bay naval station.

Despite the moribund state of nuclear weapons manufacture, in 2022, the U.S. spent $83,000 per minute on nuclear weapons. This budget includes items such as the redundant Columbia class submarine, which this environmental study narrowly contemplates. 

Earth’s inhabitants now face extreme dislocation from climate change in addition to living under the Damocles sword of nuclear annihilation for the previous three generations. Clearly, resources now squandered on nuclear weapons can be converted to the task of making the lifestyle changes required to retain our planet’s life-supporting atmosphere.

It is the pleasure and duty of the public to participate in important decisions as framed and codified by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. Nuclear Watch South lists here the pertinent portions of the Act upon which these comments rely.

Comments

An Environmental Assessment is inadequate. An Environmental Impact Statement should be performed…………………………………………………………………………….

Before 1984, it was unknown where the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales gave birth to their calves. Nuclear Watch South believes that the construction activities of the naval base forced the whales into open waters during a most vulnerable part of their life cycle, which led to the death of the baby calf discovered in 1982 and puts ongoing pressure upon the dwindling population of this critically endangered, protected species. Kings Bay’s presence must be counted among the human-created hazards driving the North Atlantic right whale to extinction.

The reasonably foreseeable impact of nuclear weapons is wholesale environmental destruction

NEPA requires analysis of all foreseeable impacts from the proposed activity. The environmental impact from use of the nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons system housed at Kings Bay must be contemplated in an EIS. It is the nature of the SSBN (Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear) program that it is capable of destroying the whole Earth. The whole Earth is stakeholder…………………………………………………

Kings Bay impacts on unique Georgia coastal environment are absent from EA and must be considered in an EIS 

Kings Bay is a complex and unique site with environmental impacts from 30 years of Kings Bay operation in the sensitive Georgia coastal eco-system. Kings Bay’s previous environmental impacts, some of which are highlighted below, must be included in an EIS……………………………………………………………….

The sound where whales have given birth for previous millennia is regularly dredged to accommodate the five-story Trident submarines. In addition, U.S. Navy sonar testing has been shown to harm sea turtles and marine life, including the large marine mammals, whales, and dolphins. The impacts of Kings Bay on the dwindling North Atlantic right whale population’s southern range must be considered in addition to its impacts on other sea-life……………………………………………………………..

We are at a cultural crossroads that requires contemplation of whether to continue planet-killing nuclear arms roulette or to denuclearize and end the Atomic Age to avert annihilation. The NEPA process provides for a public and transparent exploration of the “big picture” with respect to large projects. Indeed, NEPA was borne out of the previously unforeseen environmental misadventures of the military industrial complex and instituted as a method to avert disaster with experience and deep foresight.

An alternative to continued “business as usual” at Kings Bay would be to remove the submarine killing machines and nuclear weapons from this sensitive, fragile, and vital eco-system and instead maintain a presence of national defense in the coastal marsh with a Coast Guard base and marine wildlife sanctuary. 

This serves as a more benign project for our national defense that will also defend our wildlife and restore a healthy atmosphere to our planet.

Nuclear Watch South is a grassroots, statewide direct action environmental organization founded in 1977. Nuclear Watch South’s three-fold mission is 1) phase out nuclear power and promote conservation and sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar, 2) halt the proliferation of nuclear materials and abolish the global threat of nuclear weapons, and 3) promote the formation of ethical environmental policies for nuclear waste handling and containment.  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/08/06/do-right-by-the-whales/

August 8, 2023 Posted by | oceans, USA | Leave a comment

Demonstrators protest development of nuclear weapons in Oak Ridge

by: Ella Wales, Aug 6, 2023

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (WATE) — Demonstrators held a march in Oak Ridge Saturday against the development and use of nuclear weapons.

The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) held the demonstration ahead of the 78th Anniversary of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The group marched from Alvin K. Bissell Park to the Y-12 National Security Complex.

Tanvi Kardile, coordinator of OREPA, said they are an anti-violence grassroots organization.

“We work against development of nuclear weapons, we fight against Y-12 which is still producing weapons to this day and we want to spread public awareness about what they’re doing out there,” she said.

The group’s demonstration aimed to support nuclear abolition in the United States.

“We came here to talk about the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which is the only viable treaty that’s currently on the path to end nuclear weapons. The U.S. has not signed onto this treaty yet, so we’re here to spread public awareness about that,” Kardile said.

August 8, 2023 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

The nuclear arms race’s legacy: Toxic contamination, staggering cleanup costs and a culture of government secrecy

Advocates for a full Hanford cleanup warn that without such a commitment, the site will become a “national sacrifice zone,” a place abandoned in the name of national security.

By William J. Kinsella, 6 Aug 23,  https://japantoday.com/category/features/opinions/the-nuclear-arms-race’s-legacy-at-home-toxic-contamination-staggering-cleanup-costs-and-a-culture-of-government-secrecy

RALEIGH, North Carolina

Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer” has focused new attention on the legacies of the Manhattan Project – the World War II program to develop nuclear weapons. As the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, approach, it’s a timely moment to look further at dilemmas wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb.

The Manhattan Project spawned a trinity of interconnected legacies. It initiated a global arms race that threatens the survival of humanity and the planet as we know it. It also led to widespread public health and environmental damage from nuclear weapons production and testing. And it generated a culture of governmental secrecy with troubling political consequences.

As a researcher examining communication in science, technology, energy and environmental contexts, I’ve studied these legacies of nuclear weapons production. From 2000 to 2005, I also served on a citizen advisory board that provides input to federal and state officials on a massive environmental cleanup program at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state that continues today.

Hanford is less well known than Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists designed the first atomic weapons, but it was also crucial to the Manhattan Project. There, an enormous, secret industrial facility produced the plutonium fuel for the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, and the bomb that incinerated Nagasaki a few weeks later. (The Hiroshima bomb was fueled by uranium produced in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at another of the principal Manhattan Project sites.)

Later, workers at Hanford made most of the plutonium used in the U.S. nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War. In the process, Hanford became one of the most contaminated places on Earth. Total cleanup costs are projected to reach up to US$640 billion, and the job won’t be completed for decades, if ever.

Victims of nuclear tests

Nuclear weapons production and testing have harmed public health and the environment in multiple ways. For example, a new study released in preprint form in July 2023 while awaiting scientific peer review finds that fallout from the Trinity nuclear test reached 46 U.S. states and parts of Canada and Mexico.

Dozens of families who lived near the site – many of them Hispanic or Indigenous – were unknowingly exposed to radioactive contamination. So far, they have not been included in the federal program to compensate uranium miners and “downwinders” who developed radiation-linked illnesses after exposure to later atmospheric nuclear tests.

On July 27, 2023, however, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and expand it to communities near the Trinity test site in New Mexico. A companion bill is under consideration in the House of Representatives.

The largest above-ground U.S. tests, along with tests conducted underwater, took place in the Pacific islands. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and other nations conducted their own testing programs. Globally through 2017, nuclear-armed nations exploded 528 weapons above ground or underwater, and an additional 1,528 underground.

Estimating how many people have suffered health effects from these tests is notoriously difficult. So is accounting for disruptions to communities that were displaced by these experiments.

Polluted soil and water

Nuclear weapons production has also exposed many people, communities and ecosystems to radiological and toxic chemical pollution. Here, Hanford offers troubling lessons.

Starting in 1944, workers at the remote site in eastern Washington state irradiated uranium fuel in reactors and then dissolved it in acid to extract its plutonium content. Hanford’s nine reactors, located along the Columbia River to provide a source of cooling water, discharged water contaminated with radioactive and hazardous chemicals into the river through 1987, when the last operating reactor was shut down.

Extracting plutonium from the irradiated fuel, an activity called reprocessing, generated 56 million gallons of liquid waste laced with radioactive and chemical poisons. The wastes were stored in underground tanks designed to last 25 years, based on an assumption that a disposal solution would be developed later.

Seventy-eight years after the first tank was built, that solution remains elusive. A project to vitrify, or embed tank wastes in glass for permanent disposal, has been mired in technical, managerial and political difficulties, and repeatedly threatened with cancellation.

Now, officials are considering mixing some radioactive sludges with concrete grout and shipping them elsewhere for disposal – or perhaps leaving them in the tanks. Critics regard those proposals as risky compromises. Meanwhile, an estimated 1 million gallons of liquid waste have leaked from some tanks into the ground, threatening the Columbia River, a backbone of the Pacific Northwest’s economy and ecology.

Radioactive trash still litters parts of Hanford. Irradiated bodies of laboratory animals were buried there. The site houses radioactive debris ranging from medical waste to propulsion reactors from decommissioned submarines and parts of the reactor that partially melted down at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. Advocates for a full Hanford cleanup warn that without such a commitment, the site will become a “national sacrifice zone,” a place abandoned in the name of national security.

A culture of secrecy

As the movie “Oppenheimer” shows, government secrecy has shrouded nuclear weapons activities from their inception. Clearly, the science and technology of those weapons have dangerous potential and require careful safeguarding. But as I’ve argued previously, the principle of secrecy quickly expanded more broadly. Here again, Hanford provides an example.

Hanford’s reactor fuel was sometimes reprocessed before its most-highly radioactive isotopes had time to decay. In the 1940s and 1950s, managers knowingly released toxic gases into the air, contaminating farmlands and pastures downwind. Some releases supported an effort to monitor Soviet nuclear progress. By tracking deliberate emissions from Hanford, scientists learned better how to spot and evaluate Soviet nuclear tests.

In the mid-1980s, local residents grew suspicious about an apparent excess of illnesses and deaths in their community. Initially, strict secrecy – reinforced by the region’s economic dependence on the Hanford site – made it hard for concerned citizens to get information.

Once the curtain of secrecy was partially lifted under pressure from area residents and journalists, public outrage prompted two major health effects studies that engendered fierce controversy. By the close of the decade, more than 3,500 “downwinders” had filed lawsuits related to illnesses they attributed to Hanford. A judge finally dismissed the case in 2016 after awarding limited compensation to a handful of plaintiffs, leaving a bitter legacy of legal disputes and personal anguish.

Cautionary legacies

Currently active atomic weapons facilities also have seen their share of nuclear and toxic chemical contamination. Among them, Los Alamos National Laboratory – home to Oppenheimer’s original compound, and now a site for both military and civilian research – has contended with groundwater pollution, workplace hazards related to the toxic metal beryllium, and gaps in emergency planning and worker safety procedures.

As Nolan’s film recounts, J. Robert Oppenheimer and many other Manhattan Project scientists had deep concerns about how their work might create unprecedented dangers. Looking at the legacies of the Trinity test, I wonder whether any of them imagined the scale and scope of those outcomes.

August 8, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Greg Mitchell on “Oppenheimer” & Why Hollywood Is Still Afraid of the Truth About the Atomic Bomb

The movie Oppenheimer about the “father of the atomic bomb” focuses on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s conflicted feelings about the weapons of mass destruction he helped unleash on the world, and how officials ignored those concerns after World War II as the Cold War started an arms race. Journalist Greg Mitchell says that while the film is well made and worth seeing, “the omissions are quite serious.” He says there is little mention of the dangers of radiation and no focus on the impact of the bomb on its victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film also does not question the necessity of using the bomb in the first place, upholding the “official narrative … that has held sway since 1945,” says Mitchell.

Greg Mitchell is a documentary filmmaker and the author of numerous books, including The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. He was editor of Nuclear Times magazine from 1982 to 1986 and has written about this new film for Mother Jones, on his Substack, and in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times headlined “‘Oppenheimer’ is here. Is Hollywood still afraid of the truth about the atomic bomb?” Transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/7/2…

August 7, 2023 Posted by | media, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Barbenheimer’ highlights U.S. ignorance of nuclear reality

Lack of images depicting the real-life horrors of the atomic bombs left a generation in the dark

BY DON CARLETON 4 Aug 23  https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2023/08/04/japan/barbie-oppenheimer-nuclear-weapons/

As we approach the 79th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America is gripped in a confusing and (as some have argued) insensitive cultural moment.

The release of very different movies, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” on the same day has spawned the “Barbenheimer” craze where the two come together in a strange yet symbiotic fashion. Box office records have been broken across America and it has become a trend among moviegoers to express an ironic sense of humor by seeing both films on the same day.

In addition, countless internet jokes and memes — some showing “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” juxtaposed against the backdrop of atomic explosions — have gone viral. However, the resulting satire has led to deep offense and anger among many Japanese. Things culminated earlier this week when Warner Bros. (the makers of “Barbie”) issued an apology after their official U.S. social media account reacted positively to a Barbenheimer meme.

These memes aren’t harmless fun, because atomic bombs are never harmless. The two bombs dropped by the American armed forces on Hiroshima and Nagasaki created immense and intense human suffering. The Barbenheimer trend thus glosses over the tragedy at the core of “Oppenheimer” and points to the fact that few Americans have ever fully grappled with the enormous devastation of the atomic bombings. In large part, that’s because few Americans have ever seen that reality.

In 2018, I was approached by Hankaku Shashin Undo, the Anti-Nuclear Photographer’s Association (ANPM), who have worked since 1982 to preserve the legacy of Japanese photographers who documented the bombings and their immediate aftermath firsthand in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the executive director of the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, a research center dedicated to fostering scholarly and public understanding of U.S. history, I was interested in ANPM’s invitation to collaborate. At the heart of ANPM’s activism is a desire to remove the danger of nuclear war from the world 

— a motive we can all support, regardless of how we feel about the American decision to drop the bombs. In working together, we hoped to raise visual awareness of “what actually happened” in Hiroshima and Nagasaki so that a new generation of Americans might better understand the realities of nuclear war.

ANPM agreed to place a large digital archive of photographs at the Briscoe Center and I agreed to publish a book and create an exhibition of selected images. Along with two members of my staff, I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2018, meeting with museum staff, journalists and hibakusha.

The result was “Flash of Light, Wall of Fire,” a 2020 book and subsequent exhibit. Throughout the project, our goal was simple. We wanted to show Americans something that they had never seen before: comprehensive visual evidence of the devastation and suffering atomic bombs cause.

Why have Americans not seen this evidence until now?

After World War II, photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were immediately suppressed by the Japanese military and later by the American occupation forces in Japan, meaning very few were published on either side of the Pacific Ocean. After the end of the occupation in the 1950s (when Japanese books documenting the bombings began to be published and the memorial museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were founded), few photographs made their way from Japan to the United States.

If Americans thought of the bomb at all, their only visual memory was of the mushroom cloud, not the horrors inflicted on the Japanese civilians. This void led to a strange cultural dichotomy during the 1950s.

On the one hand, Americans took the bomb very seriously, with the Cold War fueling moments of political and cultural hysteria from McCarthyism to suburban fallout shelters. On the other hand, cultural fads such as “Miss Atomic Bomb” to atomic-themed candy made light of the bombings. Today, with Barbenheimer, we see that the pattern still resonates — seriousness on one hand, silliness on another, all smushed together in our popular culture.

“Oppenheimer” is a moving and serious film that raises important questions about the consequences of nuclear weapons through the personal experiences of physicist Robert Oppenheimer. It includes harrowing depictions of the July 1945 Trinity test site explosion in New Mexico, as well as a compelling scene where Oppenheimer briefly envisions the terrifying human effects of the bombs during a victory speech.

However, there is no attempt to depict the resulting terrors from the perspective of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Director Christopher Nolan explains this decision, in part: “(Oppenheimer) learned about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the radio, the same as the rest of the world.” It would be unreasonable to criticize Nolan for not including longer and more graphic scenes of this nature, given his vision for the film’s focus on Oppenheimer’s perspective. But without those scenes, and without any visual record in our collective memory, it is easier to avoid the ramifications of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when our view is taken from the bomb bay doors of the Enola Gay or Bockscar.

