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Nuclear weapons standout calls for US commitment to UN treaty

Nuclear weapons standout calls for US commitment to UN treaty,  By CHRIS LARABEEStaff Writer, Greenfield REcorderPublished: 1/23/2022 11:05:01 AM

GREENFIELD — On the one-year anniversary of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons becoming international law, a group gathered on the Greenfield Common and in Northampton to celebrate the treaty and to raise awareness that the United States has not signed on.

“Fifty nations have signed on. … How can we face the world?” asked Greenfield resident Patricia Greene. “We’re here to say not all of us agree.”

Greene and several other residents called out the United States’ “pugnacious” stance toward many other countries and said America should focus on peace.

“I feel that the main thing our country needs to do is look at peaceful relations,” Greene said. “We’re so divided internally, maybe heal that over, too.”

The anniversary of the treaty comes days before a state Public Safety and Homeland Security hearing Jan. 26 on Bill H.3688, which was filed by Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, and would establish an 11-member commission to investigate and report on what measures may be necessary and appropriate to protect Massachusetts residents from the threat posed by nuclear weapons and to contribute toward the total elimination of these weapons from all countries.

According to the United Nations’ website, 59 countries have ratified the treaty, which recognizes the threat of nuclear weapons and requires their elimination. Among the countries that have yet to even sign the treaty include many world powers, such as the United States, China, Japan and the majority of the European Union and England.

Pat Hynes, who sits on the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice’s board of directors, said the 11-member commission, if it was created, would find many people in Massachusetts with similar sentiments to the group standing on the frozen Greenfield Common.

“They would certainly find a very high majority opposing nuclear weapons,” Hynes said. “I hope the committee and State House have the courage to pass the bill.”

Hynes recalled a quote from World War II Army Gen. Omar Bradley that the world contains “nuclear giants and ethical infants.” She added it’s been disappointing that nuclear weapons continue to be produced, even after the horrors of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the existential threat of the Cold War.

“I’d say it’s tragic, especially with all the other crises happening,” Hynes said, highlighting climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic as current threats. “We don’t need to add to them.”………………..

https://www.recorder.com/Nuclear-weapons-standout-calls-for-U-S-commitment-to-U-N-treaty-44696552

January 24, 2022 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hypocritical Scolding Won’t Stop a Russian War on Ukraine

Peace cannot be found if the U.S. relies on the self-righteous assertion of principles that our government refuses to apply to itself.January 21, 2022 , Portside, Mitchell Zimmerman  OTHERWORDS.ORG

As Moscow signals its apparent readiness for war over Ukraine, the U.S. government seems determined to ignore Russia’s not-so-ridiculous concerns over the military alliances of neighboring states and the prospect of nuclear weapons on its borders.

Should Americans worry about our country inserting itself into another war?

Ukraine is far away, and Russia isn’t directly threatening us. Nonetheless, the U.S. intends to arm and support Ukraine if it comes to war, and there can be no certainty whether a proxy war might escalate. Nuclear powers need to tread carefully around each other.

Let’s look at the U.S. response to Russia’s insistence that Ukraine not join NATO, the U.S.-dominated military alliance that Russia wants to keep out of its immediate periphery.

Washington rejects that demand. The U.S. representative at talks with Russia recently declared it to be among America’s “bedrock principles” that there be “no tolerance of overt or tacit spheres of influence, no restrictions on the sovereign right of nations to choose their own alliances.”

Contrary to these noble statements, America has long deemed it a bedrock principle that the United States has a sphere of influence: all of North and South America!………………

After the U.S. tried to overthrow its government, Cuba chose to ally with the Soviet Union and let the Russians put nuclear missiles in Cuba. The U.S. response was to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war rather than accept the Soviets’ move into our sphere of influence.

So much for “bedrock principles.”

The U.S. now proclaims it a “bedrock principle” that Ukraine, at least, can make an alliance with whomever they want, Russian sensibilities be damned. But suppose Mexico decided to join the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Russian-sponsored counterpart to NATO?

Can anyone imagine the U.S. would quietly acknowledge Mexico’s right to do so?……………….

It is not unreasonable for the Russians not to want a hostile alliance — and potentially nuclear weapons — along their border. But Russia’s key interests do not reasonably include dismembering Ukraine.

Meanwhile the U.S. is not crazy for wanting Ukraine to be free to connect economically and culturally with Western Europe. But it’s not a key interest, requiring a confrontation between nuclear-armed states, to insist that Ukraine has the “right” to join NATO.

Peace cannot be found if the U.S. relies on the self-righteous assertion of principles that our government refuses to apply to itself.  https://portside.org/2022-01-21/hypocritical-scolding-wont-stop-russian-war-ukraine

January 24, 2022 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Washington pumping up war fever 

Washington pumping up war fever    http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2022/01/washington-pumping-up-war-fever.html  It’s nonstop in the western media. The message – war with Russia is coming. 

An American friend of mine, now living in Russia, has two sons in the US Army. One of them said to him today, “your two sons are going to be fighting your beloved Russia.” So the troops are obviously being told to prepare for war. One of those sons, an Army Special Forces soldier has been sent to western Ukraine several times to train the Nazi death squads that have been brought into the Ukrainian  Army since the US orchestrated coup d’état in 2014.

Russia has repeatedly stated that they have no intention of invading Ukraine – unless Ukraine first strikes Crimea or the Donbass (eastern Ukraine that borders Russia where two Russian-ethnic republics are located that have continually been targets of the right-wing Kiev government since 2014).

Russia constantly says they have no desire to take over the failed Ukrainian state – in fact Moscow says that the US-NATO have driven that country into the ground since the 2014 coup and they should help it recover. But the Washington agenda is chaos – just like Iraq, Syria, Libya and other places US-NATO have destroyed with their ‘freedom war machine’.

Let’s take a moment and look at possible reasons for the US-NATO daily agitation for war.

  • The western corporate powers see their reign as ‘global rulers’ rapidly vanishing and know this is the last chance to bring down Russia and China before the ‘multi-polar’ world comes into fruition in the next few years. 
  • The west is led by evil, psychopaths who thirst for war. The neo-cons come to mind.
  • It’s all a big public relations scheme to create a rare ‘win’ for the west. If Russia does not invade Ukraine then the US-NATO can claim it was all because they stood up to the ‘Russian bear’, proving that their out-of-date alliance still has a role in the world today. 
  • Western oligarchs can’t stand to let Russia have all those natural resources in the Arctic that are becoming possible to extract due to melting ice. So Russia must be broken up into smaller nations giving Mr. Big the chance to make the grab. See the RAND Corporation study that lays out the plan to balkanize Russia here. Thus there is no stopping this rush to war.
  • US-NATO are bluffing. It’s all a great distraction to help take the heat off Big Pharma’s global vaccine campaign and growing international economic problems.
  • You pick – give us your take in the comments.

  • Now let’s review some of the reasons why war might be avoided.

  • If the US-NATO really went to full blown war with Russia then it would likely go nuclear. China would probably be pulled in. If this happens forget covid – kiss your family good-bye. Is the US-NATO stupid enough to try this? Yes they are but there are some sensible leaders in Europe who know this would not be such a great idea. Let’s hope they have the stuff it takes to help shut down this insanity.
  • The US-NATO constant aggression is a big money maker for the military industrial complex so this current war talk is a cash cow for them. But they are not stupid and know that nuclear war does not help their profit line.
  • Think back to 2003 and George W. Bush’s ill-fated ‘shock and awe’ attack on Iraq that turned that nation into a chaotic failed state. Prior to the US-UK attack there were massive protests around the world for peace.

This time, as Washington-Brussels do their daily war-prep media barrage, there are few global protests. In fact there are some in the ‘US peace movement’ who buy the hype and believe Russia wants to remake the Soviet Union by invading Europe. Anyone who is actually paying real attention at this moment knows that story line is bullshit. But sadly some who should be protesting US-NATO provocations and aggression are not doing so. This weakens our ability to stop WW III.

I hope and pray that more people will speak out – and soon. Our lives depend on your courage and your action.

January 22, 2022 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

In Georgia, Bloated Costs Take Over a Nuclear Power Plant and a Fight Looms Over Who Pays,

In Georgia, Bloated Costs Take Over a Nuclear Power Plant and a Fight Looms Over Who Pays,  

Vogtle’s two new nuclear reactors are six years late and at least $16 billion over their original budget. The plant will have no direct carbon footprint, but critics say there are much cheaper ways to reduce emissions.

Inside Climate News, By James Bruggers, January 21, 2022   Ballooning cost overruns and construction delays at Georgia Power Co.’s  Vogtle nuclear project threaten to cost the state’s electricity consumers  billions of dollars in the decades to come, a new think tank report concludes.

The report, from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit advancing a sustainable energy economy, builds a case that stockholders of the company should take the lead on construction and carry much of the financial load, rather than ratepayers.

Once estimated to cost $14 billion, the price tag for two new reactors at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle property has climbed past $30 billion, and both units will be more than six years late in coming online, the institute reported after combing through public records including testimony at a Georgia Public Service Commission hearing in December. The plant already has two existing nuclear power units that began producing electricity in the 1980s.

Public Service Commission staff and consultants have blamed the project’s high costs and construction delays on Georgia Power, which is the lead partner in its construction and eventual operation, and a subsidiary of Southern Company, the energy policy institute found. 

Georgia Power was warned in 2008 that using an unproven reactor design  would likely cause overruns and delays, said David Schlissel, the report’s author and the institute’s director of resource planning and analysis. “However, the company challenged and the commission disregarded these warnings,” said Schlissel, a lawyer who has been a frequent expert witness in legal proceedings.

Commission spokesman Tom Krause said he could not comment directly on the institute’s report or the commission’s ongoing quasi-judicial proceedings that are designed to monitor the construction, which the Atlanta Journal Constitution has described as the largest project in Georgia history. The commission regulates Georgia Power, and as such, has a major say in Georgia energy policy.

Krause said future hearings, when the project is farther along, will be held to help the commission, made up of five members who are elected statewide, determine which of the Vogtle costs should be allocated to ratepayers, as opposed to shareholders.

“That will be a very significant docket before the PSC,” Krause said.

“I imagine it will be a knock-down, drag-out fight,” Schlissel said. “I have heard a fair amount of the documentation, and just reading what the PSC staff has been saying, clearly this project has been mismanaged.”

The institute, based in Lakewood, Ohio, is not an official party in those proceedings and its report was not prepared for any organization that is directly participating in them, Schlissel said.

Georgia Power’s customers have already paid more than $3.5 billion for the two units through a rider on their electric bills intended to cover financing charges, the report found.

“Our new Vogtle units will be clean energy sources and produce zero air pollution,” said Jeff Wilson, Georgia Power spokesman. “That’s why we remain fully committed to getting the job done, and getting it done right, with safety and quality our top priority.”

He also minimized the plant’s impact on customers’ rates.

The two units were originally to be placed in service in 2016 and 2017. The owners now estimate commercial operation will not begin until 2022 and 2023, according to the report. They are to be the first new commercial nuclear power units in the United States in the last three decades.

The institute’s report quoted a commission hearing in December at which an independent monitor of the project, Don Grace, told the commission that Georgia Power had on more than one occasion used low forecasts as a way to “try and continue to justify the project.”………….

Grace, in his testimony, described developing the plant as similar to driving  “uphill in the snow.”

And the wheels are turning. Money is being spent and you’re trying to get to the goal of getting to the top of the hill,” he said. “But in some cases you’re making slow progress, but not at the rate you expected. And in some cases you’re actually slipping backwards somewhat.”………………………   https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21012022/georgia-power-vogtle-nuclear/

January 22, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Could Plutonium Shipping in New Mexico Lead to Disaster?


Could Plutonium Shipping in New Mexico Lead to Disaster?   Legal Reader, 

PETER CHARLES — January 18, 2022   Santa Fe already sees a considerable amount of radioactive waste transported near its city limits, as contaminated gloves, equipment, and soil are regularly shipped from Los Alamos Laboratory.

Residents of New Mexico are concerned about a plan to ship plutonium through the Land of Enchantment. Many people are totally unaware that nuclear materials are transported through the state on a fairly regular basis, and fewer still are aware of the potential risks. So what happens if one of these semi-trucks crashes, and nuclear waste spills out? What happens if you are injured or irradiated as a result? 

If you have been injured in a semi-truck accident, it’s always best to reach out to a qualified, experienced semi-truck accident attorney in New Mexico. These legal professionals have the resources and knowledge to help you fight for justice in a confident, efficient manner. The truth of the matter is that cargo spills can cause serious injuries to innocent motorists, especially if that cargo is radioactive. This type of material should have never been transported across New Mexico in the first place, and a lawyer can help you seek justice. 

Cold War Plutonium a Concern for Santa Fe Residents

Santa Fe already sees a considerable amount of radioactive waste transported near its city limits, as contaminated gloves, equipment, and soil are regularly shipped from Los Alamos Laboratory to an underground disposal site near Carlsbad. However, the Department of Energy’s new plan is to ship leftover plutonium from the Cold War through the south side of the city, which is much more dangerous compared to normal radioactive waste. There are 26 metric tons of plutonium that needs to be disposed of, and this plutonium has to be extracted from bomb cores before being transported. 

In addition, the plutonium is so deadly that it must be diluted before it is transported. Otherwise, it would violate regulations at New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The site explicitly rejects anything other than low-level nuclear waste. The process involves shipping the plutonium to Los Alamos Lab, turning it into an oxide powder, and then shipping back across New Mexico’s highways to South Carolina.

Finally, the powder would be diluted even further before returning back to New Mexico and being stored at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Critics say that having plutonium shipped back and forth multiple times across New Mexico is an accident waiting to happen. …….. https://www.legalreader.com/could-plutonium-shipping-in-new-mexico-lead-to-disaster/

January 20, 2022 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

On Cape Cod, a nuclear nightmare arrives

On Cape Cod, a nuclear nightmare arrives,   https://news.yahoo.com/column-cape-cod-nuclear-nightmare-095201547.html, Brent Harold Columnist, Mon, January 17, 2022, 

We’re living in E.F. Schumacher’s nightmare future.

Fifty years ago, before there was much nuclear power to worry about, before Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima, he was already worrying about it in his 1973 book “Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered.” The book was ranked by The Times Literary Supplement as one of the 100 most influential books published since World War II.

It’s striking that the main argument against using nuclear energy was there from the very start.

“The biggest cause of worry for the future is the storage of the long-lived radioactive wastes,” he wrote. “In effect, we are consciously and deliberately accumulating a toxic substance on the off-chance that it may be possible to get rid of it at a later date.”

No amount of convenience or efficiency — or profits — he argued “could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make ‘safe’ and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself.”

We are in that “later date” and as we know, there still is no solution to the problem of how to get rid of the radioactive waste that is a systematic byproduct of generating nuclear energy .

We are in that future Schumacher warned against.

A few years ago, when Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant was still limping along, a documentary titled “Containment” played in Wellfleet, showing in convincing detail the nuclear future Schumacher warned against, especially the ongoing problem of containment of lethal radioactive wastes.

There is no mopping up as with oil spills. You don’t flush this, clean it up and move on. There is no getting rid of the mess we’ve made. All we can do is try to contain it, on and on farther into the future than the 10,000 years often cited as the age of “civilization” — perhaps longer than our species has been around.

There’s an interesting segment in the film about attempts to come up with a sign to warn our distant descendants of the lethal mess we have bequeathed them.

Containment is the job and the company that owned Pilgrim, when it closed the plant, handed the job of cleanup and containment off to a company named Holtec, which thought it could make a go of it while making a profit for its shareholders.

Containment is the job. But only in its first year or two, Holtec recently announced, almost off-handedly, that it was considering dumping a million gallons of radioactive waste in our Cape Cod Bay. ”What?” asked many. “Can they get away with that?”

Apparently they are within their legal rights. Certainly, the company has emphasized it has no obligation to be guided by those whose lives will be most affected by it.

In reaction to the outcry Holtec has said it will put off the dumping for a spell. To make us feel better it noted that Entergy had for years, when Pilgrim was still operating, been dumping radioactive water in the bay.

Fifty years ago Schumacher wrote: “It was thought at one time that these wastes could safely be dumped into the deepest parts of the oceans…but this has since been disproved…wherever there is life, radioactive substances are absorbed into the biological cycle.”

Containment is the job. Dumping a million gallons of radioactive waste into Cape Cod Bay seems like the opposite of containment.

Once again, as with Entergy, we find ourselves in the situation of having our present and future safety in the hands of a bottom line-oriented company.

Call it a nuclear energy problem. Call it a corporation/capitalism problem. It is both.

There is a decades-long history of opposition to Pilgrim. Diane Turco and others founded Cape Downwinders in the early 1990s, a group that worked toward the shuttering of Pilgrim..

This newspaper kept Cape citizens informed with its strong coverage of the deterioration of Pilgrim and wrote editorials advocating its closure.

The closure of the plant in 2019 was considered by activists a victory and there has been a natural tendency (for people whose name isn’t Diane Turco) to become complacent about the still-dangerous site. Certainly it does seem less glamorous being the first generation of citizens, of who knows how many, to practice ongoing wariness about containment and the company in charge of it. But that’s the reality of our situation.

A place to start getting involved or re-involved is a gathering for a speak-out on Jan. 31 at 5 p.m. at Plymouth Town Hall Great Room, to be followed at 6:30 p.m. by a meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel.

Brent Harold, a Cape Cod Times columnist and former English professor, lives in Wellfleet. Email him at kinnacum@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: pilgrim nuclear plant and holtec’s plan to dump contaminated water.

January 18, 2022 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear weapons must be relegated to the past – Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

The letter also marks the first anniversary of Pope Francis’ statement prior to the entry into force of the treaty on Jan. 22, 2021; the Pope said nuclear weapons “strike large numbers of people in a short space of time and provoke long-lasting damage to the environment.” On Tuesday, the archbishop said, “It is the duty of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, the birthplace of nuclear weapons, to support that treaty while working toward universal, verifiable nuclear disarmament.”

As of this week, the treaty has 59 member nation signatories. The purpose of the treaty is to outlaw the manufacture, testing, possession, stockpiling and use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. It is the legal form chosen by 122 nations who, in 2015, sought a route toward disarmament that would be more effective than the United States’ languishing 1970 promise to disarm “at an early date.”

Nuclear weapons must be relegated to the past,  https://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/my_view/nuclear-weapons-must-be-relegated-to-the-past/article_d247c8d8-7559-11ec-ab06-bfa71f3f3b1e.html, By Basia Miller, Jan 16, 2022  .

On Jan. 11, the Archbishop of Santa Fe, John C. Wester, shared his pastoral letter, “Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament” (“Archbishop decries labs’ weapons production,” Jan. 12).

His letter, a timely, courageous and powerful call for a culture of peace, comes at a time when the United States appears to be entering a new arms race, one in which contamination of the waters and lands of the Rio Grande watershed with radioactive, toxic and hazardous pollutants is often accepted passively, without questioning the deadly — and growing — enterprise behind it.

In his summary, the archbishop makes a link between the costs of military spending and the reciprocal effect on civilian life. He says, “Moreover, we are robbing from the poor and needy with current plans to spend at least

$1.7 trillion to ‘modernize’ our nuclear weapons and keep them forever.”

The archbishop presented his letter six days before the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and 10 days before the first anniversary of the entry into force of the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, on Jan. 22.

The letter also marks the first anniversary of Pope Francis’ statement prior to the entry into force of the treaty on Jan. 22, 2021; the Pope said nuclear weapons “strike large numbers of people in a short space of time and provoke long-lasting damage to the environment.” On Tuesday, the archbishop said, “It is the duty of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, the birthplace of nuclear weapons, to support that treaty while working toward universal, verifiable nuclear disarmament.”

As of this week, the treaty has 59 member nation signatories. The purpose of the treaty is to outlaw the manufacture, testing, possession, stockpiling and use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. It is the legal form chosen by 122 nations who, in 2015, sought a route toward disarmament that would be more effective than the United States’ languishing 1970 promise to disarm “at an early date.”

The long-range expectation is the dynamic among the treaty’s signatory nations (including the NATO countries) will gradually curb the United States’ appetite for building more weapons. The purpose was once “deterrence,” but even that rationalization has been undermined.

In this way, a new legal norm will have been created by which nuclear weapons follow the pattern of the worldwide ban on landmines and chemical and biological weapons.

An occasion to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and celebrate the first anniversary of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is planned by local activists and veterans groups at Ashley Pond in Los Alamos from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 22. The public is invited.   Basia Miller is a board member of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. She has lived in Santa Fe for over 30 years.

January 18, 2022 Posted by | Religion and ethics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Missouri Bill to honour nuclear veterans


Bob Bromley Bill seeks to honor veterans of the Nuclear Age,  https://www.fourstateshomepage.com/news/local-news/bob-bromley-bill-seeks-to-honor-veterans-of-the-nuclear-age/ by: Gretchen Bolander Jan 17, 2022   JASPER COUNTY, Mo. — It’s been decades since the US entered the Nuclear Age, but a southwest Missouri lawmaker says it’s never too late to recognize the sacrifice made through the Atomic Program.

State Representative Bob Bromley of Carl Junction is part of an effort that’s underway to recognize the military veterans associated with the US Atomic Program.

“I think every time we get the opportunity to thank them we should. Because once they’re gone, they’re gone,” said Jim Beeler, military supporter.

Jim Beeler says it’s important to thank any vet for their service, and today, especially those who were a part of the US Atomic Program.

“It’s nice to see someone recognize that.”

State Rep. Bob Bromley is sponsoring House Bill 1652 which would designate a section of Highway 171 as “Atomic Veterans Memorial Highway.” Bromley says it’s important to recognize the role these veterans played in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and the potential toll to their health after being exposed to radiation.

“There were 23 different types of cancers that develop with a lot of these veterans. And they were not eligible with their medical records and everything to get compensation,” said MO Rep. Bob Bromley, R.

Often tied to the top secret nature of the work. It took decades to change that.

“Some of them did not get compensated for their cancers and different things that was caused by this exposure to radiation ’til the mid 90s. And so it’s just very important to understand the sacrifice and the contribution that all these veterans made.”

The bill has already gone before the Veterans Committee and is expected to see an initial vote this week. Missouri is just one of a list of states considering this measure to recognize Atomic Veterans.

January 18, 2022 Posted by | health, Legal, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The US and China Could Soon Be In Race For Nuclear-Powered Satellites.

The US and China Could Soon Be In Race For Nuclear-Powered Satellites, Defense One, 16 Jan 22,

An idea from the 1960s has found new backers.,  If future U.S. satellites are to dodge incoming Russian or Chinese fire, they’ll need better ways to move around than today’s fuel-intensive thrusters. That’s why the Pentagon is looking into nuclear-powered propulsion.

While leaders at the Space Force and the Pentagon Research and Development office remain publicly quiet about the idea of putting nuclear-powered spacecraft in orbit, the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace studies released a new report that argues for more focused work on it. 

It isn’t a new concept. NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission were working toward a flight test for their nuclear rocket until the Vietnam War sapped the program’s funding. It was cancelled in 1973, and safety concerns have since scuttled further efforts………….

If future U.S. satellites are to dodge incoming Russian or Chinese fire, they’ll need better ways to move around than today’s fuel-intensive thrusters. That’s why the Pentagon is looking into nuclear-powered propulsion.

While leaders at the Space Force and the Pentagon Research and Development office remain publicly quiet about the idea of putting nuclear-powered spacecraft in orbit, the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace studies released a new report that argues for more focused work on it. 

It isn’t a new concept. NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission were working toward a flight test for their nuclear rocket until the Vietnam War sapped the program’s funding. It was cancelled in 1973, and safety concerns have since scuttled further efforts……….

But one DARPA official, at least, suggests looking at the idea afresh. A 2020 policy change from the Trump White House has clearing the way for new research into nuclear propulsion, Micheal Leahy, the director of the tactical technology office at DARPA, told a virtual audience on Friday. Leahy’s office runs the DARPA Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, program. Last April, DARPA awarded General Atomics a contract for a preliminary design of a reactor and propulsion subsystem, and gave Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin a contract for a spacecraft design.

But the bigger factor is thatChina is working along similar lines with planes to field its own nuclear-powered satellites by 2040. The lessons from the current gap in hypersonic missile technology should provide a cautionary tale, Leahy said. 

“We had the lead in hypersonics, only to watch it go away. Right?… Now I’m in a tail chase,” he said.  https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2022/01/us-and-china-could-soon-be-race-nuclear-powered-satellites/360792/

January 17, 2022 Posted by | China, space travel, USA | 1 Comment

Can Santa Fe survive as a nuclear weapons suburb?

Will Santa Fe “fold up,” democratically and spiritually, when this new “Manhattan” fully appears? Is the faith of that man of peace, St. Francis — the very name of this city — obsolete to political leaders in the city and the state?

Can Santa Fe survive as a nuclear weapons suburb?  https://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/my_view/can-santa-fe-survive-as-a-nuclear-weapons-suburb/article_b6ab8ce8-7556-11ec-b47a-57273af4ebbc.html, By Greg Mello, 16 Jan 22,

Many Santa Feans understand that Los Alamos National Laboratory, the most lavishly funded nuclear weapons facility in the world, has embarked on a new mission: making plutonium warhead cores (“pits”) on an industrial scale, to involve 4,000 full-time personnel and 24/7 operations.

It’s among the dirtiest and most dangerous missions in the nuclear weapons complex, not seen at LANL since the 1940s. It’s centered in an old facility built for research and development, now to be driven far beyond its original capacity.

LANL predicts it will spend $18 billion to start up production over this decade. In constant dollars, this is 15-fold what the Manhattan Project spent in New Mexico — indeed it dwarfs the cost of every other project in New Mexico history.

The pits will cost at least $50 million apiece, 200 times their weight in gold. A single LANL pit, assuming all goes well, will cost as much as the combined annual salaries of 1,000 New Mexico teachers, or the equipment for 5,000 residential solar systems. A major reason our society is failing is because it is kept on a war footing.

This huge program has nothing to do with national security, except in the negative sense. It is not needed to maintain any stockpile weapon. As military planners say, it’s (very) “early to need” and there are now perfectly sound, cheaper plans to do without LANL’s production should something go wrong. Why wait?

After extensive analysis under both the Obama and Trump administrations, the National Nuclear Security Administration in 2017 firmly rejected what is now LANL’s pit plan. The New Mexico delegation fought back, enlisting congressional hawks to help blackmail the Trump administration into building an unheard-of two pit factories. Up to now, a barely functioning Congress has gone along with the game. Time will tell just how long this scam holds up.

LANL’s pit production, for all its cost and danger, just isn’t enough to support any foreseeable U.S. stockpile. If LANL is a pit factory, there will be two.

What about Santa Fe, then?

On July 18, 1945, Harry Truman wrote in his diary, “Believe [Japan] will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland.”

Will Santa Fe “fold up,” democratically and spiritually, when this new “Manhattan” fully appears? Is the faith of that man of peace, St. Francis — the very name of this city — obsolete to political leaders in the city and the state?

What exactly would Santa Fe stand for or mean if nuclear weapons — the ultimate in human disposability — became its main tangible product? When our schools and community colleges direct our young people into LANL’s “pipeline” of plutonium minions? Or do you suppose their potential for creativity, compassion and wisdom could be better developed in other ways, as the region faces the towering crises of the 21st century?

Can Santa Fe survive as a nuclear weapons suburb? It certainly can, as a kind of nuclear “Pottersville” — a sprawling, increasingly ugly “city” with growing inequality, a vacuum where shared ideals should be, with no real urban center or shared human purposes, its most cherished traditions washed away by too much money given to too few people doing “work” society doesn’t need or want. It would be a city divided against itself to be sure, with plenty of poverty, human tragedy and crime.

Santa Fe could be a city that aims for justice and peace, where the obligation of respect binding us together is fostered, where the potential of every child is honored. Those political values are incompatible with manufacturing more nuclear weapons.

Greg Mello is executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group.

January 17, 2022 Posted by | culture and arts, Religion and ethics, social effects, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden is urged to eliminate land-based nuclear missiles, as US policy is revised.

Biden Urged to Eliminate Land-Based Nuclear Missiles as US Policy Is Revised, https://truthout.org/articles/biden-urged-to-eliminate-land-based-nuclear-missiles-as-us-policy-is-revised/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=e59d913f-a733-43f1-8c81-c99670e89de9Mike Ludwig, Truthout,

As the Biden administration considers changes to Trump-era nuclear policy, 60 national and regional organizations released a statement this week calling for the elimination of 400 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that are “now armed and on hair-trigger alert in the United States.”

“Intercontinental ballistic missiles are uniquely dangerous, greatly increasing the chances that a false alarm or miscalculation will result in nuclear war,” the statement reads. “There is no more important step the United States could take to reduce the chances of a global nuclear holocaust than to eliminate its ICBMs.”

Progressives, scientists and some Democrats in Congress are also pushing President Joe Biden, who has pledged to reduce U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons in its defense strategy, to adopt a “no first use” policy and declare that the U.S. will never be the first to launch a nuclear attack. Taking such a stance would strengthen the U.S. position in global nonproliferation talks, advocates say.

The White House is slowly pursuing such talks with other nuclear-armed governments including Russia, the United Kingdom and France, which recently issued a joint statement declaring that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Pakistan and India, two regional rivals armed with nuclear weapons, issued statements calling the joint statement a positive development in international arms control.

A “no first use” or “sole purpose” policy, advocates say, would also be consistent with the Democratic Party platform and Biden himself, who has said that nuclear weapons should only be used to deter nuclear attack. The Trump administration went in the opposite direction with its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which says that deterring a nuclear attack is not the “sole purpose” of nuclear weapons and nuclear war could be used to deter “non-nuclear” attacks and achieve “U.S. objectives” if deterrence fails.

The Biden administration is working on a new Nuclear Posture Review, which could be completed early this year, according to Politico. The administration would not comment on internal deliberations for the review, but unnamed officials told Politico it is unlikely to include deep cuts to nuclear weapons spending as the U.S. works to overhaul and modernize its vast nuclear arsenal.

Federal spending on nuclear forces is projected to reach $634 billion over the next decade, a 28 percent increase over 2019 projections, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Advocates for arms control said Biden should have — and still could — put the most controversial nuclear weapons projects approved under former President Donald Trump on pause until the new posture review is completed.

Writing for Defense One, Tom Collins, the policy director at the peace group Ploughshares, argues that Biden must act fast to rein in a Pentagon bureaucracy intent on keeping money flowing to the nuclear war machine, or his own policy will end up looking a lot like Trump’s:

The good news is that President Biden knows more about nuclear policy than any commander-in-chief in recent history. If Biden makes this a priority, there is every reason to think that he will approve new policies that will reduce the risk of nuclear war and make the nation and world safer.

Unfortunately, the president has left these crucial issues to officials who are not committed to his vision. A key strategy document — called the Nuclear Posture Review — has been drafted by an entrenched Pentagon bureaucracy that apparently wants to keep core elements of the Trump agenda intact, including new nuclear weapons and more ways to use them.

Biden is under pressure from conservative war hawks in Congress and the Pentagon to avoid cuts to new nuclear weapons programs approved under Trump, as Russia and China are thought to be bolstering their own arsenals. These proposed weapons systems are different than the existing ICBMs, which require billions of tax dollars for upkeep and sit ready to launch in silos located on the U.S. mainland.

The U.S. maintains a vast nuclear arsenal that can strike from the air, sea and land. The statement issued this week reports that 400 ICBM missile silos — relics of the arms race with the Soviet Union that first raised fears that global nuclear war that would lay waste of all of human civilization — are scattered across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming.

Citing a former Defense Secretary William Perry, the 60 peace and civil society groups issued the “call to eliminate ICBMs” on Wednesday. Perry has explained that the ICBMs are the weapons most likely to spark a catastrophic nuclear war. If enemy missiles were launched at the U.S., the president would only have about 30 minutes to decide whether to retaliate before the ICBMs are destroyed, a terrible decision that could result in “nuclear winter,” according to the statement.

“Rather than being any kind of deterrent, ICBMs are the opposite — a foreseeable catalyst for nuclear attack. ICBMs certainly waste billions of dollars, but what makes them unique is the threat that they pose to all of humanity,” the statement reads.

Even if the ICBMs facilities were closed, the U.S. would still retain a devastating nuclear arsenal that could respond to attacks across the world. Missiles carried on submarines and aircraft could kill millions of people. However, they are not subject to the same “use them or lose them” dilemma as the ICBMs.

“Until now, the public discussion has been almost entirely limited to the narrow question of whether to build a new ICBM system or stick with the existing Minuteman III missiles for decades longer,” said Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction, one of the groups that signed the statement. “That’s like arguing over whether to refurbish the deck chairs on the nuclear Titanic. Both options retain the same unique dangers of nuclear war that ICBMs involve.”

January 15, 2022 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | 3 Comments

To Avert ‘Global Nuclear Holocaust,’ US Groups Demand Abolition of ICBMs

To Avert ‘Global Nuclear Holocaust,’ US Groups Demand Abolition of ICBMs  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/12/avert-global-nuclear-holocaust-us-groups-demand-abolition-icbmsWhistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says no other immediate action would go further “to reduce the real risk of a false alarm in a crisis causing the near-extinction of humanity.”

JAKE JOHNSON    More than 60 U.S. organizations issued a joint statement Wednesday calling for the total elimination of the country’s land-based nuclear missiles, warning that the weapons are both an enormous waste of money and—most crucially—an existential threat to humankind.

Organized by the advocacy groups RootsAction and Just Foreign Policy, the statement argues that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are “uniquely dangerous, greatly increasing the chances that a false alarm or miscalculation will result in nuclear war.”

“There is no more important step the United States could take to reduce the chances of a global nuclear holocaust than to eliminate its ICBMs,” continues the statement, which was signed by Beyond the Bomb, Global Zero, Justice Democrats, CodePink, and dozens of other anti-war groups.

“Everything is at stake,” the groups warn. “Nuclear weapons could destroy civilization and inflict catastrophic damage on the world’s ecosystems with ‘nuclear winter,’ inducing mass starvation while virtually ending agriculture. That is the overarching context for the need to shut down the 400 ICBMs now in underground silos that are scattered across five states—Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.”

The statement comes just two weeks after President Joe Biden signed into law a sprawling military policy bill that allocates billions of dollars to research, development, and missile procurement for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program, an initiative that is expected to replace the current Minuteman III ICBMs in the coming years.

Ahead of the $778 billion legislation’s passage, some progressive lawmakers—most prominently Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—called for a pause in GBSD development, a demand that went unheeded.

Daniel Ellsberg, the legendary whistleblower and longtime proponent of nuclear disarmament, told Common Dreams in an email that “most of the so-called ‘defense’ budget is legislative pork.”

“But some of it—in particular, the maintenance and proposed replacement to the current ICBM program—is toxic pork,” he added. “It’s not just unnecessary, it’s positively dangerous, to our own security and that of the rest of the world.”

Before leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, Ellsberg specialized in nuclear weapons and operational planning for a possible nuclear war during his time as a consultant to the Defense Department, an experience he recounts in his 2017 book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

“We should have gotten rid of our silo-based ICBMs no less than half a century ago, when they had become totally vulnerable to attack,” Ellsberg told Common Dreams. “Ever since then, deterrence of a nuclear attack should have been based solely on our invulnerable submarine-launched missile force, which is itself far larger than that function requires or should permit.”

Echoing the anti-war coalition’s fear that a potential “false alarm” could spark nuclear catastrophe, Ellsberg noted that “the survival in wartime of hundreds of land-based missiles depends on their being launched, irrevocably (unlike bombers), on electronic and infrared warning before attacking missiles might arrive.”

“Such a warning, however convincing, may be false; and that has actually happened, more times than our public has ever become aware,” he said. “No other strategic weapons besides ground-based ICBMs challenge a national leader to decide, absurdly within minutes, whether ‘to use them or lose them.’ They should not exist.”

“No other specific, concrete American action would go so far immediately to reduce the real risk of a false alarm in a crisis causing the near-extinction of humanity,” Ellsberg concluded.

In a statement, RootsAction national director Norman Solomon lamented that recent public discussion surrounding U.S. nuclear weapons policy “has been almost entirely limited to the narrow question of whether to build a new ICBM system or stick with the existing Minuteman III missiles for decades longer.”

“That’s like arguing over whether to refurbish the deck chairs on the nuclear Titanic,” said Solomon. “Both options retain the same unique dangers of nuclear war that ICBMs involve. It’s time to really widen the ICBM debate, and this joint statement from U.S. organizations is a vital step in that direction.”

January 13, 2022 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Texas ‘downwinders’ should be eligible for nuclear radiation compensation, advocates say

Texas ‘downwinders’ should be eligible for nuclear radiation compensation, advocates say, TEXAS STANDARD,  By Michael Marks. January 12, 2022

Congress is considering a bill to pay more people who were harmed by nuclear development, but the legislation still excludes some Texans who saw fallout firsthand.

A bill to compensate more people who were harmed by U.S. nuclear development is moving through Congress. But advocates say that it still leaves out people who were affected by nuclear radiation.

Under proposed amendments to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, eligible people would get $150,000 from the federal government. That includes uranium miners from Texas, but not “downwinders”: people who lived down wind from nuclear test sites.

Istra Fuhrmann is a nuclear policy advocate for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. She spoke to the Texas Standard about the bill and its provisions…………………….  https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/texas-downwinders-should-be-eligible-for-nuclear-radiation-compensation-advocates-say/

January 13, 2022 Posted by | health, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Legal case over compensation for workers in ”uniquely dangerous” nuclear sites

High Court Takes Up Nuclear Site Workers’ Compensation Case (1)  https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/high-court-takes-up-washington-workers-compensation-challenge
Jan. 11, 202  

  • 9th Cir. upheld change to state workers’ compensation law
  • U.S. government warns of costly consequences for contracts

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider the federal government’s challenge to a Washington state workers’ compensation law in a case that could have costly consequences for U.S. government contracts involving hazardous work on federal property.

The justices agreed Monday to review a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decision upholding a Washington law that presumes certain worker health conditions linked to cleanup work at the Hanford Site, a decommissioned federal nuclear production complex, are occupational diseases that can trigger workers’ compensation benefits.

The Department of Energy since 1989 has overseen cleanup at the Hanford Site, which produced weapons-grade plutonium for use in the U.S. nuclear program during World War II and the Cold War. The cleanup of the Hanford site is expected to continue over the next six decades and involve roughly 400 department employees and 10,000 contractors and subcontractors.

In 2018, Washington lawmakers passed legislation, HB 1723, that amended the state’s workers’ compensation law exclusive to the Hanford site, covering at least 100,000 current and former federal contract workers who performed services there over the past 80 years. The law states that presumed occupational diseases stemming from work at Hanford should trigger benefits eligibility, including cancers and other respiratory diseases.

The federal government argued the law exposes government contractors, and by extension the United States, to “massive new costs” that similarly situated state and private employers don’t incur

‘Uniquely Dangerous Workplace’

The Justice Department had asked the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing the 2018 law discriminated against the United States and that state law shouldn’t apply to federal contract workers at Hanford. The government warned that the logic applied by a panel of Ninth Circuit judges opened the door to other states passing legislation targeting work at federal facilities.

“Congress did not permit States to adopt laws that impose unique burdens on the United States and the firms that it engages to carry out federal functions,” Justice Department attorneys argued. “The practical consequences of the panel’s mistake are far-reaching. Even if the Hanford site is considered in isolation, the decision is likely to cost the United States tens of millions of dollars annually for the remainder of the 21st century.”

Attorneys for Washington state, however, responded that courts have allowed states to regulate workers’ compensation for injuries or illnesses suffered during work on federal land. They argued Washington state has “long tailored its workers’ compensation laws to the dangers faced by particular employees,” noting statutes that protect firefighters and other workers facing special hazards.


“Hanford is a uniquely dangerous workplace, filled with radioactive and toxic chemicals, and private contractors operating there have routinely failed to provide employees with protective equipment and to monitor their exposures to toxic substances,” they argued.

Justice Department attorneys also argued the Ninth Circuit ruling clashed with Supreme Court precedent in a 1988 decision, Goodyear Atomic Corp. v. Miller, which described a similar situation of a state workers’ compensation award for an employee injured at a federally owned facility.

The full Ninth Circuit previously declined to take up the case, and said the Washington law fell properly within a part of federal law that authorizes states to apply their workers’ compensation laws to federal projects.

In a dissent to the Ninth Circuit’s denial of a rehearing, Judge Daniel P. Collins wrote that the panel’s decision clashed with high court precedent, calling it an “egregious error” that would have sweeping consequences.

The U.S. Solicitor General’s office represents the federal government. The Washington Attorney General’s office is defending the state law.

The case is U.S. v. Washington, U.S., No. 21-404, cert granted 1/10/22.

To contact the reporter on this story: Erin Mulvaney in Washington at emulvaney@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jay-Anne B. Casuga at jcasuga@bloomberglaw.com; John Lauinger at jlauinger@bloomberglaw.com; Andrew Harris at aharris@bloomberglaw.com

January 11, 2022 Posted by | employment, health, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Very quietly, NRC plans mass shipments of high level radioactive waste.

Critics of the proposed licensing are demanding that the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board halt the Holtec licensing because it is illegal. 

Plans for Mass Shipments of High-Level Radioactive Waste Quietly Disclosed https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/07/plans-for-mass-shipments-of-high-level-radioactive-waste-quietly-disclosed/ BY JOHN LAFORGE

How far is your house or apartment from a major highway, or railroad line? Do you want to play Russian roulette with radioactive waste in transit for 40 years?

Last month US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff quietly reported preparing for tens of thousands of cross-country shipments of high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors to the desert Southwest. The oft-disparaged US infrastructure of decrepit of roads, faulty bridges, rickety rails, and rusty barges may not be ready for such an onrush of immensely heavy rad waste casks.

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January 10, 2022 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

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