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What You Should REALLY Know About Ukraine

“the United States is standing with missiles on our doorstep.” Putin asked, “How would the Americans react if missiles were placed at the border with Canada or Mexico?”

The US Wants to Expand NATO  In addition to integrating Ukraine into the US-dominated economic sphere, Western planners also want to integrate Ukraine militarily. For years, the US has sought the expansion of NATO, an explicitly anti-Russian military alliance. NATO was originally billed as a counterforce to the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, but after the demise of the Soviet Union, the US promised the new Russia that it would not expand NATO east of Germany. Despite this agreement, the US continued building out its military alliance,growing closer and closer to Russia’s borders and ignoring Russia’s objections.

The West Wants Investor-Friendly Policies in Ukraine   The backdrop to the 2014 coup and annexation cannot be understood without looking at the US strategy to open Ukrainian markets to foreign investors and give control of its economy to giant multinational corporations

The US Helped Overthrow Ukraine’s Elected President……. US Officials Were Caught Picking the New Government    …

Washington Used Nazis to Help Overthrow the Government   The Washington-backed opposition that toppled the government was fueled by far-right and openly Nazi elements like the Right Sector. One far-right group that grew out of the protests was the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary militia of neo-Nazi extremists.

What You Should Really Know About Ukraine   https://fair.org/home/what-you-should-really-know-about-ukraine/, BRYCE GREENE  28 Jan 22, As tensions began to rise over Ukraine, US media produced a stream of articles attempting to explain the situation with headlines like “Ukraine Explained” (New York Times, 12/8/21) and “What You Need to Know About Tensions Between Ukraine and Russia” (Washington Post, 11/26/21). Sidebars would have notes that tried to provide context for the current headlines. But to truly understand this crisis, you would need to know much more than what these articles offered.These “explainer” pieces are emblematic of Ukraine coverage in the rest of corporate media, which almost universally gave a pro-Western view of US/Russia relations and the history behind them. Media echoed the point of view of those who believe the US should have an active role in Ukrainian politics and enforce its perspective through military threats.

The official line goes something like this: Russia is challenging NATO and the “international rules-based order” by threatening to invade Ukraine, and the Biden administration needed to deter Russia by providing more security guarantees to the Zelensky government. The official account seizes on Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula as a starting point for US/Russian relations, and as evidence of Putin’s goals of rebuilding Russia’s long-lost empire.

Russia’s demand that NATO cease its expansion to Russia’s borders is viewed as such an obviously impossible demand that it can only be understood as a pretext to invade Ukraine. Therefore, the US should send weapons and troops to Ukraine, and guarantee its security with military threats to Russia (FAIR.org, 1/15/22).

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February 10, 2022 Posted by | history, media, politics international, Reference, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Comfortably numb — Beyond Nuclear International

When we will wake up to the real threat we face?

Comfortably numb — Beyond Nuclear International “Hello? (Hello? Hello? Hello?)
“Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone home?”

Those echoing opening lines of the Pink Floyd song, “Comfortably Numb” keep wafting through my psyche as I watch the US, Russia, and China, amass ever more sophisticated, deadly and downright evil nuclear weapons capabilities. What are they thinking?

Meanwhile, tensions continue to mount at the Ukraine-Russia border, as Putin moves more armaments and fleets around and the US flies its elite 82nd Airborne Division into standby mode in Poland, part of 3,000 US troops now deployed to the region. 

All of this has sent US nuclear hawks, sounding more and more like General ‘Buck’ Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove, chafing at the bit to justify the further escalation and acceleration of the so-called modernization of the entire US nuclear weapons complex.

Meanwhile, there is even speculation that maybe Ukraine should not have given up its nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War as the Soviet Union collapsed. The Russian seizure of Crimea and the seemingly endless conflict on Ukraine’s eastern border has led some to urge a Ukraine nuclear rearmament. 

A nuclear-armed Ukraine, goes the logic, would allow it to “deter” a Russian invasion or, at least, any possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia in a grab for Ukraine.

But this thinking further exposes the hollow argument for deterrence. Nuclear weapons in Ukraine would have only one outcome — they would make the prospect of nuclear weapons being used in any current conflict more likely. (Then, of course, there is the ever-present danger of Ukraine’s 15 operating nuclear reactors — addressed in a January 30, 2022 article on these pages.)

The prospect that even a conventional conflict could break out in Ukraine is already horrific enough. But even the remotest possibility that this could progress to the use of nuclear weapons by any party, is positively nightmarish. 

If you don’t value sleep, then Ira Helfand’s article in The Nation lays all of this out in chilling detail. It’s like reading the script to an apocalyptical dystopian horror movie (the kind that sadly seems to be all too popular these days).

Helfand’s article, however, is the exception to most of the coverage, which discusses the prospect of accidental or deliberate nuclear war over the Ukraine situation in a mind-bogglingly impassive way, “comfortably numb” to the very real, horrific, humanitarian consequences were this actually to happen.

It’s as if, as IPPNW’s Chuck Johnson said to me during a recent phone call, “it’s all perfectly normal”. 

But to most of us regular folk, calmly anticipating the possibility of a nuclear war isn’t normal. It’s the definition of insanity. And it’s exasperating. Hello? Can you hear us? We have a climate crisis bearing down on us. A global emergency of, yes, apocalyptic proportions. 

It goes without saying that, as a species, we need to stop directing all our energies towards our collective extinction, both through our failure to act adequately and on time on climate, and by unnecessarily rattling nuclear sabres.

It goes without saying, but it needs saying. Again and again and really loudly. By all of us. Just nod if you can hear me.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | media, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Environmental Working Group (EWG) urges Biden to reject ‘outrageous’ call for more nuclear power subsidies in clean energy agenda

“Nuclear power is truly an example of privatizing profits and socializing risks.”


EWG urges Biden to reject electric utility executives’ call for more nuclear power subsidies in clean energy agenda. https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2022/02/ewg-urges-biden-reject-electric-utility-executives-call-more  WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is meeting today with top executives from several investor-owned electric utilities who want Congress to approve vital clean energy tax credits as part of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. But they are also seeking new federal subsidies for existing nuclear power plants that the Environmental Working Group is urging the president to oppose.“Nuclear power is truly an example of privatizing profits and socializing risks.”

The Build Back Better plan is a broad infrastructure proposal and includes some important tax credits that the utilities support. They would help expand utility-scale solar projects and boost sales of electric vehicles, crucial steps in fighting the climate emergency.

But the call for wasting more federal tax dollars propping up uneconomic and dangerous nuclear power plants too is an outrageous request, noted EWG.

“Nuclear power is a relic of the electricity sector, and a dangerous and extremely expensive one that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “The federal government must stop throwing away money propping up the nuclear industry and instead make critical investments to expand safe, clean renewable energy.”

“President Biden and congressional leaders can and should unravel the federal government’s long history of pouring scarce resources into this failed industry and its legacy of radioactive waste and the enormous threat it poses to the public,” said Cook.

Nuclear power has never been financially viable and never will be, so new subsidies make no sense. It has the distinction of a permanent negative learning curve – costs always rise and never decline – despite 60 years of taxpayer-funded research and development, construction risks dumped onto ratepayers to lure private financing, a series of bailouts worth tens of billions to the industry, and billions wasted on upgrades to keep aging power plants running that could have been much more wisely spent replacing them. 

“It is time to systematically replace nuclear power with modern clean energy technology and to stop burdening ratepayers and taxpayers with this financial albatross,” said Cook. “Nuclear power is truly an example of privatizing profits and socializing risks.”

In its 2021“None of the Above” series calling out dirty and dangerous power sources that should quickly be replaced by clean, safe and renewable energy, such as solar and wind, EWG likened nuclear power to “nothing more than a public works project with no prospects for the future that has failed financially while generating huge amounts of radioactive waste, with no viable method of disposal, that will linger for thousands of years.”

The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action. Visit www.ewg.org for more information.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | environment, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Ahead of regulatory approval the US Dept of Energy wants Govt to grant $4 billion for Small Nuclear Reactors development

Bloomberg Business Week, 7 Feb 22,  –…………………………   Congress has ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to replace a rules framework that dates to the 1950s. The new guidelines aren’t expected until at least 2025………    To prove the safety of designs, for instance, the commission demands data from similar plants, but none of the smaller installations have been built in the U.S., so there’s no performance history.

………..   the U.S. Department of Energy has gotten ahead of the NRC. The department is asking Congress for as much as $4 billion over seven years for advanced reactor development.

Beneficiaries include TerraPower, a startup founded by Bill Gates that’s working on a project in Wyoming; X-energy, which is planning a high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor in Washington state; and Kairos Power, which aims to build a 35-megawatt salt-cooled test reactor in Tennessee and applied for a construction license last September.

……………  these plants face staunch opposition. Environmental groups say that small reactors—some have a capacity of only 1.5MW, about 0.1% the size of a traditional plant—still produce enough radioactive material to present a contamination risk. And building more plants, even small ones, will add to the pile of toxic waste that no one can figure out what do with. “To the extent that there will be efforts to weaken the regulatory envelope, we will aggressively push back,” says Geoff Fettus, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Globally, more than 70 small modular reactors, with a total capacity of about 12 gigawatts, have been proposed or are under development in at least five countries, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The only one that’s been built is a floating reactor in the Russian town of Pevek, on the Arctic Sea, where it’s used to power mining operations. Gregory Jaczko, who served as NRC chair from 2009 to 2012, says the lack of movement on such plants around the world suggests we would be wrong to count on them as a way out of the climate crisis. “They’re just not ready,” he says. “And by the time they could be ready, they’re not going to be useful.”

February 10, 2022 Posted by | politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

UK’s nuclear submarine graveyard- but one is to be recycled – perhaps for Australia?

The first vessel that’s going to be recycled from the so-called ‘submarine graveyard’ in Devonport has been named – but there’s no word yet on when it’ll actually happen. The last one was decommissioned in 1980 – but thirteen of them remain tied up there. HMS Valiant will be the first to be recycled – but no date’s been set for that yet.  Planet Radio 9th Feb 2022

Planet Radio 9th Feb 2022

https://planetradio.co.uk/greatest-hits/devon/news/nuclear-submarine-recycled-devonport/

February 10, 2022 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Proposed referendum ordinance to question the pros and cons of nuclear power plant restart: Mayor Kamisada submits opposing opinion

February 8, 2022

An extraordinary meeting of the city council of Matsue City was held today to discuss a draft referendum ordinance on the pros and cons of restarting the Unit 2 reactor of the Shimane Nuclear Power Plant.

A citizens’ group in Matsue City collected more than 11,000 signatures to request the enactment of a referendum ordinance on the pros and cons of restarting the Unit 2 reactor of the Shimane Nuclear Power Plant, and on the 31st of last month, they directly requested Mayor Kamisada to enact the ordinance.
On the 8th, an extraordinary meeting of the city council of Matsue City was held, and Mayor Kamisada submitted a draft ordinance with an opposing opinion, stating, “The most appropriate way to restart the nuclear power plant is not through a referendum, but through responsible discussions by the mayor and city council members, who have been entrusted by the citizens.
The extraordinary city council meeting of Matsue City will be held on March 9 to hear opinions from citizens’ groups, and on March 15, the last day of the meeting, the proposed ordinance will be voted on.
Yumiko Okazaki, co-chair of a citizens’ group that attended the council meeting, said, “I think that the lives and safety of citizens should be the top priority when restarting nuclear power plants. As the mayor of a municipality where a nuclear power plant is located, I would like him to make it a prerequisite to face the concerns and anxieties of the citizens.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/lnews/matsue/20220208/4030011494.html?fbclid=IwAR2eyipGnCls3dHbqJJn0sPcRXz_rui4yXrb-bNo7Rn7p3nz6_vC6aaG8hI

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Japan | , , | Leave a comment

In Ukraine, USA to finance American companies to sell nuclear technology there, and to other States


Where the Russians are coming, so is Westinghouse with its nuclear ambitions, ANYA LITVAK, Post Gazette, 7 Feb 22, Over the past few months, Joel Eaker, Westinghouse Electric Co.’s vice president for new nuclear power plant projects, has been shaking hands and posing for pictures all over Eastern Europe.

He was in Poland last month, where he plans to move in the spring. A week before that, he was in the Czech Republic to announce agreements signed with local companies in Cranberry-based Westinghouse’s bid to sell its AP1000 reactors in the region.

The nuclear renaissance never happened in the United States. But Mr. Eaker thinks Europe is headed in that direction.

The long game

The nuclear business is a long game with fits and starts.

For more than two decades, Westinghouse has been seemingly on the cusp of selling new nuclear reactors to various Eastern European countries ………….

All along, Westinghouse was pursuing a parallel strategy: making fuel that could be used in existing Russian-made reactors that are scattered across Europe.

…… Westinghouse  could provide an alternate supply of fuel, which effectively delinks those countries from Russia.”

After some attempts loading the fuel in Russian-made reactors at Temelin in the Czech Republic, it was Ukraine that allowed Westinghouse to test and refine its fuel assemblies in Russian reactors.

Today, the U.S. company’s fuel is loaded into nearly half of Ukraine’s nuclear plants, and Westinghouse is trying to use those bona fides to sell fuel to existing Russian-style reactors in Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, Tarik Choho, president of Westinghouse’s Europe, the Middle East and Africa division, told Ukraine’s news service in August.

Mr. Eaker said Westinghouse’s pursuit of that market was both earnest and strategic.

The company’s bread-and-butter business is supplying fuel to and servicing existing reactors. It’s what made Westinghouse, then in bankruptcy, attractive to the Canadian asset management firm Brookfield Business Partners, which has owned it since 2018.

It’s difficult to predict if this recent burst of nuclear promise in Eastern Europe will yield actual new reactor projects, Ms. Harrington said.

…………  In 2014, when the continued existence of the U.S.’s Export-Import Bank became a topic of debate in Congress, Westinghouse’s then-CEO Danny Roderick said the first thing he was asked when pitching a new plant to clients in places like Central Europe is how much the U.S. government is willing to help financially.

………. Pierre Paul Oneid, the chief nuclear officer at Holtec International, a New Jersey-based company that specializes in decommissioning and nuclear fuel storage. Holtec, Mr. Oneid said, had been working for a decade to close a deal for a centralized storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Ukraine, which would not be possible without financing from the U.S. government.

……..  While Mr. Oneid said the deal was in the “eleventh hour,” in fact it took three more years to finalize. U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp. announced in 2017 that it was providing $250 million in political risk insurance to the Ukrainian utility. Bank of America/Merrill Lynch would then sell that $250 million commitment in the form of fixed-rate bond securities.

It was the first such deal of its type, but probably not the last.

Show me the money

If there’s another major piece, other than climate change, that’s opening doors for Westinghouse in Eastern Europe, it’s the prospect of the U.S. government’s expanded role in financing nuclear projects, Mr. Eaker said.

In 2019, then-President Donald Trump created the U.S. Nuclear Fuel Working Group………. Among its recommendations was for the U.S. Development Finance Corp., a newly-created vehicle to fund projects in low-income countries, to lift its ban on providing funds to nuclear projects. 

The development agency listened and, in the summer of 2020, it unshackled itself from the ban, which was a holdover from its predecessor and modeled on the language of the World Bank. The DFC can even provide financing to projects in higher-income countries in Eastern Europe as part of its charge under the The European Energy Security and Diversification Act of 2019.

This means the U.S. government can now offer equity financing for nuclear projects abroad, a first. It can also give larger loans and loan guarantees than what is typically handled by the Export-Import Bank, and it can offer political risk insurance.

This is the next step in Westinghouse’s advances in Eastern Europe. Once it finishes doing a $10 million front end engineering and design study for AP1000 reactors in Poland — the U.S. government funded 70% of that work as part of an intergovernmental agreement — then it hopes to submit a formal bid along with a U.S. government financing proposal this fall.

In Ukraine, Westinghouse has already signed contracts with the electric utility to start ordering long-lead equipment and doing other preparations, but the contracts won’t be fully implemented until the U.S. comes with the financing package.

Anya Litvak: alitvak@post-gazette.com.   https://www.post-gazette.com/business/powersource/2022/02/07/Russia-Ukraine-Westinghouse-Electric-nuclear-AP1000-reactors-climate-change-energy-eastern-europe/stories/202201300126

February 8, 2022 Posted by | marketing, politics international, Ukraine | 2 Comments

Hinkley nuclear mud

 500 000 tonnes of Hinkley mud are now to be dumped at Portishead. Thisdumping was licensed by @The_MMO – the English Marine Management Organisation – on the basis of EDF’s skimped EIA that brushed over the key issues of *what* contaminants, and where they *go*.

 @cianciaran 6th Feb 2022

February 8, 2022 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

India’s Nuclear Weapons Could Kill Millions Of People- a matter of pride?

What’s a few million dead. compared to national pride?

India’s Nuclear Weapons Could Kill Millions Of People, Caleb Larson, 7 Feb 22, India might be the nuclear weapons state many military analysts forget about. Nonetheless, New Delhi could start a nuclear war within just mere minutes: India’s indigenously developed technology—and a lot of Russian hardware and help—all keep Pakistan and China at bay.

No First Use. An NFU policy essentially constitutes a promise, backed by a survivable nuclear arsenal, to only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack,” explained a Carnegie publication. “The logic is simple and effective: you don’t nuke me, and I won’t nuke you. India and China both have declared no-first-use policies, whereas Pakistan and the United States, among others, do not rule out the first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict.”

Despite India’s formidable nuclear arsenal, India had since 2003 maintained it will not use said weapons of mass destruction first, but strictly in a retaliatory manner for deterrence.

However, 2019, India called their no first use policy into question when Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said that “Till today, our nuclear policy is ‘no first use’. What happens in future depends on the circumstances.” This curious statement is perhaps an example of deliberate strategic ambiguity.

Triad

India maintains a nuclear triad—that is a three-pronged nuclear weapon delivery system that utilizes a diverse array of means for delivering nuclear payload on target. New Delhi has air-launched nuclear missiles, land-based nuclear missiles, and most recently submarine-launched missiles……………….  https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/02/indias-nuclear-weapons-could-kill-millions-of-people/

February 8, 2022 Posted by | India, weapons and war | Leave a comment

European dispute over the Taxonomy plan to class nuclear power as ”green”, qualifying it for billions of euros in subsidies.

EU Observer, 7. FEB, 07:22, Barely a month since France took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, and France and Germany are already in dispute over the highly-controversial EU proposal to grant nuclear energy and natural gas a green investment label under the EU taxonomy on sustainable finance rules.

The EU proposal was published on Wednesday (2 February) with only minor edits – despite the internal row it had sparked amongst several member states.

The initial proposal itself had been quietly distributed to EU members on New Year’s Eve – the day Germany closed half of its six nuclear power plants.

If the proposal now passes the EU’s legislative procedures without getting blocked by the commission or the parliament (both unlikely scenarios), it will likely channel billions of euros into the construction of new nuclear power plants across the bloc…………………….

During the past weeks France has taken a strong stance in support of nuclear energy with president Emmanuel Macron labelling it as the “sovereign solution”, while Germany has expressly rejected the integration of nuclear power into the green taxonomy…………….

After their success in September’s federal elections, German Greens secured their position as the second-largest party in the current coalition government – making them crucial for the future of the German coalition.

No compromise

And nuclear energy is one of the topics the Greens are not willing to compromise on.

The Greens, born out of the 1980s anti-nuclear protests, were quick to call out the EU over the new energy proposal with the German vice-chancellor and climate minister, Robert Habeck, accusing the EU of “greenwashing”.

February 8, 2022 Posted by | climate change, EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

UK court should slap down the US Justice Department in the Assange case

UK court should slap down the US Justice Department in the Assange case  https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/591776-uk-court-should-slap-down-the-us-justice-department-in-the-assange-case?fbclid=IwAR1FwC11pSY_hGdiCvIdBqIj6mttfTheEDtcNR3EUpQG38xWS3-ZRC6TLhw

BY JAMES C. GOODALE, 6 Feb 22,   As the lead attorney for the New York Times in the “Pentagon Papers” case in 1971, I’ve been doing a slow burn ever since over the government’s behavior in that instance: lies, disregard of court rules, arrogance, destruction of documents. All of this was brought to mind earlier this week when a British court hinted in the Julian Assange case that the U.S. government has acted in the same way once again.

It asked Britain’s supreme court to determine the appropriateness of a late filing by the government that completely undercut a ruling that Assange could NOT be extradited to the U.S. This followed British trial court Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who was hearing Assange’s extradition case, ruling that Assange might commit suicide if held in a U.S. prison in solitary confinement under what is called Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) and, so, he could not be extradited. 

As soon as she announced her decision, the U.S. government filed assurances that Assange would not be held in that kind of detention, although it reserved the right to revoke the assurance if circumstances changed.

The judge was unmoved by this assurance, but she was reversed on appeal. The U.K.’s supreme court has now asked to consider the timeliness of this filing.

I do not believe the U.S. government’s assurances are worth the paper on which they have been written. Its behavior in this case has been rampant. Most outrageously, the CIA discussed a plot to kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was holed up, and to kill him. The CIA also tapped into conversations in the Ecuadorian Embassy, including those with Assange’s lawyers.

There is not much question whether all of this is true. There was testimony about it in open court, and Mike Pompeo, the CIA director at the time and later secretary of State during the Trump administration, has conceded that there is “some truth” in the foregoing.

I do not pretend to be particularly familiar with the extradition laws of the U.K. But common sense tells me that you deliver highly important documents about a case — such as government assurances — before the case begins, not after it has been decided. U.K. counsel representing the U.S. disagrees, saying he can deliver documents when he wants and if he loses the appeal, he will start the extradition proceedings all over again.

This is the very same arrogance that was on display in the Pentagon Papers case, in which then-U.S. Solicitor General Erwin Griswold said the usual rules of evidence did not apply. His view of the law manifested itself in his introduction of new evidence in the case anytime the government was so moved. The claims were always extravagant: Publication of the new evidence would be a disaster for the country’s national security, etc., etc. They never were. Indeed, most of them turned out to be previously published.

The other principal fallacious claim made by the government back then was that the Times had revealed that the United States had broken the Vietnamese code. This also proved to be so much hogwash.

The government also destroyed — or, in its words, “lost” — New York Times briefs in the case. It prevailed upon me to give them these briefs to protect national security and to be returned if the government indicted the Times. A later research request evoked the response “they were lost.”

We do not know if the U.K.’s supreme court will take the Assange case to determine the issue of the timing of the U.S. government’s filing. Let’s hope that it does and then decides the U.S. government should not get away with the latest example of its less than appropriate behavior in a national security case.

James C. Goodale is the former general counsel and vice chairman of the New York Times and the author of “Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles.”

February 7, 2022 Posted by | Legal, UK | 1 Comment

The nuclear power dilemma: where to put the lethal waste?

The nuclear power dilemma: where to put the lethal waste
France is exploring new ways to dispose of radioactive materials but public opposition is as fierce as ever, Ft.com  Anna Gross in Chooz and Sarah White in Bure 6 Feb 22, 
Every morning, Benoit Gannaz places a small black device in his breast pocket to make sure his work is not killing him. Like every worker at the Chooz A nuclear power facility in northern France, he carries a detector that measures ionising radiation levels at all times. The reactor was turned off more than three decades ago and the most hazardous materials removed soon after, but nobody here is taking any chances — least of all the project manager overseeing the challenging and lengthy process of decommissioning Chooz A. Gannaz’s job is to ensure the remaining hazardous materials on site are removed and stored away safely now that the lifecycle of the reactor is at an end. ………….

…………….. as momentum grows for a new generation of nuclear power plants in Europe and elsewhere, there is little discussion of the huge costs and complexity of dismantling the plants at the end of their approximately 50-year lifespan. And nobody has yet given a satisfactory answer to the question of what to do with thousands of metric tonnes of high-level nuclear waste, some of which can remain radioactive, and thereby lethal, for up to 300,000 years.

A quarter-million metric tonnes of spent fuel rods are believed to be spread across 14 countries worldwide, mostly collected in cooling pools at closed-down nuclear plants, as engineers and waste specialists puzzle over how to dispose of them permanently. Many believe these are sitting ducks for terrorist organisations and that they could potentially cause catastrophic spills or fires. The cost of maintaining these sites can be extraordinary, and last for decades. Sellafield in the UK, for example, contains the largest stock of untreated nuclear waste on earth, including 140 tonnes of plutonium. Though the plant was shut down in 2003, it remains the biggest private employer in Cumbria. More than 10,000 people continue to undertake a colossally expensive clean-up that is expected to take more than 100 years and cost above £90bn.

“Nowhere in the world has anyone managed to create a place where we can bury extremely nasty nuclear waste forever,” says Denis Florin, partner at Lavoisier Conseil, an energy-focused management consultancy in Paris. “We cannot go on using nuclear without being adult about the waste, without accepting we need to find a permanent solution.” With the Chooz A reactor, France is attempting to do just that — and in the process create a prototype for how decommissioning could be done more efficiently. If it succeeds, it could help convince environmentalists that nuclear power has a part to play in creating a greener planet. But there is still a heavy dose of popular opposition to the best option there is on the table for the waste: burying it.

The legacy of a spent reactor The challenge with cleaning up Chooz A is not so much the site itself as the materials once contained within. The facility was shut in 1991, and within three years 99.9 per cent of the most highly radioactive materials had been evacuated to a specialist plant 620km away in La Hague, in the north-west of France. According to French law, the most highly radioactive elements of a plant, the fuel and the rods, should be removed as quickly as possible once the plant has been shut down — in stark contrast to policy in most other parts of the world, where the most hazardous products are handled last.

Decommissioning a reactor

Click on the numbers to see the process in sequence (Interactive graphic on original)

Some of these products have since been recycled. In a process pioneered by France, many of the uranium, plutonium and fission chemicals have been reprocessed into new fuel at the La Hague site, while waste chemicals that cannot be reused have been vitrified, or turned into glass, for short-term storage in shallow sites underground. Though EDF says the 23,000 tonnes of spent fuel it has reprocessed at La Hague are enough to power France’s nuclear fleet for 14 years, critics point to the fact that the fuel can only be reused once and the process itself creates yet more radioactive waste, without providing a long-term solution.

The dismantling of the rest of Chooz A began in 2007, after it received legal permission from the state, and is due to be completed by 2024, at a total cost of €500mn. But the most hazardous waste removed from the site will remain radioactive for centuries to come, and perhaps millennia. “Only a state or a religion will live as long as the waste, and maybe not even them,” says Florin. Countries have toyed with ejecting such waste into space or burying it deep under the seabed, but these ideas were eventually deemed either impossible or too dangerous. Only one long-term solution is broadly considered safe and feasible: deep geological repositories, where radioactive material can be stored several hundred metres below ground in formations of clay, rock salt and granite that have not moved for millions of years.

But no one has yet managed to do it. The US has come close; it pumped $15bn into a project to bury waste beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the initiative was eventually abandoned in the face of intense and sustained public backlash. Similar opposition from local communities has dogged attempts to find burial sites in Germany, the UK and Japan. Some countries have earmarked provisional sites to try again. After a decades-long planning and negotiation process with a remote island community, Finland will bury its radioactive waste in copper tubes in a tomb 1,400 feet below the granite bedrock in Olkiluoto island. The burial site is expected to begin operation in 2023.

France has identified its own site, just outside Bure, 300km east of Paris, in which radioactive waste might be entombed. Consisting of a research centre sitting above a web of tunnels and vaults almost 500 metres below ground, the Cigeo project has so far cost €2.5bn and involved 25 years of research.

The French government is due to decide this year whether to declare the site officially viable as a storage option, setting in motion another sequence of construction and authorisation stages that would lead to the first toxic samples being deposited between 2035 and 2040. The ambition is to seal all the tunnels irreversibly from 2150, with residues encased in blocks of cement or steel within the ultimate barrier — a subterranean layer of clay with the ideal properties to entrap any material that eventually seeps out. This seeping material should lose its radioactive qualities within the 100,000 years it would take them to permeate other strata,,,………………https://www.ft.com/content/246dad82-c107-4886-9be2-e3b3c4c4f315?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6

February 7, 2022 Posted by | France, wastes | Leave a comment

A big pile of Plutonium – UK reprocessing ceases, leaving deadly waste and no plan

in the end, reprocessing became a commercial venture rather than producing anything useful. Nine countries sent spent fuel to Sellafield to have plutonium and uranium extracted for reuse and paid a great deal of money to do so. In reality, very little of either metal has ever been used because mixed oxide fuels were too expensive, and fast breeder reactors could never be scaled up sufficiently to be economic.

UK reprocessing ceases, leaving deadly waste and no plan

A big pile of PU — Beyond Nuclear International https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2022/02/06/a-big-pile-of-pu/120 tons of plutonium is legacy of Britain’s dirty decades of reprocessing, By Paul Brown, The Energy Mix

Seventy years after the United Kingdom first began extracting plutonium from spent uranium fuel to make nuclear weapons, the industry is finally calling a halt to reprocessing, leaving the country with 120 tons of the metal, the biggest stockpile in the world. However, the government has no idea what to do with it.

Having spent hundreds of billions of pounds producing plutonium in a series of plants at Sellafield in the Lake District, the UK policy is to store it indefinitely—or until it can come up with a better idea. There is also 90,000 tons of less dangerous depleted uranium in warehouses in the UK, also without an end use.

Plans to use plutonium in fast breeder reactors and then mixed with uranium as a fuel for existing fission reactors have long ago been abandoned as too expensive, unworkable, or sometimes both. Even burning plutonium as a fuel, while technically possible, is very costly.

The closing of the last reprocessing plant, as with all nuclear endeavours, does not mean the end of the industry, in fact it will take at least another century to dismantle the many buildings and clean up the waste. In the meantime, it is costing £3 billion a year to keep the site safe.

Perhaps one of the strangest aspects of this story to outside observers is that, apart from a minority of anti-nuclear campaigners, this plutonium factory in one of prettiest parts of England hardly ever gets discussed or mentioned by the UK’s two main political parties. Neither has ever objected to what seems on paper to be a colossal waste of money.

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February 7, 2022 Posted by | reprocessing, UK, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

THE ILLEGALITY OF NATO


THE ILLEGALITY OF NATO, By John Scales Avery, Popular Resistance.6 Feb 22, Recent threats of war over Ukraine.

Russia understandably fears the eastward expansion of NATO. Recently NATO countries, led by the United States, have supplied arms to  Ukraine. There is a threat that the tensions building up in the region will lead to war. Such a development would be catastrophic for the entire world. Against this backdrop, let us examine the question of NATO’s illegality.

Violation of the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles

In recent years, participation in NATO has made European countries accomplices in US efforts to achieve global hegemony by means of military force, in violation of international law, and especially in violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles.

Former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans Christof von Sponeck used the following words to express his opinion that NATO now violates the UN Charter and international law: “In the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, the Charter of the United Nations was declared to be NATO’s legally binding framework. However, the United-Nations monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, was no longer accepted according to the 1999 NATO doctrine. NATO’s territorial scope, until then limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, was expanded by its members to include the whole world”

Article 2 of the UN Charter requires that “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” This requirement is somewhat qualified by Article 51, which says that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

Thus, in general, war is illegal under the UN Charter. Self-defense against an armed attack is permitted, but only for a limited time, until the Security Council has had time to act. The United Nations Charter does not permit the threat or use of force in preemptive wars, or to produce regime changes, or for so-called “democratization”, or for the domination of regions that are rich in oil. NATO must not be a party to the threat or use of force for such illegal purposes.

In 1946, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously affirmed “the principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal”. The General Assembly also established an International Law Commission to formalize the Nuremberg Principles. The result was a list that included Principles VI and VII, which are particularly important in the context of the illegality of NATO:

Principle VI: The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

a) Crimes against peace: (I) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (I).

b) War crimes:……………….

Violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

At present, NATO’s nuclear weapons policies violate both the spirit and the text of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in several respects:…………………………………..  https://popularresistance.org/the-illegality-of-nato/

February 7, 2022 Posted by | EUROPE, Legal | Leave a comment

Nuclear baloney in today’s media

Majority support for nuclear energy — which does not appear to be the case publicly, even if it is so politically — is a clear testament to the power of well-funded propaganda campaigns and the deep pockets of lobbyists. None of us engaged on this subject have missed the saturation media campaign, on-going now for months if not years, that sows the erroneous notion in the heads of politicians that nuclear power is an answer — even the answer — to climate change.

Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it. Today’s media has become especially guilty of this. I recently had to correct a Financial Times reporter who, in an otherwise perfectly good article, described nuclear power as having “no carbon footprint.” There is no stop-and-think going on here. After all, even renewable energy does not have “no” carbon footprint.

Nuclear waste risks can be “minimized” and other myths

Nuclear baloney — Beyond Nuclear International AP story on states’ nuclear choice fails to point out key realities
By Linda Pentz Gunter, 6 Feb 2,
There are geniuses amongst us. We just didn’t know it. They are the supporters of nuclear power, who, according to the Associated Press, “say the risks can be minimized” when it comes to the perpetual and unsolved problem of long-lived, high-level radioactive waste — the main by-product of generating electricity using nuclear power. 

This observation comes within an AP story headlined: “Majority of US states pursue nuclear power for emission cuts”, and which has garnered significant pickup in numerous media outlets. (However, we never do learn the secret to precisely how nuclear waste risks can be “minimized”.)

The agency surveyed “the energy policies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” finding that “about two-thirds” plan to use nuclear power to replace fossil fuels.

The mantra about solving the nuclear waste problem has been repeated since the dawn of the Nuclear Age, coming up on 80 years this December. That was when, on December 2, 1942, the first cupful of radioactive waste was generated, a result of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction achieved at the Chicago Pile-1 by Enrico Fermi and his team.

At that time, scientists knew that radioactive waste was a problem, but assumed it would be solved later. Well, here we are at “later” and it’s still unsolved. Now, “minimizing” rather than solving the problem is apparently justification enough to keep using this dangerous technology.

The AP reporters chose Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) President and CEO, Jeff Lash (no vested interest there), as the spokesperson for the continued use of nuclear power and says he,“puts it simply” when stating: “You can’t significantly reduce carbon emissions without nuclear power.” 

But, of course, it’s not that simple. It’s also arguably dead wrong. As Stanford University’s Amory Lovins and others have demonstrated repeatedly:

“To protect the climate, we must save the most carbon at the least cost and in the least time, counting all three variables – carbon and cost and time. 

“Costly options save less carbon per dollar than cheaper options. Slow options save less carbon per year than faster options. Thus even a low- or no-carbon option that is too costly or too slow will reduce and retard achievable climate protection. Being carbon-free does not establish climate-effectiveness.

“To compare nuclear power with other potential climate solutions we should start with two criteria – cost and speed – because if nuclear power has no business case or takes too long, we need not address its other merits or drawbacks.”

The three TVA plants are at Browns Ferry in Alabama, and Sequoyah and Watts Bar, both in Tennessee. The two Watts Bar reactors produce tritium for the nuclear weapons sector — a clear crossing of the supposedly inviolable line between the civilian and military nuclear sectors.

Sequoyah 1 and 2 have also been licensed to produce tritium but, so far, TVA has chosen not to use them for that purpose.

TVA is also, right now, pushing federal regulators to allow it to increase its output of tritium, an essential radioisotope used in thermonuclear warheads to boost the explosive power of an atomic bomb. 

As Tom Clements, executive director of the Savannah River Site Watch, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press:

“Using commercial nuclear reactors to produce nuclear weapons materials is a violation of the international nonproliferation agreements.”

Watts Bar 1 has been involved in tritium production for close to 20 years. Meanwhile, Watts Bar 2 holds the unenviable record of taking the longest time ever — a staggering 42 years — between the start of construction and actual operation. It is the poster child for the argument against trying to deliver new nuclear plants as some sort of answer to an urgent climate crisis already upon us that must be addressed today.

Nevertheless, when Watts Bar 2 came on line in October 2016, TVA actually heralded it as “the first new nuclear generation in 20 years.” If a 42-year old reactor is the definition of “new”, then maybe we should all go back to driving Chevrolet Monte Carlos.

The unnamed survey respondents from the state of Georgia apparently told AP that their “nuclear reactor expansion will provide ‘ample clean energy’ for 60 to 80 years”.

But again, there is no context to this bold prediction. In reality, that “expansion” consists

of the only two survivors of another nuclear myth, the U.S. “Nuclear Renaissance”, always an aspiration and never a reality. 

The Georgia reactors, Vogtle 3 and 4, have now been under construction since 2013. Their completion dates have been repeatedly pushed into the future — 2024 is the current, optimistic prediction, but it’s equally possible that both reactors will never achieve operational status.

Meanwhile, the costs for Vogtle 3 and 4 are predicted to balloon to $30 billion, while ratepayers, already paying more to cover these excesses, will see their monthly bills double if and when the reactors come on line. Imagine the “ample clean energy” that might have already been producing electricity in Georgia, if a renewable energy program had been initiated in 2013 instead of the nuclear boondoggle.

Majority support for nuclear energy — which does not appear to be the case publicly, even if it is so politically — is a clear testament to the power of well-funded propaganda campaigns and the deep pockets of lobbyists. None of us engaged on this subject have missed the saturation media campaign, on-going now for months if not years, that sows the erroneous notion in the heads of politicians that nuclear power is an answer — even the answer — to climate change.

Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it. Today’s media has become especially guilty of this. I recently had to correct a Financial Times reporter who, in an otherwise perfectly good article, described nuclear power as having “no carbon footprint.” There is no stop-and-think going on here. After all, even renewable energy does not have “no” carbon footprint.

As John Le Carré wrote in his 1996 book, The Tailor of Panama, paraphrased from the mouth of one of his more cynical characters: 

Nothing is more predictable than the media’s parroting of its own fictions and the terror of each competitor that it will be scooped by the others, whether or not the story is true, because quite frankly dears, in the news game these days, we don’t have the staff, time, interest, energy, literacy or minimal sense of responsibility to check our facts by any means except calling up whatever has been written by other hacks on the same subject and repeating it as gospel”.

Fortunately, there remain some good investigative reporters amongst the lapdogs. But our task is made all the harder by that constant parroting of nuclear propaganda as if it is gospel. We have an uphill climb to change it, but we must keep climbing.

This article first appeared on Counterpunch.

February 7, 2022 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

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