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Peach Bottom nuclear station can struggle on for 80 years!

It’s getting a bit tiresome – this endless, mindless repetition of   “carbon-free” “clean energy” “zero-carbon” nuclear energy. Why don’t Larry Pearl and other writers, who otherwise provide thorough and well-researched information – why don’t they do their homework on the full carbon emissions of the entire nuclear fuel chain?  Even the reactors themselves release a tiny an mount of Carbon 14. There is not only the chain of construction and demolition, but also the continuing fuel chain of mining through to radioactive waste disposal.  

Exelon’s Peach Bottom becomes second US nuclear plant to get license approval to 80 years,  Utility Dive , By Larry Pearl  March 9, 2020 

Dive Brief:

  • Exelon’s Peach Bottom plant became the second nuclear power reactor in the U.S. to get permission to operate out to 80 years, after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved another 20-year extension on Friday.
  • Last December, Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point units 3 and 4 got the first such approval as utilities work to retain a major source of carbon-free [?] as long as possible.
  • Dominion has applied for a similar license extension for its Surry nuclear plant and plans to request for at least two more, while Duke plans to do the same for all 11 of its nuclear plants, Bloomberg reported last month.

Dive Insight:

Peach Bottom Unit 2 in York County, Pennsylvania, is now licensed to operate through August 2053 and Unit 3 through July 2054. The approvals come as more and more states move to adopt aggressive clean energy goals and the nuclear industry looks to advance a new generation of reactors.

But the economics of the current generation of U.S. reactors remains challenging, especially for new plants, and the industry and a number of states have adopted programs to recognize the zero emission attributes of nuclear.

While Exelon Nuclear’s Chief Nuclear Officer Bryan Hanson called the license extension, “good news for the environment, our employees and the community,” he noted that “nuclear plants must remain financially viable to continue to operate. ….

But FERC’s move in December to effectively raise the price floor for subsidized resources attempting to bid into the PJM wholesale capacity market complicates state efforts to support nuclear plants in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

A variety of stakeholders have petitioned FERC to reconsider its decision.

The NRC’s decision to move forward with Peach Bottom’s license extension is also being challenged…. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/exelons-peach-bottom-becomes-second-us-nuclear-plant-to-get-license-approv/573690/

March 10, 2020 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Dr Chris Busby exposes the facts on Cancer in US Navy  Nuclear Powered Ships

They reported the results of their own epidemiology study which they carried out on the Ronald Reagan sailors. This compared the illness yield (including cancers) of the 4,843 RR sailors with a matched control group of 65,269 sailors on nuclear powered ships that were not anywhere near Fukushima.
There were 30% more cancers in the control group after adjusting for age. But what I did was to compare the control group with the National population, using data on cancer rates by age group from the SEER database [3]. The result showed an astonishing 9.2-fold excess of cancer in the sailors on nuclear-powered vessels.

Cancer in US Navy  Nuclear Powered Ships https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/06/cancer-in-us-navy-nuclear-powered-ships/   by CHRIS BUSBY   Here is a good one. In 2011, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was about 100km off the coast of Japan at the time of the Tsunami and the subsequent Fukushima reactor explosions. It was directed by the US government to ride to the rescue in what was later called Operation Tomodachi (friendship)–to provide assistance to the victims of the floods. What no-one on board was told was that the reactors had exploded and a plume of highly radioactive material was blowing east from the site into the path of the vessel. Of course, when this arrived, all the radiation monitors on the boat started screaming, and the planes and helicopters that had flown the rescue sorties were contaminated.

In 2014 I was engaged by some California attorneys to advise on a court case being taken against the Japanese company TEPCO and the US reactor makers GEC on behalf of the sailors who served on the aircraft-carrier. A significant number of the Ronald Reagan crew were reporting a wide range of weird illnesses including cancers, all of which they were attributing to their radiation exposures. Between 2014 and now, the court arguments were all about procedure: whether the cases should be heard in Japan or in the California where the vessel’s home port of San Diego was. There was a lot of publicity [1]. Eventually, and recently, the California judge decided that the case had to be heard in Japan. This is (in passing) monstrously unjust since Japanese law is different and the sailors cannot afford to go to Japan and hire Japanese lawyers. But this is not the story here.

In 2014, following all the publicity about the cancers, a number of US Senators and important people were asking pertinent questions—the Navy had to do something to answer the accusations that the Fukushima radiation was killing those who sailed on Operation Tomodachi. They panicked. A big report was prepared by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), entitled: Final Report to the Congressional Defense Committees in Response to the Joint Explanatory Statement Accompanying the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014, page 90, “Radiation Exposure” [2]. Never use one word when ten will do

This report rambled on about how low the Fukushima doses were, how everyone acted wonderfully and how all the radioactivity was rapidly cleaned up. The dose reconstruction showed no one got more than a fraction of the Natural Background dose and so forth. We have been here regularly. (The methodology for the dose reconstruction has since disappeared from the link given in the report). Since no-one believes any of this dose bullshit any more, to prove that there was no cancer excess, the Navy took one step too far.
They reported the results of their own epidemiology study which they carried out on the Ronald Reagan sailors. This compared the illness yield (including cancers) of the 4,843 RR sailors with a matched control group of 65,269 sailors on nuclear powered ships that were not anywhere near Fukushima. The period of analysis was from 2011 to 2013, about 3 years. This showed that there were more cancers in the control group over that period. The idea clearly was to knock on the head any suggestion that the radiation from Fukushima was the cause of the cancers and other stuff that was the basis of the court case. And this it apparently did.
Their move was to compare the matched “unexposed” control group with the Ronald Reagan group. There were 30% more cancers in the control group after adjusting for age. But what I did was to compare the control group with the National population, using data on cancer rates by age group from the SEER database [3]. The result showed an astonishing 9.2-fold excess of cancer in the sailors on nuclear-powered vessels. There were 121 cancers predicted on the basis of the national rates, and 1119 reported by the DTRA study. For the Reagans it was about 6-fold with 46 reported and 7.76 expected. Now this result is astonishing. I wrote my study up for a good scientific peer reviewed journal, and it was published last week [4]. You can find it on academia.edu if you can’t afford the journal cost.

What I discuss in the paper to explain the result is my usual argument about how the radiation protection legislation is wildly incorrect when dealing with internal contamination from radionuclides. The legal limits in USA and the West are based on the comparison of cancers in those exposed to acute external gamma ray doses to the Japanese A-Bomb populations and cannot apply to internal exposures to substances which target DNA (Uranium, Strontium-90) or which provide huge local ionisation to some living cells but nothing at all to others (DU particles, reactor discharge particles).

But this time it really is a big deal. Nine times the expected rates? What are they going to do? It is their own data which they stupidly released. It shows that all the sailors on nuclear powered Navy ships are dying from cancer. You can bet the telephone lines are hot, and that we won’t see any coverage of this in the Theatre newspapers and media. But the sailors themselves and the veterans? What will they think when they find this online but not reported?
Studies of nuclear workers have been the new battleground for this Chess game since it became apparent in the last few years that the Japanese A-Bomb studies were dishonestly manipulated and ignored internal exposures to fallout and rainout [5]. We have seen a number of attempts to kill the argument about low dose radiation and health using nuclear worker studies. There was the Lancet publication in year 2015 [6]. There was the desperate and disgraceful Royal Society publication last year [7]. The late Alexei Yablokov and I wrote to the Lancet Editor on behalf of the Independent WHO [8] asking if we could point out in the journal that the Lancet articles reassuring everyone that the science of radiation risk was secure were written by nuclear industry scientists and were unsafe. The Lancet refused. I wrote to the Royal Society. They also refused to publish anything. What is Truth—says Pilate—waits for no answer.

Nuclear workers work outside at a nuclear site where the discharges get dispersed. Nuclear sailors live in a tin box that also contains the reactors. Nuclear worker studies are based on data that is provided by the nuclear industry to show there are no cancers. The DTRA study had to show more cancers in order to swamp the Ronald Reagan sailors’ cancers. But to do this, they brought out their Queen. And it was taken

Anyway, let’s not walk further into the What is Truth swamp and discuss the News Theatre. Thankfully this story shows that in this truth argument there are two last frontiers. These are the scientific peer-review literature and the courts. I am representing the widow of a UK nuclear submariner, a man who was a reactor servicing technician and who died from cancer. Let’s see what the Scottish court makes of this paper. Read it yourself and have a laugh. If you are a Navy sailor on a nuclear-powered ship, be very frightened. Write to your Senator. Kick up a fuss.
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More articles by:CHRIS BUSBY

Dr Chris Busby is the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Riskand the author of Uranium and Health – The Health Effects of Exposure to Uranium and Uranium Weapons Fallout (Documents of the ECRR 2010 No 2, Brussels, 2010). For details and current CV see chrisbusbyexposed.org. For accounts of his work see greenaudit.org, llrc.org and nuclearjustice.org.

March 7, 2020 Posted by | health, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | 2 Comments

Trump’s America prepares to use low-level nuclear weapons as “a viable option” – Russia fears

Russia Fears US Under Trump Now Ready to Use Nuclear Weapons as ‘Viable Political Option’ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/06/russia-fears-us-under-trump-now-ready-use-nuclear-weapons-viable-political-option“This dramatically increases the chance of a nuclear exchange due to miscalculation or human error.”by Eoin Higgins, staff writer   
The Russian government is regarding U.S. moves to increase and upgrade its low-level nuclear arsenal as a sign that the White House is prepared to use nuclear weapons as a political option on the world stage.

March 7, 2020 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Deceit and Dark Money -Ohio’s nuclear subsidy saga 

Dark money dominated Ohio’s nuclear subsidy saga ENERGY NEWS NETWORK, Kathiann M. Kowalski, March 5, 2020  

FirstEnergy Solutions paid nearly $2 million to at least one group, but most other data remains hidden.

After-the-fact filings show that FirstEnergy’s generation subsidiary paid nearly $2 million to Generation Now, one of the special interest groups that orchestrated ads, political donations and other efforts behind Ohio’s nuclear and coal bailout.

But legal loopholes make it harder to find out the total spent and who else was behind xenophobic advertising, dueling voter petitions, alleged intimidation and other claims of foul play. And none of those actions fully disclosed who was behind them.

The scant public filings that are available show additional connections to FirstEnergy Solutions (now Energy Harbor), as well as the law firm of an outspoken legislator who has long fought the state’s clean energy standard, and others with high-level political influence.

House Bill 6 gutted Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards while putting ratepayers on the hook for nearly $1 billion in subsidies for nuclear power plants, plus an additional amount for aging coal plants. Multiple groups spent heavily to promote HB 6 and prevent a referendum on the law following its passage.

In some cases, nonprofit and for-profit organizations funded each other or shared the same spokesperson. Groups active in the HB 6 campaign also had links to some of the same lobbyists and consultants who acted for companies that stood to benefit from HB 6, or unions with workers at their plants. But only limited amounts of funding could be traced.

ON ORIGINAL – INTRIGUING INTERACTIVE DIAGRAM HERE _ shows interrelationships of individuals and groups Continue reading →

March 7, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, politics, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Dark nuclear-lobby money effects political changes in Ohio, and where next?

Support for HB 6 comes from beyond the state and reaches into some top levels of national politics.

The forces that passed Ohio’s subsidy law are poised for further action to shore up utilities and protect fossil fuel interests.

Dark money helped shift leadership in the General Assembly.Dark money dominated Ohio’s nuclear subsidy saga ENERGY NEWS NETWORK, Kathiann M. Kowalski, March 5, 2020   “…………..Dark money groups such as Generation Now and the Growth & Opportunity PAC spent roughly $1 million in the 2018 election cycle. That election replaced Kasich with Mike DeWine as governor.

Other groups were also active, sometimes popping up for just a few months. At least one group launched a $100,000 negative ad campaign against an Ohio representative running in a congressional primary after she opposed subsidies for FirstEnergy.

The 2018 election also led to a leadership shift in the Ohio House of Representatives. Larry Householder, R-Glenford, the new speaker, proved to be a major force shepherding HB 6 through the General Assembly, even to the point of holding up a budget agreement last summer until the subsidy bill passed.

Dark money efforts while the bill was pending included advertising, coordination of bill testimony, and blocking a referendum effort that would have let voters reject HB 6 this November. Groups’ actions sparked critics to complain about misleading ads, alleged harassment of signature collectors, buyouts of petition workers, and even alleged assault.

At the end of the day, someone paid big money” for all those efforts, Hill said. “They didn’t do that [as] an un-self-interested contribution to a public policy debate.”

Groups’ efforts overlapped and linked with each other from before 2017 through the present.

Public reports reflect partial funding and cross-transfers among organizations whose backers remain secret.

Generation Now formed in 2017 as a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. That code section covers a broad range of civic and “social welfare” organizations. An IRS filing identified its president/secretary as JPL & Associates, rather than a specific individual.

Generation Now gave $1,050,000 to the Growth & Opportunity PAC in 2018, which in turn ran ads and took other steps to support candidates who would favor Householder’s selection as House speaker, preparing the way for the subsidy bill. In 2019, Generation Now continued to spend money for pro-HB 6 ads and to discourage voters from signing referendum petitions. The total amount of its spending is not yet known.

Neither Generation Now spokesperson Curt Steiner nor Jeff Longstreth, a principal at JPL & Associates, responded to questions about the organization’s funding and its activities.

Unions reported giving $840,000 to Generation Now in 2018 and 2019. Generation Now also got money from other 501(c)(4) organizations, according to IRS filings. A group called Empowering Ohio’s Economy gave $100,000 to Generation Now in 2017 and another $50,000 for advocacy in 2018. That group also gave $200,000 for public advocacy to the Coalition for Growth & Opportunity in 2017, which in turn gave $59,000 to Generation Now over the course of 2017 to 2018.

The Coalition for Growth & Opportunity has also donated money to the Growth & Opportunity PAC. And it paid roughly $103,000 in 2018 for services from Communications Counsel, Inc., a public relations firm that has represented many Republicans in Ohio politics. Mark Weaver, a principal in the firm, is also an attorney with the Isaac Wiles law firm in Columbus. Other lawyers there filed incorporation papers and serve as registered agents for Ohioans for Energy Security. That group was formed on July 30, a week after Gov. DeWine signed HB 6.

When asked about that organization, Weaver said the law firm “represent[s] a wide range of political action committees and non-profit organizations” that have free speech rights and that its lawyers “follow the law and ethical rules in every respect.” He did not answer questions about the group’s funding.

As a for-profit entity, Ohioans for Energy Security doesn’t have to report its funding sources or spending. The group’s print and video ads featured a debunked Chinese conspiracy claim. The group also took part in some blocking activities related to the referendum, such as working to hire or otherwise “buy out” workers who had been hired to collect signatures from voters.

An affidavit filed in federal court in October provides a copy of a form contract for one of those proposed buyouts. The contracting party is shown as Ohioans for Energy Security. However, it said, any notices for Ohioans for Energy Security should go to Generation Now, care of Jeff Longstreth in Columbus.

Additional blocking efforts included the circulation of rival petitions, arranged by Ohioans for Energy Security. Those petitions had no binding value. Yet they looked enough like the real thing to cause some confusion, said critics, such as Hill.

“Under the shroud of disclosure loopholes, corporations can outright lie to voters without any accountability,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “This is particularly concerning about complex issues like Ohio’s energy policy, which ultimately will affect Ohioans economically and environmentally for years to come.”

Yet another group, Protect Ohio Clean Energy Jobs, bought Facebook ads urging people to remove their names from referendum petitions. Its treasurer, Alex Thomas, also played a coordinating role for the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance. The alliance’s website says it’s a “coalition of Ohio community leaders and organizations” and is “powered by FirstEnergy Solutions.” The spokesperson, Carlo LoParo, also acted as spokesperson and president for Ohioans for Energy Security.

LoParo did not answer questions about funding for either Ohioans for Energy Security or the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance.

FirstEnergy Solutions is connected to dark money groups through its spending and through several consultants and lobbyists.

Even before the July 2019 wire payment from FirstEnergy Solutions to Generation Now, its lobbyists, Matt Borges and Alex Thomas, then with Roetzel Consulting Services, worked behind the scenes for passage of HB 6. During that time, Thomas helped get organizations to sign on to a June 12 letter to the Ohio Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee in support of HB 6. Committee records show that letter as coming from the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance.

Other FirstEnergy Solutions lobbyists and consultants coordinated efforts on HB 6. Among other things, materials in the FirstEnergy Solutions bankruptcy case reflected payments to help get the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance underway. A former FirstEnergy external affairs director, Murphy Montler, who is now deceased, was a consultant for FirstEnergy Solutions. He provided local public officials linked to the alliance with drafts of their testimony on HB 6.

Labor unions that provided funds to Generation Now also appear to have members who work at the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants. The political education arm of International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 18 gave $250,000 in 2018 and another $105,000 through November 2019. The AFL-CIO also ran anti-referendum ads in 2019. And an AFL-CIO affiliate gave $250,000 to Generation Now in 2018.

Meanwhile, employee “contests” at the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants recruited workers as part of the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance’s “employee ambassador” program. FirstEnergy Solutions employees appeared in a pro-HB 6 ad presented by the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance.

At least two employees at FirstEnergy Solutions’ nuclear plants are also in a video ad from Ohioans for Energy Security. “Don’t sign the petition to allow China to control Ohio’s power,” the ad’s voiceover announcer said.

FirstEnergy Solutions’ spokesperson declined to answer questions about the company’s relationship with the nonprofits.

Law firm links also factor prominently in activities linked to HB 6.

Continue reading →

March 7, 2020 Posted by | politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Trump picks nuclear envoy – Marshall Billingslea, formerly involved in torture program

Trump picks official involved in Bush-era torture program as his nuclear envoy

  • Marshall Billingslea oversaw Guantánamo detainees’ treatment
  • Trump wants to negotiate new deal with Russia and China, Julian Borger in Washington,  5 Mar 2020  The Trump administration has chosen a special envoy for nuclear talks, with the principal task of negotiating a new arms control agreement with Russia and China, according to congressional sources and former officials. The proposed special negotiator, Marshall Billingslea, is currently the under-secretary for terrorist financing at the US Treasury. His nomination last year for a top human rights job at the state department was stalled by controversy over the extent of his involvement in the torture programme established by the George W Bush administration, in which he oversaw the conditions of detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
    Neither the state department nor the Treasury responded to a request for comment, but congressional staffers and former officials said Billingslea had accepted the post.

    The Trump administration has been trying to recruit a high-level arms control negotiator for several months, but several former Republican officials with significant experience in the field turned down the offer.

    Billingslea, who has a long record as a hawk on nuclear weapons issues, faces a daunting task. Donald Trump wants to negotiate a new agreement to reduce the vast nuclear weapons arsenals of the major powers, to replace the New Start deal with Russia agreed by Barack Obama.

    Trump wants China to be included in a new agreement but Beijing has so far refused on the grounds that the Chinese arsenal is a small fraction (estimated at about a 20th) of its US and Russian counterparts.

    Trump has accepted an invitation from Vladimir Putin to take part in talks on nuclear arms control and other strategic issues at a summit meeting of the five permanent members of the UN security council, most likely at the time of the UN general assembly in September.

    One of Billingslea’s tasks would be to prepare for the summit, but in the absence of a major shift by China, he would have to advise Trump on whether or not to extend the New Start deal – the last nuclear arms control agreement to have survived the Trump era – as an interim measure. That is something the president is highly reluctant to do, because the 2010 agreement is part of the Obama legacy Trump has been eager to expunge.

    Billingslea is a former aide to the late Republican senator Jesse Helms, who was a fervent opponent of arms control efforts during the cold war, for example blocking US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and campaigning for the US withdrawal from the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty.  AT TOP https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/04/trump-nuclear-talks-envoy-marshall-billingslea

March 5, 2020 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Tennessee Valley Authority violated whistleblower protections for nuclear workers

March 5, 2020 Posted by | civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Bill in California to call nuclear power “renewable”!

March 5, 2020 Posted by | politics, spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

Trump gives huge funding increase to nuclear agency that develops nuclear warheads

The White House gave this nuclear agency a giant funding increase. Can it spend it all? Defense News By: Aaron Mehta 4 Mar 20, WASHINGTON — Members of Congress used a hearing Tuesday to question whether the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous arm of the Department of Energy that handles development of nuclear warheads, can spend an almost 20 percent funding increase requested by the Trump administration.

As part of its national security budget request, the White House asked for more than $46 billion for nuclear programs in fiscal 2021. That includes $28.9 billion for the Department of Defense, which develops the delivery systems such as the B-21 bomber and the new replacement for intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as $15.6 billion for NNSA’s nuclear weapons accounts and another $1.7 billion for nuclear reactor work, run through the NNSA on behalf of the Navy.

That NNSA total represents a major increase in agency weapons funding over levels projected in the previous budget request, something that several members noted during an appearance by NNSA head Lisa Gordon-Hagerty at the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee…….

Allison Bawden, director of the natural resources and environment team within the Government Accountability Office, who also appeared before the committee. Bawden warned that the “spend rate has to go up very quickly” for NNSA to be able to spend all the money coming its way.

Asked directly by Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., if NNSA could successfully execute a roughly $3 billion increase from its FY20 to FY21 request, Bawden said it would be “very challenging” to do so.

Expect agency officials to face similar questions about how to spend its money on Wednesday, when they appear in front of the House Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, the appropriations panel with the most direct control of the NNSA’s budget.

The chairwoman of that subcommittee, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, told Defense News this week that the administration is “again proposing a nuclear weapons budget that does not establish clear priorities.”

“The proposed $3.1 billion increase for weapons is simply sprinting toward failure, and Congress should right-size NNSA’s workload to match what the complex can realistically do,” Kaptur said……….

an estimated $81.37 billion to be spent on nuclear weapons programs, including modernization of a number of warheads. Combined with the Pentagon’s plan to spend about $87 billion over that same time frame on nuclear modernization, the overall price tag for the Future Years Defense Program could be at least $163 billion.

Stephen Young, an expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the nuclear “bow wave” of spending that has long been predicted is finally arriving. But he agrees that the NNSA is likely to be challenged in spending its significant increase in dollars.

“The problem is, the NNSA will almost certainly fail to achieve its admittedly aggressive timelines, even though it is throwing money at the problem. If the United States does not have an achievable, realistic warhead plan, the Pentagon will face difficult choices going forward,” Young said. “The good news is, because the U.S. nuclear arsenal is so robust, even if the NNSA has significant failures, the U.S. deterrent will remain robust.” https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2020/03/04/the-white-house-gave-this-nuclear-agency-a-giant-funding-increase-can-it-spend-it-all/

March 5, 2020 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

EXPERTS:  NUCLEAR WEAPONS SHOULD BE FRONT-BURNER ISSUE IN 2020 RACE FOR WHITE HOUSE

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist Briefing Audience Told: “We Are Living in a World Where the Next President Will Decide if the Number of Nuclear Weapons Go Up or Down.”

CHICAGO, IL///March 2, 2020///Two leading experts raised serious concerns today about the lack of substantive discussion among U.S. presidential candidates about their plans for U.S. nuclear weapons and related threats around the globe. They noted that arms control agreements resulted in the number of nuclear weapons in the world being slashed from 70,000 to 14,000, with that progress now in danger of being reversed.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists briefing held one day before Super Tuesday included an appeal to both candidates and the news media to move nuclear weapons to the forefront of the 2020 elections.

Former Obama science adviser John P. Holdren said: “We live in a soundbite and Twitter culture. It’s difficult to express nuclear weapons threats in 240 words or an eight-second quote … We should be talking about embracing a no-first-use policy. We have much cheaper and safer ways to deal with conventional and biological attacks than using nuclear weapons and therefore launching a much wider nuclear war. That threat is not worth it. Candidates should be talking about their views on ‘no first use.’”

Holdren now is the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Co-Director of the School’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Affiliated Professor in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. Holdren also is Visiting Distinguished Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and Senior Advisor to the President at the Woods Hole Research Center, a pre-eminent scientific think tank focused on global climate change. From January 2009 to January 2017, he was President Obama’s Science Advisor and Senate-confirmed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

Alexandra Bell, the senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, said: “There are well over 4,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile. Anyone running for President is asking the public to trust them … The next President is going to decide if we live in a world when the number of nuclear weapons is going up or going down. If we lose the (arms control) agreements, we are definitely headed to a world where that number is going up. That is why this should be a major issue in the 2020 election cycle.”

Previously, Bell served as a senior adviser in the Office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. She has also worked on nuclear policy issues at the Ploughshares Fund.

Holdren said that the issue of “no first use” was considered at length during the Obama Administration and that a decision was deferred in the President’s second term “on the assumption that Hillary Clinton would win” the 2016 election.

Bell noted that President Trump is the first U.S. president since John F. Kennedy to fail to initiate a major arms control agreement in their first term in office. She said: “Whoever the next person is to sit behind that Resolute Desk is going to having to deal with a number of issues that have been left behind to them.”

Both Holdren and Bell agreed that the news media (except for a handful of key outlets) are not paying enough attention to nuclear weapons issues. But they also agreed that it is incumbent on experts to find a way to talk about nuclear weapons that engages presidential candidates, elected officials, the media, and the public.

John Mecklin, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, moderated the expert panel discussion.

For more background information, see Nuclear Weapons Policy and the U.S. Presidential Election, an edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists available free online until March 31, 2020.

ABOUT THE BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS

December 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the first edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, initially a six-page, black-and-white bulletin and later a magazine, created in anticipation that the atom bomb would be “only the first of many dangerous presents from the Pandora’s Box of modern science.”  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ iconic Doomsday Clock was reset on January 23, 2020 to 100 seconds to midnight.  www.thebulletin.org.

MEDIA CONTACT:  Max Karlin, (703) 276-3255 and mkarlin@hastingsgroup.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A streaming recording of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ briefing will be available at www.thebulletin.org/nukes2020vote as of 5 p.m. CST/6 p.m. EST/2300 GMT on March 2, 2020.

 

 

March 3, 2020 Posted by | election USA 2020, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Big climate change policy unlikely no matter who wins the White House

Big climate change policy unlikely no matter who wins the White House

Amy Harder Don’t hold your breath for big climate policy changes — even if a Democrat wins the White House.

Why it matters: Congress is likely to remain gridlocked on the matter, leading to either more of the same with President Trump’s re-election or a regulatory swing back to the left no matter which Democrat wins — but far short of a legislative overhaul.

The big picture: Climate change is reaching a new high-water mark as a political concern for American voters, and Democratic presidential nominees are promising aggressive policies.

  • That in and of itself is a sea change from prior elections. Even still, these worries and pledges are unlikely to translate into any major new laws in the next few years (at least).

Here’s why, with potential scenarios mapped out.

Trump wins re-election

While Trump is uniquely unpredictable in presidential history, he’s made it clear since moving into the White House that he’s not interested in pursuing any sort of actual climate legislation on Capitol Hill.

More of the same is most likely, in two important ways:

  1. More curtailing of environmental regulations — and defending them in court.
  2. More pressure on other actors — like companies, states and other countries — to take bigger action on their own as the void of U.S. presidential leadership grows.

Any Democrat wins

All Democrats have aggressive climate plans, but it’s an open question whether any would first push climate legislation over other priorities — especially health care………

Regardless of congressional priority, any Democratic president would swing Washington’s executive-action pendulum far back in the other direction. …..

A progressive Democrat wins

… like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. ……This type of all-encompassing and hyper-aggressive legislation is unlikely to get universal support among Democrats (to say nothing of universal Republican opposition) — which makes them extremely unlikely to get through the Senate.

  • This is because Democrats with more moderate ideologies or those representing energy-intensive states are unlikely to support the broader socioeconomic measures and such aggressive moves away from fossil fuels, partly because many of those jobs are represented by unions……..

A more moderate Democrat wins

… like Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar or Michael Bloomberg.

I anticipate these politicians would be (relatively) more open to trying to work with Republicans on climate change than their progressive counterparts……

As Congress talks climate policy, carbon price gets no love

New lobbying urging Congress to support a price on carbon emissions is not convincing lawmakers to warm up to the policy.

Why it matters: A carbon price is widely considered one of the most economically efficient ways to tackle climate change. But, economics be damned, its politics remain deeply unpopular. https://www.axios.com/climate-policy-changes-unlikely-7ecf6cc3-c42c-4d7c-b492-41d73433a015.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

March 3, 2020 Posted by | climate change, election USA 2020, politics | Leave a comment

USA desperately pushing the fantasy of Small Nuclear Reactors to India

March 2, 2020 Posted by | India, marketing, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s toxic nuclear sales pitch to India- undermining India’s nuclear liability law

March 2, 2020 Posted by | India, marketing, USA | Leave a comment

Trump is using Yucca Mountain to drum up Republican votes

February 27, 2020 Posted by | election USA 2020 | 2 Comments

U.S. Pentagon demands $167 billion tax-payer nuclear funding through to 2025

February 27, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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