As reported by the Las Vegas Sun, a coalition of Nevadans — from Western Shoshone Indians, to environmentalists, to local, state, and federal officials — have come together yet again to express their adamant opposition to the scheme to dump 70,000 metric tons or more of highly radioactive wastes at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. This continues 32 years of resistance, ever since the 1987 “Screw Nevada” amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 singled out Western Shoshone land as the only site in the country to be further considered for an irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste permanent geological repository. In that time, more than a thousand environmental, and environmental justice, organizations have fought the dump at every twist and turn (see 750 of them listed here). Native Community Action Council secretary Ian Zabarte has achieved hard won, official intervening party status in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Yucca dump licensing proceeding, in his effort to defend Western Shoshone treaty rights. (The photo shows NCAC’s Zabarte at right, and Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps at left, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during a youth climate rally in 2018.)
As the Nevada Current reported about the recent forum, calls are growing for Democratic candidates for president to be bold and clear in their opposition to the Yucca dump. Nevada has the first Western presidential campaign caucus, coming just after the earliest contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The Current reports: “At least five current Democratic presidential candidates — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and [Kamala] Harris — have signed on to [U.S.] Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s [Democrat-Nevada] bill to force the federal government to request Nevada’s consent before storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Julian Castro, Beto O’Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg have also expressed their opposition to the federal government’s proposal, while Andrew Yang has said he supports it.” The Trump administration is seeking to restart the Yucca Mountain dump project, which the Obama administration wisely cancelled as “unworkable” in 2010 (not to mention scientifically unsuitable, environmentally unjust, non-consent based, inter-generationally unjust, regionally inequitable, etc.!)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren pledges not to invest in nuclear energy and focus on renewables instead, MassLive, By Douglas Hook | dhook@masslive.com, 8 Sept 19, Sen. Elizabeth Warren made clear in a Sept. 4 climate town hall meeting that if she is successful in taking office as president, she will not invest in nuclear energy.
The Democratic presidential hopeful pledged to not only prevent the building of new power plants, but also said she would phase out all nuclear power by 2035 and replace it with renewables. After 52 years of producing energy, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station closed its doors on May 31.
Warren was asked what her opinion on nuclear energy replacing fossil fuels are during the Climate Town Hall.
“[Nuclear energy] is not carbon based, but it has a lot of risks associated with it,” said Warren. “Particularly the risks associated with spent fuel rods.”
When toxic waste piles — either solid rock or liquid confined behind earthen dams — are left unaddressed, the potential increases for “catastrophic failure
WHILE ‘ZOMBIE’ MINES IDLE, CLEANUP AND WORKERS SUFFER IN LIMBO As the governor of West Virginia and other mine owners warehouse their operations and avoid cleanup, the Trump administration stifles attempts to write rules that could restrict the practice. Center for Public Integrity, 8 Sept 19
……….RADIOACTIVE LEGACY
Remnants of America’s nuclear past litter the Grants Mining District in northwest New Mexico: signs warning of radioactivity, a spiked drill bit outside the New Mexico Mining Museum in Grants, businesses offering to help retired miners get U.S. Department of Labor health benefits.
Mount Taylor — “Tsoodzil” to the Navajo Nation — towers over the landscape. At the base of the 11,305-foot-tall inactive volcano sits the Mount Taylor Mine, idled in 1990 and allowed to flood.
The heyday of Southwestern uranium mining lasted just 30 years. Much of the industry, including this mine, has since remained in standby.
The country’s last operational underground uranium mine shut in 2015, and open-pit mines haven’t produced in decades. Only one mill in Utah and four in-situ-leach operations, in which ore is dissolved belowground and pumped up, are still active. Two other mills and 15 in-situ-leach sites are either officially in standby or not producing. The American uranium industry employed only 372 people last year, down from 1,120 two decades earlier. Production from U.S. uranium mines fell 85 percent during that period, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
At current prices, mining uranium in the Four Corners remains untenable.
But now the Mount Taylor Mine is reopening, at least on paper.
…… the Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine, once the world’s largest open-pit uranium mine, is now a Superfund site. In the broader Four Corners region, the U.S. Department of Energy is supposed to clean up more than 20 such Cold War relics, from former mills to waste piles. Some leak arsenic, lead, uranium and other toxic substances into groundwater. Recently, hoofprints were found leading from an unfenced pollution control pond near Slick Rock, Colorado, indicating that cattle likely drink from it.
Just inside the southeastern corner of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, an unsettling sign hangs from barbed wire: “DANGER. ABANDONED URANIUM MINE,” a pile of mine waste looming behind it. Residents here in the Red Water Pond Road Community are surrounded by two abandoned uranium mines and a mill…….
Living around or working in uranium mines can worsen, or even trigger, autoimmune disorders, kidney disease, respiratory issues, hypertension and cancer. A study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the University of New Mexico and Navajo agencies found that Navajo Nation citizens, including infants, had elevated levels of uranium in their bodies.
Paul Robinson, Southwest Research and Information Center’s research director, has tracked the industry for more than 40 years. While the New Mexico Mining Act mandates that waste rock and other infrastructure be stabilized before entering standby status, it allows operators to delay reclamation while mining is paused, he said.
“Leaving the wastes that are generated at a mine uncovered is one of the ways to ensure airborne or waterborne release,” Robinson said.
Thompson Bell, a member of the Navajo Nation who spent five years as a mechanic in a uranium mine, grew up here and returned for the study. He said many of his mining coworkers died from lung cancer. The sheep and cattle that used to graze here have all but disappeared, the flocks given up for fear of contamination.
“The thing about uranium, we found out: It destroys humans and land,” Bell said.
Opinion remains split locally about whether the return of relatively high-paying mining jobs — if that ever happened — would be worth the human and environmental consequences. Christine Lowery, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and a commissioner for the county where the Mount Taylor Mine is located, said she welcomes a cleaner economy.
“Those mines were open for one generation,” she said. “The legacy lasts forever…….
The federal government leaves it to the states to impose limits on uranium-mine idling. The resulting patchwork of state rules are largely anchored on a 147-year-old federal law aimed more at promoting mining than managing it.
Over time, uranium production has dropped, stockpiles remained large, nuclear power’s share of the country’s electricity production fell, and power plants bought more uranium from overseas. Still, mine owners hope for a revival…….
Modern surface mining in Central Appalachia has been linked to health problems ranging from cancer to birth defects. And in a 2012 study, Bernhardt estimated that surface mining impaired about one in three miles of southern West Virginia’s rivers.
But idling poses other risks, Bernhardt said. When toxic waste piles — either solid rock or liquid confined behind earthen dams — are left unaddressed, the potential increases for “catastrophic failure,” she said, even as opportunities to use the land for new purposes are delayed…..
B. Rose Kelly, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Sept. 9, 2019 A group of Princeton University physicists has been awarded a two-year grant by the American Physical Society (APS) Innovation Fund to educate and re-engage the U.S. physics community on the globally important issue of the risk posed by nuclear weapons and the pressing need to reduce this threat.
Zia Mian, research scientist and co-director, Program on Science and Global Security and recipient of the 2019 Leo Szilard Award from the American Physical Society; and
The project will be co-led by Steve Fetter, a physicist and professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and dean of the Graduate School.
The impulse for the effort is the grave and worsening global threat from nuclear weapons, according to the Princeton group. The world arsenal contains roughly 10,000 operational nuclear warheads, mostly held by the U.S and Russia. It includes about 2,000 warheads on alert status, capable of launch within minutes of an order. There are numerous new dangers such as U.S. withdrawal from several important arms control treaties, a buildup of offensive capabilities by Russia and China in response to the growth of U.S. ballistic-missile defense, and cyberthreats to nuclear command and control systems.
The key goal of the project — one of only four initiatives selected from 100 submissions to the APS Innovation Fund — is to build a coalition of technically trained and policy-driven citizen-scientists able to assess, explain and advocate for nuclear threat reduction with the public, policymakers and those who influence public policy, such as the media and key think-tank organizations.
More specifically, the project will develop materials to inform and engage the U.S. physics community through visits to physics institutions including universities, national labs, industry and APS conferences, and will include a special effort to broaden the participation of women and underrepresented minorities and next generation physicists in nuclear policy efforts. To benefit from a diverse set of perspectives and talents, the project will establish fellowships for early-career physicists, with a particular focus on diversity and inclusion of women and underrepresented minorities.
APS is a nonprofit membership organization representing more than 55,000 physicists in academia, national laboratories and industry in the United States and throughout the world. It works to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics for the benefit of humanity, promote physics, and serve the broader physics community through its research journals, scientific meetings, and education, outreach, advocacy and international activities.
“The destruction of a society”: First the U.S. invaded Iraq — then we left it poisoned Scientist: Bombs, bullets and military hardware abandoned by U.S. forces have left Iraq “toxic for millennia”, Salon.com DAVID MASCIOTRA 7 Sept 19 “………In your groundbreaking new research, you discover that the teeth of Iraqi children have 28 times more thorium if they live near a U.S. military base. What is the significance of that conclusion, and what does the presence of thorium indicate about a child’s health? What kinds of abnormalities and health problems will they experience?
The Iraqi population is potentially contaminated with depleted uranium decay products. Baby teeth are highly sensitive to environmental exposures. Such high levels of thorium simply suggest high exposure at an early age and potentially in utero.
We found uranium and thorium in these children’s teeth and hair. Uranium and thorium were also in the bone marrow of children, all of whom had severe birth defects. The magnitude of public contamination caused by these alpha-emitting radioactive compounds is a serious question to be answered. Our bone marrow data is still unpublished, but we hope to publish it separately.
Thorium is an alpha emitter and, once in the body, it can cause cancer and other anomalies. Impacts can vary depending on the timing and amount of exposure. Childhood leukemia, which has been rising in southern Iraq, is a verified outcome of thorium exposure.
“The destruction of a society”: First the U.S. invaded Iraq — then we left it poisoned Scientist: Bombs, bullets and military hardware abandoned by U.S. forces have left Iraq “toxic for millennia”, Salon.com DAVID MASCIOTRA 7 Sept 19
The political and moral culture of the United States allows for bipartisan cooperation to destroy an entire country, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process, without even the flimsiest of justification. Then, only a few years later, everyone can act as if it never happened.
In 2011, the U.S. withdrew most of its military personnel from Iraq, leaving the country in ruins. Estimates of the number of civilians who died during the war in Iraq range from 151,000 to 655,000. An additional 4,491 American military personnel perished in the war. Because the bombs have stopped falling from the sky and the invasion and occupation of Iraq no longer makes headlines, Americans likely devote no thought to the devastation that occurred in their name.
With the exception of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is currently polling at or below 2 percent, no candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination has consistently addressed the criminality, cruelty and cavalier wastefulness of American foreign policy. Joe Biden, the frontrunner in the race, not only supported the war in Iraq — despite his recent incoherent claims to the contrary — but as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee acted as its most effective and influential salesman in the Democratic Party.
The blasé attitude of America toward the death and destruction it creates, all while boasting of its benevolence, cannot withstand the scrutiny of science. Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan and recipient of the Rachel Carson Prize, has led several investigative expeditions in Iraq to determine how the pollutants and toxic chemicals from the U.S.-led war are poisoning Iraq’s people and environment. The health effects are catastrophic, and will remain so long after the war reached its official end.
I previously interviewed Savabieasfahani about her initial research, and recently acquired an update regarding her team’s latest discovery that there is a close correlation between proximity to a U.S. military base and birth defects in Iraqi children.
Average Americans, even many who opposed the war in Iraq, seem to believe that once the military campaign is over the casualties of war stop accumulating. What is the purpose of your general research regarding the toxicity of the Iraqi environment resulting from American bombs, munitions and other materials? How does the American invasion and occupation continue to adversely affect the health of Iraqis?
Bombs and bullets have been used on an extreme scale in Iraq. Dropping tons of bombs and releasing millions of bullets leaves toxic residues the in air, water and soil of the targeted population. These pollutants continue to poison those populations years after the bombing stops
What’s more, the United States imported thousands of tons of military equipment into Iraq to use in their occupation. They include, tanks, trucks, bombers, armored vehicles, infantry weapons, antiaircraft systems, artillery and mortars — some of which are coated with depleted uranium, and much more. These eventually find their way into U.S. military junkyards which remain across Iraq.
There are unknown numbers of military junkyards scattered across the Iraqi landscape.
Fluctuations in temperature facilitates the rusting and weathering of military junk, releasing toxic pollutants [including radioactive uranium compounds, neurotoxic lead and mercury, etc.] into the Iraqi environment.
Uranium and its related compounds remain toxic for millennia and poison local populations through food, air and water contamination.
The exposure of pregnant mothers to the pollutions of war, including uranium and thorium, irreversibly damages their unborn children. We found thorium, a product of depleted uranium decay, in the hair of Iraqi children with birth defects who lived in Nasiriyah and Ur City, near a U.S. military base.
The destruction of a society does not stop after U.S. bombs stop falling. Environmental contamination which the U.S. leaves behind continues to destroy our environment and poison our people decades after the bombs have stopped falling. The U.S. has a long history of irreversibly destroying human habitats. That must end…….
Forty-four years after U.S. forces left Vietnam, there are still Vietnamese babies born with birth defects from the American military’s use of Agent Orange. How long do you believe Iraqis will continue to suffer from the American-led war?
If left unmitigated, the population will be permanently exposed to elevated toxic exposures which can impact the Iraqi gene pool.
Through the use of the scientific method, you are gaining the ability to identify a severe problem in Iraq. Considering that the problem is a result of the U.S. invasion, what could the U.S. do to solve or at least mitigate the problem?
The U.S. must be held responsible and forced to clean up all the sites which it has polluted. Technology exists for the cleanup of radiation contamination. The removal and disposal of U.S.-created military junkyards would go a long way towards cleaning toxic releases out of the Iraqi environment.
You are a scientist, not a political analyst, but you must have some thoughts regarding the political implications of your work. How do you react to the lack of substantive conversation about the consequences of war in American politics and the press, and the American establishment’s evasion of responsibility on this issue?
I expect nothing from the American political establishment or their propaganda machines which masquerade as “news media” and feed uncritically off State Department press briefings.
Fortunately, there is a movement to criminalize environmental contamination caused by war. Damage to nature and the human environment must be considered a war crime.
Elizabeth Warren Says ‘No’ to Nuclear Power: Campaign Update, Yahoo Finance, Ari Natter September 5, 2019 (Bloomberg)— Elizabeth Warren is vowing to wean the country off nuclear power if elected president, joining a number of candidates who say the risks outweigh the benefit of the carbon free electricity source.
“The problem is it’s got a lot of risks associated with it, particularly the risks associated with the spent fuel rods,” Warren said during a presidential forum on climate change hosted by CNN. “In my administration we are not going to build any new nuclear power plants.”
Warren’s remarks come as Democratic candidates split over their support for the power source, which has drawn opposition from progressives and some environmental groups who have qualms over nuclear waste storage and mining uranium for fuel. Other candidates who either want to phase out the use of the fuel or stop the construction of new plants include Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Buttigieg, and Julian Castro.
Joe Biden, the Democratic race’s front-runner, has called for funding new nuclear technologies.
Sanders says U.S. Shouldn’t Fund Coastal Rebuilds (10:14 p.m.)
Defying the Nuclear Sword, National policy, especially for the world’s dominant superpower, is based on the threat of unrelenting force. Common Dreams , by Robert C. Koehler 6 Sept 19,
“. . . and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
These lost words — Isaiah 2:4 — are nearly 3,000 years old. Did they ever have political traction? To believe them today, and act on them, is to wind up facing 25 years in prison. This is how far we haven’t come over the course of what is called “civilization.”
Meet the Kings Bay Plowshares 7: Liz McAlister, Steve Kelly, Martha Hennessy, Patrick O’Neill, Clare Grady, Carmen Trotta and Mark Colville. These seven men and women, Catholic peace activists ranging in age from their mid-50s to late 70s, cut open the future, you might say, with a pair of bolt cutters a year and a half ago—actually they cut open a wire fence—and, oh my God, entered the Kings Bay Naval Base, in St. Mary’s, Ga., without permission.
The Kings Bay Naval base, Atlantic home port of the country’s Trident nuclear missile-carrying submarines, is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world.
The seven committed their act of symbolic disarmament on April 4, 2018, the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Here’s what they did, according to the Plowshares 7 website: “Carrying hammers and baby bottles of their own blood,” they went to three sites on the base—the administration building, a monument to the D5 Trident nuclear missile and the nuclear weapons storage bunkers—cordoned off the bunkers with crime scene tape, poured their blood on the ground and hung banners, one of which contained an MLK quote: “The ultimate logic of racism is genocide.” Another banner read: “The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide.”
They also spray-painted some slogans (such as “May love disarm us all”), left behind a copy of Daniel Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, and, oh yeah, issued an indictment of the U.S. military for violating the 1968 U.N. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed by 190 countries (including the United States).
Article VI of the treaty reads: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
Then they waited to be arrested.
The plowshares movement has been taking actions like this since 1980. The Kings Bay action was approximately the hundredth.
Three of the seven have been in prison ever since, and the other four, who were able to make bail, have had to wear ankle bracelets, limiting and monitoring their movement. In early August—indeed, between the anniversaries of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—the seven testified at a U.S. District Court hearing in Brunswick, Ga. The charges were not dismissed and their trial date is set for Oct. 21. …… https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/05/defying-nuclear-sword
Alaska’s Sea Ice Completely Melted for First Time in Recorded History , BY Dahr Jamail, Truthout, 3 Sept 19 The country of Iceland has held a funeral for its first glacier lost to the climate crisis. The once massive Okjökull glacier, now completely gone, has been commemorated with a plaque that reads: “A letter to the future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”
This reality is reverberating across the globe, far beyond Iceland. Even when no literal funeral is being held, we are, in a sense, witnessing an ongoing funeral for the world we once knew.
July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth since record keeping began in 1880. Nine out of the 10 hottest Julys ever recorded have occurred since 2005, and July was the 43rd consecutive July to register temperatures above the 20th century average.
In Greenland, scientists were stunned by how rapidly the ice sheet is melting, as it was revealed the ice there was not expected to melt like this until 2070. The melt rate has been called “unprecedented,” as the all-time single-day melt record was broken in August as the ice sheet lost a mind-bending 12.5 billion tons of water in one day. It is worth remembering that the Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to increase global sea levels by 20 feet, and it is now predicted that it will lose more ice this year than ever before.
Also for the first time in recorded history, Alaska’s sea ice has melted completely away. That means there was no sea ice whatsoever within 150 miles of its shores, according to the National Weather Service, as the northernmost state cooked under record-breaking heat through the summer.
Earth
A recent UN report estimates 2 billion people are already facing moderate to severe food insecurity, due largely to the warming planet……
Water
Drought-induced blackouts are now besetting the people of Zimbabwe, where some places are seeing 18 hours per day without electricity. Imagine that in the summer heat. Dams providing hydropower lack water. Power blackouts are spreading.
In Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, the taps have run dry, affecting more than 2 million people, who have been trying to cope with not having access to municipal drinking water.
These stunning satellite photos show an Arctic burning up in front of our eyes. In Alaska alone, at the time of this writing, at least 1.6 million acres have burned from at least 100 wildfires this summer. Wildfires in Siberiacould well burn into October when the first snows fall, as at least 6.7 million acres have burned across Russia…..
Air
By 2050, Florida will have more days that feel like 100 degrees Fahrenheit (100°F) than any other state in the U.S…….
FirstEnergy Solutions argues in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that the financial rescue approved by state lawmakers in July can’t be overturned by voters because it amounts to a tax.
The company says the Ohio Constitution prohibits tax levies from being overturned by voters.
Opponents of the $1.5 billion rescue package for the nuclear plants and two coal-fired plants are collecting signatures to put the issue on the ballot in November 2020.
The financial rescue adds a new fee on every electricity bill in the state and scales back requirements that utilities generate more power from wind and solar.
Democrats split over nuclear energy amid climate fight, The Hill, BY MIRANDA GREEN – 09/04/19The use of nuclear power is splitting Democratic presidential candidates, with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and businessman Andrew Yang among those calling for new plants and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) arguing vehemently against any expansions.
Somewhere in the middle stand former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who oppose building new reactors but support maintaining those already in operation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is vying with Sanders for the progressive mantle in the nomination fight and has been in the top three in polls alongside Sanders and Biden, hasn’t spelled out her position. Neither has Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), one of the Democratic hopefuls who released their stand-alone climate plan in the final hours leading up the forum.
Nuclear power is one of the only environmental and energy issues that splits the Democratic candidates, who generally agree on the big-picture need to take action to address climate change and to strengthen regulations to protect the environment. But there is no clear consensus when it comes to the role of nuclear energy.
As candidates are looking to distinguish themselves in a crowded field, and with two climate forums this month, some environmentalists say candidates’ stances on nuclear power will be the most telling. That belief is especially true for climate activists who oppose nuclear altogether.
“Given that we don’t have a way to deal with the waste from our existing nuclear reactors, let alone any additional ones, that’s a cause for concern,” said Mitch Jones, climate and energy program director at Food and Water Action.
“If you’re trying to extend the life of existing nuclear power, then you do not have the most environmentally friendly approach to the problem.”……..
the industry is struggling financially. So far this year, two reactors are expected to be retired despite various government subsidies helping the industry. Only one new nuclear power plant has come online since 2010.
The energy source also has a tainted past, rife with references to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. And nuclear waste remains an issue to this day.
Petition drive launched to reverse aid to Ohio’s nuclear plants, Tom Jackson, http://www.sanduskyregister.com/story/2019083000439/2/2019 SANDUSKY — A group seeking a state question to overturn the law that saved the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant has taken the next step.Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts said Friday it started to circulate petitions and plans to get a state question on the November 2020 ballot.
If the state question gets approved, it would overturn House Bill 6, which provided subsidies to keep Ohio’s two nuclear power plants open.
The petition drive must collect 265,744 valid signatures by Oct. 21 to put the issue on next year’s ballot, the group said.
Attorney General Dave Yost cleared the way for the petition drive Thursday when he announced he has approved summary language for the proposed referendum.
Yost had rejected a previous summary as inaccurate but gave a thumb’s up after a revised summary was submitted.
“Without passing on the advisability of the approval or rejection of the measure … I hereby certify that the summary is a fair and truthful statement of the measure to be referred,” Yost said.
Yost’s office said the petitioners working for Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts must collect signatures from registered voters in each of 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties, equal to 3 percent of the total vote cast in the county for the governor’s race in the last election.
The signatures also must equal 6 percent of the total votes cast for governor.
Meanwhile, a group called Ohioans for Energy Security has launched a website and run TV ads claiming the new petition drive is a plot to put Ohio’s energy grid “in the hands of the Chinese government.”
The website warns Ohio voters not to sign the petition and “give your personal information to the Chinese government.”
To back its claims, Ohioans for Energy Security cites investments in Ohio clean energy projects by Chinese banks.
A spokesman for Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts, Gene Pierce, said the claims are ridiculous, calling them “a new low in Ohio politics.”
“These ads are designed to intimidate and threaten our petitioners who are exercising their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to place this ridiculous bailout on the ballot,” Pierce said. “This is the kind of garbage that will get someone hurt and we will hold all parties associated with their campaign responsible for any harm that comes to our circulators.”
Closure to begin if hurricane-force winds predicted at sites
State has two plants, St. Lucie and Turkey Point, owned by FPL
Florida’s two nuclear plants are ready to shut down if forecasts show hurricane-force winds hitting the facilities when Dorian finally moves on shore.
Both plants — St. Lucie, north of Palm Beach, and Turkey Point, south of Miami — sit on Florida’s Atlantic coast, and both lie within the possible path of the storm.
Their owner, NextEra Energy Inc.’s Florida Power & Light, has been preparing since Monday for the possibility of shutting down the plants, said spokesman Peter Robbins. It’s poised to do so once forecasts predict hurricane-force wind speeds at the sites, he said.
“We do it in advance,” Robbins said. “We don’t wait.”
Dorian’s path, however, remained uncertain enough Friday that FPL hadn’t yet made the decision to power down. “We’ve seen the path and intensity of the storm change a lot,” Robbins said. “Like most hurricanes, it’s got some tricks up its sleeve.”
The company, Florida’s largest utility, temporarily closed both facilities in 2017 as Hurricane Irma bore down on the state. Should FPL shut down the plants for Dorian, they would remain offline until the storm had passed and the facilities had been inspected, Robbins said. The company also would consult with local and federal officials before restarting operations.
“It’s a coordinated thing,” Robbins said. “We don’t make the decision by ourselves.”
Kings Bay Plowshares trial for nuclear weapons protest set for October, https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2019/08/31/kings-bay-plowshares-trial-for-nuclear-weapons-protest-set-for-october/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE Dennis Sadowski Aug 31, 2019 WASHINGTON, D.C. – Seven people charged with breaking into the Kings Bay Naval Base to protest nuclear weapons will face trial Oct. 21 for their action.U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood set the trial date after denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss the criminal charges they face because their actions were motivated by their faith and thus protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“It’s not surprising,” said Martha Hennessy, one of the so-called Kings Bay Plowshares charged with conspiracy, trespass and destruction and depredation of property.
“Her (the judge’s) job is to protect the weapons system. Our job is to keep the faith, hope and love,” Hennessy told Catholic News Service Aug. 29 by phone as she was hiking in northern Vermont.
The charges stemmed from an April 2018 protest at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia, one of two home ports for the U.S. Navy’s fleet of Trident submarines. The ships carry about half of the U.S. active strategic nuclear warheads.
The seven entered the base by cutting through a fence and spent more than two hours on the grounds, placing crime scene tape and spilling blood at different locales while posting an “indictment” charging the military with crimes against peace, citing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The defendants include longtime peace activists and several Catholic Workers.
In addition to Hennessy, granddaughter of Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day, they are Elizabeth McAlister of Jonah House in Baltimore and Jesuit Father Steve Kelly of the Bay Area in California, both of whom remain behind bars in Georgia; and Catholic Workers Carmen Trotta of New York City; Clare Grady of Ithaca, New York; Mark Colville of New Haven Connecticut; and Patrick O’Neill of Garner, North Carolina.
They testified during an Aug. 8 hearing in U.S. District Court for the Southern District in Georgia in Brunswick that they were motivated to symbolically disarm the base because of their faith.
In her ruling, Wood acknowledged that the seven established that they had a prima-facie – meaning at first review – case in arguing that their action was protected under the religious freedom law.
However, the judge also determined that the government had a “compelling” interest in keeping unauthorized people from the base.
She agreed with the government argument that charging the anti-nuclear activists with three felonies and a misdemeanor was the least restrictive means of protecting government property.
Each person faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
Attorney Bill Quigley, a member of the group’s legal team, said he will attempt to schedule witnesses who can address two fronts.
The first, he explained, involves Catholic social teaching on the immorality of nuclear weapons. The second will be to “help the jury understand the incredible destructive power of the nuclear weapons on the base and what are the consequences of any use of those,” he said.
Hennessy said she and the others will spend much of her time in the coming weeks preparing for the trial. She expressed hope that Wood will allow the group to testify about their motivations rather than limit testimony to the basic fact that they entered the military base illegally.
“The bigger question is: Will we be allowed to speak? If limits are put in place, we won’t be able to mention pacifism, faith, nuclear weapons, the shedding of blood as sacramental,” Hennessy told CNS. “That’s what the jury needs to hear. It remains to be seen if they will hear it.”
History is replete with instances in which it seems, in retrospect, that nuclear war could have started were it not for some flesh-and-blood human refusing to begin Armageddon. Perhaps the most famous such hero was Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet lieutenant colonel, who was the officer on duty in charge of the Soviet Union’s missile-launch detection system when it registered five inbound missiles on Sept. 26, 1983. Petrov decided the signal was in error and reported it as a false alarm. It was. Whether an artificial intelligence would have reached the same decision is, at the least, uncertain.
ByMatt Field, AA August 30 2019Hypersonic missiles, stealthy cruise missiles, and weaponized artificial intelligence have so reduced the amount of time that decision makers in the United States would theoretically have to respond to a nuclear attack that, two military experts say, it’s time for a new US nuclear command, control, and communications system. Their solution? Give artificial intelligence control over the launch button.
In an article in War on the Rocks titled, ominously, “America Needs a ‘Dead Hand,’” US deterrence experts Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin propose a nuclear command, control, and communications setup with some eerie similarities to the Soviet system referenced in the title to their piece. The Dead Hand was a semiautomated system developed to launch the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal under certain conditions, including, particularly, the loss of national leaders who could do so on their own. Given the increasing time pressure Lowther and McGiffin say US nuclear decision makers are under, “[I]t may be necessary to develop a system based on artificial intelligence, with predetermined response decisions, that detects, decides, and directs strategic forces with such speed that the attack-time compression challenge does not place the United States in an impossible position.”
In case handing over the control of nuclear weapons to HAL 9000 sounds risky, the authors also put forward a few other solutions to the nuclear time-pressure problem: Bolster the United States’ ability to respond to a nuclear attack after the fact, that is, ensure a so-called second-strike capability; adopt a willingness to pre-emptively attack other countries based on warnings that they are preparing to attack the United States; or destabilize the country’s adversaries by fielding nukes near their borders, the idea here being that such a move would bring countries to the arms control negotiating table.
Still, the authors clearly appear to favor an artificial intelligence-based solution.
“Nuclear deterrence creates stability and depends on an adversary’s perception that it cannot destroy the United States with a surprise attack, prevent a guaranteed retaliatory strike, or prevent the United States from effectively commanding and controlling its nuclear forces,” they write. “That perception begins with an assured ability to detect, decide, and direct a second strike. In this area, the balance is shifting away from the United States.”
History is replete with instances in which it seems, in retrospect, that nuclear war could have started were it not for some flesh-and-blood human refusing to begin Armageddon. Perhaps the most famous such hero was Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet lieutenant colonel, who was the officer on duty in charge of the Soviet Union’s missile-launch detection system when it registered five inbound missiles on Sept. 26, 1983. Petrov decided the signal was in error and reported it as a false alarm. It was. Whether an artificial intelligence would have reached the same decision is, at the least, uncertain.
One of the risks of incorporating more artificial intelligence into the nuclear command, control, and communications system involves the phenomenon known as automation bias. Studies have shown that people will trust what an automated system is telling them. In one study, pilots who told researchers that they wouldn’t trust an automated system that reported an engine fire unless there was corroborating evidence nonetheless did just that in simulations. (Furthermore, they told experimenters that there had in fact been corroborating information, when there hadn’t.)
University of Pennsylvania political science professor and Bulletin columnist Michael Horowitz, who researches military innovation, counts automation bias as a strike against building an artificial intelligence-based nuclear command, control, and communications system. “A risk in a world of automation bias is that the Petrov of the future doesn’t use his judgment,” he says, “or that there is no Petrov.”
The algorithms that power artificial intelligence-systems are usually trained on huge datasets which simply don’t exist when it comes to nuclear weapons launches. “There have not been nuclear missile attacks, country against country. And so, training an algorithm for early warning means that you’re relying entirely on simulated data,” Horowitz says. “I would say, based on the state-of-the-art in the development of algorithms, that generates some risks.”……..
There is some precedent for the system proposed by the War on the Rocksauthors, who have served in government or in the military in nuclear-weapons-related capacities. In the fictional world of Hollywood, that precedent was established in Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear satire Dr. Strangelove and called the “Doomsday Machine,” which author Eric Schlosser described this way for The New Yorker:
“The device would trigger itself, automatically, if the Soviet Union were attacked with nuclear weapons. It was meant to be the ultimate deterrent, a threat to destroy the world in order to prevent an American nuclear strike. But the failure of the Soviets to tell the United States about the contraption defeats its purpose and, at the end of the film, inadvertently causes a nuclear Armageddon. ‘The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost,’ Dr. Strangelove, the President’s science adviser, explains to the Soviet Ambassador, ‘if you keep it a secret!’”
About two decades later, satire became closer to reality with the advent of the Soviet Union’s semiautomated Dead Hand system, formally known as Perimeter. When that system perceived that the Soviet military hierarchy no longer existed and detected signs of a nuclear explosion, three officers deep in a bunker were to launch small command rockets that would fly across the country initiating the launch of all of the Soviet Union’s remaining missiles, in a sort of revenge-from-the-grave move. The system was intended to enhance deterrence. Some reports suggest it is still in place.
The possibility that taking humans out of the loop might lead to an accidental launch and unintended nuclear war is a main element in US Naval War College Prof. Tom Nichols’ harsh characterization of the Dead Hand system in a 2014 article in The National Interest: “Turns out the Soviet high command, in its pathetic and paranoid last years, was just that crazy.”
But Lowther and McGiffin say a hypothetical US system would be different than Dead Hand because “the system itself would determine the response based on its own assessment of the inbound threat.“ That is to say, the US system would be better, because it wouldn’t necessarily wait for a nuclear detonation to launch a US attack.
Still, the authors clearly appear to favor an artificial intelligence-based solution.
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