Beyond Nuclear International
The “Golden Age of Nuclear” is all a veneer
Once again, working people — this time in Britain –have been betrayed with false promises about jobs in an industry that is actually making climate change worse, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
At this point there is no need for any of us who are inclined toward commentary to further point out the utter dereliction of the UK government led by Sir Keir Starmer. It is doing a perfectly fine job on its own. The faux pas have now reached such a fever pitch that we’ve almost forgotten the free flats and fancy gifted suits.
As scandal after scandal swirls around members of Starmer’s ever diminishing inner circle, the craven subservience to war mongers continues. In September, the British government managed to kowtow to two in the space of a single week — first welcoming Israeli President Isaac Herzog to British soil, then US President Donald Trump.
On his arrival, Herzog might have heard the distant slamming of a door behind the departing deputy prime minister, Angela Raynor, or he may have passed disgraced former UK ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, slipping back into Britain.
Next came renewed turmoil around accusations that Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, might have used an undeclared Labour Together “secret slush fund” to support Starmer’s ultimately successful campaign to become the new Party Leader in 2020. Labour Together was the entity used to mount a smear campaign against former Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, falsely accusing him of anti-Semitism.
Investigative journalist Paul Holden’s soon to be released book —The Fraud, Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney, and the Crisis of British Democracy — is likely to shine an even brighter light on the details and will be celebrated by both the left and the right.
Read MoreDanger déjà vu
With offsite power cut, peril returns to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in war-torn Ukraine, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
We have been here before, nine times. External power provided by the grid has been lost, backup diesel generators have been called into duty, and Ukraine and the rest of the world has held its collective breath, hoping we are not about to witness another major nuclear disaster.
This is once again the situation at the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in southeast Ukraine, where for the tenth time external power has been lost. By September 30, that blackout had lasted seven days, the longest such stretch since the plant was first occupied by Russian forces on March 4, 2022, ten days after Russia invaded Ukraine and provoked a war that shows no sign of ending anytime soon.
Alarm is especially high at the Zaporizhzhia site given its size — the largest nuclear power plant in Europe — and enormous radioactive waste inventory of more than 2,000 metric tons. The plant has been embroiled in some of the worst of the fighting and has already suffered previous damage.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s other nine reactors at three other sites are by no means immune to the dangers of being caught up in an indefinite war zone. In late September, a drone detonated just 875 yards from the perimeter of the South Ukraine three-reactor nuclear power plant. Monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said they observed at least 22 drones close to the facility.
“Once again, drones are flying far too close to nuclear power plants, putting nuclear safety at risk,” wrote the IAEA’s director general, Rafael Grossi in a September 25 statement after the drone incident. “Fortunately, last night’s incident did not result in any damage to the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant itself. Next time we may not be so lucky.” The IAEA nevertheless continues ardently to promote the use and expansion of nuclear power around the world.
Read MoreRadioactive waste in a landfill?
Navajo communities want pros and cons delivered in language all can understand, writes Kathy Helms
Explaining the rationale of burying low-level radioactive waste in a solid waste landfill to Navajo elders, especially if English is not their first language, obviously would be a bit daunting. Regulators relish acronyms like one would a yummy bowl of alphabet soup – RCRA, SMCRA, NORM, TENORM. Elders, not so much.
Regulators need to bring the discussion down to the people’s level, Judy Platero, secretary/treasurer of Thoreau Chapter, told federal, state and tribal officials during an August 14 tour of the Red Rock Landfill.
“A lot of our community members are not here because they don’t understand this,” Platero said. “There’s no understanding of this because all of this language, all of this information that’s being disseminated, is all technical. We’ve asked many times, ‘Bring it to us in our own language.’”
Not against cleanup
Platero made it clear that the people of Thoreau are not against cleanup of the former Quivira uranium mine near Church Rock. They understand the need for the removal of 1.1 million cubic yards of radioactive waste rock and sand from within the Red Water Pond Road community. Residents have been saddled with those Cold War remnants for more years than they care to remember.
“What we are trying not to have happen is the transport and the storage here in Thoreau. That’s what we are talking about. “We want everybody, all our people, to be safe,” Platero said.
The proposed removal plan means that an estimated 76,710 truckloads – over 60 truckloads a day – will travel a 44-mile haul route along New Mexico Highway 566 to Interstate 40E, across the Continental Divide to and through downtown Thoreau to the Red Rock Landfill. Another 3,300 truckloads of waste from Sections 32 and 33 mines in Casamero Lake are expected to travel a more rural haul route, including a private toll road, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 9.
If the landfill “test pilot” for the waste is successful, the state of New Mexico could approve the disposal of more waste in other areas of the landfill on a case-by-basis in the future, tour-goers were told.
Read MoreFukushima recovery plagued with setbacks
Melted fuel, radioactive soil and a struggling fishing industry are some of the lingering legacies of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, writes John LaForge
Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world, and the regular quakes raise traumatic memories of the March 11, 2011, record-breaker that left 19,000 dead and smashed the six-reactor Fukushima-Daiichi site. This summer, a magnitude 5.5 quake struck just off Japan’s southeast Tokara coast on July 3; a mag. 4.2 quake hit east of Iwaki, in Fukushima Prefecture July 12; and a mag. 4.1 quake shook the same area July 25.
In late July, a mighty 8.8-magnitude quake struck Avacha Bay in Russia’s Far East, triggering tsunami warnings and evacuations across the entire Pacific Rim. The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was one of the strongest ever recorded.
The owner/operator of the wrecked reactor complex, Tokyo Electric Power Co., evacuated its entire staff of 4,000 in response to warnings of a possible nine-foot tsunami, after first halting its pumping of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific.
Elsewhere in Japan, over 1.9 million people were urged to evacuate the eastern seaboard, and a 4-foot tsunami wave did strike north of Fukushima at Iwate Prefecture, some 1,090 miles from Avacha Bay, site of the major Russian earthquake.
China partially lifts ban on Japanese seafood imports
China “conditionally resumed” the importation of Japanese seafood products on June 30 ⸺ except from the 10 prefectures closest to the Fukushima disaster site ⸺ after conducting water sample inspections off the coast of the site. Beijing had banned all such imports from Japan as a protest and precaution, following the 2023 start of deliberately discharging large volumes of radioactively contaminated cooling water into the Pacific Ocean.
The 2023 ban was imposed to “comprehensively prevent the food safety risks of radioactive contamination caused by the discharge of nuclear wastewater from Fukushima into the sea,” China’s General Administration of Customs said then. Shocked by Japan’s action, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry added that the discharge was an “extremely selfish and irresponsible act,” which would “push the risks onto the whole world (and) pass on the pain to future generations of human beings,” the Agence France-Presse reported.
Read MoreRead this book!
Nuclear is Not the Solution is a fluid read that makes a convincing case against continued and further use of nuclear power in an age of climate crisis, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
A couple of months ago, Ralph Nader sent around a recommended list of books to read as we wile away those idle days of summer — haha if only! It was a suitably grim line-up, given the times we are living in.
More homework, I remember thinking with dread, looking at the already expanding row of “the end is nigh” books on my shelves about nobody’s favorite subject but ours —all things nuclear.
So I confess I haven’t yet read Nuclear War: A scenario (although Paul Gunter has, so I count that as checked off — why do we both need to invite nightmares?) I never quite finished Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine, confessions of a nuclear war planner, either, brilliant though it is. But I will. I AM reading Timmon Wallis’s excellent new book, Nuclear Abolition. A scenario, and that review is now in the queue.
A few of the other waiting books are “tomes” that threaten to be a “trudge”, the worst aspect of obligatory reading. Worthy yes, important yes, but hard work nevertheless.
An exception to this was Kate Brown’s 2019 book, Manual For Survival, a Chernobyl Guide to the Future that, despite its subject matter — or maybe because of it — read like a thriller, a non-fiction page-turner that felt more like an addictive novel. The book is a tome, but decidedly not a trudge.
Neither tome nor trudge is M.V. Ramana’s new book, Nuclear Is Not The Solution, The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change. I must confess that I read Ramana’s book some time ago — in other words, immediately upon receipt — because I knew it was going to be a riveting read as well as an essential primer.
Then I got enmeshed in completing my own book — No To Nuclear. Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War (to be published by Pluto Press next March and for which Ramana provided some invaluable feedback). Consequently, this review is inexcusably late.
I could stop here and just say “Read This Book!” But it’s important to say why it’s essential reading.
Read MoreSouth Carolina’s dormant nuclear volcanoes
Resuming construction of the abandoned V.C. Summer reactors is rife with challenges, says a new report from Savannah River Site Watch
The proposal to restart the failed nuclear reactor construction project in South Carolina faces a host of unexamined challenges, according to a just-released report. The report, prepared by the nuclear policy expert who led the intervention against the project since its inception in 2008 through its collapse and termination in the face of ratepayer outrage 2017, outlines major stumbling blocks to the revival of the nation’s most shocking failure of a nuclear reactor construction project in the United States in the 21stcentury.
The V.C. Summer project involved the botched attempt by now-defunct South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) to construct two large Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors 2 – units 2 & 3 – 25 miles north of Columbia, South Carolina. Over $10 billion was wasted on the construction of project.
Its abrupt termination was one of the most impactful and costly nuclear construction-project collapses in U.S. history, which was the death knell for the so-called “nuclear renaissance” in the U.S. Customers were hit hard and are still left holding the bag with nothing in return for a reported $2 billion payment so far, for financing costs, an amount that grows daily. Though far-fetched, project restart is now being discussed.
The report – presenting 14 unanalyzed challenges to the restart idea and prepared by the Columbia-based public-interest, non-profit group Savannah River Site Watch – is titled Economic, Technical and Regulatory Challenges Confound Restart of the Terminated V.C. Summer Nuclear Reactor Construction Project in South Carolina.
The 24-page report was written by Tom Clements, director of SRS Watch, who led interventions before the PSC by the environmental group Friends of The Earth beginning in 2008 and running through the bankruptcy of SCE&G and its takeover by Dominion Energy South Carolina in January 2019.
“As the public was so abused during the V.C Summer construction project, they now deserve a voice in raising concerns about proposals concerning rebirth of the project in which they still have financial ownership and that’s for whom this report speaks” said Clements. “We reveal in the report that Dominion ratepayers are right now paying 5.22% of the bill for the terminated project and are paying, since 2019, an additional $2.8 billion over 20 years. The restart effort could once again saddle customers with additional massive costs if VCSummer 2.0 proceeds.”
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