Yo,

So let's have a sneaky-peak at what the world's most evil SOB has been up to...


July 26, 2024

"More Nuclear Reactors ?... Deceptive Tunes from the Pied Piper of Vienna"...

by M. V. Ramana - Jixiang Wang



Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agencys Director General, has been busy over the last few years. The media has often reported on his efforts to highlight the risk of a major nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Grossi has also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin twice to discuss the situation at Zaporizhzhia, arguing that a severe nuclear accidentwould recognize no borders and we must do everything possible to prevent such an accident.

But Grossi has also simultaneously been increasing the risk of accidents, albeit inadvertently, by calling for building more nuclear reactors. This advocacy takes many forms. He has written op-eds in prominent outlets like Foreign Affairs. He has been trying to canvas countries to start nuclear power programs. For example, in March 2024. he went to Baghdad and committed to working with Iraq to help build a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes. And as a way to deal with the unaffordable costs of nuclear reactors, he has pushed the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to provide funding for building nuclear plants.

None of this make sense. When viewed as investment advice to banks, Grossis promotion of nuclear power does not meet the laugh threshold. According to Grossi, the banks lack of funding for nuclear energy is out of date, out of step with what is happening. But it is Grossis advocacy that is out of step with happening to nuclear energy in the real world.

When nuclear energy is evaluated through how much it contributes to the worlds electricity production, the technology has been declining continuously for over 25 years, from 17.5 percent in 1996 down to 9.2 percent in 2022. For reasons discussed later, this trend will likely continue. In other words, the importance of nuclear energy is diminishing. Investing more money into a technology that some scholars argue is destined for decline makes little sense.

When analyzing Grossis advice to these development banks, one should remember what these institutions are supposed to do. The World Banks mission is to end extreme poverty and boost prosperity on a livable planet. And the Asian Development Bank has a similar mission, with a regional focus on Asia and the Pacific. The World Banks mission, in particular, mentions the multiple, intertwined crises we are confronting and emphasizes both the need for affordable energy and how quickly these crises should be addressed, stating time is of the essence. Nuclear energy fails on both counts.

Expensive and Slow

Electricity from nuclear reactors is costly and does not provide affordable energy, especially when compared to other low-carbon, renewable sources of energy. During the same period mentioned earlier, the share of all electricity generated by modern renewables has risen from just over 1 percent of in 1996 to 15.9 percent in 2023. Today, it is utility-scale solar photovoltaic power that provides the least costly option for generating electricity plants in many countries. This is why, in 2020, the International Energy Agency dubbed solar the new king of the worlds electricity markets. Money spent on nuclear reactors by banks would only divert funds away from investing in renewables and associated technologies and infrastructures.

Nuclear reactors have also almost never been on time. An astonishing 89 percent of all reactors that were connected to the grid between 2020 and 2022 were delayed: just two reactors in China were on schedule. In the United States, the two AP1000 reactors that just started operating in the state of Georgia ended up costing nearly $35 billion. In 2011, when the utility company building the reactor sought permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it projected a total cost of $14 billion, and in-service dates of 2016 and 2017 for the two units. These cost escalations and delays are even more extreme than the historical pattern identified in an academic study that examined 180 nuclear power projects and found that 175 had exceeded their initial budgets, by an average of 117%, and took 64% longer than initially projected

That is not all. Around the world, 92 nuclear projects have been cancelled or suspended, usually after hundreds of millions, if not billions, have been spent. In the United States, the latest such cancellation was a project involving a small modular reactor from NuScale that the company advertised as smaller, safer, and cheaper. Cheaper, it certainly wasnt, with a final cost estimate that was around 250% more than the initial per megawatt cost for the Vogtle project in Georgia. The earlier cancellation, of the V. C. Summer project involving two AP1000 reactors in South Carolina, was canceled after over $9 billion was spentelectricity consumers in the state will be paying for decades for this bad investment.

Necessary Conditions for Nuclear Power

It is not as though development banks have not considered nuclear energy. Back in 1959, the World Bank did invest in a nuclear project in Italy, based on a set of conditions, most importantly the unavailability of other cost-competitive alternatives. That project was not a success. More important for the present discussion is that with the reduced cost and increasing availability of solar and wind power, nuclear power no longer meets these conditions to be cost-effective.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB), too, undertook an analysis of various technologies and published an Energy Policy paper in 2009 that highlighted a number of barriers confronting nuclear power development, including public concerns related to nuclear proliferation, waste management, safety issues, high investment costs, long lead times, and commercial acceptability of new technologies. Thanks to these concerns, the paper declared that ADB will maintain its current policy of non-involvement in the financing of nuclear power generation. None of these barriers have disappeared.

The challenge of ensuring safety was reinforced just two years after the ADBs paper when multiple reactors at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant melted down spreading radioactive materials widely, and posing difficult technical, socio-political and economical challenges: including an estimated future bill of 35 to 80 trillion yen (around $322 to $736 billion). Fukushima served as a reminder that the nature of nuclear technology ensures the inevitability of accidents.

The Unlearned Lessons of Zaporizhzhia

A different route to a severe nuclear accident is on display at the Zaporizhzhia power plantand Grossi has been eloquent about how such an accident will have ripples and reverberations all over the world. But instead of considering Zaporizhzhia as a wake-up call to reflect on whether the world should continue to build more nuclear power plants, Grossi has taken recourse to advocating for five principles of nuclear safety and security. Unfortunately for him these rules are unlikely to be widely acceptedas evidenced by the many attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant.

This is not for lack of precedence. Well before Russia occupied Zaporizhzhia, Israel bombed Iraqs Osirak reactor in 1981 and, then in 2007, bombed the Al-Kibar nuclear facility where Syria was building a reactor. Iran and the United States have also attacked Iraqs nuclear facilities. None of the attackers faced any consequences.

Grossis principles and calls for new regimes might also contradict other imperatives. In a recent paper published in The Nonproliferation Review, two scholars have examined the history of such attacks in detail and concluded that attacks on nuclear facilities endure as a feature of the global nonproliferation regime because the international communityor at least some of the most influential members of the communitydeem them a necessary option for the maintenance of that regime. In other words, Zaporizhzhia is unlikely to be the last nuclear plant at risk of being attacked.

None of this information is new but they dont appear to play any part in Grossis advocacy for nuclear energy. When advising the World Bank to invest in nuclear power, he doesnt explain that the tens of billions of dollars the Bank might invest in a nuclear reactor could, within a matter of minutes, be converted into a cleanup project that would cost hundreds of billions. Or explaining to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni that the small modular reactors he recommended that Italy build could be blown up and the result might, as with Zaporizhzhia, cause enormous suffering.

Grossis silence about this risk should be troubling at the best of times. But it is particularly inexcusable when he is, in parallel, emphasizing the risks of suffer a major accident at the Zaporizhzhia power plant. When he went to Iraq recently, he actively downplayed the legitimate concerns in that country thanks to its nuclear reactors being bombed by Israel and the United States. Grossis prescription is to simply call for turning the page on this complex past. Can he genuinely and credibly assure Iraq that such an attack will not happen again?

The deeper problem is a conflict of interest. As the head of the International Atomic Energy, Rafael Grossi, like his predecessors, tasked with two separate objectives: to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world and to ensure, so far as it is able, that assistance provided by it or at its request or under its supervision or control is not used in such a way as to further any military purpose. The case for promoting nuclear energy was never very strong and has completely collapsed in recent years. It is past time to simply abandon the first objective and focus on the second.

 

No nukes is good nukes !

-- Edited by Rastus on Saturday 27th of July 2024 09:04:44 PM

SELLC wrote:

---

1.Dude... it would almost seem we're on the virge of WWIII, do you honestly think anyone gives AF?

2.Then again, threats of war and people not giving AF might be the exact thing they are looking for!

3.I don't think we're getting away from it either! According to your article there is some 190 nuke plants already in existence! Maybe even more by now, who knows? Does not seem like it's slowing down -- this demand for energy.

4.Here is something else to think about... I think your alien friends like nuke power too -- it's the only explanation for how they could even travel to Earth! So now what, Rastus?

 

---

 

R1. C'mon Stellar...We ( the world ) have been at war unofficially since COrona VIrus Disease 2019...And the US-of-UK/I Corporation has always been at war..It's the law yo !

R2. That's not the corporate way Stellar !

R3. There was 465 nuke-plants in operation as of March 2011, with 200 new-builds from Chjna expected over 20-years...There's been plenty of closures & new-builds arise since that time.

R4. Oh Stellar, please tell me that you're not that clue-less...It's your birthday, so I better be nice...

 

Yo,

I wasn't going to update this week due to nothing new appearing in "Beyond Nuclear", & then I found this article in CounterPunch which is superb, & just what our host likes lol ! Amazing how the US-of-I/UK wastes its money, & elects idiots that support this bullshyte...


August 8, 2024

Inside the Nuclear Weapons Lobby Today

by Hekmat Aboukhater - William D. Hartung


The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing.

This January, a review of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act a congressional provision designed to rein in cost overruns of Pentagon weapons programs found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81% over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future.

That Pentagon review had the option of canceling the Sentinel program because of such a staggering cost increase. Instead, it doubled down on the program, asserting that it would be an essential element of any future nuclear deterrent and must continue, even if the funding for other defense programs has to be cut to make way for it. In justifying the decision, Deputy Defense Secretary William LaPlante stated: We are fully aware of the costs, but we are also aware of the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront.

Cost is indeed one significant issue, but the biggest risk to the rest of us comes from continuing to build and deploy ICBMs, rather than delaying or shelving the Sentinel program. As former Secretary of Defense William Perry has noted, ICBMs are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world because they could trigger an accidental nuclear war. As he explained, a president warned (accurately or not) of an enemy nuclear attack would have only minutes to decide whether to launch such ICBMs and conceivably devastate the planet.

Possessing such potentially world-ending systems only increases the possibility of an unintended nuclear conflict prompted by a false alarm. And as Norman Solomon and the late Daniel Ellsberg once wrote, If reducing the dangers of nuclear war is a goal, the top priority should be to remove the triads ground-based leg not modernize it.

This is no small matter. It is believed that a large-scale nuclear exchange could result in more than five billion of us humans dying, once the possibility of a nuclear winter and the potential destruction of agriculture across much of the planet is taken into account, according to an analysis by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

In short, the need to reduce nuclear risks by eliminating such ICBMs could not be more urgent. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock an estimate of how close the world may be at any moment to a nuclear conflict is now set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest its been since that tracker was first created in 1947. And just this June, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defense agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a potential first step toward a drive by Moscow to help Pyongyang expand its nuclear arsenal further. And of the nine countries now possessing nuclear weapons, its hardly the only one other than the U.S. in an expansionist phase.

Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating use them or lose them weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Marylands Program for Public Consultation, which showed that 61% of us actually support phasing out ICBM systems like the Sentinel.

The Pentagons misguided plan to keep such ICBMs in the U.S arsenal for decades to come is only reinforced by the political power of members of Congress and the companies that benefit financially from the current buildup.

Who Decides? The Role of the ICBM Lobby

A prime example of the power of the nuclear weapons lobby is the Senate ICBM Coalition. That group is composed of senators from four states Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming that either house major ICBM bases or host significant work on the Sentinel. Perhaps you wont be surprised to learn that the members of that coalition have received more than $3 million in donations from firms involved in the production of the Sentinel over the past four election cycles. Nor were they alone. ICBM contractors made contributions to 92 of the 100 senators and 413 of the 435 house members in 2024. Some received hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The nuclear lobby paid special attention to members of the armed services committees in the House and Senate. For example, Mike Turner, a House Republican from Ohio, has been a relentless advocate of modernizing the nuclear arsenal. In a June 2024 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which itself has received well over a million dollars in funding from nuclear weapons producers, he called for systematically upgrading the nuclear arsenal for decades to come, while chiding any of his congressional colleagues not taking such an aggressive stance on the subject.

Although Turner vigorously touts the need for a costly nuclear buildup, he fails to mention that, with $305,000 in donations, hes been the fourth-highest recipient of funding from the ICBM lobby over the four elections between 2018 and 2024. Little wonder that he pushes for new nuclear weapons and staunchly opposes extending the New START arms reduction treaty.

In another example of contractor influence, veteran Texas representative Kay Granger secured the largest total of contributions from the ICBM lobby of any House member. With $675,000 in missile contractor contributions in hand, Granger went to bat for the lobby, lending a feminist veneer to nuclear modernization by giving a speech on her experience as a woman in politics at Northrop Grummans Womens conference. And were sure you wont be surprised that Granger has anything but a strong track record when it comes to keeping the Pentagon and arms makers accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse in weapons programs. Her X account is, in fact, littered with posts heaping praise on Lockheed Martin and its overpriced, underperforming F-35 combat aircraft.

Other recipients of ICBM contractor funding, like Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers, have lamented the might of the far-left disarmament community, and the undue influence of anti-nuclear zealots on our politics. Missing from the statements his office puts together and the speeches his staffers write for him, however, is any mention of the $471,000 in funding hes received so far from ICBM producers. You wont be surprised, were sure, to discover that Rogers has pledged to seek a provision in the forthcoming National Defense Authorization Act to support the Pentagons plan to continue the Sentinel program.

Lobbying Dollars and the Revolving Door

The flood of campaign contributions from ICBM contractors is reinforced by their staggering investments in lobbying. In any given year, the arms industry as a whole employs between 800 and 1,000 lobbyists, well more than one for every member of Congress. Most of those lobbyists hired by ICBM contractors come through the revolving door from careers in the Pentagon, Congress, or the Executive Branch. That means they come with the necessary tools for success in Washington: an understanding of the appropriations cycle and close relations with decision-makers on the Hill.

During the last four election cycles, ICBM contractors spent upwards of $226 million on 275 extremely well-paid lobbyists. For example, Bud Cramer, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama who once sat on the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, netted $640,000 in fees from Northrop Grumman over a span of six years. He was also a cofounder of the Blue Dog Democrats, an influential conservative faction within the Democratic Party. Perhaps you wont be surprised to learn that Cramers former chief of staff, Jefferies Murray, also lobbies for Northrop Grumman.

While some lobbyists work for one contractor, others have shared allegiances. For example, during his tenure as a lobbyist, former Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Trent Lott received more than $600,000 for his efforts for Raytheon, Textron Inc., and United Technologies (before United Technologies and Raytheon merged to form RX Technologies). Former Virginia Congressman Jim Moran similarly received $640,000 from Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.

Playing the Jobs Card

The argument of last resort for the Sentinel and similar questionable weapons programs is that they create well-paying jobs in key states and districts. Northrop Grumman has played the jobs card effectively with respect to the Sentinel, claiming it will create 10,000 jobs in its development phase alone, including about 2,250 in the state of Utah, where the hub for the program is located.

As a start, however, those 10,000 jobs will help a miniscule fraction of the 167-million-member American workforce. Moreover, Northrop Grumman claims facilities tied to the program will be set up in 32 states. If 2,250 of those jobs end up in Utah, that leaves 7,750 more jobs spread across 31 states an average of about 250 jobs per state, essentially a rounding error compared to total employment in most localities.

Nor has Northrop Grumman provided any documentation for the number of jobs the Sentinel program will allegedly create. Journalist Taylor Barnes of ReThink Media was rebuffed in her efforts to get a copy of the agreement between Northrop Grumman and the state of Utah that reportedly indicates how many Sentinel-related jobs the company needs to create to get the full subsidy offered to put its primary facility in Utah.

A statement by a Utah official justifying that lack of transparency suggested Northrop Grumman was operating in a competitive defense industry and that revealing details of the agreement might somehow harm the company. But any modest financial harm Northrop Grumman might suffer, were those details revealed, pales in comparison with the immense risks and costs of the Sentinel program itself.

There are two major flaws in the jobs argument with respect to the future production of nuclear weapons. First, military spending should be based on security considerations, not pork-barrel politics. Second, as Heidi Peltier of the Costs of War Project has effectively demonstrated, virtually any other expenditure of funds currently devoted to Pentagon programs would create between 9% and 250% more jobs than weapons spending does. If Congress were instead to put such funds into addressing climate change, dealing with future disease epidemics, poverty, or homelessness all serious threats to public safety the American economy would gain hundreds of thousands of jobs. Choosing to fund those ICBMs instead is, in fact, a job killer, not a job creator.

Unwarranted Influence in the Nuclear Age

Advocates for eliminating ICBMs from the American arsenal make a strong case. (If only they were better heard!) For example, former Representative John Tierney of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation offered this blunt indictment of ICBMs:

Not only are intercontinental ballistic missiles redundant, but they are prone to a high risk of accidental useThey do not make us any safer. Their only value is to the defense contractors who line their fat pockets with large cost overruns at the expense of our taxpayers. It has got to stop.

The late Daniel Ellsberg made a similar point in a February 2018 interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

You would not have these arsenals, in the U.S. or elsewhere, if it were not the case that it was highly profitable to the military-industrial complex, to the aerospace industry, to the electronics industry, and to the weapons design labs to keep modernizing these weapons, improving accuracy, improving launch time, all that. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower talked about is a very powerful influence. Weve talked about unwarranted influence. Weve had that for more than half a century.

Given how the politics of Pentagon spending normally work, that nuclear weapons policy is being so heavily influenced by individuals and organizations profiting from an ongoing arms race should be anything but surprising. Still, in the case of such weaponry, the stakes are so high that critical decisions shouldnt be determined by parochial politics. The influence of such special interest groups and corporate weapons-makers over life-and-death issues should be considered both a moral outrage and perhaps the ultimate security risk.

Isnt it finally time for the executive branch and Congress to start assessing the need for ICBMs on their merits, rather than on contractor lobbying, weapons company funding, and the sort of strategic thinking that was already outmoded by the end of the 1950s? For that to happen, our representatives would need to hear from their constituents loud and clear.

Yo,

It's been so quiet in here, I thought that there was maybe a nuke-accident, & everyone split...Thankfully, this hasn't happened, with only the usual idiocy to report on...Here the direct cut & paste from my mailbox yo.