Conversely, it is impossible to deny the terror and tragedy of the bombings when one looks through the eyes of Yoshito Matsushige, Yosuke Yamahata, Eiichi Matsumoto, Shigeo Hayashi and other photographers on the ground in 1945. Thus, when the Briscoe Center agreed to receive, display and publish photographs donated by the ANPM, the desire was to get the American mind to look from under the mushroom cloud, so to speak.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our project (as well as the 75th anniversary commemorations in Japan) and diminished the impact of the center’s book and exhibit. Nevertheless, next year’s 80th anniversary gives historians, archivists and curators around the world a new opportunity.

The Barbenheimer moment shows us that much work remains to be done. If Americans are going to take the very real nuclear dangers of our age more seriously than previous generations (not to mention having a clearer view of what was done to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), they must be confronted with the stark visual evidence of what actually happened. On the whole, Americans are still looking at the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from a distance — visually, emotionally and intellectually.

As we approach the 80th anniversary of the bombings, it is time to make a renewed push to change that perspective.

August 6, 2023 Posted by | media, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Is the US preparing to dump the proxy war in Ukraine so it can start another in Taiwan?

4 Aug 23  https://sputnikglobe.com/20230803/is-biden-preparing-to-dump-ukraine-for-taiwan-1112361859.html

US President Joe Biden is reportedly seeking congressional approval for financing military aid for Taiwan as part of the supplemental budget for Ukraine. What’s behind the move?

The White House is going to ask the US Congress to fund the arming of the island of Taiwan via the Ukraine budget in order to speed up weapons transfers to Taipei, as per Western media. The request followed the Biden administration’s announcement that the US would deliver $345 million worth of weapons to the island through a mechanism known as the “presidential drawdown authority.” The mechanism has long been used by the US to send arms to Ukraine.

Taiwan, an island located at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, is regarded by Beijing as an inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China.

“Well, what it shows is that the Biden administration has no regard or concern for angering China,” Larry Johnson, a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, told Sputnik.

“China has made it very clear that it views any effort by the United States to provide weapons or military training to Taiwan as a direct threat to China. And for some reason, the Biden administration refuses to accept or acknowledge the position of the Chinese. In submitting this aid package, I don’t think the Biden administration will have any problem getting it passed. We’ve still not reached a point in the United States where there is opposition to funding the war in Ukraine, or the potential for war in China. So, I think it’s likely to go through, which means it’s going to make relations between China and the United States worse, not better.”

At the same time, the CIA veteran does not consider the development as lessening support for Ukraine. It’s likely that the Biden administration has come under pressure to show support for Taiwan, per Johnson. The expert sees the funding maneuver “as a convenient legislative vehicle to get approval for the funding in a way that expedites it, doesn’t delay it.”

“I’m still not clear that it represents a cut in funds for Ukraine and a shifting of those funds to Taiwan. I think it’s more a function of the US legislative process, that Congress must appropriate money before the administration, in theory, can spend it. Because this legislation had already been presented, they were able, I think, decided to carve out some of the funds in that for Taiwan, because they had made prior commitments to Taiwan to provide some kind of support,” Johnson explained.

China has repeatedly urged the US to stop escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Nonetheless, US government officials and congressional leaders continue to send mixed signals to the island and meet with Taiwan’s leadership. Furthermore, the US is encouraging its allies to beef up their military presence in the Asia Pacific, citing the “China threat” to the island. To cap it off, President Joe Biden has repeatedly pledged to protect Taiwan “militarily,” with the White House then downplaying his vows as gaffes. Why is Washington continuing to develop the conflict around Taiwan?

“Well, because, number one, the United States continues to believe that it is the most powerful country in the world and can dictate to other countries reality. It’s a consequence of arrogance and hubris. The United States refuses to accept the fact that China and Russia have an equal say in matters. And I think, unfortunately, the United States, if it persists in taking actions like this, will provoke a conflict that will be very damaging to the United States and will weaken it, not make it stronger. The United States can’t even fund the one proxy war in Ukraine right now. It’s been losing. It can’t provide sufficient artillery shells, for example. The United States fails to recognize that it’s reached the limits of its power,” Johnson concluded.

August 5, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Judge tosses charges against executive in South Carolina nuclear debacle, but case may not be over

 A judge has ordered criminal charges dropped against the final executive
accused of lying about problems building two nuclear reactors in South
Carolina that were abandoned without generating a watt of power. The judge
tossed the charges Wednesday because ratepayers of the utility that lost
billions of dollars on the project were improperly allowed on the grand
jury that indicted Westinghouse Electric Co. executive Jeffrey Benjamin.

But federal judge Mary Geiger Lewis also ruled that nothing is stopping
prosecutors from properly seeking another indictment.

 Daily Mail 3rd Aug 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-12370351/Judge-tosses-charges-against-executive-South-Carolina-nuclear-debacle-case-not-over.html

August 5, 2023 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

US rejects Australian plea to drop Assange case

29 July 23,  https://www.rt.com/news/580512-blinken-rejects-assange-australia/

Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that the WikiLeaks founder caused “serious harm” to US national security

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has confirmed that Australia has raised the case of Julian Assange’s continued prosecution, but declared that Washington will not cease seeking the extradition of the former WikiLeaks boss and intends to try him for espionage.

Speaking alongside Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Brisbane on Saturday, Blinken said that while he understands “the concerns and views of Australians,” Assange’s alleged actions “risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries, and put named human sources at grave risk – grave risk – of physical harm, and grave risk of detention.”

Assange, he said, was “charged with very serious criminal conduct” and had allegedly taken part in “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country.”

An Australian citizen, Julian Assange is currently being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison. He is fighting extradition to the US, where he faces 17 charges under the Espionage Act and potentially a 175-year prison sentence. Human-rights and press-freedom activists have demanded his release, citing his deteriorating mental and physical health, while Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in May that he was “working through diplomatic channels” to press the US into dropping the case.

The charges against Assange stem from his publication of classified material obtained by whistleblowers, including Pentagon documents detailing alleged US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables exposing US efforts to – among other things – spy on its allies and influence foreign elections.

While Assange did not personally steal these documents, he is nevertheless being prosecuted for espionage. He and his supporters argue that WikiLeaks’ publication of this material is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

“We have made clear our view that Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long,” Foreign Minister Wong said on Saturday. “We’ve said that publicly and you would anticipate that that reflects also the position we articulate in private.” 

The extradition of Assange from Britain to the US was approved in 2020 by then-UK Home Secretary Priti Patel. The publisher lodged his final appeal against the decision in June, after all eight grounds of a previous appeal were rejected by a British High Court judge. 

Responding to Blinken’s comments on Saturday, Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, said that it is now up to Prime Minister Albanese to make a public appeal for Assange’s freedom, during his upcoming visit to the US. 

August 2, 2023 Posted by | civil liberties, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

The unpalatable facts of the costs to consumers of electricity from new nuclear power

ATLANTA (AP) — The first American nuclear reactor to be built from scratch in decades is sending electricity reliably to the grid, but the cost of the Georgia power plant could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power as a path to a carbon-free future.

Georgia Power Co. announced Monday that Unit 3 at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta, has completed testing and is now in commercial operation, seven years late and $17 billion over budget.

……………………………………………………. In Georgia, almost every electric customer will pay for Vogtle. Georgia Power currently owns 45.7% of the reactors. Smaller shares are owned by Oglethorpe Power Corp., which provides electricity to member-owned cooperatives, the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton. Oglethorpe and MEAG plan to sell power to cooperatives and municipal utilities across Georgia, as well in Jacksonville, Florida, and parts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

Georgia Power’s residential customers are projected to pay more than $926 apiece as part of an ongoing finance charge and elected public service commissioners have approved a rate increase. Residential customers will pay $4 more per month as soon as the third unit begins generating power. That could hit bills in August, two months after residential customers saw a $16-a-month increase to pay for higher fuel costs.

The high construction costs have wiped out any future benefit from low nuclear fuel costs in the future, experts have repeatedly testified before commissioners.

“The cost increases and schedule delays have completely eliminated any benefit on a life-cycle cost basis,” Tom Newsome, director of utility finance for the commission, testified Thursday in a Georgia Public Service Commission hearing examining spending.

