Poll: Most Americans oppose military threats against North Korea, Gephardt Daily, By United Press International – August 21, 2017 Aug. 21 (UPI)— The majority of Americans oppose U.S. military threats against North Korea, according to a new poll. But that opinion changes if diplomatic efforts fail to solve the rift between the two countries.
The CBS News poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe the U.S. “should not” threaten military action against North Korea, while 33 percent said it should.
Among Republicans, however, those numbers are almost reversed. The poll found that 63 percent of GOP supporters believe the U.S. should threaten military action, while 30 percent said it should not.
Among Democrats, the vast majority — 82 percent — said the U.S. should not threaten military action, while only 11 percent said military threats are the right thing to do.
Independents tended to reflect the national average, with 58 percent against military threats and 33 percent in favor.
U.S., North Korea clash at U.N. arms forum on nuclear threat,Stephanie Nebehay, GENEVA (Reuters) 22 Aug 17 – North Korea and the United States accused each other on Tuesday of posing a nuclear threat, with Pyongyang’s envoy declaring it would never put its atomic arsenal up for negotiation.
The debate at the United Nations began when the U.S. envoy said President Donald Trump’s top priority was to protect the United States and its allies against the “growing threat” from North Korea. To do so, he said, the country was ready to use “the full range of capabilities at our disposal”.
U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood told the Conference on Disarmament that the “path to dialogue still remains an option” for Pyongyang, but that Washington was “undeterred in defending against the threat North Korea poses”.
Fears have grown over North Korea’s development of missiles and nuclear weapons since Pyongyang test-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in July. Those fears worsened after Trump warned that North Korea would face “fire and fury” if it threatened the United States.
His remarks led North Korea to say it was considering plans to fire missiles towards the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. Trump responded by tweeting that the U.S. military was “locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely”.
A few days later, North Korean media reported the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, had delayed any decision on whether to fire missiles towards Guam while he waited to see what the United States would do. Experts warned Pyongyang could still go ahead with the missile launches…….
China’s disarmament ambassador, Fu Cong, called for support for its proposal to defuse the crisis affecting its Pyongyang ally.
“China has called for ‘dual suspension’, that is of North Korea’s nuclear activities and joint military exercises between the Republic of Korea and United States. This seeks to denuclearize the peninsula and promote a security mechanism.”
Wood rejected Beijing’s “freeze for freeze’ plan.
“This proposal unfortunately creates a false equivalency between states that are engaging in legitimate exercises of self-defense who have done so for many years with a regime that has basically violated countless Security Council resolutions with regard to its proscribed nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” he told the gathering.
“That is a false equivalency that we cannot accept and will not accept,” he said.
Fu retorted: “I just want to say that we’re not creating equivalency between anything. We are just actually making the proposal to facilitate a dialogue and to reduce the tension. We need a starting point to really launch the dialogue.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-usa-idUSKCN1B20XH
Here are 5 takeaways from Trump’s startling nuclear threats against North Korea,WP. By Mira Rapp-HooperAugust 21“…… some of the most basic tenets of international nuclear signaling were scorched by President Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” toward North Korea. Here are five lessons from his war of words with Kim Jong Un.
1. Trump ignored nuclear policy and strategy
In his “fire and fury” comments, Trump gave a warning to North Korea that had no historical precedent and was a consummate “commitment trap”: a scenario in which a leader stakes his credibility on a promise that leaves him with two bad options. He seemingly threatened a first nuclear strike as the response to any threats from Pyongyang.
From a policy perspective, this was stunning. Even at the height of the Cold War, U.S. leaders did not threaten nuclear use in response to mere threats. From a strategy perspective, Trump’s construct was foolish. It left him with the unhappy choice between backing down when North Korea next provoked or following through and launching a catastrophic conflict.
2. The Trump administration does not have a unitary nuclear declaratory policy
Trump’s secretaries of state and defense attempted to reshape his statements, but the president simply doubled down with another apocalyptic tirade. Four days later, Rex Tillerson and Jim Mattis again offered sound policy in print, but this cycle of presidential bombast and Cabinet mollification carves a credibility chasm……..
