Sizewell C nuclear project hit by fresh delays as investment talks drag on.
UK ministers have made contingency arrangements to fund the Sizewell C
nuclear power project in case a final agreement with potential investors is
delayed by as much as two years.
A £5.5 billion subsidy scheme envisages a
scenario where there is no agreement until mid-2026. Several industry and
Whitehall figures said no deal is expected before spring 2025.
FT 3rd Oct 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/2a5d9462-b921-4577-82c1-4eb508775624
The guns of August killed 15 million…the missiles of October could kill 8 billion.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 2 Oct 24
There’s an eerie similarity to the blundering of nations that ignited the slaughter of WWI and the blundering of nations, led by America, which could lead to nuclear war 110 years later.
Two weeks ago President Biden blinked on authorizing the UK to use US technology to fire its Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russia. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer came to the White House seeking US permission to allow its Ukraine proxies to fire those US guided Storm Shadows in a desperate, futile bid to stave off Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.
It may take time to get the full story why Biden blinked. Russia’s UN speech declaring such missile strikes risk putting the US at war with Russia set the tone. Likely, a backchannel communication between a high ranking Russian official to a US counterpart helped seal the sensible US rejection of Starmer’s crazed war provoking proposal.
President Biden has spent his entire term mishandling the issue of NATO membership for Ukraine and autonomy for Donbas Ukrainians into a horrific lost war that could still go nuclear. After provoking it, Biden led a joint US, UK effort to scuttle the Ukraine, Russia negotiated peace set to end it in the first month without Ukraine losing a square mile of territory. Thirty-one months later, Ukraine has lost 4 oblasts, about a fifth of its territory, without a prayer of regaining.
Biden’s biggest mistake was likely framing the war as a zero sum game whereby the US must achieve total victory ensuring Russia’s total defeat. That explains why Biden and his UK poodle, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, demanded Ukraine President Zelensky reject the peace agreement about to end the war early on. Biden’s Ukraine destroying agenda could not allow any settlement short of unconditional Russian defeat and humiliation. All that accomplished was over half a million Ukrainian troops dead, millions displaced or fled Ukraine, a shattered economy, and Ukraine’s collapse now inevitable
To prevent that, Ukraine’s Zelensky and current UK Prime Minister Starmer continue badgering Biden to unleash the missiles of October. Some US officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have also been lobbying Biden to ignore the reddest of Russia’s red lines
That may still happen. In response, Russia has publicly notified America and NATO that it has revised its nuclear policy to specifically allow their use when attacked by a non-nuclear country that is backed by a nuclear country. Russia will consider such attacks as putting Russia at war with the supporting nuclear power.
Let’s fervently hope President Biden continues to heed reality. By not publicly ruling out long range missile strikes, he’s likely still considering authorizing them to stave off a Ukraine defeat before the election. Losing a war, however criminal and senseless to begin with, in not good election strategy.
Biden, Blinken, Starmer, Zelensky all need to be locked into a room for a seminar on the stumbling and bumbling by revered European rulers that unleashed WWI. Then they must toss out their zero sum game against Russia and negotiate a win-win end to a war just as senseless, that could eventually be infinitely more destructive than the War To End All Wars 110 years ago.
Hurricane Helene sends a warning
https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/10/01/hurricane-helene-sends-a-warning/
A nuclear plant, fortunately closed, was inundated, but we may not get so lucky next time, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
As no one can have failed to notice, our country has been ravaged once again by violent weather extremes, most recently by Hurricane Helene, which left areas in the south submerged and destroyed, and led to a significant number of deaths.
The press has routinely been describing the extreme flooding, especially in places such as North Carolina, as “Biblical. But, as my partner and colleague at Beyond Nuclear Paul Gunter points out, it is nothing of the sort. As should be obvious by now, our ever more frequent climatic disasters are entirely human-caused.
Acts of God, whether you are a believer or not, have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Try telling that to our political leaders. No matter who wins in November, we are looking at drilling (Trump) or fracking (Harris) or possibly both. And, of course, more nuclear power!
The fact that all of these will obviously make the climate crisis far worse far faster does not pass these people by. They know it. But they push both fossil and fissile energy anyway, submitting willingly to the bidding of their corporate paymasters who would rather celebrate near-term greed and gain than leave a livable world to their children and grandchildren.
This means we are led by climate criminals who go not only unpunished, but who are routinely re-elected.
The push for license extensions for our aging reactor fleet is particularly heinous. The lapdog nuclear regulator, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has been exposed by the Government Accountability Office in a damning report as entirely uninterested in how the ravages of the climate crisis might jeopardize the safety of nuclear power plants.
“NRC doesn’t fully consider potential increases in risk from climate change,” wrote the GAO. “For example, NRC mostly uses historical data to identify and assess safety risks, rather than data from future climate projections.”
Instead, the NRC is intent on colluding with the nuclear industry to sell us nuclear power as some sort of answer to the climate crisis.
Apart from the fact that nuclear power is too expensive and too slow, as we have argued here countless times, it is actually a hazard under climate chaos conditions. And we got the perfect demonstration of this from Hurricane Helene.
First of all, because of the extreme radiological risks, some nuclear power plants in the path of the hurricane were shut down as a preemptive precaution including Hatch in Georgia. This makes them completely useless in the wake of the storm’s onslaught when people are desperate for electricity.
Then take the case of the Crystal River nuclear power plant on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Floodwaters swamped the site. Fortunately the plant has been shuttered since 2013 but all of the high-level irradiated radioactive fuel waste is still stored there.
“The whole site was flooded, including buildings, sumps, and lift stations. Industrial Wastewater Pond #5 was observed overflowing to the ground due to the surge,” read a report filed by plant owner, Duke Energy.
Given the present enthusiasm for extending the licenses of the still operating US nuclear reactor fleet — and they are talking about out to 80 or even 100 years for reactors that were never designed or intended to run that long — Crystal River might easily still have been operating.
Under today’s rush to relicense — and even reopen the country’s most dangerously degraded reactors including Palisades in Michigan — it probably would be.
Did nuclear waste escape as a result of the Crystal River nuclear site flood?
“We are still in the process of obtaining access and assessing the damage, but due to the nature of this event we anticipate difficulty with estimating the total discharge amount of wastewater, and impacts are unknown at this time,” wrote Duke in its report.
In other words, we may never know.
The implication of a nuclear plant inundated by a massive storm surge does not have to be imagined. We saw it at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, when a 50-foot tsunami swept over the inadequate sea wall and knocked out the backup onsite power after the earlier earthquake had already severed the offsite power connection.
Meanwhile, Crystal River owner Duke is the very same company that is trying to secure a license extension for its three Oconee reactors in South Carolina that sit downstream from not one but two dams!
The three reactors are sited 300 feet below the water level in Lake Jocassee behind Jocassee Dam and five feet below the water level in the immediately adjacent Lake Keowee.
What could possibly go wrong? Nothing, argues Duke, for whom the idea of a dam overtopping or breaking, sending a wall of water directly at the plant — effectively an inland tsunami — just isn’t a credible possibility.
Out of our scope, declares the NRC, which contends it cannot include an assessment of likely climate change impacts on Oconee operations within its environmental review for license renewal.
Beyond Nuclear and the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club have been fighting this through legal channels and will continue to do so.
After last week, you might expect such a blinkered view of current — never mind future — climatic conditions to change. But it won’t.
Retrofitting an old nuclear plant to adequately protect it against the impacts of a climate crisis never prepared for, costs money.
Israel’s Ideology of Genocide Must be Confronted and Stopped
Jeffrey D. Sachs • September 30, 2024, https://www.unz.com/article/israels-ideology-of-genocide-must-be-confronted-and-stopped/
Israel’s violent extremists now in control of its government believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people.
When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium at the U.N. General Assembly last week, dozens of governments walked out of the chamber. The global opprobrium of Netanyahu and his government is due to Israel’s depraved violence against its Arab neighbors. Netanyahu purveys a fundamentalist ideology that has turned Israel into the most violent nation in the world.
Israel’s fundamentalist credo holds that Palestinians have no right whatsoever to their own nation. The Israeli Knesset recently passed a declaration rejecting a Palestinian State in what the Knesset calls The Land of Israel, meaning the land west of the Jordan River.
The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region.
To call the land west of the Jordan the “heart of the Land of Israel” is breathtaking. Israel is one part of the land west of the Jordan, not the entire land. The International Court of Justice has recently ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian lands (those outside of Israel’s borders as of June 4, 1967, before the June 1967 war) is plainly illegal. The U.N. General Assembly has recently voted overwhelmingly to back the ICJ ruling and called on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories within one year.
There are many sources of this Israeli brazenness, the most important being the backing of Israel by U.S. military power.
It is worth recalling that when the British empire promised a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine in 1917, the Palestinian Arabs constituted around 90% of the population. At the time of the 1947 U.N. partition plan, the Palestinian Arab population was approximately 67% of the population, though the partition plan proposed to give the Arabs only 44% of the land. Now Israel asserts the claim to 100% of the land.
Without the U.S. military backing, Israel could not possibly rule over an Apartheid regime in which Palestinian Arabs constitute nearly one half of the population yet hold none of the political power. Future generations will look back in amazement at the success of the Israel Lobby in manipulating the U.S. military to the severe detriment of U.S. national security and global peace.
Yet in addition to the U.S. military, there is another source of Israel’s profound injustice to the Palestinian people, and that is the religious fundamentalism purveyed fanatics such as the self-proclaimed fascist Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Minister of Finance, and Minister of National Defense Itamar Ben-Gvir. These fanatics hold fast to the biblical Book of Joshua, according to which God promised the Israelites the land “from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.” (Joshua 1:4).
At the U.N. last week, Netanyahu once again staked Israel’s claim to the land on Biblical grounds: “When I spoke here last year, I said we face the same timeless choice that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago, as we were about to enter the Promised Land. Moses told us that our actions would determine whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse.”What Netanyahu did not tell his fellow leaders (most of whom had in any event vacated the hall), was that Moses laid out a genocidal path to the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 31):
[The LORD] will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, just as the LORD has spoken. “The LORD will do to them just as He did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, when He destroyed them. “The LORD will deliver them up before you, and you shall do to them according to all the commandments which I have commanded you.”
Israel’s violent extremists believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people. Their Biblical hero is Joshua, the Israelite commander who succeeded Moses, and who led the Israelites’ genocidal conquests. (Netanyahu has also referred to the Amalekites, another case of a God-ordained genocide of foes of the Israelites, in a clear “dog-whistle” to his fundamentalist followers.) Here is the Biblical account of Joshua’s conquest of Hebron (Joshua 10)
Then Joshua and all Israel with him went up from Eglon to Hebron, and they fought against it. They captured it and struck it and its king and all its cities and all the persons who were in it with the edge of the sword. He left no survivor, according to all that he had done to Eglon. And he utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it.
There is a deep irony to this genocidal account. It almost surely is not historically accurate. There is no evidence that the Jewish kingdoms arose from genocides. Most likely they arose from local Canaanite communities adopting early forms of Judaism. Jewish fundamentalists adhere to a 6th century BCE text that is most likely a mythical reconstruction of purported events several centuries earlier, and a form of political bravado that was common in ancient Near Eastern politics. The problem is 21st century Israeli politicians, illegal settlers, and other fundamentalists who propose to live by—and kill by—6th century BCE political propaganda.
Israel’s violent fundamentalists are some 2,600 years out of step with today’s acceptable forms of statecraft and international law. Israel is duty bound to the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, not to the Book of Joshua. According to the recent ICJ ruling and UN General Assembly resolution backing it up, Israel must withdraw in the coming twelve months from the occupied Palestinian lands. According to international law, Israel’s borders are those of June 4, 1967, not the Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea.
The ICJ ruling and U.N. General Assembly vote is not a ruling against the state of Israel per se. It is a ruling only against extremism, indeed against extremism and malevolence on both sides of the divide. There are two peoples, each with roughly half the overall population (and with no shortage of internal social, political, and ideological divisions within the two communities). International law calls for two states, living side by side, in peace.
The best solution, which we should strive for and hope for sooner rather than later, is that the two states, and the two peoples, get along, and actually draw strength from each other. Until then, however, the practical solution will be peacekeepers and fortified borders to protect each side from the animosity of the other, but with each having the chance to prosper. The utterly intolerable and illegal situation is the status quo, in which Israel rules brutally over the Palestinian people.
Hopefully, there will soon be a State of Palestine, sovereign and independent, whether the Knesset wants it or not. This is not Israel’s choice, but the mandate of the world community and of international law. The sooner the State of Palestine is welcomed as member state of the U.N., with the security of both Israel and Palestine backed by U.N. peacekeepers, the sooner will peace come to the region.
The Anishinaabe community fighting nuclear waste dumping, one step at a time‘
‘There’s more fresh water in this part of the country than there is in the Great Lakes, and they want to destroy that’
Ricochet, Crystal Greene, September 23 2024
Every September long weekend for the past five years, Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies have walked together along the TransCanada Highway 17 to peacefully protest the proposed dumping of nuclear waste on Treaty 3 lands in northwestern Ontario.
Among the walkers at the annual Walk Against Nuclear Waste was an Anishinaabe grandmother, who started the walk in hopes that more people will “wake up” to what’s at stake with the possibility of a deep geological repository (DGR) that would contain all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste within their watershed.
“This is my last year and I feel like I’m gonna miss it, but it was a good awareness. I’m okay with that,” Darlene Necan, told Ricochet Media as vehicles zoomed by on TransCanada Highway 17, many beeping their horns in support throughout the roadside interview.
On September 1, two groups left from Ignace and Wabigoon at the same time. Over two days the group of about 30 participants walked about 40 kilometres from each direction.
They all met up at a rest stop near Revell Lake, the site where the Nuclear Waste Management Organization has done exploration drilling for the potential $26-billion DGR, which would sit at headwaters of the Wabigoon River and Turtle River watersheds. The underground facility would be used to bury and abandon millions of bundles of spent fuel from Canadian nuclear power plants.
“We cannot foresee the future, but what if it does happen? What if there’s a leak?” Necan said. “The creator gifted us this beautiful land for all of us to live, but who are these people to come here and economically destroy it? Money is never going to last.”
Necan, 65, is also known for asserting Anishinaabe title by building a cabin on her traditional territory at Savant Lake, Ontario, without permits, after she grew tired of waiting for housing from her band, Ojibway Nation of Saugeen #258. She was charged under the Public Lands Act with construction on so-called Crown land.
It’s no surprise that she took on the responsibility to alert others about the NWMO’s plan to transport, bury and abandon the waste.
There is a strong sense of urgency as the NWMO is set to finalize its chosen waste site, narrowed down from a list of 22 locations in Canada, a process that began in 2010.
By the end of the year, NWMO will choose either the Revell Lake site, near where the walk ended, or a Bruce County site in southwestern Ontario.
Rather than having the radioactive waste shipped by truck or train for the next 50 plus years —which they foresee is an accident waiting to happen — walkers say they want to see the waste all kept where it originated from, and for Canada to stop producing nuclear energy altogether.
The NWMO is an industry-funded organization made up of representatives from Canada’s nuclear power industry who’ve been looking for a way to deal with the approximately 100,000 tonnes of waste they’ve produced that will be radioactive for tens of thousands of years.
In a report to the Standing Committee on Environmental and Sustainable Development, a northwestern Ontario coalition “We the Nuclear Free North” describes the flaws and weaknesses of the DGR project along with the serious risks expressed by experts.
“Numerous experts in the fields of geology, chemistry and physics warn of the insufficiency of current scientific knowledge to guide a project of the nature and magnitude of the NWMO’s proposed plan,” the coalition wrote .
Their report broke down NWMO’s “conceptual” plan.
The waste would be transported by truck and received at a fuel packaging plant where it would be placed into containers.
The water used during the process to decontaminate the devices used for the waste in-transit would become contaminated with radionuclides and moved into a tailings pond, and be contained as a low-to-medium level radioactive liquid waste.
The waste in containers would be lowered to the DGR underground storage facility, made up of rooms blasted out of precambrian rock, 500 to 1000 metres below the Earth’s surface.
Since there is no way for the high-level radioactive nuclear fuel to deactivate, except for time, it would continue to generate heat, years after being stored. It could lead to pressure build-up, causing fractures in the DGR walls, where the groundwater would seep in and mix with water-soluble radionuclides.
Eventually, the free-moving contaminated water would reach the two watersheds, through cracks in the DGR, and a sump pump would need to be used to bring liquid to a surface tailings pond.
Another risk to hosting a DGR in the Revell Lake area are low magnitude earthquakes that have been documented by Environment Canada. A quake could fracture the DGR and increase flow of water into the facility and send contaminated water into the watersheds…………………………………………………………. more https://ricochet.media/indigenous/the-anishinaabe-community-fighting-nuclear-waste-dumping-one-step-at-a-time/
UK Government seeks software to track radioactive waste as nuclear site decommissioned
1 oct 24, Power Technology,
Ten months after the Joint European Torus ceased operating, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is embarking on a long-term decommissioning project and needs new software to support its work
A government body is seeking to make a six-figure investment in software to help log and track radioactive waste created over the coming years as a long-standing nuclear fusion research site is decommissioned.
Based in Oxfordshire, the Joint European Torus (JET) facility began operating in 1983 and conducted its final test late last year. A decommissioning process – which will last until 2040 – has now begun. Work will be led by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, an arm’s-length body of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.,………………………………………
First civil nuclear site decommissioned in the UK
It took 10 years for Veolia and Imperial College London to complete the
decommissioning of the first civil nuclear site in the UK. The Reactor
Centre at Imperial’s Silwood Park eco-campus in Ascot housed the UK’s
last civilian nuclear reactor for almost 50 years until it closed in 2012.
The long and complex project required demolition of the reactor, safely
managing hazardous materials, and restoring the site to its original state
to make it safe for public use. Veolia’s specialist decommissioning team,
KDC, supported Imperial in planning the complex project, which included the
cutting operations to reduce the reactor concrete shielding, removal and
demolition of the facility. The operation required the design and use of
new equipment to safely deconstruct the facility.
Construction Management 1st Oct 2024,
https://constructionmanagement.co.uk/first-civil-nuclear-site-decommissioned-in-the-uk/
‘Western Press Obscured the Sheer Terror of What Israel Had Carried Out’: CounterSpin interview with Mohamad Bazzi on Lebanon pager attacks
So this was an entirely indiscriminate attack, and it puts the Western media fascination with Israel’s technological prowess into even sharper focus. We had the Western press marveling at—I’ll just quote a few of the terms—“Israel’s prowess,” “precision,” “James Bond“–type operation. And quite a few other terms that obscured the sheer terror of what Israel had carried out over those two days in Lebanon.
Janine Jackson interviewed NYU’s Mohamad Bazzi about Israel’s terror attacks in Lebanon for the September 27, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Speaking of Israel’s remote detonation of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies of suspected Hezbollah members in Lebanon, former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta told CBS, ”I don’t think there is any question that it’s a form of terrorism.”
Panetta’s remarks were widely reported, mostly straight, but for Fox, where Sean Hannity said Panetta “had the gall to say Israel is engaging in terrorism against the terror group Hezbollah.”
It seems worth noting: Just before Panetta, CBS viewers heard from a former FBI analyst who said of the explosions in stores, cars and homes that killed some 39 people and injured more than 3,000, including children:
Tactically, what Israel has done has been brilliant. They have severely degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities. They’ve severely degraded Hezbollah’s ability to respond to Israeli things. They’re really hoping that, strategically, Hezbollah gets the message: Stop firing rockets into our country.
That “tactic” has led to more death, more destruction and, some say, more chance of a still wider, more devastating war.
Joining us now to talk about unfolding events and US media’s depictions is Mohamad Bazzi. He’s director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and journalism professor at New York University, as well as former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday. He joins us now by phone from here in town. Welcome to CounterSpin, Mohamad Bazzi.
Mohamad Bazzi: Thank you for having me.
JJ: CBS segued from the “brilliant tactic” guy to Leon Panetta by saying that some saw Israel’s action as a “deception one step too far. The United Nations labeled the operation a violation of international law, and it’s raised some eyebrows here at home too.” It’s equally hard to imagine that this wasn’t a violation as that it wouldn’t immediately be condemned as such, had anyone else carried it out, would you say?
MB: That’s an excellent point. It would certainly have been condemned, let’s say, if Russia had carried out a similar operation, or even something a fraction of this kind of attack, in Ukraine.
I think one of the things that struck me, and I suspect it struck you and others who watch the Western media, is the sense of marvel over the ingenuity of Israel’s technological prowess. So what we had is a lot of the coverage framed as, “Oh, this is taking a page out of a spy thriller, or a dystopian movie.”
And in some ways, what unfolded in Lebanon last week was something dystopian, but it wasn’t a movie. It affected real people’s lives. And so many in the Western media were fixating on the novelty of Israel’s attack, and sometimes celebrating it, but they neglected to acknowledge or even consider the sheer terror experienced by tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians. And this is a society that suffered through years and years of trauma, and this was the latest attack that unfolded in this incredibly pernicious way.
A lot of the coverage also didn’t get into the question of whether this constituted a war crime. And, on the face of it, it seems to meet the definition of a war crime: Human Rights Watch, a few other rights organizations, issued statements noting that international humanitarian law forbids the use of booby traps, especially with objects that have such important use for civilians. I think it would fit the definition of a war crime, beyond just being an act of terrorism that’s meant to instill terror in a civilian population.
JJ: Hezbollah, like Hamas, is for many US media consumers almost like a sports team, or like a kaiju, a monster like Godzilla. And I think it might sound strange to some to think that they aren’t solely a military force in Lebanon, but in fact have a much broader role.
MB: Yeah, a lot of media consumers and listeners in the US don’t get the context. They don’t get the background that Hezbollah is not only a militia, it is not only the militia that’s labeled a terrorist group by the US and by many countries in the EU, but it’s also the most dominant military force in Lebanon, and it’s also the most powerful political party and political movement in the country.
So Hezbollah runs an extensive social service network. It operates schools and hospitals and supermarkets and credit unions.
…………………………..It’s the act of terror. It’s the imprecise nature, this deliberate setting off of detonations of thousands of small bombs that went off at the same time on a Tuesday afternoon, as people were going about their daily lives. And so the bombs went off in grocery stores and hospitals and sidewalk cafes and barbershops. The next day, on Wednesday, some of the walkie-talkie explosions went off during the funerals of people who had been killed the day before during the pager explosions.
So this was an entirely indiscriminate attack, and it puts the Western media fascination with Israel’s technological prowess into even sharper focus. We had the Western press marveling at—I’ll just quote a few of the terms—“Israel’s prowess,” “precision,” “James Bond“–type operation. And quite a few other terms that obscured the sheer terror of what Israel had carried out over those two days in Lebanon……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
JJ: There are calls now for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, to resign after it’s been reported, I believe by ProPublica, that he was in receipt of assessments, from both USAID and the State Department’s Refugees Bureau, that Israel had blocked deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza. He had that information, Blinken did, when he went before Congress, and said there was no evidence of that.
Short even of his resignation, though, how many times do US officials need to lie or hide or dissimulate before journalists stop quoting them credulously? Isn’t it just insulting to readers and to the public at some point?
MB: We certainly have many decades of this, going back to Vietnam, of course, US officials lying about war and lying about US support for allies who commit atrocities.
The report from ProPublica has been an exception. It’s an excellent report. It just came out in the last couple of days, based on internal leaks, because there are officials in the State Department, and elsewhere in the Biden administration, that find all of this unconscionable, and don’t want to see this continued support.
And it’s a very important leak, not just because of what it tells us about Blinken and others in the administration, and their ability and willingness to lie to the US public and to lie to the US media, but it also shows us that there’s actually a fairly straightforward path for the Biden administration to stop its weapons transfers to Israel, because those weapons transfers violate US laws. And if they were honest, and they had admitted it, they would’ve had to stop sending weapons, because that’s what US law requires. It’s what the Biden administration’s own guidelines require.
So that was a tremendously important leak by ProPublica. And, unfortunately, I’ve seen some references to it in the past few days, but it’s not getting the widespread attention in the corporate media and in the legacy media that it should be getting.
It’s certainly getting a lot of attention on social media. People are sharing it, and sharing the documents, and it’s creating these calls for Blinken to resign, or for Biden to do something. But it’s certainly troubling to see the legacy media ignore this as well.
And it all raises the question, what more do you want? What more can be presented to the media for it to change its approach to covering this war?
…………………MB: I would certainly like to see more humane coverage. It’s a basic ask, and it’s unfortunate that we have to make this ask, but I would like to see more humane coverage of Palestinians, of Lebanese, of other Arabs and Muslims.
I think one of the things we’ve seen, just in this past week, in the way that the pager explosions and the walkie-talkie explosions were covered—this marveling over Israel’s ingenuity, it ignores the reality on the ground, but it also contributes to the dehumanization of Palestinians and Lebanese and Arabs, this widespread dehumanization that we’ve seen, certainly for decades, but we’ve seen it ramp up to an extreme since Israel launched its war on Gaza. …..more https://fair.org/home/western-press-obscured-the-sheer-terror-of-what-israel-had-carried-out/
The Israeli Government Must Be Stopped
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, October 1, 2024, https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-israeli-government-must-be-stopped/
David Swanson is Executive Director of World BEYOND War.
The Israeli government has been dragging Western weapons and militaries into wars for far too long, putting all of the world — and its global institutions — at risk. The move into Lebanon, creating more dead, injured, traumatized, and homeless already in huge numbers ought to snap some war supporters out of their trance.
The danger of a catastrophic war on Iran that is joined by the United States and NATO on one side, and additional nations on the other, looms horrifically on the horizon.
It is high time for the world’s governments, including that of Israel’s top supplier, the United States, to begin complying with the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly, and each of the treaties and domestic laws violated by each arms shipment.
