Australian bushfire smoke across the Pacific shows how French nuclear tests spread radiation
fallout from nuclear tests affected islands such as Tahiti. Smoke from Australia this month drifted over the south of French Polynesia after crossing New Zealand.
Mr Temaru said this was more than proof that fallout from France’s atmospheric nuclear weapons tests at Moruroa spread while France maintained they didn’t affect Tahiti.
He again called on France to tell the full truth about this dark chapter of history.
Until 1974 France detonated 46 atomic bombs over Moruroa and Fangataufa before continuing the tests with underground blasts.
France maintained until a decade ago that its nuclear tests were clean and posed no risk to human health.
A law brought in in 2010 offered compensation but its criteria were widely seen as too narrow because most applications by those suffering poor health were thrown out.
Its revision was changed again, leaving veterans organisations still dismayed. Mr Temaru made the comments as his Tavini Huiraatira party campaigned for the March municipal election.
However, Mr Temaru is yet to say whether he will seek re-election to the mayoralty of Faaa which he has held since 1983.
Among the candidates known so far are two assembly members of the ruling Tapura Huiraatira party.
New Zealand veterans await nuclear radiation genetic testing study
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New Zealand veterans await nuclear radiation genetic testing study, https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/406922/new-zealand-veterans-await-nuclear-radiation-genetic-testing-study 8 Jan 2029Veterans deployed to the Mururoa Atoll will wait another two months to find out whether their children and grandchildren may be genetically impacted by nuclear radiation.
A Mururoa Nuclear Veterans Group teamed up with Otago University last year to produce a study about whether the families of veterans deployed to Mururoa Atoll in 1973, may have been affected by their parents’ exposure to radiation. University of Otago researcher David McBride is leading the study and said “the public need to know” what veterans had been facing and he hoped this study could help them in their quest for more support for their families. About 145 people participated in the study which took six weeks. It is now being peer reviewed for the New Zealand Medical Journal. “When and if our study is peer reviewed favourably then published, I’m hoping that’s not going to take too long,” he said. He said he suspected the veterans group would have to wait until March or April at the latest. “One of the most out-of-the-ordinary things you can have is exposure to nuclear radiation,” he said. “It certainly was a traumatising experience and they are right inthe fact that they may have passed defect onto their children and grandchildren.” |
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Thorium and uranium pollution from Rio Tinto’s Madagascar mine
Concerns about radioactive contamination dog Rio Tinto’s Madagascar mine, MONGABAY, by Malavika Vyawahare on 31 December 2019
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U.S. Congress Demands Investigation Into the U.S.’s Nuclear Coffin, The Runit Dome
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Congress Demands Investigation Into the U.S.’s Nuclear Coffin, The Runit Dome is leaking radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a30338371/congress-investigation-runit-dome-nuclear-waste/
Dec 27, 2019
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Seafloor mapping reveals the degradation of ocean floor by Bikini nuclear bomb tests
Bikini Seafloor Hides Evidence of Nuclear Explosions, Seafloor mapping has revealed a crater and several shipwrecks persisting 73 years after the world’s first underwater nuclear test. Eos, Amanda Heidt 28 Dec 19
Seventy-three years after serving as the site of the world’s first underwater nuclear test, the seafloor around the Bikini Atoll remains scarred by finely detailed craters and littered with derelict ships.
Today, an interdisciplinary team of scientists is using sonar to assess the complex submarine environment. The results provide a sobering assessment of humanity’s capacity to alter nature…..
Unleashing the Power of the Atom
In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. Navy chose the Bikini Atoll for a series of controlled nuclear explosions. Between 1946 and 1958, 23 confirmed tests were conducted throughout the area.
Trembanis and his team studied Able and Baker, a pair of tests conducted in July 1946 as part of Operation Crossroads. Both Able and Baker involved plutonium fission bombs with a yield of between 21 and 23 kilotons, but they were deployed differently……….
Clustering around a laptop, Trembanis and his team witnessed the real-time rendering of an underwater crater more than 800 meters across—big enough to fit three Roman Colosseums. ….
Littered throughout the atoll are the husks of strategically placed ships—decommissioned dreadnaughts, aircraft carriers, and submarines meant to bear the brunt of the Able and Baker explosions. …..
Even independent of their place in nuclear history, the Pilotfish and other Bikini shipwrecks attest to the long-lived effects of human activities on the environment.
As old ships decompose, they become ecological burdens, and researchers found that several wrecks on the Bikini seafloor are leaching plumes of oil. Trembanis and his team looked at sketches from surveys the National Park Service conducted in the late 1980s and saw the degradation of the past 40 years……. https://eos.org/articles/bikini-seafloor-hides-evidence-of-nuclear-explosions
Philippines prone to natural disasters, but still contemplates nuclear power
Philippines seeks to relaunch nuclear power ambitions, Country prone to natural disasters eyes potential suppliers including Russia and US, Ft.com 27 Dec 19. The Philippines plans to revive its long-discontinued nuclear energy programme to combat the threat of a future power supply crunch — a prospect likely to raise safety concerns in a country prone to typhoons and earthquakes. The country is working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet the UN watchdog’s safety and other requirements, and investigating potential suppliers from Russia, South Korea, China and the US, said Alfonso Cusi, the energy secretary.
Devastating array of craters on the ocean floor, from nuclear tests
Enormous Craters Blasted in Seafloor by Nuclear Bombs Mapped for the First Time, Live Science, By Mindy Weisberger – Senior Writer 11 Dec FRANCISCO — Today, all seems quiet in the remote Bikini Atoll, a chain of coral reef islands in the central Pacific. But more than 70 years ago, this region’s seafloor was rocked by powerful atomic bombs detonated by the U.S. Army.
For the first time, scientists have released remarkably detailed maps of this pockmarked seabed, revealing two truly massive craters. This new map shows that the seabed is still scarred by the 22 bombs detonated at Bikini Atoll between 1946 and 1958.
The map was presented yesterday (Dec. 9) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
During the 1946 nuclear weapons test known as “Operation Crossroads,” the U.S. wanted to test the impact of nuclear bombs on warships. To that end, the Army assembled more than 240 ships — some of which were German and Japanese — that held different amounts of fuel and munitions, then deployed two nuclear weapons to destroy them, researcher Arthur Trembanis, an associate professor with the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of Delaware, said in the presentation.
At the time of the tests, Trembanis said, comedian Bob Hope joked grimly:
“As soon as the war ended, we found the one spot on Earth that had been untouched by war and blew it to hell.”……….
But as powerful as the early atomic tests were, they were dwarfed by the later blasts caused by hydrogen and fusion bomb tests in the 1950s. The researchers investigated a crater that was 184 feet (56 m) deep and had an unusual oblong shape; they determined that it was a composite crater from multiple blasts: “Castle Bravo,” a 15-megaton bomb that was the largest ever detonated by the U.S., and “Castle Romeo,” the first deployed thermonuclear bomb.
These tests left behind a uniquely devastating array of shipwrecks and craters, and the first detailed map of their aftermath will help scientists to tell this untold story and connect to “a moment at the dawn of the nuclear age,” Trembanis said. “Our new findings provide insights into previously unknown conditions at Bikini and allow us to reflect on the lasting consequences from these and other tests.” https://www.livescience.com/mapping-reveals-bikini-atoll-nuclear-craters.html
As the Runit nuclear waste dome crumbles, Marshall Islanders want honesty and justice
‘People want justice’: Marshalls’ fury over nuclear information US withheld– https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/programmes/datelinepacific/audio/2018723289/people-want-justice-marshalls-fury-over-nuclear-information-us-withheld From Dateline Pacific, 21 November 2019
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The caretaker president of the Marshall Islands says it’s unconscionable that the United States kept secret key information about its nuclear tests for decades. New details reveal the US withheld information about the nuclear waste it left behind when the Marshall Islands gained independence, and the extent of the tests it carried out. Now, a dome that contains hundreds of tonnes of nuclear waste is at risk of crumbling into the ocean. But with Washington increasingly jittery about China, the small Pacific country’s finding it might now have some leverage to get something done. TRANSCRIPTEnewetak was once a paradise – a long atoll in the clear blue waters of the north Pacific, white sand and thick green palms. Today, it’s rutted with scars, after the US detonated dozens of nuclear bombs on, in and above it in the 1940s and ’50s. Whole islands were vaporised, deep craters carved into the coral. Jack Ading is a senator from Enewetak. His family was forced to move for the tests, and then allowed to return in the 1980s. “It appears that when we moved back to Enewetak in the 1980s after we were assured by the US government that it was safe. We were actually subjecting ourselves to a risk that we were never warned about.” Government documents reveal that beyond the nuclear blasts, the US also tested biological weapons, including an aerosol bacteria. Jamie Tahana reports. TRANSCRIPTEnewetak was once a paradise – a long atoll in the clear blue waters of the north Pacific, white sand and thick green palms. Today, it’s rutted with scars, after the US detonated dozens of nuclear bombs on, in and above it in the 1940s and ’50s. Whole islands were vaporised, deep craters carved into the coral. Jack Ading is a senator from Enewetak. His family was forced to move for the tests, and then allowed to return in the 1980s. “It appears that when we moved back to Enewetak in the 1980s after we were assured by the US government that it was safe. We were actually subjecting ourselves to a risk that we were never warned about.” Government documents reveal that beyond the nuclear blasts, the US also tested biological weapons, including an aerosol bacteria. But this was kept secret when the people from Enewetak were allowed to return, and other documents show that people were subjected to tests and experiments about the lingering effects of radiation. Last week, the Los Angeles Times also uncovered that the US didn’t tell the Marshallese it had shipped 130 tonnes of soil from its atomic testing grounds in Nevada in 1958 and dumped it at Enewetak. The caretaker president of the Marshall Islands, Hilda Heine, says the new details are disturbing. “To say the least you would have thought that all that information would have been shared with the Enewetak people before they went back to Enewetak. It is unbelievable that such information was held back, and as a result people have gone back and lived there for many years.” The nuclear waste from the era is stored in a pile at the end of the island of Runit, covered in a concrete dome. But a recent study by the Marshall Islands Nuclear Commission found the dome is now at risk of collapsing, and as rising seas erode beneath it, much of that waste is seeping into the lagoon. The commission’s chair, Rhea Moss-Christian, says information about the dome and the testing era was withheld throughout the independence process, while a compact of free association was negotiated in the 1980s. “We signed the compact in 1986 on the understanding that we had all the information we needed to have. It’s pretty hard for us to see this information, to have the level of detail that we now have, and to think that any of those previous agreements could stand.” The Marshall Islands has sought US help to clean up contamination and to shore up the dome, but American officials have declined, saying it’s on Marshallese land and, therefore, is the Marshall Islands’ responsibility. Ms Moss-Christian says that’s ridiculous. “How can it be that this radioactive waste and structure that we didn’t ask for. How can it be that this is ours and ours to deal with?” A Nuclear Claims Tribunal formed by the two countries in 1988 concluded that the US should pay $US2.2 billion in claims and settlements. But documents from both the Nuclear Commission and a 2010 US House inquiry show only $4 million has been paid. Last month, the Marshall Islands parliament – the Nitijela – endorsed a Nuclear Commission strategy which calls for, among other things, full compensation, better healthcare, and environmental protections. The US maintains it is upholding its responsibilities. It says it’s paid nearly a billion dollars, which has gone towards resettlement, rehabilitation and healthcare costs for affected communities, and that it’s funding tests of the water and atmosphere around the Runit dome. But Giff Johnson, the editor of the Marshall Islands journal and an author of books about the nuclear legacy, says that’s not enough. “People want justice for Marshall Islanders. The US government has to step up and address issues that it has addressed for American victims but is ignoring out here.” For the Marshall Islands, a smattering of atolls in the North Pacific – population 53,000 – it might be an opportune time to twist a superpower’s arm. Washington is increasingly nervous about a growing Chinese presence, and the compact of free association – which guarantees relations and funding from the US – expires in three years. Having initially maintained there won’t be a replacement compact, Washington is now keen to open talks for a new one, and has sent a string of high-ranking officials for visits. The caretaker president, Hilda Heine – who a few months ago was invited to the White House to meet President Donald Trump – says that could bode well. “The geopolitical situation in the Pacific is really helpful to the cause of the Marshall Islands. The US is now paying more attention to the Marshall Islands, so our issues around climate change, around our nuclear legacy, I think those will come to the forefront of our discussions going forward with the United States.” Whatever comes from those discussions, the people of Enewetak want more than they’re getting now. |
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The climate crisis is tied up in the dangers of nuclear weapons in ways that nobody predicted
The Climate Crisis Just Went Nuclear https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29760935/marshall-islands-nuclear-waste-climate-change/ In the Marshall Islands, local residents are reaping what the United States sowed—which includes tons and tons of nuclear and biological waste from Cold War testing.BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
The climate crisis is the one issue that touches all the other issues. For example, the climate crisis is tied up in the dangers of nuclear weapons in ways that nobody predicted, but that the Los Angeles Times spent some time and money examining. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States set off 67 nuclear bombs in and around the Marshall Islands. This had predictable results: there were now lagoons where there were none before; some islands simply aren’t there any more, and there was a lot of deadly stuff left behind. Which brings us to the climate crisis.
Here in the Marshall Islands, Runit Dome holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet — or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools — of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium. Nowhere else has the United States saddled another country with so much of its nuclear waste, a product of its Cold War atomic testing program.
U.S. authorities later cleaned up contaminated soil on Enewetak Atoll, where the United States not only detonated the bulk of its weapons tests but, as The Times has learned, also conducted a dozen biological weapons tests and dumped 130 tons of soil from an irradiated Nevada testing site. It then deposited the atoll’s most lethal debris and soil into the dome. Now the concrete coffin, which locals call “the Tomb,” is at risk of collapsing from rising seas and other effects of climate change. Tides are creeping up its sides, advancing higher every year as distant glaciers melt and ocean waters rise.
When people talk about environmental justice, this is what they’re talking about.
Officials in the Marshall Islands have lobbied the U.S. government for help, but American officials have declined, saying the dome is on Marshallese land and therefore the responsibility of the Marshallese government. “I’m like, how can it [the dome] be ours?” Hilda Heine, the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, said in an interview in her presidential office in September. “We don’t want it. We didn’t build it. The garbage inside is not ours. It’s theirs.” … They blame the United States and other industrialized countries for global climate change and sea level rise, which threaten to submerge vast swaths of this island nation’s 29 low-lying atolls.
The history behind all this is as tawdry as you might have expected it to be—an endless litany of lies, deception, and bureaucratic three-card monte, all of it designed to dodge any responsibility for the nightmares past, present, and future.
Over the last 15 months, a reporting team from the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism made five trips to the Marshall Islands, where they documented extensive coral bleaching, fish kills and algae blooms — as well as major disease outbreaks, including the nation’s largest recorded epidemic of dengue fever. They interviewed folk singers who lost their voices to thyroid cancers and spent time in Arkansas, Washington and Oregon, where tens of thousands of Marshallese have migrated to escape poverty and an uncertain future.
Over the last 15 months, a reporting team from the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism made five trips to the Marshall Islands, where they documented extensive coral bleaching, fish kills and algae blooms — as well as major disease outbreaks, including the nation’s largest recorded epidemic of dengue fever. They interviewed folk singers who lost their voices to thyroid cancers and spent time in Arkansas, Washington and Oregon, where tens of thousands of Marshallese have migrated to escape poverty and an uncertain future.
One example: The United States did not tell the Marshallese that in 1958, it shipped 130 tons of soil from its atomic testing grounds in Nevada to the Marshall Islands. U.S. authorities also didn’t inform people in Enewetak, where the waste site is located, that they’d conducted a dozen biological weapons tests in the atoll, including experiments with an aerosolized bacteria designed to kill enemy troops. U.S. Department of Energy experts are encouraging the Marshallese to move back to other parts of Enewetak, where 650 now live, after being relocated during the U.S. nuclear tests during the Cold War. But many Marshallese leaders no longer trust U.S. assurances of safety.
Can’t imagine why they’d think that.
Adding to the alarm is a study published this year by a team of Columbia University scientists showing levels of radiation in some spots in Enewetak and other parts of the Marshall Islands that rival those found near Chernobyl and Fukushima. Such discoveries could give Marshallese leaders fresh ammunition to challenge the 1986 compact, which is up for renegotiation in 2023, and also to press the United States to honor property and
health claims ordered by an international tribunal. The tribunal, established by the two countries in 1988, concluded the United States should pay $2.3 billion in claims, but Congress and U.S courts have refused. Documents show the U.S. paid just $4 million.
And what in the hell was this?
A decade later, in 1968, teams from the Department of Defense set up a new experiment. This time, they were testing biological weapons — bombs and missiles filled with bacteria designed to fell enemy troops. According to a 2002 military fact sheet and Ed Regis, the author of “The Biology of Doom,” U.S. government scientists came to Enewetak with “their boats and monkeys, space suits and jet fighter planes” and then sprayed clouds of biologically enhanced staphylococcal enterotoxin B, an incapacitating biological agent known to cause toxic shock and food poisoning and considered “one of the most potent bacterial superantigens.” The bacteria were sprayed over much of the atoll — with ground zero at Lojwa Island, where U.S. troops were stationed 10 years later for the cleanup of the atoll.
I don’t know what happens when the dome gives way, but I feel confident in saying a) it won’t be good, and b) we won’t hear about it for a couple of years, at least.
Philippines not prepared for the dangers of nuclear energy
Philippines unprepared for nuclear energy: Senate energy panel chair, https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/11/06/19/philippines-unprepared-for-nuclear-energy-senate-energy-panel-chair, Katrina Domingo, ABS-CBN News, Nov 06 2019 MANILA – The Philippines is “not ready” to use nuclear power as an energy source, a senator said Wednesday, adding more should be done to prepare for potential risks.
The Department of Energy announced recently its plan to draft a national nuclear program, which the Senate Energy Committee, chaired by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, will investigate.
“Saan natin itatapon ang nuclear waste? Pag may leakage ano ang gagawin natin? Meron ba tayong capability? Handa ba tayo in case of a nuclear leak?” he told reporters.
(Where will we dump nuclear waste? What will we do in case of a leak? Do we have the capability? Are we ready in case of a nuclear leak?)
The DOE should be more transparent about the benefits of harnessing nuclear power before it drafts a nationwide plan. Coal and solar are cheaper alternatives, he said.
“Nuclear energy is a very controversial source of energy dahil ang risk ay napakataas (because the risk is very high),” he said.
The government is eyeing the deployment of modular nuclear plants to some islands where electricity supply is low, Energy Sec. Alfonso Cusi earlier said.
The Philippines also signed a memorandum with Russia’s state-owned Rosatom for a pre-feasibility study for nuclear power plants. President Rodrigo Duterte “wants to learn more” about nuclear power, which could lower electricity prices and stabilize supply, Cusi said.
“We are hungry for power and we will tap any sources that would satisfy our own needs now,” he said.
One small nation shows how to be nuclear- free and climate friendly – theme for November 19
Citizen Advocacy: The Achievements of New Zealand`s Peace Activism, Asia Pacific Journal Pinar Temocin and Noriyuki Kawano, October 1, 2019 Volume 17 | Issue 19 | Number 2Abstract
Aotearoa New Zealand provides an important example of successful citizen activism in the form of anti-nuclear peace advocacy. The collective efforts by peace actors over several decades resulted in the successful demand for a nuclear-free nation. This paper highlights the widespread participation and political support that facilitated the process and assesses its achievements.
Introduction New Zealand, a small and isolated country, is a rare example of a nation achieving nuclear-free status. The peace-seeking nation unified around an anti-war narrative, and moved from activism based on public awareness and engagement to the passage of laws that eliminated nuclear weapons through a number of stages: from the first generation of movements against the atomic bomb after 1945 to the response to French nuclear testing in the late 60`s to US and UK nuclear warship visits in the 70`s and the early 80`s. As part of this shift, the US-led military alliance with Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS) was redefined by New Zealanders from a guarantee of security to a threat that posed a security dilemma. As this essay shows, social consciousness and activism was ultimately successful in bringing fundamental change. The Labor Party, in particular, played a critical role in translating strong public participation on the part of a broad section of the population into a significant policy outcome: `the creation of a peaceful and nuclear-free nation`.
This mobilization involved persistent and substantial public pressure over decades. Public pressure to change the nation’s foreign policy also included opposition to involvement in the United States-led coalition in the Korean and Vietnam wars. As these wars came to an end, the matter of nuclear testing became a hot-button election issue forcing each political party to adopt a policy on nuclear weapons. The anti-nuclear argument was placed within a broader moral vision. New Zealand peace advocates problematized the threatening conditions and demanded a solution under the narratives of a `democratic, egalitarian, decolonized, independent, non-violent, non-militarist nation which is intrinsically based on `a peaceful nation`. A peaceful nation for them required a nuclear-free approach in its domestic and foreign policies. To achieve this, they organized actively, coordinated professionally, sustained effective campaigns, and engaged in the policy-formation and shaping process.
Since the end of the 60s, successful protest movements have established new modes of political participation in advanced democracies.1 In some democratic societies including New Zealand, social movements have benefitted from tolerant political structures. Their success depends further on specific configurations of resources, trustworthy institutional arrangements, and historical precedents for social mobilization that facilitate the development of protest movements.2
Strong democracies are conducive to positive engagements and interactions between citizen and the state. The strengthening of practices of participation, responsiveness to a majority, and the development of inclusive and cohesive societies are powerful components of the democratic decision-making process. Therefore, citizen participation in governance with a responsive, open, and tolerant state can produce positive effects based on popular consensus……https://apjjf.org/2019/19/Temocin.html
New Zealand passes historic zero carbon bill with near unanimous bipartisan support – The New Zealand parliament has passed landmark legislation that enshrines the country’s commitment to the Paris Agreement into law, and will see the country achieve zero net carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 ….. https://reneweconomy.com.au/new-zealand-passes-historic-zero-carbon-bill-with-near-unanimous-bipartisan-support-33500/
Deadline looms for nuclear veterans and descendants study
The study lead by University of Otago associate professor David McBride will look into the connection between nuclear veterans and their children, who may have been affected by their parents’ exposure to radiation.
So far only 166 people had signed up, according to Mururoa Nuclear Veterans president Gavin Smith.
Mr Smith implored more to join, saying about 500 people went to the Christmas Island and were exposed to nuclear tests in the 1950s and about 500 went to Mururoa during the 1970s.
“Everyone who has a veteran father or grandfather that served there and has maybe deceased or may be living but mentioned nothing of it, I urge them to contact the University of Otago,” he said.
He said the study was crucial because veteran’s children may have been affected by their parents’ exposure to radiation, which could make their offspring more susceptible to conditions like leukaemia and auto-immune diseases.
“Our study is open to all nuclear veterans. If we don’t do it in our generation, it’s going to be an even bigger battle for the next generation.”
The group, which was established in 2013 to press the government to help families with nuclear related illnesses, had 135 members who served at the protest.
Of those, 56 had children or grandchildren with unexplained medical conditions.
Testing would begin next week at the University of Otago, with a timeframe and details on the study yet to be confirmed.
Legal action on The Marshall Islands’ leaky radioactive nuclear waste dome?
This Concrete Dome Holds A Leaking Toxic Timebomb | Foreign Correspondent
Leaking nuclear waste dome: Marshalls consider legal action https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/402002/leaking-nuclear-waste-dome-marshalls-consider-legal-action
But according to the Marshall Islands Nuclear Commission, more than 99 per cent of the waste has seeped into the atoll’s lagoon.
Commission’s chair Rhea Moss-Christian said the Marshall Islands was exploring legal remedies to obtain compensation from the US government.
“The political environment is always changing. We don’t know what the future brings. But as a nation that is still dealing with the impacts, we can’t afford to sit back and accept that there’s nothing further that can be done.”
The Runit Dome on Enewetak atoll was used to store radioactive materials left over from US nuclear weapons testing during the 1940s and ’50s.
But according to the Marshall Islands Nuclear Commission, more than 99 per cent of the waste has seeped into the atoll’s lagoon.
Commission’s chair Rhea Moss-Christian said the Marshall Islands was exploring legal remedies to obtain compensation from the US government.
“The political environment is always changing. We don’t know what the future brings. But as a nation that is still dealing with the impacts, we can’t afford to sit back and accept that there’s nothing further that can be done.”
The Pacific Islands Forum Chair, Dame Meg Taylor, has called for an independent audit into the Runit Dome. Her UN counterpart, Antonio Guterres, has also raised concerns about the potential radioactive fallout.
The Nuclear Commission is due to start work in November on an impact study of the dome which will take up to three years.
The commission’s report highlighted a number of ongoing impacts of American nuclear weapons testing, including forced migration and high rates of cancer it said had been exacerbated by US refusal of requests for assistance with cancer treatment facilities.
“The absence of cancer care facilities and its link to forced migration are deplorable, and it means that the violence of the testing program continues despite the cessation of weapons testing,” the report said.
It also called for broader support with compensation for victims of nuclear testing, adding that Marshall Islands officials would raise nuclear justice in all official discussions with the US government.
According to the report, a US-funded Nuclear Claims Tribunal ended payments in 2009, leaving more than $US2.2 billion in unpaid compensation.
The Marshall Islands will also request UN agencies conduct its study of radiation levels in nuclear testing sites and their impact on communities.
Establishing a National Nuclear Archive would also be explored, as well as a memorial or monument “commemorate the hundreds of Marshallese who sacrificed their health and homeland for the U.S. nuclear weapons testing program”.
Ms Moss-Christian said the Marshall Islands’ election to the UN Human Rights Council earlier this month provided a new platform for seeking assistance.
“Compensation is definitely a priority for affected communities. There are also other forms of nuclear justice, and some of those areas are where the UN can step in and provide assistance,” she said.
Cutting through the nuclear advocacy’s nonsense – for the Philippines, nuclear benefits only Russia
The supposed cost benefits of nuclear power are completely misrepresented by the nuclear advocacy.
Only Russia will benefit if PH goes nuclear, https://www.oilandgas360.com/only-russia-will-benefit-if-ph-goes-nuclear/ in Press by— 360 Feed Wire By BEN KRITZ, TMT, October 29, 2019 FOR the second time during the term of the current administration, fast-talking salesmen from Russia’s nuclear energy agency Rosatom have managed to convince a few impressionable officials here that the mighty atom is the answer to all the Philippines’ energy needs, especially if it is packaged in the product Rosatom has to offer.
The only people who will benefit from the Philippines’ adopting nuclear power will be the shareholders of Rosatom. Nuclear power is an economically and environmentally disastrous proposition for the Philippines, and no amount of persistence from the misguided nuclear advocacy can change that.
On October 17, Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi announced the Department of Energy had signed a memorandum of intent with Rosatom for the latter to conduct feasibility studies on the possible deployment of so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) in the Philippines.
These reactors, which generate between 20 to 200 megawatts (MW) of power, can be mounted on floating platforms to provide electricity to island provinces, or slaved together like giant batteries to create larger land-based power plants.
Russia currently has one such floating plant in operation, a 21,000- metric ton barge carrying two 35-MW reactors and dubbed the Akademik Lomonosov. The craft, which will replace a coal plant and an old nuclear plant in Russia’s far east, can provide power to about 100,000 homes and has a crew of about 70.
The (weak) case for nuclear power
Hard on the heels of the announcement of the DoE’s agreement with Rosatom, local nuclear advocates took part in a “Stand Up for Nuclear” event held in Manila and other cities around the world on October 20. The event achieved what its organizers presumably hoped it would — the publication of a rash of news articles and opinion columns in the days following it, all touting the supposed benefits of nuclear power to the energy-challenged Philippines.
The arguments put forth in favor of nuclear power in general — which haven’t changed in years — and of SMRs in particular are rather shallow, but at first glance seem to be valid.
The benefits of nuclear power, according to its advocates, are that it does not produce harmful emissions, unlike conventional fossil-fueled power plants; it is an extremely efficient energy source, which results in lower power costs to consumers; it has a very good overall safety record, in spite of attention-grabbing disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima; and it provides reliable baseload power to augment energy from intermittent sources like solar and wind power.
SMRs are touted as a good option for countries like the Philippines without well-developed nuclear capabilities or budgets to sustain them because they are small, versatile, relatively inexpensive, and less complicated than normal-scale nuclear plants. For example, unlike a conventional pressurized water or boiling water reactor, the cooling and steam generation water flows in most SMR designs are gravity-fed. This presumably makes them immune from the sort of loss-of-coolant accidents that led to the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters.
All of these arguments are very positive-sounding, enough to convince many impressionable government officials and media commentators, whom the nuclear advocacy hopes have neither the time, inclination nor capacity to look critically at the facts, which tend to be a more than a little inconvenient.
Cutting through the nonsense
The first argument that “nuclear plants do not produce harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions,” is true in a very literal sense, but it is not true that nuclear plants do not contribute to harmful emissions at all, as some advocates claim. All nuclear plants emit heat and water vapor to the atmosphere at the rate of 4.4 grams CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2-e/kWh) of energy produced. While this is certainly very much less than a conventional power plant, it is not zero, and compares unfavorably with solar and wind power, which actually remove water vapor and heat flux to the atmosphere at the rate of -2.2 g CO2-e/kWh.
An even bigger environmental problem with nuclear power is that any nuclear reactor uses an enormous amount of fresh water and discharges a large amount of heated wastewater.
Because of the complicated chemistry within a nuclear reactor, seawater cannot be used, and even fresh water must be “scrubbed” to remove any impurities. In a country such as the Philippines, where fresh water supplies are increasingly constrained, any nuclear power facility is a problematic option.
The second argument, that nuclear energy is extremely efficient and therefore less expensive than other forms of power, is again only literally true in a narrow context.
Uranium as a fuel is incredibly efficient; one ton of uranium has the energy content of about 80,000 tons of coal. However, to obtain useable fuel a great deal of processing is necessary, which of course comes at an energy cost, and the amount of useful uranium to be used as nuclear fuel is quickly being depleted; US reserves of uranium have virtually disappeared, and reserves elsewhere in the world are estimated to last no more than 100 years.
The supposed cost benefits of nuclear power are completely misrepresented by the nuclear advocacy. A comparison between an existing nuclear plant and an existing coal plant, for example, would show that electricity derived from nuclear power is less costly on a per-MW basis, but power costs, as Filipino consumers have long been painfully aware, include all the costs associated with building and maintaining a power plant. The proper way to calculate comparative costs is through a formula called levelized cost of energy (LCOE), which takes into account construction costs, regulatory costs, fuel costs, available subsidies, and operating costs.
This is where nuclear power completely falls apart compared to other energy alternatives.
According to the 2018 report of Lazard (the go-to source for energy cost analysis), nuclear has a high-end LCOE of $189 per megawatt hour (MWh). Coal has an LCOE of $143/MWh; utility-scale solar of between $44/MWh and $48/MWh; and wind, $56/MWh. Of the various energy sources analyzed, only gas peaking plants and rooftop solar installations had a higher LCOE than nuclear power, at $208/MWh and $287/MWh, respectively.
And Lazard’s results may be a serious underestimate of the true cost of nuclear power. In the next installment, I’ll explain further why, despite supplying about 20 percent of the world’s electricity, nuclear power is one of the worst solutions for the Philippines, or any other country for that matter
National nuclear commission strategy for Marshall Islands
Marshalls endorses nuclear commission strategy, https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/401921/marshalls-endorses-nuclear-commission-strategy The Marshall Islands government has endorsed the adoption of a national nuclear commission strategy for the next three years.
The strategy honours the legacy of Marshallese nuclear heroes and heroines who fought and continue to demand accountability for their communities.
The strategy was mandated in the Marshall Islands parliament, or Nitijela, as part of the National Nuclear Commission Act of 2017.
It focuses on five broad themes for nuclear justice: compensation, health care, the environment, national capacity, and education and awareness.
From 1946 to 1958, the US used the Marshall Islands to test its nuclear weapons.
The commission also aims to establish an independent panel of scientists and specialists in fields related to radiation exposure, to provide the republic’s citizens access to trusted, independent science.
The commission’s chair, Rhea Moss-Christian, said the NNC strategy was a tool for all Marshallese, whether living in the islands or overseas, to use in their individual and collective efforts to respond to the devastation resulting from the US nuclear weapons testing program in the Marshall Islands.
“It is also a resource for our partners and friends outside the Marshall Islands to understand the nuclear testing impacts that persist today and how they can support the Marshallese people,” Ms Moss-Christian said.
1.This Month
of the week
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety
The Nuclear Waste Problem- theme for January 2020
Please watch this video throughout. You will be surprised, and so much better informed about the reality of the nuclear waste situation.
EVENTS
January 30th – The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) will hold a public meeting about its yet-to-be-submitted application for renewal of the ten-year hazardous waste permit to the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED).
N CARLSBAD: January 30th from 5 to 7 pm at the Skeen-Whitlock Building, 4021 National Park Highway, Carlsbad
Free Julian Assange, before it’s too late. Sign to STOP the USA Extradition PETITION
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