Pentagon’s “small” giant military footprint in Africa
The Pentagon’s War on Accountability: Slush Funds, Smoke and Mirrors, and Funny Money Equal Weapons Systems Galore By William D. Hartung, Tom Dispatch, Reader Supported News, 24 May 16 Colonel Mark Cheadle, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), recently made a startling disclosure to Voice of America (VOA). AFRICOM, he said, is currently mulling over 11 possible locations for its second base on the continent. If, however, there was a frontrunner among them Cheadle wasn’t about to disclose it. All he would say was that Nigeria isn’t one of the countries in contention.
Writing for VOA, Carla Babb filled in the rest of the picture in terms of U.S. military activities in Africa. “The United States currently has one military base in the east African nation of Djibouti,” she observed. “U.S. forces are also on the ground in Somalia to assist the regional fight against al-Shabab and in Cameroon to help with the multinational effort against Nigeria-based Boko Haram.”
A day later, Babb’s story disappeared. Instead, there was a new article in which she noted that “Cheadle had initially said the U.S. was looking at 11 locations for a second base, but later told VOA he misunderstood the question.” Babb reiterated that the U.S. had only the lone military base in Djibouti and stated that “[o]ne of the possible new cooperative security locations is in Cameroon, but Cheadle did not identify other locations due to ‘host nation sensitivities.’”
U.S. troops have, indeed, been based at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti since 2002. In that time, the base has grown from 88 acres to about 600 acres and has seen more than $600 million in construction and upgrades already awarded or allocated. It’s also true that U.S. troops, as Babb notes, are operating in Somalia — from at least two bases — and the U.S. has indeed set up a base in Cameroon. As such, the “second” U.S. base in Africa, wherever it’s eventually located, will actually be more like the fifth U.S. base on the continent. That is, of course, if you don’t count Chabelley Airfield, a hush-hush drone base the U.S. operates elsewhere in Djibouti, or the U.S. staging areas, cooperative security locations, forward operating locations, and other outposts in Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad,Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Senegal, the Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda, among other locales. When I counted late last year, in fact, I came up with 60 such sites in 34 countries. And just recently, Missy Ryan of the Washington Post added to that number when she disclosed that “American Special Operations troops have been stationed at two outposts in eastern and western Libya since late 2015.”
To be fair, the U.S. doesn’t call any of these bases “bases” — except when officials forget to keep up the fiction. For example, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 included a $50 million request for the construction of an “airfield and base camp at Agadez, Niger.” But give Cheadle credit for pushing a fiction that persists despite ample evidence to the contrary.
It isn’t hard, of course, to understand why U.S. Africa Command has set up a sprawling network of off-the-books bases or why it peddles misinformation about its gigantic “small” footprint in Africa. It’s undoubtedly for the same reason that they stonewall me on even basic information about their operations. The Department of Defense, from tooth to tail, likes to operate in the dark.
Today, TomDispatch regular Bill Hartung reveals another kind of Pentagon effort to obscure and obfuscate involving another kind of highly creative accounting: think slush funds, secret programs, dodgy bookkeeping, and the type of financial malfeasance that could only be carried out by an institution that is, by its very nature, too big to fail (inside the Beltway if not on the battlefield).
Rejecting both accurate accounting and actual accountability — from the halls of the Pentagon to austere camps in Africa — the Defense Department has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to keeping Americans in the dark about the activities being carried out with their dollars and in their name. Luckily, Hartung is willing to shine a bright light on the Pentagon’s shady practices……..-Nick Turse, TomDispatch http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/37052-the-pentagons-war-on-accountability-slush-funds-smoke-and-mirrors-and-funny-money-equal-weapons-systems-galore
Chicago’s electricity costs to be twice as much as for others in the grid
Chicago to pay twice as much for electricity reliability as others in grid http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160525/NEWS11/160529907/chicagoans-to-pay-double-for-reliability-than-others-in-its-power-grid By STEVE DANIELS Chicagoans will pay more than twice as much to keep their lights on during high-demand periods as the rest of the regional power grid they’re part of.
Beginning in mid-2019, the Chicago region will pay about $9 per megawatt-hour in extra “capacity” charges to ensure power plants deliver when they’re most needed. The charges are set per a power-generator auction conducted by PJM Interconnection, which oversees the power grid from Chicago east to the Mid-Atlantic states.
Results of the auction were unveiled May 24. PJM conducts the bidding three years in advance. The prices will take effect in June 2019 and be embedded in the energy costs all commercial and residential customers pay.
The results are good news for Exelon, which has campaigned for higher revenues both through the PJM auction and also from the state of Illinois for its five Illinois nuclear plants in the PJM.
But the company’s bidding behavior will limit the revenue windfall it might have received. Its Quad Cities plant bid too high to get any revenue at all, and only a portion of the capacity at its Byron plant qualified.
If all of Byron had cleared the auction, Exelon would have received $653 million in revenue beginning in mid-2019. As it is, the company will see about $513 million, according to calculations based on a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
That’s still higher than the $495 million it will get in the year beginning this coming June 1. And that’s with all the plants—Quad Cities and all of Byron included—getting paid.
Exelon says it will close Quad Cities as soon as mid-2018 without passage of a state law hiking electricity rates statewide to make that money-losing facility profitable. Had it cleared, Quad Cities would have received more than $100 million.
As it is, that’s money Chicago-area ratepayers will have to replace if the bill Exelon is pushing in Springfield passes. Exelon’s legislation demands a surcharge on electric bills sufficient to pay Quad Cities and the downstate Clinton nuke (which isn’t in PJM and isn’t eligible for the auction) $42 per megawatt-hour. The $9 Quad Cities isn’t getting because it didn’t qualify would have to be made up through the surcharge under the bill.
Of course, had Quad Cities qualified under the auction, Exelon would have been committed to keep it open until mid-2020. As of now, Exelon can close it as early as mid-2018.
In a statement, Exelon CEO Chris Crane said the high PJM-set prices aren’t enough to save Quad Cities.
“The capacity market alone can’t preserve zero-carbon emitting nuclear plants that are facing the lowest wholesale energy prices in 15 years,” Crane said.
Critics decried the outcome of the auction.
“There is a surplus of nuclear and coal in Northern Illinois,” said Howard Learner, executive director of Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center. “Electricity demand is dropping. . . . There’s no reason revenues in the ComEd region should be twice as high as the rest of the region.”
A PJM spokeswoman said the price for ComEd was so much higher than the rest of PJM, which includes all or part of 12 other states and Washington, D.C., because of “transmission constraints inhibiting the ability to import cheaper power.”
Transmission is tighter than it used to be to move power generated to the west into Illinois, she said. And coal-plant retirements also are playing a part.
The fact that Quad Cities didn’t qualify for the PJM payments, though, also means that the 1,871-megawatt plant isn’t needed to meet Chicago-area electricity demand even during the hottest summer days. So, while Exelon has made the argument that reliability would suffer with the plant’s closure, PJM believes there’s enough capacity without Quad Cities to keep the lights on and provide a substantial cushion above that.
PJM last year overhauled its capacity market to boost prices consumers pay to power generators that promise to deliver even during the most extreme weather events like the polar vortex two years ago that crippled some plants.
Power generators face steeper penalties if they don’t produce under the new system, and consumers pay them more for the ironclad promise.
Exelon is pushing hard in Springfield for wide-ranging energy legislation, including the rescue package for the two money-losing nukes. The company has said it will move to close the plants, putting at risk about 1,500 high-paying jobs in parts of the state that aren’t flourishing economically.
Exelon had issued a May 31 deadline for Springfield action, but observers believe if anything happens at all, it won’t be until summer or early fall.
USA’s Nuclear Weapons System Technology is Outdated
Report: U.S. Nuclear System Relies On Outdated Technology Such As Floppy Disks NPR, May 26, 2016 MERRIT KENNEDY The U.S. nuclear weapons system still runs on a 1970s-era computing system that uses 8-inch floppy disks, according to a newly released report from the Government Accountability Office.
That’s right. It relies on memory storage that hasn’t been commonly used since the 1980s and a computing system that looks like this: [photo] Beyond the nuclear program, much of the technology used by the federal government is woefully outmoded, the report says. About 75 percent of the government’s information technology budget goes toward operations and maintenance, rather than development, modernization and enhancement.
“Clearly, there are billions wasted,” GAO information technology expert David Powner said at a congressional hearing Wednesday, The Associated Press reports.
The GAO report found that the Pentagon’s Strategic Automated Command and Control System — which “coordinates the operational functions of the United States’ nuclear forces, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers, and tanker support aircrafts” — runs on an IBM Series/1 Computer, first introduced in 1976.
The system’s primary function is to “send and receive emergency action messages to nuclear forces,” the report adds, but “replacement parts for the system are difficult to find because they are now obsolete.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson told The Two-Way via email:
“This system remains in use because, in short, it still works.
“However, to address obsolescence concerns, the floppy drives are scheduled to be replaced with Secure Digital devices by the end of 2017. Modernization across the entire Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) enterprise remains ongoing.”
The report also found that the Treasury Department uses 1950s-era assembly language code (which it says is “a low-level computer code that is difficult to write and maintain”) on the individual master file (“the authoritative data source for individual taxpayers where accounts are updated, taxes are assessed, and refunds are generated.”) The report adds that the department has no firm plans to modernize the system……..http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/26/479588478/report-u-s-nuclear-system-relies-on-outdated-technology-such-as-floppy-disks
America’s NRC changing nuclear fee structure to help Small Nuclear reactors: Shillenberger delighted
NuScale Power LLC is expected to be the first company in the U.S. to submit a small modular reactor design application to the NRC by the end of the year, with project commercialization by 2024. NuScale’s reactor modules would each generate 50 megawatts (95 ECR, 5/17/16).
The NRC is implementing a variable annual fee schedule for these reactors including a minimum fee, a variable fee and a maximum fee based on the reactor’s cumulative licensed thermal power rating, which is the total heat output for all modules at a nuclear power plant. …..
Safety Concerns from Environmentalists
The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit organization focused on scientific research of environmental issues, opposes different fees for small modular reactors because the safety risk of these reactors is still unclear, it said.
“It’s not clear that the relative risk of SMRs and the effort needed to license and regulate them is proportional to the power rating,” Ed Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Bloomberg BNA May 23. He said this is especially true “since SMR applicants are requesting exemptions that require significant technical analysis, such as reducing emergency planning zone size and weakening security requirements.”
Also, Lyman disagreed with the statement that the SMRs would require less regulatory oversight. “NRC inspections of a multi-module SMR bundled unit may be more complex and entail more labor than inspections of a single large reactor with the same power rating,” he said.
Similarly, Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information Resources Service, said he thinks that reduced fees for SMRs would ultimately impact NRC safety inspections.
“Smaller reactors means there would be several times more reactors requiring inspections and oversight for the same amount of power. Basing the fees on the generation capacity seems like it’s likely to starve the agency of resources to do its job,” he told Bloomberg BNA May 23.
TVA Submits Early Site Permit for SMR
The Tennessee Valley Authority submitted an early site permit application for the potential to construct and operate multiple small modular reactor units at its Clinch River site near Oak Ridge, Tenn. TVA is the first in the nuclear industry to submit any such application related to SMR technology to the NRC, TVA said in a May 13statement.
The utility, which currently operates three nuclear plants in the South, has not decided what company it would purchase the SMR technology from, a TVA spokeswman told Bloomberg BNA May 23.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rebecca Kern in Washington atrkern@bna.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Pearl atlpearl@bna.com
Californians want to palm off their nuclear waste problem onto Texas
California looks to Texas to solve nuclear waste problem
Dallas company has filed to open nuclear waste dump in West Texas
Californians say proposal is chance to move spent fuel from Rancho Seco, San Onofre plants
Moving radioactive materials out of earthquake zones still won’t happen till 2021
BY MAGGIE YBARRA mybarra@mcclatchydc.com 9 May 16. WASHINGTON
California lawmakers are rallying around a plan to relocate radioactive waste from the state’s shuttered nuclear power plants to a storage site in West Texas after failing to secure enough political support to move that waste to a repository in Nevada.
The Texas site is owned by Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists, which submitted a nuclear waste storage proposal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in April.
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who represents parts of Orange and San Diego counties, said the proposed Texas site is California’s next best hope for moving high-level radioactive waste from areas vulnerable to earthquakes and other natural disasters………
“Seems like we’re on track to make West Texas the nation’s default nuclear waste dump after the one in Nevada fell through,” said Andrew Wheat, the research director for Texans for Public Justice, an advocacy group that targets what it labels the corrupt influence of corporate money in politics.Even if legislators and government officials do decide to move forward with building a nuclear waste facility in West Texas, it would still be years before Californians would see a reduction in the size of the toxic inventory at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Diego County, which was decommissioned in 2013, and the Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station in Herald, which was mothballed in 2009.
Waste Control Specialists did not respond to questions about how long it would be before the company would be able to relocate nuclear waste from California to Texas, but The Texas Tribune has reported that waste relocation efforts would not begin until 2021………
Irradiated
The U.S. government has compensated over 52,000 nuclear workers illnesses related to radiation exposure, but the process is complicated. Deaths resulting from exposure while working at the plants and the compensation process for survivors begs the question http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article76532967.html
‘Armageddon drone’ that can search for radiation
The ‘Armageddon drone’ that can search for radiation: Nevada nuclear test site to trial atomic disaster technology
- ‘Sandstorm’ craft used for radiation sensing and environmental monitoring
- The drones will also be used for sensor development and site security
- Researchers expect to begin tests with new technology this coming fall
By CHEYENNE MACDONALD FOR DAILYMAIL.COM, 25 May 2016
The US government is set to deploy two radiation-detecting drones at the former ‘Nevada Test Site’ to test new sensing capabilities that could help in future nuclear disasters.
The ‘Sandstorm’ unmanned aircraft will be used for remote radiation sensing and environmental monitoring, along with other security applications.
Researchers are now working to expand the sensor technology for unmanned aerial systems, and they expect the Sandstorm drones to begin tests in the fall.
The Sandstorm drones were purchased by the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS).
This location was once the infamous Nevada Test Site, where nearly 1,000 nuclear tests were conducted both under and above ground, beginning in the 1950s.
Now, the NNSS leads missions on emergency response, national security, defense applications and experimentation, nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship, and environmental management.
As of December 2013, Nevada is one of six FAA authorized test sites for unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
The new drones will help to expand the research and development programs, according to NNSS officials……..http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3607203/The-Armageddon-drone-search-radiation-Nevada-nuclear-test-site-trial-atomic-disaster-technology.html
USA’s nuclear power plants have experienced 10 perilous near misses
10 Near Misses at U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Considered Precursors to a Meltdown https://ecowatch.com/2016/05/24/near-misses-nuclear-plants/ Greenpeace | May 24, 2016 Following the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Greenpeace USA released a new report Tuesday on the 166 near misses at U.S. nuclear power plants over the past decade. Of the incidents identified in Nuclear Near Misses: A Decade of Accident Precursors at U.S. Nuclear Plants, 10 are considered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to be important precursors to a meltdown.
“Contrary to NRC commissioners’ claims, there is nothing safe about the nuclear reactors in the United States,” Greenpeace Nuclear Policy Analyst Jim Riccio said. “Thirty years after Chernobyl and five years after Fukushima, it is clear that these kinds of disasters could absolutely happen here. It is time for the NRC to listen to the whistleblowers within its own ranks and address these longstanding issues and vulnerabilities.”
In addition to the 163 accident precursors or near misses documented by the NRC, Greenpeace identified three significant near misses that NRC risk analysts failed to review under the agency’s Accident Sequence Precursor Program (ASP): the triple meltdown threat to Duke Energy’s Oconee Nuclear Station west of Greenville, South Carolina. According to NRC’s risk analysts, if nearby Jocassee Dam had failed, all three of the nuclear reactors at Oconee were certain to meltdown.
The report identified the following incidents as the top 10 near misses at nuclear plants between 2004-2014:
1. Browns Ferry 1 in Athens, Alabama: Residual heat removal loop unavailable; valve failure.
2. Wolf Creek in Burlington, Kansas: Multiple switchyard faults, reactor trip and loss of offsite power.
3. Robinson in Hartsville, South Carolina: Fire causes partial loss of offsite power & reactor coolant pump seal cooling challenges.
4. Fort Calhoun in Fort Calhoun, Nebraska: Fire in safety-related 480 volt electrical breaker due to deficient design control. 8 other breakers susceptible.
5. River Bend in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Loss of normal service water, circulating water and feedwater caused by electrical fault.
6. Oconee 1 in Seneca, South Carolina: Failure of Jocassee Dam would result in a meltdown.
7. Oconee 2 in Seneca, South Carolina: Failure of Jocassee Dam would result in a meltdown.
8. Oconee 3 in Seneca, South Carolina: Failure of Jocassee Dam would result in a meltdown.
9. North Anna 1 in Mineral, Virginia: Dual loss of offsite power caused by earthquake AFW pump out of service & failure of Unit 2 EDG.
10. Byron 2 in Byron, Illinois: Transformer & breaker failures cause Loss of Off Site Power, reactor trip and de-energizing of safety buses.
“If the NRC can’t even accurately track near meltdowns why should the public have any confidence that they can prevent them? It’s time to retire these dangerous nuclear plants and end the nuclear era once and for all,” Riccio concluded.
USA desperately wants to market nuclear power to India
U.S. official says India has addressed nuclear concerns, May 24, 2016 Reuters WASHINGTON | BY PATRICIA ZENGERLE A U.S. State Department official assured lawmakers on Tuesday that India has addressed concerns over liability that had for years kept U.S. corporations from signing nuclear power contracts in the country.
“We believe that the steps that India has taken have addressed by and large the key concerns that have been in place,” Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Desai Biswal told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
She also said the United States supported India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a 48-member group of nuclear trading nations.
India wants to increase its nuclear energy capacity dramatically………
ndia was shut out of the nuclear trade for decades because of its weapons program. A 2008 agreement with the United States gave it access to foreign suppliers without giving up arms primarily meant as a deterrent against nuclear-armed China.
But hopes that U.S. nuclear reactor manufacturers would get billions of dollars of new business evaporated after India adopted a law in 2010 giving the state-run Nuclear Power Corp of India Ltd (NPCIL) the right to seek damages from suppliers in the event of an accident.
Biswal declined to say that all U.S. companies would now be comfortable doing business in India. “Those are going to be individual determinations that companies are going to have to make,” she said.
Some companies are moving into the market. The chief executive of Toshiba Corp’s Westinghouse Electric said in March he expected to sign a deal in June to build six nuclear reactors in India.
Senator Edward Markey questioned Biswal on whether India had met the requirements to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which is dedicated to curbing nuclear arms proliferation by controlling the export and re-transfer of materials that could foster nuclear weapons development.
Diplomats quietly launched a new push last year to induct India into the group, which would carry the risk of antagonizing Pakistan as well as its ally, China. Beijing could veto any application by India.
Biswal said the United States backs India. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-india-nuclearpower-idUSKCN0YF2C1
USA wants to market nuclear power to Vietnam
Enhancing U.S.-Vietnam Civil Nuclear Clean Energy Cooperation “…… Earlier this month, the United States and Vietnam signed the Administrative Arrangement under our historic agreement on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy (123 Agreement), which initially opened the door to nuclear trade between our two countries in 2014.
To further build on this robust cooperation in the civil nuclear field, the United States and Vietnam aim to:
Build Institutional Connections: Continue reading
Former radioactive waste workers take legal action over their radiation caused illnesses
Former McDonnell Douglas workers, residents file suit over radiation exposure, St Louis Public Radio By DURRIE BOUSCAREN • MAY 20, 2016 Three former aircraft workers and seven north St. Louis County residents who say they were exposed to radioactive waste stored near Lambert Airport after World War II, have filed a federal lawsuit against Mallinckrodt and the Cotter Corporation.
They hope to join a larger case, filed in 2012, that represents about 250 plaintiffs who lived or worked near the airport waste site, Coldwater Creek, and another storage site in Hazelwood.
“There were a lot of fellow employees that are no longer with us. And I feel that I’m speaking for them,” said the lead plaintiff, 72-year-old Bob Malon, who survived a colon cancer diagnosis in 2004.
The personal injury lawsuit, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, seeks unspecified damages………
The nine plaintiffs claim that Mallinckrodt and other federal contractors acted negligently and allowed materials to leach into the environment, putting people nearby at a greater risk for several types of cancer and thyroid disease………
The 10 plaintiffs allege they were exposed to doses above 500 millirem a year without their knowledge.
Ken Brennan, the lead attorney on the lawsuit, hopes to consolidate it with ongoing litigation filed in 2012, McClurg et. al v. MI Holdings, Inc. et al. About 250 people who believe their health issues are connected to their exposure to radioactive contamination in north St. Louis County are represented by the consolidated suit, and another 150 have filed similar suits.
“We reconstruct, based on data that’s available, how much radiation was stored at the airport site, how that radiation was then distributed through weather and erosion and wind patterns,” Brennan said.
Brennan estimates a quarter of the plaintiffs are former employees of Boeing or McDonnell Douglas. The majority lived near the airport or along Coldwater Creek. Many plaintiffs, including Malon, were made aware of the litigation by a Facebook group that has tracked cancer and other health issues near Coldwater Creek since 2011, when a group of friends planning a high school reunion realized that many of their classmates had developed cancer or passed away.
“When we determine the extent to which each of our clients was exposed to radiation, we use existing science to demonstrate that their cancers were more likely than not caused by that radiation,” Brennan said……..
The people who worked at the waste site could be eligible to receive compensation from the federal government—and 48 of them have filed to do so, according to the Department of Labor.
By law, contractors and subcontractors who worked at nuclear sites between 1942 and 1971 can receive a lump sum and coverage of medical bills if they meet certain conditions. 22 cancers are specified in the law, including lung, breast and colon cancer.
Residents and nearby workers are not included, but Malon and the other plaintiffs believe their injuries stem from the same contamination. …. http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/former-mcdonnell-douglas-workers-residents-file-suit-over-radiation-exposure?utm_content=buffer961c0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Exxon Mobil documents should be thoroughly investigated
Exxon Mobil documents call for a thorough investigation We expect prosecutors to investigate when evidence suggests a corporation may have committed a crime, especially when the company may have harmed the public or deceived investors. Houston Chronicle, By Chris Tomlinson May 21, 2016 That’s why the legal community was surprised that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would try to stop an investigation by another attorney general into whether Exxon Mobil Corp. misled the public and investors about climate change.
Seventeen attorneys general, who unlike Paxton have criminal law experience, want to know when Exxon Mobil knew climate change was real, when it realized global warming would hurt its business, and whether it misled shareholders about the potential risk…….
Scientists working for Exxon Mobil in the 1970s and 1980s were among the first to recognize global warming, and that carbon dioxide was a major contributor, according to company papers published online by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times in September 2015.
“There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” Exxon Mobil senior scientist James Black told the company’s management committee in 1977. Black told senior managers and scientists the following year that a doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit and cause significant climactic changes, according to the documents…….
Exxon Mobil managers recognized the threat to the planet and their business model. Exxon Mobil scientists studied atmospheric CO2 and built climate models in the early 1980s. Company scientists worked alongside the world’s top climate experts and published academic papers, many of which are the basis for our understanding of climate change today.
A memo from 1980 called on Exxon Mobil managers to promote the company’s research into finding a solution to “the Greenhouse Effect.”……..http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Exxon-Mobil-documents-call-for-a-thorough-7887890.php?t=a90e275765&cmpid=twitter-premium
USA nuclear stations’ disaster procedures and processes are inadequate
U.S. Nuclear Reactors Fall Short on Steps to Cope With Disasters http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-20/u-s-nuclear-reactors-fall-short-on-steps-to-cope-with-disasters Jonathan Crawford JonNCrawford May 21, 2016
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Report notes failings in securing spent fuel, plant security
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Operators have already spent $4 billion on safety measures
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More than five years after a tsunami struck Japan triggering one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, U.S. reactors and industry regulators haven’t done enough to prevent a similar catastrophe, a government-sponsored study found.
Reactor operators are falling short on measures to prevent spent nuclear fuel stored at the plant from overheating and releasing radiation into the atmosphere following an accident or natural disaster, according to a report Friday from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Operators should also upgrade plant security “to cope with extreme external events and severe accidents.”
- A March 2011 earthquake caused a tsunami that slammed into Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, causing a triple meltdown that sent a radioactive plume over surrounding communities. The loss of power that followed the tsunami exposed weaknesses in systems meant to secure the plant and its stock of spent fuel.
- “The 2011 Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear accident should serve as a wake-up call to nuclear plant operators and regulators,” the National Academies, a private research group that advises the government, said. A 2014 report from the group focused on the causes of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident.
The recommendations follow safety and security steps covering the nation’s 100 operating reactors mandated by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in response to the Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident. Industry groups questioned the cost of the rules while environmental groups said they didn’t go far enough.
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Terrorist Attacks
Plant operators have spent $4 billion on post-Fukushima safety enhancements, according to the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group representing plant owners. Friday’s report calls on the industry to go further.
Operators must ensure that pools used to cool spent fuel rods can be maintained and monitored following accidents or terrorist attacks. Power sources serving security systems should be protected and backed up with redundant supplies. Regulators and plant operators must improve their ability to identify terrorist threats.
Regulators should also examine the risks and benefits of expediting the transfer of spent fuel from pools to drys casks.
Chelsea Manning appeals conviction in WikiLeaks case
http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/crime/2016/05/19/chelsea-manning-appeal-wikileaks/84585376/
Manning’s attorney, Vincent Ward, said the documents were filed Wednesday with the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Chief Deputy Clerk John Taitt said the document must undergo a review for classified information before it can be publicly released. Ward said he’ll wait until the review is complete before commenting.
Manning is serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The transgender soldier, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was convicted of espionage and other offenses for sending WikiLeaks more than 700,000 digital files including battlefield logs, diplomatic cables and video clips.
NBC4 is revealing LA’s Nuclear Secret – investigative journalism spells it out
LA’S NUCLEAR SECRET http://data.nbcstations.com/national/KNBC/la-nuclear-secret/
You really need to go to the link above and read the original article. It makes it easy for you to follow up aspects and find details
Years of mishandling dangerous radioactive materials and chemicals has also left a toxic legacy for generations of people living near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. BY JOEL GROVER AND MATTHEW GLASSER
Tucked away in the hills above the San Fernando and Simi valleys was a 2,800-acre laboratory with a mission that was a mystery to the thousands of people who lived in its shadow. In a place called Area IV of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), there was a secret collaboration between the U.S. government and private companies to test the limits of nuclear power.
For decades, scientists and staff at SSFL experimented with new types of nuclear reactors, advanced rocket systems and futuristic weapons. While this research helped launch Americans into space and provided a better understanding of nuclear power, years of mishandling dangerous radioactive materials and chemicals has also left a toxic legacy for generations of people living near the site. The scientists are now gone, but acres and acres of radioactive and chemical contamination remains right above the neighborhoods of thousands.
The NBC4 I-Team spent a year investigating the story of the Santa Susana Field Lab. Our work involved interviews with whistleblowers, an intense review of more than 15,000 pages of government, academic and corporate documents, and interviews with dozens of community members, experts and public officials. We now know these families have been living in the shadow of one of the nation’s worst nuclear disasters in history and for the first time, NBC4 is revealing LA’s Nuclear Secret. Continue reading
USA using Westinghouse nuclear reactors and fuel to compete with Russia for European dominance
The U.S. is going after Russian nukes in Europe. And they’re counting on just one company to do it. Oddly enough, it’s Japanese.
If you thought the energy security issue the U.S. has been selling to Europe was only about American liquefied natural gas, look closer. It’s also about Russian nuclear energy behind the old Iron Curtain.
Energy security in Eastern Europe is a thermo-nuclear reactor war that mainly pits Westinghouse Electric (WEC) against Russian Rosatom. It’s a drawn-out and extremely costly energy game the U.S. is trying desperately to win. State Department chief Hillary Clinton even “lobbied” for Westinghouse in Prague in 2012.
It’s not a secret.
Westinghouse Chief Executive Danny Roderick says Clinton’s showing made a big impression on the Czechs. “I was proud that she was in the trenches with me,” he reportedly said.
The unstated goal: lessen Russian control of the nuclear power market in Eastern Europe, even if that does not translate into an immediate market share for Westinghouse. Historically, for some of those countries Rosatom and its fuel assembly maker TVEL are the only game in town. Continue reading
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