While the UK and Canada have stopped some weapons, that is far from sufficient. While a handful of U.S. Senators anti-democratically plan a vote weeks from now after a U.S. election, on halting illegal arms shipments to Israel, that is far from sufficient, and yet more than we see in the U.S. House of so-called representatives.
Western governments have emboldened the Israeli government with weapons supplies for so long that Israel understands there are no limits. There is nothing it can do that anyone could reasonably expect the U.S. and allied governments not to support, not to protect with propaganda assistance, Security Council vetoes, and yet more instruments of mass killing. That has to change.
Public pressure in the West has prevented western governments from going to war with Iran for decades. But Israel is now expanding an existing war in an effort to create a wider war without any debate or decision. Western media is already using the passive language of “being dragged into” a war — as if no decision need be made at all. This could not be more dangerous, more dishonest, more opposed to the supposed ideal of democracy.
The good people who have raised their voices and taken nonviolent action against the genocide in Gaza for a year and more, and those who have been silent, must all rise up together now and declare that nothing permits wider war, nothing justifies these outrages, no election season puts a pause on our moral duty to protect all life.
Ukrainian energy minister censured over response to power grid attacks
Ahead of Ukraine’s third and most testing winter of the war, criticism
is mounting over the government’s slow response to Russia’s attacks on
the energy grid and its priorities when rebuilding.
Energy minister German
Galushchenko has come under fire for delaying by two years efforts to
decentralise power generation so it is less vulnerable to Russian attacks.
The energy ministry started taking steps towards building smaller power
stations only this summer, with the government announcing cheap loans to
attract investors in these projects. But critics say those efforts should
have started in 2022 soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion when Moscow
homed in on Ukraine’s energy grid and that hundreds of smaller
gas-powered stations or renewable energy projects could have been built in
this period.
“The energy ministry is not interested in decentralisation.
Rather, they are interested in centralisation, they want as much of energy
sector, particularly generation, under their state companies,” said an
energy official.
Galushchenko, say experts and officials, has instead
lobbied for the construction of large and costly nuclear reactors, which
take between seven to 10 years to build. Before becoming minister in 2021,
Galushchenko was vice-president of the state nuclear company, Energoatom.
FT 30th Sept 2024. https://www.ft.com/content/69b56215-c373-45a6-b52e-c1ab403565d5
“Drop Out of Nuclear Dump Plan” Message to Nuclear Waste Services “Drop In”
By mariannewildart, https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2024/09/30/drop-out-of-nuclear-dump-plan-message-to-nuclear-waste-services-drop-in/—
“Drop Out of Nuclear Dump Plan” was the message from campaigners at the Nuclear Waste Services “Drop In” at the Beacon Portal, Whitehaven on Saturday 28th September.
The Plan
Should Nuclear Waste Services plan in Cumbria be taken to conclusion a giant mine as deep as Scafell is high at 1000m and larger than the City of Westminster at 25km square would be excavated under the Irish Sea in order to bury the UK’s high level nuclear wastes in the hope that it would stay buried. The above ground area of a Geological Disposal Faciity (GDF) at 1km square, would be nearly as big as Hyde Park in London and would sit alongside the National Park boundary on the Lake DIstrict coast. Lakes Against Nuclear Dump (LAND) a Radiation Free Lakeland campaign chatted with members of the public on Saturday outside Nuclear Waste Services event. LAND were thanked by members of the public for showing resistance to the plan for a deep nuclear dump or Geologicial Disposal Facility under the Lake District’s coast.
Irish Sea Geology a Giant Heat Sink?
Lakes Against Nuclear Dump LAND campaigner Marianne Birkby said “no other industry would have the sheer brass neck to plan to use the geology of the supposedly protected Irish Sea as a gigantic heat sink for their ever increasing wastes. No other industry produces heat generating nuclear wastes . The reason the infamous leaks at the once state of the art Magnox silos at Sellafield are impossible to find and stop is precisely because the silos are buried 6 metres underground.” Campaigners asked how long it would take the heat from buried high level nuclear wastes to reach the Irish Sea bed. Nuclear Waste Services staff replied that they would “find out” It is clear that alongside the radiological impacts the industry cannot point to any research on the short or long term impacts of thermal heating of the deep geology and ocean specifically of the Irish Sea from a Geological Disposal Facility.
Earthquakes and Plutonium
Campaigners asked about the earthquake risks of deep mining so close to the plutonium stockpiles at Sellafield and were told that “the government is working on a plan for the plutonium so it won’t be a problem at the time mining begins”. LAND Campaigners say that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s “preferred” option is to use plutonium as MOX fuel . MOX (mixed oxide) fuel contains a tiny amount of plutonium blended with uranium.
The net result is the production of ever more plutonium for “reuse as fuel in reactors followed by disposal (of unusable plutonium) in a GDF.” Much more land would be required for MOX fabrication facilities. The NDA say “The policy position recognises that not all the inventory could be reused; therefore, any strategy will also require the development of approaches to immobilise plutonium for storage pending disposal.” Nuclear Waste Services assurance to the public at the “drop in” that the plutonium problem “will not exist when mining begins” is clearly at odds with reality. LAND say “burning MOX fuel would increase the nuclear sprawl at Sellafield and would increase, not decrease the plutonium stockpiles. Instead of reducing the “exceptional circumstances” of a severe accident at Sellafield the nuclear industry and government seem hell bent on increasing the likelihood of severe accident with proposing earthquake inducing mining to bury high level nuclear wastes while at the same time proposing increasing the plutonium mess at Sellafield.”
Orange Harbour a Visual Reminder of Fragile Area
The continuing acid mine pollution pouring into Whitehaven Harbour for two years with no end in sight is a terrible visual reminder that deep mining in this fragile area of West Cumbria should be banned and that is say campaigners without the area containing the world’s largest stockpiles of plutonium.
Most Dangerous Experiment Since Splitting the Atom
Lakes Against Nuclear Dump say The potential disastrous impacts of the plan could be on planetary scale but a future “test of public support” is limited to those who are now benefitting from £millions for every year the manufactured “Community Partnership” with Nuclear Waste Services continues along the “Journey to GDF” aka Nuclear Dump Under the Lake District Coast
References:…………………………………………….
Sullivan: US Will Ensure Iran Faces ‘Severe Consequences’ for Attacking Israel
October 2, 2024 , By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday that the US would work with Israel to ensure Iran faces “severe consequences” for launching a missile attack on Israel, which came in response to recent Israeli escalations.
“There will be severe consequences for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House.
President Biden said the US was in “active discussions” with Israel on what the response would be. “The United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” he said.
Media reports say Iran fired at least 180 missiles at Israel. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the attack was launched in retaliation for the Israeli assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the killing of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and Abbas Nilforoushan, an IRGC commander who was killed alongside Nasrallah.
The IRCG has claimed that 90% of the missiles hit their targets, while Israel claimed most were intercepted. Videos have surfaced that show Iranian missiles making an impact on Israeli military sites. So far, there’s been no word on Israeli deaths, but a Palestinian in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was killed when shrapnel from an intercepted missile fell on Jericho.
The US said that it helped Israel intercept some of the Iranian missiles and portrayed the defense as a success. Sullivan said the Iranian attack “appears to have been defeated and ineffective.”
…………………………………………Iran has signaled that it’s done attacking Israel but warned there would be a “crushing response” if Israel hits back. Israeli officials have made clear that they plan to respond.
“There will be consequences,” said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari. “Our defensive and offensive capabilities are at the highest levels of readiness. Our operational plans are ready. We will respond wherever, whenever, and however we choose, in accordance with the directive of the government of Israel.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran will “pay” for the attack. “This evening, Iran made a big mistake — and it will pay for it,” he said at a security cabinet meeting. “The regime in Tehran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and to exact a price from our enemies.” https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/02/sullivan-us-will-ensure-iran-faces-severe-consequences-for-attacking-israel/
Russia revisits nuclear doctrine to allow attacks on non-nuclear states in response to Western weapons in Ukraine.
By Heloise Vyas, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-26/russia-revises-nuclear-weapons-laws-warning-united-states/104398414
In short:
Vladimir Putin has unveiled changes to conditions surrounding Russia’s use of nuclear weapons which he says will be put into effect if there was “reliable information” about a large-scale enemy attack.
The updated doctrine includes a widening of the threats under which Russia would consider a nuclear strike, including retaliating against conventional weapons.
What’s next?
Russia’s warning to the West comes amid deliberations on Ukraine’s use of Western long-range missiles. The US has not directly responded to the threat.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has broadened the remit of his nuclear doctrine to fend off Western-supported attacks in the Ukraine war, threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-armed nations even if not attacked by them.
During a meeting with Russia’s Security Council on Wednesday, local time, he outlined three key changes to the Kremlin’s official nuclear doctrine — signed in 2020 — as a response to ongoing deliberations in the United States and Britain about permitting Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into Russian territory.
Mr Putin said under the lowered threshold, Russia could deploy nuclear bombs even if it was struck with conventional weapons, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a “joint attack”.
Russia reserved the right to also use nuclear weapons if it or ally Belarus were the subject of aggression, including by conventional weapons, he added.
The 71-year-old, who is the primary decision-maker on Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, said he wanted to underscore one key change in particular.
“It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation,” Mr Putin said in his opening remarks to the council.
He said the new rules would be effectuated if Russia detected a large-scale launch of enemy missiles, aircraft or drones was coming its way: “The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed.”
Mr Putin said the clarifications were carefully calibrated and commensurate with the modern military threats facing Russia — confirmation that the nuclear doctrine was changing.
The implications
Russia’s warning to the West comes amid Ukrainian pleas to fire long-range weapons (many already in its possession) into Russia, including British Storm Shadows and American ATACMS ballistic missiles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy argues these will help hit vital military depots with precision, but the US has trodden carefully, fearing such a move would escalate the war and pit NATO in direct conflict with Russia.
Russia has previously provoked war with NATO, accusing the US and European nations of de facto participation in the conflict, but has not come as far as spelling out changes to the use of its nuclear arsenal. Earlier this month it said it was considering updating the doctrine.
With Ukraine losing key towns to gradually advancing Russian forces in the country’s east, the war is entering what Russian officials say is the most dangerous phase to date.
Western aid for Kyiv has remained steady, with the US pledging a further $375 million in aid on Thursday, although it is unclear what bearing Mr Putin’s nuclear threat will have on considerations of long-range weapon restrictions.
Many view Russia brandishing its nuclear sabre as little more than a bluff, but some analysts say it is “because of and not in spite of” the fact that Moscow has repeatedly held its nuclear arsenals over Western heads that leaders should take these threats seriously.
Russia’s current published nuclear doctrine, set out in a 2020 decree by Mr Putin, says it may use nuclear weapons in case of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.
The innovations outlined include a widening of the threats under which Russia would consider a nuclear strike, the inclusion of ally Belarus under the nuclear umbrella, and the idea that a rival nuclear power supporting a conventional strike on Russia would also be considered to be attacking it.
Nuclear-armed states that could be drawn into this include France, the United Kingdom, Israel and most crucially the US, which along with Russia controls 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads.
China, Pakistan, India, and North Korea possess the remainder, but neither has actively been involved in the Ukraine war. A further 32 states also either host nuclear weapons or endorse their use.
Ukraine is neither a nuclear state, nor a part of NATO, but is backed by the alliance.
How has Russia’s threat been received?
Mr Zelenskyy has urged the West to disregard Russia’s so-called “red lines”, and some Western allies have also urged the US to do just that.
“Russia no longer has any instruments to intimidate the world apart from nuclear blackmail,” Andrey Yermak, Mr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said in response to the Russian president’s Wednesday remarks.
“These instruments will not work.”
Mr Putin, who casts the West as a decadent aggressor, and US President Joe Biden, who casts Russia as a corrupt autocracy and Mr Putin as a killer, have both warned that a direct Russia-NATO confrontation could escalate into World War III. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has also warned of the risk of nuclear war.
In his comments to Russia’s Security Council, a type of modern-day politburo of Mr Putin’s most powerful officials including influential hawks, he said work on amendments to changing the doctrine had been going on for the past year.
“The nuclear triad remains the most important guarantee of ensuring the security of our state and citizens, an instrument for maintaining strategic parity and balance of power in the world,” he said.
Russia, he said, would consider using nuclear weapons “upon receiving reliable information about the massive launch of aerospace attack vehicles and their crossing of our state border, meaning strategic or tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft”.
No explicit laws restraining nuclear weapons use
Casualties from a nuclear war between Russia and the US could reach tens of millions, with even a single bomb having the capacity to wipe out about 580,000 people, according to estimates from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
US-Russian arms control agreements also classify “tactical” nuclear weapons, which are presented as having smaller yield, and are intended for battlefield use as opposed to strategic weapons fired across vast distances.
But even these smaller warheads are hugely destructive and comparable in strength with the two atomic bombs dropped by the US in Japan during World War Two which killed about 210,000 people.
In 2022, Washington was so concerned about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia that it warned Mr Putin about the consequences of using them, according to Central Intelligence Agency director Bill Burns.
The two-and-a-half-year Ukraine war has triggered the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — considered to be the closest the two Cold War superpowers came to intentional nuclear war.
Internationally, little power exists to prevent nuclear powers invoking the use of their arsenals.
The UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons does formally push for nuclear disarmament and outlaws the development, testing, production, acquisition, possession and stockpiling of nuclear weapons but neither Russia nor the US is a part of it.
The Netherlands is also the only NATO member participating in the treaty.
DOE Plutonium Pit Plan Found To Violate Environmental Law
By Daniel Wilson (September 30, 2024,) — A South Carolina federal judge on Monday backed antinuclear groups’ challenge to a U. S. Department of Energy plan to boost production of plutonium cores used in nuclear weapons, saying the DOE hadn’t properly considered the potential environmental impact of the plan. . . …….. (Subscribers only) more https://www.law360.com/articles/1884130/doe-plutonium-pit-plan-found-to-violate-environmental-law
US government provides $1.52 billion loan to resurrect Michigan nuclear plant
US closes $1.52 billion loan to resurrect Michigan nuclear plant, By Timothy Gardner October 1, 2024
WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. on Monday said it closed a $1.52 billion loan to resurrect Holtec’s Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, and a senior Biden administration official said it could take two years to reopen the plant, which is longer than the company predicted.
President Joe Biden’s administration has called for a tripling of U.S. nuclear power capacity as U.S. power demand surges and worries about climate change mount.
The push could include the potential reopening of some commercial reactors that have been shut for decommissioning, including one at Three Mile Island, site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. Restarting shut nuclear plants is a complicated and expensive process never before accomplished in the country.
“Palisades is a climate comeback story,” Ali Zaidi, the White House climate adviser, told reporters in a call, adding that nuclear power supports high-paying union jobs
The $1.52 billion in financing from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, was accompanied by funding for nonprofit electric cooperatives to purchase power from Palisades. Deputy U.S. Energy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small announced more than $1.3 billion in public funding to power cooperatives Wolverine and Hoosier Energy.
Nuclear reactors generate virtually emissions-free power, which is valued as electricity demand soars for the first time in decades on growth in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and cryptocurrencies. Nuclear critics, however, point out that the U.S. has not agreed on a permanent place to bury radioactive nuclear waste.
Palisades still needs licensing from regulators and the senior U.S. official said that means it could take “a couple of years to turn back on”. Holtec has estimated a comeback in the fourth quarter next year…………….
O’Brien has said Holtec does not expect delays or additional costs. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-closes-152-billion-loan-resurrect-michigan-nuclear-plant-2024-09-30/
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