nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

US warns it will ‘run out’ of Ukraine aid funds by end of year

Financial Times, Mon, 04 Dec 2023

The White House has issued a blunt warning that the US is set to run out of funds to aid Ukraine by the end of the year, saying that a failure by Congress to approve new support would “kneecap” Kyiv.

The alert from Shalanda Young, the White House budget director, in a letter to congressional leaders on Monday, represented the most specific assessment yet of Washington’s waning financial and military support for Ukraine.

“Without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from US military stocks,” Young wrote to political leaders of both parties.

“There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money — and nearly out of time,” she said.

President Joe Biden’s request for $106bn in emergency funding for his biggest foreign policy priorities, including Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific, remains mired in stalemate on Capitol Hill, driven by mounting Republican opposition to helping Kyiv.

Some lawmakers — especially in the Senate, where backing for Ukraine runs deeper — are trying to negotiate a bipartisan deal that would contain aid for Kyiv alongside new immigration and asylum procedures to reduce the number of undocumented people arriving in the US through its southern border.

Even if an agreement is reached in the Senate, however, it is unclear if it can pass the Republican-led House, whose new speaker Mike Johnson has been sceptical of funding for Ukraine.

“Cutting off the flow of US weapons and equipment will kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield, not only putting at risk the gains Ukraine has made, but increasing the likelihood of Russian military victories,” Young wrote to Congress.

“Already, our packages of security assistance have become smaller and the deliveries of aid have become more limited . . . while our allies around the world have stepped up to do more, US support is critical and cannot be replicated by others,” she added.

The White House warning comes as EU member states are struggling to reach a budget deal in Brussels that would send €50bn to Ukraine, people close to the discussions told the Financial Times.

Young said Ukraine also needed economic support, which is in danger of stalling.

“If Ukraine’s economy collapses, they will not be able to keep fighting, full stop,” she wrote. “Putin understands this well, which is why Russia has made destroying Ukraine’s economy central to its strategy — which you can see in its attacks against Ukraine’s grain exports and energy infrastructure,” she added.

Young also said money for Ukraine would bring benefits to the US economy. Sincethe start of Russia’s full invasion in February 2022, Washington has approved $111bn in aid to Kyiv.

“While we cannot predict exactly which US companies will be awarded new contracts, we do know the funding will be used to acquire advanced capabilities to defend against attacks on civilians in Israel and Ukraine — for example, air defense systems built in Alabama, Texas, and Georgia and vital subcomponents sourced from nearly all 50 states,” she said………  https://www.ft.com/content/ca16e42d-fda9-4c1d-b2c9-410d764745b7

December 6, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

DOUBLING DOWN ON NUCLEAR POWER IS NO SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CRISIS

 https://greens.scot/news/doubling-down-on-nuclear-power-is-no-solution-to-climate-crisis 3 Dec 23

Nuclear power is costly, inefficient and leaves a long and toxic legacy.

Doubling down on nuclear power will not solve the climate crisis, says the Scottish Greens climate spokesperson Mark Ruskell.

Mr Ruskell was responding to the announcement from the COP climate summit that 22 countries, including the US, France and the UK, have signed a declaration to triple nuclear capacity by 2050.

Mr Ruskell said: “Nuclear energy is costly, dangerous and out of date. It’s no kind of solution, and will leave a long and toxic legacy for generations to come. The UK experience of Hinkley Point underlines all of these problems, with delay after delay and ever-ballooning costs.  

“The climate emergency is happening all around us. We simply don’t have time to waste on overpriced and dirty solutions like nuclear energy.”

Mr Ruskell welcomed the announcement that 118 countries have pledged to triple renewable energy, saying: “This is a significant step in the right direction and could be key to our shift away from climate-wrecking fossil fuels. 

“Locally sourced renewable energy is the cheapest and greenest energy available. We have more and better technology available to us than ever before, all that is missing is the political will. 

“I hope that this summit can be when leaders finally turn a corner and start to give renewables the investment and support that they deserve.”

December 5, 2023 Posted by | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: Israel Reopens the Gaza Slaughterhouse

Nothing is off limits. Hospitals. Mosques. Churches. Homes. Apartment blocks. Refugee camps. Schools. Universities. Media offices. Banks. Sewer systems. Telecommunications infrastructure. Water treatment plants. Libraries. Wheat mills. Bakeries. Markets. Entire neighborhoods. Israel’s intent is to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and daily kill or wound hundreds of Palestinians. Gaza is to become a wasteland, a dead zone that will be incapable of sustaining life. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel this week, and while calling for Israel to protect civilians, refused to set conditions that would disrupt the $3.8 billion Israel receives in annual military assistance or the $14.3 billion supplemental aid package.

https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/01/chris-hedges-israel-reopens-the-gaza-slaughterhouse/

Phase One of Israel’s genocidal campaign on Gaza has ended. Phase Two has begun. It will result in even higher levels of death and destruction.

By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost

The skies over Gaza are filled — after a seven-day truce — with projectiles of death. Warplanes. Attack helicopters. Drones. Artillery shells. Tank shells. Mortars. Bombs. Missiles. Gaza is a cacophony of explosions and forlorn screams and cries for help beneath collapsed buildings. Fear, once again, is coiling itself around every heart in the Gazan concentration camp. 

By Friday evening, 184 Palestinians — including three journalists and two doctors — had been killed by Israeli air strikes in the north, south and central Gaza, and at least 589 injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Most of them are women and children. Israel will not be deterred. It plans to finish the job, to obliterate what is left in the north of Gaza and decimate what remains in the south, to render Gaza uninhabitable, to see its 2.3 million people driven out in a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing via starvation, terror, slaughter and infectious diseases. 

The aid convoys, which brought in token amounts of food and medicine — the first batch was shrouds and coronavirus tests according to the director of al-Najjar hospital — have been halted. No one, least of all President Joe Biden, plans to intervene to stop the genocide. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel this week, and while calling for Israel to protect civilians, refused to set conditions that would disrupt the $3.8 billion Israel receives in annual military assistance or the $14.3 billion supplemental aid package. The world will watch passively, muttering useless bromides about more surgical strikes, while Israel spins its roulette wheel of death. By the time Israel is done, the 1948 Nakba, where Palestinians were massacred in dozens of villages and 750,000 were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias, will look like a quaint relic of a more civilized era. 

Nothing is off limits. Hospitals. Mosques. Churches. Homes. Apartment blocks. Refugee camps. Schools. Universities. Media offices. Banks. Sewer systems. Telecommunications infrastructure. Water treatment plants. Libraries. Wheat mills. Bakeries. Markets. Entire neighborhoods. Israel’s intent is to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and daily kill or wound hundreds of Palestinians. Gaza is to become a wasteland, a dead zone that will be incapable of sustaining life. 

Israel began to bomb Khan Younis on Friday after dropping leaflets warning civilians to evacuate further south to Rafah, located on the border crossing with Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians had sought refuge in Khan Younis. Once Palestinians are pushed to Rafah, there is only one place left to flee — Egypt. The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, in a leaked report, calls for the forcible transfer of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A detailed plan to intentionally displace the Palestinians in Gaza and push them into Egypt has been embedded in Israeli doctrine for five decades. Already, 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza have been driven from their homes. Once Palestinians cross the border into Egypt — which the Egyptian government and Arab leaders are seeking to prevent despite pressure from the U.S. — Palestinians will never return. 

Israeli strikes are generated at a dizzying rate, many of them from a system called “Habsora” — The Gospel — which is built on artificial intelligence that selects 100 targets a day. The AI-system is described by seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials in an article by Yuval Abraham on the Israeli sites +972 Magazine and Local Call, as facilitating a “mass assassination factory.” Israel, once it locates what it assumes to be a Hamas operative from a cell phone, for example, bombs and shells a wide area around the target, killing and wounding tens, and at times hundreds of Palestinians, the article states.

“According to intelligence sources,” the story reads, “Habsora generates, among other things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.”

Some 15,000 Palestinians, including 6,000 children and 4,000 women, have been killed since Oct. 7. Some 30,000 have been wounded. Over six thousand are missing, many buried under the rubble. More than 300 families have lost 10 or more members of their families. More than 250 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, and more than 3,000 injured, although the area is not controlled by Hamas. The Israeli military claims to have killed between 1,000 and 3,000 of some 30,000 Hamas fighters, a relatively small number given the scale of the assault. Most resistance fighters shelter in their vast tunnel system. 

Israel’s playbook is the “Dahiya Doctrine.” The doctrine was formulated by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who is a member of the war cabinet, following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya is a southern Beirut suburb and a Hezbollah stronghold. It was pounded by Israeli jets after two Israeli soldiers were taken prisoner. The doctrine posits that Israel should employ massive, disproportionate force, destroying infrastructure and civilian residences, to ensure deterrence.

Daniel Hagari, spokesman of the IDF, conceded at the start of Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza that the “emphasis” would be “on damage and not on accuracy.”

Israel has abandoned its tactic of “roof knocking” where a rocket without a warhead would land on a roof to warn those inside to evacuate. Israel has also ended its phone calls warning of an impending attack. Now dozens of families in an apartment block or a neighborhood are killed without notice.

The images of mass destruction feed the thirst for revenge within Israel following the humiliating incursion by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7 and the killing of 1,200 Israelis, including 395 soldiers and 59 police officers. There is a sadistic pleasure voiced by many Israelis over the genocide and a groundswell of calls for the murder or expulsion of Palestinians, including those in the occupied West Bank and those with Israeli citizenship. 

The savagery of the air strikes and indiscriminate attacks, the cutting off of food, water and medicine, the genocidal rhetoric of the Israeli government, make this a war whose sole objective is revenge. This will not be good for Israel or the Palestinians. It will fuel a conflagration throughout the Middle East. 

Israel’s attack is the last desperate measure of a settler colonial project that foolishly thinks, as many settler colonial projects have in the past, that it can crush the resistance of an indigenous population with genocide. But even Israel will not get away with killing on this scale. A generation of Palestinians, many of whom have seen most, if not all, of their families killed and their homes and neighborhoods destroyed, will carry within them a lifelong thirst for justice and retribution. 

This war is not over. It has not even begun. 

December 5, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sellafield has contaminated the Irish Sea with plutonium.

CORE – Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment, December 2023

http://corecumbria.co.uk/alternative-tour-of-sellafield/irish-sea/

Sellafield discharges two million gallons of radioactive water into the Irish Sea every day at high tide. This includes a cocktail of over 30 alpha, beta and gamma radionuclides. BNFL admits that radioactive discharges in the 1970’s were 100 times those of today. As a result of these discharges, which include around half a tonne of plutonium, the Irish Sea has become the most radioactively contaminated sea in the world. Caesium-137 and Iodine-129 from Sellafield have spread through the Arctic Ocean into the waters of northern Canada and are having a bigger impact on the Arctic than the Chernobyl accident. Sellafield’s gas discharges of Krypton can be measured in Miami.

The guinea pigs in a ‘deliberate scientific experiment’ to find out levels of contamination in the food chain, were the Cumbrian people and their environment. Claiming then that the radioactive materials discharged from the 2km pipeline would dilute and disperse into the wider oceans, the industry clearly got it wrong, with high levels of radioactive discharge material washed ashore and trapped in the coastal sands and sediments.

A leading government-backed scientist from East Anglia University discovered that plutonium particles, concentrated in waves breaking on the shore, was being blown over West Cumbria, as far as 37 miles inland.This was confirmed by analysis of vacuum cleaner house dust samples taken up and down the coast by a National Radiological Protection Board investigation.

That Sellafield plutonium gets everywhere was shown in post-mortem examinations of former Sellafield workers. Concentrations of hundreds and in one case thousands of times higher than in the general population were found. Cumbrians who never worked at the plant had plutonium levels ranging from 50% to 250% above the average compared to elsewhere in Britain. Atomic Energy Authority scientist, Prof. Nick Priest, studied the teeth of over 3000 young people throughout Britain and Ireland. He found traces of Sellafield plutonium in varying doses, the highest doses being closest to Sellafield.

In November 1983 a team of Greenpeace divers tried to block the Sellafield underwater discharge pipe. When they emerged from the water, their Geiger counters revealed that they were seriously contaminated. It was only when they publicised this fact that BNFL admitted to having problems with their radioactive discharges and that a tankfull of ‘radioactive crud’ had been flushed out to sea. As radioactive flotsam was being washed ashore, posing a danger to health, the Department of the Environment effectively closed the beach and warned the public not to use the fifteen-mile stretch of shoreline north and south of Sellafield. This advice stayed in force for a full six months. In June 1985 BNFL faced a three-day trial, was found guilty and fined £10,000.

BNFL’s own environmental monitoring figures for the first quarter of 1997 revealed alarmingly raised levels of Technetium 99 in seaweed samples from the West Cumbrian coast. A Tc-99 level of 180,000 Bq/Kg in seaweed was sampled from Drigg, just south of the plant. This compared to a level of 71,000 Bq/Kg sampled in the previous quarter and to a level of just 800 Bq/Kg in 1992. Via the food chain Tc-99 is now found in duck eggs, and the use of locally harvested seaweed as a garden fertiliser has led to the discovery of Tc-99 in locally grown spinach. Irish Sea lobster have shown a similar alarming rise from 210 Bq/Kg in 1993 to 52,000 Bq/Kg in 1997 – over 40 times the EU Food Intervention Level set as a safety level for foodstuffs contaminated following a nuclear accident. Raised levels of Tc-99 were subsequently found in Norwegian lobsters.

A wide range of fish, shellfish and molluscs continue to show varying degrees of radioactive contamination from Sellafield’s discharges.

December 5, 2023 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Apocalypse Then: 40 Years Ago, A TV Movie Saved the World from Nuclear Annihilation

ABC’s 1983 film ‘The Day After’ — the subject of a new documentary as well as a book —not only blew America’s (and Ronald Reagan’s) mind, but it may also have changed the course of human history.

Hollywood Reporter, BY BENJAMIN SVETKEY, 5 Dec 23

“………………………………… Next to the moon landing, it’s hard to think of a TV moment that had a bigger impact on the collective psyche than The Day After, ABC’s white-knuckle drama depicting the aftermath of a nuclear strike on the United States. Its airing 40 years ago — which is being commemorated on Dec. 4 with a new PBS documentary, Television Event, as well as a just-published book about the film, Apocalypse Television — didn’t just terrify the nation. It may have also altered the course of human destiny, which at that time, the red-hot height of the Cold War, seemed to be barreling towards an inevitable atomic showdown……………

“I’ve come to believe that’s true,” says Nicholas Meyer, 77, who directed the three-hour film. “The movie may have indeed helped prevent a nuclear war. It certainly changed one person’s mind on the subject, and that person just happened to be the President of the United States. Ronald Reagan wrote about watching the movie in his memoir. His biographer, who spent three years in the White House, said the only time he ever saw Reagan flip out was after seeing the movie. Ultimately, it sent Reagan into such a tailspin, he signed the Intermediate Missile Range Treaty, the only treaty that ever resulted in the physical dismantling of nuclear weapons.”

The brains behind The Day After, the one who deserves most of the credit not only for conceiving the concept but also strong-arming a reluctant ABC into putting it on the air, was the late Brandon Stoddard, then the network exec in charge of ABC’s made-for-TV movies. 

“Brandon was stunned by Three Mile Island,” recalls Meyer. “And that’s how he came up with The Day After. ‘What if we showed a nuclear exchange and what would happen to regular people if they got nuked?’”

Unsurprisingly, ABC’s top executives were not entirely onboard with Stoddard’s vision…………………………………

For one thing, there was considerable political pushback. Conservative groups went on the warpath against the network, claiming the movie was Soviet propaganda designed to undermine America’s nuclear deterrent (even though Hume’s script never identified who launched the strike against the U.S. or why). For another, the subject matter of atomic war was, predictably, radioactive to advertisers. They began pulling out in droves………………………………………………………… https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/how-the-day-after-saved-the-world-12357

December 5, 2023 Posted by | media, USA | 1 Comment

Estonian universities anticipate high costs of training nuclear experts

ERR ee , Joakim Klementi, 4 Dec 23

The future of nuclear energy in Estonia will be decided next year. Universities in Estonia are ready to train specialists in this field, but this requires new curricula, recruiting expensive lecturers from abroad and years of preparation. Due to Estonia’s small population, the pool of nuclear specialists for Estonia must be trained internationally to ensure impartiality in decision making processes.

If Estonia decides to build its own nuclear power plant, it will probably also have to set up a radiation safety and nuclear security authority, similar to as in other nuclear countries.

While the agency could hire a few dozen professionals before the facility is operational, it should eventually employ 60-80 experts. We can compare ourselves to our northern neighbors.

“We have over 100 workers in the nuclear reactor regulation department and roughly 25 in the nuclear waste department in charge of nuclear safety, so about 130-140 people in total,” Tomi Routamo, deputy director of the Finnish radiation protection center, said.

The first reactor is the most expensive for the country, both financially and in terms of the demand for experts. The question of how many experts the plant needs is much more complicated.

“The number of persons in the preliminary phase is about 50-60, while during construction it reaches a few hundred, 200-300. It is expected to be 400 or more throughout the operational period,” Siim Espenberg, the head of the center for applied social science research at the University of Tartu, said.

Since Estonia is the only nuclear country with a small population, predicting the need for experts is impossible. There are few reactors in the world that are a reasonable size for Estonia. However, building a nuclear power facility in Estonia would require 10 or more classes of nuclear experts in additional to the current ones.

There is also a concern characteristic of small population countries that officials from a regulatory body and nuclear plant managers could be past classmates. The agency must be objective and rigorous. This implies that the expert community cannot be too small. It is also critical that nuclear workers have actual expertise in order to deal with unanticipated scenarios……………………………………………………………………………

“Certainly, people should be brought in from overseas, and in my opinion, some people from Estonia should be trained abroad. This type of curriculum, which can span years, can be used to teach professionals at a specific level, but it is also possible for a small number of specialists, perhaps five or ten, to be trained abroad,” Aune Valk, vice-rector of the University of Tartu, said.

These top researchers are quite expensive, particularly if they are recruited from the western Europe or the Nordic countries.

“We are talking about a wage bill of around €150,000 per year. Also, such a top specialist would be expecting investment funding for the establishment of laboratories, a research group, and the recruitment of PhD students. These are very significant investments,” Hendrik Voll, vice rector of Tallinn University of Technology, said.

The new curricula could take seven to 10 years to produce Estonia’s own nuclear engineers, possibly up to 15 years if they are required to obtain practical experience with an employer. Universities are hesitant to start on such costly and time-consuming projects until Estonia has made a solid decision to build a nuclear power plant.

“We might end up educating highly expensive professionals for western Europe, the Nordic countries, or certain eastern European countries if we don’t develop nuclear energy here,” Voll said.

Universities agree that the future of the nuclear power plant in Estonia will require the creation of a school of nuclear engineers…………………

December 5, 2023 Posted by | Education, EUROPE | Leave a comment

How Are U.S. Warships Supporting Israel’s Genocide In Gaza?

Wherever you’re located, get out in the streets to demand an end to genocide in Gaza

LISA SAVAGE, DEC 4, 2023

Gaza has been under military blockade since 2006. Its one harbor, in Gaza City, was heavily bombed by Israel recently. Repeated attempts to reach Gaza with boats carrying humanitarian supplies have been thwarted by Israel with U.S. backing and we’ve seen activists beaten and even killed for trying to deliver cargo like medical supplies.

Bringing this question closer to home, How is the genocide in Gaza supported by General Dynamics and Bath Iron Works?

General Dynamics is the world’s fourth largest weapons manufacturer and Bath Iron Works (BIW) is one of its many locations for building weapon delivery systems. In this location in Maine shipbuilders historically profited from building slave ships.

Today, both destroyers and cruisers are built to be nuclear-capable meaning they are designed to be able to deliver first-strike attack nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-3 ‘missile defense’ interceptors which would take out an enemy’s defenses following a first strike by the U.S.

Currently there are multiple Bath-built warships in the vicinity of Gaza including the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. The USS Kearny, an Aegis destroyer built at BIW, is deployed there as is the USS Mason, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer which on 27 November engaged in a firefight with Yemeni forces on behalf of an Israeli merchant ship it was sent to rescue. U.S. ships have been reported as routinely shooting down drones launched from Yemen that target ships in the vicinity.

On 15 November Aljazeera published a video report, “What does the Western naval build-up in the Middle East look like?” with this comment: “The Middle East is witnessing a Western naval build-up that hasn’t been seen there for decades: aircraft carriers, destroyers, missile cruisers, amphibious assault ships, a nuclear-powered submarine, and many more.”

U.S. warships are deployed to deter resistance forces in the region — such as Hezbollah — from intervening to stop genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. So far they’ve been apparently unsuccessful, however, their presence increases the likelihood of escalation as in the case of the USS Mason fighting Yemen on behalf of Israel.

Since the resumption of Israel’s bombing of Gaza on December 1, these confrontations have indeed escalated.

Treating U.S. warships as inherently different from Israeli warships is mythology. The two nation states have never been in closer lock step as they do the bidding of their corporate overlords.

Israel has been described as “America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier” but the U.S. and Israel have never been so reviled in world opinion as they are today. Their collective reputation is sinking like a warship that’s taking on water.

Join us in Bath this Friday if you’re able. Help us communicate to workers that we know Bath Iron Works only has one customer — the U.S. Navy — but it wasn’t always like that. So many useful things could be built there and even more good union jobs generated, like hospital ships to provide relief for the bombed out children of Gaza.

If you have the courage, watch or read: “A harrowing video shows decomposing babies in a Gaza hospital after they had to be abandoned amid Israeli attacks.”

Then, wherever you’re located, get out in the streets to demand an end to genocide in Gaza and to the military blockade that supports it.

December 5, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Sweden to slug tax-payers for the costs of small nuclear reactors, and big ones.

Sweden plans new nuclear reactors by 2035, will share costs

By Simon Johnson, November 16, 2023

STOCKHOLM, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Sweden’s government said it aimed to build the equivalent of two new conventional nuclear reactors by 2035 on Thursday to meet surging demand for clean power from industry and transport and was prepared to take on some of the costs.

By 2045 the government wants to have the equivalent of 10 new reactors, some of which are likely to be small modular reactors (SMRs), smaller than conventional reactors.

Energy Minister Ebba Busch said the government was planning a “massive build out” of new nuclear power by 2045.

“It’s decisive for the green transition, for Swedish jobs and at heart for the welfare of our citizens,” she told reporters.

……………..critics have pointed to the huge costs and the private sector’s reluctance to invest without guarantees or other incentives – like Britain’s deal with French nuclear developer EDF for its new Hinkley Point C plant which gave price guarantees.

Sweden’s government has already offered 400 billion crowns ($37.71 billion) of loan guarantees to support new nuclear power, which it says is needed to power developments like fossil-fuel free steel production, but said it was now willing to shoulder more of the burden.

“Guarantees are very important, but that won’t be enough,” Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson said. “For this type of infrastructure it is going to require the state to take part and share the risk.”  https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-plans-new-nuclear-reactors-by-2035-can-take-costs-2023-11-16/—

December 5, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, Sweden | Leave a comment

Seymour Hersh: Russia, Ukraine peace underway, 4 new region additions

By Al Mayadeen English, Source: Agencies, 1 Dec 2023  https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/seymour-hersh–russia–ukraine-peace-underway–4-new-region

Included in the potential deal would also be Russia’s agreement to Ukraine’s accession to NATO provided that NATO troops are not stationed on its territory and only defensive weaponry is located there.

In his newly released article, renowned US journalist Seymour Hersh assured that peace negotiations between top Russian and Ukrainian generals Valery Gerasimov and Valerii Zaluzhnyi respectively are currently underway which include a potential security of Crimea and another four former regions of Ukraine as part of Russia.

Included in the potential deal would also be Russia’s agreement to Ukraine’s accession to NATO provided that NATO troops are not stationed on its territory and only defensive weaponry is located there.

According to Hersh, both Russia and Ukraine agree that the persistence of war is illogical and that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be with an agreement that fixates borders according to where the troops are stationed after the end of peace negotiations.

Hersh cited a US official involved in the top negotiations as saying: “This was not a spur-of-the-moment event,” adding: “This was carefully orchestrated by Zaluzhny. The message was the war was over and we want out. To continue it would destroy the next generation of the citizens of Ukraine.”  

On the other hand, the Biden administration is strongly opposing the peace deal while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remains the “wild card” but has been allegedly told that “this is a military-to-military problem to solve and the talks will go on with or without you”. 

“The White House is totally against the proposed agreement,” the US official said, noting: “But it will happen. Putin has not disagreed.”

December 5, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Prepare for bad news’ from Ukraine – NATO chief

 https://www.rt.com/news/588418-nato-chief-stoltenberg-ukraine-bad-news/ 4 Dec 23

Jens Stoltenberg said the military bloc’s defense industry has yet to reach the level of cooperation needed to satisfy Kiev.

The Ukrainian military has failed to achieve any breakthroughs on the battlefield over the past several months, but the West should stand by the country regardless, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has argued. The official also lamented the apparent failure of the military bloc’s defense industry to establish provide Kiev with the munitions it requires.

Earlier this week Stoltenberg warned that Moscow had been amassing missiles ahead of the winter, noting that Russian weapons manufacturers were operating “on a war footing.”

In an interview with Germany’s Das Erste TV channel aired on Saturday, Stoltenberg acknowledged that the frontlines in Ukraine have remained largely unchanged of late, adding that “wars are difficult to plan.”

“We have to be prepared for bad news. Wars move in phases, but we must stand by Ukraine in good and in bad times alike,” NATO’s chief insisted.

According to Stoltenberg, “ramping up production is of decisive importance” at this juncture.

When asked what Kiev should do in the meantime while its backers increase weapons production capacities – something that is bound to take time – Stoltenberg said that he would leave these “difficult operative decisions” to the Ukrainian leadership and military commanders.

“I think one of the problems that we must address is the fragmentation of the European defense industry. We are not capable of working so closely together as we should,” NATO’s secretary general stated. He called on all member states to “overcome the national, narrow interests” and increase supplies instead of enjoying rising prices.

Speaking after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on Wednesday, Stoltenberg warned that “Russia has amassed a large missile stockpile ahead of winter, and we see new attempts to strike Ukraine’s power grid and energy infrastructure.”

Two days prior, he told reporters that “we should never underestimate Russia.” NATO’s chief noted that Moscow had set its “defense industry on a war footing,” making it “hard to achieve the territorial gains we hope for.”

However, he stopped short of characterizing the current situation as a “stalemate” – a description used by the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, in early November.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s latest estimates, Kiev’s counteroffensive, which began in early June, has resulted in over 125,000 casualties for the Ukrainian side as of December 1.

December 5, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Canadians should be afraid of radiation: Frank Greening.

Dr. Frank Greening, Hamilton, Ont. 4Dec 23

Re: “We can manage predictable radiation: Canadian Nuclear Society,” (The Hill Times, Nov. 15, 2023, letter to the editor. The gist of this CNS letter to The Hill Times appears to be: we should not be afraid of radiation because it’s predictable and we can manage it.

I have to say that when it comes to radiation exposures at nuclear power stations, the Canadian nuclear industry has proven time and again that radiation exposures to workers have often been quite unpredictable and totally mismanaged. As proof of this assertion consider what happened at Pickering Nuclear Generating Station (NGS) in March 1985 and at Bruce NGS in January 2010. 

In the case of the Pickering NGS 1985 event, workers involved in the refurbishment of Units 1 and 2 were exposed to airborne beta-active particulate.

Most unfortunately for the CNSC, there is ample evidence that the Bruce alpha exposure event was not unforeseen. Indeed, in November 2009, the CNSC reported that a routine survey during refurbishment operations at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station detected the presence of radioactive alpha contamination in the Unit 1 reactor vault. Nevertheless, both Bruce Power and the CNSC proceeded with the Unit 1 refurbishment.

I would say that Canadians should be afraid of radiation when our very own nuclear industry and the regulatory body, responsible for the safety of nuclear facilities, appear to be incapable of protecting nuclear workers from needless radiation exposures during reactor refurbishments.

December 5, 2023 Posted by | Canada, incidents | Leave a comment

Ukraine has lost up to 300,000 soldiers – ex-Zelensky aide

Rt.com 4 Dec 23

Kiev’s refusal to negotiate with Moscow has only caused the country heavy battlefield casualties, Aleksey Arestovich says.

Ukraine has lost up to 300,000 soldiers during its conflict with Russia, Aleksey Arestovich, a former aide to President Vladimir Zelensky, has claimed.

Arestovich made the revelation on Friday while speaking to journalist Yulia Latynina via video link. The former presidential aide was addressing the recent admission made by top Ukrainian MP David Arakhamia, who said the Istanbul talks between Moscow and Kiev were derailed by then-UK PM Boris Johnson, who urged Ukraine to “just continue fighting” instead of attempting to reach a deal with Russia.

“I was a member of the Istanbul negotiating team, but even I don’t know how it happened that we decided to break off the Istanbul [talks],” Arestovich stated.

The initiatives floated during the Istanbul talks were actually “very good,” he admitted, claiming that Ukraine’s neutrality and its non-alignment with NATO was a “red line” for Moscow.

Refusing to negotiate, however, has only resulted in heavy casualties, while its prospects to join NATO still remain dubious, he suggested.

“Where is NATO? Does it accept us or not? And will it accept us? … Then the 200 thousand [Ukrainian servicemen] or whatever, 300 thousand, would still be alive,” the ex-aide said.

…………………………..In recent weeks, top Ukrainian officials admitted the counteroffensive had failed to reach the desired outcome, and they seemed to shift blame for the failure on each other. Early in November, for instance, Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top general, said the battlefield situation had reached a “stalemate,” with Kiev unlikely to achieve a breakthrough unless it received a wonder-weapon of sorts.

The assessment has been vehemently rejected by Zelensky, who insisted the counteroffensive was still making progress. In an interview with AP published on Friday, however, Zelensky finally admitted that it had failed, stating that he considers the fact that his country’s troops are not retreating at the moment a “satisfying” enough result.  https://www.rt.com/russia/588358-ukraine-losses-zelensky-aide/

December 5, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

URANIUM WARHEAD POISONING IS THE SPECIALTY OF US AGAINST RUSSIANS, ISRAEL AGAINST PALESTINIANS

by John Helmer, Moscow , December 2023
  @bears_with

Long before the British intelligence agency MI6  invented the story that Russian military agents had carried the nerve agent weapon Novichok into England, fired it at two Russians, and left it in a dustbin for a local scavenger to find, take home and kill his girlfriend, there was depleted uranium poisoning.

