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 UMD Survey Finds Large Bipartisan Majorities Favor Prohibiting President from Using Nuclear Weapons First Without Congressional Approval, Yahoo Finance, PR Newswire May 21, 2019 Eight in Ten Support Nuclear Arms Control with Russia, Disagree with Trump Decision to Withdraw from Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
A new in-depth survey on U.S. nuclear weapons policy finds that 68% of voters (Republicans 59%, Democrats 74%), support Congressional legislation prohibiting the President from using nuclear weapons first without Congressional approval and a declaration of war. An overwhelming 8 in 10, of Republicans as well as Democrats, do not support a policy shift in the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review that explicitly declares the U.S. would consider using nuclear weapons first and specifies examples of non-nuclear attacks that would prompt such consideration. The study was conducted by the Program for Public Consultation (PPC) and the Center for International and Security Studies (CISSM) at Maryland, with consultation by the Center for Public Integrity.
Support for nuclear arms control remains very robust across party lines. More than 8 in 10 (83%, Republicans 84%, Democrats 83%), favor the US continuing to have arms control treaties with Russia. Eight in ten (82%, Republicans 77%, Democrats 89%) favor the United States agreeing to extend the New START Treaty.
“A large bipartisan majority opposes ideas for making nuclear threats a more usable instrument of policy and favors continuing efforts to constrain and reduce nuclear weapons through arms control treaties,” comments Steven Kull, director of PPC. ……….
The public is not convinced that having intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) is necessary. Six in ten, including a majority of Republicans, favor phasing out the 400 US land-based ICBMs that are aging and are vulnerable to a first strike. However, only one-third favor unilaterally reducing the net number of strategic warheads in the U.S. arsenal to 1050 rather than adding warheads to U.S. submarines and bombers if the Russians still have 1550 warheads (the number allowed under New START).
Overwhelming bipartisan majorities agree that the US must have a nuclear arsenal destructive enough that no country could think that there would be any advantage in attacking the United States with nuclear weapons. A plurality (49%) also agree that this minimum requirement is sufficient, and that the US does not need a nuclear arsenal which could also respond in-kind to any nuclear attack. However, when asked about a proposal in line with that requirement, in which the US would put low-yield nuclear weapons on submarines so that it can retaliate against a Russian attack using a similar weapon, two thirds were in favor.
Contact: Steven Kull (PPC) 301-254-7500, skull@umd.edu
Nancy Gallagher (CISSM) 301-405-7610 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/umd-survey-finds-large-bipartisan-majorities-favor-prohibiting-195000854.html
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May 21, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
public opinion, USA |
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 Trump warns Iran it will never be allowed to build nuclear arsenal, US president insists he wants to avoid Tehran conflict after weeks of escalating tensions, Ft.com 20 May 19
Donald Trump said he would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, while insisting he wanted to avoid war with the Islamic republic after weeks of escalating tensions. The US president has kept Tehran on edge by mixing threats with statements playing down the odds of a conflict, as foreign policy analysts speculate that Mr Trump is less keen on military conflict than some of his hawkish advisers.
“I don’t want to fight. But you do have situations like Iran, you can’t let them have nuclear weapons — you just can’t let that happen,” Mr Trump said in an interview with Fox News. He had earlier warned Tehran to stop threatening America, and suggested that the US would destroy Iran if there was a military conflict. “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!” he tweeted.
Tensions have risen sharply in recent few weeks, with Iran saying it will no longer comply with elements of the 2015 nuclear accord it signed with world powers, including the US, and Washington deploying an aircraft carrier strike group to the region. …….
Mr Trump’s key foreign policy advisers, national security adviser John Bolton and secretary of state Mike Pompeo, have referred to unspecified “escalatory action” from Tehran, fuelling speculation that the hawkish pair are trying to convince the president to go to war with Iran.
This has led some lawmakers to grow concerned that the administration is seeking to enter into a conflict without congressional approval. Several senators were last week given details of the administration’s intelligence on Iran, with more lawmaker briefings expected this week. …… https://www.ft.com/content/0192edae-7b0a-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560
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May 21, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
North Korea, politics international, USA, weapons and war |
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Washington Post 17th May 2019 , Gregory Jaczko served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2005 to 2009, and as its chairman from 2009 to 2012. Nuclear power was supposed to save the planet. The plants that used this technology could produce enormous amounts of electricity without the pollution caused by burning coal, oil or natural gas, which would help slow the catastrophic changes humans have forced on the Earth’s climate.
