What would a nuclear war look like? And how would anyone be able to help?
What would you choose? Live or die?
The future of humanity hangs in the balance’: Why the world could not handle a nuclear attack . The Journal I.e. Órla Ryan @orlaryan, orla@thejournal.ie, 17 Feb 19
An expert explains how we could be “headed for a nuclear arms race”. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE probably talked about more nowadays that at any stage since the Cold War.
There are about 14,500 such weapons in the world, with nine countries owning them. The vast majority of the weapons are owned by the US (about 6,500) and Russia (about 6,800).
Tense relations between these two countries, as well as North Korea trying to increase its nuclear capability, has increased fears about a potential nuclear race.
TEPCO sat by idly on reports of fires, glitches at nuclear plants, By YUSUKE OGAWA/ Staff Writer, Asahi Shimbun 14th Feb 2019 , Tokyo Electric Power Co. ignored reports on fires and other problems from its nuclear power plants and didn’t even bother to share the information in-house or consider precautionary measures, the nuclear watchdog revealed.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority decided Feb. 13 it will investigate the failure by TEPCO’s headquarters to tackle the problems reported by its three facilities: the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture and the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear plants, both in Fukushima Prefecture.
A TEPCO official said that the company put off tackling the problems because the deadline for dealing with such matters “was not clearly stated.” TEPCO’s safety regulations stipulate that blazes, glitches in air-conditioning and other problems at nuclear plants must be dealt with by the main office of the operator. ttp://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201902140054.html
Bridgwater Mercury 14th Feb 2019 , MORE than 70 children from local primary schools headed to Hinkley C last week for the official naming ceremony of three enormous tunnel boring machines.
The competition gave 215 primary schools from across Somerset the
opportunity to name the three 1,200 tonne tunnel boring machines that will
soon begin the construction of the new power station’s water inlet and
outfall tunnels. After arriving safely at the construction site by sea and
road, the trio of tunnelling machines will soon be removing 370,000 cubic
metres of earth to enable 3.3 kilometres of tunnels to be built underneath
the seabed. The tunnels will carry seawater to cool the two reactors, the
first of which will see first operation in 2025. ttps://www.bridgwatermercury.co.uk/news/17433214.huge-hinkley-c-tunnel-boring-machines-named-after-inspirational-women/
Can offshore energy replace a failing nuclear industry? The Manufacturer, 12 Feb 2019 by Maddy White
The world’s largest offshore windfarm off the Yorkshire coast is to supply its first power to the UK electricity grid this week. Could it fill the gap left by a failing nuclear industry? When fully operational next year, Hornsea One will be the largest windfarm in the world. Its 174 Siemens 7MW turbines will generate enough electricity (1.2GW) to reportedly power more than one million homes.
The electricity generated by the turbines 120km off of the Yorkshire coast will pass through one of three offshore substations, before being carried by three high voltage subsea cables (245kV).
Danish developer Ørsted’s project propels the offshore wind power sector to a new scale; Hornsea One will cover 407 sqkm – almost eight-times the size of Norwich
Rapid growth for renewables
A clean and sustainable energy supply, and reducing the impacts of climate change has become priority for countries across the globe as part of the Paris Agreement. Climate change was also found, in the World Economic Forum’s global risks report, to be the biggest concern for business in 2019.
The UK committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050, relative to 1990 levels, but the question remains just how can this be achieved?
Offshore windfarms could help fulfill this. Additionally it could aid the low carbon power gap created as a result of Hitachi and Toshiba recently scrapping nuclear plant projects in Wales and Cumbria. Hitachi followed Toshiba’s move and halted work on the Welsh site earlier this year due to rising costs………
A failing nuclear industry
Last year renewable energy supplied a record 33% of the UK’s electricity, opposed to 19% from nuclear. As technology advances, renewable energy has become cheaper and the logical energy source.
Hinkley C, the nuclear power plant in Somerset is years behind schedule, and billions over budget. Alongside Hinkley, there were five other plants with nuclear proposals: Moorside (Cumbria), Wylfa (Wales), Oldbury (West Midlands), Bradwell (Essex) and Sizewell (Suffolk).
Three have been scrapped and two are yet to be approved. Of the eight sites currently generating power, the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) report that only one is due to be in use by 2030…….
The renewable sector is rapidly growing, its technology advancing and its costs decreasing, while nuclear remains an expensive and complex option that is becoming less appealing.
Can renewable energy be created on the same scale as nuclear? As nuclear power plants shut down and reach their operational expiry date, their contributions to the UK’s energy mix becomes increasingly irrelevant.
US will not open door to Saudi Arabia building nuclear weapons, deputy energy secretary says CNBC David Reid| @cnbcdavy 17 Feb 2019
The Trump administration wants to sell its nuclear energy technology to cash-rich Saudi Arabia.
To prevent nuclear arms development, the U.S. wants to place tight controls on how the technology can be used.
Saudi Arabia has put the U.S. on a shortlist with China, Russia and others to bid for nuclear power projects in the country.
“………….The Saudis have so far refused to rule out their right to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, pointing to neighboring Iran’s ability to do so under the 2015 nuclear agreement that world powers struck with Tehran.
In an interview in March on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the country wasn’t interested in developing weapons but would develop nuclear capability should Iran ever develop a working nuclear bomb.
On Sunday, Saudi Arabian Prince Turki Al-Faisal responded directly to Brouillette’s words, saying the country had more options than just U.S. technology.
“Well the nuclear energy market is open. It is not just the United States that is providing nuclear technology,” he told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble in Munich.
Nuclear Fears Haunt Leaders With U.S.-Russian Arms Pact’s Demise, Bloomberg, By Henry Meyer, Marc Champion, and Patrick Donahue, With assistance by Andrea Dudik, February 17, 2019
Arms-race specter raises alarm at global security conference
Looming standoff revives memory of 1962 Cuban missile crisis
President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of a landmark arms control treaty with Russia is turning the worst fears of a dangerous weapons race into reality.
The U.S. and its allies are laying the groundwork to deploy new intermediate-range missiles in Europe for the first time since they were banned in a 1987 treaty, a move that would prompt a tit-for-tat Russian response. With a second nuclear pact likely to expire in two years, the risks of confrontation are growing.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s top civilian, cited recent Russian deployments and evoked a Cold War-style threat of nuclear destruction at a global conference of security and defense officials this weekend in Munich, the baroque German metropolis that’s one of Europe’s richest cities.
“These missiles are mobile, easy to hide and nuclear-capable,” Stoltenberg said. “They can reach European cities, like Munich, with little warning.”
As U.S. officials accused Russia of provoking the crisis by violating the accord, German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced a sense of alarm that’s spreading in Europe as the two big powers trade blame.
“We’re stuck with the consequences,” she said Saturday. At the same time, “blind rearmament can’t be the answer.”
Cold War Echoes
The looming standoff puts Washington and Moscow on a path back to the era of the 1950s and 1960s when the two superpowers were rapidly building up their strategic forces. It risks destroying decades of arms control efforts under which the rivals accepted limits on their arsenals in the wake of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which took them to the brink of a nuclear clash.
…………. Intercontinental Arsenals
The concerns about the potential for an armed build-up in Europe are amplified by the fact that New START, the last such arms control agreement still in place, looks set to expire in 2021.
Under New START, which followed from the 1991 START treaty and was signed in 2010, the Russian and U.S. arsenals are restricted to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on no more than 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers. Each side can inspect the other’s arsenals 18 times a year.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Munich that Russia is ready to hold talks on extending New START for another five years, while complaining that the Trump administration is unwilling to have any “meaningful consultations” on the issue.
His deputy in charge of arms control, Sergei Ryabkov, warned that the collapse of the treaty “would be another extraordinary shock for the arms control system.”
Back to the ’70s?
“The most frightening thing is when in the absence of information, the two sides will have to go back to the logic of seeking a military advantage,” said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of the Russian parliament. “It means we’ll have to spend vast resources and confront the risk for each other and the entire world of a direct armed clash.”
The INF treaty was a response to a regional arms race that began with the Soviet deployment of SS-20 missiles in the European theater in 1977. The U.S. responded by deploying Pershing II missiles with a similar range. At one point, almost 3,000 intermediate-range nuclear weapons were stationed in Europe and it took a decade to end the standoff.
Closer to Russia
With the Iron Curtain gone, the difference is that now the missiles would be deployed in eastern Europe or in former Soviet republics, closer to key Russian political, military and industrial facilities.
The U.S. has proposed replacing the INF with a broader treaty bringing in other military powers, including China. That’s considered unlikely: of China’s 501 land-based missile launchers, 431 would be covered by the INF treaty, so agreeing to a ban on intermediate-range weapons would require destroying 80 percent of this arsenal, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Losing the pact without any replacement would make it impossible for either side to know whether newly deployed missiles are nuclear or conventional, said Francois Heisbourg, a former French diplomat and Defense Ministry adviser.
Independent 16th Feb 2019 Replenishing the world’s forests on a grand scale would suck enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to cancel out a decade of human
emissions, according to an ambitious new study. Scientists have established
there is room for an additional 1.2 trillion trees to grow in parks, woods
and abandoned land across the planet. If such a goal were accomplished,
ecologist Dr Thomas Crowther said it would outstrip every other method for
tackling climate change – from building wind turbines to vegetarian
diets. https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/forests-climate-change-co2-greenhouse-gases-trillion-trees-global-warming-a8782071.html
Dept. of Justice 14th Feb 2019 The Department of Justice announced today that the United States has filed suit against CB&I AREVA MOX Services LLC (MOX Services) and Wise Services Inc. under the False Claims Act and the Anti-Kickback Act in connection with a contract between MOX Services and the National Nuclear Security
Administration relating to the design and operation of the MOX Fuel
Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the NNSA Savannah River Site in Aiken, South
Carolina.
MOX Services is a South Carolina Limited Liability Corporation with headquarters in Aiken, South Carolina. Wise Services, which subcontracted with MOX Services, is an Ohio corporation with headquarters in Dayton, Ohio. Under the MOX Contract, MOX Services agreed to design, build, operate (and ultimately decommission) the MFFF.
The MFFF is designed to transform weapons-grade plutonium into mixed oxide fuel rods that may be irradiated in commercial nuclear power plants.
In performing the MOX Contract, MOX Services entered into a series of subcontracts with Wise Services between 2008 and 2016. Each of these subcontracts provided for
Wise Services to supply labor, materials, equipment, and supervision for unplanned construction activities (e.g. general labor, plumbing, electrical, carpentry) deemed necessary to support MOX Services’ efforts at the MFFF.
The government’s complaint alleges that Wise Services falsely claimed reimbursement under its subcontracts with MOX Services for construction materials that did not exist, and that in turn MOX Services knowingly submitted $6.4 million in claims to NNSA for the fraudulent charges submitted by Wise Services. The complaint further alleges that Wise Services’ Senior Site Representative Phillip Thompson paid kickbacks to MOX Services officials with responsibility for the subcontracts to improperly obtain favorable treatment from MOX Services. On Feb. 27, 2017, Mr. Thompson entered a guilty plea on charges of conspiring to commit theft of government funds. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-files-false-claims-act-lawsuit-connection-mox-fuel-fabrication-facility
“The important point is that the generals are going to have to decide immediately: Are they going to follow the law of the United States or are they going to follow the commander in chief?” (Bruce Ackerman, Sterling professor of law and political science at Yale University) From Cronkite News/Arizona PBS: “Constitutional experts express concerns […]
Some history: Moffett says that “first use” ended World War II. That was hardly the principal cause of Japan’s surrender.
Most historians now attribute the end to the Soviet entry on Aug. 8. That immoral and illegal first use was also unnecessary. I’ve made the case in this paper many times, but I’ll merely quote Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander): “Japan was ready to surrender, and there was no need to use that awful thing.” Virtually all the top military leaders agreed.
But apart from its illegal and immoral despicability “common to Dark Age barbarians” (as Adm. William Leahy put it), that first use alienated our Soviet ally and started a long and dangerous Cold War.
What Moffett doesn’t say is that the first-use option, while not necessitating first use, does require preparation and willingness to do it. In a time of crisis, Nation X, knowing that Enemy Y has the first-use option and fearing imminent first use from Y, may pre-empt with the strike first – better to use ’em than lose ’em. This is equally dangerous with nukes kept on “hair trigger” alert, which first-use nuke nations do (but not the no-first-use nations: India, China and North Korea). It’s a recipe for an accidental nuclear launch.
–We’ve long held first use, even during the 1980s when the Soviets (and China) espoused a no-first-use policy. It was a main driver of the dangerous and often nearly catastrophic super power arms race. There were hundreds of nuclear accidents and near misses, some after the Cold War ended, as we now know from Eric Schlosser’s shocking 2014 book, Command and Control. By pure luck we survived decades of military inattention to nuclear safety and our (still ongoing) deference to the “we’re falling behind” cries of the dollar-seeking military-industrial-complex. (We are the world’s No.1 arms merchant, with many undemocratic customers.) For some frighteningly close calls see my review of Schlosser’s book: bit.ly/2SCQUO5.
First use has also been used by every president since Harry Truman as a threat to force concessions, as Daniel Ellsberg (nuke adviser to the Pentagon and several presidents in the 1960s and ’70s) has pointed out, with many examples in his recent Doomsday Machine.
Moffett also says Ronald Reagan showed “wisdom” by retaining the first-use option. Eventually Reagan wised up, but not until Mikhail Gorbachev (Nobel Peace Prize, 1990) came along in the mid-1980s. Earlier Reagan had little understanding of nukes. In fact he and his vice president, George H.W. Bush, were both insisting that a nuclear war was survivable and winnable.
By 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev, at their first summit, nearly agreed to the abolition of all nukes. But Reagan’s “Star Wars” (a proposed anti-ballistic missile system then outlawed by treaty and thought to be “pie in the sky”) killed the deal. But in 1987 we fortunately got the INF Treaty destroying 3,000 medium-range missiles – a treaty the United States is threatening to leave.
Moffett said our local leftists should “leave defense policy to national security and military experts.”
Surely Moffett knows that many such experts are today advocating exactly what the “local leftists” are – urging our state Legislature to urge Congress and the president to adopt no first use and halt funds for new low-yield nukes. They include: Gen. Lee Butler (Air Force), commander of Strategic Air Command (1984-1991) and first of the Strategic Command (1991-1994); Gen. James Cartwright (USMC), commander of the Strategic Command (2004-07) and vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (2007-2011); Secretary of State George Shultz (under Reagan); and Secretary of Defense William Perry (under Bill Clinton).
There are moral problems with nukes and even with nuclear deterrence of any form. Even deterrence (with no first use) requires the preparation for possible use and a willingness to use nukes “if necessary.” As such, all nuclear deterrence runs the risk of nuclear war and the killing of millions of innocent human beings or worse, given the possibility of nuclear winter. As science knows, but apparently not the Pentagon, even a small nuclear exchange – for example, India versus Pakistan, each firing 50 low-yield weapons – could bring on a 10-year nuclear winter and global famine killing over a billion people (2014 study by Physicians for Social Responsibility). Such a risk is morally unacceptable – a concern central to creating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 – now with 189 parties and as important as ever.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty (Art. 6) requires a swift end to the nuclear arms race and the bringing to conclusion a treaty for “general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” In 1996 the World Court rendered an opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons, saying: “The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.”
Meeting our treaty obligations will be a very long and difficult journey. But we must recover the progress that slowed soon after the end of the Cold War and recently threatens to stop – or worse.
In the meantime, the United States can encourage the non-proliferation treaty’s many non-nuke parties to show that the United States is still serious about its treaty obligations. We N.H. folks – as many other states are doing – can and should take the small but positive steps to support our state government to urge Congress and the president to adopt a no-first-use pledge, and to decline funding for any new costly and “more usable” low-yield nukes.
(Ray Perkins Jr. of Concord is professor of philosophy, emeritus, at Plymouth State University and vice chairman of the Bertrand Russell Society board of directors.)
WASHINGTON —The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Republican majority, in a 3-2 vote, approved a stripped-down version of a rule originally intended to protect U.S. nuclear plants against extreme natural events, such as the massive earthquake and tsunami that triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan in March 2011.
The commission majority struck a provision from the draft final rule the NRC staff recommended in December 2016 requiring plant owners to protect their facilities from the real-world hazards they face today instead of “design-basis” hazards that were estimated using now-obsolete information and methodologies when the plants were built decades ago.
The commission majority’s act will leave unresolved how the NRC will address new information showing that plants may experience bigger floods and earthquakes than they are now required to withstand. It is possible that the commission will not require all plant owners whose facilities face greater hazards to make structural upgrades.
“Nearly eight years after the Fukushima accident, the NRC continues to disregard a critical lesson: Nuclear plants must be protected against the most severe natural disasters they could face today—not those estimated 40 years ago,” said Dr. Edwin Lyman, senior scientist and acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
After Fukushima, an NRC task force recommended that the NRC “order licensees to reevaluate the seismic and flooding hazards at their sites … and if necessary, update their design basis and SSCs [structures, systems and components] important to safety to protect against the updated hazards.”
To date, the NRC has only implemented the first part of the recommendation: Owners have reevaluated seismic and flooding hazards. What they found is not reassuring. For instance, the flooding reevaluations revealed that roughly two-thirds of U.S nuclear plants face hazards beyond what they were originally designed to handle, including higher flood levels from extreme precipitation, upstream dam failure and storm surge. The reevaluated flood height for local intense precipitation for the Palisades plant in Michigan, for example, was more than 25 feet higher than the level considered in the plant’s original design. Similar concerns were identified in many seismic risk evaluations.
Despite these findings, the NRC failed to implement the second part of the task force recommendation to require plant owners to strengthen their defenses against greater hazards. The rule that was approved today was originally intended to close that gap. The commission majority’s action today removed that requirement and will simply maintain the uncertain—and inadequate—status quo.
“The NRC must require plant owners to upgrade their facilities based on the best current information, the most realistic analyses, and the potentially devastating impacts of increased flooding from climate change,” said Dr. Lyman. “Failing to do so will leave some nuclear plants dangerously unprepared and needlessly invite disaster.”
Kim Ready to Accept Nuclear-Plant Inspections, South Korea Says, Bloomberg, By Youkyung Lee, February 16, 2019,
· South Korea presidential adviser sees Trump path to compromise
· Trump says ‘I’m in no rush for speed’ in talks with Kim regime
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was ready to accept the dismantlement and inspection of a high-profile nuclear plant, a South Korean presidential adviser said, suggesting a possible point of compromise in upcoming talks with President Donald Trump.
Moon Chung-in, a special adviser for foreign affairs and national security, said in an interview Friday that the verified destruction of the regime’s Yongbyon nuclear complex was an achievable goal during Trump’s planned Feb. 27-28 summit with Kim. Moon said it was his “understanding” that South Korean President Moon Jae-in got Kim’s personal assurance on that when they met in Pyongyang in September.
………..Moon Chung-in said the U.S. should agree to allow economic projects between the two Koreas to proceed in exchange for inspections of Yongbyon — something the U.S. has so far been reluctant to do. Kim has railed against the international sanctions regime choking his moribund economy and called for resuming the projects, including a industrial park and a mountain resort.
“Those will be doable,” Moon Chung-in said. Such an exchange would advance talks, “without undermining the overall sanctions regime by the UN Security Council, yet giving some kind of incentives to North Korea in a way the U.S. can come up with some sort of compromise,” he said.
Moon Chung-in, a strong advocate of South Korea rapprochement with North Korea, said the success of the Hanoi summit hinges on how North Korea proceeds with its nuclear arms program. Satellite-imagery analysis and leaked American intelligence suggest that North Korea has been churning out rockets and warheads as quickly as ever.
Three of the four panelists who will speak on Friday, Feb. 15, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting have contributed to the worldwide misrepresentation of the mission and design of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The panelists will be part of a workshop that is financially sponsored by the ITER Organization.
One of the panelists will be science journalist Daniel Clery, who works for the Association’s magazine Science. Clery has, almost certainly unknowingly, helped promote the ITER fusion deception, now in its second decade. Hiding the power that the ITER reactor is designed to use and employing deceptive wording, fusion representatives have greatly exaggerated the expected power output of the reactor. In order to produce fusion particles of 500 MW, according to its design, ITER will require at least 300 MW of electricity. That’s not what Clery told readers in his Nov. 19, 2015, article in Science:
The ITER project aims to show that nuclear fusion—the power source of the sun and stars—is technically feasible as a source of energy. Despite more than 60 years of work, researchers have failed to achieve a fusion reaction that produces more energy than it consumes. ITER, with a doughnut-shaped “tokamak ” reaction chamber able to contain 840 cubic meters of superheated hydrogen gas, or plasma, is the biggest attempt so far and is predicted to produce at least 500 megawatts of power from a 50 megawatt input.
Clery has a degree in theoretical physics. Either the ITER promoters fooled him, or he was an active participant in the deception. Neither option is favorable for Clery. In either case, he certainly was not alone.
Fusion representatives have also misled the public into thinking that the reactor is designed for a specific overall power gain when, in fact, the expected gain applies to only one part of the reactor: the plasma heating system. But nowhere in his article does Clery inform readers that his comparison of 500 MW out and 50 MW in applies only to the plasma. Nowhere in his article does he explain to readers that his 500/50 comparison did not apply to the overall reactor. Nowhere in his article does he explain to readers that the reactor, to get 500 MW out, will require 300 MW in.
To the contrary, everything about Clery’s article was written as if he intended to communicate to readers that the overall reactor is designed for a 500 MW output with only a 50 MW input.
Despite all of this, Clery has a tiny bit of wiggle room to claim that he was not deceived. He could say that, because his paragraph uses the phrase “a fusion reaction,” it provides evidence that he knew that the 500/50 values applied only to the plasma, not to the overall reactor. But that would create an even greater problem for Clery: All other statements he made in his article create a false impression about the mission and design capacity of the reactor.
Clery’s article perpetuated the three false and misleading claims about ITER: 1) The ITER reactor, as a system, is designed to produce 500 MW of net thermal power, 2) The ITER reactor is designed to consume only 50 MW of power, and 3) The ITER reactor, as a system, is designed to produce 10 times the power it is designed to consume.
Another presenter at the Friday workshop will be Bernard Bigot, the director-general of the ITER Organization. Bigot holds the ultimate responsibility for the false and misleading claims on the ITER Organization Web site, some of which he has corrected since New Energy Times began publishing the results of this long-running investigation. Last year, Bigot used misleading language to create false impressions about ITER and the JET reactor, its predecessor, while testifying before Congress. The ITER Organization corrected more of the false statements on its Web site less than 24 hours after New Energy Times published a report on Bigot’s testimony.
Another panelist at the ITER-sponsored AAAS workshop will be Ned Sauthoff, the director of the U.S. ITER project office at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Sauthoff, as a video recording of a 2014 congressional hearing shows, successfully pulled the wool over the eyes of members of Congress. More news on that story is on the way.
The fourth panelist will be Mickey Wade, the director of Advanced Fusion Systems at General Atomics, an ITER component supplier. In his congressional testimony last year, Wade was the only witness on that panel to accurately and honestly report ITER’s primary mission and design.
“ITER’s primary technical goal is to produce plasmas that produce 10 times more fusion power than is being injected into the plasma from external means,” Wade said.
The AAAS board of directors includes Steven Chu, a former United States Secretary of Energy and current member of the board of advisors for energy research company First Light Fusion. That company published deceptive fusion power claims in a Feb. 12, 2019, press release.
Brisbane Times, by Elizabeth Farrelly, 15 Feb 19…………women aren’t the only victims. Nature too bears the brunt. The world is being shoved off a cliff not by masculinity’s strength but by its terrifying fragility.Fragile masculinity is fear pressurised into rage; fear of losing control – of liberated femininity, of mysterious nature, of a world bucking its traces, of chaos. The anger is a desperate attempt to reinstate that control, illusory as it may always have been.
We [in Australia] have just endured a series of 40-plus days across much of the country, last month was the hottest on record. We joke. Thirty-six is the new normal, haha. I gaze with cold-envy at Antarctica, minus 29. But see this for what it is. This is the will-to-dominance: fragile masculinity in action.
The Darling Basin Royal Commission finds “gross maladministration” and “negligence” in our governments’ wilful ignorance of climate change. Even the courts, bless them, have started to disallow coal mines for their climate impact. Yet the government response is, well, nothing, actually. Minister Littleproud mentions “learnings” from the Darling but still our noble leaders favour irrigators, build motorways, approve new mines, deny climate science and ease the path to public subsidies for one the biggest coal mines on earth as though it’s all fine.
It’s not fine. This is domestic violence. This planet is our home and they thrash around in it yelling, intimidating, wrecking the joint. Like violent husbands they get all remorseful and beg forgiveness only to do it all again. Why? Because we’ve always thrashed nature, and nature has always coped. As a bloke once said to me: “You don’t want me to shout and get possessive? But I’ve always treated women like this.”
Stoically, the planet has housed and nourished us, tolerated us. But it can’t last. A dominance relationship is never sustainable, human-to-human or human-to-nature. Winning? To win this battle is to lose. The era of collaboration is here………….
It’s when people “stitch their self-worth to being all-powerful” that things go bad. An equal-status relationship – with a partner or with nature – requires listening, empathy, the antidote to shame.
We talk as though “traditional masculinity” were the enemy, as though we want men to evolve into something more like women. But that’s wrong.
What we need is not faux-women but nobler, more confident men. The man-heroes of the future, if we’re to have one, won’t be the brutes and sociopaths. They won’t be the cruel and the thoughtless, the boat-stoppers and coal-brandishers. They’ll be those who hold power but refuse to exploit it, renowned as much for their kindness as their exploits. Literally, gentlemen.
Chicago may be the largest city in the U.S. to commit to 100% renewable energy and has set a 2035 target date. The famous city’s long association with nuclear power says a lot about the future of clean energy Statesside.
Chase Tower is one of the tallest skyscrapers to dominate Chicago’s skyline. But it is not the building’s height, at 869 feet, which makes it prominent but rather what’s in it: the headquarters of Exelon, the largest owner and operator of nuclear power plants in the United States.
However, despite there being 11 nuclear reactors in operation in the state of Illinois, Chicago is moving to a different power source: renewable energy. Yesterday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled the Resilient Chicago plan, which with action number 38 commits to “transition to 100% clean, renewable energy in buildings community-wide by 2035”. The deadline for all city government buildings to be powered solely by renewables, first established in 2017, has been brought forward to 2025.
The language of the Resilient Chicago text says “clean, renewable energy”, and the Sierra Club does not include nuclear as part of its Ready to 100 campaign. The new policy is a particularly interesting move for Emanuel, once considered one of the more pro-nuclear politicians in the Democratic Party, and a man who brokered the deal that created Exelon.
Were Chicago to include nuclear in a 2035 target, it would require either buying power from existing plants instead of investing in new generation, or starting new nuclear plants within six years. Given the high cost of nuclear compared to wind and solar, few decision makers are contemplating that option.
The City of Chicago and stakeholders will have until December next year to come up with a plan to meet the city’s new mandate.
Community solar, electric buses
And there are a number of other clean energy commitments among the 50 action points in the wide-ranging Resilient Chicago report. Chicago plans to complete the electrification of its bus fleet by 2040, and the city is also making a push for community solar.
Action 37 states the city will “promote greater access to community solar”, by supporting the Illinois Power Agency’s community incentive programs and by incentivizing community solar through voluntary programs, with the Chicago Renewable Energy Challenge highlighted.
Since the passage of the Future Energy Jobs Act in the Illinois General Assembly, Chicago has seen a boom in community solar, with 1.8 GW of projects applying for block grants in just the last two weeks, more than ten times the amount the state had planned for in its block grant program.
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