To 7 August – nuclear news this week

A bit of good news – The largest landfill in Latin America has now been restored into a thriving mangrove ecosystem.

TOP STORIES

Wilfred Burchett: The Atomic Plague,

Those who will fire the nuclear weapons are thoroughly trained to have no hesitation. We must stop them.

US rejects Australian plea to drop Assange case.

UK government must come clean, to tax-payers and consumers, on the financial figures before signing up to new nuclear programme. ( Full report. See in particular paras 41 -44)

Senate passes $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA): No audits necessary.

Dangers of Tritium.

Aggressive U.S. Push for Military Supremacy in the Arctic Could Trigger Nuclear War.

Climate. A Vital Atlantic Ocean System Could Collapse Sooner Than Previously Thought . The Chilling Truth: Antarctica Just Lost an Ice Mass the Size of My Country .

Nuclear. Well – It’s been THAT memorable week – the 78th anniversary. I can’t add to the many fine stories this week. Except to note that all nuclear-weapons nations are sticking to their policies, and the nuclear industry is enthusiastically propagandising -because we all know that small nuclear reactors etc have nothing to do with military use, don’t we?.

 Christina notes. Forget Oppenheimer. The real nuclear hero is Joseph Rotblat.       The persecution of Wilfred Burchett and Julian Assange  .

CLIMATE. Nuclear war would be more devastating for Earth’s climate than cold war predictions – even with fewer weapons. What you won’t learn about in Oppenheimer: the potential effects of a nuclear winter.

ECONOMICS. How the “Nuclear Renaissance” Robs and Roasts Our Earth.       First new US nuclear reactor in 3 decades may well also be its last.          Nuclear power’s landmark project stumbles across the finish line. The unpalatable facts of the costs to consumers of electricity from new nuclear power. The High Costs and Failures of Nuclear Reactors.

ENERGY. The digital data industry is an energy-and-water-guzzling climate disaster. For Scotland, energy is our best argument for independence.

EMPLOYMENT. Hinkley Point scaffolders begin industrial action over pay and shift patterns.

ENVIRONMENT. Environment Agency allows Hinkley Point C permit variation to remove fish deterrent system. Nuclear Weapons: Devastation Inside the U.S. Do right by the whales.           Water. Water Wars: Cooling the Data Centres. Environment Agency grants contentious Hinkley C water discharge permit.

ETHICS and RELIGION. Scared to Death! Oppenheimer and the threat of nuclear destruction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xthzy1PxTA&t=5s

HISTORY. Western Media Has Falsely Presented the Donbas’ Drive For Autonomy as Being Instigated By Moscow.

LEGAL. Judge tosses charges against executive in South Carolina nuclear debacle, but case may not be over.

MEDIA. Like ‘the tolling of a distant temple bell’, Ibuse Masuji’s Black Rain remembers the horrors of Hiroshima and warns of the inhumanity of war. ‘Barbenheimer’ highlights U.S. ignorance of nuclear reality.        Greg Mitchell on “Oppenheimer” & Why Hollywood Is Still Afraid of the Truth About the Atomic Bomb.      Why no Hollywood movie on Nagasaki A Bombing? Humans Might Be About to Break the Ocean? Don’t Stop the Presses.

OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Campaigners against Sizewell C nuclear plan welcome call for financial clarity from Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.       

Together Against Sizewell environmental group angry at the coming destruction of marine life, as acoustic fish deterrent will not be installed at Hinkley Point C nuclear.         Pacific anti-nuclear groups condemn Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka for backing Fukushima wastewater stance.

PERSONAL STORIES. Oppenheimer’s nuclear fallout: How his atomic legacy destroyed my world.

POLITICS.

• Why The Niger Coup Has Sparked Concerns About Nuclear Power.
• BRING IT HOME-Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
• UK has no coherent plan to develop nuclear energy . Ambition alone will not build UK nuclear power. Another kick in the teeth for UK taxpayers as EDF pockets another £170m of public money for their Sizewell C White Elephant. Ministers diverted £136m from electric car fund to Sizewell C nuclear project despite infrastructure concerns.
• Sweden’s Nuclear Power Ambitions Quashed.
• Why is Ontario Government bent on building a new nuclear reactor, at a much greater cost than solar or wind technologies? New Brunswick Power is kicking the can down the road while the planet burns. ADVANCE Act on nuclear sends us backwards.

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. 

•  Requiem for NATO’s Nightmare – the Vilnius summit. Mexican president urges end to ‘irrational’ Ukraine war, wants Russia at peace talks. CIA Director Affirms U.S. Regime Change Strategy in Russia in Address at British Foundation. 
•   United Nations wants to resurrect a global disarmament mechanism last used in the 1980s. 
•   Saudi Arabia could convert civilian nuclear to military, Israeli expert warns. 
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is reiterating his call for the case against Julian Assange to be dropped. Australian MPs Blast Blinken Over Assange.   

PROTESTS. Protests held in Tokyo against nuclear water discharge,

SAFETY. UN nuclear watchdog finds no explosives at Zaporizhzhia plant.       Russia’s Kola nuclear power plant turns 50. That is not necessarily something to celebrate.        Non-compliant fire program halts decommissioning of Whiteshell Nuclear Laboratories.

URANIUM. Niger stops uranium and gold export to France.

WASTES. 

•   Niger’s 20 million tonnes of radioactive waste. 
•  The nuclear arms race’s legacy: Toxic contamination, staggering cleanup costs and a culture of government secrecy. 
•  Sellafield seeks partners for £4.8bn nuclear decommissioning works. UK’s Radioactive Waste Management holds meetings in Lincolnshire, seeking a location for nuclear waste dump

WAR and CONFLICT    When facts cut through the fog of war.       Is the US preparing to dump the proxy war in Ukraine so it can start another in Taiwan?     Nuclear catastrophe threat is ‘great and growing’, warn over 100 top medical journals.      Veterans, descendants of nuclear testing era urged to apply for British medal.      

 Decades Later, the U.S. Government Called Hiroshima and Nagasaki ‘Nuclear Tests’, Japan marks 78th anniversary of US atomic bombing on Hiroshima, calls nuclear deterrence ‘folly’. Japan condemns Russia nuclear threat on Hiroshima anniversary.

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES

The Sky’s the Limit on Nuclear Weapons Spending, But What Does It Really Get Us? US cluster munitions will bring more pain and death to Donbass civilians, and Washington doesn’t care. Kiev’s broken record: no matter what advanced weaponry the West sends, there is no magic wand to conjure a Ukrainian victory. Military Initiative by Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) is Another Major Step in Prospective War on China. How Have Nuclear Weapons Evolved Since Oppenheimer and the Trinity Test?  

 Building for War: The US Imperium’s Top End Spend. USA flexes its belligerent muscles in Western Australia, showing off its nuclear submarines.      AUKUS, Australia and the drive to war. A Client State. 

August 7, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | 23 Comments

TODAY. The media – dishonest – or just sloppy and incompetent ?- nuclear fusion coverage as a case in point.

A part of me thinks that it is some sort of giant conspiracy – the media being told by military-industrial-corporate-government-complex to never criticise the nuclear priesthood.

The more sensible part of me suggests that the journalists are probably overworked people who must get the news out FAST, and are relieved to get the helpful handouts from the nuclear priesthood.

After all, journalists are not qualified nuclear physicists, and we all know that only qualified nuclear physicists can have an opinion on matters nuclear, don’t we?

Well, either way, it comes out as sloppy and incompetent reporting – never better shown that the present chorus of media joy over a nuclear fusion experiment.

Fortunately, there are a few mainstream journalists out there who do bother to do their homework. Arianna Skibell of Politico wrote a piece headed “Here’s a reality check for nuclear fusion.” Henry Fountain in his New York Times online column queried the costs and the claims about action on climate. The Washington Post and The New Statesman deplored the hype..And I’m hoping that there will be more journalists today, who bother to find out the facts on the usefulness or non-usefulness of nuclear fusion development.

December 16, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | Leave a comment

Hiroshima, Nagasaki – Never Again Nuclear War! No to Nuclear Weapons

This is perhaps the saddest photograph of the time of America’s August 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The dignity of this boy, as he waits, with his small dead brother strapped to his back, to include the brother in a mass grave in Nagasaki..

We know that the bombing of people is unethical, immoral, and simply wrong.

We know that chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction are inhumane and immoral. The global human society knows this, too, and they are illegal under the United Nations Ban –  the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)  and United Nations Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons(TPNW), or the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, with the goal of leading towards their total elimination. 66 nations have ratified the treaty, and it was passed by 120 countries at the United Nations in July 2017.

The nuclear lobby, and the “hawks” may scoff, but this Treaty is clear evidence that the world is coming to see that considering the humanitarian effects of nuclear war, – the treaty prohibits the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as assistance and encouragement to the prohibited activities.

The goal is the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Sounds too extreme to be taken seriously?   It is not as extreme as the goal of using them, which is still actively being considered by the Pentagon.

It’s rarely mentioned that USA’s original plan was to explode a nuclear bomb on the moon. It’s rarely mentioned in the current hype about Mars exploration, that the Trump administration’s plan is for nuclear weapons in space .

The humanitarian, the “emotional” side, of discussing nuclear weapons is now taken seriously, much as the nuclear proponents will pontificate about “strategy”, “security” etc. With the UN nuclear ban treaty –   nuclear weapons are no longer “respectable”, and are headed towards eventual elimination.

August 8, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | 7 Comments

NUCLEAR POWER – WEAPONS AND WAR –

“Now I  am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientist and “father of the bomb”

On the morning of 6 August 1945, the first atomic bomb, code-named “Little Boy” was dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later the United States dropped a plutonium bomb code-named “Fat Man” on the city of Nagasaki. 140,000 people (almost all civilians) died in Hiroshima either immediately or within a few days. Deaths in Nagasaki were about 74,000. The survivors lived on, some with horrifying burns scars, some to die of radiation-induced illnesses

Following the war, many scientists involved in the atomic bomb project, turned to the “atoms for peace” program – nuclear power. They did this partly out of guilt, partly to continue to be employed. (Where would a nuclear physicist get a job, otherwise? Well, some were happy to continue with nuclear weapons development)

Nuclear weapons are an inevitable by-product of the nuclear power industry.

Like climate change, nuclear weapons development is now at the point of a global emergency.

Time to close down the whole insane nuclear industry charade, before it kills us all.

August 6, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | 3 Comments

Nuclear Politics – theme for March 2022

Homo Sapiens (and I do mean Homo, not Femina) has always solved his relational problems by fighting, by war and the threat of war.

And it sorta worked, in a sorta way. (The meek, the ”weak” men had some success, setting up co-operative arrangements, like the United Nations). It’s turning out that the ”weak” ”sissy” men might just have a broader, more considered, intelligence that just might be essential for the survival of the species. Heck they might even welcome Femina in – likely to be a lot more sapiens.

In the current crisis – one thing is for sure – if it develops into a third world war – it will be a nuclear war. Probably now, only Russia accepts that it’s just fine to send thousands of men to their deaths, and even Russians might be getting sick of this old idea.

The new way is – press a button, from far away, and incinerate millions. Trouble is that might cause millions on your side also to be incinerated – heck – even the ones pressing the buttons.

A new politics must be found. Otherwise, at best, the species might be lucky enough to survive, and evolve into a bee or ant-like species, with males as just a tiny minority.

March 4, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | 5 Comments

Nuclear politics – fear and militarism – theme for March 2022

War in UKraine

Joy to the weapons -makers of Western and Russian corporations.

Joy to the macho men of the Pentagon and the Russian Armed Forces

Joy to the political leaders who want their communities to forget about health, climate, and what is being done with their tax money

Joy to the nuclear industry, commercial-and military (they’re the same thing!)

The world waits to see what will be the outcome of hostilities in Uk.raine. No, Putin should not have attacked Ukraine. But also – No – the West, led of course by the world’s policeman, USA, did nothing to meet the very real concerns of Russia – understandable fears of being almost encricled by hostile NATO military installations – Ukraine being the most imprtant state on their doorstep.

Also the 8 years of war in Donestk and Luhansk – the genuine concerns of ethnically Russian people, and the presence of a Nazi -membered battalian attacking them – these factors were ignored by Biden and his Western disciples.

No answer to Putin’s list of requests, no concessions made, no compromises.

The result – terrible for Ukraine, pretty terrible for Russia and the rest of the world.

February 25, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | 8 Comments

New ‘cool’ pro nuclear propaganda ignores plutonium danger – theme for February 22

The new pro nuclear shills are young, feminine, cool, and disastrously ignorant about radioactivity and nuclear wastes.

Why do we let them keep on making this toxic radioactive trash?

January 18, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | 8 Comments

The nuclear fantasy – time that we ended it -theme for January 2022.

It WAS a great dream – when the atomic scientists thought that they could assuage their guilt by inventing ”atoms for peace”

But that was a great lie. The USA raced on with nuclear reactors producing fuel for nuclear weapons. The British and Russians followed suit – then France, India, Israel, China – just about every nation wants them – Middle Eastern rulers now salivating at the thought.

Everybody piously talks about ”peaceful nuclear”. Now there’s the new champion lie – ”nuclear to save the world from climate change”.

And that feat is to be accomplished by so-called Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) – thousands of super-expensive little unicorns that don’t exist. The lying salesmen (who have no conscience) will keep pretending that they’re ”little”, while economies of scale demand that the reactors are put together to make Big nuclear plants.

And still the purpose is – all for the weapons industry. Technology, expertise, funding – to support that real industry – Nuclear weapons – under the sea, on land, in space! The ordinary peasant is not so keen, so investment in SMRs isn’t really happening. The thing is pushed by grandiose gurus like Bill Gates – . and even Gates knows that tax-payer funding is the intended funding system.

I recommend a couple of posts on this website:
Establishment support, secrecy and corruption, in the promotion of dangerous nuclear power. Natrium reactors, like those at Santa Susana.

And don’t think, just because these articles are about America, that the Establishments in UK, Russia France, China etc are any better. The same sort of toxic macho-men are in control of governments there, too.

Time to take the toys from the boys

December 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | 22 Comments

Small nuclear reactors lead the great mindless nuclear-war-mongering juggernaut – theme for December 21

The ”juggernaut” is an imaginary evil chariot, a giant, powerful, violent unstoppable force, crushing all in its path, (wrongly connected to a Hindu belief).

Of all the threats to our home planet, the only one to sustain life, only the nuclear threat could be stopped by human action. But human action is now dominated by the nuclear and weapons industry juggernaut– that ”military-industrial -complex” that controls big macho-men governments.

The mask of ”peaceful” nuclear power is off. If nuclear was ever useful for energy and climate – it is no longer.

So – what do the nuclear lobby wizards come up with?

Small nuclear reactors and the pretense that they could have any effect on climate. No, Virginia, their one and only use is to keep the nuclear industry alive. Thus the nuclear weapons industry can more easily pass their costs on to tax-payers, convince nuclear executives and workers that they’re doing something beneficial, and the rest of us – that governments are ”looking after us;”.

But governments are looking after the military-industrial complex, as it leads on to nuclear war, – on land, under the sea, and in space. And the small nuclear reactors are leading the war-mongering nuclear juggernaut

November 30, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | 9 Comments

The only true purpose of small nuclear reactors- to promote the nuclear weapons industry, and hide its costs – theme for December 21.

Small Nuclear Reactors – the Big New Way – to get the public to fund the nuclear weapons industry

November 28, 2020

so-called “small nuclear reactors”

Downing Street told the Financial Times, which it faithfully reported, that it was “considering” £2 billion of taxpayers’ money to support “small nuclear reactors”

They are not small

The first thing to know about these beasts is that they are not small. 440MW? The plant at Wylfa (Anglesey, north Wales) was 460MW (it’s closed now). 440MW is bigger than all the Magnox type reactors except Wylfa and comparable to an Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor.

Only if military needs are driving this decision is it explicable.

”Clearly, the military need to maintain both reactor construction and operation skills and access to fissile materials will remain. I can well see the temptation for Defence Ministers to try to transfer this cost to civilian budgets,” 

Any nation’s defence budget in this day and age cannot afford a new generation of nuclear weapons. So it needs to pass the costs onto the energy sector.

How the UK’s secret defence policy is driving energy policy – with the public kept in the dark. https://www.thefifthestate.com.au/energy-lead/how-the-uks-secret-defence-policy-is-driving-energy-policy-with-the-public-kept-in-the-dark/ BY DAVID THORPE / 13 OCTOBER 2020

November 16, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's themes | 3 Comments