As a physicist who studied esoteric properties of subatomic particles, I admired the science and the technological innovation behind the industry. And by the time I started working on nuclear issues on Capitol Hill in 1999 as an aide to Democratic lawmakers, the risks from human-caused global warming seemed to outweigh the dangers of nuclear power, which hadn’t had an accident since Chernobyl, 13 years earlier.
By 2005, my views had begun to shift. I’d spent almost four years working on nuclear policy and witnessed the
influence of the industry on the political process. Now I was serving on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where I saw that nuclear power was more complicated than I knew; it was a powerful business as well as an impressive feat of science. In 2009, President Barack Obama named me the agency’s chairman.
Two years into my term, an earthquake and tsunami destroyed four nuclear reactors in Japan. I spent months reassuring the American public that nuclear energy, and the U.S. nuclear industry in particular, was safe. But by then, I was starting to doubt those claims myself. Before the accident, it was easier to accept the industry’s potential risks, because nuclear power plants had kept many coal and gas plants from spewing air pollutants and greenhouse gases into the air.
May 21, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
PERSONAL STORIES, safety, USA |
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Science Group Launches Effort to Push Candidates on Nuclear Issues
A recent Zogby Analytics poll found that 82 percent of Iowa residents want presidential candidates, who are already passing through the Hawkeye State, to lay out their positions on nuclear weapons.
“Nuclear war seems like something we no longer should have to worry about,” said David Wright, a physicist and co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “But the prospect of a nuclear war is higher now than it has been in decades. The United States and Russia are abandoning arms control treaties and developing new nuclear weapons considered more usable in a conflict.”
Aware of the increased risk, mayors around the country, including Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie, U.S. Vice-President of Mayors for Peace, are joining forces to call on Congress and the president to take steps to reduce the risks of a nuclear exchange.
“We’re putting future generations at risk by even considering the use of nuclear weapons,” said Mayor Cownie. “We must urge our elected officials in Washington to understand that nuclear warfare is not an option.”
The Zogby poll shows that public attention is increasingly focused on these issues, finding:
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May 21, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
election USA 2020 |
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 Congress continues search for nuclear waste dump, https://www.graydc.com/content/news/Congress-continues-search-for-nuclear-waste-dump-510161521.html By Kyle Midura | WASHINGTON (Gray DC) 20 May 19, – More than 70,000 tons of nuclear waste has no place to go. Congress agreed to take care of it decades ago, but lawmakers can’t agree on where to send it. Waste from 42 years of operation at Yankee Nuclear in Vermont remains on-site years after the shuttered plant stopped generating power. For now, it’s being held in large, thick cannisters known as dry casks.Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) said that’s a direct result of Congress failing to fulfill its promise to create a national dump for used fuel. “Every place where we have a nuclear plant including Vermont has in effect become a long-term storage plant,” he said, “that’s not viable.”
The government developed Nevada’s Yucca Mountain to be the repository for the country’s spent fuel, planning to bury it deep underground and within thick barriers designed to be impenetrable. President Donald Trump is trying to revive that plan.
Welch would like to see Yucca Mountain used as a permanent site – though he said political opposition in the state may make that impossible — and is working on a bill to move forward with a temporary site in Texas.
“Bottom line: after spending 15 billion dollars on Yucca, I think that is a bad place to be permanently storing the nuclear waste in this country,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
Sanders said he’s concerned by the potential for earthquakes at the site given geological fault lines in the area. He opposes further expansion of nuclear – especially while the search for a permanent repository continues. Like many of his fellow Senators seeking the democratic nomination – Sanders signed onto a bill allowing a state like Nevada to say ‘no’ to storing nuclear waste in its backyard.
“We need to find a permanent solution which is not going to be Yucca,” Sanders said.
“The science says it’s safe, but we’ve got to make sure it’s correct and let Nevada have its day in court,” said Baker Elmore, Senior Director of Federal Programs for the Nuclear Energy Institute.
He argues the best path forward is to create temporary storage sites, and finalize plans for a permanent repository as soon as possible. After decades of waiting, Elmore says the country appears to be getting closer to signing-off on a plan. “I’m excited because we’re finally getting around to having a meaningful conversation on this issue,” he said.
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May 21, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
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North Korean missiles: Size does not matter, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Duyeon Kim, Melissa Hanham, May 15, 2019 When it comes to dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program, one fundamental challenge (among many) has been a gap in the definitions of very basic terms in the security lexicon. This inability to agree on the basics has complicated negotiations and communications for more than 25 years. While the vague use of the term “denuclearization” has allowed a kind of rapprochement between the United States and North Korea, denuclearization will never actually happen until the parties agree on what it means and how to achieve it.
“Denuclearization” is not the only term in contention, and diplomacy is not the only field in which semantics count. North Korea is playing another hand in this age-old word game: Missiles are being tested, but Pyongyang prefers to call them “rockets.” In North Korea, a rocket can be anything from artillery rounds to a space launch vehicle. Pyongyang fired a short-range ballistic missile, artillery, and multiple-launch rocket systems on May 4 and another barrage on May 9, revealing what the new “tactical guided weapon” they also tested on April 18 and likely November 2018 really is. The regime claims that the firing of these “rockets” is routine and defensive in nature. The activities near Wonson are indeed likely to resemble how North Korea would attempt to repel an invasion from the East. Unfortunately, this exercise included what may be a short-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
Washington does not appear to be overreacting to these latest tests, which it should not, and has chosen to focus on the short-range nature of the missile involved. But the Trump administration must not turn a blind eye either. Responses and punishments—proportionate to the significance and gravity of Pyongyang’s actions—can be taken without botching the diplomatic process. The lack of an international response only emboldens the regime to sharpen its gray-zone tactics to push the envelope and gain influence without having to explode nuclear devices or fire long-range missiles.
These smaller, solid-fuel missiles matter because—tipped with nuclear warheads or chemical or biological weapons—they threaten South Korea as well as US troops and American citizens in the South. Indeed these may be the first weapons used in a large scale conflict that could pull allies in. They cannot be regarded simply as part of a sovereign country’s right to develop arms. The larger intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are not the only enemy. Smaller missiles are just as significant. Size does not matter—it’s what you can do with a missile that counts.
What’s in a name? For the first time, Washington, Pyongyang, and Seoul are reading from the same script and agree on one thing: these missiles ought not to be called “missiles.” Instead, they are being named “projectiles” and “rockets.” The common thread is to prevent the already fragile diplomatic process from unraveling…… https://thebulletin.org/2019/05/north-korean-missiles-size-does-not-matter/?utm_source=Bulletin%20Newsletter&utm_medium=iContact%20email&utm_campaign=NKmissiles_05152019
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May 21, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
North Korea, politics international, USA |
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 Statehouse full steam ahead on nuclear plants’ bailout Columbus Dispatch, 20 May 19, Say this much for the proposed bailout by Ohioans of FirstEnergy Solutions’ two Ohio nuclear power plants: The debate shows who really has power at the Statehouse.
Shameless as plant-closing General Motors’ CEO Mary T. Barra is (amid layoffs, her total 2018 compensation was $21.7 million) can anyone imagine Barra asking the Republicans who run Ohio’s General Assembly to boost the sticker price of every car sold in Ohio to save GM’s Lordstown plant?
That’s not far from what House Bill 6, the proposed nuclear bailout, would do to the checkbook of an Ohioan who pays an electric bill, whether to DP&L, FirstEnergy, AEP or Duke. The Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants, built by what’s now FirstEnergy, can’t produce power as cheaply as ever-more-plentiful natural gas. Without customer subsidies, Perry and Davis-Besse will shut down. Something like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, Ohio’s GOP-run House has suddenly become a convert to clean air. And, in fairness, HB 6 would to an extent promote clean (maybe cleaner) Ohio air.
Here’s what the federal Energy Information Administration says: “Unlike fossil fuel-fired power plants, nuclear reactors do not produce air pollution or carbon dioxide while operating.” The federal agency also says this: “However, the processes for mining and refining uranium ore and making reactor fuel all require large amounts of energy.”
This, too, though: Nuclear plants produce radioactive waste — something seemingly unmentioned in Ohio House “debate” on HB 6. (Also unmentioned: If the Ohio General Assembly extends the generating lives of Perry and Davis-Besse, that’d create a couple of money-earning assets for creditors owed money thanks to the bankruptcy of FirstEnergy Solutions, a soon-to-be-independent FirstEnergy tentacle.)
