France’s EDF, GE to co-build reactors for huge Indian nuclear plant, Reuters Staff, NEW DELHI (Reuters) 28 June 18- GE and French utility EDF have agreed to team to build six reactors for a nuclear power project in western India, which is due to be the world’s biggest when finished……… The six European Pressurised Water reactors will be for a 9,900 mw nuclear power project at Jaitapur, south of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra, GE and EDF said in a joint statement released on Tuesday…….
EDF will be responsible for engineering integration of the entire project, while GE Power will design the critical part of the plant and supply its main components, the companies said.
GE will also provide operational support services and a training programme to meet the needs of the state-run Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd, the plant’s owner and operator.
Electric rates may be cut after failed nuclear plants, TD, By JEFFREY COLLINS Associated Press, 28 June 18
COLUMBIA — Customers of South Carolina Electric & Gas could see their rates temporarily cut by nearly 15 percent, under a compromise plan passed Wednesday by lawmakers after the company spent billions on two failed nuclear plants that never produced power.
The bill passed with enough margin to overcome a promised veto from Gov. Henry McMaster. It could end up doing a lot more than lowering rates for the average South Carolina Electric & Gas customer by about $22 a month for several months.
Speaking ahead of the week-long World Gas Conference, Perry cited his experience with natural gas, saying he had “sung its praises for a long time,” the Washington Examiner reported.
According to a draft memo from the Department of Energy (DOE) that surfaced at the start of June, the Trump administration plans to direct the federal government to purchase electricity or generation capacity from coal and nuclear plants for two years. The DOE’s bailout package for at-risk generators remains unclear.
Dive Insight:
“We are looking at all the contingencies and different impacts,” Perry told reporters on Monday.
Perry’s comments echoed previous statements to the press made by Energy Undersecretary Mark Menezes earlier this month at an Energy Information Administration conference. Menezes said the DOE draft memo was being considered as one of several options.
Perry highlighted the importance of a bailout plan to keep coal and nuclear power plants open in competitive power markets. The DOE draft memo proposed using Perry’s executive authority under the Federal Power Act’s and the Defense Production Act’s emergency provisions to subsidize select plants.
Responding to criticisms that federal intervention would disrupt the electricity market and raise prices, Perry said, “The economics is secondary from my perspective. There is the potential to see some really chaotic attacks in this country. That is DOE’s responsibility to make sure that does not happen.”
Natural gas companies have opposed any market interference for coal and nuclear, joining renewable energy companies. Perry said those concerns won’t stop him from acting, to ensure people have access to electricity.
Regarding natural gas, the Trump administration has said pipeline infrastructure is vulnerable to physical and cyberattacks, thus increasing the need to ensure baseload generation options.
https://apnews.com/dc5e3c60042741c696dd062462a03cca– 28 June 18, ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Advocates for New Mexicans who many believe were sickened by U.S. uranium mining and nuclear weapons testing have urged Congress to acknowledge their sacrifice and authorize compensation for them.
Navajo Nation Vice President Jonathan Nez and the co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium testified during a hearing Wednesday in Washington on a compensation measure.
Sponsored by U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, it proposes expanding eligibility for payouts under the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act of 1990, which currently covers claims from areas in Nevada, Arizona and Utah that are downwind from a different test site.
Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa consortium, said many who lived in the area weren’t told about the dangers of the Trinity Test on generations of residents.
They could benefit from the proposal, along with post-1971 uranium mine workers in Northwestern New Mexico.
Why the United States Needs North Korea to Stay Nuclear, A nuclear North Korea is not a threat, but an ideal stabilizer. National Interest Hongyu Zhang, Kevin Wang,
Many are hopeful that the June 12 summit in Singapore between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will lead to denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula. Others believe the historical record makes clear that such a hope is overly optimistic. But what if allowing North Korea to retain its nuclear arsenal could both lead to peace and benefit America’s long-term security interests in the region?
There are two reasons for this. First, possessing nuclear weapons is the best way to pacify North Korea and constrain its aggression. Second, a secure and independent North Korea (without the presence of Chinese or U.S. forces) would also provide a buffer against great power tensions. The long-term primary objective of U.S. strategy in East Asia should be to contain a rising China. To achieve this, the United States must minimize Chinese influence on its neighboring states—whether they are U.S. allies or not. A limited North Korean nuclear arsenal is the most effective way to make this happen.
The United States should, therefore, continue reaching out diplomatically to North Korea and even end some sanctions to seek long-term stability. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, a nuclear North Korea and a balanced peninsula are the best possible outcome for the region and the world.
The View From Pyongyang: A Need for Balance
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s backing of North Korea and U.S. backing of South Korea were roughly equal, resulting in a stable power balance on the Korean Peninsula. However, since the Soviet collapse, the balance of power has rapidly shifted against North Korea. The United States continues to lead the Republic of Korea (ROK)-U.S. Combined Forces Command and regularly renews its security commitments in the region. In contrast, Russia abolished its alliance treaty with North Korea in 1994. China also refused to replace the Soviet Union as North Korea’s patron when the matter was discussed between Deng Xiaoping and Kim Il-sung in 1991.
Without this balance, the peninsula has been in prolonged instability and frequently came close to military confrontation. As a sovereign state ruled by a totalitarian regime, North Korea has shown its willingness to guarantee its security at any cost. Intensifying military and economic pressure against the North has only made it more defiant and unpredictable. Therefore, any solution to the present crisis must take into account the security of this sovereign nation. Clearly, massive militarization and isolation are not a long-term solution for North Korea.
……… not only do nuclear weapons offer a level of security that Chinese assurances do not, but they also are the most cost-effective way for a resource-poor North Korea to achieve sustainable security. A nuclear North Korea is not a threat, but an ideal stabilizer. The balance of power on the Korean peninsula and that between the United States and China are interrelated. China’s rise has the potential to shift the regional balance, making confrontation more likely in the future. If a limited nuclear capability guarantees North Korea’s existence and independence, it can provide a buffer space to keep Chinese forces in China and U.S. troops stationed in South Korea separate. ……….
North Korea’s fear of Chinese control is one area where North Korean and American interests of containing China actually align. Moreover, North Korea would prefer to have the ability to hedge between two superpowers to get the best deal, which is only possible by reducing China’s monopoly on economic leverage over North Korea. In the same way that a nuclear China was useful in containing the USSR in the 1970s, North Korea may be helpful in containing China today.
A tacit agreement to allow the DPRK to retain a minimal but credible nuclear deterrent is advantageous to U.S. interests in that it maintains a source of friction in Sino-North Korean relations. By possessing nukes, North Korea will be more independent from Chinese influence and can turn away from China. Thus, a nuclear North Korea would be a viable solution to the imbalance of power on the Korean peninsula after the end of the Cold War. Finally, North Korea would also benefit the long-term U.S. strategy of containing Chinese expansionism. This China containment policy can only be successful if the United States is willing to politically and economically engage with North Korea.
In a 1967 article in Foreign Affairs, Richard Nixon stated that “Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors.” If Nixon, along with Henry Kissinger’s support, could understand the strategic value of engaging a former adversary with newly acquired nuclear weapons, perhaps policymakers can see the strategic value of doing so with North Korea today.
Hongyu Zhang is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, and can be reached at hzhang17@wm.edu. His research focuses on nuclear proliferation, East Asian security, and Chinese foreign policy.
Washington: US secretary of state Mike Pompeo on Saturday warned Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons, saying it would face the “wrath of the entire world” if it did so, but added that he hoped it would never be necessary for the United States to take military action against the country.
In an interview with political columnist Hugh Hewitt conducted on Friday and broadcast the following day on MSNBC, Pompeo said that whatever the fate of the international nuclear deal with Iran, it would not be in Tehran’s interest to seek nuclear arms.
“I hope they understand that if they begin to ramp up their nuclear program, the wrath of the entire world will fall upon them,” he said.
“Wholly separate from if they spin a couple of extra centrifuges, if they began to move to a weapons program, this is something the entire world would find unacceptable and we’d end up down a path that I don’t think is in the best interests of Iran,” Pompeo said
“When I say wrath, don’t confuse that with military action. When I say wrath, I mean the moral opprobrium and economic power that fell upon them. That’s what I’m speaking to. I’m not talking to military action. I truly hope that that’s never the case. It’s not in anyone’s best interests for that.”
Pressed on whether the United States would do whatever it had to do to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Pompeo said: “President Trump has been unambiguous in his statements that say Iran will not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon.”
The group had been examining “the ways in which (the Meeting) is complicit in the nuclear weapons industry, including the funding of those activities through our investments, purchases, or other business transactions, and to plan for ways to eliminate or reduce that complicity in order to be compliant with the treaty.”
Timmon Wallis and Vicki Elson were the subjects of a May cover story, “Lay down your arms,” in Hampshire Life Magazine. Written by Emma Kemp, the piece focused on Wallis’ involvement with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, ICAN won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for developing a treaty banning nuclear weapons.
Today, both Wallis and Elson work with ICAN, which initiated the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the Nuclear Ban Treaty, which was adopted by 122 countries on July 7, 2017. It prohibits the development, production, use and threat of nuclear weapons. As Kemp reported, “Once 50 countries have ratified the treaty, it will come into effect and be implemented into law in the respective countries. The United States is not one of the participating countries.”
But Wallis, 61, and Elson, 59, are hoping to change that. The two activists, who plan to marry this summer, launched the Northampton-based organization NuclearBan.US, to help people nationwide comply with the treaty. Continue reading →
Trump’s Nuclear Bailout Won’t Happen: Get Out Of Nuclear Investments, Seeking Alpha, Ezra Weener,
Summary
The nuclear and coal industries are dying.
Natural gas and the growing renewable industries are making nuclear energy economically inefficient and a money-losing proposition.
Trump has ordered energy secretary Rick Perry to find a way to revive these industries citing “national security” and “resilience”.
Despite many positives for these industries, some potential bailout plans negatively impact the free market; regulators have pushed back intensely, and it is unlikely anything significant will be done.
Investing in uranium miners or nuclear power plants based off the possibility of a bailout would be a huge mistake.
Over the last 7 years, the nuclear and coal industries have been getting killed. The spot price of uranium has dropped around 65% and made it basically impossible to economically mine, refine, and sell uranium. This comes from the U.S. and other countries moving away from nuclear power for fears of radiation, possible disasters, and a focus on renewables.
All this has made nuclear power harder to produce and increased the cost of production, while a boom in natural gas electricity production has lowered wholesale electricity selling prices to the point that it is no longer a properly viable source of power. As stated in DOE Staff Reports on Electricity Markets and Reliability,
“Flat demand growth, flattened supply curves, Federal and state policy interventions, and the massive economic shift in the relative economics of natural gas compared to other fuels are placing pressures on centrally-organized wholesale electricity markets, resulting in low average wholesale energy prices.”
The U.S. Senate approved a Hanford spending bill for the next fiscal year that would provide $315 million more for the nuclear reservation than proposed by the Trump administration.
The vote was 86-5 for a package of funding bills.Earlier this month, the U.S. House passed a spending bill for fiscal 2019 that would provide $247 million more for the Hanford Site than the administration’s funding request.
The two bills next must be reconciled. A final version then could be sent to President Donald Trump for his signature.
The Senate bill would restore all but $25 million of the cuts to current spending that were proposed by the administration.
The total Hanford budget under the Senate plan would be $2.4 billion, plus some additional money for security at the site.
“Once again, I’m proud that Democrats and Republicans have come together to reject President Trump’s senseless budget cuts and instead craft a budget that honors the sacrifices of central Washington families,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Murray, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, worked to secure money for Hanford as the appropriations bill was being written.
Trump’s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes, and No One Is Talking About It, TruthDig, Lee Camp, 24 June 18 We live in a state of perpetual war, and we never feel it. While you get your gelato at the hip place where they put those cute little mint leaves on the side, someone is being bombed in your name. While you argue with the 17-year-old at the movie theater who gave you a small popcorn when you paid for a large, someone is being obliterated in your name. While we sleep and eat and make love and shield our eyes on a sunny day, someone’s home, family, life and body are being blown into a thousand pieces in our names.
Once every 12 minutes.
The United States military drops an explosive with a strength you can hardly comprehend once every 12 minutes. And that’s odd, because we’re technically at war with—let me think—zero countries. So that should mean zero bombs are being dropped, right?
Hell no! You’ve made the common mistake of confusing our world with some sort of rational, cogent world in which our military-industrial complex is under control, the music industry is based on merit and talent, Legos have gently rounded edges (so when you step on them barefoot, it doesn’t feel like an armor-piercing bullet just shot straight up your sphincter), and humans are dealing with climate change like adults rather than burying our heads in the sand while trying to convince ourselves that the sand around our heads isn’t getting really, really hot.
You’re thinking of a rational world. We do not live there.
Instead, we live in a world where the Pentagon is completely and utterly out of control. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the $21 trillion (that’s not a typo) that has gone unaccounted for at the Pentagon. But I didn’t get into the number of bombs that ridiculous amount of money buys us. President George W. Bush’s military dropped 70,000 bombs on five countries. But of that outrageous number, only 57 of those bombs really upset the international community.
Because there were 57 strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen—countries the U.S. was neither at war with nor had ongoing conflicts with. And the world was kind of horrified. There was a lot of talk that went something like, “Wait a second. We’re bombing in countries outside of war zones? Is it possible that’s a slippery slope ending in us just bombing all the goddamn time? (Awkward pause.) … Nah. Whichever president follows Bush will be a normal adult person (with a functional brain stem of some sort) and will therefore stop this madness.”
We were so cute and naive back then, like a kitten when it’s first waking up in the morning.
It’s not just the fact that bombing outside of a war zone is a horrific violation of international law and global norms. It’s also the morally reprehensible targeting of people for pre-crime, which is what we’re doing and what the Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report” warned us about. (Humans are very bad at taking the advice of sci-fi dystopias. If we’d listened to “1984,” we wouldn’t have allowed the existence of the National Security Agency. If we listened to “The Terminator,” we wouldn’t have allowed the existence of drone warfare. And if we’d listened to “The Matrix,” we wouldn’t have allowed the vast majority of humans to get lost in a virtual reality of spectacle and vapid nonsense while the oceans die in a swamp of plastic waste. … But you know, who’s counting?)
There was basically a media blackout while Obama was president.
……. we now know that Donald Trump’s administration puts all previous presidents to shame. The Pentagon’s numbers show that during George W. Bush’s eight years he averaged 24 bombs dropped per day, which is 8,750 per year. Over the course of Obama’s time in office, his military dropped 34 bombs per day, 12,500 per year. And in Trump’s first year in office, he averaged 121 bombs dropped per day, for an annual total of 44,096.
Trump’s military dropped 44,000 bombs in his first year in office.
He has basically taken the gloves off the Pentagon, taken the leash off an already rabid dog………
Under Trump, five bombs are dropped per hour—every hour of every day. That averages out to a bomb every 12 minutes.
And which is more outrageous—the crazy amount of death and destruction we are creating around the world, or the fact that your mainstream corporate media basically NEVER investigates it? They talk about Trump’s flaws. They say he’s a racist, bulbous-headed, self-centered idiot (which is totally accurate)—but they don’t criticize the perpetual Amityville massacre our military perpetrates by dropping a bomb every 12 minutes, most of them killing 98 percent non-targets.
