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Chelsea Manning Is Going Back To Jail, Saying She’d Rather “Starve To Death” Than Testify About WikiLeaks, BuzzFeed News,
Manning was released for a week after the grand jury she had been subpoenaed to testify before expired. A judge ordered her detained again on Thursday.
Zoe Tillman, BuzzFeed News Reporter, May 16, 2019, ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — After a week of freedom, former Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning was ordered back to jail on Thursday for once again refusing to testify before a federal grand jury.
Manning had been jailed for two months starting on March 8 after she refused to answer questions before a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, about WikiLeaks and the group’s founder Julian Assange — specifically, about the cache of classified military documents that she gave to WikiLeaks in 2010. She was released on May 9 because the term of the grand jury expired.
US District Judge Anthony Trenga ordered Manning jailed on Thursday following a two-hour hearing, half of which was sealed. During the second, public portion of the hearing, Trenga announced that he had once again found Manning in civil contempt, and decided that notwithstanding her pledge not to cooperate, he thought there was still a chance that more jail time could convince her otherwise. The government had argued that because Manning had an appeal pending during part of the previous two months she served, she spent part of her earlier jail time with some hope of release. …..
Manning, wearing a black jacket, shirt, pants, and boots, told the judge she would rather “starve to death” than change her opinion, and added that she meant that “literally.”
“The government cannot build a prison bad enough, cannot create a system worse than the idea that I would ever change my principles,” she said.
The judge has the power to keep Manning in jail until she testifies or until the term of the grand jury expires again. Trenga also imposed a fine — after 30 days in jail, a daily fine of $500 will kick in, and that amount will go up to $1,000 per day after 60 days. …….
After the previous grand jury expired earlier this month and Manning was released, prosecutors convened a new grand jury in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and issued a new subpoena to Manning, requiring her to come back and testify. Speaking to reporters before she went into the courthouse, Manning again vowed not to answer any questions.
“I will not cooperate with this or any other grand jury,” Manning said.
Grand jury proceedings are normally secret, but Manning and her support team confirmed that prosecutors want to ask her about WikiLeaks. A military court found Manning guilty of violating the Espionage Act in 2013, among other crimes, for leaking hundreds of thousands of military documents to WikiLeaks. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison. But in January 2017, in the final days of the Obama administration, former president Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence, and she was released in May of that year.
Assange is facing an indictment in the Alexandria court charging him with conspiring with Manning to hack into US Defense Department computer systems in 2010. Assange is in London — he was arrested on April 11 after spending years in the Ecuadorian Embassy as an asylum-seeker — and is contesting efforts by the US government to extradite him to the United States. It could be years before the extradition fight is resolved, however.
The Justice Department has 60 days after seeking a “provisional arrest” of Assange through UK authorities in mid-April to submit a final extradition package. Once that happens, prosecutors can’t add any more charges against him. It’s unclear if prosecutors want Manning to testify before the grand jury specifically about matters that could lead to more charges against Assange, or as part of a broader investigation with other subjects.
Manning has repeatedly challenged the lawfulness of the government’s effort to force her to testify, and said she believes she may have been under surveillance. The US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit summarily rejected her challenges to the subpoena and her incarceration the first time she was jailed. …….https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/chelsea-manning-back-jail-wikileaks-assange
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May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
civil liberties, USA |
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This Town Didn’t Want to Be a Radioactive Waste Dump. The Government Is Giving Them No Choice. Earther, Yessenia Funes , 17 May 19,PIKETON, OHIO—David and Pam Mills have grown tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and okra on their secluded Appalachian property for about 18 years now. This will be the first year the retired couple doesn’t. They just can’t trust their soil anymore. Not with what’s being built barely a five-minute walk away.
Past the shed and through the gray, bare trees that grow in the backyard, bulldozers and dump trucks are busy scooping tan-colored dirt atop an overlooking hill on a brisk January afternoon. They’re constructing a 100-acre landfill for radioactive waste. …..On a short metal fence marking where the Mills property ends, a sign reads, “U.S. PROPERTY, NO TRESPASSING,” in big, bold letters with red, white, and blue borders.
The Department of Energy (DOE) owns what sits on the other side: the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The DOE built the 1,200-acre facility, located just outside town of Piketon about an hour’s drive south of Columbus in southcentral Ohio, in 1954, as
one of three plants it was using to enrich uranium and develop the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Now, the agency is trying to clean it up.
The landfill—or “on-site waste disposal cell,” as the department calls it—would extend about 60-feet down and house 2 million tons of low-level radioactive waste comprised of soil, asbestos, concrete, and debris. It’ll be outfitted with a clay liner, a plastic cover layer, and a treatment system for any water that leaches through it. When finished, it will be one of the largest nuclear waste dumps east of the Mississippi.
Waste could begin entering it as soon as this fall…….
“It’s gonna contaminate everything,” David says, after he shows me how close the landfill sits to his property. “It’s just a matter of time.”
The couple is far from alone in their fears. The 2,000-strong Village of Piketon passed a
resolution in August 2017 opposing the landfill. So did the
local school district and the
Pike County General Health District, where Piketon resides. The rural, low income, and largely white county is home to more than 28,000 people across a number of small towns and cities, some of which have passed their own resolutions against this project. Driving through neighborhoods behind Piketon’s main highway, lawn signs covered in red stating “NO RADIOACTIVE WASTE DUMP in Pike County” can be seen everywhere……
The Zahn’s Corner Middle School, which sits barely a 10-minute drive away from the plant,
closed on May 13 after university researchers detected enriched uranium inside the building, and traces of neptunium appeared in readings from an air quality monitor right outside the school. While the DOE believes everything’s fine, the Pike County General Health District
has been calling for the department to halt work while it investigates the matter. Townspeople worry this contamination is a direct result of recent activity at the plant.
All of this highlights deep public distrust over the nuclear facility’s cleanup plan. And after reviewing thousands of pages of documents—including independent studies, the project’s record of decision, and the remedial investigation and feasibility studies that went into writing it—to understand the risks, it’s clear the public isn’t worried for nothing.
Here’s the thing: Nothing is technically illegal about the landfill. The DOE, though the polluter, is taking the lead on cleaning up the facility, and the Ohio EPA supports its plan. Whether their decision is morally right given local opposition is another matter. But this is what often happens when a corporation or governmental entity needs to dispose of toxic waste: It gets left in an overlooked town no one’s heard of……..
What they, and everyone really, didn’t understand at the outset of the Cold War was the lasting impacts uranium enrichment could have. Sure, scientists understood radioactive material could cause cancer, but they thought that it’d take
a lot of radiation, explained Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist and acting director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Nuclear Safety Project. Now, we know
any exposure poses a risk……
Now, the DOE is left with the task of cleaning up the more than 2 million tons of low-level radioactive waste and thousands more tons of hazardous waste the plant’s operations left behind. Completing the landfill is estimated to take another 10 to 12 years, with the entire clean-up projected to go on
until 2035. ……
Money aside, shipping radioactive waste off-site has other benefits. Some 24 wetlands and 38 streams sit near the landfill. To bury the waste on-site, the DOE must waive a requirement that prevents it from constructing the landfill within 200 feet of these kinds of water bodies. The department can do so because even though it’s not technically a Superfund, it’s being regulated as one, a common practice for such DOE facilities. ……
the local hydrology is a key point of concern among community members. The region has a rainy climate, and it’s been seeing
above-average levels of precipitation in recent years. More than anything, it’s the idea of rainfall causing the landfill’s contents to leak into the groundwater that makes people so nervous…….
Despite the fancy cut-outs put together by DOE contractor Fluor-BWXT, Chillicothe city council members passed a resolution that day against the waste cell. And it wouldn’t be the last: at least 11 counties, townships, city councils, and school boards in southcentral Ohio have come out against the project. Unfortunately, the plan was set by the time these resolutions passed.
Here’s the thing: Many residents didn’t even know about the landfill until after the DOE had already decided on it. The public had between November 2014 and March 2015 to comment on the project. The department published its record of decision in favor of the landfill on June 30, 2015. Then, the backlash hit……..
A lot of community members worry that the town will continue to be impoverished and devoid of business opportunities so long as it’s home to the landfill. Who’s going to want to invest in a place that’s a nuclear dumpsite?
And Piketon officials don’t trust the DOE at all. Neither does the plant’s former chief scientist, David Manuta, who worked there for nearly 11 years and has seen firsthand the operations that went on.
“DOE has a history in this community of not listening,” Manuta told Earther. “DOE is not a popular government agency in this community.”……
As the Ferguson Group points out in its analysis, fractures deeper than 20 feet exist throughout the entirety of where the landfill will be built, with some reaching as deep as 70 feet.
“This is the craziness of it all. They go out there and investigate this what we call ‘ideal site,’ right?” Karl Kalbacher, the Ferguson Group consultant Piketon hired for this analysis, told me. “There’s groundwater just oozing out of the ground, which tells you there’s a very shallow water table. They document that there are streams that are flowing through the proposed site area.”……..
To opponents of the landfill, all these fractures and discrepancies raise concerns about the DOE’s commitment to keeping the region contaminant-free. So does the recent independent analysis from
Northern Arizona University that prompted the closure of Piketon’s Zahn’s Corner Middle School this week. That analysis found that the Scioto River and village creeks, as well as dust and soils from the school and private homes, are currently contaminated with enriched uranium, neptunium, and plutonium—all radioactive carcinogens. While the analysis did not measure concentrations, it found that much of this contamination could, indeed, be traced back to the plant……..
Regardless of whether the DOE is concerned, the evidence suggests demolition of the plant and construction of the landfill may already be spreading some contaminants via the air. Add in the threat of the landfill impacting groundwater, and opponents see several additional health risks in a regional already overburdened by cancer.
Jeanie Williams, a 63-year-old who’s lived in a spacious trailer home since 1972 right alongside the plant—not far from where the Mills live—knows that statistic all too personally. Cancer took Williams’ brother in 1999. Her dad worked at the plant and died of lung disease about 10 years ago. Her stepfather worked there and died last year from cancer. Her daughter is battling colon cancer. https://earther.gizmodo.com/this-town-didnt-want-to-be-a-radioactive-waste-dump-th-1834789264?IR=T
May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
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“Get Your Endangered Species Off My Bombing Range!” Counter Punch by JOAN 
ROELOFS MAY 17, 2019, “The Department of Defense’s ability to conduct realistic live-fire training, weapons system testing, and essential operations is vital to preparing a more lethal and resilient force for combat. . . . Starting in the late 1990s, the Department became increasingly concerned about “encroachment” pressures adversely affecting the military’s use of training and testing lands. Specifically, military installations saw
two main threats to their ability to test, train, and operate: nearby incompatible land uses and environmental restrictions to protect imperiled species and their habitats.”
Such problems are to be resolved by the DoD Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration
(REPI) Program.
The program employs “buffer partnerships” that include the DoD, private conservation groups, universities, and state and local governments. Also involved, often as additional funders, are other federal departments: Homeland Security, Energy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce; and agencies, for example, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). REPI regards these as “win-win partnerships,” as they share the cost of land or acquire easements to preserve compatible uses and natural habitats, without interfering with bombing or other essential training exercises. In addition to the helpful funding, the military can muster impressive influence over local development authorities, town councils, and adjacent landowners…….
At Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the “Maneuver School of Excellence,” (as well as the notorious School of the Americas, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), live-fire and other training was threatened by threatened species and their habitats. Now the base and its partners are restoring habitat and offering contiguous land for buyers who would use the land for recreation. Among the partners are the Georgia Land Trust, The Conservation Fund, the Alabama Land Trust, and the Nature Conservancy (TNC).
Nationwide, TNC is likely the conservation organization with the greatest amount of funding from the DoD. The TNC grants for Fort Benning alone included (but were not limited to) one for $11,115,000, and another for $55,517,470. Both were described as: “Assist State and local governments to mitigate or prevent incompatible civilian land use/activity that is likely to impair the continued operational utility of a Department of Defense (DoD) military installation.”
Washington State, very receptive to military activities, despite the Hanford nuclear disaster area, has several REPI projects. One of them, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, on Puget Sound, is to eliminate the “threat” to live-fire exercises and other missions coming from imperiled species and incompatible development. The extensive area beyond its 91,000 acres became a designated “Sentinel Landscape,” a partnership headed by Departments of Agriculture, Defense, and Interior to “align resources” to protect military testing “while benefiting ALL partners and landowners.” ……
The Defense Department has several other programs designed to prevent interference with live ammunition, bombing ranges, and other military activities. One is the Legacy Resource Management Program, which seeks civilian partners to help protect endangered species and “to promote stewardship of our nation’s. . . cultural heritage.” Already “The Department of Defense manages thousands of National Register of Historic Places-listed properties. . .” Also working with REPI is the DoD’s Office of Economic Adjustment; its Joint Land Use Studies Program helps local communities to avoid interfering with military operations by their civilian activities.
The military has a poor reputation as regards the environment—we think about the Marshall Islands, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, poisoned aquifers, toxic waste burns, underwater sonar, and much more. It has paid attention to the criticisms. It still engages in its former ways, including the world record of oil consumption and extensive toxic emissions, but now there is a soft cop.
The DoD now emphasizes its need for natural landscapes for realistic training, its wish to avoid displacing or accidently bombing locals, and its help in protecting endangered species. However it does not want any environmental restrictions to poke into its activities. The military wants more land, airspace, and ocean clearance, and will make concessions. It uses the carrot, and the commanding influence of military power. The REPI Program supplies funds and also leverages contributions from state and local governments and conservation organizations, which are henceforth partners…..
there are serious concerns about the REPI project, and similar ones that partner with civilian governments and nongovernmental environmental organizations. First of all, by publicizing its protection of red-cockaded woodpeckers, gopher tortoises and others, their habitats, working farmlands, forests, and wetlands, the DoD emits a dust cloud over the intense environmental destruction of land, sea, and air resulting from military operations and their preparations. Militarization is worldwide and beyond, into space. In addition to the contribution of the US, other nations’ militaries are increasing in size, activities, and lethality. Many have been armed by us, or against the threat of us; some in response to other perceived threats. ……
Toxic wastes are produced (and not sequestered) at many US domestic bases; our military has granted us the bulk of superfund sites. As Joshua Frankhas stated:
US military sites, which total more than 50 million acres, are among the most insidious and dangerous Pentagon legacies. They are strewn with toxic bomb fragments, unexploded munitions, buried hazardous waste, fuel dumps, open pits filled with debris, burn piles and yes, rocket fuel…….
Another major concern about REPI and other military “partnerships” with civilian institutions and terrain is that it erodes the boundaries, however weak these days, between civil and military. Might the US be turning into a banana republic or a military dictatorship? Penetration is not new; the US Army Corps of Engineers have been developing and maintaining recreational lakes and flood control projects for a long time. However, the military is slowly expanding into every nook and cranny of civilian life. …..
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/17/get-your-endangered-species-off-my-bombing-range/
May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
environment, Reference, USA, weapons and war |
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 Some in rural Nevada see benefits in nuclear repository plan, WRAL.com MIRANDA WILLSON, Las Vegas Sun 17 May 19, LAS VEGAS — Elected officials in rural Nye County say they support moving forward with a long-studied but mothballed national nuclear waste repository in Nevada, unlike their counterparts in urban Las Vegas, approximately 90 miles away.
But the Las Vegas Sun reports that residents who live close to Yucca Mountain are split on whether storing approximately 70,000 tons of nuclear waste there is a good idea.
Spanning more than 18,000 square miles, Nye County is the largest county by area in Nevada, with a population of 44,200 people.
Some see the proposed repository as a potential bringer of economic development and jobs to a county where nearly 19% of residents live below the poverty line.
Others say the environmental and human health risks of transporting and storing the nation’s most radioactive material are too high, and unjust, considering that Nevada doesn’t produce nuclear energy.
Nevada’s U.S. senators, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, Gov. Steve Sisolak, Democrats, and most of the state’s congressional representatives and officials in Clark County surrounding Las Vegas share similar concerns.
Nonetheless, Nye County commissioners are urging lawmakers in Congress to support the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, sponsored by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The bill has a name recalling a measure that Congress passed in 1982 and amended in 1987. It would restart the licensing process for establishing Yucca Mountain as the primary storage site for the country’s spent nuclear fuel.
Progress toward licensing stopped in 2009 under President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has signaled support for moving forward again.
In a letter to Barrasso and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, a ranking member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, Nye County commissioners asked lawmakers to allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to renew its review of the Yucca Mountain proposal.
Eight other rural counties in Nevada also support resuming the Yucca Mountain licensing process……..
The county’s National Resources and Federal Facilities chief, Daryl Lacy, said many residents are convinced that nuclear waste isn’t inherently dangerous.
He says Yucca Mountain could bring several thousand highly paid jobs to Nye County, where the former Nevada Test Site, renamed the Nevada National Security Site, remains the largest employer in Nye County.
Lacy said officials support resuming discussions about how waste could be transported and stored safely, as well as financial benefits the county and the state would get in return.
“Many of the people here understand that yes, there’s risks, yes, it’s a nasty material, but it can be handled appropriately. And it’s not necessarily any worse than other things that have been done here in the past,” Lacy said, referring to nuclear detonations from 1951 to 1992……..
Ninety-eight nuclear reactors operating in 30 U.S. states have so far produced approximately 90,000 tons of radioactive waste. Most is stored at reactor sites using dry cask storage, intended to be a temporary solution……
Susan Sorrells, owner and manager of Shoshone Village just over the California state line, says Yucca Mountain could devastate an area that relies on tourism to Death Valley National Park, which draws more than 1 million people a year.
A fourth-generation resident of the town of fewer than 30 people, Sorrells said Yucca Mountain would negatively impact ecotourism that she spearheads. She also worries about impacts on the area water supply, which she says is affected by nuclear testing decades ago.
Patrick Donnelly, Nevada director for the Center for Biological Diversity and a former Shoshone resident, said he believes environmental and safety risks outweigh potential economic benefits.
Joe Kennedy, former Timbisha Shoshone chairman, says nuclear waste could affect the environment and water supply in Indian Village and Furnace Creek, California, close to Death Valley.
