Aggressive U.S. Push for Military Supremacy in the Arctic Could Trigger Nuclear War
Covert Action Magazine By Jeremy Kuzmarov, July 14, 2023 (Excellent pictures on original.)
From 1959 to 1966, the U.S. illegally stored nuclear weapons in Greenland in preparation for a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and built an underground scientific research center right out of a James Bond movie.
It resulted in the displacement of natives and has left a residue of environmental destruction in the Arctic that will likely be compounded in Cold War Part II.
On June 2, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. would open its northernmost diplomatic station in the Norwegian Arctic town of Tromsoe, the only diplomatic station above the Arctic Circle. .
The move comes as competition over the Arctic’s resources with Russia intensifies as polar ice melt opens access to rich mineral resources and the new Cold War heats up.
In 2019, then-President Donald Trump had talked about purchasing Greenland in “the real estate deal of a lifetime” that would help secure a land mass a quarter of the size of the U.S.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the offer “absurd,” saying that Greenland was not for sale. (Denmark is Greenland’s sovereign owner.)
Beyond Trump’s self-aggrandizement lay a calculating imperial strategy in which the U.S. would use Greenland, where the U.S. already possesses the Thule Air Base, to project its power into the Arctic—a growing arena of geopolitical and military competition.
In 2018, China launched the Polar Silk Road initiative which sought to align Chinese Arctic interests with the Belt and Road initiative involving the building of new infrastructure and interlinking of China’s economy with its regional allies and countries around the world.
As part of the Silk Road initiative, China began creating new freight routes extending into the Arctic that would better enable extraction of natural resources while launching a new satellite to track shipping routes and monitor changes in sea ice there.
The Russians have also been busy expanding shipping routes into the Arctic that are navigable because of global warming, and have finished equipping six military bases on Russia’s northern shore and on outlying Arctic Island, while planning to open 10 Arctic search-and-rescue stations, 16 deep-water ports, 13 air fields, and 10 air-defense radar stations across its Arctic periphery.
The New York Times reported last year that, in response to Russia’s military build-up near the Arctic Circle, the U.S. government has been investing hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the port at Nome on the west coast of Alaska, which could transform into a deep-water hub servicing Coast Guard and Navy vessels navigating into the Arctic Circle.
The Pentagon has further plans to increase its presence and capabilities, with the Army releasing its first strategic plan for “Regaining Arctic Dominance.” The U.S. Air Force has transferred dozens of F-35 fighter jets to Alaska, announcing that the state will host “more advanced fighters than any other location in the world.”[1]
Until now, competition in the Arctic was largely mediated through the Arctic Council, founded in 1996, which includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the U.S., and promotes research and cooperation. But it does not have a security component, and soon all members but Russia will be North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members.
Admiral Alexander Moiseyev, commander of Peter the Great, the flagship of the Russian Northern Fleet, accused NATO forces and the U.S. of military actions in the Arctic that increased the risk of conflict.
“There haven’t been so many of their forces here for years. Decades. Not since World War Two,” he told a BBC reporter who told him that NATO blamed Russia for the surge in tension. “We see such activity as provocative so close to the Russian border where we have very important assets. By that, I mean nuclear forces.”
First Ice Cold War
Kristian H. Nielsen and Henry Nielsen,[2] in their recent book Camp Century: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Arctic Military Base Under the Greenland Ice, show that today’s perilous situation has roots in the original Cold War period.
U.S. army engineers then built the subterranean city, Camp Century, under the Greenland ice near the Arctic Circle under the guise of conducting polar research, and explored the feasibility of Project Iceworm, a plan to store and launch hundreds of ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads targeting the Soviet Union from inside the ice.
Described by two Danish journalists as “some monstrous figment of the imagination that could have been featured in an early James Bond film,”[3] Project Iceworm was justified under the 1950s military doctrine of “massive retaliation,” and the Eisenhower administration’s “New Look” policy which advocated for a massive conventional and nuclear arms build-up to counter potential Soviet aggression…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
“The City Under Ice”—A Science-Fiction Scenario Come True
In 1960, the U.S. Army began initiating research projects near Camp Thule at the underground, nuclear-powered Camp Century, which was established as a kind of science-fiction scenario come true.
The projects aimed to understand the environment and climate on the ice sheet, thereby enabling the U.S. to better establish and secure its northernmost military position…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The sub-surface installation of a nuclear reactor within the Greenland ice sheet at Camp Century was an enormous and difficult engineering endeavor that was an astonishing achievement…………………………………….
Almost all of the journalists invited to visit Camp Century in the early 1960s celebrated the major scientific achievements while minimizing the Cold War context and military purposes behind the camp.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. an American journalist writing under the pseudonym “Ivan Colt” who, in an article appearing in October 1960, included a vivid description of missile-launching bases beneath the surface of the ice sheet that would be “able to plaster every major Soviet city, H-bomb depot and missile plant.”
Audacious Cold War Project
In 1997, a group of Danish historians were able to locate a classified document proving that the U.S. saw Camp Century as the first step toward a colossal sub-surface tunnel system that would enable the U.S. Army to launch a nuclear-missile strike at virtually any target in the Soviet Union.[10]
These missiles would be protected because of their distance from the U.S. mainland, and location in a secret underground facility……………………………………………………………………………………………..
Health and Environmental Detritus and the Dangers of History Repeating Itself
Camp Century was shut down in 1966, as its sub-surface tunnel system in the Greenland ice sheet was extremely difficult and costly to maintain and the development of Polaris nuclear missiles launchable from submarines made it largely obsolete. However, its remains may soon resurface because of global warming.
Greenland, today a largely self-governing part of Denmark, threatened to bring the case before the UN International Court of Justice if Denmark did not promptly assume responsibility for cleaning up the Camp Century site.
The remaining debris, some 35-70 meters (115-230 feet) beneath the surface of the ice, is known to include not only buildings and structural elements but also radioactive, chemical and biological waste.[12]
Over the years, many workers at Thule Air Base had developed cancers from radiation exposure, as did members of a clean-up crew that was called in to collect snow contaminated with plutonium for transport to the U.S. after a B-52 Stratofortress carrying hydrogen bombs crashed seven kilometers from Thule Air Base in 1968.[13]
The health and environmental detritus is an example of a vast and unrecognized cost of the Cold War arms race that is sadly being reinvigorated today.
As Russia, China and the U.S. compete for renewed control over the Arctic and set up yet more military bases there, the fallout will again be considerable even if the nukes are never deployed, and the tragedy of Camp Century will be repeated.
References: …………………………………………….more https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/07/14/aggressive-u-s-push-for-military-supremacy-in-the-arctic-could-trigger-nuclear-war/?mc_cid=f5762ce44c&mc_eid=65917fb94b
Western Media Has Falsely Presented the Donbas’ Drive For Autonomy as Being Instigated By Moscow
Covert Action Magazine By Ambrose Sylvan, July 13, 2023 [a long, detailed artice, – I recommend that you read the original]
In Reality It Resulted Largely from Kyiv’s Destruction of Eastern Ukraine’s Economy Under Neo-Liberal Economic Policies Pushed by Washington Since the 1990s
The war in Ukraine is commonly seen through one of two lenses. The vision presented by Western, NATO-aligned powers is one of an astro-turfed Donbas separatism created by Moscow to justify the division of Ukraine.
The view of NATO’s critics is that the Donbas republics rebelled against the Euromaidan revolution and the country’s nationalistic, Euro-centric tilt. The reality is that this conflict started much earlier and was merely frozen until the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2013.
Political Economy of the Donbas
Global Security outlines the economic situation in Donbas at the time of the dissolution of the USSR……………………………………………………………………………..
The tension between the central government and the Donbas miners was fueled by the increasing difficulty (and cost) of pulling coal from Donbas mines. Other coal-mining regions of the USSR were less costly but the social unrest in Donbas was placated with increasing state subsidies.
Ukrainian independence ended the Donbas struggle against Moscow but created intractable economic problems. The extensive subsidies for Donbas mines were shifted to the less wealthy government in Kyiv, the economic integration of the Soviet Union’s republics was disrupted, and the shift to a market economy was disastrous.
After the break-up of the Union, the political leaders of the Donbas miners would become known as “red directors,” socialists who put the interconnected economic needs of the Donbas and surrounding regions at the heart of their demands to Kyiv.
One of the earliest separatist organizations in Ukraine was the International Movement of Donbas. The Ukrainian news site DEPO, citing Novosti Donbas, describes the origin of the Intermovement as a project of academics at Donetsk University. The group was created as the “International Front for Donbas” at a meeting held on August 31, 1989.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. The Intermovement for Donbas failed to raise support for a renewed USSR, but the separatist movement would grow larger and stronger with every crisis that shook independent Ukraine.
The Shock Year
The act of independence immediately triggered a years-long economic crisis which was the driving force behind Ukraine’s growing separatist and anti-government movements.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Inflation was accelerated by the spike in oil and gas prices as Ukraine lost the preferential rates it had enjoyed in the Soviet Union. Despite warnings from Moscow and the National Bank of Ukraine that the country would have to pay world prices if it exited the “Ruble Zone,” the government decided to drop the ruble as Ukraine’s currency by year-end.
New national borders interrupted the industrial sector, costs soared, demand fell (especially in state-driven industries like defense and science), and production crashed. For the first time in living memory, Ukrainians experienced the terrors of unemployment, price gouging, and starvation in a time of plenty.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Ukraine dropped the ruble on November 12, 1992, and had no stable legal currency to use at markets. Wages were worthless and some workers were paid directly in consumer goods like soap instead of money. The economic problems of the working masses had become many times worse than they had been at the end of the Soviet era.
Demands of Donbas
Naturally there were outbursts of popular rage against the government as people lost their livelihoods………………………………………………………………………………………..
A government commission headed by the Finance Minister (who had authored the disastrous economic reforms) arrived in Donetsk on June 8. The striking miners made their demands clear: a no-confidence referendum on the President and parliament, and stronger regional self-government for Donbas. On June 18 the government agreed to schedule the referendum for September and to double miners’ wages. However this wage increase did little in the face of hyperinflation and the referendum was eventually canceled in favor of early elections.
Regional autonomy had already been a project of the Donetsk Regional Council before the 1993 general strike……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
A “consultative poll” was held in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts on the same day as the early elections, March 27, 1994. The central government refused to acknowledge it as a legally binding referendum, but the poll results showed that Donbas had a popular mandate to establish an autonomous government.
The poll had four questions: whether the constitution of Ukraine should change from a unitary state to a federal state; whether the Russian language should be constitutionally equal to the Ukrainian language; whether Russian should be an equal language of government and education in Donbas; and whether Ukraine should be a full participant in the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States.
An overwhelming majority of voters said “YES” to all four questions: The federal system received 84% of all valid ballots in Donetsk, and the other three questions received more than 90% of all valid ballots in both regions…………………………………………
Deindustrialization
Tensions between the Donbas miners and the Ukrainian government continued to intensify over economic and political issues, and major labor actions continued through the decade.
………………………………………………………….The government did not follow through and strike action resumed on February 2, 1996, coordinated across Russia and Ukraine from Siberia to Donbas. As many as one million miners and allied workers went on strike in Ukraine.
…………………………………………………………. The central government’s economic warfare against the Donbas has continued unabated for decades………………………………………………………………………………..
Pushed to the Edge
Kyiv’s systematic destruction of the Donbas economy is a much greater driver of separatism than any Russophile nationalism. Sociological surveys conducted in early 2014 show us the most important issues to eastern Ukrainians on the verge of civil war.
Eight southern and eastern oblasts were surveyed by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in April 2014. ……………………………………………………………………………………………
KIIS additionally asked about the state structure of Ukraine. Only 10.6% in Donetsk and 12.4% in Luhansk indicated that they would keep the unitary state with its weak oblasts; 41.1% in Donetsk and 34.2% in Luhansk wanted power to be decentralized with oblasts given greater authority; and 38.4% in Donetsk and 41.9% in Luhansk endorsed a federal system with each region having its own state and the national government becoming a federation of these states. There were clear majorities in Donetsk and Luhansk (79.5% and 76.1%) that desired autonomous local governments.
Another survey was carried out by the Donetsk Institute for Social Research and Political Analysis in April 2014. ………………..In total, 79% of respondents wanted Kyiv to have less power and 48% wanted Donetsk to have its own state formation, whether independent or federated with Ukraine or Russia.
Breakaway
The infamous Donbas independence referendums were held just a few weeks after these surveys had been published. Despite accusations of endemic fraud and fabricated results the outcome was not far from what had been described by scientific opinion polls. The ballots asked not for independence but whether the republics should have “self-rule,” which the Donetsk electoral commissioner said could include autonomous or federal status within Ukraine.
When we consider the souring of public opinion on Kyiv’s “Anti-Terrorist Operation” and its civilian casualties, it is not hard to imagine how the 79% that polled in favor of more self-governance could have become 89% voting in favor of Donetsk self-rule.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………. By 2020 the Donetsk Institute’s follow-up survey had found that 45-50% of respondents favored annexation and only 20-25% supported a return to Ukraine; the remaining 25-30% answered that they wanted any resolution that would end the war.
………………………………………………………………………………………. Shut out of power, the Donbas was subjected to decades of ruthless economic policies which suited northern and western Ukraine’s desires to join the European Union. When President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign the EU Association Agreement, acting in the interests of the south and east, he was ousted by the Euromaidan protests and riots in the capital. The government which replaced Yanukovych’s Party of Regions immediately signed the agreement, took on colossal debts, and adopted catastrophic austerity measures.
This is how Russian separatists, far-right extremists, and paramilitary bandits were able to find support. Their militant actions burst the tension and made secession a real possibility for the first time. Now a decade of war and blockades has deepened the fissure between Donbas and Ukraine and, with the accession of Donetsk and Luhansk to the Russian Federation, this division may become permanent.
- See David Hoffman, “One Million Miners Go on Strike in Russia, Ukraine,” The Washington Post, February 2, 1996, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/02/02/1-million-miners-go-on-strike-in-russia-ukraine/191f1387-b970-4c0a-971a-e7a30edf07b6/ ↑ https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/07/13/western-media-has-falsely-presented-the-donbas-drive-for-autonomy-as-being-instigated-by-moscow/?mc_cid=f5762ce44c&mc_eid=65917fb94b—
I was a US nuclear missile operator. I’m grateful for the Oppenheimer film
A “Broken Arrow” is defined as an unexpected event that results in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of a nuclear weapon. Since the creation of nuclear weapons, there have been 32 Broken Arrows.
Cole Smith, 24 July 23 more https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/24/nuclear-war-oppenheimer-serious?CMP=share_btn_tw
The questions at the center of Oppenheimer don’t feel theoretical to me. From 2012 to 2017 I worked on nearly 300 nuclear silo alerts
Audiences are rushing to theaters to see Oppenheimer. Early buzz is that this movie will be one of the blockbusters of the summer.
One reason for the interest: the film is loaded with the philosophical questions J Robert Oppenheimer and his team faced while developing the first atomic bomb. Do nuclear weapons make us safer? Will they inspire an arms race that will push humanity into extinction? Is it possible this weapon will lead to the destruction of the world?
The questions that the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, places at the center of Oppenheimer don’t feel theoretical to me. From 2012 to 2017 I worked as a nuclear missile operator in the US air force. During that time, I worked nearly 300 “alerts”, or shifts in underground launch control centers, where I oversaw maintenance, security and launch operations for 10 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
It may surprise you to hear that I watched a lot of movies while on alert. To be sure, the job of air force missile operators is often very busy. But it is also a 24/7/365 shift schedule. And on those late nights, weekends or holiday shifts when nothing was going on, my crew partners and I would turn to movies to get us through our shifts. It was here that I began to notice Hollywood’s love affair with nuclear weapons.
Early on, Hollywood gave us a lot to chew on. Sidney Lumet’s 1964 film Fail Safe is as serious a commentary on the questions around nuclear deterrence as has ever been presented on the screen. The same year, Stanley Kubrick defined the absurdity of a society that uses a nuclear arsenal to achieve “peace” in his film Dr Strangelove. When these films were released, it had been less than 20 years since Americans dropped the first atomic bombs on Japan. America was just beginning its nuclear arms race with Russia and the nuclear conversation felt very much alive to the average American.
But the American public grew weary of always being on high alert. Hollywood reflected this change as the meticulous films of the 60s began to give way to a new type of cold war thriller – one in which every villain seemed to speak with a Russian accent and wield some sort of vague existential nuclear threat that would be defeated by a red-blooded American. Some of these films, like 1983’s WarGames, were self-aware enough to work. But most existed on a spectrum ranging from Steven Seagal’s Under Siege to The Core – which is to say, mildly entertaining to so bad it’s somehow maybe almost good. As a result, in the decades before the release of Oppenheimer, the nuclear thriller had become an almost taboo genre in Hollywood.
That’s a problem, because the nuclear threat never went away. If anything, it got worse. Today, the United States has about 400 nuclear tipped ICBMs, the ones I operated, ready for launch every single day. It also has a robust nuclear bomber program as well as nuclear-armed submarines. In total, the US owns approximately 6,000 nuclear warheads. What’s more, the air force is currently in the midst of developing a new ICBM nuclear delivery system, called Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). In 2020, the air force awarded a $13.3bn sole-source contract for GBSD to Northrop Grumman. The contract was awarded by default with no other competitors for the contract and little to no press coverage or public debate.
When I was a 23-year-old missile operator in the air force, my commander once told me that a good day in nuclear missile operations is a quiet one. Most of the days in the five years I spent working in underground nuclear launch control silos were just that: quiet. But not every day in the history of the US air force nuclear missile program has been quiet. A “Broken Arrow” is defined as an unexpected event that results in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of a nuclear weapon. Since the creation of nuclear weapons, there have been 32 Broken Arrows.
In the five years I served as a nuclear missile operator I performed targeting on dozens of active nuclear missiles. I commanded “major maintenance” operations like warhead swaps from one ICBM to another. We even pulled entire missiles out of the ground and replaced them with refurbished ones. And never once was I worried that I might have a Broken Arrow on my hands.
The problem is that, while a good day in nuclear missile operations is a quiet one, the quiet days don’t lead to a reduction in the number of these weapons. That’s why we need engaging stories about nuclear weapons in our movie theaters. We need journalism that comprehensively unpacks this issue. In short, we need a public that is as engaged with nuclear weapons as they were during the cold war. Otherwise, it’s only on days when Vladimir Putin threatens the use of nuclear weapons, or the days that North Korea test launches its latest ICBM, that we begin to discuss the inherent dangers of a world that allows nuclear missiles to exist. And on those not-so-quiet days, it’s already too late.
In May of 2022, while Nolan was in the midst of principal photography on Oppenheimer, I sat down for lunch in New York with Kai Bird, the co-author of American Prometheus, the book from which Oppenheimer is adapted.
I asked Bird if he thought Nolan would do justice to the subject. Bird told me that Nolan shared a draft of the script with him and asked him to read it for any historical discrepancies. Bird told Nolan that almost everything looked accurate, but that the script put the casualty rate from the bomb used on Hiroshima at 70,000, a number much lower than the casualty count accepted by most historians. Nolan said that he knew this figure was low but that he had gone back and read the original transcripts from the Senate hearing and used the actual words from Oppenheimer’s mouth.
Nolan’s attention to detail is what the nuclear conversation deserves. Oppenheimer sets the stage for a new conversation about nuclear weapons in Hollywood – one that doesn’t rely on overwrought cold war tropes. It’s a more difficult conversation because it’s one where, like Robert Oppenheimer, we have to come to terms with our own actions (or inactions) in order to make decisions about our future. Do we want to live in a world free from the threat of nuclear war? Or do we want to cover our eyes and throw the dice in a world with more than 14,000 nuclear warheads? Nolan isn’t afraid to ask these hard questions. I hope other film-makers follow his lead.
70 Years Later, The Korean War Must End
By Cathi Choi / Other Words, July 28, 2023 , https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/28/70-years-later-the-korean-war-must-end/—
A fragile ceasefire halted the Korean War 70 years ago. With nuclear tensions rising and the environment under threat, it’s time to end it for good.
July 27 marked 70 years since the signing of the armistice that halted — but did not end — the Korean War. Since then, the divided Peninsula has been locked in a perpetual state of war that grows ever more dangerous.
In recent weeks, the U.S. has flown nuclear-capable bombers, launched nuclear war planning talks with South Korean officials, and sent a nuclear-capable submarine to South Korea for the first time in 42 years.
This followed the largest-ever live-fire military drills near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides Korea. North Korea has responded with missile tests — and recently threatened nuclear retaliation.
As a Korean American with family ties to both sides of the DMZ, I know that as long as this war continues, everyday people — Americans as well as Koreans — pay the steepest price. The Korean War inaugurated the U.S. military industrial complex, quadrupled U.S. defense spending, and set the U.S. on a course to become the world’s military police.
While much attention is paid to North Korea’s nuclear program and aggressive rhetoric, Americans also need to understand how the U.S. government’s actions exacerbate tensions — and why we have a critical role to play in ending this war.
To start, we must remember the central role of the U.S. in the Korean War — and just how destructive the fighting was.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has described the war as an example of what a “successful” U.S. war can “achieve.” Other talking heads have made similar claims, offering the war as a model for how to proceed in Ukraine. This revisionism is dangerous.
The Korean War killed over 4 million people, more than half of them civilians. From 1950 to 1953, the U.S. dropped 32,000 tons of napalm and 635,000 tons of bombs — more than were dropped in the Pacific theater in World War II. The U.S. military showed “next to no concern for civilian casualties,” historian Bruce Cummings notes, burning 80 percent of North Korea’s cities to the ground.
Even after this mass destruction, the Peninsula is still at war today — with ongoing consequences for Koreans on both sides of the DMZ.
The U.S. has evicted families from their homes in South Korea to build military bases, while chemicals leaking from bases have poisoned local environments and contaminated drinking water. The Biden administration continues to enforce a Trump-era travel ban keeping Korean Americans separated from their loved ones in North Korea, while sanctions hinder the delivery of essential aid to the country.
U.S. taxpayers bankroll this devastation, spending $13.4 billion to maintain 28,500 troops in South Korea between 2016 and 2019.
Unless we act, our communities and environment will suffer devastating consequences as our military presence expands across the Pacific.
For example, the Defense Department recently announced a missile-defense system to be built on Guam, comprising up to 20 sites across the island and billed as a response to “perceived threats from potential adversaries like China and North Korea.” This plan, like many in the past, will destroy precious landscapes.