When you have a Department of War with a completely unaccountable budget—as we saw with the $21 trillion—and you have a president with no interest in overseeing how much death the Department of War is responsible for, then you end up dropping so many bombs that the Pentagon has reportedwe are running out of bombs.
……….This is about a runaway military-industrial complex that our ruling elite are more than happy to let loose. Almost no one in Congress or the presidency tries to restrain our 121 bombs a day. Almost no one in a mainstream outlet tries to get people to care about this.
Recently, the hashtag #21Trillion for the unaccounted Pentagon money has gained some traction. Let’s get another one started: #121BombsADay.
One every 12 minutes…….. We are a rogue nation with a rogue military and a completely unaccountable ruling elite. The government and military you and I support by being a part of this society are murdering people every 12 minutes, and in response, there’s nothing but a ghostly silence. It is beneath us as a people and a species to give this topic nothing but silence. It is a crime against humanity. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/trumps-military-drops-a-bomb-every-12-minutes-and-no-one-is-talking-about-it/
The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich. It is what is happening. He wrote it in 1933, and most of the book tries to answer the question why democracies continually elect psychopaths to rule them. I think you would really like it.
You know Trump is a narcissist– a malignant narcissist. Every psychopath is also a narcissist and it’s clear that Trump is also a psychopath. You probably knew that too.
The question is, how did a malignant narcissist psychopath become president– not just president but a horrific monster who is intentionally destroying the protections that have made Americans and America save from the predations of the worst corporations and his fellow billionaire psychopaths? And what should we do about it.
It’s a long story. Before civilization, humans evolved, over at least seven million years, to live in small hunter-gather bands where they were bottom-up beings– empathic, kind, cooperative, sharing, interdependent, living with bottom-up connection consciousness– awareness of how decisions and actions affected all the people around them– and the natural ecosystems they depended upon. Anyone who tried to take more than their share of the bands resources would be seen as insane, or would banished or killed. for example, one expert on psychopaths told me that in the far north, a psychopath living amongst the indigenous peoples would be put on an chunk of ice and pushed off into the ocean to float away.
The creeping opening of vulnerability to the depredations of narcissists and psychopaths started with the onset of civilization, when food surpluses and possession of domesticated animals led to the creation of police and soldiers to protect them. That led to hierarchy, centralization, authoritarianism and domination. Narcissists and psychopaths began to flourish because there was no band of people to stop them.
Most of history (as opposed to prehistory)has been, until the past 3040 years, the top-down history of generals and rulers, i.e., despots, monarchs and worse. Civilization, while bringing some wonderful good advances came with a high price– slavery, serfdom, feudalism, privatization of the commons and brutal exploitation of the people at the bottom.
The narcissistic, top-down ideas of privatization and exploitation have been framed and celebrated by the right as aspects of “liberty” and individualism, as described by Ayn Rand. These narcissistic behaviors have become values that are supported and encouraged by religious and political leaders
Today, some businesses actually seek out psychopaths as employees. That gives them increasing access to wealth and power. Trump is a born-on-third-base child of wealth. These people are, I believe more at risk for developing the characteristics of psychopaths– particularly callousness, hard-heartedness, absence of empathy, propensity towards lying and disrespecting laws and morals. Of course, Donald Trump fits this profile perfectly.
His massive scale child abuse is a clear sign of his having all the signs– callousness, hard-heartedness, absence of empathy, propensity towards lying and disrespecting laws and morals. Worse, his deranged behavior is contagious, as evidenced by the many supporters and flunkies who defend this depraved policy. Even worse, ripping away children from their loving parents will permanently traumatize them and make them, the victims more at risk of becoming narcissists and psychopaths themselves. We have to take serious, aggressive action.
I’ve written many articles, in my article series, Psychopaths, Sociopaths and Narcissists, on the challenge narcissists and psychopaths present to a decent society. Trump and his enablers have made my message even more urgent. We need to develop a science and culture that reject the “values,” really, pathological behaviors and thinking, as the vile, evil things they are. People who engage in such behaviors, people with strong narcissistic and psychopathic tendencies and characteristics should be identified, just as sexual predators are. This is not bigotry, not separating out any particular religion, race, or culture. This is what is done with sexual predators and carriers of highly contagious diseases.
We need to deal with the reality that these people are dangerous, malignant, destructive people. At one level, they are predators who take life savings from innocent victims who love them. But they are also the same people who gave us the multi-trillion dollar economic collapse of 2008, and the people who profit from war and drugs– addictive and pharmaceutical.
These are the people who set examples of the worse kind, so we see massive increases in hate, bigotry, intolerance and discrimination. We need to identify them and protect the whole, healthy people who are not narcissists and psychopaths. This should be a conversation that is on the table. It will not be easy. There are billionaire narcissists and psychopaths who will fight it and they will fight dirty, attacking the messengers, attacking the idea. But we’ve gone far too long without doing this necessary work.
From Paul Street article on Trump
“There have been many tyranny tests under the monstrous orange-tinted white nationalist Twitter clown Donald Trump. Where to begin:
+ The opening day trip to CIA headquarters, where he half-jokingly rambled about the US going back to Iraq to “get the oil”?
+ The repeated attempts to repeal even Obama’s inadequate health insurance measure and thereby remove tens of millions of U.S. citizens from health coverage?
+ The insane claim to have won the popular vote but for the votes of illegal immigrants?
+ The idiotic call for a southern border wall combined with the asinine call for Mexico to “pay for it”?
+ The noxious description of Mexican and other Central American immigrants and asylum-seekers as rapists and murderers?
+ The praise and dog-whistling cover he offered to murderous fascist racists in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017?
+ The giant tax cut that the racist real estate mogul trailblazed for the already obscenely super-opulent Few last Christmas season – a socioeconomic atrocity in a nation where the top 10thof the upper 1 percent already owned as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent?
+ The advance pardon that the Tangerine Satan offered to the sickening racist and nativist tent-camp murderer Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona last year?
+ The racist shaming of federal judges who happen not to rule his way?
+ The repeated transparent attempts to place himself above the rule of law?
+ The open assault on basic environmental protections and the eco-exterminist determination to advance the extraction and burning of every last fossil fuel in U.S. reach?
+ The clear and transparent affection he shows for blood-drenched authoritarians the world over?
+ The snap approvals of the planet-cooking Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines?
+ The open embrace of Saudi Arabia’s practically genocidal war on Yemen?
+ The repeated ugly embrace of the National Rifle Association after yet another and then another mass shooting that amounts to homeland terrorism sponsored by the proto-fascistic and white supremacist gun lobby?
+ The open advance of prison privatization and mass incarceration combined with clear disinterest in curbing the ongoing epidemic of racist police shootings?
That’s just a short list.
What would it take to send millions of U.S.-Americans into the streets to confront the total evil of “their” government in the age of Trump? How about this: “Dragging young children kicking and crying and screaming from their parents, separating those children from their parents indefinitely, locking those children up in cages (‘dog kennels’) like animals, and subjecting them to the predators of the American police state”? Would that be enough? Could that do the trick?”
Star Wars Redux: Trump’s Space Force, Counter Punch byKARL GROSSMAN , 22 June 18 “…..,.,…Craig Eisendrath, who had been a U.S. State Department officer involved in its creation, notes that the Soviet Union launched the first space satellite, Sputnik, in 1957 and “we sought to de-weaponize space before it got weaponized…to keep war out of space.”
Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966, The Outer Space Treaty entered into force in 1967. It has been ratified or signed by 123 nations.
It provides that nations “undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in space in any other manner.”
Atomic physicist Edward Teller, the main figure in developing the hydrogen bomb and instrumental in founding Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, pitched to Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of California visiting the lab, a plan of orbiting hydrogen bombs which became the initial basis for Reagan’s “Star Wars.” The bombs were to energize X-ray lasers. “As the bomb at the core of an X-ray battle station exploded, multiple beams would flash out to strike multiple targets before the entire station consumed itself in in a ball of nuclear fire,” explained New York Times journalist William Broad in his 1986 book Star Warriors.
Subsequently there was a shift in “Star Wars” to orbiting battle platforms with nuclear reactors or “super” plutonium-fueled radioisotope thermoelectric generators on board that would provide the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons.
The rapid boil of “Star Wars” under Reagan picked up again under the administrations George H. W. Bush and son George W. Bush. And all along the U.S. military has been gung-ho on space warfare.
A U.S. Space Command was formed in 1982.
“US Space Command—dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into war-fighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict,” it trumpeted in its 1998 report Vision for 2020. It laid out these words to resemble the crawl at the start of the Star Warsmovies. The U.S. Space Command was set up by the Pentagon to “help institutionalize the use of space.” Or, as the motto of one of its units declares, to be “Master of Space.”
Vision for 2020states, “Historically, military forces have evolved to protect national interests and investments-both military and economic.” Nations built navies “to protect and enhance their commercial interests” and during “the westward expansion of the United States, military outposts and the cavalry emerged to protect our wagon trains, settlements and railroads. The emergence of space power follows both of these models. During the early portion of the 2lst Century, space power will also evolve into a separate and equal medium of warfare.”
“It’s politically sensitive, but it’s going to happen,” remarked U.S. Space Command Commander-in-Chief Joseph W. Ashy in Aviation Week and Space Technology (8/9/96):
“Some people don’t want to hear this, and it sure isn’t in vogue, but—absolutely—we’re going to fight in space. We’re going to fight fromspace and we’re going to fight intospace…. We will engage terrestrial targets someday—ships, airplanes, land targets—from space.”
Or as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Keith R. Hall told the National Space Club in 1997: “With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it and we’re going to keep it.”
The basic concept of the Pentagon’s approach to space is contained in The Future of War: Power, Technology & American World Dominance in the 2lst Century. Written by “arms experts” George and Meredith Friedman, the 1996 book concludes: “Just as by the year 1500 it was apparent that the European experience of power would be its domination of the global seas, it does not take much to see that the American experience of power will rest on the domination of space. Just as Europe expanded war and its power to the global oceans, the United States is expanding war and its power into space and to the planets. Just as Europe shaped the world for a half a millennium [by dominating the oceans with fleets], so too the United States will shape the world for at least that length of time.”
Or as a 2001 report of the U.S. Space Commission led by then U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asserted: “In the coming period the U.S. will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on the earth and in space.”……. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/22/star-wars-redux-trumps-space-force/
Nuclear power that was once advertised as being “too cheap to meter” has evidently become too costly for electric utilities to buy. Apart from two 1,000 megawatt reactors being constructed in Georgia at enormous expense to ratepayers (even after subsidies from tax payers), there are no immediate prospects for new nuclear power plants in the United States. What of the longer-term future?
One possibility for new nuclear reactor construction comes from what are called the Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). One SMR design called NuScale is slowly making its way to potential construction. Developed by a company based in Oregon, a single NuScale reactor is designed to generate just 50 megawatts of power.Earlier this spring, the NuScale design cleared the first phase of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s certification process. A group of electrical utilities called the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems has expressed an interest in purchasing a power plant, which consists of 12 NuScale reactors. The Tennessee Valley Authority also has applied for a permit to develop a site that could host an SMR.
Why SMRs? According to promoters of these scaled-down reactors, they could solve the multiple challenges faced by nuclear power. SMR developers promise lowered costs, decreased production of radioactive waste, reduction or even elimination of the risk of severe accidents, and no contribution to nuclear proliferation. Dozens of companies claim to be developing their own SMR designs, and many have received funding from wealthy private investors and the U.S. Department of Energy.
However, there is little to suggest SMRs will somehow magically remedy all that ails the nuclear industry. SMRs, as the name suggests, produce relatively small amounts of electricity in comparison with currently operational reactors. This puts them at a disadvantage.
One known way to reduce the cost of nuclear electricity has been to build larger reactors because the expenses associated with constructing and operating a reactor do not increase in direct proportion to the power generated. SMRs will, therefore, cost more than large reactors for each unit of generation capacity. Most of the small reactors built in the United States shut down early because they couldn’t compete economically.
SMR proponents argue that they can compensate by savings through mass manufacture in factories and learning how to hold down costs from the experience of constructing lots of reactors. This is a dubious assumption: In both the United States and France, the two countries with the highest numbers of nuclear plants, costs went up, not down, with construction experience.
Even if one were to assume that such “learning” actually occurs, SMRs have to be manufactured by the thousands to achieve meaningful savings. There is simply no market for so many reactors.
Even Westinghouse, the company that has directly or indirectly designed the majority of the world’s nuclear reactors, has realized that there is no market. For a decade or more, Westinghouse pursued a SMR design. But, in 2014, the company abandoned that effort. Its CEO explained: “The problem I have with SMRs is not the technology, it’s not the deployment — it’s that there’s no customers.” Few or no customers means no one would, or should, want to build a factory to construct the modules constituting these SMRs.
For example, safety can be improved by making reactors smaller. But, a smaller reactor, at least the water-cooled reactors that are most likely to be built earliest, will produce more, not less, nuclear waste per unit of electricity they generate because of lower efficiencies. With no long-term solution in sight for nuclear waste, accumulating more radioactive spent fuel aggravates the storage problem.
The poor economic outlook for SMRs also affects safety. Companies that market SMRs propose placing multiple reactors in close proximity to save on costs of associated infrastructure. But this would increase the risk of accidents or the impact of potential accidents on the surrounding population.
At Japan’s Fukushima nuclear complex, explosions at one reactor damaged the spent fuel pool in a co-located reactor. Radiation leaks from one unit made it difficult for emergency workers to approach the other units.
The future of nuclear power in the United States, and indeed in much of the world, is bleak. Small modular reactors will not change that prognosis. There is no point in wasting public money on promoting them.
M. V. Ramana is the Simons chairman in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia and the author of “The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energyin India.”
Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press June 22, 2018 Up to 124,000 tons of low-level radioactive soil and other materials from a contaminated former military supplier in Ohio will begin arriving at a Wayne County landfill next week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced.
The soil and materials are headed for Wayne Disposal Inc., U.S. Ecology’s hazardous waste landfill off I-94 near Willow Run Airport in Van Buren Township. Once the soil disposal operation is fully underway, up to 11 tractor-trailers per day, each carrying about 15 tons of contaminated soil, are expected to head north on local freeways from the village south of Toledo to the Wayne County landfill, Army Corps officials said Thursday. There’s no indication the shipments would be every day. A U.S. Ecology spokesman said the remediation project could take 8 to 10 years.
It’s part of a major cleanup of what’s known as the Luckey site, a long-shuttered beryllium plant in Luckey, Ohio. The plant supplied the strong, light but highly toxic metal to the U.S. military and Atomic Energy Commission in the 1940s and 1950s.
Opponents protest nuclear waste transport in Idaho, June 22, 2018, By SAVANNAH CARDON, Post Register ,Idaho Press CALDWELL — Among the tents set up at the Caldwell Farmers Market on June 13, one stuck out. Covered in nuclear waste symbols and mock waste barrels was the Radioactive Waste Roadshow with Don’t Waste Idaho.
