Radiation poses major obstacle to future deep-space astronauts bound for Mars
A roundtrip from Earth to Mars, plus time on the Red Planet, would mean a human crew could spend months or years in deep space.
Mars seems to be on everybody’s mind in the space industry. There are already several robotic missions to the Red Planet underway, and companies and space agencies are already working to one day send humans there.
But a crewed mission would present many more challenges. One of these obstacles is radiation, and so researchers are working to find a way to protect a crew against the dangerous radiation of deep space.
Humans evolved underneath the protective blanket that is the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. Our bodies are not like the robots we shoot into the far reaches of the solar system. We are made of organic matter that needs to be shielded from harmful radiation. …… https://www.space.com/mars-radiation-obstacle-crewed-human-missions.html
Morgan, Gardner: More Time Needed For Nuclear Storage Discussion
Morgan, Gardner: More Time Needed For Nuclear Storage Discussion https://www.wortfm.org/morgan-gardner-more-time-needed-for-nuclear-storage-discussion/
APRIL 1, 2020 BY 8 O’CLOCK BUZZ Interim nuclear storage is a problem, not just with where the highly radioactive materials are stored, but the routes of transportation on rail, highways, and waterways. Leona Morgan from the Nuclear Issues Study Group and Rose Gardner from the Alliance for Environmental Strategies discuss the current proposals and are urging an extension to the public comment period for the bill.
In the current mood – time for international co-operation and prompt action to stall global heating
Global response to Covid-19 is rapid. Response to climate change is too damn slow
Climate Policy Times 15th March 2020
The deadly threat posed by the rapid spread of Covid-19 has resulted in
unprecedented action from governments around the world. There’s a lesson
here for climate change: it’s too damn slow. What would happen, for
example, if we learnt that the polar icecaps had reduced by almost half
overnight, rather than since the 1980s? What if some of the world’s
largest lakes mysteriously dried up over January, not over the past decade?
What sort of panic would ensue if a quarter of the world’s population
found their homes under water tomorrow, instead of being told it would
happen in 80 years?
Greta Thunberg calls for Friday climate rallies to be held online
Greta Thunberg calls for Friday climate rallies to be held online, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/greta-thunberg-calls-for-friday-climate-rallies-to-be-held-online Climate activist Greta Thunberg has called on fellow climate activists to move their weekly rallies online to prevent the spread COVID-19.
Snazzy little nuclear reactors the next big thing for Australia? I don’t think so
NUCLEAR PRICES ITSELF OUT OF THE FUTURE, HTTPS://WWW.AUMANUFACTURING.COM.AU/NUCLEAR-PRICES-ITSELF-OUT-OF-THE-FUTURE BY PETER ROBERTS, 9 Mar 20,
I was at lunch the other day and out came the familiar theme – Australia should go nuclear to de-carbonise the economy.
Well, a just-released report from the NSW Parliament’s State Development Committee should put an end to such talk – it is just too expensive and problematic.
The report, detailed in Channel 9 media, found the cost of the two reactors being built in the US is now thought to be between $20.4 billion and $22.6 billion for each reactor.
In the UK the cost of two reactors being build has jumped seven-fold to $25.9 billion each.
And those being built in France and Finland are now costed at upwards of $17.7 billion each.
Cost over-runs and delays mean that big nuclear power plants are only going to be built where there are massive government subsidies.
And this is even before factoring in the cost of the odd Fukushima or Chernobyl.
This morning on social media the pro-nuclear trolls were out in force – people are living happily now at Chernobyl one said.
Well I visited Chernobyl 18 months ago and there is nothing normal about it.
Maintaining the remains of the reactors at Chernobyl consumes 10 per cent of Ukraine’s admittedly modest GDP, and the long term effects of radiation continue to be felt.
This is why nuclear proponents now talk about snazzy new small reactors which are going to be the next big thing.
The same story is unfolding in small reactor construction as large – cost over-runs, very few small reactors actually under construction, and the need for massive, yes there’s that word again, government subsidies.
We already know what the answer to our carbon crisis is – renewables. Wind and solar plus storage is already cheaper and getting cheaper every day.
The future is not nuclear.
Karen Silk remembered – nuclear unsafety whistleblower
Observer 23rd Feb 2020, Life is never easy for whistleblowers – see Mordechai Vanunu, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden among many others. But in 1974 Karen Silkwood, a lab technician who had doubts about the safety of the nuclear plant she worked at in Oklahoma, died – in extremely mysterious circumstances – before she could reveal the information.
It was her death itself that led
investigations into safety practices at the plant. Joyce Eddinton
interviewed Meryl Streep, who played Silkwood in Mike Nichols’s eponymous
film, for the Observer Magazine of 8 April 1984 (‘The Karen Silkwood
File’).https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/feb/23/from-the-archive-meryl-streep-as-muclear-whistleblower-karen-silkwood-1984-mike-nichols-film
The containers the U.S. plans to use for nuclear waste storage may corrode
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The containers the U.S. plans to use for nuclear waste storage may corrode
Groundwater exposure could cause the metal and glass binding the waste to break down. Science News, By Maria Temming, 3 Feb 2020Containers that the U.S. government plans to use to store dangerous nuclear waste underground may be more vulnerable to water damage than previously thought.Millions of liters of highly radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons program are currently held in temporary storage units across the country. The government’s game plan for permanently disposing of this material is to mix radioactive waste into glass or ceramic, seal it in stainless steel canisters and bury it deep underground. Such a nuclear waste dump may be constructed under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but local opposition has stalled the project (SN: 1/16/02). Now, new lab experiments reveal another potential snafu in the scheme. When a nuclear waste package is exposed to groundwater, chemical interactions between a stainless steel canister and its glass or ceramic contents may cause the materials to corrode slightly faster than expected, researchers report online January 27 in Nature Materials. That corrosion risks exposing the radioactive waste stored in the container. Xiaolei Guo, a materials scientist at Ohio State University in Columbus, and colleagues discovered this problem by pressing pieces of stainless steel against glass or ceramic and submerging the materials in a saltwater solution, simulating groundwater exposure. When water seeped into the boundary between the stainless steel and ceramic or glass, the steel released ferrous iron, ferric iron and other components that created an acidic environment at the metal’s surface. That acidity corroded the neighboring ceramic or glass. ……..https://www.sciencenews.org/article/containers-u-s-plans-use-nuclear-waste-storage-may-corrode |
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Accident in the Hinkley Point site area
Somerset Live 20th Jan 2020, There have been multiple reports this evening of severe delays around the Hinkley Point site after a serious crash in the area. Emergency services including an air ambulance are reported to have attended the scene this evening, Monday, January 20.
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/reports-hundreds-trapped-hinkley-point-3760129
Watch the 2020 Doomsday Clock Announcement on January 23
Watch the 2020 Doomsday Clock Announcement on January 23By Gayle Spinazze, January 8, 2020 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will host a live international news conference at 10 a.m. EST/1500 GMT on Thursday, January 23, 2020, to announce the 2020 time of the Doomsday Clock. The news conference will take place at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Watch the announcement live on our website or on our Facebook page………. https://thebulletin.org/2020/01/watch-the-2020-doomsday-clock-announcement/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=ThursdayNewsletter01092020&utm_content=DoomsdayClock_ClockEvent_01082020
Nuclear industry in terminal decline – over to solar and wind
Nuclear Futures, Oil Price 18th Jan 2020unequivocally entering the era of wind and solar power. https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Is-This-The-Death-Knell-For-Nuclear.html
Nuclear weapons are an existential threat and intertwined with the climate threat
Guardian 16th Jan 2020
 Rachel Connolly is right to demand that the Labour leadershipcandidates address the climate crisis (The nuclear button? There really are more pressing issues, Journal, 8 January). But suggesting we remove nuclear weapons from the conversation ignores how intertwined these two existential threats are. Generations of climate scientists have documented that a
nuclear war could cause drastic climatic disturbances and global famine. Last year scientists found that the use of a few hundred weapons (less than 10% of today’s global nuclear arsenals) could nearly stop all rain over India and central China, and reduce global precipitation globally by 15%-30%. It would take over a decade to return to rainfall levels before the nuclear war. Nuclear weapons destroy the climate even when they are not used. Nuclear weapons facilities – not unlike the oil and gas companies
exacerbating the climate crisis – have contaminated land and water around the world with waste that will last far beyond even our grandchildren’s lifetimes. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/16/nuclear-weapons-worsen-the-climate-crisis |
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EDF’s dubious plan to finance Sizewell C nuclear build will actually increase costs
problems and costs, not savings.
https://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.com/2020/01/why-edfs-argument-that-they-cut-costs.html
Expensive but necessary – to protect nuclear reactors from cyber threats
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Cybersecurity
M.V. Ramana: October 2019 cyberattack on a computer system at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant points to new pathways to severe accidents that can result in widespread radioactive fallout. Attempts to lower this risk would further increase the cost of nuclear power.India Forum 10th Jan 2019 https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/computer-infection-kudankulam-and-its-implications |
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Nuclear weapons systems don’t make either Russians or Americans safer
Is Russia’s 100-Megaton Nuclear Torpedo More Trouble Than Its Worth? The National Interest, Lyle J. Goldstein, The National Interest•January 8, 2020
Key Point: The development of new weapons systems may benefit the military-industrial complex, but they don’t benefit the safety of Russians or Americans.
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The “collateral damage” of the Russia investigation becomes ever more apparent. From the breakdown of American institutional norms between the executive and the legislature, to increasing distrust regarding the law enforcement and intelligence apparatus to regional crises, for example in Syria, that seem to spin increasingly out of control, the probe has brought both U.S. domestic and foreign policy making to a the point of crisis. Yet these calamities, which are largely advantageous to newspaper subscriptions and cable news ratings, may mask a deeper and more fundamental threat: the accelerating pace of a nuclear arms race [гонка ядерных вооружений] between Moscow and Washington……. https://news.yahoo.com/russias-100-megaton-nuclear-torpedo-020000145.html |
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1.This Month
CoVid 19/Nuclear Dangers:
Arnie Gundersen & Maggie Gundersen of Fairewinds
Call Out Safety Issues, Refueling Lies
This Week’s Covid19/Nuclear UPDATE:
- Arnie Gundersen & Maggie Gundersen of Fairewinds Energy Education go through how truly impossible the nuclear industry’s “safety” claims truly are, as well as various ways the nukesters are lying, manipulating, and positioning themselves for tax credits, fee waivers, and more.
- A news roundup of nuclear industry manipulations to get tax credits, fee waivers, delayed maintenance, and, oh yes, stimulus package money.
of the week
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