Nuclear power may soon be irrelevant to our energy needs. With the pandemic and social distancing, nuclear reactors are likely to be cutting back on output, or even going offline. And there are still the risks of extreme weather. Irrelevant, but still dangerous. Similarly, other nuclear facilities, like waste management, and nuclear weapons sites are also threatened. New nuclear development possibly stopped in its tracks, and certainly adding to its already astronomic costs.
The nuclear lobby, desperate to keep its industry alive, is claiming that “essential work” is the construction of the UK’s boondoggle –Hinkley C project, and USA’s boondoggle Nuclear Plant Vogtle.
The “Small Nuclear Reactors” industry development is looking sillier – carrying its huge financial risk, but no safety risk yet, seeing that it does not physically exist.
“Ethics” seems to be a dirty word in this strange era in which “Economics”, (i.e money) is apparently the only credible argument for taking any action.
Yet, now, under those truly awful shadows of a heating planet, and nuclear conflict, ethics might be our only sane guide.
What are ethics in relation to climate and nuclear issues?
Surely – ethical behaviour, -behaving decently and honestly. In the face of these dire threats – this is the way to go.
Not that it’s easy. No-one wants to pay the price, – changed employment, lifestyle changes, increased taxes….
BUT – we have borrowed this world from our children, and great grandchildren.We need to return it in good condition.
This means facing up to the reality of all the effects of climate change, the horrors of nuclear weapons, the environmental poison of ionising radiation.
And then – taking action on all levels, from the personal to global co-operation. A tall order? It means plain, honest, speaking, just treatment of under-privileged groups and countries, taking investment out of dirty industries.
An impossible order? Perhaps, but it would be a shame not to try. Even in this period of ethically and often environmentally ignorant , narcissistic national leaders Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Scott Morrison …….still there are thousands of individuals and groups working for a clean and nuclear-free planet.
We don’t need to be taken in by the big words and twisted arguments of the fossil fuel and nuclear industries and their bought politicians and journalists. The facts on climate change are clear. The facts on nuclear dangers are clear.
Even the economic facts point us to climate action and to scrapping nuclear power and weapons. But surely, human beings can do better than that, and be guided by ethics.
Citizen Advocacy: The Achievements of New Zealand`s Peace Activism, Asia Pacific Journal Pinar Temocin and Noriyuki Kawano, October 1, 2019 Volume 17 | Issue 19 | Number 2Abstract
Aotearoa New Zealand provides an important example of successful citizen activism in the form of anti-nuclear peace advocacy. The collective efforts by peace actors over several decades resulted in the successful demand for a nuclear-free nation. This paper highlights the widespread participation and political support that facilitated the process and assesses its achievements.
Introduction New Zealand, a small and isolated country, is a rare example of a nation achieving nuclear-free status. The peace-seeking nation unified around an anti-war narrative, and moved from activism based on public awareness and engagement to the passage of laws that eliminated nuclear weapons through a number of stages: from the first generation of movements against the atomic bomb after 1945 to the response to French nuclear testing in the late 60`s to US and UK nuclear warship visits in the 70`s and the early 80`s. As part of this shift, the US-led military alliance with Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS) was redefined by New Zealanders from a guarantee of security to a threat that posed a security dilemma. As this essay shows, social consciousness and activism was ultimately successful in bringing fundamental change. The Labor Party, in particular, played a critical role in translating strong public participation on the part of a broad section of the population into a significant policy outcome: `the creation of a peaceful and nuclear-free nation`.
This mobilization involved persistent and substantial public pressure over decades. Public pressure to change the nation’s foreign policy also included opposition to involvement in the United States-led coalition in the Korean and Vietnam wars. As these wars came to an end, the matter of nuclear testing became a hot-button election issue forcing each political party to adopt a policy on nuclear weapons. The anti-nuclear argument was placed within a broader moral vision. New Zealand peace advocates problematized the threatening conditions and demanded a solution under the narratives of a `democratic, egalitarian, decolonized, independent, non-violent, non-militarist nation which is intrinsically based on `a peaceful nation`. A peaceful nation for them required a nuclear-free approach in its domestic and foreign policies. To achieve this, they organized actively, coordinated professionally, sustained effective campaigns, and engaged in the policy-formation and shaping process.
Since the end of the 60s, successful protest movements have established new modes of political participation in advanced democracies.1 In some democratic societies including New Zealand, social movements have benefitted from tolerant political structures. Their success depends further on specific configurations of resources, trustworthy institutional arrangements, and historical precedents for social mobilization that facilitate the development of protest movements.2
Strong democracies are conducive to positive engagements and interactions between citizen and the state. The strengthening of practices of participation, responsiveness to a majority, and the development of inclusive and cohesive societies are powerful components of the democratic decision-making process. Therefore, citizen participation in governance with a responsive, open, and tolerant state can produce positive effects based on popular consensus……https://apjjf.org/2019/19/Temocin.html
You might think that this has nothing to do with nuclear issues. And you’d be right – nothing directly. But this is a world issue that affects every controversial matter, and suppression of journalism will surely affect nuclear issues, and indeed, it already does.
Prosecutors recently expanded a criminal case against Julian Assange to include accusations that he violated the Espionage Act by soliciting, obtaining, and publishing classified documents leaked in 2010 by Chelsea Manning, which could establish a precedent that such common journalistic activities (a separate question from whether Assange counts as a “journalist”) can be treated as a crime in America…..more https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/press-freedoms-executive-power.html
The nuclear industry originated in lies, and in the barbaric culture of Nazism. Werner von Braun and at least 88 other Nazi scientists started working on inhuman weapons, including nuclear. Americans panicked and decided that a nuclear bomb was OK to develop. With Japan about to surrender in 1945 Truman and the generals hastily tested the bomb out on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, and the false story went out that this was necessary to end the war.
Faced with the horror of those two atrocities, the allies, including the Soviet Union, and the nuclear boffins, came up with the cover of “cheap” and “peaceful” nuclear energy, and the immoral and probably suicidal, nuclear weapons race was on for all.[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRLON3ddZIw for page]
Over the decades, despite government and industry cover-ups, the cruel truth about the health and environmental harm from the nuclear industry has at times been revealed in the Western mainstream media.
But now, freedom of information is threatened as never before. The Internet may have enabled alternative media, sites like this one, and social media, to get their message out. But that is very much a mixed blessing. At the same time, investigative journalists of the mainstream media are losing their jobs. And – disappearing with them are the fact checking, and quality editing.
Worst of all, now, when investigative journalists speak out, they face oppression. in Russia, China they risk “disappearing” – with long-held cultures of suppression of free speech.
Now in Western countries they risk life imprisonment. Julian Assange is threatened with this, and UK and Australia are complicit in USA’s heavy-handed determination to “make an example” of him.
What has this all to do with the nuclear industry?
The nuclear weapons industry, immoral and potentially globally murderous, has become an insanely expensive burden on the public purse.
The nuclear power industry is out-dated, unaffordable, dangerous, and wedded to nuclear weapons.
Nevertheless, the media now regurgitates glowing handouts from the “new” and the old nuclear industry as “news”. Journalists want to keep their jobs- it’s easier to tout rubbish like “new nukes solve climate change”, than to offend government and powerful corporations by really seeking out and publishing the facts. The governments’ persecution of Julian Assange and Chelsie Manning makes that subservient attitude the standard behaviour for journalists.
If we let America put away, disappear, and shut up Julian Assange – well, who’s next?
What about studying consequences rather than causes? Studying birth abnormalities in places where they occur more often than is normal? The Omni-Net Ukraine Birth Defects Prevention Program, came up with this different approach, reported in July 2012. http://ibis-birthdefects.org/start/pdf/BaltimoreAbstr.pdf Measuring radiation is difficult, and can produce ambiguous results. But measuring babies with malformations is a concrete matter. Facts are facts here As Dr Vladimir Wertelecki says “ a baby that has no head is a baby that has no head.”
THE PROGRAM
The program started in 2000, conducting a 10 year study on 5 provinces of the Ukraine – measuring and monitoring all newborn babies. The study, led by Dr Wertelecki, was done in co-operation with Ukraine health authorities. This was a descriptive epidemiological study. It could prove only a difference between geographical areas. It cannot prove the cause of difference.
Within 2-3 years it was obvious that the rates of spina bifida and other defects of the nervous system, were many times greater than expected, particularly in one province. A few years later an excess of conjoined twins (“Siamese twins”) was found. They found other nervous system problems, mainly microcephaly (tiny head) .. After 10 years of study they published a report showing an excess of frequency of anomalies of nervous system and of these conjoined twins.
This was found especially in the northern half of the province – an area that is a unique ecology niche – mainly wetlands. And this area also has a unique population, an ethnic group living there since recorded history. They live in small villages, very isolated, and they rely completely on local foods.
These foods are all radioactive. The soil there is such that plants absorb many times more radioactivity. People there are absorbing much higher levels of radiation. – 20 times more than there would be in soil 50 km. away.
Dr Wertelecki reminds us that there are many causes of birth abnormalities. One well recognised cause is foetal alcohol syndrome, due to alcoholism in the mother. However, the program did in fact research this question. 6 universities joined it in a very well funded and thorough study of pregnant women. It showed that in this Northern area, alcohol use among pregnant women is statistically less than in the Ukraine in general. . Alcohol does not explain the birth abnormalities. Radiation is the obvious major cause.
ABNORMALITIES IN THE DEVELOPING FOETUS- TERATOGENESIS
Little research has been done on the causes of this in humans. Studies on non human species show that foetuses in first three months are about 1000 times more vulnerable to environmental effects.
Dr Wertelecki’s team focused on teratogenesis – changes caused by environmental interference to a developing foetus, a foetus with with normal genes. This must be distinguished from gene mutations, inherited from parents and the two processes have different effects. The genetic, inherited defects are most likely to cause mental disability. But with the teratogenic abnormalities, the baby, if it survives, most often is of normal intelligence.
This process can begin very early, before the ovum has been implanted in the wall of the womb – before the woman knows that she is pregnant. That very early “line” of the embryo can split. In this case – the result is – twins. This split can be incomplete – resulting in conjoined twins, (“Siamese twins”). A fetiform teratoma is a sort of failed Siamese twin, a monster like mass, containing a mixture of tissues.
Abnormalities that are started at a little later stage of pregnancy include spina bifida, ( opening in lower back body wall), opening in front body wall with heart on the exterior, anencephaly (absence of head or of most of the skull and brain)
McClatchy reports: 33,480 Americans dead after 70 years of atomic weaponry
“….. The number of deaths has never been disclosed by federal officials. It’s more than four times the number of American casualties in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And it looms large as the nation prepares for its second nuclear age, with a $1 trillion plan to modernize its nuclear weapons over the next 30 years…..
A total of 107,394 workers have been diagnosed with cancers and other diseases after building the nation’s nuclear stockpile over the last seven decades. The project includes an interactive database that offers details on all 107,394 workers.
McClatchy’s yearlong investigation, set in 10 states, puts readers in the living rooms of sick workers in South Carolina, on a picket line in Texas and at a cemetery in Tennessee…..
— Federal officials greatly underestimated how sick the U.S. nuclear workforce would become. At first, the government predicted the compensation program would serve only 3,000 people at an annual cost of $120 million. Fourteen years later, taxpayers have spent sevenfold that estimate, $12 billion.
— Even though costs have ballooned, federal records show that fewer than half of those workers who sought help had their claims approved by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Disastrous health effects of uranium mining, on the people of Jharkhand, India
the financial benefits are meaningless when weighed against what his group says is an alarming rise in stillbirths, birth defects, and adults and children diagnosed with cancer, kidney disease, and tuberculosis.
World leaders are dimly becoming aware of the global Climate Crisis. Unfortunately there are few world leaders for whom the penny has dropped – that a global crisis is not just a domestic matter – that to tackle it is a matter for international co-operation..
There is another crisis, which seems to be below everybody’s radar, and invisible to world leaders, especially disregarded by the leaders of nuclear nations. This is the apocalyptic danger of nuclear war – started either by intention, or by accident. The dangers of the nuclear industry in general are also global – with the creeping toxicity of ionising radiation accumulating in the ecosphere.
The boys that run the world are pretty much oblivious of those twin global threats – like little schoolkids taunting each other – they have no concept of working together to defuse the climate and nuclear dangers. They show no sign of understanding the concept of international co-operation.
And don’t the nuclear industry and weapons companies love it this way!!!
The nuclear lobby is desperately pitching its new gimmicks – to governments (nobody else would put their money in) They come up with all sorts of new titles, with appropriate abbeviations – Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) , Small and Medium Reactors, (also SMRs) Micro Reactors, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) , Integral molten Salt Reactot (IMSR), Virtual Test Reactor, (VTR) – to name just a few .
So -new nuclear reactors leave a smaller amount of radioactive trash? But it’s so highly toxic that it requires the same volume of space for its final disposal. The reactors themselves become radioactive trash eventually.
Thoriumnuclear reactors produce these radioactive wastes:
Technetium-99 has a half life of 220,000 years
uranium-232 produces thallium-208 (a nasty wee gamma emitter)
Selenium-79 (another gamma emitter with a 327,000 year half-life),
even Thorium-232 is a problem with its half life of 14 Billion years (and while the T-232 isn’t a major worry, all the time during this 14 Billion years it will be decaying and producing stuff that is!)
Mixed-oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel reprocessing turns out to be twice as expensive as burial of nuclear wastes. according to an unreleased US Department of Energy report – and the World Nuclear Association knows this!
First of all, dispel the nonsense that these expensive gimmicks will solve climate change. They can’t. And even if they could, they’d be deployed far too late to make any difference.
Generation IV nuclear reactors , Thorium Molten Salt Reactors (TMSRs) , Medium and Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (MSRs) – have only one real use – to support the nuclear weapons industry – providing it with expertise, materials, technology development and media hoohah.
The nuclear salesmen promote other lies, as well as the climate one. There’s the lie about solving the waste problem, and the one about safety.
But the most compelling case against Generation IV nuclear reactors is that inevitable one – COST. There’s no market for these nuclear lobby toys – no chance of commercial biability. That’s mainly because , to have any hope, they would have to be ordered en masse. – and who’s going to invest in that risky idea?
Therefore – the only possible customers are governments. Which means YOU – your taxes.
In the meantime, rapid developments in energy efficiency, renewables, and battery storage offer a genuine opportunity for investors – and they are taking it up.
Would you go to British Tobacco for education on how to have healthy lungs?
Would you trust the Sugar Industry for education on healthy teeth?
So why on earth are we letting the nuclear industry run the education on the most important aspects of nuclear power – the ones that affect humans, all species, and the environment?
The nuclear experts are big on their technical stuff, how to build a new reactor etc, (but very quiet on how to get rid of its radioactive trash)
But don’t let them be the education authorities on ionising radiation – a cause of cancer, birth defects, genetic effects, environmental effects.
Don’t let them be the education authorities on dealing with climate change.
Don’t let them be the education authorities on prevention of war.
Don’t let them be the education authorities on the supposed economic benefits of nuclear power.
Above all, don’t let the nuclear industry control education about HISTORY – about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, atomic testing, about Urals disaster 1957, Mayak, Three Mile Island, Church Rock, Chernobyl, Fukushima…….
And don’t let them get at our kids with their propaganda.
We’re now in the era of “STEM education” – Science Technology, Engineering, Mathematics” – and how the nuclear industry loves this! Don’t get me wrong. I think that everyone should have a good knowledge especially of maths and science.
BUT – alongside the current fervour for STEM, is a very wrong downgrading of the humanities – the so-called “soft subjects”. At this critical time of climate change and nuclear danger, we really need the insights from art, history, culture, sociology – the human studies – to help us to know what to do.
The nuclear industry thrives on this almost religious belief that technology is the answer. And of course, who is to educate us about nuclear technology, and how much we need it etc? That’s a no-brainer. On the whole, education about nuclear power relies on information from the nuclear industry. That is either not forthcoming or is a comfortable ‘we know best’ assurance, allied with technical information – designed to reiterate that only the nuclear experts can really understand it – so don’t bother your pretty little heads about it.
Much of the media mindlessly regurgitates information from the industry, but fortunately, not all of it.
But, of course, the nuclear lobby ‘s “education” is all over the place, with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) running courses in the Asia Pacific and elsewhere. And Russia, expanding its nuclear propaganda to Asia, Africa, the Middle East.
Would we trust tobacco companies to control education about healthy lungs, and lung disease? So why rely on the IAEA etc for education about nuclear power?
Solar and wind energy both flow directly to the generating system.
Not only are these fuels carbon-free, but, unlike nuclear, they leave no wastes
Only one step in that uranium-nuclear chain is low emission – though all nuclear lobbyists claim that this step is “no emission” – the reactor’s operation. BUT – Carbon-14 is produced in coolant at boiling water reactors (BWRs) and pressurized water reactors (PWRs). It is typically released to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide at BWRs, and methane at PWRs.
The claim that new nuclear power will solve climate change is spurious. This ignores life-cycle CO2 emissions Nuclear energy is not zero carbon. Emissions from nuclear will increase significantly over the next few decades as high grade ore is depleted, and increasing amounts of fossil fuels are required to access, mine and mill low-grade ore.
The “Generation IV” demonstration plants projected for 2030-2040 will be too late, and there is no guarantee the pilots will be successful.
James Hansen states that 115 new reactor start-ups would be required each year to 2050 to replace fossil fuel electricity generation ‒ a total of about 4,000 reactors. Let’s assume that Generation IV reactors do the heavy lifting, and let’s generously assume that mass production of Generation IV reactors begins in 2030. That would necessitate about 200 reactor start-ups per year from 2030 to 2050 ‒ or four every week. Good luck with that.
Moreover, the assumption that mass production of Generation IV reactors might begin in or around 2030 is unrealistic.
… a US Government Accountability Office report on the status of small modular reactors (SMRs) and other ‘advanced’ reactor concepts in the US concluded: “Both light water SMRs and advanced reactors face additional challenges related to the time, cost, and uncertainty associated with developing, certifying or licensing, and deploying new reactor technology, with advanced reactor designs generally facing greater challenges than light water SMR designs. It is a multi-decade process …”
Renewables are much faster to roll out.
It gets even more ridiculous when the nuclear lobbyists tout Small Modular Nuclear Reactors. (SMRs) . If the large reactors are required in many thousands – to be effective – how many millions of small ones would be needed?
And – don’t lets us forget. All nuclear reactors are themselves very vulnerable to the effects of climate change. (from Jim Green, REneweconomy)
Saudi Arabia and Israel have been itching for an attack on Iran. That would be a dangerous move by either of those States. But hey! What if you get get America to do this on their behalf? With Trump now surrounding himself with belligerent advisors, like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, and with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner cosying up to Israel and Saudi Arabia – there’s every chance that USA will move closer to the military brink. After all, Trump recently warned Iran that if it started enriching uranium “there will be very severe consequences,” and “something will happen”
Of course, it’s a different story for the Trump and the USA, when it comes to letting the Saudi Arabians enrich uranium. Westinghouse is keen to sell U.S,. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, and the Trump administration is writhing about trying to bypass the “123 rule” which prohibits uranium enrichment.
Saudi Arabia has been quick to militarily attack in the past – Bahrain 1994 and 2011 – Yemen recently.
The regime’s brutality towards its own citizens should surely give the world pause to think about how it might behave towards other people, when it’s in possession of nuclear bombs. Cruelty and beheadings are “normal” for crimes -not only for murders, but also for apostasy, blasphemy, atheism.
Of course, super salesman Donald Trump would find this irrelevant, indeed encouraging. After all, 12 months ago, Trump visited Riyadh , returning with a $350 Billion arms contract for America.
Nuclear power for Saudi Arabia becomes an absurd idea, when you consider that Saudi Arabia is not only the “Saudi Arabia” of oil, but also of sunshine. Their motivation for nuclear weapons is clear.
nuclear-news 