Antinuclear

A Powerful minority makes the nuclear decisions, in a strategy of concealment

“Without civilian nuclear energy there is no military use of this technology – and without military use there is no civilian nuclear energy,” Macron said during a visit to Framatome’s Le Creusot facility in December 2020.

The French nuclear mullahs are at the heart of this international lobby. In particular, they are engaged in a communication strategy that consists of underestimating, trivializing or denying the effects of radiation, and insisting that it is possible to live with radiation in contaminated areas. In other words, a strategy of concealment. 

By Kolin Kobayashi,  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/09/24/a-strategy-of-concealment/—

This year marks the 13th year since the Fukushima accident began, yet the path to a conclusion is by no means clear. The declaration of a state of emergency still cannot be lifted because of the various dangers and difficulties that have arisen. Despite this, Prime Minister Kishida’s government is doing more than ever to promote nuclear power as a basic energy source. This approach is similar to that of the French administration, which is also trying to promote nuclear energy as a dual-use nuclear weapon.

The international nuclear lobby, which represents only a minority, has the influence and money to dominate the world’s population with immense power and has now united the world’s minority nuclear community into one big galaxy. Many of the citizens who have experienced the world’s three most serious civil nuclear accidents have clearly realized that nuclear energy is too dangerous. These citizens are so divided and conflicted that they feel like a helpless minority.　

The current situation with the Fukushima accident

Let’s start with the total amount of radiation that the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant still contains today. The spent fuel at the site contains 85 times more cesium-137 than Chornobyl and 50,000 to 100,000 times more than the Hiroshima bomb. 

The fuel is still stored in pools on the top floor of the reactor buildings (30 metres above ground), with the exception of Unit 3, the removal of which was completed in 2019. 

Now, although 12 years have passed, the precise program for future decommissioning is unclear.  While the approximate overall radiation levels are known, the buildings and reactors themselves, where the decommissioning and dismantling work will take place, are highly radioactive and cannot be easily penetrated by workers. 

The true extent of the accident is not known, nor is the exact state of dispersion of the corium (the molten magma from the nuclear fuel rods in the reactor core). In Unit 1, for example, it is clear from the images taken by a robot that many parts of the circular concrete foundation supporting the pressure vessel have been damaged by the high heat of the corium. There is a significant risk of collapse in the event of a strong earthquake, and if the 440-tonne vessel collapses, it could hit the storage pool next to it. If this pool is damaged, even partially, another major disaster could occur.

Release of contaminated water

The amount of contaminated water is increasing all the time, as water continues to flow to cool the corium. Currently, around 90 tonnes of contaminated water are being added to the tanks every day. There are currently more than 1,000 tanks, and TEPCO says they will be full by February next year. 

TEPCO had promised not to release water without the consent of local communities and fishermen, but this promise was not kept. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) dispatched a team of experts to investigate whether the radioactivity levels of the contaminated water treated by TEPCO met the international safety standards set by the IAEA, and the final report was submitted to the government on July 4. On the basis of this report, the Japanese government decided to release the water and began discharging water into the Pacific Ocean on August 24, releasing 7,800 tons in 17 days. 

However, the IAEA does not have the scientific authority to make reference to the ecological impact of this water discharge, nor has it carried out such a long-term assessment. It is more of a political decision than a scientific one.

TEPCO and the Japanese government have said that releasing contaminated water is essential for decommissioning work, but there are still places to build storage facilities. There are also methods other than releasing the water into the ocean, such as solidifying it in mortar and storing it on the surface. 

However, the regulatory committee and study group said they had considered five solutions: geological injection, hydrogen release, underground burial, steam release and ocean release. In the end, they chose the cheapest method. 

What is the international nuclear lobby?

Today, the nuclear issue is globally interwoven. The raw material needed — uranium — as well as nuclear technology and radiation protection standards, cannot be managed by a single country. 

First of all, nuclear energy is the dark side of the atomic bomb. Nuclear reactors designed to produce electricity were originally machines designed to produce plutonium for the manufacture of atomic bombs. So it was only natural that French president, Emanuel Macron, should advocate the complementary nature of civil nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. “Without civilian nuclear energy there is no military use of this technology – and without military use there is no civilian nuclear energy,” Macron said during a visit to Framatome’s Le Creusot facility in December 2020.

The realpolitik of the atomic bomb led to the creation of the IAEA in 1948. The five nuclear-weapon states on the UN Security Council promoted nuclear energy for peace and encouraged its development in order to monopolize nuclear weapons, and they made the IAEA a nuclear supervisory agency to ensure that no other country produced atomic bombs. The UN Member States were deceived by Eisenhower’s fine-sounding words “Atoms for Peace” to the UN General Assembly on 8 December 1953.

The IAEA controls nuclear energy throughout the world. But this international organization is neither objective nor impartial, nor does it conform absolutely to scientific truth. It is a highly political institution. 

Ordinary citizens trust international organizations simply because they hear about them in UN reports. But the IAEA is constantly working to promote nuclear energy. The effects of radiation are trivialized or denied, as if they were not a problem, merely a manageable danger for nuclear power plants. 

The effects of radiation are grossly underestimated. The data base on which the IAEA relies is that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, collected by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. These data are totally incomplete. They do not take into account people who were exposed to radiation more than 2 km from the hypocenters, people who entered the cities after the bombs were dropped, and people who were exposed to radiation from black rain in distant areas. In other words, low-dose radiation exposure is completely ignored.

The French nuclear mullahs are at the heart of this international lobby. In particular, they are engaged in a communication strategy that consists of underestimating, trivializing or denying the effects of radiation, and insisting that it is possible to live with radiation in contaminated areas. In other words, a strategy of concealment. 

The famous Ethos project, which ran in Belarus from 1996 to 2001, ten years after the Chornobyl accident, seemed to be helping the population, but in fact it was consolidating the theory of acceptance of radiation. Jacques Lochard, former director of the CEPN (Centre d’étude sur l’Evaluation de la protection dans le domaine Nucléaire) in France, who carried out this project, quickly showed up in Fukushima in November 2011 and implemented the same strategy in a different form.

Lochard is the perfect example of the constantly revolving door among individuals from organizations that promote nuclear power and those involved in radiation protection. These circumstances are totally unknown to ordinary citizens.

The CEPN is an association with only four members: the CEA (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives), EDF (Électricité de France), Areva/Orano and the IRSN (Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire). In other words, it is the embodiment of the French nuclear lobby and manages the French nuclear lobby’s communication on radiation protection. 

The Chornobyl Ethos project and the CORE and SAGE projects that followed it, were organized and carried out by Lochard, now retired but appointed as a visiting professor at the Institute of Atomic Bomb Disease at Nagasaki University, and his right-hand man, Thierry Schneider. They have become respectable points of reference for the European Commission as a means of dealing with a nuclear accident. 

The methods initiated by this minority of promoters will be imposed, with authority and money, on those who are victims of a future serious nuclear accident in Europe. According to this philosophy, there is no need to evacuate. We can live happily with radiation, even in contaminated areas.

In this way, the French nuclear lobby, in cooperation with the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the IAEA-UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) and others, can assure us that we can overcome a serious nuclear accident, by simply adapting to radiation exposure. The phrase “let’s hope people have the strength to bounce back” is repeated. The word “resilience” has become a key word in this milieu.

But in Belarus and Ukraine, 37years after the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, 60% to 80% of children are still ill from the radiation resulting from Chornobyl. In Fukushima too, there are those 300 or more cases of thyroid cancer. The Japanese authorities still insist that in the case of Fukushima, the causal relationship between cancer and radiation is not yet known. This is despite the fact that this was admitted in the case of Chornobyl. It can therefore be said that at Chornobyl, as at Fukushima, the reality of the effects of radiation caused by the accidents is still not officially recognized.

France has clearly stated that nuclear weapons and nuclear power are the two wheels of the car, and President Macron has insisted that a total of 15 nuclear power plants will be built by 2050. Japan has also declared that it will continue to develop nuclear power plants in collaboration with France. 

However, it is clear from the outset that if we continue to develop nuclear power plants, nuclear waste will continue to accumulate. At present, the storage pools at every nuclear power plant site — whether in Japan or France — are approaching the limit of their full capacity. However, no reliable method for the final disposal of high-level nuclear waste has yet been established.

In this way, the lessons of Chornobyl and Fukushima are not being applied at all, but rather, the actual health hazards are being covered up. Any so-called cleanup projects are being carried out for the sake of immediate interests only. In the end, they are forcing the victims to endure radiation exposure and ultimately abandoning them. This is because of the cover-up strategy of the international nuclear lobby in the background.

Kolin Kobayashi is a Tokyo-born France-based anti-nuclear activist and retired freelance journalist. He is president of the non-profit organization, Echo-Echanges.

September 25, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Is World War III About to Start? Part I: Drift Toward War

We have now come full circle. Warnings from Washington continue that Putin had better not go nuclear, which can be read as inviting him to do so. This is obviously a new phase of brinkmanship that could give the U.S. a pretext for themselves moving to nuclear war.

Nuke rattling from both sides over Ukraine.

SCHEERPOST, By Richard C. Cook September 23, 2023

It is likely that billions of people around the world view the conflict in Ukraine as a proxy war being waged by the U.S. against Russia. US President Joe Biden has pledged to aid Ukraine’s pursuit of victory “for as long as it takes,” without defining what the end state might be. Russian President Vladimir Putin has interpreted U.S. intentions to mean a fight “to the last Ukrainian.” 

Anyone with a discernible pulse is aware of the danger that the conflict could escalate into a conflagration large and destructive enough to morph into World War III. The threshold would likely be crossed once nuclear weapons were unleashed. The military doctrines of all nuclear powers stipulate that such an attack would justify an in-kind response, though without always ruling out the same for lesser provocations of a potentially existential nature.

President Biden has said “the world faces the biggest risk of nuclear Armageddon since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.” The context of Biden’s statement came a month earlier on September 21, 2022, when Putin warned the West he was not bluffing when he said he would be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia against what he said was “nuclear blackmail.” Earlier, in an April 21, 2021, speech, Putin said: 

We really do not want to burn bridges. But if someone mistakes our good intentions for indifference or weakness and intends to burn or even blow up these bridges, they must know that Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, swift, and tough. Those behind provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time. 

Another to speak of nuclear war has been former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Russian Security Council and one of Putin’s top advisers. Commenting on Ukraine’s highly touted but now failed 2023 “spring offensive,” Medvedev said in July 2023 that if Ukraine succeeded in taking Russian sovereign territory—including Crimea plus the four Donbass oblasts (regions) annexed by Russia last year—Russia “would have to use nuclear weapons by virtue of the Russian Presidential Decree.” This decree stated that any assault on Russian territory justified a nuclear response.

On Hiroshima Day, August 6, 2023, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, “The drums of nuclear war are beating once again. Mistrust and division are on the rise. The nuclear shadow that loomed over the Cold War has re-emerged.” One who has predicted world war has been UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace. On May 19, 2023, he warned “that the UK could enter a direct conflict with Russian and China in the next seven years and has called for an increase in military spending to counter the potential threat.” Speaking to London’s Financial Times, Wallace said “a conflict is coming with a range of adversaries around the world.” 

More recently, independent commentator Tucker Carlson, who has said the U.S. is intentionally seeking war with Russia, remarked in a September 2023 interview on The Adam Corolla Show that the Biden administration would attempt to stay in power by starting a “hot war” with Russia before the 2024 election. Carlson argued that the U.S. was “already at war” with Russia in Ukraine. He added, “I don’t think we’ll win it.” 

………………………………………………………………… Nor are proxy wars anything new. They began with the Korean War. Of course, there were U.S. “boots on the ground,” but North and South Korea also fought against each other with Russia/China and the U.S./UN having the backs of each respectively. The Vietnam War was fought with U.S. troops and weapons aiding the South Vietnamese against the Russian-backed Hanoi regime and its ally, South Vietnam’s Viet Cong. The Korean conflict became a stalemate; Vietnam, a debacle. ……………………………………………………………

Purporting to be offended by the U.S.-Soviet nuclear standoff, whereby peace was assured only by the logic of “Mutually-Assured Destruction,” Reagan proposed an armada of “defensive” weapons in space. The military-industrial complex seized on Star Wars as a cornucopia of lucrative research and development projects that ended when space shuttle Challenger blew up. The space shuttle was being converted to a testing platform for space weaponry, as I saw personally at NASA when I worked there in 1985-1986…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

 9/11, the Neocons’ “new Pearl Harbor,” produced the “War on Terror,” the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, the military doctrine of Full-Spectrum Dominance, and the assaults on Afghanistan, Iraq, and later Libya. The ideological focal point was demonization of all things Islam. The rationale? “They hate our freedoms.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..UKRAINE — THE CROSSROADS

Now the U.S., with the Neocons firmly entrenched in the State Department and elsewhere, surrounded Russia with military bases………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Finally, after eight years of Ukrainian provocations, the death from Ukrainian shelling of more than 10,000 Donbass civilians, and the treachery of Germany and France in failing to uphold the Minsk agreements they had guaranteed, Russia entered Ukraine with its military forces in February 2022. The conflict was on, a conflict that Russia is winning. U.S.-led sanctions against Russia failed to bring down its economy or force regime change against Putin. But each Ukrainian setback on the battlefield has been followed by more weapons and money supplied to the Volodymyr Zelensky regime by the U.S., UK, Germany, France, and other NATO members. 

But who was calling the shots? In March 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators reached agreement on a tentative settlement at meetings in Istanbul. UK prime minister Boris Johnson then rushed to Kiev to induce Zelensky to tear up the agreement and continue the war. Western escalation has included billions of dollars worth of heavy tanks and other weapons to Ukraine, along with cluster munitions and depleted uranium projectiles. There have been drone attacks on Russia itself and on Crimea. But the Ukrainian counteroffensive has collapsed, with speculation increasing of a major Russian counterattack, possibly even cutting Ukraine off from the Black Sea. 

We have now come full circle. Warnings from Washington continue that Putin had better not go nuclear, which can be read as inviting him to do so. This is obviously a new phase of brinkmanship that could give the U.S. a pretext for themselves moving to nuclear war. Meanwhile, the U.S. understands that it could in no way challenge Russia in a conventional war even with the entire NATO alliance being activated. Even then, divisiveness within NATO and the absence of sufficient military force anywhere in Europe make this impossible at present. Veteran military analyst Scott Ritter writes in Sputnik News on September 21, 2023, that even were the U.S. to activate its entire military force stationed in Europe against Russia, it would be defeated within one to two weeks of intensive combat. The only alternative would then be to activate a gigantic airlift of additional forces into Europe with U.S. cargo planes sitting ducks for destruction en route. Impossible. 

There are now signs that the U.S. may be pressuring Ukraine to agree to a cease-fire, with a “freeze” along the lines of the decades-old Korean settlement. But all this would do would be to “kick the can down the road”—possibly until after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, likely to be preceded by elections in Ukraine in March. There are no signs that the U.S. is ready to concede a Russian victory involving the redrawing of the European security apparatus with Russia a respected party. The Ukrainian government speaks of a “long-term” conflict lasting decades. So there is no way to aver that the war in Ukraine is ending or to speculate about the next phase. 

So, is a nuclear World War III a possibility?   https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/23/is-world-war-iii-about-to-start-part-i-drift-toward-war/

September 25, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

South Asian leader slams AUKUS pact.

“It is a military alliance moved against one country – China.”

The US-led initiative was created to antagonize Beijing, Sri Lanka’s president has said.

 https://www.rt.com/news/583182-sri-lanka-slam-aukus-pact/ 20 Sept 23

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe has condemned the AUKUS pact as an alliance designed to target China, calling it a “strategic misstep,” and insisting it will only divide Asia into rival camps and destabilize the region.

Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Monday, Wickremesing he took aim at AUKUS, which was formed by the US, UK, and Australia in 2021. “I don’t think it was needed,” he said.

“I think it’s a strategic misstep. I think they made a mistake,” the president stated. “It is a military alliance moved against one country – China.”

Wickremesinghe went on to say that Sri Lanka wants no part in the growing tensions between Washington and Beijing, adding that his country would like to maintain good relations with both powers and does not wish to see Asia divided into competing blocs. 

“The next round of rivalry is going on. And that’s taking place in Asia. It’s the question of China versus the US, on how they are going to divide their region of influence in Asia,” he said. “Why are we getting pulled into it? It’s difficult for us to understand.”

The president also expressed concern about the stepped-up US military presence in the region in recent years – often labeled ‘freedom of navigation’ missions by American officials. “As far as the Indian Ocean is concerned, we don’t want any military activity,” he continued, saying most neighboring countries “will not want NATO anywhere close by.”

AUKUS was established in 2021 between Washington, Canberra, and London in part to facilitate the transfer of military technology among the three allies. Though officials from each country have maintained that the bloc is not a formal military alliance and is solely focused on technology sharing, Beijing has condemned the project, claiming it will only help to spread nuclear weapons around the globe and kick off an arms race in Asia.

“The three countries have gone further down the wrong and dangerous path for their own geopolitical self-interest, completely ignoring the concerns of the international community,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said earlier this year, adding that the AUKUS pact is based on a “Cold War mentality which will only motivate an arms race, damage the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, and harm regional stability and peace.”

Tensions between Washington and Beijing have steadily escalated in recent years, with former US President Donald Trump kicking off a low-level trade war with China which persists under his successor, Joe Biden.

The Biden administration has also deployed navy warships to waters near China on a near-monthly basis, including the disputed Taiwan Strait, drawing repeated condemnation from Chinese officials

September 21, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Maintaining the USA nuclear arsenal,  at $750 billion over the next decade

2 This is what it’s like to maintain the US nuclear arsenal

By Tara Copp, Associated Press, Sep 21, 23 C ISR NET

The U.S. will spend more than $750 billion over the next decade to revamp nearly every part of its aging nuclear defenses. Officials say they simply can’t wait any longer — some systems and parts are more than 50 years old.

For now, it’s up to young military troops and government technicians across the U.S. to maintain the existing bombs and related components. The jobs are exacting and often require a deft touch. That’s because many of the maintenance tasks must be performed by hand……………………………………

Because the U.S. no longer conducts explosive nuclear tests, scientists are not exactly sure how aging warhead plutonium cores affect detonation. For more common parts, like the plastics and metals and wiring inside each detonator, there are also questions about how the years spent in warheads might affect their integrity.

So, workers at the nation’s nuclear labs and production sites spend a lot of time stressing and testing parts to make sure they’re safe. . At the Energy Department’s Kansas City National Security Campus, where warheads are made and maintained, technicians put components through endless tests. They heat weapons parts to extreme temperatures, drop them at speeds simulating a plane crash, shoot them at high velocity out of testing guns and rattle and shake them for hours on end. The tests are meant to simulate real world scenarios — from hurtling toward a target to being carted in an Air Force truck over a long, rutty road.

Technicians at the Los Alamos National Lab conduct similar evaluations, putting plutonium under extreme stress, heat and pressure to ensure it is stable enough to blow up as intended. Just like the technicians in Kansas City, the ones in Los Alamos closely examine the tested parts and radioactive material to see if they caused any damage…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Workers younger than the warheads

It’s not unusual to see a 50-year-old warhead guarded or maintained by someone just out of high school, and ultimate custody of a nuclear weapon can fall on the shoulders of a service member who’s just 23.

……………………………….. At the Kansas City campus, for example, just about 6% of the workforce has been there 30 years or more — and over 60% has been at the facility for five years or less.

That change has meant more women have joined the workforce, too. In the cavernous hallways between Kansas City’s secured warhead workrooms are green and white nursing pods with a greeting: “Welcome mothers.”

At Los Alamos, workers’ uniform allowance now covers sports bras. Why? Because underwire bras were not compatible with the secured facilities’ many layers of metal detection and radiation monitoring. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/2023/09/20/this-is-what-its-like-to-maintain-the-us-nuclear-arsenal/

September 21, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Elephant In The Climate Room: Rocket Launches

Proliferation of rocket launches and their environmental damage are almost never mentioned in reporting on space

LISA SAVAGE, SEP 20, 2023, Substack

… I’ve spent years collecting research and reporting on the climate harms of militarism. When I began this was an obscure perspective shared by few; it is now mainstream in climate movements (as long as they are not controlled by the Democratic Party, that is).

So it is gratifying to see this fact of modern life represented at last weekend’s big climate march in New York City.

Other points of view also trend in that direction.

If capitalism is the root cause of rapidly warming oceans and extreme weather events, then the wars that are necessary to sustain capitalism are implicated.

But what about war in space, which is already well underway even if few realize it? The proliferation of rocket launches in recent years and the accompanying environmental damage are almost never mentioned in reporting on either space topics or military topics.

This coming weekend I’ll attend Maine’s biggest annual green lifestyle event, the Common Ground Fair. It draws thousands from all over the region for a “celebration of country living” sponsored by the Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association.

On Sunday morning in the political and social action tent a group of us will update fairgoers on plans to build a rocket launch site on the coast of Maine. Steuben is within sight of Acadia National Park, and the floating launch pad proposed would sit amid lobster fishing and seaweed harvesting activities already generating jobs and providing sustenance for the last several decades.

All rocket site construction involves toxic substances, including the PFAS foam used for fire fighting and stored in vast quantities on site until it may be needed. And when rockets and satellites fall from the sky, they disintegrate into a chemical soup that then falls to Earth. Mass deaths of birds and other animals have been observed at rocket launch sites in other states.

Maine was once considered Vacationland because of its deep forests, clean water, beautiful shoreline, and abundance of foods like lobsters, trout, and clams.

Although organized lobster fishermen in Jonesport blocked the construction of the toxic launch site in their fishing grounds, Steuben has not been so lucky. Resident Larch Hanson is ready to sue blueShift’s CEO for trampling on the democratic process and putting his seaweed harvesting business at risk. The town government of Steuben has squelched discussion of the rocket launch site plan and silenced critics, according to Hanson.

It’s worth noting that a bill rushed through supposedly as “emergency” legislation and passed under the gavel (i.e. without a roll call vote) established a private-public partnership called the Maine Space Corporation to support just this kind of project. So undemocratic methods are a signature of bringing rocket launches to Vacationland.

But isn’t space cool? you may ask. And educational?

All space programs are inherently military in nature, no matter what NASA or the University of Maine tell you. Every rocket launch site built on other pristine coasts such as Kodiak, Alaska or Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand was sold to local residents as non-military but once built has been used extensively and repeatedly to launch military satellites. (More details on that here.)

As a retired educator, I know STEM fans will enthuse about how much science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education will be advanced by projects such as this one. STEM educators in Australia are currently excited about how middle school students will be involved in projects connected to nuclear submarines the U.S. is forcing on them despite considerable pushback from the public. 

STEM can be a force for good, but not when it’s used as a cover up for militarizing education and other public resources.

I have been astonished at the lack of interest among environmentalists who I might have expected would oppose building a rocket launch site on the Maine coast. No doubt it’s partly attributable to the slavish reprinting of bluShift press releases as “news” in corporate media.   https://went2thebridge.substack.com/p/elephant-in-the-climate-room-rocket?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1580975&post_id=137220260&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=c9zhh&utm_medium=email

September 21, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Cooling system at Zaporizhzhya stabilised – but military action in the area continues

In its Update 183 on the Ukraine situation International Atomic
Energy Agency director general Rafael Grossi announced that Zaporizhzhya
Nuclear Power Plant has been drilling more wells at the site as part of
efforts to find new sources of cooling water following the destruction of
the downstream Kakhovka dam more than three months ago.

ZNPP has built
another two groundwater wells to supply the sprinkler ponds that cool the
six reactors and spent fuel, bringing the total of new wells to nine.
Together they pump around 200 cubic metres of water per hour into the
sprinkler ponds, representing most of the cooling needs of the six shutdown
reactors.

The remainder of the water comes from the drainage system and
clean water that is periodically discharged from the plant’s chemical
water treatment facility. The IAEA has been informed that the water supply
situation will be assessed after a tenth well has been constructed to see
if more will be needed.

September 21, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Andreyeva Bay cleanup slows to a snail’s pace since invasion of Ukraine

 https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2023-09-andreyeva-bay-cleanup-slows-to-a-snails-pace-since-invasion-of-ukraine 18 Sept 23 Charles Digges

In 2017, Russia began a landmark project ridding one of its most dangerous Cold War relics of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. The effort to clean up Andreyeva Bay — a submarine base near Murmansk uniquely positioned to contaminate the Barents Sea — was the culmination of a years-long and often strained cooperative effort between Moscow and numerous European nations, chief among them Norway and the United Kingdom.

The outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022 disrupted that progress and drained the project of millions in international funding as European nations suspended their contributions in protest of Moscow’s invasion.

In the early days of the war, officials with Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, insisted they would continue Andreyeva Bay’s cleanup without international assistance, though it was unclear on what funding that would be done.

It wasn’t until Rosatom’s annual conference convened in Murmansk this past July that any news of how these projects were progressing saw the light of day. But even then, the audience a was select one. Bellona — which had attended the annual Rosatom meeting in prewar times — has only viewed the conference presentations in written form.

In fact, none of Rosatom’s former international partners whose funding has driven the Andreyeva Bay project — nations like Norway, France, the United Kingdom and others from Europe— were invited. Instead, the international delegation consisted primarily of countries like Belarus, Kirgizstan, Uzbekistan and others from the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States.

“Most of these countries don’t know anything about the Arctic,” said Bellona’s Alexander Nikitin, who is a former member of Rosatom’s Public Council, which was disbanded when the invasion began. “They were invited so the organizers could call the event ‘international.’”

As it turns out, Rosatom hasn’t made any significant progress on the cleanup since the war estranged it from its primary international partners. The problems that remained at the Andreyeva Bay site before war broke out are the same problems Rosatom is addressing now.  And where the cleanup was forecast to be completed by 2028 before the Ukraine invasion, current projections by Rosatom officials put the completion date much later.

The disruption to Andreyeva Bay and other cleanup projects threatens to turn back the clock on more than two decades of environmental progress in Northwest Russia.

History

Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States built more than 400 nuclear submarines, assuring each superpower the ability to fire nuclear missiles from sea even after their land-based silos had been decimated by a first strike. The fjords and coastlines around Murmansk adjacent to Norway became the hub of the Soviet Northern Fleet, and a dumping ground for radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

After the Iron Curtain was drawn back, the disturbing scale of this legacy came to light. It was revealed that a storage building at Andreyeva Bay  — the now notorious Building No 5 — had leaked some 600,000 metric tons of irradiated water into the Barents Sea from a nuclear fuel storage pool in 1982. The site contained 22,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies pulled from more than 100 subs, many kept in rusted containers stored in the open air.

This slow-motion nuclear disaster continued to unfold in near secrecy until Bellona brought it to international attention in 1996, when it published a groundbreaking report on Northwest Russia’s nuclear woes.

Fearing contamination, Norway spearheaded a sweeping cleanup effort with other Western nations. Combined they spent more than $1 billion to dismantle 197 decommissioned Soviet nuclear subs that rusted dockside, still loaded with spent nuclear fuel. One thousand Arctic navigation beacons powered by strontium batteries were replaced, many with solar powered units provided by the Norwegians.

Then, six years ago, the first batches of spent nuclear fuel began their journey away from Andreyeva Bay to safer storage — a process meant to continue for another decade thereafter. By 2021, more than half of the spent fuel assemblies had been removed. Later that year, damaged spent fuel fragments lying at the bottom of Building No 5’s storage pools had also been extracted. Real progress was being made.

Progress since the beginning of the war

Since the beginning of the war, however, the tempo of removing spent fuel assemblies has nearly ground to a halt. If 2017, the first year of the removal, saw 18 batches of spent fuel transported away from the site, then in 2022, according to various reports, only two batches left Andreyeva Bay.

The disposition of solid radioactive waste at the site, which includes solid waste inside the storage buildings, also remains unclear and appears to have slowed considerably as a result of the war. As of 2022, some 9,500 cubic meters of it — or roughly 51 percent of the entire legacy waste at the site — remained in place. This waste was scheduled to depart for other storage bases, such as the Gremikha site, by 2026. Now, that’s schedule may be unrealistic.

About half of Andreyeva Bay’s infrastructure— structures like Building No 5 and Building No 3-A, to which spent fuel in Building No 5 was rushed after the 1982 leak — remains irradiated and in need of safe rehabilitation or dismantlement. But since the schedule for removing solid waste from these structures has been pushed back from 2026 to sometime in the 2030s, dates for the completion of the dismantlement are likewise unclear.

Should that ever get done, what’s left of Building No 5 will present other problems. On the whole, the building itself represents some 15,300 tons of low- to medium level radioactive waste. The two options for dealing with this are to demolish the building and bury the debris in a radioactive waste storage facility, or encasing it in a sarcophagus, not unlike the one used at Chernobyl. As with the other issues at Andreyeva Bay, no real prospective conclusion date for disposing of Building No 5 has been discussed since the outbreak of war.

This is the first in a series of articles examining the state of nuclear cleanup in Russia since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. charles@bellona.no

September 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The risk that nuclear weapons could be used is tremendous – Finnish President on war in Ukraine

He also spoke in favour of cautious policy of such states as the US and Germany concerning supplying Ukraine with some kinds of armament, mainly for the attacks on Russia-occupied Crimea.

Yahoo News Ukrainska Pravda, Mon, September 18, 2023 

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö warns Europe to be cautious concerning the risk of escalation of the full-scale Russian war against Ukraine.

Source: Niinistö expressed this opinion in an interview for The New York Times, as reported by European Pravda

Niinistö thinks that the war against Ukraine will last a long time and even though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a “wake-up call” for Europe and NATO, now this fact is being gradually forgotten.

“We’re in a very sensitive situation. Even small things can change matters a great deal and unfortunately for the worse. That is the risk of such large-scale warfare. The risk that nuclear weapons could be used is tremendous,” Niinistö said.

He also spoke in favour of cautious policy of such states as the US and Germany concerning supplying Ukraine with some kinds of armament, mainly for the attacks on Russia-occupied Crimea………………………….. more https://news.yahoo.com/risk-nuclear-weapons-could-used-144000584.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAExkFb73zWCbee9AK_vuFm2BTmp0kiQDmDUXiBzV6qklzWqYIFsX_LXu9LAxNrBCYBq1jiKFYYNtTql41UYxMkGOceFZGslm7ZB2DP56ACiY6zTGQry2jsKbYix7589Hu54kZpAcm6jfdeJQDJs1JEs77sAiMK0vhn8GH6AyXa6s

September 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment