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Senate Approves Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Extension

https://nativenewsonline.net/health/senate-approves-radiation-exposure-compensation-act-extension, BY KELSEY TURNER  MAY 02, 2022, The U.S. Senate on Thursday unanimously approved a two-year extension of an act giving compensation to people who were exposed to radiation from atomic weapons testing and uranium mining. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which is set to expire in July, provides one-time benefit payments to those who have been diagnosed with cancer or other diseases relating to radiation exposure. The extension now awaits approval by the House. 

Since its creation in 1990, RECA has given over $2.4 billion in benefits to more than 38,000 people in Nevada, Utah and other impacted areas. Compensation is available to several groups, including “onsite participants” involved in atmospheric test of an atomic weapon, “downwinders” who were present in certain areas near test sites, and uranium miners, millers and ore transporters who worked with uranium. If passed, the extension would give people more time to apply for compensation.  

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez applauded the Senate’s approval of the extension, saying it “demonstrates strong bi-partisan support for former uranium miners, downwinders, and many others who have to live with the devastating health effects to this day.” 

In March, Nez met with members of both political parties in Washington, D.C., where he voiced the concerns of Navajo people experiencing health impacts due to radioactive contamination and exposure from abandoned uranium mines. 

“This is a united effort on behalf of former uranium miners and their families, to secure just compensation and benefits for the health issues and detrimental impacts of uranium mining conducted by the federal government,” Nez said in a Navajo Nation press release. “The RECA bill is an opportunity for Congress to be a part of something historic for the Navajo people, the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee, and other impacted groups.”

Nez encouraged legislators to work toward a long-term solution that would extend RECA until 2040. A bill sponsored by Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo proposes to expand and extend RECA for another 19 years following the bill’s enactment. 

Navajo Nation is pushing for this expansion to include all downwinders, create additional categories of uranium workers and radiation-related illnesses, and increase the minimum compensation received by affected individuals.

May 3, 2022 Posted by | health, Legal, politics, USA | 2 Comments

Britain’s very wrong turn in energy policy

At least Rishi Sunak would appear to have recognised all this nuclear nonsense for the massive con trick it is. As far as the Treasury is concerned, a few hundred million to prop up Rolls-Royce, and a couple of billion to keep the prospect of Sizewell C alive – that’s acceptable, it would seem. Beyond that, from the Chancellor’s perspective, lies one vast funding black hole. Not least because of nuclear waste.

Courtesy of the mainstream media’s cosy relationship with the nuclear industry, we hardly ever hear about this. But the Treasury writes a cheque to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority of around £2.5bn every year – to deal with the legacy of our earlier nuclear investments in terms of waste management and decommissioning. The price tag just for cleaning up Sellafield has now risen to an astonishing £97bn! On top of that, the anticipated cost of an underground storage facility to house the high-level waste for thousands of years has now risen to as much as £53bn – according to the Government’s own figures. That’s the cost of old nuclear. It will be no different with any new nuclear.

Why a nuclear power policy is clearly the road not to take

Wrong turn — Beyond Nuclear International The establishment’s obsession with nuclear power just won’t die,
more https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/72759838/posts/3984916370
By Jonathon Porritt 1 May 22,
This is absolutely the right time for a new Energy Strategy. Unfortunately, we’ve got absolutely the wrong politicians in charge of it. In the UK, the combination of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak all but guarantees that the new Energy Security Strategy will fail on most counts.

– In Boris Johnson, we have a careless showman, drawn unerringly to ‘big ticket’ announcements, groomed by a nuclear industry that knows exactly how to play to these personality defects.

– In Rishi Sunak, we have a man so detached from the reality of most people’s lives that the prospect of five million UK citizens finding themselves in fuel poverty by the end of the year means literally nothing.

Careless Johnson and callous Sunak is a devastating double-act – with the inconsequential figure of Kwasi Kwarteng (UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) lurking around to pick up the pieces.

There will, of course, be some welcome commitments in the new UK Strategy, particularly on solar and offshore wind, with a hugely encouraging pipeline of new developments in both now underpinning the UK’s decarbonisation strategy. Onshore wind may well get more encouragement than in the past, but the aesthetic sensibilities of Tory Nimbies will still matter more to Johnson and Sunak than the opportunity to ramp up the single most cost-effective source of renewable electricity – coming in at an astonishing 20% of the cost of new nuclear! Yet again, those ‘hard-working families’ Johnson constantly refers to will pay the price for this appalling policy failure.

The UK establishment’s obsession with nuclear power just won’t die. Boris Johnson is heading off down a well-worn path. Margaret Thatcher promised to build a nuclear reactor every year for ten years at the start of her time in office. In 2006, Tony Blair vowed to bring back nuclear power ‘with a vengeance’. David Cameron’s Government identified opportunities for a massive expansion of nuclear.

However, apart from Sizewell B (which came online in 1995) and EDF’s grotesquely expensive monster emerging at Hinkley Point C, there’s nothing to show for all that overblown nuclear enthusiasm. The industry blames this 40-year failure on everyone else – including a generation of anti-nuclear campaigners. In truth, the blame lies entirely with the industry itself, mendaciously promoting outdated, dangerous, increasingly expensive technologies.

Johnson’s big nuclear bets will almost certainly include big reactors at both Sizewell C and Wylfa, and as many as possible of the so-called ‘small reactors’ being pushed by Rolls-Royce. Regardless of the hype, the economic reality of all of these bets is dire:

Sizewell C – with the Chinese out of the picture, the Government will be looking to its new Regulated Asset Base funding model (with consumers having to pay up front) to persuade private investors to get on board. Backed (so far) by the promise of £1.75bn of taxpayers’ money.

Wylfa – so much effort has gone into trying to get a new reactor at Wylfa over the line over the last ten years! All to no avail – primarily for economic reasons. Any renewed ‘firm commitment’ for Wylfa will mean as little as all previous commitments.

Rolls-Royce’s Small Modular Reactors – apparently, Johnson is particularly excited by this prospect, even though they’re not even remotely small (at 470MW, they’re actually as big as the first generation of Magnox reactors here in the UK!), and no-one has ever done modular construction (offsite in factory settings) before now.

And none of these ‘exciting prospects’ will give Johnson (let alone hard-pressed UK consumers) one single electron in terms of helping to meet the Government’s target to have carbon-free electricity by 2035.

Continue reading →

May 2, 2022 Posted by | ENERGY, Sweden | Leave a comment

Germany backs a plan to put sanctions on the supply from Russia, of uranium, the fuel for Europe’s so called ”independent self-sufficient, sovereign” nuclear energy.

Russia faces threat of sanctions on nuclear power industry as Germany backs uranium ban https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-nuclear-power-uranium-plants-europe-imports-germany-sanctions-ukraine-war/

Move would hit the supply of uranium to the EU’s Russian-built reactors, as well as new nuclear projects., BY BARBARA MOENS, ZIA WEISE, AMERICA HERNANDEZ AND LEONIE KIJEWSKI. April 29, 2022    Germany has thrown its weight behind demands to sanction uranium imports from Russia and other parts of Vladimir Putin’s civil nuclear industry in retaliation for his invasion of Ukraine, five EU diplomats told POLITICO.

Such a move could hit the supply of uranium that fuels the bloc’s Russian-built power reactors, as well as new nuclear projects managed by Russia’s Rosatom Western Europe subsidiary, based in Paris.

Four of the diplomats said sanctioning Russia’s nuclear industry was discussed in a meeting with EU ambassadors and the Commission earlier this week, with Poland and the Baltic countries leading the calls to act.

“Germany’s ambassador on Wednesday announced Berlin’s new position, saying they are not only OK with oil sanctions, but they actively support an oil phaseout, rather than just a price cap, and a ban on Russian uranium,” one EU diplomat said.

The fact that Germany, the EU’s economic powerhouse, is now on board makes the move significantly more likely. A wide range of MEPs have also asked for nuclear to be included in EU sanctions.

“It is important for the Germans, Austrians and others that the EU reduces its energy dependency on Russia across the board. This includes banning imports of Russian nuclear fuels as well. For them it is a bit of a no-brainer,” an EU diplomat said.

The European Commission is working on proposals for a sixth package of sanctions against Russia, including potentially measures targeting oil. Details are expected to be discussed with EU countries in the coming days as European governments seek to intensify pressure on Putin by cutting off the revenues from energy exports that finance his invasion of Ukraine.

It is not yet clear how soon sanctions on nuclear imports to the EU could be imposed.

But any move against Russia’s nuclear industry would not be pain free for Europeans. The EU imports almost all of its uranium from outside the bloc. About 20 percent comes from Russia, making it the second-biggest supplier to the EU after Niger.  

May 2, 2022 Posted by | Greece, politics international | Leave a comment

Where will Connecticut’s nuclear waste go?

  Connecticut has been living more than half a century with what was supposed to have been temporary spent fuel storage.

On any day since the mid 1950s, there might be multiple reactors in or around the Thames River, welded into the nuclear powered submarines stationed at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in Groton

The Navy won’t discuss how it disposes of its spent nuclear waste.

It’s in question as the state pushes toward a green future, By Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant, May 01, 2022, The federal government is jump-starting its long-stalled search for a place to store the tons of spent nuclear fuel piling up in Connecticut and other states.

 …… The U.S. Department of Energy is reviewing responses to a request for information it issued to nuclear industry stakeholders late last year as a first step in another attempt to resolve one of the thorniest challenges of the nuclear age: how and where to store the highly-radioactive, spent uranium that is the waste product of nuclear energy production.

The state legislature this session approved a bill requiring all electric power consumed in Connecticut to be produced from carbon free sources by 2040. Another bill, written with smaller, better reactors in mind, is pending. It would lift a state moratorium on new nuclear power production — a moratorium enacted decades ago over the same concerns about the state’s spent fuel stockpiles — but limit new production to the Millstone nuclear complex in Waterford, where Dominion Energy has what was intended to be a temporary nuclear waste storage facility.

The country’s inability to figure out what to do with waste stockpiles has become an impediment for nuclear-generating states like Connecticut…… That has power industry and private capital looking toward the development of a new generation of smaller [really?] safer, more efficient [really?] nuclear reactors — reactors that will continue to produce waste that needs to be disposed of someplace safe.

……………………….. “Disposal is absolutely an issue,”  State Sen. Norm Needleman   said. “That is why this is limited to a site that is a going plant today where they already are dealing with that problem. I would not at this moment support any expansion until the Department of Energy finds someplace. If you are going to build nuclear power plants and you are going to be siting 200 piles of nuclear waste, it is better to have it buried 2,000 feet below ground someplace, rather than having it spread all over.”

………………………   Connecticut has been living more than half a century with what was supposed to have been temporary spent fuel storage.

On any day since the mid 1950s, there might be multiple reactors in or around the Thames River, welded into the nuclear powered submarines stationed at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in Groton, or just down river at the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics where the ships are built. For years the Navy operated an experimental reactor in Windsor.

Beginning in the late 1960s, four commercial reactors produced power in Connecticut — one at the Connecticut Yankee plant on Haddam Neck, a peninsula stretching into the lower Connecticut River, and three on Millstone Point at the east end of Long Island Sound.

Two of the three Millstone reactors remain operational. Connecticut Yankee has been closed and decommissioned.

The Navy won’t discuss how it disposes of its spent nuclear waste. Because the federal government has not been able to find a politically acceptable commercial disposal solution, every bit of radioactive uranium expended in the production of commercial power in Connecticut remains under guard in what are designed as impregnable — but temporary — storage containers at the Millstone and Connecticut Yankee sites……………………………………

as much as 90,000 metric tons of spent fuel continues to pile up and remain stranded at what were supposed to be temporary sites around the country.

On Haddam Neck, there are 43 enormous concrete and steel storage casks containing radioactive material on the site of the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee plant. At the Millstone site in Waterford, waste is divided between a storage pool and 47 storage modules. Plant operator Dominion Energy says it has the capacity to store a total of 135 modules.

The storage costs, which involve protecting the spent fuel from hazards running from terrorist attacks to natural disasters, is enormous. The cost at Connecticut Yankee is about $10 million a year — at a plant that shut down in 1996 because it was no longer cost effective after 28 years of operation.

The federal government and, ultimately, taxpayers are picking up the cost. The law that was to make Yucca Mountain a national repository carried a provision obligating the Department of Energy to remove and store spent fuel from commercial reactors beginning in 1998. Without a repository, the department cannot meet its obligation. Plant operators sued, and the government has been held responsible for incurred storage costs.

There are intangible costs to temporary storage, too…………………………….  

May 2, 2022 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

The USA has not been able to confirm the allegations that Russia used chemical weapons in Ukraine

US comments on chemical attack accusations against Russia, RT, Fri, 29 Apr 2022,

Washington has been “very much focused” on the matter but is unable to verify reports, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

The United States has not been able to verify reports of the alleged use of chemical weapons by Russian forces in Ukraine but is “very, very much focused” on the matter, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday.

Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger asked Blinken to provide an update on the government’s recent claims that chemical weapons may have been used by Russia. Noting that it might be more appropriate to discuss this issue “in a different setting,” Blinken underlined that the US government is looking at the matter “very, very carefully.”

“I don’t believe that we’ve been able to verify that use, but I want to come back to you,” he told Kinzinger.

He added that there are different kinds of chemical agents that could have been used, “including riot-control agents that would be prohibited.”

“But in terms of the use of chemical weapons, I think what I can say here is that we have not yet verified the use but it is something we are very, very much focused on,” Blinken stressed.

Two weeks ago, Blinken said the government “had credible information” that Russian forces may use “a variety of riot-control agents, including tear gas mixed with chemical agents” in “the aggressive campaign to take Mariupol.”

On the same day, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the US government was concerned that “Russia may seek to resort to chemical weapons.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington called Price’s statements “provocative” and called on the US authorities to intensify the process of chemical demilitarization of their own country instead of “spreading disinformation.”

According to a NBC report, released in early April, US intelligence officials have deliberately leaked some “low-confidence” information about the Ukraine conflict in order to win an “info war” against the Kremlin and discourage Russia from actually using chemical weapons. Thus, when the American media cited US “intelligence” to warn that Russia was preparing to carry out a chemical attack in Ukraine, and when President Joe Biden repeated these warnings, they were participating in a disinformation campaign, the NBC report revealed.

Meanwhile, Moscow has repeatedly warned of possible chemical attacks by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU). In mid-March, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russia knew “for certain” that the SBU was preparing “a provocation using poisonous substances against civilians” with the support of Western countries.

“The purpose of the provocation is to accuse Russia of using chemical weapons against the population of Ukraine,” Konashenkov claimed.

He also emphasized that Russia, “unlike the United States,” has met its international obligations and completely destroyed all stockpiles of chemical weapons.

Moscow sent its troops to Ukraine in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join NATO. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

. https://www.sott.net/article/467307-US-comments-on-chemical-attack-accusations-against-Russia

May 2, 2022 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘A downpayment on WWIII’: Peace advocates blast Biden’s ask for more Ukraine aid


Brett Wilkins. Common Dreams. Thu, 28 Apr 2022 Peace advocates reacted to Thursday’s request by U.S. President Joe Biden for $33 billion in additional aid to Ukraine by warning against what they called a dangerous escalation and by accusing the administration of misplaced priorities.

Biden is asking Congress for additional funding for war-ravaged Ukraine, including more than $20 billion in “security and military assistance,” $8.5 billion in economic aid, and $3 billion in “humanitarian assistance.”

Biden claimed:

“It’s not cheap. But caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we allow it to happen. We either back the Ukrainian people as they defend their country, or we stand by as the Russians continue their atrocities and aggression in Ukraine every day.”

The president’s appeal for additional funds comes on top of the $4.6 billion in security assistance the U.S. has given Ukraine since January 2021, including $3.7 billion since Russian forces invaded the country in February.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group CodePink, called Biden’s request

“a down payment on World War III. Biden’s call for an enormous $33 billion for Ukraine is over half the entire budget for the State Department and USAID. We need diplomacy, not billions more in weapons!”…………………………………….https://www.sott.net/article/467323-A-downpayment-on-WWIII-Peace-advocates-blast-Bidens-ask-for-more-Ukraine-aid

May 2, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international | Leave a comment

‘Balancing on the brink’: Senior Russian diplomat warns Western powers of nuclear threat

The New Daily May 22,   Ukraine has shelled and killed its own civilians, Russia says, after some non-combatants who had taken shelter in Mariupol’s besieged steel plant finally made their way to safety.

The claim comes as a senior Russian diplomat strongly hinted that the Kremlin could authorise the use of nuclear weapons against nuclear-armed Western nations supporting the embattled Kyiv government.

Moscow has turned its focus to Ukraine’s south and east after failing to capture the capital Kyiv in a nine-week assault that has flattened cities, killed thousands of civilians and forced more than five million people to flee abroad.

Its forces have captured the town of Kherson, giving them a foothold just 100 kilometres north of Russian-annexed Crimea, and have mostly occupied Mariupol, the strategic eastern port city on the Azov Sea.

Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukraine’s forces of shelling a school, kindergarten and cemetery in the villages of Kyselivka and Shyroka Balka in the Kherson region, the Russian RIA news agency said on Sunday.

The Russian foreign ministry’s head of nuclear non-proliferation says nuclear-armed Western powers are facing ‘severe consequences’ in a veiled threat of an arms escalation.

Vladimir Yermakov told the Russian Tass news agency late Saturday that nuclear war should never be unleashed, and that Russia is clearly following understandings between nuclear powers to prevent it.

Mr Yermakov cited an international agreement pledging to seek to avoid nuclear war, saying that the risks of such conflict “must be minimised, in particular, by preventing any armed conflict between nuclear powers”.

But he said the Western nuclear “troika” [of United States, Britain and France] were “slipping into other positions”, as was Nato in “positioning itself as a nuclear alliance”.

“Such ‘balancing on the brink’ is fraught with the most serious consequences,” he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last week warned the West not to underestimate the risks of nuclear conflict.

Senior US defence officials maintains the US does not believe there is a threat of Russia using nuclear weapons.

The ominous warning came as Russia accused Ukraine of attacking the the border region of Kursk, while the Ukrainian military says a Russian strike damaged the Odessa airport runway.

A Russian missile strike at the airport in the southwestern port of Odessa – a city that has so far been relatively unscathed in the war – has damaged the runway and it can no longer be used, the Ukrainian military said early Sunday.

Russia has sporadically targeted Odessa, a Black Sea port, and a week ago Ukraine said at least eight people were killed in a strike on the city.

As a result of a missile attack in the Odessa region, the runway at Odessa airport was damaged. Its further use is impossible,” the Ukrainian military said.

There was no immediate word on the strike from the Russian military.
Russian forces also pounded Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on Saturday…….

Russia hopes to take full control of the eastern Donbas region made up of Luhansk and Donetsk, parts of which were already controlled by Russian-backed separatists before the invasion.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a daily update that the Russian forces were trying to capture the areas of Lyman in Donetsk and Sievierodonetsk and Popasna in Luhansk, adding they are “not succeeding – the fighting continues”.

The war since February 24 has turned cities to rubble, killed thousands and forced five million Ukrainians to flee abroad.

While there have been efforts since the start of the war to hold peace talks, the two sides are far apart – which was illustrated by conflicting comments on the efforts by senior Russian and Ukrainian officials on Saturday.

Mr Lavrov, in remarks published on the Russian foreign ministry’s website, said lifting foreign sanctions on Russia was part of the talks but senior Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak denied this was the case.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted since the Russian invasion that sanctions needed to be strengthened and could not be part of negotiations……………  https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/europe-news/2022/05/01/russian-warns-west-nuclear/

May 2, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Fear in Europe, of nuclear war causes soaring demand for nuclear bunkers

Demand for Nuclear Bunkers Soars as Russia-Ukraine War Fuels Fear in Europe.

NewsWeek, BY NATALIE COLAROSSI  4/30/22 Companies across Europe are reporting a sharp rise in demand for bomb shelters and bunkers as citizens fear Russia may soon use nuclear weapons in the ongoing war with Ukraine.

Residents in Germany, Switzerland, France and the U.K. have increasingly been seeking information about building and buying protective shelters amid fears that the war could spread further into Europe, several companies recently told The Telegraph. Russia has repeatedly warned the West not to interfere in its invasion of Ukraine, and has alluded to the possibility of using nuclear weapons if tensions further escalate.

Following two months of bloody fighting in Ukraine, Europeans—and even some Americans—are fearful that Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon target other nations with deadly weapons……………………………..    https://www.newsweek.com/demand-nuclear-bunkers-soars-russia-ukraine-war-fuels-fear-europe-1702467

May 2, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, EUROPE | Leave a comment

Europe to Make Fresh Push to Revive Iran Nuclear Deal

Talks have hit a deadlock over Iran’s demand that Washington lift terror designation on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards,  By Laurence Norman, May. 1, 2022 European officials are preparing to make a fresh push to salvage a nuclear deal with Iran, offering to send a top European Union negotiator to Tehran in an effort to break a stalemate in talks, according to Western diplomats.

Enrique Mora, the European Union coordinator of the negotiations, has told Iranian counterparts he is ready to return to Tehran to open a pathway through the deadlock, the people said. So far, Iran hasn’t responded with an invitation, the people added……. (subscribers only) https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-to-make-fresh-push-to-revive-iran-nuclear-deal-by-offering-to-send-top-negotiator-back-to-tehran-11651419295

May 2, 2022 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida says nuclear power should be reconsidered as energy costs soar

Of 33 operable reactors overseen by the Nuclear Regulation Authority only 10 have restarted under rules imposed since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Apr 27, 2022

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the country must consider using more nuclear power, as the import-dependent nation grapples with rising fuel prices and a weak yen.

Regulations in place since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 need to be made more efficient to help the process of restarting Japan’s idled reactors, he said, adding new impetus to calls for the energy source to take a bigger role. Only about a third of operable reactors have resumed.

“We must think about nuclear power given rising electricity and gas prices,” Kishida said in a TV Tokyo interview late Tuesday evening. “We won’t compromise on safety, and will get the understanding of the people before proceeding.”

Kishida’s remarks come as Japan contends with an energy crisis that’s sent prices of liquefied natural gas and coal to record highs. The nation imports almost all of its energy needs, and costlier fuel has slashed profits of utility companies and stoked inflationary fears among consumers who are facing higher power bills. A beleaguered yen, which has weakened against the dollar to touch the lowest level in two decades, is adding to the burden for fuel importers.

Lawmakers have been calling for nuclear restarts to accelerate, while public support is growing according to a March survey.

Still, a lengthy restart inspection process, combined with frequent lawsuits filed by nuclear opponents, have hampered efforts to get idled reactors back online. Of 33 operable reactors overseen by the Nuclear Regulation Authority only 10 have restarted under rules imposed since the Fukushima disaster.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/04/27/national/kishida-nuclear-energy/

May 1, 2022 Posted by | Japan | , | Leave a comment

Mitsubishi Electric Continues Transformer Performance Fraud through March; Nuclear Plant to Which Transformers Are Shipped Undisclosed.

Some of the transformer products with the problem.
Part of the transformer product with the problem

April 22, 2022
Another problem has come to light at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, which has been the target of a series of fraudulent product inspections and quality issues. This time, the company has been falsifying test data for transformers used in nuclear power plants and thermal power plants for 40 years. Although the top management resigned and emphasized the prevention of recurrence, the fraud continued until March. The time frame for the completion of the investigation is unclear, and the restoration of trust in the company is far from certain.

　The transformers in question are large and are used in nuclear power plants, thermal power stations, railroad substations, and other facilities. Some of the transformers were falsely labeled with temperatures that exceeded specifications during pre-shipment tests. Although this is an irregularity in important equipment related to the supply of electric power, no press conference has been held, and the supplier has not been disclosed. The company claims that “no immediate malfunctions or accidents will occur” with regard to the safety of its products, but this is difficult to verify from the outside. Some of the transformers are large and expensive, and replacing them could be time-consuming and costly.

　In response to the revelation of irregularities at its Nagasaki Works last June, Mitsubishi Electric set up an investigative committee consisting of outside lawyers in July of last year. Since then, irregularities have been uncovered every month.

　Management was held accountable, and then-President Takeshi Sugiyama resigned in July, and then-Chairman Masaki Kenzan resigned in October. The new president, Kei Urushima, had stated that he would take thorough measures to prevent recurrence and hasten reform of the organizational climate.

　However, the Investigation Committee pointed out that the current…
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASQ4P7KG4Q4PULFA03D.html?fbclid=IwAR33KXcEK15wfqT4TOcFX-E4c1kpRBXT1uGEjLu2-mpG9s8AeveUAso0XvY

May 1, 2022 Posted by | Japan | , | Leave a comment

This Is How the United States Could Help Bring Peace to Ukraine

Decisions by the U.S. will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace in Ukraine, or only a much longer and bloodier war.
https://7news.com.au/business/call-to-dump-nuclear-go-hydrogen-for-subs-c-6580633?fbclid=IwAR2rf7smDYvCgEnSKGxjYp0rNFExJe0Vv8zd7tt8S9aN1Jkdk3_t9WW0rqY

MEDEA BENJAMIN,  NICOLAS J.S. DAVIES, April 28, 2022

On April 21st, President Biden announced new shipments of weapons to Ukraine, at a cost of $800 million to U.S. taxpayers. On April 25th, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced over $300 million more military aid. The United States has now spent $3.7 billion on weapons for Ukraine since the Russian invasion, bringing total U.S. military aid to Ukraine since 2014 to about $6.4 billion.

The top priority of Russian airstrikes in Ukraine has been to destroy as many of these weapons as possible before they reach the front lines of the war, so it is not clear how militarily effective these massive arms shipments really are. The other leg of U.S. “support” for Ukraine is its economic and financial sanctions against Russia, whose effectiveness is also highly uncertain.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is visiting Moscow and Kyiv to try to kick start negotiations for a ceasefire and a peace agreement. Since hopes for earlier peace negotiations in Belarus and Turkey have been washed away in a tide of military escalation, hostile rhetoric and politicized war crimes accusations, Secretary General Guterres’ mission may now be the best hope for peace in Ukraine. 

This pattern of early hopes for a diplomatic resolution that are quickly dashed by a war psychosis is not unusual. Data on how wars end from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) make it clear that the first month of a war offers the best chance for a negotiated peace agreement. That window has now passed for Ukraine.

An analysis of the UCDP data by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that 44% of wars that end within a month end in a ceasefire and peace agreement rather than the decisive defeat of either side, while that decreases to 24% in wars that last between a month and a year. Once wars rage on into a second year, they become even more intractable and usually last more than ten year.

CSIS fellow Benjamin Jensen, who analyzed the UCDP data, concluded, “The time for diplomacy is now. The longer a war lasts absent concessions by both parties, the more likely it is to escalate into a protracted conflict… In addition to punishment, Russian officials need a viable diplomatic off-ramp that addresses the concerns of all parties.”

To be successful, diplomacy leading to a peace agreement must meet five basic conditions:

First, all sides must gain benefits from the peace agreement that outweigh what they think they can gain by war.

U.S. and allied officials are waging an information war to promote the idea that Russia is losing the war and that Ukraine can militarily defeat Russia, even as some officials admit that that could take several years.     

In reality, neither side will benefit from a protracted war that lasts for many months or years. The lives of millions of Ukrainians will be lost and ruined, while Russia will be mired in the kind of military quagmire that both the U.S.S.R. and the United States already experienced in Afghanistan, and that most recent U.S. wars have turned into.

In Ukraine, the basic outlines of a peace agreement already exist. They are: withdrawal of Russian forces; Ukrainian neutrality between NATO and Russia; self-determination for all Ukrainians (including in Crimea and Donbas); and a regional security agreement that protects everyone and prevents new wars.

Both sides are essentially fighting to strengthen their hand in an eventual agreement along those lines. So how many people must die before the details can be worked out across a negotiating table instead of over the rubble of Ukrainian towns and cities?

Second, mediators must be impartial and trusted by both sides.

The United States has monopolized the role of mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis for decades, even as it openly backs and arms one side and abuses its UN veto to prevent international action. This has been a transparent model for endless war. 

Turkey has so far acted as the principal mediator between Russia and Ukraine, but it is a NATO member that has supplied drones, weapons and military training to Ukraine. Both sides have accepted Turkey’s mediation, but can Turkey really be an honest broker?

The UN could play a legitimate role, as it is doing in Yemen, where the two sides are finally observing a two-month ceasefire. But even with the UN’s best efforts, it has taken years to negotiate this fragile pause in the war.

Third, the agreement must address the main concerns of all parties to the war.

In 2014, the U.S.-backed coup and the massacre of anti-coup protesters in Odessa led to declarations of independence by the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The first Minsk Protocol agreement in September 2014 failed to end the ensuing civil war in Eastern Ukraine. A critical difference in the Minsk II agreement in February 2015 was that DPR and LPR representatives were included in the negotiations, and it succeeded in ending the worst fighting and preventing a major new outbreak of war for 7 years.

There is another party that was largely absent from the negotiations in Belarus and Turkey, people who make up half the population of Russia and Ukraine: the women of both countries. While some of them are fighting, many more can speak as victims, civilian casualties, and refugees from a war unleashed mainly by men. The voices of women at the table would be a constant reminder of the human costs of war and the lives of women and children that are at stake.   

Even when one side militarily wins a war, the grievances of the losers and unresolved political and strategic issues often sow the seeds of new outbreaks of war in the future. As Benjamin Jensen of CSIS suggested, the desires of U.S. and Western politicians to punish and gain strategic advantage over Russia must not be allowed to prevent a comprehensive resolution that addresses the concerns of all sides and ensures a lasting peace.    

Fourth, there must be a step-by-step roadmap to a stable and lasting peace that all sides are committed to.

The Minsk II agreement led to a fragile ceasefire and established a roadmap to a political solution. But the Ukrainian government and parliament, under Presidents Poroshenko and then Zelensky, failed to take the next steps that Poroshenko agreed to in Minsk in 2015: to pass laws and constitutional changes to permit independent, internationally-supervised elections in the DPR and LPR, and to grant them autonomy within a federalized Ukrainian state.

Now that these failures have led to Russian recognition of the DPR and LPR’s independence, a new peace agreement must revisit and resolve their status, and that of Crimea, in ways that all sides will be committed to, whether that is through the autonomy promised in Minsk II or formal, recognized independence from Ukraine.

A sticking point in the peace negotiations in Turkey was Ukraine’s need for solid security guarantees to ensure that Russia won’t invade it again. The UN Charter formally protects all countries from international aggression, but it has repeatedly failed to do so when the aggressor, usually the United States, wields a Security Council veto. So how can a neutral Ukraine be reassured that it will be safe from attack in the future? And how can all parties be sure that the others will stick to the agreement this time?

Fifth, outside powers must not undermine the negotiation or implementation of a peace agreement.

Although the United States and its NATO allies are not active warring parties in Ukraine, their role in provoking this crisis through NATO expansion and the 2014 coup, then supporting Kyiv’s abandonment of the Minsk II agreement and flooding Ukraine with weapons, make them an “elephant in the room” that will cast a long shadow over the negotiating table, wherever that is.

n April 2012, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan drew up a six-point plan for a UN-monitored ceasefire and political transition in Syria. But at the very moment that the Annan plan took effect and UN ceasefire monitors were in place, the United States, NATO, and their Arab monarchist allies held three “Friends of Syria” conferences, where they pledged virtually unlimited financial and military aid to the Al Qaeda-linked rebels they were backing to overthrow the Syrian government. This encouraged the rebels to ignore the ceasefire, and led to another decade of war for the people of Syria.

The fragile nature of peace negotiations over Ukraine makes success highly vulnerable to such powerful external influences. The United States backed Ukraine in a confrontational approach to the civil war in Donbas instead of supporting the terms of the Minsk II agreement, and this has led to war with Russia. Now Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavosoglu, has told CNN Turk that unnamed NATO members “want the war to continue,” in order to keep weakening Russia.

Conclusion 

How the United States and its NATO allies act now and in the coming months will be crucial in determining whether Ukraine is destroyed by years of war, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen—or whether this war ends quickly through a diplomatic process that brings peace, security, and stability to the people of Russia, Ukraine, and their neighbors.

If the United States wants to help restore peace in Ukraine, it must diplomatically support peace negotiations and make it clear to its ally, Ukraine, that it will support any concessions that Ukrainian negotiators believe are necessary to clinch a peace agreement with Russia.

Whatever mediator Russia and Ukraine agree to work with to try to resolve this crisis, the United States must give the diplomatic process its full, unreserved support, both in public and behind closed doors. It must also ensure that its own actions do not undermine the peace process in Ukraine as they did the 2012 Annan plan in Syria.

One of the most critical steps that U.S. and NATO leaders can take to provide an incentive for Russia to agree to a negotiated peace is to commit to lifting their sanctions if and when Russia complies with a withdrawal agreement. Without such a commitment, the sanctions will quickly lose any moral or practical value as leverage over Russia and will be only an arbitrary form of collective punishment against its people, and against poor people everywhere who can no longer afford food to feed their families. As the de facto leader of the NATO military alliance, the U.S. position on this question will be crucial.

So policy decisions by the United States will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace in Ukraine, or only a much longer and bloodier war. The test for U.S. policymakers, and for Americans who care about the people of Ukraine, must be to ask which of these outcomes U.S. policy choices are likely to lead to.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Girl’s Cancer Leads Mom to ‘Overwhelming’ Discovery of More Than 50 Sick Kids Near Closed Nuclear Lab

https://people.com/health/calif-girls-cancer-leads-mom-to-overwhelming-discovery-more-than-50-kids-near-closed-lab-were-also-sick/ By Johnny Dodd, 29 Apr 22,

“Pediatric cancer is rare — you’re not supposed to have neighbors whose children also have it,” says Melissa Bumstead, who “knew I had to do something”  

Melissa Bumstead made a terrifying discovery in 2014 as her four-year-old daughter Grace lay in a hospital bed battling a rare form of leukemia. While keeping vigil at the Los Angeles medical center where Grace was receiving treatment, Bumstead began meeting the parents of more than 50 children with equally rare cancers and was horrified to learn that they all lived near one another.

“I just kept meeting people who lived down the corner or around the block or behind the high school,” she tells PEOPLE during an interview in this week’s issue. “And that’s when the panic started to set in.”

Even more alarming, Bumstead soon learned that all their homes were located in a circle around a 2,850-acre former top-secret rocket engine and nuclear energy test site—built in 1947—that had long been contaminated with radioactive waste and toxic chemicals.

And for the past seven years the 41-year-old mother of two, who lives 3.7 miles west of the facility, has helped lead the fight to finally get the Santa Susana Field Laboratory property — run chiefly by the Department of Energy, Boeing and NASA before its closure in 2006 — cleaned up.

“This is a hugely contaminated site that contains a who’s-who of chemicals toxic to human health,” says Dr. Robert Dodge, a Ventura, Calif., family doctor and board member of the group Physicians for Social Responsibility. “They can cause cancers, leukemias, along with developmental, genetic, neurologic and immune system disorders.”

While caring for her daughter, whose acute lymphoblastic leukemia has been in remission since a bone marrow transplant five years ago, Bumstead and her group — Parents Against the Santa Susana Field Lab — has pressured California state officials to enforce a 2007 cleanup agreement, scheduled to have been completed in 2017, that they say has remained stalled. That agreement, among other things, called for the removal of contaminated topsoil that residents allege gets blown from the site into surrounding communities by high winds or washed offsite during rains.

Since 2015 Bumstead has immersed herself in scientific studies on the site, testifying at countless public meetings, launching a Facebook page (now with nearly 5,000 members) and creating a change.org petition on the issue (that has attracted over 750,000 signatures).

“It was frightening,” says Bumstead, who is featured in the 2021 documentary In The Dark of the Valley, “to read studies about how adults who lived within two miles from the lab had a 60 percent higher cancer rate than those living more than five miles away or that over 1,500 former workers at the site received federal compensation after being diagnosed with cancer.”

Even more frightening for Bumstead was learning that the lab was the location of one of the nation’s largest — and least known — nuclear accidents that occurred 1959 when one of the facility’s ten sodium nuclear reactors experienced a partial meltdown, releasing enormous amounts of radiation into the surrounding environment.   

“It’s exhausting, depressing and often overwhelming,” says Bumstead of her crusade to get the contaminated site cleaned up. “But the cancer was all around us. And I realized that kids are just going to keep getting sick. So I need to do something to make the situation better.”         

April 30, 2022 Posted by | health, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

USA and NATO pursuing a ”winnable war” to the ultimate end – World War 3

Ukraine is a pawn in this conflict, and its population is cannon fodder.

The Guns of April, WSWS Editorial Board 27 April 2022

The United States and the NATO powers of Europe have set into motion a chain of events that is leading to World War III. 

In her famed work on the outbreak of World War I, The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman detailed how miscalculations, the ubiquitous belief in a brief and winnable conflict, and irreversible tactical maneuvers—the “ifs, errors, and commitments”—accumulated as the imperialist powers dragged the workers of Europe into the snarl of the trenches and the slaughter of the Great War.

A similar dynamic is unfolding in the US-NATO conflict with Russia. The US-supplied howitzers and massive deployment of weapons into Ukraine are sounding the Guns of April. 

In mid-March, US President Joe Biden repeatedly stated that he would not allow direct conflict between the United States and Russia, because “that would mean World War III.” A month later, this is precisely what the Biden administration is doing.

On Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin presided over a meeting of the representatives of forty nations in a council of war assembled by Washington on its Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the headquarters for the US Air Force in Europe and the NATO Air Command. 

Austin, fresh from a visit to war-torn Kiev, confirmed that the war in Ukraine is a war between US and NATO, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other. He announced that Washington would be assembling every month going forward a comparable international gathering of high-ranking military figures—which he termed the Ukrainian Contact Group—to “focus on winning” the conflict with Russia.

The aims of the war are now clear. The bloodshed in Ukraine was not provoked to defend its technical right to join NATO, but rather was prepared, instigated and massively escalated in order to destroy Russia as a significant military force and to overthrow its government. Ukraine is a pawn in this conflict, and its population is cannon fodder.

The Ramstein war council was organized to plot the next stage in this scheme. Prior to and in the aftermath of the meeting, the US and other NATO powers announced the deployment of advanced weaponry to Ukraine, including anti-tank missiles, tanks and tactical drones. 

The Contact Group, Austin declared, must “move at the speed of war.” In accordance with this direction, Germany announced Tuesday that it would deliver an unspecified number of Flakpanzer Gepard “anti-aircraft cannon tanks,” while Canada reported that it would be sending M777 howitzers, anti-tank munitions and armored vehicles. “The distinction limiting escalatory weapons,” which existed in the first weeks of the war, Air Force Magazine noted, “appears to have melted away.”

The pretense that the US and NATO are not at war with Russia has also “melted away.” Former US Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges stated on Sunday that the US aim in the conflict was “breaking the back” of Russia. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded, accusing the United States of pressuring the Ukrainian government to sabotage peace talks and of conducting a proxy war in Ukraine. He warned that there was a “serious, real” danger of nuclear war. Austin dismissed Lavrov’s warning as “dangerous and unhelpful.” 

What nonsense! Washington assembles a war camp and states that it aims to “break the back” of Russia. When Russia responds that such language and goals raise the danger of nuclear war, Washington declares this to be … unhelpful. 

The United States has made clear that it aims to crush Russia and topple its government. Faced with such an existential threat, the use of nuclear weapons becomes a tactic the Russian ruling class will weigh. Washington is determined to win the war, the Putin government is determined to prevent that from happening. There is no way out for either side but escalation. Lavrov is in fact correct: nuclear war is a real and serious danger.

The real driving forces behind the war have emerged in the course of the conflict. The US and NATO powers goaded Russia into invading Ukraine, refusing to negotiate over Russia’s demand that Ukraine not be made a member of NATO. Russia termed its invasion a special operation, signaling that it intended a contained, tactical maneuver to stabilize its position in the region.

The US, however, would not allow such a rearrangement and sought either to sink Russia in the quagmire of a “grinding occupation,” or to organize its defeat. To this end, Washington worked to undermine all efforts at a negotiated settlement. The rhetoric of Washington justifying this policy has deepened the conflict. Biden accused Putin of war crimes, then of genocide, and called for regime change in Moscow. Each new formulation had an irreversible, escalatory character, a click in the ratchet of war.  

Despite the massive and mounting infusion of military equipment into Ukraine—Washington has shipped more than $3.7 billion worth of weaponry since the beginning of the war—the regime in Kiev has not been able to orchestrate the decisive defeat of Russia. The danger, seen from the standpoint of the US and NATO, is that Russia will be able to consolidate its control over Eastern Ukraine and the Black Sea coast. If the Ukrainian forces do not drive forward, then the advantage, at least from a military standpoint, shifts to Russia.

The development of the conflict, set in motion in the Oval Office and deliberated in the Kremlin, is increasingly in the hands of military men and it is reaching a point of no return. A decisive defeat of Russia in the conflict requires the ever more direct involvement of the NATO powers themselves, up to and including the deployment of troops.

With its arms shipments, sweeping declarations and councils of war, the United States has staked its entire credibility on the defeat of Russia in this conflict. “The stakes reach beyond Ukraine and even beyond Europe,” Austin declared on Tuesday. The fate of American hegemony, including the credibility of its threats against China, hangs in the balance. The reckless decisions made by Washington have thus become the major premise in the logic of further escalation. 

Washington drags behind it the major powers of Europe, as it assembles, with the hubris of empire, a war camp on the continent. Britain has been deeply complicit in every escalatory step, and Germany and France are taking up their assigned roles. Washington gathers the military conspirators on a US airbase in Germany, the country which once launched Operation Barbarossa, holds the Germans as virtual bystanders, and plots its war with Russia…………. more https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/04/27/pszn-a27.html

April 30, 2022 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

IAEA probing Ukraine report that a missile flew over a nuclear power plant.

 https://www.reuters.com/world/iaea-probing-ukraine-report-that-missile-flew-over-nuclear-power-plant-2022-04-28/ Reuters April 28  Reporting by David Ljunggren Editing by Chris Reese  – The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Thursday it was probing a Ukrainian report that a missile had flown directly over a nuclear power station, saying this would be “extremely serious” if true.

 IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said Kyiv had formally told it on Thursday the missile flew over the south Ukraine plant on April 16. The facility is near the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk, some 350 km (220 miles) south of Kyiv.

“Had such a missile gone astray, it could have had a severe impact on the physical integrity of the plant, potentially leading to a nuclear accident,” he said in a statement.

Grossi did not say who had fired the missile but Kyiv had earlier accused Moscow of sending rockets directly over nuclear plants.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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