Sweden criticised over plan to build at least 10 new nuclear reactors
Environmental experts say proposals are too expensive and will come too late to meet energy needs
Miranda Bryant in Stockholm, Fri 11 Aug 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/sweden-criticised-over-plan-to-build-at-least-10-new-nuclear-reactors
Environmental experts have criticised the Swedish government’s plan to build at least 10 nuclear reactors in the next 20 years, more than doubling the current number, saying it will be too expensive and will come too late to meet energy needs.
The climate minister, Romina Pourmokhtari, announced on Wednesday that in order to meet its climate goals Sweden needed to double electricity production in the next two decades.
The plan for 10 new reactors would mark a dramatic change from the country’s current capacity for nuclear power, with six reactors in operation in Forsmark, Oskarshamn and Ringhals accounting for about 30% of its electricity production.
Lars J Nilsson, a professor at Lund University and a member of the European climate advisory board, said he disputed the government’s claim that the new reactors were needed and dismissed the move as “symbolic”.
“You cannot certainly say that we need 10 new reactors. Right now the expansion of electricity production in Sweden is through wind power,” he told the Guardian. “I don’t expect any new nuclear power in Sweden, unless the government provides quite far-reaching guarantees similar to what you have at Hinkley Point [in the UK].”
The move was more about posturing than action, he said, claiming the government wanted to show it was taking action on meeting its climate goals. “I see it more as symbolic than actually creating any real change.”
If the reactors were built the costs were likely to fall heavily on the Swedish taxpayer, said Nilsson. Having been a hotly debated issue in the past, this latest announcement had had a “lukewarm response”.
Sweden’s reputation as a green leader on the global stage was shifting, he said. “Sweden will partly lose that profile. Now the momentum and progressiveness is coming from the EU and Brussels.”
The EU’s Fit for 55 plan legally requires member states to reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and become “climate neutral” by 2050.
Sweden’s Moderates agreed when they formed a coalition government with the Christian Democrats, Liberals and the far-right Sweden Democrats that more reactors would be permitted and that investments in nuclear power would be made profitable through credit guarantees and changes to pricing.
This week was the first time the government had given an anticipated number of new reactors.skip past newsletter promotion
#3DNukeMissile on Hiroshima/Nagasaki Days: A reminder of increased nuclear threats And a call to the NPT Prep Com
Basel Peace Office, 11 Aug 23
On Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days this week (August 6 and 9) passers-by in the Vienna Central Square and diplomats at the United Nations in Vienna were confronted with an eerily realistic 3D artistic rendering of a nuclear missile.
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days occur this year amid heightened conflicts involving nuclear armed states in Europe, North East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East,” said Alyn Ware, Member of the World Future Council which created the #3DNukeMissile.
“A nuclear war could occur from escalation of one of these conflicts, miscalculation, accident or even intent. We call on the nuclear armed states to stand-down the nuclear forces by relinquishing first-use policies, affirming international law prohibiting the threat or use of nuclear weapons, commencing negotiations on comprehensive nuclear weapons abolition and committing to achieve the global elimination of nuclear weapons within a set timeframe.”
#3DNukeMissile and the NPT Prep Com
The #3DNukeMissile was displayed in Vienna as governments met at the United Nations (VIC) to discuss nuclear risk-reduction, nonproliferation and disarmament proposals in a two-week-long Preparatory Committee Meeting for the Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference (NPT Prep Com).
The interactive art display provides a symbolic opportunity for members of the public to ‘prevent’ a nuclear missile launch by holding or standing on the chains which are wrapped over the missile.
“The humanitarian and environmental impacts of our shared nuclear history, as well as potential threats, are a threat to our common security and the future of our youths,” said Michaela Higgins Sørensen, a team leader of the Youth Fusion global network which has brought youth perspectives and proposals into the NPT Review process and which co-organised the #3DNukeMissile display. “Now is the time to act and work across the board to ensure we take a human security approach in working towards a more sustainable and peaceful world for our future generations.”
The States Parties to the NPT recognized in 2010 that there would be “catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” and reaffirmed “the need for all states at all times to comply with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law.” In addition, the legal obligation to negotiate for – and achieve – the complete elimination of nuclear weapons has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice (in 1996) and the UN Human Rights Committee (in 2018).
The Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons submitted a working paper entitled Abolition NWC Reset: Frameworks for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World to the NPT Prep Com on August 2 outlining a choice of three possible frameworks which the nuclear armed and allied states could employ to implement these obligations and abolish nuclear weapons under strict and effective international verification and control.
Frameworks for a nuclear-weapon-free world
According toMs Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director of Western States Legal Foundation and Coordinating Committee Member of Abolition 2000, The nuclear armed and allied states could negotiate either:
- A nuclear weapons convention or package of agreements which provide a comprehensive framework for the elimination of nuclear weapons along with the necessary verification and compliance measures;
- A framework agreement which includes the legal commitment to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world, identifies the measures and pathways required in general terms, and provides a process for agreeing on details over time; or
- Protocols to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) or related instruments which nuclear armed and allied states would sign as part of a process for them to join the TPNW and build the nuclear destruction, elimination, verification and compliance process through the TPNW, particularly its Article 4.”
| View this email in your browser #3DNukeMissile on Hiroshima/Nagasaki Days: A reminder of increased nuclear threats And a call to the NPT Prep Com August 11, 2023On Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days this week (August 6 and 9) passers-by in the Vienna Central Square and diplomats at the United Nations in Vienna were confronted with an eerily realistic 3D artistic rendering of a nuclear missile.“Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days occur this year amid heightened conflicts involving nuclear armed states in Europe, North East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East,” said Alyn Ware, Member of the World Future Council which created the #3DNukeMissile.“A nuclear war could occur from escalation of one of these conflicts, miscalculation, accident or even intent. We call on the nuclear armed states to stand-down the nuclear forces by relinquishing first-use policies, affirming international law prohibiting the threat or use of nuclear weapons, commencing negotiations on comprehensive nuclear weapons abolition and committing to achieve the global elimination of nuclear weapons within a set timeframe.”  Austria Red Cross checking the missile for radiationto see if it is carrying a nuclear warhead in its cone.#3DNukeMissile and the NPT Prep Com The #3DNukeMissile was displayed in Vienna as governments met at the United Nations (VIC) to discuss nuclear risk-reduction, nonproliferation and disarmament proposals in a two-week-long Preparatory Committee Meeting for the Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference (NPT Prep Com).The interactive art display provides a symbolic opportunity for members of the public to ‘prevent’ a nuclear missile launch by holding or standing on the chains which are wrapped over the missile.“The humanitarian and environmental impacts of our shared nuclear history, as well as potential threats, are a threat to our common security and the future of our youths,” said Michaela Higgins Sørensen, a team leader of the Youth Fusion global network which has brought youth perspectives and proposals into the NPT Review process and which co-organised the #3DNukeMissile display. “Now is the time to act and work across the board to ensure we take a human security approach in working towards a more sustainable and peaceful world for our future generations.”The States Parties to the NPT recognized in 2010 that there would be “catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” and reaffirmed “the need for all states at all times to comply with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law.” In addition, the legal obligation to negotiate for – and achieve – the complete elimination of nuclear weapons has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice (in 1996) and the UN Human Rights Committee (in 2018).The Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons submitted a working paper entitled Abolition NWC Reset: Frameworks for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World to the NPT Prep Com on August 2 outlining a choice of three possible frameworks which the nuclear armed and allied states could employ to implement these obligations and abolish nuclear weapons under strict and effective international verification and control.  Jackie Cabasso, Coordinating Committee Member of Abolition 2000, speaking at the Hiroshima Day event at Stephensplatz, Vienna on August 6.Frameworks for a nuclear-weapon-free worldAccording toMs Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director of Western States Legal Foundation and Coordinating Committee Member of Abolition 2000, The nuclear armed and allied states could negotiate either:A nuclear weapons convention or package of agreements which provide a comprehensive framework for the elimination of nuclear weapons along with the necessary verification and compliance measures;A framework agreement which includes the legal commitment to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world, identifies the measures and pathways required in general terms, and provides a process for agreeing on details over time; orProtocols to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) or related instruments which nuclear armed and allied states would sign as part of a process for them to join the TPNW and build the nuclear destruction, elimination, verification and compliance process through the TPNW, particularly its Article 4.”“The nuclear-armed and nuclear sharing states should immediately affirm that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is not only inadmissible but also illegal under international humanitarian law and human rights law,’ said Mr Bill Kidd MSP, Co-President of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (PNND). “And they should commit to adopting a framework, package of agreements or comprehensive nuclear weapons convention by 2030, and to achieving its full implementation no later than 2045, the 75th anniversary of the NPT, 100th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations and the 100th anniversary of the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” concluded Mr Kidd. |
Welsh groups call on the National Eisteddfod to reject funding from USA nuclear and arms company Westinghouse
The National Eisteddfod receives sponsorship money for the Science Pavilion
from nuclear power and arms company Westinghouse from the United States.
Westinghouse recently announced that they are setting up an office at
M-Sparc, Gaerwen, Ynys Môn to develop nuclear decomissioning skills.
In 2017, Toshiba Westinghouse went bankrupt after having to abandon building
new nuclear reactors at the V.C.Summer site in South Carolina 40% into
construction.
Six directors were charged with financial fraud in the U.S.
Federal Court. The Westinghouse Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility on a
secretive corner of their site produce radioactive tritium gas. This
tritium is then sent to the Savannah River site in South Carolina where it
is prepared to be inserted in all U.S. nuclear weapons.
CADNO, CND Cymru, Cymdeithas y Cymod, Cymdeithas yr Iaith and PAWB calls on the National Eisteddfod to reject any sponsorship from Westinghouse in future
Eisteddfodau from Westinghouse due to their connection to terrifying arms
of mass destruction.
PAWB 10th Aug 2023
Hinkley Point C unrest continues as steel erectors down tools
An unofficial one-day stoppage of work took place yesterday, as the new
nuclear power station site Hinkley Point C continues to be embroiled in
labour disputes and unrest. Steel erectors working for contractor William
Hare downed tools in response to existing shift rotation patterns on the
site, wanting to change the current 11/3 and 10/4 rotation to a regular
10/4 arrangement. The unrest follows a spate of similar walkouts at Hinkley
Point C. On the supply side, 150 platers, welders and sheet metal workers
at Darchem Engineering in Stockton-Upon-Tees (a Hinkley Point C supplier)
secured a pay boost worth up to 13% after seven weeks of walk-out action.
PBC Today 9th Aug 2023
Ukrainian Minister Warns Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Plant ‘One Step Away’ From Blackout
Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko has appealed to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the loss of the main power
line supplying electricity to the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in
southern
Ukraine. Halushchenko said on Ukrainian television on August 10
that the nuclear plant is currently being supplied with power from a backup
line. “This is the only external power line left. And such a situation is
one step away from the blackout of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant —
that is, the final loss of external power supply,”
Halushchenko said. In
the event of a blackout, diesel generators would be connected to meet the
needs of the station, but they may be damaged by Russian shelling, which
would stop the cooling of the station and set off a nuclear meltdown,
Halushchenko said. Ukraine’s nuclear authority, Enerhoatom, warned earlier
on August 10 that the Russian-occupied nuclear plant is on the verge of a
blackout because power was cut from the main high-voltage line.
Radio Free Europe 10th Aug 2023
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-zaporizhzhya-nuclear-plant-risk-blackout/32541960.html
Biden to ask congress for an additional $13 billion for Ukraine – total aid given would soar to $113 billion
Lisa Mascaro Associated Press 11 Aug 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide more than $13 billion in emergency defense aid to Ukraine and an additional $8 billion for humanitarian support through the end of the year, another massive infusion of cash as the Russian invasion wears on and Ukraine pushes a counteroffensive against the Kremlin’s deeply entrenched forces…………………………
While the last such supplemental spending request from the White House for Ukraine funding was easily approved in 2022 despite reservations from Republicans, there’s a different dynamic this time.
A political divide on the issue has steadily grown, with the Republican-led House facing enormous pressure to demonstrate support for the party’s leader, Donald Trump, who has been very skeptical of the war. And American support for the effort has been slowly softening………………………………..
the price tag of $40 billion may be too much for Republicans who are fighting to slash, not raise, federal outlays. As a supplemental request, the package the White House is sending to Congress falls outside the budget caps both parties agreed to as part of the debt ceiling showdown earlier this year………………………………………………….
President Joe Biden and his senior national security team have repeatedly said the United States will help Ukraine “as long as it takes” to oust Russia from its borders. Privately, administration officials have warned Ukrainian officials that there is a limit to the patience of a narrowly divided Congress — and American public — for the costs of a war with no clear end. https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-invasion-biden-congress-funding-d392f9b1adbb9c44249dce1cccdc2d1e—
United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) held a public youth pitch event “‘Peace & XX’ Ideation – Nuclear Disarmament and Sustainable Futures”
Mirage News, 11 Aug 23
United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) held a public youth pitch event “‘Peace & XX’ Ideation – Nuclear Disarmament and Sustainable Futures” in Hiroshima.
.39 youth living in Japan held discussions on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and a sustainable future and select teams presented their ideas to expert panellists for their feedback.
Expert panelists congratulated all participants for the fruitful discussions and presentations and for taking the first step to realizing a sustainable future and stressed the importance of youth to continue to act and to disseminate messages to realize their ideal and sustainable future.
11 August 2023, Hiroshima, Japan – On 6 August 2023, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) held a public youth pitch event “‘Peace & XX’ Ideation – Nuclear Disarmament and Sustainable Futures” at Eikei University in Hiroshima. Youth living in presented their ideas in groups on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation for a sustainable future based on given sustainable development goals (SDGs) to expert panellists for their feedback.
The panellists were Ms Izumi NAKAMITSU, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Mr Hidehiko YUZAKI, Governor of Hiroshima Prefectural Government and President of Hiroshima for Global Peace, and Ms Mihoko KUMAMOTO, Director of the UNITAR Division for Prosperity and Hiroshima Office. Mr. Kenta SUMIOKA, Vice-Chair of Peace Culture Village supported as the facilitator of the event and Ms. Kumiko MORIMOTO, freelance announcer as the emcee.
The final presentations were live-streamed in English and Japanese for youth around the world………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
About UNITAR
The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is a dedicated training arm of the United Nations. In 2021, UNITAR trained 370,139 learners around the world to support their actions for a better future. In addition to our headquarters in Geneva, we have offices in Hiroshima, New York and Bonn and networks around the world……………. https://www.miragenews.com/unitar-hosts-peace-xx-youth-pitch-on-nuclear-1064342/
TVA should focus on a better grid and renewable, not nuclear, energy
Tennessean, Ita Hardesty-Mason, 11 Aug 23
Nuclear energy is a fool’s folly and a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, the lobby around the Tennessee Valley Authority’s nuclear options is strong. It must be noted that Jeff Lyash, president and CEO of TVA, who wrote the guest column “How Tennessee Valley Authority is planning for growth and meeting future demands,” is also the chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute. I am not so sure TVA has the best interests of its customers in mind.
Several experts and foundations have investigated this form of energy. Massive nuclear plants are costly, and a recent Fortune magazine article stated that since 2000 “at least $50 billion has been spent on a frantic effort to create a new Golden Age for nuclear energy in the U.S.” Nuclear energy will cost more per kilowatt hours than the renewable energy options like solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower.
The money wasted on these dangerous sites could be more wisely used by TVA to take the steps towards the switch to safe, sustainable forms of energy and a better energy grid.
………………. Nuclear power is not making us safe. It demands perfect conditions, and its problems can be exponentially harmful.
It must be asked if TVA, several elected representatives, and Gov. Bill Lee are being influenced by the fossil fuel and nuclear lobby.
It’s important that we all understand we must move away from fossil fuels and avoid nuclear energy.
We must see the sustainable options being deployed. Investment in and implementation of clean and safe energy is well underway. Renewable energy focus right now will satisfy our energy needs much quicker than nuclear power.
We need help understanding we can turn to solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal-generated energy and that we must make the switch to clean, sustainable energy as soon as possible.
Why in the world would TVA put us at such risk?
https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/contributors/2023/08/11/opinion-tva-should-focus-on-shift-to-renewable-not-nuclear-energy/70532888007/
TODAY: The Australian Labor Party embraces militarism- has it lost its soul?
Yes, I’m afraid so. Even when I left the Australian Labor Party in 1984, as then Prime Minister Bob Hawke compromised with the nuclear industry, I still had hope for Australia’s party that represented the workers and the ordinary people.
Not any more. What a huge disappointment is Anthony Albanese. Once he seemed to be a champion for the workers, and for peace, and for a nuclear-free Australia. Now he is Joe Biden’s best friend, and leading Australia into militarism with more fervour even than the Liberals and Nationals.
A glimmer of hope. Labor Against War – a newly formed body within the ALP will be pushing for an end to AUKUS, AUSMIN and the whole war-mongering madness. And they’re not a bunch of extremists – they represent some of the brightest minds and most respected people in the ALP, as well as some powerful trade unions and anti-nuclear activists in many ALP branches.
Labor Against War is not going away . The corporate media today is proclaiming their unimportance – “AUKUS is safe – the coming ALP National Conference will not be troubled by such movement”
Well, we will see. No wonder that so many disenchanted Labor voters have moved to the Greens, as I did. But even within Labor, we still have like-minded people who oppose the suicidal lunacy that is AUKUS.
US/France Threaten Intervention in Resource-Rich Niger: Fears of War in West Africa
SCHEERPOST, August 8, 2023, By Ben Norton / Geopolitical Economy Report
The US and France have threatened foreign intervention to re-install a pro-Western regime in Niger.
The US and France have threatened intervention to re-install a pro-Western regime in Niger, which produces uranium needed for nuclear energy, has untapped oil reserves, and hosts strategic US drone bases and French troops. This follows coups led by nationalist, anti-colonial military officers in West Africa.
Niger is a major producer of gold and uranium, the latter of which is needed for European nuclear energy. The country has significant oil reserves to which foreign corporations have wanted access. It also hosts large US drone bases.
These Western threats follow coups led by nationalist, anti-colonial military officers in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, whose governments have warned that intervention would be considered an act of war, and could thus set off a regional conflict.
West Africa is rich in natural resources. It is also very strategic for the United States and France.
Almost all of West Africa was colonized by France, which committed brutal atrocities in the region.
Still today, France maintains neocolonial policies, effectively controlling West African economies by forcing them to use the CFA franc as their national currency.
Senegalese development economist Ndongo Samba Sylla described the CFA franc as “a colonial currency, born of France’s need to foster economic integration among the colonies under its administration, and thus control their resources, economic structures and political systems”.
Paris dictates the monetary policies and even holds much of the foreign exchange reserves of numerous West African nations, including Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali.
The CFA franc is a “a barrier to industrialisation and structural transformation” in these countries, explained Sylla, who characterized it as a “neocolonial device that continues to destroy any prospect of economic development in user nations”.
The United States has one of its largest and most important drone bases in Niger: the Air Base 201, which cost $110 million to build, and an additional $20-30 million per year to maintain – in one of the poorest countries on Earth.
Niger is geostrategically important for the Pentagon’s Africa strategy. It is located in the middle of the Sahel, a region with a lot of US and French military activity, where thousands of troops are stationed on a regular basis.
Washington uses its drone bases in Niger, in the heart of the Sahel, to project military dominance in North and West Africa, in coordination with the forces that US Africa Command, or AFRICOM, has deployed across the continent.
If Washington loses its ally in Niger, the new nationalist military government may try to close the foreign military bases and kick out the roughly 1000 US soldiers in the country.
Niger’s historically subordinate relationship with the Western powers has not brought the Nigerien people any prosperity.
The country is a major producer of gold, but more than 40% of Nigeriens live in extreme poverty.
Niger is also one of the world’s largest producers of uranium. This radioactive material is crucial for nuclear energy in Europe, especially in France, where roughly one-third of electricity comes from nuclear power.
Less known is that Niger also has sizeable oil reserves………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Soon after the coup in Niger, there were similar reports that the nationalist military government decided to block exports of uranium and gold to the West.
The prospect of a foreign military intervention in Niger and potentially other West African nations is truly on the table. It is by no means an empty threat…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Anti-colonial nationalists rise to power in West Africa
Some of the nationalist military leaders who have taken power in West Africa are invoking the historical legacy of anti-colonial movements………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Threats of intervention in West Africa
The leaders of the new government in Niger publicly warned that France is plotting military intervention.
Paris is looking “for ways and means to intervene militarily in Niger”, the authorities said, stating that French officials met with the chief of staff of Niger’s national guard “to obtain the necessary political and military authorisation”, The Guardian reported.
The British newspaper described Niger’s toppled president, Bazoum, as “an ally of western powers”.
Along with Paris, the US State Department is actively coordinating with Bazoum and plotting to put its ally back in power.
To give supposed “multilateral” cover to their plans for intervention, the US and France have been working closely with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Reuters reported that ECOWAS and “West African defence chiefs have drawn up a plan for military action if Niger’s coup is not overturned”.
The UK-based news outlet emphasized, “Given its uranium and oil riches and pivotal role in the war with Islamist rebels in the Sahel region, Niger has strategic significance for the United States, China, Europe and Russia”.
ECOWAS imposed sanctions on Niger, and the country’s southern neighbor Nigeria has begun establishing a de facto blockade……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Niger is a leading producer of uranium, needed for European nuclear energy
One of the principal economic interests that Western powers have in Niger is its uranium.
The anti-poverty organization Oxfam published a report in 2013 detailing how France was making a killing profiting off of the uranium in Niger, which is one of the poorest countries in the world.
The people of Niger, who are known as Nigeriens (not to be confused with Nigerians from Nigeria), have seen almost no benefits from this uranium extraction.
Oxfam cited a Nigerien activist who noted, “In France, one out of every three light bulbs is lit thanks to Nigerien uranium. In Niger, nearly 90% of the population has no access to electricity. This situation cannot continue”.
“It is incomprehensible that Niger, the world’s fourth-largest uranium producer and a strategic supplier for Areva and France, is not taking advantage of the revenue from this extraction and remains one of the poorest countries on the planet”, an Oxfam researcher added.
……………………………………………………………………………………. Since the coup in Niger, both France and EU leadership have insisted they will not be affected, stating that they have enough uranium in their reserves to last a few years.
But if the nationalist government remains in power in Niger and abides by its alleged pledge to cut off uranium exports, Europe could face economic consequences.
This also comes at a complicated moment for Europe, which has pledged to boycott Russian oil exports and reduce imports of Russian gas………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Niger hosts strategic US military bases
In addition to foreign economic designs on West Africa, the US military has a massive footprint on the region – particularly in Niger, where it operates multiple bases.
A 2019 report in PBS noted an increasing US military presence in Africa, revealing that the Pentagon had nearly 800 personnel stationed in Niger. (That figure later rose to roughly 1000.)………………………………………………………………..
General Thomas Waldhauser, the commander of US military forces in Africa, described Niger’s pro-Western government as “a good partner in a very, very bad neighborhood”.
PBS indicated that the US military was creating a base in Agadez, Niger, which “will be the largest installation Air Force personnel have ever built”.
“The U.S. has been operating drone missions out of another base in Niger’s capital since 2013”, the media outlet wrote, adding, “The CIA is also believed to be using another drone base in Northeastern Niger”.
Investigative journalist Nick Turse, reporting in 2023, described this US facility in Niger, Air Base 201, as “the linchpin of the U.S. military’s archipelago of bases in North and West Africa and a key part of America’s wide-ranging intelligence, surveillance, and security efforts in the region”……………………………
What is striking is the neocolonial symbolism of the United States maintaining these high-tech military facilities worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Niger, one of the poorest countries on Earth, where the majority of the population doesn’t even have access to electricity.
Before the July 2023 coup, Washington saw the Nigerien government as a key ally in its attempt to isolate China and Russia.
Antony Blinken took a historic trip to Niger in March, in the first-ever visit by a US secretary of state………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Washington sees the continent as highly strategic in its new cold war against China and Russia.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..The nationalist governments in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali are very unstable, and the threat of Western-sponsored military intervention could destabilize the countries, fueling more coups, and potentially setting off a regional war.
The transparent goal of the United States and France is to re-impose political control over the region, to exploit its plentiful natural resources and geostrategic location…………. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/08/us-france-threaten-intervention-in-resource-rich-niger-fears-of-war-in-west-africa/
The blockbuster movie ‘Oppenheimer’ leaves out the real story’s main characters: New Mexicans
The terrible emptiness of “Oppenheimer” Searchlight New Mexico, by Alicia Inez Guzmán, August 8, 2023
Bernice Gutierrez was eight days old when a light 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun cracked open the predawn sky. No one in south-central New Mexico knew where it came from, or that the tiniest units of matter could be split to unleash such energy. Nor could they know that when the cloud that followed bloomed some 50,000 feet into the sky, it was surrounded for the briefest of seconds by a blue halo, the “glow of ionized air,” as the Manhattan Project physicist Otto Frisch described it.
The impacts of that unholy halo were all too apparent in the years after, when her great-grandfather died of stomach cancer. One person after another would receive their own wrenching cancer diagnoses — 41 people in her immediate family, spanning five generations. Every one of them had lived in the Tularosa Basin and within 50 miles of the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb, nicknamed “Gadget,” was detonated on the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert.
Gutierrez was one of a group of downwinders, including Mary Martinez White and Tina Cordova, cofounder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, who watched the movie “Oppenheimer” together when it opened. In one scene after another, New Mexico’s landscapes unfurled — all painfully beautiful and all, it appeared, empty and unpeopled.
In New Mexico, we have lived in the blind spot of a national narrative for eight decades, repeated once again in this box office hit. Over its exhaustive three-hour run-time, it managed to avoid mentioning what we here have been sharing with loved ones at kitchen tables for decades: the violent evictions that took place on the Pajarito Plateau to build Los Alamos, the Pueblo and Hispanic men and women who did essential work for the Manhattan Project, or the thousands of New Mexicans affected to this day by the Trinity test.
To watch J. Robert Oppenheimer’s character instead create and destroy in the state’s big, beautiful and ostensibly barren lands is to deny the presence of so many people whose lives were indelibly transformed by the dawn of the atomic era and continue to be shaped by the juggernaut that is today’s nuclear industrial complex.
Oppenheimer, the son of a wealthy businessman, had come here as part of a cultural moment. He hiked, rode horses and camped. He stayed at a dude ranch in Pecos. He fell in love with and then changed New Mexico forever.
“I am responsible for ruining a beautiful place,” he would later confess.
The film, Gutierrez said, skipped blithely over the ruin. “They leave out the fact that in those isolated areas lived ranchers whose lands they took away and who were never compensated for it.”
The blast was so hot it liquified sand and pieces of the bomb into hunks of green glass. Lead-lined tanks were dispatched to take soil samples at ground zero as fallout cascaded across 46 states. Ash fell from the sky like snow for days afterward, contaminating cisterns, acequias, crops, livestock, clothing and people. At the time of the detonation, 13,000 people lived within a 50-mile radius.
‘Love-struck’ with the beauty
Oppenheimer initially arrived in New Mexico among a wave of smitten travelers. Artists, writers, dancers, anthropologists, museum boosters, health seekers and at least one psychoanalyst (Carl Jung), all had come as well-to-do tourists in search of the ineffable — landscapes, light, exotic cultures, “a patch of America that didn’t feel American,” in the words of writer Rachel Syme.
Long before he became the father of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer was “love-struck” with the stark beauty of New Mexico, as Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin wrote in “American Prometheus,” the biography upon which the movie is based. He would later lease and then buy a home in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with his brother, Frank. Like so many others, he’d been mesmerized by the West.
New Mexico and the Southwest had long been lodged in America’s psyche. Landscape painting and photography pictured this new and alien frontier to incoming settlers and tourists as early as 1848, the year the United States annexed the region from Mexico. The art forms ended up serving the nation’s gospel, Manifest Destiny, by portraying “uninhabited” landscapes open to settlement. At the same time, U.S. forces brutally removed Indigenous peoples and others of mixed descent from their ancestral lands.
That aesthetic was at work in “Oppenheimer,” a movie that not only played up the romance of the landscape but also made it appear that the atomic bomb test only affected an elite group of scientists watching raptly in cars and bunkers.
“That’s the thing about the white supremacist imagination, right? They create alternate realities for our lives and communities and we have to live with the consequences,” said Mia Montoya Hammersley, an environmental attorney and member of the Piro-Manso-Tiwa tribe whose ancestry includes the earliest stewards of the Tularosa Basin, where the first bomb was detonated.
“This narrative that New Mexico is this empty barren place, people still really buy into that and believe it.”………………………………………………………………………………………………
There is nothing to suggest during any of that storytelling that New Mexico was essentially poisoned, its residents never warned, evacuated or educated about the health hazards of the July 16, 1945 Trinity test.
“It was,” as artist Medina put it, “a great act of desecration.”
Some geologists propose that this moment marks the start of a new epoch of geologic time, the Anthropocene. In New Mexico, it marks a new epoch of our own — when we became a nuclear colony. We are the only “cradle-to-grave” state in the nation, home to uranium mining, nuclear weapon manufacturing and waste storage. Two of the nation’s three weapons labs — Los Alamos and Sandia — are located here, and some 2,500 warheads are buried in an underground munitions complex spitting distance from the Albuquerque Sunport.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is currently undergoing a multi-billion-dollar expansion to create plutonium pits on an industrial scale — the “new Manhattan Project,” as Ted Wyka, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s field office manager, recently said in an aside before a media tour. Wyka told me he imagined himself in the role of Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project; LANL’s current director Thomas Mason was his Oppenheimer, he said.
The film gestures obliquely toward a future world irrevocably changed by the spectacle of nuclear military might. That future — our present — is now a global arms race. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
in the film, there are only two references to Indigenous peoples. In the first, Oppenheimer is selecting the Pajarito Plateau for the Manhattan Project. The second arrives after the U.S. decimates Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A scene in the oval office shows a crass Harry Truman asking Oppenheimer what to do with the site now that the bombs have been dropped.
Oppenheimer’s response? “Give it back to the Indians.”
Instead, the nuclear arms race was born……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
What remains is a persistent belief that the creation of atomic weapons ended World War II and made for “one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time,” as a plaque near the Santa Fe Plaza reads…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Gutierrez, White and Cordova, all three on the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium’s steering committee, left the film no less resolved. Days after seeing the movie, Gutierrez was back at work, researching all the infants that died the summer of the Trinity test. Cordova was busy writing about the movie and pushing for compensation for New Mexico’s downwinders, her mission for the past 18 years. And White had helped organize a photography exhibition in Las Cruces on the legacy of Trinity from a local perspective.
The movie’s over, but the battle goes on.
Antarctica could become ‘global radiator’ if ice loss continues at the current rate .
UK homes could be at risk of flooding if Antarctica becomes ‘global
radiator’ and ice melts. Scientists have warned that the Antarctic could
start to absorb solar heat rather than reflect it if ice loss continues at
the current rate, further accelerating global warming. Antarctica is at
risk of becoming a “global radiator”, with the current rate of ice loss
at the upper bounds of previous forecasts, scientists have warned. The
southern continent currently acts to cool the global climate by reflecting
large amounts of solar radiation with its pure white surface. The melting
of ice, and loss of that surface, means it could begin to absorb heat
instead. Melting ice also means that 16 million more people, including in
the UK, could be exposed to flooding every year. The warning came alongside
the publication of a major synthesis paper pulling together Antarctic
scientific research from the last several years to paint a continent-wide
picture.
iNews 8th Aug 2023
Times 8th Aug 2023
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/antarctica-global-warming-climate-change-effects-2023-6m7fstwmd
‘Virtually certain’ extreme Antarctic events will get worse without drastic action, scientists warn
It is “virtually certain” that future extreme events in Antarctica
will be worse than the extraordinary changes already observed, according to
a new scientific warning that stresses the case for immediate and drastic
action to limit global heating.
A new review draws together evidence on the
vulnerability of Antarctic systems, highlighting recent extremes such as
record low sea ice levels, the collapse of ice shelves, and surface
temperatures up to 38.5C above average over East Antarctica in 2022 – the
world’s largest ever recorded heatwave.
Guardian 8th Aug 2023
Nippon Life bans investments in nuclear arms firms, tobacco companies
The company’s ESG investment list already excludes cluster munitions and landmine manufacturers and coal power programs.
By Kenneth Araullo, Aug 10, 2023
https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/asia/news/life-insurance/nippon-life-bans-investments-in-nuclear-arms-firms-tobacco-companies-455734.aspx
Nippon Life, Japan’s largest life insurer, will not invest in nuclear weapons manufacturers as part of its new environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policy.
In addition to nuclear arms, tobacco-related companies – a first for a major insurer in the country – and palm-oil related businesses are also off its investment list. Nippon Life’s exclusion list already includes manufacturers of inhumane weapons like cluster munitions and landmines, in addition to coal-fired power generation programs.
With this change, Nippon Life is affirming its commitment to nuclear disarmament and abolition, an idea that is beginning to see huge strides ever since the G7 leaders’ “Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament.” According to The Mainichi, Nippon Life decided that it should “clarify a corporate policy of not investing in or financing nuclear weapons manufacturers, based on the mission of the life insurance business and its public nature.”
In addition to Nippon Life, Dai-ichi Life already bans investments or loans to nuclear arms firms; this makes two of the largest insurers in the country now following the same ESG policy regarding such weapons.
Elsewhere, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has started its probe into four nonlife insurers which were alleged to have taken part in price fixing activities.
Small nuclear Reactor (SMR) Stock Analysis Overview
Investors Observer 10 Aug 23
What this means: InvestorsObserver gives Nuscale Power Corp (SMR) an overall rank of 40, which is below average. Nuscale Power Corp is in the bottom half of stocks based on the fundamental outlook for the stock and an analysis of the stock’s chart. A rank of 40 means that 60% of stocks appear more favorable to our system………. https://www.investorsobserver.com/symbols/smr—
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