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Rapacious nuclear company Holtec: its dodgy record on safety, finance and lack of transparency

New Mexico’s nuclear rush. A massive nuclear waste site near Carlsbad is seemingly on a fast track. Can the company behind it be trusted? Searchlight, By Sammy Feldblum and Tovah Strong|February 3, 2021

-” ………………There really is no fixed date on a repository,” said Rod McCullum of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group. In the absence of a permanent storage place, the conversation has turned to interim storage sites that could save companies money until a final destination is established.Enter Holtec. The company was formed in the 1980s to design spent-fuel storage technology for nuclear plants. By the early 2000s, Holtec had secured contracts to provide specialized dry storage casks for a never-built interim facility on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation in Utah and the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Sequoyah Nuclear and Browns Ferry Nuclear plants. By 2018, Holtec operated branches in seven countries, including Ukraine and Spain.

In 2019, Holtec began acquiring decommissioned nuclear power plants. (Such plants can bring large profits, including whatever decommissioning funds are left over after they’ve been cleaned up.) Holtec purchased New Jersey’s Oyster Creek Generating Station; Massachusetts’ Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station; New York’s Indian Point Energy Center; and Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, as well as spent fuel from the former Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant.

But the company’s record was not without concern. Holtec has received an estimated nine violation notices since 2001 for failing to follow NRC quality assurance procedures, including rules meant to ensure that the company’s storage casks — the kind it would be using in New Mexico — consistently met safety standards.

The most recent violation occurred in 2018 when Holtec modified its casks without notifying the NRC, as mandated. The change was only discovered when workers preparing to load a cask at San Onofre Generating Station in California noticed a four-inch pin, meant to hold the fuel basket, loose at the bottom of the cask — an obvious manufacturing flaw. When asked for comment on the incidents, a Holtec spokesman told Searchlight that the company is an industry leader in quality assurance.

Holtec has run into other problems as well. An investigation conducted in 2010 by the Tennessee Valley Authority into suspected overbilling revealed that the company had bribed a TVA employee in order to secure a contract. In 2007, the employee pleaded guilty to concealing more than $54,000 received from Holtec. In the wake of the investigation, the TVA ordered the company to pay a $2 million fine, open its operations to outside monitors and face a largely symbolic 60-day ban from doing federal business — the first debarment in TVA history.

In 2014, Holtec failed to mention that debarment on tax credit application forms. The misrepresentation initially went unnoticed, allowing the company to receive $260 million in tax credits from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA), a story first reported by ProPublica and WNYC.

In 2019, the NJEDA announced it would investigate Holtec’s use of tax credits, prompting the company to sue the agency for withholding money. (The NJEDA declined to answer questions about the investigation’s status, saying it did not comment on matters related to pending litigation.)

Holtec’s use of offshore banking has also come under scrutiny. According to leaked records called the Paradise Papers, Holtec has operated at least one shell corporation in Bermuda between 2005 and 2007. The records, which were obtained by the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, listed Krishna P. Singh II as an officer: He is the son of Holtec CEO Krishna P. Singh. Several of the CEO’s other family members were also listed as officers, as was Niraj Chaudhary, director of the executive committee for Holtec Asia. An additional offshore company in Bermuda that operated during the same time period, Southampton Technologies Ltd., included nearly identical officers and was listed at the same address.

Holtec did not respond to questions from Searchlight about why the accounts were used and whether the company still keeps bank accounts in tax havens. The leaked records don’t reveal this information, either. But tax havens like Bermuda can allow companies to avoid paying taxes.

“There’s nothing inherently nefarious about [the accounts],” said Jack Blum, a national authority on international tax evasion and money laundering whose anti-corruption work contributed to the establishment of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. However, Blum told Searchlight, Holtec “is a closely held company that has a history of being controlled by its founders, and wherever it goes, it wants to keep its finances as secret as it can and its taxes as low as it can.”

In general, Blum said: “Companies that are dealing in nuclear materials are in a world where there’s very little transparency.”

Holtec did not respond to questions from Searchlight about why the accounts were used and whether the company still keeps bank accounts in tax havens. ……. https://searchlightnm.org/new-mexicos-nuclear-rush/

February 4, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Universities in collusion with nuclear industry

U.S. universities have continued to build connections to the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Although students and faculty have opposed university participation in nuclear weapons research and development at various points in the last 70 years, such participation continues.

November 15, 2020 by beyondnuclearinternational https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/2663585/posts/3150281214 An ICAN report

Universities across the United States are identified in this report for activities ranging from directly managing laboratories that design nuclear weapons to recruiting and training the next generation of nuclear weapons scientists. Much of universities’ nuclear weapons work is kept secret from students and faculty by classified research policies and undisclosed contracts with the Defense Department and the Energy Department. The following is the executive summary from ICAN’s report: Schools of Mass Destruction, with some changes made for timeliness.

Over the next ten years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates U.S. taxpayers will pay nearly $500 billion to maintain and modernize their country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, or almost $100,000 per minute. A separate estimate brings the total over the next 30 years to an estimated $1.7 trillion. In a July 2019 report, National Nuclear Security Administrator Lisa Gordon-Haggerty wrote, “The nuclear security enterprise is at its busiest since the demands of the Cold War era.”

In addition to large amounts of funding, enacting these upgrades requires significant amounts of scientific, technical and human capital. To a large extent, the U.S. government and its contractors have turned to the nation’s universities to provide this capital.

Over the next ten years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates U.S. taxpayers will pay nearly $500 billion to maintain and modernize their country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, or almost $100,000 per minute. A separate estimate brings the total over the next 30 years to an estimated $1.7 trillion. In a July 2019 report, National Nuclear Security Administrator Lisa Gordon-Haggerty wrote, “The nuclear security enterprise is at its busiest since the demands of the Cold War era.”

Despite these debates, U.S. universities have continued to build connections to the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Although students and faculty have opposed university participation in nuclear weapons research and development at various points in the last 70 years, such participation continues.

Universities involve themselves in the nuclear weapons complex through the four channels listed below. In return for this engagement, universities receive funding, access to research facilities, and specific career opportunities for students.

1) Direct Management

A handful of universities directly manage nuclear weapons related activities on behalf of the federal government, retaining contracts worth billions of dollars per year collectively. These include the University of California, Texas A&M University, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Rochester.

2) Institutional Partnerships

Many of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) sites advertise collaborative agreements with local and national universities. These formal agreements allow the institutions to cooperate on research and share personnel and expertise. They can also provide university researchers access to funding and advanced facilities in the NNSA laboratories. The report highlights more than 30 such agreements with schools in 18 states.

3) Research Programs and Partnerships

In addition to formal institutional partnerships, numerous connections exist between universities and the nuclear weapons complex at the research project level. In a report delivered to Congress in July 2019, the NNSA highlights that more than $65 million in grants were delivered to academic institutions in the last year to support stockpile stewardship. When including grants and subcontracts from the NNSA labs as well, the total amount of funding to universities for research may be higher than $150 million per year.

4) Workforce Development Programs

Former Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry has written that finding “the next generation workforce of world-class scientists, engineers and technicians is a major priority.” Through university partnerships, vocational training programs and research fellowships, the NNSA creates employment pipelines for the development of its future workforce.

A primary goal of this report is to facilitate a shared understanding of university connections to nuclear weapons research and development. A common factual basis will help communities of university faculty, students and administrations engage in robust internal debates and take action. Universities would not willingly participate today in the production of chemical and biological weapons; for the same humanitarian reasons, no university should seek an association with the other category of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons.

While American universities have played a key role in the development and continuation of nuclear weapons, they can now join U.S. cities and states that have rejected U.S. nuclear weapons and called on the federal government to support nuclear reductions and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. In light of the research presented, this report offers the following recommendations to universities:

Recommendations

• Provide greater transparency into connections with the nuclear weapons complex;

• Stop directly managing nuclear weapons production sites and dissolve research contracts solely related to nuclear weapons production;

• For contracts with dual-purpose research applications, demand greater transparency and create specific processes for ethical review of this research;

• Advocate for reinvestment of weapons activities funding to non-proliferation and environmental remediation efforts; and

• Join cities and state legislatures in urging the federal government to support the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and reverse course on nuclear arms control backsliding.

