The Department of Energy (DOE) has called for 42 actions to correct safety deficits that led to a series of radioactive releases during demolition of the now-closed plutonium processing facility at the former Hanford nuclear weapons production site in Washington state.
Dr Helen Caldicott – forthright and clear – on Donald Trump, and the nuclear war danger
Interview A conversation with Helen Caldicott From the forthcoming issue (May 2018)Taylor and Francis online, 17 Apr 18 Dan Drollette Jr For decades, anti-nuclear weapons campaigner Helen Caldicott (helencaldicott.com) has been educating people about the effects of nuclear weaponry and issuing rousing calls to action. A practicing pediatrician from Australia, Caldicott was the subject of an Oscar-winning short film, If You Love This Planet, and is the author of 12 books.In this Skype interview from her home in Sydney, Australia, the 79-year-old Caldicott doesn’t pull punches. For nearly six decades, she has been taking on the powers that be, in joyously feisty terms: She has said that the US Defense Department should be re-named the Killing Department and characterized Barack Obama as an “intelligent, lovely man, who failed the world” when it came to eliminating nuclear weapons. She considers the movie Dr Strangelove more of a documentary than a satire, labeled arms manufacturers “wicked,” and called American politicians “corporate prostitutes.”And of the current president, Caldicott said: “We’ve got a man in charge who I think has never read a book, and who knows nothing about global politics, or his own country’s politics. Who operates with his own kind of sordid intuition. And he’s putting people in every department committed to destroying that department. He’s absolutely destroying the infrastructure of America.”
Noting that it was International Women’s Month, Caldicott had one thing to say to young women: “We need to take over, because we’re on the short course to annihilation, and we need to say to men ‘Look, stand aside, you need your bottom smacked.’ ”
Yet for someone who has spent a lifetime fighting vigorously against the specter of nuclear annihilation, Caldicott reveals that she is remarkably pessimistic about humanity’s chances. Caldicott said that she wants her tombstone to read: “She tried.”
Editor’s note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
……..I noticed there seem to be a lot of people in the anti-nuclear weapons movement with medical backgrounds.
Helen Caldicott:
It’s a medical problem. And explaining the medical dangers of nuclear war was a very good way to teach people what the danger is, and to bring it home to their city. That approach was – and is – very powerful. During the 1980s, when I was one of the leaders of the nuclear weapons freeze movement and one of the founding presidents of PSR, we at PSR held symposia on the medical effects of nuclear war at various universities, all around the country. It started at Harvard, where we had George Kistiakowsky, a physicist who had been in the Manhattan Project as an explosives expert (https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/george-kistiakowskys-interview). It was quite wonderful.
Although afterwards, some journalists did say: “What are doctors talking about this for, this is a political issue.” And we said no, it’s a medical issue, because it will create the final medical epidemic of the human race……….
…… I think we’re actually in a much more dangerous situation than we were during the height of the Cold War, though no one’s really taking any notice. I mean, Dan Ellsberg went to 14 different publishers before Bloomsbury published his book. And my latest book, Sleepwalking to Armageddon, (https://thenewpress.com/books/sleepwalking-armageddon) is not selling very well at all. It seems like society is practicing psychic numbing and manic denial. We’re into clothes and food, and all sorts of things like that, while life on the planet just hangs in the balance………
Of course. America’s economy is built on killing. It’s the Killing Department, not the Defense Department. There’s no defense from nuclear weapons. It’s all run by voracious, wicked corporations, such as Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, General Dynamics, and the like. And many American politicians are corporate prostitutes. ……
Dan Drollette:
So you think that the military-industrial complex (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp) that Eisenhower warned about 50-odd years ago in his farewell address is still alive and healthy?
Helen Caldicott:
Oh, it’s grown, and metastasized.
……..Dan Drollette: How would you characterize Trump and his administration?
Helen Caldicott:
Trump is a dolt. He’s an idiot. We’ve got a man in charge who I think has never read a book, and who knows nothing about global politics, or his own county’s politics. Who operates with his own kind of sordid intuition. And he’s putting people in every department committed to destroying that department. He’s absolutely destroying the infrastructure of America.
When you think of all the brave, heroic Americans who worked hard all their lives to set up wonderful laws to protect the environment and protect the people and protect the children and protect the Earth, what’s happening is shameful. It’s all being undone, and I can’t understand why.
……..Dan Drollette:
What about his administration’s doings on the world stage?
Helen Caldicott:
For some reason, Trump likes Putin and the Russians. Well, I think I know why. I think that they and the oligarchs have funded Trump for years and years and years. It’s mostly, I think, about money. Trump wants to get on well with them, which is good because, you know, there’s almost certainly about 40 hydrogen bombs targeted on New York as we speak. So, therefore, it is imperative that America get on well with the Russians and in fact, push for bi-lateral nuclear disarmament. So, from that perspective, it makes me feel a little bit … less anxious.
………I think that enlarging NATO right up to the Russian border was extremely provocative. That policy largely came about because of people like Lockheed-Martin president Norman Augustine, who I’ve previously described elsewhere as “commander-in-chief of the Pentagon.” Because after the Cold War ended, Lockheed-Martin et al had nowhere to make money. They’re going to make money by making bombs, killing people, and then making more bombs.
So, Augustine set off on a journey to all the newly released little countries – Lithuania, Latvia, etcetera – to say “Look, if you want to be a part of NATO and have a democracy, you have to spend about $3 billion on armaments.” (http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/29/world/arms-makers-see-bonanza-in-selling-nato-expansion.html) And let’s be frank: NATO is in fact America. So that was all well and good for Lockheed-Martin, even though it meant that America went back on its promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not be enlarged. As a consequence, there are NATO missiles right up to the Russian border, on what had been territory that was previously friendly to Russian, which is extremely provocative. Imagine if the situation were reversed, and Canada became part of the Warsaw Pact, and they put Warsaw Pact-missiles on the US border. How do you think America would react? So that’s problem number one………https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MBkXvHtz5QyAfikSM8Cv/full
European lawmakers urge USA to stick with the Iran nuclear deal
Hundreds Of European MPs Urge U.S. To Support Iran Nuclear Deal https://www.rferl.org/a/hundreds-of-european-mps-urge-u-s-to-support-iran-nuclear-deal/29177578.html APRIL 19, 2018
Hundreds of lawmakers from Germany, France, and Britain have called on their counterparts in the U.S. Congress to support the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, calling it a “major diplomatic breakthrough.”
The initiative came as U.S. President Donald Trump has set a May 12 deadline to either improve or scrap the deal providing Iran with relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its atomic program.
“We were able to impose unprecedented scrutiny on the Iranian nuclear program, dismantle most of their nuclear enrichment facilities, and drastically diminish the danger of a nuclear arms race,” reads a statement signed by some 500 MPs from the German, British, and French national parliaments and posted online on April 19.
Britain, Germany, and France are signatories to the nuclear accord, along with the United States, China, and Russia.
Trump accuses Tehran of violating the spirit of the agreement and has called on European powers to “fix” what he says are the “terrible flaws” of the agreement. He wants new restrictions to be imposed on Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs.
“It is the U.S.’s and Europe’s interest to prevent nuclear proliferation in a volatile region and to maintain the transatlantic partnership as a reliable and credible driving force of world politics,” the European lawmakers said.
They wrote that abandoning the accord would result “in another source of devastating conflict in the Middle East and beyond,” would “diminish the value of any promises or threats made by our countries,” and would damage “our credibility as international partners in negotiation, and more generally, to diplomacy as a tool to achieve peace and ensure security.”
“We therefore urge you to stand by the coalition we have formed to keep Iran‘s nuclear threat at bay,” they added.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will both travel to Washington next week on separate official visits, in part to convince Trump not to pull the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran.
Releases of radiation from Hanford plutonium processing plan: demolition process is halted
Plutonium plant removal halted after radiation releases https://cen.acs.org/safety/Plutonium-plant-removal-halted-radiation/96/i17 Corrective measures include better control measures, communication with workers by Jeff Johnson APRIL 18, 2018
The actions include better application of coatings and use of other technologies to control spread of radioactive contamination, broader radiation boundaries, improve air dispersion measurement and modeling, greater involvement of employees as demolition moves ahead, and better training of and communication with site workers to solicit their input.
Following the releases, site remediation halted last December. Several hundred workers were tested for radiation exposure. Test results showed that several dozen workers had inhaled or ingested detectable radiation but at levels acceptable to the department.
The shutdown only affects demolition of the plutonium facility, but that is a significant part of the $2 billion a year Hanford cleanup. Hanford, in turn, is the largest component in what is the world’s more expensive remediation program. During World War II and the Cold War, the Hanford site was one of more than 100 U.S. plants that made nuclear weapons components. All the plant sites are undergoing some level of remediation.
The radiation exposure incidents at Hanford occurred last year and DOE’s analysis of what happened was released publicly in March. Additionally, DOE recently announced an additional internal but independent review of the plutonium demolition project. That analysis will be “ongoing,” according to DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments, which will conduct the review. An official with the office would not predict when oversight will end.
The demolition and remediation will not restart until the Washington State Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which regulate Hanford cleanup activities, are satisfied the operation is safe, according to DOE and Washington state officials.
The plutonium finishing facility turned plutonium nitrate solutions into solid, hockey-puck-sized plutonium “buttons” that could be shipped to other facilities. It once was a complex of some 90 building and was shut down in the 1980s. Cleanup began in 1989; demolition began in 2016.
Last June and again in December, demolition activities contaminated workers and vehicles at the site. Small levels of radiation were found away from the plutonium facility but still within the Hanford site. No detectable amounts were found in workers’ homes, DOE says.
In the March report, DOE says 281 workers requested bioassays and were tested following the December release. The results found two doses less than 1 millirem, eight doses between 1 to 10 mrem, and one dose between 10 to 20 mrem. DOE sets the acceptable level at 100 mrem/year for nonradiological workers and members of the public and 500 mrem/year for radiological workers.
Following the June release, some 300 workers requested testing and bioassays found elevated radiation exposure for 31 workers, DOE says.
U.S. Supreme Court considers forcing changes to reduce Savannah nuclear sites leaking into the river.
The State 18th April 2018 ,Four decades after radiation leaked from a landfill for nuclear waste near
Barnwell, unsafe levels of radioactive pollution continue to contaminate
groundwater near the site, as well as a creek that flows toward the
Savannah River. Now, after 13 years of legal battles between the landfill’s
operator and environmentalists, the S.C. Supreme Court is considering
whether to force changes that would make the site less likely to leak
radioactive contaminants, landfill critics say. http://www.thestate.com/latest-news/article209093444.html
America’s Nuclear Posture Reviews (NPR) – inconsistencies, limitations, and questions unanswered
What is US nuclear policy, exactly? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Adam Mount, Abigail Stowe-Thurston 19 Apr 18, The US Nuclear Posture Reviews (NPR) are the nation’s primary statements of nuclear weapons policy, and each has been debated closely. However, the 2018 NPR is unusual in that it has been subject not only to debate about the rectitude of its policies, but also about what those policies actually are. Even as press accountsclaim that the review provides for significant, even alarming changes to US policy, four notable experts, writing in Real Clear Defense, recently assured us that the document is “clearly in the mainstream of U.S. nuclear policy.” These widely divergent accounts are not merely a function of incomplete information or expertise, but also due to the fact that statements by the NPR authors and other senior defense officials reveal inconsistencies on several subjects—including the circumstances in which the US would consider using nuclear weapons, the capability of existing forces, and the necessity and mission of two proposed nuclear options.
Communities that hosted nuclear reactors now stuck with stranded radioactive trash
The township will be stuck with 753 metric tons of nuclear waste because the U.S. has no plan for its disposal. Oyster Creek’s used nuclear fuel now goes to the plant’s spent fuel pool, a specially designed area where the fuel cools for five years. After that, it’s moved to dry cask storage in metal canisters safely contained within a massive concrete structure.
Gary Quinn, Lacey’s former mayor and a current committeeman, said the town never anticipated having to deal with the spent fuel, which stays radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
With nuke plant shutting down, N.J. community inherits 1.7M pounds of waste WHYY By Catalina Jaramillo April 16, 2018
“No New Nuclear Plants To Be Built in the U.S” – says top Exelon official
Exelon Official: No New Nuclear Plants To Be Built in the U.S. Because of the plants’ size and security needs, the costs become prohibitive.U.S. News By Alexa Lardieri, Staff Writer April 16, 2018,
A SENIOR OFFICIAL WITH America’s largest nuclear plant operating company is predicting a dim future for nuclear power in the U.S.
William Von Hoene, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Exelon, said last week that he doesn’t foresee any new nuclear plants being built in the United States due to their high operating costs.