Ian Zabarte, principal man for the larger Western Shoshone Nation that includes the Timbisha, questions whether the Timbisha would reap any financial benefits if Yucca Mountain moves forward……. https://www.wral.com/some-in-rural-nevada-see-benefits-in-nuclear-repository-plan/18393722/
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May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
opposition to nuclear, USA |
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New Jersey’s $300 Million Nuclear Power Bailout Is Facing a Court Challenge. Does It Have a Chance? The state’s utility advocate said regulators should not have approved the subsidies for the energy company PSEG.by
Talia Buford , May 16,
But some of the board members who voted for subsidies had openly questioned the need for them, echoing concerns expressed by the board’s staff and objections raised by utility watchdogs.
Now, the unusual circumstances around the vote are the basis of a legal challenge by the state-appointed utility advocate, who says the subsidies — and the surcharge financing them — should be cut off.
In an appeal filed on Wednesday in state court, Stefanie Brand, the state’s rate counsel, said that by ignoring its own staff experts and providing little basis for the amount of the surcharge, the board had violated the law.
“It’s very unusual and inconsistent with the statute,” Brand said.
But will that argument persuade a court?
“It’s hard, in general, to beat regulators at their own game,” said Ari Peskoe, a lawyer and director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School. ……..
“The significant thing about this filing is the rate counsel was given this on a silver platter on why these subsidies are unwarranted,” said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “It’s not a surprise that she’d be filing an appeal. I think the surprise is the ratepayer has such a strong case.”
The appeal focuses on four issues: the staff findings that PSEG didn’t meet the criteria for the subsidy; the board’s dismissal of those findings; the lack of reasoning for setting the subsidy rate at $0.004 per kilowatt hour, which was calculated to provide a total subsidy of $300 milion; and whether the amount of the subsidy represented clean-energy benefits as legislators claimed.
PSEG’s Hope Creek and Salem plants in Salem County make up the second-largest nuclear facility in the United States, and they serve as an economic anchor for the area, which is represented by New Jersey’s most powerful legislator, Senate President Stephen Sweeney. New Jersey passed its nuclear subsidy last year after intense lobbying by PSEG, which spent nearly $4 million in 2017 and 2018 on the effort.
Similar measures that offer incentives for nuclear plants to stay open after the companies have threatened to close them survived challenges in federal court. This month, Pennsylvania legislators said they didn’t have the support to bring the proposed subsidy bill to a vote, prompting Exelon to announce plans to close Three Mile Island nuclear plant in September.
Since the debate over the New Jersey measure began in 2017, Brand has questioned how legislators came up with the amount of the subsidy…….
At the board meeting last month, BPU staff and an independent consultant reported that PSEG was including some ineligible costs and inflating others in an attempt to satisfy the statute’s requirements, but they said that the facilities were not actually in danger of closing. …….
While the run-up to the BPU vote was marked by full-page newspaper ads and stories in local media, the only indication that customers were subsidizing PSEG’s nuclear plants was, for some, a note on the top corner of their latest bills. https://www.propublica.org/article/new-jerseys-300-million-nuclear-power-bailout-is-facing-a-court-challenge-does-it-have-a-chance#
May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Legal, USA |
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The Nuclear Weapons Sisterhood, It’s hard for women to be hired, promoted or taken seriously in the national security establishment. NYT, By Carol Giacomo, Ms. Giacomo is a member of the editorial board, May 15, 2019 In the mid-1990s, Laura Holgate, then a senior Defense Department official, was in Moscow leading a delegation to discuss ways the United States could help the Russians secure plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons.
image – New York Times
After a male Russian official gave a confusing explanation about the Kremlin’s storage plans, she sought clarification. The Russian, his voice dripping with sarcasm, offered to “put this in terms a woman would understand” and then described loading plutonium into a “cooking pot and putting a lid on it.”
……. For women, people of color and transgender people, sexism, discrimination and harassment are often barriers to being hired, promoted or taken seriously in the national security bureaucracy — overseas and at home.
…….Women are particularly underrepresented in senior positions dealing with nuclear issues, according to a study by New America, part of a growing effort involving various groups and individuals to make the fields more welcoming to women.
Part of the problem is the discipline itself, the study found. Policies involving the building, deployment, targeting and use of nuclear weapons have long been the province of an insular, innovation-averse group of men. Discussions by this “priesthood” conflate national security and manliness with sexualized jargon about vertical erector launchers and thrust-to-weight ratios. The demand for nuclear orthodoxy has excluded outsiders, particularly women, placing them in a “consensual straitjacket” of conformity in a male-dominated world.
Just consider Donald Regan, the former White House chief of staff, who before President Ronald Reagan’s summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 said women were “not going to understand throw-weights” or other national security issues raised at the meeting.
The numbers show how this order became so entrenched. From the 1970s to 2019, the study found, women held 11 of 68 of senior positions dealing with nuclear weapons, arms control and nonproliferation at the State Department, 13 of 109 of these jobs at the now-defunct Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, five of 63 at the Defense Department, five of 36 at the Energy Department and two of 21 national security adviser positions. ……
To be successful in these posts so critical to national security, women pay a “gender tax,” performing “the constant mental and emotional calculus that comes with implicit sexism; explicit sexism and discrimination; gender and sexual harassment; and gendered expectations,” according to the New America study, based on interviews with 23 women who held senior government positions.
Nearly all of the 23 said they were harassed or saw others harassed, and when a foreign official was involved, the stress was magnified because it could cause an international incident.
During a round-table discussion with Global Politico in 2017, Laura Rosenberger, who spent 11 years at the State Department and the National Security Council, talked about wearing more pantsuits and baggier tops as a defense mechanism “to make myself seem less attractive in the workplace.”
Mieke Eoyang, who served 12 years as a staff member on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, has described how she would walk into a meeting and be asked to get coffee or how a committee chairman cornered her at a reception to discuss his sexual prowess. ….
To encourage progress, Pamela Hamamoto, who served as United States ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, began a program called Gender Champions to identify international leaders committed to advancing women, and Ms. Holgate, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, replicated it in the United States. …..https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/opinion/women-national-security.html
May 16, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, Women |
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IEEFA update: Bailing out Ohio’s nuclear and coal plants unnecessary for supply or rate stability
But $300 million annual charge would be bonanza for FirstEnergy Solutions (IEEFA U.S.) – A bill before the Ohio General Assembly (HB 6), aimed at rescuing FirstEnergy Solutions’ economically uncompetitive aging nuclear and coal-fired power plants is misguided, according to a briefing note released by the Cleveland-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).The briefing note: Bailout Bill a Bonanza for FirstEnergy Solutions, may end up costing Ohio consumers and businesses more than $300 million per year “in perpetuity,” according to IEEFA.
“Proponents of this ill-advised bill are using misleading arguments to warn about nonexistent dangers to the electricity supply and rising energy costs,” said IEEFA director of resource planning analysis and author of the briefing note David Schlissel. “The data shows, to the contrary, that Ohio has ample energy supply and that retiring the plants in question would in no way undermine the reliability of the system or raise costs.”
The bill would keep open FirstEnergy Solutions’ Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants and could also provide revenue for the Sammis coal-fired plant in Ohio. There is no evidence to suggest that extending their operational lifespans would benefit consumers.
EEFA found that:
- FirstEnergy’s nuclear and coal plants are not needed to ensure electricity supply or reliability in Ohio.
- Taking the nuclear plants off the market would be unlikely to drive up electricity rates – but reducing energy efficiency and renewable energy would.
- Investing in solar and other renewables would make sense rather than subsidizing aging nuclear and coal-fired plants.
PJM, the operator of the regional electricity market, has concluded that the deactivation of FirstEnergy Solutions’ nuclear power plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania will have no effect on the reliability of the electric power grid……..
Those studies by the Brattle Group were based on misleading assumptions about the cost of renewables and inflated notions about how much energy the nuclear plants were actually providing to the system,” said Schlissel. “This bill is clearly designed to benefit FirstEnergy Solutions and not Ohio ratepayers.”
IEEFA recommends that Ohio follow the lead of New York state and allocate resources to support the tax bases of school districts and communities undergoing economic transition caused by the closure of coal and nuclear plants.
The briefing note suggests that the state design a program to support workers who lose their jobs when coal and nuclear plants close. Such a program should also include thorough and timely clean-up and decommissioning of these facilities, with hiring preferences given to former plant employees, according to IEEFA. http://ieefa.org/ieefa-update-bailing-out-ohios-nuclear-and-coal-plants-unnecessary-for-supply-or-rate-stability/?fbclid=IwAR1t8o2qjaqzn995F360PTVYtV5fimZUaPX1ls7R-gDd1q15XyUnO3AjuQA
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May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, politics, USA |
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Overall, an all-out U.S. attack on the Soviet Union, China and satellite countries in 1962 would have killed 335 million people within the first seventy-two hours.
As devastating as these projections are, all readily admit they don’t tell the entire story. While these three studies model the immediate effects of a nuclear attack, long-term problems might kill more people than the attack itself. The destruction of cities would deny the millions of injured, even those who might otherwise easily survive, even basic health care. What remains of government—in any country—would be hard pressed to maintain order in the face of dwindling food and energy supplies, a contaminated landscape, the spread of disease and masses of refugees.
While the threat of nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union has ended, the United States now faces the prospect of a similar war with Russia or China. The effects of a nuclear war in the twenty-first century would be no less severe. The steps to avoiding nuclear war, however, are the same as they were during the Cold War: arms control, confidence-building measures undertaken by both sides and a de-escalation of tensions.
335 Million Dead: If America Launched an All-Out Nuclear War https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/335-million-dead-if-america-launched-all-out-nuclear-war-57262 “Under SIOP, “about 1,000” installations that were related to “nuclear delivery capability” would be struck.” by Kyle Mizokami 13 May 19, A major draw of U.S. nuclear weapons to Soviet cities would have also been the presence of local airports, which would have functioned as dispersal airfields for nuclear-armed bombers. On the other hand, the Soviet attack would largely hit ICBM fields and bomber bases in low-population-density regions of the Midwest, plus a handful of submarine bases on both coasts.
It is no exaggeration to say that for those who grew up during the Cold War, all-out nuclear war was “the ultimate nightmare.” The prospect of an ordinary day interrupted by air-raid sirens, klaxons and the searing heat of a thermonuclear explosion was a very real, albeit remote, possibility. Television shows such as The Day After and Threadsrealistically portrayed both a nuclear attack and the gradual disintegration of society in the aftermath. In an all-out nuclear attack, most of the industrialized world would have been bombed back to the Stone Age, with hundreds of millions killed outright and perhaps as many as a billion or more dying of radiation, disease and famine in the postwar period.
During much of the Cold War, the United States’ nuclear warfighting plan was known as the SIOP, or the Single Integrated Operating Plan. The first SIOP, introduced in 1962, was known as SIOP-62, and its effects on the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and China were documented in a briefing paper created for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and brought to light in 2011 by the National Security Archive. The paper presupposed a new Berlin crisis, similar to the one that took place in 1961, but escalating to full-scale war in western Europe.
Although the war scenario was fictional, the post-attack estimates were very real. According to the paper, the outlook for Communist bloc countries subjected to the full weight of American atomic firepower was grim. The paper divided attack scenarios into two categories: one in which the U.S. nuclear Alert Force, a percentage of overall nuclear forces kept on constant alert, struck the Soviet Union and its allies; and a second scenario where the full weight of the nuclear force, known as the Full Force, was used. Continue reading →
May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, weapons and war |
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 The Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign: A prelude to war with Iran? Bulletin of the Atomic Scentists By Dina Esfandiary, May 6, 2019 The Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran has picked up pace. Last month, the administration designated the Revolutionary Guards as a terror organization. Last week, it cancelled waivers from US sanctions that allowed some countries to buy Iranian crude oil, aiming to force Iranian oil exports to zero, and only renewed some of the waivers that allowed foreign countries to engage in civil nuclear cooperation with Iran—key to the functioning of the Iran nuclear deal. This week, the White House stated that a routine deployment of and aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf was in fact intended to “send a clear and unmistakable message” to Iran.
To date, however, the maximum pressure campaign has failed to change Iranian behavior. In fact, it seems designed to push Iran to leave the deal and set the scene for military confrontation……..
The 2015 nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), specified that three Iranian facilities—the Fordow enrichment plant, the Arak heavy water reactor, and the Bushehr nuclear power plant—would be converted with the help of foreign countries. The nuclear deal requires both Fordow and Arak to be converted into research facilities; also, Iran needs waivers to continue buying fuel from Russia for the Bushehr plant. There was no fact-based argument in favour of not renewing the nuclear waivers; they enable foreign suppliers and engineers both to work to convert the Iranian facilities so they can’t be used in a nuclear weapons program, and to have insight into Iranian civilian nuclear efforts because of their presence on the ground and access to the facilities.
On 3 May, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Ford announced the renewal of the waivers allowing work to continue on Arak, Fordow, and Bushehr facilities, but only for 90 days, rather than the previous 180. The decision to renew the waivers is welcome to those who hope all remaining parties to the nuclear deal will continue to implement it. But the engineers involved in converting Iranian facilities will not be able to make significant progress in such a short time. This short extension move effectively kicks the can down the road for 90 days.
Apparently, the Trump administration did not want to risk looking lenient by renewing all nuclear waivers and so revoked two. The first allowed Iran to ship excess heavy-water to Oman, while the second permitted it to ship excess enriched uranium—any amount above a 300-kilogram limit—in exchange for natural uranium. The JCPOA states that excess enriched uranium can be either down-blended (converting uranium enriched to anything above 3.5 percent back to low enriched uranium) or sold. The US decision prevents Iran from selling the excess enriched uranium, only leaving Tehran with the option of down-blending it………
It is unclear what the Trump administration aims to achieve with its “maximum pressure” campaign. Ceasing the oil waivers only restricts Iran’s ability to purchase much needed humanitarian goods for a population that Secretary Pompeo repeatedly states the administration “stands with.” The renewal of the waivers allowing work to continue on Iran’s nuclear facilities is wise, but the shortening of the timeframe will mean that the administration will merely have to revisit the issue in 90 days. The work contemplated under the Iran nuclear deal can’t possibly be completed within three months. What’s more, far from “tightening restrictions on Iran’s program,” preventing it from shipping or selling excess nuclear material abroad seems designed to interfere with Iran’s efforts to implement its commitments under the JCPOA. Reframing a routine deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln strike force to the region only serves to unnecessarily heighten tensions and foster the potential for miscalculation. The only reason to do any of this is to push Iran into a corner, paving the way toward military confrontation—something few want because it will achieve little. https://thebulletin.org/2019/05/the-trump-administrations-maximum-pressure-campaign-a-prelude-to-war-with-iran/?utm_source=Bulletin%20Newsletter&utm_medium=iContact%20email&utm_campaign=TrumpMaxPressure_05062019
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May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Iran, politics international, USA |
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A Biden Presidency Would Be a ‘Death Sentence,’ Climate Activists Warn https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/a3x39g/climate-activists-dont-like-joe-biden 12
May 19
The former vice president’s campaign has them very, very worried. Joe Biden backed one of the first climate bills in US history, has a relatively strong score from the League of Conservation Voters, and calls fighting global temperature rise “a matter of survival.” The former vice president—who became the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination shortly after entering the race last month—has the profile, on paper, of someone who should be able to tout his bona fides on climate change and the environment.
It’s difficult to find many climate thinkers or activists these days who are all that excited about Biden’s entry into the Democratic primaries—and some interviewed for this story worry that if he wins he could actually slow down progress at a time when the planet is least able to afford it.
“This is an existential threat that we are talking about for all life on Earth, all Americans,” said Leah Stokes, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who closely follows the politics of climate change and energy. “I don’t trust him at all… I think he’s got some explaining to do about what exactly his plan is to deal with the climate crisis.”
Biden’s campaign website contains only three sentences about the greatest crisis ever to face humankind, and these are located midway down a secondary page. “We must turbocharge our efforts to address climate change and ensure that every American has access to clean drinking water, clean air, and an environment free from pollutants,” the site reads. His campaign did not respond to VICE’s request for more details on the actual policies this would entail.
There are virtually no specifics about how Biden plans to cut emissions in half by 2030—which is what United Nation scientists calculated is required to stabilize the world at or below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and keep cities like Houston, London, Shanghai, Jakarta, Bangkok, Lagos, Manila and Dhaka above water.
But the Reuters story sheds light on what a Biden presidency might include when it comes to climate—a return to Barack Obama’s policies of regulating emissions and working with the international community, but not the kind of aggressive action favored by experts and advocates. One of the sources for the Reuters article, Heather Zichal, previously advised Obama on climate change and is now an informal advisor to Biden. She is affiliated with Cheniere Energy, a major liquefied natural gas producer based in Houston.
Unsurprisingly, activists were alarmed by this news.
“A ‘middle ground’ policy that’s supportive of more fossil fuel development is a death sentence for our generation and the millions of people on the frontlines of the climate crisis,” Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, which has been leading the push for a Green New Deal, said in a statement.
Even before the Reuters story, there were plenty of reasons for people like Prakash to be skeptical of Biden on climate. When he launched his campaign for president on April 29 in Pittsburgh he didn’t mention climate change once. Instead, he gave a lengthy shout-out to union leaders in the audience, promising to “restore,” “rebuild,” and “unify” America after four years under Donald Trump. Buried deep in his 40-minute speech, Biden made a passing reference to low-carbon growth, pledging his support for “rebuilding America’s clean, renewable energy.” He went on to brag that “North American energy makes us independent,” a phrase often used in reference to oil and gas production.
Ed Fallon, a former Iowa legislator turned radio talk show host and climate activist who once played a game of pool with Biden, wasn’t impressed. He found the former vice-president to be “an eloquent speaker and an all-around likable guy.” But with Iowa recovering from two months of historic flooding linked in part to global carbon emissions, and Democrat supporters rating climate change as a top concern, Fallon wanted to know how seriously Biden takes human survival on our planet.
So when Biden spoke in Des Moines on May 2, Fallon and 11 others put on penguin masks and stood directly in front of Biden’s podium holding signs that read “Climate is a crisis.” Biden addressed Fallon’s group directly. “Don’t worry, I’ll get to climate change,” he said, adding, “I introduced climate legislation way, way back in 1987,” a reference to a bill he’d pushed urging President Ronald Reagan to back a task force studying global warming. “You’re preaching to the choir,” Biden said.
But Fallon isn’t so sure. Biden at one point told the crowd that “the United States is soon going to be the largest producer of energy of any nation in the world by the end of the 2020s. My lord, what are we so afraid of?” Biden appeared to be referring to the fact that US oil production has rocketed over recent years to 12.1 million barrels per day, surpassing the output of Saudi Arabia and Russia.
“He’s proud of that,” Fallon told VICE. “Joe’s boasting about being the biggest oil producer. You can’t be proud of that and fight climate change.”
Several days later Biden travelled to Los Angeles to speak at some of his campaign’s first fundraising events. At the home of UCLA School of Medicine faculty member Cynthia Telles and media executive Joe Waz, Biden discussed global warming “in passing,” according to notes emailed to reporters from his campaign. Notes from an event at the Jonathan Club, a private Los Angeles social club, don’t mention climate change at all.
“This is not a second-tier problem,” Stokes said. “This is not something we can pretend will be easy to do and we’ll talk about later, this is a fundamental conversation that has to be happening.”
Biden has at times seemed willing to discuss climate change with the urgency it requires. Earlier this year he told the Conference of Mayorsthat the US could easily quadruple the wind power it generates and that half of electricity in North America should come “from non-polluting sources” with six years. If rising seas force millions of people out of their homes, he said, “that’s how wars start.”
Biden received an 83 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters for his support of environmental policy as a US senator, a score that may have been higher if he hadn’t missed votes while several times competing in Democratic presidential primaries, said Tiernan Sittenfeld, the group’s senior vice president for government affairs.
But she said with the impacts of climate change becoming clearer and more deadly all the time, “all candidates who are serious about running for president need to make climate change an absolute top-tier priority.” They must prove every day to voters, Sittenfeld went on, that they’ll “move forward in ambitious ways on combating climate change starting on day one in the Oval Office.” The world as we know it could literally be depending on it.
Geoff Dembicki is the author of Are We Screwed? How a New Generation Is Fighting to Survive Climate Change. Follow him on Twitter. This article originally appeared on VICE US.
May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
election USA 2020 |
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Beyond the spectacle of summits, Trump isn’t truly dedicated to nuclear arms control https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/beyond-the-spectacle-of-summits-trump-isnt-truly-dedicated-to-nuclear-arms-control/
After three decades of intermittent negotiations with North Korea, direct engagement between heads of state was a fresh approach, for which Trump should be commended. But his administration’s indigestion when contemplating anything less than an all-encompassing, landmark accord should have been tempered with a seasoned helping of negotiating flexibility. And looking beyond Hanoi, it’s evident that Trump and his team are hardly committed to nuclear arms control writ large.
Only weeks after the US declared its intention to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which forbids both nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,000 kilometres, the Pentagon announced its plans to test a ground-mobile version of the sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missile in August, followed by a 4,000-kilometre-range ballistic missile in November.
Russia and the US have each critiqued the other for treaty noncompliance. Washington has continued to cite the operating range of Russia’s 9M729 missile and Moscow’s failure to course-correct since 2014, whereas Moscow has countered that the US Aegis Ashore missile defence site in Romania could perhaps be repurposed to launch offensive cruise missiles instead of only defensive interceptors.
At a January meeting in Geneva, Russia purportedly offered an inspection of the 9M729 system in exchange for a demonstration that the Aegis launchers couldn’t be converted to accommodate offensive missiles. American diplomats rejected this proposal, and, with the US Defense Department wasting no time to prepare for tests of INF Treaty–violating weapons soon after the agreement becomes void on 2 August, the Trump administration appears all too willing to dispense with existing arms limitations.
US officials have also yet to communicate their stance on prolonging the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2017, Trump reportedly disparaged the treaty as a ‘bad deal’ after Putin mentioned possible extension beyond 2021. Top US Air Force generals have testified before Congress and spoken publicly in unequivocal support of New START, calling bilateral and verifiable arms-control treaties ‘essential’, ‘of huge value’, ‘unbelievably important’ and ‘good for us’.
Regrettably, Bolton was a strident critic of New START before his appointment to lead Trump’s National Security Council, and the US State Department’s top diplomat for arms control remains noncommittal, explaining that the administration’s consolidated position towards treaty extension is still meandering through bureaucratic interagency review. ‘It gives reason to suspect our American counterparts of setting ground’ to let the treaty expire quietly, said Russia’s deputy foreign minister. Without the INF Treaty and the binding, verifiable limits contained in New START, American and Russian nuclear weaponry could soon be unconstrained for the first time since 1972.
And signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have just concluded their final preparatory meeting in advance of the treaty’s review conference next year. Non-nuclear states have expressed irritation that the US and Russia have further created ‘doubt about their intention ever to fulfil their disarmament obligations’. Instead of faithfully pursuing another stepwise reduction in its numbers of launchers and warheads, the US proposed multilateral working groups to discuss specific disarmament challenges. Among the 122 countries that voted in July 2017 for a nuclear-weapons ban, this American initiative, called ‘Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament’, smells like much high-minded talk without any meaningful effort towards US arms reductions.
If Trump desires credibility, dialogue with Russia promises fertile ground. At the outset, his political opponents may deride such overtures as cosying up to Putin. But as highlightedby former admiral Mike Mullen, the top American military officer from 2007 to 2011, ‘even in the darkest days of the Cold War’ the US had regular interchanges with the Soviet Union, but ‘we don’t have them now—it’s not even close’.
And responsibly trimming American and Russian arsenals would make any future pressure on North Korea all the more compelling.
Commitment to arms-control talks could help Washington and Moscow further comprehend areas of shared concern, such as China’s economic clout in central Asia and its adventurism in the Arctic, short of a thaw in relations. If mutually beneficial agreements with Moscow stimulate Trump’s appetite for open-minded negotiations and incremental processes, and achieve appreciation and esteem from the international community, perhaps step-by-step progress with Kim would then become palatable.
Evan Karlik is a lieutenant commander in the US Navy. He spent his early childhood in Western Samoa and the Philippines, and was stationed in Hawaii from 2011 to 2014. He served last year as a Defense Fellow in the US House of Representatives.
May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics international, USA, weapons and war |
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 This Old U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine Could Nuke 24 Cities (In One Shot)
If you do the math, the Ohio-class boats may be the most destructive weapon system created by humankind. National Interest,by Sebastien Roblin 13 May 19, In short, a full salvo from an Ohio-class submarine—which can be launched in less than one minute—could unleash up to 192 nuclear warheads to wipe twenty-four cities off the map. This is a nightmarish weapon of the apocalypse.
