Nuclear rethink: A change in India’s nuclear doctrine has implications on cost & war strategy
A nuclear doctrine states how a nuclear weapon state would employ its nuclear weapons both during peace and war. Economic Times ET Bureau|, Aug 17, 2019,
“…….. revoking the NFU would have its own costs. First, India’s image as a responsible nuclear power is central to its nuclear diplomacy. Nuclear restraint has allowed New Delhi to get accepted in the global mainstream. From being a nuclear pariah for most of the Cold War, within a decade of Pokhran 2, it has been accepted in the global nuclear order. It is now a member of most of the technology denial regimes such as the Missile Technology Control regime and the Wassenaar Arrangement. It is also actively pursuing full membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Revoking the ‘no first use’ pledge would harm India’s nuclear image worldwide.
Parting away with NFU would also be costly otherwise. A purely retaliatory nuclear use is easier to operationalize. Nuclear preemption is a costly policy as it requires massive investment not only in weapons and delivery systems but also intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) infrastructure. The latest estimates of India’s nuclear weapons by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists point to a small arsenal of 130-150 nuclear warheads even though it has enough militarygrade plutonium to produce 200 warheads.
In fact, when compared with the estimates a decade earlier of 70 nuclear warheads, there has only been a modest increase in India’s nuclear inventory. If India does opt for first use of nuclear weapons and given that it has two nuclear adversaries, it would require a far bigger inventory of nuclear weapons particularly as eliminating adversaries’ nuclear capabilities would require targeting of its nuclear assets involving multiple warheads. The controversy around the supposed low yield of its Hydrogen weapon test in 1998 further complicates this already precarious calculation.
Similarly, first use of nuclear weapons would require a massive increase in India’s nuclear delivery capabilities. There is yet no evidence suggesting that India’s missile production has increased dramatically in recent times. Moreover, India is yet to induct the Multiple Reentry Vehicle (MRV) technology in its missiles, which is fundamental to eliminating hardened nuclear targets. Finally, India’s ISR capabilities would have to be augmented to such a level where India is confident of taking out most of its adversary’s arsenal. According to a senior officer who had served in the Strategic Forces command, this is nearly an “impossible task”. Finally, India would have to alter significantly its nuclear alerting routine. India’s operational plans for its nuclear forces involve a four-stage process. Nuclear alerting would start at the first hints of a crisis where decision-makers foresee possible military escalation. This would entail assembly of nuclear warheads and trigger mechanisms into nuclear weapons. The second stage involves dispersal of weapons and delivery systems to pre-determined launch positions. The third stage would involve mating of weapons with delivery platforms.
The last and final stage devolves the control of nuclear weapons from the scientific enclave to the military for their eventual use. Canisterization of missiles has combined the dispersal and mating of weapons into a single step, cutting down the effort required for achieving operational readiness. Even then, this model does not support first use of nuclear weapons as it gives ample warning to the adversary of India’s intentions. There is certainly a need for a reappraisal of India’s nuclear doctrine.
Li Yang returned to photograph his hometown, an abandoned city known as 404, which was once China’s largest nuclear base
404 is the name of an abandoned city in the Gansu province of northeast China, situated within the sandy plains of the Gobi desert. The city was built in 1958; it occupied an area of 4 km2 and included a factory, police station, school, and a residential area. In the 1990s, it was China’s largest nuclear base, and there were almost 100,000 people who lived there. There is no official report on what happened to 404, but according to photographer Li Yang, a third generation citizen of the city, the lack of decent medical facilities, an education system, and other supporting structures, drove residents to relocate in 2005.
Yang was born in 404 in 1984, and lived there for 19 years until he moved to Sichuan to study computer science in 2003. By his second university break, his family had relocated to a different city. “This sudden departure brought on a feeling of loss,” says Yang, who never studied photography, but was interested in the medium, and decided to return to photograph the remains of the places he remembers.
404 Not Found comprises photographs made between 2013 and 2016. Yang visited the city four times, staying for three days on each visit. With no place to stay the night, he drove back and forth every day, following a carefully planned itineraryto save time. “I wanted to shoot the scenes which held my living experiences and memories, like my kindergarten, the public bathroom, and my home,” he says.
Yang’s images are often symmetrical with a one-point perspective; the main subjects of his photographs are always centered within their surroundings. “I was there to talk to the city face-to-face,” he says, explaining his favourite image of two leafless trees that stand among a desolate landscape. “I planted them in front of my home when I was four years old,” he says “When I came back to shoot the photos in 2016, I found my home was demolished. One tree had died, but the other was still alive.” Yang finds meaning in images like these, where there is a play between the disappearance of the physical object, and the immortality of it in his memory. “For others, these places are just empty buildings, but I see them as they were before. This place was once my home, filled with life.”
US analysts think the accident involved the prototype of a nuclear-powered cruise missile that the Russians call Burevestnik, or Petrel, but is known in the West by its NATO designation, Skyfall. Putin has called it “a fundamentally new type of weapon” – an “invincible missile” with virtually unlimited range, easily able to evade US defences.
When Skyfall was first announced, early last year, some Western military analysts started hyperventilating. “That’s a technological breakthrough and a gigantic achievement,” claimed one. “These weapons are definitely new, absolutely new.”
But in fact, these “new” missiles are a throwback to the early days of the Cold War. And back then, it was the United States that developed a nuclear-powered cruise missile, in the early 1960s.
“Project Pluto” was part of a Pentagon program known as Supersonic Low Altitude Missile, a clunky name almost certainly designed to yield its catchier acronym, SLAM. The missile was cancelled in 1964, never having taken flight. Nuclear-powered cruise missiles were not a good idea then, and they are not a good idea now.
That’s not to say that such weapons are not impressive, in a way.
SLAM envisioned a locomotive-sized missile flying at three times the speed of sound near treetop level, tossing out hydrogen bombs along the way and spewing radiation in its wake. (In 1990, when I worked at the National Air and Space Museum, I researched the history of the project for an article in Air and Space magazine.)
There was a reason Pluto’s inventors, at the Livermore nuclear weapons laboratory in California, dubbed it “the weapon from Hell.” The noise level on the ground when Pluto went by was expected to be 150 decibels. (The Saturn V moon rocket, by comparison, produced 200 decibels at full thrust.)
But ruptured eardrums would have been the least of your worries if you were in the neighbourhood.
The shock wave alone might have been lethal. And since Pluto’s nuclear ramjet engine ran at 2500 degrees Fahrenheit (1371 degrees), portions of the missile would have been red-hot — literally “frying chickens in the barnyard” on the way to its targets.
Indeed, SLAM operated on the same principle as the errant low-flying B-52 bomber in Dr Strangelove. As Major Kong observed to his crew, “they might harpoon us, but they dang sure ain’t going to spot us on no radar screen.”
An alternate idea was to tie Pluto to a tether at the Nevada Test Site. (“That would have been some tether,” dryly observed another scientist at the lab.) Finally, what do you do with a highly radioactive missile once it’s been tested? Dumping it in the ocean was the solution offered back then. And it is probably Putin’s preferred solution now.
Ultimately, in the United States, cooler heads prevailed. Six weeks after the successful static test of Livermore’s nuclear engine in Nevada in July 1964, the Pentagon pulled the plug on Pluto.
Intercontinental-range ballistic missiles promised to destroy targets in the Soviet Union well before Pluto got to them, with equal certainty and a lot fewer associated risks. SLAM, its critics said, stood for “slow, low and messy.”
Putin’s Skyfall cruise missile also has a seagoing sibling: a giant nuclear-powered torpedo, dubbed Poseidon, designed to destroy US port cities with a multi-megaton blast.
Poseidon bears a striking resemblance to the idea that Russia’s Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Andrei Sakharov, came up with in the early 1960s. When Sakharov told a Soviet admiral of his proposal, however, the latter was “shocked and disgusted by the idea of merciless mass slaughter.”
Feeling “utterly abashed,” the physicist abandoned the concept and never raised it again. “I’m no longer worried that someone may pick up on the idea,” Sakharov wrote in his memoirs, published in 1990. “It doesn’t fit in with current military doctrines, and it would be foolish to spend the extravagant sums required.”
Plainly, times have changed. Yet as several experts have since noted, it is also possible that Putin’s amazing new weapons are only part of a propaganda campaign, a response to plans announced by the Trump administration to expand and modernise America’s nuclear arsenal.
If so, Putin’s ploy is reminiscent of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s hollow Cold War boast that the USSR was turning out ICBMs “like sausages.” (As Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, later observed, his father wasn’t exactly lying: The Soviets weren’t making sausages then, either.)
Of course, flying nuclear reactors and giant nuclear-armed undersea drones could do a lot of damage to cities if they really existed and were ever used. But the real danger of Putin’s Potemkin arsenal is that it will – as Khrushchev’s boast did decades ago – spark a US overreaction and lead to pressure to revive ideas like Livermore’s Pluto and Sakharov’s Poseidon: forgotten relics of Cold War 1.0 that are best left dead and buried.
Herken is an emeritus professor of American diplomatic history at the University of California. From 1988 to 2003, he was the curator of military space at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Trump is laying the ground for a nuclear arms race in the Gulf
Trump’s mismanagement of the nuclear issue in the Middle East is damaging the international nonproliferation regime. Alzaeera, by Luciano Zaccara, Over the past three months since the Trump administration imposed severe sanctions on Iran, which have significantly curbed its oil exports and exacerbated its economic crisis, tensions in the Gulf have escalated. Commercial vessels have been attacked, oil tankers seized and drones shot down. Despite these escalations, both sides are holding back and at least in the short-term, an open conflict so far seems unlikely.
In the long-term, however, the highly-problematic approach that the United States has adopted towards the nuclear issue could have devastating consequences. Two recent developments point in that direction.
First, the Trump administration has given a green light to US companies to work on nuclear projects in Saudi Arabia. According to a report recently released by the US Congress Oversight Committee, “with regard to Saudi Arabia, the Trump Administration has virtually obliterated the lines normally separating government policymaking from corporate and foreign interests.”
The report also stated that the evidence collected and analyzed “raise serious questions about whether the White House is willing to place the potential profits of the President’s friends above the national security of the American people and the universal objective of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.”
The White House seems committed to allowing the transfer of sensitive nuclear technology without demanding that Riyadh abide by US legal requirements not to engage in activities that can lead to nuclear proliferation.
Second, in response to mounting pressure from the US, Iran has announced that it is going to backtrack on a number of commitments made under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if the international community does not take measures to ameliorate the effects of US sanctions on its economy.
Iran has already stopped complying with limits on the production of enriched uranium and heavy water, invoking articles 26 and 36 of the agreement, which entitle it to do so if the other parties reintroduce nuclear-related sanctions.
Thus, Washington’s incapacity to deal with the Iranian file in a coherent manner, and its erratic policies on nuclear proliferation, are pushing the Middle East towards a dangerous nuclear competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Nuclear ambitions
The nuclear aspirations of both countries are not new………
A collapsing nonproliferation regime
With its ill-advised policies in the Gulf, the Trump administration is not only encouraging a nuclear race in the region by allowing Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear technology, but it is also undermining the international non-proliferation regime.
Since nuclear powers agreed in the 1960s to curb the spread of nuclear weapons, there have been a number of cases in which countries – including Israel, India, and Pakistan – have broken international rules in pursuit of nuclearisation and not faced serious consequences.
The double standards applied by the Trump administration have been particularly damaging to international nonproliferation agreements. Trump has pursued normalisation of relations with North Korea – a state that openly tested and detonated nuclear devices – while withdrawing from a nuclear deal with Iran, which was strictly abided by all provisions and was not working on developing a nuclear bomb.
Effectively, the US government destroyed a well-functioning agreement that enjoyed wide international support in order to satisfy the commercial interests of a few individuals close to the White House and give an advantage to one side in the growing regional rivalry in the Middle East.
These actions have thrown the international community into disarray, as now there appears to be no clear consensus on what nuclear activities can be considered a threat, what evidence state actors must present to be regarded as truly committed to nonproliferation and what instruments – legal, economic, or military – should be used to enforce the nonproliferation regulations.
Washington’s unilateral (mis)management of the nuclear issue is endangering the whole nonproliferation regime, weakening any multilateral agreement or negotiation, and leaving solely the White House to decide on how to deal with these abovementioned questions.
In the current volatile situation in the Middle East – with intensifying confrontation along religious, ethnic, territorial and ideological cleavages – the lack of a robust non-proliferation agreement will encourage a nuclear race in the region and increase the chances of pre-emptive military attacks that could lead to large-scale war. Luciano Zaccara is professor of Gulf Politics at the Qatar University Gulf Studies Center. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/trump-laying-ground-nuclear-arms-race-gulf-190801130430388.html
The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has now been signed by 70 nations, and ratified by 25. With this Treaty, the world recognises that nuclear weapons now have the same status as chemical and biological weapons – an inhumane and immoral method of dealing with conflict.
The world’s macho men, the hawks of both genders, the sociopathic leaders in business and politics can scoff, but with this Treaty comes a rational movement essential for the survival of humanity.
The immoral squandering of public funds on nuclear weapons continues apace. benefiting only a few greedy corporate big-wigs, and their government lackeys. Nuclear weapons are useless – there are no winners in nuclear wars, the only result – the unimaginable horror and pain of the people. Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed what this is like.
The folly of the nuclear arms race continues – in the tensions in India, Pakistan, the Middle East, and all now led by the leaders of the most powerful nations. Led by an irresponsible and unhinged US President Donald Trump, they are scrapping the agreements on nuclear weapons control, and feeding the greed of the weapons makers..
People are going to have to decide – perhaps take some short-term pain , by not allowing their votes and their savings, their investments, perhaps even their jobs, to be part of the weapons industries.
While the Internet was meant to democratise the transmission of information we see a few giant technology companies, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have near total control of what is seen and shared.
The situation is even worse in Australia with two or three media companies and the same technology giants having control. And the Government of Australia has granted them ever wider market access to extend their monopolies.
Slowly, instance by instance, the malicious and deceitful smears of Julian Assange’s character have been exposed for what they are; an effort to destroy trust in a system of anonymous leaking that will educate everyone.
WikiLeaks’ threat to the powerful was recognised and every effort was, and is, being made to criminalise anonymous leaking, which would be akin to criminalising Gutenberg’s printing press, but there is not much chance this criminalisation will succeed.
It’s time to bring Julian Assange home. Torturing and punishing him has never been legitimate and serves absolutely no purpose.
Media dead silent as Wikileaks insider explodes the myths around Julian Assange, Michael West, by Greg Bean — 16 August 2019– It is the journalists from The Guardian and New York Times who should be in jail, not Julian Assange, said Mark Davis last week. The veteran Australian investigative journalist, who has been intimately involved in the Wikileaks drama, has turned the Assange narrative on its head. The smears are falling away. The mainstream media, which has so ruthlessly made Julian Assange a scapegoat, is silent in response.
Greg Bean likens the revolutionary work of Julian Assange to that of Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press. Government reaction, 580 years later, is similarly savage.
Five hundred and eighty years ago, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press to the world. That single act created a free press which gave birth to the concept of freedom of speech. The two are inextricably linked; printing is a form of speech.
Gutenberg’s invention started the Printing Revolution, a milestone of the 2ndmillennium that initiated the modern period of human history including the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution, and began the knowledge-based economy that spread learning to the masses.
Such mass communication permanently altered the structure of society. Removing control of information from the hands of the powerful and delivering it into the hands of the disempowered…….
From paper revolution to digital revolution
Today in 2019, 580 years since Gutenberg unleashed his printing press, the powerful are still trying to put the free press and freedom of speech genie back in the bottle.
Their present strategy is to make their knowledge, the element that is the key to retaining authority, as it was in Gutenberg’s day, secret, even Top Secret, and criminalising any action that reveals these secrets to anyone outside their circle of authority.
One of the ways this has been achieved is by enlisting the very core of what should be the free press, granting them almost monopoly rights to information dissemination and transmission and in exchange attaining for themselves the guarantee that their secrets will not be revealed.
Media concentration and control
In the US today, it is estimated that five dominant media organisations have almost total control of information transmission to the entire 325 million Americans. While the Internet was meant to democratise the transmission of information we see a few giant technology companies, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have near total control of what is seen and shared.
The situation is even worse in Australia with two or three media companies and the same technology giants having control. And the Government of Australia has granted them ever wider market access to extend their monopolies. As an aside, it’s both funny and ironic that the Turnbull Government last increased the capacity for Australian media to further consolidate and then Malcolm Turnbull was deposed by that same media for being insufficiently sycophantic to their wishes.
But in 2006, something akin to the arrival of Gutenberg’s press appeared that would threaten the tightly held master’s control as surely as Gutenberg’s press threatened autocratic control in 1439.
That something was a technology suite, from WikiLeaks, that protected the anonymity of individuals who leaked the secrets of corruption that powerful governments preferred to keep hidden.
The strategy was quite elegant in its simplicity. WikiLeaks recognised that organisations and governments can only succeed if they can communicate their instructions to the operational workforce. If the instructions are legal and legitimate, this can be done publicly and with no need to hide any of these instructions.
What have they got to hide?
If however, the instructions entail illegal or illegitimate actions, then the only way these can be communicated to the entire workforce is as secrets. And to ensure they remain secret the organisation or government must impose a penalty on anyone who breaks that secrecy and divulges the information to person not authorised to see it.
The very act of defining something as secret and restricting its dissemination is a clear indicator that the actions or events are very likely illegal or illegitimate. Imposing penalties on those who disseminate these secrets outside authorised channels is another indicator of illegal or illegitimate actions or events.
Authoritarian regimes, murderous military organisations, human rights breaching spy agencies, polluting or corrupt organisation, mind control religious cults, and many more examples are available where their ability to continue with the illegal or illegitimate actions or to hide past events all must utilise secrecy and impose punishment on leakers to ensure that secrecy.
WikiLeaks destroyed that ability. Anonymous leaking of illegal or illegitimate actions or events destroys the ability of corrupt organisations to continue being corrupt.
That undermines their authority and control. And that’s what WikiLeaks introduced to the world — a mechanism and technology that was as pivotal to educating, enlightening, and promoting corrective action as was previously achieved by the creation of Gutenberg’s printing press.
WikiLeaks destroyed the masters in virtually every realm by providing the means to expose knowledge worldwide. The genie was out of the bottle.
Imagine the master’s anger.
A drastic response
WikiLeaks’ threat to the powerful was recognised and every effort was, and is, being made to criminalise anonymous leaking, which would be akin to criminalising Gutenberg’s printing press, but there is not much chance this criminalisation will succeed.
Their strategy however, as exposed in a document leaked by WikiLeaks, outlined how WikiLeaks uses trust by protecting the anonymity and identity of leakers and concluded that damaging or destroying this trust would deter leaking; defame Assange and WikiLeaks to kill the threat posed by anonymous leaking.
For 12 years, since 2008, that is exactly what powerful organisations, powerful media and government, powerful military and corrupt corporations have been doing. They are trying to destroy the public’s trust in Julian Assange and, by so doing, destroying the trust in WikiLeaks and ensuring this mechanism of educating the world fails.
Slowly, instance by instance, the malicious and deceitful smears of Julian Assange’s character have been exposed for what they are; an effort to destroy trust in a system of anonymous leaking that will educate everyone. As an example, on Thursday, August 8, 2019, at an event in a pub in Sydney, Mark Davis, a multi-Walkley award winning video journalist destroyed the smear that Assange was cavalier; cavalier that is about the risk of death of informants whose names appeared in documents in one of the sets of releases.
Davis said that, not only was Assange quite worried about the risk, but that The Guardian and New York Times journalists showed little if any worry. The video is here. It is quite remarkable.
As well as these smears, numerous torturous actions were visited on Assange, aimed at achieving not just his discrediting but also to break him mentally and physically.
Assault on human dignity
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, recently wrote a damning articlepublished on the United Nations Human Rights website describing the situation in detail and comments, “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said. “The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”.
Sydney based Clinical Psychologist Lissa Johnson has also written about the treatment of Julian Assange ( link ) and the complicit actions of many who turn a blind eye.
“At this democratic crossroads, although establishment media have signalled their reluctance to support Espionage Act charges, in the knowledge they could be next, many nevertheless appear willing to act as instigators of torture, inciting publics to morally disengage, so that states can continue persecuting Julian Assange,” wrote Johnson. “Every act of ‘journalism’ that buries crucial information, and every utterance that vilifies or dehumanises Julian Assange, or sanitises his abuse, is complicit.. “.
Bring Julian Assange home
It’s time to bring Julian Assange home. Torturing and punishing him has never been legitimate and serves absolutely no purpose.
It’s time to recognise that anonymous leaking is here to stay and promote the world changing benefits that this system of mass education will deliver.
How can I be sure anonymous leaking is here to stay? Like Gutenberg’s printing press, WikiLeaks is not a one-off unit, it is a model for how to approach and overcome an issue. Many printing presses were built after Gutenberg revealed the concept and they were soon powered, automated and churning out printed material in huge volumes.
The same has happened with Julian Assange’s concept of a mechanism and technologies that can support anonymous leaking. A group called The Freedom of The Press Foundation, founded among others by Daniel Ellsberg, the man famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers that exposed the lies about the War in Vietnam, created a freely available WikiLeaks-like system called SecureDrop that is now in use by many news organisations.
And a number of these SecureDrop implementations are multi-national and so shield the recipient from AFP-style raids as they exist out there … somewhere … out of AFP and Australian authority reach … out of the reach of any other nation attempting to clamp down on anonymous leaking.
The WikiLeaks style anonymous leaking genie is out of the bottle and is not going back in.
Controversy over radiation and heat surrounding Tokyo Olympics, HANKYOREH By Kim Chang-geum, staff reporter : Aug.14,2019
“…… Safety from radiation and heat at the Tokyo Olympics
Most of the issues related to the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, which are now only a year away, boil down to safety concerns over radiation and extreme heat. Some baseball and softball matches are scheduled to be held in a stadium located close to the Fukushima nuclear reactor that took direct damage during the 2011 earthquake. Korean civic groups have also pointed out that the Japanese government has failed to properly control water contaminated by radiation from the reactor. Plans to source some of the rice and ingredients for the Tokyo Olympics Athletes Village from Fukushima are adding to these concerns. Although the level of radiation measured in such rice is within the acceptable standards in Japan, it is believed to exceed Korean standards.
Extreme heat is another potential issue. After an open water test competition in Odaiba Seaside Park, Tokyo, on Aug. 11, Sports Nippon reported, “Many athletes complained about a foul odor and the high water temperature, and one male athlete made the shocking claim that it ‘smelled like a toilet.’” Although the Olympic Committee did not reveal the water temperature on that day, it has been reported that the temperature was 29.9 degrees Celsius at 5am. The International Swimming Federation (FINA) cancels events if the water temperature reaches 31 degrees Celsius. There have also been warnings about road races. On August 8, Yusuke Suzuki, Japan’s star race-walker and world record holder in the men’s 20km, stated, “I tried training on the Tokyo Olympics race-walking course. There was no shade, so it could cause dehydration.”
Tokyo Olympics delegation heads meeting from Aug. 20-22It appears that the issue of safety from radiation and concerns about food ingredients will be conveyed during the upcoming three-day meeting with the leaders of each country’s delegation in Tokyo on Aug. 20-22, and a request will be made to the Japanese Olympic Committee to change the name of Dokdo used on maps. If the representatives from each country do raise the radiation issue, the IOC will have no choice but to intervene. The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee is also considering providing separate Korean food to Korean athletes through specially prepared meals or lunchboxes. …. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/905758.html
By Evan Gershkovich and Pjotr Sauer 16 Aug 19, Five hospital staff workers, including senior doctors, told The Moscow Times that FSB agents had their colleagues sign non-disclosure agreements.The three injured men arrived at the hospital around 4:30 pm, naked and wrapped in translucent plastic bags. The state of the patients made staff suspect they were dealing with something very serious. But the only information they had at the time was that there had been an explosion at a nearby military site around noon.
“No one — neither hospital directors, nor Health Ministry officials, nor regional officials or the governor — notified staff that the patients were radioactive,” one of the clinic’s surgeons told The Moscow Times by phone this week. “The hospital workers had their suspicions, but nobody told them to protect themselves.”
The hospital was Arkhangelsk Regional Clinical Hospital, a public healthcare center in Russia’s far north, and the day was last Thursday, Aug. 8. After the explosion, radiation spiked to as much as 20 times its normal level for about 30 minutes in the region’s second largest city of Severodvinsk. Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom has reported that the accident killed five of its staff members.
Russian authorities are keeping the circumstances surrounding the explosion shrouded in mystery. With government agencies releasing information piecemeal amid a mass of contradictions, the state’s response to the accident echoes its behavior after Chernobyl, the catastrophic 1986 nuclear accident in then-Soviet Ukraine.
Official reaction has included initial denials that radiation spiked at all, and an announcement four days after the accident that the village of Nyonoksa, close to the military site, would be evacuated. Authorities later denied that they had ever ordered villagers to leave. The lack of information has led to confusion among locals, who reportedly scrambled to buy up all of the iodine, a chemical used to limit harm to radiation exposure, in the Arkhangelsk region.
They are not the only ones who have been left confused and demanding answers. Four male doctors at the Arkhangelsk hospital — two in senior positions — and a medical worker told The Moscow Times that its staff have been left shocked and angered by the events that took place. The doctors spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a period of heightened attention by Russian security services.
While none of the doctors worked directly with the patients in question, they all attended a briefing at the hospital on Aug. 12 by a deputy health minister for the Arkhangelsk region and are in constant communication with colleagues who did treat the victims, they said. The doctors said that all staff who worked with the patients directly were asked by Federal Security Service (FSB) agents on Aug. 9 to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from talking about what happened.
“They weren’t forced to sign them, but when three FSB agents arrive with a list and ask for those on the list to sign, few will say no,” said one of the senior doctors.
The Moscow Times was unable to speak with any of the doctors who tended to the three patients or obtain a copy of the reported non-disclosure agreements.
But the versions of events that the five men recounted are identical. They also concur with two additional anonymous accounts published on Aug. 15 — one from a female doctor at the hospital in a local news outlet, Northern News, and one in a local chat group on the popular Telegram messenger.
All seven of the accounts express pointed frustration with the authorities for keeping medical staff in the dark about the risks they were facing.
“The staff is furious to say the least,” said one of the doctors who spoke to The Moscow Times. “This is a public hospital. We weren’t prepared for this and other people could have been affected.”
“Still, everyone did their jobs professionally,” he added.
All of the accounts also ask why state personnel exposed to radiation would be sent to a civilian hospital, rather than a military one, in the first place. The doctors who spoke to The Moscow Times said they and their colleagues had prepared a thorough list of questions for Health Ministry representatives who visited on Aug. 12 to clarify the staff’s concerns, and not a single one was answered clearly.
The Health Ministry, the FSB, the Arkhangelsk’s governor’s office and the Arkhangelsk Regional Clinical Hospital did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
Rather than answers, the doctors were offered a trip to Moscow for tests. All four doctors said that about 60 of their colleagues, including four or five paramedics who had transported the patients to the hospital, took up the offer. The first group flew to Moscow hours after the meeting with the Health Ministry representatives, they said.
According to three of the doctors, including both senior sources, one of the doctors flown to Moscow was found to have Caesium-137 — a radioactive isotope that is a byproduct of the nuclear fission of uranium-235 — in their muscle tissue. One of the sources said the affected doctor had told him so directly, though he was not informed about the amount or concentration of the isotope found.
The affected doctor declined a request for an interview.
“[The person is] beaten down emotionally, but physically seems to be fine, for the moment,” the doctor who spoke to The Moscow Times said, describing his colleague.
The doctors said that after two groups flew to Moscow the rest of the flights were cancelled. They also said after the results had come back radiation experts were flown to Arkhangelsk to carry out the tests there instead.
Yuri Dubrova, an expert on the effects of radiation on the body at the University of Leicester in the U.K., said by phone that the patients brought to the hospital most likely had high doses of the isotope on their skin. The level of danger for the Arkhangelsk doctor all depends on how much the person was exposed to, Dubrova said.
“If the dosage wasn’t very high, the person should be able to fully recover within a week if they are given clean food and water,” he said.
But Dubrova also noted that the lack of information is what would have put the doctor in harm’s way.
“Exposure to Caesium-137 is quite preventable — all you need to do is wash the patient really well,” he said. “But the doctors were made vulnerable to radiation because they hadn’t been told what had happened.”
According to the doctors, the operating theater, located on a third-floor wing of the hospital, was sealed off until Aug. 13. They said that Russia’s consumer safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor and the Emergency Situations Ministry inspected the hospital over the following days.
The doctors also said Rospotrebnadzor representatives have told staff that the hospital is now safe.
Last Friday, Aug. 9, the Baza news outlet, which has close ties to Russia’s security services, reported that men injured during the blast had been brought to a Moscow clinic for radiation sickness treatment. The outlet published a video of a convoy of police cars and ambulances travelling through the Russian capital.
According to three of the doctors, two of the three patients that were treated at the Arkhangelsk Regional Clinical Hospital didn’t even reach Moscow, dying en route to the airport.
They said that security services officers who visited the hospital on Aug. 9 recovered and deleted all of the information about the incident that was in the hospital’s records.
“It’s as if the event no longer exists,” one of the doctors said. “With no documentation the staff couldn’t try to take anyone to court, even if they wanted to.”
He added that some of his colleagues who travelled to Moscow had done so to try to gather evidence to prove the accident happened.
“When all of our colleagues are back in Arkhangelsk, we will sit down and discuss what we should do next,” another doctor said, noting that so far the staff is strongly considering appealing to the prosecutor general.
“Every rule was broken,” he added. “Why were these patients brought to a civilian hospital and not a military one? Why were staff not told to implement proper safety measures? Why were paramedics allowed to transfer them without wearing the right protective gear?”
The events bring to mind a chilling scene in the recent HBO miniseries ‘Chernobyl.’ When the first patients arrive at a local hospital after the accident, doctors begin treating them without protective gear. One cautious nurse explains that their clothes should be burned, but the doctors are depicted handling the toxic items with bare hands.
“It’s exactly like the show’s creator said,” one of the doctors said, referring to a tweet from Craig Mazin three days after the Severodvinsk explosion. “Thirty-three years later and our government hasn’t learned a thing. They keep trying to hide the truth.”
In Australian news, with considerably less media coverage, Parliament announced an Inquiry into nuclear energy for Australia, with an emphasis on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). Submissions are due by September 16.
A bit of background. The U.S. government and the U.S. nuclear industry are very keen to develop and export small modular nuclear reactors for two main reasons, both explained in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018 Firstly, with the decline of large nuclear reactors, there is a need to maintain the technology and the expertise, trained staff, necessary to support the nuclear weapons industry. Secondly, the only hope for commercial viability of small nuclear reactors is in exporting them – the domestic market is too small. So – Australia is seen as a desirable market.
The USA motivation for exporting these so far non-existent prefabricated reactors is clear. The motivation of their Australian promoters is not so clear.
These are the main reasons why it would be a bad idea for Australia to import small modular nuclear reactors.
COST.Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy concluded that the SMR industry would not be viable unless the industry received “several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies” over the next several decades. For a company to invest in a factory to manufacture reactors, they’d need to be sure of a real market for them – Australia would have to commit to a strong investment up front.
The diseconomics of scale make SMRs more expensive than large reactors. A 250 MW SMR will generate 25 percent as much power as a 1,000 MW reactor, but it will require more than 25 percent of the material inputs and staffing, and a number of other costs including waste management and decommissioning will be proportionally higher.
A study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, commissioned by the 2015/16 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated costs of A$180‒184/MWh (US$127‒130) for large pressurised water reactors and boiling water reactors, compared to A$198‒225 (US$140‒159) for SMRs.
To have any hope of being economically viable, SMRs would have to be mass produced and deployed, and here is a “Catch-22″ problem The economics of mass production of SMRs cannot be proven until hundreds of units are in operation. But that can’t happen unless there are hundreds of orders, and there will be few takers unless the price can be brought down. Huge government subsidy is therefore required
Safety problems. Small nuclear reactors still have the same kinds of safety needsas large ones have. The heat generated by the reactor core must be removed both under normal and accident conditions, to keep the fuel from overheating, becoming damaged, and releasing radioactivity. The passive natural circulation coolingcould be effective under many conditions, but not under all accident conditions. For instance, for the NuScale design a large earthquake could send concrete debris into the pool, obstructing circulation of water or air. Where there are a number of units, accidents affecting more than one small unit may cause complications that could overwhelm the capacity to cope with multiple failures.
Because SMRs have weaker containment systems than current reactors, there would be greater damage if a hydrogen explosion occurred. A secondary containment structure would prevent large-scale releases of radioactivity in case of a severe accident. But that would make individual SMR units unaffordable. The result? Companies like NuScale now move to projects called “Medium” nuclear reactors – with 12 units under a single containment structure. Not really small anymore.
Underground siting is touted as a safety solution, to avoid aircraft attacks and earthquakes. But that increases the risks from flooding. In the event of an accident emergency crews could have greater difficulty accessing underground reactors.
Security
Proponents of SMRs argue that they can be deployed safely both as a fleet of units close to cities, or as individual units in remote locations. In all cases, they’d have to operate under a global regulatory framework, which is going to mean expensive security arrangements and a level of security staffing. ‘Economies of scale’ don’t necessarily work, when it comes to staffing small reactors. SMRs will, anyway, need a larger number of workers to generate a kilowatt of electricity than large reactors need. In the case of security staffing, this becomes important both in a densely populated area, and in an isolated one.
Weapons Proliferation.
The latest news on the Russian explosion is a dramatic illustration of the connection between SMRs and weapons development.
But not such a surprise. SMRs have always had this connection, beginning in the nuclear weapons industry, in powering U.S. nuclear submarines. They were used in UK to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Today, the U.S. Department of Energy plans to use SMRs as part of “dual use” facilities, civilian and military. SMRs contain radioactive materials, produce radioactive wastes – could be taken, used part of the production of a “dirty bomb” The Pentagon’s Project Dilithium’s small reactors may run on Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) , nuclear weapons fuel – increasing these risks.
It is now openly recognised that the nuclear weapons industry needs the technology development and the skilled staff that are provided by the “peaceful” nuclear industry. The connection is real, but it’s blurred. The nuclear industry needs the “respectability” that is conferred by new nuclear, with its claims of “safe, clean, climate-solving” energy.
Wastes.
SMRs are designed to produce less radioactive trash than current reactors. But they still produce long-lasting nuclear wastes, and in fact, for SMRs this is an even more complex problem. Australia already has the problem of spent nuclear fuel waste, accumulating in one place – from the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights. With SMRs adopted, the waste would be located in many sites, with each location having the problem of transport to a disposal facility. Final decommissioning of all these reactors would compound this problem. In the case of underground reactors, there’d be further difficulties with waste retrieval, and site rehabilitation.
6. Location.
I have touched on this, in the paragraphs on safety, security, and waste problems. The nuclear enthusiasts are excited about the prospects for small reactors in remote places. After all, aren’t some isolated communities already having success with small, distributed solar and wind energy? It all sounds great. But it isn’t.
With Australia’s great distances, it would be difficult to monitor and ensure the security of such a potentially dangerous system, of many small reactors scattered about on this continent. Nuclear is an industry that is already struggling to attract qualified staff, with a large percentage of skilled workers nearing retirement. The logistics of operating these reactors, meeting regulatory and inspection requirements, maintaining security staff would make the whole thing not just prohibitively expensive, but completely impractical.
Delay.
For Australia, this has to be the most salient point of all. Economist John Quiggin has pointed out that Australia’s nuclear fans are enthusing about small modular nuclear reactors, but with no clarity on which, of the many types now designed, would be right for Australia. NuScale’s model, funded by the U.S. government, is the only one at present with commercial prospects, so Quiggin has examined its history of delays. But Quiggin found that NuScale is not actually going to build the factory: it is going to assemble the reactor parts, these having been made by another firm, – and which firm is not clear. Quiggin concludes:
Australia’s proposed nuclear strategy rests on a non-existent plant to be manufactured by a company that apparently knows nothing about it.
As there’s no market for small nuclear reactors, companies have not invested much money to commercialise them. Westinghouse Electric Company tried for years to get government funding for its SMR plan, then gave up, and switched to other projects. Danny Roderick, then president and CEO of Westinghouse, announced:
The problem I have with SMRs is not the technology, it’s not the deployment ‒ it’s that there’s no customers. … The worst thing to do is get ahead of the market.
Russia’s programme has been delayed by more than a decade and the estimated costs have ballooned.
South Korea decided on SMRs, but then pulled out, presumably for economic reasons.
There’s a lot of chatter in the international media, about all the countries that are interested, or even have signed memoranda of understanding about buying SMRs, but still with no plans for actual purchase or construction.
Is Australia going to be the guinea pig for NuScale’s Small and Medium Reactor scheme? If so,when? The hurdles to overcome would be mind-boggling. The start would have to be the repeal of Australia’s laws – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999 Section 140A and Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998. Then comes the overcoming of States’ laws, much political argy-bargy, working out regulatory frameworks, import and transport of nuclear materials, – finding locations for siting reactors, – Aboriginal issues-community consent, waste locations. And what would it all cost?
And, in the meantime, energy efficiency developments, renewable energy progress, storage systems – will keep happening, getting cheaper, and making nuclear power obsolete.
Rosatom postpones fast reactor project, report says, WNN, 13 August 2019
Rosenergoatom is expected to receive about RUB280 billion (USD4 billion) less in state funding for the construction of new nuclear reactors in Russia owing to the postponement of its fast neutron reactor programme, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported last week, citing anonymous sources. Rosenergoatom is the nuclear power plant operator subsidiary of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom.
Rosatom’s investment plan received preliminary approval during a meeting in the Russian Energy Ministry on 2 August, according to the article, with funding out to 2035 to total RUB880 billion and not the RUB1.16 trillion Rosatom had allocated for the two new VVER-1200 units under construction for the Kursk II project, units 3 and 4 for the Leningrad II project and a BN-1200 fast reactor at Beloyarsk. Commissioning of the BN-1200 has been postponed to 2036, the article said, from the previous target of 2027.
Financing to pay for the new units will be paid back over 20 years, with an average rate of return on investment of 10.5% per year, the article said. Rosatom is prepared to consider a lower rate of return, it added.
Russia’s new investment cycle for its electricity sector will also take into account modernisation work at thermal power plants, the construction of remote energy facilities and the development of renewable energy sources. The funds must however be “distributed among market participants so that wholesale energy market prices do not rise above inflation”, the article said. The reduction in funding reflects “the restriction on tariff growth by inflation”, it added, and thus the launch of the BN-1200 will “most likely be postponed to 2036 in order to reduce energy market spending”……. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rosatom-postpones-fast-reactor-project-report-say
Spectacular Video Shows Nuclear Power Plant Demolition in Germany
How to demolish a nuclear power plant without blowing it up, By Sheena McKenzie, CNN August 16, 2019 London(CNN Business)This is how you demolish a nuclear power plant German-style. No big red button. No dramatic countdown. No “kaboom!”
The engineers who brought down a disused power plant on the River Rhine last week did so without an explosion. Instead they used robots to gently collapse it like a house of cards.
Or at least, as gently as you can flatten an 80-meter (262-foot) concrete cooling tower.
The tower was part of the Mülheim-Kärlich power plant, which was in operation for just over a year in the 1980s. The plant was shut down in 1988 following licensing issues and concerns about the risk of earthquakes in the area. The hefty task of dismantling began in 2004.
Germany decided to phase out all its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011. And it’s also planning to close all its coal power plants by 2038 in an effort to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, which are currently the largest in Europe. That means there are likely to be many more such demolitions in the coming years.
Decades ago, Germany’s power plants were a symbol of its engineering prowess. Today the country has become a world leader in taking these complex buildings apart.
Robot power
n May last year, engineers began shortening what was then the 162-meter-tall cooling tower at Mülheim-Kärlich. They attached a robot to the lip, and for the past year it’s been munching its way down the building -— a bit like a caterpillar devouring a leaf.
By June this year, the tower was half its previous height.
Engineers still needed to finish the job. But as project manager Olaf Day explained, they didn’t have permission from authorities for an explosion, so instead came up with a different plan.
The tower was supported by 36 V-shaped pillars. Last week, the team of experts used a giant robotic “hammer” to weaken some of the pillars, and then another high-tech pair of “scissors” to cut them until the tower collapsed, said Day.
“It was the first time in the world this demolition method has been used [on a nuclear plant],” he said, adding that the entire “hammer and scissors” process took just under four hours.
There was another benefit to this unique method.
Explosives cause “huge amounts of dust that fly everywhere,” explained Professor Miranda Schreurs, chair of environmental and climate policy at the Technical University of Munich. The Mülheim-Kärlich tower, however, just “fell in on itself,” producing minimal dust.
While the tower was not deemed radioactive, there’s still an interest in “minimizing potential spread of any harmful materials,” she said.
The new nuclear experts
For more than three decades, the cooling tower dominated the skyline in this small town in western Germany, the legacy of an era when the country generated around 30% of its electricity from nuclear power, according to Schreurs.
Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, nuclear energy was seen as a “sign of Germany’s engineering prowess,” Schreurs said.
But when the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in nearby Ukraine caused radioactive clouds to drift over western Europe, concerns about the safety of nuclear energy “took on a whole new dimension,” she said.
Following the reunification of Germany in 1990, more Soviet nuclear plants in the former East Germany were decommissioned that “did not meet the West German safety standards,” said Schreurs.
Germany has been cooling on nuclear power since 2000, but it was Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011 that really swung the government into action.
Chancellor Angela Merkel quickly set new deadlines. Of the country’s 17 reactors, eight were immediately shut down. The seven reactors still in operation today are due to close by 2022.
As the plants closed down, a new industry has emerged.
Even after a power plant shuts, “you still need people who are experts in radioactive materials, you still need people who know how to deal with the robots that operate inside nuclear facilities,” said Schreurs.
That know-how could be exported to other countries. There are about 450 nuclear power plants in the world, many of them approaching the end of their lifetimes.
“So you’re not going to have the same level of expertise as you have here in Germany,” said Schreurs. “That means Germany will probably play quite an important role in helping other countries to also deal with decommissioning.” …….
India hints at changing ‘no first use’ nuclear policy Channel News Asia, NEW DELHI: India’s defence minister hinted on Friday (Aug 16) that New Delhi might change its “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons, amid heightened tensions with fellow atomic power Pakistan.
India committed in 1999 to not being the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict. Among India’s neighbours China has a similar doctrine but arch rival Pakistan does not.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made the comment on Twitter after visiting Pokhran, the site of India’s successful nuclear tests in 1998 under then prime minister Atal Vajpayee.
“Pokhran is the area which witnessed (Vajpayee’s) firm resolve to make India a nuclear power and yet remain firmly committed to the doctrine of ‘No First Use’ (NFU),” Singh wrote.
“India has strictly adhered to this doctrine. What happens in future depends on the circumstances,” Singh tweeted.
The statement comes as tensions rise with Pakistan after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government stripped Indian-administered Kashmir of its autonomy, a move sharply condemned by Islamabad……..
A region in northern Russia has ordered more than 1,000 gas masks after a deadly explosion led to a spike in radiation, Russia’s Open Media news website reported.
At least five nuclear experts were killed in the explosion, which took place during a rocket test at sea off the coast of the Arkhangelsk region last Thursday. The incident has been cloaked in mystery, leading outside experts to theorize that the blast occurred during testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.
A region in northern Russia has ordered more than 1,000 gas masks after a deadly explosion led to a spike in radiation, Russia’s Open Media news website reported.
At least five nuclear experts were killed in the explosion, which took place during a rocket test at sea off the coast of the Arkhangelsk region last Thursday. The incident has been cloaked in mystery, leading outside experts to theorize that the blast occurred during testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.
The regional administration has announced an auction for 1,200 gas masks worth 4.6 million rubles ($70,000), Open Media reported Wednesday.
The gas masks must be able to protect from “radioactive, toxic, biological and chemical hazardous substances in man-made accidents,” according to the auction’s description cited by Open Media.
The Arkhangelsk region is reportedly expected to announce the winner later in August.
The local civil defense authority called the bulk purchase “a usual replenishment of provisions” and said it had been scheduled on July 31. “You’re familiar with [Russia’s law regulating government procurement] 44-FZ, right? Can you imagine how long it takes to hold an auction?” the unnamed Arkhangelsk region civil defense official told Open Media.
Officials have been slow to release information about the blast, which led to a radiation spike in a nearby city and sparked heightened demand for iodine.
Greenpeace Russia has said that the authorities “forgot” to report a three-day rise in beta radiation levels in addition to the brief spike in gamma radiation which had been “widely disseminated” to the media following the explosion.
“It is important to understand which radionuclides were released into the environment. Their accumulation … and impact on nature and humans depend on this,” Greenpeace said in a statement on Wednesday.
Adam Broinowski is a theatre maker, academic and writer. Adam has worked as a director, performer and writer with Australian and international artists and companies since 1994, including as a member of Tokyo-based Gekidan Kaitaisha while a researcher at the University of Tokyo in the 2000s. He is a teacher and researcher in Interdisciplinary Humanities with a focus on Japanese and Asian Studies, Historical Studies, and critical International Politics. He earned a PhD in modern Japanese history and cultural studies (performance, film) from the University of Melbourne. His book Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body during and after the Cold War (Bloomsbury Academic) was published in 2016, and he recently completed an Australian Research Council DECRA fellowship entitled ‘Contaminated Life: ‘Hibakusha’ in Japan in the Nuclear Age’ at the School of Culture, History and Language at the ANU. He is co-founder of Social Repair Service with dancer/choreographer Emma Strapps.
The Street talked to Adam as he gets ready for rehearsals of Metamorphosis opening at The Street Theatre on the 17th of August.
HOW DO YOU WORK AS A DIRECTOR? WHAT PRINCIPLES DO YOU WORK BY?
As a theatre director I design my approach to suit the particularities and demands of each project. There are some consistent principles I work from. As theatre making is a collaborative pursuit which brings together the skills and knowledges of many people, creating a space for the layering of multiple perspectives is essential. The theatre is a live space which embraces all of the senses in devising ways to evoke the qualities as well as language-meaning of a story. I work with each designer and performer to build a palette of materials and refine a shared multi-sensory language. Theatre also provides a unique opportunity to express the marginalised voices and senses; an attempt to re-balance the homunculus-effect in our societies by creatively amplifying the little-heard perspectives which are so often ignored in public. In short, a people’s theatre which attempts to evoke the life of consciousness in the fullest way possible so as to even-out, if momentarily, the dominant dynamic which concentrates power in our human-made systems as they change over time.
FRANZ KAFKA’S THE METAMORPHISIS IS ONE OF THE TOP TEN NOVELLAS READ IN THE WORLD? WHY DO YOU THINK ITS STORY AND THEMES REMAIN RELEVANT TODAY?
Ignoring my urge to blank on this one, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, published around 1915 amid the collapsing Austro-Hungarian empire and the catastrophe of World War I, seems to have captured a state of being that readers from all over the world continue to identify with. Anchored in the realistic conditions of an aspirational middle-class family somewhere in Bohemia who suddenly lose their capacity to maintain their illusions of status and security, an enigma at the heart of this story stimulates the imagination and permits the reader to blur their boundaries of what shared reality is. While unrelentingly bleak – not surprising considering Kafka’s increasingly withdrawn condition, his battle with tuberculosis, and difficult familial relations – it is also cruelly funny. More politely ridiculous than nihilistic, Kafka beautifully articulates the arbitrary judgements imposed upon people for incomprehensible reasons through a profound wit which manages to find pleasure even as life slowly rolls inexorably toward the cliff… you can always write about it, until you can’t. Sound familiar? We see what can happen to someone and all they thought they had held dear, when for no explicable reason they get up on the ‘wrong side of bed’ in the morning.
HOW DOES THE BERKOFF ADAPTATION DIFFER FROM THE NOVELLA?
Steven Berkoff’s adaption, originally published in the late 1960s, and which he toured around the world as a signature theatre piece over several decades, was a vehicle to promote his style of acting and directing. It remains remarkably close to the original. After all, Berkoff does state in the introduction to his script, ‘I am Kafka’. And yet the ending is somewhat more forgiving in Berkoff’s version. He manages to bring out a wider range of sensory qualities from Kafka’s world. Drawing from a rich legacy of physical theatre artists such as Jean-Louis Barrault, Etienne Decroux, Marcel Marceau and Jacques Lecoq, Berkoff is a genius at adapting modern classic texts using the theatrical tools of physical or total theatre: gesture, movement, design. While maintaining the beauty of the literary text, Berkoff concentrates on evoking shared psychological states, including the subconscious and materiality of emotions, through movement and stage technique in a simple and appealing way. Berkoff also wrote and performed his own plays, produced with his team of designers, actors and producers. As one of a band of mercurial theatre makers who could astutely position themselves within the political and social zeitgeist, particularly during the upheavals of 1980s Britain, Berkoff carved a place for himself within the British theatre scene and now his works are now well established in their own right.
TALK US THROUGH YOUR VISION FOR BRINGING STEVEN BERKOFF’S ADAPATION OF METAMORPHOSIS TO LIFE ON THE STREET THEATRE STAGE.
In this version of Berkoff’s adaptation of Metamorphosis, over many readings of the story and the script, relevant literary criticism and from experience in stylised and naturalistic theatre, together with the wonderful talents of the creative and production team I have generated a range of devices and concepts to inform an overall approach. I situated my understanding of the distinct contexts of WWI Bohemia at the tail-end of the industrial revolution in Europe and of West Europe during economic and social recovery after the devastation of WWII in relation to conditions in Canberra in 2019. From the consistent patterns of militarism and contestation over vital resources, market control and boundaries, we see a thread interweaving these three periods – harsh work/life balance, conformity and stigmatisation, individual withdrawal and widespread desire for liberation amid growing inter-state tensions. Yet there is also new meaning to be found in Kafka’s story in the present. It is now undeniable that we are facing mass extinctions in the natural world at a scale we have never experienced in human history. As yet another legacy of the industrial age, a situation largely created from our abundant releases of carbon emissions from our fossil-fuel reliant economies, ‘becoming an insect’ has an altogether new dimension.
HOW WILL YOU USE PHYSICAL THEATRE TO TELL THE STORY?
Combining the cast’s skills in physical theatre and mime, experience in butoh along with text-based theatre will support our imaginative interpretations of character. In embodying qualities, states and pressures imbedded in the text, we can further open up the psychological and emotional world tensions and time slippages which Berkoff so loves in his script images. We will also use devices from visual theatre, to help perform the transformations in the story as they take place over time.
METAMORPHOSIS IS ACTED OUT BY AN ENSEMBLE OF FOUR. WHAT WILL BE YOUR METHODOLOGY TO GETTING THE BEST OUTCOMES FROM THE STORY AND CAST?
Working as an ensemble means working as a chorus, in unison, as parts of a whole, as individuals who inform and support each other in sharing the telling of a story. With some nifty ideas and a bit of imagination we are using the theatrical tools of physical stylisation, mask and pre-recorded voice, object/set manipulation, paint and some vegetable matter to double-up some of the roles and to convey the story in an evocative way.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR WORK WITH THE CREATIVE TEAM OF DESIGNERS?
Working closely with the design team has meant providing catalytic stimuli from which to launch their creative realisations – clarifying the script for interpretation, trajectories, details, seeking ways to realise a world of Metamorphosis that layers the influences of three distinct time periods. Adopting a liberal approach to the script, to remain true to the text and the core dynamics of the scenes while not taking the specific stage directions too literally, we aim to contaminate it with present world conditions. This has been quite pleasurable, allowing us to have the freedom to enjoy where our imagination will take us while remaining within the structure of the script and the world of the story.
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN A WORK IS READY FOR AN AUDIENCE?
The work is never ready. It must be ready. It is ready when it is over. A work must have distilled the scenes as much as possible to their essence so they have layers of sediment and a clear flavour. To get there we work we create space for discovery – there are no right answers. Filtering a lot of ideas and materials, we get to the core and its practicable repetition throughout the season. The beauty is in finding things you didn’t expect that emerge from a range of combinations in unpredictable sequential complex: planning, chance, imagination, reflection. As the work is never ready until there is an audience to complete at least half of the whole, the theatre is a place of sensory and intellectual stimulation and engagement where new ideas are sewn and which hopefully germinate for a few weeks after at least.
HOW HAS YOUR WORK IN JAPAN INFORMED YOUR PRACTICE AS A THEATRE MAKER?
I worked as a member of a contemporary Japanese theatre company for roughly five years in the 2000s. I learned an enormous amount. As a movement-based company with a strong reliance on concepts on the one hand, and movement techniques derived and adapted from ankoku butoh (dance of darkness), I was able to experience a different way of working in an ensemble and creative team. Working from a basic movement style, as opposed to character and story-telling, while still performing a show with a dramatic structure and arc, was a new way of working for me. Working immersed in a different language and culture was perhaps the most significant difference. This made me more aware of being a minority. It also had a maturing effect on me, helping me to understand different ways of organising and working, to be less assuming, less self-centred, to give more value to seemingly unimportant things, more empathetic of others’ perspectives based on their lived experiences and contexts, and appreciative of the uniqueness and ephemerality of the overall experience. It is truly remarkable what artists, humans overall, can achieve if they cooperate and focus on a shared goal. It is even more remarkable if they have the support of visionary cultural policy and the networks that engenders. It may have been a path I was on anyway, but I learned an enormous amount. I certainly learned to creatively make more out of less. This piece is a blend of some of these influences – minimalist movement, expressionist movement, dramatic theatre.
WHAT KIND OF THEATRE DO YOU WANT TO MAKE?
I want to continue to make theatre that is of relevance to the contemporary situation, which can offer new ways of interpreting our shared present and pasts, based on new and under-recognised connections and resonances between diverse communities and knowledges in this infinitely complex ensemble we call the Earth.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE STREET.
The Street and I have been steadily developing a relationship based on inspiration, reciprocity, generosity, trust, healthy realism, and advocacy of the importance of theatre and live performance for the wider community and a healthy social fabric. Artistic Director Caroline Stacey has generously made creative offers which I couldn’t refuse from The Street and the theatre and arts community including this wonderful opportunity.
WHAT’S INSPIRING YOU CREATIVELY AT THE MOMENT?
A book called ‘The Songs of Trees’. An interesting book from the early 1990s called the Mudrooroo-Müller project that explores the adaptation of a Heiner Müller play by Aboriginal playwright Mudrooroo. Also, a book on Dario Fo. There are several other ‘to read’ books and articles on my desk…
“Remote-controlled robots that can withstand high radiation exposure are ‘expected in the near future’ to help remove melted nuclear fuel debris out of the reactors”
Uncapable at home to really handle a triple meldown while sacrificing its own population with an intensive denial and cover-up campaign, Japan is now proposing to the U.S. to help denuclearizing North Korea. Isn’t that the ultimate height of hypocrisy and arrogance?
(File photo taken from a Kyodo News helicopter on April 23, 2019, shows the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, where decommissioning work is under way.)
Japan tells U.S. of plan to offer robots for denuclearizing N. Korea
August 16, 2019
Japan has told the United States that it is ready to provide its robot technology for use in dismantling nuclear and uranium enrichment facilities in North Korea as Washington and Pyongyang pursue further denuclearization talks, Japanese government sources said Friday.
As Japan turns to remote-controlled robots it has developed to decommission reactors that suffered meltdowns in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, it believes the same technology can be used in North Korea, according to the sources.
The offer is part of Japan’s efforts to make its own contribution to the denuclearization talks amid concern that Tokyo could be left out of the loop as the United States and North Korea are stepping up diplomacy.
Tokyo has already told Washington it would shoulder part of the costs of any International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of North Korean facilities and dispatch Japanese nuclear experts.
The scrapping of nuclear facilities such as the Yongbyon complex that has a graphite-moderated reactor will come into focus in forthcoming working-level talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered to close the complex — seen as the center of the country’s nuclear material production activities — during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi in February.
But the Trump-Kim talks broke down after the two leaders failed to reconcile Washington’s demand for denuclearization and Pyongyang’s call for sanctions relief.
Earlier this year, Japan and the United States held a working-level meeting before the Hanoi summit, in which Washington pointed to the possibility of radioactive contamination near North Korea’s facilities due to its lax management of nuclear materials, the sources said.
Japan then offered “any support,” including technological assistance, according to the sources.
Remote-controlled robots that can withstand high radiation exposure are ‘expected in the near future’ to help remove melted nuclear fuel debris out of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, crippled since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan.
For such technology to be used in the decommissioning of a nuclear facility, experts need to inspect its internal structure and check radiation levels. Therefore, Pyongyang’s acceptance of such on-site inspections would be essential.
Trump has said on Twitter that he received a letter from Kim stating that the North Korean leader is willing to meet again after joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises end next Tuesday.
North Korea, which sees the joint drills as rehearsals for invasion, has fired a series of short-range missiles in apparent protest, most recently on Friday, but Trump has played down the significance of such launches.
While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who places priority on resolving the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s, has expressed his hope to meet Kim “without preconditions,” such a summit appears unlikely.
Abe is the only leader yet to meet face-to-face with Kim among the countries involved in the long-stalled six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program — the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Trump has delivered on his promise to Abe to raise the abduction issue during his meetings with Kim. The U.S. president takes the view that neighboring countries such as Japan need to pay for North Korea’s denuclearization and extend economic assistance in return for Pyongyang scrapping its nuclear facilities.
“Japan’s security will be left out if we fail to be part of the U.S.-North Korea negotiations,” a Japanese Foreign Ministry source said.
How the viewing public was ‘protected’ from seeing what the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing did to people
Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the cutting room floor https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-on-the-cutting-room-floor/ By Thomas Gaulkin, August 5, 2019 Seventy-four years after nuclear weapons were first and last used in war, it can be challenging to conceive of the devastation they cause. But even in the immediate months after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, news accounts offered a view of ingenuity and destruction that often elided the human cost.
The newsreels below [on original] were mainly screened to audiences in 1946 and 1947 and detail the destructive force of the explosions almost entirely through excited accounts of the structural damage to the cities. There’s occasional mention of the lost city populations and the scientific knowledge to be gained from studying their casualties, but hardly any description of what people actually suffered, let alone personal accounts. It’s instructive to look at and listen to these reports today, and contemplate what is missing.
The 12-minute reel below was produced by the US War Department in 1946. “Tale of Two Cities” makes selective use of film that was confiscated from a Japanese filmmaker, Akira Iwasaki—though you wouldn’t know that from the narration, which boasts that “army cameramen have found and filmed pictorial evidence that tells in twisted steel and stone the effect of death-dealing atomic power.” (Some twenty years later, historian Eric Barnouw obtained more of Iwasaki’s footage and produced a remarkably different narrative that documented the horrible physical impact of the attacks on Hiroshima’s citizens.)
Contrasted with the triumphant tone of the news/propaganda made for 1940s audiences, silence changes everything. Made public only decades later, the two films below —one beginning with footage of wounded victims, the other, a full-color glimpse of survivors picking up the pieces of the ruined city—report what those above do not, without a single word.
(File photo taken from a Kyodo News helicopter on April 23, 2019, shows the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, where decommissioning work is under way.)