The utility will face a fight from longtime opponents of the plant, many of whom note that power generated from solar and wind would be cheaper. They say letting Georgia Power make ratepayers pay for mistakes will unfairly bolster the utility’s profits.

“While capital-intensive and expensive projects may benefit Georgia Power’s shareholders who have enjoyed record profits throughout Vogtle’s beleaguered construction, they are not the least-cost option for Georgians who are feeling the sting of repeated bill increases,” Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney Bob Sherrier said in a statement.

Commissioners will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs of Vogtle, including the fourth reactor. Customers will pay for the share of spending that commissioners determine was prudent, while the company and its shareholders will have to pay for spending commissioners decide was wasteful.

Georgia Power CEO Kim Greene said the company hasn’t decided how much it will ask customers to pay. https://apnews.com/article/georgia-power-nuclear-reactor-vogtle-9555e3f9169f2d58161056feaa81a425

August 2, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

First new US nuclear reactor in 3 decades may well also be its last

“The only reason there’s a nuclear renaissance is because the federal government is throwing tens of billions of dollars at nuclear,” …….. “Investors aren’t interested.”

Opening of Georgia Power’s Vogtle unit 3 comes 7 years late and billions
of dollars over budget.

 FT.com Myles McCormick in Houston, 31 July 2023

The US nuclear energy industry has reached a watershed moment. Plant Vogtle unit 3 began delivering commercial electricity to the Georgia power grid, becoming the first nuclear reactor the country has built from scratch in more than three decades.

Unit 3 and a twin reactor to open in the coming months may also be the last. Years of delays and billions of dollars of cost overruns have made the megaproject as much a cautionary tale as a new chapter for atomic investment.

The 1,100-megawatt Vogtle unit 3 was initially supposed to enter service in 2016, however. Its start of operations was delayed once more in June after the company discovered a degraded seal in its main generator.

“It turns out nuclear construction is hard,” said Bob Sherrier, a staff attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which challenged the project in court. 

“Along the way the company kept ratcheting up the cost estimates, pushing back the deadlines a bit at a time. Every time it was raised just enough where it was still within the bounds of justification that it made sense to proceed. But they were wildly off in their estimates every single time.”

“The resurgence of America’s nuclear industry starts here in Georgia, where you’ve just got approval, for the first time in three decades, to build new nuclear reactors,” then-US energy secretary Steven Chu said as Vogtle was authorised in 2012. 

The Georgia project was supposed to be the first among dozens of new reactors built across the country. But the renaissance floundered amid safety concerns after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan coupled with plunging prices for natural gas, a competing generation fuel. In the end only four reactors moved ahead and two, Vogtle units 3 and 4, have been built. Unit 4 is scheduled to come online by early 2024.

Soaring costs at Vogtle, along with new reactors at the VC Summer nuclear project in South Carolina, forced engineering contractor Westinghouse into bankruptcy in 2017. While South Carolina utilities pulled the plug on their project, Georgia ploughed ahead.

The $14bn original cost of Vogtle units 3 and 4 has now ballooned to more than $30bn. The cost for Georgia Power, with a 45 per cent share of the project, will be about $15bn.

How the company’s costs are shared with its customers will be decided by the commission once unit 4 is operating: the law allows only costs deemed “prudent” to be passed on to ratepayers.

McDonald said the company should not expect an easy ride. “They are guilty until they prove themselves innocent,” he said. 

Georgia Power, a division of New York-listed Southern Company, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

………………………………………  there are no other traditional large-scale light water reactors under way in the US. Critics say that investors have been turned off. 

“The only reason there’s a nuclear renaissance is because the federal government is throwing tens of billions of dollars at nuclear,” said David Schlissel at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “Investors aren’t interested.”

For Georgians, the more immediate concern is what the project means for utility bills. Georgia Watch, a consumer group, estimates ratepayers have already paid $900 extra since construction began to cover financing costs. Bills are set to rise by another $3.78, or 3 per cent, on average when unit 3 comes online.

But the ultimate impact will not be felt until unit 4 comes online and the PSC decides how much of the burden will be left for ratepayers to shoulder. Georgia Watch estimates the final increase will add anywhere between 10-13 per cent to bills……………… https://www.ft.com/content/5d8e0c6c-59c9-4b40-806f-604889dd5fb6

August 1, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | 1 Comment

Military interest in nuclear-powered space travel, but solar-powered is just as good, -and safer.

2 Government, Industry Explore Nuclear, Solar Space Engines

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — More commercial and military activity is taking place in space, and the Defense Department and industry are investing in emerging propulsion technologies to move systems in orbit faster, farther and more efficiently.

……………………………………..In 2021, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency selected Lockheed Martin as one of three prime contractors — along with General Atomics and Blue Origin — for Phase 1 of its Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, program to showcase the potential of a nuclear thermal propulsion system in space, a DARPA release said.

This January, NASA announced it had partnered with DARPA on the DRACO program, describing a nuclear thermal rocket engine as “an enabling capability for NASA crewed missions to Mars.” The goal is to demonstrate the system in orbit in fiscal year 2027, with the Space Force providing the launch vehicle for the DRACO mission, a DARPA statement said.

The program is about to enter Phase 2, which “will primarily involve building and testing on the non-nuclear components of the engine” such as valves, pumps, the nozzle and “a representative core without the nuclear materials in it,” DARPA’s program manager for DRACO Tabitha Dodson said during a panel discussion at the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium in April. Dodson said then a Phase 2 decision is “quite close.” However, at press time in mid-July, no contracts have been awarded.

…………………………………“There are no facilities on Earth that we could use for our DRACO reactor’s power test … so we’ve always baselined doing our power test for the reactor in space,” Dodson said. Once in space, DARPA will “very gradually” ramp up the system to “full power thrust,” she said…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Despite DARPA’s commitment to safety, nuclear propulsion systems face an uphill battle getting deployed on spacecraft at scale, said Joel Sercel, founder and CEO of TransAstra, a space technology company.

………………………………………………………………………………..In May, the Space Force awarded TransAstra a Phase One Small Business Innovation Research contract to explore new applications for the company’s propellant-agnostic Omnivore thruster.

The Omnivore thruster uses solar reflectors to focus sunlight onto a solar absorber, which then superheats the system’s propellant to generate thrust “typically six times faster and eight times cheaper than electric systems,” a company release said.

Additionally, TransAstra calculated an Omnivore thruster “using liquid hydrogen propellant … will perform similarly to nuclear rockets, but without nuclear materials, costs or risk.”

Sercel said Omnivore has “80 percent of the performance of nuclear at 1 percent of the cost.” The system is essentially nuclear powered, “but the nuclear reactor in question is the fusion reactor at the center of the solar system called the Sun,” he added.

“The nice thing about nuclear reactors is that you have a small, compact reactor versus large deployable solar reflectors, but the basic performance of solar thermal rockets and nuclear rockets is about the same,” he said. And with Omnivore “you don’t have all these safety concerns and radioactive material and reactor control issues and so on. So, we think it’s a much more practical approach.”

Omnivore could have multiple mission applications for the Defense Department, Sercel said. Using liquid hydrogen propellant, the thruster “can deliver hundreds of kilograms” of spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit “on small launch vehicles, and the Space Force seems to be very excited about this,” he said. The system could also deliver spacecraft weighing more than 100 kilograms to cislunar space, he said.

Additionally, TransAstra has an Omnivore variant that uses water as the propellant, the solar absorber superheating the water vapor and releasing the gas through a nozzle to generate thrust.

The water-based variant can be placed on the company’s Worker Bee small orbital transfer vehicles, about 25 of which can fit on a single Falcon 9 rocket, Sercel said.

“Each [Worker Bee] could deliver up to six small [satellites] to their orbital destinations. So, we can deliver a full constellation of 100 small or micro [satellites] to all different inclinations, and you would get global coverage in one launch.”…………………………………………………………more https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/7/31/government-industry-explore-nuclear-solar-space-engines

August 1, 2023 Posted by | renewable, space travel, USA | Leave a comment

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