See the full list of universities.

The above is the Executive Summary of ICAN’s report on US Universities. Read the full report. Beyond Nuclear is a member of ICAN.

In addition to large amounts of funding, enacting these upgrades requires significant amounts of scientific, technical and human capital. To a large extent, the U.S. government and its contractors have turned to the nation’s universities to provide this capital.

At the same time, the United States is shirking its previous commitments to nuclear arms control and reducing nuclear risks despite its obligation under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue good-faith measures towards nuclear disarmament.

In August 2019, the United States officially withdrew from the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, testing a treaty-prohibited missile shortly thereafter. The Trump Administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review expanded the circumstances under which the United States would consider the first use of nuclear weapons and called for the development of two new sea-based low-yield nuclear weapon systems.

Internationally, many member states of the United Nations have recognized the devastating humanitarian and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons: debating, adopting, signing and now ratifying the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

January 28, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Education, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

Dangers of plutonium fuelled, sodium cooled “Versatile Nuclear Reactor”

Experimental Nuclear Reactor Design Could Come to ID https://www.publicnewsservice.org/2021-01-25/nuclear-waste/experimental-nuclear-reactor-design-could-come-to-id/a72914-1January 25, 2021

BOISE, Idaho — The public can weigh in this week on an experimental nuclear reactor which could be coming to the Idaho National Laboratory.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a new design known as a “versatile nuclear reactor.”

The DOE said it will be used to test nuclear-energy innovations, helping to push the sector forward.

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists, believes its construction would pose risks for eastern Idaho.

“People should ask questions about whether the DOE has really done the accident analysis that it needs to, and is being honest with the people about the potential consequences of accidents at that reactor,” Lyman contended.

The versatile nuclear reactor is cooled by liquid sodium, which Lyman noted is highly potent. Reactors currently in operation in the U.S. are cooled by water.

The public hearings on the EIS will be held online Wednesday and Thursday.

Lyman added there is another concern with the fuel the reactor would use.

“Unlike the fuels that are used for light-water reactors, which is called low-enriched uranium fuel, that fuel is not directly usable in a nuclear weapon,” Lyman explained. “But plutonium is directly usable.”

Lyman argued it raises questions about the potential for nuclear proliferation.

The DOE estimated the project will cost between $2.6 and $5.8 billion dollars. Lyman cautioned that’s a lot of money for an experimental project.

“The DOE needs to reconsider this whole project, and whether they can spend that money more wisely in helping to improve the safety of existing technologies,” Lyman concluded.

January 26, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, safety, technology | Leave a comment

South Africa the only country to have nuclear weapons, then abandon them

The Story Of The Jet That Would Have Delivered South Africa’s Nuclear Bomb, The British-made Buccaneer strike aircraft was adapted to carry apartheid-era South Africa’s guided nuclear bomb. The War Zone, BY THOMAS NEWDICK JANUARY 18, 2021

“………South Africa, an international pariah for much of the Cold War due to its apartheid policy, remains the only country to have developed nuclear weapons and then voluntarily given them up. Before it did so, the main focus of these developments was an air-launched weapon that was intended to be delivered by a Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer strike aircraft. This combination could potentially have struck targets in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as partof South Africa’s long-running campaign against regional rebel groups, or even hostile revolutionary governments.

……..The final death knell for South Africa’s nuclear weapons program was the presidency of F. W. de Klerk, who came to power in 1989, deciding to do away with it. There was apparently no significant opposition from the military, whose experience in years cross-border campaigns had not revealed any requirement for a weapon of this type. Ultimately, the actual utility of a nuclear weapon in the conflict in Angola was always negligible, and its use would represent an unprecedented escalation while further ostracizing the South African regime. Moreover, the end of apartheid now seemed to be in sight, and possession of weapons of mass destruction would do nothing to enhance South Africa’s international position then, or in the future. While a veil of secrecy remained over the program, de Klerk oversaw the removal of enriched uranium from the weapons that had been completed.

In 1991, South Africa finally signed the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty and, two years later, de Klerk acknowledged the existence of the nuclear weapons program. Survivors of the SAAF Buccaneer fleet were withdrawn in the same year, by which time only five examples were reportedly still airworthy. …

more https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38646/this-is-the-jet-that-would-have-carried-south-africas-nuclear-bomb

January 21, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, South Africa, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Impacts the United States

How the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Impacts the United States, and Why the United States Must Embrace its Entry into Force, Columbia SIPA Journal of International Affairs, ALICIA SANDERS-ZAKRE AND SETH SHELDEN, JAN 15, 2021 The United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will enter into force on January 22, 2021, two days following the inauguration of Joseph Biden as the 46th president of the United States. Despite the TPNW’s widespread support throughout the world, the United States has attempted to thwart the treaty’s progress at every step, boycotting the negotiations from the start and urging other countries to withdraw as the treaty neared its entry into force. These efforts have proven unsuccessful. This article explores the implications of the entry into force of the TPNW, with special attention to the United States and how the new Biden administration can play a more constructive role in the international treaty regime.

On January 20, Joseph Biden will become the next U.S. President. Two days later, on January 22, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will become binding international law. The Biden administration should seize the opportunity to sign this landmark treaty and work toward its ratification, while productively engaging with the new legal regime created by the treaty.

With the TPNW, nuclear weapons will be subject to a global ban treaty for the first time, at last aligning nuclear weapons with other weapons of mass destruction, all already the subject of treaty-based prohibitions. The TPNW provides a framework to verifiably eliminate nuclear weapons and requires its States Parties, i.e., states that have ratified or acceded to the treaty, to assist victims and remediate environments affected by nuclear weapons use and testing. The treaty was negotiated in recognition of the increasing likelihood of use of nuclear weapons, whether intentionally or accidentally, and the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any such use.

The United States has aggressively attempted to thwart the TPNW despite support for the treaty from more than two-thirds of the world’s states. These efforts have been unsuccessful. If President-elect Biden truly intends “to prove to the world that the United States is prepared to lead again—not just with the example of our power but also with the power of our example,” his administration must reverse the U.S. position on the TPNW.

Past United States Approach to TPNW

Before treaty negotiations had begun, in a 2016 nonpaper the United States urged NATO members to vote against proceeding with the initiative, claiming that such a treaty would “undermine…long-standing strategic stability.” Despite U.S. urging, the resolution to proceed with negotiations was adopted in December 2016 with clear global support. After Donald Trump assumed the presidency, the United States intensified its opposition, publicly dismissing and ridiculing the TPNW while privately pressuring countries not to support it. On the first day of treaty negotiations, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, hosted a press conference outside the room where negotiations were to take place, criticizing the pursuit of a prohibition treaty and questioning if nations participating were “looking out for their people.”

In October 2020, as the treaty approached the threshold of 50 ratifications for its entry into force, the United States sent a letter to countries that had joined the TPNW, restating its “opposition to the potential repercussions” of the treaty and encouraging states to withdraw their instruments of ratification. Once the treaty reached 50 States Parties, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Ford retweeted his remarks from 2018 in which he had called the treaty “harmful to international peace and security.” China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have consistently issued joint statements disparaging the treaty at various international fora, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference, the United Nations General Assembly, and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) meetings.

U.S. opposition to the TPNW is predicated on the falsehood that nuclear weapons provide security, as well as mischaracterizations about the treaty itself. Despite legal obligations and decades of commitments to bring about a world without nuclear weapons, in truth the United States relies steadfastly upon deterrence doctrines that are incompatible with these obligations and commitments, and it views any threat to the legitimacy of nuclear weapons as a threat to its national security. In clutching to deterrence doctrines, despite recognition—even from conservatives and libertarians—that nuclear weapons offer no military or practical value, U.S. policymakers undoubtedly are influenced also by the trillion dollar industry supporting its nuclear weapon arsenal. They thus have advanced spurious claims about the TPNW’s failings, arguing that the treaty will undermine the NPT, weaken IAEA safeguards, and only impact democracies, all of which are untrue.

These false assertions have been debunked in numerous more thorough examinations, so it suffices to say that the majority of countries do not share U.S. and like-minded states’ concerns about the TPNW

…………Nuclear-armed states aggressively denouncing an initiative with global support impairs unity in other international fora needed to advance other nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation, and risk reduction measures.

Implications of Entry Into Force

U.S. denouncements of the TPNW also ignore the significant impact of this treaty internationally, and on the United States itself. When the TPNW enters into force, States Parties will immediately need to adhere to the treaty’s Article 1 prohibitions, prohibiting them from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, acquiring, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using, or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed in their territories. It also prohibits States Parties from assisting, encouraging, or inducing anyone to engage in these activities.

Under Articles 6 and 7 of the TPNW, States Parties also are obligated to assist victims of and remediate environments contaminated by nuclear weapon use and testing. These “positive obligations” break new ground in international nuclear weapons law. States with affected victims and contaminated lands under their jurisdiction have the primary responsibility for providing assistance, in a nod to state sovereignty and practical facilitation. However, Article 7 requires all States Parties to cooperate in implementing the treaty and, particularly for those in a position to do so, to assist affected states. ………..more https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/online-articles/how-treaty-prohibition-nuclear-weapons-impacts-united-states-and-why-united-states

January 18, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Thyroid cancer at ages 0 and 2 at the time of the nuclear accident-Health survey in Fukushima Prefecture January 2021

Thyroid cancer at ages 0 and 2 at the time of the nuclear accident-Health survey in Fukushima Prefecture Posted by: ourplanet Posted on: Thu, 01/14/2021 –00:46 http://ourplanet-tv.org/?q=node/2537 (Japanese only)

(Translated from Google) The “Prefectural Health Survey” Review Committee was held in Fukushima City on the 15th to discuss the health survey of Fukushima citizens following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. For the first time, it was discovered that two infants, a 0-year-old girl and a 2-year-old girl at the time of the accident, were diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

Material https://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp/site/portal/kenkocyosa-kentoiinkai-40.html

This time, the result of the fourth round of thyroid examination until June last year was newly announced. The number of children diagnosed with suspected thyroid cancer by fine needle cytology increased by 6 from the previous time to 27, and the number of children who underwent thyroidectomy increased by 3 from the previous time to 16 children. Up to now, 252 patients have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer or suspected thyroid cancer from prior examination, of which 203 have undergone thyroid surgery. 202 people, excluding one, were confirmed to have thyroid cancer.

In the fourth round of examination, it was found for the first time that a girl who was 0 years old and a girl who was 2 years old at the time of the accident were diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Since the age of the examination is not the actual age but the grade, the ages at the time of the examination are 9 years old (3rd grade of elementary school) and 11 years old (5th grade of elementary school), respectively. According to the previous test results of 27 patients, 5 patients had “A1 judgement” without nodules or tumors, and 16 people had “A2 judgement” with nodules of 5 mm or less or cysts of 2 cm or less, 5 mm or more. 5 people had a “B-judgement” with nodules or cysts of 2 cm or more, and 1 had not been examined. He had the smallest tumor size of 6.1 mm and the largest tumor was 29.4 mm.

What stands out in the results of the fourth round of examination is the high dose of radiation for people diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Of the 27 patients diagnosed as suspected of being malignant by fine needle cytology, 11 patients (40.7%) who submitted the basic survey questionnaire had an exposure dose of less than 1 mSv in 2 patients (18.1%) 4 months after the accident. The number of children exposed to 2mSv or more was the highest, with 4 (36.3%) from 1mSv to 2mSv and 5 (45.5%) from 2mSv to 5mSv. In particular, the two boys who were five years old at the time of the accident were both over 2mSv.

According to the results of the basic survey of all Fukushima residents, 62.2% are less than 1mSv, 31.6% are from 1mSv to 2mSv, and 5.5% are from 2mSv to 3mSv. Very different.

To review the mass examination at school At this review committee, a major shift was made to reviewing simultaneous examinations at schools. The test, which has found more than 200 people with thyroid cancer, raises the theory of “overdiagnosis” among experts who deny the effects of radiation exposure, saying that they are finding thyroid cancer that they do not have to find. There is a growing opinion that the mass examination at school should be reviewed.

Based on these opinions, the review committee decided to conduct an interview survey at schools in the prefecture on August 31st last time. This time, there was a report on the results of a survey conducted by the prefecture at 26 elementary and junior high schools and high schools in the prefecture.

At many schools, thyroid examinations were performed during class hours, criticized by Shoichiro Tsugane, a member of the National Cancer Center, saying, “You can’t take this without a strong will.” “The benefits of the test are not except that you can be reassured when you get negative. The discovery of thyroid cancer has little benefit in avoiding death or poor quality of life, especially when you are diagnosed with thyroid cancer. “I think it will be a huge disadvantage for those who do,” he said. “Thyroid examination in a group of asymptomatic healthy people is not desirable. I asked him to stop the mass examination at school. ..

In addition, Professor Toshiya Inaba of Hiroshima University also cut out at the school examination that “they are left behind” and said, “Parents are not worried. The school rents the venue. The prefectural medical college has an inspection. I understand each position well, but in the end, it is the people who are left unattended. ” He emphasized that the prefectures and medical colleges that are the subjects of the survey should explain more to children and students the significance of the test and the fact that it can be rejected.

Screenshot of Zoom chat from the meeting 2021

In response, Professor Satoshi Tomita of Fukushima University argued head-on. He criticized that “many Fukushima residents have anxiety about their health” and that members of the Prefectural Health Investigation Committee, especially members outside Fukushima Prefecture, are calling for the cancellation or reduction of examinations. He said that thyroid examination is a way to relieve the anxiety of Fukushima residents, “the anxiety of Fukushima residents, especially those with children, is left behind.” “It is dangerous to go in the direction of reduction easily.” “Thinking” was pointed out.

Ikuko Abe, chairman of the Fukushima Clinical Psychologists Association, who also lives in Fukushima Prefecture and has a close relationship with schools, agrees with this, saying, “I agree with Professor Tomita’s opinion.” “Given the anxiety about radiation that Fukushima residents have, thyroid examinations are very reassuring,” she said. “Reducing or eliminating the examinations still takes the opposite position. I want you to do it. “

What caught my eye in the discussion was the presence of Katsushi Tahara, director of the Ministry of the Environment’s Health and Welfare Department. The members of the review committee from the Ministry of the Environment have not said much, but have played a role in important aspects of policy change. This time too, Mr. Tahara considers the fact that the school is cooperating with the implementation of the examination, such as encouraging households whose delivery to Fukushima Medical University is delayed to submit again when the deadline has passed. About 30% of the children undergoing medical examinations at school were asked intensively about this point, such as confirming that the school side took over the collection of consent forms.

To conduct hearings with the person to be inspected Following a survey of the school, the prefecture proposed to have a place to hear directly from the children and students who had been inspected. Questions were raised about the representativeness of the interviewees, and there was an opinion requesting a quantitative survey such as a questionnaire, but the prefecture’s proposal was approved because the survey took too long.

Regarding this “interview survey,” there was a harsh debate over the neutrality of the content, such as the opinion that a pilot study was unavoidable and that the voices of patients diagnosed with thyroid cancer should also be heard. With the strong push back of the constellation chairman, it was decided that the selection of the target audience and the holding method would be left to the chairperson and the prefecture. The results will be reported at the next meeting.

In response to the further shift to reviewing mass screening at school in this “interview,” Chiba parent and child of the “thyroid cancer support group Hydrangea Association” that supports families with thyroid cancer said, “Accident Among the 0-year-old and 2-year-old children at that time, a child with thyroid cancer appeared and my chest hurts. Thyroid cancer also has recurrence and metastasis, and early detection and early treatment are beneficial for the child. Given that the cancer was found in a school test, there can be no argument to eliminate the school test. ” The group has made offers to the prefecture three times in the past and opposes the reduction of inspections.

January 16, 2021 Posted by arclight2011part2 | children, Fukushima continuing, Reference | 2 Comments

”Small Modular Reactors”’- governments are being sucked in by the ”billionaires’ nuclear club”

SNC-Lavalin Scan dal-ridden SNC-Lavalin is playing a major role in the push for SMRs.

Terrestrial Energy….. Terrestrial Energy’s advisory board includes Dr. Ernest Moniz, the former US Secretary of the Dept. of Energy (2013-2017) who provided more than $12 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. Moniz has been a key advisor to the Biden-Harris transition team, which has come out in favour of SMRs.

The “billionaires’ nuclear club” …“As long as Bill Gates is wasting his own money or that of other billionaires, it is not so much of an issue. The problem is that he is lobbying hard for government investment.”

Going after the public purse

Bill Gates was apparently very busy during the 2015 Paris climate talks. He also went on stage during the talks to announce a collaboration among 24 countries and the EU on something called Mission Innovation – an attempt to “accelerate global clean energy innovation” and “increase government support” for the technologies.

Gates’ PR tactic is effective: provide a bit of capital to create an SMR “bandwagon,” with governments fearing their economies would be left behind unless they massively fund such innovations.

governments “are being suckers. Because if Wall Street and the banks will not finance this, why should it be the role of the government to engage in venture capitalism of this kind?”

It will take a Herculean effort from the public to defeat this NICE Future, but along with the Assembly of First Nations, three political parties – the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Green Party – have now come out against SMRs.

Mini-Nukes, Big Bucks: The Interests Behind the SMR Push https://watershedsentinel.ca/articles/mini-nukes-big-bucks-the-money-behind-small-modular-reactors/

Why Canada is now poised to pour billions of tax dollars into developing Small Modular Reactors as a “clean energy” climate solution, by Joyce Nelson, January 14, 2021 Back in 2018, the Watershed Sentinel ran an article warning that “unless Canadians speak out,” a huge amount of taxpayer dollars would be spent on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), which author D. S. Geary called “risky, retro, uncompetitive, expensive, and completely unnecessary.” Now here we are in 2021 with the Trudeau government and four provinces (Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Alberta) poised to pour billions of dollars into SMRs as a supposed “clean energy” solution to climate change.

It’s remarkable that only five years ago, the National Energy Board predicted: “No new nuclear units are anticipated to be built in any province” by 2040.So what happened?

The answer involves looking at some of the key influencers at work behind the scenes, lobbying for government funding for SMRs.

Continue reading →

January 16, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, investigative journalism, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Donald Trump the Worst President in the History of the United States

Anna Thurlow, 9 Jan 21, Donald Trump Has Been the Worst President in the History of the United StatesBy Eve ottenburg and Karl Grossman

“For those who concluded from the Covid-19 debacle that Trump simply wasn’t up to the job, it looks unlikely, to say the least, that his China legacy will be anything other than catastrophic. U.S. and Chinese economies are intertwined and, as we’ve already seen, decoupling hurts lots of Americans, starting with farmers. Trump’s executive order on December 28, prohibiting investments in firms reportedly controlled by the Chinese military does little besides ratchet up tensions. Hostilities between the two navies in the South China Sea could explode into regional war at any time. And how that war would be prevented from becoming nuclear is a very well-kept secret. But the geniuses in the Pentagon aren’t concerned. They believe in their new generation of small, “smart” nuclear weapons and “winnable” nuclear wars, as does Trump, the president who arguably has done more to promote nuclear war than perhaps any predecessor since mankind first split the atom.
Donald Trump has been the worst president in the history of the United States.”

Eve ottenburg

The attack by his supporters on the Capitol was a capstone of his presidency — lawless, an attack on democracy, a U.S. counterpart of the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s.

It was a horror representative of his tenure.

Thank heavens and thanks to successful and hard political work, he will in days be out of office. And there must be criminal prosecutions on the state and local levels as well the federal level, which he’ll likely try to wrangle out of with a pardon.

There must be consequences to his horrendous term in office.

“An American Tragedy” was the title of a piece by David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker magazine, right after Election Day 2016. “The election of Donald Trump,” Remnick wrote, “is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism.” There would be “miseries to come”– and there have been.

Remnick warned against an “attempt to normalize” the election of Trump. “Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader”, “a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right…a flim-flam man” with “disdain for democratic norms.”

The attack on the Capitol by the Trumpsters was an attempt at a coup to undo a presidential election in which a record number of voters came out to dump Trump and elect Joe Biden.

It was an act of insurrection incited by Trump.

As he tweeted to followers on December 20th — “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Yes, and indeed it was wild.

And then, in a speech in front of The White House on Wednesday, addressing his backers who had arrived, said: “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…and we’re going to the Capitol.” He added: “You have to be strong.”

His call was preceded by his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, proclaiming “let’s have trial by combat.”

Giuliani, who took an oath to be an attorney and adhere to rule of law, represented Trump in many courts in challenges to his election defeat with claims that judges found totally untrue–but Giuliani opted instead, in violation of that oath, for “trial by combat.”

Remnick warned about an “attempt to normalize” Trump, but so much of media have engaged in “both sides-ing” the situation, as Julie Hollar of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has written.

When a person tells an out-and-out lie, there is no journalistic obligation to “balance” a story with a falsehood

And Trump, The Washington Post report has recorded, has uttered more than 20,000 falsehoods in his term in office.

And then there have been the Trump disinformation machines led by Fox -about which Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels would smile.

But this is far more than a media problem.

Trump tapped into a vein of racism and other poisons in the United States.

He soon will be out of The White House but Trumpism, so horribly, will still be here.

“You have to summon an act of will, a certain energy and imagination, to replace truth with the authority of a con man like Trump,” George Packer wrote in the current issue of The Atlantic.

Trump’s “barrage of falsehoods — as many as 50 daily in the last fevered months of the 2020 campaign — complemented his unconcealed brutality,” writes Packer.

“Two events in Trump’s last year in office broke the spell of his sinister perversion of the truth,” he says: COVID-19 and a free election.

“The beginning of the end of Trump’s presidency arrived on March 11, 2020, when he addressed the nation for the first time on the subject of the pandemic and showed himself to be completely out of his depth. The virus was a fact that Trump couldn’t lie into oblivion or forge into a political weapon — it was too personal and frightening, too real. As hundreds of Americans died and the administration flailed between fantasy, partisan incitement, and criminal negligence, a crucial number of Americans realized that Trump’s lies could get someone they love killed,” says Packer.

He continues: “The second event came on November 3”– the election.

And that is what Trump and his followers who attacked the Capitol sought to undo. And, on the same day, Trump enablers in Congress were trying to undo it by having the votes of the Electoral College denied.

“The election didn’t end his lies — nothing will…But we learned that we still want democracy. This, too, is the legacy of Donald Trump,” Packer concluded.

Yes, most Americans still want democracy, but the history of authoritarian takeovers shows that a relatively small group of fanatics can beat the majority.

And we still are left with those toxic issues that Trump capitalized on.

Another component here is the enabling of Trump by all those Republicans.

Margaret Sullivan wrote a piece earlier this week in The Washington Post, headed “We must stop calling Trump’s enablers ‘conservative.’ They are the radical right.”
She wrote: “These days the true radicals are the enablers of President Trump’s ongoing attempted coup: the media bloviators on Fox News, One America and Newsmax who parrot his lies about election fraud; and the members of Congress who plan to object on Wednesday to what should be a pro forma step of approving the electoral college results, so that President-elect Joe Biden can take office peacefully on Jan. 20.

“But instead of being called what they are, these media and political figures get a mild label: conservative. Instead of calling out the truth, it normalizes; it softens the dangerous edges,” she continued. “It makes it seem, well, not so bad. Conservative, after all, describes politics devoted to free enterprise and traditional ideas. But that’s simply false. Sean Hannity is not conservative. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama are not conservative. Nor are the other 10 (at last count) Senators who plan to object” to the Electoral College vote.

She notes Tim Alberta wrote on Politico that “‘There is nothing conservative about subverting democracy.’ He suggests ‘far right’ as an alternative descriptor. Not bad. But I’d take it a step further, because it’s important to be precise. I’d call them members of the radical right.

“Members of the radical right won’t like this, of course. They soak in the word ‘conservative” like a warm bath.”

“On Jan. 20, we can still presume Trump will be gone from the White House,” she writes. “But his enablers and the movement that fostered him, and that he built up, will remain. That’s troubling. We should take one small but symbolic step toward repairing the damage by using the right words to describe it. It would be a start.”

Journalist Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, says Trump “will be in our history books as a dark, dark stain unlike any president of the United States.” And he investigated Nixon.

January 11, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, politics, politics international, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

An act of love — Beyond Nuclear International

Courts threaten freedom of Russian nature protector
An act of love — Beyond Nuclear International

Lyubov Kudryashova loves nature. Now she may be jailed for defending it

By Jack Cohen-Joppa

In Russian, her name means love. And it’s true. Lyubov Kudryashova loves the broad valley of Russia’s Tobol River, where it meanders out of Kazakhstan into the Kurgan Oblast. Her grandfather is buried there, she was born there, and she’s raised three sons there. As far as she knows, her ancestors have always lived there.

There, below the southern Urals, frigid continental winters give way to spring floods that inundate a landscape of oxbow lakes, wetlands, forests and fields. The waters sustain a large aquifer that Russia recognizes as a strategic reserve of fresh water.

“We, native people of the land, are against a barbaric attitude towards nature,” she says. “But our voices are too low.”

Which is why the passion of this campaigning environmentalist and entrepreneur has been met with fabricated charges of encouraging terrorism via the internet. She’s now on trial in a military court in Yekaterinburg, six hours away from her small town.

But Lyubov Kudryashova will not be spurned. “My ecological activity is going to continue. Well, I guess till the day the unjust court could takes away my freedom.”

In 2017, the government awarded an operating license for borehole leeching of uranium to Dalur, a uranium mining subsidiary of the Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom. The license to tap the Dobrovolnoye deposit around the village of Zverinogolovskoye condemned the very farmland Kudryashova’s father managed when she would accompany him as a child.

Dalur has two other leaky in-situ uranium projects in the Kurgan.

Many Tobol Valley residents feared environmental disaster when they learned that hundreds of exploratory wells would be drilled through the aquifer into the mineral deposit lying beneath it, without any public environmental review. Borehole leeching would eventually involve drilling thousands of wells and the injection of a million tons of sulfuric acid over 20-30 years, then withdrawing the dissolved minerals and chemically extracting the uranium.

Several times, activists tried to start a referendum and demand an independent environmental review, but met only refusals from the local officials.

Last fall, environmentalists surveyed some of Dalur’s other boreholes in Kurgan and documented much higher radiation levels than permitted. Despite the concerns, construction began on an in-situ leaching pilot plant and the huge clay-lined “mud pits” needed to receive the massive volume of toxic, acidified sludge produced in the process.

Beginning in 2017, Kudryashova was involved in the legal case against the Russian Federation over its refusal to conduct an environmental impact assessment before awarding the license to develop the mine.

That year, she also co-founded the Public Monitoring Fund for the Environmental Condition and the Population Welfare with the regional branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. One month later, a judge of the Kurgan Regional Court issued an order giving the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) authority to wiretap her telephone.

The Fund publishes information on the environmental impact of Dalur’s mining activity. Kudryashova writes, “Shortly after the completion of the case in the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and the registration of the environmental fund, a hidden judgment of another court was rendered that allowed the FSB to begin wiretapping my phone and, I believe, begin to look for fictitious crimes in order to stop my work.

“I guess money is more important than the radioactive contamination of land,” she observed.

So it was that on January 29, 2019, armed men led by an FSB captain broke into her family’s home and spent the day searching it. That summer the FSB got a local court to involuntarily commit Kudryashova to the Kurgan District Psychiatric Hospital for most of the month of July. She was kept from speaking with family or others outside without permission of the agency.

Then in March 2020, the FSB charged Kudryashova with 12 counts of “public justification of terrorism using the Internet” based on a specious forensic analysis of posts on the social network VKontakte, which, according to Kudryashova, never belonged to her page. The actual source of those posts remains unknown because the protocol and the DVD-R capturing those posts show evidence of fabrication and forgery. And at the most recent session of her trial in late December, a CD-R the defense had presented to the court for evidence was found to have been erased by an FSB operative.

Prosecutors say she advocated for violent overthrow of the constitutional order by re-posting memes with such seditious phrases as, “The fate of Russia is determined by each of us, what you personally or I do, then Russia will. A correct position can only be revolutionary” and “If the nation is convinced that the ruling power in the state is directed not at the development of its cultural, economic and other needs, but, on the contrary, at trampling them, then it is not only the right, but also the duty of the nation to overthrow that power and establish one corresponding to the national interests of the people.”

Kudryashova writes, “Nonviolent ecological activism, in the understanding of the rulers of my country, is a crime. That’s why prisons are full of people who wanted to protect nature, but those who harmed it are free… Ecological crimes against present and future generations are not subject to the judgement of a military court.

“I’m 55 years old and my life is not as important as the preservation of nature. My duty and responsibility are to make a small contribution in a great cause — to stop violence against nature and people. The price of atomic energy is the life of future generations.”

Her trial is in the Central District Military Court of Yekaterinburg, where the next hearing is scheduled for 28-29 January, 2021. Agora International Human Rights Group and the Memorial civil rights society in Russia have provided an attorney and other support for Kudryashova.

Letters in support of Lyubov Kudryashova and seeking dismissal of the charges against her should be addressed to the chair of the court collegium examining the case, Judge Sergei Gladkih, st. Bazhova 85, Yekaterinburg, Russia 62005, or by email to opo.covs.svd@sudrf.ru. Refer to Case №: 2-42/2020, Lyubov Kudryashova.

Jack Cohen-Joppa is the co-editor of The Nuclear Resister, the co-founder of the eponymous organization and co-winner with Felice Cohen-Joppa of the 2020 Nuclear Free Future Award in the category of Education.

January 10, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Legal, opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, politics, Reference, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Human Rights and the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Australia: The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: Corrs Human Rights Day event recap https://www.mondaq.com/australia/human-rights/1019602/the-un-treaty-on-the-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons-corrs-human-rights-day-event-recap
23 December 2020

by Bronwyn Lincoln , Nastasja Suhadolnik and Phoebe Wynn-Pope

Corrs Chambers Westgarth On 10 December 2020, Corrs marked Human Rights Day with an ‘In Conversation’ event focused on the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (Treaty).

The event brought together leading experts in the field of nuclear disarmament and the humanitarian impacts of a nuclear event, including;

Dr Helen Durham – Director of International law and Policy at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Associate Professor Tilman Ruff – co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and 2017 Nobel Peace Prize recipient
Tara Gutman – Legal Advisor at the Australian Red Cross

Discussion between the panellists focused on the significance of the Treaty and how it may shape future obligations of states and corporates in connection with nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament. The Treaty currently has 51 parties and 86 signatories and is set to enter into force on 22 January 2021, cementing a categorical ban on nuclear weapons, 75 years after their first use. Australia has yet to ratify the Treaty.

A number of themes that emerged from the conversation are explored below.

Why is this conversation so critical?

The panellists agreed that the prohibition of nuclear weapons is perhaps more urgent now than ever before.

In early 2020, the Doomsday Clock – which symbolises the gravest existential dangers facing humankind – was moved to 100 seconds to midnight, indicating that humankind was closer to the apocalypse than ever in history. This movement was attributed to the increased threats of nuclear war and the continued global failure to address climate change. The adjustment was described as indicative of ‘the most dangerous situation that humanity has ever faced’.

This is unsurprising. Today, there remain around 13,500 nuclear weapons in the hands of only a few states. Many are in a high operational readiness, and have the ability to be rapidly deployed.

It is well understood that the use of even a fraction of these weapons would result in unimaginable loss of human life and have long-term effects on human health, the environment and global food supplies. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has consistently found that all the world’s health resources would not be effective in responding to even a singlenuclear attack.

A paradigm shift

The Treaty was born out of a shift in focus from the assumed defence and international security benefits of nuclear weapons to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences they would incur. The Red Cross, ICAN and members of civil society played a vital role in shaping that discussion.

Dr Durham noted that this shift in momentum began when then President of the ICRC Jakob Kellenberger addressed the Geneva Diplomatic Corp in the lead up to the Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 2010, declaring that the debate on nuclear weapons must be guided not by ‘military doctrine and power politics’, but by ‘human beings, . the fundamental rules of international humanitarian law, and . the collective future of humanity’.

The humanitarian focus of the discourse continued its momentum with a series of conferences convened to consider the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons in Norway (2013), Mexico (2014) and Austria (2014). Dr Durham and Dr Ruff reflected on their respective involvement in these conferences, observing how they provided a platform to discuss the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapon use at the international level, significantly shifting the debate and bringing to bear increased urgency in the need to ban nuclear weapons.

Legal significance and relationship with other treaties

When the Treaty enters into force, it will be the first international legal instrument which makes nuclear weapons illegal, prohibiting their development, testing, production, acquisition, stockpiling, use, deployment or threat of use. The Treaty will also prohibit the provision of assistance to any state in the conduct of prohibited activities. It is notable that, even with all their destructive power, nuclear weapons are the last form of weapons of mass destruction to be prohibited.

The Treaty will only bind those states which have formally signed and ratified it, which means that non-parties (such as Australia) do not have any formal obligations under the Treaty.

Other nuclear weapons treaties, including the nearly universal Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which has been in force since 1970, will continue as a cornerstone in the international legal framework governing nuclear weapons. In this regard, Dr Durham observed that the NPT and the Treaty are complimentary rather than conflicting in their shared aspiration to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Legal ramifications for the commercial sector

For businesses, the Treaty will begin a process of stigmatisation of companies that are involved in the production of nuclear weapons. It may also render their operations unlawful.

Tara Gutman observed that the impact of the Treaty’s prohibitions is already being felt, noting that:

the social licence of businesses that make nuclear weapons or their components is being called into question;
institutional investors have started to divest from companies manufacturing or financing nuclear weapons; and
the Treaty is hoped to result in formal commitments being included in corporates’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) frameworks to screen for, and not to fund, nuclear weapons.

In addition, state parties to the Treaty are expected to make the manufacture of nuclear weapons or their components unlawful under domestic laws in their territories. How these matters impact the commercial sector in the coming years will be interesting to follow.

What’s next?

The panellists reminded us that the entry into force of the Treaty is but a step on what has been a long path towards nuclear disarmament.

Legal ramifications for the commercial sector

For businesses, the Treaty will begin a process of stigmatisation of companies that are involved in the production of nuclear weapons. It may also render their operations unlawful.

Tara Gutman observed that the impact of the Treaty’s prohibitions is already being felt, noting that:

the social licence of businesses that make nuclear weapons or their components is being called into question;
institutional investors have started to divest from companies manufacturing or financing nuclear weapons; and
the Treaty is hoped to result in formal commitments being included in corporates’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) frameworks to screen for, and not to fund, nuclear weapons.

What’s next?

The panellists reminded us that the entry into force of the Treaty is but a step on what has been a long path towards nuclear disarmament.

January 7, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal, politics international, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Dr Helen Caldicott as mentor for anti-nuclear activists

My Six Mentors, “………Helen Caldicott, MD, by Mary Olson, Gender and Radiation Impact Project, 1 January 20121

Helen Caldicott deserves a much greater place in our histories of the Cold War and ending the USA / USSR arms race than she generally gets. This is, perhaps, because she is powerful and a woman. A pediatrician, who in the 1970’s would not tolerate the radioactive fallout she and her patients were suffering from nuclear weapons tests in Australia, Helen and her family came to the USA. She and another physician named Ira Helfand revived what had been a local Boston organization of physicians and created a Nobel Prize winning organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), which later participated in the creation of another Nobel Prize winning group, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). These two along with hundreds of other organizations committed to peace and nuclear disarmament formed the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) which has helped to create the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (see http://icanw.org/the-treaty ) and also won the Nobel Prize (2017).

Helen herself is a powerful communicator and will move audiences at a level that can change the course of someone’s life and work. She followed her own destiny to winning meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union, where she educated him about Nuclear Winter and the fact that nuclear is not a war that anyone can win. She also met with President Reagan in the era and diagnosing early-stage dementia… Her ability to bring the reality of the world to these men, and reality of these men to the world set her aside, in a class by herself—and was an enormous contribution to us all.

I first met Helen in the body of her Cold War block-buster book “Nuclear Madness.” I was in the midst of an existential crisis that could have become an even bigger health crisis. After college I needed a job (not yet a career) because I was broke, broken up from my first “true” love, and far from home. I got a job as a research assistant in a lab at a prestigious medical school; it was 1984.

Within 2 weeks, I was inadvertently contaminated with radioactivity (without my knowledge) by carelessness of a lab-mate. The radioactive material, Phosphorus-32 is used in research to trace biochemical activity in living organisms. This type of radioactivity is not deeply penetrating, so there was some reason not to panic, however the I was exposed continuously for over a week, and I also found radioactivity at home– my toothbrush was “hot”—so I had also had some level of internal exposure. I was terrified. The lab used concentrations of the tracer thousands of times higher than is typical.

The institution told me there was no danger, but because I was upset, they helped me transfer to a different job. No accident report was filed, and in the midst of transition, my radiation detection badge was never processed. It is not possible to know the dimensions of my exposure—I began having symptoms that were not normal for me. Many people, including some family members told me I was imagining things. No one in my circle understood how terrified I was.

I was fortunate that Helen had already written “Nuclear Madness”—the first edition came out in 1978, just before the March 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown in Harrisburg PA—an event that propelled the book into multiple printings including a Bantam Paperback edition that I found. It turned out that 7 years later I helped Helen to revise and update the same text for the 1994 WW Norton edition. It was Helen’s deep commitment to truth, to speaking and writing that truth, to empowering people to take action for good. Helen’s words accurately described radiation and its potential for harm, and in my panic about the unknown, this calmed me.

Every other authority I had encountered was trying to tell me there was no problem—when I knew they had no right to dismiss what had happened to me. I am quite certain that had I remained alone with my fear, despair, and confusion my panic would have resulted in behaviors that would have compounded any harm bodily from that radioactive contamination. Reading Helen’s work let me know there was at least one woman walking the Earth who did know what I was going through… it made it possible for me to choose recovery and walk away from a legal battle that would have forced me to maintain, hold and prove a myself a victim. Instead, following in Helen’s wake, I chose Peaceful Warrior. Thank you Helen! : ……….. https://www.genderandradiation.org/blog/2020/12/31/my-six-mentors

January 2, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, opposition to nuclear, Reference, Women | Leave a comment

Mary Olson pays tribute to Rosalie Bertell, the great explainer of radiation impacts on health.

My Six Mentors, by Mary Olson, Gender and Radiation Impact Project, 1 January 20121

“……………. Rosalie Bertell, PhD

It was Rosalie who most let me know that I am able to contribute original work towards the day that People, to decide not to split atoms any more. Human beings began splitting atoms in Chicago, in 1942. Rosalie, a PhD in mathematics and member of the Order of Gray Nuns, knew more than anyone else I have worked with, that all of it—every last nuclear license, and radioactive emission, all the waste and all the bombs and all the money congress gives to nuclear activities are choices. People made, and continue to make these decisions…and we can change our mind.

Rosalie studied radiation impacts and was committed to service on behalf of future generations. She won the Right Livelihood award for her work with communities impacted by nuclear industry. Often called the “alternative Peace Prize” – she was one of the first women to be honored. As a laureate, she was encouraged to find and mentor students. Rosalie hoped that I, and my coworker Diane D’Arrigo would go to graduate school and she could be our mentor. We decided since we were already in our 50’s to simply study with her, informally. We traveled, 5 or 6 times to the Mother House where she resided and she generously met with us in the last two years of her life. She was always small in stature, but at that point her back was bent and she barely came up to my chest, but still had the intensity of a wolverine!

It was Rosalie Bertell who helped me tackle one of the biggest challenges I have faced. After a public talk on radioactive waste policy that I gave during this time, a woman asked me if radiation was more harmful to women, to her, compared to a man. Even though I had studied and known many of the top independent radiation researchers, including Bertell, I had never heard that biological sex could be a factor for harm—other than in reproduction (pregnancy)—but that is more about the embryo and fetus than the woman. I told her that I was sorry, I did not know and would get back to her. In fact, I forgot.

Two years later, when nuclear reactors exploded in Japan at a site called Fukushima Daiichi, I remembered that question and knew it urgently needed an answer. I was unaware that Dr Arjun Makhijani and a team had written on sex differences in radiation harm in 2006 (see www.ieer.org ) and also did not turn that up as I searched for any information on differences between males and females. My findings, five years later are an independent confirmation of the IEER work.

Since I found nothing on a basic google dive, I called Rosalie, who was at that point nearing the end of her life, to ask if she had studied biological sex. She had not, and the one report she pointed me to was out of print. It was my second call, a week later, that prompted her to tell me that I would have to look at the data myself.

I had no idea that the National Academy of Science (NAS) had published tables with 60 years of data on cancers and cancer deaths among the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rosalie told me to find out for myself. I was shocked. I had stopped any formal study of math in the 6th grade…she was a mathematician—I asked her to do it, and she reminded me that she was dying. I protested again. It was her next words that pushed me. Rosalie said, “The data is divided by males and females so you can look at this question—and if there is a difference, it will be a simple pattern. It is good you do not have more math because if there is a difference, you will find it and not make it more complicated than it is.” She said to get a few pencils, a sharpener, an eraser and lots of paper, and go to it. I did.

The result was my first paper on the topic, “Atomic Radiation is More Harmful to Women,” (October 2011) published to the web in time for Rosalie to congratulate me. Three years later the paper was the basis for my invitation to speak at the global Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons. Three years later as the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was in the work, I founded the Gender and Radiation Impact Project. Rosalie is the one who put rocket fuel in my determination to help. If the world decides to base radiation protection on Refence Little Girl—make every regulation in terms of protecting females who are infants—five years old, future generations have a chance. Rosalie is the one who modeled for me that it is possible to reach for the best possible outcome, and, indeed, we have an obligation to do so………..…… https://www.genderandradiation.org/blog/2020/12/31/my-six-mentors

January 2, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, history, PERSONAL STORIES, radiation, Reference, women, Women | Leave a comment

Mary Olson on 4 mentors about radiation -Diana Bellamy, Sharon Barry, Judith Johnsrud, Joanna Macy

My Six Mentors, by Mary Olson, Gender and Radiation Impact Project, 1 January 20121

…in these atomic times…

[September, 2020] I was born in 1958—full-on Cold War… my family lived upwind of the Nevada nuclear weapons test site in California and even there air quality was the reason my parents gave when they moved our family back to the Midwest… I was in kindergarten in a tiny town in Illinois during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when a bomb drill caused me to become aware of nuclear annihilation at that age. I opted out: that very night I got sick and stayed chronically ill dropping out of kindergarten and was mostly homeschooled for the next 12 years. I am fortunate that my brilliant parents were my teachers and I learned a lot on that journey. When I emerged well enough to go college and work, I learned even more from amazing women. These six, my MENTORS:

Diana Bellamy, MFA

At Reed College I majored in Biology—focused on evolution, and History of Science. As a Junior I fulfilled an arts requirement by taking a theater course, for the first time. Professor Diana Bellamy was a working actor, and in her Introduction to Acting class I discovered that embodiment of an experience is something that others can see and recognize, and at times, experience with the actor. My ability was spotted by Bellamy. She invited—urged me–to change my major and come to the Theater Department, even so late in my coursework. I was shocked into an evaluation of my own priorities and goals.

The following summer was a deep-dive into determining whether to stay the course in my original science major, or jump. The process of discernment, largely via discussions with my father, brought me to a deep understanding of WHY I was studying science: I knew that society’s decisions and actions would be, more and more, made in the worlds of research and technology, and I also knew that ordinary people do not speak those languages. I wanted to become fluent enough in that world to be able to help translate for those who are affected, but outside that bubble. Eventually, ten years out, I attained that role…and have stayed with it.

Diana’s recognition of my ability to project experience challenged me to find the reason I would stay in Biology besides a more stable work-life. It was an empowerment for me to find how to use my gift as a communicator. I bow to her every time I take the stage to speak to 10’s or to 1000’s of people, and help them experience the vital importance of what I am there to say. …………

Sharon Barry, CPA

As I left research behind at age 25, I needed stability, clean air and water, and a different kind of stress as I rebuilt my health. In 1986 I got a job running the retreat, conference center, and camp in Michigan where my parents had been summer staff when I was a toddler—and I had attended camp. Circle Pines Center is both legendary, and unknown. I created, and served on a Management Team for five years and built a strong tool-box of non-profit organizational skills. That portfolio includes business management and administration. It was my dear friend and mentor, Sharon who helped me learn. Our relationship was not easy—but Sharon stood by me as she taught me the craft, and helped with the art by serving on the Finance Committee of the Board. We rebuilt the Center which had been in tough shape…to its strongest financial footing in decades. Sharon went on to win her own CPA and has been part of my financial life ever since as my accountant. I am not wealthy, but I am also deeply committed to accountability. Sharon taught me, and continues to support me in this. It is her strength I pull on to get through my own tough times. THANK YOU!

Judith Johnsrud, PhD

I met Judy in 1990 at the Backyard Eco Conference in Michigan. I left my submersion job at Circle Pines and drove to the gathering, expressly to hear Johnsrud speak about radioactivity in the environment. I had been recovering from my radiation exposure, and learning about new proposals from the federal government to deregulate a large share of the radioactive waste generated in the processing of uranium for nuclear fuel, and the operation of nuclear reactors for energy and nuclear weapons materials production. The Below Regulatory Concern Policy would put metals, building materials, soil and many other materials that were measurably radioactive into unregulated county landfills and also allow recycle into consumer products, with no warning or label. The deregulation is what I wanted to talk to her about. It seemed to me that what happened in the lab with a tiny plastic petri dish might happen in a Walmart to someone who never knew what had happened since radioactivity is invisible, has no smell or taste…

When I got to the conference, event organizers were looking for a volunteer to drive Judy across the state to the airport near Detroit. I immediately volunteered—it was a 5 hour drive and that gave us plenty of time to get to know each other. Judy remained my friend, my confidant and my teacher for the next 20 years as I moved into working at the national and global level for the peaceful end of the nuclear era—ending the production of more nuclear waste and better protection for our living systems from the waste we already have made. Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) was founded by a small group, including Judy Johnsrud. I was hired in 1991 as Staff Biologist and Radioactive Waste Specialist, and Judy was always there—and in the first decade, we were often the only women in the room. Judy died in 2014; I retired from NIRS, five years later, in 2019.

Joanna Macy

The paths of Joanna Macy and I have crossed and re-crossed—I first met her work in her first book, ‘Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age,’ published in 1983, before my radiation accident…I actually met her in-person, briefly at that time because of her leadership in the Buddhist Peace Fellowship… and our paths crossed again, briefly, when she and her husband Fran introduced me to their concept of Nuclear Guardianship. It was not until a younger friend and protégé of mine convinced me to attend a short-course at Schumacher College in Devon England (1998) led by both Fran and Joanna that I got to know her…a little. It was a two-week session rooted in community work that formed the later book, ‘Coming Back to Life’ (1998). I include Joanna here, as a Mentor, even though we have spent little time together, because when I open my mouth to speak, it is most often her influence I hear. The basic insight that we are all one is a foundation for me—and she brings that insight to the nuclear work. I honor her, and in doing so, I hear echoes of her in me…… https://www.genderandradiation.org/blog/2020/12/31/my-six-mentors

January 2, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, women, Women | Leave a comment

Non violent anti-nuclear action – the Clamshell Alliance model for success

Know Your Nonviolent History: In 1976 Clamshell Alliance Launches Mass Demonstrations https://www.riverasun.com/know-your-nonviolent-history-in-1976-clamshell-alliance-launches-mass-demonstrations/August 18, 2016, by Rivera Sun On August 1st, 1976, the first nonviolent mass demonstration of the Clamshell Alliance took place at the proposed site of the Seabrook Nuclear Energy Facility in New Hampshire. The Clamshell Alliance was a group of anti-nuclear activists who worked to stop nuclear power plant construction at a time when President Nixon’s “Project Independence” had proposed the construction of over 1,000 nuclear power plants throughout the nation. Although the Clamshell Alliance was only partially successful in halting the Seabrook facility, their mass mobilizations deterred the plans for other plants and changed the landscape of nuclear energy forever. If not for the Clamshell Alliance, it is possible that we would be living in the nuclear nightmare of President Nixon’s vision of a thousand plants by the year 2000.

The Clamshell Alliance used a model of affinity groups of 6-20 people, and a spokes council system that functioned on consensus decision-making by all members. In July 1976, the Clamshell Alliance adopted a Declaration of Nuclear Resistance and by August 1st had mobilized their first protest of 200-600 people. Later in August, a second protest and civil disobedience action occupied the Seabrook construction site for 75 minutes, singing songs and planting trees. Nearly all of the 200 participants were arrested.

In April of 1977, the Clamshell Alliance mobilized 2,000 people for a demonstration. 1,400 participants were arrested, most refusing to post bail. They were held in jails and National Guard armories for up to two weeks. The activists used this time for training and networking, and subsequently, the detention of the activists was seen as a blunder on the part of Governor Meldrim Thomson.

In 1978, the Clamshell Alliance successfully organized another series of mass demonstrations and arrests. From June 23-26th, the alliance accepted an agreement to legally protest on the site for three days. Some sources claim this protest was one of the largest on-site protests in the history of the anti-nuclear movement, citing over 20,000 participants and very few arrests.

On March 29th, 1979, the meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, propelled the dangers of nuclear power to the forefront of national concern. In collaboration with other groups, a huge anti-nuclear energy rally was organized in Washington, D.C. on May 6, 1979. Between 50,000 and 120,000 people gathered to protest nuclear power and demand safe alternatives.

These demonstrations played a major role in slowing and stopping the rush toward nuclear energy. Although Unit 1 of Seabrook Power Plant went online in 1990, Unit 2 was cancelled altogether. The project cost seven times the original billion-dollar estimate and was completed 14 years later than anticipated. In that time, hundreds of other proposals were dropped, due to the high social and fiscal costs encountered by the Seabrook Power Plant. For decades after the inception of the Clamshell Alliance and other similar groups, no new nuclear power facilities were proposed or constructed. The Clamshell Alliance left a lasting legacy in its organizing structure, movement practices, consensus model, and strategies for change. These are all tools and resources that can be used by current movements for change.

This article is from Rivera Sun’s book of nonviolent histories that have made our world. Click here for more information.

January 1, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, opposition to nuclear, Reference, USA | 1 Comment

Hanford’s dangerous collection of nuclear waste sites, including 177 underground leaky tanks

Washington’s new nuclear waste lead takes on Hanford’s aging tanks, OPB, By Anna King (Northwest News Network), Dec. 30, 2020.

David Bowen is charged with holding the U.S. Department of Energy accountable for its cleanup of a site that once produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.

At the Hanford site in southeastern Washington, along the Columbia River, millions of gallons of radioactive sludge are cradled in aging underground tanks.

Nearly 2,000 capsules filled with cesium and strontium rest unquietly in an old, glowing-blue pool of water. Two reactors along the Columbia still need to be sealed up and cocooned.

And those are just some of the bigger waste sites out of hundreds at the 580-square-mile cleanup site.

177 underground tanks filled with radioactive waste It’s a lot to ponder and a steep learning curve for freshly hired David Bowen. …..He started his new job Dec. 16 as the Nuclear Waste Program lead for Washington’s Department of Ecology in Richland.

he’ll hold the U.S. Department of Energy accountable for its cleanup at the site using the Tri-Party Agreement. That’s a 1989 document struck between Ecology, the federal Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Hanford houses leftovers from World War II and the Cold War, when it was the nation’s factory for plutonium. Trenches, pits and buildings are all contaminated with loads of chemicals and radioactive waste generated at breakneck speed.

The stickiest problem: 177 tanks — some of them leakers — filled with radioactive waste.

“Some of [the underground tanks] are 50-plus years old,” Bowen said. “And they weren’t designed to last this long. There are still fluids in them, millions of gallons, in sludge, et cetera. So, there’s the opportunity for that to escape and get into the Columbia River — or the groundwater is high.”

A massive waste treatment plant is being built in the desert at Hanford to treat that tank waste. But the cleanup timeline has been pushed back several times since the 1980s. It could be pushed back more because of the pandemic.

……. Aging infrastructure, aging expertsHanford is much like a complex small city: thousands of commuting workers, miles of highways and intertwining roads.

Then there are all the stakeholders: multiple tribes, Seattle-based Hanford watchdog groups, salmon and Columbia River advocates and multiple government agencies. Losing Hanford experts to retirement or attrition to other agencies is a big problem — and a growing one. Some key Ecology experts have recently been lured away to federal posts or to work as Hanford contractors. And many have already retired. Bowen said he’s well aware he needs to work fast……… https://www.opb.org/article/2020/12/29/washington-nuclear-waste-program-manager-hanford/

December 31, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

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petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.

[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!

World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/

Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560

of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-the-ukrainian-government-to-drop-prosecution-of-peace-activist-yurii-sheliazhenko/?clear_id=true&link_id=4&can_id=f0940af377595273328101dea28c2309&source=email-yurii-has-been-abducted&email_referrer=email_3153752&email_subject=yurii-has-been-abducted&&

To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com

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nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Rapacious nuclear company Holtec: its dodgy record on safety, finance and lack of transparency

Universities in collusion with nuclear industry

1) Direct Management

2) Institutional Partnerships

3) Research Programs and Partnerships

4) Workforce Development Programs

Recommendations

Dangers of plutonium fuelled, sodium cooled “Versatile Nuclear Reactor”

South Africa the only country to have nuclear weapons, then abandon them

How the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Impacts the United States

Thyroid cancer at ages 0 and 2 at the time of the nuclear accident-Health survey in Fukushima Prefecture January 2021

”Small Modular Reactors”’- governments are being sucked in by the ”billionaires’ nuclear club”

Donald Trump the Worst President in the History of the United States

An act of love — Beyond Nuclear International

Lyubov Kudryashova loves nature. Now she may be jailed for defending it

Human Rights and the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Why is this conversation so critical?

A paradigm shift

Legal significance and relationship with other treaties

Legal ramifications for the commercial sector

What’s next?

Legal ramifications for the commercial sector

What’s next?

Dr Helen Caldicott as mentor for anti-nuclear activists

Mary Olson pays tribute to Rosalie Bertell, the great explainer of radiation impacts on health.

Mary Olson on 4 mentors about radiation -Diana Bellamy, Sharon Barry, Judith Johnsrud, Joanna Macy

Non violent anti-nuclear action – the Clamshell Alliance model for success

Hanford’s dangerous collection of nuclear waste sites, including 177 underground leaky tanks

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