Heatwaves: Why this (Northern) summer has been so hot
It is hot. Very hot. And we are only a few weeks into summer. Texas and
part of the south-west of the US are enduring a searing heatwave. At one
point, more than 120 million Americans were under some form of heat
advisory, the US National Weather Service said. That is more than one in
three of the total population.
In the UK, the June heat didn’t just break
all-time records, it smashed them. It was 0.9C hotter than the previous
record, set back in 1940. That is a huge margin. There is a similar story
of unprecedented hot weather in North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. No
surprise, then, that the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather forecasts
said that globally, June was the hottest on record. And the heat has not
eased. The three hottest days ever recorded were in the past week,
according to the EU climate and weather service, Copernicus.
These highs are in line with what climate models predicted, says Prof Richard Betts, climate scientist at the Met Office and University of Exeter.
“We should not be at all surprised with the high global temperatures,” he says. “This is all a stark reminder of what we’ve known for a long time, and we will see ever more extremes until we stop building up more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
When we think about how hot it is, we tend to think about the air temperature, because that’s what we experience in our daily lives.
But most of the heat stored near the surface of the Earth is not in the atmosphere, but in the oceans. And we’ve been seeing some record ocean temperatures this spring and summer.
The North Atlantic, for example, is currently experiencing the highest surface water temperatures ever recorded.
That marine heatwave has been particularly pronounced around the coasts of the UK, where some areas have experienced temperatures as much as 5C above what you would normally expect for this time of year……………………………………………………………
Most of the extra heat trapped by the build-up of greenhouse gases has gone into warming the surface ocean, he explains. That extra heat tends to get mixed downwards towards the deeper ocean, but movements in oceans currents – like El Niño – can bring it back to the surface.
“When that happens, a lot of that heat gets released into the atmosphere,” says Prof Lenton, “driving up air temperatures.”
It’s easy to think of this exceptionally hot weather as unusual, but the depressing truth is that climate change means it is now normal to experience record-breaking temperatures.
Greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase year on year. The rate of growth has slowed slightly, but energy-related CO2 emissions were still up almost 1% last year, according to the International Energy Agency, a global energy watchdog.
And the higher the global temperature, the higher the risk of heatwaves, says Friederike Otto, a climatologist at the Grantham Institute of Climate Change at Imperial College London.
“These heatwaves are not only more frequent, but also hotter and longer than they would have been without global warming,” she says.
Experts are already predicting that the developing El Niño is likely to make 2023 the world’s hottest year.
They fear it is likely to temporarily push the world past a key 1.5C warming milestone.
And that is just the start. Unless we make dramatic reductions to greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures will continue to rise.
The Met Office said this week that record June temperatures this year were made twice as likely because of man-made climate change.
These rising temperatures are already driving fundamental and almost certainly irreversible changes in ecosystems across the world………………………………….
The world is effectively in a race.
It is clear we are speeding towards an ever hotter and more chaotic climate future, but we do have the technologies and tools to cut our emissions.
The question now is whether we can do so rapidly enough to slow the climate juggernaut and keep the impacts of global warming within manageable boundaries.
BBC 9th July 2023https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66143682
Terrible truths about nuclear energy exposed
“We are all seeing a global political agreement centred in the UN organisations, tie IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], the World Health Organisation… All the international agencies are whitewashing what is happening in Fukushima.
By Karl Grossman | 11 July 2023 https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/terrible-truths-about-nuclear-energy-exposed,17704
A NEW documentary titled The Fukushima Disaster: The Hidden Side of the Story is a powerful, moving, informative film that is superbly made. Directed and edited by Philippe Carillo, it is among the strongest ever made on the deadly dangers of nuclear technology.
Australians featured in the film are Dr Helen Caldicott, former president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and John Keane, professor of politics at the University of Sydney. Carillo is a resident of the nation of Vanuatu, 1,750 kilometres northeast of Australia.
The documentary begins with the words of U.S. President John F Kennedy from 1961:
“Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by an accident, or miscalculation or by madness.”
It then goes to the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan after it was struck by a tsunami. Its backup diesel generators kicked in but “did not run for long,” notes the documentary. That led to three of the six plant reactors exploding – and there’s video of this – “releasing an unpreceded amount of nuclear radiation into the air”.
“Fukushima is the world’s largest ever industrial catastrophe,” then says Professor John Keane. He says there was no emergency plan and, as to the owner of Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), with the accident its CEO “for five nights and days… locked himself inside his office”.
Meanwhile, from TEPCO, there was “only good news” with two Japanese government agencies also “involved in the cover-up” — the Nuclear Industry Safety Agency and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
“Japanese media was ordered to censor information. The Japanese Government failed to protect its people,” the documentary relates.
Yumi Kikuchi of Fukushima, since a leader of the Fukushima Kids Project, recalls:
“On TV, they said that ‘it’s under control’ and they kept saying that for two months. The nuclear power plant had already melted and even exploded but they never admitted the meltdown until May. So, people in Fukushima during that time were severely exposed to radiation.”
Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and now a principal of Fairewinds Energy Education in Burlington, Vermont in the United States, speaks of being told by Naoto Kan, the Prime Minister of Japan at the time of the accident, that “our existence as a sovereign nation was at stake because of the disaster at Fukushima Daichi”.
Kan then appears in the documentary and speaks of “manmade” links to the disaster.
The documentary tells how Kan, following the accident, became “an advocate against nuclear power… ordered all nuclear power plants in Japan to shut down for safety” and for the nation “to move into renewable energy”.
Subsequently, “a nuclear advocate”, Shinzo Abe, became Japan’s Prime Minister.
Yoichi Shimatsu, a former Japan Times journalist, appears in the film and speaks of “the cruelty, the cynicism of this government”. He speaks of how in the accident’s aftermath, “nearly every member of Parliament and leaders of the major political parties”, along with corporate executives, “moved their relatives out of Japan”.
He says:
“Shanghai is the largest Japanese community outside Japan now… while these same people [had been] telling the people of Fukushima ‘go home’, ten kilometres from Fukushima, ‘go home, it’s safe’, while their families are overseas in Los Angeles, in Paris, in London and in Shanghai.”
“If it’s safe, why they left?” asks Kikuchi.
Gundersen says:
At Fukushima Daichi, the world is already seeing deaths from cancer related to the disaster…There’ll be many more over time. [There has been a] huge increase in thyroid cancer in the surrounding population.
Unfortunately, the Japanese Government is not telling us all the evidence. There’s a lot of pressure on the scientists and the medical community to distort the evidence so there’s no blowback against nuclear power.
There is a section in the documentary on the impacts of radioactivity which includes Dr Caldicott discussing the impacts of radiation on the body and how it causes cancer.
She states:
There is no safe level of radiation. I repeat, there is no safe level of radiation. Each dose of radiation is cumulative and adds to your risk of getting cancer and that’s absolutely documented in the medical literature.
The nuclear industry says, well, there are ‘safe doses’ of radiation and even says a little bit of radiation is good for you and that is called the theory of hormesis. They lie and they lie and they lie.
Maggie Gundersen, who was a reporter and then a public relations representative for the nuclear industry and, like her husband Arnie, became an opponent of nuclear power, speaks of how nuclear power derives from the World War II Manhattan Project program to develop atomic weapons and post-war so-called “Atoms for Peace” push.
Gundersen says in becoming a nuclear industry spokesperson, “the things I was taught weren’t true”. The notion, for example, that what is called a containment at a nuclear plant is untrue because radioactivity “escapes every day as a nuclear power plant operates” and in a “calamity” is released massively.
As to economics, she cited the claim decades ago that nuclear power would be “too cheap to meter”.
The president of Fairewinds Energy Education says:
Regarding the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power, she says “there is literally no technology” to safeguard it for the many years it remains lethal. “It does not exist.”
As to international oversight, the documentary presents the final version of the Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation issued in 2014 which finds that the radiation doses from Fukushima ‘to the general public during the first year and estimated for their lifetimes are generally low or very low… The most important effect is on mental and social well-being’.
Shimatsu says it is not only in Japan but on an international level that the consequences of radioactive exposure have been completely minimised or denied:
“We are all seeing a global political agreement centred in the UN organisations, tie IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], the World Health Organisation… All the international agencies are whitewashing what is happening in Fukushima. We take dosimeters and Geiger counters in there, we see a much different story.”
In Germany, says Maggie Gunderson, “the politicians chose” to do a study to substantiate that no health impacts “happened around nuclear power plants… But what they found was the radiation releases cause significant numbers of childhood leukemia”.
A summary of that 2008 study comes on the screen. The U.S. followed up on that research, she says, but recently “the [U.S.] Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was not going to do that study,” that “it doesn’t have enough funding; it had to shut it down”. She said the real reason was that it was producing “data they don’t want to make public”.
Beyond the airborne releases of radiation after the Fukushima accident, now, says the documentary, there is the growing threat of radioactivity through water that has and still is leaking from the plant as well as more than a million tons of radioactive water stored in a thousand tanks built at the plant site.
After the accident, TEPCO released 300,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Now there is no land for more tanks, so the Japanese Government, the documentary relates, has decided, starting this year, to dump massive amounts of radioactive water over a 30-year period into the Pacific.
Arnie Gundersen speaks of the cliché that “the solution to pollution is dilution,” but with the radiation from Fukushima being sent into the Pacific, there will be “bio-accumulation” — with vegetation absorbing radiation, little fish eating that vegetation and intensifying it and bigger fish eating the smaller fish, further bio-accumulating the radioactivity. Already, tuna off California have been found with radiation traced to Fukushima. With this planned further and yet greater dispersal, thousands of people “in the Pacific basin will die from radiation,” he says.
Andrew Napuat, a member of the Parliament of Vanuatu, an 83-island archipelago in the Pacific, says in the documentary:
“We have the right to say no to the Japan solution. We can’t let them jeopardise our sustenance and livelihood.”
Vanuatu, along with 13 other countries, has signed and ratified the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty.
As the documentary nears its end, Arnie Gundersen says that considering the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986, and now the three Fukushima meltdowns in 2011, there has been “a meltdown every seven years roughly”.
He says:
“Essentially, once every decade the world needs to know that there might be an atomic meltdown somewhere.”
And, he adds:
“The nuclear industry is saying they want would like to build as many as 5,000 new nuclear power plants.”
(There are 440 in the world today.)
Meanwhile, he says:
“Renewable power is no longer alternative power. It’s on our doorstep. It’s here now and it works and it’s cheaper than nuclear.”
The cost of producing energy from wind, he says, is three cents a kilowatt hour, for solar, five cents and for new nuclear power plants, 15 cents. Nuclear “makes no nuclear economic sense”.
Maggie Gundersen says, with tears in her eyes:
“I’m a woman and I feel it’s inherent for us as women to protect our children, our grandchildren, and it’s our job now to raise our voices and have this madness stop.”
Philippe Carillo, who worked for 14 years in Hollywood and who since 2017 has lived in Vanuatu, has worked on several major TV documentary projects for the BBC, 20th Century Fox and French National TV as well as doing independent productions. He says he made The Fukushima Disaster: The Hidden Side of the Story to “expose the nuclear industry and its lies”.
His previous award-winning documentary, Inside the Garbage of the World, has made changes regarding the use of plastic.
The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story can be viewed at Amazon (UK and U.S.), Apple TV, iTunes, Google Play and Vimeo on demand.
Safe or septic – Japan’s nuclear wastewater dumping
RNZ, From The Detail, Tom Kitchin, co-host of The Detail @inkitchnz tom.kitchin@rnz.co.nz 11 July 23
There are diplomatic headaches and heated scientific debates after Japan revealed plans to dump the wastewater it’s been using to cool the Fukushima nuclear power plant – in the Pacific.
…………………………… Sea and ground water has been used to cool the damaged reactors, and now there’s about 1.3 million tonnes of that sitting in tanks while the Japanese government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) figure out what to do with it.
They want to release the wastewater into the ocean – diluting all the cancer-causing nuclear fission products out of it – such as caesium, which can build up in muscles, strontium-90 which can build up in bones and iodine-129 which can build up in the thyroid.
…………………………………………. journalist Nic Maclellan, a Melbourne-based correspondent with Islands Business Magazine, tells The Detail.
“The Pacific Islands Forum has been especially critical, and appointed an independent scientific panel to investigate safety issues around the proposed dumping,” he says.
“The panel has raised a series of issues around the quality of the sampling, the cost of the sampling, the cost of the programme over decades, the maintenance of safety sampling and the fact that they really don’t know whether Japan can maintain the quality that will stop other radioactive isotopes being released into the ocean.”
There are also questions over whether the wastewater dump is a breach of the Treaty of Rarotonga, signed in 1985, which created a South Pacific nuclear-free zone.
It was largely about nuclear weapons, but article seven talks about preventing nuclear waste dumping.
“Japan has been acting as if these safety concerns are not serious and it’s taken a lot of pressure for Japan to be dragged kicking and screaming into addressing questions, many of which are still unresolved,” Maclellan says.
AUKUS is also a factor now – a security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and United States. The main news out of that is the US and UK will help Australia get nuclear-powered submarines.
“The nuclear submarines are a breach of the spirit of the Rarotonga treaty. There’s going to be interesting debates about a technical definition of whether this is… a breach of the letter as well as the spirit,” Maclellan says. https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018897817/safe-or-septic-japan-s-nuclear-wastewater-dumping
Bowen: “Australia will be renewable energy superpower, not a nuclear backwater”
ReNewEconomy, Giles Parkinson 7 July 2023
Federal energy minister Chris Bowen has slammed Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s call for nuclear power in Australia, saying they are slow to build, impossible expensive and not needed in Australia.
“Here we go again,” Bowen told reporters after a meeting of state and federal climate and energy ministers in Tasmania on Friday, where the main topics of discussion were the new capacity investment scheme to help storage and a fast connections process for wind and solar.
“Mr. Dutton shows he does not understand renewable energy,” Bowen said.
“He did not get the memo from the Australian people last year, when they threw out his climate denying government.
“He has not changed and I say this. Peter Dutton as prime minister would be worse for the climate than Scott Morrison. And that takes him doing. The man who carried a lump of coal into the House of Representatives was better on climate than Peter Dutton. That’s the low bar that Peter Dutton has managed to get below.”
Bowen mocked Dutton’s reference of both “small” nuclear reactors and “micro” nuclear reactors, neither of which exist in commercial form anywhere in the world.
“The nuclear for Australia committee called for 80 of these things … where will they go? What will the cost be?
“Some of his own party have acknowledged they cost $10 billion each. The only thing small about a small modular reactor is its output. nothing small about its cost.
“:His deputy Mr. Littleproud, the leader of the National Party, said it wouldn’t cost a cent which will come as a considerable surprise surprise to the nuclear industry that they’re going to build them for free.
“We’ve had 10 years of denial and delay. And now we have an attempt at a distraction. I’ll tell you what the future of Australia is, a renewable energy superpower, not a nuclear backwater. https://reneweconomy.com.au/bowen-australia-will-be-renewable-energy-superpower-not-a-nuclear-backwater/
US cluster bombs deal is clear signal that war is not going well for Ukraine
America risks losing the moral high ground by supplying Ukraine with a weapon banned by much of the world, so why are they supplying it?
Mark Stone, US correspondent @Stone_SkyNews
The White House is fully aware of the huge controversy surrounding this cluster munitions decision.
Some 123 countries are part of the 2008 International Convention on Cluster Munitions which bans the use or transfer of this particular weapon.
Almost all of America’s allies are signatories to the convention.
Even within US government circles, there has been deep unease about supplying its own stockpile of cluster munitions to Ukraine.
Ukraine war latest: US to send Kyiv controversial weapon banned by more than 100 countries
As recently as last week, within the state department, there was division about the decision to supply the weapon.
The long and grim record of the cluster bomb explains the unease and the controversy.
Globally, civilians represent 97% of cluster munition casualties, according to a report last year by the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor – an organisation that seeks to ban them altogether.
Children are overwhelming the victims.
By supplying the weapon, there is a clear risk to civilians, not now necessarily, but in the future. The legacy of unexploded cluster bomblets is evident on former battlefields globally.
America also risks losing the moral high ground against Russia by supplying a weapon banned by much of the world.
So why supply it?
Well, the facts on the ground are not in Ukraine’s favour. The transfer is a clear signal that the war is not going well for Ukraine.
The so-called spring offensive did not materialise in the spring and looks set to falter through the summer too.
Ukraine is fast running out of more conventional artillery with supply stocks in America and elsewhere running low.
A ‘bridge of supply’ is necessary.
………………. The munitions would be used by Ukraine on occupied Ukrainian soil. The risk to civilians would be owned by Ukraine. The onus would be on Ukraine, with a pledge of American help, to clear the unexploded munitions when the war comes to an end.
The announcement is part of a multi-million dollar tranche of new weaponry which is an attempt by the Biden administration to future-proof the conflict; to give Ukraine the weapons it needs now in case domestic political circumstances change in the next 18 months.
American politics is in flux.
There is no guarantee of open-ended support for Ukraine. https://news.sky.com/story/us-cluster-bombs-deal-is-clear-signal-that-war-is-not-going-well-for-ukraine-12917101
US Will Provide Ukraine U.N. Condemned Cluster Bombs as Part of New Weapons Package
by EDITORJuly 8, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/08/us-will-provide-ukraine-cluster-bombs-as-part-of-new-weapons-package/
The news comes after HRW issued a report that said Ukraine killed civilians with U.N. banned cluster bombs used in Izium
By Dave DeCamp / Anitwar.com
The Associated Press reported Thursday that the Biden administration has decided to arm Ukraine with cluster bombs and will announce the munitions as part of a new $800 million arms package. The news comes after Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report that said Ukraine has killed its own citizens using the munitions.
US officials told AP that they expect the arms package to be announced Friday. The White House used to be opposed to arming Ukraine with cluster munitions, as they are indiscriminate weapons that cause harm to civilians, but the concerns have waned.
Cluster bombs scatter small submunitions over large areas, making them especially hazardous to civilians who can find unexploded munitions years after they were dropped. Because of their indiscriminate nature, cluster munitions have been banned by more than 100 nations. The US, Ukraine, and Russia are not parties to the treaty, known as the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
The HRW report said that Ukrainian cluster munition rocket attacks in the eastern city of Izium in 2022 killed at least eight civilians and wounded 15 more. HRW also said Russia’s use of cluster bombs in the war has killed many civilians.
Ukraine’s use of cluster bombs on people living in its eastern territory goes back to 2014, when war first broke out in the Donbas. That year, HRW issued a report that said Kyiv was using the controversial munitions against populated areas of Donetsk. “The use of cluster munitions in populated areas violates the laws of war due to the indiscriminate nature of the weapon and may amount to war crimes,” HRW said.
According to Truthout, Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, issued a statement on Thursday warning the US against sending cluster bombs to Ukraine. He said doing so would “be escalatory, counterproductive, and only further increase the dangers to civilians caught in combat zones and those who will, someday, return to their cities, towns, and farms.”
The Fukushima Disaster: The hidden side of the story
Arnie Gundersen speaks of the cliché that “the solution to pollution is dilution,” but with the radiation from Fukushima being sent into the Pacific, there will be “bio-accumulation”—with vegetation absorbing radiation, little fish eating that vegetation and intensifying it and bigger fish eating the smaller fish and further bio-accumulating the radioactivity. Already, tuna off California have been found with radiation traced to Fukushima. With this planned further, and yet greater dispersal, thousands of people “in the Pacific basin will die from radiation,” he says.
Exposing the nuclear industry and its lies. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/08/labour-explore-ai-ban-decisions-nuclear-weapons-david-lammy/
“The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story,” is a just-released film documentary, a powerful, moving, information-full film that is superbly made. Directed and edited by Philippe Carillo, it is among the strongest ever made on the deadly dangers of nuclear technology.
It begins with the words in 1961 of U.S. President John F. Kennedy: “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by an accident, or miscalculation or by madness.”
It then goes to the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plants in Japan after they were struck by a tsunami. Their back-up diesel generators were kicked in but “did not run for long,” notes the documentary. That led to three of the six plants exploding—and there’s video of this—“releasing an unpreceded amount of nuclear radiation into the air.”
“Fukushima is the world’s largest ever industrial catastrophe,” says Professor John Keane of the University of Sydney in Australia. He says there was no emergency plan and, as to the owner of Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power Company, with the accident its CEO “for five nights and days…locked himself inside his office.”
Meanwhile, from TEPCO, there was “only good news” with two Japanese government agencies also “involved in the cover-up”—the Nuclear Industry Safety Agency and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
“Japanese media was ordered to censor information. The Japanese government failed to protect its people,” the documentary relates.
Yumi Kikuchi of Fukushima, since a leader of the Fukushima Kids Project, recalls: “On TV, they said that ‘it’s under control’ and they kept saying that for two months. The nuclear power plant had already melted and even exploded but they never admitted the meltdown until May. So, people in Fukushima during that time were severely exposed to radiation.”
Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and now a principal of Fairewinds Energy Education in Burlington, Vermont, speaks of being told by Naoto Kan, the prime minister of Japan at the time of the accident, that “our existence as a sovereign nation was at stake because of the disaster at Fukushima Daichi.”
Kan then appears in documentary and speaks of “manmade” links to the disaster.
The documentary tells how Kan, following the accident, became “an advocate against nuclear power….ordered all nuclear power plants in Japan to shut down for safety” and for the nation “to move into renewable energy.”
But, subsequently, “a nuclear advocate,” Shinzo Abe, became Japan’s prime minister.
Yoichi Shimatsu, a former Japan Times journalist, appears in the film and speaks of “the cruelty, the cynicism of this government.” He speaks of how in the accident’s aftermath, “nearly every member of Parliament and leaders of the major political parties” along with corporate executives, “moved their relatives out of Japan”
He says “Shanghai is the largest Japanese community outside Japan now…while these same people” had been “telling the people of Fukushima go home, 10 kilometers from Fukushima, go home it’s safe, while their families are overseas in Los Angeles, in Paris, in London and in Shanghai.”
“If it’s safe, why they left?” asks Kikuchi. “They tell us it’s safe to live in Fukushima, and to eat Fukushima food to support Fukushima people. There’s a campaign by Japanese government…and people believe it.”
Gundersen says: “At Fukushima Daichi, the world is already seeing deaths from cancer related to the disaster…There’ll be many more over time.” He adds that there’s been a “huge increase in thyroid cancer in the surrounding population.”
“Unfortunately,” he goes on, “the Japanese government is not telling us al the evidence. There’s a lot of pressure on the scientists and the medical community to distort the evidence so there’s no blowback against nuclear power.”
There is a section in the documentary on the impacts of radioactivity which includes Dr. Helen Caldicott, former president of Physician for Social Responsibility, discussing the impacts of radiation on the body and how it causes cancer. She states: “There is no safe level of radiation. I repeat, there is no safe level of radiation. Each dose of radiation is cumulative and adds to your risk of getting cancer and that’s absolutely documented in the medical literature.”
“The nuclear industry says, well, there are ‘safe doses’ of radiation and even says a little bit of radiation is good for you and that is called the theory of hormesis,” notes Dr. Caldicott. “They lie and they lie and they lie.”
Maggie Gundersen, who was a reporter and then a public relations representative for the nuclear industry and, like her husband Arnie became an opponent of nuclear power, speaks of how nuclear power derives from the World War II Manhattan Project program to develop atomic weapons and post-war so-called “Atoms for Peace” push.
Gundersen says in becoming a nuclear industry spokesperson, “the things I was taught weren’t true.” The notion, for example, that what is called a containment at a nuclear plant is untrue because radioactivity “escapes every day as a nuclear power plant operates” and in a “calamity” is released massively.
As to economics, she cited the claim decades ago that nuclear power would be “too cheap to meter.” The president of Fairewinds Energy Education, she says: “Atomic power is now the most expensive power there is on the planet. It is not feasible. It never has been.” Regarding the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power, she says “there is literally no technology to do that…It does not exist.”
As to international oversight, the documentary presents the final version of a “Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation” issued in 2014 which finds that the radiation doses from Fukushima “to the general public during the first year and estimated for their lifetimes are generally low or very low….The most important effect is on mental and social well-being.”
Shimatsu says it is not only in Japan but on an international level that the consequences of radioactive exposure have been completely minimized or denied. “We are all seeing a global political agreement centered in the UN organizations, tie IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], the World Health Organization…All the international agencies are whitewashing what is happening in Fukushima. We take dosimeters and Geiger counters in there, we see a much different story,” he says.
In Germany, says Maggie Gunderson, “the politicians chose” to do a study to “substantiate” that no health impacts “happened around nuclear power plants….But what they found was the radiation releases cause significant numbers of childhood leukemia.” A summary of that 2008 study comes on the screen. The U.S. followed up on that research, she says, but recently “the [U.S.] Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was not going to do that study,” that “it doesn’t have enough funding; it had to shut it down.” She said the real reason was that it was producing “data they don’t want to make public.”
Beyond the airborne releases of radiation after the Fukushima accident, now, says the documentary, there is the growing threat of radioactivity through water that has and still is leaking from the plants as well as more than a million tons of radioactive water stored in a thousand tanks built at the plant site. After the accident, TEPCO released 300,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Now there is no land for more tanks, so the Japanese government, the documentary relates, has decided that starting this year to dump massive amounts of radioactive water over a 30-year period into the Pacific.
Arnie Gundersen speaks of the cliché that “the solution to pollution is dilution,” but with the radiation from Fukushima being sent into the Pacific, there will be “bio-accumulation”—with vegetation absorbing radiation, little fish eating that vegetation and intensifying it and bigger fish eating the smaller fish and further bio-accumulating the radioactivity. Already, tuna off California have been found with radiation traced to Fukushima. With this planned further, and yet greater dispersal, thousands of people “in the Pacific basin will die from radiation,” he says.
Andrew Napuat, a member of the Parliament of the nation of Vanuatu, an 83 island archipelago in the Pacific, says in the documentary: “We have the right to say no to the Japan solution. We can’t let them jeopardize our sustenance and livelihood.” Vanuatu along with 13 other countries has signed and ratified the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty.
As the documentary nears its end, Arnie Gundersen says that considering the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986, and now the three Fukushima meltdowns in 2011, there has been “a meltdown every seven years roughly.” He says: “Essentially, once every decade the world needs to know that there might be an atomic meltdown somewhere.” And, he adds, the “nuclear industry is saying they want would like to build as many as 5,000 new nuclear power plants.” (There are 440 in the world today.)
Meanwhile, he says, “renewable power is no longer alternative power. It’s on our doorstep. It’s here now and it works and it’s cheaper than nuclear.” The cost of producing energy from wind, he says, is three cents a kilowatt hour, for solar five cents, and for new nuclear power plants 15 cents. Nuclear “makes no nuclear economic sense.”
Maggie Gundersen says, with tears in her eyes: “I’m a woman and I feel it’s inherent for us as women to protect our children our grandchildren, and it’s our job now to raise our voices and have this madness stop.”
Philippe Carillo, from France, who worked for 14 years in Hollywood and who since 2017 has lived in Vanuatu, has worked on several major TV documentary projects for the BBC, 20th Century Fox and French National TV as well as doing independent productions. He says he made “The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story” to “expose the nuclear industry and its lies.” His previous award-winning documentary, “Inside the Garbage of the World,” has made changes regarding the use of plastic.
“The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story” can be viewed at Amazon, Apple TV, iTunes, Google Play and Vimeo on demand. Links are: iTunes; Apple TV; Amazon UK; USA; Google Play, and Video on demand.
‘Russian victory’ worse than civilian cluster-bomb deaths – says Pentagon official
A US official has defended the decision to supply Ukraine with the weapons, which are banned in more than 100 countries.
US fears of Russian success on the battlefield outweigh concerns that deliveries of cluster bombs to Ukraine could result in civilian casualties, a senior Pentagon official acknowledged on Friday.
Speaking to reporters, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl defended the White House’s decision to approve another $800 million weapons package for Ukraine, including cluster munitions. The weapons are banned in more than 100 countries.
When they detonate, the munitions release many small bomblets over a wide area. A percentage of bomblets fail to detonate on impact, however, and unexploded elements pose severe risks to civilians for years after fighting ends.
Asked if the Pentagon has assured its allies that the munitions will not cause excessive civilian harm, Kahl replied: “I’m as concerned about the humanitarian circumstance as anybody, but the worst thing for civilians in Ukraine is for Russia to win the war. And so it’s important that they don’t.”…………………………… https://www.rt.com/news/579374-pentagon-cluster-munition-civilian-casualties/
A watershed week in nuclear news
A bit of good news -The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation
It’s a watershed moment – on 2 counts:
1. Ukraine. The determination of the USA-led Western countries to bring Ukraine into NATO is a red flag to Russia, and current events, indicate that the West, and its charismatic super-star Zelensky, will not countenance any negotiated end to the war.
2. The IAEA’s Rafael Grossi has made it clear that the Fukushima nuclear wastewater MUST be emptied into the Pacific, to ensure that this practice is accepted, for the continued growth of the nuclear industry world-wide.
Christina notes. IAEA hypocrisy, and the little Fukushima nuclear radiation mill. And the prize for HYPOCRISY goes to Rafael Grossi,Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. No real research into the effects of releasing nuclear waste-water into rivers and seas. Oh goody! That means it’s OK, (doesn’t it?)
TOP STORIES
Ralph Nader: Reverse the Accelerating Warfare State Before It’s Too Late! Daniel Kovalik: Why Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is legal under international law. Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.
Better, safer, alternatives for managing Fukushima’s radioactively polluted wastewater. Cover up? Did atom bosses collude to ‘manage message’ of Japanese plan to poison Pacific? Will this whistleblower be heard by anyone? Fukushima: Anxiety and anger over Japan’s nuclear waste water plan.
An Attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Could Still be Catastrophic (- nuclear promoters minimise the risk). Red alert at Zaporizhzhia? US cluster bombs deal is clear signal that war is not going well for Ukraine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpVon7R2XKo
AUSTRALIA.
- Barngarla people continue their fight against the proposed Kimba nuclear waste dump.
- Vice Admiral Jonathon Mead to be Director-General of New Australian Submarine Agency. Sinking billions: undergunned and overpriced. Inside ‘nuke school’, the elite US training ground preparing Australian submariners for an AUKUS future.
- Peter Dutton ramps up nuclear power push and claims Labor down ‘renewable rabbit hole’. Bowen: “Australia will be renewable energy superpower, not a nuclear backwater”. Nuclear: Coalition remains trapped by climate and technology denial. Queensland’s Liberal National Party leader Crisafulli rejects Dutton’s push for nuclear power.
CLIMATE. Wishful thinking about nuclear energy won’t get us to net zero.
CIVIL LIBERTIES. Ben & Jerry’s, CodePink Co-Founders Arrested in DC Demanding Freedom for Julian Assange.
ECONOMICS.
- World’s 30 major banks are NOT investing in so-called “green” “sustainable” nuclear energy.
- Small nuclear reactors are unaffordable, and Rafael Grossi and the IAEA know this! Minireactor cost surge threatens nuclear’s next big thing,
- Holtec hogs the money, but Michigan ratepayers will foot the bill for reactor resuscitation.
- Jacobs’ nuclear spin-off raises alarm in Whitehall.
ENERGY. Germany’s power mix boasts more renewables, lower spot market prices – despite nuclear exit. Fukushima: China calls for suspension of Japanese plan to release radioactive water into sea. Russian K-278 sub sank 30 years ago but continues to leak radiation. Historic Hanford contamination is worse than expected.
FILM. The Fukushima Disaster: The hidden side of the story, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBqk0OtlE8k
HEALTH. Workers, residents at US site that made Nagasaki A-bomb’s plutonium still suffering. U.S. senators seek expanded compensation for people exposed to nuclear fallout.
INDIGENOUS ISSUES. Local colleges train students to work in a plutonium pit factory, but at what cost? First Nations won’t back nuclear plant expansion until waste questions are answered.
LEGAL High nuclear crimes don’t pay.
MEDIA. Fukushima, the Hidden Side of the Story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBqk0OtlE8k . Journalists Abandoned Julian Assange and Slit Their Own Throats. Today in war propaganda.
NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY. World’s Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal. Even the science engineering big-wigs don’t seem too enthusiastic about nuclear fusion. Sweden goes for small nuclear reactors, dumps renewable energy plans. Canada planning World’s Biggest Nuclear Power Plant . UK Labour seeks pact to keep AI out of nuclear arms deployment.
OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR. Huge protest against Rafael Grossi at Gimpo airport, Seoul, South Korea. Jeju islanders protest Japan’s radioactive water discharge. UN report on Japan’s Fukushima water plans fails to placate opponents. Come and join us: Nuclear Free Local Authorities individual membership launched on Independence Day. Backlash builds as Japan prepares to release wastewater from Fukushima nuclear plant. Nagasaki to take shot at G-7 over its nuclear deterrence stance.
POLITICS. Italy’s Nuclear Energy Debate: Past, Present, and Future. US govt provides yet another round of money grants to companies, including Westinghouse, to promote nuclear power development. RFK Jr torches Biden for handing “horrific” cluster munitions to Ukraine.
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. ” The future of nuclear as an alternative energy source relies on the success of the Fukushima release” – Rafael Grossi, (“problem is war, not nuclear energy”- Grossi). International community cannot tolerate Japan’s nuclear-contaminated water dumping.. Ukraine, Russia accuse each other of planning to attack Europe’s biggest nuclear plant. Russia and Ukraine step up rhetoric around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Ukraine in talks with Bulgaria to buy Russian nuclear reactors with EU funds. N Korea slams US move to deploy nuclear submarines to peninsula.
SAFETY. Russia calls on NATO to discuss Ukraine nuclear plant. IAEA: Europe’s largest nuclear power plant regains back-up electricity feed. Especially in USA, nuclear reactors are getting very old – past their use-by dates. INCIDENTS: One of the world’s worst nuclear disasters is likely something you’ve never heard of.
SECRETS and LIES. Nuclear Contaminated Water Dumping: IAEA Concludes ‘Absolute Safety of Nuclear Contaminated Water’ – with Japanese Government Money?.
Despite Zelensky’s claims, there’s no evidence that Russia has rigged Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya plant with explosives, nuclear watchdog says.
SPINBUSTER. Despite Zelensky’s claims, there’s no evidence that Russia has rigged Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya plant with explosives, nuclear watchdog says. John Bolton Accidentally Explains Why US Policy On Russia And China Is Wrong.
WASTES. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi says he’s satisfied with Japan’s plans to release Fukushima wastewater. Japanese regulator greenlights discharge of nuclear waste from Fukushima plant. What to know about Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water from Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea. Japan Set to Pour Fukushima Water Into Pacific, Irking China. Japan’s nuclear regulator finishes inspection of Fukushima radioactive wastewater release system. Japan claims that China and South Korea both pour radioactive waste-water , worse than Japan’s, into the oceans.
Hanford nuclear waste site has a clean-up bill of 560 billion USD in Washington DC . Missouri S&T will ask St. Louis-area residents their opinions about nuclear waste.
WAR and CONFLICT.
- ‘Russian victory’ worse than civilian cluster-bomb deaths – says Pentagon official. American, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians gather in Vienna to call for peace. War can be ended quickly either through peace treaty or nuclear weapons: Top Russian official. Scenario for a War in Eastern Ukraine. NATO’s Scorched Earth in Ukraine. ‘Kiev inflating regional conflict into World War III’, Russian envoy warns US.
- Charming optimism, as a Japanese non-profit group plans for bunkers for the community to be OK in a nuclear war.
- “The Doomsday Machine”: Confessions of Daniel Ellsberg, Former Nuclear War Planner.
- The ultimate technocratic fantasy: “a winnable nuclear war.”
WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.
- US Will Provide Ukraine U.N. Condemned Cluster Bombs as Part of New Weapons Package.
- Ukraine great ‘testing ground’ for Western weapons: Kiev. U.S. Depleted Uranium to Make Ukraine War Dirtier.
- Report Shows How Military Industrial Complex Sets Media Narrative on Ukraine.
- US Nuclear-Capable B-52 Bombers Fly to Korean Peninsula in Latest Provocation.
Queensland’s Liberal National Party leader Crisafulli rejects Dutton’s push for nuclear power
No nukes in Qld: Crisafulli rejects Dutton’s plan Financial Review, Mark Ludlow, Queensland bureau chief, 10 July 23
Queensland Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli has rebuffed federal leader Peter Dutton’s push to repurpose the state’s retiring coal-fired power stations for nuclear power, saying it will never get off the ground without bipartisan support.
As Mr Dutton attempts to put nuclear power back on the agenda as a way to help Australia to reach net zero by 2050, Labor has ridiculed the idea as too expensive, despite the price of small modular reactors coming down in recent years.
Mr Crisafulli, who could become premier at Queensland’s state election next year, according to the latest opinion polls, said there was no point discussing nuclear power until it was endorsed by both major parties.
“Until both sides of federal parliament agree that is the course of action, it is not going to happen,” Mr Crisafulli told The Australian Financial Review.
“I’m not spending any energy on it – pardon the pun – because no one will invest in it unless both sides agree to it. It’s a reality.”
When asked what he would do if he and Mr Dutton won their respective elections and it became federal government policy, Mr Crisafulli said investors would still steer clear of nuclear power until Labor was behind it.
Federal Labor is vehemently opposed to nuclear power, …………………………………………….
1 This month.
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 