Beyond Nuclear International
No radioactive water dump!
Japan has other choices for Fukushima water
From GENSUIKIN
Update: Thank you very much to those who have already sent comments opposing Japan’s plan to dump radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Due to the overwhelming response from concerned citizens and groups across the globe, GENSUIKIN is extending the comment period until January 31, 2021. Please email your comments to: gensuikin.online@gmail.com.
The Japanese government appears ready to dispose of radioactive water contaminated by tritium and other radioactive materials from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. GENSUIKIN is asking for your support to prevent this reckless attempt by the government. Please see the end of the article for action steps.
At GENSUIKIN, we have campaigned against any uses of nuclear technology by any country, including the commercial use of nuclear energy such as nuclear power plants, on the basis that “nuclear and humanity cannot coexist”.
On March 11, 2011, during the Great East Japan Earthquake, four of six nuclear reactors operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had core meltdowns caused by loss of cooling power. Due to the high radiation dose at the facility – 42 Sv in the containment vessel and 5150 mSv in the buildings — it is impossible to know the true extent of damage to the core while cooling water continues to be injected to prevent criticality.
In such a situation, it is extremely dangerous for cooling water to be contaminated by high level radioactive materials, to accumulate to as much as 1.23 million cubic meters and then, potentially, to leak into the groundwater.
At present, after decontamination by an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), the contaminated water is stored in tanks at the nuclear site. There are currently 1,044 tanks at the site. Astonishingly, to remove the contaminated water, the Japanese government and TEPCO plan to dispose of it by dumping it into the Pacific Ocean. There are a number of problems with this, around which we are organizing opposition movements in solidarity with residents in Fukushima.
Read MoreWill Trump attack Iran’s nuclear center?
Advisors warn against aggression, but will Trump listen?
By Linda Pentz Gunter
What do embattled political leaders do to try to build a surge in their popularity? Sometimes, they start a war (Thatcher-Falklands anyone? Bush-Iraq?)
Defeated US president, Donald Trump, perhaps in an effort to create further mayhem as the reins of power are prized from his grasp and handed to Joe Biden, reportedly inquired last week about options to exercise a military strike on Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.
Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and, as such, claims it is exercising its right under Article IV to engage in what the treaty misguidedly describes as the “inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”
It’s a problematic clause, shooting itself in its non-proliferation foot by providing the roadmap to nuclear weapons development and encouraging countries to follow it. But Iran, if it stays within uranium enrichment limits, isn’t violating it.
The U.S. meanwhile, also a party to the treaty, IS violating it by not abiding by Article VI which asks signatories “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
There is no cessation of the nuclear arms race “at an early date” or even, recently, at all. A treaty on “complete disarmament” has now arrived in the form of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which the Trump administration has not only refused to sign or ratify but has threatened other countries for doing so.
Trump, who seems to believe that he will remain president, is perhaps seeking to look tough to his blindly obedient followers. He won’t concede the presidential election, because he’s not a “loser”. And he can start a war, because that would be tough and macho, the only likeness of leadership he understands.
Read MoreScience, or nuclear fiction?
Biden-Harris must reject the nuclear path
By Linda Pentz Gunter
Although possibly a sad comment on his predecessors, incoming U.S. president, Joe Biden, is offering the most progressive climate policy so far of any who have previously held his position.
As Paul Gipe points out in his recent blog, the Democratic Party platform — and now the Biden-Harris climate plan — use the word “revolution” right in the headline — a bit of a departure from the usual cautious rhetoric of the centrist-controlled Democratic Party.
But ‘revolution’ is proceeded by two words which let us know we are still lingering in conservative ‘safe’ territory. They call it a “clean energy revolution”, which Gipe rightly refers to as “focus-group shopped terminology.” He goes on:
”Clean energy is a term forged by Madison Avenue advertising mavens in the crucible of focus groups. It ‘polls well,’ as they say. It means one thing to one interest group, something else to another. So it’s perfect for politics in America.
“To environmentalists, it means wind and solar energy, often only those two forms of renewable energy, and sometimes only solar. It also means good times to the coal and nuclear industry. (Ever hear of ‘clean coal’?)
“So clean energy is one of those misleading words that party leaders and, importantly, fundraisers can use to elicit money from donors of all stripes. Why say renewable energy, when you want to raise money from the coal and nuclear industries?”
Schools of mass destruction
American universities in the US nuclear weapons complex
An ICAN report
Universities across the United States are identified in this report for activities ranging from directly managing laboratories that design nuclear weapons to recruiting and training the next generation of nuclear weapons scientists. Much of universities’ nuclear weapons work is kept secret from students and faculty by classified research policies and undisclosed contracts with the Defense Department and the Energy Department. The following is the executive summary from ICAN’s report: Schools of Mass Destruction, with some changes made for timeliness.
Over the next ten years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates U.S. taxpayers will pay nearly $500 billion to maintain and modernize their country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, or almost $100,000 per minute. A separate estimate brings the total over the next 30 years to an estimated $1.7 trillion. In a July 2019 report, National Nuclear Security Administrator Lisa Gordon-Haggerty wrote, “The nuclear security enterprise is at its busiest since the demands of the Cold War era.”
In addition to large amounts of funding, enacting these upgrades requires significant amounts of scientific, technical and human capital. To a large extent, the U.S. government and its contractors have turned to the nation’s universities to provide this capital.
At the same time, the United States is shirking its previous commitments to nuclear arms control and reducing nuclear risks despite its obligation under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue good-faith measures towards nuclear disarmament.
Six million dead
The Congo Holocaust has its origins in minerals plunder and colonialism
By Linda Pentz Gunter
When you’ve lost family members to the Nazi death camps, it’s a pain that never goes away. Six of my relatives were killed there, four more shot in Polish ghettos and at Forlì. They died long before I was born and were people I never knew. But we have their photographs. Their pain stares out from those images, a perpetual ache.
But what use is endless mourning if no lessons are learned? The most important one surely is that no such Holocaust must ever be allowed to happen again? And yet it has. To almost universal silence. No one speaks of today’s six million dead. They lie beneath the mineral-rich soil of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), invisible and unmourned by the world beyond their country’s borders.
“The Holocaust continues in DRC with the complicity of the international community,” Rodrigue Muganwa Lubulu wrote to me in an email exchange. “Women and girls are raped every day and the dead are counted by tens each day.” He is the program director for CRISPAL Afrique and gave a zoom talk recently hosted by ICAN Germany.
The tragedy of the DRC, the second largest country in Africa, began with the discovery in 1915 of the Shinkolobwe uranium deposit, the richest ever discovered at the time. Its plunder, from 1921 until its closure in 2004, “has been a curse for the powerless community” around the mine, said Lubulu, “because not only have they been forced to abandon their lands, houses and fields in favor of uranium mining, but also all the men were forced to dig out those extremely radioactive materials without protective equipment.”
The cancers and other illnesses that killed those uranium workers are still harming the community today, Lubulu says, even though the mine is now shut down.
Read MoreA secret military-energy agenda
UK defence policy is driving energy policy – with the public kept in the dark
By David Thorpe
The UK government has for 15 years persistently backed the need for new nuclear power. Given its many problems, most informed observers can’t understand why. The answer lies in its commitment to being a nuclear military force. Here’s how, and why, anyone opposing nuclear power also needs to oppose its military use.
“All of Britain’s household energy needs supplied by offshore wind by 2030,” proclaimed Prime Minister Boris Johnson at a recent online Conservative Party conference. This means 40 per cent of total UK electricity. Johnson did not say how, but it is likely, if it happens, to be by capacity auctions, as it has been in the recent past.
But this may have been a deliberate distraction: there were two further announcements on energy – both about nuclear power.
16 so-called “small nuclear reactors”
Downing Street told the Financial Times, which it faithfully reported, that it was “considering” £2 billion of taxpayers’ money to support “small nuclear reactors” – up to 16 of them “to help UK meet carbon emissions targets”.
It claimed the first SMR is expected to cost £2.2 billion and be online by 2029.
The government could also commission the first mini power station, giving confidence to suppliers and investors. Any final decision will be subject to the Treasury’s multiyear spending review, due later this year.
The consortium that would build it includes Rolls Royce and the National Nuclear Laboratory.
Support for this SMR technology is expected to form part of Boris Johnson’s “10-point plan for a green industrial revolution” and new Energy White Paper, which are scheduled for release later in the autumn.
Read More
Beyond Nuclear International 