Seven Peace Activists Found Guilty of “Conspiracy” for Anti-Nuclear Protest
Seven Peace Activists Found Guilty of “Conspiracy” for Anti-Nuclear Protest, https://truthout.org/video/seven-peace-activists-found-guilty-of-conspiracy-for-anti-nuclear-protest/, BY Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, October 25, 2019
In Georgia, a federal grand jury on Thursday found seven Catholic peace activists guilty on three felony counts and a misdemeanor charge for breaking into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base on April 4, 2018. The activists, known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, entered the base armed with hammers, crime scene tape, baby bottles containing their own blood, and an indictment charging the U.S. government with crimes against peace. The base is home to at least six nuclear ballistic missile submarines, each of which carries 20 Trident thermonuclear weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: The activists will be sentenced within the next 90 days. They face more than 20 years in prison. This is Plowshares activist Martha Hennessy.
Bushfires rage in California- 940.000 without power
Power shut off to 940,000 Californians as major bushfires rage, SBS, 27 Oct 19,Nearly a million people in California will be blacked out as powerful winds threaten to knock down electric wires and spark further fires.
A California power company says it will shut off power to around 940,000 customers across the north of the US state as powerful winds threatened to knock down electric wires and spark further fires.
“Winds of this magnitude pose a higher risk of damage and sparks on the electric system and rapid wildfire spread.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom said the outages were “unacceptable.”
“We are going to do our best to get through these high-wind events and work through Saturday, Sunday into Monday and get these lights back on and do everything in our power to make sure PG&E is never in a position where they’re doing this to us again,” Newsom said in a video posted on Twitter.
The largest wildfire is currently raging in northern California’s Sonoma County, where 50,000 residents were ordered to evacuate on Saturday.
‘Story about greed’
A number of bushfires are also raging in the northern part of the state. The most serious – the Kincade Fire – broke out late Wednesday in the Sonoma wine region, also prompting evacuations.
The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., warned that millions of people in northern and central parts of the state could have their power cut off during the weekend given the high risk of fire.
The same type of equipment was responsible for the state’s deadliest bushfire ever – the Camp Fire in 2018 which killed 86 people.
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry says USA and Saudi Arabia negotiating on nuclear sales
U.S. says talks progressing with Saudi on possible 
nuclear program, DUBAI (Reuters) 27 Oct 19– U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Saturday that conversations with Saudi Arabia on a nuclear program are going forward.The world’s top oil exporter had said it wanted to use nuclear power to diversify its energy mix. It wants to go ahead with a full-cycle nuclear program, including the production and enrichment of uranium for atomic fuel.
In order for U.S. companies to compete for Saudi Arabia’s project, Riyadh would normally need to sign an accord on the peaceful use of nuclear technology with Washington.
Reuters has reported that progress on the discussions has been difficult because Saudi Arabia does not want to sign a deal that would rule out the possibility of enriching uranium or reprocessing spent fuel – both potential paths to a bomb.
“The kingdom and the leadership in the kingdom .. will find a way to sign a 1,2,3 agreement with the United States, I think,” Perry said.
Speaking at a round table in Abu Dhabi, Perry added that the United States was doing everything it could to have a ready global supply of oil…… https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uae-us-energy/us-says-talks-progressing-with-saudi-on-possible-nuclear-program-idUSKBN1X509E
$85B Nuclear Missile Competition Gets Messier as Feds Investigate Northrop,
GLOBAL BUSINESS EDITOR, 27 Oct 19, Boeing is breaking up its ICBM team — just as the Federal Trade Commission begins looking into the company’s allegations that Northrop wasn’t playing fair.
The Pentagon’s effort to build a new ICBM just took another step toward a no-competition sole-source award — and the prospective lone bidder just came under federal investigation for anti-competitive behavior.
Two pieces of news broke late this week concerning the U.S. Air Force’s Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, whose total value has been estimated at $85 billion. First, the service stopped paying Boeing for ICBM-related technology-development work that began in 2017. In response, the company has begun to break up the specialized team of engineers it brought together to create a replacement for the Cold War-era Minuteman III, according to a Boeing source close to the project.
Second, a Northrop Grumman filing revealed that the Federal Trade Commission is looking into allegations that the company is not abiding by an agreement that allowed its 2018 acquisition of Orbital ATK, one of just two U.S. makers of solid rocket motors. Those terms required the company to sell rocket motors “on a non-discriminatory basis to all competitors for missile contracts.”
Until July, Boeing and Northrop had both been planning to bid on the ICBM contract. Then Boeing announced that it would withdraw, charging that it had been unfairly handicapped in the competition because Northrop had slow-rolled an agreement that would have paved the way for Boeing to buy rocket motors from Orbital ATK……. https://www.defenseone.com/business/2019/10/usaf-puts-its-icbm-chips-northrop-feds-launch-investigation/160888/
For the climate’s sake, the $multibillion nuclear industry bailouts must stop
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Nuclear Industry’s $23 Billion Bailout Request Shows Why It Should Have ‘No Role to Play’ in Solving Climate Crisis: Study “For the sake of taxpayers, electricity consumers and the climate, Congress must stop this endless nuclear boondoggle.” by Eoin Higgins, staff writer A proposed bailout of the U.S. nuclear power industry that could cost taxpayers $23 billion over the next 10 years is a perfect example of why the climate crisis needs solutions that focus on renewable resources, green advocacy group Friends of the Earth said Thursday.”The dying nuclear industry wants a massive bailout at the expense of taxpayers and the climate,” the group’s senior policy analyst Lukas Ross said in a statement. Friends of the Earth commissioned a study (pdf) on the Nuclear Powers America Act of 2019, a nuclear industry-backed bill making its way through Congress that would continue subsidies for the industry for decades. Vermont Law School fellow Mark Cooper, who authored the study, wrote that the consequences of continuing tax credits for the industry would have the effect of making other potential technologies unviable for reducing emissions. “Subsidizing nuclear keeps reactors on-line and crowds out the alternatives,” said Cooper. “It slows the transition to an electrical grid based on low-carbon distributed resources.” While renewables are a major part of the push from climate activists and advocates to solve the climate crisis, using nuclear power to reduce emissions has been floated as a potential piece of the Green New Deal. The technology was notably left out of the legislation by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a decision that Popular Mechanics writer Avery Thompson hailed in February as a “great idea.” “Reactors are gigantic beasts, and sustaining a nuclear reaction while drawing power from it requires an absurd level of engineering,” wrote Thompson. “Reactors are expensive, bulky, and complicated, to say nothing of the waste products they produce or the fear of a catastrophe like Chernobyl or Fukushima.” The proposed nuclear industry bailout, warns Cooper in the new report, is an attempt to reverse economic trends that have never been favorable to nuclear power standing by itself. The industry, Cooper said, hasn’t earned the right to be considered as a realistic solution to the climate crisis or U.S. energy needs. “Nuclear has failed for over 50 years to control its costs, even with help from massive subsidies, and alternatives are available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a much lower cost,” wrote Cooper. Time is of the essence, said Friends of the Earth’s Ross. “With just a decade left to prevent the worst of the climate crisis, we shouldn’t dump more money into ancient nuclear reactors at the expense of cleaner and much cheaper renewables,” he said. |
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Problems for Elizabeth Warren’s policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons
 Elizabeth Warren Wants A Nuclear No First Use Policy, But It Won’t Be Easy to Implement, Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama tried—but failed—to incorporate NFU into their Nuclear Posture Reviews. If Warren wants an NFU, she should look to these Democratic presidents’ pasts to learn how to make her lofty goal achievable. National Interest
by Lauren Sukin, 25 Oct 19, While President Donald Trump boasts about the “tippy top” shape of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has a much more reasonable plan for American nuclear weapons, outlined in her co-sponsored fourteen-word bill that aims to radically alter the conditions under which the United States can use nuclear weapons. The bill (S. 272/H.R. 921) reads simply: “It is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first.” The idea—called No First Use (NFU)—has been around since the Cold War, but it has never officially been U.S. policy………..
Lessons for the Next President
If the next president wants to implement NFU, what should they do differently? First, an improved NPR process would involve hands-on, consistent leadership from civilian executives. Second, the next president will need to bridge differences of opinion between traditionalists and those who are more reform-minded. That means choosing civilian leaders of the NPR effort who have and commit to building a good rapport with the military establishment and military leaders who are receptive to new ideas while using their expertise to ensure that any adopted policies are beneficial, clear, and implementable. Lessons for the Next President If the next president wants to implement NFU, what should they do differently? First, an improved NPR process would involve hands-on, consistent leadership from civilian executives. Second, the next president will need to bridge differences of opinion between traditionalists and those who are more reform-minded. That means choosing civilian leaders of the NPR effort who have and commit to building a good rapport with the military establishment and military leaders who are receptive to new ideas while using their expertise to ensure that any adopted policies are beneficial, clear, and implementable. Lauren Sukin is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/elizabeth-warren-wants-nuclear-no-first-use-policy-it-wont-be-easy-implement-90716 |
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USA’s nuclear wastes can’t stay in above-ground canisters forever
Who will be the ultimate bearer of the nation’s nuclear waste? Mashable
by Mark Kaufman, Editors Nandita Raghuram and Brittany Levine Beckman Illustrations Vicky Leta, 25 Oct 19, In Mashable’s series Wasted, we dig into the myriad ways we’re trashing our planet. Because it’s time to sober up.When future tourists journey through a desolate, sun-baked patch of the southeastern New Mexico desert, some 20 miles outside of the 21st-century oil boomtown of Carlsbad, they’ll spot dozens of giant pillars on the flat terrain, somewhat like the great stone heads looming on the treeless hills of Easter Island. If the intrigued desert visitors wander close enough to the 25-foot high granite monuments, erected by the United States Department of Energy, they’ll see inscriptions written in seven different, perhaps archaic, languages.
And if they dare wander past the perimeter of the grandiose columns, the travelers will find an open-air structure made of 15-foot high walls, emblazoned with frightening pictographs and symbols. Taken together, the U.S. agency hopes to convey a clear message to anyone who enters.Keep out. Leave. Don’t dig. Something bad lurks beneath the ground. “This ‘stay out’ sign warns future generations of the danger of intrusion,” the Department of Energy wrote in its blueprint of this imposing message.
In 1990, the agency convened a group of linguists, writers, anthropologists, and an assortment of other scientists to think about how, in centuries or thousands of years (perhaps long after the fall of the U.S. empire), they might discourage people from revealing what lay 2,000 feet below the rocky soil and dashing roadrunners: hundreds of thousands of containers filled with radioactive sludge, soil, mops, brooms, and gloves from the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program. The sealed casks would be a danger for at least 10 millennia.
[illustration by Vicky Leta, Mashable). Rather, much of the nuclear rummage is the spent radioactive fuel from power plants ……..the waste is scattered around the country at the very nuclear power plants where it was used, because the U.S. hasn’t decided on a place to permanently deposit the deadly dross. But the concrete and metal storage casks, often stockpiled directly on the surface in places like the idyllic California coast, age, crack, and decay over time. The waste can’t stay there forever.It’s got to go somewhere,” said Allison Macfarlane, the former chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and professor of science and technology policy at George Washington University.
“The worst option is leaving it above ground indefinitely,” stressed Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist and expert in nuclear weapons policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy group….. there’s no good place to store the forever waste. “There’s no best option. There’s only the least bad option,”………
One day, WIPP might be joined by another nuclear waste site — but this one exposed on New Mexico’s desert surface.
Between the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs, about 70 miles apart, lies 1,000 acres of rough desert scrub. Holtec International, a company that sells sturdy containers for storing nuclear waste, has a scheme for these 1,000 acres that would make them a lot of money. The company wants to transform this forsaken desert into a concrete field holding 10,000 containers of spent fuel from all the nation’s nuclear power plants, collectively called the HI-STORE Consolidated Interim Story Facility. “Interim” is a somewhat deceiving word here. Taxpayers would essentially rent these thick casks until our underperforming Congress finds a truly permanent place to store the spent fuel from nuclear plants. The waste could stay there for 40 years. Or, if the casks are continually restored, much longer……..
The waste must eventually go deep, deep underground, said Lyman, the nuclear expert. The irradiated can can’t be punted down the road all century. Nuclear plants are brimming with this stuff. “The Department of Energy is on the hook to produce some type of a solution as the reactor facilities are filling up,” emphasized Notre Dame’s Burns.
There’s only one way that can happen: not forcing, not dictating, but collaborating with a community, somewhere, to allow a geologic depository, stressed Macfarlane. The site would need to be heavily guarded in perpetuity. “The question is can they be compensated enough and their concerns be mitigated enough that they’re willing to accept it,” said Lyman.
while the waste can’t just sit exposed on the surface forever, it could be some 50 years before the casks become an imminent threat.
Indeed, nuclear waste is “out of sight out of mind,” noted Lyman. This is in stark contrast to an environmental threat like relentlessly rising global temperatures, wherein the well-predicted consequences of a warmer globe are conspicuously unfolding today: wildfires torching more land, the melting of the great ice sheets, unprecedented deluges, overheated infrastructure, an incessantly warming ocean, and beyond……..
If New Mexico’s nuclear heritage is somehow ever lost, perhaps by the passage of millennia and ravages of time, tall monuments will stand in the windswept desert for thousands of years, hopefully warding off any curious pilgrims, explorers, or future industrialists from the decaying consequences of war, weaponry, and defense. Whatever symbols the Department of Energy ultimately etches into the walls of the roofless, sunlit temple where WIPP once stood, they better be damn scary.https://mashable.com/feature/most-radioactive-state-in-us-nuclear-waste-new-mexico-nevada/?fbclid=IwAR3hb7-ZZjWxaF863zuHqueEHeA8VjhLwrWVm2sA849Kvcb5D6OAQ00SmdI
20 sovereign nations in New Mexico and Texas oppose nuclear facility near Carlsbad
Native American Pueblo leaders oppose nuclear facility near Carlsbad, Hobbs, https://www.oilandgas360.com/native-american-pueblo-leaders-oppose-nuclear-facility-near-carlsbad-hobbs-2/ in Press by— 360 Feed Wire
Oct. 24– Oct. 24–A group of Native American leaders opposed a plan to temporarily store nuclear waste at proposed facilities in southeast New Mexico and West Texas before a permanent repository is available.
The All Pueblo Council of Governors, which represents 20 sovereign nations in New Mexico and Texas held a meeting on Thursday where members affirmed their opposition to the projects, read a Monday news release from the group.
Concerns with the transportation of spent nuclear fuel rods drove the group’s opposition to two proposed consolidated interim storage (CIS) sites, one near the border of Eddy and Lea counties in New Mexico and another in Andrews, Texas. Continue reading
Ohio’s Nuclear and Coal Bailout Bill Survives Court Challenge.
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Ohio’s Nuclear and Coal Bailout Bill Survives Court Challenge. Federal judge says group seeking overturn of pro-nuclear House Bill 6 must seek state Supreme Court relief, raising bar for a 2020 challenge. Greentech Media, JEFF ST. JOHN OCTOBER 24, 2019 An effort to overturn Ohio’s controversial nuclear bailout law via voter referendum suffered a setback this week, after a federal judge denied the group’s request for more time to collect signatures to put it before state voters next year.In a late Wednesday evening decision, U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus, Jr. denied a request from the Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts group for more time to collect the required 265,774 signatures to prevent House Bill 6 from going into effect while it faces repeal.
Instead, Sargus wrote that the issues raised by the group were under the jurisdiction of the Ohio Supreme Court, which “could afford plaintiffs the remedy they seek — a stay of HB 6 and additional time to circulate their petitions.” HB 6, passed in July by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, is broadly unpopular with the public, according to multiple polls, and has come under withering attack from the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, and other environmental groups. The bill, which went into effect on Tuesday, slashes the state’s existing efficiency and renewable energy mandates, a long-term goal of the Ohio GOP, and redirects the hundreds of millions of dollars a year to support bankrupt utility FirstEnergy Solutions’ nuclear power plants. The surcharges of about 85 cents per month on typical residential customers’ utility bills, meant to raise roughly $1 billion for FirstEnergy’s Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants over seven years, won’t go into effect until 2021. “We’re disappointed, but we’re exploring our options with the Ohio Supreme Court,” Gene Pierce, spokesperson for Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts, told The Toledo Blade. A high-stakes energy policy battle turns nastyOhioans Against Corporate Bailouts has alleged that its signature-gathering efforts were targeted by HB 6 supporters in a dirty-tricks campaign that prevented it from hitting its targeted signature numbers. According to its complaints, these tactics included bribing its signature-takers with cash and plane tickets to join an opposing ballot initiative, and in some cases, allegedly threatening signature-gatherers in public. The Ohio Attorney General’s office is investigating dozens of complaints related to signature-gathering, including activities by pro-HB 6 group Generation Now, which has been accused of hiring “blockers,” or people who will stand in the way of or otherwise interfere with signature-gatherers in public. Earlier this month, Sargus granted the group a temporary order preventing enforcement of a state law that requires some paid signature-gatherers to disclose their identities or face criminal penalties, based on allegations that Generation Now had been approaching signature-takers and their employers to pressure them into quitting…….. Ohio’s bill also eliminates the state’s renewable portfolio standard of 12.5 percent by 2027, passed in 2008, which has been under attack from state Republicans for years. And it eliminates the nearly $200 million per year, collected in surcharges of roughly $1.69 per month on Ohio utility customers, to fund energy-efficiency and demand-reduction programs. These programs have saved Ohio customers $5.1 billion from 2009 to 2017, according to the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. HB 6 also imposes a $2.50-per-month charge on utility customers’ bills to support two coal-fired power plants owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corp., a consortium of utilities in the state. Opponents of the plan have challenged the subsidies, saying the law’s text inadvertently bars them from participating. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/ohios-nuclear-and-coal-bailout-bill-survives-court-challenge |
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Rick Perry, as Energy Secretary, “solved” nuclear waste problem by reclassifying high level waste as low level
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Perry’s Odd Definition of Progress on Nuclear Waste https://www.nrdc.org/experts/caroline-reiser/perrys-odd-definition-progress-nuclear-waste, October 22, 2019 Caroline Reiser
After months of suspense, Energy Secretary Rick Perry finally confirmed he will resign, boasting in a farewell tweet that under his leadership the Department of Energy “made environmental progress unseen for decades cleaning up the legacy of the Manhattan Project.” —What’s that now? Where exactly are the “numerous” legacy sites that Perry claims the Department tackled? All the Department of Energy has done under Perry is weaken standards and renege on promises by finding ways to abandon the world’s most toxic chemical and radioactive waste in place. To give a brief history of the legacy Perry is referring to, the Manhattan Project is the name of the World War II era research and development effort that led to the first several nuclear weapons, including those used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the atomic arms race of the Cold War, the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies continued to design, test, and manufacture nuclear weapons but on a vaster scale—ultimately manufacturing over 30,000 nuclear weapons. Making nuclear weapons is not a clean business. Every country that has built a nuclear arsenal has harmed its own people and environment in the process. Nuclear production created a so-called “legacy” of profoundly contaminated radiological and chemical waste sites. There are dozens of these legacy waste sites across the United States; the largest three are the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, the South Carolina Savannah River Site, and the Washington Hanford site (which many consider one of the most contaminated sites in the Western Hemisphere). To give you a picture of the scale in terms of size and danger, the Hanford site hosts 177 tanks. The tanks range from 55,000 gallons to more than a million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste each. That’s from about 20 semi-trucks full to about two Olympic sized swimming pools. And even brief exposure to a small portion of that waste can be deadly. So what happened at these sites under Perry? Not much. The most far-reaching action the Department of Energy took under Secretary Perry was to give itself permission to “reclassify” highly toxic radioactive waste. The Department’s new stance is that it can magically decide that certain High-Level Waste is now Low-Level Waste without oversight from the Environmental Protection Agency, states, or tribes. With this authority, the Department of Energy no longer has to permanently isolate from the environment High-Level Waste, but instead can abandon hundreds of gallons of the most toxic waste at sites like Hanford. So really the only way Perry could be said to have cleaned up this toxic waste is by “recategorizing” it as something less dangerous than it is, and then (metaphorically) washing his hands of it. The Perry-led Department of Energy will also be remembered for breaking promises. In addition to the promises the Department is breaking by reclassifying High-Level Waste, the Department is also breaking promises to clean up smaller sites as well. For example, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory sits in the golden hills of California, right on the outskirts of Los Angeles’s urban sprawl. In 2010, the Energy Department agreed to clean up the site to what’s called “background levels,” meaning the normal levels of radiation one could expect to find at the site before industry intervened. But the Perry Energy Department decided this agreement didn’t matter – it now plans to leave in place the vast majority of the contamination and to act without consent from California. Both Washington and California are pushing back against the Department of Energy’s broken promises. And it’s clear that if the Department gets away with it at these sites, it will do the exact same thing at other sites across the country. So, for Secretary Perry’s tweet to be true, he must have a strange definition of “progress.” Maybe he means progress in abandoning the Department of Energy’s obligation to clean up the mess it made. Maybe he means progress in speeding up transferring the responsibility of managing highly toxic sites back to states, tribes, and local communities. Maybe he means progress in cutting corners to favor cost over health and safety. All I can say is that I hope the next Secretary and I have a more similar idea of what progress looks like. The Department of Energy can do better. President Trump has already nominated Dan Broulliette as a replacement for Perry. If Broulliette wants to make actual progress on America’s nuclear waste legacies, he needs to stop wasting time trying to get away with doing less – do the work and do it right. Given the track record of the last few years, there’s ample reason for skepticism. But I would love to be proven wrong. |
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Uninsurable – and for good reason – nuclear power
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Nuclear energy is too costly and risky; better alternatives exist https://www.jhnewsandguide.com/opinion/columnists/common_ground/nuclear-energy-is-too-costly-and-risky-better-alternatives-exist/article_71a11439-581d-572f-87c7-88dad34ddf74.html Common Ground / By Paul W. Hansen , 23 Oct 19 In last week’s Guest Shot the director of the Idaho National Lab (INL) Mark Peters wrote to open a dialogue with News&Guide readers about nuclear energy. I want to take him up on his offer. First, what we agree on. Nuclear energy produces about 20% of the nation’s electricity, which is about 8% of our total energy use. Overall, we need to produce and use energy that minimizes greenhouse gases. Looking at the troubled history, poor economics, attendant risk and unsolved problem of nuclear waste disposal, I think there are much better alternatives for producing carbon free energy. Today, there are 97 nuclear reactors in 29 states that produce electricity. Thirty-four reactors have been shut down. More orders for nuclear plants have been canceled than plants have been built. Only one plant has come online in the last 25 years. Early claims that nuclear power would be “too cheap to meter” proved false. Despite extensive public subsidies, nuclear plants across America have faced significant cost overruns. For example, the Washington Public Power Supply System defaulted on $2.25 billion in municipal bonds when cost overruns on two units caused the cancellation of two other units. The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island was completed in 1985, but never operated when an evacuation plan could not be implemented. The plant was decommissioned. The $6 billion cost of the unused plant was passed on to Long Island residents. Attempts to build new nuclear plants have been even more challenging. During the 1980s, the cost of Plant Vogtle’s first two nuclear units near Augusta, Georgia, jumped from an estimated $660 million to $8.87 billion. Regardless, 20 years later Georgia Power wanted to build the “next generation” of nuclear power plants. In August 2008, it was estimated that Plant Vogtle reactors 3 and 4 would cost $14.3 billion and begin operations in 2017. Today, updated estimates put the cost at $28 billion with an operation date of November 2022. The project is projected to be $14 billion over budget and more than 5 years behind schedule. The builder of the reactors, Westinghouse, has declared bankruptcy. In 2017, a similar two-unit plant in South Carolina, the V.C. Summer plant, was abandoned — costing about $5 billion. Concerns over the transportation and storage of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel have prevented any nuclear waste repositories from being developed in the U.S. Spent fuel rods are stored onsite at nuclear plants. When uranium fuel is used up, usually after about 18 months, the spent rods are generally moved to deep pools of circulating water to cool down for about 10 years. The radioactive material is then transferred to metal casks. The waste remains dangerously radioactive for about 10,000 years. There is no plan for permanent disposal of this waste. This brings me to my biggest concern — the fact that those in our society whose business it is to determine risk will not insure nuclear power. If you own a home, look at your homeowner’s insurance policy. You are not covered in the event of a nuclear accident. No one is. The nuclear industry exists only due to the liability limitations granted by Congress in the Price Anderson Act. Price Anderson requires the nuclear industry to fund an account of $12.6 billion. Any liability above that is supposed to be covered by taxpayers. Then there are the issues of long-term decommissioning costs, nuclear accidents or terrorists. In Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear accidents have left large areas uninhabitable. What if the 9/11 terrorists had managed to crash those planes into the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant north of New York City? While the reactor containment vessel might have survived the impact, the spent fuel rod pools may not have, leaving much of the New York metropolitan area uninhabitable. Nuclear energy has not worked out as planned. Far more carbon-free power can be generated at far less cost and risk by renewable energy and energy efficiency programs. |
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Columbia nuclear fuel factory in trouble again, with safety problems
The Westinghouse nuclear plant discovered last week that it had a device in place that was not adequate to prevent uranium from leaking into chemical supply drums at the site, federal records show.
That’s potentially significant because the drums were in a “non-favorable’’ position, which under certain circumstances could increase chances of a radiation burst inside the 1,000-employee plant.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is looking into the matter, reported by Westinghouse to the agency Oct. 16. Westinghouse shut down part of the plant where the improper equipment was found, a spokesman for the NRC said this week………
The nuclear fuel factory, one of only three of its kind in the country, has a long history of incidents, including events in which some workers were exposed to radiation or injured. But concerns have intensified in recent years among people who live in eastern Richland County, near the plant.
Since 2016, the facility has run afoul of federal regulators for allowing uranium to build up in an air pollution control device, leaking uranium through a hole in the plant floor and failing to notify authorities of historic leaks on the property. This past summer, federal officials learned that water had dripped through a rusty shipping container onto a barrel of nuclear waste, causing a leak into the ground. Officials also learned about a small fire this summer that erupted in a container that held nuclear material.
Groundwater beneath the site is polluted with an array of toxins, including nitrate, solvents and nuclear materials, dating as far back as the 1980s. Neighbors near the plant are leery, with some saying they don’t trust Westinghouse to safeguard the environment. The company has pledged to do better.
Westinghouse’s plant supplies fuel rods for atomic power plants across the country. Located between Interstate 77 and Congaree National Park, the 550,000-square-foot factory has been a key part of the Columbia economy since opening in 1969. The plant employs about 1,000 people. Operators are now seeking to renew a federal license, as well as state discharge permits. https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article236495448.html
Bill Gates still hoping for tax-payer funding for his small nuclear reactor project
Bill Gates’ Nuclear Reactor Hits a Roadblock,
Engineering.com , October 21, 2019 Bill Gates is optimistic about the future—and the role of nuclear energy as an environmentally friendly energy source—but he faces significant obstacles along the way.
His company, TerraPower, is working on new technologies to revolutionize nuclear power. One of them is a traveling wave reactor (TWR). ………
One major problem with a TWR power plant is the price. It will cost about $3 billion to build a demonstration reactor. Even Bill Gates isn’t rich enough to fund it himself. TerraPower had signed a promising agreement with China to build a demonstration reactor, but the project has been shuttered due to China-U.S. trade tensions. The company is now lobbying Congress for a public-private partnership to fund the reactor. ……
Kings Bay Plowshares 7 face criminal charges and long jail senetences
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Taking Next Steps Toward Nuclear Abolition. https://truthout.org/articles/taking-next-steps-toward-nuclear-abolition/, BY Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, October 21, 2019 My friend Marianne Goldscheider, who is 87, suffered a broken hip in July, 2018 and then, in June 2019, it happened again. When she broke her hip the first time, she was running, with her son, on a football field. After the second break, when she fell in her kitchen, she was in so much pain that she recalls her only desire as she was placed on a stretcher: “I just wanted ‘the right pill.’” Marianne says her Catholic friends, who live nearby in the New York Catholic Worker community, persuaded her not to give up. They’ve long admired her tenacity, and over the years many have learned from her history as a survivor of the Nazi regime who was forced to flee Germany. Recalling her entry to the United States, Marianne jokes she may have been one of the only displaced persons who arrived in the United States carrying her skis. Yet she also carried deep anxieties, the “angst,” she says, of her generation. She still wonders about German people in the military and the aristocracy who knew where Hitler was headed and, yet, didn’t try to stop him. “When and how,” she wonders, “do human beings get beyond all reasoning?”
Marianne is deeply disturbed by the extraordinary danger of maintaining nuclear weapons arsenals and believes such weapons threaten planetary survival. She worries that, similar to the 1930s, citizens of countries possessing nuclear weapons sleepwalk toward utter disaster. On April 4, 2018, several of Marianne’s close friends from the New York Catholic Worker community became part of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 by entering the U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine base in King’s Bay, GA and performing a traditional Plowshares action. Guided by lines from Scripture urging people to “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” they prayed, reflected and then symbolically disarmed the Trident nuclear submarine site. The Kings Bay is home port to six nuclear armed Trident ballistic missile submarines with the combined explosive power of over 1825 Hiroshima bombs. One of the banners they hung read “The Ultimate Logic of Trident is Omnicide.” Referring to this sign, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, said the banner “is exactly right.” In an October 18 endorsement, he called their actions “necessary to avert a much greater evil.” In late September, the Catholic Bishops of Canada, alarmed over the increasing danger nuclear weapons pose, urged the Government of Canada to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted at the UN in 2017. The Canadian bishops issued their statement on September 26, the United Nations International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. In it, they note the Vatican has already signed and ratified the Treaty. “The ashes of World War I and the centenary of its armistice,” wrote Pope Francis, “should teach us that future acts of aggression are not deterred by the law of fear, but rather by the power of calm reason that encourages dialogue and mutual understanding as a means of resolving differences.” The seven defendants, in everyday life, practice nonviolence while serving people who are often the least cared for in our society. Like Marianne, I have known each defendant for close to four decades. They have risked their lives, safety and health in numerous actions of civil disobedience. When imprisoned, they write and speak of the cruel abuse of human beings and the racist, primitive nature of the United States prison-industrial complex. They’ve also chosen to visit or live in war zones, providing witness on behalf of people trapped under bombardment. They live simply, share resources and strive to help build a better world. Nevertheless, beginning Monday, they will face serious criminal charges and potentially harsh sentences for their action at Kings Bay. Marianne anxiously awaits their trial. “Why,” she asks, “isn’t there more coverage?” One of the defendants, Rev. Steve Kelly, SJ, a Jesuit priest, referred to himself in a recent letter as “a tenuous voice in the wilderness.” He further explained that he is among the wilderness of the incarcerated, “two and a quarter million folks comprising the human warehouses in the empire.” Steve has been imprisoned in the Glynn County jail since April 4, 2018. His letter continues:
Late in the afternoon of October 18, Judge Woods issued her long-awaited orders regarding testimony allowed in court. She will not allow testimony about the illegality of nuclear weapons, the necessity of civil disobedience, or individual motivations and personal faith. Fortunately, the many dozens of people filling the Brunswick, GA courtroom on October 21 will help communicate the essential evidence that won’t be shared within the court. In alternative settings, such as over meals, during a Festival of Hope, and as part of a Citizens Tribunal, they’ll discuss and eventually share reasons that motivated our friends to perform the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 action. A recent op-ed in The New York Times suggests the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 message is entering public discourse. The defendants have clarified that the U.S. nuclear weapon arsenal robs resources desperately needed for food, shelter, health care and education. The New York Times notes if we could reach a total nuclear weapons ban, we could save roughly $43 billion each year on weapons, delivery systems and upgrades. “That’s roughly the same amount we’ve allocated in federal hurricane aid for Puerto Rico.” Marianne laments the way in which nuclear weapons are revered as a modern idol deserving of great sacrifice. She is rightfully wary of social and cultural developments that consider such reverence normal. She and I commiserate about recovering from hip fractures, (I’ve been on the mend for the past month), but we both know that Steve Kelly’s invitation deserves our greatest attention. Tiny postcards are the only means of correspondence allowed to or from the Glynn County jail. On one of these, Steve wrote a message to a large gathering in New York celebrating the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 action. “I am encouraged by your presence,” he wrote, “to ask that this small effort of ours not be the last word in nuclear abolition.” |
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US Energy Secretary Perry turns New Nuclear Salesman to Europe
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Messianic Perry preaches nuclear to sceptical Europeans, By Frédéric Simon | EURACTIV.com 21 Oct 19, Small nuclear reactors can help “vulnerable nations take control of their destinies,” the US energy secretary said in Brussels today (21 October), claiming that small off-grid nuclear plants can bring electricity to poor nations and “disperse the darkness” around the globe.
Countries with nuclear power “can’t be controlled by other countries wielding energy as a geopolitical weapon”, US Secretary of State Rick Perry said in Brussels as he addressed a forum of policymakers and industry representatives from both sides of the Atlantic. Nuclear power helps “vulnerable nations take control of their destinies,” Perry claimed, arguing that “energy security also bolsters national security”. Perry attended the first EU-US high-level forum on small modular reactors. His remarks on energy independence were chiefly aimed at Eastern European countries, which have repeatedly complained about Russian interference in national politics, using gas as a lever. Nuclear is a divise topic in Europe. While countries like France opted for it decades ago, others like Germany and Austria are strongly opposed. “Nuclear energy is neither safe and sustainable nor cost-effective,” said German State Secretary for Energy, Andreas Feicht, during a recent meeting of EU energy ministers, firmly rejecting suggestions that EU money might be used to extend the lifetime of existing nuclear plants. But Perry’s message was broader, and was also addressed at developing nations whom he said could benefit from small off-grid nuclear plants………. |
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1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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