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May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, weapons and war |
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US Air Force nuclear, space programs take hit in border wall reprogramming, Defense News, By: Joe Gould , Aaron Mehta , and Valerie Insinna 13 May 19, WASHINGTON — In the wake of the Pentagon reprogramming $1.5 billion in fiscal 2019 funds to support President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico, only the U.S. Air Force appears to be losing money appropriated for equipment updates.
The funding largely comes from personnel accounts in the Air Force, Navy and Army. But the Air Force is the only service to lose funding for hardware, including nuclear and conventional weapons, surveillance aircraft updates, and space programs……..
About half of the non-OCO $818 million sum the Defense Department wants to redirect to the border comes from Air Force accounts, with space and missile programs taking the biggest hit. In total, the Pentagon expects the service to shear $402 million off its FY19 budget.
About $210 million would be cut from Air Force space programs, specifically the Evolved Expandable Launch Vehicle program, which funds the use of rockets that send satellites and other capabilities into space. According to the reprogramming document, one rocket launch has been canceled due to the “Space Test Program (STP)-4 satellite provider termination of the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) spacecraft,” which is no longer necessary under the National Security Strategy……
Other Air Force programs that will take a hit include a planned upgrade to the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile and the air-launched cruise missile programs.
May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
space travel, USA |
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Former DOE Nuclear Waste Chief Critical of Consent-Based Siting https://www.exchangemonitor.com/former-doe-nuclear-waste-chief-critical-consent-based-siting/
BY EXCHANGEMONITOR 13 May 19, The federal government is not likely ever to secure local consent for disposal of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors, but that approach could nonetheless be tested in a plan for temporary storage of the radioactive material, according to a former head of the Energy Department’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM).
“Consent-based siting does sound very appealing. I just don’t see it leading to a successful leading to a successful conclusion. Of course, I may be wrong,” Ward Sproat, who managed OCRWM from June 2006 to January 2009 before it was dismantled by the Obama administration, wrote in a May 2 letter to Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.), the top members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Among the obstacles to consent, Sproat wrote: history, as illustrated by failed Private Spent Fuel storage project in Utah; politics, including the potential for elected officials who support a facility to be replaced by opponents; and the need for at least two layers of local approval to analyze a selected location and then to begin licensing.
Still, Sproat indicated support for assessing the viability of a consent-based approach for interim storage discussed before the committee by an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Geoff Fettus, senior attorney for the NRDC’s nuclear program, was among the witnesses for a May 1 hearing on a draft bill from Barrasso that is intended to advance interim storage and permanent disposal of U.S. spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Among the measures, the legislation would authorize the secretary of energy to site, build, and operate at least one monitored retrievable storage facility and to store DOE-held waste in a privately operated facility.
In his prepared testimony, Fettus said the NRDC supports changing existing federal laws to give states more authority for regulating radioactive waste as part of a consent-based approach. A pilot program for interim storage should specifically involve a hardened structure at an operational nuclear power plant, Fettus said.
May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
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Park Record, | May 13, 2019 Martin Jedlicka Park City I would like to respond to Allison Cook’s editorial in a recent Park Record by agreeing with her premise that man-made global warming is an existential threat to human survival on this planet
I disagree with her thesis that nuclear power is the best solution. I know folks who are afraid of industrial nuclear power merely from watching “The Simpsons” on Fox. Sadly, that’s not as silly as it should be. The physics and engineering supporting nuclear power are sound. Unfortunately, the human administration and operation of it is not. We are as a people prone to error, greed and arrogance, with the first often resulting from the latter two. Behind every Homer is a Mr. Burns; ask any engineer if he or she has a story about corners cut by some bottom line-obsessed executive. U.S. nuclear plant workforces have been trimmed by 26,000 jobs in the past decade. A constant call for deregulation at the behest of lobbyists reveals a corporate culture that prioritizes monetary profit over environmental safety, just like the fossil fuel industry.
Ms. Cook asserts that there have been “zero radiation illnesses/casualties” at Fukushima. The tragic facts are that one worker has died from radiation-induced illness. Time will determine the ultimate price paid by the volunteer “Suicide Squads” who exceeded lifetime legal limits and face hundredfold cancer risk. Three studies estimate 130 deaths. The evacuation of the area surrounding the Daiichi and Daini plants resulted in an estimated 1,368 deaths (people, not eagles or tortoises). As of 2015, 166 children in the area have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, exceeding normal rates by a factor of 30.
The 1979 partial meltdown of reactor No. 2 at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania sparked widespread anti-nuclear power protests. The cumulative human error that led to radioactive release into the atmosphere inspired the engineering maxim “Normal Accident Theory.” Charles Perrow posited that “normal accidents” result from the “unanticipated interaction of multiple failures in a complex system.”
Seven year later the Chernobyl Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine, caused at least 42 deaths from acute radiation sickness. In a 2005 report, the environmental NGO Greenpeace (which actually supports the use of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuel burning) estimates “270,000 cases of cancer attributable to Chernobyl fallout,” with an estimated death toll of 93,000. How one contracts thyroid cancer is debatable but the fact is that by the year 2000, the number of Ukrainians receiving state benefits for radiation related problems was over 3.5 million.
“Radiation” is a catch-all term for myriad forms of energy — my mug of tea is radiating infrared photons into my hand. The nuclear power industry likes to point out the natural radiation occurring around us, from sunshine to bananas and cellphone transmission. Most forms of radiation are harmless as all radiation should be considered in terms of dosage. We need doses of solar radiation to produce vitamin D. Not so with ionizing waves called gamma rays that radiate from isotopes used and produced by nuclear power plants. With short wavelengths and high energy, gamma rays disrupt cells and chromosomes throughout the human body and require dense materials to block them. Like all electromagnetic radiation, they are invisible. It is reasonable for people to fear invisible things that can make you horribly sick and die…… https://www.parkrecord.com/opinion/guest-editorial-nuclear-power-is-subject-to-human-error-and-that-makes-it-a-poor-solution-to-climate-change/
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May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
spinbuster, USA |
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nuclear-news 