Antinuclear

Countries that backed renewables over nuclear power have cut more CO2   

Countries that backed renewables over nuclear power have cut more CO2, New Scientist .  By Adam Vaughan 5 Oct 20  Nations that embraced renewable energy have significantly cut their carbon emissions, but those pursuing nuclear power failed to do so, researchers have found.

Nuclear and renewables are seen as two key ways for governments to decarbonise, but the question of whether one is more effective for tackling climate change hasn’t been fully addressed. With several countries on the brink of deciding whether to back new nuclear plants to meet carbon targets, the answer matters.

To find out, Benjamin Sovacool at the University of Sussex, UK, and his colleagues looked ….. (subscribers only) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2256123-countries-that-backed-renewables-over-nuclear-power-have-cut-more-co2/

October 6, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

The safety of the world requires a nuclear-free planet

Nuclear power: A gargantuan threat, Independent Australia   By Karl Grossman | 4 October 2020, At the start of 2020, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight — the closest to midnight, doomsday, since the clock started in 1947.

There are two gargantuan threats — the climate crisis and nuclear weapons/nuclear power.

The only realistic way to secure a future for the world without nuclear war is for the entire planet to become a nuclear-free zone — no nuclear weapons, no nuclear power. A nuclear-free Earth.

How did India get an atomic bomb in 1974? Canada supplied a reactor and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission provided heavy water for it under the U.S. so-called “Atoms for Peace” program. From the reactor, India got the plutonium for its first nuclear weapon.

Any nation with a nuclear facility can use plutonium produced in it to construct nuclear arms.

Nuclear technology continues to spread around the world — a recent headline: ‘Trump Administration Spearheads International Push for Nuclear Power.’ Russia, despite Chernobyl, is pushing hard at selling nuclear plants.

Can the atomic genie be put back in the bottle? Anything people have done other people can undo. And the prospect of massive loss of life from nuclear destruction is the best of reasons.

There is a precedent: the outlawing of poison gas after World War I when its terrible impacts were tragically demonstrated, killing 90,000. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the Chemicals Weapons Convention of 1933 outlawed chemical warfare and to a large degree the prohibition has held.

There are major regions of the Earth – all of Africa and South America, the South Pacific and others – that are Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones based on the United Nations provision for such zones.

But if we are truly to have a world free of the horrific threat of nuclear arms, the goal needs to be more. A world free of the other side of the nuclear coin – nuclear power –is also necessary.

Radical? Yes, but consider the even more radical alternative: a world where many nations will be able to have nuclear weapons because they have nuclear technology. And the world continuing to try using carrots and sticks to try to stop nuclear proliferation — juggling on the road to nuclear catastrophe…………

It took decades of struggle to make the place where I live – Long Island, New York – nuclear-free. The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was stopped and the six to ten more the Long Island Lighting Company wanted to build, prevented. The two reactors at Brookhaven National Laboratory leaking radioactive tritium into its underground water table have been shut down.

On this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, let us strive for the goals of defeating global warming and having all the Earth nuclear-free. These are existential threats that must be overcome.

A version of this article was given as a presentation at the Long Island Earth Day 2020 Program on 21 September.

Karl Grossman is a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York. He is also an award-winning investigative reporter. Click here to go to Karl’s website.  https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/nuclear-power-a-gargantuan-threat,14372

October 5, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

Severe floods in Italy and France

October 5, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

Coastal flooding will disproportionately impact 31 million people globally 

Coastal flooding will disproportionately impact 31 million people globally 

Indiana University researchers analyzed these geographic regions, which include cities like New Orleans, Bangkok, and Shanghai, using a new global dataset to determine how many people live on river deltas, how many are vulnerable to a 100-year storm surge event, and the ability of the deltas to naturally mitigate impacts of climate change.

October 5, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

Climate change responsible for record sea temperature levels, says study 

October 5, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

See through the nuclear lobby’s spin and technical jargon

It’s important to bust the pro-nuclear spin, Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere  (MAHB),  Noel Wauchope | October 1, 2020  ”……………. cutting through the spin, where do we start? The reason that I start with the nuclear industry is that it is utterly symbolic of the lies, the deceptions, that prop up the polluting industries that are ruining the natural world on which we depend.

It is the most dangerous arena of industry lying because its proponents have very successfully put across the idea that only the ”experts” those with technical knowledge of nuclear physics, can have a valid opinion. I think that’s why journalists world-wide are content to simply regurgitate industry handouts as ”news” – often as an excited recitation of a sequence of technical procedures, with detailed technical illustrations. The only bit that is easily understood is the bit where they’ll say that nuclear power is “zero-carbon” “essential to combat climate change”. But is that bit true?

Any doubt about nuclear power fixing climate change is not explored, because, after all, the society at large, including the journalists, do not understand nuclear physics. They might know a bit about history, ecology, biology, radiation effects, sociology, economics, indigenous rights, conflict resolution, – but hey, that’s all soft stuff and doesn’t matter.

The lying began with the very conception of the nuclear monster. First, the idea that it’s OK for war attacks to focus on massacring civilians – this reached its greatest acceptance with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then came that first big factual lie, that this bombing was necessary to end the war. This comfortable belief has been refuted by many recent studies that indicate that the real motive was to intimidate the Russians and that Japan was already set to surrender, anyway. The persecution of Wilfred Burchett, and the suppression of his reporting, set off the deception that the effects of ionizing radiation are not all that bad, really.

The next lie, again a very comforting belief, is that this new horror could be turned into something really good – nuclear reactors, safe, cheap, electricity – a peaceful purpose.

It was never safe. You just ignore the cancers among the uranium mining communities, and nuclear workers. You ignore the many radiological and nuclear accidents and messes, even the big ones – Chalk River, Rocky Flats, Windscale, Soviet ice-breaker Lenin, Mayak, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Tomsk, Hanford, Fukushima. The risk of terrorism, using nuclear materials, is ever-present.

It was never cheap. You just ignore the costs of the health and environmental damage due to uranium mining, and to the many accidents. The insurance industry understands this, which is why laws like the Price Anderson Act are there, to make sure that the tax-payer cops the costs of nuclear accidents. You just don’t count the costs of disposing of the virtually eternal radioactive wastes, including dead reactors, and the necessary security involved.

It was never peaceful. The prime purpose of nuclear reactors was to produce that novel element – plutonium, for nuclear weapons. Every country that now has nuclear weapons began that process by getting “peaceful” nuclear power. We must wonder why Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, with abundant oil and sunshine resources, are so keen to get nuclear power. Today, the nuclear industry no longer makes the pretense that there is no connection between commercial and military reactors. and indeed, calls for government subsidy because of its role in national security. It is particularly worrying that the media enthuses over space research, while the USA and other nuclear nations are planning for nuclear-powered weapons in space.

When it comes to global heating, it’s a terrible shame that the media keeps on buying the nuclear deception about this. Even if nuclear power were ”zero-carbon” – there would have to be thousands of reactors, (millions of small ones) operating very quickly, to have any effect. But global heating is happening too fast for that. “Zero carbon” is also nonsense when you consider the whole nuclear fuel chain – those many operations that go on from uranium mining through to the building and operation of nuclear waste dumps.

Nuclear medicine is becoming somewhat of a fig leaf on the industry. It still has its role. But, non-nuclear technologies – cyclotrons are coming into operation, and produce the medical radioisotopes far more conveniently, and near hospitals, close to the point of use.

The nuclear lobby’s most questionable deception, which was shown in its glossy propaganda film “Pandora’s Promise”, is that the world needs endless energy use, for the world’s expanding human population. Indeed, we learn that nuclear is needed to set up colonies on Mars when we’ve mucked up this planet.

Not that the nuclear lobby is the only one advocating endless energy use. Some renewable energy advocates have this same idea. It’s an idea tied to our mistaken culture of growth.

During this period of pandemic economic paralysis, and despite all the suffering, many people have the chance to reflect on the world’s rather perilous situation. Many citizen scientists, citizen journalists, are asking the necessary questions. We need to be aware, to bust through, the vested interests, the jargon, the lies, that keep us hooked to the growth paradigm. There is no better spin bubble to bust than the nuclear one. https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/its-important-to-bust-the-pro-nuclear-spin/

October 3, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment