Follow the money trail: how the nuclear industry escapes taxing for its toxic emissions
Citizens Climate Lobby Promotes Carbon Taxes, Another False Solution, Being Pushed By Pro Nuclear Promoters To Ensure Profits For Nuclear Power Industry, Be The Change You Want To See A Green Road Magazine, 14 Jan 16 “…….In the opinion of AGRP, millions of people are being misled via an active disinformation and/or greenwashing campaign that is being orchestrated from the top down in both the carbon and nuclear industry. Millions of people are wasting their money, time and energy in promoting faux groups that pretend to be for a clean energy future, but in reality, they are promoting either the carbon industry or nuclear power behind the scenes, in secret.
DON’T BE DECEIVED AND HOODWINKED. Ask the hard questions to get to the truth and follow the money, because the money trails never lie.
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-solar-energy-energy-usage-and-costs.html
Nuclear power pushers are self-centered criminals
Karen Harvey: Nuclear power pushers are self-centered criminals http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/mailbag/karen-harvey-nuclear-power-pushers-are-self-centered-criminals/article_93b12b2a-ec4f-5475-b83f-2a3c865e62a4.html Jan 13, 2016
Dear Editor: This letter is in response to the column John La Forge wrote regarding the Legislature’s proposal to do away with the moratorium on nuclear plant construction in Wisconsin. First I want to thank John for his insights and forbearance on the nuclear issues we face as a state and global community.
Nuclear energy has created far more problems than solutions.
The old argument that nuclear power is cheap has proven to be false over and over again. The new argument that nuclear power will help to solve the global warming/climate change problem is simply not true.
Look at Fukushima — the meltdowns and the resultant deadly oceanic and atmospheric radioactive contamination. The oceans produce much of the world’s oxygen while they absorb much of the greenhouse gas CO2. The Pacific Ocean is experiencing a critical die-off that mainstream media don’t recognize. Marine nuclear radiation contamination is destroying the phytoplankton-based ocean food chain. Sea life is rolling up on shores as never before.
We are in a global crisis, with extinction levels at an all-time high. Nuclear destroys fertility and mutates/damages DNA. In the face of these truths, and consequences, how dare they promote nuclear energy! Ask the Japanese if they want another nuclear plant! Ask the indigenous nations if they want another uranium mine. The nuclear industry has brought unprecedented suffering, death and tragedy. It has not, and will not, contribute to global climate stability, prosperity, or a healthy world.
The nuclear industry and “radioactive waste trade” is toxic to all life and as such it must end. The nuclear pushers are self-centered criminals of the highest degree — careless of all earth-life and should be held accountable for what they have already unleashed against humanity and earth!
“Irresponsible” to restart Belgium’s nuclear reactors
Concerns over two Belgian nuclear reactors, News 24 2016-01-14 20:18 Brussels – Two Belgian nuclear reactors which were temporarily shut down due to structural problems should never have been restarted, according to a study commissioned by a pro-environmental group in the European Parliament and published on Thursday.
The study feeds into an ongoing debate about the safety of Belgium’s ageing nuclear plants, but the country’s nuclear regulator rejected the findings.
Technical problems with Belgium’s nuclear reactors have created tensions with neighbouring Germany, which is moving toward clean and sustainable energy sources and has passed legislation that requires the closure of all its commercial nuclear reactors by 2022.
The two reactors, Doel 3 and Tihange 2, were taken offline in 2012 after service checks indicated defects in the reactor pressure vessels. They were later found to be hydrogen flakes, formed when hydrogen bubbles became trapped during the manufacturing of the tank’s steel rings.
But the new study, carried out by material scientist Ilse Tweer on behalf of the Greens’ parliamentary group, challenges several of the FANC’s assessments and concludes that the decision to restart the two power plants is “not understandable.”
Tweer’s report says it is not certain that the flaws in the pressure vessels are hydrogen flakes, adding that there is no “explicit proof” that they have not grown during the 30 years that the reactors have been operational, or could do so in future.
“A reactor pressure vessel with thousands of flaws – and with these large flaw sizes – would not be licensable, neither today nor at the time of manufacture,” the report notes.
“Operating these two reactors, which contain thousands of cracks, is irresponsible,” Green EU lawmaker Rebecca Harms of the said on Wednesday. “Were the vessel to burst, the consequences for the densely populated region around the reactors would be catastrophic.”…… http://www.news24.com/World/News/concerns-over-two-belgian-nuclear-reactors-20160114
Smaller nuclear weapons make greater risk of nuclear weapons use
As U.S. Modernizes Nuclear Weapons, ‘Smaller’ Leaves Some Uneasy, NYT By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER JAN. 11, 2016 “…… while the North Koreans have been thinking big — claiming to have built a hydrogen bomb, a boast that experts dismiss as wildly exaggerated — the Energy Department and the Pentagon have been readying a line of weapons that head in the opposite direction.
The build-it-smaller approach has set off a philosophical clash among those in Washington who think about the unthinkable.
Mr. Obama has long advocated a “nuclear-free world.” His lieutenants argue that modernizing existing weapons can produce a smaller and more reliable arsenal while making their use less likely because of the threat they can pose. The changes, they say, are improvements rather than wholesale redesigns, fulfilling the president’s pledge to make no new nuclear arms.
But critics, including a number of former Obama administration officials, look at the same set of facts and see a very different future. The explosive innards of the revitalized weapons may not be entirely new, they argue, but the smaller yields and better targeting can make the arms more tempting to use — even to use first, rather than in retaliation.
Gen. James E. Cartwright, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was among Mr. Obama’s most influential nuclear strategists, said he backed the upgrades because precise targeting allowed the United States to hold fewer weapons. But “what going smaller does,” he acknowledged, “is to make the weapon more thinkable.”…….
while the North Koreans have been thinking big — claiming to have built a hydrogen bomb, a boast that experts dismiss as wildly exaggerated — the Energy Department and the Pentagon have been readying a line of weapons that head in the opposite direction.
The build-it-smaller approach has set off a philosophical clash among those in Washington who think about the unthinkable.
Mr. Obama has long advocated a “nuclear-free world.” His lieutenants argue that modernizing existing weapons can produce a smaller and more reliable arsenal while making their use less likely because of the threat they can pose. The changes, they say, are improvements rather than wholesale redesigns, fulfilling the president’s pledge to make no new nuclear arms.
But critics, including a number of former Obama administration officials, look at the same set of facts and see a very different future. The explosive innards of the revitalized weapons may not be entirely new, they argue, but the smaller yields and better targeting can make the arms more tempting to use — even to use first, rather than in retaliation.
Gen. James E. Cartwright, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was among Mr. Obama’s most influential nuclear strategists, said he backed the upgrades because precise targeting allowed the United States to hold fewer weapons. But “what going smaller does,” he acknowledged, “is to make the weapon more thinkable.”…….
Inside the administration, some early enthusiasts for Mr. Obama’s vision began to worry that it was being turned on its head.
In late 2013, the first of the former insiders spoke out. Philip E. Coyle III and Steve Fetter, who had recently left national security posts, helped write an 80-page critique of the nuclear plan by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private group that made its name during the Cold War, arguing for arms reductions.
American allies and adversaries, the report warned, may see the modernization “as violating the administration’s pledge not to develop or deploy” new warheads. …….
the bigger risk to the modernization plan may be its expense — upward of a trillion dollars if future presidents go the next step and order new bombers, submarines and land-based missiles, and upgrades to eight factories and laboratories.
“Insiders don’t believe it will ever happen,” said Mr. Coyle, the former White House official. “It’s hard to imagine that many administrations following through.”
Meanwhile, other veterans of the Obama administration ask what happened.
“I think there’s a universal sense of frustration,” said Ellen O. Tauscher, a former under secretary of state for arms control. She said many who joined the administration with high expectations for arms reductions now feel disillusioned.
“Somebody has to get serious,” she added. “We’re spending billions of dollars on a status quo that doesn’t make us any safer.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/science/as-us-modernizes-nuclear-weapons-smaller-leaves-some-uneasy.html?_r=0
Tax-payers could end up on the hook for Ontario’s upgrade of Pickering nuclear station
Ontario to squeeze more life out of Pickering nuclear station, City News, THE CANADIAN PRESS JAN 11, 2016 Ontario’s Liberal government wants to squeeze four more years of life out of the Pickering nuclear station.
It will start a $12.8 billion refurbishment of the Darlington power station this fall.
Nuclear reactors at both stations owned by Ontario Power Generation (OPG) were originally scheduled to be decommissioned in 2020.
But cabinet decided to keep Pickering running until 2024 while the four nuclear reactors at the Darlington station are rebuilt to extend their lives by about 30 years…….
Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats are worried taxpayers will be on the hook for huge cost overruns with the Darlington rebuild, noting nuclear projects never come in on budget…… Ontario companies in the CANDU reactor supply chain.http://www.citynews.ca/2016/01/11/ontario-to-squeeze-more-life-out-of-pickering-nuclear-station/
Nuclear power politics in USA: even Conservatives say it’s too costly
The 2016 politics of nuclear energy, Washington Examiner By JOHN SICILIANO • 1/10/16 The presidential election may offer hope for a resurgence of interest in nuclear energy. And if a Republican wins the White House, it’s more likely that the centerpiece of that effort, a controversial nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, will move forward.
Republicans stand for what they call the “law of the land,” referring to the fact that Congress chose Yucca Mountain to be the nation’s nuclear waste dump, and that has not changed despite President Obama’s and congressional Democrats’ success in upending the project and focusing instead on wind and solar power.
But even with a president who favors nuclear energy, it will still prove difficult to build the site to take radioactive waste from nearly 100 power plants…
…..opponents say it’s unsafe. But both sides agree that building more nuclear plants hinges on waste disposal.
It pits the administration against lawmakers……
…A big barrier to the nuclear option is price. Ben Zycher, senior energy fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said new nuclear reactors cost far too much, especially since natural gas is so cheap. That could sideline nuclear energy and Yucca Mountain this election year……. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-2016-politics-of-nuclear-energy/article/2579855
USA decision-makers have no concept of the implications of nuclear weapon supgrades
The criminality and recklessness of the foreign policy of Washington and its NATO allies is staggering. A pre-emptive nuclear strike against Russian forces, many of them near populated areas, could claim millions of lives in seconds and lead to a nuclear war that would obliterate humanity.
Even assuming that the US officials threatening Russia do not actually want such an outcome, however, and that they are only trying to intimidate Moscow, there is a sinister objective logic to such threats.”
No Danger of Nuclear War? The Pentagon’s Plan to Blow up the Planet By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, January 11, 2016 “……The media consensus is that a nuclear holocaust is an impossibility.
Should we be concerned?
Publicly available military documents confirm that nuclear war is still on the drawing board of the Pentagon.
Compared to the 1950s, however, today’s nuclear weapons are far more advanced. The delivery system is more precise. In addition to China and Russia, Iran, Syria and North Korea are targets for a first strike pre-emptive nuclear attack.
Let us be under no illusions, the Pentagon’s plan to blow up the planet using advanced nuclear weapons is still on the books.
War is Good for Business: Spearheaded by the “defense contractors” (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, British Aerospace et al), the Obama administration has proposed a one trillion dollar plan over a 30 year period to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) largely directed at Russia and China.
A new arms race is unfolding. Russia has in turn responded to US threats through a major modernization of its strategic nuclear weapons arsenal.
Political Insanity
The use of nuclear weapons is casually endorsed by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who believes that nuclear weapons are instruments of peace-making. Her election campaign is financed by the US military industrial complex which produces the WMDs.
Meanwhile, scientists on contract to the Pentagon have endorsed the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are said to be “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground.” The tactical nukes are bona fide thermonuclear weapons, with an explosive capacity between one third and six times a Hiroshima bomb. They have been cleared for battlefield use (in the conventional war theater) by the US Senate and their use does not require the approval by the Commander in Chief.
The people at the highest levels of government who make decisions regarding the use of nuclear weapons haven’t the foggiest idea as to the implications of their actions. Continue reading
Jeremy Corbyn on scrapping Trident: I want Britain to bring about a nuclear-free world
Jeremy Corbyn on scrapping Trident: I want Britain to bring about a nuclear-free world
Labour leader suggests he is prepared to speak at an anti-Trident CND and Stop the War rally in February……
Nuclear power cannot be both “safe” and “cheap” for Wisconsin
John LaForge: Nuclear power might be safe or cheap, but never safe and cheap, The Cap Times, Madison, Wisconsin, JOHN LaFORGE | Nukewatch staffer, 11 Jan 16
Wisconsin legislators are seeking repeal of a 33-year-old moratorium on building nuclear reactors here without having 
first found a solution for managing high-level radioactive waste. Since no solution is in hand, the state is permanently saddled with three large reactors on Lake Michigan (one at Kewaunee is closed), another shut-down reactor on the Mississippi River near La Crosse, and a research reactor on Madison’s University of Wisconsin campus. Radioactive waste just keeps accumulating onsite.
Yet in spite of the problem of corrosive, hot, cancer-causing, deadly waste that is radioactive for 1 million years, the Legislature has been captured by industry lobbyists who love a good yarn like the one about clean, safe, cheap nuclear power.
At a state Senate committee hearing Jan. 5, several dozen people testified for and against the repeal (S.B. 288), and the “what could go wrong?” crowd spoke up for a theoretical future of safe and cheap reactors. They forget that reactor safety costs an astronomical amount of money. Others complained that the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, waste dump proposal was canceled for political rather than scientific reasons, not recognizing that their own bill is thoroughly political and frighteningly anti-scientific. In fact, the Yucca Mountain plan faced over 290 unresolved scientific roadblocks that stood in the way of licensing approval at the time it was canceled.
At the hearing, Al Gedicks testified against the repeal bill with brevity and punch……..“The idea that nuclear power is clean defies common sense. Would a truly ‘clean energy’ source produce ‘one of the most hazardous substances on earth,’ according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office?
“Dr. Arjun Makhijani at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research emphasizes that: ‘An objective assessment of the facts leads to the clear conclusion that nuclear power is already economically obsolete, quite apart from a number of other considerations. The same amount of money can produce far greater CO2 reductions with wind and solar energy than with nuclear.’”……. http://host.madison.com/ct/opinion/column/john-laforge-nuclear-power-might-be-safe-or-cheap-but/article_7d1ae5bc-40db-55d4-ac23-79f8bb62761b.html
USA ‘s “antagonism” blamed for increasing tensions in Korean Peninsula
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Questions on safety of Chinese nuclear technology
Chinese nuclear safety must be fully scrutinized: but will it be in UK? http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/chinese-nuclear-safety-must-be-fully.html?spref=fb Dr David Lowry, Letter to The Financial Times:
Decades to clean up former Oldbury nuclear power station?
Final nuclear fuel flask leaves former Oldbury power station, BBC News 8 Jan 16 The last flask of nuclear fuel from the former Oldbury power station reactor has been sent for reprocessing.
The site was shut in 2012 after 44 years of operation, during which it produced 137.5TWh of electricity.
Operators Magnox said the final fuel shipment marked the “end of an era” but added “work was far from complete”.
Oldbury now moves to a decommissioning phase aiming to make the site “safe and secure” and free of radioactive hazard by 2027. Mike Heaton, the site director, said: “It has not been an easy task and the work at Oldbury is far from complete, but today is a significant landmark in the journey towards care and maintenance.”
Each flask carried some 200 fuel elements, and since de-fuelling began four years ago 286 flasks have been taken away from the site to be reprocessed at Sellafield in Cumbria.
This final batch of fuel elements has been in storage in a cooling pond at the site since being removed from the reactor last October. ………http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-35245781
‘Decluttering’ is not enough to stop the consumerism mess
Decluttering can’t save us from the consumerist mess we’ve made, Guardian, 7 Jan 16
Suzanne Moore Marie Kondo’s bestselling books sell tidying as a spiritual experience. But liberating ourselves from stuff is about more than just a neat sock drawer
“……What fascinates me is how decluttering has become yet another way of virtue signalling. The rise of mega-selling advice about decluttering is an extension of the detox, an add-on to the binge/purge cycle. For those who live on TED talks and superfood alone, then maybe tidying up really is that liberating.
For decluttering elevates the domestic sphere. This is not just cleaning. Would any woman buy a book on how to do housework?
……we hold on. We are constantly told to get more stuff and we are confused by the value of what we possess. This is acted out perversely by hoarders……
the decluttering industry can’t deal with the broader aspect of why we feel so out of control in our own homes. After all, we have merely done as we were told: consumed. Now, it has become excessive, and we are swimming in our own tat. Is this elevation of tidying enough to stop the circle of shopping, of built-in obsolescence, of fashion, of our complete lack of connection to where any of our products come from?
To be free from this cycle may indeed be magical. The illusion that it is up to each of us individually to sort this out may be comforting. But liberation from the mess we have made is about more than a neat sock drawer. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/06/decluttering-cant-save-us-from-the-consumerist-mess-weve-made#comment-66332353
USA nuclear weapons manufacture: the job that produced 80,000 cancers
the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research has maintained that the actual number of fatal cancers caused by nuclear testing could be 17,000. Of course, a larger number of people contracted cancer from nuclear testing than actually died of it. The government study estimated that those who contracted cancer numbered at least 80,000 Americans.
Open thread for night owls: Building the U.S. nuclear arsenal has killed thousands http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1/4/1466115/-Open-thread-for-night-owls-Building-the-U-S-nuclear-arsenal-has-killed-thousands By Meteor Blades Jan 05, 2016 Lawrence Wittner writes—American Casualties of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program When Americans think about nuclear weapons, they comfort themselves with the thought that the vast, nuclear destruction of human life has not taken place since 1945—at least not yet. But, in reality, nuclear weapon-related destruction has taken place, with shocking levels of U.S. casualties.
This point is borne out by a recently-published study by a team of investigative journalists at McClatchy News. Drawing upon millions of government records and large numbers of interviews, they concluded that employment in the nation’s nuclear weapons plants since 1945 led to 107,394 American workers contracting cancer and other serious diseases. Of these people, some 53,000 judged by government officials to have experienced excessive radiation on the job received $12 billion in compensation under the federal government’s Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. And 33,480 of these workers have died.
How could this happen? Let’s examine the case of Byron Vaigneur. In October 1975, he saw a brownish sludge containing plutonium break through the wall of his office and start pooling near his desk at the Savannah River, South Carolina nuclear weapons plant. Subsequently, he contracted breast cancer, as well as chronic beryllium disease, a debilitating respiratory condition. Vaigneur, who had a mastectomy to cut out the cancer, is today on oxygen, often unable to walk more than a hundred feet. Declaring he’s ready to die, he has promised to donate his body to science in the hope that it will help save the lives of other people exposed to deadly radiation.
Actually, workers in nuclear weapons plants constitute only a fraction of Americans whose lives have been ravaged by preparations for nuclear war. A 2002 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintained that, between 1951 and 1963 alone, the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons — more than half of it done by the United States — killed 11,000 Americans through cancer. As this estimate does not include internal radiation exposure caused by inhaling or swallowing radioactive particles, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research has maintained that the actual number of fatal cancers caused by nuclear testing could be 17,000. Of course, a larger number of people contracted cancer from nuclear testing than actually died of it. The government study estimated that those who contracted cancer numbered at least 80,000 Americans.
Climate change is altering Greenland ice sheet, accelerating sea level rise
Date:January 4, 2016
- Source:
- York University
- Summary:
- The Greenland ice sheet has traditionally been pictured as a sponge for glacier meltwater, but new research has found it’s rapidly losing the ability to buffer its contribution to rising sea levels, say researchers. They have also found that climate change has caused meltwater from lower elevations to run directly into the sea…….http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160104130436.htm
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