Antinuclear

Ralph Nader: Stop the Worsening Undercount of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza

By Ralph Nader, March 5, 2024

Since the Hamas raid penetrated the multi-tiered Israeli border security on October 7, 2023 (an unexplained collapse of Israel’s defensive capabilities), 2.3 million utterly defenseless Palestinians in the tiny crowded Gaza enclave have been on the receiving end of over 65,000 bombs/missiles plus non-stop tank shelling and snipers.

The extreme right-wing Netanyahu regime has enforced its declared siege of, in its genocidal words, “no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, no medicine.”

The relentless bombing has destroyed apartment buildings, marketplaces, refugee camps, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, roads, electricity networks, critical water mains – just about everything.

The U.S.-equipped Israeli war machine has even uprooted agricultural fields, including thousands of olive trees on one farm, bulldozed many cemeteries and bombed civilians fleeing on Israeli orders, while obstructing the few trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt.

With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With five thousand babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted.

Netanyahu and Hamas, which he helped over the years, have a common interest in lowballing the death/injury toll. But for different reasons. Hamas keeps the figures low to reduce being accused by its own people of not protecting them, and not building shelters. Hamas grossly underestimated the savage war crimes by the vengeful, occupying Israeli military superpower fully and unconditionally backed by the U.S. military superpower.

The Health Ministry is intentionally conservative, citing that its death toll came from reports only of named deceased by hospitals and morgues. But as the weeks turned into months, blasted, disabled hospitals and morgues cannot keep up with the bodies, or cannot count those slain laying on roadsides in allies and beneath building debris. Yet the Health Ministry remains conservative and the “official,” rising civilian fatality and injury count continues to be uncritically reported by both friend and foe of this devastating Israeli state terrorism.

It was especially astonishing to see the most progressive groups and writers routinely use the same Hamas Health Ministry figures as did the governments and outside groups backing the one-sided war on Gaza. All this despite predictions of a human catastrophe in the Gaza Strip almost every day since October 7, 2023, by arms of the United Nations, other besieged international relief agencies on the ground, eyewitness accounts by medical personnel, and many Israeli human rights groups and brave local journalists in that Strip, the geographic size of Philadelphia. (Unguided Western and Israeli reporters and journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza by the Israeli government.) (See the open letter titled, “Stop the Humanitarian Catastrophe” to President Biden on December 13, 2023, by 16 Israeli human rights groups that also appeared as a paid notice in the New York Times.)

Then came the December 29, 2023, opinion piece in The Guardian by the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Devi Sridhar. She predicted half a million deaths in 2024 if conditions continue unabated. (See her piece here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/29/health-organisations-disease-gaza-population-outbreaks-conflict).

In recent days, the situation has become more dire. In the March 2, 2024, Washington Post, reporter, Ishaan Tharoor writes: “The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known. Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis. Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid.”

Tharoor quotes Jan Egeland, chief of the Norwegian Refugee Council: “We must be clear: civilians in Gaza are falling sick from hunger and thirst because of Israel’s entry restrictions.” “Life-saving supplies are being intentionally blocked, and women and children are paying the price.”

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations lead humanitarian officer, said “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, according to the Post, warned of an “‘unknown number of people’ – believed to be in the tens of thousands – lying under the rubble of buildings brought down by Israeli strikes.”

Volker Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said “All people in Gaza are at imminent risk of famine. Almost all are drinking salty and contaminated water. Health care across the territory is barely functioning.” “Just imagine what this means for the wounded, and people suffering infectious-disease outbreaks. …many are already believed to be starving.” UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, the Palestinian Red Crescent, and Doctors Without Borders are all relating that the same catastrophic conditions are getting worse fast.

Yet, and get this, in this article, the Post still stuck with the “more than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the ongoing war began.”

Just like the entire mass media, many governments, even the independent media and critics of the war would have us accept that between 98% and 99% of Gaza’s entire population has survived – albeit the sick, injured and more Palestinians about to die. This is lethally improbable!

From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.

Imagine Americans, if this powerful U.S.-made weaponry was fired on the besieged, homeless, trapped people of Philadelphia, do you think that only 30,000 of that city’s 1.5 million people would have been killed?

Daily circumstantial evidence of the deliberate Israeli targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructures requires more reliable epidemiological estimates of casualties.

It matters greatly whether the aggregate toll so far, and counting, is three, four, five, six times more than the Health Ministry’s undercount. It matters for elevating the urgency for a permanent ceasefire, and direct and massive humanitarian aid by the U.S. and other countries, bypassing the sadistic cruelty against innocent families of the Israeli siege. It matters for the columnists and editorial writers who have been self-censoring themselves, with some, like the Post’s Charles Lane fictionally claiming that Israel’s military doesn’t “intentionally target civilians.” It matters for accountability under international law.

Above all, it lets weak Secretary of State Antony Blinken and duplicitous President Joe Biden be less servile when Netanyahu dismisses the low death toll by taunting them: what about Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

As a percentage of the total population being killed, Gaza can expose the Israeli ruling racist extremists to a stronger rebuttal for ending U.S. co-belligerent complicity in this never-to-be-forgotten slaughter of mostly children and women. (The terrifying PTSD on civilians, especially children will continue for years.)

Respecting the more accurate casualty toll of Palestinian children, mothers and fathers presses harder for permanent ceasefires and the process of recovery and reparations for the survivors of their Holocaust.

March 10, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Buried Nuclear Waste May Soon Rise From the Grave

If we don’t get a handle on climate change soon, we may have a serious radioactive issue on our hands.

BY DARREN ORF MAR 07, 2024  https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a60067341/gao-nuclear-waste-report/

• During the Cold War, the U.S. stashed nuclear waste—or accidentally dispersed it—in several sites around the world.
• The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released an update on three of those sites in Spain, Greenland, and the Marshall Islands.
• Two of those sites are currently under threat from climate change in the form of either melting ice or rising sea levels, which could eventually reveal these dump sites’ deadly contents.

During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union had the bright idea to irradiate the planet with nuclear bomb testing.

Of the 67 U.S. nuclear tests during this period, Castle Bravo—conducted on the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954—was the biggest of them all. This denotation, along with all the others, came with an ecological and human toll on the surrounding area. And now, during the era of climate change, the specter of the most dangerous era of the nuclear age is haunting the world once again.

A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GOA) re-evaluated three sites around the world contaminated by U.S nuclear waste. One of these sites included Palomares, Spain—in 1966, a U.S. B-52G bomber carrying four thermonuclear bombs collided with a KC-135 tanker in the area. The collision didn’t cause the bombs to explode (you probably would’ve heard about that one time we accidentally bombed Spain) but it did disperse a lot of radioactive material. The report finds that the U.S. and Spain continue to monitor the contamination to this day.

However, the nuclear waste sites in Greenland and the Marshall Islands are currently a more direct threat to the world due to climate change. Entombed in ice under Greenland is roughly 47,000 gallons of radioactive waste produced by the Portable Mobile-2A (PM-2A) reactor, which powered the “city under the ice” known as the U.S. Camp Century base. Although the reactor was removed, the waste was left behind. Simply put, engineers at the time never thought it’d be exposed, but climate change—a term that wasn’t even coined yet when the base was built in 1960—is slowly melting the ice cap, which could reveal the radioactive waste hiding below.

“The scientists concluded that the contaminants should remain entombed in the ice at least through 2100,” the report reads. “The radioactive isotopes will continue to decay while entombed in the ice sheet and, as a result, will be less of a threat to human health the longer they remain locked in the ice.”

However, of most pressing concern is the nuclear waste currently impacting the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Runit Island houses a “nuclear coffin” that contains 110,000 cubic yards of radioactive contaminated soil and 6,000 cubic yards of contaminated debris, and it’s already been documented that rising sea levels are impacting this coffin. Nuclear radiation can also be measured at several atolls as well, including Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap, and Utrik Atolls.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the RMI have disagreed over the impacts of the U.S.’s past nuclear testing on the people of this island, and the GOA believes that a new communication strategy could help alleviate mistrust—which isn’t exactly what the Marshallese people want to hear.

“What we need now is action and implementation on environmental remediation,” Ariana Tibon, chair of RMI’s National Nuclear Commission told the environmental website Grist. “If they know that it’s contaminated, why wasn’t the recommendation for next steps on environmental remediation?”

In other words, it’s time for the U.S. to stare down the ghosts of its nuclear past.

March 10, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Could Fukushima’s radioactive water pose lasting threat to

studies have highlighted how tritium can be absorbed into sediments and soils, raising concerns about its potential transfer to the water cycle and the food web.

research showing that fish have transported radioactive particles generated by the Fukushima incident far and wide. Like a number of other nuclear accidents before it, that makes what happened at Fukushima a global concern.”

by Alan Williams, University of Plymouth,  https://phys.org/news/2024-03-fukushima-radioactive-pose-threat-humans.html

The meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, caused by the devastating earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, represents the most severe nuclear power accident of the 21st century so far.

However, a new study highlights how the decision by the Japanese government to begin releasing the radioactive water stored within it—a decision approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—has generated scientific and public debate, given its potential to cause environmental harm for decades to come.

Writing in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, researchers say the water cannot be stored indefinitely due to the ongoing risk of earthquakes and tsunamis in the region.

But they say not enough is known about the long-term impacts of tritium—the primary radionuclide present, with a half-life of 12.6 years—to ascertain if the release of more than one million tons of water can be considered safe or not.

As a result, they have called for assurances that regular monitoring will be carried out in different components of the region’s ecosystem to examine any impacts the release might be having on the environment.

They have also suggested more evidence is needed about the future effects of tritium in the presence of multiple and emerging stressors, such as hypoxia, rising ocean temperatures, and microplastics, given that environmental contamination can occur in many combinations.

The study was carried out at the University of Plymouth, where researchers have been examining the environmental impacts of radioactive material for almost three decades.

“The Japanese tsunami of 2011 was devastating for people living along this whole coastline. The presence of a nuclear power plant within the region left a lasting threat, and this study highlights some of the complex challenges that need managing and scientific questions that still need addressing.”

“Being in a region prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, there is an obvious danger in simply storing radioactive water there indefinitely. But based on our research, not enough is known about the impacts of tritium on both environmental and human health to say that releasing the water into the ocean is completely safe,” says Awadhesh Jha, professor in genetic toxicology and ecotoxicology and corresponding author on the research.

The new study includes a review of existing literature on the behavior of tritium in the environment and studies that have assessed its impact on individual species.

That includes studies that have highlighted how tritium can be absorbed into sediments and soils, raising concerns about its potential transfer to the water cycle and the food web.

There has also been research showing that tritium can cause DNA damage to certain fish species, which could impact their physical and reproductive fitness and—ultimately—the genetic diversity of a population.

However, the researchers say there is little data available on the distribution, behavior, and potential effects of tritiated water and organically-bound tritium, and therefore assessing the broad risks is almost impossible.

They also say the Fukushima situation cannot be compared with the Chornobyl accident, as some authorities have attempted to do, given the differing geographical locations of the two plants and the fact the long-term environmental impacts of Chornobyl are still being debated.

“Through our study, we have found research showing that fish have transported radioactive particles generated by the Fukushima incident far and wide. Like a number of other nuclear accidents before it, that makes what happened at Fukushima a global concern.”

“As such, we urgently need global research into the impacts of tritium—and how they might be managed—especially with the nuclear power industry set to expand significantly. If it does indeed expand, the construction of nuclear power plants, especially in coastal regions, should also take into account worst-case scenarios of flooding, earthquakes, and tsunamis as part of a fundamental goal to minimize radioactive discharges to the environment,” says Professor Jha.

March 10, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The need for clear thinking on the Holocaust in Gaza

Sometimes I wonder if very high education and learning can be an impediment to clear thinking. So many highly educated, prestigious, individuals calmly accept without question the numbers published by various authorities, on the deaths in Gaza. But when you ignore all the learned and official stuff – and just stop and think about this matter – they’re counting only the deaths that have been definitely identified, not the number who lie under the rubble of the bombing.

Fortunately, not all prestigious individuals are as complacent as that. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, warned of an “‘unknown number of people’ – believed to be in the tens of thousands – lying under the rubble of buildings brought down by Israeli strikes.”

And what about the deaths from disease, malnutrition, starvation? Are these deaths from “natural causes” – or from the actions of the Israeli campaign against the Gazans?

Ralph Nader gives an estimate – considering all factors, of a Palestinian death toll today of 200,000 – a number “accelerating by the hour”

And here’s another matter for clear thinking. The Israeli administration and their supporters are vociferous about the evil of Hamas. And I think that they are right about this . Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya ) can purport to respect other nations, and merely seek Palestinian rights, but in fact, their beliefs are profoundly anti-Jewish, denying the Holocaust, aiming to destroy the State of Israel and kill all Jews.

But – not all Gazans believe in that extreme philosophy. Many adults there have joined Hamas simply because that is necessary to get a decent job. And are we to believe that all children there understand and support that philosophy?

So – the Hamas philosophy is evil. Does that make Jewish Zionism good?

Zionism should not be confused with Judaism. Zionism is not the Jewish religion. It is a philosophy dedicated to the continuance of “the Jewish State” run by “the chosen people” at all costs, and the eradication of those untermenschen – the Palestinians. It’s very like Nazism – it’s OK to kill children , pregnant women, anyone -in revenge for Hamas’ violent actions.

Of course, there are historic reasons for the development of Zionism, and of Hamas. But that doesn’t make either of them OK.

Clear thinking is not black and white, supporting one side because we’ve decided that the other side is evil.

Clear thinking is about what is actually happening now. 200,000 Gazans have been killed, and that number is accelerating, – as the world-leader USA feigns regret, pretends to help the Gazans, while funding Israel and providing the weapons for the killing.

Meanwhile – the USA focusses on two individuals strutting about, trying to become the next President, each boasting about himself, and how bad his opponent is – both apparently oblivious to the reality of Gazan catastrophe that America is promoting – what a pathetic sight – American politics!

March 9, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Coalition wants nuclear power. Could it work – or would it be an economic and logistical disaster?

Guardian, Graham Readfearn, 8 Mar 24

The prospect of Australia trying to build nuclear reactors at soon-to-be-closed coal plants raises many questions. Here’s what we know.

The prospect of Australia turning to nuclear power has been little more than a politically radioactive thought bubble – until the Coalition this week confirmed it wants to put reactors at the sites of soon-to-be-closed coal plants.

Energy experts have previously derided the idea, saying some of the technologies being touted did not exist, and that nuclear would be too slow, too expensive and unnecessary in a country with so much free solar and wind available to harness.

But as the Coalition promises to take a pro-nuclear policy to the next election, the prospect of Australia trying to build nuclear reactors raises many questions.

Could it even work, or would it be an economic and logistical disaster?

What’s being proposed?

The Coalition is understood to be looking at both conventional large-scale nuclear reactors and small modular reactors (SMR) which are not expected to be available commercially until the early 2030s, or potentially later.

The Coalition has said more details will come before its reply to the federal budget, expected in May.

What about timing?

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s latest draft plan to develop the national electricity market (that’s everywhere except Western Australia and the Northern Territory) says under the most likely future scenario, 90% of coal plants will have retired by 2035, with the rest gone by 2038.

That means governments and electricity generators are already having to work at breakneck speed to add enough renewable energy and storage, such as batteries and pumped hydro, to make sure Australia can meet its obligations to bring down greenhouse gas emissions while delivering the cheapest and most reliable electricity system possible.

Those decisions are being made based on the technology that is available now, and based on economics. Renewables backed up by storage are the cheapest option, according to the vast majority of experts.

The Coalition argues building reactors on the sites of old coal plants would avoid some of the costs of building new transmission lines and the storage needed to allow for the times when wind and solar production is low.

Tony Wood, the director of the Grattan Institute’s energy program, says by the time a hypothetical nuclear plant could be built and operating – which he says could be 20 years away – “the coal-fired power has been closed down and you’re in deep trouble”.

“I just think the economics and the timescales don’t fit.”……………………………………….

When could reactors be built in Australia?

A Coalition government, if elected, would have to agree regulations to govern a brand new industry and create new government institutions such as the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to run the industry.

Dr Dylan McConnell, an energy systems analyst at the University of New South Wales, says: “Recent nuclear power projects in comparable countries have experienced considerable delays and cost overruns. There is little prospect of a conventional nuclear power plant delivering electricity before the 2040s.”

Construction on two nuclear units in the US started in 2009 and were seven years late and reportedly US$17bn (A$25bn) over budget when they started generating power last year.

In the UK, French company EDF’s 3,200MW Hinkley Point C plant began construction in 2017 and, after several revisions, the company says it may not be delivering electricity until 2031. Initial cost estimates of £18bn (A$34bn) have been revised as high as £46bn (A$89bn).

A deal to buy the electricity using a surcharge on UK customer bills has put “an albatross around the neck of UK consumers for a very long time”, says Woods.

And who would build them?

Glenne Drover, the secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Institute of Energy and a broad supporter of nuclear power, thinks the biggest potential block for nuclear in Australia would be finding overseas companies to actually build reactors.

At last year’s Cop28 climate talks, more than 20 countries pledged to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050. The books of many nuclear builders are filling up.

“Australia could do what the United Arab Emirates did and go out with a tender process, but who would take that up?” he asks.

“Would we be happy if one of those companies was Chinese or Russian? Kepco [a South Korean company] maybe, but could you get them?”………………………………….

Could nuclear work in Australia’s grid?

McConnell says conventional nuclear plants need to be almost constantly running to be economically viable. But as we head towards 2040, Australia’s energy system will be dominated by renewable energy and storage, such as batteries and pumped hydro.

This would be a “very challenging power system for nuclear power to economically operate in”, says McConnell.

“Some of the challenges facing the economic viability of coal generation are directly transferable to nuclear power generation.

“Low-cost renewable generation is eroding both the utilisation and market value of coal generation and would have similar effects on a nuclear generator.”

But large nuclear reactor units could also create a headache for the electricity grid. The biggest single generating source on Australia’s grid is a 750MW coal unit in Queensland.

“The typical size of conventional nuclear units today is larger than any existing coal units in the national Eeectricity market,” says McConnell. “The loss of such a single large unit represents a risk to the operation of the electricity system. This risk would need to be managed and would come at some additional cost.”

McConnell questions if the sites of old coal plants would be available to buy. “The grid connection points are valuable assets,” he says. “Old power station sites are already being developed to make use of these valuable connection points.”

What about costs?

Without knowing what kind of reactors might be built, and how they would be paid for, and the price of establishing an industry, it’s difficult to know the future costs of nuclear. But it’s unlikely to be cheap.

For SMRs, the CSIRO gives a theoretical range of $382 to $636 per MWh in the year 2030, compared with $91 to $130 for wind and solar. CSIRO has so far not provided estimates for conventional nuclear but, using US data, nuclear is among the more expensive power options.

John Quiggin, a professor of economics at the University of Queensland, says without a carbon price, nuclear plants would need very large taxpayer subsidies in Australia.

He says one of the only countries to have recently started a nuclear industry is the United Arab Emirates that drew up its first nuclear policy in 2008, commissioning South Korean company Kepco to build four 1,400MW units.

Quiggin says these four reactors will likely have cost the UAE as much as $100bn – enough money to put a large solar system on the roof of every Australian house, he says.

The first of the country’s four nuclear power units came online in 2020 and a fourth is expected to start producing electricity in the coming months – all between three and four years later than expected.

That’s a 16-year process in a country that, without a democratic system, can make arbitrary decisions to get plants built. It is not a good comparison for what might happen in Australia.

“When the economics of this comes up in Australia, it will look very bad,” he says.  https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/07/the-coalition-wants-nuclear-power-could-it-work-or-would-it-be-an-economic-and-logistical-disaster

March 9, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Australia nuclear facility installs massive rooftop solar system to save $2 million

Jacinta Bowler, Mar 8, 2024,  https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-nuclear-facility-installs-massive-rooftop-solar-system-to-save-2-million/

One of the major nuclear research facilities belonging to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO)’s is installing a major rooftop solar system that will save $2 million.

The ANSTO campus in Clayton hosts the Synchrotron, where electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light to allow researchers to investigate materials down to the atoms. An electron beam travelling at about 299,792 kilometres a second requires plenty of energy.  

The facility is now host to a 1.59 MW rooftop solar system, one of the largest in the state, with 3,000 panels installed by RACV Solar. It is expected to save two million kilowatt hours a year, and $2 million over the first five years of operation.

“The engineering and technical expertise required to deliver this type of project is complex,” said RACV’s head of energy Greg Edye.

“The solar panel installation was completed over five months, and it covers the rooftops of the main Australian Synchrotron building, the Australian Synchrotron guesthouse, and the environmentally controlled storage facility.

“There will be a significant reduction in energy costs for ANSTO, with these savings used to support operations and important research. Not only are they reducing their carbon footprint, but they are also investing in a cleaner energy future.”

Synchotron director Professor Michael James says Going solar was a “no-brainer” because of the size of the facility’s rooftops and the “ample, uninterrupted exposure to sunlight” at the location within the Monash University precinct.

“While our science facility operates 24 hours per day, during daylight hours, the new solar plant provides a cyclical way to harness the power of light – from the Sun to help power our facilities,” he said.

“That in turn, allows us to generate brilliant beams of synchrotron light that are more than a million times brighter than the light from the Sun.

“Some of those brilliant beams of synchrotron light are even used to undertake research into the next generation of solar cell technology.”

The ANSTO team are hoping that the investment will save them $2 million over a 5 year period, as well as stop 1,680 tonnes of carbon equivalent entering the atmosphere every year.

“The reduction in our carbon footprint is enough to offset 367 family-sized cars each year,” James added.

“This investment in renewable technology is just one way ANSTO can meet its own sustainability goals, while also acting as a buffer against increasing energy overheads in the future.”

March 9, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment