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Biden Wants US Back in Iran Nuclear Deal (Video) 

Biden Wants US Back in Iran Nuclear Deal (Video)   https://www.voanews.com/episode/biden-wants-us-back-iran-nuclear-deal-4531861
January 03, 2021,   President-elect Joe Biden says he wants the United States to return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — if Tehran also resumes compliance. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington that experts say they expect a shift away from the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign of crippling economic sanctions on Iran, but a U.S. return to the nuclear deal will not be easy.

January 4, 2021 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s nuclear construction deal with Poland – strained with Biden victory ?

Poland plays down fears over nuclear power plans despite Biden victory.  Rightwing government’s relations with incoming US administration strained after Trump construction deal, Ft.com 3 Jan 2021, 

  Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election will not derail Washington’s co-operation with Warsaw on plans to develop its own nuclear energy sector, Poland’s climate minister has said. Donald Trump’s administration built close ties with Warsaw, where the rightwing government is led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party.
In October the US signed an agreement to draw up a design for Poland’s proposed nuclear programme, which envisages constructing six nuclear plants with a capacity of 6-9GW in 2033-43. But relations with Mr Biden’s incoming administration have been cooler.
During his campaign, Mr Biden sparked consternation in Poland by mentioning the country in the same breath as Belarus — where Alexander Lukashenko cracked down brutally last year after claiming victory in a flawed election — and “the rise of totalitarian regimes around the world”. Poland’s president Andrzej Duda — like his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin — was among the few world leaders who did not congratulate Mr Biden on his November 3 victory until it was confirmed in mid-December by the US electoral college.

However, Michal Kurtyka, climate minister, played down concern that the change would have a significant impact on Poland’s plans.

 ……France’s EDF has held talks with Poland over the project. But the frontrunner is the US, which Poland regards as its security guarantor. The Trump administration has been pushing for American companies such as nuclear reactor maker Westinghouse and engineering group Bechtel to be involved.  ……
 Despite the climate ministry’s enthusiasm, big questions remain. One issue is timing. Many nuclear projects in the EU are far behind schedule, and just 12 years before the first plant is due on line Poland has yet to choose a location or confirm its financing model.
 “Assuming that we can have the first nuclear plant up and running in 2033 is beyond optimistic,” said Joanna Flisowska, head of Greenpeace’s climate and energy unit in Poland. “We need to replace coal power stations now, because most are already set to close by 2035 at the latest . . . So nuclear is just the wrong answer. It’s too late. It’s too expensive and it’s not really a technology that works well with renewables.”  ……  https://www.ft.com/content/5c42b1c2-f790-49ee-af0b-b3e8419be8c1
A comment on original
The nuclear nuts have found a sucker—Poland which apparently wants an investor to share risk. Which risk? The long-run risk of nuclear contamination? Where are they going to store the spent fuel? They could ask Japan. Poland sees a nuclear future just as Germany is shutting nuclear power down due to the risks. In the UK the nuclear power gambit cannot find investors because none wants the risks. The investors want indemnity from the risks. 

January 4, 2021 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

USA show of force -flying nuclear bombers over Iran

US flying nuclear bombers over Iran to deter NYE attack, 9 news, By CNN Dec 31, 2020  The US have flown nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to the Middle East in the latest show of force meant to deter Iran, as defense officials remain divided over the risk posed by the regime and the Iraq-based militias it supports.

Pentagon officials say the military muscle-flexing is meant to warn Tehran off attacking American interests or personnel in the days surrounding the January 3 anniversary of the Trump administration’s assassination of the powerful Iranian leader General Qasem Soleimani.
At the same time, acting Secretary of Defence Christopher Miller decided yesterday against a push to extend the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz’s deployment to the Persian Gulf, sending it out of the region in an explicit de-escalation signal to Iran, according to a senior defense official.
The conflicting messages could reflect divisions within the Pentagon, where a second senior defence official tells CNN that the current threat level from Iran is the most concerning they have seen since Soleimani’s death.

Officials cite new intelligence that Iran and allied militias in Iraq may be plotting attacks against US forces in the Middle East.
For example, Iran has been moving short range ballistic missiles into Iraq, prompting the US to deploy additional military assets to the region.
Yet others in the Pentagon contend that the threat is being exaggerated, with the first senior defence official – who is directly involved in discussions – telling CNN that there is “not a single piece of corroborating intel” suggesting an attack by Iran may be imminent.
US President Donald Trump has fuelled some of the uncertainty, reportedly asking in a mid-November meeting for military options he could use against Iran.
He then threatened Iran after a December 21 attack on the US embassy in Baghdad that senior US officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, attributed to Iraqi militias affiliated with Tehran.
“Our embassy in Baghdad got hit Sunday by several rockets,” Mr Trump tweeted from aboard Air Force One after a December 23 White House meeting on Iranian threats.
“Three rockets failed to launch. Guess where they were from: IRAN.”
Mr Trump then offered “some friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible. Think it over.”

……… The B-52 flight was the second time this month the Pentagon has sent the nuclear-capable bombers to the region. It follows the Navy’s rare December 21 announcement that it had sent a nuclear-powered submarine through the Persian Gulf, accompanied by guided-missile cruisers.  ,,,,,,,https://www.9news.com.au/world/donald-trump-us-flying-nuclear-bombers-over-iran-to-deter-nye-attack/f02018ea-2b8f-4d07-9941-e1df3a0a0f4c

January 2, 2021 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Joe Biden must end the cover-up of, and the huge money to, Israel’s nuclear weapons

January 2, 2021 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How the USA and Soviet Union planned to use nuclear radiation as a weapon.

 This was initially seen as a great idea –  you could kill all the people while leaving the omfrastructure intact for your own use.
Death Dust: The Little-Known Story of U.S. and Soviet Pursuit of Radiological Weapons,  Three international security experts chart the rise and fall of radiological weapons programs in the United States and the Soviet Union. The MIT Press Reader

By: Morgan L. Kaplan, 31 Jan 20, 

For decades, the thought of radiological weapons has conjured terrifying images of cities covered in “death dust.” Classified as a weapon of mass destruction — alongside chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons — it has remained a point of mystery as to why these devastatingly indiscriminate weapons were not pursued in earnest by more state and non-state actors alike.

What did early radiological weapons (RW) programs look like? How and why did they arise, and what accounts for their ultimate demise? Aside from a handful of known cases, why have RW programs not proliferated with the same alacrity as other weapons programs?

Thanks to the rigorous and rich historical work of Samuel Meyer, Sarah Bidgood, and William Potter of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, we now have more answers. Focusing on the United States and Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s, the authors, in a recent study published in the journal International Security, trace the unique origins of these RW programs, as well as explain why they were subsequently abandoned. Their study, “Death Dust: The Little-Known Story of U.S. and Soviet Pursuit of Radiological Weapons,” reveals a fascinating web of causes, including organizational and bureaucratic politics, international competition, economic and technological constraints, and even the powerful initiatives of well-placed individuals.

While the authors’ work examines the past, it speaks directly to the present and future trajectory of RW programs. If you are interested in military innovation, the history of weapons of mass destruction, the sociology of technology, and science fiction (yes, science fiction!), the exchange featured below is for you.

Morgan Kaplan: First things first, what are radiological weapons? Do any countries or non-state actors have them today?

Samuel Meyer, Sarah Bidgood, and William C. Potter: We define a radiological weapon as one intended to disperse radioactive material in the absence of a nuclear detonation. ……..

……….. May 1941 — the first reference to RW appeared in a U.S. government document: the Report of the Uranium Committee. The report identified three possible military aspects of atomic fission, the first of which was “production of violently radioactive materials … carried by airplanes to be scattered as bombs over enemy territory.” (The other two possible applications noted in the report were “a power source on submarines and other ships” and “violently explosive bombs.”) ………

Technological advances were among the major drivers of RW programs in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and RW were initially pursued in tandem with nuclear weapons and chemical weapons (CW) programs. The anticipated promise of RW as a weapons innovation, however, never materialized in either country due to a combination of factors, including technical difficulties in the production and maintenance of the weapons, diminution in the perceived military utility of RW relative to both CW and nuclear weapons, and low threat perceptions about adversary RW capabilities. ……..

the parallelism in many respects between the rise and demise of the U.S. and Soviet RW programs; and (5) the serious but ultimately unsuccessful effort by the United States and the Soviet Union to secure a draft convention at the Conference on Disarmament prohibiting radiological weapons.

MK: Are radiological weapons a thing of the past or do they remain an attractive option for some countries and non-state actors today?

The authors: We are encouraged that no country has either used RW in war or has incorporated them into a national military arsenal. We are concerned, however, that the Russian Federation, despite its own unsuccessful history with RW, has shown renewed interest in advanced nuclear weapons that seek to maximize radioactive contamination. We also worry that some countries may conclude that RW serve their perceived national interests, especially in the absence of international legal restraints. It therefore is important, we believe, to revive U.S.-Russian cooperation to ban radiological weapons and strengthen the norm against their use.

Morgan L. Kaplan is the Executive Editor of International Security and Series Editor of the Belfer Center Studies in International Security book series at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/death-dust-the-little-known-story-of-radiological-weapons/

January 2, 2021 Posted by | history, radiation, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Non violent anti-nuclear action – the Clamshell Alliance model for success

Know Your Nonviolent History: In 1976 Clamshell Alliance Launches Mass Demonstrations https://www.riverasun.com/know-your-nonviolent-history-in-1976-clamshell-alliance-launches-mass-demonstrations/August 18, 2016, by Rivera Sun  On August 1st, 1976, the first nonviolent mass demonstration of the Clamshell Alliance took place at the proposed site of the Seabrook Nuclear Energy Facility in New Hampshire. The Clamshell Alliance was a group of anti-nuclear activists who worked to stop nuclear power plant construction at a time when President Nixon’s “Project Independence” had proposed the construction of over 1,000 nuclear power plants throughout the nation. Although the Clamshell Alliance was only partially successful in halting the Seabrook facility, their mass mobilizations deterred the plans for other plants and changed the landscape of nuclear energy forever. If not for the Clamshell Alliance, it is possible that we would be living in the nuclear nightmare of President Nixon’s vision of a thousand plants by the year 2000.

January 1, 2021 Posted by | history, opposition to nuclear, Reference, USA | 1 Comment

Extending the operating licences on nuclear reactors to 60, 80, 100 years – a recipe for disaster

Inviting Nuclear Disaster Counterpunch BY KARL GROSSMAN  30n Dec 20, Nuclear power plants when they began being constructed were not seen as running for more than 40 years because of radioactivity embrittling metal parts and otherwise causing safety problems. But in recent decades, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has extended the operating licenses of nuclear power plants from 40 years to 60 years and then 80 years, and is now considering 100 years.

“It is crazy,” declares Robert Alvarez, a former senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy and a U.S. Senate senior investigator and now senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and is an author of the book Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation.

No reactor in history has lasted that long,” commented Alvarez. The oldest nuclear power plant in the U.S. was Oyster Creek, five miles south of Toms River, New Jersey, which opened in 1969 and was shut down 49 years later in 2018.

The move is “an act of desperation in response to the collapse of the nuclear program in this country and the rest of the world,” he declares.

The nuclear industry and nuclear power advocates in government are “desperately trying to hold on,” says Alvarez. With hardly any new nuclear power plants being constructed in the U.S. and the total number down to 94, they seek to have the operating licenses of existing nuclear power plants extended, he says, to keep the nuclear industry alive.

It’s a sign of “the end of the messy romance with nuclear power.”

The NRC will be holding a webinar on January 21 to consider the extending of nuclear plant operating licenses to 100 years. As its announcement is headed: “PUBLIC MEETING ON DEVELOPMENT OF GUIDANCE DOCUMENTS TO SUPPORT LICENSE RENEWAL FOR 100 YEARS OF PLANT OPERATION.”

Nuclear power plant construction has been in a deep depression for some time. Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia are “the first new nuclear units built in the United States in the last three decades,” notes on its website Georgia Power, one of the companies involved in that project. The cost projection in 2008 to build the two nuclear plants was $14.3 billion. “Now, updated estimates put the total project cost at roughly $28 billion,” states Taxpayers for Common Sense, and construction is more than five years behind schedule.

It’s not just the gargantuan price of nuclear power, and the preferability economically today of green, renewable energy led by solar and wind. Nuclear plant construction in the U.S. and much of the world has been in the doldrums because of the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plant catastrophes. People not only don’t want to waste their money–they don’t want to lose their lives to nuclear power.

“There is no empirical evidence” to support the notion that nuclear plants can have a century-long life span, says Alvarez. There “is no penciling away the problems of age” of nuclear power plants which operate under high-pressure, high-heat conditions and are subject to radiation fatigue. “The reality of wear-and-tear can’t be wished away.”

“Who would want to ride in a 100 year-old car?” he asks.

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project of the organization Beyond Nuclear, says: “The new construction of nuclear power plants is proving to be more expensive and more dubious than ever before. So, the nuclear industry and the NRC are in the process of developing a plan to get these existing aging and inherently dangerous machines to run for 100 years.”

“This raises all kinds of problems that have never been addressed,” says Gunter.

And the NRC and the U.S. Department of Energy don’t want to address them…………….

an AP review of historical records, along with an interview of an engineer who helped develop nuclear power, shows that … Reactors were made to last only 40 years. Period.”

Further, the piece—”Aging Nukes: NRC and industry rewrite nuke history”—said “the AP found that the relicensing process often lacks fully independent safety reviews. Records show that paperwork of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometimes matches word-for-word the language used in a plant operator’s application.”

Getting operating license extensions “is a lucrative deal for operators,” said AP.

Priscilla Star, director of the Coalition Against Nukes, said of extending the operating licenses of nuclear power plants to 100 years: “There is no sane argument to perpetuate the lifespan of our already decrepit nuclear reactors other than the NRC seeking to perpetuate the endless profits to its licensees.”

“All kinds of technical foul-ups occur in the daily operations of a nuclear power plant,” she continued. ‘It’s a crapshoot running any of them safely on any given day because human error plays such a big part of operational safety. More frequent cyber hacking will also put hs at greater risk if this form of energy production is not abolished in favor of renewables. It’s time for a presidential administration to curb the noblesse oblige appetite of the NRC and once and for all consider it unsafe and unsound as a regulatory agency putting profit before public safety.”

What the NRC has also done extending nuclear power plant licenses to 60 and then 80 years is to allow the plants to be “uprated” to generate more electricity—to run hotter and harder increasing the chance of accidents. It is asking for nuclear disaster.  ……..https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/30/inviting-nuclear-disaster/?fbclid=IwAR1YQ614qqcsQZ3mwVCo9UV2JlqCfVBgmS358L7DCCwcShjKDJFtzH-nZ0k

December 31, 2020 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

USA is not facing up to the climate threats to its nuclear wastes

US is Ill-Prepared to Safely Manage its Nuclear Waste from Climate Threats.   More than 150 sites across the country have to be managed for radioactive waste for centuries or millennia. But there’s no plan in place for how this will be done, says GAO report.  Earth Island Journal , CHARLES PEKOW, December 29, 2020    The Cold War never erupted into the nuclear nightmare that the world feared for decades. But the legacy of the never-used nuclear weapons remains a ticking time bomb that could endanger countless people and lead to environmental catastrophe any time.

In the United States, there are more than 150 sites that have to be managed for nuclear waste for centuries or millennia. But, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the US Department of Energy (DoE) — which is charged with managing dangerous, radioactive waste and contaminated soil and water leftover from weapon construction — appears to lacks the capacity for the task.
DoE’s Office of Legacy Management (LM) manages 100 nuclear waste dumps with 51 or 52 more sites expected to fall under its jurisdiction by 2050 (one site remains in question). The sites range all over the country, from Amchitka in the western Aleutians to El Verde on the east side of Puerto Rico. The Legacy Management office takes over maintenance of dangerous sites after other managers — including DoE’s Office of Environmental Management, US Army Corps of Engineers, and private licensees — have cleaned them up.

The GAO report, “Environmental Liabilities: DoE Needs to Better Plan for Post-Cleanup Challenges Facing Sites” (pdf), issued earlier this year, found, among other things, that the DoE doesn’t have a plan for how to address challenges at some sites that may require new cleanup work that is not in the scope of LM’s expertise.

Nor, says the report, does it have a strategy in place to assess and mitigate the effects of climate change on these sites, that need to be safeguarded against increasingly frequent and severe rainfall, tornadoes, hurricanes and accompanying flooding and forest fires. It foresees that the DoE will need yet-to-be-developed technology and untold billions of dollars to keep the stored nuclear waste from contaminating air, soil and water. 
The report notes that the Office of Legacy Management has not developed agreements or procedures in collaboration with the Office of Environmental Management (EM) or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to figure out how to contain the radioactive waste. The Legacy Management office estimated its liabilities (in the 2019 fiscal year) at 503.3 billion – but that could be a vast underestimate as it doesn’t know what hazards or costs may develop. The cost estimates go only 75 years out and don’t include estimates for the cost of protecting the 50 plus sites it will have to take over in the next few decades. For instance, these estimates don’t account for the Elemental Mercury Storage Facility near Andrews, Texas, which DoE hasn’t inherited yet, but where the department has decided to store up to 6,800 metric tons of elemental mercury — a major environmental pollutant………..

some of these sites have already been creating serious problems.

At Rocky Flats, which has become surrounded by suburban development since its 1992 closure, excessive rain damaged the facility in in 2013. The soil, sediment, groundwater, and surface water of the former nuclear weapons manufacturing site had been contaminated with hazardous chemicals and radioactive constituents as a result of “manufacturing activities, accidental industrial fires and spills, support activities, and waste management practices,” according to EPA.
Even after cleanup, several ponds and landfills remained contaminated. In recent years, excessive rainfall and erosion has damaged the site again in the past few years. The office Legacy Managment considers Rocky Flats as its biggest liability ($452 million). In 2016, the estimated cost of just maintenance and surveillance of the site totaled $269 million………

Among the many other problem sites, the Legacy Management office is struggling to figure out what to do with contaminated groundwater at the Shiprock nuclear waste dump on the Navajo Nation Indian Reservation in northwest New Mexico. Contaminated water, the legacy of uranium mining for nuclear power plants and weapons, is being pumped to an evaporation pond there.

Compounding the problem, most of these nuclear waste sites were created before key environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation & Recovery Act, were enacted. So the laws don’t apply…………..
Now climate change is adding a new level of complication to an already complex waste management issue that can have serious environmental and public health impacts……….

nuclear watchdog groups aren’t satisfied with the slow progress on this front. The nation needs “a reverse Manhattan project,” to figure out how to safely diffuse the radioactive waste, says Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.  https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/us-is-ill-prepared-to-safely-manage-its-nuclear-waste-from-climate-threats

December 31, 2020 Posted by | climate change, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Doubtful that aging Los Alamos National Laboratory could safely produce plutonium triggers, no matter how much funding it gets

December 31, 2020 Posted by | safety, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hanford’s dangerous collection of nuclear waste sites, including 177 underground leaky tanks

Washington’s new nuclear waste lead takes on Hanford’s aging tanks, OPB, By Anna King (Northwest News Network), Dec. 30, 2020.

David Bowen is charged with holding the U.S. Department of Energy accountable for its cleanup of a site that once produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.

At the Hanford site in southeastern Washington, along the Columbia River, millions of gallons of radioactive sludge are cradled in aging underground tanks.

Nearly 2,000 capsules filled with cesium and strontium rest unquietly in an old, glowing-blue pool of water. Two reactors along the Columbia still need to be sealed up and cocooned.

And those are just some of the bigger waste sites out of hundreds at the 580-square-mile cleanup site.

177 underground tanks filled with radioactive waste   It’s a lot to ponder and a steep learning curve for freshly hired David Bowen. …..He started his new job Dec. 16 as the Nuclear Waste Program lead for Washington’s Department of Ecology in Richland.

he’ll hold the U.S. Department of Energy accountable for its cleanup at the site using the Tri-Party Agreement. That’s a 1989 document struck between Ecology, the federal Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Hanford houses leftovers from World War II and the Cold War, when it was the nation’s factory for plutonium. Trenches, pits and buildings are all contaminated with loads of chemicals and radioactive waste generated at breakneck speed.

The stickiest problem: 177 tanks — some of them leakers — filled with radioactive waste.

“Some of [the underground tanks] are 50-plus years old,” Bowen said. “And they weren’t designed to last this long. There are still fluids in them, millions of gallons, in sludge, et cetera. So, there’s the opportunity for that to escape and get into the Columbia River — or the groundwater is high.”

A massive waste treatment plant is being built in the desert at Hanford to treat that tank waste. But the cleanup timeline has been pushed back several times since the 1980s. It could be pushed back more because of the pandemic.

……. Aging infrastructure, aging expertsHanford is much like a complex small city: thousands of commuting workers, miles of highways and intertwining roads.

Then there are all the stakeholders: multiple tribes, Seattle-based Hanford watchdog groups, salmon and Columbia River advocates and multiple government agencies. Losing Hanford experts to retirement or attrition to other agencies is a big problem — and a growing one. Some key Ecology experts have recently been lured away to federal posts or to work as Hanford contractors. And many have already retired. Bowen said he’s well aware he needs to work fast……… https://www.opb.org/article/2020/12/29/washington-nuclear-waste-program-manager-hanford/

 

December 31, 2020 Posted by | Reference, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Avril Haines is unfit for Director of National Intelligence, with her history of coverup of tortures.

December 31, 2020 Posted by | politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission “sanitises” report, wipes off safety findings about nuclear license renewals

Inviting Nuclear Disaster Counterpunch BY KARL GROSSMAN, 30 Dec 20, “……….Paul Gunter points to what happened to a report which the NRC commissioned the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to make. “The federal laboratory was contracted by the NRC to develop the criteria and guidance document to address and close numerous ‘knowledge gaps’ in the license renewal safety review process to provide the ‘reasonable assurance’ that the reactors could be operated reliably and safely into the license extension period,” relates Gunter. The 2017 report raised many significant issues regarding extending the operating licenses of nuclear plants.

The report is titled “Criteria and Planning Guidance for Ex-Plant Harvesting to Support Subsequent License Renewal.”

It “was publicly posted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to its website in December 2017,” relates Gunter, “as well as to the websites of the Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information and the International Atomic Energy Commission’s International Nuclear Information System.”

But then Gunter attended a public meeting at the NRC’s headquarters in Rockville, Maryland on September 26, 2018 on operating license extensions “and I started asking questions citing the report” of the year before. The NRC officials there “were quite surprised.”

And the NRC “wiped all three websites of the report.”

The NRC was to repost the report, but it was then “scrubbed clean of dozens of references to safety-critical knowledge ‘gaps’ pertaining to many known age-related degradation mechanisms described in the original published report,” says Gunter. “The NRC revision also scrubbed Pacific Northwest National Laboratory findings and recommendations to ‘require’ the harvesting of realistic and representative aged materials from decommissioning nuclear power stations—base metals, weld materials, electric cables, insulation and jacketing, reactor internals and safety-related concrete structures like the containment and spent fuel pool—for laboratory analyses of age degradation. The laboratory analyses are intended to provide ‘reasonable assurance’ of the license extension safety review process for the projected extension period.”

However, Beyond Nuclear had downloaded and saved a copy of the original report which you can view here.

And you can view what Gunter terms the “sanitized version” of the report which has the same title but is dated March 2019. It’s here.

The omissions start with what is headed “Abstract” in the original 2017 report. The “Abstract” states: “As U.S. nuclear power plants look to subsequent license renewal (SLR) to operate for a 20-year period beyond 60 years, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry will be addressing technical issues around the capability of long-lived passive components to meet their functionality objectives. A key challenge will be to better understand likely materials degradation mechanisms in these components and their impacts on component functionality and safety margins. Research addressing many of the remaining technical gaps in these areas for SLR may greatly benefit from materials sampled from plants (decommissioned or operating). Because of the cost and inefficiency of piecemeal sampling, there is a need for a strategic and systematic approach to sampling materials from structures, systems and components in both operating and decommissioned plants.”

But in the 2019 version of the report, this “Abstract,” among other material, is gone.……  ……..https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/30/inviting-nuclear-disaster/?fbclid=IwAR1YQ614qqcsQZ3mwVCo9UV2JlqCfVBgmS358L7DCCwcShjKDJFtzH-nZ0k

December 31, 2020 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Ohio Supreme Court stops collection of nuclear plant subsidy

December 31, 2020 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Plowshare anti nuclear-weapons activists again face prison .

Longtime Anti-Nuke Activists Face Prison, Again, After Breaking Into Naval Base  https://www.npr.org/2020/12/28/948116757/longtime-anti-nuclear-activists-face-prison-again-after-breaking-into-naval-base
December 28, 20205: Heard on Morning Edition

EMMA PEASLEE.  Dressed in black, the seven intruders cut through a fence and stole along the perimeter of the naval base, trying to avoid detection from the guard towers, as a loudspeaker overhead blared: “Deadly force is authorized!”

Patrick O’Neill, who had a GoPro strapped to his head, tried to reassure himself by remembering a scene in the Bible where Jesus escapes unscathed from a wrathful mob that wants to throw him off a cliff.

When O’Neill and the others reached their target, they poured their own blood on the shield of the Kings Bay naval base in Georgia and attached a poster of Martin Luther King Jr. to a mock-up of a Trident II D5 ballistic missile at the welcome area.

The anti-nuclear activists — Roman Catholics who call themselves Plowshares, from the Biblical passage about “beating swords into plowshares” — followed the metaphor quite literally and took a hammer to the replica of the warhead.

“When you think of idolatry, that’s exactly what I think of: statues of nuclear weapons,” O’Neill said later. “I mean, my God, you’re gonna build a statue for something that if it’s used would blow up a whole city full of people. This is your idea of welcoming people? I mean, it’s sick.”

The break-in on the night of April 4, 2018, ended with the arrest and conviction on charges of trespassing and destruction of property for the seven activists aged 58 to 81.

And in the midst of a pandemic that’s wreaking havoc on prisons and disproportionately affecting older people, six of them have been sentenced to up to 33 months in prison. The seventh is scheduled to be sentenced in February.

The Plowshares activists were seeking to revive the anti-nuclear movement by committing acts of civil disobedience.

They are part of a larger faith-based movement that has been around since the 1980s, when anti-nuclear protests used to draw millions into the streets.

Those days are long gone, but the threat of nuclear warfare isn’t. According to some atomic scientists, the threat may be even greater now, and the activists are frustrated that in their view hardly anyone is paying attention.

Which is one reason why they have broken into military bases and sometimes succeeded in doing damage to actual nuclear armaments. In a highly publicized protest in 1980, Plowshares activists hammered two missile nose cones at a General Electric complex in King of Prussia, Pa., causing tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage. In 2012, another group that included an 82-year-old Catholic nun defaced a bunker holding weapons-grade uranium at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

People are always astounded that a bunch of old people or unarmed people or whatever people can gain access to these weapons at all,” said O’Neill, 64.

Patrick O’Neill, 64, is a member of the Kings Bay Plowshares. He reports to prison in January for a 14-month sentence.
Emma Peaslee/NPR

Martha Hennessey, 65, had already been to prison three times before beginning her sentence at a federal prison in Danbury, Conn., on Dec. 14. She is the granddaughter of the journalist-turned-activist Dorothy Day, who founded the pacifist Catholic Worker Movement in the 1930s.

Rather than dwell on her own sentence, she drew attention to the mass incarceration of people who have committed minor offenses.

“I mean, there are people being thrown into prison for years for, you know, things that are not even crimes,” she said in an interview before reporting to prison.

Members of the Plowshares group prefer not to talk about the risks they might face in prison, but their families are worried.

“I’m afraid that my dad might die in prison,” said Maura O’Neill, 26, one of O’Neill’s eight children. “I worry that he might contract COVID and get really sick, and it feels like a real possibility.”

December 31, 2020 Posted by | Legal, opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, Religion and ethics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Joe Biden reported to be considering cuts to America’s $1.2trillion nuclear modernization program

December 31, 2020 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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