In Hawai’i, leaking jet fuel from Navy storage tanks has contaminated drinking water for thousands of families. And next year, the U.S. will hold the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), the largest annual maritime warfare exercise, in the state. Past exercises killed untold scores of marine life.
To avert nuclear war and protect our environment, Americans must demand an end to the growing U.S. military presence around the world and rein in our nearly $900 billion military budget. Our grassroots peace movement continues to grow, leading to the introduction of the Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act (H.R. 1369), which now has nearly 40 co-sponsors.
To end the Korean War, we need individuals with all skillsets — storytellers, community builders, healers, and more — working in concert. We must educate our communities, fight for change, and together build peace in Korea and across the world.
Julian Assange Is “Dangerously Close” to Extradition for Revealing US War Crimes
This is the first time a publisher has been charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets.
By Marjorie Cohn , TRUTHOUT, July 15, 2023 https://truthout.org/articles/julian-assange-is-dangerously-close-to-extradition-for-revealing-us-war-crimes/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=75553d1810-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_3_20_2023_13_41_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-75553d1810-650192793&mc_cid=75553d1810&mc_eid=73e1cd43d0
or nearly five years, publisher and journalist Julian Assange has fought extradition to the United States where he faces 175 years in prison for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes.
Instead of protecting freedom of the press, to which he pledged allegiance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, Joe Biden is continuing Donald Trump’s prosecution of Assange under the infamous Espionage Act. Journalist James Ball is one of at least four journalists that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI are pressuring to cooperate with the prosecution of Assange, Ball wrote in Rolling Stone.
Biden’s DOJ is apparently attempting to bolster its prosecution of Assange in the event he is extradited to the United States. Ball said that all three of the other journalists being pressured to provide a statement told him they have no intention of helping the prosecution.
Assange, who is in frail physical and mental health after years of confinement, is contesting the U.K. High Court’s rejection of his appeal. If he loses in the U.K., Assange’s last resort is to the European Court of Human Rights to litigate several violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
But even if the European court issues an injunction against extradition, the U.K. courts may not honor that ruling. Assange is “dangerously close” to extradition, according to his family and observers.
“Julian Assange and Wikileaks were responsible for the exposure of criminality on the part of the U.S. Government on a massive and unprecedented scale,” including “torture, war crimes and atrocities on civilians,” Assange’s Perfected Grounds of Appeal states.
“Assange’s work, dedicated to ensuring public accountability by exposing global human rights abuses, and facilitating the investigation of and prosecution for state criminality, has contributed to the saving of countless lives, stopped human rights abuses in their tracks, and brought down despotic and autocratic regimes,” his appeal papers say. Human rights defenders who expose state crimes suffer “political retaliation and persecution from the regimes whose criminality they expose. Julian Assange is no exception.”
The War Crimes That Assange and WikiLeaks Exposed
In 2010, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning provided WikiLeaks with documents containing evidence of U.S. war crimes. They included the “Iraq War Logs,” which were 400,000 field reports describing 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, as well as systematic rape, torture and murder after U.S. forces “handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad.” They contained the “Afghan War Diary,” 90,000 reports of more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported. And they also included the “Guantánamo Files” — 779 secret reports with evidence that 150 innocent people had been held at Guantánamo Bay for years, and 800 men and boys had been tortured and abused, which violated the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Manning also furnished WikiLeaks with the notorious 2007 “Collateral Murder Video,” which shows a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter targeting and killing 11 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, as well as a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured. The video reveals evidence of three violations of the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual.
This is the first time a publisher has been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets. In December 2022, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País and Der Spiegel signed a joint open letter calling on the U.S. government to dismiss the Espionage Act charges against Assange for publishing classified military and diplomatic secrets. “Publishing is not a crime,” the letter says. “This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.”
Extradition Initially Denied on Mental Health Grounds
On January 4, 2021, U.K. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that Assange could not be extradited to the United States because of the repressive prison conditions in the U.S. and the threat that imprisonment would pose to his mental health, including the likely risk of suicide. The Biden administration’s DOJ appealed.
The U.K. High Court reversed Baraitser’s ruling after the DOJ presented questionable “assurances ” that Assange would be held in humane conditions if extradited.
Assange asked the High Court to consider his other grounds of appeal which Baraitser had rejected when she denied extradition for mental health reasons.
On June 8, 2023, British Judge Sir Jonathan Swift rejected Assange’s appeal in a cursory three-page denial with almost no analysis of the issues raised in Assange’s 150-page submission.
Assange appealed Swift’s ruling to the U.K. High Court and his appeal is pending.
The U.K.-U.S. Extradition Treaty Prohibits Extradition for Political Offences
The Espionage Act charges in the indictment include the following:
- Conspiracy to obtain, receive and disclose national defense information (Count 1);
- Unauthorized obtaining and receiving of national defense information (Counts 3 to 9); and
- Unauthorized disclosure of national defense information (Counts 10 to 18).
In addition, Assange is charged with “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” with intent to “facilitate Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information related to the national defence of the United States.”
Article 4(1) of the U.K.-U.S. Extradition Treaty provides that “extradition shall not be granted if the offence for which extradition is requested is a political offence.” In their appeal, Assange’s lawyers note that espionage is a “pure political offence” as it is an offence against the state.
As Assange’s legal team wrote, “The gravamen (and defining legal characteristic) of each of the charges is thus an alleged intention to obtain or disclose US state secrets in a manner that was damaging to the security of the US state,” which makes them political offences.
In his denial, Swift wrote that the 2003 Extradition Act trumps the binding treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. The act doesn’t include the “political offences” bar to extradition.
The Extradition Request Was Made for Ulterior Political Motives and Not in Good Faith
Article 4(3) of the Extradition Treaty forbids extradition if the request was “politically motivated.”
The legally unprecedented and selective nature of the prosecution in focusing on leaked national security information speaks to the political character of the prosecution and request for extradition, the appeal says.
Assange’s lawyers wrote that “this prosecution is motivated by matters other than the proper and usual pursuit of criminal justice. It is motivated instead by a concerted intent to destroy or inhibit the publishers of evidence of state criminal ability, and thereby put a stop to the process of investigating, prosecuting and preventing such international crimes in the future.”
The appeal papers point out that Assange is being prosecuted for exposing “wholescale abuse and war crimes” committed by the United States. If instead he had “exposed war crimes or crimes against humanity committed by a state such as the Russian Federation,” the defense lawyers write, “there can be no doubt that his prosecution for such revelations would be regarded as both a political offence (within the Treaty) and an impermissible prosecution motivated by a desire to punish him for his political opinions/acts.”
“While the leakers of such materials have been prosecuted albeit selectively, no prosecution for the act of obtaining or publishing state secrets has ever occurred,” the appeal says.
That is “[b]ecause the First Amendment protects the free press and it is vital that the press expose rather than ignore … not because journalists are somehow privileged but because the citizenry has a right to know what is going on,” Mark Feldstein, journalism professor at University of Maryland, testified at Assange’s extradition hearing.
Extradition Would Violate Freedom of Expression Guaranteed by the ECHR
Article 10 of the ECHR protects freedom of expression.
Columbia Law Professor Jameel Jaffer testified that the indictment is focused “almost entirely” on things that national security journalists do “routinely and as a necessary part of their work,” including “cultivating sources, communicating with them confidentially, soliciting information from them, protecting their identities from disclosure, and publishing classified information.”
The conviction of Assange would chill journalists from fulfilling their function as watchdog for the public. The appeal quotes the 1996 case of Goodwin v. the United Kingdom:
Press freedom assumes even greater importance in circumstances in which State activities and decisions escape democratic or judicial scrutiny on account of their confidential or secret nature. The conviction of a journalist for disclosing information considered to be confidential or secret may discourage those working in the media from informing the public on matters of public interest. As a result, the press may no longer be able to play its vital role as “public watchdog” and the ability of the press to provide accurate and reliable information may be adversely affected.
There Is New Evidence Not Considered by the District Judge
The ECHR protects the right to life (Article 2) and forbids torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (Article 3). The appeal argues that there is a real risk of violation of Article 2 and/or Article 3 if Assange is extradited.
In September 2021, a Yahoo! News report revealed that while Assange was living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London under a grant of asylum, senior CIA and Trump administration officials asked for “sketches” and “options” for assassinating him. Trump himself “asked whether the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide him ‘options’ for how to do so.”
“If these state agencies were prepared to go to these lengths whilst he was under the protection of an embassy and located in the UK, there must be a real risk of similar extra-judicial measures or reprisals if he is extradited to the US,” the appeal says.
The High Court’s ruling on Assange’s appeal could be issued any day.
Nuked blood: PM Rishi Sunak is urged to uncover the truth on veterans’ missing health records
The PM has been told to fix his “broken promises” as MPs urge an investigation into missing blood records of nuclear veterans
Rishi Sunak promised to meet test veterans and back a police investigation into possible crimes committed against them, but has yet to do either
Mirror UK, By Susie Boniface, Reporter, 14 Jul 2023
Rishi Sunak has been told to fix his “broken promises” to nuclear test veterans by telling Parliament the full truth of their missing medical records.
Labour and Tory MPs have asked the Defence Select Committee to hold its own inquiry into the blood tests that Cold War veterans say are being illegally withheld from them.
Labour peer Lord Watson of Wyre Forest has written to the Prime Minister asking him to correct Ministry of Defence claims in Parliament that it does not hold the blood data, and fulfil the promise made last year to meet the test veterans in person.
“Given the series of misleading statements, broken promises, and unwarranted delays, the onus rests upon the PM to rectify this matter,” Lord Watson said……………….
Lord Watson added: “It is an affront to expect elderly veterans to navigate the labyrinthine corridors of the MoD, merely to ascertain partial truths.”
It followsthe Mirror’s revelations yesterday that veterans’ service records appear to have had health data, including blood and urine analysis which may have showed radiation damage during their time at the weapons tests, removed from the files.
It is potentially a criminal offence for any healthcare provider to withhold, falsify or destroy medical records, due to the likely impact on the health of patients who cannot later be properly diagnosed or treated.
A timeline of denial…
December 2018: Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood tells Parliament “the MoD is unable to locate any information AWRE staff took blood samples for radiological monitoring”
October 2022: Atomic Weapons Establishment confirmed in Freedom of Information requests it held the results of “a small number” of blood and urine tests; the same information is given to Parliament
February 2023: Royal Navy tells veteran’s son that “the AWE does not hold any evidence that such tests ever happened”
March 2023: Defence Minister Andrew Murrison tells Parliament “AWE does not hold the blood test results for Nuclear Test Veterans” but only “references” to them, which are “included in scientific documentation related to nuclear weapons trials”. He says veterans can request any information held, individually
June 2023: Murrison tells one Tory MP that AWE only has information about blood tests of “one individual”; 10 days later he tells a second Tory MP it holds “blood test data for a small number of individuals”……………………………………
Labour MP Emma Lewell-Buck, who sits on the Commons defence committee, has urged it to consider launching an investigation. She said yesterday: “There is enough evidence to show blood tests were ordered, arranged, and taken, from large numbers of people. The results were stored and analysed. The veterans have always had a right to that information, and failing to provide it can cost lives.
“We must find out when and why they were removed from the medical records.”
Support has come from Tory backbencher Dr Julian Lewis, on behalf of a test veteran constituent, who has asked the committee chairman Tobias Ellwood to question the MoD further.
We have uncovered more than 200 pages of archive documents, ordering blood to be taken from servicemen at all of Britain’s nuclear weapons tests, from 1952 onwards.
They show:
- The MoD had a “Director of Hygiene and Research” who organised blood tests of personnel and kept a “master record” of results
- Orders from the Air Ministry and War Office telling unit medical officers to arrange repeated “blood testing of personnel working regularly with radioactive sources”, from 1952 onwards
- The medical forms used and instructions on how to duplicate and store them
- Officers seeking guidance from government ministers on testing troops and civilians
- A task force commander demanding all RAF sampling and decontamination personnel, and 25% of other trades under his command, have blood tests
- RAF crews being blood-screened before leaving the UK, with some rejected for service as a result
- Proof that army blood tests were copied “from AWRE records” to be put into soldiers’ main medical files – where they can no longer be found
- Pathologists attached to the weapons trials were told to create a “special health register” to log the data, with “safety limits” set for the blood counts, and instructions to send home or withdraw from service anyone who tested below those levels.
We have uncovered documentary evidence that urine was taken from men ordered into the forward area after Britain’s first atomic bomb in 1952, and analysed by scientists. Everyone who served at nine subsequent bomb tests on the Australian mainland had their blood tested. And for another three atom bombs, and six hydrogen bombs, detonated at Christmas Island in the South Pacific, there is evidence that RAF and Army soldiers were tested too.
Almost 22,000 men took part in the weapons tests, which were the biggest tri-service operation since D-Day.
Alan Owen, who founded campaign group LABRATS, said: “It is inconceivable that with all these orders, and thousands of men involved over more than a decade, there isn’t a warehouse somewhere filled with the results. We understand they were held on microfiche at the AWE in Aldermaston, and may have been recently reclassified or moved.
“We are certain these records exist and are being withheld, and the only possible reason to do that is to limit compensation claims to those injured by the radiation the government has always denied they were exposed to.”
All the documents are available to view online at www.labrats.international/blood https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nuked-blood-rishi-sunak-promises-30464869
Japan to Release 1.3 Million Tonnes of Water Used During Fukushima Nuclear Accident
The water used to cool damaged reactor cores from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in March 2011.
David Krofcheck, The Wire 16 Jul 23
“…………………………………………This year the Japanese government plans to release 1.3 million tonnes of water – used to cool the damaged reactor cores from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in March 2011 – into the Pacific Ocean
Between 2011-2013, approximately 300,000 tonnes of untreated wastewater had already flowed into the ocean off Fukushima. These first two years were the most dangerous time because long-lived heavy nuclei, like cesium-137, strontium-90 and shorter-lived iodine-131, from nuclear fission in the reactors ended up in the ocean.
Since 2013, the stored water has also accumulated flushed seawater goundwater which leaked into the three damaged reactor cores.
The big challenge is how to manage 1.3 million tonnes of unsafe radioactively-tainted water………………………………………………………………………….
“As Low As Reasonably Achievable” or ALARA – filtering out the nuclear fission nuclei from the stored wastewater may be the best that can be done. The ALARA approach to reduce nuclear fission nuclei released resulted in a 2013 effort to develop and employ an advanced liquid processing system, or ALPS. A series of filters was designed to remove 62 fission nuclei leaving both tritium and carbon-14 in the water. It only partially worked.
Potentially, this water could be run through more cycles of the ALPS before extra dilution and later release into the ocean.
The other 30% of treated water could also be diluted with seawater by factors of several hundred to one thousand and then released into the ocean. Any remaining tritium from the Fukushima reactor may find its way into the food chain as organically bound tritium via build-up in underwater plants and organisms.
The second option for managing the Fukushima water was to hold it on site in an ever-increasing number of tanks.
If the water is properly filtered to leave only tritium and carbon-14, then the natural decay of tritium can be used to reduce overall radioactivity. Since the radioactive half-life of tritium is 12.4 years, holding the water in tanks for seven half-lives, about 85 years, would reduce the tritium content to less than 1% of its current value. This option leaves the carbon-14 which would still roughly have the same radioactivity due to its 5,730-year half-life.
However, storing a tremendous volume of water for an entire human lifespan has never been tried. Even more water and storage tanks would need to be added as decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor cores proceeds. This is problematic.
A third option was to evaporate the water on land near Fukushima.
A 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island Nuclear Station in the United States resulted in a similar radioactive water storage problem. About 9,300 tonnes of tritiated water, about 140 times less than that currently held in the Fukushima storage tanks, was electrically evaporated over two years. The tritium was released into the atmosphere, resulting in a radiation dose to people in the surrounding area of about one-hundredth of the natural background radiation.
Japan and TEPCO would need to deal with even larger amounts of water and tritium emitted into the atmosphere if the 30-year timeline for the reactor core clean-up is followed……………….. https://thewire.in/environment/japan-to-release-1-3-million-tonnes-of-water-used-during-fukushima-nuclear-accident
‘Atomic Fallout’: Records reveal government downplayed, ignored health risks of St. Louis radioactive waste for decades
In May, almost 50 years after the waste was dumped at West Lake, the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged what many residents had long feared: Radiological waste was spread throughout the West Lake Landfill, not confined to two specific portions as officials had long maintained.
The West Lake Landfill contamination was discovered in 1974. It was designated a Superfund site in 1990, and there is still no date certain for when the cleanup will begin.
MuckRock, by Allison Kite, Edited by Derek Kravitz, Jason Hancock 12 July 23
For kids like Sandy Mitchell, Ted Theis and Janet Johnson, childhood in the North St. Louis County suburbs in the 1960s and ‘70s meant days playing along the banks or splashing in the knee-deep waters of Coldwater Creek.
They caught turtles and tadpoles, jumped into deep stretches of the creek from rope swings and ate mulberries that grew on the banks.
Their families — along with tens of thousands of others — flocked to the burgeoning suburbs and new ranch style homes built in Florissant, Hazelwood and other communities shortly after World War II. When the creek flooded, as it often did, so did their basements. They went to nearby Jana Elementary School and hiked and biked throughout Fort Belle Fontaine Park.
Growing up, they never knew they were surrounded by massive piles of nuclear waste left over from the war.
Generations of children who grew up alongside Coldwater Creek have, in recent decades, faced rare cancers, autoimmune disorders and other mysterious illnesses they have come to believe were the result of exposure to its waters and sediment.
“People in our neighborhood are dropping like flies,” Mitchell said.
The earliest known public reference to Coldwater Creek’s pollution came in 1981, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed it as one of the most polluted waterways in the U.S.
By 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was advising residents to avoid Coldwater Creek entirely. Cleanup of the creek is expected to take until 2038. A federal study found elevated rates of breast, colon, prostate, kidney and bladder cancers as well as leukemia in the area. Childhood brain and nervous system cancer rates are also higher.
“Young families moved into the area,” Johnson said, “and they were never aware of the situation.”
Theis, who grew up just 75 yards from the creek and played in it daily, died in August at the age of 60 from a rare cancer. Mitchell is a breast cancer survivor whose father died from prostate cancer. Johnson’s sister has an inoperable form of glioblastoma and other family members, including her father, daughter and nephew, have had various cancers.
Families who lived near Coldwater Creek were never warned of the radioactive waste. Details about the classified nuclear program in St. Louis were largely kept secret from the public. But a trove of newly-discovered documents reviewed by an ongoing collaboration of news organizations show private companies and the federal government knew radiological contamination was making its way into the creek for years before those findings were made public.
Radioactive waste was known to pose a threat to Coldwater Creek as early as 1949, records show. K-65, a residue from the processing of uranium ore, was stored in deteriorating steel drums or left out in the open near the creek at multiple spots, according to government and company reports.
A health expert who, as part of this project, was recently presented with data from a 1976 test of runoff to the creek concluded it showed dangerous levels of radiation 45 years ago.
Federal agencies knew of the potential human health risks of the creek contamination, the documents show, but repeatedly wrote them off as “slight,” “minimal” or “low-level.” One engineering consultant’s report from the 1970s incorrectly claimed that human contact with the creek was “rare.”
The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press spent months combing through thousands of pages of government records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and interviewing dozens of people who lived near the contaminated sites, health and radiation experts and officials from government agencies.
Some of the documents, obtained by a nuclear researcher who focuses on the effects of radiation, had been newly declassified in the early 2000s. Others had been previously lost to history, packed away in government archives and not released publicly until now. (Read the documents here and learn more about our methodology here.)
All told, the documents from the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission; its successors, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and the Environmental Protection Agency span the 75-year lifespan of the nuclear saga in St. Louis.
It starts in downtown St. Louis, where uranium was processed, and at the St. Louis airport, where it was stored at the end of the war; a monthslong move of the waste to industrial sites on Latty Avenue in suburban Hazelwood and a quarry in Weldon Spring, next to the Missouri River; an illegal dumping of waste at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton in the 1970s by a private company; and the declaration of the landfill as a federal toxic Superfund site in 1990.
Since then, the contaminated sites have been subjected to a seemingly endless cycle of soil, air and water testing, anxious community meetings attended by an ever-growing chorus of angry residents and panic when a subsurface smoldering event, similar to an underground fire, at the Bridgeton landfill threatened the radioactive waste buried nearby. That fire sent noxious and hazardous fumes into surrounding neighborhoods. The company in charge of the Bridgeton landfill now spends millions a year to contain it.
The documents have a familiar cadence: Year after year, decade after decade, government regulators and companies tasked with cleaning up the sites downplayed the risks posed by nuclear waste left near homes, parks and an elementary school. They often chose not to fully investigate the potential harms to public health and the environment around St. Louis………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Illegal dumping of radioactive waste
When the Atomic Energy Commission sold the remnant nuclear waste, it anticipated being able to get rid of the more than 100,000 tons of toxic residues without spending any money.
The first company to purchase the waste, Continental Mining and Milling Co. of Chicago, borrowed $2.5 million to buy it in 1966 and then, shortly after, went bankrupt. Continental’s lender, Commercial Discount of Chicago, re-purchased the waste at auction for $800,000 and, after failing to get a bidder at a second auction, sold it to the Cotter Corp. To turn a profit, Cotter would ultimately dry the material and ship it to its uranium mill plant in Cañon City, Colorado………………………………………………………….
Cotter asked the government to bury the waste at Weldon Springs multiple times, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but were rebuffed each time, meeting minutes show.
So, over a period of 2 ½ months in the summer and fall of 1973, Cotter took the problem into its own hands, without telling government regulators.
The company mixed the radioactive waste with tens of thousands of tons of contaminated soil from the site and illegally dumped it in a free, public landfill called West Lake, under three feet of soil and other garbage……………………………..
The AEC released Cotter from its St. Louis permit without immediate sanctions in 1974, but the company is partially responsible for the cleanup costs at the site.
Cotter’s parent company, General Atomics, did not respond to multiple requests for comment……………………………………………………………….
‘Tip of the iceberg’
In 1999, when Robbin Dailey moved into Spanish Village, a neighborhood of only a few dozen homes with its own park less than a mile from the back side of West Lake Landfill, she had no idea she was living next to a Superfund site.
When the EPA decided initially in 2008 to cap the waste at West Lake and leave it in place, Dailey never heard about the plan. Two years later, in 2010, she was alerted to the radioactive waste when a “subsurface smoldering event” — a type of chemical reaction that consumes landfilled waste like a fire but lacks oxygen — sent a pungent stench into the air around her home.
Dailey and her husband had their house tested and found thorium in the dust at hundreds of times natural levels. They sued the landfill’s owners, Republic Services, as well as the Cotter Corp. and Mallinckrodt.
Dailey said she and the companies had “resolved” their legal issues, but she, like all of the residents in North St. Louis County, was still in the dark about where within the landfill site the waste actually was.
Court records reveal a bevy of lawsuits against the private companies involved, at various times, with the West Lake Landfill. Not only that, but the landfill operators sued Mallinckrodt in an attempt to force the maker of the radioactive waste to pay for part of the cleanup.
Since the late 1970s, federal regulators repeatedly failed to uncover the true extent of contamination at West Lake.
In October 1977, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission used a helicopter to take hour-long passes back and forth over the landfill from an altitude of 200 feet. The goal was to measure gamma radioactivity coming from the site using specialized equipment.
While the effort correctly identified two areas with high levels of radiation, it had serious limitations, experts say. A survey of that type can miss contamination if it’s buried deep underground or if the ground is obstructed by vegetation.
And it did…………………………………
In May, almost 50 years after the waste was dumped at West Lake, the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged what many residents had long feared: Radiological waste was spread throughout the West Lake Landfill, not confined to two specific portions as officials had long maintained……………………..
EPA officials said the contamination was found all over the property — in some areas at the surface and, in other areas, at great depths.
The agency looked at the dates on newspapers above and below the radioactive waste in two areas of the site previously thought to be uncontaminated to approximate when it was dumped, said Chris Jump, the EPA’s lead remedial project manager for the site.
It’s likely been there the whole time.
…………………………… Dawn Chapman, who left her job and co-founded Just Moms STL to advocate for the community around the landfill, said the EPA used to treat her and other activists like their fears were hysterical.
………………
A staffer with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources wrote in 1980 that contamination at the landfill was more severe and widespread than previously thought. In 1986 and 1990, onsite sampling showed possible radiological contamination in the groundwater in areas outside the sections of the landfill thought to be radioactive.
In 1987, the state classified the landfill as a hazardous waste site. The radioactive waste was in direct contact with the groundwater, the agency said in its annual report.
“Based on available information, a health threat exists due to the toxic effects of chemicals and low-level uranium wastes buried at the site and the possibility that off-site migration of these materials might occur,” the agency wrote.
…………………………. The West Lake Landfill contamination was discovered in 1974. It was designated a Superfund site in 1990, and there is still no date certain for when the cleanup will begin.
…………………………………….. Back to the drawing board
EPA’s first plan for the site would not have included moving the radioactive waste at all.
In 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency approved a plan for the landfill’s “primarily responsible parties” — the government and private contractors responsible for the site — to place a cap over the landfill and leave the waste in place.
Following criticism from the surrounding communities, EPA asked the Department of Energy, the Cotter Corp. and the landfill’s owner, Republic Services, to test the site again.
In the meantime, an underground fire brought a new level of scrutiny.
Starting in 2010, the Bridgeton landfill, which sits adjacent to the West Lake Landfill, has been experiencing a subsurface smoldering event.
………………………………………………….. The depth and severity of the new contamination the EPA found is not yet clear. The agency is preparing to release a report that will include the readings, a spokesperson said. A remedial design portion of the project is underway, the last step before the excavation begins.
But EPA doesn’t have a date certain as to when work on the project might start.
Curtis Carey, a spokesperson for the EPA, said despite decades of delays, the agency is planning next steps for the landfill “with a great deal more information because of our purposeful approach than was available 10, 15, 20 years ago.”
The following people contributed reporting, writing, editing, document review, research, interviews, photography, illustrations, analysis and project management. Chris Amico, Dillon Bergin, Kelly Kauffman and Derek Kravitz of MuckRock; Jason Hancock, Allison Kite and Rebecca Rivas of The Missouri Independent; Michael Phillis and Jim Salter of The Associated Press; Sarah Fenske, Theo Welling, Tyler Gross and Evan Sult of the Riverfront Times; EJ Haas, Madelyn Orr, Sydney Poppe, Mark Horvit and Virginia Young of the University of Missouri; Katherine Reed of the Association of Health Care Journalists; Liliana Frankel, Erik Galicia, Laura Gómez, Lauren Hubbard, Sophie Hurwitz and Steve Vockrodt; and Gerry Everding and Carolyn Bower of the original St. Louis Post-Dispatch team that published the seven-part “Legacy of the Bomb” series in 1989. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2023/jul/12/st-louis-landfill-toxic-superfund/
Failed Fukushima Fixes Falling Like Dominoes
CounterPunch BY JOHN LAFORGE, 6 July, 23
“……………………………………………………………………Tepco’s cost-avoidance on its sea wall was only the first in a string of failures that have followed like dominos. The corruption led in July 2022 to convictions of four top Tepco executives for negligence and a fine of $95 billion.
In the 12 years since the meltdowns, Tepco’s disaster response efforts, always heralded as fixes, have been a series of hugely expensive failures: the “advanced” wastewater filter system “ALPS” has failed; the buried “ice wall” groundwater barrier has failed; containers made for the radioactive sludge produced by ALPS have failed; and plans to deal with millions of tons of collected debris — now kept in plastic bags — are being fiercely resisted by Japanese citizens.
Tons of cooling water is still being poured every day into Fukushima’s triple reactor wrecks to keep the hot melted fuel from again running amok. Additionally, groundwater gushes through the reactors’ foundations’ countless cracks and breaks caused by the staggering earthquake into what’s left of the structures’ sub-floors. All this water becomes highly radioactive as it passes over and through three giant masses — totaling at least 880 tonnes — of melted and mangled uranium and plutonium fuel.
You read that right. Fukushima’s destroyed reactor No. 3 was using fuel made partly of plutonium (see below), and so plutonium contaminates not just the ground and cooling water running over the melted fuel, but the ALPS apparatus, its filters, the containers used to store the radioactive sludge extracted by ALPS, and of course the sludge itself. You would think that the word plutonium would appear occasionally in news coverage of this ongoing disaster.
Failed ALPS means million-tonne do-over
Tepco’s jerry-rigged system dubbed Advanced Liquid Processing System or ALPS has never worked as planned. As early as 2013 the machinery was stalled. “The ALPS system failed to reduce radioactive elements, as claimed by the owner,” Power Technology, reported June 2, 2021.
Tepco has repeatedly said ALPS would remove 62 radioactive materials — all but tritium and carbon-14 from the continuously expanding volume of wastewater. Documents on a government committee’s website show that of 890,000 tonnes of water held at Fukushima, 750,000 tonnes, or 84 percent, contain higher concentrations of radioactive materials than legal limits allow, according to Reuters, Oct. 11, 2018. Among the long-lasting and deadly isotopes picked up by the water runs that through melted fuel wreckage are cesium, strontium, cobalt, ruthenium, carbon-14, tritium, iodine, plutonium, and at least 54 others.
In a June 14 op/ed for the China Daily, Shaun Burnie, the Senior Nuclear Specialist at Greenpeace East Asia, reported that the ALPS “has been a spectacular failure” and noted that:
“About 70 percent or 931,600 cubic meters of the wastewater needs to be processed again (and probably many more times) by the ALPS to bring the radioactive concentration levels below the regulatory limit for discharge. Tepco has succeeded in reducing the concentration levels of strontium, iodine, and plutonium in only 0.2 percent of the total volume of the wastewater, and it still requires further processing. But no secondary processing has taken place in the past nearly three years. Neither Tepco nor the Japanese government [have] said how many times the wastewater needs to be processed, how long it will take to do so, or whether the efforts will ever be successful. Greenpeace reported on these problems and why the ALPS failed nearly five years ago, and none of these issues has been resolved.”
Consequently, Tepco says it will re-filter over 70 percent of the 1.37 million tonnes of wastewater stored in giant tanks on site. Approximately 875,000 tons of contaminated water must be put through the system again, a process that will leave behind more of the highly radioactive and corrosive waste sludge.
Hoping to slow the rush to dumping, Ryota Koyama, a professor at Fukushima Univ. in Japan, said in an interview with China Media Group last May, “If the Japanese government or the Tokyo Elec Power Co really wants to discharge contaminated water into the sea, they need to explain in more detail whether the nuclides have really been removed.”
Ice wall also melts
Tepco intended to reduce the volume of groundwater gushing into the reactor building foundations by digging a $350 million “ice wall” into the earth between the destroyed reactors and the mountains behind. The company placed 1,568 heavy pipes filled with coolant 90 feet deep. It was to freeze the ground to form a deep impenetrable barrier, diverting groundwater to either side of the destroyed six-reactor Fukushima complex and prevent it seeping inside. It has failed to do so, The Guardian reported. In 2016, the Times of London reported that the scheme had only a “minor impact” on the volume of groundwater rushing in, which at the time still averaged 321 tonnes a day. Tepco announced then that it would retrofit the system and fix the leaks, but Science/The Wire reported in January 2022 that the company had admitted that its ice wall was “partially” melting. About 150 tonnes per day still gushes in.
Filtered sludge burning through containers
The ALPS filter has produced over 4,000 large containers filled with highly radioactive slurry and sludge left from the treatment.
Like the use of the word “advanced” in the name of the failed ALPS machinery, the cylinders used for the caustic, highly radioactive sludge are called “High Integrity Containers” or HICs, but in fact they are made of plastic and have degraded far faster than Tepco anticipated.
By March 2, Tepco had filled 4,143 containers, according to the daily Asahi Shimbun. At 30 cubic feet each, the cylinders now store a total of about 124,290 cubic feet of the highly radioactive sludge that will soon require expensive repackaging and, eventually, isolation from the biosphere for thousands of years.
Over two years ago, on June 8, 2021, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) announced that 31 of the containers had “exceeded their lifespans” and were corroded badly enough by the harsh toxic material that they must be replaced. The NRA also warned that another 56 cylinders would need replacing within two years.
Japan’s Mainichi newspaper reported that the government regulators blamed Tepco for “underestimating the radiation the 31 plastic cylinders were exposed to.” The company then claimed it would start moving the contents to new containers.
The Asahi Shimbun reported April 27, 2023, that the HICs must be stored in concrete boxes that can block radiation evidently being emitted by the HICs. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14883115
Rad waste to be dumped, deregulated
As early as next month, Japan intends to begin dispersing 1.37 million tonnes of contaminated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. The government has steadfastly ignored fierce local and international opposition to the plan from the fishing community, marine scientists, Pacific Island nations, environmentalists, South Korea, and China. So far only South Korean politicians have suggested bringing international legal action against the dumping.
Since the 2011 meltdowns spewed radioactive materials broadly across Japan’s main island, some 14-million tonnes of cesium-contaminated soil, leaves, and debris have been scraped from the ground and stored in one-tonne bags. Citizens are struggling desperately prevent authorities from using the radioactive waste in road building or burning it in incinerators. The bags are currently stacked in tens of thousands of piles all over the region.
Even more protest was raised last February 10 when the NRA said it would allow Tepco to severely weaken its monitoring of the wastewater’s radioactivity. The NRA said would but the number of radioactive elements to be measured from 64 to 34.
The environment minister of Hong Kong — a coastal metropolis of 7.5 million people — charged in June that Japan is “violating its obligations under international law and endangering the marine environment and public health.” Minister Tse Chin-wan wrote in the daily Ta Kung Pao that Hong Kong would “immediately prohibit imports of seafood caught off the coast of Fukushima prefecture.”
Plutonium Spread Long Distances from Fukushima
Very few reports of the Fukushima catastrophic releases of radiation have mentioned plutonium contamination. Yet plutonium was used in fuel rods in Fukushima’s reactor number 3 which was destroyed by meltdown and several hydrogen explosions. Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known to science, and fine particles are far more biologically hazardous than larger particles.
Following the March 14, 2011 explosion, experts worried about the release of extremely dangerous radioactive substances, and then a week later, on March 21 and 22, Tepco announced that it had detected plutonium in soil collected from its compound. (Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster, Takashi Hirose, Asahi Shimbun Publications, 2011, p. 51)
Now, studies published in the journals Science of the Total Environment, Nov. 15, 2020, and Chemosphere, July 2023, report that researchers found that cesium and plutonium “were transported over long distances,” and that deposits of them were recorded in “downtown Tokyo,” about 142 miles from the meltdowns.
According to the authors, very high concentrations of radioactive cesium were released during the accident as particles referred to as “cesium-rich micro-particles” (CsMPs). The researchers say CsMPs they found are mainly composed of silicon, iron, zinc, and cesium, and minor amounts of radioactive tellurium, technetium, molybdenum, uranium, and plutonium.
The studies, involving scientists from six countries and led by Associate Professor Satoshi Utsunomiya, a researcher at Kyushu University, found that “plutonium was included inside cesium-rich micro-particles that were emitted from the site.”
Radioactive CsMPs released from Fukushima are a potential health risk through inhalation. “Given the small size of the particles, they could penetrate into the deepest parts of the lung, where they could be retained,” Utsunomiya wrote. “The route of exposure of greatest concern is inhalation,” the authors reported, because plutonium, lodged in the lungs, can “remain for years.”
Utsunomiya summed up his team’s work saying, “It took a long time to publish results on particulate [plutonium] from Fukushima … but research on Fukushima’s environmental impact and its decommissioning are a long way from being over.”
John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter. https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/06/failed-fukushima-fixes-falling-like-dominoes/
Daniel Kovalik: Why Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is legal under international law
One must begin this discussion by accepting the fact that there was already a war happening in Ukraine for the eight years preceding the Russian military incursion in February 2022. And, this war by the government in Kiev against the Russian-speaking peoples of the Donbass – a war which claimed the lives of around 14,000 people, many of them children, and displaced around 1.5 million more even before Russia’s military operation – has been arguably genocidal. That is, the government in Kiev, and especially its neo-Nazi battalions, carried out attacks against these peoples with the intention of destroying, at least in part, the ethnic Russians precisely because of their ethnicity.
The argument can be made that Russia exercised its right for self-defense
10 July 23 https://www.rt.com/russia/554166-international-law-military-operation-ukraine/
Daniel Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and is author of the recently-released book Nicaragua: A History of US Intervention & Resistance.
For many years, I have studied and given much thought to the UN Charter’s prohibition against aggressive war. No one can seriously doubt that the primary purpose of the document – drafted and agreed to on the heels of the horrors of WWII – was and is to prevent war and “to maintain international peace and security,” a phrase repeated throughout.
As the Justices at Nuremberg correctly concluded, “To initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” That is, war is the paramount crime because all of the evils we so abhor – genocide, crimes against humanity, etc. – are the terrible fruits of the tree of war.
In light of the above, I have spent my entire adult life opposing war and foreign intervention. Of course, as an American, I have had ample occasion to do so given that the US is, as Martin Luther King stated, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” Similarly, Jimmy Carter recently stated that the US is “the most war-like nation in the history of the world.” This is demonstrably true, of course. In my lifetime alone, the US has waged aggressive and unprovoked wars against countries such as Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Libya, and Somalia. And this doesn’t even count the numerous proxy wars the US has fought via surrogates (e.g., through the Contras in Nicaragua, various jihadist groups in Syria, and through Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the ongoing war against Yemen).
Indeed, through such wars, the US has done more, and intentionally so, than any nation on earth to undermine the legal pillars prohibiting war. It is in reaction to this, and with the express desire to try to salvage what is left of the UN Charter’s legal prohibitions against aggressive war, that a number of nations, including Russia and China, founded the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter.
In short, for the US to complain about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of international law is, at best, the pot calling the kettle black. Still, the fact that the US is so obviously hypocritical in this regard does not necessarily mean Washington is automatically wrong. In the end, we must analyze Russia’s conduct on its own merits.
One must begin this discussion by accepting the fact that there was already a war happening in Ukraine for the eight years preceding the Russian military incursion in February 2022. And, this war by the government in Kiev against the Russian-speaking peoples of the Donbass – a war which claimed the lives of around 14,000 people, many of them children, and displaced around 1.5 million more even before Russia’s military operation – has been arguably genocidal. That is, the government in Kiev, and especially its neo-Nazi battalions, carried out attacks against these peoples with the intention of destroying, at least in part, the ethnic Russians precisely because of their ethnicity.
While the US government and media are trying hard to obscure these facts, they are undeniable, and were indeed reported by the mainstream Western press before it became inconvenient to do so. Thus, a commentary run by Reuters in 2018 clearly sets out how the neo-Nazis battalions have been integrated into the official Ukrainian military and police forces, and are thus state, or at least quasi-state, actors for which the Ukrainian government bears legal responsibility. As the piece relates, there are 30-some right-wing extremist groups operating in Ukraine, that “have been formally integrated into Ukraine’s armed forces,” and that “the more extreme among these groups promote an intolerant and illiberal ideology… ”
That is, they possess and promote hatred towards ethnic Russians, the Roma peoples, and members of the LGBT community as well, and they act out this hatred by attacking, killing, and displacing these peoples. The piece cites the Western human rights group Freedom House for the proposition that “an increase in patriotic discourse supporting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia has coincided with an apparent increase in both public hate speech, sometimes by public officials and magnified by the media, as well as violence towards vulnerable groups such as the LGBT community.” And this has been accompanied by actual violence. For example, “Azov and other militias have attacked anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, media outlets, art exhibitions, foreign students and Roma.”
As reported in Newsweek, Amnesty International had been reporting on these very same extremist hate groups and their accompanying violent activities as far back as 2014.
It is this very type of evidence – public hate speech combined with large-scale, systemic attacks on the targets of the speech – that has been used to convict individuals of genocide, for example in the Rwandan genocide case against Jean-Paul Akayesu.
To add to this, there are well over 500,000 residents of the Donbass region of Ukraine who are also Russian citizens. While that estimate was made in April 2021, after Vladimir Putin’s 2019 decree simplified the process of obtaining Russian citizenship for residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, this means that Russian citizens were being subjected to racialized attack by neo-Nazi groups integrated into the government of Ukraine, and right on the border of Russia.
And lest Russia was uncertain about the Ukrainian government’s intentions regarding the Russian ethnics in the Donbass, the government in Kiev passed new language laws in 2019 which made it clear that Russian speakers were at best second-class citizens. Indeed, the usually pro-West Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed alarm about these laws. As the HRW explained in an early-2022 report which received nearly no coverage in the Western media, the government in Kiev passed legislation which “requires print media outlets registered in Ukraine to publish in Ukrainian. Publications in other languages must also be accompanied by a Ukrainian version, equivalent in content, volume, and method of printing. Additionally, places of distribution such as newsstands must have at least half their content in Ukrainian.”
And, according to the HRW, “Article 25, regarding print media outlets, makes exceptions for certain minority languages, English, and official EU languages, but not for Russian” (emphasis added), the justification for that being “the century of oppression of … Ukrainian in favor of Russian.” As the HRW explained, “[t]here are concerns about whether guarantees for minority languages are sufficient. The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s top advisory body on constitutional matters, said that several of the law’s articles, including article 25, ‘failed to strike a fair balance’ between promoting the Ukrainian language and safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights.” Such legislation only underscored the Ukrainian government’s desire to destroy the culture, if not the very existence, of the ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
Moreover, as the Organization of World Peace reported in 2021, “according to Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Decree no. 117/2021, Ukraine has committed to putting all options on the table to taking back control over the Russian annexed Crimea region. Signed on March 24th, President Zelensky has committed the country to pursue strategies that . . . ‘will prepare and implement measures to ensure the de-occupation and reintegration of the peninsula.’” Given that the residents of Crimea, most of whom are ethnic Russians, are quite happy with the current state of affairs under Russian governance – this, according to a 2020 Washington Post report – Zelensky’s threat in this regard was not only a threat against Russia itself but was also a threat of potentially massive bloodshed against a people who do not want to go back to Ukraine.
Without more, this situation represents a much more compelling case for justifying Russian intervention under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine which has been advocated by such Western ‘humanitarians’ as Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice, and which was relied upon to justify the NATO interventions in countries like the former Yugoslavia and Libya. And moreover, none of the states involved in these interventions could possibly make any claims of self-defense. This is especially the case for the United States, which has been sending forces thousands of miles away to drop bombs on far-flung lands.
Indeed, this recalls to mind the words of the great Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said, who opined years ago in his influential work, ‘Culture and Imperialism’, that it is simply unfair to try to compare the empire-building of Russia with that of the West. As Dr. Said explained, “Russia … acquired its imperial territories almost exclusively by adjacence. Unlike Britain and France, which jumped thousands of miles beyond their own borders to other continents, Russia moved to swallow whatever land or peoples stood next to its borders … but in the English and French cases, the sheer distance of attractive territories summoned the projection of far-flung interest …” This observation is doubly applicable to the United States.
Still, there is more to consider regarding Russia’s claimed justifications for intervention. Thus, not only are there radical groups on its border attacking ethnic Russians, including Russian citizens, but also, these groups have reportedly been funded and trained by the United States with the very intention of destabilizing and undermining the territorial integrity of Russia itself.
As Yahoo News! explained in a January 2022 article:
“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.
The program has involved ‘very specific training on skills that would enhance’ the Ukrainians’ ‘ability to push back against the Russians,’ said the former senior intelligence official.
The training, which has included ‘tactical stuff,’ is ‘going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine,’ said the former official.
One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. ‘The United States is training an insurgency,’ said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how ‘to kill Russians.’”
(emphasis added).
To remove any doubt that the destabilization of Russia itself has been the goal of the US in these efforts, one should examine the very telling 2019 report of the Rand Corporation – a long-time defense contractor called upon to advise the US on how to carry out its policy goals. In this report, entitled, ‘Overextending and Unbalancing Russia, Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options’, one of the many tactics listed is “Providing lethal aid to Ukraine” in order to “exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability.”
In short, there is no doubt that Russia has been threatened, and in a quite profound way, with concrete destabilizing efforts by the US, NATO and their extremist surrogates in Ukraine. Russia has been so threatened for a full eight years. And Russia has witnessed what such destabilizing efforts have meant for other countries, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria to Libya – that is, nearly a total annihilation of the country as a functioning nation-state.
It is hard to conceive of a more pressing case for the need to act in defense of the nation. While the UN Charter prohibits unilateral acts of war, it also provides, in Article 51, that “[n]othing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense… ” And this right of self-defense has been interpreted to permit countries to respond, not only to actual armed attacks, but also to the threat of imminent attack.
In light of the above, it is my assessment that this right has been triggered in the instant case, and that Russia had a right to act in its own self-defense by intervening in Ukraine, which had become a proxy of the US and NATO for an assault – not only on Russian ethnics within Ukraine – but also upon Russia itself. A contrary conclusion would simply ignore the dire realities facing Russia.
An Attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Could Still be Catastrophic (- nuclear promoters minimise the risk)
Ed Lyman, July 7, 2023 https://blog.ucsusa.org/edwin-lyman/an-attack-on-the-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-could-still-be-catastrophic/
Ukraine has accused Russia of planning to carry out a sabotage attack at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that it has controlled since it seized it by force in March 2022. Although it reports this morning that this current threat is decreasing, the situation is fluid and the plant remains vulnerable to both accidents and attacks. While this ongoing crisis should not lead to panic, there is no cause for complacency either.
Unfortunately, the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and other commenters have been busy attempting to dismiss the risks that either an accident or a deliberate attack could lead to a significant radiological release with far-reaching consequences. Simply put, the ANS is dead wrong here, and by minimizing the potential risk it is endangering Ukrainians and others who may be affected by lulling them into a false sense of security and undermining any motivation to prepare for the worst. Effective emergency preparedness requires a clear-eyed understanding of the actual threat.
As I have pointed out previously, the fact that the six reactors have been in shutdown mode for many months (with one in “hot”, as opposed to “cold,” shutdown) does reduce the risk somewhat compared to a situation where reactors are operating or have only recently shut down. The decay heat in the reactors’ cores decreases significantly over time, although the rate of decrease slows down quite a bit after a few months. However, this does not mean, as ANS misleadingly implies, that there is no risk of a major radiological release that could disperse over a wide area. What it does mean is that if cooling were disrupted to one or more of the reactors, then there would be a longer period of time—days instead of hours—for operators to fix the problem before the cooling water in the reactor cores would start to boil away and drop below the tops of the fuel assemblies, causing the fuel to overheat and degrade.
Timely operator actions are even more critical for reactors that are shut down than for reactors that are operating, since some automatic safety systems are not functional during shutdown. Indeed, in a 1997 report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) points out that “acceptable results for most of events during shutdown modes cannot be achieved without operator intervention.” The IAEA report states that both “preventive and mitigatory capabilities are somewhat degraded” in shutdown conditions, and lists a number of shutdown accident initiators for VVER-1000s.
One class of events of particular concern are “boron dilution” accidents, in which the concentration of boron in cooling water necessary to maintain reactors in a subcritical state becomes reduced and nuclear fission inadvertently begins in the core. This would not only increase the reactor temperature and the amount of heat that would have to be removed, but would also generate new quantities of troublesome short-lived fission products, such as iodine isotopes, which have previously decayed away in the months since shutdown. (This is why it remains important that potassium iodide—a drug that can block uptake of radioactive iodine in the thyroid—continue to be available to communities who may be in the path of any plume.)
It is also important to note that it is very unusual for reactors to be maintained for any length of time in either hot or cold shutdown modes with fuel remaining in the core, as is the case at Zaporizhzhia. Whenever nuclear reactors operate in unusual conditions that have not been thoroughly analyzed, risks increase.
Unfortunately, because of the incredible stress that the greatly reduced staff at Zaporizhzhia are under, and the unclear lines of command under Russian occupation, their ability to efficiently execute all the actions necessary to mitigate any accident or sabotage attack is in grave doubt. And if timely operator intervention does not occur, and the fuel assemblies are exposed, then a core melt accident similar to what was experienced in three of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi is certainly possible.
Once the water level has dropped below the tops of the fuel assemblies, the original decay heat in the reactor core is no longer a relevant factor because when the zirconium cladding surrounding the fuel rods overheats and reacts with steam or air, it produces additional heat through a so-called exothermic reaction. The heat released in this way would soon become far greater than the original decay heat load and would accelerate the heat-up and degradation of the reactor core. At that point, it would be much harder for operators to arrest the progression of the core melt. Eventually, the molten core would drop to the floor of the steel reactor vessel and melt through it onto the floor of the containment building, where it would react with concrete to generate hot gases. Then, there are multiple ways in which the radioactive gases and aerosols generated during the core melt could be released into the environment, including a containment melt-through mode that is possible in VVER-1000 reactors such as Zaporizhzhia.
There is no technical reason why any resulting radioactive releases could not disperse at least as far as occurred at Fukushima, depending on the meteorological conditions. The heat of the radioactive plumes, which determines how high they will rise in the atmosphere and hence how far they can travel, largely come from the heat released by zirconium oxidation. The magnitude and extent of the resulting environmental contamination would depend on the “source term,” or the inventory and characteristics of the radioactive materials released from the site. Since up to six reactors and six spent fuel pools could be involved—especially if the site is deliberately sabotaged—the source term could ultimately be larger than that of Fukushima, where only three reactors were involved and containments remained largely intact.
Thus it is imperative that the international community take Ukraine’s warnings seriously and provide all the assistance it needs for emergency preparedness. Unjustified complacency could lead to a lack of resolve for addressing the danger, only increasing the potential for a long-lasting disaster that will compound the misery of the Ukrainian people.
Wishful thinking about nuclear energy won’t get us to net zero
The climate problem is too serious to engage in unrealistic modelling exercises. Wishful thinking about nuclear energy will only thwart our ability to act meaningfully to lower emissions rapidly.
BY M.V. RAMANA AND SUSAN O’DONNELL | July 3, 2023 https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2023/07/03/wishful-thinking-about-nuclear-energy-wont-get-us-to-net-zero/391721/
On June 20, the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) released its 2023 Canada’s Energy Future report, developing scenarios for a path to net zero by 2050. These scenarios project roughly a tripling of nuclear energy generation capacity in Canada by 2050, seemingly reinforcing then-natural resources minister Seamus O’Regan’s statement in 2020 that there is “no path to net zero without nuclear.”
However, underlying both the scenarios and O’Regan’s contention is wishful thinking about the economics of nuclear energy, and how fast nuclear power can be scaled up.
The new nuclear capacity the report envisions consists of so-called small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), which have so far not been built in Canada. Aside from refurbishing existing CANDU reactors, the CER does not think any more standard sized nuclear reactors will be built in Canada. Most of this buildup is to happen between 2035-2050, meaning that nuclear power will not help meet the government’s stated goal of decarbonizing the electricity grid by 2035.
But can SMRs be built rapidly after 2035? Only two Crown companies in the business of generating electricity for the grid have proposed to build SMRs: NB Power in New Brunswick, and Ontario Power Generation (OPG).
The reactor designs proposed for New Brunswick are cooled by molten salts and liquid sodium metal. Despite decades of development work and billions of dollars invested, major technical challenges have prevented molten salt reactors and sodium-cooled reactors from commercial viability, making it highly unlikely that the New Brunswick designs can be rapidly deployed in the time frame envisioned by the CER.
Assuming that OPG’s chosen design—the 300-megawatt BWRX-300—is the one to be deployed widely, then around 70 SMR units would need to be built and operating effectively on the grid between 2030-2050. The BWRX-300 design is yet to be approved by any safety regulator anywhere in the world.
But the report has an even more serious problem: economics. Nuclear power cannot compete economically, which is why its share of global electricity generation has declined from 17.5 per cent in 1996 to 9.2 per cent in 2022. Because SMRs lose out on economies of scale, they will produce even more expensive electricity.
The CER’s scenarios for nuclear power are based on the Electricity Supply Model, meant to calculate “the most efficient and cost-effective way to meet electricity demand in each region.” Such models are widely used in energy analysis and policymaking, but their utility depends on the validity of the assumptions used; garbage in, garbage out.
Two key parameters underlie the report’s scenarios: the capital cost of an SMR, and how that cost evolves with time. The CER’s assumptions in the two net-zero scenarios are that a SMR costs $9,262 per kilowatt in 2020, falling to $8,348 per kW by 2030, and to $6,519 per kW by 2050. Both these assumptions are ridiculously out of touch with the real world.
Consider the CAREM-25 SMR designed to feed 25 megawatts of electricity into the grid, being built in Argentina since 2014. Its original cost estimate in 2014 of US$446-million has escalated significantly since then, but even using these original costs, the project costs nearly $30,000 per kilowatt in 2022 Canadian dollars.
The NuScale design, arguably the closest to deployment in the United States, has been in development since 2007 with the build not yet begun. The January 2023 cost estimate for six NuScale SMRs with a total capacity of 462 megawatts is $9.3-billion, or over $26,000 per kilowatt in Canadian dollars.
Finally, the cost of the five-megawatt Micro Modular Reactor Project at Chalk River, Ont., was estimated by the proponent in May 2020 to be between $100- and $200-million. In 2022’s Canadian dollars, that works out to $22,000 to $44,000 per kilowatt.
In other words, the CER’s cost assumptions are wild underestimates, two-and-a-half to four times lower than the current evidence.
The second incorrect assumption is that costs will decrease with time. Both in the United States and France, the countries with the highest number of nuclear plants, the trend was the opposite: costs went up—not down—as more reactors were built. In both countries, the estimated construction cost of the most recent reactors being built—Vogtle in the United States and Flamanville-3 in France—have broken new records.
We need government organizations to do better. The climate problem is too serious for such unrealistic modelling exercises. Wishful thinking will only thwart our ability to act meaningfully to lower emissions rapidly.
M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. Susan O’Donnell is adjunct research professor and primary investigator of the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B.
‘Exploring Tritium’s Dangers’: a book review
By Robert Alvarez | June 26, 2023 https://thebulletin.org/2023/06/exploring-tritiums-danger-a-book-review/
Over the past 40 years, Arjun Makhijani has provided clear, concise, and important scientific insights that have enriched our understanding of the nuclear age. In doing so, Makhijani—now president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research—has built a solid reputation as a scientist working in the public interest. His most recent contribution to public discourse, Exploring Tritium’s Dangers, adds to this fine tradition.
A radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium is one the most expensive, rare, and potentially harmful elements in the world. Its rarity is underscored by its price—$30,000 per gram—which is projected to rise from $100,000 to $200,000 per gram by mid-century.
Although its rarity and usefulness in some applications gives it a high monetary value, tritium is also a radioactive contaminant that has been released widely to the air and water from nuclear power and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. Makhijani points out that “one teaspoon of tritiated water (as HTO) would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the US drinking water limit; that is enough to supply about 1 million homes with water for a year.”
Where tritium comes from. Since Earth began to form, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen known as tritium (H-3) has been created by interactions between cosmic rays and Earth’s atmosphere; through this natural process, the isotope continues to blanket the planet in tiny amounts. With a radioactive half-life of 12.3 years, tritium falls from the sky and decays, creating a steady-state global equilibrium that comes to about three to seven kilograms of tritium.
Tritium initially became a widespread man-made contaminant when it was spread across the globe by open-air nuclear weapons explosions conducted between 1945 and 1963. Rainfall in 1963 was found in the Northern Hemisphere to contain 1,000 times more tritium than background levels. Open-air nuclear weapons explosions released about 600 kilograms (6 billion curies) into the atmosphere. In the decades since above-ground nuclear testing ended, nuclear power plants have added even more to the planet’s inventory of tritium. For several years, US power reactors have been contaminating ground water via large, unexpected tritium leaks from degraded subsurface piping and spent nuclear fuel storage pool infrastructures.
Since the 1990s, about 70 percent of the nuclear power sites in the United States (43 out of 61 sites) have had significant tritium leaks that contaminated groundwater in excess of federal drinking water limits.
The most recent leak occurred in November 2022, involving 400,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated water from the Monticello nuclear station in Minnesota. The leak was kept from the public for several months. In late March of this year, after the operator could not stop the leak, it was forced to shut down the reactor to fix and replace piping. By this time, tritium reached the groundwater that enters the Mississippi River. A good place to start limiting the negative effects of tritium contamination, Makhijani recommends, is to significantly tighten drinking water standards.
Routine releases of airborne tritium are also not trivial. As part of his well-researched monograph, Makhijani underscores this point by including a detailed atmospheric dispersion study that he commissioned, indicating that tritium (HTO) from the Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant in Illinois has been literally raining down from gaseous releases – as it incorporates with precipitation to form tritium oxide (HTO)—something that occurs at water cooled reactors. Spent fuel storage pools are considered the largest source of gaseous tritium releases.
The largely unacknowledged health effects. Makhijani makes it clear that the impacts of tritium on human health, especially when it is taken inside the body, warrant much more attention and control than they have received until now. This is not an easy problem to contend with, given the scattered and fragmented efforts that are in place to address this hazard. Thirty-nine states, and nine federal agencies (the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Department of Agriculture are all responsible for regulating tritium.
This highly scattered regulatory regime has been ineffective at limiting tritium contamination, much less reducing it. For example, state and federal regulators haven’t a clue as to how many of some two million exit signs purchased in the United States—and made luminous without electric power by tritium—have been illegally dumped. For decades, tritium signs, each initially containing about 25 curies (or 25,000,000,000,000 pCi) of radioactivity, have found their way into landfills that often contaminate drinking water. One broken sign is enough to contaminate an entire community landfill. There are no standards for tritium in the liquid that leaches from landfills, despite measurements taken in 2009 indicating levels at Pennsylvania landfills thousands of times above background.
Adding to this regulatory mess, is the fact that federal standards limiting tritium in drinking water only apply to public supplies, and not to private wells.
In past decades, regulators have papered over the tritium-contamination problem by asserting, when tritium leakage becomes a matter of public concern, that the tritium doses humans might receive are too small to be of concern. Despite growing evidence that tritium is harmful in ways that fall outside the basic framework for radiation protection, agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission remain frozen in time when it comes to tritium regulation.
The NRC and other regulating agencies are sticking to an outdated premise that tritium is a “mild” radioactive contaminant that emits “weak” beta particles that cannot penetrate the outer layers of skin. When tritium is taken inside the body (by, for example, drinking tritiated water), half is quickly excreted within 10 days, the agencies point out, and the radiation doses are tiny. Overall, the NRC implies its risk of tritium ingestion causing cancer is small.
But evidence of harm to workers handling tritium is also growing. Epidemiologists from the University of North Carolina reported in 2013, that the risk of dying from leukemia among workers at the Savannah River Plant following exposure to tritium is more than eight times greater (RBE-8.6) than from exposure to gamma radiation (RBE-1). Over the past several years, studies of workers exposed to tritium consistently show significant excess levels of chromosome damage.[1]
The contention that tritium is “mildly radioactive” does not hold when it is taken in the body as tritiated water—the dominant means for exposure. The Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—which advises the US Energy Department about safety at the nation’s defense nuclear sites—informed the secretary of energy in June 2019 that “[t]ritiated water vapor represents a significant risk to those exposed to it, as its dose consequence to an exposed individual is 15,000 to 20,000 times higher than that for an equivalent amount of tritium gas.”
As it decays, tritium emits nearly 400 trillion energetic disintegrations per second. William H. McBride, a professor of radiation oncology at the UCLA Medical School, describes these disintegrations as “explosive packages of energy” that are “highly efficient at forming complex, potentially lethal DNA double strand breaks.” McBride, underscored this concern at an event sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, where he stated that “damage to DNA can occur within minutes to hours.” [2]
“No matter how it is taken into the body,” a fact sheet from the Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory says, “tritium is uniformly distributed through all biological fluids within one to two hours.” During that short time, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board points out that “the combination of a rapid intake and a short biological half-life means a large fraction of the radiological dose is acutely delivered within hours to days…”
A new approach to tritium regulation. Makhijani pulls together impressive evidence clearly pointing to the need for an innovative approach that addresses, in addition to cancer, a range of outcomes that can follow tritium exposure, including prenatal and various forms of genomic damage. In particular, he raises a key point about how physics has dominated radiation protection regulation at the expense of the biological sciences.
It all boils down to estimation of a dose as measured in human urine based on mathematical models. For tritium, dose estimation can be extraordinarily complex (at best) when it is taken inside the body as water or as organically bound, tritide forms. So the mathematical models that can simplify this challenge depend on “constant values” that provide the basis for radiation protection.
In this regard, the principal “constant value” holding dose reconstruction and regulatory compliance together is the reliance on the “reference man.” He is a healthy Caucasian male between the age of 20 to 30 years, who exists only in the abstract world.
Use of the reference man standard gives rise to obvious (and major) questions: What radiation dose limit is necessary to protect the “reference man” from serious genomic damage? And what about protection of more vulnerable forms of human life?
According to the 2006 study by the National Research Council, healthy Caucasian men between the age of 20 and 30 are about one-tenth as likely to contract a radiation-induced cancer as a child exposed to the same external dose of gamma radiation while in the womb.
In his monograph, Makhijani underscores the need to protect the fetus and embryo from internal exposures to tritium—a need largely being side-stepped by radiation protection authorities. “Tritium replaces non-radioactive hydrogen in water, the principal source of tritium exposure,” Makhijani writes, pointing to unassailable evidence that tritium “easily can cross the placenta and irradiate developing fetuses in utero, thereby raising the risk of birth defects, miscarriages, and other problems.”
He is not alone in such an assessment. According a 2022 medical expert consensus report on radiation protection for health care professionals in Europe, “The greatest risk of pregnancy loss from radiation exposure is during the first 2 weeks of pregnancy, while between 2-8 weeks after conception, the embryo is most susceptible to the development of congenital malformations because this is the period of organogenesis.”
In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s efforts to reduce exposure limits and protect pregnant women and their fetuses is best described as foot-dragging. By comparison, the required limit for a pregnant worker in Europe to be reassigned from further exposure is one-fifth the US standard—and was adopted nearly 20 years ago.
Long-term environmental retention. A 2019 study put forward the first ever empirical evidence of very long-term environmental retention of organically bound tritium (OBT) in an entire river system, deposited by fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons explosions.
When released into the environment, tritium atoms can replace hydrogen atoms in organic molecules to form organically bound tritium, which is found soil, and river sediments, vegetation, and a wide variety of foods. It’s been more than a half century since the ratification of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and tritium released through nuclear weapons testing has undergone significant decay. Yet because of the long retention of organically bound tritium, in greater than expected concentrations, it still remains a contaminant of concern.
For instance, despite its 12.3-year half-life, a much larger amount of organically bound tritium from nuclear tests than previously assumed is locked in Arctic permafrost, raising concerns about widespread contamination as global warming melts the Arctic. Organically bound tritium can reside in the body far longer than tritiated water, to consequently greater negative effect.[3]
Nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and tritium. The tritium problem has several dimensions that relate directly to the world’s current and future efforts vis a vis nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
Now that nuclear power reactors are closing down, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident, the disposal of large volumes of tritium-contaminated water into lakes, rivers, and oceans is becoming a source of growing concern around the world. The Japanese government has approved the dumping of about 230 million gallons of radioactive water, stored in some 1,300 large tanks sitting near the Fukushima nuclear ruins, into the Pacific Ocean. Once it incorporates into water, tritium is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to remove.
Protests in Japan by a wide segment of the public and in several other nations—including Russia, the Marshall Islands, French Polynesia, China, South Korea and North Korea—object to the disposal of this large volume of contaminated water into near-shore waters.
Then there’s the matter of boosting the efficiency and destructive power of nuclear weapons with tritium gas—a use that has dominated demand for this isotope. Because five percent of the tritium in thermonuclear warheads decays each year, it has to be periodically replenished. Over the past 70 years, an estimated 225 kilograms of tritium were produced in US government reactors, principally at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina. Those reactors were shuttered in 1988. Since 2003, tritium supplies for US nuclear warheads are provided by two Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power reactors. The irradiation of lithium target elements in the reactors has fallen short of meeting demand because of excess tritium leakage into the reactor coolant.
The hazards of tritium production for weapons are far from trivial.
For instance, since June of 2019, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board has taken the Energy Department to task for its failure to address the risk of a severe fire involving tritium processing and storage facilities at the Savannah River Site. According to the Board, such a fire may have a 40 percent chance of occurring during 50 years of operation and could result in potentially lethal worker doses greater than 6,000 rems—1,200 times the annual occupational exposure limit. Doses to the public would not be inconsequential. Meanwhile, the Energy Department is under pressure from the nuclear weapons establishment to step up demand for tritium. Unless there is “a marked increase in the planned production of tritium in the next few years,” the 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review concluded “our nuclear capabilities will inevitably atrophy and degrade below requirements.”
The Energy Department estimates it will take 15-20 years to achieve a major multibillion overhaul of its tritium production infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the quest for fusion energy highlights a startling fact: The amount of tritium required to fuel a single fusion reactor (should an economic, fusion-based power plant ever be created) will likely be far greater than the amount produced by all fission reactors and open-air bomb tests since the 1940s. A full-scale (3,000 megawatt-electric) fusion reactor is estimated to “burn” about 150 kilograms of tritium a year.[4]
The cost for a one-year batch of tritium fuel for a fusion reactor, based on the current market price, would be $4.5 billion. An annual loss to the environment from a single fusion reactor could dwarf the release of tritium from all nuclear facilities that currently dot the global landscape.
The tritium overview. Evidence is mounting not just in regard to increased health risks from tritium-contaminated water and from organically bound tritium, but also as relates to the harm tritium can visit on the unborn. At the same time, it has become clear that regulation of tritium in the United States is grossly insufficient to the current risk from tritium contamination, not to mention future risks that could arise if tritium production, use, and associated leakage rise. Arjun Makhijani provides a useful roadmap for sparing workers and the public from the dangers this pernicious contaminant will pose in the future, absent more effective regulation that includes lower limits for human tritium exposure.
Notes
[1] See: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004200050272; https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/10/2/94; https://www.jstor.org/stable/3579658; http://www.rbc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db/Literature/THO-Occupational.html; and https://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2016/UNSCEAR_2016_Annex-C.pdf
[2] William MacBride, UCLA School of Medicine Vice Chair for Research in Radiation, Principal Investigator of UCLA’s Center for Medical Countermeasures Against Radiation — National Institutes of Health, Jan 27, 2014. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEH72v-yN9A
[3] See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47821-1
[4] Advocates assume that only the initial loading of 150 kg will be needed, as the reactor will “breed” the remaining amount of tritium to run the plant after a year of operation.
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