“The fact is – and I don’t want my message to be misconstrued in this part – I don’t think we’re building any more nuclear plants in the United States. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen,” S&P Global quoted Van Hoene as saying at the annual U.S. Energy Association’s meeting in Washington, D.C. “I’m not arguing for the construction of new nuclear plants. They are too expensive to construct, relative to the world in which we now live.”………
“I think it’s very unlikely that absent some extraordinary change in environment or technology, that any nuclear plants beyond the Vogtle plant will be built in my lifetime, by any company,” S&P Global quoted Van Hoene as saying, referring to a plant currently under construction in Georgia.
Von Hoene says because of nuclear plants’ sizes and the security required to monitor them, the costs become prohibitive.https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-04-16/exelon-official-no-new-nuclear-plants-to-be-built-in-the-us
Workers allege fraud in the clean-up operations on radioactive shipyard contamination
Workers’ Group Alleges Legislators Aren’t Doing Enough On Shipyard Radiation Contamination. Bay City News Service
SF Gate, April 16, 2018 A public workers’ advocacy group at a rally in San Francisco today criticized Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, for allegedly failing to do enough about the cleanup of radiological contamination at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
SF Gate, April 16, 2018 A public workers’ advocacy group at a rally in San Francisco today criticized Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, for allegedly failing to do enough about the cleanup of radiological contamination at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
Members of United Public Workers for Action also charged that the two legislators have failed to protect whistleblowers and called for a criminal investigation of their alleged lack of action.
“This is the largest eco-fraud in the United States,” group member Steve Zeltzer told a crowd of about 30 supporters in front of the Federal Building.
“Why are most of the politicians silent?” he said.
The claimed fraud concerns the U.S. Navy’s former contract with Tetra Tech EC of Pasadena to remove contamination, including radioactive soil and materials, from about 500 acres of the former shipyard slated for development for industry, offices and housing.
A preliminary investigation by the Navy concluded in September that there was evidence of data manipulation or falsification on soil samples taken from two parcels after the cleanup of those sections was supposed to have been completed. The two parcels make up about 40 percent of the property.
The Navy said that 49 percent of the soil samples for one parcel were suspect and 15 percent were suspect for the other parcel.
A second review of the information by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and two state agencies in December revealed more widespread alleged falsification.
The EPA review concluded that a total of 97 percent of the samples in one parcel and 90 percent in the other were suspect. The two agencies joining the EPA were the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and Department of Public Health.
“In summary, the data analyzed showed a widespread pattern of practices that appear to show deliberate falsification, failure to complete the work in a manner required…or both,” John Chesnutt, a regional EPA Superfund manager, wrote to the Navy on Dec. 17, 2017.
Chesnutt’s letter was made public last week by Washington, D.C.-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility after that organization obtained it in a Freedom of Information Act request.
……….The Navy began investigating Tetra Tech in 2012 after learning that some purported soil samples came from outside the cleanup locations.In 2016, according to a Navy fact sheet, former cleanup employees additionally alleged that potentially contaminated soil samples were swapped for clean samples, potentially contaminated soil was placed in open trenches in other areas around the shipyard, misleading data reports were prepared and computer data was tampered with to indicate lower levels of radiation. https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/Workers-Group-Alleges-Legislators-Aren-t-Doing-12839607.php
USA government keen to promote Westinghouse sales of nuclear power projects to India
U.S. backs Westinghouse to finish nuclear power projects in India, Reuters Staff, Reporting by Nidhi Verma and Sudarshan Varadhan; Writing by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Susan Fenton NEW DELHI (Reuters) 17 Apr 18 – Westinghouse Electric, which filed for bankruptcy last year, is now “lean and mean and ready to get to work” on its projects to build nuclear reactors in India, U.S. energy secretary Rick Perry said on Tuesday.The show of support by Perry came after Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse’s bankruptcy filing had raised doubts about the proposed construction of six nuclear reactors in India’s Andhra Pradesh state.
The agreement to build reactors, announced in 2016, was the result of a decade of diplomatic efforts as part of a U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement signed in 2008.
“Nobody in the world makes better reactors than Westinghouse,” Perry told journalists after a meeting with India’s oil and gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan in New Delhi.“They had some challenges in the past from its business practices. We leave that where it is. The bottom line is, that’s all behind them. They are lean and mean and ready to get to the work.”
Westinghouse, owned by Japan’s Toshiba Corp (6502.T) which is to be bought by a unit of Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc (BAMa.TO) (BAM.N), is one of the world’s leading suppliers of nuclear fuel and provides some form of service to 80 percent of the world’s 450 commercial reactors.
Perry and Pradhan released a joint statement to “reaffirm their strong commitment to early and full implementation of our civil nuclear partnership, including the Westinghouse civil nuclear project”. They also said the two countries would deepen cooperation on oil and gas, power, renewable energy and coal.
Trump is being urged by Electric Power Supply Association to reject bailout for coal, nuclear
Power plant owners press Trump to reject bailout for coal, nuclear, Washington Examiner by John Siciliano, April 13, 2018 Power plant owners are urging President Trump to reject a plea by a Ohio power provider to save its fleet of coal and nuclear plants that are slated to shut down in the next three years, saying it would be legally wrong and jeopardize his America First agenda.
Donald Trump to demand “full denuclearisation” of North Korea, in exchange for US embassy in Pyongyang’
Donald Trump ‘to tell Kim Jong-un to scrap nuclear arsenal within year in return for US embassy in Pyongyang’ ,
President Donald Trump is expected to demand that Pyongyang abolish its nuclear weapons capability within a year when he sits down for talks with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, but will offer to open an embassy in the North’s capital and provide humanitarian assistance as an incentive.
The details offer a sense of the rapid pace of progress towards talks although analysts suggest the timetable may be overambitious.
Quoting sources in Washington, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said Mr Trump rejected Pyongyang’s proposals for “phased and synchronised” steps to eliminate the North’s nuclear arsenal and will instead insist that full denuclearisation is completed within 12 months of their meeting. …….https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/13/donald-trump-tell-kim-jong-un-scrap-nuclear-arsenal-within-year/
Radioactively-hot particles detected in dusts and soils from Northern Japan
Radioactively-hot particles detected in dusts and soils from Northern Japan by combination of gamma spectrometry, autoradiography, and SEM/EDS analysis and implications in radiation risk assessment, Science Direct
Highlights
- •
-
Radioactive particles from Fukushima are tracked via dusts, soils, and sediments.
- •
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Radioactive dust impacts are tracked in both Japan and the United States/Canada.
- •
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Atypically-radioactive particles from reactor cores are identified in house dusts.
- •
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Scanning electron microscopy with X-ray analysis is used for forensic examinations.
…………https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969717317953
Helicopter to monitor radiation ahead of Boston Marathon – precaution in view of terrorism risks
Chopper will measure radiation ahead of Boston Marathon, With the Boston Marathon around the corner, more security efforts are underway. Metro US News By Statehouse News ServiceApril 11, 2018
A helicopter equipped with radiation-sensing technology will make several low passes over the Boston Marathon route later this week to measure naturally occurring background radiation ahead of the 122nd Boston Marathon next week.
Between Thursday and Sunday, the National Nuclear Security Administration will use the chopper to measure background radiation along the 26.2-mile marathon route and slightly beyond, flying a twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter in a grid pattern at about 150 feet above the ground at speeds of about 80 miles per hour, the agency said.
The NNSA said measuring baseline levels of radiation is “a normal part of security and emergency preparedness for major public events”
According to the United States Government Accountability Office, “the surveys can be used to compare changes in radiation levels to (1) help detect radiological threats in U.S. cities more quickly and (2) measure contamination levels after a radiological attack to assist in and reduce the costs of cleanup efforts.”…….https://www.metro.us/news/local-news/boston/boston-marathon-chopper-radiation
Radioactive Sludge Barrel Ruptures at Idaho Nuclear Site
U.S. News U.S. officials say a barrel of radioactive sludge has ruptured at an Idaho nuclear site., April 12, 2018, By KEITH RIDLER, Associated Press,
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A barrel containing radioactive sludge ruptured at an Idaho nuclear facility, federal officials said Thursday, resulting in no injuries and no risk to the public but possibly slowing progress in shipping waste out of the state.
The U.S. Department of Energy said the 55-gallon (208-liter) barrel ruptured late Wednesday at the 890-square-mile (2,305-square-kilometer) site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory, one of the nation’s top federal nuclear research labs.
The rupture triggered a fire alarm, and three Idaho National Laboratory firefighters extinguished the smoldering barrel and pulled it away from a dozen other barrels nearby.
When the firefighters left the building, emergency workers detected a small amount of radioactive material on their skin, said department spokeswoman Danielle Miller………
Federal officials said it’s the first known rupture of a barrel containing radioactive sludge at the site but might not be the last. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/idaho/articles/2018-04-12/incident-reported-at-idaho-nuclear-site-crews-responding
Nuclear subsidy approved, could cost New Jersey ratepayers $billions
North Jersey.com
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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