NUCLEAR MADNESS

Lets stop it


Nuclear madness is everywhere. Our government is determined to promote new reactors and the continued use of dangerous old ones, as long as we pay for them. Executives and politicians have even been convicted of crimes to ensure this happens. The media laps up the rhetoric and parrots the lie that nuclear power is carbon-free. Yet, spending those same dollars on renewables would get us more carbon reductions faster and without all the deadly risks of nuclear power.


Thats why we need your support now more than ever to block these dangerous proposals at every step including through legal action. If you agree that nuclear power is NOT the answer to the climate crisis, please donate to Beyond Nuclear today.




ZOMBIE NUKE?!

Coalition resists MI nuke license transfer


For years, Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan, and Michigan Safe Energy Future have beat the drum of resistance, against the unprecedented restart of the closed, nearly 60-year old, problem-plagued, Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, MI. On August 27, the coalition's legal counsel, Wally Taylor of Iowa, and Terry Lodge of Ohio, met the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's arbitrarily and capriciously short 20-day deadline, petitioning to intervene and requesting a hearing in opposition to the transfer of the possession-only license from Holtec Decommissioning to a brand new holding company, Palisades Energy, LLC. The coalition also intends to meet NRC's October 7 deadline, regarding several License Amendment Requests, and an "Exemption," vital to Holtec's Palisades zombification scheme.





THE RISKS AT KURSK

Another Chornobyl?


Summarized from Scientists for Global Responsibility: Due to the Ukraine military incursion into the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, there is now a severe risk to the nuclear power plant there that, like the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine also at high risk because of the war has six reactors, making it one of the three biggest nuclear power stations in Russia. Unlike the fully closed Zaporizhzhia, two of the Kursk reactors are operating at full power and are of the same design - the RBMK - as the Chornobyl nuclear plant that melted down in 1986. They have no protective dome structure, making them very vulnerable to a military strike or aircraft impact that could lead to a Europe-wide nuclear disaster.





RADIOACTIVE RACISM

D.C. Circuit blesses Holtec's NM dump


On August 27, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against all opposition to Holtec's consolidated interim storage facility for high-level radioactive waste targeted at majority minority (Latinx and Indigenous) New Mexico. The 173,600 ton facility for irradiated nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive waste would be the world's largest. Beyond Nuclear and our allies have opposed Holtec's scheme since it was announced on Nuclear Fool's Day, April 1, 2017 -- and for decades before that. Holtec's license has been vacated by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. If the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear the other side's appeals, our side wins -- for now.



*Typical Geiger Counter readings of 18 CPM here in deep southern Oz yo !

Yo,

A short post this week, since no-one likes to read, especially books on this subject matter. More nuclear bollox however to stay up-to-date with. (And I for one, am sure glad I don't live State-side, what a shyte country to call home).



RADIATION VICTIMS COME TO DC

Call on House to pass victim compensation


"Beginning September 22, more than 50 members of the Navajo Nation, Laguna Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo and Hopi tribe will drive roughly 30 hours by bus from New Mexico to Washington, D.C., to demand House Speaker Mike Johnson allow a vote on legislation reauthorizing the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). The bill would aid victims of U.S. nuclear tests, uranium mining and nuclear waste storage. The group, from New Mexico and Arizona, includes former uranium workers, veterans, and people who lived downwind of nuclear weapons tests who are suffering from radiation-related illnesses, such as thyroid cancer and lung disease... [t]he bill has sat on Speaker Johnsons desk since March, when it was passed by a bipartisan supermajority in the Senate.





NUKE ZEALOTRY

DOE targets closed atomic/fossil sites


As reported by Utility Dive, the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy commissioned a study by authors from Argonne and Oak Ridge National Labs. Entitled "Evaluation of Nuclear Power Plant and Coal Power Plant Sites for New Nuclear Capacity," it concluded up to 269,000 Megawatts-electric (MW-e) of new atomic power could be constructed/operated, at up to 145 coal sites in 36 states, and 41 nuclear sites in 31 states, including at some recently retired plants. The schemes include adding nuclear new build at spacious enough sites with still operating reactors, as well. In Michigan, for example, Holtec plans to restart a closed 805 MW-e reactor, and add two so-called "Small Modular Reactors," of 300 MW-e each.


No nukes is good nukes !

SELLC wrote:

---

1.Rastus, our power company here (DTE) recently got authorization from the regulatory commision to increase bills to cover an extra $350 million a few months back... they were back at the commission two days ago looking for $460 million more!

2.I might also add that a few local cities just successfully blocked New York from dumping contaminated dirt here from the Manhattan project !

3.So... I mean, why not! We already have two dumps in close proximity -- we're all fucked.

4.Last I heard someone wanted to dump some sh!t there on Australia too!

---

 

R1. Poon !

R2. Great news !

R3. The technology already exists to neutralize nuke-waste. But you have to enter the realm of free-energy to do so...And why do that when fear & control is successfully managed by having the shyte around. It's a perpetual scare tactic.

R4. You likely heard it from me lol ! This is what AUKUS & 5-Eyes (lol) was all about. Most Australians have no idea to this day what these even mean, yet alone exist. These decisions warranted a referendum, where the whole country is meant to vote on this decision making process, but I suggest it was made in the 1990's. At this time, the rail-way-line from Darwin was super-upgraded to Alice Springs, where the secret US-of-I(UK)  base of "Pine Gap" exists. The Northern Territory is a territory, & not a State, & so easily corrupted, making it easy for nuke-waste to be easily distributed secretly...

This is why "Steve Irwin" was buying-up & securing as much land as possible, so as to stop this happening I imagine, as well as fracking & all that other bollox.

 

Yo,

It seems that the recent hurricane through Florida has more than raised some concerns with nuke-plants in the area, & throughout the country...Read on !



HELENE FLOODS FL REACTOR

12-ft surge at Crystal River


Duke Energy reported to the state of Florida that its decommissioning Crystal River nuclear power plant on Floridas Gulf Coast was inundated by Hurricane Helenes 12-foot storm surge.



Dukes filing cites, The whole site was flooded, including buildings, sumps, and lift stations. Industrial Wastewater Pond #5 was observed overflowing to the ground due to the surge. Crystal River, south of Cedar Key and closed in 2013, is being decommissioned rather than operational. Had it been operational, even in hot shutdown, the hurricane force wind, flooding and power outage might have caused a nuclear accident with far reaching radioactive consequences on top of the natural disaster. Helene sends a warning ahead of an accelerating climate crisis to still vulnerable nuclear power plants.




NUKE RUST BUCKET!

Corrosion "far exceeds" expectations


A Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) summary of a conference call with Holtec, published October 2, reveals why NRC recently issued a rare Preliminary Notification of Occurrence at Palisades. NRC reports a recent inspection of tubes in Palisades' two steam generators (SG) revealed Stress Corrosion Cracking under Holtec far exceeded what occurred under previous owner, Entergy: 250 times more tubes were found to be damaged. Entergy operated Palisades from 2007-22; Holtec took over the reactor less than 2.5 years ago, under false pretenses to decommission it. Inspections uncovered at least 700 additional tubes that must be plugged, as many as had been plugged during the previous 20 years of operations. Palisades' unprecedented restart could be delayed years, despite massive bailouts.



No nukes is good nukes !

Current CPM here in Southern Oz a steady 18.25...

Get rid of climate change is so simple. Demolish HAARP and hang everyone.

Yo,

The nuclear industry is really turning into an unbelievable comedy act, with employees announcing the most amazing bullshyte...And the gov't keeps feeding it your tax dollars...At some point soon, the people will have to lose these mofo's yes ?"...

Here's the weekly update on this madness...Which like your gov't, is simply stringing the cash out needlessly for as long as it can, to a dying industry...




DOE: $900 MILLION to SMRs

More grease on the skids



Reuters reports the US Department of Energy (DOE) is dangling $900 million in federal government applications to jump start licensing and construction activity for new nuclear power plants largely on the misinformation that has accompanied a rollout of Small Modular Reactors (SMR) going back to the 1950s.


The nuclear industry and its tireless promoters claim that SMRs are more likely to achieve a stubbornly elusive nuclear renaissance where previous large-scale generations of reactors have proven to be futile to reliably finance and deploy. SMRs are supposed to be simpler designs, inherently safe, scalable power and less costly to roll off factory assembly lines. But no U.S. commercial SMR has been built yet, and remains more a mirage than modular technology.





NRC HIDING NUCLEAR LEAKS

Apologies are coverups


Nukewatch has reprised its public disclosure that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) deliberately played down a potential public hazard pathway by misreporting that Xcel Energys Monticello nuclear power station had a large accidental radioactive release on November 22, 2022 that in a series of leaks of at least 829,000 gallons of radioactive tritium (radioactive water) with readings of up to 5.2 million picocuries per liter had discharged into the Mississippi River northwest of Minneapolis (20,000 picocuries is the EPA protective threshold in drinking water). Moreover, Xcel Energy did not issue any cautionary alerts to the public of the accidental radioactive discharge for downstream populations recreating downstream or alert protective actions for downstream municipal drinking water treatment centers.






NUKE DUMPING IN GREAT LAKES

Coalition comments to MI on NPDES


Comments spearheaded by Dont Waste MI and NIRS, endorsed by 71 organizations, have raised numerous concerns with Michigans Energy, Great Lakes, and Environment state agency, regarding National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit renewal at the Palisades atomic reactor.


The comments were inspired by Indigneous-led CRAFT (Citizens Resistance at Fermi Two) NPDES comments last year, to similarly protect Lake Erie.


Entergy closed Palisades for good 2.5 years ago. The reactor had operated for 51 years. But Holtec, which had taken over at Palisades, supposedly to decommission it, changed its mind. It decided to restart Palisades instead, even though it is unprecedented, unneeded, insanely expensive for the public, and extremely risky for health, safety, security, and the environment.


Holtec will need a renewed NPDES permit in order to dump in Lake Michigan during renewed operations from 2025 to 2051.

SELLC wrote:

---

Here we go!

Micro Reactors by 2027 by White Westinghouse.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/micro-nuclear-reactors-being-built-195000344.html

---

 

Yo,

Yes, I heard about those, but let's face it...

1. Microsoft is pushing the builds ???

2. AI needs the power ???

3. And what do you do with them after 5-years ??? - Find somewhere to bury them for the next 10-million years or so ???

4. Smells like a last ditch effort to bullshyte the general public...

 

Nukes are NOT needed, dinosaur technology, especially when free energy from the vacuum is available. Look at the headaches in Michigan alone yo !

 

There are BIG changes coming very soon folks, hold-on-to-your-hats...I doubt anything here will get-off-the-ground...

Yo,

Yes indeed, the idiocy of all-things-nuclear just seems to keep-on expanding its idiocy...Here's more updates for you to contemplate...





ZOMBIE NUKE?!

Yet another path to core meltdown


Today the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hosted Holtec for a meeting on GSI-191, a "Generic Safety Issue" involving "containment coatings and sump strainers" at the Palisades atomic reactor and some others, as at South Texas Project. Calcium silicate (CalSil) containment coatings will disintegrate under the pressure and temperature of pipe breaks or other leaks, likely clogging Palisades' inadequate sump strainers, potentially blocking vital coolant flow during reactor core overheating emergency situations. This problem has been known for two decades, yet little to no meaningful action has been taken at Palisades. Shockingly, even though Holtec intends to restart the 2.5-years closed Palisades reactor, it appears there is still no plan to take any meaningful action on this risk of a meltdown, one of many at Palisades.





THE NEW NUCLEAR PUSH

New package, same lies



On October 23, Beyond Nuclear board of directors member Karl Grossman (pictured) published an article in CounterPunch. Quoting the likes of Michel Lee at the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy, Sierra Club Nuclear Free Campaign, Food & Water Watch, safe energy activists on his home of Long Island, and Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, Karl's article debunks deceptive industry propaganda driving current nuclear power relapse schemes. Karl reports veterans of the successful campaign against prior Long Island nuclear development plans are reaching out to New York governor, Kathy Hochul, as well as the Long Island Power Authority, to nip in the bud any atomic expansion plans in renewables-rich Long Island. Karl has written extensively against nuclear power and weapons, on planet Earth and beyond.






CISFs at SCOTUS

Schedule crystallizes at Supreme Court


Beyond Nuclear and our allies have resisted consolidated interim storage facilities for highly radioactive waste, targeting Texas and New Mexico, since before Interim Storage Partners and Holtec filed their license applications at the NRC in 2016 and 2017. This included very active engagement at the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future from 2010-12, the NRC licensing proceedings themselves over several long years, and federal appeals. The federal legal battles have now moved to the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS). Petitioners' Briefs are due December 2. Respondents' Briefs are due January 15. Oral arguments will likely be in early March. If SCOTUS upholds 5th Circuit (New Orleans) Court of Appeals rulings, these environmentally unjust dumps would be blocked, at least for now.





ANA FALL MEETING

GA/SC event focused on SRS


Beyond Nuclear has been an Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) member organization since our founding in 2007. ANA has held fall meetings for four decades. 2024's will be hosted by African American women-led ANA member group Georgia Women's Action for New Directions (WAND), in Atlanta, on Tuesday, December 3 and Wednesday, December 4. A U.S. Department of Energy tour of the Savannah River Site (SRS) nuclear complex in Aiken, South Carolina will take place on Thursday, December 5. GA WAND's annual holiday fundraiser will be in Atlanta on Friday, December 6. Environmental justice impacts of nuclear industry activities in GA and SC will be the focus, including SRS, Nuclear Plant Vogtle, and the Barnwell, SC "low-level" radioactive waste dump. Pre-registrations required

Yo,

Here's the latest nuclear-news, with it containing the news that some folks are even going to jail for their bullshyte...


ANTI-NUKE NEWS

Showing up in MSM, trade press, more


Activists, some of whom have dedicated most of their lives to the cause, sometimes break through the Main Stream Media, and even into nuclear power industry trade press publications (see POWER op-ed entry). Eric Epstein, Three Mile Island Alert chair, was quoted on November 17 in the Financial Times regarding zombie nukes like TMI-1 electrifying AI data centers: We havent even cleaned up Three Mile Island unit two, the site of the accident is still highly radioactive...and now were going to generate more nuclear waste. Its disappointing and its manifestly unfair. In the Chicago Tribune on November 16, Nuclear Energy Information Service director, Dave Kraft, was quoted: We really need to question AI itself. Is all that energy intensity worth it?





EX-WESTINGHOUSE VP JAILED

South Carolina customers to pay


On November 20, 2024, ex-Westinghouse Electric Corporation Vice President and head of the companys AP1000 advanced reactor global marketing, Jeffrey Benjamin was sentenced in the District of South Carolina Federal Court to one year and a day in prison and a $100,000 fine for his role to defraud the South Carolina Public Utility Commission and state electric ratepayers of billions of dollars following the SCANA utility's 2017 abandonment and $9 billion sunk cost in the failed construction of V.C. Summer nuclear plant.


SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh and Chief Operating Officer Stephen Byrne were also convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison.


Another Westinghouse official, Carl Churchman, pled guilty to lying to the FBI and sentenced to six months home detention.




PALISADES ZOMBIE?!

NRC, FEMA revive emergency plans


Concerned local residents and environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, spoke out against Holtec's unprecedented, unneeded, insanely expensive for the public, and extremely high-risk restart scheme for the closed for good Palisades atomic reactor on southwest Michigan's Great Lakes shore. This was the third major hybrid public meeting in just the past four months. This time, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Federal Emergency Management Agency, focused on re-establishing Palisades' emergency preparedness plans, which NRC had allowed previous owner Entergy, new owner Holtec, and state, county, and local governments to end, given its supposed permanent closure. Citing highly radioactive waste still stored on-site, Kevin Kamps stated Emergency preparedness should never have been terminated in the first place."

Yo,

It's time for that news that sends you running for the shyte-house once again...Hold-on until you get to sit-on-the-can yo !



HOLTEC SCANDALS

Workers beware corrupt nuclear firm


As reported by Provincetown Independent, a former worker at Holtec's Pilgrim nuclear decommissioning site in Massachusetts alleges in a lawsuit that he suffered radiation poisoning due to the company's negligence. About the same time, another worker suffered symptoms, and ultimately "had part of his tongue and esophagus surgically removed." The New Jersey Monitor also reported that Holtec has sued former high level employees. The company alleges its former CFO, and general counsel, perpetrated "rogue" operations, including embezzling more than $700,000, losing $65 million in bad investments (including in marijuana), and causing serious legal trouble for Holtec and its CEO, Krishna Singh. A former Chief Investment Officer also sued Singh for firing and stiffing her hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation due.





REPORT: INDIGENOUS VIEWS

A no to nuclear



A new report Indigenous Views on Nuclear Energy and Radioactive Waste and video Askomiw Ksanaqak (Forever Dangerous): Indigenous Nations Resist Nuclear Colonialism are being released this week. Both are the culmination of a year-long project, CEDAR, led by Susan ODonnell at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada, in partnership with two Indigenous organizations, the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group Inc. and the Wolastoq Grand Council. The report amplifies Indigenous views on nuclear energy and waste and concludes that they do not support more nuclear development or the transport and storage of nuclear waste on Indigenous homelands. Researchers analyzed 30 statements from Indigenous nations and communities in three Canadian provinces and 125 documents submitted to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.





HALT CISFs!

SCOTUS schedule announced


For ten years, Beyond Nuclear has resisted highly radioactive waste consolidated interim storage facilities targeting Texas and New Mexico. For several long years, we have appealed Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) license approvals at the U.S. Circuit Court for D.C., "the second highest court in the land." But the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) itself recently entered the fray. Petitioners' (NRC, DOJ, and both dump companies) Opening Briefs are due December 2. Amicus Briefs supporting the dumps are due a week later. Respondents' (dump opponents, namely Fasken Land and Minerals and the State of Texas) Briefs are due January 15, and Amicus Briefs opposing the dumps (including ours) a week later. SCOTUS oral arguments are March 5.





WATER IS LIFE

From Michigan to the Mississippi


Beyond Nuclear, along with allies like Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, and many others, including Indigenous Nations, have long watchdogged radioactive risks to the Great Lakes, 21% of the planet's surface fresh water. A focus for two and a half years has been the "closed for good" Palisades reactor, designed 60 years ago, on the Great Lakes State's Lake Michigan shore. