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Plutonium’s Hidden Legacy at Piketon

Plutonium was here. It was processed, mishandled, released, and denied. It contaminated water, soil, fish, and workers. It spread to schools. And it killed.

Investigative Team April 24, 2025, https://appareport.com/2025/04/24/plutoniums-hidden-legacy-at-piketon/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=jetpack_social&fbclid=IwY2xjawJ5XrBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE3b0JDR3JZZ0xqRkNqVU1oAR5YM8gN60lbVkb21XEno8JBYLC_Rnqv7LD993TwfBersmNr-c-SsZuL1J_1mA_aem_sCNRay627WxIPPEuu7DVsA  [ample illustrations]

For decades, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) claimed that plutonium had no place at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS). But government documents, congressional testimony, and radiological data spanning more than 40 years tell a different story — one of systemic exposure, buried secrets, and radioactive contamination that continues to haunt the soil, water, and people of southern Ohio.

The truth has been revealed in pieces. Some of it was made public as early as the 1990s. Some surfaced only recently. Together, it paints an undeniable picture: plutonium was present at PORTS, it was mishandled, and it left a toxic legacy that federal agencies have failed to clean up — or fully acknowledge.

The Paper Trail: Plutonium Officially Confirmed

The denial cracked in 1999, when The Portsmouth Daily Times published a front-page bombshell: “Plutonium Confirmed in Piketon.” The article cited admissions by federal officials that plutonium-contaminated uranium had been shipped to the site from Paducah, Kentucky, as part of a Cold War-era uranium recycling program.

In a formal letter to DOE Secretary Bill Richardson, U.S. Senators Mike DeWine and George Voinovich confirmed that at least 570 tons of contaminated feed material had been sent to Piketon, beginning as early as 1983. DOE had known. The public had not.

The Incinerator and the Burned Truth

Records show the X-705A incinerator, which operated from the 1970s until 1986, was used to burn approximately 50,000 pounds of uranium-contaminated solid waste annually. But it didn’t stop there.

ccording to on-site Ohio EPA coordinator Maria Galanti, uranium-contaminated solvents — materials never meant for incineration — were also burned in the unit. The result? Soil surrounding the incinerator is now radioactive to a depth of at least 12 feet.

Until the late 1980s, operators even tilled radioactive oils into unlined soil, assuming it would degrade over time. It didn’t. And it won’t — the plutonium isotopes involved have half-lives exceeding 24,000 years.

Radiation in the Waterways — and the Food Chain

A 2006 Ohio EPA report confirmed what residents feared: plutonium had migrated offsite and into the public environment.

Testing in Little Beaver Creek, Big Beaver Creek, Big Run, and the Scioto River revealed the presence of:

  • Plutonium-238
  • Plutonium-239
  • Americium-241
  • Neptunium-237
  • Alongside technetium-99 and uranium isotopes

All these elements were detected well above background levels, confirming they originated from the plant, not nature.

The Hazard Index (HI) — a risk threshold used by federal agencies — was exceeded across all tested water bodies, with Big Run scoring more than 20 times the EPA’s risk cutoff.

Separate DOE assessments show Pu-238 in fish as a significant dietary exposure source, second only to Tc-99 in produce. Plutonium has entered the food chain.

Offsite Spread: Plutonium Detected Near Schools and Homes

Monitoring data confirmed the presence of plutonium-239/240, neptunium-237, and americium-241 at offsite stations including:

  • Station A41A near Zahn’s Corner Middle School
  • Station A6 in northwest Piketon
  • Station A23 near local residential zones

DOE contends that any plutonium found in air monitors comes from 1950s nuclear weapons testing fallout and not PORTS.

Workers Testify to Deception and Disease

At a 2000 Senate hearing, former worker Sam Ray described his fight with chondrosarcoma, a rare bone cancer he linked directly to his work at PORTS. He spoke of no health monitoring, no protective equipment, and no transparency.

Jeffrey Walburn, a plant whistleblower, testified to a 1994 chemical exposure that permanently damaged his lungs. He alleged a criminal cover-up by Lockheed Martin, including the alteration and destruction of radiation dose records.

He warned that widows of deceased workers may never receive compensation because exposure data had been falsified.

DOE’s Own Admissions: Plutonium in the Cascade System

According to a 2024 DOE report, plutonium-238 and plutonium-239 were present in enrichment equipment, having entered the cascade system through contaminated uranium hexafluoride cylinders. The isotopes were found in the X-326 Process Building and throughout the cascade.

DOE also confirmed that residual technetium-99 remained embedded in internal pipe surfaces, requiring special disposal decades after operations ended.

From Russian Warheads to Pike County: The Megatons to Megawatts Program

Between 1993 and 2013, the U.S. and Russia dismantled over 20,000 nuclear warheads under the Megatons to Megawatts Program — converting highly enriched uranium (HEU) into low-enriched uranium (LEU) for use in American power plants.

But that uranium didn’t just vanish. It came through U.S. enrichment sites — including the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.

Contractor and DOE records confirm that Russian-origin uranium — some of it likely carrying residual contaminants from dismantled warheads — was introduced into the U.S. enrichment stream at PORTS.

Whether plutonium from these shipments contributed to PORTS contamination is still under question. What’s undeniable is this: the U.S. government sent Russian bomb-grade material through an Appalachian processing plant with a history of unsafe handling, minimal oversight, and deliberate secrecy.

They took Soviet nukes and ran them through Appalachian lungs. Without warning. Without consent.

While the legacy of plutonium contamination at PORTS stretches back to the Cold War, the threat isn’t just historical — it’s current, legal, and active.

Centrus Energy: HALEU, the NRC license, and legal plutonium storage at PORTS

In 2021, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted Centrus Energy Corp. a license to operate a first-of-its-kind High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) facility inside the old enrichment footprint at PORTS. HALEU is a higher-enriched form of uranium (5–20% U-235), specifically produced for next-generation small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

But buried in the licensing documents is something the public was never told:

The HALEU license explicitly authorizes Centrus to store an undisclosed amount of plutonium-bearing material at the site.

That’s not speculation — that’s federal licensing language. In plain English: Centrus is legally allowed to store plutonium compounds at a facility that already has a catastrophic contamination legacy.

A Legacy Buried in Contamination and Lies

Plutonium was here. It was processed, mishandled, released, and denied. It contaminated water, soil, fish, and workers. It spread to schools. And it killed.

Some of the evidence has been buried. Some altered. But most of it has been in plain sight — ignored by federal agencies and omitted from cleanup plans.

This is not an old story. This is an ongoing disaster.

The time for quiet compliance is over. The reckoning for Piketon — and for the people poisoned by its secrets — has come.

April 27, 2025 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Call it what it clearly is: Genocide

April 26, 2025, By Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/call-it-what-it-clearly-is-genocide/

Some dare not call it genocide

Folks following the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, fully enabled by America, are of two views.

Those of us in the peace community instantly recognised that Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack was a genocidal ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Gaza.

We didn’t have to guess. Israeli leaders made clear through word and deed that return of Israeli hostages was secondary to their primary goal of killing and clearing out all 2,300,000 Palestinians so Gaza could be redeveloped to expand Greater Israel.

It was also clear that the US, under both Biden and Trump, were and are in complete accord with Israel’s grisly, murderous policy. Biden feigned sympathy for the tens of thousands of dead Palestinian innocents on his watch and the decimated 139 square miles of Gaza rubble. But he kept mum while delivering over $20 billion in weapons allowing Israel to rain down on Gaza over 50,000 tons of American bombs dropped from American planes.

Trump, no surprise, gloried in the worst genocide this century. He invited indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to the Oval Office to discuss which African countries they could intimidate to take in the roughly 2.2 million remaining starving, sick, traumatized Palestinians. Trump is eager to kick start his biggest real estate project ever, expanding Greater Israel into Gaza once the Palestinians have been cleared out. That is grotesque, not something to champion.

Then there are those who refuse to believe or admit that genocide is occurring before their eyes and ears in real time.

Reasons likely many.

Some simply view it not as genocide but a war between Israel and Hamas.

Some argue that the Palestinian destruction, no matter how horrible, does not rise to genocide which they equate to the Nazi horrors of WWII.

Some are in complete sympathy with Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign, indeed, cheering it on. Mike Huckabee, Trump’s new Ambassador to Israel, claims there is no such thing as Palestine or even Palestinians, so let the ethnic cleansing proceed unabated to expand Greater Israel.

There is a near total blackout in mainstream media of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Whether conservative or progressive, the talking heads go mute when it comes to the informing the public of the most horrific US policy in their lifetime.

None in Congress dare cross the Israel lobby by calling it genocide. To do so risks having millions in lobby campaign funds dry up or worse, going to a pro lobby primary opponent. Some are horrified by the violence crushing the Palestinians but cannot embrace the moral imperative to call it out and demand its end.

To his credit, Sen. Bernie Sanders tried twice to pass Senate Joint Resolutions to cut off the flow of genocide weapons to Israel but only garnered 17 votes from the other 99 mostly genocide-supporting Senators. But tho Sanders calls Israel’s conduct “ethnic cleansing”, he refuses to call it what it truly is: genocide.

Representing Sanders’ Senate opposite is colleague John Fetterman, who supports Israel cutting off all food, medicine, and water to Gaza until the Israeli hostages are released. Horrifying.

Israel breaks the January ceasefire with daily bombings, killing dozens of Palestinian innocents while most Americans turn away.

Collectively, American genocide deniers enable President Trump to fund, supply, and cheer on arguably the most murderous, destructive and tragically bi-partisan foreign policy in American history.

April 27, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

EDF’s new UK plants should be negotiated as one, French energy minister says.

EDF’s two UK nuclear construction projects at Hinkley Point and Sizewell
should be negotiated as a single financial venture, France’s energy
minister has urged, to prevent the French energy giant shouldering
significant cost overruns.

Marc Ferracci said he had held discussions on
the projects with Britain’s energy minister Ed Miliband on Thursday, on
the sidelines of an energy security summit in London. “France and EDF are
very committed to deliver the projects but we have to find a way to
accelerate them and we have to find a way to consolidate the financial
schemes of both projects,” Ferracci told the FT.

France has been lobbying
the UK government to help EDF with the finances of Hinkley Point C in
Somerset for more than a year. It argues that the French state-owned
electricity operator should not be left on the hook for cost overruns that
have taken the total bill to as high as £46bn. EDF — which has also
experienced long delays on other projects using the same reactor technology
in Finland and France — has warned that the first of two reactors at
Hinkley Point C could be delayed to as late as 2031, which would be six
years later than its original target.

The French company has a smaller
equity stake in the Sizewell C project in Suffolk, which it is also
developing. Ferracci denied that the French government was seeking to use
Sizewell as “leverage” to help bail it out of financial difficulties at
Hinkley.

 FT 25th April 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/0c50a553-3376-42d8-8ac5-c8aa84d2e78d

April 27, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, France | Leave a comment

Trump’s transactional instincts could help forge a new Iran nuclear deal

Mohamad Bazzi, 265 Apr https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/25/trump-iran-nuclear-deal

The president has a chance to make good on his reputation as a dealmaker as Iran moves closer to a nuclear weapon.

In May 2018, Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed American sanctions that crippled the Iranian economy. Trump tore up the 2015 agreement, which had taken years for Iran to negotiate with six world powers, under which Tehran limited its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions. Trump insisted he would be able to negotiate a better pact than the one reached by Barack Obama’s administration.

Today, in his second term as president, Trump is eager to fix the Iran deal he broke nearly seven years ago.

While Trump’s overall foreign policy has been chaotic and has alienated traditional US allies in Europe and elsewhere, he has an opportunity to reach an agreement with Iran that eluded Joe Biden. Since Trump walked away from the original deal, Iran has moved closer to having a nuclear weapon than it has ever been. It has enriched enough uranium close to weapons-grade quality to make six nuclear bombs, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But analysts believe that even after enriching enough uranium for a bomb, Iran would still need up to a year to develop an actual nuclear warhead that could be deployed on a ballistic missile.

Last month, Trump sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying the US wanted to negotiate a new deal. Trump followed up with a public threat, saying if Iran’s leaders did not agree to renewed talks, they would be subjected to “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before”. After Trump’s threats and a buildup of US forces in the Middle East, Iran’s military said it would respond to any attack by targeting US bases in the region, which house thousands of American troops.

But Iranian leaders also agreed to indirect negotiations, rather than the direct talks Trump had proposed. Trump dispatched his special envoy, the real estate developer Steve Witkoff, to lead a team of US negotiators to meet indirectly with top Iranian officials, including the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. The two sides held two rounds of productive talks so far this month, under the mediation of Oman. And the US and Iranian teams are due to meet again this weekend in Muscat, the capital of Oman, where they will start talks on technical details of a potential agreement.

While Trump and Iran’s leaders both changed their tones in recent weeks, there are many obstacles before a deal can be reached, including hardliners in Iran and Washington, as well as opposition from Israel’s rightwing government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent years working to undermine negotiations between the US and Iran. The main barrier will be whether the Trump administration insists on a total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program – the so-called “Libya model”, named after the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who decided to eliminate his country’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 under pressure from the US. But that decision deprived Gaddafi of a major lever to stave off western military intervention after the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, which led to his regime’s fall and his killing by Libyan rebels.

Some foreign policy hawks in Washington, including Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, insist on this maximalist strategy, which echoes Netanyahu’s demand that Iran must completely dismantle its nuclear enrichment activity and infrastructure as part of any deal with the US. If Trump takes a similar approach, negotiations would probably break down and Trump could follow through on his threat to carry out military strikes.

Iran has made clear that it will not agree to the total end of its nuclear program, but would accept a verification-based approach, as it did under the 2015 deal negotiated by the Obama administration along with China, France, Russia, the UK and Germany, together with the European Union. That type of agreement would place strict limits on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and impose an inspections regime involving international monitors. Several of Trump’s advisers, including Witkoff and the vice-president, JD Vance, seem to favor this solution.

“I think he wants to deal with Iran with respect,” Witkoff said of Trump’s outreach to the Iranian regime, in a long interview last month with Tucker Carlson, the rightwing media host who has been highly critical of Republican hawks agitating for war with Iran. “He wants to build trust with them, if it’s possible.”

Iran’s leaders apparently got that message – and have tried to stroke Trump’s ego and convey that they respect him in ways they never respected Biden. In a Washington Post op-ed published on 8 April, Iran’s foreign minister seemed to be speaking to Trump directly when he blamed the failure of earlier negotiations on a “lack of real determination by the Biden administration”. Araghchi also played to Trump’s oft-repeated desire to be a peacemaker who ends America’s legacy of forever wars, writing: “We cannot imagine President Trump wanting to become another US president mired in a catastrophic war in the Middle East.”

And the minister appealed to Trump’s reputation as a deal-maker, citing the “trillion-dollar opportunity” that would benefit US companies if they could gain access to Iran after a diplomatic agreement. Iran’s leaders evidently understand that Trump loves to frame his foreign policy as being guided by his desire to secure economic deals and benefits for American businesses.

In this case, Trump’s transactional instincts and bulldozer style of negotiations could lead to a positive outcome, avoiding war with Iran and undermining the hardliners in Washington, Iran and Israel. Trump has already adopted a significant shift toward Tehran from his first term, when he had insisted that Iran was the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and the greatest threat to US interests in the Middle East.

After he took office in 2017, Trump wanted to tear up the Iran deal partly because it was one of Obama’s major foreign policy accomplishments. Trump also surrounded himself with hawkish advisers who reinforced the danger of an Iranian threat, including HR McMaster, who served as national security adviser, and James Mattis, who was defense secretary. Both men commanded US troops during the occupation of Iraq, and they fought Iraqi militias funded by Iran. Trump later appointed John Bolton, another neoconservative and advocate of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, as his national security adviser.

In his second term, Trump has banished most of the neocons from his administration. Trump also seems to realize that Netanyahu could become one of the biggest obstacles to an Iran deal, as he was during the Obama and Biden administrations. It was no accident that the president announced his plan for renewed talks with Iran while Netanyahu sat beside him at an Oval Office meeting on 7 April. Netanyahu had arranged a hasty visit to Washington to seek an exemption from Trump on new tariffs on Israeli exports. But he left empty-handed and embarrassed by Trump’s Iran announcement. That meeting was a signal to Iran’s leaders: that Trump would not allow Netanyahu to steamroll him, as the Israeli premier had done with other US presidents.

If Trump continues to resist Netanyahu, along with hawkish Republicans and some of his own advisers, he might well be able to negotiate a dramatic deal with Iran – and repair the nuclear crisis he unleashed years ago.

  • Mohamad Bazzi is the director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern studies and a journalism professor at New York University.

April 27, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Weatherwatch: sage advice 50-odd years ago on UK nuclear power still relevant

Ministers might care to heed conclusions of 1976 Flowers report before they go ahead with latest energy policy plans

Paul Brown, 25 Apr 25, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/apr/25/weatherwatch-sage-advice-50-odd-years-ago-on-uk-nuclear-power-still-relevant

Gathering dust somewhere in Whitehall is the 1976 royal commission’s sixth report on environmental pollution, known afterwards as the Flowers report after its chair, Sir Brian Flowers. It dealt with the future of the nuclear industry, warning about the dangers of producing large quantities of plutonium amid fears of potential threats from terrorists. The report particularly emphasised the pressing need to find a way of disposing of nuclear waste and recommended there should be no great expansion of nuclear power until a satisfactory way had been found of disposing of it.

The report was written before climate change and the current extremes of weather were of public concern, but the commission was exercised by the pressing need to increase the electricity supply. The report did not rule out the expansion of nuclear power but urged the government to look at wave power and other renewables as much more desirable alternatives.

Fast-forward almost half a century and the UK is still no nearer to dealing with its ever increasing pile of nuclear waste, costing billions every year just to keep safe. However, the Flowers commission would be delighted that wind, solar and other renewables have largely replaced nuclear power, and be puzzled that the government seems poised to ignore sage advice and expand nuclear energy again.

April 27, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Tankers travel from Alton Water to Sizewell C every day

Tankers full of water are travelling 30 miles up the A12 and B1122 to keep Sizewell C’s offices topped up because the local water company cannot cope with demand.

 Essex and Suffolk Water is the company that supplies the north
east of the county – and it has long been known that it has problems in
coping with increasing demand. The company is operating at near capacity –
and this problem has forced some development or expansion plans in the area
to be cancelled or postponed. It is not able to supply water to the offices
that have been built at Sizewell so a temporary deal has been signed with
Anglian Water to bring in supplies.

 Ipswich Star 25th April 2025,
https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/25110191.tankers-travel-alton-water-sizewell-c-every-day/

April 27, 2025 Posted by | UK, water | Leave a comment

UN: Gaza Is Facing Worst Humanitarian Situation Yet Due to Israeli Blockade.

“Hunger is spreading & deepening, deliberate & manmade,” “Two million people: a majority of women & children are undergoing collective punishment.”

The Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid and all other goods entering Gaza has been imposed for 50 days

by Dave DeCamp April 22, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/04/22/un-gaza-is-facing-worst-humanitarian-situation-yet-due-to-israeli-blockade/

The UN’s humanitarian office, OCHA, warned on Tuesday that Gaza is facing its worst humanitarian situation yet, as a total Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid and all other goods has been imposed for more than 50 days.

“Right now is probably the worst humanitarian situation we have seen throughout the war in Gaza,” Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for OCHA, said at a press briefing in Geneva, according to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.

Also on Tuesday, the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, said Gaza had become a “land of desperation” and warned of spreading hunger.

“Hunger is spreading & deepening, deliberate & manmade,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X. “Two million people: a majority of women & children are undergoing collective punishment.”

Lazzarini said that aid trucks, including 3,000 from UNRWA, are ready to enter Gaza but are being blocked by Israel. “The siege must be lifted, supplies must flow in, the hostages must be released, the ceasefire must resume,” he said.

The US has strongly backed Israel’s collective punishment of the civilian population of Gaza. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee released a video statement on Monday in response to calls for him to pressure Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and blamed Hamas for the Israeli blockade.

Last week, 12 major aid organizations issued a statement that said the “people of Gaza – particularly women and children – are paying the price” and that “famine is not just a risk, but likely rapidly unfolding in almost all parts of Gaza.”

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Scottish nuclear plant emptied of fuel as UK winds down ageing gas-cooled reactors.

the cost of decommissioning should be taken into
account when the government decided on new nuclear plants as “no scheme can be guaranteed to meet a cost more than a century into the future”.

 The first of the UK’s seven advanced gas-cooled reactor nuclear power
stations has been emptied of fuel, kick-starting a decommissioning process
that will cost at least £27bn in total and take almost a century.

EDF said on Thursday it had defuelled Hunterston B, on the west coast of Scotland,
paving the way for the transfer of the site and 250 staff from the French
power company to the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority next April. The
site provided most of Scotland’s energy for more than 40 years from its
launch in 1976 until its final closure in 2022.

EDF owns seven advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs) plants in the UK, which were built between the 1960s and 1980s and differ from newer nuclear plants that use water for
cooling. Just four are still operating.

The uranium fuel has been packaged
into 350 large flasks, which will be stored by the NDA at the Sellafield
nuclear site in Cumbria for at least 50 years until a longer-term
underground facility has been built.

Although the process took just three
years and £400mn, it will take almost a century to eradicate the radiation
from the land and buildings, EDF has said. The decommissioning of the seven
AGRs is separate to a much wider £105bn decommissioning programme, which
will cover an additional 17 closed nuclear sites over the next 120 years,
according to the NDA.

The closures will leave the UK with just one nuclear
power plant still running by 2030 — Sizewell B in Suffolk, which is also
managed by EDF and uses a pressurised water reactor. The NDA said it was
“acutely aware of the costs associated with delivering our mission”.

The cost of decommissioning nuclear power plants is under scrutiny as the
UK presses ahead with new nuclear projects, including the £40bn Sizewell
C, which is expected to get government go-ahead this spring, and the £46bn
Hinkley Point C, which is still under construction and will open by 2030 at
the earliest.

Steve Thomas, emeritus professor of energy policy at
Greenwich university, said the cost of decommissioning should be taken into
account when the government decided on new nuclear plants as “no scheme
can be guaranteed to meet a cost more than a century into the future”.

Although EDF has owned Hunterston B and the seven other AGR nuclear plants
since 2009, the cost of decommissioning is being paid for through the
ringfenced Nuclear Liabilities Fund (NLF), which was set up in 1996 after
privatisation and is valued at £20.6bn. Decommissioning costs have soared
over the past three decades, with the fund requiring cash injections from
the Treasury, including £5bn in July 2020 and a further £5.6bn in March
2022, according to the NLF.

 FT 24th April 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/c31af2d6-eeaa-4a3d-a2c0-81c63b29cb1d

April 26, 2025 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

EDF’s two nuclear plants in Britain should be negotiated as one, French minister says.

Guy Taylor, Transport Reporter, 25 April 2025

EDF’s two nuclear construction schemes at Hinkley Point and Sizewell C should be treated as one financial venture in negotiations, according to France’s energy minister.

Marc Ferracci told the FT he had held discussions with the UK’s energy minister Ed Miliband at the sidelines of a conference in London on Thursday.

“France and EDF are very committed to deliver the projects but we have to find a way to accelerate them and we have to find a way to consolidate the financial schemes of both projects,” he said.

The French government has been pushing ministers in the UK to lend a hand with Hinkley Point’s floundering finances over the last year.

Costs on the nuclear project have risen to as high as £46bn and it argues EDF, the French state-owned energy firm, should not be forced to cover the overruns.

EDF’s equity stake in Sizewell C, a 3.2 gigawatt nuclear station on the Suffolk Coast, is smaller than Hinkley Point.

Ferracci denied that the French government was looking to use Sizewell as “leverage” against the financial troubles at Hinkley………………….. https://www.cityam.com/edfs-two-nuclear-plants-should-be-negotiated-as-one-french-minister-says/

April 26, 2025 Posted by | France, politics international, UK | Leave a comment

The Australian Labor Party is No Friend of the Nuclear-Free Cause.

 https://theaimn.net/the-australian-labor-party-is-no-friend-of-the-nuclear-free-cause/ 26 Apr 25

I’m thinking that the nuclear lobby loves the ALP even more than it loves the Liberal Coalition opposition party.

Advance Australia, and the U.S-controlled Atlas Network are powerful and well-funded groups dedicated to molding public opinion on behalf of wealthy right-wing groups. They did a fine job in 2023 of destroying Australian support for the 2023 Australian referendum on the indigenous Voice to Parliament.

I was expecting them to pretty much run riot in support of the Liberal Coalition’s plan for a nuclear Australia. That does not seem to have happened. Why not?

Advance “kicked off with outright lies“, but has been rather quiet lately. And the Atlas Network is nowhere in sight, although its modus operandi is secretive anyway, spreading simplistic memes.

My conclusion is that Peter Dutton’s Liberal Coalition campaign is so inept, so incompetent, that it has turned out to be counter-productive to the party’s cause. There’s just so much evidence of this ineptitude – particularly when it comes to the estimated costs of setting up seven nuclear power plants around Australia. The latest of many examinations of these costs is – “Coalition’s nuclear gambit will cost Australia trillions – and permanently gut its industry.” Half-baked plans to keep old coal-power plants running for many years until nuclear is “ready”, no mention of plans for waste disposal, – the tax-payer to cop the whole cost. Even a suave sales magician like Ted O’Brien has not been able to con the Australian public. The party’s incompetence is on show in other ways, too, unconnected to the nuclear issue.

But what of Labor? They have been remarkably quiet on the nuclear issue – focussing on their own rather ha[f-baked plans for housing. It’s all cost-of-living issues – and I don’t deny that this is important. But nuclear rarely gets a mention – except when Labor finds it useful to mention the costs.

It doesn’t look as if Peter Dutton’s Liberal Coalition has a hope in hell of getting a majority win for its nuclear platform.

But does the nuclear lobby really care? I’m afraid not. You see, the Labor Party, supposedly opposed to the nuclear industry, has a long tradition of caving in on nuclear issues. From 1982 – a weak, supposed “no new uranium mines” policy became a “three mines uranium policy” 1984 then a pathetic “no new mines policy” in the 1990s. Backing for South Australia’s uranium mines further weakened Labor anti-nuclear policy.

Over decades, Labor luminary Gareth Evans has been acclaimed for his supposed stance against nuclear weapons. But he’s done a disservice to the nuclear-free movement, in his long-standing position in favour of “the contribution that can be made by nuclear energy capable of providing huge amounts of energy, and just as clean as renewables in its climate impact”. Evans has always been close to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in his complacency that nuclear power has nothing to do with nuclear weapons!

Labor has always been officially opposed to nuclear power, but at the Federal level, and some State levels, there have always been significant Ministers like Bob Hawke, and Martin Ferguson, who pushed for the nuclear industry. To his credit, Anthony Albanese for a long time held out against the nuclear industry. Even up until 2024, he was still trying .

But the crunch had already come – Albanese on Thursday, 16th September 2021 – “We accept that this technology [nuclear-powered submarines ] is now the best option for Australia’s capability.”

Why did Albanese agree to this deal, arranged between the Morrison Liberal government, and the USA and UK? Apparently, he did so, after just a two-hour briefing, with no documents provided, on the previous day. Labor Caucus was presented with it as a fait accompli. No vote was taken.

I can only conclude that Albanese’s decision was based on that time-honored fear of Labor looking “weak on security”.

In one fell swoop, Labor’s anti-nuclear policy was wrecked. The nuclear submarines will mean nuclear reactors on Australia’s coast. The will mean nuclear waste disposal in Australia, including foreign nuclear waste from the second-hand submarines. They will surely eventually mean nuclear weapons, as who can really tell if a nuclear-powered submarines has or has not got nuclear weapons? (The Chinese will be very wary about them.)

Since 2021, Australia’s nuclear submarine arrangement has been largely in the hands of Defence Minister Richard Marles, who worked with that dodgy company PWC to set it up, and who is a committed supporter of Australia’s solidarity with the USA.

March 2023 – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak  unveiled the path to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

“In 2024, Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, made undisclosed “political commitments” with its AUKUS partners in an agreement for the transfer of naval nuclear technology to Australia, sparking concerns about the potential for high-level radioactive waste to be stored in the country. “

The global nuclear lobby works across national boundaries to promote its industry. It does well with Russia – as government clamp-down on dissent makes it easier to expand the industry in all its forms, and to market nuclear power to Asian ana African countries.

The nuclear industry is well aware of the problems in maintaining the belief that nuclear is clean, cheap, and climate friendly. But above all, it’s the nuclear-waste problem that its most expensive and difficult obstacle. Here’s where Australia has always looked appealing. All this nonsense about getting small nuclear reactors is just a distraction . The industry knows that small nuclear reactors are fraught with difficulties – too expensive, requiring too much security, public opposition at the local level, still needing too much water……… But to keep the global industry going, a nuclear-waste-welcoming country would be such a boost.

Well, it is early days, even for the prospect of those AUKUS nuclear submarines ever actually arriving. But in the meantime – the whole AUKUS thing has quietly introduced the Australian public to the idea that nuclear submarines are OK, and so are their wastes, and so are USA nuclear weapons based in Australia.

So, really, the Australian Labor Party has done a much better job of promoting the nuclear industry, than the fumbling Liberal Coalition could.

We are fortunate inn Australia to have proportional representation in our election. If you care about keeping Australia nuclear-free, you don’t have to vote for either of the big parties.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, Christina's notes, politics | Leave a comment

Before the Elephant’s Foot: True Story of Chernobyl’s Reactor Explorers | Chornobyl Uncharted Ep 22

What happened inside the Chernobyl Sarcophagus after 1986? Where was the missing nuclear fuel? And who were the first people to go in? In this episode of Chornobyl Uncharted, we reveal the untold story of the Soviet scientists and nuclear experts who became the first explorers of Reactor 4 — after the explosion, after the fires, and after the construction of the Shelter. Led by the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, these early missions faced deadly radiation, pitch darkness, and structural chaos. Using boreholes, detectors, periscopes, and even a robot built from a toy rover, they began the search for the melted nuclear core — and unknowingly discovered what would later be known as the Elephant’s Foot.

But, that was just the beginning. With newly translated reports from Oleksandr Borovoi and Volodymyr Shykalov, we follow their first steps into the ruins of Unit IV, the surprising data they uncovered, and the moment they realized: the reactor shaft was nearly empty. This is the true story of the people who dared to enter the Sarcophagus first — and what they found inside.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

China, Russia may build nuclear plant on moon to power lunar station, official says

By Eduardo Baptista, April 24, 2025,
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-led-lunar-base-include-nuclear-power-plant-moons-surface-space-official-2025-04-23/

  • Summary
  • China and Russia plan nuclear reactor for lunar base by 2035
  • China and Russia-led ILRS aims to rival NASA’s Artemis program
  • China-Russia cooperation strengthened by tensions with West

SHANGHAI, April 23 (Reuters) – China is considering building a nuclear plant on the moon to power the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) it is planning with Russia, a presentation by a senior official showed on Wednesday.

China aims to become a major space power and land astronauts on the moon by 2030, and its planned Chang’e-8 mission for 2028 would lay the groundwork for constructing a permanent, manned lunar base.

In a presentation in Shanghai, the 2028 mission’s Chief Engineer Pei Zhaoyu showed that the lunar base’s energy supply could also depend on large-scale solar arrays, and pipelines and cables for heating and electricity built on the moon’s surface.

Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said last year it planned to build a nuclear reactor on the moon’s surface with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) by 2035 to power the ILRS.

The inclusion of the nuclear power unit in a Chinese space official’s presentation at a conference for officials from the 17 countries and international organisations that make up the ILRS suggests Beijing supports the idea, although it has never formally announced it.

“An important question for the ILRS is power supply, and in this Russia has a natural advantage, when it comes to nuclear power plants, especially sending them into space, it leads the world, it is ahead of the United States,” Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.

After little progress on talks over a space-based reactor in the past, “I hope this time both countries can send a nuclear reactor to the moon,” Wu said.

China’s timeline to build an outpost on the moon’s south pole coincides with NASA’s more ambitious and advanced Artemis programme, which aims to put U.S. astronauts back on the lunar surface in December 2025.

Wu said last year that a “basic model” of the ILRS, with the Moon’s south pole as its core, would be built by 2035.

In the future, China will create the “555 Project,” inviting 50 countries, 500 international scientific research institutions, and 5,000 overseas researchers to join the ILRS.

Researchers from Roscosmos also presented at the conference in Shanghai, sharing details about plans to look for mineral and water resources, including possibly using lunar material as fuel.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Russia, space travel | Leave a comment

They didn’t know their backyard creek carried nuclear waste. Now, they’re dying of cancer.

By Skyler Henry, Cait Bladt, https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/coldwater-creek-st-louis-missouri-nuclear-waste-manhattan-project/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJ5WlNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE3b0JDR3JZZ0xqRkNqVU1oAR6r1OHnTIbzQszYmq5UdxWm2CDEhfSw2CBAqIbrvNc_QJ0mnVpSMlz18FoZ6A_aem_HBiqzbUxMZqObYI2gfOYx April 24, 2025 

This story is part one of a two-part series that examines the effects of nuclear waste contamination in Coldwater Creek on the surrounding community in St. Louis, Missouri. Part two aired Wednesday, April 23 on “CBS Evening News.”

When Linda Morice and her family first moved to St. Louis in 1957, they had no idea they had anything to fear. Then, people started getting sick.

“It was a slow, insidious process,” Morice said.

After the death of Morice’s mother, her physician uncle took her aside and gave her a stark warning: “Linda, I don’t believe St. Louis is a very healthy place to live. Everyone on this street has a tumor.”

Their neighborhood was bordered by Coldwater Creek, a 19-mile tributary of the Missouri River It wound through their backyards, near baseball fields, schools and cemeteries — and past lots where leaking barrels and open-air dumps of nuclear waste leeched into its waters.

“It was shocking that this creek was likely making people sick,” Morice said.

Starting in 1942, roughly one ton of pure uranium was produced per day in downtown St. Louis. It was then shipped to labs across the country for the top secret Manhattan Project that created the first nuclear bomb.

The leftover waste was dumped around the city. 

“That material was in 82 different spots throughout St. Louis County. It spilled. Children played in it. It seemed to me that there wasn’t an attempt to absolutely get to the bottom of it,” Morice said.

In Morice’s family alone, her mother, father and brother died of cancer, leaving her to think differently about her childhood.

“All that time, all those fun things were happening, but that whole time we, and the rest of the community were being exposed to some pretty dangerous stuff,” Morice said.

Now her husband, who also lived in the area, is fighting cancer. He’s being treated by urologic oncologist Dr. Gautum Agarwal. For the last several years, Agarwal has been tracking which of his patients lived near Coldwater Creek.

“I was seeing patients who are young, who had developed pretty significant cancers from areas that there’s been some contamination with nuclear waste,” Agarwal said.

While radiation is known to cause cancer, experts say they can’t pin down the specific cause of the disease in a given patient.

But a 2019 study from the Department of Health and Human Services found that people who lived and played near Coldwater Creek from the 1960s to 1990s “could be at an increased risk of developing lung cancer, bone cancer or leukemia.”

“The people there deserve for us to look at this much closer than we have,” Agarwal said.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | health, USA | 1 Comment

Chernobyl’s shadow highlights Australia’s potential nuclear risks

April 26, 2025

April 26, 2025, Don’t Nuke the Climate

On 26 April 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded, spewing uncontrolled radiation across Europe and beyond.

Chernobyl caused massive human, environmental and economic impacts. The ongoing clean-up is set to continue for another four decades, with parts of the exclusion zone likely to remain uninhabitable for many hundreds of years.

Against the shadow of Chernobyl, Peter Dutton’s proposal to build nuclear power plants at seven sites around the country could put up to 200,000 Australians in direct danger.

Advocacy group Don’t Nuke the Climate has produced an online resource based on real world data from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. This detail has been transposed to Australia to help people understand the extent of nuclear contamination from a potential reactor accident.

The maps at www.nuclearplume.au show how far radioactive fallout from a Fukushima-sized accident would spread under different wind conditions from the seven sites identified for nuclear reactor by the federal Coalition. They highlight how a nuclear accident at one of the proposed reactor sites would affect nearby communities, including schools and hospitals.

Don’t Nuke the Climate is sharing this research to assist with evidence-based decision making that reduces nuclear risks and prioritises environmental responsibility and a safe future ahead of the coming federal election.

Dave Sweeney – Nuclear analyst, Australian Conservation Foundation says:

‘Australia should heed the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima and keep the door shut on domestic nuclear power. Nuclear isn’t just dangerous, it’s an irresponsible distraction from real climate action that makes no economic or environmental sense in Australia.’

‘Instead of the threat of radiation blowing in the wind we should be using the wind to generate clean electricity. Australia’s energy future is renewable, not radioactive.’

Dr Jim Green – Nuclear campaigner, Friends of the Earth Australia says:

‘Emergency Leaders for Climate Action recently warned that nuclear reactors would introduce significant and unnecessary risk to Australian communities and emergency responders, including firefighters already stretched by escalating climate fuelled disasters.’

‘The Coalitions nuclear push is risky and reckless. It is a high cost, high risk thought bubble, not a credible national energy policy.’

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament will be shining a spotlight on theBritish government’s ongoing cover-up of plans for a US nuclear weapons deployment to Britain.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament will be shining a spotlight on the British government’s ongoing cover-up of plans for a US nuclear weapons deployment to Britain, during a blockade of the main gate of RAF Lakenheath on Saturday, 26 April.
 
Campaigners will be joined by ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘Keir Starmer’ along with replicas of the B61-12 guided nuclear bomb. CND activists are coming from across the country to take part in the blockade of the main gate of the base from 12 noon. 
 
•    Saturday, 26 April
•    Blockade starts at 12 noon 
•    RAF Lakenheath Gate 1, Brandon Road, Suffolk, IP27 9PN
 The blockade takes place on the final day of the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace* peace camp, which has seen a continuous presence of campaigners outside the main gate of the base since 14 April, as well as events highlighting Lakenheath’s role in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the role of the military in climate breakdown, and NATO’s nuclear network in Europe.
 
The blockade comes as CND’s lawyers forced the Ministry of Defence to declassify a significant nationwide exemption certificate, issued in March 2021 by former Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, on the grounds of ‘national security’. The document shockingly exempts US Visiting Forces from adhering to British nuclear safety regulations at its bases across Britain, which includes RAF Lakenheath. 
 
CND is calling on PM Keir Starmer to come clean about this cover-up and to publicly announce that US nuclear weapons will not be deployed to Britain. 

CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said:
 
“Trump’s reckless ‘America First’ agenda is increasing international tensions every day.  Siting US nuclear bombs in Britain will put us on the frontline of any military confrontation. The British government needs to step back from its so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US and refuse to host these deadly bombs.  The US has poured millions of dollars into upgrading the base in preparation for siting new nuclear bombs. Yet the government refuses to come clean. 
 
“RAF Lakenheath has a history of near nuclear accidents which were covered up for decades. The best way to protect people in East Anglia and across the country is to not have nuclear weapons in the first place. With nuclear dangers on the rise, the presence of US nuclear weapons in Britain makes us a target in the event of a nuclear war – with catastrophic consequences. Any accidents involving a nuclear weapon would have a devastating environmental and humanitarian impact which no amount of drilling could prepare us for. CND is calling on everyone who is concerned about this to join us at the blockade on RAF Lakenheath’s main gate this Saturday, 26 April.”
 

April 25, 2025 Posted by | Events, UK | Leave a comment

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