SCOTT RITTER: NATO Summit, a Theater of the Absurd
The scope and scale of the Ukrainian military defeat is such that the focus of many NATO members appears to be shifting from the unrealistic goal of strategically defeating Russia to a more realistic objective of bringing about a cessation to the conflict that preserves Ukraine as a viable nation state.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend the NATO summit. However, his demands for NATO membership will not be met.
Normalizing failure might best describe the best that NATO can accomplish in Vilnius.
By Scott Ritter, Consortium News, July 10, 2023
The unfulfilled goals and objectives from last year’s meeting in Madrid loom over the Atlantic military alliance. When the membership meets in Vilnius this week, normalizing failure might best describe the most that can be accomplished.
The leaders of NATO’s 31 constituent member states have begun to assemble in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, for the alliance’s 33rd summit, an event that has come to symbolize the military organization’s increasingly difficult task of transforming political will into tangible reality.
Since the Wales Summit of 2014, when NATO made Russia a top priority in the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea, and the Warsaw Summit of 2016, when NATO agreed to deploy “battlegroups” on the soil of four NATO members (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland) in response to perceived Russian “aggression” in the region, Russia has dominated the NATO agenda and, by extension, its identity.
The Vilnius summit promises to be no different in this regard.
One of the major issues confronting the NATO leadership is that the Vilnius summit operates under the shadow of last year’s Madrid summit, convened in late June in the aftermath of Russia’s initiation of military operations against Ukraine.
The Madrid summit came on the heels of Boris Johnson’s deliberate sabotage of a Ukrainian-Russian peace agreement that was supposed to be signed on April 1, 2023, in Istanbul, and the decision by the United States in May 2023 to extend to Ukraine military assistance exceeding $45 billion as part of a new “lend lease” agreement.
In short, NATO had opted out of a peaceful resolution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and instead chose to wage war by proxy — with Ukrainian manpower being married with NATO equipment — designed to achieve what U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith, in May 2022, called the “strategic defeat” of Russia in Ukraine.
The Madrid summit generated an official NATO statement which declared that “Russia must immediately stop this war and withdraw from Ukraine,” adding that “Belarus must end its complicity in this war.”
When it came to Ukraine, the Madrid statement was equally firm. “We stand in full solidarity with the government and the people of Ukraine in the heroic defense of their country,” it read………………
Confidently Seeking a ‘Strategic Defeat’
NATO, it seemed, was supremely confident in its ability to achieve the outcome it so very much wanted — the strategic defeat of Russia.
What a difference a year makes.
NATO assistance to Ukraine resulted in a successful counteroffensive which compelled Russia to withdraw from territory around the city of Kharkov, as well as abandon portions of the Kherson Oblast located on the right bank of the Dnieper River. Once the Russian defenses solidified and the Ukrainian attack stalled, NATO and Russia both began preparing for the next phase of the conflict……………………………….
NATO had placed high hopes on the Ukrainian army being able to carry out a counteroffensive against Russia which would achieve discernable results both in terms of territory re-captured and casualties inflicted on the Russian army. The results, however, have been dismal to date — tens of thousands of Ukrainian casualties and thousands of destroyed vehicles while failing to breach even the first line of the Russian defenses.
One of the challenges NATO will face in Vilnius is the question of how to recover from this setback. Many NATO countries are starting to exhibit “Ukraine fatigue” as they see their armories stripped bare and their coffers emptied in what, by every measurement, appears to be a losing cause.
The scope and scale of the Ukrainian military defeat is such that the focus of many NATO members appears to be shifting from the unrealistic goal of strategically defeating Russia to a more realistic objective of bringing about a cessation to the conflict that preserves Ukraine as a viable nation state.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend the NATO summit. However, his demands for NATO membership will not be met — U.S. President Joe Biden himself has weighed in on the matter, saying this would not be possible while Ukraine is at war with Russia.
Face-Saving Gestures
There will be face-saving gestures from NATO, such as the creation of a NATO-Ukraine Council and talk of eventual post-conflict security guarantees. But the reality is Zelensky’s presence will do Ukraine more harm than good, since it will only accentuate the internal disagreement within NATO on the issue of Ukrainian membership and highlight NATO’s impotence when it comes to doing anything that can meaningfully alter the current trajectory on the battlefield, which is heading toward a strategic defeat for both Ukraine and NATO.
…………………………………………………………………. One can expect a plethora of rhetorical spin and posturing by the NATO membership, but the fact is the real mission of the Vilnius summit is how best to achieve a soft landing from the unfulfilled goals and objectives laid out last year in Madrid.
Normalizing failure might best describe the best that NATO can accomplish in Vilnius.
Any failure to try to stop the accumulation of debacles that represent the current NATO policy toward Ukraine will result in further collapse of the military situation in Ukraine, and the political situation in Europe, which, in their totality, push NATO closer to the moment of its ultimate demise.
This prospect does not bode well for those whose task it is to put as positive a spin as possible on reality. But NATO has long ago stopped dealing with a fact-based world, allowing itself to devolve into a theater of the absurd where actors fool themselves into believing the tale they are spinning, while the audience stares in dismay. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/07/10/scott-ritter-nato-summit-a-theater-of-the-absurd/—
Boat arrives in Albany to raise awareness of dangers of nuclear weapons
by: Courtney Ward, Jul 12, 2023 more https://www.news10.com/news/albany-county/boat-arrives-in-albany-to-raise-awareness-of-dangers-of-nuclear-weapons/
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — An historic ship that’s spreading a message of peace made a stop in Albany on Wednesday. The Golden Rule was first built in 1956 in Costa Rica and sailed around the Marshall Islands with the goal of preventing nuclear weapons testing.Get the latest, news, weather, sports and community events delivered right to your inbox!
The ship sank twice, most recently in 2010. It was restored and relaunched from California by a group of veterans, who said their message about nuclear disarmament still needs to be heard.
Their stop in Albany was part of a trip that started in Chicago last September.
Nuclear power is still an option at Comanche 3. These Pueblo activists want to change that
James Bartolo, The Pueblo Chieftain
Xcel Energy’s Comanche 3 power plant in Pueblo is slated to ditch coal by 2031, but what will replace the fossil fuel as the site’s energy source remains to be seen.
One of the the power generation options being considered by Xcel and the Pueblo Innovative Energy Solutions Advisory Committee (PIESAC) is nuclear energy. However, Nuclear-Free Pueblo, a coalition of local environmental activists that formed two years ago when the idea was first broached by Pueblo County commissioners, continues to fight against nuclear as a replacement.
The coalition believes a nuclear plant would pose a health risk to Pueblo County residents and siphon funds away from the county’s transition to renewable energy. Its members spent Saturday canvassing local neighborhoods before holding a rally outside the Pueblo County Courthouse during its “Day of Action.”
“As far as what can go wrong, it ranges from minor issues that can cause us to just be without power for a while to anything up to and including a meltdown situation like Chernobyl, Fukushima, or so many of these other nuclear reactors we have heard about melting down,” said Jamie Valdez, organizer for Mothers Out Front. “If we have a situation like that, Pueblo and surrounding areas could be rendered unlivable for generations to come.”
Radioactive waste and water usage among coalition’s concerns
In a “toolkit” distributed to community members in both English and Spanish, Nuclear-Free Pueblo lists its reasons for opposing nuclear energy in Pueblo.
Among them: the thousands of years that high-level nuclear waste remains reactive; the lack of a permanent disposal facility for high-level waste in the United States; and the average small modular reactor’s daily water use of 160 million to 390 million gallons.
The toolkit also sites a 2012 International Journal of Cancer study that indicated increased incidences of childhood cancer near nuclear plants.
What is Nuclear-Free Pueblo?………………………………….
Dumping Doubts: Releasing Fukushima’s Waste Water
Australian Independent Media, July 13, 2023, Dr Binoy Kampmark
Nothing said from the nuclear industry can or should be taken for face value. Be it in terms of safety, or correcting defects or righting mistakes; be it in terms of construction integrity, there is something chilling about reassurances that have been shown, time and again, to be hollow.
The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) disaster has forever stained the Japanese nuclear industry. Since then, the site has been marked by over 1,000 tanks filled with contaminated water that arises from reactor cooling. The attempts by the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (TEPCO) to decommission and clean the plant has also seen a daily complement of 150 tons arising from groundwater leakage into the buildings and systems involved in the cooling process.
According to Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, the gradual 1.3 million or so tons kept in those tanks into the Pacific over three decades is something that can be executed without serious environmental consequences. This was a view that was already entertained in 2021, expressing confidence that the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) being used in cleaning the contaminated water would be effective. Of primary concern here is the presence of a radioactive form of hydrogen called tritium, the presence of which is a challenge to remove.
There are various questions arising from this, not least the assumption that the levels of radioactivity arising from tritium will be significantly reduced by 1/40th of regulatory standards through the use of seawater. But as has been pointed out by such scientists as Ken Buesseler, Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress and Antony M. Hooker, there are also nontritium radionuclides that “are generally of greater health concern as evidenced by their much higher dose coefficient – a measure of the dose, or potential human health impacts associated with a given radioactive element, relative to its measured concentration, or radioactivity level.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency neither recommends nor endorses the plans – a curious formulation that does little for confidence……………………………………….
the inherent clandestine air that has surrounded TEPCO, scepticism should not only be mandatory but instinctive. Why not, ask such voices as Hooker and Buesseler, consider other disposal methodologies, such as solidifying the ALPS treated wastewater within concrete? No, counter the Japanese authorities, citing insuperable technical and legal problems. https://theaimn.com/dumping-doubts-releasing-fukushimas-waste-water/
UK delays ‘Great British Nuclear’ launch
Energy Secretary Grant Shapps was due to give a speech at London’s Science Museum.
Politico, BY CHARLIE COOPER, JULY 12, 2023
The U.K. government has delayed the official launch of a major arms-length body intended to support the country’s nuclear industry.
Energy Secretary Grant Shapps had been due to give a heavily-trailed speech at London’s Science Museum on Thursday, setting out his plans for Great British Nuclear and its role helping the U.K. hit its net zero goals.
But in an email to attendees, seen by POLITICO, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) confirmed the event was being rescheduled “due to unforeseen circumstances.”
Shapps was expected to use his speech to outline the next phase of a planned competition for manufacturing firms — including Rolls Royce and GE Hitachi — vying to develop small modular reactors (SMRs). The government hopes the new technology will provide cheaper, more flexible atomic power to help the U.K. hit its target of 24 gigawatts of nuclear generation by 2050.
The reasons for the cancellation were not immediately clear………………… https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-delays-great-british-nuclear-launch/
France to supply Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles with the ‘capacity to strike deeply’
By John Irish, July 11, 2023, VILNIUS, July 11 (Reuters) – France will join Britain in supplying Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles, which can travel 250 km (155 miles), a move that allows Ukrainian forces to hit Russian troops and supplies deep behind front lines, French officials said on Tuesday.
Emmanuel Macron said he had decided to boost military aid to Ukraine to help its counteroffensive as the French President arrived at a summit of the 31-member NATO alliance in Lithuania.
“I have decided to increase deliveries of weapons and equipment to enable the Ukrainians to have the capacity to strike deeply,” Macron said, while declining to say how many missiles would be sent.
A French diplomatic source said they were talking about 50 SCALP missiles produced by European manufacturer MBDA.
The missiles would come from existing French military stocks, a French military source told reporters, adding that it would be a “significant number”.
The French version, known as SCALP, has a range of about 250 km, three times as far as Ukraine’s existing missile capacities.
The missiles were being integrated into Ukrainian Russian-made warplanes, the French military source said……………………………….. more https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-send-long-range-missiles-ukraine-macron-2023-07-11/
Exposing the lying claims of pro nuclear shill Zion Lights
2 Response to a July 2023 article by Zion Lights: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/zion-lights/
In Australia, for the same investment we can get three times more firmed renewable power (generation, not capacity) in one-third of the time compared to nuclear. The cost difference between nuclear and renewables is so vast that renewables are still cheaper even when transmission and storage are costed in. Perhaps the comparison is more nuclear-friendly in the UK, but I strongly suspect renewables+storage+transmission is still cheaper given the obscene costs of Hinkley Point (approx. A$50 billion for two reactors).
Specifically in Light’s latest article:
* Lights’ claims about the IPCC supporting nuclear power are dishonest, the IPCC maps out countless scenarios (including scenarios with nuclear reducing to zero) and its ‘analysis’ of pros and cons is generally reduced to dot-points.
* Lights’ claims about a “scientific consensus” in support of nuclear power are dishonest, e.g. the Climate Council, comprising Australia’s leading climate scientists, states that nuclear power reactors “are not appropriate for Australia and probably never will be”.
* Ignores profound impacts of catastrophic accidents.
* Ignores the repeatedly-demonstrated connections between nuclear power and weapons (in the UK and elsewhere).
* Light’s ‘millions of lives saved’ meme is dishonest because it assumes nuclear displaces nothing other than coal.
* Nonsense about warm water around nuclear plants providing a haven for sea-life is dishonest, she surely knows that water intake pipes kill fish by the thousands. (And she should know something about Irish opposition to radioactive discharges from Sellafield.)
* Glib, ignorant and/or dishonest claims about high-level nuclear waste: “spent fuel can be easily transported to another location, and even recycled”. The UK has given up on reprocessing (a polluting, multi-billion-dollar disaster) and has made near-zero progress on a deep underground repository and has wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in the process. The only operating deep underground repository in the world – WIPP in the US ‒ was disastrously mismanaged and under-regulated resulting in a chemical explosion in 2014.
* The UAE project came in under budget? Either Lights is ignorant or lying. The UAE project was years behind schedule and many billions of dollars over-budget.
And in other articles/interviews, even more unhinged nonsense, e.g.
* Lights saying climate change ‘could be solved overnight’ with nuclear. Seriously?
* Lights lying about her role in Extinction Rebellion.
* Lights getting sucked in by, and collaborating with, lunatic MAGA liar Michael Shellenberger.
Update: Lights deleted the above comments from the comments thread below her article, failed to address any of the substantive energy issues and failed to respond to the accusations of deceit.
Sizewell C faces fresh legal action in fall out over water supply
Campaigners opposed to the Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk have
launched fresh legal action following concerns about the water supply for
the plant.
In July 2022, then business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng granted
permission for the 3.2 gigawatt power station being developed by French
energy provider EDF to be built alongside the existing Sizewell B nuclear
plant, in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Natural Beauty (AONB).
This was despite the Planning Inspectorate noting that NNB Nuclear Generation, a
subsidiary company created by EDF, was unable to identify a permanent water
supply for the project, without which it said it “could not be licensed
and could not operate”.
In August 2022, campaign group Together Against
Sizewell C (TASC), represented by law firm Leigh Day, brought a judicial
review against the decision on the grounds that Kwarteng had failed to
assess the implications of the project as a whole by ignoring the issue of
whether a permanent water supply could be secured – the group argued it
is clear a new desalination plant will be required to guarantee supply.
Last month this challenge was dismissed by High Court judge Justice Holgate
who found the approach to the water supply was lawful, and that Kwarteng
did not need to take into account the impact of the water supply. However,
TASC has now announced that it is appealing this ruling. Specifically, the
group has said that the judge was “wrong” to say that NNB Generation
Company Limited was “unable to identify a permanent supply of potable
water”.
ENDS 11th July 2023
https://www.endsreport.com/article/1829565/sizewell-c-faces-fresh-legal-action-fall-water-supply
FBI colluded with Ukraine in social media crackdown – lawmakers
https://www.rt.com/news/579523-fbi-ukraine-meta-twitter/ 11 July 23
The bureau failed to properly vet information provided by Kiev, the US House Judiciary Committee says
The FBI cooperated with Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) to clamp down on social media accounts disseminating alleged “Russian disinformation,” but ended up flagging pages run by the US State Department and American journalists, a report by the House Judiciary Committee has revealed.
Released on Monday, the report accused the FBI of not properly vetting lists of accounts provided to it by the SBU before sending them to the likes of Meta, Google, and Twitter.
As a result, the two agencies “flagged for social media companies the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified US State Department account and those belonging to American journalists,” and requested that those pages be deleted, the document read.
On some occasions, the FBI followed up to ensure that “these accounts were taken down,” according to the report, which was based on documents subpoenaed from Meta and Alphabet in February.
In one of the SBU’s lists forwarded by the FBI to Meta, the official Russian-language Instagram account of the US State Department was described as “distribut[ing] content that promotes war, inaccurately reflects events in Ukraine, justifies Russian war crimes in Ukraine in violation of international law,” the report stated.
CNN pointed out that Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, apparently did not comply with the request to delete the State Department page.
Another moderation request filed to Facebook by the US domestic security agency included a roster of 5,165 accounts, the House Judiciary Committee said.
The report cited an email by a senior Twitter employee who indicated to the FBI that “a few accounts of American and Canadian journalists” were on one of the lists sent to the company by the agency.
Alphabet platforms Google and YouTube were also approached about censoring alleged pro-Russian accounts. A high-ranking member of Google’s cybersecurity team told the authors of the report that the company had been “deluged with various requests” for the removal of content, mainly from “the Ukrainian government, other Eastern European governments, the European Union, and the European Commission.”
The House Judiciary Committee suggested that the FBI had “violated the First Amendment rights of Americans and potentially undermined our national security” through its partnership with the SBU, claiming that the latter had been “infiltrated by Russian-aligned actors.”
The author of the paper noted the purge within the SBU by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky last summer, which saw the agency’s head sacked and hundreds of criminal cases launched against employees on treason charges.
The report was released ahead of FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled for Wednesday.
A Judiciary Committee aide told CNN that the Republicans on the panel are planning to question Wray about the content of the paper and use it to claim that the FBI interferes in free speech.
What to expect from NATO Summit 2023
Thus, it is slowly emerging that there shall not be a NATO membership for Ukraine — now or ever.
The bottom line is that the Vilnius summit will sound the bugle to let the manor know that an orderly NATO pullback from Ukraine is in the cards.
India Punchline, BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
The trajectory of the Ukraine war hangs in the balance. All eyes are on the US President Joe Biden’s arrival in Vilnius for the NATO summit meeting .
………………………………………………………………………………………….this will virtually put out the flicker of hope among the NATO Allies about political uncertainties within Russia hampering the Kremlin’s war effort. Quite obviously, there are no “cracks” to be seen anywhere on the Kremlin wall. Putin remains firmly in charge and the military operations to scatter the month-long Ukrainian offensive are succeeding beyond expectations.
Correspondingly, there is bound to be a greater sense of realism amongst the NATO Allies. Alas, momentous political decisions concerning European security were riveted on flawed intelligence.
The Americans had no idea about the capability of Russian weaponry or of the country’s defence industry, its seamless capacity to mobilise for a continental war, the mood of the Russian people, Putin’s strong power base with a consistent rating at 80% (more than double that of Biden), the Russian economy’s resilience to withstand sanctions, or the blowback from sanctions that eventually would devastate the European economies.
……………………………………………………….. the NATO summit will factor in the geopolitical reality, howsoever unpalatable, that the war in Ukraine has far from isolated Russia but on the contrary, helped invigorate and expand Moscow’s orbit of diplomatic and political influence in the vast majority of the world community.
At the same time, on the military front too, the delusional hopes of NATO countries defeating Russia have withered away and the Vilnius summit’s decisions will reckon with this ground reality.
Already, the Biden Administration admitted that the Pentagon has run out of ammunition to supply Ukraine and the industrial capacity will have to be strengthened. But that is a medium term objective whilst the war has its immediate requirements. And to meet the current requirements, Biden has decided to instead supply Ukraine with cluster bombs, a dirty weapon that is banned under international law by the UN.
Thus, it is slowly emerging that there shall not be a NATO membership for Ukraine — now or ever. Yesterday, Richard Haas, president of the council of Foreign Relations and a hugely influential opinion maker of the US foreign policy establishment, wrote in Project Syndicate (with an eye on the European audience) a forceful critique titled Ascending the Vilnius Summit: “Offering NATO membership in principle, as was done when NATO leaders met in Bucharest in 2008, seems hollow…”
Haas elaborated that the NATO countries can instead bilaterally “extend a security commitment to defend Ukraine’s right to exist… without reference to precise territory…comparable to what the US has long done for Israel.”
Haas believes that such a formal, open-ended commitment backed up with “the arms, intelligence, and training it requires” would signal that America “will not allow any entity to threaten” Ukraine’s existence, but without linking it “to any specific map” of the territory of Ukraine.
Interestingly, when asked about it during the press gaggle on Sunday, Sullivan also confirmed that such a concept is on the table whereby the US, its allies and partners “within a multilateral framework, will negotiate bilateral security commitments with Ukraine for the long term… to provide various forms of military assistance, intelligence and information sharing, cyber support and other forms of material support so that Ukraine can both defend itself and deter future aggression.”
The bottom line is that the Vilnius summit will sound the bugle to let the manor know that an orderly NATO pullback from Ukraine is in the cards. Unlike in Afghanistan, the US will no doubt keep the allies in the loop, since this primarily concerns European security — and importantly, it should not turn out to be another chaotic retreat that Kabul or Saigon witnessed in yesteryears. That, in turn, demands absolute NATO unity. ……………..
Evidently, the nuts and bolts of an orderly withdrawal will need to be painstakingly worked out within the framework of a ceasefire in the war. This means engaging with Russia in a near future and discouraging it from pressing ahead forthwith with any major offensive to end the war conclusively in its favour.
Meanwhile, according to the grapevine in Kiev, the commander-in-chief of armed forces General Valeri Zaluzhny has recommended to his president Zelensky that the current month-old Ukrainian military offensive is simply not sustainable against the overwhelmingly powerful Russian forces and should be called off. https://www.indianpunchline.com/what-to-expect-from-nato-summit-2023/
Zelensky slams Biden’s ‘unprecedented and absurd’ stance on NATO membership
New York Post, By Steven Nelson, 11 July 23
VILNIUS, Lithuania — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tore into NATO leaders including President Biden on Tuesday for not extending membership to his war-torn country — introducing fresh diplomatic drama into the annual gathering of the military alliance’s leaders.
Zelensky slammed the reticence as “weakness” and “absurd” just moments after Biden referred to the development of new language regarding his country’s potential NATO ascension.
“Now, on the way to Vilnius, we received signals that certain wording is being discussed without Ukraine. And I would like to emphasize that this wordxfing is about the invitation to become NATO member, not about Ukraine’s membership,” Zelensky tweeted.
“It’s unprecedented and absurd when a time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time vague wording about ‘conditions’ is added even for inviting Ukraine.”
Zelensky added: “It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance. This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror. Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit.”……………
Shortly before Zelensky’s fiery tweet, Biden said during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that “we agree on the language that you propose, relative to the future of Ukraine being able to join NATO. And we’re looking for a continued united NATO.”
The wording that Biden alluded to was released later, saying vaguely, “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.”…………..
Biden said in a CNN interview that aired Sunday that he believes Ukraine is not “ready” for membership.
“I don’t think it’s ready for membership in NATO,” Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “I don’t think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war.”
……………………… Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that he is particularly concerned about corruption in Ukraine’s government and said that it was an “understandable” cause for concern among fellow NATO countries.
………….. NATO countries including the US have heavily financed and armed Ukraine’s resistance to the more than 16-month-old Russian invasion and Biden has gradually met many of Zelensky’s prior demands, such as agreeing last week to send cluster bombs to aid Kyiv’s flagging offensive, despite a human rights campaign to ban the weapons, which can maim or kill civilians for decades after conflicts end. https://nypost.com/2023/07/11/zelensky-slams-weakness-of-absurd-biden-stance-on-nato/
—
Japan’s Radioactive Fukushima Water Release – Media Propaganda, Reports from Vanuatu in South Pacific
Nuclear Hotseat, 12 July 23
SPECIAL REPORTS:
With Japan’s pending release of 1.3 million tons of Tritium-contaminated radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) approval of that plan, it is time for an examination of the issues behind this wrongheaded assault upon people and the environment. To find out various hidden aspects of the issue, Nuclear Hotseat provides five separate segments.
Nuclear Hotseat Hot Story with Linda Pentz Gunter considers that the IAEA’s vested interest in promoting nuclear power should disqualify the agency as a nuclear safety watchdog.Marine Biologist Tim Deere-Jones takes on the whistleblower leak of an internal IAEA document from June 21, which shows collusion between the agency and the government of Japan over how the announcement of approval of the water release was to be handled to minimize public fear and response. Japan has dismissed the document as a “fraud;” neither TEPCO nor IAEA has said anything else. What’s the bigger story?Filmmaker Philippe Carillo (The Fukushima Disaster: The Hidden Side of the Story) lives in Vanuatu and talks about Japan’s campaign to propagandize south Pacific journalists into only believing the talking points they’ve been fed and not to look further.
The Honorable Andrew Solomon Napuat, a Member of Parliament for Vanuatu, an island nation in the south Pacific, explains how his country and others have been manipulated to not speak out against the water release or risk “friendly” relations with Japan…………… https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/japan-radioactive-fukushima-water-dump/?_thumbnail_id=11643
UK discusses sale of Wylfa nuclear site
1The government has confirmed ongoing discussions about the potential sale
of the Wylfa nuclear site in response to a report by the Welsh Affairs
Committee. The Wylfa nuclear site, located in Anglesey, North Wales, has
long been a subject of interest for nuclear energy development. Previous
plans for a new nuclear power station at Wylfa were scrapped in 2019 due to
financial and commercial challenges. Since then, the government has been
actively seeking alternative arrangements for the site.
Energy Live News 10th July 2023
Failed Fukushima Fixes Falling Like Dominoes
CounterPunch BY JOHN LAFORGE, 6 July, 23
“……………………………………………………………………Tepco’s cost-avoidance on its sea wall was only the first in a string of failures that have followed like dominos. The corruption led in July 2022 to convictions of four top Tepco executives for negligence and a fine of $95 billion.
In the 12 years since the meltdowns, Tepco’s disaster response efforts, always heralded as fixes, have been a series of hugely expensive failures: the “advanced” wastewater filter system “ALPS” has failed; the buried “ice wall” groundwater barrier has failed; containers made for the radioactive sludge produced by ALPS have failed; and plans to deal with millions of tons of collected debris — now kept in plastic bags — are being fiercely resisted by Japanese citizens.
Tons of cooling water is still being poured every day into Fukushima’s triple reactor wrecks to keep the hot melted fuel from again running amok. Additionally, groundwater gushes through the reactors’ foundations’ countless cracks and breaks caused by the staggering earthquake into what’s left of the structures’ sub-floors. All this water becomes highly radioactive as it passes over and through three giant masses — totaling at least 880 tonnes — of melted and mangled uranium and plutonium fuel.
You read that right. Fukushima’s destroyed reactor No. 3 was using fuel made partly of plutonium (see below), and so plutonium contaminates not just the ground and cooling water running over the melted fuel, but the ALPS apparatus, its filters, the containers used to store the radioactive sludge extracted by ALPS, and of course the sludge itself. You would think that the word plutonium would appear occasionally in news coverage of this ongoing disaster.
Failed ALPS means million-tonne do-over
Tepco’s jerry-rigged system dubbed Advanced Liquid Processing System or ALPS has never worked as planned. As early as 2013 the machinery was stalled. “The ALPS system failed to reduce radioactive elements, as claimed by the owner,” Power Technology, reported June 2, 2021.
Tepco has repeatedly said ALPS would remove 62 radioactive materials — all but tritium and carbon-14 from the continuously expanding volume of wastewater. Documents on a government committee’s website show that of 890,000 tonnes of water held at Fukushima, 750,000 tonnes, or 84 percent, contain higher concentrations of radioactive materials than legal limits allow, according to Reuters, Oct. 11, 2018. Among the long-lasting and deadly isotopes picked up by the water runs that through melted fuel wreckage are cesium, strontium, cobalt, ruthenium, carbon-14, tritium, iodine, plutonium, and at least 54 others.
In a June 14 op/ed for the China Daily, Shaun Burnie, the Senior Nuclear Specialist at Greenpeace East Asia, reported that the ALPS “has been a spectacular failure” and noted that:
“About 70 percent or 931,600 cubic meters of the wastewater needs to be processed again (and probably many more times) by the ALPS to bring the radioactive concentration levels below the regulatory limit for discharge. Tepco has succeeded in reducing the concentration levels of strontium, iodine, and plutonium in only 0.2 percent of the total volume of the wastewater, and it still requires further processing. But no secondary processing has taken place in the past nearly three years. Neither Tepco nor the Japanese government [have] said how many times the wastewater needs to be processed, how long it will take to do so, or whether the efforts will ever be successful. Greenpeace reported on these problems and why the ALPS failed nearly five years ago, and none of these issues has been resolved.”
Consequently, Tepco says it will re-filter over 70 percent of the 1.37 million tonnes of wastewater stored in giant tanks on site. Approximately 875,000 tons of contaminated water must be put through the system again, a process that will leave behind more of the highly radioactive and corrosive waste sludge.
Hoping to slow the rush to dumping, Ryota Koyama, a professor at Fukushima Univ. in Japan, said in an interview with China Media Group last May, “If the Japanese government or the Tokyo Elec Power Co really wants to discharge contaminated water into the sea, they need to explain in more detail whether the nuclides have really been removed.”
Ice wall also melts
Tepco intended to reduce the volume of groundwater gushing into the reactor building foundations by digging a $350 million “ice wall” into the earth between the destroyed reactors and the mountains behind. The company placed 1,568 heavy pipes filled with coolant 90 feet deep. It was to freeze the ground to form a deep impenetrable barrier, diverting groundwater to either side of the destroyed six-reactor Fukushima complex and prevent it seeping inside. It has failed to do so, The Guardian reported. In 2016, the Times of London reported that the scheme had only a “minor impact” on the volume of groundwater rushing in, which at the time still averaged 321 tonnes a day. Tepco announced then that it would retrofit the system and fix the leaks, but Science/The Wire reported in January 2022 that the company had admitted that its ice wall was “partially” melting. About 150 tonnes per day still gushes in.
Filtered sludge burning through containers
The ALPS filter has produced over 4,000 large containers filled with highly radioactive slurry and sludge left from the treatment.
Like the use of the word “advanced” in the name of the failed ALPS machinery, the cylinders used for the caustic, highly radioactive sludge are called “High Integrity Containers” or HICs, but in fact they are made of plastic and have degraded far faster than Tepco anticipated.
By March 2, Tepco had filled 4,143 containers, according to the daily Asahi Shimbun. At 30 cubic feet each, the cylinders now store a total of about 124,290 cubic feet of the highly radioactive sludge that will soon require expensive repackaging and, eventually, isolation from the biosphere for thousands of years.
Over two years ago, on June 8, 2021, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) announced that 31 of the containers had “exceeded their lifespans” and were corroded badly enough by the harsh toxic material that they must be replaced. The NRA also warned that another 56 cylinders would need replacing within two years.
Japan’s Mainichi newspaper reported that the government regulators blamed Tepco for “underestimating the radiation the 31 plastic cylinders were exposed to.” The company then claimed it would start moving the contents to new containers.
The Asahi Shimbun reported April 27, 2023, that the HICs must be stored in concrete boxes that can block radiation evidently being emitted by the HICs. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14883115
Rad waste to be dumped, deregulated
As early as next month, Japan intends to begin dispersing 1.37 million tonnes of contaminated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. The government has steadfastly ignored fierce local and international opposition to the plan from the fishing community, marine scientists, Pacific Island nations, environmentalists, South Korea, and China. So far only South Korean politicians have suggested bringing international legal action against the dumping.
Since the 2011 meltdowns spewed radioactive materials broadly across Japan’s main island, some 14-million tonnes of cesium-contaminated soil, leaves, and debris have been scraped from the ground and stored in one-tonne bags. Citizens are struggling desperately prevent authorities from using the radioactive waste in road building or burning it in incinerators. The bags are currently stacked in tens of thousands of piles all over the region.
Even more protest was raised last February 10 when the NRA said it would allow Tepco to severely weaken its monitoring of the wastewater’s radioactivity. The NRA said would but the number of radioactive elements to be measured from 64 to 34.
The environment minister of Hong Kong — a coastal metropolis of 7.5 million people — charged in June that Japan is “violating its obligations under international law and endangering the marine environment and public health.” Minister Tse Chin-wan wrote in the daily Ta Kung Pao that Hong Kong would “immediately prohibit imports of seafood caught off the coast of Fukushima prefecture.”
Plutonium Spread Long Distances from Fukushima
Very few reports of the Fukushima catastrophic releases of radiation have mentioned plutonium contamination. Yet plutonium was used in fuel rods in Fukushima’s reactor number 3 which was destroyed by meltdown and several hydrogen explosions. Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known to science, and fine particles are far more biologically hazardous than larger particles.
Following the March 14, 2011 explosion, experts worried about the release of extremely dangerous radioactive substances, and then a week later, on March 21 and 22, Tepco announced that it had detected plutonium in soil collected from its compound. (Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster, Takashi Hirose, Asahi Shimbun Publications, 2011, p. 51)
Now, studies published in the journals Science of the Total Environment, Nov. 15, 2020, and Chemosphere, July 2023, report that researchers found that cesium and plutonium “were transported over long distances,” and that deposits of them were recorded in “downtown Tokyo,” about 142 miles from the meltdowns.
According to the authors, very high concentrations of radioactive cesium were released during the accident as particles referred to as “cesium-rich micro-particles” (CsMPs). The researchers say CsMPs they found are mainly composed of silicon, iron, zinc, and cesium, and minor amounts of radioactive tellurium, technetium, molybdenum, uranium, and plutonium.
The studies, involving scientists from six countries and led by Associate Professor Satoshi Utsunomiya, a researcher at Kyushu University, found that “plutonium was included inside cesium-rich micro-particles that were emitted from the site.”
Radioactive CsMPs released from Fukushima are a potential health risk through inhalation. “Given the small size of the particles, they could penetrate into the deepest parts of the lung, where they could be retained,” Utsunomiya wrote. “The route of exposure of greatest concern is inhalation,” the authors reported, because plutonium, lodged in the lungs, can “remain for years.”
Utsunomiya summed up his team’s work saying, “It took a long time to publish results on particulate [plutonium] from Fukushima … but research on Fukushima’s environmental impact and its decommissioning are a long way from being over.”
John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter. https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/06/failed-fukushima-fixes-falling-like-dominoes/
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