WE ARE ON A PATH TO NUCLEAR WAR
WAR ON THE ROCKS, JEREMY SHAPIRO, 12 Oct 22, In war, nothing is inevitable and not much is predictable. But the war in Ukraine has a direction that observers can see and that we should name. What began as a criminal Russian aggression against Ukraine has become a proxy war between Washington and Moscow. The two sides are locked in an escalatory cycle that, along current trends, will eventually bring them into direct conflict and then go nuclear, killing millions of people and destroying much of the world. This is obviously a bold prediction and certainly an unwise one to make — in part because if I’m right, I’m unlikely to be around take credit for it.
President Joe Biden has named this danger, to great criticism, apparently because he believes that acknowledging the danger increases the chances of avoiding such a terrible outcome. Indeed, much can change the current trajectory, but doing so will require purposeful action by both sides specifically intended to avoid direct confrontation. At the moment, neither side seems willing or politically able to take such steps. On the contrary, in Russia nuclear threats are a prominent part of the Russian war strategy. In the United States, commentators condemn those who even name this danger, fearing that doing so will weaken Western resolve. Any mention of such considerations on Twitter, where it is always 1938, inevitably provokes accusations of appeasement and references to Neville Chamberlain.
Despite the opprobrium, not naming the danger is unlikely to reduce it. Think tank analysts prefer instead to talk in terms of “scenarios,” wherein we can bury the most likely outcome amongst a few other less likely possibilities. Such exercises are useful for planning purposes, and they appropriately reflect our general inability to predict events on the ground. But scenarios also serve to hide the relative likelihood of the various outcomes. Here I present just the central scenario of nuclear escalation. I take as a starting point that, although we may experience long periods of relative stalemate and we may never arrive at such a horrific outcome, uncontrolled escalation is the path that we are currently on.
Testing the Red Lines
No rational or even sane leader plans to start a nuclear war. And for all of the Russian regime’s risk taking, it does not show signs of suicidal tendencies. The essence of the problem is more insidious than mere insanity: Once an escalatory cycle begins, a series of individually rational steps can add up to a world-ending absurdity. In Ukraine, both sides have publicly pledged that they cannot lose this war. They hold that doing so would threaten their very way of life and the values that they hold most dear. In the Russian case particularly, a loss in Ukraine would seem to threaten regime survival and even the territorial integrity of the country.
As the war has moved against the Russians, they have drawn numerous red lines to warn the West against escalation. The Russians called the provision of long-range rocket systems near the Russian border “intolerable,” warned against the admission of Sweden and Finland to NATO, and threatened that any attack on Crimea would “ignite judgment day.” In each case, the crossing of these Russian red lines by Ukraine, the United States, or Europe generated some sort of response but fell well short of Russian threats.
As Russian red lines have proven very pink, they are increasingly questioned in the West. Numerous Western commentators now assert that Russia is a paper tiger and dismiss Russian nuclear threats as “bluster.” The most recent Russian red line warns against the provision of long-range missile systems to Ukraine. The Russian government says that if the United States crosses this line, it would become “a direct party to the conflict.” Given all of the red lines already crossed, however, it is doubtful that U.S. decision-makers see such threats as very meaningful.
The problem that the Russians have had in their signaling is that their decision to escalate likely revolves around the progress that the Ukrainians make on the ground, not on any discrete action (such as the provision of new weapons systems) that the West might take. The likelihood of escalation, in other words, has stemmed from developments on the battlefield, not from the crossing of some arbitrary red line. Experts on the Russian military have long suspected that Russian nuclear signaling is an elaborate bluff meant to instill fear and caution in a weak-willed Western enemy. But events in Ukraine and the possibility of a catastrophic military loss may have changed that calculation. Nobody really knows. It is likely that the Russians don’t know either.
What is clear is that both sides have consistently escalated in Ukraine when they fear that they might lose. The United States and its European partners have continually upped their military assistance to Ukraine, in both quality and quantity, regardless of red lines. Under the pressure of war, they decided to deliver weapons and intelligence that just a few months ago they believed carried too great an escalation risk to provide. They have similarly incrementally increased economic sanctions to the degree that they now appear intended to permanently weaken Russia and destroy the Russian regime, as Biden has said is necessary to end the war.
The Russians have consistently responded to battlefield setbacks with their own escalations including energy cut-offs to Europe, increased bombing of civilian targets, and recently through the formal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces and the partial mobilization of Russian manpower reserves. This last step carries obvious risks for the Russian regime, as the multiple protests against it across Russia testify, but the leadership preferred those domestic risks to losing the war.
In taking these escalatory steps, both sides have also increased the domestic and geopolitical costs of compromise, thus increasing the incentive for further escalations. Thus, for example, the Russian annexations are intended to signal to foreign and domestic audiences that the occupied parts of Ukrainian territory will now be defended as if they were Russia itself. But it is not just a signal, it also genuinely reduces Russia’s ability to back down and abandon these provinces. This is essence of an escalatory cycle — it contains a logic of its own wherein previous escalations make future ones more likely.
Of course, wars have often escalated but no war since 1945 has ended in nuclear use. Nuclear powers have at times considered their use for warfighting, notably in Korea in 1953 and in Israel in 1973, but have always stepped back from the brink. In the current situation, both sides have many more steps to take before direct confrontation: ………………………………………………………………………..
This is only a scenario. None of it is inevitable, of course. But this is the path that we are currently on and the likelihood of it coming to pass grows by the day as one side or the other becomes more desperate. The consequences of this path are deeply ruinous. It should be named. https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh/
Crimean Bridge Attack: Ukraine’s Sabotage Teams Take Orders From Washington, Senior Official Reveals
https://sputniknews.com/20221010/crimean-bridge-attack-ukraines-sabotage-teams-take-orders-from-washington-senior-official-reveals-1101698419.html Ilya Tsukanov, 12 Oct 22, The 19-km bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula to the Russian mainland sustained serious damage following the detonation of a truck bomb on one of its road sections on Saturday morning. Ukrainian officials boasted to US media that Kiev was responsible.
Ukrainian officials keep their US counterparts abreast of Kiev’s sabotage ops and other anti-Russian actions, Sergey Pashinsky, the head of the Association of Ukraine’s Defense Enterprises, accidentally revealed.
“We are planning several operations. My position is: we must and are obliged to inform our American partners about them. And those operations which I am conducting right now – I have the opportunity to conduct operations myself, I http://cut channels this is also the CIA http://cut have their own intentions. Because I understand that the US also carries responsibility for them and has the right to veto all of our operations,” Pashinsky said, speaking to infamous Russian pranksters Vladimir ‘Vovan’ Kuznetsov and Alexei ‘Lexus’ Stolyarov, who posed as US officials.
Pashinsky clarified that he has been in charge of some major Ukrainian military actions, including operational planning on Zmeiny (‘Snake’) Island – the small but strategically significant island situated off the western coast of Romania in the Black Sea, and which saw heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces earlier this year.
“I planned the Zmeiny Island operation, I carried it out personally [using] Ukrainian Bohdan and French Caesar [howitzers]. Yes, this was my operation in its entirely,” the official said.
Pashinsky indicated that operations against a piece of infrastructure like the Crimean Bridge became possible only once the US gives the green light.
“As soon as you tell me that the US approves the sabotage of the Crimean Bridge, the situation can move forward. [Laughs]. A verbal message is enough for me. We don’t want to take responsibility of this scale for ourselves, while Mr. Zelensky – I don’t know, I don’t even want to know about this situation,” Pashinsky said.
“The Crimean Bridge is an important artery, but on the other hand I think you know [Vladimir] Putin better than I do. That is, who can analyze Putin’s actions in the event of sabotage against the Crimean Bridge? Who?” the official asked.
The pranksters did not clarify whether the interview with Pashinsky was conducted before or after Saturday’s sabotage attack.
Two senior Ukrainian officials told the New York Times on Sunday that Ukrainian intelligence were behind the attack on the bridge, one of them grading the success of the attack as “excellent” and saying that the operation “showed the failure of the Russian system to guarantee the security even of the most significant and sacred targets.”
Ukrainian officials also publicly gloated over the act of terror, with presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak saying the bridge attack was only “the beginning” and that “everything illegal must be destroyed” and “everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine.”
“Today was not a bad day and mostly sunny on our state’s territory. Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea. Although it was also warm,” President Vladimir Zelensky said in a sarcasm-laden address to the nation on Saturday night.
Russia launched a series of missile strikes deep into Ukraine on Monday in the wake of the bridge attack after confirming Ukrainian special forces’ involvement, with the strikes targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure and military command and communications posts across the country. President Putin warned that strikes would be followed up if Ukrainian attacks against Russian infrastructure continue.
Ukraine held talks with Britain for destruction of Crimean bridge
https://apa.az/en/europe/ukraine-held-talks-with-britain-for-destruction-of-crimean-bridge-382809—15 August 2022,
Deputy of the Rada Goncharenko announced negotiations with Wallace on the destruction of the Crimean bridge, APA reports.
Ukraine held talks with British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace on a plan to destroy the Crimean Bridge at the NATO summit in June, Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleksiy Goncharenko said.
The parliamentarian drew attention to the statement of expert Igor Korotchenko, who said on the air of the Rossiya 1 TV channel that, according to some information, the plan for striking the bridge was allegedly being developed under the personal supervision of the head of the British military department.
“Ben Wallace and I discussed the plan to destroy the Crimean bridge back in June,” Goncharenko wrote, posting a photo from the talks, which, in addition to him and the head of the British Ministry of Defense, shows British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
In July, Aleksey Arestovich, an adviser to the head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office, said that Ukraine could attack the Crimean Bridge as soon as the first technical opportunity appeared.
Joshua Frank’s book Atomic Days shows the nuclear industry’s only real role – it is essential for the USA’s ‘permanent war economy’
As the atomic energy business is increasingly priced out of the electricity market by wind, solar, batteries, and increased efficiency and conservation, we will likely see the nuclear power industry increasingly admitting to what it always was — a necessary servant of the nuclear weapons industry.
Nuclear Power Isn’t Clean — It Creates Hellish Wastelands of Radioactive Sewage, Harvey Wasserman, Truthout October 12, 2022,
“……………………………..To put the nuclear power industry in a larger context, Frank guides us through the “permanent war economy” birthed during WWII, and discusses Franklin Roosevelt’s ambivalent relations with the “Malefactors of Great Wealth” who often stood in the way of making the U.S. the “Arsenal of Democracy,” and who once even plotted to kill him.
With the decision to build an A-Bomb, the giant Bechtel Corporation used the 120-square-mile reservation at Hanford to produce 103.5 metric tons of plutonium, perhaps the deadliest substance known to humanity.
But there was no effective solution for what might happen to the place in the aftermath. The Waste Treatment Plant meant to “vitrify” rad wastes into glass began construction in 2002, with plans to open in 2011. It has become, in both cost and area, “the largest single construction operation taking place anywhere in the United States,” now with an estimated price tag of $41 billion and a projected opening in 2036.
With “a string of bungled jobs under its belt,” Bechtel’s failed “Big Dig” in Boston — a much-vaunted tunnel from Logan Airport to downtown — reflected its work at Hanford when a collapse killed a 39-year-old woman and resulted in $357.1 million settlement exempting management from criminal prosecution.
As the U.S.’s fourth-largest privately held company, Bechtel spending $1.8 million on D.C. lobbying in 2019-20 was par for the course. The payback, Frank writes, comes in the tragic diseases suffered by Hanford workers like Abe Garza and Lawrence Rouse, usually amid terse, well-funded official denials. Researchers like Karen Wetterhahn and veterans like Victor Skaar have joined Vietnam victims of Agent Orange in being victimized by exposures they were repeatedly assured were “safe.” Whistleblowers like Ed Bricker were even subjected to intense spying and sabotage by close associates he was deceived into accepting as friends.
Meanwhile activists like Russell Jim of the Yakama Tribe began to force “an immeasurable amount of transparency” around the Hanford disaster. Their decades of hardcore community organizing came with a growing demand for accountability that has changed the political atmosphere surrounding the cleanup.
The debate has carried into the use of commercial atomic power.
Because of Hanford’s nuclear presence, five atomic reactors were constructed in Washington State, promising electricity that would be “too cheap to meter.”
But like the soaring costs of plutonium production and clean-up, the Washington Public Power System plunged into the biggest public bankruptcy in U.S. history, due to massive delays and cost overruns. Only one of the nukes now operates.
Sadly, some self-proclaimed climate activists have fallen into the atomic pit, arguing that in the face of the acute threat of climate change, nuclear power should be pursued as a way to lower emissions.
But they all ignore the big lesson Joshua Frank teaches us about Hanford: All the rhetoric in the world can’t cover for the physical realities of dealing with atomic radiation. And atomic fires burning at 571 degrees Fahrenheit will never cool the planet. The mines, the mills, the fuel fabrication, the reactors themselves, the waste dumps, all that horrendous multitrillion-dollar paraphernalia — they together comprise the most lethal and expensive technological failure in human history.
Many reactor promoters have long vehemently denied any connection between their “peaceful atom” and the scourge of war, but anti-nuclear activists have exposed the falsity of those claims. For example, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a British advocacy organization that opposes both nuclear weapons and the building of new nuclear power facilities, writes:
The civil nuclear power industry grew out of the atomic bomb programme in the 1940s and the 1950s. In Britain, the civil nuclear power programme was deliberately used as a cover for military activities…. The development of both the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industries is mutually beneficial. Scientists from Sussex University confirmed this once again in 2017, stating that the government is using the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to subsidise Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system.
As the atomic energy business is increasingly priced out of the electricity market by wind, solar, batteries, and increased efficiency and conservation, we will likely see the nuclear power industry increasingly admitting to what it always was — a necessary servant of the nuclear weapons industry.
Fittingly, the only future for atomic reactors will be as a bottomless pit for ecological suicide and massive public subsidies — exactly like Hanford.
Indeed, for readers truly interested in the future of atomic energy, take a good look at how it plays in Joshua Frank’s Atomic Days. Then ask how soon we can cover the whole damn place with solar panels. https://truthout.org/articles/nuclear-power-isnt-clean-it-creates-hellish-wastelands-of-radioactive-sewage/
Georgia nuclear plant’s cost now forecast to top $30 billion
https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/05/09/georgia-nuclear-plants-cost-now-forecast-top-30-billion?fbclid=IwAR3OXo4tKdYJgJPMQxXjl_l4VnbN1cFZkTtiYE7KZ-NEPngOb5_FnB_GpRY May 9, 2022 Associated Press,
A nuclear power plant being built in Georgia is now projected to cost its owners more than $30 billion.
A financial report from one of the owners on Friday clearly pushed the cost of Plant Vogtle near Augusta past that milestone, bringing its total cost to $30.34 billion.
That amount doesn’t count the $3.68 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners after going bankrupt, which would bring total spending to more than $34 billion.
Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States, and its costs could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions.
The latest increase in the budget, by the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, wasn’t a surprise after lead owner Georgia Power Co. announced delays and $920 million in overruns on March 3. Georgia Power’s costs only cover the 45.7% of the plant it owns, meaning that the cooperatives and municipal utilities that own the majority of the two-reactor project later update their financial projections as well.
MEAG, which owns 22.7% of Vogtle and provides power to city-owned utilities, raised its total cost forecast, including capital spending and borrowing costs, to $7.8 billion from the previous level of $7.5 billion.
Oglethorpe Power Corp., which provides power to 38 cooperatives in Georgia, owns 30% of Vogtle. In March bumped up its cost projects by $250 million to $8.5 billion.
The city of Dalton, which owns 1.6%, estimated its cost at $240 million in 2021. It hasn’t released a public update.
The municipal utility in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as some other municipal utilities and cooperatives in Florida and Alabama are obligated to buy power from the plant.
When approved in 2012, the third and fourth reactors were estimated to cost $14 billion, with the first electricity being generated in 2016. Now the third reactor is set to begin operation in March 2023, and the fourth reactor is set to begin operation in December 2023.
Atlanta-based Southern Co., which owns Georgia Power, has been charging increasing shares of its cost overruns as shareholder losses, saying it’s unlikely that the Georgia Public Service Commission will approve adding amounts to the bills of Georgia Power’s 2.6 million customers. But Oglethorpe, MEAG and Dalton don’t have shareholders, meaning customers are fully exposed to overruns.
Georgia Power’s customers, as well as some Oglethorpe customers, are already paying the costs of Vogtle.
To protect themselves, the other owners signed an agreement with Georgia Power in 2018 specifying that if costs reach a certain point, the other owners can choose to freeze their costs at that level. In exchange for paying more of the costs, Georgia Power would own a larger share of the reactors.
Oglethorpe wants to freeze its costs at $8.1 billion, selling 2% of the reactor to Georgia Power in exchange for Georgia Power paying $400 million more in costs. MEAG also said Friday it wants to freeze its costs, but didn’t say how much it sought to shift to Georgia Power.
Southern has acknowledged it will have to pay at least $440 million more to cover what would have been other owners’ costs, and has said another $460 million is in dispute.
Georgia Power is disputing the cost threshold at which it must shoulder more of the burden and saying it shouldn’t have to pay the other owners’ share of extra costs stemming from COVID-19. The owners are in talks aimed at resolving their disagreements.
“Cost sharing is imminent, however, until the parties reach agreement, Oglethorpe will continue to pay its full share of the construction costs as billed by Georgia Power, but will do so under contractual protest,” Oglethorpe CEO Mike Smith said in March.
All the owners did vote to continue construction on Feb. 25. Also, the owners report that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March completed a follow-up inspection of wiring problems at the third reactor and signed off that problems it identified in November had been fixed, returning the reactor to its less intensive baseline inspection regime.
How nuclear testing leaves lasting environmental scars
https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-testing-north-korea-environment-biodiversity/a-6341. Edited by: Tamsin Walker 13 Oct 22,
With analysts predicting further nuclear tests in North Korea, the planet stands to lose. The ongoing environmental effects of nuclear testing are felt worldwide and for millions of years.
Since late September, North Korea has launched a flurry of ballistic missile tests as part of what experts believe is a program to develop so-called tactical nuclear weapons. If the reclusive state were to move beyond testing missiles to testing actual nuclear warheads, as some analysts are predicting, it would not only ramp up political tensions, but also pose a significant environmental threat.
In the past, countries such as the United States, the former Soviet Union and the United Kingdom tested their nuclear weapons in the open atmosphere and in the sea — and around Pacific Islands, the Australian desert, mainland US, remote parts of the USSR and other places. These tests left contaminated landscapes and spread their radioactive clouds far afield.
Thanks to global treaties, nuclear tests were largely moved underground after 1963, a slightly preferable scenario environmentally speaking. And since a 1996 test ban, only India, Pakistan and North Korea have tested weapons at all.
North Korea is the only country known to have conducted tests in the 21st century.
The impact of nuclear testing on mammals
“The legacy of nuclear weapons testing has been absolutely catastrophic for humans and for the environment,” said Alicia Sanders, the policy research coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
One of the unique consequences for the environment, she added, “is that it lasts essentially forever.”
Putting aside the development required to set up test sites, the first major effects are felt in the microseconds after the explosion.
A 2015 paper on the environmental impact of military actions found that nuclear blasts represent an extreme threat to local biodiversity.
The massive energy released in the thermal emission from the blast — comprising light and heat — kills any organisms unfortunate enough to be near the epicenter. Depending on the yield of the bomb, even organisms several kilometers away face lethal temperatures. What remains is a charred mess.
The effect from the thermal shock on animals is not well researched, but humans face serious, life-threatening burns even several kilometers away, depending on the power of the bomb. A similar effect is assumed for other mammals. They also suffer from the pressure of the blast, which causes lung damage and hemorrhaging.
And animals that aren’t killed immediately are more likely to die from infections in the days and weeks following the explosion, leading to a localized die-off event, the 2015 review found.
The impact on plants, birds and marine life
Plants are also not spared the effects of a nuclear blast. The sheer force strips trees of their foliage, tears down branches and uproots vegetation.
For fish, meanwhile, the impact is similar to that of a non-nuclear explosion, but on a much larger scale. The US tests in Alaska, and those of France in French Polynesia in the late 1960s and early 70s were associated with large-scale die-offs of fish, as their gas-filled swim bladders ruptured.
Marine mammals and diving birds suffered similarly, post-mortem analysis showed. However, marine non-vertebrates appeared to be more resistant to pressure waves as they do not have gas-containing organs, according to defense studies at the time.
Long-term environmental impacts
During the Cold War, the United States detonated scores of nuclear weapons in atmospheric tests in the Pacific. Entire islands were incinerated and many are still uninhabitable. Local residents were forced to leave. A 2019 study found that some of the affected areas had radiation levels 1,000-times that of those found in Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Significant long-term environmental consequences of nuclear testing are the contamination of surface soil and groundwater, land disturbances in the form of craters or partially collapsed mountains — as in the case of the North Korean testing site — and the addition of radionuclides to sediments in seabeds.
Atmospheric nuclear tests spread radionuclides — unstable particles that releases radiation as they break down — far and wide, contaminating topsoil.
But even in underground testing, high pressure conditions can propel radionuclides into the atmosphere — a phenomenom known as venting — where they can be carried by winds and deposited far away from the test sites and enter food-chains.
Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s nuclear policy program, says Pyongyang has thus far avoided the pitfall of venting.
“The North Koreans have actually, with their last five nuclear tests at least, been very effective at preventing the venting of radionuclides,” he said. “Because some of these radionuclides can even offer hints about the specific materials that are being used in the nuclear device.”
At the very least, underground tests deposit huge quantities of radioactive material which will remain there for millions of years. The long-term ecological damage from such contamination is unknown.
The impact on drinking water
Underground testing also poses a threat of radionuclides leeching into drinking water.
Studies at the US nuclear testing site near Las Vegas, found that some contaminants released by underground nuclear tests can get into the surrounding water. Plants and animals are particularly liable to pick up radioactive strontium and caesium, which are easily spread in water.
With a half-life of 30 years, these two radionuclides can cause health issues in the food chain for decades. A common shrub in New Mexico, chamisa, has roots that extend deep into the ground, bringing strontium back up to the surface near the Los Alamos testing site in New Mexico, from where it can be widely distributed as the leaves fall, decay, and contaminate the soil understory.
“Animals will eat from contaminated land and that becomes very dangerous. These can be key sources of food for people,” ICAN’s Sanders said.
Organizations such as ICAN continue to push for complete denuclearization.
Until that happens, one factor that might help clean up the legacy of nuclear testing is a provision in the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which requires signatories to provide assistance to victims of nuclear weapons and begin to remediate contaminated environments. States should next year begin initial assessments of environmental damage and use that as a basis for future remediation efforts.
Australian and some other, nuclear news – week to 11 October.
Some bits of good news – What went right this week: an iconic river reborn, plus more. Around 90 per cent of the plastic in our oceans could be gone by 2040-(they claim, anyway).
A tragic and predictable story. Another Australian, Wilfred Burchett went to Hiroshima in the first days following the atomic bomb. He photographed the victims, the devastation, the horror, done by the USA. and he wrote about it all.
What happened to Burchett’s record of this – it disappeared, then came the never-ending persecution of him, and his banishment from his own country.
They’ll do it more subtly to Assange. They’ll aim to break his spirit and his mental health.
For Australia, America’s lackey – the best face-saving outcome will be – to make Assange plead guilty. Then he spends some time in the cruellest USA prison. then a “kindly” U.S. President magnaminously lets him go to an.. Australian gaol. Some years later, a completely discredited and broken Julian is released, when they’re sure he’s forgotten by the public.
But world-wide journalists won’t forget- they have been shown how they must toe the USA line.
Coronavirus.COVID-19 world weekly cases drop 7% but European nations rise 2% .(Governments in Covid denial?) International task force finds COVID-19 origins ‘most likely zoonotic’ and warns of a failure to reduce animal-to-human transmission.Julian Assange tests positive for COVID-19.
AUSTRALIA.
Rotting in jail’: Thousands march for Julian Assange’s release as his brother urges Anthony Albanese to act. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFzxb0bi4pA
The Australian Radioactive Waste Agency (ARWA) shows that the planned Kimba dump is predominantly for ANSTO’s wastes, NOT for medical wastes.
Energy Resources of Australia’s investor Willy Packer completely wrong on Jabiluka uranium.
Coalition nuclear power bill “dead on arrival,” but somehow the debate lives on.
Nuclear Power: the Right’s giant red herring,
‘Next generation’ nuclear is not a credible energy response – makes no sense for Australia- The Australian Conservation Foundation. ‘Unproven’ small nuclear reactors would raise Australia’s energy costs and delay renewable uptake, report says. ‘Next-generation’ nuclear power a furphy.
What do you think the arms trade is, a charity? Actually yes, that’s what it is.
Never mind Australia’s economic problems, health crisis etc – Weapons for Zelensky is the big need..
Pacific islanders want nuclear legacy aid. Radiation ‘hotspots’: legacy of British nuclear tests lingers on idyllic islands in Western Australia.
Tanya Plibersek should seize the moment. The Murray Darling Basin Plan is hobbled – it’s time for Tanya Plibersek to lead
INTERNATIONAL
Assange protesters rally for his release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-l5-PXo0qY The CIA, the corporate state, and the persecution of Julian Assange – democracy being destroyed.
Nuclear War and Moral Sanity. Why We Need To Teach Nuclear War. Nothing’s more important than avoiding nuclear war. 2022 Nobel Peace Prize award violates the purpose of the prize .
Media hide the fascist ideology of Ukrainian militia who visit U.S. Congress.
The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2022 (WNISR2022). Nuclear share in energy generation falls to lowest in four decades-report.
The risk of nuclear disaster grows every day.
Radioactive releases from the nuclear power sector and implications for child health.
Particle radioactivity linked to pollution-associated heart attack and stroke death.
Renewables need minerals. Can their pollution and public health challenges be overcome?
UKRAINE.
- Ukraine behind Crimean Bridge blast – US media . Crimean Bridge explosion ‘just the beginning,’ Ukraine warns. Lavrov explains why Russia sees Ukraine as a threat – Zelensky asked NATO for a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Zelensky aide attempts to walk back call for ‘preemptive strike’. US comments on Zelensky’s ‘preemptive strike’ appeal.
- ‘We’re hunting them down and shooting them like pigs’: How the Ukrainians are taking brutal revenge on pro-Russian collaborators
- Ukraine War Exposes Risks to Deploying Small Nuclear Reactors. Ukraine’s ZNPP Must Be Urgently Protected, IAEA’s Grossi Says After Plant Loses All External Power Due to Shelling. Zaporizhzhia on the brink: How deteriorating conditions at the nuclear power plant could lead to disaster.
- Black pigmentation in Chernobyl’s Eastern Tree Frogs. Crops growing 30 miles outside of Chernobyl are still contaminated with dangerous levels of strontium .
POLAND. Poland suggests hosting US nuclear weapons- ‘nuclear sharing’.
RUSSIA. Are Putin’s nuclear threats really likely to lead to Armageddon?
UK
- 7,000 form human chain in London to protest treatment of Assange.
- The great ratepayer robbery: how UK new nuclear rips off its customers. Liz Truss and Emmanuel Macron get together on promoting nuclear power, especially Sizewell C. Will Sizewell C nuclear really go ahead? EDF’s €60bn debt, and €52bn costs for French nuclear build.
- Liz Truss blocks a plan for UK citizens to reduce their energy use. Truss sees energy conservation measures as making Britain a ‘nanny state’.
- Scotland government will double down on opposition to new nuclear power stations north of the border. Truss call for Scottish nuclear power is to make up for UK mistakes.
- Nuclear fusion – public money wasted on this unproven technology. Britain’s new Energy Secretary suffering from the ‘nuclear fusion delusion’.
- Nuclear test veterans: Stik sculpture unveiled at Kent army museum.
- First containers sealed into Dounreay low level waste vaults. UK’s Nuclear Free Local Authorities urge the South Copeland Geological Disposal Facility to make meetings more “accessible and transparent”.
7,000 form human chain in London to protest treatment of Assange
WSWS 9 Oct 22, Around 7,000 people formed a human chain around the Houses of Parliament in the UK Saturday, protesting the British government’s persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The chain ran continuously from Parliament Square along the Palace of Westminster, across Lambeth Bridge, along South Bank to Westminster bridge, then back over the Thames river to Parliament Square—roughly two miles. The event was organised by the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign.
Assange is currently held in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London. The United States government is seeking his extradition under the Espionage Act for exposing the war crimes and human rights abuses of US imperialism and its allies. It has plotted his assassination and levelled charges which carry a life sentence in solitary confinement. The WikiLeaks founder is seeking to overturn orders by the British judiciary and the home secretary approving his extradition. His legal team filed an appeal with the High Court in August.
Stella Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher’s wife, told protestors on Saturday, “Julian is suffering and part of the point of making this human chain was to show that what is happening here is not a legal process, it’s not a legitimate process. It is the instrumentalisation of the law in order to persecute a person, a journalist, in order to keep him in prison indefinitely.
“People around the world are witnessing this atrocity and that is what compels them to come here to show their solidarity, to show that they care about Julian. That they believe in justice, that they see what is happening here is a state that has committed crimes against innocent, that is now committing crimes against a journalist who exposed those crimes they committed.
“Let’s not forget that the US planned to assassinate Julian in the UK, while he was in the embassy and now they’ve put him in the harshest prison in the UK for almost four years.”
WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson said proceedings against Assange were “not a legal case,” because of the way the legal system has “bent itself to the demands and requests of the government… it’s appalling.”
He continued, “Julian is a political prisoner. He’s being politically persecuted. The chain around Parliament is sending a message to those inside. They are there to serve the people on the outside. And those are Julian’s supporters. Thousands of them here today, and millions around the world who know that this is a travesty.”
Labour MP and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell had the brass neck to announce, “As we go into the 18 months up to a general election, this will become a general election issue. Every MP will be asked: do you stand up for journalism, do you stand up for the rights of journalist to report freely, do you stand up for his basic human rights, do you stand up for justice?”……………………..
Reporters from the World Socialist Web Site spoke with some of the protestors……………………………………………
A number of those protesting travelled to London from other countries to do so. Mantas, who traveled from Lithuania that day to support Assange as part of the chain, told our reporters, “Assange told the truth about war crimes, and he fought for human rights and freedom of the press.”
The US and UK governments “want to make a clear and obvious example of Assange so that no-one attempts what he did. The powers that be are trying to impose their own world view, control how people think, to seduce them into thinking nothing can be done or that the world is as it’s supposed to be, when we are actually entering into wholesale madness in the world.”
He said of the war in Ukraine that the weapons manufacturers and businesses “want to promote a new war, and they don’t care about the consequences for the Ukrainian people or the Russian people. I don’t agree with Putin’s actions, but I think there was another option, but Zelensky was encouraged to take a hard line and oppose any deals from the Russian Federation.”
Listing the crimes exposed by WikiLeaks he said, “Where do you start? You can look at the video of an Apache helicopter shooting civilians. The Afghan and Iraq war logs and so on. People should look into it. There’s too much to go into herethat many crimes have been uncovered. People should look into what WikiLeaks has done what its expose and be objective about the matter.”
Assange’s case “shows that if anyone finds out something like this and tries to tell the public then they can be prosecuted for it. So obviously that can threaten everyone.” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/10/08/chai-o08.html?fbclid=IwAR0oU-kS9VcRD34qsOcy2SC2BTcKB2CmeY6IwAoPfyc-MniCzPt3xsgXEu4
Chris Hedges: the corporate state, the CIA, and the lynching of Julian Assange
Chris Hedges: The Puppets and the Puppet Masters
The judicial proceedings against Julian Assange give a faux legality to the state persecution of the most important and courageous journalist of our generation.
This is the talk given by Chris Hedges outside the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. on Saturday October 8 at a rally that called on the U.S. to revoke its extradition request for Julian Assange.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/10/09/chris-hedges-the-puppets-and-the-puppet-masters/ By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost, 9 Oct 22,
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Merrick Garland and those who work in the Department of Justice are the puppets, not the puppet masters. They are the façade, the fiction, that the longstanding persecution of Julian Assange has something to do with justice. Like the High Court in London, they carry out an elaborate judicial pantomime. They debate arcane legal nuances to distract from the Dickensian farce where a man who has not committed a crime, who is not a U.S. citizen, can be extradited under the Espionage Act and sentenced to life in prison for the most courageous and consequential journalism of our generation.
The engine driving the lynching of Julian is not here on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is in Langley, Virginia, located at a complex we will never be allowed to surround – the Central Intelligence Agency. It is driven by a secretive inner state, one where we do not count in the mad pursuit of empire and ruthless exploitation. Because the machine of this modern leviathan was exposed by Julian and WikiLeaks, the machine demands revenge.
The United States has undergone a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. It is no longer a functioning democracy. The real centers of power, in the corporate, military and national security sectors, were humiliated and embarrassed by WikiLeaks. Their war crimes, lies, conspiracies to crush the democratic aspirations of the vulnerable and the poor, and rampant corruption, here and around the globe, were laid bare in troves of leaked documents.
We cannot fight on behalf of Julian unless we are clear about whom we are fighting against. It is far worse than a corrupt judiciary. The global billionaire class, who have orchestrated a social inequality rivaled by pharaonic Egypt, has internally seized all of the levers of power and made us the most spied upon, monitored, watched and photographed population in human history. When the government watches you 24-hours a day, you cannot use the word liberty. This is the relationship between a master and a slave. Julian was long a target, of course, but when WikiLeaks published the documents known as Vault 7, which exposed the hacking tools the CIA uses to monitor our phones, televisions and even cars, he — and journalism itself — was condemned to crucifixion. The object is to shut down any investigations into the inner workings of power that might hold the ruling class accountable for its crimes, eradicate public opinion and replace it with the cant fed to the mob.
I spent two decades as a foreign correspondent on the outer reaches of empire in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. I am acutely aware of the savagery of empire, how the brutal tools of repression are first tested on those Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth.” Wholesale surveillance. Torture. Coups. Black sites. Black propaganda. Militarized police. Militarized drones. Assassinations. Wars. Once perfected on people of color overseas, these tools migrate back to the homeland. By hollowing out our country from the inside through deindustrialization, austerity, deregulation, wage stagnation, the abolition of unions, massive expenditures on war and intelligence, a refusal to address the climate emergency and a virtual tax boycott for the richest individuals and corporations, these predators intend to keep us in bondage, victims of a corporate neo-feudalism. And they have perfected their instruments of Orwellian control. The tyranny imposed on others is imposed on us.
From its inception, the CIA carried out assassinations, coups, torture, and illegal spying and abuse, including that of U.S. citizens, activities exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee hearings in the Senate and the Pike Committee hearings in the House. All these crimes, especially after the attacks of 9/11, have returned with a vengeance. The CIA is a rogue and unaccountable paramilitary organization with its own armed units and drone program, death squads and a vast archipelago of global black sites where kidnapped victims are tortured and disappeared.
The U.S. allocates a secret black budget of about $50 billion a year to hide multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National Security Agency, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, usually beyond the scrutiny of Congress. The CIA has a well-oiled apparatus to kidnap, torture and assassinate targets around the globe, which is why, since it had already set up a system of 24-hour video surveillance of Julian in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, it quite naturally discussed kidnapping and assassinating him. That is its business. Senator Frank Church — after examining the heavily redacted CIA documents released to his committee — defined the CIA’s “covert activity” as “a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies and consorting with known torturers and international terrorists.”
All despotisms mask state persecution with sham court proceedings. The show trials and troikas in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The raving Nazi judges in fascist Germany. The Denunciation rallies in Mao’s China. State crime is cloaked in a faux legality, a judicial farce.
If Julian is extradited and sentenced and, given the Lubyanka-like proclivities of the Eastern District of Virginia, this is a near certainty, it means that those of us who have published classified material, as I did when I worked for The New York Times, will become criminals. It means that an iron curtain will be pulled down to mask abuses of power. It means that the state, which, through Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs, anti-terrorism laws and the Espionage Act that have created our homegrown version of Stalin’s Article 58, can imprison anyone anywhere in the world who dares commit the crime of telling the truth.
We are here to fight for Julian. But we are also here to fight against powerful subterranean forces that, in demanding Julian’s extradition and life imprisonment, have declared war on journalism.
We are here to fight for Julian. But we are also here to fight for the restoration of the rule of law and democracy.
We are here to fight for Julian. But we are also here to dismantle the wholesale Stasi-like state surveillance erected across the West.
We are here to fight for Julian. But we are also here to overthrow — and let me repeat that word for the benefit of those in the FBI and Homeland Security who have come here to monitor us — overthrow the corporate state and create a government of the people, by the people and for the people, that will cherish, rather than persecute, the best among us.
You can see my interview with Julian’s father, John Shipton, here.
NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.
Energy Resources of Australia’s investor Willy Packer completely wrong on Jabiluka uranium
https://gac-v3.katalyst.com.au/news_items/era-minorities-completely-wrong-on-jabiluka— Kirsten Blair, 10 Oct 122, The Mirarr Traditional Owners of the Ranger Uranium Mine totally reject the commentary of Energy Resources of Australia minor investor Willy Packer as completely wrong. Like ERA’s former Independent Board Committee, Mr Packer mistakenly considers the question of Jabiluka’s development as simply being about Traditional Owner consent.
Representing the Mirarr, the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation (GAC) seeks to bring clarity to the debate, including correcting misunderstandings about the contemporary significance of cultural heritage, insurmountable environmental and technical challenges at the site and the true costs of mining in the Kakadu region.
“It is simply wrong to say that anyone can just change their mind about Jabiluka in the future. This place is unique, Kakadu is World Heritage listed because of its value to the whole world. This isn’t about Traditional Owners agreeing to mining, they are defending heritage that matters to all of us. It is also wrong to ignore the fact that mining at Ranger produced a two-billion dollar clean-up bill. This is not just something interesting for valuers to toss around. What Packer wants is offensive to the majority of Australians,” CEO of Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation Justin O’Brien said.
“It’s also wrong to ignore the scale of the rehabilitation. The task is massive. ERA must rehabilitate Ranger to a standard such that it may be incorporated into the surrounding national park. The company is obliged, among other requirements, to physically separate tailings from the environment for 10,000 years.
“Further mining in Kakadu National Park would be insane,” Mr O’Brien said.
Mr Packer has raised the prospect of the compensation of ERA’s minority shareholders. “Mr Packer is asking to be compensated for his wager on an impossible project. It’s nonsensical and contrary to standard business risk. This is why investors shouldn’t and don’t run mining companies.
“We are living in the 21st century; iconic cultural heritage of international significance is not up for negotiation. Our hearts go out to the Traditional Owners at Juukan Gorge. Their loss has focused the nation and indeed the international investment community on supporting Traditional Owners and protecting cultural heritage. Everyone wants to ensure Kakadu National Park is protected.
“Mr Packer needs to stop blaming Rio Tinto for his own ignorance about cultural heritage. Of course, Rio Tinto, now knows better after Juukan Gorge.”
Mr O’Brien said the role of directors within ERA is to be perfectly honest with the market, including all minor investors. “Unlike many other proposed projects on Aboriginal land, Jabiluka is utterly impossible – it is unfeasible both culturally and technically. Rio Tinto has acknowledged this. It is hardly a secret.
“Mr Packer has complained of something having gone “terribly wrong” with his gamble at Jabiluka. In fact, the only thing ‘terribly wrong’ has been the false hope of ignorant investors.”
The Murray Darling Basin Plan is hobbled – it’s time for Tanya Plibersek to lead
The Murray Darling Basin Plan is hobbled – it’s time for Tanya Plibersek to lead
Tyler Rotche
On 12 October, new water ministers from Murray-Darling Basin states will meet with the recently minted federal minister Tanya Plibersek in Canberra. At stake is the fate of the basin plan and the survival of Australia’s largest river system.
Ukraine behind Crimean Bridge blast – US media
The attack was masterminded by Kiev’s intelligence services, two major outlets claim. https://www.rt.com/russia/564343-ukraine-behind-crimean-bridge-explosion/—9 Oct 22,
The blast that damaged Russia’s strategic Crimean Bridge and killed at least three people was orchestrated by Ukraine, the New York Times and Washington Post both reported on Saturday, citing sources.
A senior Ukrainian official interviewed by the New York Times claimed that Kiev was behind the explosion, adding that the attack was masterminded by Ukraine’s intelligence services, which had arranged a bomb to be planted on a truck that was driving across the bridge..
This claim was echoed by the Washington Post, which, citing a Ukrainian government official, also attributed the explosion to the country’s special services. This version was backed by the news site Ukrainska Pravda, which, quoting a source in the country’s security services, said that the intelligence agency, called the SBU, was behind the attack.
While Ukrainian officials did not explicitly take responsibility for the attack, they cheered it. An aide to President Vladimir Zelensky, Mikhail Podoliak, said that the explosion was “just the beginning,” adding that “everything illegal must be destroyed.”
Since Russia launched its military campaign in late February, Ukrainian officials have repeatedly promised to attack the bridge, which serves as a strategic link between Russia’s Crimean peninsula and its Krasnodar Region.
While the Kremlin did not directly accuse Kiev of staging the explosion, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated that Ukraine’s reaction to the incident is a testament to the “terrorist nature” of its leadership.
Meanwhile, Crimean officials directly pointed the finger at Kiev. Vladimir Konstantinov, the head of the republic’s State Council, claimed that “Ukrainian vandals have finally managed to get their bloodstained hands on the Crimean Bridge.”
The powerful blast rocked the bridge early Saturday morning, causing a partial collapse of the road on the vehicle section, as well as a blaze on a parallel railway span where seven fuel tanks caught fire. According to Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee, the bridge was damaged by a truck that exploded while making its way across the bridge. The blast caused at least three deaths.
Radioactive releases from the nuclear power sector and implications for child health
British Medical Journal Paedistrics,Cindy Folkers & Linda Pentz Gunter 9 Oct 22, :
Although radioactivity is released routinely at every stage of nuclear power generation, the regulation of
these releases has never taken into account those potentially most
sensitive—women, especially when pregnant, and children.
From uranium mining and milling, to fuel manufacture, electricity generation and
radioactive waste management, children in frontline and Indigenous
communities can be disproportionately harmed due to often increased
sensitivity of developing systems to toxic exposures, the lack of resources
and racial and class discrimination.
The reasons for the greater susceptibility of women and children to harm from radiation exposure is not
fully understood. Regulatory practices, particularly in the establishment
of protective exposure standards, have failed to take this difference into
account.
Anecdotal evidence within communities around nuclear facilities
suggests an association between radiation exposure and increases in birth
defects, miscarriages and childhood cancers.
A significant number of academic studies tend to ascribe causality to other factors related to diet
and lifestyle and dismiss these health indicators as statistically insignificant.
In the case of a major release of radiation due to a serious
nuclear accident, children are again on the frontlines, with a noted
susceptibility to thyroid cancer, which has been found in significant
numbers among children exposed both by the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear accident
in Ukraine and the 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.
The response among authorities in Japan is to blame increased testing or to
reduce testing. More independent studies are needed focused on children,
especially those in vulnerable frontline and Indigenous communities. In
conducting such studies, greater consideration must be applied to
culturally significant traditions and habits in these communities.
BMJ Paediatrics 7th Oct 2022
Renewables need minerals. Can their pollution and public health challenges be overcome?
https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2022/10/09/renewables-need-minerals/ By Linda Pentz Gunter, by beyondnuclearinternational,
We are now both on the path to — and amidst the crisis of — resolving our past greed and irresponsibility in the energy and transport sector. But few, if any, human industries are without a carbon footprint. This has made the climb out of our carbon-intensive paradigm all the harder.
Consequently, our first imperative — in order to do as little current or future environmental harm as possible — is to focus on solutions that have the lowest carbon footprint and environmental and human impact. This puts conservation at the pinnacle of our priorities, followed by energy efficiency.
Particularly in developed countries — where we bear almost the entire responsibility for the mess we have made of our planet — we can, and must, consume less, become more energy efficient, live in smaller homes, use public transport routinely, walk and bicycle more and drive and fly less.
Using fossil fuels has to stop. Completely. And ideally now, but, realistically, as soon as possible. Replacement power will still be needed. But nuclear power, which creates long-lived lethal radioactive waste from the beginning to the end of its fuel cycle, and, as a large thermo-electric generator, relies on huge quantities of what will become increasingly scarce water supplies, is not the substitute for fossil fuels. Nuclear power cannot be an environmentally clean and just energy solution. And it has no answers for the transport sector, either.
Yet, as we decry the extraction of uranium — and all its attendant poisoning of the environment and ourselves along with human rights violations — we are met with the legitimate argument that increasing the use of renewables (and electric cars) in order to decarbonize, brings with it the same extractive environmental impacts.
But are they really the same? If we dig deeper, to use an unwelcome metaphor, we find parallels but not necessarily equity between the impacts of renewables and nuclear. This does not excuse or justify worker abuse, human rights violations or extractive contamination in any sector. But it’s an important distinction.
First and foremost, we must look to carbon emissions. It makes sense, even if all the other downsides were equal — which they clearly are not — to at least focus on the lowest carbon emitters. And those are unquestionably renewables. Therefore, our responsibility now is to put things right in the renewable energy industry, even as we must point out, criticize and urge change in those areas that need improvement, including recycling, sustainable sourcing and human rights.
A second priority, is the ability and willingness of industries to make those improvements.
We have seen how the wind industry has worked to minimize its impacts on migratory birds. It’s no coincidence that some of the biggest bird conservation groups, including BirdLife International, the American Bird Conservancy and the Audubon Society, cautiously support the development of wind power while scrupulously watchdogging its progress.
The renewable energy and electric vehicle industries recognize the fact that they rely on mineral extraction and, as such, must try to mitigate or avoid negative environmental, social and human rights impacts. Unlike the nuclear industry — which has been guilty of environmental and human rights abuses since it began — the renewable energy industry is working to resolve these significant drawbacks.
As Justine Calma wrote in The Verge at the end of last year: “There are ways to get the minerals the clean energy revolution needs while minimizing the impact on people and the planet. Startups are figuring out how to get better at recycling lithium batteries.” Mining companies are also looking to power their extraction using renewables rather than fossil fuels.
The World Bank program — The Climate-Smart Mining Initiative — aims to help “resource-rich developing countries benefit from the increasing demand for minerals and metals, while ensuring the mining sector is managed in a way that minimizes the environmental and climate footprint as it works to decarbonize”.
The nuclear industry, by contrast, has made no such effort to mitigate its environmental impact, and cannot do so, because splitting the atom to boil water is inherently dangerous and polluting. Worse, the industry actively pushes back against — or outright rejects — mitigation efforts because it would cost the already financially struggling nuclear sector money it can’t afford to expend if it is to stay in business.
The end product of nuclear power is long-lived highly radioactive waste with no long-term, safe, permanent management solution. While the renewable energy sector is looking into the recycling of batteries, there is no recycling of nuclear waste. Reprocessing — often misleadingly called “recycling” — does no such thing.
In separating out the uranium and plutonium from irradiated reactor fuel, reprocessing produces even higher volumes of largely “low” and “intermediate”-level radioactive wastes, discharged into the air and sea or stored indefinitely.
The mining of uranium for use in nuclear power leaves behind radioactive waste and heavy metals that persistently contaminate the local environments, harming the health and safety of those communities and that of their land and water resources.
Nevertheless, there is no getting around the reality that the renewable industry, too, requires mining of minerals and rare earth metals, and that recycling, while beneficial, is not always done sustainably.
These hurdles are laid out in detail in a useful report prepared for Earthworks by the Institute for Sustainable Futures — Responsible minerals sourcing for renewable energy (Dominish, E., Florin, N. and Teske, S., 2019, Responsible Minerals Sourcing for Renewable Energy. Report prepared for Earthworks by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney.)
The report emphasizes that “recycling and responsible sourcing are fundamental to improving the sustainability of the renewable energy transition”.
However, it points out that while “the renewable energy and battery industries have made significant improvements to the efficiency of technologies, to improve performance, minimize demand for materials and reduce production costs,” attention to stewardship and human rights abuses has been less promising. “The industry experts interviewed noted that reducing the environmental and social impacts of supply is not a major focus of the renewable energy industry.”
Inevitably, many of the resources for the renewable energy industry (along with electric vehicles, not discussed here as these are outside our energy focus), are to be found in troubled parts of the world — most notably DR Congo. In turn, the manufacturing of those minerals into metals is largely carried out in China, where human rights are suppressed.
The impacts of mining to supply the renewable energy industry invariably result in “pollution and heavy metal contamination of water and agricultural soils, and health impacts on workers and surrounding communities”.
The wind energy industry emerges as the least offender, according to the report. “Material use for wind turbines is already very efficient. Recycling of bulk materials (steel, aluminium, copper) used in wind turbines is well established with high recycling rates.”
The report offers some glimmers of hope, noting that increased use of renewables means a reduction in coal mining, “which is responsible for the greatest number of fatalities, health and environmental issues.”
But we are undoubtedly now in the land of Faustian bargains. We have left it too late to make choices that are problem-free. Renewables, therefore, must be measured up against the alternatives and nuclear power isn’t one of them. Aside from the carbon footprint and human rights violations of nuclear power, and its high costs and long construction times, we must also factor in the lethal waste; the daily radioactive releases harming primarily children; the outcome of a catastrophic accident; and the inextricable link to nuclear weapons development, to name a few.
We must learn to live more simply; smaller. More quietly. Tread lightly. And yes, we must transition to renewables, energy efficiency and conservation, not tomorrow, not gradually, but immediately. Can we do it without leaving yet another mess? Without further abuses?
As the ISF study concludes, not yet, but we are getting there. “There are a large number of responsible sourcing initiatives that promote environmental stewardship and the respect of human rights in the supply chain, most of which are voluntary and industry-led,” the authors wrote. “If these initiatives are harmonized and widely adopted, it may lead to more responsible supply chains.”
Until then, renewables are our least worst power option, and, out of time as we are, it’s a choice we have brought upon ourselves.
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 