“Debate” is in quotes because of last week’s attempt by Rep. Nino Vitale, an Urbana Republican who chairs the House committee hearing HB 6, to “save time” by stifling Democrats’ questions. ……
On the downside, for HB 6 supporters: The Republican-run Pennsylvania General Assembly appears to have backed off a plan to subsidize the Three Mile Island nuclear plant’s Unit 1, owned by Exelon Corp. (In 1979′s TMI accident, Unit 2, then owned by General Public Utilities, partially melted down and has been shuttered ever since. GPU later merged with FirstEnergy Corp.) ……….
At the Statehouse, the actors change. The script doesn’t. Reaching back to the Ohio Gang of Statehouse lobbyists who swarmed around future Republican President Warren G. Harding 100 years ago, utilities, banks and insurance companies more often win than lose General Assembly battles. That’s why, HB 6′s merits aside, every Ohio electricity customer may want to keep his or her checkbook handy.Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University.tsuddes@gmail.com https://www.dispatch.com/opinion/20190520/column-statehouse-full-steam-ahead-on-nuclear-plants-bailout
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May 21, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA |
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Soaring costs but limited progress in cleanup of “scariest” nuclear sites https://www.salon.com/2019/05/18/soaring-costs-but-limited-progress-in-cleanup-of-scariest-nuclear-sites_partner/
The progress to clean up nuclear waste sites appears to be slowing down though still devouring billions of dollars, PHIL ZAHODIAKIN, MAY 18, 2019 THE PROGRESS OF A DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY PROGRAM TO CLEAN UP THE NATION’S MOST DANGEROUS NUCLEAR WASTE SITES APPEARS TO BE SLOWING DOWN EVEN THOUGH IT’S STILL DEVOURING BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
That discouraging picture emerges in the latest report by the federal Government Accountability Office on the long-running cleanup effort. Launched in 1989, it was designed to clean up 107 sites engaged in research or production of enriched uranium or plutonium for making nuclear weapons.
Cleanup work at 91 of the Cold War-era sites is finished. But the remaining 16 pose the greatest health risks — especially those with underground storage tanks leaking highly radioactive waste.
Testifying last week before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, a GAO official said that for reasons that are unclear, estimated cleanup costs at the 16 ”biggest and scariest sites” have increased by $214 billion despite the Department of Energy (DOE) spending $48 billion since 2011.
David C. Trimble, the GAO’s director for natural resources and the environment, said the soaring costs ”are getting worse as the growth in cleanup liabilities vastly outpaces [the DOE’s] ability to reduce them.”
DOE officials are trying to pin down the reasons for delays and cost overruns, Trimble said, “but they haven’t finished their ‘root cause’ analysis.”
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) asked Trimble and Ann Marie White, director of the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management how they would “explain to the taxpayers this astonishing cost increase when the number of cleanup sites hasn’t changed.” White replied that the 56 million gallons of radioactive liquids and sludge in the underground tanks at the immense Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington are driving “much of the increase.”
But the GAO has cited other problems, too, including DOE providing Congress with inconsistent and misleading information. For example, Trimble said, legislation passed in 2011 required DOE to annually report on its funding needs, but the reports have been submitted in only two of the years since.
“So, what are [the taxpayers] buying for all this money?” Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked, observing that the latest estimate to complete the work at all 16 sites has reached $377 billion.
Rep. Ann M. Kuster (D-N.H.) pointed out that, besides costs, the risk of accidents or sabotage at the 16 sites only increases with time. And Trimble drew an analogy to a type of mortgage popular during the housing bubble of the early 2000s.
By spending billions to contain radioactive soil, water, and nuclear materials at their sites of origin without a path to completing cleanups, “There’s a danger that, at some point, the dynamic starts to look like an interest-only loan that doesn’t require you to pay down the principal amount of the loan,” Trimble said.
Trimble said he was encouraged by DOE’s willingness to accept management improvements recommended by GAO
But Ed Lyman, acting director of the nuclear safety project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Fair Warning that “GAO issues one report after another about DOE’s mismanagement of the nuclear cleanup program but the reports don’t seem to move the ball.”
Pointing out that the experiments to condense and vitrify (or turn into glass) the liquid wastes at Hanford and Savannah River, S.C., “have not been going well,” Lyman added that the long disposal delays leave the safety of the sites in a nether world of “borrowed time.”
Besides Hanford, where cleanup activities are expected to continue at least until 2070, and the Savannah River Nuclear Reservation, which will keep producing radioactive tritium during its cleanup, some of the other, major sites among the 16 left to clean up include the World War 2-era facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and the gaseous diffusion plants in Piketon, Ohio and Paducah, Ky.: formerly principal source of enriched uranium.
May 20, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
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5 Reason’s Why HB 6, Ohio’s Nuclear Plant Subsidy Proposal, Should Be 
Rejected, Uniion of Concerned Scientists, STEVE CLEMMER, DIRECTOR OF ENERGY RESEARCH, CLEAN ENERGY | MAY 16, 2019 Last November, UCS released Nuclear Power Dilemma, which found that more than one-third of existing nuclear plants, representing 22 percent of total US nuclear capacity, are uneconomic or slated to close over the next decade. This included the Davis-Besse and Perry plants in Ohio that are owned by Akron-based FirstEnergy Solutions. Replacing these plants with natural gas would cause emissions to rise at a time when we need to achieve deep cuts in emissions to limit the worst impacts of climate change.
When we released our report, my colleague Jeff Deyette described how a proposal backed by FirstEnergy to subsidize its unprofitable nuclear plants in Ohio was deeply flawed and did not meet the conditions recommended in our report. By providing a blatant handout to the nuclear and fossil fuel industries at the expense of renewable energy and energy efficiency, ironically, the latest proposal to create a “Clean Air Program” in Ohio (House Bill 6) is bad for consumers, the economy and the environment.
Here are five reasons why this proposal is flawed and should be rejected:
1. HB 6 doesn’t protect consumers
…………..HB 6 doesn’t require FirstEnergy Solutions to demonstrate need or limit the amount and duration of the subsidies to protect consumers and avoid windfall profits as recommended in our report. It simply sets the starting price at $9.25/MWh and increases that value annually for inflation. ……… FirstEnergy Solutions nuclear plants would receive approximately $170 million per year in subsidies, or 55% of the total…..
2. HB 6 is a bait and switch tactic to gut Ohio’s clean energy laws
But here’s the rub. HB 6 would effectively gut the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards to pay for the subsidies for Ohio’s existing nuclear, coal and natural gas plants. It would make the standards voluntary by exempting customers from the charges collected from these affordable and successful programs unless they chose to opt-in to the standards. This could result in a net increase in emissions and a net loss of jobs in Ohio over time.
This political hit job is outrageous, but not at all surprising. It is just another attempt in a long series of efforts by clean energy opponents to rollback Ohio’s renewable and efficiency standards over the past five years …….
the cost of wind and solar has fallen by more than 70 percent over the past decade, making them more affordable for consumers and competitive with natural gas power plants in many parts of the country. ……
Energy efficiency programs are especially important for low-income households. By lowering their energy bills, they have more money to spend on food, health care and other necessities.
3. HB6 creates a false sense of competition
While renewable energy technologies are technically eligible to compete for funding under HB 6, several criteria would effectively exclude them:
- It excludes any projects that have received tax incentives like the federal production tax credit or investment tax credit, which applies to nearly every renewable energy project.
- Eligible facilities must be larger than 50 MW, which excludes most solar projects, and wind projects have to be between 5 MW and 50 MW, which is smaller than most existing utility scale wind projects in the state.
- Eligible projects must receive compensation through organized wholesale energy markets, which excludes smaller customer-owned projects like rooftop solar photovoltaic systems.
When combined with the rollback to the renewable standard, this absurdly stringent criteria would create too much uncertainty for renewable developers to obtain financing to build new projects in Ohio.
4. HB 6 will increase Ohio’s reliance on natural gas
While HB 6 could temporarily prevent the replacement of Ohio’s nuclear plants with natural gas, gutting the renewables and efficiency standards would undermine the state’s pathway to achieving a truly low-carbon future by locking in more gas generation as coal plants retire. …….
5. HB 6 includes no safety criteria or transition plans
HB 6 does not require FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants to meet strong safety standards as a condition for receiving subsidies, as recommended in our report. While Davis-Besse and Perry are currently meeting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) safety standards–as measured by their reactor oversight process (ROP) action matrix quarterly rating system–both plants have had problems with critical back-up systems during the past two years that put them out of compliance.
The nuclear industry has been trying to weaken the ROP for years………
A better approach
On May 2, House Democrats announced an alternative “Clean Energy Jobs Plan” that would address many of the problems with HB 6. The plan would modify the state’s Alternative Energy Standard (AES) by increasing the contribution from renewable energy from 12.5% by 2027 to 50% by 2050and fix the onerous set-back requirements that have been a major impediment to large scale wind development. It would expand the AES to maintain a 15% baseline for nuclear power. In addition, it would improve the state’s energy efficiency standards, expand weatherization programs for low-income households, and create new clean energy job training programs…….
With more than 112,000 clean energy jobs in 2018, Ohio ranks third in the Midwest and eighth in the country. Ohio added nearly 5,000 new clean energy jobs in 2018. While most of the clean energy jobs are in the energy efficiency industry, Ohio is also a leading manufacturer of components for the wind and solar industries.
To capitalize on these rapidly growing global industries, lawmakers in Ohio should reject HB 6 and move forward with a real clean air program that ramps-up investments in renewables and efficiency and achieves the deep cuts in emissions that are needed to limit the worst impacts of climate change. https://blog.ucsusa.org/steve-clemmer/5-reasons-why-hb6-should-be-rejected
May 20, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, politics, USA |
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Is the Air Force Really Testing an ‘Earth-Penetrating’ Nuclear Bomb? Nope. And here is why. National Interest
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May 20, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, weapons and war |
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Power, 05/17/2019 | Darrell Proctor A federal judge this week ruled the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) must continue to honor an agreement to sell the unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant to a real estate developer who has said he would complete construction of the long-idled project.
U.S. District Court Judge Liles C. Burke, in a 17-page opinion issued after a hearing this week in Huntsville, Alabama, declined to dismiss a lawsuit brought by developer Franklin Haney, who sued TVA in November 2018 for breach of contract after TVA said it could not complete the sale of the Bellefonte site and its assets to Haney’s Nuclear Development LLC.
Haney in 2016 was the winning bidder in an auction for Bellefonte, agreeing to pay $111 million for the twin-reactor nuclear plant. He sued TVA last year after the federally owned utility said it needed approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to authorize the sale.
TVA at the 2016 auction said the winning bidder would have two years to complete the purchase. Haney has argued he was ready to take over Bellefonte last year, though the NRC was still reviewing his application to resume construction at the site. TVA asked the district court to dismiss Haney’s lawsuit, saying federal rules require the sale to be authorized by the NRC, and thus TVA cannot legally sell the plant to Haney.
Nuclear Development filed a license transfer application with the NRC on Nov. 13, 2018, a couple of weeks after the sale’s original closing date, and just more than two weeks before an extended deadline to complete the sale by Nov. 30. TVA told Haney on Nov. 29 that it could not complete the transaction without approval of the license transfer by the NRC. In the sales agreement with Haney, TVA said “federal law at all times govern the validity, interpretation and enforceability” of the sale.
Developer: $30 Million Spent on Project……….
VA has until May 29 to respond to the court ruling. Burke has not ruled out that he could agree with TVA’s arguments if the case goes to trial. TVA, meanwhile, must maintain Bellefonte’s deferred construction permit for a possible transfer to Haney once a decision is reached in the case.
Haney has said his group can finish the nuclear plant, and sell its power for a competitive price. His group has not identified any utility or other customer that would buy Bellefonte’s electricity.
TVA has said that if the deal with Haney falls through, the utility would again put the site Bellefonte up for sale.
May 20, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Legal, USA |
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picture is from Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/d35f0566-787b-11e9-be7d-6d846537acab
John Bolton Has Wanted War With Iran Since Before You Were Born
“I actually temper John,” Trump said, “which is pretty amazing.” Mother Jones, DAN SPINELLI, 18 May 19, Fourteen months into his tenure as national security adviser, John Bolton has become a central figure in the run-up to what could be the most extensive American military offensive since the invasion of Iraq. Tensions between Iran and the United States have been high for weeks, beginning with a menacing video Bolton released in February targeting the Iranian supreme leader and reached a boil last week when, according the New York Times, he ordered the Pentagon to prepare to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East to counter Iran. ……
May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics international, USA, weapons and war |
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Nuclear Weapons Are Getting Less Predictable, and More Dangerous Defense One, BY PATRICK TUCKER, TECHNOLOGY EDITOR MAY 16, 2019 Facing steerable ICBMs and smaller warheads, the Pentagon seeks better tracking as the White House pursues an unlikely arms-control treaty.
On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to discuss, among many things, the prospect of a new, comprehensive nuclear-weapons treaty with Russia and China. At the same time, the Pentagon is developing a new generation of nuclear weapons to keep up with cutting-edge missiles and warheads coming out of Moscow. If the administration fails in its ambitious renegotiation, the world is headed toward a new era of heightened nuclear tension not seen in decades.
That’s because these new weapons are eroding the idea of nuclear predictability.
Since the dawn of the nuclear era, the concept of the nuclear triad — bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles — created a shared set of expectations around what the start of a nuclear war would look like. If you were in NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado and you saw ICBMs headed toward the United States, you knew that a nuclear first strike was underway. The Soviets had a similar set of expectations, and this shared understanding created the delicate balance of deterrence — a balance that is becoming unsettled.
Start with Russia’s plans for new, more-maneuverable ICBMs. Such weapons have loosely been dubbed “hypersonic weapons” — something of a misnomer because all intercontinental ballistic missiles travel at hypersonic speeds of five or more times the speed of sound — and they create new problems for America’s defenders. …….
The United States is starting to build a new generation of smaller nukes of its own. The reasoning was laid out in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, and the weapons have been rolling off the assembly line since January……
But Selva also noted that low-yield weapons present the same sort of ambiguity as hypersonic weapons.
“We don’t know what they launched at us until it explodes,” he said.
The U.S. military has responded to Russian weapons development with several other key moves: building a next-generation air-launched cruise missile, hiring Northrop Grumman to build a new penetrating bomber, lowering the nuclear yield on some sub-launched ballistic missiles, and exploring bringing back a sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCM, that could have a nuclear tip……
Lynn Rusten, vice president of the Global Nuclear Policy Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said that the ambiguity problem would apply to the SLCMs effort as well. “We use conventional SLCMs a lot in our normal warfare. If you start having nuclear SLCMs deployed as well, there will be a real discrimination in terms of when one of those things is launched, what is that thing coming at you? Where is it going?”……..
Many arms control experts say the first and most important step that the U.S. could take in navigating this far more unpredictable future is to extend New START. Even Selva, who declined to offer a public recommendation about such an extension, said that the United States benefits in multiple ways from the treaty’s mechanisms for keeping track of the parties’ strategic arsenals. ……
A collapse of New START might also cause China to embrace a more aggressive nuclear stance to hedge against rising unpredictability…….
As uncertainty increases, misperceptions become more dangerous. And there is reason to believe the United States is already looking at the situation through various imperfect lenses. One is the belief that China has any interest in trilateral arms control. Another is “escalate to de-escalate.” Some Russia experts, such as Olga Oliker, the Europe and Central Asia director at the International Crisis Group, call it a fiction dreamed up in the West after a misreading of a Russia’s 2017 Naval Doctrine.
“Moscow continues to believe, and Russian generals in private conversations emphasize, that any conventional conflict with NATO risks rapid escalation without ‘de-escalation’ — into all-destroying nuclear war. It must therefore be avoided at all costs,” she wrote in February.
“If anything, U.S. emphasis on new lower-yield capabilities — effectively an ‘escalate to de-escalate’ strategy of the sort many attribute to Russia — would undermine the deterrent balance, potentially triggering the very sorts of crises low-yield proponents hope to avert.”
Michael Kofman, a senior research scientist at CNA, says the “escalate to de-escalate” debate obscures a more fundamental truth about Russian strategic doctrine. “Russia has never accepted the proposition that a war with the United States could be conventional only. Hence, Russian nuclear strategy has a firm place for scalable employment of nuclear weapons, for demonstration, escalation management, warfighting, and war termination if need be,” he told Defense One. “The gist of the problem is that the Pentagon believes that nuclear weapons are some kind of gimmick that can be deterred in conventional war, but actually the prospect for conventional-only war with Russia is somewhat limited from the outset.”
Bottom line: the U.S., Russia, and China, may be entering into a high-stakes discussion on nuclear arms with each suffering from severe misconceptions about the others’ intent. The price of failure of the new negotiation effort, if New START is not re-affirmed, would be a new period of heightened nuclear tensions and less predictability.
Rusten believes the arms race has already begun.
“We don’t want to be where that trajectory will take us five years from now,” she said.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/05/everyones-nuclear-weapons-are-getting-less-predictable-and-more-dangerous/157052/
May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war |
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Vote Delayed On Bill To Prop Up Ohio Nuclear Plants WOSU Public Media, By JO INGLES 18 May 19, Lawmakers in the Ohio House continue to debate a bill that would bail out the state’s two financially struggling nuclear power plants. Earlier this week, some Democrats walked out of a committee hearing, saying their concerns were not being heard……
Democrats on the committee say they need more assurances that the changes being made will not hurt air quality or do away with clean energy…..
FirstEnergy gave more than $150,000 to House Republicans in 2018 leading up to the November election, but Householder denies a connection between the bill and FirstEnergy’s political support
https://radio.wosu.org/post/vote-delayed-bill-prop-ohio-nuclear-plants#stream/0
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May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA |
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With Bolton whispering in Trump’s ear, war with Iran is no longer unthinkable, Guardian, Owen Jones 16 May 19, Antiwar activists must do everything they can to prevent it, and that includes pressuring US allies
It was a deception that would lead to millions of civilian deaths, and the deaths of nearly 60,000 US soldiers. In August 1964 President Lyndon B Johnson solemnly declared that, after two apparent North Vietnamese attacks on US navy destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, military action would take place.
Four years later, Senator Albert Gore – father of Bill Clinton’s future vice-president – warned in a closed Foreign Relations Committee session that, “If this country has been misled … the consequences are very great.” His suspicions were correct. The second Gulf of Tonkin attack might never have happened – and perhaps neither did. Communications to make it look like the attack occurred had been falsified. But US policy was already set on a dramatic escalation of the Vietnam war: and here was the perfect pretext.
This week it emerged that the US government is discussing sending up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East for possible military action against Iran. “We’ll see what happens with Iran,” declared President Trump. “If they do anything, it will be a bad mistake.” The principal driving force behind this is Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, a man who thinks there is no problem to which the answer isn’t war: in the Bush era, his militarism was too much for the commander-in-chief who laid waste to Iraq. You can see them scrabbling for excuses already: the Trump administration says Iran-backed proxy groups are preparing attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria, a claim forcefully denied this week by British major-general Christopher Ghika, the deputy commander of counter-terror operations in both countries. The US has blamed Iran, without evidence, for damage to Saudi oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Could an Iranian Gulf of Tonkin be looming?
It is easy to dismiss these fears as alarmist. Is Trump not the man who confounded his critics by seeking peace on the Korean peninsula? Trump boasts that he “actually tempers” Bolton; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, states: “There won’t be any war.” As Sanam Vakil, a research fellow at Chatham House, tells me: “Both sides are posturing, sending [threats] back and forth, and I don’t think heading for any direct military interventions.” Bolton, she reassures me, is just one of many voices in the room, and US secretary of state Mike Pompeo himself says that the US is not seeking war……..
A senior Senate aide tells me that the triumph of Bolton’s plans is all too conceivable: Bolton could exploit Trump’s ignorance of policy, an area in which he excels. While any war would not be popular with Trump’s base he could be convinced by Bolton that it is possible to escalate up to a point, then pull back at the brink: but by then it may be impossible to do so. Rightwing thinktanks and broadcasters are already hyping up links between Iran and al-Qaida.
The consequences of an Iranian conflagration should horrify us. Dan Plesch – a specialist at Soas University of London’s Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy – details the US air and naval power potentially ranged against Iran: it’s what one of his colleagues describes as “a tsunami of precision-guided molten metal”. The “lethality of US force”, says Plesch, “to very rapidly destroy military, civil, political and economic infrastructure is hugely underestimated” – and is far greater than in 2003. The US would seek to impose a government-in-exile with no roots in the country; a bloody balkanisation could follow. Iran would mobilise its regional influence – dramatically increased by the Iraq catastrophe – raising the prospect of wider regional conflict.
The risk is already too real for us to wait and see before acting. Pressure must be exerted by the public on US allies to declare their total opposition to any war with Iran, including not permitting their military bases to be used. The mass protests that will greet Trump’s visit in three weeks’ time must include demands that no British support for such a bloody adventure be offered. Feeling blasé about the danger? Well, consider this: all that stands between Bolton’s violent fantasy being executed is Donald Trump himself. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/15/war-with-iran-john-bolton-donald-trump-usa?CMP=share_btn_tw
May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, politics international, USA, weapons and war |
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