This is a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

In the past thirty years it has been used by the US, British, and Israeli armies in their wars against Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine (Gaza), Serbia, and recently against the Russians on the Ukrainian battlefield. As a US invention, however, depleted uranium dispersal as a gas to contaminate terrain for enemy soldiers has been acknowledged in secret since 1943.   

In the official military manuals, depleted uranium rounds are used because their metal concentration and intense heat burn their way through armour plate. In practice, they vaporise high concentrations of radioactive particles to cover large swathes of territory, civilian and military.

The US Department of Homeland Security defines a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) as “a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or other device that is intended to harm a large number of people.” DU harms a relatively small number of soldiers on a battlefield operating in tanks, other armoured vehicles, self-propelled artillery and reinforced  bunkers. DU  strikes a much larger number of people through the release of radiation downwind of the battlefield by penetrating their bodies, attacking their genetic codes, and triggering cancers, birth defects, miscarriages of the unborn, and premature death of adults.  

According to Homeland Security, it “works every day to prevent terrorists and other threat actors from using these weapons to harm Americans.” But when the US supplies its DU weapons to the Israeli and Ukrainian armies, it intends to cause this mass destruction by not caring for the harm they do — in fact concealing this harm, and publicly pretending DU ordnance is not what it is.

DU is a WMD by stealth. The US knows this because US and British soldiers who participated in the first battlefield use of DU shells and bombs, the war against Iraq in 1991, have been the long-term victims of their own weapons.

When the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) fire their DU shells and bombs into the buildings of Gaza, they are not aiming at Hamas tanks, armoured personnel carriers, or howitzer units – the Palestinian forces have none of those. Instead, the Israelis are aiming at the mass destruction of the Palestinian people, including those still unborn. The supply chain for this WMD includes the Cypriot, Greek, German and British governments.

In Gaza, and in the Ukraine, they are all witting participants in targeting a race of people for extermination, now and for the future.

According to US Government publications, the use of depleted uranium (DU) as a super-burning, heavy-metal weapon began in the US in the 1970s.  

“Naturally occurring uranium ore is abundant in nature and contains several forms of uranium called isotopes. All uranium isotopes are radioactive; however, only one of these isotopes, Uranium-235 (U-235), provides the fuel used to produce both nuclear power and the powerful explosions used in nuclear weapons… In nature, U-235 only makes up a very small part of the uranium ore. Given its importance for nuclear power and nuclear weapons technology, U-235 is often removed from the natural uranium ore and concentrated through a process called uranium enrichment. Depleted uranium hexafluoride, also known as DU, is the material left behind after enrichment. Like the natural uranium ore, DU is radioactive. DU mainly emits alpha particle radiation.”  …………………………………………………………………………….

US nuclear bomb designers describe the DU artillery shell or bomb as a “dirty radiation weapon” because of its uncontrollable dispersal on wind, rain, and through the soil targeting civilian populations far from the battlefield targets; indeed, the very civilian populations supporting and paying for the use of DU munitions against their purported enemies.  “Some of the uranium used with DU weapons vaporises into extremely small particles, which are dispersed into the atmosphere where they remain until they fall to the ground with the rain. As a gas, the chemically toxic and radioactive uranium can easily enter the body through the skin or the lungs and be carried around the world until it falls to earth with the rain. AFP asked Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab, if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb. ‘That’s exactly what they are,’ Falk said. ‘They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way.’”

According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact. ‘The larger the bang the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere,’ Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the micron size or smaller, he said.”      

One of the leading nuclear physicists in Europe to have researched the long-range dispersal of DU biochemical damage is Christopher Busby. Here is his report, published in 2011, of the long-term poisoning of Iraqi civilians following the US and British use of DU ammunition during the fighting at Fallujah in 2004. The data on which Busby and his colleagues based their findings came from soil and water sampling, as well as from spectrometric analysis of the hair of civilian children, fathers and mothers in Iraq. The abnormally high concentrations of uranium were traced to the use by US and UK forces of artillery shells, ground-fired missiles, and air-fired rockets, missiles and bombs. According to Busby, “US forces also used Fallujah to combat-test prototypes of at least two new types of thermobaric weapons – Thermobaric Hellfire missiles – AGM-114N [54]- and a new thermobaric RPG called SMAW-NE (Shoulder-fired, Multi-purpose Assault Weapon – Novel Explosive).”

Testing new radiation weapons in civilian areas of Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan has been standard practice for the US, the British, and the Israelis over more than thirty years.  

The conclusion of Busby’s Fallujah study of September 2011 was that “we found significant levels of Uranium, a material which has been associated with weapons employed in Iraq and in the Balkans since 1991 and also with genotoxicity. These levels were significantly higher than those expected on the basis of published control group data from various studies and particularly from Southern Israel. Further, the pattern of contamination with regard to hair length indicated a major contamination event in the past. The levels of Uranium could not be explained by any local Uranium deposits in the soil since measurements made of soil Uranium showed only modest concentrations though the Uranium was slightly enriched…Since none of the other elements found in excess in the parents were genotoxic except Uranium we conclude that these results support the belief that the effects in Fallujah follow the deployment of a Uranium-based weapon or weapons of some unknown type.”  

Other research studies by Busby and others have produced the evidence of Israeli use of DU air-dropped bombs and artillery fired shells against Arab targets in Gaza and Lebanon since 2006.     Independent research has been undertaken by Arab experts of late miscarriages, stillbirths, and birth defects for pregnant Palestinian women at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “These data suggests a causative/favouring role of acute exposure of parents to the weapons-associated contaminants, and/or of their chronic exposure from their persistence in the environment on the embryonic development of their children.”   

In a research paper published in December 2021, Arab scientists from Egypt and Gaza, with a Japanese colleague, and collaboration from a German institute in Munich, reported that uranium weapon contamination was found in sand, stone, concrete, demolition and other building materials in Gaza as well as in Egyptian Sinai. “The past and ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip has led to a severe shortage of building materials since 2007. Many houses, buildings and infrastructure were destroyed and produced huge amounts of demolition debris after the war in the Gaza Strip in 2008. As a result, re-use of the degraded building materials has been required in the past and present. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the amount of demolition debris in the Gaza Strip, produced from 2008 through 2009, was estimated to be 600,000 tonnes. The demolition debris was crushed, sieved and re-used as recycled building materials.”  

In other words, the Israeli-American DU attacks on Gaza make the recycling of the current destruction hazardous for rebuilding. The findings indicate that long before the present war began last month,  it has been Israeli state policy, backed and supplied by the US, to make Gaza uninhabitable for the future. This is genocide, using genotoxic weapons. For the first attempt at documenting the wind dispersal of DU radioactive particles fired by the IDF since October 7 to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel itself, click on this.    

In time Busby and Arab scientists will report the evidence of DU health damage among the Gazans who survive direct destruction by Israeli attack.

On November 25, Busby has reported new research documenting the bioch

Busby has now updated the earlier findings in a research paper issued on November 25. Because the standard European and US academic publishers are so far refusing to report the evidence, Busby’s report is published here in full.    

The Khmelnitsky Ukraine Uranium explosion revisited.
The calculated source term is approximately 50 tons.
Public health implications for Poland and Western Ukraine.
By Christopher Busby, PhD
………………………………………………………………………………more https://johnhelmer.net/biochemical-weapon-for-race-war-uranium-warhead-poisoning-is-the-specialty-of-us-against-russians-israel-against-palestinians/?fbclid=IwAR2H2vUD6Fw26z_-MTk2qEOyRLXTmRK4vUCjw8Bs8N_QIYxMgg3OcAgCDnY

December 5, 2023 Posted by | depleted uranium, USA | Leave a comment

U.S. to Develop Unanticipated New Nuclear Bomb

December 2023, By Shannon Bugos

The U.S. Defense Department unexpectedly announced its intention to develop an additional variant of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, to be known as the B61-13.

………………………………….. The Pentagon acknowledged its hope that the B61-13 variant would help catalyze the stagnant retirement process of the B83 megaton gravity bomb.

“The B61-13 will provide the President with additional options against certain harder and large-area military targets, even while the department works to retire legacy systems such as the B83-1,” according to a Pentagon fact sheet……………………………..

“The case for the B61-13 is strange,” assessed the Federation of American Scientists in an Oct. 27 blog post. “For the past 13 years, the sales pitch for the expensive B61-12 has been that it would replace all other nuclear gravity bombs,” as well as “cover all gravity missions with less collateral damage than large-yield bombs.”

The B61-13 would be deliverable by modern aircraft and have a maximum yield similar to the 360-kiloton B61-7 variant, a massive increase when compared to the most recent 50-kiloton B61-12. The B61-12 is scheduled for initial deployment this year, replacing the 100 B61-3/4 bombs believed to be stationed across Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey under the NATO nuclear sharing mission………………………..

In an Oct. 24 letter to Congress, the Energy Department officially requested to amend its fiscal year 2024 budget request to cover development engineering activities for the B61-13.

Whether the request will be granted remains to be seen because Congress has yet to pass the necessary legislation to fund any department for all of fiscal year 2024. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2023-12/news/us-develop-unanticipated-new-nuclear-bomb

December 5, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant suffered power outage, energy ministry says

Reuters, December 2, 2023

KYIV, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost its power supply after the last remaining line to it from Ukrainian-controlled territory was disrupted, but it has since been repaired, the energy ministry said on Saturday.

The plant was occupied by Russia in March 2022 and is no longer generating power, but needs a supply of electricity to cool one of its four reactors which is in a state of ‘hot conservation’ – meaning it has not fully been shut down.

According to a statement published by Ukraine’s energy ministry on Telegram, one power line to the plant was disrupted late on Friday, while the last, 750 kW, line was broken at 2:31 a.m. (0031 GMT) on Saturday.

“This is the eighth blackout which occurred at the (Zaporizhzhia plant) and could have led to nuclear catastrophe,” the statement said.

The ministry said that after losing grid connection the plant turned on 20 backup generators to supply its own electricity needs.

December 5, 2023 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment