Something Is Missing From Americans’ Greatest Fears. It’s the Bomb.
NYT, By Serge Schmemann, Mr. Schmemann is a member of the editorial board., March 13, 2023
“……………………………………………………….. More than 30 years after the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear obliteration simply doesn’t rank among Americans’ greatest fears. For a while after Sept. 11, global terrorism reigned in the public’s mind as the most pressing threat. According to a 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center, cyberattacks are now considered the major global menace, followed by false information, China, Russia, the global economy, infectious diseases and climate change. My grandson, a college student, told me his peers don’t see a global nuclear war as a real danger today.
Yet even the sharply reduced Russian and American nuclear arsenals are still enough to wipe out much of the world, China is pushing hard to become the third nuclear superpower, and at least six other countries, including the uber-dictatorship North Korea, have nuclear weapons (the others: Britain, France, Israel, India and Pakistan).
Perversely, the complexity of today’s world has even generated something akin to nostalgia for a time when there were only two superpowers to deal with and stability depended on mutually assured destruction. But it is hard to be nostalgic about a time when President John Kennedy urged all Americans to prepare nuclear shelters (“The time to start is now”) and nuclear nightmares were the stuff of popular movies like “On the Beach,” “Fail Safe” and “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”
…………………………… nuclear arms controls are as needed today as they ever were, and not only with Moscow. Mr. Putin obliquely acknowledged that when, after saying on Feb. 21 that Russia would suspend participation in New START, Russia quickly added that the country would continue to respect the treaty’s limits on nuclear warheads and delivery systems.
…………………….. Even if the Doomsday Clock doesn’t move any closer to midnight, time is still running out. New START expires in three years. It’s hard to imagine negotiations on a new treaty so long as the war in Ukraine rages on. At the same time, China is racing ahead in an apparent bid to match the U.S. and Russian arsenals by 2035. So far, Beijing has rebuffed any efforts to negotiate limits with the United States, though it joined the United States, Russia, France and Britain in January 2022 in declaring that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Even if Russia and China can be brought to the table, the parties will need a new way to define how many bombs each nation needs to deter the other two………………………………….more https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/opinion/international-world/putin-ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html
Sir David Attenborough urges people to unite to save ‘nature in crisis
Sir David Attenborough said “nature is in crisis” as he urged people to
unite to save it for future generations. He spoke out after last night’s
first episode of his five-part show about British wildlife.
His plea comes
as the National Trust, RSPB and WWF have launched their first joint
campaign, Save Our Wild Isles, which encourages people to “go wild”
once a week, by doing activities such as sowing bee-friendly plants or
creating “hedgehog highways”, and urges citizens to call on the
government to make changes to halt nature’s decline.
The series features a
sixth, iPlayer-only episode called Saving Our Wild Isles, commissioned by
the RSPB and WWF. “[It] shows what amazing people are doing to turn the
UK round and how quickly it can recover,” Alastair Fothergill, the
producer, said.
Times 13th March 2023
Independent 13th March 2023
What’s dumped is not just Fukushima nuclear water
In January, the Japanese government announced that it would begin to release into the Pacific Ocean more than 1.37 million tons of water from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant sometime this spring or summer. A shadow of nuclear contamination is looming larger.
Although the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) insists that the contaminated water has been filtered and diluted and meets the criterion for a safe discharge, a report has shown that 73 percent of the treated water still exceeds the discharge standard.
Unlike normal wastewater from nuclear power plants, Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water contains over 60 kinds of radioactive substances. Besides tritium, which is difficult to remove, the treated water also contains strontium-90 and carbon-14, whose half-lives are 29 years and 5,730 years, respectively.
For those who can’t grasp its meaning, tritium can replace stable hydrogen atoms in the human body and cause chronic radiation syndrome and cancer. Strontium-90 is highly toxic and may induce bone tumors.
Experts have pointed out that once released into the ocean, the contaminated water would rapidly spread to most parts of the Pacific. Radiation would be absorbed by marine life and enters the human body.
In 2022, it was detected that radiation in black rockfish caught off Fukushima prefecture was 14 times higher than the safe level for humans, even after 11 years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The South China Morning Post reported that caesium, one of the most dangerous radionuclides that “can build up in muscle, fat and bone and cause malignant tumors,” was detected in “fish caught at a depth of 24 meters about 9 km off Fukushima prefecture’s town of Shinchi.”
After more than 10 years, the local fishery industry has not fully recovered. In 2012, Japan banned the sale of 36 species of fish caught off Fukushima, and Tokyo’s decision crushed their hopes. Voices of opposition have been ongoing. In Japan, fishery organizations have expressed their concerns. Citizens in Tokyo, Osaka and Shizuoka protested on the streets to demand the government rescind its decision.
On the world stage, Japan’s neighbors including China, Russia and South Korea have asked Tokyo to provide useful information, engage in full consultation, and take responsible measures. The Pacific Island countries urged Japan not to release the contaminated water before there is enough scientific evidence proving that it’s safe. And independent UN human rights experts issued a joint statement calling Japan’s decision “very concerning” and “deeply disappointing.”
To make a clear evaluation of the safety of Japan’s plan, an International Atomic Energy Agency task force was set up to conduct a safety review. Days ago, it completed its second regulatory review and “will release a report on its findings in about three months, as well as a comprehensive report before the discharge.” Nonetheless, even before the task force set out, Tokyo unilaterally announced the planned discharge. The Japanese government has set its mind on the discharge regardless of the review outcome.
When Tokyo decides to discharge the contaminated water without ensuring safety, does it even consider people’s right to life and health? As a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, and the Convention on Nuclear Safety, does the Japanese government recognize its international obligations? When it puts the whole Pacific and Pacific Rim countries at the risk of environmental disaster, how does it uphold the principle of “environment first”?
When it comes to nuclear contamination, it’s better to err on the side of caution. There could be better alternatives than dumping the contaminated water into the sea. Evaporating, storing underground the tritium-laced water from the plant, or storing and processing the water over the long term, these are all technically reasonable options that are safer than a direct discharge. Unfortunately, Tokyo has chosen to go for the cheapest “quick fix.”
When the earthquake and tsunami struck Fukushima, neighboring countries reached out their helping hands to Japan. Today, the nation is repaying them with tons of nuclear contaminated water.
The Pacific Ocean is home to billions of people, but Japan takes it as its own sewer. Along with contaminated water, Japan’s reputation, conscience and international obligations will be dumped as well.
UK political row over ‘expensive and unnecessary ‘ spending on nuclear power stations.
Tory Aberdeenshire MP accused of ‘failing to stand up for north-east’ in
nuclear power row. The UK Government has been hit with criticism over what
is being described as ‘expensive and unnecessary’ spending on nuclear power
stations, with the Aberdeenshire MP slated by the SNP’s Energy
spokesperson.
A political row has broken out after an Aberdeenshire MP was
accused of prioritising ‘expensive and unnecessary’ nuclear stations over
carbon capture storage (CCS) and renewable energy. In a letter to Mr Bowie,
the MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, SNP energy spokesman Alan
Brown expressed concerns over updated costs to nuclear station Hinckley
Point C in Somerset.
The project is now slated to cost the taxpayers
£33billion, a 40 per cent real terms increase to the original 2016 estimate
of £18billion. Despite the soaring costs, it was revealed earlier this week
the UK government has not engaged with EDF over what that means for the
delivery of the project, while still pressing ahead for another new station
at Sizewell C.
Aberdeen Live 14th March 2023
https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdeen-news/tory-aberdeenshire-mp-accused-failing-8250696
A SIX WAR MONGERING THINK TANKS AND THE MILITARY CONTRACTORS THAT FUND THEM
By Amanda Yee, Orinoco Tribune., March 12, 2023 https://popularresistance.org/six-war-mongering-think-tanks-and-the-military-contractors-that-fund-them/
From producing reports and analysis for U.S. policy-makers, to enlisting representatives to write op-eds in corporate media, to providing talking heads for corporate media to interview and give quotes, think tanks play a fundamental role in shaping both U.S. foreign policy and public perception around that foreign policy. Leaders at top think tanks like the Atlantic Council and Hudson Institute have even been called upon to set focus priorities for the House Intelligence Committee. However, one look at the funding sources of the most influential think tanks reveals whose interests they really serve: that of the U.S. military and its defense contractors.
This ecosystem of overlapping networks of government institutions, think tanks, and defense contractors is where U.S. foreign policy is derived, and a revolving door exists among these three sectors. For example, before Biden-appointed head of the Pentagon Lloyd Austin took his current position, he sat on the Board of Directors at Raytheon. Before Austin’s appointment, current defense policy advisor Michèle Flournoy was also in the running for the position. Flournoy sat on the board of Booz Allen Hamilton, another major Pentagon defense contractor. These same defense contractors also work together with think tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies to organize conferences attended by national security officials.
On top of all this, since the end of the Cold War, intelligence analysis by the CIA and NSA has increasingly been contracted out to these same defense companies like BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, among others — a major conflict of interest. In other words, these corporations are in the position to produce intelligence reports which raise the alarm on U.S. “enemy” nations so they can sell more military equipment!
And of course these are the same defense companies that donate hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to think tanks. Given all this, is it any wonder the U.S. government is simultaneously flooding billions of dollars of weaponry into an unwinnable proxy war in Ukraine while escalating a Cold War into a potential military confrontation with China?
The funding to these policy institutes steers the U.S. foreign policy agenda. To give you a scope of how these contributions determine national security priorities, listed below are six of some of the most influential foreign policy think tanks, along with how much in contributions they’ve received from “defense” companies in the last year.
All funding information for these policy institutes was gathered from the most recent annual report that was available online. Also note that this list is compiled from those that make this information publicly available — many think tanks, such as the hawkish American Enterprise Institute, do not release donation sources publicly.
1 – Center for Strategic and International Studies
According to their 2020 annual report
$500,000+: Northrop Grumman Corporation
$200,000-$499,999: General Atomics (energy and defense corporation that manufactures Predator drones for the CIA), Lockheed Martin, SAIC (provides information technology services to U.S. military)
$100,000-$199,999: Bechtel, Boeing, Cummins (provides engines and generators for military equipment), General Dynamics, Hitachi (provides defense technology), Hanwha Group (South Korean aerospace and defense company), Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (largest military shipbuilding company in the United States), Mitsubishi Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (provides intelligence and information technology services to U.S. military), Qualcomm, Inc. (semiconductor company that produces microchips for the U.S. military), Raytheon, Samsung (provides security technology to the U.S. military), SK Group (defense technology company)
$65,000-$99,999: Hyundai Motor (produces weapons systems), Oracle
$35,000-$64,999: BAE Systems
2 – Center for a New American Security
From fiscal year 2021-2022
$500,000+: Northrop Grumman Corporation
$250,000-$499,999: Lockheed Martin
$100,000-$249,000: Huntington Ingalls Industries, Neal Blue (Chairman and CEO of General Atomics), Qualcomm, Inc., Raytheon, Boeing.
$50,000-$99,000: BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, Intel Corporation (provides aerospace and defense technology), Elbit Systems of America (aerospace and defense company), General Dynamics, Palantir Technologies
3 – Hudson Institute
According to their 2021 annual report
$100,000+: General Atomics, Linden Blue (co-owner and Vice Chairman of General Atomics), Neal Blue, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman.
$50,000-$99,000: BAE Systems, Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
The Comprehensive Crisis in the US and the Revolutionary Way Forward
4 – Atlantic Council
According to their 2021 annual report
$250,000-$499,000: Airbus, Neal Blue, SAAB (provides defense equipment)
$100,000-$249,000: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon
$50,000-$99,000: SAIC
5 – International Institute for Strategic Studies
Based in London. From fiscal year 2021-2022
£100,000+: Airbus, BAE Systems, Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Rolls Royce (provides military airplane engines)
£25,000-£99,999: Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, Northrop Grumman Corporation
6 – Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Note: ASPI has been one of the primary purveyors of the “Uyghur genocide” narrative
From their 2021-2022 annual report
$186,800: Thales Australia (aerospace and defense corporation)
$100,181: Boeing Australia
$75,927: Lockheed Martin
$20,000: Omni Executive (aerospace and defense corporation)
$27,272: SAAB Australia
Sociologist urges Japan to stop perpetuating nuclear colonialism
Japan should stop perpetuating nuclear colonialism, and instead respect the
sovereignty and self-determination of Pacific nations regarding the planned
discharge of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear
Power Plant, a New Zealand sociologist has said.
The social aspects and major country relations around Japan’s decision to release the radioactive
wastewater from the defunct plant must be questioned, Karly Burch from the University of Auckland told Xinhua in a recent interview.
CGTN 11th March 2023
Grief – Japan marks 12 years since Fukushima nuclear disaster as concerns grow over treated radioactive water release
9 News By Associated Press, Mar 12, 2023
Japan on Saturday marked the 12th anniversary of the massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster with a minute of silence, as concerns grew ahead of the planned release of the treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant and the government’s return to nuclear energy.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that ravaged large parts of Japan’s northeastern coast on March 11, 2011, left more than 22,000 people dead, including about 3,700 whose subsequent deaths were linked to the disaster.
A moment of silence was observed nationwide at 2.46pm, the moment the earthquake struck.
Some residents in the tsunami-hit northern prefectures of Iwate and Miyagi walked down to the coast to pray for their loved ones and the 2,519 whose remains were never found.
In Tomioka, one of the Fukushima towns where initial searches had to be abandoned due to radiation, firefighters and police use sticks and a hoe to rake through the coastline looking for the possible remains of the victims or their belongings.
At an elementary school in Sendai, in Miyagi prefecture north of Fukushima, participants released hundreds of colorful balloons in memory of the lives lost.
In Tokyo, dozens of people gathered at an anniversary event in a downtown park, and anti-nuclear activists staged a rally.
The earthquake and tsunami that slammed into the coastal Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant destroyed its power and cooling functions, triggering meltdowns in three of its six reactors.
They spewed massive amounts of radiation that caused tens of thousands of residents to evacuate.
Over 160,000 people had left at one point, and about 30,000 are still unable to return due to long-term radiation effects or health concerns.
Many of the evacuees have already resettled elsewhere, and most affected towns have seen significant population declines over the past decade.
At a ceremony, Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori said decontamination and reconstruction had made progress, but “we still face many difficult problems.”
He said many people were still leaving and the prefecture was burdened with the plant cleanup and rumors about the effects of the upcoming release of the treated water.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, and the government are making final preparations to release into the sea more than 1.3 million tons of treated radioactive water, beginning in coming months.
The government says the controlled release of the water after treatment to safe levels over several decades is safe, but many residents as well as neighbours China and South Korea and Pacific island nations are opposed to it.
Fishing communities are particularly concerned about the reputation of local fish and their still recovering business.
In his speech last week, Uchibori urged the government to do utmost to prevent negative rumors about the water release from further damaging Fukushima’s image.
……….. Kishida’s government has reversed a nuclear phase-out policy that was adopted following the 2011 disaster, and instead is pushing a plan to maximise the use of nuclear energy to address energy supply concerns triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine while meeting decarbonisation requirements.
He said last week that while the energy policy is the central government’s mandate, he wants it to remember that Fukushima continues to suffer from the nuclear disaster. https://www.9news.com.au/world/japan-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-anniversary-concerns-treated-radioactive-water-release/ccd3dc02-52ae-449f-98a8-0475fbdb85ed
Lesson from Fukushima: Collusion in the nuclear domain
Nuclear power became an unstoppable force, immune to scrutiny by civil society. Its regulation was entrusted to the same government bureaucracy responsible for its promotion.”
Canada has not heeded these warnings. ……. The CNSC, mandated to protect the public and the environment, lobbied government to abolish full impact assessments for most “small modular nuclear reactors” (SMN
By Gordon Edwards & Susan O’Donnell | Opinion | March 13th 2023 https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/03/13/opinion/lesson-fukushima-collusion-nuclear-domain
—
This month marks the 12th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, when three nuclear reactors in Japan suffered catastrophic meltdowns.
A tsunami knocked out the reactors’ cooling systems. The plant was shut down, but radioactivity sent temperatures soaring past the melting point of steel.
Radioactive gases mingled with superheated steam and explosive hydrogen gas, which detonated, spreading radioactive contamination over a vast area; 120,000 people were evacuated and 30,000 are still unable to go home.
Radioactively contaminated water from the stricken reactors has accumulated in 1,000 gigantic steel tanks, and despite objections from China, Korea and local fishers, Japan plans to dump it into the Pacific Ocean soon.
What caused this catastrophe? Most people blame the tsunami. The commission of investigation in Japan concluded otherwise. In its report to the National Diet, the commission found the root cause was a lack of good governance.
The accident “was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO [the nuclear company], and the lack of governance by said parties. They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents. Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly ‘man-made.’ We believe that the root causes were the organizational and regulatory systems that supported faulty rationales for decisions and actions…”
The commission chairman wrote: “What must be admitted — very painfully — is that this was a disaster ‘made in Japan.’ Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity… Nuclear power became an unstoppable force, immune to scrutiny by civil society. Its regulation was entrusted to the same government bureaucracy responsible for its promotion.”
Canada has not heeded these warnings. After Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015, his government did away with environmental assessments for any new reactors below a certain size, thus eliminating scrutiny by civil society. This leaves all decision-making in the hands of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) — an agency previously identified by an expert review panel as a captured regulator.
The CNSC, mandated to protect the public and the environment, lobbied government to abolish full impact assessments for most “small modular nuclear reactors” (SMNRs).
Back in 2011, in the midst of the media frenzy about the triple meltdown, Canadians were testifying at federal environmental assessment hearings for up to four large nuclear reactors to be built by Ontario Power Generation (OPG) at Darlington, about 50 kilometres east of Toronto’s edge. The Fukushima disaster was cited repeatedly as a warning.
The panel approved OPG’s plan, but the Ontario government was thunderstruck by the price tag, reputed to be over $14 billion per unit, and cancelled the project.
Now OPG wants to build a smaller reactor at the Darlington site. Since a full impact assessment has been ruled out, CNSC is using the report from 12 years ago as the basis for public interventions. The reactor now proposed (the BWRX-300) has no similarity to any of the reactors that were under consideration then or to any operating today in Canada. Ironically, it is a “miniaturized” version of those that melted down at Fukushima.
CNSC is legally linked to the minister of Natural Resources, who is also tasked with promoting the nuclear industry at home and abroad. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warns that regulators must be independent of any agency promoting the industry.
One day after Canada’s Infrastructure Bank gave OPG a $970-million “low-interest loan” to develop the BWRX-300 at Darlington, the minister boasted to a Washington audience that it would soon become Canada’s first commercial SMNR.
CNSC president Rumina Velshi lauded the speed at which the licensing is proceeding, saying that Canada would be the first western country to approve an SMNR built for the grid.
CNSC is at least two years from approving the reactor. Nevertheless, OPG held a ground-breaking ceremony at Darlington in December. The licence to construct seems a foregone conclusion. When asked, CNSC freely admitted that from the day of its inception, it has never refused to grant a licence for any major nuclear facility.
Government, regulator and industry are already on board. Collusion? Or just co-operation?
Gordon Edwards is president and co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, a not-for-profit corporation established in 1975. He is a retired professor of mathematics and science at Vanier College in Montreal.
Susan O’Donnell is an adjunct professor at St. Thomas University and a member of the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick.
At last! While cowardly Australian corporate media fawns all over the nuclear submarine deal – New Zealand has the guts to criticise it.
the Australian order will be filled with a new and advanced SSN® model still in development. This is where the British come in. In a sense, Australia will be (a) serving as a test run and (b) will be creating extra economies of scale for the British Navy’s plans to develop and build SSN( R) models to replace its Astute class submarines by the early to mid 2040s.
On AUKUS And Australia’s Decision On Nuclear Subs
Monday, 13 March 2023, Scooop, Gordon Campbell
China may well regard Taiwan as a renegade province. Yet the invasion of Taiwan – as the Australian economist and commentator John Quiggin points out – would pose massive challenges for the forces or Xi Jinping……………………………………………………What Quiggin is getting at here is that a concerted campaign is currently being waged by sections of the Aussie media with the aim of scaring the pants off the Australian public about the imminent threat from China in the Pacific, in the South China Sea and with regard to Taiwan.
The aim of this campaign is to justify a sky-high level of new defence spending by the Australian government. New Zealand is at risk of being carted along by the same momentum into authorising increases in our own defence spending that we don’t need, and can’t afford.
Acting the part
The campaign kicks into high gear today. As the Oscars get handed out in Los Angeles, another pantomime of power will be playing out on the docks just down the coast, in San Diego. Anthony Albanese, Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden will be standing shoulder to shoulder as they announce the first concrete manifestation of the AUKUS pact – a military alliance between Australia, Britain and the Americans that has China as its common target……………………………………
. As Reuters put it:
….[The] AUKUS pact, will have multiple stages with at least one U.S. submarine visiting Australian ports in the coming years and end in the late 2030’s with a new class of submarines being built with British designs and American technology, one of the officials said….after the annual port visits, the United States would forward deploy some submarines in Western Australia by around 2027.
In the early 2030’s, Australia would buy 3 Virginia class submarines and have the option to buy two more. AUKUS is expected to be Australia’s biggest-ever defence project and offers the prospect of jobs in all three countries.
That last bit is very important. Like his predecessors, Albanese will be treating Australia’s defence policy as a cutting edge ingredient of its manufacturing policy.
Australia’s defence policy as a cutting edge ingredient of its manufacturing policy. For Australian politicians, military policy and defence spending is as much about (a) creating jobs for Aussie workers, (b) gaining technology upgrades for Aussie industry and (c) scoring lucrative contracts for Aussie goods and services firms as it is about the actual defence of the nation.
…………………………………………………………………. In a worst case scenario, the Australians could well invite New Zealand to join AUKUS and assign us some “friend of AUKUS” status, as an observer. Our anti-nuclear legislation would complicate such a role. That aside, and given the ocean currents and prevailing winds, New Zealand has every good reason to feel nervous about the prospect of our near-neighbour learning on the job about how to build and maintain the nuclear reactors on its new submarine fleet.
Luckily, most of the new Aussie subs won’t be delivered until the early to mid 2030s. That means these massively expensive new purchases probably wouldn’t arrive in time to deter China from invading Taiwan, given that this is supposed to be imminent.
In the US, the building of Virginia-class subs are shared between two shipyards, one in Groton Connecticut and the other in Newport News, Virginia. Reportedly, the design variant that Australia has in mind will have been a three-headed upgrade project to the Virginia-class that will have been co-designed by Britain and the US, as amended to Australian specifications, with at least some of the subs being built by US-trained Australians who had no prior experience in this sort of construction. On top of these complications, all participants will be coming under pressure to deliver every stage of the project at the lowest cost possible. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with such a design and construction plan? And in this case, I don’t just mean the danger of cost blowouts.
Attack and defence
AUKUS is likely to make New Zealanders feel more unsafe in a number of other ways as well. For starters, AUKUS is not a “defend the homeland” pact. It is a forward projection alliance, to attack enemy targets and stifle the enemy’s ability to defend itself and respond. (Enemy = China.) Before we bow to the pressure coming from our traditional allies to join in with their chest-bumping rivalries with China, it is probably worth looking at the Aussie nuclear submarine deal in more detail.
The Albanese government has said the Aussie subs will not be nuclear-armed. (Not yet, anyway) However, the roughly 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles (the final design will limit the number) that each submarine will carry can all carry nuclear warheads. Only previous treaty commitments with Russia have prevented the cruise missiles carried on Virginia-class subs from being nuclear-armed.
Yet with the scrapping of nuclear proliferation treaties with Russia in the wake of the war in Ukraine, we could well be sailing in a few years time into “neither confirm nor deny” territory with our Australian neighbours. Regardless of their potential for carrying nuclear tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles alongside the usual torpedoes, mines, autonomous undersea drones, etc etc ….Would these nuclear-powered Australian subs be barred from docking at New Zealand ports under the terms of our anti-nuclear legislation? Yes, they would.
Therefore, it would be good to know if our current political leaders share a bi-partisan agreement to preserve our anti-nuclear stance in its current form and thereby ban those Aussie subs from our ports, now and forever more. Even if Labour and National did agree, the reality is that our new and expensive Poseidon anti-submarine surveillance aircraft will still be taking part in exercises which will increasingly have (a) a nuclear component and (b) an anti-submarine (ASW) component, courtesy of our ANZAC buddies. Lest we forget. (The growing ASW role for Virginia-class SSN category subs is mentioned on page 9 of the Congressional Review Service evaluation of the SSN programme. )
From what can be gleaned at this point i.e. prior to the formal announcement, the Australian order will be filled with a new and advanced SSN® model still in development. This is where the British come in. In a sense, Australia will be (a) serving as a test run and (b) will be creating extra economies of scale for the British Navy’s plans to develop and build SSN( R) models to replace its Astute class submarines by the early to mid 2040s.
To repeat: It would be unwise for New Zealand to be stampeded by the “defence” lobbyists both here and offshore into making significant increases to the allocations for Defence in the May Budget. If nothing else, the Aussie subs saga is a useful reminder that the regional tensions in the Pacific and the China bogey are both being driven and monetised by firms within the military-industrial complex, via the pork barrel politicking (lucrative jobs and contracts for our neighbourhood! ) that is so rife among our traditional military allies.
Footnote: While we spend billions on a fleet of new Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft, and the Aussies buy their fleet of mega-expensive nuclear submarines, the future of underwater warfare is seen by some observers to rest with unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Apparently, the Australian military has a programme to develop UUVs called Ghost Shark, cutely named after the US Ghost Bat programme.
UUVs are being developed to do some of the dirty and dangerous work previously done by crewed submarines under their ASW air cover. Some see UUVs as an adjunct to conventional below- surface warfare. Others see UUVs as making those conventional tools redundant. You can read about these unmanned underwater military drones here. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2303/S00018/on-aukus-and-australias-decision-on-nuclear-subs.htm
Why were studies canceled? — Beyond Nuclear International
Do federal agencies fear a connection between nuclear power and cancer?
Why were studies canceled? — Beyond Nuclear International
Federal agencies won’t look at cancer impacts of commercial nuclear facilities
By Cindy Folkers, 12 Mar 23
If you thought the government of the United States, the country with the most nuclear power reactors in the world, might be interested in finding out the cancer impact of nuclear power on our children, you’d be wrong. But, our government is willing to give failed, uneconomic, decaying nuclear power reactors oodles of taxpayer money without first figuring out if and how they harm our children. Assessing potential health damage should be a prerequisite for reactor license renewal.
Citizens and lawmakers from California have been working to revivify a cancelled National Academy of Sciences (NAS) health study originally requested and funded by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2010. The study was to have been carried out in two phases. The first phase “identified scientifically sound approaches for carrying out an assessment of cancer risks” that would inform the study design(s) to be carried out in Phase 2.
Phase 1 recommended examining seven pilot sites, six of which are operating or closed nuclear power plants: Big Rock Point (MI, closed), Dresden (IL), Haddam (CT, closed), Millstone (CT), Oyster Creek (NJ), and San Onofre (CA, closed). The seventh site, Nuclear Fuel Services (TN), is a fuel processing and stockpile conversion facility.
There were also two study designs recommended in the subsequent 2012 Phase 1 report: an ecologic study that would look at a variety of cancers among adults and children over the operational history of the facilities; and a record-linkage-based case-control study examining cancer risks for childhood exposures to radiation during more recent operating histories of the facilities. Because the case-control study would have focused on children, Beyond Nuclear supported this study type over the ecologic study recommendation.
The NAS was preparing to perform the pilot study at the seven sites in order to see which study type had the stronger methodology to be performed nationwide when it was scuttled by the NRC in 2015.
The NRC justified the cancelation by publicly contending that it would cost too much, take too long, and not be able to see any health impact — claims that are still disputed. The NAS health study would have cost an estimated $8 million at the time it was first proposed.
Yet, at the same time that the NRC claimed the cancer study was too expensive, it signed a 20-year lease for a third building at its Rockville, MD headquarters (against the advice of Congress) that will eventually mount to a cost of $350 million. The decision was made in anticipation of the so-called Nuclear Renaissance, which instead fizzled, leaving the NRC scrambling to lease out the new space instead.
The NAS was considering using new ways of examining the health impacts of radioactivity from NRC licensed sites by implementing a more detailed, more thorough, publicly shared research protocol. Such a protocol could have opened up the NRC’s regulatory regime to exhaustive scrutiny, revealing just how inadequate it is for examining health impacts.
Instead of asking the NRC to restart the original study, three members of the U.S. House of Representatives from California have asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to pick up the NAS study where the NRC left off, only to be rebuffed with the jaw-dropping claim by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, that such a study would be “premature”(letter from X. Becerra to Hon. Mike Levin (D-CA), September 12, 2022), despite 60+ years of exposures to radiation from nuclear power. Becerra wants more delays to allow “collaboration” with other agencies, like the U.S. Department of Energy that has historically been sanctioned from involvement in certain health studies.
In fact, such studies done in Europe have shown increases of childhood leukemia around nuclear facilities worldwide. These studies were not “premature”, they were revelatory. Despite these findings, there has never been independent nationwide analysis in the U.S. examining connections between childhood cancer and nuclear power facilities. The NAS case-control study under consideration had a design similar to the European studies that found linkage between living near a nuclear reactor and increases in childhood cancers.
While Bacerra claims it is “premature” to study health impacts from nuclear power, it seems to be just the right time to throw more bailout money down the nuclear bottomless pit in order to keep the current reactor fleet running without knowing what their health impacts have been or will be.
In an ironic twist, the first $1.1 billion nuclear bailout was given to Diablo Canyon in California, a slap in the face for those asking for the health study. This taxpayer largess given to the California nuclear power plant was just a small piece of the $30 billion subsidy (by some estimates, nuclear subsidies could be even higher) earmarked for nuclear power in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The two Diablo Canyon nuclear generating units released 72 curies of tritium gas alone in 2019, part of a suite of radionuclides routinely released by operating reactors. This particular isotope is a radioactive form of hydrogen that can collect in fetal tissue to twice the concentration as it does in maternal tissue. It is well-known that pregnancy development is particularly sensitive to damage from radiation exposure — more so than adults or even children — clearly making this an issue that should interest HHS, as well as one that should help determine whether nuclear power can continue to operate or if its impact on our future generations might be too great. After all, we have readily available, cheaper and safer alternatives.
Despite its published motto — “Protecting people and the environment” — the NRC’s main focus has always been nuclear reactor operations, while downplaying and denying rather than investigating health impacts. The agency’s cancellation of the child cancer study was industry-friendly and tone-deaf; in other words, expected. It had undertaken the study to soothe public anxiety about health impacts. When the NRC learned the study might not accomplish this, or worse, might reveal the agency’s shortcomings as a watchdog agency, it pulled the plug.
From HHS, on the other hand, I expected better. “Health” after all, is in their name.
Cindy Folkers is the Radiation and Health Hazard Specialist at Beyond Nuclear.
12 yrs after Fukushima nuclear disaster, gov’t not facing evacuees’ hardship
March 11, 2023 (Mainichi Japan) Editorial:
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230311/p2a/00m/0op/006000c
Today marks 12 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. Over 22,000 lives were lost due to the cataclysm, including a massive tsunami that struck coastal regions and the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
Today, some 31,000 people are still living as evacuees. Around 90% of them are residents of Fukushima Prefecture. In municipalities mostly within so-called “difficult-to-return zones” where radiation levels are high, many residents have been barred from coming back, and reconstruction has been delayed.
The government is proceeding with decontamination of the areas it has designated as bases for reconstruction within these zones. However, they account for less than 10% of the zones’ total area. It also plans to prepare places outside these reconstruction bases so that people who want to return to those areas can do so, but it is expected that decontamination will be limited to the homes to which people want to return and the surrounding roads. This has left residents who want the whole area decontaminated at a loss.
Local ties lost
The town of Namie in Fukushima Prefecture is a prime example of the difficult circumstances. The current population stands below 2,000 — less than a tenth of what it was before the 2011 disaster. The fact that it has the largest area of difficult-to-return zones, accounting for 80% of the entire town, has put it at a significant disadvantage.
“Even if just one part is decontaminated and a person comes back alone, they can’t live in a mountain village. The government first needs to prepare an environment in which the local community can maintain itself,” stressed Shigeru Sasaki, 68, who has evacuated within Fukushima Prefecture.
Before the disaster, Sasaki lived in the eastern part of the Tsushima district, located in a gorge in Namie. When the Obon season arrived, residents in the settlement would go out together and cut the grass along roads and work together to protect the community.
Since the nuclear disaster, however, the entire Tsushima district has been off-limits as a place to dwell. Sasaki is the deputy leader of a group of 650 plaintiffs in a class action against the government and Fukushima Daiichi operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Holdings Inc. They are calling for the town to be restored to its original state, bringing radiation levels down to what they were before the disaster, but their claims were rejected by a district court. They are now appealing.
Last year, there was a change in government policy that struck a nerve with those whose lives were turned upside down by the nuclear disaster. The administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida effectively extended the operating life of existing nuclear reactors, which had been set at a maximum of 60 years, and also set out to promote replacing them with next-generation nuclear power plants. It is thus lowering the banner of “freedom from reliance on nuclear power” that had been held up from the time of the meltdown.
Sasaki was unable to hide his anger. “We see Tsushima in such a state, yet the government is acting as if the problems in Fukushima are over,” he said.
Meanwhile, some residents have voiced concerns that moves to go back to nuclear power will cause memories of the disaster to fade.
Since 2012, the year after the Fukushima disaster, the Namie Machi Monogatari Tsutae-tai, a town storytellers’ group, has performed picture story shows inside and outside Fukushima Prefecture, conveying the confusion immediately after the disaster and the hardship of life as evacuees. Group founder Yoshihiro Ozawa, 77, lamented, “What was the point of all our activities to date to make sure that people don’t forget the accident?”
Ozawa’s health has deteriorated and so he has given up on returning to Namie, where medical infrastructure remains inadequate. He and his wife still live in the place where they evacuated, and they have little contact with neighbors. He worries about what will happen when one of them ends up alone there.
“My friends and relatives are all scattered. I want people to know that Fukushima still has many issues,” Ozawa said.
Anger at the government for forgetting the lessons of 3.11
While the Japanese government wants to quickly close the book on the nuclear disaster, the locals cannot escape from the disaster’s prolonged effects. There is a wide gap between the perceptions of the two sides.
It is said that it will take several decades to decommission the Fukushima Daiichi reactors. In a survey asking residents why they were hesitant to return, quite a few people cited concerns about nuclear power plant safety, in addition to a lack of hospitals and commercial facilities.
Treated wastewater that continues to accumulate at the Fukushima Daiichi is set to be released into the ocean sometime from this spring onward. However, those in the fishery and others harbor strong concerns about reputational damage. At the end of last year, TEPCO announced compensation standards in the event of such damage, but there are no signs it will be able to gain people’s understanding.
Contaminated soil and other items collected during clean-up efforts across the prefecture remain in interim storage facilities in the local towns of Okuma and Futaba. They are supposed to be moved outside the prefecture for final disposal by 2045, but a destination for the material remains undecided.
Such problems, which are difficult to solve, weigh heavily on the future of the region.
Residents have not only lost their hometowns and a place to live; they have lost the happiness and security of living in close contact with those familiar to them. Twelve years after the outbreak of the nuclear disaster, this sense of profound loss has yet to heal.
The nuclear disaster is not over.
Rather than hurrying to retreat to nuclear power, the government should look squarely at the hardship of each and every resident. It has a responsibility to put effort into supporting them so that wherever they find shelter, they can make connections with people and find a purpose in life.
The voices of the victims
The right to avoid exposure is “a fundamental right to protect human life”
The voices of the victims — Beyond Nuclear International
Firsthand accounts from Fukushima survivors and others afflicted by the nuclear sector
From Nos Voisins Lontains 3.11 (Our Faraway Neighbors 3.11)
Where are the voices of nuclear victims? It is becoming increasingly difficult to hear them. In denial of the harmful consequences of atomic plants, there is an attempt, for example, to downplay and minimize the damage caused by nuclear accidents and more generally the nuclear risk, limiting it merely to the number of deaths.
But there is a far wider web of suffering, especially because nuclear power accidents often do not cause instant, headline-grabbing deaths, but later ones, after a long latency period. This makes them harder to quantify and more easily dismissed.
In the context of the revival of nuclear power in France and Japan, it seems important to return to the field and listen to the voices of the victims. To that end, Nos Voisins Lontains 3.11 has created a new YouTube Channel — Voix des victimes du nucléaire (Voices of the nuclear victims).
In this series, the NGO Nos Voisins Lointains 3.11 (Our Faraway Neighbours 3.11) proposes to broadcast their voices with English subtitles. We are not presenting only the voices of the Fukushima nuclear accident victims, but also more widely the words of the victims of all nuclear uses, military or civil.
We hope that the courage and perseverance of these people will allow the warning voices of so many Cassandras to be heard far and wide, piercing the curse of the powerful nuclear industry and the political powers that support it.
The first video message is from Akiko Morimatsu. You can watch her testimony below. The transcript of her remarks follows.
My name is Akiko MORIMATSU.
The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 was followed by the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. What happened to us, the residents of Fukushima? What damage did the people living near the plant suffer? I would like to tell you about it in a concrete way.
On March 11, 2011, I was living in Koriyama, a town in Fukushima Prefecture, located about 60 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. There were four of us. Me, my husband and two children. A 5-month-old girl and a 3-year-old boy.
First of all, I would like to tell you that when a nuclear accident occurs, regardless of our age or sex, whether we are for or against nuclear power, we are all confronted with the problem of exposure to radioactivity. Radiation is invisible and colourless. There is no pain or tingling on the skin. And there is the issue of low-dose radiation exposure. At a great distance, you are exposed to low doses of radiation. Besides the fact that radiation cannot be perceived by the senses, people do not die instantly.
In this context, we, living 60km from the plant, lost our home in the Great Earthquake, and then after this natural disaster, we suffered a man-made disaster: the nuclear accident.
Of course, we did not hear the explosions at the nuclear power plant, nor did we see the damaged plant buildings directly. We only learned about the accident through the news on TV. Apart from that, there was no way to know that an accident with explosions took place. There was no way of knowing the exact situation of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, nor how much radiation we would be exposed to.
First of all, I would like to tell you that when a nuclear accident occurs, regardless of our age or sex, whether we are for or against nuclear power, we are all confronted with the problem of exposure to radioactivity. Radiation is invisible and colourless. There is no pain or tingling on the skin. And there is the issue of low-dose radiation exposure. At a great distance, you are exposed to low doses of radiation. Besides the fact that radiation cannot be perceived by the senses, people do not die instantly.
In this context, we, living 60km from the plant, lost our home in the Great Earthquake, and then after this natural disaster, we suffered a man-made disaster: the nuclear accident.
Of course, we did not hear the explosions at the nuclear power plant, nor did we see the damaged plant buildings directly. We only learned about the accident through the news on TV. Apart from that, there was no way to know that an accident with explosions took place. There was no way of knowing the exact situation of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, nor how much radiation we would be exposed to. . We didn’t know how much radiation we had to endure, because neither the state authorities nor the operator TEPCO provided accurate information. We, the people living near the plant, had to make many decisions in this ignorance.
I’m going to tell you about the most difficult thing I have had to do in the last 12 years since the accident. After the explosions at the nuclear power plant, we were well aware of the explosions… But we, who were 60 km away from the plant, were not evacuated by force. Apart from the evacuation order, there was also a confinement order. Gradually, within a radius of 2 km, then 3 km around the nuclear power plant, the population was forcibly evacuated. The circular mandatory evacuation zone gradually expanded. And from 20 to 30 km from the power plant, there was the order to stay indoors. That was the order given by the government. But we, 60 km away, did not receive the confinement order. We were not evacuated either. We were left on our own without any protection.
In this situation, I learned from the TV that the tap water, the drinking water, was contaminated. The first information I got was about the tap water in Kanamachi in Tokyo. They had found radioactive substances in the water. It was on a television program.
The Kanamachi water treatment plant was 200 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. We were only 60 km from the plant. Within the 200 km radius, the radioactivity increased, and with the rain radioactive substances contaminated the drinking water. Since the tap water at 200 km from the plant was contaminated, the water at 60 km had to be contaminated without any doubt. So, we learned about the radioactive contamination of our drinking water from the TV news.
Up to that point, it was known that radioactive material had been dispersed, but at 60km, there were no orders to evacuate or to stay indoors. There were repeated statements from the Prime Minister’s Office that there would be no immediate impact on health. The issue of exposure was indeed on our minds. But when I found out that the water in Tokyo was contaminated, and that the water in Fukushima was also contaminated, I realised that I was unknowingly drinking radioactive water. But even after learning this fact, I had to continue drinking the water. And so did my two children, aged 5 months and 3 years. My 5-month-old daughter was clinging to life through breast milk from a mother who was drinking contaminated water.
We also heard on the news that there had been a huge radioactive fallout in and around Fukushima, that shipments of leafy vegetables had been suspended, that farmers were going to lose their livelihoods, and that there had been suicides of desperate farmers. They had lost all hope in the future of their profession. All this we heard on TV.
So, we learned that there really was radioactive contamination. I learned that the farmers had milked the cows, but since shipping was no longer possible, they had to dump the milk in the fields.
As a nursing mother in Fukushima, I thought that we were also mammals like the cows. We humans were also exposed to high doses of radioactivity in the air, and we had to drink tap water, knowing that it was polluted.
I heard about the biological concentration. Milk was even more radioactive than water. That’s why the milk had to be thrown away. Yet I was drinking radioactive water, I was breastfeeding my 5-month-old daughter, and my milk concentrated the radioactivity.
didn’t want to be exposed to radiation myself, and of course I didn’t want my five-month-old child to be exposed to radiation. But we were totally denied the right to choose to refuse exposure. Above all, a baby can’t say she doesn’t want to drink breast milk because it is contaminated. My three-year-old son brought me a glass when he was thirsty, saying “mummy, give me a glass of water”. Knowing that the tap water was contaminated, I was obliged to give him this water.
This is my experience.
The will to avoid exposure, the right to avoid exposure, are fundamental rights to protect life. Their violation is the most serious of all the damages caused by the nuclear accident. I think this issue should be at the heart of the nuclear debate.
I am not the only one who gave poisoned water to our children. Many people living in the area affected by the nuclear disaster had the same experience.
In order to avoid repeating these experiences and to improve the radioprotection policy, I would like you all to think together about the real damage caused by a nuclear accident, starting with whether you can drink radio-contaminated water. I think that this would naturally lead to a certain conclusion.
The most serious damage I suffered from the nuclear accident was that I was subjected to radiation exposure that was not chosen and was avoidable.
This is the most serious damage to which I would strongly like to draw your attention.
Headline photo of Akiko Morimatsu and her son in Geneva at the UN courtesy of Nos Voisins Lontains 3.11.
Fukushima nuclear water plan is a new blow to fishermen
Locals believe livelihoods are at risk as authorities attempt to tackle
contamination 12 years on from the disaster. The authorities are about to
begin pumping contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant
into the Pacific Ocean.
More than a million tons of water will be released
into the sea over the next thirty years. The waste water will be treated
and diluted to remove most radioactive contaminants, but will still contain
traces of the isotopes, tritium and carbon-14.
The governments of China,
South Korea and Pacific island nations have protested against the decision.
But none are affected more directly than the fishermen of Fukushima. Twelve
years after the catastrophe, there is no clear timeline for the
decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi, which is decades away from being
safely dismantled.
In the meantime, 130 tons of water is contaminated by it
every day. Some of this is poured directly onto the broken reactors to cool
them. Much is natural ground water which flows through the earth towards
the sea, picking up radiation from the exposed reactors on the way.
To prevent the groundwater reaching the plant in the first place, the
authorities built an underground “ice wall” of frozen earth, but this
has been only partly effective. Filtering is supposed to remove all the
radioactive elements except for tritium, which is routinely released into
the sea in diluted form from nuclear plants around the world
. But carbon-14
and trace elements of more dangerous radioactive substances, including
strontium-90 and iodine-129, have also been detected in the water. The
Japanese government says that tritium will be diluted to less than one-40th
of the concentration permitted under Japanese safety standards and
one-seventh of the World Health Organisation’s permitted level for safe
drinking water.
According to Tepco, the radiation in the tritium in the
water amounts to some 860 trillion becquerels — less than half the 1,620
trillion becquerels released from Britain’s Sellafield plant in 2015. The
theory is that the water will quickly and harmlessly dissipate into the
vastness of the Pacific Ocean.
But environmentalists and some scientists
disagree. The US National Association of Marine Laboratories claims that
the statistics, assumptions and models used in the Tepco projections are
flawed. It points to the danger of concentrated clusters of radiation
accumulating on the ocean floor.
Shaun Burnie, a nuclear expert at
Greenpeace, says that the water should be stored longer in tanks, allowing
time for the tritium to reduce, and that the decision to release into the
ocean is as much as about saving money as science. It also gives an
illusion of concrete progress.
Even if it is safe, it makes little
difference to the fishermen of Soma, for whom even just the perception of a
danger is enough to harm their business. Among them opinion is divided.
Some oppose the release under any circumstances; others, including Konno,
reluctantly accept it as the least worst option given that only complete
decommissioning, decades in the future, will solve the problem.
Times 10th March 2023
Costs for safety measures necessary to restart Japan’s idle nuclear reactors keep ballooning
Costs for safety measures necessary to restart Japan’s idle nuclear
reactors following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster ballooned to over
6.09 trillion yen in January, according to 11 major power companies in the
country. As some companies have not yet included costs related to
implementing anti-terrorism measures in their calculations, required under
stricter regulations introduced in 2013 following the nuclear accident that
occurred on March 11, 2011, the total amount is expected to increase
further.
The costs involve safety measures for 15 nuclear power stations
and consist of both expenses already used and those expected in the future.
As of January 2022, they totaled 5.78 trillion yen. Over a one-year period
through January this year, safety costs increased by 230 billion yen at the
No. 2 unit in Tohoku Electric Power Co’s Onagawa plant in Miyagi
Prefecture, northeastern Japan, and by 80 billion yen at Chugoku Electric
Power Co’s Shimane nuclear plant in western Japan. The Onagawa No. 2 unit
and the Shimane No. 2 unit have already cleared safety screenings by the
country’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, with
construction work necessary to restart them under way after gaining local
consent. The cost of safety measures for the Onagawa No. 2 unit totals 710
billion yen, more than double the roughly 300 billion yen spent to build
it.
Japan Today 12th March 2023
https://japantoday.com/category/national/safety-costs-at-nuclear-plants-in-japan-exceed-6-tril.-yen
1 This Month
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