April 16 Energy News — geoharvey
Science and Technology: ¶ “Rising From The Ashes, Alaska’s Forests Come Back Stronger” • Michelle Mack, an ecologist at Northern Arizona University, did a study of regrowth in Alaskan forest that burned in 2004. It was published in the journal Science, and was unexpectedly hopeful. The burned boreal forests are on track to hold a […]
April 16 Energy News — geoharvey
The Nuclear Question: Violence Begats Violence, by Alicia Sanders-Zakre and Dorothy VanSoest talks about Nuclear Action — Rise Up Times
“The cost of building and maintaining the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, or GBSD, as it’s known, could swell to $264 billion over the coming decades, with much of the money going to military contractors, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.”
The Nuclear Question: Violence Begats Violence, by Alicia Sanders-Zakre and Dorothy VanSoest talks about Nuclear Action — Rise Up Times
Unrelenting dishonest propaganda leading us to war against China
Not sleepwalking but marching with eyes wide open to war. Independent Australia, By William Briggs | 13 April 2021 While the USA moves towards war, anti-China rhetoric grows on a daily basis and the idea of war is being sold as the “right” thing, writes Dr William Briggs.
A LIE told often enough can become accepted, but it can never be the truth. China has been declared a threat to all that we hold dear, but it is just not so. China, for all its faults, is not a threat and nor is it practising genocide!
The Uyghur genocide claim gets bigger as each day dawns. Peter Hartcher, in The Age on the 10 April, writes of this genocide and of ‘the evil genius of the system of genocide with Chinese characteristics.’ The “genius” according to Hartcher is that the Chinese are allowing the Uyghurs to live. What a clever and cunning genocide that is!
The plight of the Uyghurs is but the latest lurid episode in a sustained and enormously successful push to demonise China in the eyes of the world. The motivations behind this are simple enough. China’s economic star is rising and America’s best days are behind it.
The world is certainly on the edge of a precipice. There is a broad acceptance, despite an embarrassing lack of evidence, that China is an enemy and, as an enemy, a threat. Nobody is ever eager for war, but people have often enough been persuaded that war is an acceptable option. This is particularly so when an existential threat exists, or in this case, is manufactured. The potential for war, justifications for it and warnings of how it might almost “accidentally” become a reality have come to dominate thought……..
If the USA goes to war with China, it will not be by chance. It has been meticulously planned, costed, budgeted for and the weapons, including “low-yield” nuclear weapons, have been manufactured and deployed by the USA. The world should be aghast at such blatant preparations, but it is not. Those who would take us to war need first to convince us that we have no option, that we are protecting freedom, that we are standing for justice and that a threat exists that the enemy is engaging in genocide.
In the space of just a decade, the people have come to accept this. China has gone from economic saviour of the world to arch enemy. Governments begin the process but could not be expected to convince the people alone. Television and print media: editorials, opinion pieces from leading journalists and international editors, columnists and experts, have all played a decisive role.
A recent poll by the Lowy Institute showed that in 2018, 52 per cent of Australians believed that China would act responsibly in the world. Two very short years later and that figure had dropped to just 23 per cent! The polls are then used by the same anti-China crusaders to prove that a problem exists. They are happy to ignore the effect that a daily barrage of anti-China campaigning can do and how it can shift people’s views…….
The most recent reporting of the treatment of the Uyghurs is that the Chinese are engaged in a campaign of genocide. Genocide was practised in Nazi Germany, in Kampuchea, in Rwanda, in Armenia, in Australia, but to suggest that the Chinese behaviour towards the Uyghurs, while quite possibly repressive, even reprehensible, is genocidal is ludicrous.
There has been discrimination and persecution. Life, for the Uyghurs, has never been easy. However, the West paid little or no attention to these people until about the time that the USA began to talk of “containing” China. It was, for the USA, a fortuitous discovery.
The Chinese, at the end of the 20th Century, waged a campaign against Islamist separatist groups that had become active within the Uyghur population. Violence met violence and conditions worsened for the Uyghurs. None of this concerned Washington. What happened to make things change so dramatically? The Chinese, in all likelihood, did step up repressions but the USA have manipulated events to suit a specific propaganda purpose.
Uyghur stories become more and more horrifying. The Western media was once content to rail against the existence of “re-education” camps. Then it was reports of campaigns of mass rape and then mass sterilisation programs. This morphed into claims of social genocide. Reports of forced labour emerged and evolved into stories of slave labour. The term “social” genocide came into use but has now been shortened to genocide.
This ramping up of rhetoric has one real purpose. China must, at every turn, be shown to be a malignant force. The editorialists, international editors, columnists and journalists have become a willing and shameless weapon in this campaign. If it all ends in war it will not be a chance thing. The world will not be “sleepwalking”.
Nobody wants war but we are being prepared for it. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/not-sleepwalking-but-marching-with-eyes-wide-open-to-war,14982#.YHZ_2MRzAdY.twitter
OECD says Australia is 2nd dirtiest economy per capita, tells it to clean up — RenewEconomy
The OECD’s criticism of Australia’s climate record comes two months before former finance minister Matthias Cormann takes over as secretary-general. The post OECD says Australia is 2nd dirtiest economy per capita, tells it to clean up appeared first on RenewEconomy.
OECD says Australia is 2nd dirtiest economy per capita, tells it to clean up — RenewEconomy
A fossil fuel frenzy is drinking Australia’s finite water resources — RenewEconomy
Water is our life support system in a drying continent, yet the coal and gas industries consume prodigious amounts of water each day. The post A fossil fuel frenzy is drinking Australia’s finite water resources appeared first on RenewEconomy.
A fossil fuel frenzy is drinking Australia’s finite water resources — RenewEconomy
Fukushima” is not over: Japanese NGOs raise concern over the ongoing nuclear disaster
Fukushima” is not over: Japanese NGOs raise concern over the ongoing nuclear disaster, Friends of the Earth Japan, Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC), 14 Apr 21,
On the 10th anniversary of one of the worst nuclear accidents at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, and amid the controversial decision of the Japanese government to dump “treated” radioactive water into the ocean, Japanese NGOs Friends of the Earth Japan and Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC) co-produced a documentary film Fukushima 10 Years Later: Voices from the continuing nuclear disaster. The film sheds light on the ongoing suffering of victims of the accident and poses critical questions about the Japanese government’s poor responses to the accident.
While then-Prime Minister Abe vainly declared to the world that “the situation in Fukushima is completely under control”, nuclear decays are continuing inside the molten fuel rods, and the exploded plants are still emitting radioactive particles to this day. In the meanwhile, evacuees are torn apart in limbo, with grim hopes of returning to their homeland, continued fear of radioactive fallout, and a dire socio-economic situation. Fisherfolk, who overcame the initial fear of ocean contamination, are forced to relive the experience each time TEPCO and the Japanese government repeatedly choose to release contaminated water into the ocean.
This happens all under the propaganda that Fukushima is pressing ahead with “Fukkou (Recovery)”.
This video aims to highlight the current situation of the victims of the man-made disaster, and challenge the government propaganda of Fukushima’s Recovery.
Fukushima 10 Years Later: Voices from the continuing nuclear disaster
Produced by Friends of the Earth Japan and Pacific Asia Resource Center
Supervised by HOSOKAWA Komei (Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy)
Directed by MATSUMOTO Hikaru (Friends of the Earth Japan)
Running time: 43 min.
The English subtitled version of the film is now available on Vimeo on Demand and will cost USD 5.75 to rent and USD 47.50 to purchase.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fukushima10years
For further information on the film, please contact OKUMURA Yuto, Pacific Asia Resource Center.
E-mail: video@parc-jp.org
Yuto Okumura,Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC)
Nuclear Alert: Iran and Israel Playing High-Stakes Poker with Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear Alert: Iran & Israel Playing High-Stakes Poker with Nuclear Power & Nuclear Weapons Fairewinds, Maggie Gunderson, 14 Apr 21, Fairewindsy now, Fairewinds is sure you know that an explosion at an Iranian nuclear enrichment plant has slowed Iran’s progress to enrich uranium. The crisis shows a very blurry line between Civilian Atomic Power and Military Atomic Bombs!………..
For decades, we are informed there is no correlation between weapons and civilian power. This standoff between Iran and Israel highlights the strong connection between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, like hand-in-glove.
The borderline between bomb-grade uranium and civilian power-grade uranium is determined by how much the isotope Uranium-235 (U-235) is enriched. Traditionally, if uranium enrichment is above 20%, that is considered the low-end of weapons-grade enrichment, which falls between 20% and 100% enrichment for bombs. Therefore, the higher the percent of enrichment of U-235, the easier it is to manufacture a nuclear bomb.
To be cost-effective, the nuke industry claims its U-235 must be more enriched to prevent atomic power reactors from refueling as often. Currently, uranium fuel used worldwide in operating nuclear power plants is enriched to about 6%. But the nuclear industry’s new designs for proposed Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) will use fuel enriched to about 20%.
Yes, as Fairewinds quoted above, SMRs will use nuclear fuel that is “one step away from weapons-grade uranium” used to make bombs!
At Fairewinds, we have two questions today:
- First, what are Iran’s plans for gaining that much enrichment? Iran claims that this centrifuge produced fuel is for peaceful purposes only, then why does the uranium have to be enriched to almost bomb-grade? Is Iran building SMRs?
- Where does that place the United States in world politics with its creation of SMRs? The U.S. plans to build tens of thousands of these allegedly new Small Modular Reactors. Moreover, SMRs use HALEU fuel (High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium) enriched to almost 20% Uranium-235.
- How does this action make the U.S. any different from what Iran is doing when the U.S. SMRs will contain high-test Uranium identical to what is being enriched in Iran?
- Is this federal push for this new SMR design some type of ploy to spread atomic bomb-grade fuel all over the world?
- The U.S. nuclear power industry is looking at SMRs as its latest cash cow, expecting to sell and build SMRs all over the world! What kind of international threat is this if thousands of proposed SMRs are located all over the U.S. and worldwide?
As a result of the attack on its enrichment facility, Iran has further changed its mind and said it would enrich uranium to 60%. According to the BBC:
Iran will produce 60%-enriched uranium in retaliation for a suspected Israeli attack on a nuclear site, President Hassan Rouhani says, bringing it closer to the purity required for a weapon. … But he reiterated that Iran’s nuclear activities were “exclusively peaceful”.
France, Germany and the U.K. expressed “grave concern” at the move, saying Iran had “no credible civilian need for enrichment at this level”.
Fairewinds is clear that the 20% enriched fuel planned to be used in SMRs is only one easy step away from creating bomb-grade atomic fuel! Now that Iran has informed the world that it intends to enrich its uranium to 60%, scientists worldwide know that there is no peaceful civilian atomic reactor of any kind using U-235 enriched to 60%!
Fairewinds hopes that diplomats will resolve this enrichment conundrum before the military situation escalates further. https://www.fairewinds.org/demystify/nuclear-alert-iran-israel-playing-high-stakes-poker-with-nuclear-power-nuclear-weapons
South Australia to introduce “flexible” export option for rooftop solar — RenewEconomy
South Australia to test “flexible” exports for solar households in a trial that is expected to become standard throughout the country. The post South Australia to introduce “flexible” export option for rooftop solar appeared first on RenewEconomy.
South Australia to introduce “flexible” export option for rooftop solar — RenewEconomy
South Korea aims to fight, at International Tribunal, Japan’s plan to empty Fukushima water into Paific Ocean
S Korea aims to fight Japan’s Fukushima decision at tribunal, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/14/s-korea-aims-to-fight-japans-fukushima-decision-at-tribunal15 Apr S Korea A
Moon Jae-in asks officials to look at ways to refer Japan’s Fukushima decision to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has ordered officials to explore petitioning an international court over Japan’s decision to release water from its Fukushima nuclear plant, his spokesman said, amid protests by fisheries and environmental groups.
Moon said officials should look into ways to refer Japan’s move to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, including filing for an injunction, spokesman Kang Min-seok told a briefing.
Japan unveiled plans on Tuesday to release more than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water into the sea from the plant, which was crippled by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, starting in about two years after filtering it to remove harmful isotopes.South Korea protested strongly against the decision, summoning Koichi Aiboshi, Tokyo’s ambassador in Seoul, and convening an intra-agency emergency meeting to craft its response.
Moon also expressed concerns about the decision as Aiboshi presented his credentials, having arrived in South Korea in February for the ambassador’s post.“I cannot but say that there are many concerns here about the decision as a country that is geologically closest and shares the sea with Japan,” Moon said, asking Aiboshi to convey such worries to Tokyo, according to Kang.An aerial view shows the storage tanks for treated water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan February 13, 2021 [Kyodo via Reuters]South Korea’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying it had raised similar concerns with the United States after the Department of State said Japan’s decision was “transparent” and in line with global safety standards.
The ministry also said it shared “strong regret and serious concerns” about the water’s planned release at a video conference on Wednesday with Chinese officials on maritime issues.
A series of protests against the move by politicians, local officials, fishermen and environmental activists took place in South Korea on Wednesday, including in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul and consulates in the port city of Busan and on Jeju island.
A coalition of 25 fisheries organisations staged a rally and delivered a written protest to the embassy, urging Tokyo to revoke the decision and Seoul to ban imports from Japanese fisheries.
“Our industry is on course to suffer annihilating damage, just with people’s concerns about a possible radioactive contamination of marine products,” it said in a statement.
The progressive minor opposition Justice Party and some 30 anti-nuclear and environmental groups called Japan’s move “nuclear terrorism,” and said they sent the Japanese embassy a list of signatures of more than 64,000 people opposed to the move collected from 86 countries since February.
The nuclear industry – a vortex of corruption
Part two | Nuclear energy in Africa
The second in this three-part series looks at how power purchase agreements raise the cost of electricity for consumers and act as major sources of inflationary pressure in economies. New Frame, By: Neil Overy, 1 Dec 2020
A vortex of corruption
Another issue that needs to be seriously considered when evaluating the cost of nuclear power is corruption. A 2013 survey of corruption in the nuclear industry by Richard Tanter from the University of Melbourne found “widespread and often deep corruption” in the nuclear industry, saying that national and international nuclear regulatory regimes were “virtually completely ineffective”.
In recent years, the industry has been rocked by several corruption scandals.
In 2014, a massive corruption scandal involving South Korean nuclear vendor Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, a subsidiary of Korea Electric Power Company, resulted in dozens of employees receiving a cumulative total of 258 years in prison for fraud and corruption. Many of these charges related to the supply of counterfeit equipment, some of it safety-related, to nuclear power stations in South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.
In July, five people were arrested in Ohio in the United States, including the Ohio house speaker, for receiving $60 million from an embattled nuclear energy operator in exchange for securing the passage of a $1.5 billion bailout for the operator.
A month later, Brazilian federal prosecutors charged a subsidiary of EDF and Brazilian nuclear company Eletronuclear with corruption.
The construction and ongoing maintenance of nuclear power stations are areas particularly susceptible to corruption for two specific reasons. First, because they are megaprojects they are massively complicated enterprises that involve potentially hundreds of contractors and subcontractors, which creates fertile conditions for corruption. Second, these fertile conditions are exacerbated by the secrecy that surrounds nuclear power. While this secrecy is supposedly designed to stop the spread of nuclear technology or the capture of nuclear materials, it fosters an environment that is shielded from scrutiny and public oversight.
While Africa has no recent experience of nuclear power plant construction, other recent megaprojects on the continent – the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, the Lauca Dam in Angola, the Mambilla Hydropower Project in Nigeria, and the construction of the Medupi and Kusile power stations in South Africa – show how corruption can become entrenched in megaprojects on the continent.
In this regard, it is worth remembering that Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index for 2019 found that sub-Saharan Africa was the worst performing region in the world, followed closely by North Africa. There is clearly good reason to be concerned about possible corruption in any nuclear deals concluded on the continent. South Africa’s recent unlawful deal between former president Jacob Zuma’s government and Rosatom shows just how real this danger is.
Part three looks at the costs associated with nuclear waste disposal, decommissioning nuclear power stations and major nuclear accidents. https://www.newframe.com/part-two-nuclear-energy-in-africa/
The fiasco of nuclear preprocessing: UK, Japan, USA.
Part one | The slow violence of SA’s nuclear waste,
Part one of this four-part story considers the imminent danger involved in storing used radioactive materials, a dilemma growing at a rate of more than 32 tonnes a year. New Frame , By: Neil Overy, 8 Mar 21
”……………..This is a process by which fission products are chemically separated out of used fuel rods to extract any unused uranium. This alleged solution to the problem of high-level waste has been one of the illusionary solutions Eskom has regularly mooted and just as regularly abandoned because of the colossal costs and serious dangers involved in reprocessing.
In the United Kingdom, the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, opened at huge cost in 1994, closed in 2018 having reached none of its intended reprocessing targets. Its decommissioning is now set to cost taxpayers at least $5.5 billion and take up to 100 years to complete. In Japan, construction of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant began in 1993 and was supposed to be completed by 1997. Incredibly, the plant is still not complete – its completion date has been postponed 25 times – and it is now expected to be operational in 2023, 26 years late and tens of billions of dollars over budget.
Even when operational, large quantities of dangerously radioactive waste, which needs to be stored for thousands of years, remains. Some of this waste is separated plutonium, a fissile material used in nuclear bombs, which presents a very serious security risk. This is precisely why reprocessing has never been authorised in the United States. As the Union of Concerned Scientists conclude, reprocessing is “dangerous, dirty and expensive”. Quite clearly, reprocessing is not an option South Africa should consider. …… , https://www.newframe.com/part-1-the-slow-violence-of-sas-nuclear-waste/?fbclid=IwAR0TEdv3xITKJISxqQs_UwdO9JB4m5LkPABzUl9b6R_nYVZKdL2S2ikp-MA
South Africa’s mismanagement of nuclear waste
Part one | The slow violence of SA’s nuclear waste,
Part one of this four-part story considers the imminent danger involved in storing used radioactive materials, a dilemma growing at a rate of more than 32 tonnes a year. New Frame , By: Neil Overy, 8 Mar 21
Where will South Africa permanently and safely store the radioactive nuclear waste produced by the Koeberg nuclear power station in Cape Town? This critical question remains worryingly unanswered, despite the government’s intention to create even more high-level waste by extending the life of Koeberg 20 years past its original decommissioning date, and by building an additional 2 500MW of new nuclear power in South Africa.
The South African story of what to do with this high-level waste is one characterised by endless broken promises, gross mismanagement, ineptitude and pie-in-the-sky “solutions”. This catalogue of failures means there is now so much high-level waste stored at Koeberg that Eskom is having to build a transient interim storage facility (TISF) at the site, just 25km from Cape Town. That this site is both “transient” and “interim” perfectly illustrates that Eskom, or any other operator of nuclear power plants for that matter, has no long-term answer to the question of what to do with high-level nuclear waste.
Three categories of radioactive waste are produced by nuclear power stations – low-level waste, intermediate-level waste and high-level waste.
Continue readingUS cannot afford a world war with Russia — THE WEICHERT REPORT
Brandon J. Weichert’s newest op-ed at The Asia Times shows how bad the US policy toward Russia and Eastern Ukraine really is.
US cannot afford a world war with Russia — THE WEICHERT REPORT
Australia’s democracy threatened, damaged, by News Corpse’s media domination, and government cuts to the ABC
Media concentration by Murdoch, Nine and Stokes, and ABC cuts, a danger to democracy – report https://www.michaelwest.com.au/media-concentration-by-murdoch-nine-and-stokes-and-abc-cuts-a-danger-to-democracy-report/A
by Elizabeth Minter | Apr 12, 2021 | The heavy concentration of media ownership in Australia corrodes democracy. The antidote is a thriving public broadcaster, but by 2023, Coalition cuts to the ABC will add up to $1 billion. Elizabeth Minter reports.
“[Australia’s] highly concentrated media ownership has had a corrosive impact on democracy. It has skewed public debate, favouring the interests of the wealthy and powerful over the public good.
This has been clearly evidenced in the national debates on climate change policy, where the scale of News Corp’s climate misinformation has hindered climate policy, encouraged negative sentiments towards climate action, and actively driven a political wedge into our public debate. This would not have been possible in a more diverse media landscape.”
So states the report “Who controls our media“, a report into Australia’s media ownership commissioned by GetUp!
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp owns 59% of the metropolitan and national print media markets by readership — up from 25% in 1984. Nine Entertainment is the second-largest media owner, with a combined 23% readership share.
These two corporations control Australia’s two national mastheads and two daily newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne are controlled by News and Nine. The remaining capital cities have only one daily paper.
Furthermore, “the predominance of News Corp in cross-media settings is unprecedented in liberal democracies”.
At the same time that media ownership has become more concentrated, the budgets of the nation’s public broadcasters, which are key to media diversity, have been slashed, the report notes.
More than $600 million was cut from the ABC over the past seven years. In the decade to 2023/24, the Coalition will have cut the ABC’s budget by just over $1 billion.
Just three corporations – News Corp, Nine, and Seven Media Holdings — collect 80% of Australian free-to-air and subscription TV revenues, with News Corp picking up 40%, almost double that of the next in line Nine.
And just three corporations — News Corp, Nine and Southern Cross Media (and their associated entities) — control almost 90% of the lucrative metropolitan radio licences across the nation.
Dangerous interpretation of news
The report notes that billionaire media moguls like Rupert Murdoch heavily promote an “increasingly dangerous interpretation of what news represents. They measure the worth of news not by its invaluable contributions to the health of our democracy, but by its monetary worth.”
Former UK prime minister David Cameron admitted in Parliament that “we all did a bit too much cosying up to Rupert Murdoch”.
As for the News Media Bargaining Code, the biggest winners are the large media companies. The code only applies to media entities with revenues greater than $150,000, thus barring smaller news institutions, especially community or locally led initiatives, which mostly need help.
The Code also doesn’t mandate how much should be paid, and there is no transparency around the deals, meaning it is impossible for the public to have a clear idea of what resources will be invested in journalism.
The report notes that leaving Google and Facebook to decide which media companies to fund has resulted in deals being signed only with the biggest organisations. Early estimates suggest that News Corp, Nine, and Seven West Media together stand to gain 90% of Facebook’s total revenue under the code.
News Corp and Nine’s cross-media dominance was made possible when the Australian Government repealed the ‘two out of three’ rule in 2017. Traditionally media corporations were only allowed to own media in two out of the three media markets — print, radio and television — but not all three.
The report was written by Benedetta Brevini, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Sydney, and Michael Ward, a former senior executive with the ABC who is researching Australian media as part of a PhD at the University of Sydney.
The problem of plutonium programs
Plutonium programs in East Asia and Idaho will challenge the Biden administration, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Frank N. von Hippel | April 12, 2021 Among the Biden administration’s nuclear challenges are ongoing civilian plutonium programs in China and Japan. Also, South Korea’s nuclear-energy research and development establishment has been asserting that it should have the same “right” to have a plutonium program as Japan. These challenges have been compounded by a renewed push by the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory to revive a plutonium program that was shut down in the 1980s. These foreign and domestic plutonium programs are all challenges because plutonium is a nuclear-weapon material.
Henry Kissinger’s State Department quickly discovered that the governments of Brazil, Pakistan, South Korea, and Taiwan—all under military control at the time—had contracted for French or German spent-fuel “reprocessing” plants. The United States intervened forcefully and none of these contracts were fully consummated…………………..
…………….A possible path forward. During the Trump administration, the Energy Department fell back into the never-never land of plutonium-fueled reactors from which the United States extracted itself in the 1980s. Fortunately, the big-dollar commitments to the Versatile Test Reactor and the Natrium Reactor have not yet been made, and the Biden administration could use the excuse of budget stringency not to make those commitments.
In South Korea, the Biden administration will have to deal with the completion of the Idaho National Lab–Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute Joint Fuel Cycle Study. Although there will no doubt be obfuscation in the report, the conclusions of the 10-year study should have been obvious from the beginning: reprocessing is hugely costly, creates proliferation risks, and complicates spent fuel disposal. Fortunately, the anti-nuclear-energy Moon administration is unlikely to push for reprocessing. It will be much more interested in the opportunities that the Biden administration can provide to advance the Korean Peninsula denuclearization agenda. It should therefore be politically relatively easy for the Biden Administration to terminate cooperation on pyroprocessing.
China’s reprocessing and fast-neutron reactor program may be driven in part by China’s interest in obtaining more weapon-grade plutonium to build up the size of its nuclear arsenal. If that is the case, China’s incentive to build up could be reduced through nuclear arms control. Specifically, if China is building up its nuclear arsenal out of concern about the adequacy of its nuclear deterrent in the face of an unconstrained US missile-defense buildup, then the United States could examine the possibility of an agreement to limit missile defenses as an alternative to an open-ended, offense-defense arms race. That was the path of wisdom that the United States and Soviet Union chose with their 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
In Japan, the Biden administration will be faced with the continued unwillingness of the powerful Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry to wind down Japan’s dysfunctional plutonium program. But, if a linkage could be made between constraining China’s nuclear buildup and ending Japan’s hugely costly reprocessing program, that might help tip the balance in Japan’s internal debate over reprocessing. https://thebulletin.org/2021/04/plutonium-programs-in-east-asia-and-idaho-will-challenge-the-biden-administration/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter04122021&utm_content=NuclearRisk_EastAsia_04122021
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