Two plead guilty to espionage of US nuclear weapons
Scientist and wife plead guilty to espionage involving nuclear weapons, Examiner, CRIME & COURTS JUNE 23, 2013 BY: JIM KOURI
Two contract workers for a U.S. nuclear facility pleaded guilty in
U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico on Friday to
espionage charges involving classified nuclear weapons information,
according to Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security
John Carlin.
Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Argentina,
and Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, a U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty to
charges under the Atomic Energy Act and other charges related to their
communication of classified nuclear weapons data to a person they
thought was a representative of the Venezuelan government under
then-President Hugo Chavez……..
Both husband and wife were indicted in September 2010 and they were
charged with conspiracy to communicate and communicating Restricted
Data to an individual with the intent to secure to an advantage to a
foreign nation.
The indictment also charged the couple with conspiracy to convey and
conveying classified Restricted Data. The indictment also charged
Mascheroni with concealing and retaining U.S. records with the intent
to convert them to his own use and gain, and both defendants with
making false statements…..
http://www.examiner.com/article/scientist-and-wife-plead-guilty-to-espionage-involving-nuclear-weapons
US Dept of Energy investing more in solar energy research
DOE Expands Solar Research Capability by Energy Matters, 24 June 13, A new $135 million renewable energy research facility is the latest addition to the U.S. Department of Energy’s network of National
Laboratories.
The 182,500-square-foot Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF)
will allow researchers and manufacturers of promising renewable energy
systems to test and scale up their products in a real-world
environment by simulating a utility-scale energy grid……..
According to the DOE, solar generation in America has doubled in the
last four years, while the cost of solar power systems has fallen by
80 percent. Consolidating these gains depends in part on
next-generation inverter technology that is cheaper to produce and
better suited to smart energy
grids.http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3804
Electricity utilities and the challenge of distributed solar energy
How can we boost distributed solar and save utilities at the same time? Grist, By David Roberts, 11 April 2013 Yesterday I wrote that solar PV and other distributed-energy technologies pose a radical threat to U.S. power utilities and the centralized business model they’ve operated under for the last century. This is, I hasten to add, according to the utilities themselves. So what should be done about it?
It’s complicated. On one hand, more distributed renewable energy is a good thing. It reduces carbon emissions, increases resilience, stimulates the growth of new industries with new jobs, and gives Americans a taste of energy democracy.
On the other hand, it just won’t do to have utilities view the spread of rooftop solar PV as an existential threat. Whatever you think of them, utilities still have tons of political power. If they want to slow the spread of distributed energy, they can. A lot.
So let’s look at their complaint. But one key thing to keep in mind as we do is that the utilities’ primary objective, the impetus behind the recent report from their trade group, Edison Electric Institute, is toprotect their business model and their profits. That’s what business groups do…….http://grist.org/climate-energy/how-can-we-boost-distributed-solar-and-save-utilities-at-the-same-time/
Hanford radioactive cleanup $billions over budget
Nuclear waste clean-up delayed and billions over budget http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57590163/nuclear-waste-clean-up-delayed-and-billions-over-budget/
CBS News: Worry about explosion of unstable radioactive material at U.S. nuclear site — “We don’t understand the chemical reactions” -Safety Manager (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/cbs-news-worry-about-explosion-at-u-s-nuclear-site-video#Hanford Title: Nuclear waste clean-up delayed and billions over budget
Source: CBS News
Reporter: Carter Evans
Date: June 19, 2013
h/t Anonymous tip
Little is known about what was put in the tanks and how it’s changed since the 1940s. [Donna Busche, a manager of environmental and nuclear safety at Hanford,] is worried it’s unstable and an explosion during clean-up could release radioactive material.
Asked how a treatment facility can be built when it’s unclear what is in the tanks, Busche says, “I think that is the fundamental issue. We don’t understand the chemical reactions, but yet we’re building the plant.”
Similar concerns were raised in a review by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative agency. It blamed the Department of Energy for building the plant before the design process was complete. As a result, parts of the facility “may not work and may not meet nuclear safety standards,” the report said.
Watch the broadcast here
Ki Klux Klansmen’s plan to kill Muslims by radiation
Behind A Klansman’s Plan To Kill Muslims With A Radiation Death Beam TPMMuckraker ERIC LACH JUNE 20, 2013, On April 11, 2012, Glendon Crawford — who went by his middle name, Scott — walked into an Albany, N.Y., synagogue and asked if there was anyone around to talk to him about a technology that could be used by Israel to defeat its enemies.
According to a federal court document, Crawford was “denied assistance” at the synagogue. But he was not deterred. That same day, he called up a different Jewish organization — the document does not specify which one beyond saying that it has a facility in Albany — and made a similar overture. Crawford also asked for financial help with his project. The person who took Crawford’s call later told the FBI that they spoke with Crawford for about 10 minutes. On the call, Crawford allegedly said the technology he was talking about could kill Israel’s enemies in their sleep. He also said the technology could be purchased for a significant amount of money.
You may have already heard how this story ended. Crawford, 49, and an associate, Eric Feight, 54, were arrested by the FBI on Tuesday, and both charged with conspiracy to “provide material support, or resources, intending that they be used in preparation for, or in carrying out, a violation of Title 18, U.S.C. § 2332a (use of a weapon of mass destruction).” In layman’s terms, Crawford and Feight were allegedly trying to create a truck-mounted, remote controlled, radiation death beam. According to an FBI affidavit written in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrants for Crawford and Feight, Crawford specifically identified “Muslims and several other individuals/groups as targets.”
The 65-page affidavit, filed in federal court in Albany on Tuesday, provides numerous details about Crawford and Feight’s activities over the past 14 months…………….. Crawford and Feight both made initial appearances in U.S. District Court in Albany on Wednesday. U.S. Magistrate Christian Hummel told Crawford he would be assigned an attorney, according to The Albany Times-Union.
“Is it going to be the right kind of attorney for this?” Crawford asked the judge. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/06/kkk_radiation_gun.php
VIDEO: Hanford’s radioactive waste crisis
Waste will be leaking into the ground water. It will continue to leak. It’s an urgent problem that must be solved.”
But engineers have to get this right. It will take 40 years to treat the waste, and during that time, radiation will make parts of the plant inaccessible to humans.
Video: Nuclear waste clean-up delayed and billions over budget http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57590163/nuclear-waste-clean-up-delayed-and-billions-over-budget/ By Carter Evans (CBS News) 19 June 13, The new Secretary of Energy has been on the job only four weeks, but he made a beeline Wednesday to see his biggest headache for himself. Ernest Moniz went to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.
Hanford made the plutonium for American nuclear weapons from the Manhattan Project in World War II until 1987. Now, highly radioactive waste is leaking, and a project to clean it up has stalled.The clean-up at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation costs U.S. taxpayers $2 billion every year. This winter, engineers discovered six new leaks of radioactive material from underground tanks.
“There’s something on the order of 1,000 gallons a year that are leaking now from these six tanks,” says Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. Continue reading
US Congressmen in the dark about USA’s nuclear weapons tally
VIDEO How Many Nuclear Weapons Does the US Have? Don’t Ask a Congressman By Chris Good Jun 21, 2013 As it turns out, some members of Congress don’t know how many nuclear weapons the United States has.
Nukes are back in the news this week after President Obama renewed his call to significantly cut the U.S. arsenal, telling a crowd in Berlin Wednesday that he wants to reduce deployed U.S. and Russian nukes by one-third.
Global Zero, a group that promotes eliminating all nuclear weapons, asked a few lawmakers how many nukes are in the U.S. stockpile. Some said they didn’t know; others gave inaccurate numbers.
The above video includes interviews with Republican Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri; Phil Gingrey of Georgia; Morgan Griffith of Virginia; Steve Womack of Arkansas; Rob Wittman of Virginia; Tom McClintock of California; Duncan Hunter of California; Mark Amodei of Nevada; Bill Flores of Texas; Democratic Reps. Donald Payne Jr. of New Jersey and John Garamendi of California; and New Progressive Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi.
Global Zero says the United States has 7,700 nuclear warheads, citing a Federation of American Scientists report. The Department of Defense disclosed in 2012 that “as of September 30, 2009, the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons consisted of 5,113 warheads.”
US President’s new guidance on nuclear weapons strategy
FACT SHEET: Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy of the United States The White HouseOffice of the Press Secretary, 19 June 13
Today, the President announced new guidance that aligns U.S. nuclear policies to the 21st century security environment. This is the latest in a series of concrete steps the President has made to advance his Prague agenda and the long-term goal of achieving the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.
Following the release of the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and ratification of the New START Treaty, the President directed the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of State, Department of Energy, and the intelligence community, to conduct a detailed analysis of U.S. nuclear deterrence requirements and policy in order to ensure U.S. nuclear posture and plans are aligned to address today’s security environment. This review was based on the principle that a robust assessment of today’s security environment and resulting Presidential guidance must drive nuclear employment planning, force structure, and posture decisions.
The President’s new guidance: Continue reading
Utah’s Moab uranium mine created a radioactive wasteland
TV: Western U.S. turned into “radiant wasteland” by nuclear-related facilities http://enenews.com/tv-western-u-s-turned-into-radiant-wasteland-by-nuclear-related-facilities
Title: Moab, Utah: Beauty and the Nuclear Feast
Source: KCET
Author: Char Miller
Date: June 19, 2013
[…] The [uranium] tailings made Moab [Utah] glow — and not in a good way. For nearly 30 years, the various companies that operated the facility dumped ton after ton of the radioactive sandy byproduct into an unlined impoundment area located 750 feet from the river. Over the decades, this Geiger-hot waste, which ultimately totaled 12 million cubic yards, was spread over 130 acres at a depth of more than 80 feet. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), which took over remediation of the site, the tailings “have an average radioactivity of 665 picocuries per gram of radium-226,” and because the center of the monstrous pile has a “high water content…excess water in the pile drains into underlying soils, contaminating the ground water.”
Some the deleterious consequences are revealed in “The American West at Risk,” an illuminating book whose authors pay special attention to the Moab mill. It’s hard to dispute their claim that it ranks “high in the annals of indiscriminate disposal,” for the tailings each day continue to release “an estimated 28,000 gallons of radioactive pollutants and toxic chemicals into the only major river draining the southwestern United States.” […]
The Moab mine, like Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Rocky Flats weapons facility in Colorado, and Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico, helped turn the west into a radiant wasteland. […]
See also: Los Angeles-area Meltdown: Cesium-137 still up to 1,000 times higher than standard — Plutonium also detected — Located between Chatsworth and Simi Valley
The USA’s nuclear triad bombers, ICBMs, and ballistic missile submarines.
Triad And True…Time, By Mark Thompson _ June 21, 2013 How much could be saved by trimming the U.S. nuclear triad…and at what cost to U.S. security? President Obama’s call this week to cut the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals by one-third has a certain symmetry to it, given the fact that if war broke out between them, the U.S. would use three different kinds of weapons to rain atomic fire down on the Russians: bombers, land-based missiles, and submarine-launched missiles.
More than 20 years after the Cold War, that’s the way it’s going to stay, according to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. “The United States will pursue negotiated reductions with Russia,” Hagel said Wednesday in a speech at the University of Nebraska – his alma mater – in Omaha, also the home of the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the nation’s strategic nuclear forces. “As we pursue these reductions, let me emphasize three things — three things that will not change. First, the U.S. will maintain a ready and credible deterrent. Second, we will retain a triad of bombers, ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), and ballistic missile submarines. Third, we will make sure that our nuclear weapons remain safe, secure, ready and effective.”
We will retain a triad of bombers, ICBMs, and ballistic missile submarines.
Why?
The nuclear triad is a creation of the Cold War, when the U.S. and Soviet Union were busy building nuclear bombs to destroy one another. Each concluded that having three separate systems to deliver those weapons was key to deterrence. It meant that a surprise attack on the other side’s nuclear forces would be complicated to the point of futility.
But the Cold War is over, and debate over the U.S. triad has heated up because all three of its legs need to be modernized: new bombers and submarines costing perhaps $100 billion or more are on the drawing boards, and the Air Force is spending $7 billion to update its Minuteman missiles, with plans to replace them after 2030. And just what potential foe out there has the means – never mind the desire — to wipe out even a single leg of the U.S. nuclear force?
With the Pentagon budget in decline, amputating a leg of the triad would surely save money. But the dollars are tough to nail down, and spread among hundreds of U.S. government accounts. Figuring out precisely how much might be saved is challenging: triad boosters tend to minimize the cost ($10 billion annually to operate!), while those eager to jettison nuclear weapons tend to maximize them (more like $56 billion when you include the cost of replacing the aging systems used to actually deliver them!). It’s a safe bet the truth is somewhere in-between. … http://nation.time.com/2013/06/21/triad-and-true/#ixzz2WyxyT6RD
doubt over future of Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairwoman
The botched repair job that doomed a California nuclear plant has created a political whirlpool that may be close to claiming another victim: the chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The issue is no longer the plant itself, San Onofre, which the majority owner, Southern California Edison, announced on June 7 it would permanently close. The problem now is that Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who is chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a longtime critic of nuclear power, has been seeking documents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the work the utility did and how the commission oversaw that work.
The chairwoman of the commission, Allison M. Macfarlane, agreed during her confirmation hearing to a blanket request to provide documents. Opponents of nuclear power say that some of the San Onofre documents could raise safety issues about plants that are still running. Ms. Boxer’s office said they could also influence California regulators as they decide who should pay the nearly $1 billion cost of addressing the failed repair.
The Senate committee and the nuclear commission are locked in a dispute over the documents, and Dr. Macfarlane’s term ends on June 30. President Obama — who appointed her to fill out the term of the previous chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, who resigned under pressure last year — has nominated Dr. Macfarlane for a full five-year term, but Ms. Boxer is refusing to have the committee vote on the nomination until the argument over the documents is settled.
The Senate has only three meeting days left before June 30. Dr. Macfarlane, a geologist, has told friends that she has been offered a university teaching position and will accept it if she is not confirmed for a full term. Continue reading
White supremacist pair plotted radiation weapon to kill Muslims
New York men accused of plotting to build radiation weapon By T.G. Branfalt Jr. ALBANY, New York Jun 19, 13 (Reuters) – Two New York men are accused of plotting to produce a lethal radiation weapon and trying to sell it to a Jewish group and the Ku Klux Klan, according to a federal complaint unsealed on Wednesday…..Crawford, who claimed to belong to the white supremacist Klan, described the device as able to emit lethal doses of radiation but that victims would be unaware they were poisoned until several days later, according to the complaint.
The two also used the phrase “disposing of medical waste” to describe killing Muslims, it said.
They were charged with conspiring to provide material support for use in preparation for a weapon of mass destruction. If convicted, they each face the possibility of up to 15 years in prison.
They appeared in U.S. District Court on Wednesday where they were deemed flight risks and ordered held in custody.http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-usa-crime-radiation-idUSBRE95I1KN20130619
Cancer cluster near uranium site in Albuquerque
Residents blame cancers on uranium site
http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/environment/residents-blame-cancers-on-uranium-site
19 Jun 2013, Elizabeth Alvarez ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Residents near Milan say there’s been a cluster of cancer cases, and they’re blaming an abandoned uranium mill.
The Albuquerque Journal reports residents in the community west of Grants say action is needed immediately. They’re demanding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency either move the waste from the abandon mill or relocate the owners of about 75 nearby homes.It’s been more than a decade since uranium ore was mined in New Mexico, but two foreign companies are looking to re-open another one this year near Grants.
USA chemist chain Walgreens goes solar, bigtime
According to Australian solar provider Energy Matters, if a business is paying more than 20 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity; a commercial solar power system sized to daytime consumption can pay for itself in just a few years – after which, the electricity is essentially free
Walgreens To Add 200+ Solar Power Systems http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3801, 20 June 13, Walgreens, the USA’s largest chemist store chain, says it will expand rooftop solar installations on its stores from 150 to more than 350.
With over 8,000 stores nationally plus distribution centers, Walgreens has substantial rooftop real estate; some of which it is putting to good use in harvesting power from the sun. The company started taking on solar panel projects in 2007.
According to the company, the addition of the 200-plus rooftop solar power systems will generate an estimated 13.5 million kilowatt hours annually, enough to meet the energy needs of around 1,400 households. Continue reading
USA’s nuclear power industry in its economic death throes
These are the facts: Renewables have taken the lead in new power generation in America, comprising nearly half of all new generating capacity installed in the United States in 2012. In the first quarter of this year, nearly half the new capacity installed was solar. With its poor economics, enormous complexity, overly-large capital requirements, too-long lead times, and overall risk, US nuclear power is headed for contraction, not resurgence. Ultimately, I think the same will be true globally
The real reason to fight nuclear power has nothing to do with health risks, Quartz, By Chris Nelder, 17 June 13“……Nuclear’s long goodbye The simple fact is that, at least in the US, the nuclear industry is dying a slow death. The announced closure of four major facilities in 2013 alone amount to 4,246 megawatts of nuclear capacity—enough to power 2.7 million homes for a year—that are being retired.
Even while the nuclear industry is able to externalize its costs for insurance (which are federally limited), loan guarantees (which are federally backstopped), decommissioning (which is pushed onto ratepayers) and waste handling (which is pushed onto taxpayers), it still lost. If it had to stand on its own and pay its full insurance costs like every other energy source, we could never build another nuclear plant in America, because no private investors would be willing to take that kind of risk. It’s hard to imagine how the economics could be more tilted in nuclear’s favor (although I’m sure its proponents have ideas on that).
The reason nuclear is dying is economics, not tribalism, as Shellenberger and Nordhaus claim. Continue reading
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23-25 October – on Zoom – World BEYOND War’s annual global conferenc
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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