Beyond Nuclear International

Megajoules and megaheadlines are all meganonsense

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Another week, more fusion news, cue another overblown headline, as the mainstream media once again paid homage to industry hype, digesting nuclear propaganda soundbites without even a hiccup. 

On February 8, we learned that the Joint European Torus fusion project, also known as JET, had broken its own record in energy output during a last gasp attempt to make fusion work. The 40-year old project is now closed down for good. 

The moment  — and just a fleeting moment it truly was, lasting a mere 5.2 seconds — was duIy celebrated as another breakthrough for fusion.

“Nuclear fusion: new record brings dream of clean energy closer,” trumpeted the BBC who were especially smug since Torus is based in the UK.

“Nuclear Fusion World Record Smashed in Major Achievement”, said Science Alert.

“Scientists have made a record-setting fusion energy breakthrough,” blared the headline on Vice.

What actually happened? JET generated 69 megajoules of energy in those 5.2 seconds, breaking its previous record of 59 megajoules over 5 seconds in 2021.

For those of us who don’t go about measuring things in megajoules, I deferred to our colleague, physicist, M.V. Ramana, for an explanation. 

What are they really talking about here and is it actually a breakthrough?

Hibakusha remind us just why a nuclear-free world is needed

By Joseph Gerson

Later this month I will return to Japan for the annual Bikini commemoration and the Gensuikyō, or Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, annual conference. There won’t be a bikini fashion show.

The commemoration of what can only be called the criminal U.S. Bravo H-bomb test on March 1, 1954, is one of two annual anchor events of the Japanese peace movement. Although Covid-19 is still with us, these events will play important roles in revitalizing the Japanese peace movement; one of the most effective in the world. 

Over the years, this movement has played a major role in preventing Japan from becoming a nuclear weapons state, and the testimonies of Hibakusha (victims and witnesses of the A-bombings) have played critical roles in inspiring the nuclear disarmament diplomacy and the international negotiations that resulted in the 2017 United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Although I initially met several Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bomb survivors as early as the 1978 U.N. Second Session of Nuclear Disarmament, it wasn’t until I first traveled to Hiroshima in 1984 that I began what became a 40-year engagement with Hibakusha and the Japanese movement.

In an effort to compensate for his earlier support for the Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign and to bring nonexistent jobs bacon to Boston, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and, following him, the Massachusetts congressional delegation and the city’s business establishment were suckered into Reagan-administration planning to transform Boston Harbor into a nuclear weapons base.

Knowing the Navy’s record of nuclear weapons accidents, the ways that the base would ratchet up tensions with Moscow and violate the freeze, and with knowledge of better economic and social uses for the waterfront property, several of us organized at the grassroots level to prevent construction of the base. We prevailed, and I was invited to give a brief inspirational speech at the World Conference against A- and H- Bombs. Needless to say, my first trip to Hiroshima was a transformative experience.

Former executives face a judge — in their ankle monitors

By Linda Pentz Gunter

It was called “likely the largest bribery money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.” And the shoes are still dropping. Or should that be ankle monitors? Because these latter belong to the three latest criminals indicted for their roles in a scheme that saw FirstEnergy hand over $61 million in bribes to Ohio politicians and their co-conspirators to secure favorable legislation.

That bill, known as HB6, guaranteed a $1.3 billion bailout to FirstEnergy in order to keep open its two failing Ohio nuclear power plants, Davis-Besse and Perry, as well as struggling coal plants. The nuclear portion of the bill has since been rescinded, but Ohio consumers are still paying to prop up two aging coal plants, to the tune of half a million dollars a day, amounting to an extra $1.50 a month on every ratepayer’s electric bill.

The $61 million bribery plot was the mastermind of then speaker of the Ohio House, Larry Householder, who is now a household name in Ohio for all the wrong reasons. He was sentenced last June to 20 years in prison for his part in the conspiracy. GOP Chairman Matt Borges, was also found guilty of racketeering conspiracy and sentenced to five years in federal prison. Both men say they will appeal.

Householder may have been the instigator, but in those earlier trials, FirstEnergy was described as a company that went “looking for someone to bribe them”. They found willing accomplices among politicians but also in the person of then Ohio Public Utilities Commission chairman, Samuel Randazzo.

So on February 12, yet more indictments were handed down, this time to Randazzo and the two FirstEnergy executives who corrupted him — former CEO Charles Jones, and former senior vice president of external affairs, Michael Dowling.

Pro-nukers warned coal use would rise as reactors closed in Germany. The opposite happened.

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Remember all those doomsayers from the pro-nuclear mythology unit who cast Germany’s Energiewende  — or green energy revolution — as a catastrophic failure? They claimed, totally erroneously or deliberately misleadingly, that the country’s choice to close all its nuclear power plants guaranteed an increase in fossil fuel use and especially coal.

Germany vehemently denied those false predictions since they clearly knew that the country’s renewables were more than able to replace nuclear and fossil fuels. And so it has come to pass.

Germany’s use of lignite, or brown coal, dropped to its lowest level in 60 years in 2023. Even more dramatically, its hard coal use is at the lowest level since 1955. All of this happened at the same time as Germany was closing its last three reactors.

Meanwhile, according to reporting by Clean Energy Wire (CLEW), and citing an analysis (in German) from the research institute, Fraunhofer ISE, renewables “contributed a record share of more than half of the country’s power consumption” in 2023.

“The country sourced nearly 60 percent (59.7%) of its net power production from renewables, which generated a total of 260 terawatt hours (TWh), an increase of 7.2 percent compared to 2022,” the report said.

The 2022 uptick of coal production in Germany was entirely driven by high gas prices and a shortfall of French nuclear power production. The French nuclear sector was so unreliable that 50% of its reactors were out of action in April 2022, and again in November 2022, just as winter electricity usage began to rise.

Consequently, France had to import electricity to keep the lights on and the heat running.

Hope lies with societies with deliberative democratic practices and traditions of civic engagement

By Ralph Nader

The countries that straddle our tormented world are woefully unprepared to counter and prevent five Omnicides already underway or looming menacingly on the horizon. This is increasingly true with the yearly passage of neglected opportunities. The gap between our mounting knowledge and its application to these global threats is widening.

1. The Climate Crisis, better called Climate Violence, producing record storms, wildfires, droughts, sea-level rises, floods and unprecedented heat waves, is omnicidal. The year 2023 was the hottest in recorded history. Millions of lives are already being lost, with even more people suffering from climate-related illnesses and injuries. In addition, property destruction is rampant. The consequential effects of natural disasters are mounting in terms of damaged agriculture, soil erosion, habitat destruction (leading to species extinction) and the regional spread of insect-borne diseases such as malaria.

Promised investments for mitigation and prevention made at the international “climate change” conventions have not been fulfilled. Renewable solar energy is growing, to be sure. However, the pace of proven responses required by the accelerating global warming is at abysmally low levels.

2. Viral and bacterial pandemics are looming larger by the decade. Faster transport carriers of infections often zoonotically transmitted, poor collaborations such as between China and the U.S., and increasing human-driven mutations from e.g., reckless over-use of antibiotics are exacerbating these problems. The proliferation of laboratories with inadequate safeguards for their “gain of function” and viruses and bacteria breaching containment all are raising alarming scenarios by scientists from many disciplines.

The Covid-19 pandemic has taken approximately 15 million lives between 2020 to 2021, according to the World Health Organization. Specialists are saying it is not a question of “if,” but a question of “when” future pandemics will occur.