3. Trump wasn’t just talking to allies and adversaries
We often think of American nuclear signaling as directed toward two primary audiences: the adversary the United States seeks to deter and the allies it seeks to assure. But Trump’s nuclear bombast may have had two other audiences that ranked ahead of these.
The first audience was Trump’s domestic base, his hardcore supporters. …….The second audience was China, which Trump has long believed would “fix” the North Korea problem for the United States…….
4. Trump played the mad man, while North Korea and China played it cool
One might argue that Trump’s nuclear threats were his version of a “madman” strategy — he cowed his adversaries into submission with punishing words, even though there was little chance he would really act as he says. In response, we would generally expect an adversary to either escalate in brinkmanship or back down.
North Korea and China did neither…….
5. There may be lasting damage to U.S. alliances in Asia
Trump has not disguised his disdain for America’s alliances and has previously rattled Seoul by maligning important trade and missile defense deals. With his nuclear threats, however, he has done more serious damage to the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
Mira Rapp-Hooper is a senior research scholar at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
US refuses to pause drills despite North’s vow of ‘merciless retaliation’http://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/us-refuses-pause-drills-despite-norths-vow-merciless-retaliationAUGUST 23, 2017, SEOUL— As North Korea vowed “merciless retaliation” against United States-South Korean military drills it claims are an invasion rehearsal, senior US military commanders yesterday dismissed calls to pause or downsize the exercises they said were crucial to countering a clear threat from Pyongyang.
The heated North Korean rhetoric, along with occasional weapons tests, is standard fare during the spring and summer war games by allies Seoul and Washington.
USA persists with But uneasy ties between the Koreas are worse than normal this year following weeks of tit-for-tat threats between US President Donald Trump and Pyongyang in the wake of the North’s two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month.
There have been calls in both the US and South Korea to postpone or modify the drills in an attempt to ease hostility on the Korean peninsula following North Korea’s threat to fire missiles toward the US territory of Guam.
But a visiting group of senior US military commanders, including Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of US forces in the Pacific, said the drills are critical for the allies to maintain readiness against an aggressive North Korea.
“A strong diplomatic effort backed by a strong military effort is key because credible combat power should be in support of diplomacy and not the other way around,” Adm Harris said during a news conference at South Korea’s Osan Air Base.
General Vincent Brooks, commander of US Forces Korea, said the allies should continue the war games until they “have reason not to”. He added: “That reason has not yet emerged.”
The North Korean military said in a statement that it will launch an unspecified “merciless retaliation and unsparing punishment” on the US over the Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began on Monday for an 11-day run.
Despite the threat, an unprovoked direct attack is unlikely because the US vastly outguns Pyongyang, which values the continuation of its dictatorship above all else. The impoverished North hates the drills in part because they force it to respond with expensive military measures of its own.
The North Korean statement accused the US of deploying unspecified “lethal” weapons for the drills that it says involve a “beheading operation” training aimed at removing absolute ruler Kim Jong-un.
“No one can vouch that these huge forces concentrated in South Korea will not go over to an actual war action now that the military tensions have reached an extreme pitch in the Korean Peninsula,” the statement said.
“Moreover, high-ranking bosses of the US imperialist aggressor forces flew into South Korea to hold a war confab. Such huddle is increasing the gravity of the situation.” Adm Harris said yesterday it was more important to use diplomacy to counter North Korea’s missile threat rather than consider what actions by the reclusive nation might trigger a preemptive strike. “So we hope and we work for diplomatic solutions to the challenge presented by Kim Jong-un,” Adm Harris said.
When asked what actions by North Korea might trigger a preemptive US strike against Pyongyang, he added: “As far as a timeline, it would be crazy for me to share with you those tripwires in advance. If we did that, it would hardly be a military strategy.”
The Ulchi drills are largely computer-simulated war games held every summer, and this year’s exercise involves 17,500 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers.
