Nuclear fuel canisters all stored at decommissioned San Onofre nuclear station in California
The latest milestone brings the spent fuel roads one step closer to relocation at an off-site facility. Currently, however, no such federally licensed facility exists…… https://www.power-eng.com/2020/08/10/nuclear-fuel-canister-all-stored-at-decommission-san-onofre-nuclear-station-in-california/
Army finally tearing down Fort Belvoir’s nuclear plant
Nuclear watchdog opposes any agreement that would transfer ownership of Three Mile Island Unit
Nuclear watchdog opposes any agreement that would transfer ownership of Three Mile Island Unit 2 https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/nuclear-watchdog-opposes-any-agreement-that-would-transfer-ownership-of-three-mile-island-unit-2/article_20c1bc76-d8cb-11ea-9431-97c468d34a2b.html, SEAN SAURO | Staff Writer – 10 Aug 20,
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- And signs point to a settlement between state and federal regulators, and FirstEnergy, the power company that now owns the unit that partially melted down in 1979.
At least that’s what Dauphin County-based nuclear watchdog Eric Epstein said he suspects. Epstein said he opposes any kind of agreement that would advance the plan, which he worries could threaten radioactive disaster.
“We will not agree to allow Three Mile Island to become a radioactive waste site,” Epstein said. “An island in a river is the worst place for it.”
Spokespeople speaking on the behalf of the state Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not provide details about the negotiations.
“Regarding a settlement, DEP is evaluating the motion and will reach a decision soon,” DEP spokesman Neil Shader said. “More information will be available once a decision is reached.”
FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young said much the same.
“FirstEnergy continues to work with the DEP as well as the NRC to address questions relevant to the license transfer and decommissioning plans for TMI-2,” she said. “Details of the settlement agreement are confidential.”
Last fall, Unit 2’s owners at FirstEnergy announced they planned to transfer ownership of all related licenses and assets to a subsidiary of Utah-based EnergySolutions, which would eventually dismantle the reactor.
The transfer must be approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and it’s to that commission that Epstein of the Harrisburg-based Three Mile Island Alert raised concerns, urging that the transfer not be approved before they are addressed.
Specifically, he worried about the environmental threats of leaving radioactive waste on the island, which is situated in the Susquehanna River just north of Conoy Township near the Dauphin-Lancaster counties line. That’s in addition to fears that rate-payer funded accounts will not have enough money to cover the cost of decommissioning.
Similar concerns were included in a letter sent earlier this year from DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell to federal regulators.
But now, Epstein worries that DEP officials will settle, undermining those fears, though he admits he hasn’t been a part of ongoing discussions — a point of contention.
“I don’t know how you build public confidence by excluding the public,” he said.
Regardless of what may come from negotiations, Epstein said his organization plans to continue advocating for safety “by any legal means,” appealing decisions if necessary.
Germany’s ‘very, very tough’ climate battle
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Germany’s ‘very, very tough’ climate battleEnvironment Minister Svenja Schulze aims to steer tough talks over upping the bloc’s 2030 climate goal. Politico, By KALINA OROSCHAKOFF, 08/09/2020, BERLIN — EU leaders last week agreed to increase the bloc’s 2030 climate target by the end of the year. Now it’s up to German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze to make it happen.
That’s a big change for Berlin, which has traditionally been wary of higher EU climate targets. Germany holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, which means Schulze chairs meetings of environment ministers until the end of December. She’ll have to oversee tricky negotiations on raising the bloc’s 2030 emissions reduction goal from 40 percent to as high as 55 percent — something that pits rich countries against poor and East against West. “We have to deliver an updated [EU climate commitment] in 2020. It’s only six months [but] we have to deliver,” Schulze told POLITICO from her Berlin office after hosting a first informal meeting with her peers in mid-July. “The pressure is huge … We need very, very tough negotiations. There are no summer holidays for anyone.” The issue will heat up in late September when the European Commission is due to come out with a plan for reaching the 2030 target, and map implications for the energy sector. The 2030 goal is also part of the bloc’s commitment under the Paris Agreement, and there’s pressure for countries to submit updated and ideally higher emissions reduction objectives by the end of the year. “Not to fulfill the Paris Agreement, not delivering, that’s a global signal the EU shouldn’t give … It’s not an option,” Schulze said. “The Paris Agreement is clear, we need to deliver in 2020 … that’s the challenge for the German presidency.” Busy fall……the German minister faces a massively complex political puzzle in the next months. “Yes, there are some states who worry how they’re supposed to manage it all. They have corona, are dealing with its impacts, they have to revive the economy … and have to do more about climate protection. To bring it all together isn’t easy,” Schulze said. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/09/germany-climate-change-goals-393035 |
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Inhumanity, racism, sheer immorality, in the decisions to nuclear bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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The decision 75 years ago to use atomic bombs was fuelled not by strategy but by sheer inhumanity “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” So said Curtis LeMay after America obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two atomic bombs in August 1945. LeMay was no bleeding-heart liberal. The US air force chief of staff who had directed the assault over Japan in the final days of the Second World War, he believed in the use of nuclear weapons and thought any action acceptable in the pursuit of victory. Two decades later, he would say of Vietnam that America should “bomb them back into the stone ages”. But he was also honest enough to recognise that the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not regarded as a war crime only because America had won the war. Last week marked the 75th anniversary of the world’s first nuclear attacks. And while Hiroshima has become a byword for existential horror, the moral implications of the bombings have increasingly faded into the background. Seventy-five years ago, LeMay was not alone in his verdict. “We had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages,” Fleet Admiral William Leahy, chair of the chiefs of staff under both presidents Roosevelt and Truman, wrote in his autobiography, I Was There. Dwight Eisenhower, too, had, as he observed in the memoir The White House Years, “grave misgivings” about the morality of the bombings. Almost as soon as the bombs had dropped, however, attempts began to justify the unjustifiable. On 9 August, the day of the Nagasaki bombing, the US president, Harry Truman, broadcast to the nation, claiming that “the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base… because we wished… to avoid the killing of civilians”. In fact, more than 300,000 people lived in Hiroshima, of whom up to 40% were killed, often in the most grotesque fashion. Many commentators, including Truman, have also argued that without the bombings, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of US troops would have been killed in any invasion of Japan. What the casualty figures may have been is in the realm of speculation and estimates vary widely. Most Allied military leaders did not, however, see the necessity for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Chester W Nimitz, the commander in chief of the US Pacific fleet, insisted that they were “of no material assistance in our war against Japan”. Eisenhower agreed that they were “completely unnecessary” and “no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives”. General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the southwest Pacific area, saw “no military justification for the dropping of the bomb”. The official Strategic Bombing Surveys in 1946 concluded that “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped”. There is evidence that the Americans had been preparing to use the A-bomb against the Japanese as early as 1943 and that, in the words of General Leslie R Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, the US nuclear weapon programme, “the target… was always expected to be Japan”. It’s an attitude that may have been driven by the different ways in which the Allies saw their enemy in Europe and in Asia. Germans were depicted as brutal and savage, but the bigotry was restrained to some extent by the fact that they were European and white. The Japanese, however, were particularly despised because they were non-white. As the historian John Dower observes in his pathbreaking book, War Without Mercy, the Pacific war was especially brutal because both sides saw the conflict “as a race war” that was “fuelled by racial pride, arrogance and rage”. It was common for western diplomats to refer to the Japanese as “monkeys” and “yellow dwarf slaves”. A former marine, Andrew Rooney, observed that US forces “did not consider that they were killing men. They were wiping out dirty animals.” Truman himself wrote: “When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.” “The entire population of Japan is a proper military target,” wrote Colonel Harry F Cunningham, an intelligence officer of the US Fifth Air Force. “There are no civilians in Japan.” The deliberate firebombings of Japanese cities are believed to have killed some 350,000 civilians. Against this background, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki become more explicable. The Japanese too were vicious, cruel and racist. But Japanese attitudes and atrocities are well known; those of the Allies are often forgotten, because they were the “good guys”. So much so that simply to question the morality of the bombings now can be deemed unpatriotic. When, 25 years ago, Washington’s National Air and Space Museum planned an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of Second World War, part of which put the bombings in historical context, it faced fierce criticism from politicians and veterans. It was forced to rework the exhibition and its director, Martin Harwit, had to resign. He later reflected: “Those who in any way questioned the bomb’s use were, in this emotional framework, the enemies of America.” At a time when Black Lives Matter protests have thrust the history of slavery and of empire into public debate, it is striking that there remains such historical amnesia about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We seem much less aware today of the sheer inhumanity and moral indefensibility of the bombings than even the military hawks were at the time. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, Robert McNamara, the former US defence secretary who had been LeMay’s military aide during the Second World War, reflected on the question of war crimes: “LeMay recognised that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” That’s not just a historical question. It’s as relevant today, and to today’s wars, as it is about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. History may be written by the victors, but morality should not be defined solely by them. |
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Hiroshima survivor explains why 75 years of radiation research is so important
Watch: Hiroshima survivor explains why 75 years of radiation research is so important https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/watch-hiroshima-survivor-explains-why-75-years-radiation-research-so-important By Joel GoldbergAug. 3, 2020 ,
Seventy-five years ago on 6 August, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Up to 120,000 people died in the bombing and its aftermath. Some of the survivors, known as hibakusha, would eventually enroll in the Radiation Effects Research Foundation’s Life Span Study, which continues to examine the effects of atomic radiation on the human body. The study’s findings have been the basis for radiation safety standards around the world, ranging from power plants to hospitals. Decades of archival footage and images, survivor drawings, and the testimony of research participant Kunihiko Iida convey the kind of misery that results from an atomic bombing—as well as the message of peace and humanity that can result from scientific research.
“The Good Energy Collective” – a new nuclear front group getting the nuclear lobby into USA government
US / New Policy Group Calls For Nuclear-Specific Staff In White House https://www.nucnet.org/news/new-policy-group-calls-for-nuclear-specific-staff-in-white-house-8-4-2020 By David Dalton, 6 August 2020
It said advanced nuclear energy should be integrated into climate legislation and incentives should be similar to those for renewables, including loan guarantees, production and investment tax credits, access to public land, and federal power purchase agreements.
The nuclear industry should create new business and finance models for new nuclear technologies and ensure a “robust commercialisation pathway” to bring advanced reactor designs to market.
“Nuclear energy will be needed to reach ambitious climate goals, but we must first reconstruct the technology for a new era complete with modern, socially-grounded approaches,” the Good Energy Collective said.
“Smart policies and better nuclear governance can help quickly shift the sector to a new, more sustainable pathway. Better governance will require a step-change by the administration, congress, and the nuclear industry.”
Nuclear crime seems to have actually still been worth it for South Carolina fraudsters
Executive admits fraud in fleecing ratepayers and shareholders https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/72759838/posts/2851460855 By Linda Pentz Gunter
“It looks like crime might well pay after all.”
That was the weary and only slightly tongue-in-cheek conclusion drawn by longtime anti-nuclear campaigner, Tom Clements recently, after a former South Carolina nuclear utility executive pled guilty to fraud in federal court.
Clements is the director of Savannah River Site Watch, but his activism has, for decades, extended well beyond the perimeter of that vast nuclear site.
For years, Clements and others have followed — and attempted to stand in the way of — the forced march of South Carolina ratepayers toward nuclear fiasco. When it finally unraveled in late July, there was only cautious cause for celebration.
On July 23, Stephen Byrne, the former COO of SCANA, the South Carolina utility originally in charge of the construction of two new nuclear reactors in the state, pled guilty in a massive nuclear conspiracy that defrauded ratepayers, deceived regulators and misled shareholders.
Byrne is charged with lying about progress on two Westinghouse AP 1000 reactors under construction — and since abandoned — at the V.C. Summer site, where costs ballooned to more than $9 billion.
The lies — or “intentional misrepresentations” as court documents described them — were necessary to make the case that the two new reactors would be finished on time, thereby qualifying the company for $1.4 billion in future federal tax credits.
But when Clements did the math, Byrne still came out ahead. “One of the court filings says Byrne earned $6.3 million from 2015-2017,” Clements said. “The project originally started with a filing with the SC Public Service Commission in 2008 and ended in July 2017. His plea agreement says he will pay a $1 million fine, though the judge could make it higher.”
So yes, crime still pays.
And so did South Carolina ratepayers. They were bilked of at least $2 billion until the project faltered and finally collapsed. A class action law suit and decisions by judges will see millions returned to ratepayers.
Ironically, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s lobbying group, gave Byrne the opportunity to explain exactly how ratepayers could be fleeced in advance to save money. In this 2012 NEI video, Byrne describes how Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) would allow the utility to collect funds from ratepayers in advance rather than waiting for construction completion — which has now, of course, not happened, even though customers paid for two new reactors that failed to materialize.
Byrne, who began cooperating with investigators about two years into the now three year-long investigation, could face jail time and a fine, but will likely testify against his co-conspirators to reduce his punishment.
For the time being, the judge has let him go home without even requiring he post the $25,000 bond. Sentencing could be years down the road. Clements believes Byrne “should face prison time” and that he “must fully reveal the criminal role of others in the conspiracy that has been so disastrous for ratepayers.”
Two other top SCANA executives could also be in the FBI’s crosshairs by now — former CEO Kevin Marsh and former chief financial officer Jimmy Addison.
Early warning signals of trouble to come sounded in February 2020, when Byrne and Marsh were charged with civil fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The agency said the pair “lied and deceived shareholders, regulators, and the public regarding the construction of two new nuclear units at the V.C. Summer site, which the company abandoned amid massive cost overruns in July 2017,” according to reporting in Energy and Policy.
The thoroughly duped — or possibly hopelessly biased — S.C. Public Service Commission, had earlier “allowed SCE&G to raise its electric rates nine times to finance the doomed V.C. Summer Nuclear Station project,” reported the Charlotte Observer.
But by January 2019, the PSC had changed its mind, saying that “SCE&G intentionally misled the commission about a failing nuclear reactor construction project to win electric rate hikes.”
Clements joined other protesters outside the Columbia, SC courthouse where Byrne pled guilty to his offenses. “As he scurried into the federal courthouse, Byrne refused to tell us if he would apologize for his crime against ratepayers,” Clements said.
He, along with other South Carolina activists, and with support of Friends of the Earth, had consistently opposed the state law (CWIP, described in the NEI video), that had allowed the utility to fleece ratepayers in advance of completion of the reactors. The groups had also contested approval of the two-reactor project before the SC PSC since 2008.
As Clements watched Byrne enter the courthouse, finally forced to face up to his crimes, he basked, for a brief moment, in the glow of the celebratory light at the end of the tunnel.
“I’m glad there is going to be a little bit of justice,” Clements told the Post and Courier. And in an email, he wrote: “Nukes bring fraud, graft and corruption wherever they go. The next charges here will be more serious, I think.”
The Post and Courier described the nuclear debacle as “one of the worst economic calamities in South Carolina history”.
But while there may eventually be a day of reckoning — and sentencing — until then, South Carolina ratepayers could keep right on paying.
That is because, when SCANA went bankrupt over the Summer debacle, Dominion Energy took over. Dominion, says Clements, “will file a rate-hike request next month and the cost to ratepayers for the nuclear construction debacle will go up.”
Nuclear blackmail in Illinois — Beyond Nuclear International
Ratepayers robbed of renewables as well as cash
Nuclear blackmail in Illinois https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/72759838/posts/2851460456
Exelon stranglehold on energy legislation runs long and deep
By David Kraft, 9 Aug 20
The recent Illinois lobbying corruption scandal involving Exelon Corporation, its subsidiary Commonwealth Edison and Democratic House Speaker, Michael Madigan, demonstrates the extent to which nuclear “power” is about more than electrons.
The FBI arrests of the Ohio House Speaker and five others in a $60 million bribery/corruption scheme; the $10 billion Exelon nuclear bailout in New York; the questionable circumstances surrounding Exelon’s 2016 PepCo merger; and the South Carolina $9 billion SCANA fraud case, suggest that this may be a national pandemic.
All of this was summarized nicely in a recent New York Times opinion column, “When Utility Money Talks,” (8/2/20).
However, the situation in Illinois with Exelon, and its subsidiary ComEd, has been longstanding and particularly egregious.
For decades, Exelon’s stranglehold on Illinois energy legislation, in cooperation with the currently investigated Mr. Madigan, has stuck Illinois with more reactors (14) and high-level radioactive waste (>11,000 tons) than any other state. It has also severely stifled expansion of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and hampered the Illinois energy transformation to renewables needed to deal with the worsening climate crisis.
For decades, the Illinois environmental community has seen renewables expansion thwarted because no significant renewable energy buildout could occur without concessions to either Exelon or ComEd, and without Speaker Madigan’s approval. The most recent instance was the 2016 $2.35 billion bailout of three uncompetitive Exelon reactors.
This “nuclear blackmail” politics has forced environmentalists wanting to see new legislation pass that would expand renewables, into a reluctant and grudging alliance with Exelon, but on Exelon’s terms, with capacity market “reform” rewarding both renewables and ten of the company’s operating reactors.
If passed in its presently proposed form, this new legislation would provide yet another nuclear bailout under the disguise of “market-based reform.”
To ratchet up the pressure to enact this nuclear prop-up even more, Exelon CEO Chris Crane, in Exelon’s 2Q quarterly earnings call with analysts, once again dangled the prospect of closing up to six reactors if this market-based-bailout is not granted in 2021.
Under the current ongoing FBI corruption investigation, this reluctant alliance of necessity has turned disastrous, given the political toxicity of any current association with either ComEd or Exelon.
It is just and reasonable that ComEd executives (and the so-called “bad apples” who “retired” already), should be penalized and prosecuted for their misdeeds, even if they are reportedly “cooperative.”
However, a $200 million “settlement” penalty for a $34 billion corporation, which for decades has gouged billions from Illinois ratepayers through admittedly corrupt illegal practices, is a slap on the wrist.
Further, the $200 million penalty agreement provides no restitution for the decades-long societal damage done via nuclear pay-for-play.
Illinois rate payers deserve restitution from these and any predatory, corrupt companies that would engage in such activities. This may require explicit legislation. How can one logically or ethically assert that ill-gotten gains (e.g., the 2016 $2.35 billion nuclear bailout) are still “good for the public” when bribery and corruption were used to get them?
Last Fall, a spokesperson for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker stated, “The governor’s priority is to work with principled stakeholders on clean energy legislation that is above reproach.” Gov. Pritzker – your moment of truth has arrived.
We urge the governor and the legislature to begin the restitution process by repealing the $2.3 billion 2016 nuclear bailout. Further, and as others like Crain’s Joe Cahill have suggested, Crane must step down completely from all functions at Exelon.
The legislature should also enact explicit utility ethics legislation, with transparent oversight of utility contracting and philanthropic giving activities, to insure that this kind of corrupt behavior is not repeated.
And if Crane’s threat of imminent reactor closure is true, then community just-transitions legislation to protect those negatively impacted communities should be a priority of the legislature.
As NEIS has maintained — and advocated since 2014 — it’s the reactor communities (and equally adversely affected coal mining and power plant communities) that need state support and bailouts when plants are threatened with closure, not profitable private corporations like Exelon.
Finally, we support the FBI’s continued investigation into the activities of Speaker Madigan, his associates, and other legislators if necessary, to ferret out the remaining political corruption that has abetted this corporate larceny.
This is the only way to send a significant and lasting message that nuclear pay-for-play in Illinois is over.
David Kraft is the director of Nuclear Energy Information Service
A doctor who is a hibakusha speaks out for the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Dr. Masao Tomonaga Surviving the nuclear bomb at Nagasaki 75 years ago showed me nuclear weapons shouldn’t exist https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/surviving-nuclear-bomb-nagasaki-75-years-ago-showed-me-nuclear-ncna1236148
People like me learned firsthand the results of using nuclear weapons. A full-scale nuclear war would destroy both the world and humanity as we know it. Aug. 9, 2020, By Dr. Masao Tomonaga, vice president, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
It has been 75 years since August 9, 1945, when the atomic bombing of Nagasaki opened the nuclear weapon age. I was 2 years old, and only 1 1/2 miles from ground zero of the nuclear explosion in there; I was, fortunately, unhurt by the blast itself. I was rescued by my mother from a half-destroyed wooden house just before it burned down.
I am one of a dwindling number of hibakusha — atomic bomb survivors; we are now, on average, 83 years old. Many of us still die of radiation-induced cancers and leukemia from the bombs dropped on our cities in 1945 because that exposure to radiation — when most of us were just 10 years old or younger — led to gene abnormalities in many organs that are still causing malignant diseases today.
That means, legally and morally, the human toll of the bombings is still unfolding and the total number of casualties cannot yet be calculated.
Only two atomic bombs of what we would, today, consider a rather small size were used by the United States in Japan: They were 20 kilotons (Nagasaki) and 15 kilotons (Hiroshima), whereas the common size today is a few hundred kilotons. Still, one 15- and one 20-kiloton bomb were enough to devastate two medium-sized Japanese cities and kill 200,000 or more people, either instantaneously or within five months due to acute radiation injuries and skin burns.
Almost the same numbers of hibakusha survived the immediate aftermath, only to go on living with the fear of both contracting radiation-related disorders and passing malignant genetic diseases onto their children.
We hibakusha learned firsthand the horrible human consequences of using nuclear weapons and thus have long feared that a full-scale nuclear war would destroy both the world and humanity as we know it. This made us determined to fight for nuclear abolition — for the sake of the rest of humanity.
Many hibakusha came together years ago, drawing emotional energy from one another, to begin a campaign against nuclear weapons and move humanity forward by spreading our testimonies worldwide and warning of the global danger of human extinction.
In our first success, we hibakusha witnessed the passage of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970 by the United Nations, which gave us hope for a nuclear weapon-free world.
Sadly, as we approached the 50th anniversary of the passage of the NPT, the push for nuclear disarmament had almost stopped, and it seemed like the race for nuclear weapons might begin anew. The U.S., for instance, in August 2019 abandoned the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1987), the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (signed by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010) is set to expire next year, and other countries are building new, smaller nuclear weapons.
To push back against this new nuclear arms race, we hibakusha collaborated with the non-nuclear weapon states and many nongovernmental organizations such as ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, to establish a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We finally succeeded in July 2017, and since then, the TPNW has been signed and ratified by 43 countries — close to the 50 needed for it to become official under international law.
However, we are facing a serious opposition to the TPNW by the nuclear states, all of whom refuse to sign and ratify the treaty. There is a continuing belief in the nuclear weapon states and the allied countries under their “nuclear umbrella” — including many NATO states, Japan, Australia and Canada — that nuclear weapons are still necessary to keep peace.
Here in Japan, we hibakusha shed tears when our government declared at the United Nations Assembly in 2017 that it would not sign or ratify the TPNW, despite Japan being the only nation to experience nuclear attacks and know in the greatest detail the human consequences and social destruction of the weapons. The nuclear umbrella offered under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty for the past 60 years has bound Japan tightly to U.S. political and military leaders, who oppose the treaty.
Surprisingly Rapid Increase in Scale and Intensity of Fires in Siberia
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NASA/NOAA Satellites Observe Surprisingly Rapid Increase in Scale and Intensity of Fires in Siberia, SciTech Daily By KASHA PATEL, NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY AUGUST 7, 2020 Abnormally warm temperatures have spawned an intense fire season in eastern Siberia this summer. Satellite data show that fires have been more abundant, more widespread, and produced more carbon emissions than recent seasons.The area shown in the time-lapse sequence above includes the Sakha Republic, one of the most active fire regions in Siberia this summer. The images show smoke plumes billowing from July 30 to August 6, 2020, as observed by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NASA/NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Strong winds occasionally carried the plumes as far as Alaska in late July. As of August 6, approximately 19 fires were burning in the province……
Estimates show that around half of the fires in Arctic Russia this year are burning through areas with peat soil—decomposed organic matter that is a large natural carbon source. Warm temperatures (such as the record-breaking heatwave in June) can thaw and dry frozen peatlands, making them highly flammable. Peat fires can burn longer than forest fires and release vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. …… “The destruction of peat by fire is troubling for so many reasons,” said Dorothy Peteet of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “As the fires burn off the top layers of peat, the permafrost depth may deepen, further oxidizing the underlying peat.” Peteet and colleagues recently reported that the amount of carbon stored in northern peatlands is double the previous estimates. Fires in these regions are not just releasing recent surface peat carbon, but stores that have taken 15,000 years to the accumulate, said Peteet. They also release methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. “If fire seasons continue to increase in severity, and possibly in seasonal extent, more peatlands will burn,” said Peteet. “This source of more carbon dioxide and methane to our atmosphere increases the greenhouse gas problem for us, making the planet even warmer.”…… https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-noaa-satellites-observe-surprisingly-rapid-increase-in-scale-and-intensity-of-fires-in-siberia/ |
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No. The U.S. did not need to drop a second nuclear bomb on Japan
 Did the U.S. Need to Drop a Second Atomic Bomb on Japan? NEWSWEEK, BY DAVID BRENNAN ON 8/9/20 “……… The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together killed somewhere between 129,000 and 226,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians. Then, it was argued that the bombs were the only way to defeat the forces of Imperial Japan, which were fighting tooth and nail for every inch of Japanese territory against the Allies………This has remained the dominant view through most of the post-war era, even with the shifting debate on whether the bombings constituted war crimes. …….
But not everyone agrees that the bombs were necessary. Miyako Taguchi is the daughter of two atomic bomb survivors—known as hibakusha—who lived in Nagasaki at the end of the war. Now living in New York, she told Newsweek that she grew up some 30 minutes walk from ground zero.
Even as a child she felt nervous about the incident and recalled how big a role it played in Nagasaki’s culture and story. Taguchi even remembers how the city’s hot, humid summer days would make her think of the unimaginable heat of an atomic blast and how it must have felt for those caught in it. As she got older, Taguchi said she better understood what happened to her family’s home town and the horrors that befell them—horrors that her family members were reluctant to recall. As the anniversary approaches each year, she said these feelings resurface. Taguchi told Newsweek that the bombing was “inhuman,” regardless of arguments about the lives that the attacks hypothetically saved elsewhere. When hearing people advocate for the bombs, Taguchi said she struggles to control her temper. ……. by explaining her family’s experience Taguchi said she hopes she can make some people reconsider their assumption that the attack was necessary. “It’s very difficult to change other people’s minds,” she said, especially when they know little about what really happened on that fateful day….. the Soviet Union declared war on Japan at midnight on August 8, 1945—hours before Nagasaki was destroyed. More than the atomic bombs, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan was the final nail in Tokyo’s coffin, according to Tsuyoshi Hasegawa—a Japanese-American historian who is an expert in Soviet Russian and Japanese history. Hasegawa noted that Japanese leaders were seeking Soviet mediation for talks with the U.S. during the closing stages of the war, even after the first atomic bomb killed tens of thousands of people in Hiroshima. “The Hiroshima bomb did not change Japanese policy to seek mediation,” Hasegawa told Newsweek. “So in that sense that was not the decisive factor… I would say that the Soviets entering the war was a more decisive factor.” “The Soviet Union was the last hope for the Japanese government to terminate the war,” he added. “That hope was totally dashed.” Had the Soviets not entered the war, “I think the Japanese government would have continued to seek mediation from Moscow.” Emperor Hirohito took the “sacred decision” to surrender early in the morning of August 10, military and political leaders having met throughout August 9 following the Soviet entry into the war. The emperor informed citizens of the surrender on August 15. Hasegawa said that the Nagasaki bomb did not dominate the emperor’s decision, as the full extent of the damage and casualties were not known until August 10. The Nagasaki explosion was contained in the Urakami Valley, protecting the parts of the city spread across the nearby hills including the city’s civil defence headquarters which sent out the first reports of the explosion. “The extent of the damage of Nagasaki was not properly reported to Tokyo throughout August 9,” Hasegawa said. Another theory for both atomic bombs is that while they were not necessarily needed to defeat Japan, U.S. leaders wanted to show the Soviet Union what their weapons of mass destruction could do……… Hasegawa said the accepted history of the atomic bombs in the U.S.—and much of the Western world—argues that both bombs were necessary to bring Japan to its knees. It gained popularity and acceptance, he believes, for psychological reasons. “The use of atomic bombs really, really bothered the conscience of Americans—it’s a psychological factor,” he said. “They really wanted to believe that what we did, the terrible thing that we did was necessary.” Hasegawa also said that the prevailing history of the war has been too U.S.-centric, allowing American explanations to take root with little challenge. Many American scholars treat the Soviet Union factor as a sort of “side show,” he said, and write the history of the atomic bombs with little attention given to the Japanese decision making process. https://www.newsweek.com/second-atomic-bomb-hiroshima-1523608 |
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Fukushima’s contaminated waste water – more serious than previously thought
Fukushima’s Contaminated Wastewater Could Be Too Risky to Dump in the Ocean, https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/08/fukushimas-contaminated-wastewater-could-be-too-risky-to-dump-in-the-ocean/ Dharna Noor :August 7, 2020 Almost a decade ago, the Tohoku-oki earthquake and tsunami triggered an explosion at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing the most severe nuclear accident since Chernobyl and releasing an unprecedented amount of radioactive contamination in the ocean. In the years since, there’s been a drawn out cleanup process, and water radiation levels around the plant have fallen to safe levels everywhere except for in the areas closest to the now-closed plant. But as a study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution published in Science on Thursday shows, there’s another growing hazard: contaminated wastewater.Radioactive cooling water is leaking out of the the melted-down nuclear reactors and mixing with the groundwater there. In order to prevent the groundwater from leaking into the ocean, the water is pumped into more than 1,000 tanks. Using sophisticated cleaning processes, workers have been able to remove some of this contamination and divert groundwater flows, reducing the amount of water that must be collected each day. But those tanks are filling up, and some Japanese officials have suggested that the water should dumped into the ocean to free up space.
But according to the new study, that’s not the only radioactive contaminant left in the tanks. By examining TEPCO’s own 2018 data, WHOI researcher Ken Buesseler found that other isotopes remain in the treated wastewater, including carbon-14, cobalt-60, and strontium-90. He found these particles all take much longer to decay than tritium, and that fish and marine organisms absorb them comparatively easily.
“[This] means they could be potentially hazardous to humans and the environment for much longer and in more complex ways than tritium,” the study says.
Though TEPCO’s data shows there is far less of these contaminants in the wastewater tanks than tritium, Buesseler notes that their levels vary widely from tank to tank, and that “more than 70% of the tanks would need secondary treatment to reduce concentrations below that required by law for their release.”
The study says we don’t currently have a good idea of how those more dangerous isotopes would behave in the water. We can’t assume they will behave the same way tritium does in the ocean because they have such different properties. And since there are different levels of each isotope in each different tank, each tank will need its own assessment.
“To assess the consequences of the tank releases, a full accounting after any secondary treatments of what isotopes are left in each tank is needed,” the study said.
Buesseler also calls for an analysis of what other contaminants could be in the tanks, such as plutonium. Even though it wasn’t reported in high amounts in the atmosphere in 2011, recent research shows it may have been dispersed when the explosion occurred. Buesseler fears it may also be present in the cooling waters being used at the plant. That points to the need to take a fuller account of the wastewater tanks before anything is done to dump them in the ocean.
“The first step is to clean up those additional radioactive contaminants that remain in the tanks, and then make plans based on what remains,” he said in a statement. “Any option that involves ocean releases would need independent groups keeping track of all of the potential contaminants in seawater, the seafloor, and marine life.”
Many Japanese municipalities have been pushing the government to reconsider its ocean dumping plans and opt to find a long-term storage solution instead, which makes sense, considering exposure to radioactive isotopes can cause myriad health problems to people. It could also hurt marine life, which could have a devastating impact on fishing economies and on ecosystems.
“The health of the ocean — and the livelihoods of countless people — rely on this being done right,” said Buesseler.
Las Vegas Sun presents numerous arguments against nuclear testing in Nevada
When it comes to nuclear tests in Nevada, numbers just don’t add up, https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2020/aug/09/when-it-comes-to-nuclear-tests-in-nevada-numbers-j/ Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020
On the anniversary of a meaningful day in history, we present this argument opposing the Trump administration’s idea of resuming live testing of nuclear weapons near Las Vegas.
75: Years ago, to the day, when the last atomic bomb was dropped in anger.
110,000-210,000: Estimated death toll of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, respectively.
2,000-plus: Nuclear tests that have been conducted since the end of World War II by the U.S., Russia and six other countries.
1,021: Number of detonations that occurred in 928 tests conducted in Nevada, with some tests involving more than one device.
100: Number of above-ground detonations in Nevada from 1951 to 1962.
65: In miles, the distance between Las Vegas and the Nevada Test Site (now the Nevada National Security Site).
74: Yield, in kilotons, of the largest above-ground device detonated at the Nevada Test Site, which occurred in 1957. The bomb delivered the equivalent of 74,000 tons of TNT.
35: Combined yield, in kilotons, of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
5: Number of men who were positioned below a nuclear explosion in July 1957 for a government film designed to prove to the public that above-ground testing was safe. The film was part of a larger, years-long campaign to convince Nevadans and our neighbors not to worry about the effects of testing.
11,000: Number of cancer deaths stemming from above-ground testing in Nevada, as estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a 2003 report. That number is disputed, however, with some researchers saying the death toll may have been many times that based on how far the fallout would have traveled. One study estimated the minimum number of dead at 145,000.
1.3: Yield, in megatons, of the largest detonation at the site, part of the “Boxcar” underground test of 1968. That’s the equivalent of 1.3 million tons of TNT.
20: According to one estimate, the above-ground tests in Nevada sent 20 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than was released during the Chernobyl catastrophe.
$2 billion: Amount Congress would eventually pay to Nevadans and downwinders exposed to radiation from test blasts.
1.6 trillion: Gallons of groundwater contaminated by radiation from below-ground tests, according to one estimate. That equates to 16 years worth of Nevada’s allotment of water from the Colorado River.
28: Years that have passed since the United States placed a moratorium on nuclear testing.
0: Number of detonations currently needed to ensure that stockpiled nuclear weapons are safe, secure, reliable and effective. Modern computers and physics equipment have made live testing unnecessary.
0: Number of Southern Nevada’s congressional delegates who support resumption of nuclear testing at the site. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, and Reps. Dina Titus, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford, all spoke out in opposition. In a prepared statement, Rosen said Nevadans “do not want to return to a time when the ground shook and radiation exposure was a fact of life,” and that “any actions that could place Nevadans’ health and safety at risk should be off the table.”
0: Number of tests that would be allowed at the site under legislation introduced by Titus and recently approved by the House. “I did not introduce this ban lightly, but it was necessary to prevent President Trump from recklessly threatening Nevadans’ health and potentially restarting a global arms race,” Titus said in a prepared statement.
0: The number of reasons we can find to support Trump’s plan.
Nagasaki urges world ban on nuclear weapons 75 years after US atomic bomb blast
Nagasaki urges world ban on nuclear weapons 75 years after US atomic bomb blast https://www.sbs.com.au/news/nagasaki-urges-world-ban-on-nuclear-weapons-75-years-after-us-atomic-bomb-blast 9 Aug 20, Survivors of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki have urged world leaders to do more for a nuclear weapons ban on the 75th anniversary of the US attack.
The Japanese city of Nagasaki has marked its 75th anniversary of the US atomic bombing, with the mayor and dwindling survivors urging world leaders including their own to do more for a nuclear weapons ban.
At 11.02am, the moment the B-29 bomber Bockscar dropped a 4.5-ton plutonium bomb dubbed “Fat Man”, Nagasaki survivors and other participants stood in a minute of silence to honour more than 70,000 dead.
The 9 August 1945 bombing came three days after the United States dropped its first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the world’s first ever nuclear attack that killed 140,000.
1 This Month
Tell Congress: Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe in Iran
Tell Congress: Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe in Iran
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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