Failed nuclear project expected to dominate upcoming S.C. legislative session, By Andy Shain and Seanna Adcox, ashain@postandcourier.com sadcox@postandcourier.com, Jan 6, 2018
Unusual Event’ Declared At Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant, Low water levels in plant’s water intakes were apparently caused by weather conditions from the recent storm Lacey Patch, By Patricia A. Miller, Patch Staff | LACEY TOWNSHIP, NJ – Control room operators at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant declared an “unusual event” early Saturday morning when water levels in the plant’s water intakes dipped too low, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
Control room operators reduced reactor power to about 70 percent in response to the lower-than-normal water intake levels and will continue to monitor and evaluate conditions throughout the day, spokesman Neil Sheehan said
An “unusual event” is the lowest of the NRC’s four levels of emergency classification, he said.
Water from the intake canal is used for cooling purposes, doesn’t flow through radioactive materials and is discharged at higher temperatures to the outfall portion of the canal, Sheehan said.
NRC resident inspectors assigned to Oyster Creek on a full-time basis responded to the plant to verify the plant was in safe condition……https://patch.com/new-jersey/lacey/unusual-event-declared-oyster-creek-nuclear-plant
PSEG NUCLEAR SUBSIDY BILL KILLED IN LAME-DUCK SESSION, NJ Spotlight, TOM JOHNSON | JANUARY 4, 2018 “………..A controversial bill to subsidize nuclear power plants apparently is dead — at least in the lame-duck session scheduled to end next week, with opposition from too many quarters finally taking a toll.
The legislation, pushed by Public Service Enterprise Group for more than a year, would have asked ratepayers to pony up $300 million annually to help prop up the company’s three nuclear units in South Jersey.
The bill (S-3560), up for a vote in the Senate today, faltered in the lower house when Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, a Democrat from Secaucus, balked at posting it. His decision came after a meeting with Gov.-elect Phil Murphy yesterday and rising concern among some lawmakers over the bill being rushed through in the last days of the current session…..http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/18/01/03/pseg-nuclear-subsidy-bill-killed-in-lame-duck-session/
The Astronomical Cost of New Subsidies for Old Reactors: $280 Billion. https://safeenergy.org/2016/10/14/the-astronomical-cost-of-new-subsidies-for-old-reactors-280-billion/#more-14163 GreenWorld has covered the unfolding story of the American nuclear power industry’s clamor for new subsidies and bailouts since it started in 2014. Purely as a spectator sport, it might have been entertaining to watch the country’s largest utilities go from proclaiming a “Nuclear Renaissance” a decade ago to peddling the message that “Nuclear Matters.”
But there is just too much at stake to treat it like a game. The utility industry’s ramped-up efforts to block renewable energy and horde billions of our clean energy dollars to prop up old nukes risks both climate and nuclear disaster. Most of these proposals have been failing, thanks to the dogged persistence of grassroots activists and clean energy groups–and, it must be said, the outrageous sticker price of subsidies the industry needs. In fact, just this week, the two-year saga of FirstEnergy’s $8 billion nuclear-plus-coal bailout plan seems to have ended, with what amounts to a consolation gift to a couple FirstEnergy utility companies. Still an outrageous corporate giveaway, but no subsidies for nuclear or coal, even after it seemed like a done deal a few months ago.
But New York Governor Cuomo’s decision in August to award a 12-year, $7.6 billion subsidy package to four aging reactors–including reversing Entergy’s decision to close the FitzPatrick reactor this coming January–has put wind into the industry’s sails. Even that chapter isn’t over, with lawsuits already being filed and several more expected. And environmental groups this week launched a new campaign to get Governor Cuomo to smell the coffee and cancel what will not only be the largest corporate give-away in the state’s history, but relegate clean energy to second-class status behind old nukes.
The lingering uncertainty hasn’t stopped the industry PR and lobbying machines, though–after all, billions of dollars in free money is at stake! Exelon, FirstEnergy, and other companies touted New York as a national model, and began urging states from Connecticut to Illinois to follow suit. Having to get each state to line up is going to be a tall order. In addition to FirstEnergy’s failed Ohio bailout, Exelon hasn’t been able to sell a much smaller five-year, $1.5 billion subsidy in Illinois. And nukes in Connecticut and New Jersey are still making millions in profits each year, without heaping billions more in subsidies onto ratepayers’ utility bills.
So the industry has started pushing for a national bailout. NIRS thought we should take a look at what that might cost. Next week, we will publish a short report showing that a federal nuclear subsidy based on the EPA’s estimate of the social cost of carbon (as New York approved) would be massively expensive: up to $280 billion by 2030. Even if it were only applied to reactors that are already becoming unprofitable–more than half of the nukes in the country, according to a recent report–it would total at least $160 billion. In Illinois and Pennsylvania alone, it would cost ratepayers in each state $30 billion.
NIRS is launching a petition to the next President urging the new administration to say no to a national nuclear bailout, and to end subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuels. We hope you’ll sign the petition and help us get to our goal of 100,000 signatures. Whoever wins the election in November needs to know that another nuclear bailout isn’t going to fly with the American people.
There is no nuclear bridge to a clean energy future. If we are going to make good on the global climate treaty and prevent runaway global warming, we need to go all in on renewable energy (and efficiency!) and not waste our time and money propping up dirty energy sources. Nobody is even talking about putting the kind of money a national nuclear bailout would cost into climate action. But if we did, we could get off nuclear and fossil fuels in a generation. And maybe save the world.
The CDC is now officially planning for a nuclear attack, Quartz, BY Karen Hao 5 Jan 17, Welcome to 2018. It’s been an apocalyptic start to the new year. And according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the worst could be yet to come.
The agency wants the American public to get ready for the possibility of a nuclear strike, reports Politico, and it has posted a notice for a Jan. 16 briefing titled “Public Health Response to a Nuclear Detonation.” The session in Atlanta, Georgia will include experts on radiation and disaster preparedness and discuss what federal, state and local governments are doing to prepare……https://qz.com/1172895/the-cdc-is-holding-a-briefing-to-prepare-the-public-for-a-nuclear-attack/
Moderation on Iran: Better to improve than scrap nuclear pact http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2018/01/02/Moderation-on-Iran-Better-to-improve-than-scrap-nuclear-pact/stories/201712300018 THE EDITORIAL BOARD, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette It shouldn’t seem necessary to make an argument to the American people that the United States should not go to war with a nation of 80 million, located far from our shores, with which America once had a fruitful commercial and political relationship and with which, like other parts of the world, it has entered into a nuclear weapons control agreement.
But here we are, and it is useful to suggest that it would be unwise for America to go to war with Iran, whose regime in recent days has been beset by popular political demonstrations.
The Trump administration has criticized the Iran nuclear agreement repeatedly and could scrap it. However, as far as the agreement having shortcomings, wouldn’t it make more sense to take the agreement — signed not only by Iran and the United States, but also by China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom — as the basis for negotiating changes, as opposed to threatening to pull out of it and, perhaps, to attack Iran?
The first problem with the current U.S. posture is that the other signatories like the agreement. China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world have taken it as a green light to improve trade, including major sales, to Iran. America-based companies have considered the continued U.S. sanctions against Iran, and, particularly the continued political objections to it in the United States, including from Israel and American Christian fundamentalists, as a reason not to put the pedal to the metal in terms of pursuing trade and investment opportunities in Iran.
The second major problem in any thought that the United States might attack Iran militarily is that the results would be catastrophic. Of course, the United States would probably win an all-out war against Iran in the long haul — that is, assuming the American people would be prepared to support such a war. That’s a real question, because it would be hard to persuade them that there was any reason for such a war, and it would cost the Earth.
In the short run, a quick glance at the map is worth the trouble in assessing U.S. vulnerabilities in such a conflict. Iran lies just across the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, in all of which the U.S. has important military installations, including the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet and the regional headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, a short rocket distance away. Iran also borders on Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. maintains a vulnerable presence as well as long-term investment.
It would be dreamy to imagine that Iran’s first response to a U.S. attack wouldn’t be retaliation against some or all of these key U.S. targets surrounding it. The usual arguments for improving relations with Iran, not worsening them, are otherwise foregone commercial opportunities, the concerns of some of our allies, and regional and world peace in general. Given that President Donald J. Trump’s principal national security affairs advisers are current or retired military officers, it is also worth looking at the military aspects of U.S. relations with Iran with a cold eye, then determining future U.S. policy, in 2018 and beyond.
The dry-storage plan OK’ed by the Coastal Commission is the Holtec system: cheaper canisters with 1/2 to 5/8-inch thick stainless steel walls, wildly short of the 10 to 20-inch thick-walled ones used in other countries.
At the controversy’s core is the susceptibility of Holtec canisters to cracking, which could leak radiation into the environment.
Holtec canisters have no seismic rating, are not proven safe for transport, and there is no means to even inspect them for cracks or for existing cracks to be repaired in a safe manner. A crack can’t even be detected until after a radiation leak has occurred.
A highly disturbing report from Sandia National Laboratories states that a crack in a hot canister can penetrate the wall in under 5 years.
Mosko: Ticking Time Bomb at San Onofre Nuclear Plant, https://voiceofoc.org/2018/01/mosko-ticking-time-bomb-at-san-onofre-nuclear-plant/ By SARAH “STEVE” MOSKO The seaside nuclear reactors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente were permanently shut down in 2013 following steam generator malfunction. What to do with the 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive waste remains an epic problem, however, pitting concerned citizens against Southern California Edison, the California Coastal Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Edison operates San Onofre, the Coastal Commission is charged with protecting the coastline, and the NRC is responsible for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel and protecting the public.The Problem
The Current Plan
The dry-storage plan OK’ed by the Coastal Commission is the Holtec system: cheaper canisters with 1/2 to 5/8-inch thick stainless steel walls, wildly short of the 10 to 20-inch thick-walled ones used in other countries. Each of 72 remaining canisters slated to be converted from wet to dry storage will contain about 50,000 pounds of nuclear waste and as much radiation as was released from Chernobyl.
At the controversy’s core is the susceptibility of Holtec canisters to cracking, which could leak radiation into the environment, both land and sea. Seawater seepage into canisters can produce explosive substances.
Holtec canisters have no seismic rating, are not proven safe for transport, and there is no means to even inspect them for cracks or for existing cracks to be repaired in a safe manner. A crack can’t even be detected until after a radiation leak has occurred.
The Coastal Commission acknowledges these issues but is allowing Edison 20 years to hopefully come up with a solution.
In the meanwhile, loading into dry-canisters already began in December, 2017 and is scheduled to be completed by 2019. Furthermore, Edison plans to empty the cooling pools once the dry transfer is completed, eliminating the only approved method to replace a defective canister.
There is also no community evacuation plan in place in the event of radiation leakage at San Onofre. The fear is that failure of even one canister could leave Orange and San Diego counties an uninhabitable wasteland for eons, with exposed humans suffering permanent genetic damage. And, home and business insurance doesn’t cover losses due to radiation contamination.
The very real specter of radiation havoc from a terrorist bomb attack launched from an offshore boat or a truck on the I-5 Freeway looms as well.
In the minds of many, the reckless plan allowed by the NRC and endorsed by the Coastal Commission and Edison creates imminent risk of a “Fukushima” in South Orange County.
The Solution
A lawsuit filed by the San Diego watchdog organization Citizens Oversight in 2015 asserted that the Coastal Commission failed to adequately consider both the special risks of on-site storage in an earthquake zone next to the ocean and the shortcomings of the Holtec system. In a court settlementjust reached on Aug. 25, 2017, Edison agreed to hire a team of experts in hopes of locating an alternative temporary storage site. Edison also agreed to develop a plan for dealing with cracked canisters, though there is no assurance that such a plan is feasible for Holtec canisters.
Though the settlement plan appears a first step toward a saner solution to San Onofre’s nuclear waste problem, the obligations in the plan are far too vague to assuage the concerns of local residents. Their main points are threefold: There are other safer temporary storage sites inland that can be considered; maintaining the cooling pools is imperative until all nuclear waste has been moved off-site; and Holtec canisters should be abandoned in favor of thick-wall options that already have a 40-year track record of safety during both transport and storage in countries across the globe.
Case in point, the thick-wall canisters in place at Fukushima survived both the earthquake and the tsunami.
Take action to protect yourself and your family by signing on to a petition from PublicWatchdogs.orgto revoke the Coastal Commission’s permit to turn San Onofre into a nuclear waste dump.
Energy Department to permanently close damaged Hanford Nuclear Reservation tank http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2018/01/02/energy-department-permanently-close-damaged-hanford-nuclear-reservation-tank/995967001/RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — The Energy Department says it will permanently close a damaged radioactive waste storage tank on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Nuclear subsidy a poorly considered handout, My Central Jersey, Mauricio Gutierrez, president and chief executive officer, NRG Energy, Princeton The nuclear subsidy bill (S3560) currently before the Legislature creates only one winner — nuclear plant owners — and many losers, including millions of business and residential electricity customers. By giving a blatant handout to PSE&G and Exelon to prop up three of their aging nuclear facilities, this legislation amounts to a $300-$400 million energy tax on millions of electricity customers across New Jersey every year. It will increase the cost of electricity and take hard-earned taxpayer dollars out of the pockets of average citizens, only to put it in the coffers of two multi-billion dollar corporations. And it won’t create a single job or additional investment in New Jersey along the way.
CBO Cost Estimation of Nuclear Modernization Omits Hazardous Cleanup https://washingtonspectator.org/alvarez-nuclear-cleanup/ High-level radioactive waste pose threats to environment around nuclear management facilities , By Robert Alvarez, ith its $1.2 trillion price tag for the modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal and production complex, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office has induced “sticker shock” on Capitol Hill. Yet despite this enormous projected cost for rebuilding the U.S. triad of land, submarine, and bomber nuclear forces, the CBO has in fact lowballed its estimate by excluding the costs for environmental restoration and waste management of the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons complex.
Even though the cleanup of nuclear weapons sites comes from the same congressional spending account as DOE nuclear weapons modernization, the CBO chose to exclude an additional $541 billion in legacy costs. If these costs are included, the total price tag goes to $1.74 trillion over three decades.
The largest of these cleanup costs, at $179.5 billion, is attributed to the stabilization and disposal of high-level radioactive wastes generated from the production of plutonium. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) informed Congress in 2013 that these wastes are “considered one of the most hazardous substances on earth.”
About 100 million gallons are stored in 227 underground tanks, many larger than state capitol domes and ranging in age from 43 to 73 years. Over 1 million gallons of these contaminants have leaked at the DOE’s Hanford site in Washington state, threatening the Columbia River.
The removal and stabilization of these wastes at Hanford by mixing them with molten glass, at an estimated cost of as much as $72.3 billion, represents the single largest, most expensive, and potentially riskiest nuclear cleanup project ever undertaken by the United States. It’s roughly comparable to the Apollo moon program in cost and risk, except there’s no moon.
Even without factoring in cleanup, an analysis of the DOE costs for the nuclear warheads program shows that while the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile has shrunk by 56 percent since 2003, the annual per-warhead cost has increased by about 422 percent. This huge cost growth in the nuclear stockpile budget is largely due to ever-growing overhead expenses for abandoned and antiquated structures not formally part of the DOE cleanup program. Many of these facilities contain hazardous materials and have been ignored for several decades.
To keep the lights on, the DOE weapons complex must pay for things like collapses, flooding, fires, and preventing roofs from falling in. In 2015, the DOE Inspector General warned that, “delays in the cleanup and disposition of contaminated excess facilities expose the Department, its employees, and the public to ever-increasing levels of risk [and] lead to escalating disposition costs.”
The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for instance, has a high-risk “footprint” of abandoned contaminated structures, mostly built in the 1940s, that is 2.5 times larger than the Pentagon building. Although Y-12 has not produced weapons for more than 25 years, its annual budgets have increased by nearly 50 percent since 1997, to more than $1 billion a year.
Over the past 20 years, there have been dozens of fires and explosions at Y-12 involving electrical equipment, glove boxes, pumps, waste containers, and nuclear and hazardous chemicals. Several of these incidents resulted in worker injuries and destruction of property.
As late as September of this year, unstable amounts of highly enriched uranium, called “material at risk” have spontaneously combusted. For more than 20 years, Y-12 has not been able to stabilize its backlog of “materials at risk.”
In a December 2016 DOE report to Congress, the unaccounted-for liability of getting rid of 2,349 of the DOE’s abandoned facilities over the next 10 years was roughly estimated at $32 billion. The DOE finds that among those are 203 unattended “high-risk” facilities and estimates a cost of $11.6 billion to close them down safely.
The most recent high-profile examples of aging-infrastructure risks include the collapse, last May, of a section of tunnel at the Plutonium and Uranium Extraction Facility, known as PUREX, a long-idle component of the sprawling Hanford nuclear site, 200 miles east of Seattle. The tunnel holds an enormous amount of radioactive wastes, and hundreds of workers were forced to seek cover.
And in June of this year, during the process of tearing down a building that was known to contain countless respirable plutonium particles, 31 workers inhaled or ingested plutonium during a work shift, after failing to take necessary precautions. It took four months for the DOE’s contractor to inform the public about the mishap and to tell the workers about their doses.
he costs for the disposition of excess plutonium from the nuclear weapons programs is pegged by GAO at $56 billion. In 2012, the U.S. Government determined that it no longer needed 43.4 metric tons of plutonium for military needs.
The majority of that plutonium is stored in facilities at the DOE’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, that were built in the 1940s. The plutonium is densely packed in special containers that are only meant for “interim” storage.
In 2010 and 2017, unexpected 2,000-year rains flooded a major plutonium storage area with several inches of water, which shut down the plant and impacted about 1,000 containers at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in recovery funds.
Because plutonium weapon components can become dangerous if mishandled or improperly stored, a Pantex worker told me, while I was working for the DOE’s Secretary, that it was like “having a zoo full of wild animals.”
Because the plutonium disposition program is way over budget and is stalled without a credible path forward, tens of tons of plutonium are likely to remain in these 70-plus-year-old structures awaiting further floods and additional threats to their safety and integrity.
While an ever-growing amount of plutonium will be stored in antiquated structures at the Pantex plant, another 1,000 abandoned facilities will be added to the list of sites requiring specialized disposition over the coming decade. Costs for the disposal of large amounts of hazardous wastes in the abandoned structures are not included in the DOE’s 2016 estimate and are likely to add several billions of dollars more.
When the DOE cleanup program was created in 1990, Congress made sure that it would be paid for from the same pot of money designated for the U.S. arsenal of nuclear warheads. These legacy costs should not be isolated from estimates of the nation’s nuclear weapons budget.
The need to protect the safety and health of workers and the American public from the mess produced by the current and previous nuclear weapons stockpiles should not be ignored as we proceed to deal with the future of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. As former Senator John Glenn of Ohio, a staunch supporter of the Cold War, would often say, “What good is it to protect our nation with nuclear weapons if we poison our people in the process?”
A senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Robert Alvarez served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999. During this tenure, he coordinated the Energy Department’s nuclear material strategic planning and established the department’s first asset management program.
North Korea SHOCK warning: US military action only option to DESTROY Kim’s nuclear arsenal, Sunday Express, AURORA BOSOTTI, 31 Dec 17, NORTH KOREA will not give up its nuclear arsenal unless the United States military intervenes to “pre-emptively destroy” it, former US UN Ambassador John Bolton said.
North Korea has refused to heed calls to stop its nuclear development programme and continues to fuel fears of World War 3 within the international community.
Mr Bolton warned that military action from the US would be the only possibility to ultimately end Kim Jong-un’s threat campaign.
He said: “I think we are going to come down to a binary choice. That is the use of military force is one possibility to pre-emptively destroy North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Or we allow North Korea to have nuclear weapons.”
Mr Bolton warned Pyongyang would not give up its weapons as it nears full nuclear capability.
The former US ambassador told Fox News: “There’s zero chance that after 25 years of pressure, this close to the finish line, they are going to give it up.
“It’s not going to happen.”
North Korea was hit with a swathe of new sanctions after defying orders to terminate its nuclear development programme and conducting several missile tests – threatening both Japan and the US overseas territory of Guam…..
Lessons from Florida’s nuclear failure, https://www.aikenstandard.com/guest-editorial-lessons-from-florida-s-nuclear-failure/article_d9f06eea-ec33-11e7-9362-eb50c4bd1cba.html 31 Dec 17, It’s a story all too familiar to millions of South Carolina electric ratepayers.Some $381 million in lost construction costs; $1.3 billion to shut down an existing nuclear power plant; $871 million for a nuclear project that never even broke ground. Those and other disasters will cost Florida ratepayers about $6 billion over the next few decades.
Here in South Carolina, Santee Cooper and SCE&G customers could be stuck paying as much as $9 billion over the next six decades for two new nuclear reactors that will never generate electricity unless lawmakers and regulators effectively intervene on their behalf.
In South Carolina, that law led to one massive failure. In Florida it contributed to a handful.
The lesson from Florida is that South Carolinians remain vulnerable until the Base Load Review Act is either repealed or significantly modified. Until then, utilities in the state could theoretically use it to advance other major projects while leaving customers on the hook for the cost.
That shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
Interestingly, Florida never actually repealed its law. Instead, lawmakers added two key words in 2013 that set a much higher bar for getting new projects off the ground – “reasonable” and “feasible.” No nuclear projects have been proposed since then.
It’s almost inconceivable that a law should have to state that building a new nuclear reactor on the backs of millions of ratepayers should be “reasonable” and “feasible.” Any business would be incredibly foolish to pursue such a massive investment that didn’t meet such a minimal standard.
But the BLRA and its Florida equivalent allow, and in fact encourage, utilities to go big by removing any economic risk associated with inherently risky investments.
That was deeply misguided in 2007. It seems unfathomably wrongheaded now in the wake of so many high-profile failures across the Southeast.
In South Carolina, utilities must prove that their nuclear costs were “prudently incurred” before passing them on to customers under the BLRA. SCE&G and Santee Cooper did not likely meet even that low bar.
But work proceeded, customers continued to pay higher rates, and utility executives kept telling lawmakers and regulators that construction on the reactors was proceeding appropriately. That’s certainly not “prudent.”
Lawmakers must now make it a priority when they return to session in January to help SCE&G and Santee Cooper customers recover as much money as possible and avoid paying higher electric bills for decades for a failure that was entirely out of their hands.
They must also undo the law that made that failure possible in the first place. Otherwise – as in Florida – South Carolina’s first nuclear disaster might not be its last.
The Experimental Nuclear Reactor Secretly Built Under the University of Chicago Chicago Pile-1, the first reactor to reach criticality, was built under a football field. Atlas Obscura, JULY 27, 2016
The Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), as it came to be known was monolith made of carefully stacked graphite blocks, interlaced with cubes of uranium. Control rods made of cadmium were inserted to absorb any errant radiation from the reaction. It looked, from the outside, like not much more than a pile of black bricks.
Trump’s “America First” Security Strategy Imperils the US http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43066-trump-s-america-first-security-strategy-imperils-the-us, December 29, 2017By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout | News Analysis Last week, with great fanfare, Donald Trump rolled out his new National Security Strategy (NSS). Its guiding theme is “America First.” An analysis of the 55-page document, however, reveals a program that renders the United States more unpopular and vulnerable to external threats.
Trump’s plan takes Barack Obama’s policy of “American exceptionalism” to a new level. In his speech accompanying the NSS’s release, Trump stated, “America has been among the greatest forces for peace and justice in the history of the world.”
Yet Trump has not only continued but also escalated the Bush-Obama wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, dropped Tomahawk missiles on Syria, threatened North Korea and Iran, intensified airstrikes against Muslim countries, and fanned the flames of conflict in the Middle East.
Trump’s NSS stresses military might but makes scant reference to diplomacy. His administration is building 10 new aircraft carriers worth $13 billion each as a counterweight to China, and expanding the US nuclear weapons program to the tune of $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
Nuclear weapons are “the foundation of our strategy to preserve peace and stability by deterring aggression against the United States, our allies, and our partners,” according to the NSS. But Trump has dangerously escalated tensions with North Korea, providing that country with increasing incentives to develop nuclear weapons that reach around the world.
And by refusing to recertify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s finding to the contrary, Trump is further imperiling peace.
The NSS’s brief mention of working with international organizations is belied by the Trump administration’s abiding contempt for the United Nations. The UN Charter was created in 1945 by the countries of the world to collectively restore and maintain international peace and security.
As with Trump’s domestic program, the NSS makes no pretense of concern for human rights in other countries. This is evidenced in practice by Trump’s unwavering support for Israel‘s brutal occupation of Palestinian lands, including, most recently, his declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel . The NSS accurately states, “for generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region.”
But the NSS minimizes Israel’s central responsibility for the conflict, stating, “the threats from radical jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems.”
In defiance of nearly all other nations, Trump’s Jerusalem declaration endangers world peace. Indeed, last week, the UN Security Council voted 14-1, with a US veto, to condemn Trump’s characterization of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And in a rarely used procedure called Uniting for Peace (UFP), the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly followed suit. UFP allows the General Assembly to take measures to restore international peace and security when the Security Council is unable or unwilling to act. By utilizing UFP, which requires a two-thirds vote, this resolution has greater force than other General Assembly decisions. The International Court of Justice upheld the legality of UFP in its 1962 advisory opinion.
Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Human Rights, told Truthout that, “What is already evident on the basis of [Trump’s Jerusalem] decision itself is the severe damage done to the global and regional leadership reputation of the United States.”
While setting forth the goal of being an “energy-dominant nation,” the NSS gives short shrift to “the importance of environmental stewardship.” Obama’s 2015 NSS, on the other hand, correctly stated that climate change was an “urgent and growing threat to our national security.” Yet Trump’s NSS does not recognize the threat of climate change. And in spite of increasingly extreme and unseasonal weather events such as recent hurricanes and wildfires, Trump has alarmingly and irresponsibly pulled out of the Paris climate accord.
The four pillars of the NSS, according to Trump, are protecting the US homeland, promoting US prosperity, achieving peace through strength and advancing US influence in the world.
The NSS singles out unauthorized immigration as a threat to the homeland, but also implicitly attacks authorized immigration as well. It states that residency and citizenship decisions “should be based on individuals’ merits and their ability to positively contribute to US society, rather than chance or extended family connections.” This policy leads to the separation of families and makes us no safer.
Pillar I stresses securing our borders “through the construction of a border wall,” embodying Trump’s campaign mantra. There is no evidence that an expensive border wall will secure US borders or make us safer.
“The United States rejects bigotry and oppression,” according to Pillar I. Yet Trump has instituted three iterations of a Muslim ban, which would exclude from the United States immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries, as well as North Korea and Venezuela.
The Trump administration has also drastically cut back on accepting refugees from Syria, whose people are suffering from a prolonged, tragic civil war.
Pillar I pledges the US government will “help communities recover and rebuild” after natural and other disasters. Yet Trump has failed to meaningfully respond to the devastation wrought by the recent hurricane in Puerto Rico, which is part of the United States.
One subsection of Pillar II, called “Reduce the Debt Through Fiscal Responsibility,” cites “modernizing our tax system” as a way to “make the existing debt more serviceable.” Ironically, at Trump’s urging, the GOP-controlled Congress passed a radical tax overhaul that will reportedly add $1.5 trillion (or more) to the debt in the next 10 years. This is the height of irresponsibility.
Moreover, the United Nations has just conducted an investigation of extreme poverty in the United States, with disturbing results. It concluded that the prevalence of poverty and inequality “are shockingly at odds with the [US’s] immense wealth and its founding commitment to human rights.” The report documented a rise in poverty that disproportionately affects women and people of color as well as many white Americans. Homelessness, police surveillance, criminalization of poverty and unsafe sanitary practices were also flagged as problems.
Yet documentation of poverty in the United States is conspicuously absent from Trump’s NSS. In fact, Pillar II cites “unnecessary regulations” as problematic. Deregulation serves the interest of the wealthy. Since he took office, Trump has eliminated hundreds of regulations that protect health, safety and workers.
This pillar identifies China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and jihadist terrorist groups as “actively competing against the United States and our allies and partners.” It stresses diplomacy “short of military involvement” as “indispensable.” Yet Trump castigated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for pursuing diplomacy with North Korea while escalating the war of words and pushing punishing sanctions against that emerging nuclear power. Although Pillar III pays lip service to the “law of armed conflict,” Trump’s actions have violated those rules.
Pillar IV states, “Around the world, nations and individuals admire what America stands for. We treat people equally and value and uphold the rule of law.” But since taking office, Trump has celebrated white supremacists, pardoned racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio and ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He has also consistently violated US and international law.
The United States sells weapons and provides military advisers to Saudi Arabia, which enables the Saudis’ illegal bombing and medical/food/fuel blockade of Yemen, the poorest Arab country. This has resulted in famine and an outbreak of cholera affecting millions of Yemenis, particularly children. California Democratic Representatives Ted Lieu and Ro Khanna both warned that such actions expose US officials to criminal liability for aiding and abetting Saudi war crimes in Yemen.
This pillar admits that the UN “can help contribute to solving many of the complex problems in the world.” It emphasizes that the “United States supports the peaceful resolution of disputes under international law.” Yet the administration reacted to the Security Council and General Assembly’s rejections of Trump’s Jerusalem-as-capital-of-Israel declaration by threatening countries that voted against it with loss of foreign aid. Moreover, Trump threatened to cut off funding to the UN itself, the most significant peacekeeping organization in the world.
Increasing disillusionment with Trump’s policies and, most recently, his unpopular new tax bill, may lead to the loss of a Republican majority in one or both houses of Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. It is incumbent on us all to continue and escalate our resistance to the Trump regime. The future of the United States and indeed, the world, depends on it.
‘War worse than ANY in human history’ Russia’s stark warning to US and North Korea https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/669884/North-Korea-War-Russia-US-Vladimir-Putin-Donald-Trump-Kim-Jong-un-Missile-Nuclear-Test, 30 Dec 17
RUSSIA has warned North Korea and the US are on course for an explosive war of a level “never before seen in human history”. US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un could stumble into a nuclear war of “unprecedented scale”, warned Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat Oleg Burmistrov.
Russia’s so-called ambassador-at-large predicted the start a war could be “unprovoked” and said the US it is “playing with fire” in goading North Korea.
Moscow has repeatedly called for calm in the region as Trump and Kim’s fiery war of words stoked the conflict to horrifying new heights in recent months.
Burmistrov called on the world to do “everything possible” to prevent the war that would spiral into the first use of nuclear weapons since World War 2.
North Korea is feared to be plotting another missile test before the end of the year – with US “missile sniffer” plane Cobra Ball taking flight yesterday amid Kim’s threats.Burmistrov told Sputnik: “[It could be] the catastrophe of the scale, never before seen in human history.
“We are talking not only about a major military conflict but also about a conflict that potentially has a nuclear component.
“Now we are in the face of a major military conflict, which can become a reality if the military solution plan is implemented.
“And we need to do everything possible to prevent this from happening.” Putin’s top man suggested US war drills in the region may be “testing” North Korea and looking for grounds to impose a total economic blockade on Pyongyang.
He described the region as a “powder keg” as military forces continue to march into the Korean Peninsula.
The ambassador added: “The situation on the Korean Peninsula is characterised by an unprecedented level of tension, there is a growing danger of slipping into an armed conflict, unprovoked, but which may begin due to accidental circumstances.”
Burmistrov has previously visited Pyongyang to discuss the nuclear crisis and has also hosted meetings with North Korean officials in Moscow. This week, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov met with US secretary of state Rex Tillerson to discuss North Korea.
Despite separate tensions between Moscow and Washington, the two came to an agreement that they would “never accept” a nuclear-armed Kim.
North Korea is believed to be gearing up to launch a space rocket, which experts have warned could be a cover for another weapons test. Kim should be expected to carry out at least one more launch before the end of the year, North Korea expert Michael Madden told Daily Star Online.
Pyongyang is believed to have long-term ambitions to launch a nuclear missile into the heart of the Pacific.
This test is known as the dreaded Juche Bird – and has been described as Trump’s “red line” that could spark World War 3.
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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