No field training like live-fire exercises or tank manoeuvring is involved in the Ulchi drills, in which alliance officers sit at computers to practise how they would engage in battles and hone their decision-making capabilities. The allies have said the drills are defensive in nature. AGENCIES
U.S. Imposes Sanctions on China and Russia Over North Korea’s Nuclear Program, NYT, By EILEEN SULLIVAN, AUG. 22, 2017WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced new sanctions against China and Russia on Tuesday as part of its campaign to pressure North Korea to stop its development of nuclear weapons and missiles.
Navy Families Sue Fukushima Operators for Wrongful Death, Courthouse News, BIANCA BRUNO August 22, 2017SAN DIEGO (CN)— Families of five Navy service members who died after responding to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown have sued Tokyo Electric Power Co., blaming the deaths on radiation illnesses contracted from the March 2011 disaster.
The families wish to join a lawsuit from 152 other members or survivors of members of the 7th Fleet who performed humanitarian response from March 11, 2011 until March 14, when the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier was moved away from Fukushima due to detection of nuclear radiation in the air and on helicopters returning to the ship.
The new plaintiffs want to join in the third amended complaint Cooper, et al. v. TEPCO, et al., originally filed in the same court in 2012. They say it is only recently that they discovered the extent of the injuries, real and/or expected, due to exposure to radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The federal lawsuit was filed Friday and made available Monday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of California. They sued General Electric in addition to Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO.
SAN DIEGO (CN) — Families of five Navy service members who died after responding to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown have sued Tokyo Electric Power Co., blaming the deaths on radiation illnesses contracted from the March 2011 disaster.
The families wish to join a lawsuit from 152 other members or survivors of members of the 7th Fleet who performed humanitarian response from March 11, 2011 until March 14, when the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier was moved away from Fukushima due to detection of nuclear radiation in the air and on helicopters returning to the ship.
The new plaintiffs want to join in the third amended complaint Cooper, et al. v. TEPCO, et al., originally filed in the same court in 2012. They say it is only recently that they discovered the extent of the injuries, real and/or expected, due to exposure to radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The federal lawsuit was filed Friday and made available Monday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of California. They sued General Electric in addition to Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO.
The Navy servicemen and -women want a $5 billion survivor fund for medical expenses.
They say General Electric designed defective the GE Boiling Water Reactors at Fukushima, which was run by TEPCO, Japan’s largest electric utility. The 7th Fleet’s Operation Tomodachi provided humanitarian relief after the tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster. The sailors say they will need medical monitoring for life, payment of medical bills, and health monitoring for their children, including for possible radiation-induced birth defects.
“These harms include, but are not limited to, the following: illnesses such as leukemia, ulcers, gall bladder removals, brain cancer, brain tumors, testicular cancer, dysfunctional uterine bleeding, thyroid illnesses, stomach ailments, birth defects, death, and a host of other complaints unusual in such young adults and victims,” the complaint states…….
The families say the prime minister of Japan has effectively admitted the negligence of TEPCO. “This negligence was underscored on December 12, 2013, by admission of the former Prime Minister of Japan, Naoto Kan, who was in office when the Fukushima disaster took place. It was at that time that he admitted, for the first time: ‘People think it was March 12th (2011) but the first meltdown occurred 5 hours after the earthquake.’
“Unaware of either the meltdown or any potentially harmful radioactive release, the U.S. Sailor First Responders arrived off the coast of Fukushima during the afternoon of March 12, 2011 in order to carry out their mission of providing humanitarian aid to the victims of the earthquake and tsunami disaster. At no time did this mission include, nor expand into a response to a meltdown or a nuclear emergency at the FNPP. Rather, plaintiffs were carrying out their mission to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Japan by coming to their aid by delivering clean water, blankets, food, and other aspects of providing other humanitarian relief to the inhabitants of Fukushima Prefecture.”
The plaintiffs claim that though the nuclear meltdown was induced by a natural disaster, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission found in July 2012 that the meltdown was manmade because GE and TEPCO did not take adequate precautions for earthquakes and tsunamis.
turning the agency into a hollow shell by whacking its budget, overturning rules based on bogus reports and keeping employees in the dark allows Pruitt and his allies to claim publicly that all they are doing is restricting the EPA to its original purpose, not demolishing it.
In fact, the damage that Pruitt is inflicting will take years to repair.
Scott Pruitt’s EPA Is Crazyland, Clean Technica ,August 22nd, 2017 “…..By Meteor BladesCoral Davenport and Eric Lipton at The New York Times report that Pruitt has injected a sense of paranoia at the agency, making career employees feel as if they are the enemy. Those staffers say floors at EPA HQ are frequently locked, and if they wish to see Pruitt, they must have an escort. They are often told to leave their cellphones behind and not to take notes in meetings with him:“Mr. Pruitt, according to the employees, who requested anonymity out of fear of losing their jobs, often makes important phone calls from other offices rather than use the phone in his office, and he is accompanied, even at E.P.A. headquarters, by armed guards, the first head of the agency to ever request round-the-clock security.
“A former Oklahoma attorney general who built his career suing the E.P.A., and whose LinkedIn profile still describes him as ‘a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda,’ Mr. Pruitt has made it clear that he sees his mission to be dismantling the agency’s policies — and even portions of the institution itself.
“But as he works to roll back regulations, close offices and eliminate staff at the agency charged with protecting the nation’s environment and public health, Mr. Pruitt is taking extraordinary measures to conceal his actions, according to interviews with more than 20 current and former agency employees.”…….
Among the examples of Pruitt’s moves to undermine the agency’s mission is what was done to the analysis of the Waters of the United States rule put in place during the Obama administration to expand EPA’s oversight of large bodies of water to the streams and rivers that feed them. This attempt to preserve wetlands and clean up polluted tributaries was widely attacked by farmers, real estate developers, and rightist ideologues.
Pruitt was determined to dump the rule. So he ordered a rewrite of a lengthy analysis that had shown that the rule’s economic benefits far outweighed its costs. The EPA’s staffers dutifully complied, and when their report emerged, more than half a billion dollars in benefits from the rule had been erased:
“Jeffrey Ruchs, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an organization representing government employees in environmental fields, said the E.P.A. could not allow changes like this to take place, or expect its employees to follow such directives.
“‘This is a huge change, and they made it over a few days, with almost no record, no documentation,’ Mr. Ruchs said, adding, ‘It wasn’t so much cooking the books, it was throwing out the books.’ […]
“’The mere fact they are telling people not to write things down shows they are trying to keep things hidden,’ said Jeffrey Lubbers, a professor of administrative law at American University.”
The secrecy extends to the most mundane matters. Unlike previous agency administrators, he doesn’t post his schedule and makes it difficult for top staffers to even know where he is traveling on government business……
turning the agency into a hollow shell by whacking its budget, overturning rules based on bogus reports and keeping employees in the dark allows Pruitt and his allies to claim publicly that all they are doing is restricting the EPA to its original purpose, not demolishing it.
Their numbers are misleading, don’t add up and fail to account for the $ 1.1 billion rate-payers were charged to build Three Mile Island, the $987 million rate-payers and taxpayers were billed to defuel TMI-2 and the $5.26 billion in stranded costs Exelon collected from rate-payers to bailout their nuclear fleet as a result of deregulation.
When considering more bailout money for Three Mile Island, please remember the following numbers:
Zero: The amount of taxes paid by TMI-2 annually.
Two: Number of unguarded entrances to TMI.
Five: Number of counties within 10 miles of Three Mile Island. The NRC does not require emergency planning for the cites of Harrisburg, Lancaster, Lebanon or York.
Seven: Number of lobbying firms Exelon hired in Pennsylvania (2016) to convince legislators to support another bailout.
10 percent: Exelon announced it would eliminate about 1,900 positions — 10 percent of its workforce — by 2006 as part of its restructuring. Exelon cut 1,200 additional positions in 2004 and another 700 in 2006.
30 metric tons: Amount of high-level radioactive waste generated annually and stored onsite.
90: Number of days TMI-2 operated before the meltdown.
200+: Number of job losses at TMI-1 since Exelon bought TMI in 1999.
520: The “Top 50” list published by the Patriot News on July 2, 2006, reported Exelon’s staffing numbers were 520.
525: Number of jobs at Exelon reported to the NRC in their license renewal application for Three Mile Island.
600 tons: Amount of of additional high-level radioactive garbage TMI-1 will produce from 2014 to 2034.
804: Numbers of employees working at TMI in 1998.
1999: The Better Business Bureau determined, “The process currently used to produce at least some, if not most, of the uranium-enriched fuels that are necessary to power nuclear energy plants emits substantial amounts of environmentally harmful greenhouse gases.” (May 13, 1999).
2,000: Exelon Vice President and CFO, Robert Shappard, speaking in New York to the Deutsche Bank energy conference on June 22, 2004, boasted that Exelon “can cut 2,000 heads from our head count by the year 2006.”
$11,843: The amount of money Exelon spent to provide “gifts, hospitality, transportation and lodging for state officials” in Pennsylvania in 2016. (Source: “The Caucus,” March 21, 2017).
69,468: Number of clean-energy jobs in Pennsylvania as of 2016. Lancaster and York combined for 4,684 energy efficiency and renewable-energy jobs. (Environmental Entrepreneurs).
$490,207: The amount Exelon spent to lobby candidates in Pennsylvania in 2016.
$1,111,840: The amount the Exelon PAC spent to fund candidates in Pennsylvania in 2016.
2.3 million gallons: Amount of accident-generated, radioactive water TMI evaporated directly into the atmosphere.
$4.6 billion: Rate-payers spent $1.1 billion to build Unit-1 and Unit-2. Taxpayers and rate-payers were charged almost $1 billion to remove damaged fuel from TMI-2. The cost to decontaminate and decommission both reactors is more than $2.5 billion. These costs are not factored in another bailout.
— Eric Epstein is chairman of TMI-Alert, Inc., a “safe-energy organization” based in Harrisburg, Pa. and founded in 1977. It monitors Peach Bottom, Susquehanna, and Three Mile Island nuclear generating stations. Online at www.tmia.com.
Instead, Oliver pointed out that most nuclear plants around the country continue to store spent fuel rods even though those facilities were not designed to compile the nuclear waste.
“The most frightening example of this is the Hanford site in Washington state which created two-thirds of the plutonium in the U.S. arsenal and is currently storing 56 million gallons of highly toxic and nuclear waste underground,” Oliver said.
He then ripped a local news broadcast that called Hanford the most contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere.
“Oh it’s right here. We did it guys. Washington state,” Oliver said. “Home to the most contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere. Thousands of acres of apple orchards and several of Ted Bundy’s grisliest murders. We did it right here.”
Between the gibes, Oliver mentioned the continued health risks at Hanford, including a recent plutonium leak, and criticized officials for the design of a tunnel that collapsed on May 9. Some of the wooden timbers gave way in the tunnel, which exposed highly contaminated machinery…..
We’ve been saying that we were going to fix this for decades now and we seem to be no closer to a solution,” Oliver said. “We are dancing with trouble here. So if anyone says the government can just continue to wait, they are much like a house without a toilet, absolutely full of …”
Two companies have offered to buy into the currently-abandoned Summer nuclear expansion, though Santee Cooper CEO Lonnie Carter said neither are viable.
Carter said neither of the parties that made an offer has the assets to undertake the massive and expensive project. In fact, one company is “somehow trying to get into the nuclear business in this country so it can actually build power plants in the Mideast,” The Post and Courierreported. He did not identify the companies.
Santee Cooper has set a September 15 deadline for potential buyers.
The offers came after Carter sent a letter seeking buyers for its 45 percent share in the plant to dozens of power companies earlier this month. SCANA Corp. owns the remaining 55 percent.
Estimates from both companies indicated the final cost of the two new nuclear reactors would be $21 billion, or nearly double the original estimate.
Additionally, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster has initiated his own search for a buyer, and has reached out to officials at Duke Energy, Dominion Energy and Southern Power.
Trump’s attack on science isn’t going very well, WP, By Robert B. RichardsonAugust 10 2017, Robert B. Richardson is an ecological economist and an associate professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Community Sustainability. He served on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Board of Scientific Counselors from 2014 to 2017.
The first 200 days of the Trump administration have been marked by direct and consistent confrontations with the scientific community, and no area of science has been targeted more explicitly than climate science. The administration has proposed drastic cuts in the budget to federal climate change programs; removed climate-related information from government websites; and refused to renew the appointments of more than 30 members of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Board of Scientific Counselors — including me.
Scientists know that these actions are dangerous to public health, the economy and our national security. Thankfully, some government workers concerned about climate change are pushing back on the administration’s attempts to muzzle them, finally speaking out — or, in some cases, leaking out — against threats to academic freedom.
This week, The New York Times published a draft report written by scientists from 13 federal agencies. The draft, completed this year under congressional mandate as a special science section of the National Climate Assessment, states that “evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans.” It goes on to say that “many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change.”
The document was publicized before the Trump administration signed off on the release of the final draft. As the Times reported, scientists who worked on the draft feared that the Trump administration would not approve the document or might tamper with the report.
Fears of censorship are not unfounded. Staff members at the Agriculture Department’s Natural Resource Conservation Service must “avoid” using the phrase “climate change” in agency documents, according to a series of emails leaked to the Guardian this week. The phrase “weather extremes” is now the prefered language. Other phrases on the blacklist: “climate change adaptation,” “reduce greenhouse gases” and “sequester carbon.”
Such phrases are part of the language and lexicon of science, and instructing federal scientists to avoid using particular words is an affront to the pursuit of knowledge. This is censorship, and it is dangerous to both science and democracy…….
The United States previously served as a world leader in global environmental responsibility, but tragically that’s no longer the case. The administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord and President Trump’s refusal to budge on the issue at the recent Group of 20 conference confirms that the United States is denying science and dangerously ignoring the threat of climate change.
Nuclear’s Fork in the Road Atomic Insights, August 19, 2017 By Jim Little
Would you be willing to continue investing in an established business with flat revenues, increasing costs while competing against an agile field of competitors who enjoy a market advantage of lower costs, quicker deployment schedules and the support of government subsidies and favorable public opinion? Should you stay the course and focus on addressing those challenges or divest? This is the stark choice facing the nuclear power industry today……
Will nuclear generation continue or decline? Will the nuclear industry turn its attention away from new plant builds and extended-life operation activities and rather focus on decommissioning as evidenced by the plethora of recent conferences focused on decommissioning as the new market opportunity?…..
With revenues remaining flat, cost increases are significantly squeezing the profit margins of these operations. The financial outlook for nuclear utilities is bleak in an investment environment which rewards growth in revenues and profits. A number of utilities with nuclear units in merchant markets have recently announced decisions to decommission those units which are no longer able to sustain profitability. Utilities with units in regulated markets are likewise feeling similar financial pressures.
This situation was recently described to me by one nuclear utility executive: “From a shareholder perspective, how can I justify a recommendation to continue to invest in a facility when facing a forecast of declining returns while there may be other more profitable uses of capital?” So, should the default decision be to retire that unit and fund those efforts through its decommissioning fund; i.e. a “Nuclear 401(k)”?There are no easy choices. While the logic may seem straightforward, abandoning even a single unit could have cascading effects and far reaching implications. This same executive explained his concerns further: “How does one retain and attract talent going forward when there is a signal that nuclear may not enjoy full support going forward?” The inability to offset talent loss due to retirements in the workforce can affect performance on the remaining operations, increase costs, and further accelerate the departure away from nuclear. With a downturn in the industry there are other outcomes such as the reluctance of students to enter the nuclear field, university decisions to pursue other programs of study, research budgets reduced and grant applications no longer being sought. There are a number of other issues; the loss of existing, stable baseload generation and economic impacts such as those being experienced in host communities such as Zion, Illinois, and Vernon, Vermont. From a national policy perspective, it directly impacts the largest source of carbon-free generation in the United States, currently 63% of the nation’s total carbon-free generation.
Lastly, for the industry, the departure from nuclear is likely irreversible once made in the U.S. as the current talent and knowledge base is the result of over 50 years of investment and development. The situation may best be described by Stephen Wright, a comedian who is a master of the art of irony: “I live in a house halfway down a dead end street. It’s one way.”……..https://atomicinsights.com/nuclears-fork-road/
The Trump administration just disbanded a federal advisory committee on climate change, WP, By Juliet EilperinAugust 20The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning.
The charter for the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment — which includes academics as well as local officials and corporate representatives — expires Sunday. On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting administrator, Ben Friedman, informed the committee’s chair that the agency would not renew the panel.
The National Climate Assessment is supposed to be issued every four years but has come out only three times since passage of the 1990 law calling for such analysis. The next one, due for release in 2018, already has become a contentious issue for the Trump administration.
Administration officials are currently reviewing a scientific report that is key to the final document. Known as the Climate Science Special Report, it was produced by scientists from 13 different federal agencies and estimates that human activities were responsible for an increase in global temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010.
The committee was established to help translate findings from the National Climate Assessment into concrete guidance for both public and private-sector officials. Its members have been writing a report to inform federal officials on the data sets and approaches that would best be included, and chair Richard Moss said in an interview Saturday that ending the group’s work was shortsighted……
While many state and local officials have pressed the federal government for more concrete guidance on how to factor climate change into future infrastructure, President Trump has moved in the opposite direction.
Last week, the president signed an executive order on infrastructure that included language overturning a federal requirement that projects built in coastal floodplains and receiving federal aid take projected sea-level rise into account. Some groups, such as the National Association of Home Builders, hailed the reversal of that standard from the Obama administration on the grounds that stricter flood requirements would raise the cost of development and “could make many projects infeasible.”
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) said in an interview Saturday that the move to dissolve the climate advisory committee represents “an example of the president not leading, and the president stepping away from reality.” An official from Seattle Public Utilities has been serving on the panel; with its disbanding, Murray said it would now be “more difficult” for cities to participate in the climate assessment. On climate change, Trump “has left us all individually to figure it out.”…..
With the United States and South Korea set to begin joint military exercises on Monday—and as Trump administration officials attempt to de-escalate tensions after the president threatened to bring “fire and fury” upon North Korea—the regime of Kim Jong-un published an editorial in a state-run newspaper on Sunday calling the planned war games “reckless behavior” that is “driving the situation into the uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war.” The editorial added that the military exercises amount to “pouring gasoline on fire,” and warned that the U.S. would not be able to “dodge the merciless strike” the regime claims it is prepared to launch.
“The Korean People’s Army is keeping a high alert, fully ready to contain the enemies,” the editorial continued. “It will take resolute steps the moment even a slight sign of the preventive war is spotted.”
“If the U.S. is lost in a fantasy that war on the peninsula is at somebody else’s doorstep far away from them across the Pacific, it is far more mistaken than ever,” the editorial concluded.
The U.S.-South Korea military exercises are set to last for ten days, and they will consist of 17,500 American troops and 50,000 South Korean troops. As the Associated Pressnoted, the drills “hold more potential to provoke than ever,” and some are calling on the U.S. and South Korea “to postpone or drastically modify drills to ease the hostility on the Korean Peninsula.
Tensions between the U.S. and North Korea have been running high of late as the North continues to develop its nuclear capacities and as U.S. President Donald Trump continues to ratchet up tensions by responding erratically. Trump recently suggested that his “fire and fury” remarks were not “tough enough.”
As a result, a growing number of lawmakers are calling for Trump to be stripped of the “nuclear football.” “No U.S. President, certainly not Trump, should have sole authority to initiate an unprovoked nuclear war,” argued Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
According to a recent CBS Newspoll, nearly 60 percent of Americans are “uneasy” about Trump’s ability to deal reasonably with North Korea, and the same percentage believes that the U.S. should not be threatening Pyongyang with military action.
As Common Dreams has reported, activists and analysts have issued urgent calls for diplomacy in recent weeks as tensions continue to intensify. The failure to pursue diplomatic avenues could result in a “nuclear nightmare,” some have warned.
“Time has proven that coercion doesn’t work,” CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin recently wrote. “There’s an urgent need to hit the reset button on U.S.-Korean policy.”
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
nuclear-news 