nuclear-news

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

January 21, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Nuclear industry in terminal decline – over to solar and wind

Nuclear Futures, Oil Price 18th Jan 2020

Nuclear energy has been on the decline in much of the world (with some notable exceptions in the nuclear-friendly administrations in China and Russia). This is not new news.

Now, however, Chatham House, the UK’s Royal Institution of International Affairs, has taken things a step further by taking the official stance that nuclear will never be a serious contender as a solution to catastrophic climate change.

As paraphrased by environmental news site EcoWatch, the energy experts at Chatham House “agreed that despite continued enthusiasm from the industry, and from some politicians, the number of nuclear power stations under construction worldwide would not be enough to replace those closing down.”

The consensus was that this is nuclear’s swan song, and we are now
unequivocally entering the era of wind and solar power. https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Is-This-The-Death-Knell-For-Nuclear.html

January 20, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | 1 Comment

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 leadership candidates 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

January 18, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

EDF’s dubious plan to finance Sizewell C nuclear build will actually increase costs

January 18, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Expensive but necessary – to protect nuclear reactors from cyber threats

January 13, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

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.

January 11, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Nuclear’s ‘safe and green’ image is the industry’s devious hoax

Nuclear’s ‘safe and green’ image is the industry’s devious hoax, https://www.barnstablepatriot.com/opinion/20200103/nuclears-safe-and-green-image-is-industrys-devious-hoax  Dana Franchitto, South Wellfleet,  Jack Edmonston is hardly alone in embracing the nuclear industry’s hoax that such energy is a “safe and green” fossil fuel alternative (“Climate change is scarier than nuclear power,” My View, Dec. 28).Writing in a 2008 issue of Extra, a publication of the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, journalism professor Karl Grossman reveals the links among the media, the government and the industry. For example, nuclear plant manufacturer General Electric owned NBC until 2013, while Westinghouse for years owned CBS. The New York Times systemically promotes nuclear energy. And “liberal,” “independent” National Public Radio “has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from nuclear operator Sempra Energy and Constellation Energy,” according to Grossman. The lie, lately gaining momentum, is that nuclear energy is carbon-free. Not so. True, up-and-running plants emit no greenhouse gases. However, what the Nuclear Energy Institute and its puppet, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, fail to mention is that the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining and milling to enrichment, fuel fabrication and disposal of radioactive waste are greenhouse gas-intensive, according to Michel Lee, chairwoman of the Council of Intelligent Energy and Conservation Policy. She adds that nuclear power “is actually a chain of highly energy-intensive industrial processes.” Sobering in light of an MIT study postulating the construction of 1,500 new plants in the coming years. Grossman nailed it: “The only thing green about nuclear power is the nuclear establishment’s dollars.”

January 4, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Trump’s push for lofty nuclear treaty sparks worry over current deal

Trump’s push for lofty nuclear treaty sparks worry over current deal, MPR News Franco Ordoñez, January 1, 2020 President Trump and his Russian counterpart have the coming year to deal with an expiring nuclear treaty that will lapse just after the end of his first term…..

January 1, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Dr David Lowry corrects the false argument about nuclear power being “carbon free”

David Lowry’s Blog 28th Dec 2019, David Lowry letter to FT. Your correspondent Dr John Law from the Clean Energy Revolution organization makes a very similar erroneous argument as he did three months ago in an earlier letter.Both repeat the false arguments promoting presumed low carbon emission benefits of nuclear power deployment made by Dr James E. Hansen and his colleagues in another recent letter you published.

Dr Hansen is a brilliant analyst of the atmospheric climate change problem, but his suggested solution of more nuclear power is demonstrably misguided/ Both old nuclear power plants as mentioned by Dr Law, and new nuclear plants advocated by Prof Hansen require uranium fuel.

Uranium is energy intensive in its mining, milling, enrichment and fuel
fabrication, all carbon emission-rich processes.

http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.com/2019/12/atomic-cheerleaders-ignore-nuclears.html?m=1

December 30, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Ignoring or downplaying serious environmental risks of nuclear power does not remove the objective danger

December 14, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

In Fukui Prefecture, 101 officials received gifts from former deputy mayor of town that hosts a nuclear plant.

November 26, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s impulsiveness may play right into Kim Jong Un’s hands

November 11, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Erdogan’s Ambitions Go Beyond Syria. He Says He Wants Nuclear Weapons.

October 22, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

News media -Don’t call nuclear power “clean” or “green”

Ann Darling: Nuclear power should not be linked with words like ‘clean’ or ‘green’  https://www.gazettenet.com/Darling-letter-28945232,  10/14/2019  I got behind on my reading and am just now going through your series on climate change and climate activism. I’ve learned a lot. Thank you. I’m writing because I’ve been trying to get your writers and editors to think twice when you see mention of nuclear power in association with adjectives like clean or green. I see I have to keep on trying. Buried in your article Sept. 19 extolling the green virtues of Holyoke Gas & Electric, I found this: HSG&E “provides an enormous advantage when looking to improve the city’s commitment to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The source of energy HG&E draws from are around 90 percent carbon-free, including nuclear and hydro.” To begin, creating no greenhouse gasses during the actual generation of energy is not the litmus test for clean and green. Good science demands that we also ask, is the power source sustainable? Does the extraction of the fuel pollute the planet? Does the waste from producing the energy pollute the planet? In the case of nuclear power, the answers are all these questions is a resounding no. Uranium is a finite source of fuel. Its mining consumes tremendous amounts of water and leaves radioactive tailings that are still being cleaned up and have poisoned mostly Native American communities for decades. The radioactive waste generated during power production, the most toxic thing known to humankind, is with us forever, and there is no good way to neutralize or segregate it. Let’s not forget the link to nuclear weapons. The radioactive waste is used in weapons. Yes, during electricity generation, nuclear power facilities don’t emit greenhouse gasses. Thinking that nuclear power is, therefore, a good or useful thing to address climate change is short-sighted and just plain bad science. If we have learned anything, it should be that we have to consider all the consequences of a means of power production before we adopt it. I call on HG&E to divest of nuclear power and on the Gazette to think more incisively and critically about this. I challenge you to run a series on nuclear power generation and its supposed “greenness.”

October 17, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | 2 Comments

Radiation a top anxiety problem for Russians, survey finds

Russians’ Biggest Fears Are Police Violence and Radiation, Moscow Times, 16 Oct 19, Police violence and radiation prompted the highest levels of anxiety among Russians on social media, according to a quarterly analysis cited in Russian Forbes on Wednesday.

The findings by Russian PR firm CROS follow a summer of mass anti-government protests in Moscow, where police detained thousands of demonstrators, and two high-profile nuclear accidents that sparked fears of radiation. Drug shortages were third on the list….. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/10/16/russians-biggest-fears-are-police-violence-and-radiation-a67752

October 17, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment