Antinuclear

Jeff Bezos and the corporate colonisation of the stars

Jeff Bezos goes to space but not everyone is celebrating, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, By Chris Zappone, July 23, 2021This week, Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world and mastermind behind the retail giant Amazon, fulfilled a lifelong ambition and launched into space.

The New Shepard rocket, designed and built by his company, Blue Origin, blasted off from remote west Texas, taking Bezos, his younger brother Mark, Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen and female pioneer of the first space age Mary “Wally” Funk into a 10-minute sub-orbital journey. Bezos’ reusable rocket body returned autonomously to land upright on a launch pad……

Upon landing this week, Bezos — estimated to be worth $US205 billion ($280 billion) — said he had had the “best day ever”.

How does everyone else feel?

While Bezos believes in “going to space to benefit Earth”, his launch was met with as much derision as celebration. No one contested the technological accomplishment. Yet the optics of a billionaire whose fortune has been linked with harsh working conditions and monopolistic business practices fulfilling his personal dream during a raging pandemic triggered a rash of reactions. Bezos didn’t help his own cause by proclaiming: “I want to thank every Amazon employee and customer because you guys paid for this.”

Only last year, a US House Judiciary Committee probe into anti-trust behaviour declared: “Amazon’s pattern of exploiting sellers, enabled by its market dominance, raises serious competition concerns.” US Senator Elizabeth Warren was more pointed. After Blue Origin’s launch, she wrote: “Jeff Bezos forgot to thank all the hardworking Americans who actually paid taxes to keep this country running while he and Amazon paid nothing.”   Warren was not alone in voicing such sentiments.

Who is Jeff Bezos?

……….Optimised for profit, growth and speed, Amazon was increasingly called out for anti-competitive practices, demanding the lowest prices from suppliers and punishing those who sold their products cheaper elsewhere. As the technology got more complex, and the company grew more dominant, Amazon could better shape the competitive environment. Bezos even bought one of the most influential publications in the US, The Washington Post, in 2013. Meanwhile, the work pressure became so high in the anti-union company-operated warehouses that employees had to relieve themselves in bottles. Bezos stepped down as CEO this month but remains Amazon’s executive chairman and its largest shareholder.

Why does this week’s launch matter?

Billionaires are locked in a battle to build new space businesses. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flight occurred nine days before Bezos’ launch. Meanwhile, the SpaceX business of fellow billionaire Elon Musk is upping the pace with its reusable Falcon 9 rockets, with 60 launches so far.

After the launch this week, he added: “This sounds fantastical, what I’m about to tell you, but it will happen. We can move all heavy industry and all polluting industry off of Earth and operate it in space.” The prospect of solving the problem of pollution by hoisting dirty industry into space sounds like science fiction.

What happens next?

The space business is set to grow, possibly more than tripling to $US1.4 trillion in the next 20 years on Morgan Stanley numbers. Expect the likes of Blue Origin and SpaceX to take a big bite of that apple. Yet even as space tourism and commercial launch services look set to flourish, public angst grows about inequality. Given the trajectory toward domination by companies like Amazon (and Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google), Silicon Valley writing its own rules for space has generated some public concern.

Amazon and the tech giants have succeeded in part by growing quickly enough to shape the terms of the industry and overwhelming regulators. If governments can’t effectively regulate the billionaires’ companies or keep abreast of technology on Earth, what hope does the public have for a space that benefits them?

Houston-based Poppy Northcutt, who helped put humans on the moon as a rocket scientist with NASA during the Apollo program, says the billionaire-led space race would bring new worries. “Anyone who knows any of the history of the commercial [ventures] that led the early European exploration of the Indies, Africa, the Americas, Asia would have concerns,” she told The Age and Sydney Morning Herald……..

The question for Bezos, as for the public, will be whether we’re on the road to space colonies in orbit or a corporate colonisation of the stars.  https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/jeff-bezos-goes-to-space-why-not-everyone-is-celebrating-20210722-p58bzn.html

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Perils to austronauts’ health – high radiation and low gravity

High Radiation, Low Gravitation: The Perils of a Trip to Mars, Sunscreen and calcium supplements aren’t enough to protect Mars-bound space travelers from radiation and a lack of gravity in outer space.   July 23, 2021 – 17:00Yuen Yiu, Staff Writer   (Inside Science) — Back in May, SpaceX launched its Starship SN15 prototype to about the cruising altitude of a commercial airliner before landing it safely. The company claims future versions of the rocket will be able to take 100 passengers at a time to the moon, and even Mars.  

But while it’s one thing to send a rocket to Mars, it’s another to send people there alive. And it’s yet another thing to make sure the people can be as healthy as they were when they left Earth. 

Besides packing enough fuel and air and water and food for the seven-month-long journey to Mars (and more for a return trip if you want a return ticket), there are other luxuries we enjoy here on Earth that the spaceship will have to provide if we want to stay healthy during the long flight. 

Nasty sunburns and zero gravity

Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field protect us from harmful space radiation, but passengers bound for Mars will lose that protection. So, their spaceship would need to provide some kind of radiation shielding.

Depending on where radiation comes from, it may be made of different particles and have different energies, which would require different means of shielding and pose different levels of danger to our radiation-prone DNA. For example, radiations from energetic particles ejected from the sun behave very differently than cosmic rays from outside our galaxy. 

So, how many times more radiation would a Mars-bound astronaut experience compared to what they would experience on Earth? 

Enough to be of concern, according to Athanasios Petridis, a physicist from Drake University in Des Moines. According to calculations by his team, high-end estimates for radiation exposure during a round trip to Mars are in the range of several Sieverts (Sv). For reference, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has set 0.05 Sv/year as the dose limit for workers who are exposed to radiation at their jobs.

Solar weather also plays a role in the amount of radiation you would get in space. For instance, the 11-year solar cycle affects the amount of radiation the sun emits. However, due to the complicated interplay between sun-generated radiation and cosmic rays from outer space, it may not be worth it to time the launch around these cycles. 

“There are enough competing factors in radiation exposure that trying to plan around the solar cycle is like trying to time the stock market, which usually results in losing,” said Kerry Lee, a radiation analyst from NASA in Houston, Texas.

The lack of gravity can also wreak havoc on the human body given enough time. Astronauts aboard space stations have been shown to lose 1 to 1.5 % of the mineral density in their weight-bearing bones every month. They also tend to lose muscle mass, even when exercising as much as they do on Earth. ………..  https://www.insidescience.org/news/high-radiation-low-gravitation-perils-trip-mars

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Bill Gates’fast nuclear reactor ”Natrium” – not so safe and a nuclear weapons proliferation risk

At the March Senate hearing, TerrPower’s CEO described a future for the Natrium project that had almost unlimited export opportunities for Natrium and much larger plants. As Levesque explained, the current Natrium offering is a 345-megawatt (electric) machine—not so small in itself—because that size was what today’s market would accept. As TerraPower gained experience, though, he anticipated “growing Natrium output back up to gigawatt scale,” the size of current large light water reactors. The obvious conclusion is that, despite the current ballyhoo about the economic advantages of small units, TerraPower doesn’t think the smaller units would be as economic as larger ones. The “small” label is apparently just for the easily impressed.

Bill Gates’ Fast Nuclear Reactor: Will It Bomb?,  https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/bill-gates%E2%80%99-fast-nuclear-reactor-will-it-bomb-189967 The principal reason for preferring fast reactors, historically the only reason, is to gain the ability to breed plutonium. Thus, the reactor would make and reuse massive quantities of material that could also be used as nuclear explosives in warheads.

by Victor Gilinsky Henry Sokolski 23 July 21, “Fast” means Natrium relies on energetic neutrons as opposed to “slow” neutrons that drive all our current power reactors. That’s also what gives it the “advanced” label. DOE and nuclear enthusiasts have advertised that small, factory-built, modular reactors will be cheaper and safer, and will be so attractive to foreign buyers that they will revive America’s nuclear industry, currently dead in the water; that they will enable the United States to compete in an international market now dominated by China and Russia; and they will provide a solid nuclear industrial base for meeting U.S. military nuclear requirements.

With all these supposed advantages it is not surprising that DOE is pouring money into SMRs. And based on little more than slogans, it is also getting enthusiastic bipartisan Congressional support. To understand what is really going on, one has to look beyond most of DOE’s small reactor projects, mere distractions with little future, to TerraPower’s Natrium. This is not, by the way, the company’s original “traveling wave” concept. That one apparently did not work.

The Natrium project, more than any other, offers the possibility to fulfill the nuclear community’s eighty-year-old nuclear dream to develop a nuclear power plant that can run on all mined uranium, not just on the relatively rare uranium-235 fissile isotope, as current reactors do, thereby vastly increasing fuel resources. It does this by first turning the inert uranium into plutonium and then using the plutonium as fuel. It can even “breed” excess plutonium to fuel new fast reactors. Those outside the nuclear community have no idea of the grip this captivating idea has on nuclear engineers’ minds. It has, however, serious practical drawbacks. What concerns us here is that plutonium is a nuclear explosive—a few kilograms are enough for a bomb, and it is an awful idea to have untold tons of it coursing through commercial channels.

Fast breeder reactors are not exactly a new idea. The DOE’s predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, pushed fast breeder reactors in the 1970s as the energy solution in what was thought to be a uranium-poor world. It turned out we live in a uranium-rich world, so the expensive project, whose safety problems had not been fully resolved, made no economic sense. Congress canceled the Clinch River Fast Breeder Reactor demonstration project in 1983. Enthusiasts tried but failed to revive fast reactors during the second Bush administration. That effort flopped. Now they are trying again with Natrium, a scaled-up version of a General Electric design for a small sodium-cooled, plutonium-fueled fast breeder reactor (natrium is German for sodium).

TerraPower, of course, is Bill Gates’s company. One might ask, naively, why he of all people needs government support if the Natrium project is as good as he apparently thinks it is, but let us pass over that to focus on what the project technically entails and the difficulties those technical details pose.

Chris Levesque, TerraPower’s CEO, told a March 25 Senate Energy Committee hearing that the Natrium would be fueled with uranium enriched to 20 percent U-235 rather than explosive plutonium. But will that remain the preferred fuel if the Natrium reactor takes off and is offered for export? Currently, only a handful of nations can make 20 percent enriched uranium. It’s hard to believe that foreign customers will want to be tied to a U.S. supply of this fuel.

If they want another source for 20 percent fuel, will the United States go along with foreign enrichers offering it? We currently oppose Iran producing it on grounds that such material is too close to bomb-grade uranium. In a 1976 statement on nuclear policy, President Gerald Ford said the United States would not act in its civilian program in a way contrary to what we ask of others. Has this level of consistency and respect for others gone by the boards?

The thing to remember is that the principal reason for preferring fast reactors, historically the only reason, is to gain the ability to breed plutonium. That is surely what foreign customers will want. The original GE design on which Natrium is based included an onsite reprocessing plant. So configured, the reactor would make and reuse massive quantities of material that could also be used as nuclear explosives in warheads.

The potential weapons link is obvious in India, which has refused to allow international inspections of its fast reactor. And the recent disclosure that China is building two fast reactors more or less under wraps immediately provoked international concerns about Chinese possible weapons plutonium production. The plutonium produced in the fast reactor uranium “blanket” surrounding the reactor core is well over 90 percent plutonium 239, which is ideal for nuclear weapons.

At the March Senate hearing, TerrPower’s CEO described a future for the Natrium project that had almost unlimited export opportunities for Natrium and much larger plants. As Levesque explained, the current Natrium offering is a 345-megawatt (electric) machine—not so small in itself—because that size was what today’s market would accept. As TerraPower gained experience, though, he anticipated “growing Natrium output back up to gigawatt scale,” the size of current large light water reactors. The obvious conclusion is that, despite the current ballyhoo about the economic advantages of small units, TerraPower doesn’t think the smaller units would be as economic as larger ones. The “small” label is apparently just for the easily impressed.

Nor are the touted safety advantages of fast reactors what they seem. The low pressure of sodium-cooled reactors is an advantage. But sodium burns violently when exposed to air or water. And a fast reactor needs a large, concentrated amount of fissile material which becomes more reactive if it loses its coolant. In short, the comparison with the safety of light water reactors is at best a draw.

The March Senate hearing discussion about competing with Russia and China made clear the nuclear industry’s business plan centers on exporting fast reactor technology around the world, however implausible this may be given the cost and safety issues we’ve noted. The question for the U.S. government is, should it be encouraging nuclear technologies that threaten to flood the world with untold tons of plutonium?

Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter made it U.S. policy to discourage commercializing of plutonium-fueled reactors. Ford’s words bear repeating: In 1976, he announced that the United States wouldn’t support reliance on plutonium fuel and associated reprocessing of spent fuel until “the world community can effectively overcome the associated risks of proliferation.” Fast reactors like TerraPower’s Natrium don’t meet this test.

Victor Gilinsky serves as program advisor to The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, is a physicist, and was a commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations.

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Problems at China nuclear power plant are serious enough to warrant shutdown, French co-owner warns.

Problems at China nuclear power plant are serious enough to warrant shutdown, French co-owner warns, By Barbara Wojazer, Zachary Cohen, Michael Callahan and Jessie Yeung, CNN, July 23, 2021   CNN)The French power company that co-owns a nuclear plant in China would shut it down if it could, due to damage to the fuel rods, a spokesperson said — but the decision is ultimately up to the plant’s Chinese operator.

The spokesperson for Electricite de France (EDF) said on Thursday that while it was “not an emergency situation” at the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, located in China’s southern Guangdong province, it was a “serious situation that is evolving.”If the reactor was in France, the company would have shut it down already due to “the procedures and practices in terms of operating nuclear power plants in France,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson did not directly call on China to halt operations at the plant, noting it was a decision for its Chinese partner and majority shareholder in the plant, the China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN).

CNN first reported in June that the French company Framatome — an EDF subsidiary which supports operations at Taishan — had warned of an “imminent radiological threat” at the plant, prompting the United States government to investigate the possibility of a leak.

The company had also accused the Chinese safety authority of raising the acceptable limits for radiation detection outside the plant in order to avoid having to shut it down, according to a letter from Framatome to the US Department of Energy, obtained by CNN…………..On Thursday, the EDF spokesperson reiterated it was detecting an increase in noble gas in a reactor, and that the company had publicly clarified its position to the Chinese plant’s owner and operator, Taishan Nuclear Power Joint Venture Co., Ltd (TNPJVC).

EDF holds a 30% stake in TNPJVC — a joint venture with state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group.”We’ve shared with them all the elements of EDF’s analysis and all the reasons why, in France, we would stop the reactor,” the spokesperson said, “so that they can take the decision that will be necessary as responsible operators.”According to the spokesperson, EDF would have shut down the reactor in order to “avoid further degrading of the fuel rods, and carry out an investigation, and avoid further damage to the industrial facility.”…..   https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/22/china/edf-taishan-nuclear-plant-china-intl-hnk/index.html

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Maohi Lives Matter’: Tahiti protesters condemn French nuclear testing legacy 

Maohi Lives Matter’: Tahiti protesters condemn French nuclear testing legacy  https://globalvoices.org/2021/07/23/maohi-lives-matter-tahiti-protesters-condemn-french-nuclear-testing-legacy/
France conducted 193 nuclear tests in the South Pacific by Mong Palatino 23 July 20217

More than 1,000 people gathered in the Tahiti capital of Papeete to condemn the failure of the French government to take full accountability for its nuclear testing program in the South Pacific.

France conducted 193 nuclear tests from 1966–1996 in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia). France’s 41st nuclear experiment in the Pacific led to catastrophe on July 17, 1974, when France tested a nuclear bomb codenamed “Centaure.” Because of weather conditions that day, the test caused an atmospheric radioactive fallout which affected all of French Polynesia. Inhabitants of Tahiti and the surrounding islands of the Windward group were reportedly subjected to significant amounts of ionizing radiation 42 hours after the test, which can cause significant long-term health problems.

The July 17, 2021 protest was organized under the banner of #MaohiLivesMatter to highlight the continuing fight for nuclear justice. Campaigners said that despite the statement of former French President François Hollande in 2016 recognizing the negative environmental and health impact of the nuclear tests, the French government has done little to provide compensation or rehabilitation to French Polynesia.

After analyzing 2,000 pages of declassified French military documents about the nuclear tests, in March 2021 a group of researchers and investigative journalists from INTERPRT and Disclose released their findings on the health implications of the experiments.

According to our calculations, based on a scientific reassessment of the doses received, approximately 110,000 people were infected, almost the entire Polynesian population at the time.

The report has revived public awareness in France about the impact of their nuclear testing program. The French government held a roundtable discussion about the issue in Paris in early July. Though some criticized the French government for their alleged lack of transparency around the clean-up efforts in French Polynesia, officials denied these claims.

Protesters in Tahiti insisted that the French government should do more to address the demands of French Polynesian residents. Some noted that if French President Emmanuel Macron was able to seek forgiveness for the role of France in enabling the Rwanda genocide in 1994, he should at least make a similar apology for the harmful legacy of the nuclear tests in the Pacific.

The #MaohiLivesMatter protest has inspired solidarity in the Pacific.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN) Australia issued this statement of support:

As you gather in Maohi Nui on the 17th July we offer our deep respects to your leaders and community members who have long spoken out against the harms imposed by these weapons. We have heard your calls for nuclear justice. We continue to listen closely when you speak of the lived experience of the testing years and the on–going harms.

French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to tackle the legacy of nuclear testing during his visit to Tahiti this month.

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Despite the rain, France’s nuclear reactors are still threatened by global heating.

Rhône production still threatened despite the rains. A heatwave and drought could still cause shutdowns of nuclear reactors along the Rhone by the fall, despite unprecedented rainfall in Western Europe in recent weeks which has replenished the flow of the river, said analysts Wednesday.

 Montel 21st July 2021

https://www.montelnews.com/fr/news/1240314/-la-production-du-rhne-toujours-menace-malgr-les-pluies

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Wind and solar set new production records as they reshape Australia’s grid — RenewEconomy

Wind and solar have set new production records in Australia’s main grid as they continue to reshape the grid and displace coal and gas. The post Wind and solar set new production records as they reshape Australia’s grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Wind and solar set new production records as they reshape Australia’s grid — RenewEconomy

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

AEMO subsidiary to lead planning for NSW’s ambitious clean energy vision — RenewEconomy

AEMO to play a hands on role in planning New South Wales’ electricity transition, after being appointed as the NSW Consumer Trustee. The post AEMO subsidiary to lead planning for NSW’s ambitious clean energy vision appeared first on RenewEconomy.

AEMO subsidiary to lead planning for NSW’s ambitious clean energy vision — RenewEconomy

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New wind farms take output to record levels in WA, despite cyclone impact — RenewEconomy

Wind output hits new record in Western Australia grid, but overall generation hit badly after cyclone tore through transmission lines. The post New wind farms take output to record levels in WA, despite cyclone impact appeared first on RenewEconomy.

New wind farms take output to record levels in WA, despite cyclone impact — RenewEconomy

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

World’s largest floating solar farm – more than 2GW – to supply Singapore — RenewEconomy

Sunseap to build “hyper-scale” floating solar and storage project to supply Singapore with power. What does it mean for Sun Cable? The post World’s largest floating solar farm – more than 2GW – to supply Singapore appeared first on RenewEconomy.

World’s largest floating solar farm – more than 2GW – to supply Singapore — RenewEconomy

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Bavarian conservative state premier wants coal phase-out by 2030 after floods — RenewEconomy

In light of the catastrophic floods that hit Germany, Bavaria’s conservative state premier wants coal generation to finish by 2030. The post Bavarian conservative state premier wants coal phase-out by 2030 after floods appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Bavarian conservative state premier wants coal phase-out by 2030 after floods — RenewEconomy

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The people have spoken: they want a fairer, greener country — Inside track

This post is by Joshua Emden, research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). If you put people at the heart of efforts to solve the climate and nature crises, then opportunity abounds. This is the core message presented by the final report of IPPR’s Environmental Justice Commission, Fairness and Opportunity. But this […]

The people have spoken: they want a fairer, greener country — Inside track

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

July 23 Energy News — geoharvey

Opinion: ¶ “As The World Burns, California Will Pick Up The Pace On Climate – Maybe” • Reading directives by California’s governor about goals for 2030 and 2035 and 2045, we should think about a report from RMI, whose authors wrote, “The most important year to phase out fossil fuel infrastructure and invest in clean […]

July 23 Energy News — geoharvey

July 24, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment