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Shares in nuclear weapons company Serco crash, As UK govt nationalises the industry

Serco shares crash as outsourcer loses role on nuclear weapons consortium, City A.M. Edward Thickness, 2 Nov 20, 
Shares in Serco plummeted this morning after the outsourcing giant confirmed that the government had taken back management of its atomic weapons development facility.

Shares dropped nearly 12 per cent as markets opened as traders digested the news.

Yesterday Sky News reported that the government was due to announce that it would take over the running of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) from next year.

AWE has been run by a consortium made up of US defence giant Lockheed Martin, Serco and Jacobs since 2000.

The contract was due to expire in 2025, so the government’s decision to renationalise the facility is a considerable blow to the FTSE 250 company.

Serco said that it was expecting to make £17m in profit from its 24.5 per cent stake in AWE this year. In its last full year results the firm reported profit of £120m.

However, it said that it would stick to its full year financial forecasts for 2020/21……..

AWE, which makes nuclear warheads for the UK’s submarines, will pass back into government ownership on 30 June.

Earlier this year the facility came under fire from spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO).https://www.cityam.com/serco-shares-crash-as-outsourcer-loses-role-on-nuclear-weapons-consortium/

November 3, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nukes in space

New Los Alamos spin-off aims to put nuclear reactors in space,   LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Nov. 2, 2020—A new agreement hopes to speed along a nuclear reactor technology that could be used to fuel deep-space exploration and possibly power human habitats on the Moon or Mars. Los Alamos National Laboratory has signed an agreement to license the “Kilopower” space reactor technology to Space Nuclear Power Corporation (SpaceNukes), also based in Los Alamos, NM…… https://www.miragenews.com/new-los-alamos-spin-off-aims-to-put-nuclear-reactors-in-space/

November 3, 2020 Posted by | space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Russian company with powerful connections withdraws from Turkish nuclear plant operation

November 3, 2020 Posted by | politics international, Russia, Turkey | Leave a comment

While Canadian authorities fall for “New Small Nuclear” spin, U.S. consortium rips off Canada’s nuclear waste disaster

U.S. corporations profiting from major Canadian nuclear liability,  https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2020/10/us-corporations-profiting-major-canadian-nuclear-liability Ole Hendrickson, October 30, 2020

The nearly 70-year history of the federal crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) has left a $16 billion toxic legacy of shuttered reactors, polluted lakes and groundwater, contaminated soils, and hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of radioactive waste.

AECL’s 2018 annual report estimates its undiscounted waste and decommissioning liability at $15.9 billion as of March 31, 2018. Table 5.7 in Canada’s 2019 public accounts estimates AECL’s environmental liabilities at $1.05 billion and “asset retirement obligations” at $6.6 billion.

This $7.7 billion estimate of AECL’s total nuclear liability is heavily discounted. The accounting firm Deloitte does not recommend discounting for environmental liabilities and asset retirement obligations unless the amount of the liability and the amount and timing of cash payments are “reliably determinable.” As explained in a detailed report, neither is true for AECL’s liability.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper thought that the private sector might do a better job of addressing this massive liability than AECL itself. Just before losing power to the Liberals in the 2015 election, his government contracted an American-controlled consortium (creatively called the “Canadian National Energy Alliance”) to manage federal nuclear facilities and reduce the waste liability quickly and cheaply.

According to the main estimates, AECL’s expenditures grew from $326 million in 2014-15 (before the consortium assumed control) to $491 million in 2015-16, $784 million in 2016-17, $827 million in 2017-18 and $829 million in 2018-19. The 2020-21 main estimates for AECL are $1.2 billion.

AECL hands most of this money over to the consortium, whose current members are Texas-based Fluor and Jacobs, and SNC-Lavalin. AECL retains ownership of the waste. A 2017 special examination report of the Auditor General of Canada to AECL’s board of directors says that “approximately $866 million for contractual expenses was paid or payable by the Corporation in the 2016-17 fiscal year.”

Is this “Government-owned, contractor-operated” (GoCo) arrangement providing value for money?

The GoCo contract was supposed to have been reviewed after an initial six-year period. However, AECL — whose president is an American with past ties to consortium members — extended it to a full 10-year period in April 2020, 18 months before its September 2021 renewal date.

The centrepiece of the consortium’s approach — a million-cubic–metre radioactive waste mound on a hillside draining into the Ottawa River – was revealed in May 2016, shortly after the ink dried on the contract. Neither the public, nor Algonquin peoples on whose unceded territory this facility would be built, were consulted.

Technical problems and public opposition have put the “near surface disposal facility” — to be built at AECL’s Chalk River laboratories — years behind schedule. AECL waste management experts who left when the consortium took over have been highly critical, pointing out that an above-ground mound would not contain and isolate the types of radioactive waste that the consortium planned to put in it.

Chalk River, the focal point of Canadian nuclear research since the late 1940s, is where most of AECL’s radioactive waste legacy is found. But AECL also built reactors at four other sites in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. All have been shut down for decades — radioactive hulks, yet to be fully decommissioned.

AECL and its American-led consortium have announced quick and cheap plans for Manitoba and Ontario reactors: fill them up with blast furnace slag and concrete, and abandon them in place. Critics say these proposals are seriously flawed, noting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that “entombment” should only be considered in the event of a serious reactor accident.

Critics say that these sub-standard schemes would pollute major Canadian waterways and could expose workers and future generations to dangerous radiation levels.

The consortium is trying to salvage its Chalk River mound proposal with a promise to reduce the amount of radiation in the wastes it would house. Less radiation would leak into the Ottawa River.

However, management practices during Chalk River’s early years were poor, accidents were frequent and records were lost in a fire. Trying to separate out lower-activity from higher-activity wastes would involve considerable expense and high worker radiation exposures. And if strict limits on the mound’s radioactivity were adhered to, much of the federal waste liability would likely remain unaddressed.

Management of Canada’s radioactive waste by for-profit corporations, combined with a lack of government oversight, creates risks of delays, excessive radiation exposures to workers and the public, and squandering of tax dollars. Critics of AECL’s GoCo contract are asking the federal government to establish a publicly acceptable strategy for addressing its nuclear liability.

In a mission to Canada in late 2019, IAEA reviewers found virtually “no evidence … of a governmental policy or strategy related to radioactive waste management.” The government agreed to their recommendation that this gap be filled, assigning the task to Natural Resources Canada.

But Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan seems preoccupied with promotion of a new generation of mass-produced, “modular” nuclear reactors. Two consortium members — Fluor and SNC-Lavalin — are heavily invested in their own reactor designs. There are plans to build three new demonstration reactors at Chalk River, and talk of building as many as eight. One proposal has already reached the environmental assessment stage.

If the Liberal government caves into industry pressure to fund the building of these new reactors — instead of dealing responsibly with its existing waste liability — AECL’s $16 billion radioactive burden on Canadian taxpayers — and risks to workers and the public — will just keep growing.

Ole Hendrickson is a retired forest ecologist and a founding member of the Ottawa River Institute, a non-profit charitable organization based in the Ottawa Valley.

November 2, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, Canada, investigative journalism, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, wastes | 1 Comment

Now climate change, rising seas, swamping Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, victims of nuclear racism

Losing paradise,  Atomic racism decimated Kiribati and the Marshall Islands; now climate change is sinking them, Beyond Nuclear   https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/72759838/posts/2998141589–1 Nov 20, This is an extract from the Don’t Bank on the Bomb Scotland report “Nuclear Weapons, the Climate and Our Environment”.

Kiribati.  In 1954, the government of Winston Churchill decided that the UK needed to develop a hydrogen bomb (a more sophisticated and destructive type of nuclear weapon). The US and Russia had already developed an H-bomb and Churchill argued that the UK “could not expect to maintain our influence as a world power unless we possessed the most up-to-date nuclear weapons”.

The governments of Australia and New Zealand refused to allow a hydrogen bomb test to be conducted on their territories so the British government searched for an alternative site. Kiritimati Island and Malden Island in the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony in the central Pacific Ocean (now the Republic of Kiribati) were chosen. Nine nuclear weapons tests – including the first hydrogen bomb tests – were carried out there as part of “Operation Grapple” between 1957 and 1958.

Military personnel from the UK, New Zealand and Fiji (then a British colony) and Gilbertese labourers were brought in to work on the operation. Many of the service personnel were ordered to witness the tests in the open, on beaches or on the decks of ships, and were simply told to turn their backs and shut their eyes when the bombs were detonated. There is evidence that Fijian forces were given more dangerous tasks than their British counterparts, putting them at greater risk from radiation exposure. The local Gilbertese were relocated and evacuated to British naval vessels during some of the tests but many were exposed to fallout, along with naval personnel and soldiers.

After Grapple X, the UK’s first megaton hydrogen bomb test in November 1957, dead fish washed ashore and “birds were observed to have their feathers burnt off, to the extent that they could not fly”. The larger Grapple Y test in 1958 spread fallout over Kiritimati Island and destroyed large areas of vegetation.

Despite evidence that military personnel and local people suffered serious health problems as a result of the tests, including blindness, cancers, leukaemia and reproductive difficulties, the British government has consistently denied that they were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and has resisted claims for compensation.

Like the Marshall Islands, the low-lying Republic of Kiribati is now bearing the brunt of the effects of climate change. Salt water washed in on king tides has contaminated the islands’ scarce freshwater resources. Pits that are used to grow taro plants have been ruined and the healthy subsistence lifestyle of local people is under threat.

It is predicted that rising sea levels will further impact freshwater resources and reduce the amount of agricultural land, while storm damage and erosion will increase. Much of the land will ultimately be submerged. In anticipation of the need to relocate its entire population, the government of Kiribati bought 20km2 of land on Fiji in 2014.

The UK is set to spend £3.4 billion a year on Trident nuclear weapons system between 2019 and 2070. If Trident were scrapped, a portion of the savings could be provide to the Republic of Kiribati in the form of climate finance (see section 1.2.1). Scrapping Trident would also allow money and skills to be redirected towards measures aimed at drastically cutting the UK’s carbon emissions (see section 1.2.2) – action that Pacific island nations are urgently demanding.

The Marshall Islands.  The most devasting incident of radioactive contamination took place 8,000 km from the US mainland during the Castle Bravo test in 1954. The US detonated the largest nuclear weapon in its history at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, causing fallout to spread over an area of more than 11,000km. Residents of nearby atolls, Rongelap and Utirik, were exposed to high levels of radiation, suffering burns, radiation sickness, skin lesions and hair loss as a result.

Castle Bravo was just one of 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted by the US in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958. Forty years after the tests, the cervical cancer mortality rate for women of the Marshall Islands was found to be 60 times greater than the rate for women in the US mainland, while breast and lung cancer rates were five and three times greater respectively. High rates of infant mortality have also been found in the Marshall Islands and a legacy of birth defects and infertility has been documented. Many Marshallese were relocated by the US to make way for the testing.

Some were moved to Rongelap Atoll and relocated yet again after the fallout from Castle Bravo left the area uninhabitable.

Rongelap Atoll was resettled in 1957 after the US government declared that the area was safe. However, many of those who returned developed serious health conditions and the entire population was evacuated by Greenpeace in 1984. An attempt to resettle Bikini Atoll was similarly abandoned in 1978 after it became clear that the area was still unsafe for human habitation.

A 2019 peer-reviewed study found levels of the radioactive isotope caesium-137 in fruits taken from some parts of Bikini and Rongelap to be significantly higher than levels recorded at the sites of the world’s worst nuclear accidents, Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Compounding the injustice of nuclear weapons testing, the Republic of the Marshall Islands is now on the frontline of the climate emergency. The government declared a national climate crisis in 2019, citing the nation’s extreme vulnerability to rising sea levels and the “implications for the security, human rights and wellbeing of the Marshallese people”.

At Runit Island, one of 40 islands in the Enewetak Atoll, rising sea levels are threatening to release radioactive materials into an already contaminated lagoon. In the late 1970s, the US army dumped 90,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste, including plutonium, into a nuclear blast crater and covered it with a concrete cap. Radioactive materials are leaking out of the crater and cracks have appeared on the concrete cap. Encroaching salt water caused by rising sea levels could collapse the structure altogether. The Marshallese government has asked the US for help to prevent an environmental catastrophe but the US maintains that the dome is the Marshall Islands’ responsibility. Hilda Heine, then President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, said of the dome in 2019: “We don’t want it. We didn’t build it. The garbage inside is not ours. It’s theirs.”

The Runit Island dome offers a stark illustration of the ways in which the injustices of nuclear weapons testing and climate change overlap. Marshall Islanders were left with the toxic legacy of nuclear weapons testing conducted on their territory by another state. The country is now being forced to deal with the effects of a climate crisis that they did not create, including the erosion of the Runit dome.

The nations that contributed most to the crisis are failing to cut their emissions quickly enough to limit further global heating, leaving the Marshallese at the mercy of droughts, cyclones and rising seas. A recent study found that if current rates of greenhouse gas emissions are maintained, the Marshall Islands will be flooded with sea water annually from 2050. The resulting damage to infrastructure and contamination of freshwater supplies will render the islands uninhabitable.

If the US scrapped its nuclear weapons programme, it could give a portion of the billions of dollars that would be saved to the Republic of the Marshall Islands to help the country mitigate and adapt to climate disruption (see section 1.2.1 on international climate finance). The US could also use the freed-up funds to invest in its own Just Transition away from a fossil-fuel powered economy.   Read the full report.

November 2, 2020 Posted by | climate change, environment, history, OCEANIA, Reference, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Coronavirus cases rise in grim march to America’s Election Day

Coronavirus cases rise in grim march to Election Day,  SMH, By Doina Chiacu and Susan Cornwell

Washington: Coronavirus cases continued their grim climb in the United States on Sunday, local time, with Midwestern states experiencing record hospitalisations, as increasingly bitter rhetoric kept the virus front and centre of campaigning two days before the presidential election.

Nearly 87,000 cases were reported on Saturday, with 909 deaths and record hospitalisations for the sixth straight day in the Midwest, according to a Reuters tally. In October, 31 states set records for increases in new cases, 21 for hospitalised COVID-19 patients and 14 for record increases in deaths.

President Donald Trump, the Republican seeking re-election against Democratic challenger Joe Biden on Tuesday, downplays the virus and has accused Democrats of overblowing the pandemic that has killed more 230,000 Americans, more than any other country.

Biden and fellow Democrats have hammered Trump as a poor leader who failed to contain COVID-19 in the United States, which also leads the world in the daily average number of new cases.

Trump’s false accusation Friday that doctors were profiting from COVID-19 deaths drew harsh criticism from the governor of the election battleground state of Wisconsin.

“We have a president that believes that the doctors are at fault, they’re messing with the numbers and he believes that it’s over. It ain’t over,” Democratic Governor Tony Evers told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

“We have hospitalisations going through the roof,” he said. “We absolutely need somebody that understands that this is an issue, it’s a thing. People are dying.”……..

Stanford University economists estimated that Trump’s campaign rallies have resulted in 30,000 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19, and likely led to more than 700 deaths overall, according to a paper posted this weekend.

Infectious disease experts have long suspected that the president’s rallies might be so-called superspreader events. But scientists have not been able to get a good read on their impact, in part because of a lack of robust contact tracing.

Trump has repeatedly disdained masks, even after outbreaks affected his own family and multiple White House staffers.

In contrast, Biden has stuck to federal health guidelines that discourage large, crowded gatherings during his campaign events. He has called Trump’s handling of the virus negligent and irresponsible.

Amid the acrimony, DeWine urged Americans to come together and fight what he called a war against a common enemy.

“This virus doesn’t care whether we vote for Joe Biden or whether we vote for Donald Trump. It’s coming after us.”    https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/coronavirus-cases-rise-in-grim-march-to-election-day-20201102-p56ali.html

November 2, 2020 Posted by | election USA 2020, health | Leave a comment

USA should accept Russia’s offer of a one-year extension of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty 

Russia and the U.S. Need a Timeout on Nuclear Weapons, With New START about to expire, the U.S. should accept Moscow’s offer of a one-year extension.  Bloombeerg By James Stavridis, 31 October 2020,  “…….. The stakes are vastly higher when it comes to negotiations involving the possible use of strategic nuclear weapons, such as those on intercontinental ballistic missiles, which have the potential to end civilization as we know it. In my final military job, as supreme allied commander at NATO, I argued contentiously with senior Russian officials that U.S. Aegis missile systems in Eastern Europe — which are intended primarily to avert an Iranian attack on the continent — could not threaten their strategic nuclear force. It was a debate that went around and around in circles.

The simple truth is that both sides have a vital interest in reducing the number of strategic nuclear weapons systems — and likewise moving away from tactical nukes, the less-powerful weapons geared to use on the battlefield. Now the U.S. and Russia are performing a complicated negotiating dance around replacing the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty before it expires next February. For the sake of the entire world, Washington and Moscow have to be able to get to “yes” and “da,” respectively. …..

The administration’s goals are overambitious for now — particularly given that Trump may not be in office in three months — so it would be smart to take up Russia’s offer.

Eventually, Washington should seek an agreement that includes, most fundamentally, even tighter limits on the warheads aboard intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach each other’s shores. Then there are new systems coming into play — notably nuclear-powered torpedoes with strategic nuclear warheads, and boost-glide, ultra-high-speed versions of ICBMs — that will require new kinds of restrictions and possible inspection regimes……
one long list of tricky issues to be hashed out if New START is to get a new life. It would be in America’s interest to agree to at least a one-year timeout to continue the conversation — regardless of which party ends up in the White House. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-30/putin-s-right-that-u-s-and-russia-need-a-nuclear-timeout

November 2, 2020 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Plutonium: How Nuclear Power’s Dream Fuel Became a Nightmare

Nailing the Coffin of Civilian Plutonium, Plutonium: How Nuclear Power’s Dream Fuel Became a Nightmare, By Frank von Hippel,   Masafumi Takubo, and Jungmin KangSpringer Press, Reviewed by Thomas Countryman, November 2020

Even in the world of speculative investment bubbles, it would be difficult to find a parallel to the business of making plutonium. This “industry” has seen massive investment by private and mostly governmental funds in pursuit of creating the world’s most dangerous material, an investment that has failed to yield a single dollar in returns. Nevertheless, a combination of scientific ambition, bureaucratic inertia, and governmental hubris keeps alive a dream that should have been smothered long ago.

Leave it to three highly experienced specialists to briefly recount the history, clearly explain the physical realities, and precisely pick apart the ever-weakening arguments that have supported reprocessing spent nuclear fuel into a new plutonium-based fuel. Frank von Hippel, Masafumi Takubo, and Jungmin Kang accomplish all of this in Plutonium: How Nuclear Power’s Dream Fuel Became a Nightmare. Its planned translation into Japanese and Korean should help citizens participate in critical upcoming decisions about continuing plutonium projects by governments in Tokyo and Seoul.

The earliest rationale for using plutonium as a nuclear fuel rested on the fact that spent nuclear fuel, the leftover material from civilian nuclear power plants, still contained far more potential energy than had yet been consumed. In the 1970s, uranium was believed to be scarce in the natural environment, and the full utilization of its energy capacity made some engineering, logical, and economic sense. In succeeding decades, the economic rationale has been constantly undermined by the realization that natural uranium is sufficiently plentiful that its price is no longer the primary cost factor in nuclear power generation, by the unanticipated complexity of building advanced reactors optimized to use plutonium as fuel, by the cost of new and necessary safety regulations applicable to all reactors, and most recently by the continued fall in the cost of generating renewable energy.

In the face of these realities, only France, at a substantial economic loss, currently operates a full program for recovering plutonium from spent fuel for use as new nuclear fuel. Russia reprocesses spent fuel and is now testing plutonium in a breeder reactor. Japan has indicated it plans to open one of the world’s largest reprocessing plants in Rokkasho in the next two years, but that two-year time frame has been the boilerplate forecast for each of the past 10 years. India is actively reprocessing civilian spent fuel, and China is constructing a major facility for that purpose. South Korea has announced an end to its nuclear power program, but some officials and experts retain the aspiration to pursue civilian reprocessing.

No other nuclear-powered nation is actively pursuing “closing” the nuclear fuel cycle by reprocessing plutonium for energy generation. The economic and technical realities forced one country after another—Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, then the United States—to end their own efforts.

This weak support highlights the merits of the authors’ arguments. They systematically deconstruct the political and technical arguments in favor of such programs. Crucially, they demonstrate the factual inaccuracy of the primary argument advanced by Japanese and South Korean advocates that reprocessing spent fuel will diminish the volume and danger of nuclear waste that must ultimately be stored in geological repositories. They also knock down convincingly the claim that plutonium that is reactor grade, as opposed to weapons grade, is unusable in an explosive device.

Although it may be the prerogative of sovereign states to spend their own money irrationally, the authors focus also on important externalities, in particular the threat to the world’s security and environment from the continued production of plutonium. A commitment to the closed fuel cycle delays the inevitable decision that must be made by Japan and South Korea concerning permanent safe storage of spent fuels, a decision on which the United States also continues to procrastinate. In addition, it leads to unsafe practices concerning the storage of spent fuel rods destined for reprocessing. The authors describe for the first time how close the world was to a greater disaster in 2011, as overcrowded spent fuel cooling ponds could have led to a much greater radiation release following the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The authors explain that moving the spent fuel to interim dry cask storage would avert such catastrophic risks.

Of still greater concern is the risk that even a sliver of the massive plutonium stockpiles could be acquired by terrorists to use in a nuclear explosive device or a panic-inducing radiological dispersion device. Since plutonium was first fabricated 80 years ago, nations have created more than 500 tons of what is arguably the world’s most dangerous material. The International Atomic Energy Agency defines a “significant quantity” of plutonium, or enough to make a nuclear weapon, as eight kilograms, although even a Nagasaki-size blast could be generated with significantly less plutonium. Thus, the 300 tons of plutonium designated for civilian use would be sufficient to create more than 35,000 warheads.

Continuing to accumulate plutonium is not only a terrorism risk, but also a source of tension between states. There is concern in Beijing that Japan holds greater stocks of separated plutonium than China and in Seoul that South Korea holds none. The authors note briefly but tellingly the normally unstated security considerations that in part motivate civilian reprocessing programs: an intention to sustain a latent weapons capacity.

The authors make a convincing case for the international community to act together to end further production of separated plutonium. The effort to negotiate a fissile material cutoff treaty, which would ban production of plutonium for weapons, remains frozen in a glacier at the Conference on Disarmament. Whether or when it moves ahead, there is a separate compelling need to negotiate a ban on civilian separation of plutonium.

Although less than 200 pages, Plutonium is not light reading. Its economic and scientific arguments are compact, thoroughly documented, and clear even to lay people. For policymakers and the public, it provides a clear picture of a dream whose claimed benefits have all evaporated but whose danger remains ominously present.

Thomas Countryman is the chair of the Arms Control Association Board of Directors. He served 35 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, retiring in 2017 as acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

November 2, 2020 Posted by | - plutonium, 2 WORLD, Reference, resources - print | Leave a comment

Despite propaganda from nuclear front group ”Third Way”, research shows that nuclear power as carbon reducer is counter-productive

Market Watch 30th Oct 2020, There’s a growing push for nuclear-power generation as a choice for  countries trying to wean themselves off fossil fuels and reduce their carbon footprint. But new research suggests there are potential downsides.
For many scientists — and Bill Gates — nuclear energy is part of the answer to the world’s climate-change problem. The market for nuclear power could triple by 2050 across the world, according to a recent study by Third Way, a U.S.-based think tank. There are more than 60 advanced reactor designs in development in the U.S., the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, said in a paper.
However, a recent study published in Nature Energy provides a different view. Scientists who conducted the study collected
data from 123 countries over a 25-year period, examining how the introduction of either nuclear-power or renewable-energy sources affects each country’s levels of carbon emissions.
The results show that a larger-scale national investment in nuclear-power plants not only fails to yield a significant reduction in carbon emissions, it actually causes higher emissions in poorer countries that implemented this strategy. For renewables, the opposite is true — in certain large country samples, the relationship between renewable energy and reduction in CO2-emissions is up to seven times stronger than the corresponding relationship for nuclear power. It is interesting how consistent the results are across different time frames and country sets.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nuclear-power-may-not-be-a-good-option-for-a-cleaner-world-11604056821

November 2, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Surge in fires in Brazil’s Amazon

November 2, 2020 Posted by | Brazil, climate change | Leave a comment

U.S. Senate unanimously passes resolution supporting nuclear weapons workers made ill by radiation

November 2, 2020 Posted by | employment, health, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Compensation claims recognised – workers made ill by working at Fukushima’s wrecked nuclear plant

Compensation claims related to Fukushima nuclear plant work total 269,  https://japantoday.com/category/national/compensation-claims-related-to-fukushima-plant-work-total-269

Oct. 31  2020l TOKYO  A total of 269 cases linked to the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant work have been deemed as job-related accidents and covered by compensation since the 2011 nuclear disaster, labor ministry officials say, underscoring the harsh conditions onsite workers still face.

The workers’ compensation claims that have been recognized by labor authorities include six cases of workers who developed cancer or leukemia due to radiation exposure, and four others who suffered from overwork-related illnesses, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare officials.

Decommissioning of the Fukushima plant is still under way nearly 10 years after the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. To this day, about 4,000 people still work on site every day, with many at risk of radiation exposure.

The compensation claims that have been approved refer to the period since the March 2011 nuclear accident through Oct 1 this year.

According to the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc, three people died between fiscal 2011 and 2019.

One worker, who wished to remain anonymous, told Kyodo News the pressure of working at a nuclear power plant as opposed to a normal working site is “incomparable.”

“I have to deal with so much anxiety and stress as I could never know what may happen inside a nuclear power plant,” said the man from Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture.

According to the worker, he wears two protective layers of clothing and tapes them together so there is no space between them, and also puts on a raincoat.

“I sweat a lot even in winter and I drink a lot of water,” he said, adding that several of his colleagues suffered from heat stroke or heat exhaustion while working at the plant.

TEPCO said a total of 98 people suffered from heat-related illnesses between fiscal 2011 and 2019, having had to wear masks and protective gear made of less permeable materials under the sweltering summer heat.

At the site of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 313 accidents have occurred in the same period of time, including several fatal cases between 2014 and 2015 in which workers fell into a tank, TEPCO said.

Acknowledging that many accidents had occurred, a TEPCO official said, “We will continue to work with our contractors to prevent such incidents from happening.”

November 2, 2020 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, health | Leave a comment

Expert guidance for the next President to head off a nuclear catastrophe

5 Steps for the Next President to Head Off a Nuclear Catastrophe

To the horror of experts, 30 years after the Cold War, the global risk from nuclear weapons is actually getting worse. Here’s how a new administration can turn that around. Politico, By EDMUND G. BROWN JR. , REP. RO KHANNA and WILLIAM J. PERRY, 10/30/2020

Edmund G. Brown Jr. is the former governor of California and executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) represents Silicon Valley in the House of Representatives.

William J. Perry was the 19th United States Secretary of Defense.

As fires rage across the West and the coronavirus continues its deadly march, President Donald Trump tweets and fulminates but refuses to take charge. He denies climate change; on the pandemic, he leaves to the states his clear responsibility to protect the people of America.

Tragically, his incompetence extends beyond Covid-19 and climate change to another existential danger, rarely debated in Washington or covered by the media: the chance of a nuclear blunder.

The Cold War may have ended in 1989, but the United States and Russia together still possess more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, 90 percent of the world’s arsenal, nearly 2,000 of which are programmed to launch in minutes at the command of either countries’ president. The risk of a real nuclear catastrophe is not a bugbear from a past decade. It is a current threat, and becoming more serious because of Trump’s policies—and because the public has largely stopped paying attention.

Like passengers on the Titanic, our leaders in Washington don’t see what is in front of them.
Trump has pulled out of two vital nuclear treaties—one covering Iran’s nuclear program and the other banning intermediate and short-range missiles. Now, there’s just one treaty holding back an all-out revival of the nuclear arms race with Russia—the New START Treaty, signed in 2010, and expiring early next year. Instead of promptly extending this agreement, Trump is dithering and has shown no interest in controlling nuclear weapons. In fact, he just authorized $13.3 billion to build new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The president is playing Russian roulette with humanity—with weapons that could kill millions, and in the case of a full-scale nuclear war, lead to the end of civilization itself.

How can we change course? That starts with the election of a new president, one who will have the courage to restore nuclear sanity. This is precisely what President Ronald Reagan did when he joined Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, declaring that “a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.”

The next step would be for the new president to publicly reaffirm that principle and take bold action to pull us back from the brink.
Where does the next president begin? Fortunately, serious academic and policy experts have thought long and hard about this continuing and intractable nuclear danger. They have proposed many practical steps. Based on their ideas and our own experience, we recommend that the new president and Congress take the following actions—practical, commonsense and eminently achievable.
First, prohibit “launch on warning” of nuclear weapons. The gravest threat facing the world today is that both the United States and Russia have their intercontinental ballistic missiles on hair-trigger alert, which means that nuclear weapons can be fired before an incoming attack is even verified. The president can quickly change this since he has the sole authority to decide when, and under what conditions, nuclear weapons can be launched………..
Second, cut back the current plan, initiated by the Obama administration, to spend—over three decades—more than $1 trillion to build and maintain a new generation of missiles, submarines and bombers for a nuclear arms “modernization.” ……….

Third, the next president should immediately extend the New START Treaty with Russia and begin follow-on negotiations to reduce deployed strategic nuclear forces by one-third, something Obama himself had planned to do.

Fourth, we should find a way to limit strategic missile defenses, which perversely incentivize building ever more offensive systems—making the world far more dangerous. The United States has spent $300 billion since 1983 trying to build a defense system to stop incoming nuclear missiles, without success………..
Fifth, after the bluster and bombast of Trump, it is now time for serious and intensive diplomacy with Russia and China, and also with North Korea and Iran—one already a nuclear power and the other striving to be one……..

The next president should reflect deeply on our existential predicament and chart a new and wiser path for America.  https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/30/5-steps-for-the-next-president-to-head-off-a-nuclear-catastrophe-433695

October 31, 2020 Posted by | election USA 2020, politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Financial red flags warn against Utah’s NuScale small nuclear reactor project

October 31, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Another city bites the dust in regard to Utah’s NuScam small nuclear reactors plan

Seven Utah cities have now bailed out of an Idaho nuclear power project, Salt Lake Tribune,  By Taylor Stevens-30 Oct 20,

Three more Utah cities voted this week not to move forward with a first-of-its kind nuclear power project that proponents have pitched as the future of clean energy but that opponents have lined up against over concerns about financial risk.

Beaver, Bountiful and Heber are the latest municipalities to exit the small modular nuclear reactor pursuit, following in the footsteps of Murray, Kaysville, Lehi and Logan, which also backed out in recent weeks. ………

The Heber Light and Power Board, which voted 5-1 to get out of the project, and the Bountiful City Council, which unanimously made the decision to back out, both did so this week largely over concerns about the subscription rate of the nuclear energy pursuit.

“There’s enough things wrong with this project that it made it really scary,” said Bart Miller, Heber Light and Power’s chief financial officer. “We’re just a bunch of little utilities in the state of Utah trying to do a $6 billion nuclear power plant.”………

Bountiful City Councilman Richard Higginson said the leaders there had similar concerns, and felt too many of the development and construction costs were falling to a small number of municipalities…….

Costs have been one of the main concerns for several of the cities that have backed out over the last few weeks, as the project’s projected price tag has ballooned significantly, from $4.5 billion a few years ago to around $6 billion now. Opponents have also raised concerns about time and cost overruns, safety considerations and an uncertain regulatory environment.

The Utah Taxpayers Association has been among the critics of the project, arguing that municipal power companies should not act as a “seed investor” for the new technology, a responsibility it’s argued should lie with the private sector.

Environmental groups, such as the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, have also raised concerns about the radioactive waste that would be generated by the project.

Cities participating in the Carbon Free Power Project through the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems — a consortium of municipally owned power systems in Utah and several other Western states that has partnered with NuScale Power to study and create the nuclear technology — have until Saturday to decide whether to stay in the project or back out.  https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/10/29/seven-utah-cities-have/

October 31, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

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