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US Secretary of State Blinken says Ukraine will be NATO member

Ukraine, if/when it enters NATO, will have “unresolved” territorial issues. Crime and the Donbass are in Russian hands and will remain in Russian hands. If Ukraine enters NATO with that being the case, border conflicts over that territory could spark war, which would then drag in NATO through Article V. Such a war would be extremely bloody and potentially escalate to nuclear armageddon.

Reuters, Thu, 04 Apr 2024  https://www.sott.net/article/490373-US-Secretary-of-State-Blinken-says-Ukraine-WILL-be-NATO-member

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that Ukraine will eventually join NATO as support for the country remains “rock solid” among member states.

“Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership,” Blinken told reporters in Brussels.

Comment: For now, this appears to primarily be belligerent rhetoric, because at least some analysts say that Ukraine can’t join whilst involved in a conflict and with ongoing border disputes.

However, Russia has discussed creating a demilitarised zone, and so it is possible that this will compel it to neutralise Ukrainian regions even further West than they would have otherwise. Furthermore, this speaks more to the desperation of the West, and to Russia’s upper hand, which it could maintain so long as it doesn’t, precipitously, escalate the situation. And, amidst all this, the West ruins itself, its position on the global stage, and its ability to provoke the rising multipolar world.

Footage, and relevant snippet from the X post, below:

Will Tanner:

Secretary of State Blinken says that Ukraine will be joining NATO This is insane. This is insane. This is intentionally starting WWIII to help Hunter Biden’s paymasters level of insane 1) Ukraine, if/when it enters NATO, will have “unresolved” territorial issues.

1) Ukraine, if/when it enters NATO, will have “unresolved” territorial issues. Crime and the Donbass are in Russian hands and will remain in Russian hands. If Ukraine enters NATO with that being the case, border conflicts over that territory could spark war, which would then drag in NATO through Article V. Such a war would be extremely bloody and potentially escalate to nuclear armageddon.

2) This is Putin’s red line. In the 90s, when the USSR fell, America promised the Russians that NATO wouldn’t expand to the East. Then, in Russia’s weakness (created in large part by Goldman Sachs helping the oligarchs loot the country through privatization), it expanded to the East, doing just what it promised it wouldn’t, much to Russia’s chagrin. But Putin, while upset, has made it clear that Ukrainian membership in NATO is his red line that would mean war, potentially nuclear. It is utterly unacceptable and would have been like Ireland or Canada joining the Warsaw Pact. That’s why he launched the war; by “demilitarizing” Ukraine by shelling its army into oblivion and by creating a constant conflict, he wants to keep Ukraine out of NATO without going to war with NATO. He thought we wouldn’t be so dumb as to bring it into the alliance if it is fighting a war with Russia.

More NATO involvement in Ukraine doesn’t bode well, as the following highlights:

NATO chief, Jens Stoltenberg, admitting that the war did start in 2014. And from that same year, 2014, NATO has been busy training and arming the Ukraine armed forces

April 6, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

‘Curious Timing’: What’s Behind US Security Council Resolution Proposing Ban on Nukes in Space?

Ilya Tsukanov. 5 Apr 24 https://sputnikglobe.com/20240405/curious-timing-whats-behind-us-security-council-resolution-proposing-ban-on-nukes-in-space-1117767963.html

Russia has promised to “form a position” on a US-sponsored Security Council resolution proposing a ban nuclear weapons in space in due course. Why is Washington suddenly so interested in the idea? What kinds of things could the resolution contain? Sputnik asked one of America’s top independent military and foreign affairs observers to comment.

Matters of strategic security are one of the few areas where potential for dialogue between Russia and the US exists, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

“The main potential area for dialogue between the United States and Russia is issues related to strategic security, which includes the space issue,” the spokesman told reporters on Friday, commenting on plans by the US and Japan to put forward a resolution before the United Nations Security Council next week proposing a ban on the deployment of nuclear weapons in space.

“As for the project, we need to wait, study the document, read it and then form a position,” Peskov said.

Peskov’s comments were preceded by remarks by White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Thursday outlining Washington’s expectations for Moscow as far as the as yet untabled draft resolution is concerned.

“We have heard President Putin say that Russia has no intention of deploying nuclear weapons in space,” Kirby said. “So we look forward to Russia voting in favor of this resolution. There should be no reason why not to. And if they do [sic], then I think that should open up some really legitimate questions to Mr. Putin about what his intentions really are,” Kirby added, with his comments coming off as an attempt to force Moscow’s hand on the issue.

“Our position is quite clear and transparent,” Putin said in a meeting in the Kremlin with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu back in February, commenting on claims by US officials that Russia had obtained some kind of “troubling” new “anti-satellite weapon capability” that might become operational soon.

“We have always been and remain categorically opposed to the deployment of nuclear weapons in space. Just the opposite, we are urging everyone to adhere to all the agreements that exist in this sphere,” Putin said, adding that Western powers “know” that Russia’s space-based capabilities are in line with those possessed by other nations, including the United States.

Russia has “many times suggested to strengthen joint cooperation in the area but for some reason, in the West, this topic has not come up again,” Putin said.

“We haven’t deployed any nuclear weapons in space or any elements of them to use against satellites or to create fields where satellites can’t work efficiently,” Shoigu said during the meeting, accusing Washington of talking up a Russian space threat to pressure Congress into approving more aid to Kiev, and to try to maneuver Russia into nuclear arms control negotiations suspended amid the crisis in Ukraine.

“The US and the West…are calling for Russia’s strategic defeat, while on the other hand saying they would like to have a dialogue on strategic stability, pretending that those things aren’t connected,” Putin said, stressing that such an approach “won’t work.”

What’s in the Resolution?

The US-Japanese joint resolution reportedly urges countries to commit not to “develop nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction designed to be placed in orbit,” reaffirming the expectation that nations “fully comply” with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibiting nuclear arms in space.

Further details on the draft resolution have not been publicized, but Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyansky commented on the proposal last month, calling it “divorced from reality” and accusing the US of “yet another propaganda stunt” via a “very politicized” draft document.

Curious Timing

“It’d be interesting to know the details of this proposed treaty by the United States,” Earl Rasmussen, a veteran independent military and foreign affairs commentator and retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of service under his belt, told Sputnik.

“I’m often kind of cautious when they propose something, because the US is probably the one country that has reneged or withdrawn unilaterally from more treaties than any other country,” Rasmussen said.

Saying the Outer Space Treaty could use an update after nearly 60 years, Rasmussen said he found the timing of the US proposal both “interesting” and “curious,” and the undisclosed details crucial to know, because a treaty dealing with the deployment of nuclear weapons in space already exists.

“I’m just curious what the intent behind this is,” the analyst pondered, wondering whether the resolution could be meant to reign in not just the deployment of nuclear weapons in outer space, but their development as well.

“I mean if we look at the [1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty that the US pulled out of – they were developing missile defense systems prior to doing so and then they withdrew from the treaty and deployed them,” Rasmussen said, noting that there is nothing prohibiting countries from developing, but not fielding, powerful space-based weapons at the moment.

“I also think that the US probably has concerns over EMP,” the observer said, referring to electromagnetic pulse weapons which can knock out satellite electronics. “Nuclear weapons obviously can do that, but you don’t need a nuclear weapon. The US even admits that they’re not sure that Russia is developing a nuclear weapon for outer space, but I think they’re concerned about it.”

The US military machine is “highly dependent on satellites” for its operations, Rasmussen said. “So I’m thinking they’re probably concerned as far as not really having a good defensive capability to counter some type of satellite killer or disrupter or something. So that may be behind this.”

Whatever the case may be, “there’s got to be a benefit” to Washington to field the resolution now, or they wouldn’t be proposing it, the observer stressed.

If the resolution is honestly worded, and promotes proposals beneficial to everyone, Rasmussen doesn’t see a problem Russia and other countries considering it. “But if it angles and cuts off research and tries to skew proposals to the West’s benefit, then you could see China and Russia pushing back,” he predicted.

The US has repeatedly accused Russia of developing space-based superweapons capable of tilting the global strategic balance, most recently via the creation of nuclear-powered satellite killer technology.

At the same time that it has accused Russia of militarizing space, the Pentagon has gradually ramped up its own space warfare capabilities, formally establishing Space Force as a separate branch of the US military in 2019, taking steps to ramp up its space-based military activities with new satellite constellations, and openly discussing plans to turn space into a new “warfighting domain.” Last December, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Matthew Glavy emphasized that the US must “win the space domain” to win wars.

In 2008, Russia and China introduced the Proposed Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) Treaty – a comprehensive draft arms control agreement designed to ban the deployment of weaponry, anti-satellite systems and other advanced technology used for military purposes in space.

Moscow and Beijing have returned to the treaty again and again in negotiations with Washington and its allies, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasizing as recently as 2021 that “generally accepted, legally binding measures which can prevent a military confrontation in outer space” can be created, with PAROS serving as a jumping off point for talks. Successive US administrations have rejected PAROS as a “diplomatic ploy” by Russian and China to somehow give the countries a “military edge” over the US.

April 6, 2024 Posted by | space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Spent nuclear fuel mismanagement poses a major threat to the United States. Here’s how.

Restricting its analyses to a severe earthquake scenario allowed the NRC to help allay public fears over the dangers of spent fuel pool accidents. There is good reason to question whether severe earthquakes pose the greatest threat to spent fuel pools.

Solar storms, physical attacks, and cyberattacks have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario …….

Bulletin, By Mark Leyse | April 2, 2024

Irradiated fuel assemblies—essentially bundles of fuel rods with zirconium alloy cladding sheathing uranium dioxide fuel pellets—that have been removed from a nuclear reactor (spent fuel) generate a great deal of heat from the radioactive decay of the nuclear fuel’s unstable fission products. This heat source is termed decay heat. Spent fuel is so thermally hot and radioactive that it must be submerged in circulating water and cooled in a storage pool (spent fuel pool) for several years before it can be moved to dry storage.

The dangers of reactor meltdowns are well known. But spent fuel can also overheat and burn in a storage pool if its coolant water is lost, thereby potentially releasing large amounts of radioactive material into the air. This type of accident is known as a spent fuel pool fire or zirconium fire, named after the fuel cladding. All commercial nuclear power plants in the United States—and nearly all in the world—have at least one spent fuel pool on site. A fire at an overloaded pool (which exist at many US nuclear power plants) could release radiation that dwarfs what the Chernobyl nuclear accident emitted.

Many analysts see very rare, severe earthquakes as the greatest threat to spent fuel pools; however, another far more likely event could threaten US nuclear sites: a widespread collapse of the power grid system. Such a collapse could be triggered by a variety of events, including solar storms, physical attacks, and cyberattacks—all of which are known, documented possibilities. Safety experts have warned for decades about the dangers of overloading spent fuel pools, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Congress have refused to act.

The threat of overloaded spent fuel pools. Spent fuel pools at US nuclear plants are almost as densely packed with nuclear fuel as operating reactors—a hazard that has existed for decades and vastly increases the odds of having a major accident.

Spent fuel assemblies could ignite—starting a zirconium fire—if an overloaded pool were to lose a sizable portion or all of its coolant water. In a scenario in which coolant water boils off, uncovered zirconium cladding of fuel assemblies may overheat and chemically react with steam, generating explosive hydrogen gas. A substantial amount of hydrogen would almost certainly detonate, destroying the building that houses the spent fuel pool. (Only a small quantity of energy is required to ignite hydrogen gas, including electric sparks from equipment. It is speculated a ringing telephone initiated a hydrogen explosion that occurred during the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.)

A zirconium fire in an exposed spent fuel pool would have the potential to emit far more radioactive cesium 137 than the Chernobyl accident released. (The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has conducted analyses that found a zirconium fire at a densely packed pool could release as much as 24 megacuries of cesium 137; the Chernobyl accident is estimated to have released 2.3 megacuries of cesium 137.) Such a disaster could contaminate thousands of square miles of land in urban and rural areas, potentially exposing millions of people to large doses of ionizing radiation, many of whom could die from early or latent cancer.

In contrast, if a thinly packed pool were deprived of coolant water, its spent fuel assemblies would likely release about 1 percent of the radioactive material predicted to be released by a zirconium fire at a densely packed pool. A thinly packed pool has a much smaller inventory of radioactive material than a densely packed pool; it also contains much less zirconium. If such a limited amount of zirconium were to react with steam, most likely too little hydrogen would be generated to threaten the integrity of the spent fuel pool building.

After being cooled under water for a minimum of three years, spent fuel assemblies can be transferred from pools to giant, hermetically sealed canisters of reinforced steel and concrete that shield plant workers and the public from ionizing radiation. This liquid-free method of storage, which cools the spent fuel assemblies by passive air convection, is called “dry cask storage.”

A typical US storage pool for a 1,000-megawatt-electric reactor contains from 400 to 500 metric tons of spent fuel assemblies. (Dry casks can store 10 to 15 tons of spent fuel assemblies, so each cask contains a far lower amount of radioactive material than a storage pool.) Reducing the total inventories of spent fuel assemblies stored in US spent fuel pools by roughly 70 to 80 percent reduces their amount of radioactive cesium by about 50 percent. And the heat load in each pool drops by about 25 to 30 percent. With low-density storage, a pool’s spent fuel assemblies are separated from each other to an extent that greatly improves their ability to be cooled by air convection in the event that the pool loses its coolant water. Moreover, a dry cask storage area, which has passive cooling, is less vulnerable to either accidents or sabotage than a spent fuel pool.

In the aftermath of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan, in which there was a risk of spent fuel assemblies igniting, the NRC considered forcing US utilities to expedite the transfer of all sufficiently-cooled spent fuel assemblies stored in overloaded pools to dry cask storage. The NRC decided against implementing such a safety measure.

To help justify its decision, the NRC chose to analyze only one scenario that might lead to a zirconium fire: a severe earthquake. In 2014, the NRC claimed that a severe earthquake with a magnitude “expected to occur once in 60,000 years” is the prototypical initiating event that would lead to a zirconium fire in a boiling water reactor’s spent fuel pool.

The NRC’s 2014 study concluded that the type of earthquake it selected for its analyses would cause a zirconium fire and a large radiological release to occur at a densely packed spent fuel pool once every nine million years (or even less frequently). Restricting its analyses to a severe earthquake scenario allowed the NRC to help allay public fears over the dangers of spent fuel pool accidents. (At the time of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the New York Times and other news outlets warned that a zirconium fire could break out in the plant’s Unit 4 spent fuel pool, causing global public concern.)

There is good reason to question whether severe earthquakes pose the greatest threat to spent fuel pools. A widespread collapse of the US power grid system that would last for a period of months to years—estimated to occur once in a century—may be far more likely to lead to a zirconium fire than a severe earthquake. The prospect that a widespread, long-term blackout will occur within the next 100 years should prompt US utilities to expedite the transfer of spent fuel from pools to dry cask storage. Utilities in other nations, including in Japan, that have overloaded pools should follow suit.

Solar storms, physical attacks, and cyberattacks have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario in which the US power grid collapses, along with other vital infrastructures—leading to reactor meltdowns and spent fuel pool fires, whose radioactive emissions would aggravate the disaster.

Vulnerability to solar storms……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Vulnerability to physical attacks.……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Vulnerability to cyberattacks. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Insufficient public safety.…………………………………………………………………………………….

Overloading spent fuel pools should be outlawed. Safety analysts have warned about the dangers of overloading spent fuel pools since the 1970s. For decades, experts and organizations have argued that in order to improve safety, sufficiently cooled spent fuel assemblies should be removed from high-density spent fuel pools and transferred to passively cooled dry cask storage. Sadly, the NRC has not heeded their advice.

In the face of the NRC’s inaction, Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced The Dry Cask Storage Act in 2014, calling for the thinning out of spent fuel pools. The act, which Senator Markey has reintroduced in subsequent congressional sessions, has not passed into law.

The relatively high probability of a nationwide grid collapse, which would lead to multiple nuclear disasters, emphasizes the need to expedite the transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage. According to Frank von Hippel, a professor of public and international affairs emeritus at Princeton University, the impact of a single accident at an overstocked spent fuel pool has the potential to be two orders of magnitude more devastating in terms of radiological releases than the three Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns combined. If the US grid collapses for a lengthy period of time, society would likely descend into chaos, as uncooled nuclear fuel burned at multiple sites and spewed radioactive plumes into the environment.

The value of preventing the destruction of US society and untold human suffering is incalculable. So, on the issue of protecting people and the environment from spent fuel pool fires, it is surprising when one learns that promptly transferring the nationwide inventories of spent fuel assemblies that have been cooled for at least five years from US pools to dry cask storage would be “relatively inexpensive”—less than (in 2012 dollars) a total of $4 billion ($5.4 billion in today’s dollars). That is far, far less than the monetary toll of losing vast tracts of urban and rural land for generations to come because of radioactive contamination.

One should also consider that plant owners are required, as part of the decommissioning process, to transfer spent fuel assemblies from storage pools to dry cask storage after nuclear plants are permanently shut down. So, in accordance with industry protocols, all spent fuel assemblies at plant sites are intended to eventually be placed in dry cask storage (before ultimately being transported to a long-term surface storage site or a permanent geologic repository).  https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/spent-nuclear-fuel-mismanagement-poses-a-major-threat-to-the-united-states-heres-how/

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Reference, safety, USA, wastes | 1 Comment

Nuclear regulators should weigh climate change risk to power plants, report says

A GAO report found the Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs to factor more risk from the impact of more extreme natural events in how it licenses the safety of power plants. 

CARTEN CORDELL, Managing Editor, Government Executive, APRIL 2, 2024, https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/04/nuclear-regulators-should-weigh-climate-change-risk-power-plants-report-says/395412/

With the possibility of climate change driving more extreme weather events in areas where nuclear power plants operate, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs to incorporate those events into the safety planning of the facilities, a new report has found. 

The Government Accountability Office said in an audit Tuesday that 75 operational and shuttered nuclear power plants in the U.S. reside in areas expected to be further impacted by climate change-driven weather events like drought, extreme heat and floods.

The NRC is tasked with developing the safety regulations and for licensing those power plants, with the agency mandating that nuclear facilities are designed to withstand earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods without harm to the public, largely by ensuring that their reactors remain cooled through a series of redundancies. 

The report noted that while the NRC issued new safety requirements following the 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant — where an earthquake-triggered tsunami caused the meltdown of three reactor cores —the agency does not factor climate projections data in its safety risk assessments, instead leaning on historical data to predict potential future risk. 

“In such a case, NRC expects the event to occur only once in 10,000 to 10 million years, depending on the hazard,” the report said. “NRC officials we interviewed told us that they review regional climate projections information for some hazards but do not incorporate site-specific climate projections data, which include hazard assessments, design bases or determining the adequate safety margin for plants.” 

The agency also doesn’t reevaluate natural hazard or climate-related events in its license renewal process, beyond a power plant’s initial 40-year licensing period, instead focusing on its aging impacts and retaining its original natural disaster risk-informed design.

The report noted that as of January, the NRC “had issued license renewals to 49 of the 54 operating nuclear power plants, meaning most plants are operating on the basis of assessments of natural hazard risk that are over 40 years old.”

The NRC inspection process also doesn’t factor in the climate projections, but agency officials told the GAO that other criteria such as the historical record of severe natural phenomena at a power plant site — known as conservatism — safety margins and multiple independent and redundant layers of defense “provide an adequate margin of safety to address climate risks to the safety of nuclear power plants.” However, GAO officials said that the NRC has done no assessment to affirm that assertion.  

“According to NRC officials, using site-specific climate projections data for extreme hazard levels in nuclear power plant design and safety reviews is challenging because of the uncertainty associated with applying these data to specific sites” the report said. “However, NRC regulations do not preclude NRC from using climate projections data, and new sources of reliable projected climate data are available to NRC.”

The report also notes that since 2017, the agency uses an information system dubbed Process for the Ongoing Assessment of Natural Hazard Information to log and document historical hazard data and assess potential risk, including events driven by climate change.

But GAO officials said that the NRC has not developed new regulations as a result of the system, hasn’t used it to assess potential changes to all natural hazards and hasn’t comprehensively reviewed natural hazards on a regular basis.

“NRC conducts POANHI assessments for one hazard at a time, and the agency does not have a schedule for reviewing natural hazards beyond the assessment of seismic hazards currently underway,” the report said. “As such, POANHI is used to react to new hazard information or events when NRC staff become aware of them.”

GAO officials offered three recommendations, including assessing whether licensing and oversight processes address increased risk from climate change, that the NRC develop a plan to address gaps in its assessment process and that the agency finalize guidance incorporating climate projections data into its processes. 

NRC officials said the recommendations were “consistent with actions that are either underway or under development,” but asserted that its conservatism and defense-in-depth processes provided reasonable assurance to natural hazards and potential climate change. 

GAO officials said the agency “cannot fully consider potential climate change effects on plants without using the best available information—including climate projections data—in its licensing and oversight processes.”

April 5, 2024 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

45 years after Three Mile Island, we need a ‘No Nukes’ comeback

“A tsunami of nuclear power propaganda is sweeping the globe.” According to Gunter, this propaganda is backed by a multi-billion-dollar nuclear promotion campaign funded by taxpayers via the Biden administration’s Department of Energy. “

Billions of dollars in nuclear subsidies were loaded into Biden’s infrastructure bill, with billions more in the Inflation Reduction Act.

As Biden sinks billions into nuclear energy, members of the historic Clamshell Alliance are reuniting to spark a new wave of anti-nuke resistance.

Arnie Alpert , WAGING NON VIOLENCE, March 25, 2024

When a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went from a technological miracle to a pile of radioactive rubble in a matter of moments in 1979, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire office of the Clamshell Alliance became a hive of activity. I was working there at the time, fielding calls from activists and journalists from around the world. Everyone wanted our opinion since — over the previous few years — our nonviolent demonstrations to prevent the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant put us at the forefront of a growing social movement.

From the arrests of 18 New Hampshire residents in our first act of civil disobedience in 1976 to more than 1,400 arrests the following spring to a permitted rally that drew some 18,000 protesters in 1978, the Clamshell Alliance touched off a grassroots anti-nuclear rebellion that brought the “No Nukes” message to communities across the country and into the popular culture.

With that groundwork in place, Three Mile Island took our message to the next level. The idea that “nuclear power is a bad way to generate electricity” soon became accepted knowledge across the United States. Everyone from Wall Street tycoons to congressional staffers to ordinary voters now understood that the nuclear industry’s promise of safe, clean and affordable power was a fraud.

Unfortunately, in recent years this understanding has slowly eroded, as the industry has worked to tout its product as the answer to climate catastrophe. With the Biden administration now sinking billions into nuclear energy — and Congress on the verge of passing legislation to ease regulatory precautions on new reactors — the nuclear fraudsters are aiming for a comeback.

Whether they call it a ‘nuclear renaissance’ or a ‘nuclear enlightenment,’ nukes aren’t the answer to the climate crisis,” said Paul Gunter, who was one of the first 18 Clamshell members arrested at Seabrook in 1976.

Now the co-director of Beyond Nuclear, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Takoma Park, Maryland, Gunter says “Nukes are just too expensive, take too long to build and feature too many pathways to catastrophic accidents.” What’s more, as he maintains, their continued use — along with building costly new reactors — make climate change worse and the world less safe.

With this in mind, “seasoned Clams,” as we jokingly call ourselves, have been holding regular meetings over Zoom — and occasionally in person — to strategize on how to bring our anti-nuclear message to younger generations, as well as fellow boomers, for whom Three Mile Island has become a faded memory. We ultimately want to refute the nuclear industry’s claims that it has solved the problems posed by the old reactors.

In a statement on our new website, we assert: “A tsunami of nuclear power propaganda is sweeping the globe.” According to Gunter, this propaganda is backed by a multi-billion-dollar nuclear promotion campaign funded by taxpayers via the Biden administration’s Department of Energy. “They even have a plan to convert coal-fired power plants to nuclear generation,” he said.

Billions of dollars in nuclear subsidies were loaded into Biden’s infrastructure bill, with billions more in the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Advancement Act — which sailed through the U.S. House 365-36 last month — extends nuclear subsidies further by continuing the $16.6 billion cap on liability from nuclear accidents for the next 40 years.

“The still unrealized total damage costs of a severe nuclear accident, as evidenced by ongoing nuclear catastrophes at Fukushima (13 year ago) and Chernobyl (38 years ago), are already running into the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Gunter said, adding that Congress didn’t even hold a public hearing on the liability cap extension.

As the new Clamshell website maintains, new nukes are not needed to avert a climate crisis. “Far better options are being built much faster than nuclear power plants, at a fraction of the cost and without the grave hazards. They include solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, efficiency and conservation.”………………………………………………………….. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/03/three-mile-island-45th-anniversary-no-nukes-comeback-clamshell-alliance/

April 4, 2024 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

‘Obscene’: Biden Quietly OKs More 2,000-Pound Bombs, Warplanes for Israel

U.S. support for Israel—which already included nearly $4 billion in annual military aid—has continued unabated, with the Biden administration seeking an additional $14.3 million in armed assistance and repeatedly bypassing Congress to fast-track emergency weapons shipments.

“Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal,” one critic admonished the U.S. president.

BRETT WILKINS, Mar 29, 2024,  https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-military-aid-to-israel-2667634511

Despite growing worldwide calls for an arms embargo, the Biden administration in recent days has approved the transfer of billions of dollars worth of new weapons shipments to Israel, including warplanes and 2,000-pound bombs that have been dropped on densely populated areas of Gaza with devastating results.

The Washington Postreported Friday that the administration has “quietly” authorized arms shipments including more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, as well as 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines worth approximately $2.5 billion. The transfers are the latest of more than 100 arms shipments authorized by the Biden administration since the October 7 attacks on Israel.

“‘Quietly,'” Palestinian American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer scoffed in response to the report. “This is cowardly from the administration. If you are going to be full backers of genocide, own it. We see you and history sees you as well.”

“It is scary to think of the world U.S. support for Israel is creating. A world with no rules, no limits in war, where norms don’t exist, and where genocide is supportable,” he added. “Good luck getting anyone to listen to you about international law after this.”

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said in a statement: “We strongly condemn the Biden administration’s unbelievable and unconscionable decision to secretly send hundreds of new 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons to support Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide. Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal.”

According to the Post:

The 2,000-pound bombs, capable of leveling city blocks and leaving craters in the earth 40 feet across and larger, are almost never used anymoreby Western militaries in densely populated locations due to the risk of civilian casualties.

Israel has used them extensively in Gaza, according to several reports, most notably in the bombing of Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp October 31. U.N. officials decried the strike, which killed more than 100 people, as a “disproportionate attack that could amount to war crimes.” Israel defended the bombing, saying it resulted in the death of a Hamas leader.

The Biden administration’s arms shipments to Israel continue despite urgent pleas from United Nations officials, international human rights groups, and some progressive U.S. lawmakers to stop arming Israel’s 175-day Gaza onslaught, during which Israeli bombs and bullets have killed more than 32,600 Palestinians—mostly women and children—while wounding over 75,000 others and damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, and other structures.

The International Court of Justice in January found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza and ordered the country to prevent genocidal acts. However, Israel has been accused of ignoring the ICJ order, and amid ongoing atrocities—including the forced starvation of Palestinians—the court on Thursday issued another order demanding that Israel allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Last December, when the death toll in Gaza stood at approximately 18,000, President Joe Biden implored the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Palestinian civilians in the embattled enclave.

However, U.S. support for Israel—which already included nearly $4 billion in annual military aid—has continued unabated, with the Biden administration seeking an additional $14.3 million in armed assistance and repeatedly bypassing Congress to fast-track emergency weapons shipments.

“The U.S. cannot beg Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and the next send him thousands more 2,000-pound bombs that can level entire city blocks,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on social media Friday. “This is obscene. We must end our complicity: No more bombs to Israel.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told the Post that “the Biden administration needs to use their leverage effectively and, in my view, they should receive these basic commitments before greenlighting more bombs for Gaza. We need to back up what we say with what we do.”

Biden administration officials have claimed they don’t have any leverage over Israel, drawing ridicule from observers who point to the indispensable military and diplomatic support the U.S. provides.

The staggering death and destruction wrought by Israel’s assault on Gaza has drawn criticism from even staunch supporters of the key U.S. ally.

Referring to the worsening famine in Gaza—which one U.S. State Department official acknowledged anonymously to Reuters on Friday—New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on social media: “Really, POTUS? With Gaza facing starvation and Netanyahu defying you over Rafah, you ship billions of dollars in additional weapons to Israel, including 2,000-pound bombs, without end-use restrictions? Bibi is rolling you.”

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April 4, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Dennis Kucinich: the US engineered a coup to drag Ukraine into a conflict

by Donald A. Smith, PhD, 3 Apr 24, https://progressivememes.org/ukraine/Dennis-Kucinich-on-Ukraine.html

In this April 2, 2024 interview with Judge Napolitano, Dennis Kucinich says: “What’s happened is that the U.S. State Department and U.S. Government basically engineered a coup in Ukraine and used that to drag Ukraine into a conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas and ignited this war which Russia has been horrible in the way they have come in and attacked. There’s been six hundred thousand people, the flower of Ukraine, who have been killed. This thing is heartbreaking. But we cannot ignore the role that the U.S. has played in helping to impel it, and we cannot ignore the fact that, as you point out, there was a chance to resolve this two years ago.”  (He’s referring to how in March of 2022 the U.S. forced the Zelensky government to step back from a peace deal that was being negotiated with Russia.)

Kucinich says that it will be impossible for the U.S. and NATO to defeat the Russian military.  “There needs to be an end to this war, an effort to repair Ukraine.”  Stop this “vainglorious effort to build up NATO.” Napolitano said that the neocons Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Joe Biden think they can use Ukraine as a battering ram to weaken Russia, but Putin is popular and the Russian economy is thriving.  Napolitano says, “The war was started in 2014 by the United States with the coup, as you pointed out.”   (For more details about how the U.S. engineered the war, see this.  The CIA was deeply involved. Numerous senior U.S. diplomats warned that aggressive NATO expansion would lead to a war. RAND Corporation recommended arming Ukraine as the best way to weaken Russia. The U.S. government always lies about its wars.)

Napolitano asks Kucinich why all the Dems in Congress are behind the war in Ukraine. Kucinich replies that it’s partly due to the desire not to be shunned by their caucus and partly due to a desire to support the incumbent Democratic president.

Kucinich said that Senator Biden supported the disastrous war in Iraq, and the same sort of thinking that led to that war exists in the U.S. government today. Indeed, many of the same people are making  policy. They’re leading us to war with Russia and in the Middle East (Gaza and possibly Iran) and are preparing for war with China. “It’s madness. It’s against the interest of the American people. It’s against the taxpayers of this country. It’s driving our national debt. It’s leading to the collapse of America, not the collapse of Russia, not the collapse of China.” Instead of trying to rule the world by military force, we should take care of our own needs.

Kucinich also condemns U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza and calls what Israel is doing “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Syria, also a crime according to international law.  On the one hand, President Biden  says Israel should not invade Rafah and should respect Palestinian lives. On the other hand, Biden gives billions of dollars of weapons. Netyanahu has got the “Biden government over a barrel because of the politics of this. And he knows that and will keep going on.”  “You can’t give someone a gun who has a record of killing innocent people and say, ‘Don’t kill innocent people'” (without being complicit).

“We cannot afford to be the policeman of the world”  with a $34 trillion debt.

Naopolitano (who has been interviewing a lot of lefty peace activists) ends by calling Kucinich a “fierce defender of civil liberties, constitutional government and peace.”

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics, Ukraine, USA, USA elections 2016 | Leave a comment

I Could Not Stay Silent: Annelle Sheline Resigns from State Dept. over U.S. Gaza Policy

DEMOCRACY NOW, MARCH 28, 2024

A State Department official working on human rights issues in the Middle East resigned Wednesday in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Annelle Sheline, who worked as a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, was not planning on publicly resigning, but her colleagues asked her to “please speak out” against the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel. “At the end of the day, many people inside [the State Department] know that this is a horrific policy, and can’t believe that the United States government is engaged in such actions that contravene American values so directly, but the leadership is not listening,” says Sheline.

“I’m trying to speak on behalf of those many, many people who feel so betrayed by our government’s stance.” Sheline describes being moved by the words of Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty U.S. airman who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in protest of the war on Gaza, who implored everyone to take a stand against genocide. “I have a young daughter, and I thought about, in the future, if she were to ask me, ‘What were you doing when this was happening? You were at the State Department.’ I want to be able to tell her that I didn’t stay silent.”

Transcript…………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/28/annelle_sheline

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Lawsuit challenges $1 billion in federal funding to sustain California’s last nuclear power plant

BY MICHAEL R. BLOOD, 10, April 4, 2024

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An environmental group has sued the U.S. Energy Department over its decision to award over $1 billion to help keep California’s last nuclear power plant running beyond a planned closure that was set for 2025. The move opens another battlefront in the fight over the future of Diablo Canyon’s twin reactors.

Friends of the Earth, in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, argued that the award to plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric last year was based on an outdated, flawed analysis that failed to recognize the risk of earthquakes or other serious events.

The complaint called the safety assessment “grossly deficient” and accuses the Energy Department of relying on a 50-year-old environmental analysis.

“The environmental impacts from extending the lifespan of this aging power plant at this point in time have not been adequately addressed or disclosed to the public,” the complaint said.

An email seeking comment was sent to the Energy Department.

Diablo Canyon lies on a bluff overlooking the Pacific midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It began operating in the mid-1980s and supplies up to 9% of the state’s electricity on any given day.

In 2016, PG&E, environmental groups and unions representing plant workers agreed to close the facility by 2025. But the Legislature voided the deal in 2022 after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom reversed his position and said the power is needed to ward off blackouts as the state transitions to renewables and climate change stresses California’s energy system.

Since then, disputes have swirled about the safety of Diablo Canyon’s decades-old reactors, whether taxpayers might be saddled with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs and even if the electricity is needed in the age of solar and other green energy.

PG&E has long said the twin-domed plant is safe, an assessment endorsed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Biden administration approved $1.1 billion in Energy Department funding in January. The financing came through the administration’s civil nuclear credit program, which is intended to bail out financially distressed owners or operators of nuclear power reactors as part of the administration’s effort to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.

PG&E has said it wants to keep the plant open to “ensure statewide electrical reliability and combat climate change” at the direction of the state.

The utility is seeking a 20-year extension of its federal licenses, typical in the industry, but emphasized the state would control how long the plant actually runs. A state judge has conditionally approved a blueprint to keep it operating for an additional five years, until 2030.

California is the birthplace of the modern environmental movement and for decades has had a fraught relationship with nuclear power. The fight over Diablo Canyon is playing out as the long-struggling nuclear industry sees a potential rebirth in the era of global warming. Nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but it leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Are US, Israel Heading for Divorce?

It’s unclear how much longer Netanyahu can hold on to power in Israel in the face of a torrent of bad news for Israel about declining international support for — and dire economic consequences derived from — its ongoing military operation in Gaza

Scott Ritter, Washington, Apr 1, 2024,  Energy Intelligence Group,  https://www.energyintel.com/0000018e-9900-d183-abef-9f430f020000

The crisis in Gaza that has been ongoing since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel has resulted in a sea change in political opinion on the question of Israeli security prerogatives and Palestinian statehood. While international opinion has decisively shifted to the Palestinian cause, Israel has until recently been ably backstopped by the US, which has wielded its veto at the UN Security Council to shield Israel from any binding consequences. But shifting global priorities, coupled with turbulent domestic political realities, have caused the US stance on Israel to shift, creating the possibility of Israel, for the first time, standing alone in the crosshairs of global condemnation.

On Mar. 25, the 10 non-permanent members of the UN Security Council tabled a draft resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan, the immediate release of hostages and humanitarian access. The resolution was the latest in a succession of similar calls from the Security Council seeking an end to the violence that has wracked Gaza and the region since Oct. 7.

Prior to the Mar. 25 draft resolution being tabled, all previous efforts to bring an end to violence in Gaza had failed, with the draft texts either vetoed by the US or, on one occasion, Russia and China. But the latest call for a ceasefire passed muster, receiving 14 “yes” votes, zero “no” votes, and one abstention — from the US.

The Security Council resolution has no enforcement clause, making it little more than a formal notice of disapproval by the UN of Israeli actions. The administration of President Joe Biden made it clear that it continued to blame Hamas over Israel when it comes to the root cause of the current crisis, and that the US supported the overall Israeli objective of destroying Hamas both militarily and politically. Circumstances at home and abroad, however, raise questions about the sustainability of this policy position.

Changing Times

The Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu is the most conservative in its history, the byproduct of a desperate politician (Netanyahu) seeking to bury his personal legal problems under the weight of governing what has, for several election cycles, become an increasingly ungovernable state. To accomplish this, Netanyahu made common cause with Israel’s extreme right-wing political element, crafting a coalition that not only rejected the notion of a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian question but also embraced the idea of a greater Israel that would do away with the idea of a Palestinian state in general.

Israel was able to capitalize on the general apathy of the global collective to the plight of the Palestinian people, allowing the dream of a viable Palestinian state to be supplanted by a road map toward regional economic connectivity and prosperity defined by the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world. This generated schemes such as the India-Middle East Economic Corridor (Imec), an ambitious sea-rail collaboration designed to link India with Europe via the Gulf Arab states, Jordan and Israel.

The Hamas attack of Oct. 7 and Israel’s heavy-handed response changed all that. Imec is dead in the water, alongside any notion of normalized relations with Arab countries until the question of Palestinian statehood is resolved. The resilience of Hamas militarily and politically has compelled Israel to undertake military action that has resulted in the deaths in Gaza of over 30,000 civilians (some 19,000 of whom are children). This has prompted allegations of genocide presented to the International Court of Justice. Cities across the world are full of protesters condemning Israel and praising the cause of a free and independent Palestine. More and more US cities are hosting such actions.

The tidal wave of public sentiment has moved the needle of government policy in many nations. The US State Department has put the White House on notice that the US is in danger of losing the support of the Global South at a time when US policy objectives are centered on slowing the pace of multipolarity and preserving the rules-based international order that serves as the centerpiece of US foreign and national security policy. The US abstention at the Security Council reflected a new reality, where the US must weigh its own foreign policy objectives against the established principle of unquestioned support for Israel.

Local Politics

The US and Israel could attempt to ride out the storm of international protest, waiting for a world that had long been indifferent to the plight of the Palestinian people to lose interest again and shift its attention to a new crisis — in a world fully capable of generating one at a moment’s notice.

But as Tip O’Neill, a former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, once quipped, “all politics is local,” and the Gaza crisis is no exception. The UN abstention was an attempt at damage control which, under normal circumstances, might have allayed the concerns of people more interested in words over action. But 2024 is a US presidential election year, with incumbent Joe Biden set to face former President Donald Trump in a race that is expected to be every bit as heated — or more — than the tumultuous 2020 election.

The 2020 election, like the 2016 one before it, was won on the margins, in so-called “battleground states” where the difference between winning and losing came down to a few thousand votes derived from distinct demographics. One such demographic is the Muslim-American community, which is overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

The UN abstention was an effort to dampen the negative feelings of this community. But void of any meaningful follow-on action by the Biden administration to enforce the will of the Security Council, this won’t be enough to secure this demographic come election time. As a result, the US political theater is witnessing previously unimaginable scenes, such as the ardently pro-Israeli Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calling for the removal of Netanyahu or Biden threatening to withhold military aid, something previously unimaginable in US politics, should Israel not yield to the demand for a ceasefire.

It’s unclear how much longer Netanyahu can hold on to power in Israel in the face of a torrent of bad news for Israel about declining international support for — and dire economic consequences derived from — its ongoing military operation in Gaza. Netanyahu, who failed in his bid to cloak himself with judicial immunity, faces not just political defeat but also personal ruin should he be removed from office.

Netanyahu’s political viability is linked to his ability to sustain the current conflict in the hope that he can pull a miraculous victory over Hamas out of the hat. Netanyahu, however, is running into a brick wall of US political opposition where the presidential political imperative is starting to trump loyalty to Israel. No Israeli prime minister has survived without US political support. And no US presidential candidate has prevailed in an election where the cause of Israel was forsaken. The question now is who will blink first, Netanyahu or Biden — the answer to which remains very much up in the air.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

America’s Nuclear War Plan in the 1960s Was Utter Madness. It Still Is.

The Final Solution was enacted. The SIOP never has been—not so far. But a similar, still-classified plan exists today. Over the years, its name has changed. It is now simply the Operational Plan (OPLAN).

We rarely consider the dangers these days, but our existence depends on it.

ANNIE JACOBSEN, MARCH 27, 2024, Mother Jones

This article was adapted from Nuclear War: A Scenario, published March 26, 2024, by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright 2024 by Annie M. Jacobsen.

Nuclear war is madness. Were a nuclear weapon to be launched at the United States, including from a rogue nuclear-armed nation like North Korea, American policy dictates a nuclear counterattack. This response would almost certainly set off a series of events that would quickly spiral out of control. “The world could end in the next couple of hours,” Gen. Robert Kehler, the former commander of US Strategic Command, told me in an interview.

We sit on the razor’s edge. Vladimir Putin has said he is “not bluffing” about the possibility of using weapons of mass destruction should NATO overstep on Ukraine, and North Korea accuses the US of having “a sinister intention to provoke a nuclear war.” For generations, the American public has viewed a nuclear World War III as a remote prospect, but the threat is ever-present. “Humanity is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” cautions UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “We must reverse course.”

So far, we haven’t. The Pentagon’s plans for nuclear war remain firmly in place.

The US government has spent trillions of dollars over the decades preparing to fight a nuclear war, while refining protocols meant to keep the government functioning after hundreds of millions of Americans become casualties of a nuclear holocaust, and the annual budgets continue to grow. The nation’s integrated nuclear war plan in the 1960s was utter madness. It almost certainly remains so today.  ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Atomic bombs were “a threat to mankind and to civilization,” warned the group of admirals, generals, and scientists who authored the report—“weapons of mass destruction” able to “depopulate vast areas of the Earth’s surface.” But they could also be very useful, the group told the Joint Chiefs. “If used in numbers,” they wrote, “atomic bombs not only can nullify any nation’s military effort, but can demolish its social and economic structures and prevent their reestablishment for long periods of time.”……………………………………………….

What America had created presaged its own potential demise. “The United States has no alternative but to continue the manufacture and stockpiling of weapons,” the Joint Chiefs were advised. They took notice and approved……………………………………………………………………….

the atomic bomb—its extraordinary power, its mass-killing capacity—would pale in comparison to what was coming next. American and Russian weapons designers each had radical new plans on their individual drawing boards. What followed was the invention, in 1952, of “the most destructive, inhumane, and indiscriminate weapon ever created,” in the words of a group of Nobel laureates. A climate-altering, famine-causing, civilization-ending, genome-changing, newer, bigger, and even more monstrous nuclear weapon—one that the scientists involved called “the Super.”

Indeed, the Super “works better in large sizes than in small sizes,” its designer, Richard Garwin, told me in an interview, confirming that, yes, “I am the architect of the Super…of this first thermonuclear bomb.” Edward Teller conceived it and Garwin drew it at a time when no one else knew how.

The Super was a two-stage mega-weapon: a nuclear bomb within a nuclear bomb. A thermonuclear weapon, also called a hydrogen bomb, uses an atomic (fission) bomb as its triggering mechanism—as an internal, explosive fuse. The Super’s explosive power is the result of an uncontrolled chain reaction in which the nuclei of hydrogen isotopes combine under extremely high temperatures, releasing tremendous energy.

An atomic bomb will kill tens of thousands of people immediately (and tens of thousands later, from follow-on effects), as did the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whereas a thermonuclear bomb detonated on or over a city like New York or Seoul will kill millions of people in a superheated flash, followed by millions more from blast, firestorms, and radioactive fallout.

Garwin’s 1952 prototype had an explosive power of 10.4 megatons—the near equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs exploding all at once. It was an atrocious weapon. Garwin’s mentor, the Manhattan Project physicist Enrico Fermi, experienced a crisis of conscience at the very thought of such a horrifying weapon being built. Fermi and his colleague I.I. Rabi temporarily broke ranks with their weapons-building colleagues and wrote to President Truman, declaring the Super “an evil thing.”

As they put it: “The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.”

But the president ignored the plea to stop building the Super, and Garwin was given the go-ahead to draw the plans. “If the hydrogen bomb was inherently evil, it’s still evil,” Garwin told me.

The Super was built. Its code name was Mike. The series was Ivy. “So it was the Ivy Mike test,” he said.

On November 1, 1952, it was test-fired on Elugelab island in the Marshall Islands. The Ivy Mike prototype weighed around 80 tons, an instrument of destruction so physically enormous it had to be constructed inside a corrugated-aluminum building 88 feet long and 46 feet wide.

Ivy Mike exploded with an unprecedented yield. The crater left behind was described in a classified report as being “large enough to hold 14 buildings the size of the Pentagon.” And while there is much to say about the inhumanely destructive power of thermonuclear weapons in general, two aircraft photographs—before and after shots of the Ivy Mike bomb test—tell the story.

What happened after America’s war planners saw what 10.4 megatons could instantly destroy simply boggles the mind. What came next was a mad, mad rush to stockpile thermonuclear weapons, first by the hundreds and then by the thousands.

In 1952 there were 841 nuclear bombs. The next year there were 1,169.

“The process became industrialized,” historian McDuff explains. “These were not science projects anymore.”………………………………..

By 1967, it hit an all-time high: 31,255.

One nation. Thirty-one thousand, two hundred and fifty-five nuclear bombs.

Why stockpile 31,255 nuclear bombs when a single bomb the size of Ivy Mike, dropped on New York City or Moscow, could wipe out 10 million people? Why continue to mass-produce such weapons when the use of a single thermonuclear bomb will almost certainly ignite an unstoppable, civilization-ending nuclear war?

As the nuclear stockpile multiplied out of control, so did each of the US military branches’ plans for nuclear war. As crazy as this now seems, before December 1960, each Army, Navy, and Air Force chief had control over his own nuclear stockpile, delivery systems, and target lists. In an attempt to rein in the potential for mayhem from these multiple, competing plans, the secretary of defense ordered them all to be integrated into a single plan, which is how the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) for General Nuclear War got its name.

……………………………… The secret plan that, if activated, would result in the deaths of at least 600 million people on the other side of the world.

The SIOP showed how the entire US military force would be launched at Moscow in a preemptive first strike. How defense scientists had carefully calculated that 275 million people would be killed in the first hour, and that at least 325 million more people would die from radioactive fallout over the next six or so months. Roughly half of these deaths would be in the Soviet Union’s neighboring countries—countries not at war with America, but that would be caught in the crosswinds. This included as many as 300 million Chinese.

………………………………………………………………………………………………….. No one spoke up to object to the indiscriminate killing of 600 million people in a preemptive, US–led first-strike, Rubel wrote. Not any of the Joint Chiefs. Not the secretary of defense. Not John Rubel. Then, finally, one man did: Gen. David Shoup, the Marine Corps commandant, who’d been awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in World War II.

“Shoup was a short man with rimless glasses who could have passed for a schoolteacher from a rural mid-American community,” recalled Rubel. He remembered how Shoup spoke in a calm, level voice when he offered the sole opposing view: “All I can say is, any plan that murders 300 million Chinese, when it might not even be their war, is not a good plan. That is not the American way.”

The room fell silent, Rubel wrote. “Nobody moved a muscle.”

Nobody seconded Shoup’s dissent.

No one else said anything.

According to Rubel, everyone just looked the other way.

Decades later, Rubel confessed that the SIOP had reminded him of the Nazis’ plans for genocide. In his memoir, he referred to a time when a group of Third Reich officials met at a lakeside villa in the German town of Wannsee. It was there, over the course of a 90-minute meeting, that this group of allegedly rational men decided among themselves how to move forward with the genocide in a war they were presently winning—World War II—so as to ensure total victory. Millions of people needed to die, these officials agreed.

Millions of them.

The Final Solution called for the extermination of all of Europe’s millions of Jews and millions more people the Nazis considered subhuman. The plan for General Nuclear War that Rubel and his colleagues signed off on—the SIOP—called for the mass extermination of some 600 million Russians, Chinese, Poles, Czechs, Austrians, Yugoslavians, Hungarians, Romanians, Albanians, Bulgarians, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Finns, Swedes, Indians, Afghans, Japanese, and others whom US defense scientists calculated would be caught in the crosswinds.

The Final Solution was enacted. The SIOP never has been—not so far. But a similar, still-classified plan exists today. Over the years, its name has changed. It is now simply the Operational Plan (OPLAN).

When the SIOP was created, there were just two nuclear-armed nations. Today there are nine: the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. Several of these countries are in direct conflict with one another. There is great instability between Pakistan and India…………………………………………………………….

For the Nuclear Information Project, in consort with the Federation of American Scientists, project director Hans Kristensen and senior researcher Matt Korda have identified the current Operational Plan for nuclear war as OPLAN 8010-12, consisting of “‘a family of plans’ directed against four identified adversaries: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.” But like all the Exceptionally Controlled Information in the nuclear command and control domain, the details of what, exactly, these war plans entail are off limits to the public…………………………………………………….

So here we are. Teetering at the edge—perhaps even closer than ever before……………………………….more https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/03/nuclear-war-scenario-book-siop-weapons-annie-jacobsen/

April 3, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Radioactive nuclear waste burial ground in Pittsburgh area to be cleaned up by federal government

By Andy Sheehan, April 1, 2024 ,
 https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/radioactive-nuclear-waste-burial-ground-armstrong-county-parks-township/

KISKIMERE, Pa. (KDKA) — An untold number of 55-gallon drums containing radioactive waste are buried in shallow trenches on a 144-acre site in Armstrong County.

They pose a health and safety danger to those who live nearby. But now after decades of lawsuits and public outcry, the federal government is getting ready to finally clean it up.

Debbie Secreto has lived next to the contaminated field in Parks Township all of her life. She played on it as a kid, unaware of the hidden danger. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at 44 years old.

There are 10 shallow trenches filled with haphazardly disposed of radioactive nuclear waste. Though she and other cancer survivors won a class action settlement years ago, she’s remained in her childhood home.

“It’s hard living like this, but what are you going to do? Move? I don’t want to move. I’m 71 years old,” Secreto of Kiskimere said.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the company MUMEC in nearby Apollo produced nuclear fuels for power plants and nuclear submarines and buried the waste in Parks Township. Now, after decades of fighting for it, neighbors like Secreto have won another major victory.

The United States government is finally taking action, now building the needed infrastructure to commence a six-year, $500-million project to excavate all of that nuclear waste to decontaminate and clean the entire 144-acre site.

Beginning next year, contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin the slow and methodical process of excavating an estimated 30,000 cubic yards of contaminated waste. They will unearth a little bit at a time, scanning it with X-rays and radiation detectors before encapsulating it in steel containers. 

The waste will then be trucked and shipped by rail to a disposal site in Utah, where it will be permanently buried deep underground.

But while happy the waste is going elsewhere, neighbors are concerned the unearthing could spark a nuclear event, releasing toxins into the air and water.

“Everybody up here is worried about it. It’s going to be dangerous,” said Karen Brenner of Kiskimere.

“I can promise that we are committed to protecting the health and welfare of the community and the environment,” said Steven Vriesen, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

In participating in reports like this, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it is committed to transparency with the public and will be holding meetings to assure the community every safeguard to safely remove the waste will be taken.

“We have multiple layers of safety,” said David Romano, deputy district engineer. “From air monitors on the workers that are right on the site, groundwater monitoring, surface water monitoring, air monitors around the perimeter, all to ensure our actions ensure the health and safety of our environment.”

If all goes well, this six-year project will restore the site and make this Armstrong County community a safe place to live again.

April 3, 2024 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Michigan Republican congressman says Gaza should be destroyed with nuclear bomb ‘like Nagasaki and Hiroshima’, as he slams US for sending humanitarian aid

  • Michigan Republican Congressman Tim Walberg has suggested using a nuclear bomb on Gaza in order to facilitate Israel’s elimination of Hamas 
  • He referenced bombs used in World War II on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
  • Walberg’s remarks drew condemnation, with some calling for his resignation while his spokesperson said he was using a metaphor

By JAMES GORDON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM , 31 March 2024, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13255849/Michigan-GOP-congressman-says-Gaza-destroyed-nuclear-bomb-like-Nagasaki-Hiroshima-slams-sending-humanitarian-aid.html

A Michigan Congressman has suggested a nuclear bomb should be dropped on Gaza to ‘support Israel‘s swift elimination of Hamas.’

Speaking during a town hall earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican from Lenawee County, appeared entirely comfortable advocating for the use of nuclear weapons against the Palestinians.

‘It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick,’ Walberg could be heard stating in a video posted to X in which he mentioned the Japanese cities in which America detonated atomic bombs at the end of World War II.

Walberg, an eight-term Republican congressman from Lenawee County, can also be heard speaking against providing humanitarian aid for those in the Palestinian territory.

‘We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,’ Walberg stated in response to a question about American troops being deployed into Gaza to build a port that would help aid be delivered to the Palestinians.

Walberg had been responding to a question about an initiative put forward by President Joe Biden to use American tax dollars to construct a port off the Gaza coast that would allow humanitarian aid to be delivered more quickly.  

Many recent reports have suggested the Gaza’s two million inhabitants are on the brink of famine as Israel’s war against Hamas approaches the six month mark. 

The conflict began after Hamas terrorists launched an attack on Israeli citizens, killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostages.

Walberg’s office has now attempted to explain the GOP congressman’s seemingly  straightforward answer as a metaphor.

‘During his community gathering, he clearly uses a metaphor to support Israel’s swift elimination of Hamas, which is the best chance to save lives long-term and the only hope at achieving a permanent peace in the region,’ Walberg spokesman Mike Rorke said on Saturday.

‘Congressman Walberg vehemently disagrees with putting our troops in harm’s way. He has great empathy for the innocent people in Gaza who have been thrust into this situation due to the attack carried out by Hamas leaving 1,163 innocent civilians dead,’ Rorke continued. 

‘To this day, Hamas still is holding hostages, including Americans. Hamas should surrender and return the hostages.’

Walberg’s comments have been described as ‘clear call to genocide by a member of Congress’.

The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said his remarks should be ‘condemned by all Americans who value human life and international law.’ 

‘To so casually call for what would result in the killing of every human being in Gaza sends the chilling message that Palestinian lives have no value,’ CAIR Executive Director Dawud Walid said to Detroit News. 

‘It is this dehumanization of the Palestinian people that has resulted in the ongoing slaughter and suffering we see every day in Gaza and the West Bank.’ 

The U.N. food agency has said famine is ‘imminent’ in northern Gaza, with two-thirds of population experiencing catastrophic hunger.

Later in the town hall, held on March 25 in Dundee, Michigan, Walberg went on to suggest that a nuclear bomb should also be used in Russia’s war with Ukraine in order to ‘defeat Putin quick.’ 

He said instead of American money being used to provide aid to Ukraine for humanitarian purposes, it should instead be used ‘to wipe out Russia, if that’s what we want to do.’ 

Walberg has been taken to task over his comments by his Democratic colleagues with some calling for his immediate resignation. 

Michigan state Democratic Senator Darrin Camilleri tweeted how Walberg had been caught on video ‘endorsing and calling for a complete genocide in Gaza.’

‘He’s an absolute disgrace and needs to resign,’ Camilleri stated.

‘Threatening to use, suggesting the use of, or, God forbid actually using nuclear weapons, are unacceptable tactics of war in the 21st Century,’ wrote Democratic Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens. 

April 2, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US secretly sending more bombs to Israel – Washington Post.

A US 2000 pound bomb (MK-84) of which the US has sent thousands to Israel to aid the genocide.

Sat, 30 Mar 2024  https://www.sott.net/article/490252-US-secretly-sending-more-bombs-to-Israel-WaPo

Washington is fueling the war in Gaza with new arms supplies despite a rift with West Jerusalem

The US has signed off on the transfer of billions of dollars worth of bombs and aircraft to Israel, despite publicly expressing concerns about a looming Israeli ground incursion into the overcrowded Gaza town of Rafah, the Washington Postreported on Friday.

Around 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs are among the armaments in the handover, anonymous Pentagon and White House officials told the newspaper. On top of that, the State Department reportedly authorized the transfer of 25 F-35A aircraft and engines valued at around $2.5 billion. The transfers had originally been approved by Congress years ago as part of the $3 billion+ annual military assistance to the longtime ally, so did not require a new notification.

The use of US-supplied bombs added to the soaring death toll in Gaza, which by the end of March topped 32,000, according to the latest figures provided by Palestinian health officials.

West Jerusalem is seeking to completely eliminate Palestinian militant group Hamas, which staged an incursion from the enclave into southern Israel last October, killing around 1,200 people and capturing scores of hostages.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) allegedly used the 2,000-pound bunker busters in strikes on Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp and around the Al-Shati refugee camp last year. The Jabalia bombings alone are believed to have claimed more than 100 lives, in what the UN later called “disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes.”

Comment: Bombing a refugee camp with 2000 pound bunker buster bombs is a war crime.

Washington insists that Israel has provided the US with “credible and reliable written assurances” that any military aid provided has been used in accordance with international law. “We have not found them to be in violation,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told the press on Monday.

However, the rift between Washington and the Jewish state has become increasingly evident this week, when the US allowed a resolution urging for an immediate ceasefire to pass in the UN Security Council, instead of vetoing it. In response, Israel canceled the planned visit of a high-level delegation to the US.

The delegation was supposed to discuss the planned Israeli military operation against Rafah, a city in the south of Gaza where more than 1.4 million of the enclave’s total population is currently taking refuge. The UN has warned that the offensive will lead to massive loss of life, and even the White House has publicly urged Israel against the attack.

Israel has “no choice” but to send troops into the overcrowded Palestinian city, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US lawmakers on Wednesday, reiterating that the remaining Hamas strongholds must be completely eliminated.

Comment: The US is without honor or shame and despite calls for peace and respect for civilians has supplied Israel with ‘carte blanche’ to continue its genocidal campaign. Had the US not supplied the weapons and the money, this war would have stopped long ago.

April 2, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Rising Nuclear Threat

Readers respond to the “At the Brink” series of Opinion articles.

March 30, 2024,  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/30/opinion/nuclear-threat.html

To the Editor:

Re the “At the Brink” series (Opinion, March 10):

Thank you for highlighting the existential threat of nuclear weapons.

President Ronald Reagan and the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, issued a joint statement in 1985 saying “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” But we squandered the opportunity at the end of the Cold War to abolish these weapons.

Today we are entering an extremely dangerous new arms race and risking direct military confrontation with a revanchist Russia, while other nuclear conflicts loom around the world.

The United States, as you report, is expected to spend up to $2 trillion to “modernize” the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal. More modern weapons are more likely to be used and to take the world over the fateful nuclear threshold.

A group of citizens and experts has proposed an alternative: “Back From the Brink,” a program to reduce nuclear risk. It calls on the United States to 1) declare it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict and invite other nations to make similar pledges; 2) take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; 3) end the president’s sole, unchecked authority to launch a nuclear attack; 4) cancel plans to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal; and 5) enter negotiations with other nuclear powers toward the verifiable global elimination of nuclear weapons.

An awakened citizenry must demand that our leaders work to end the nuclear threat.

David Keppel
Bloomington, Ind.

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April 2, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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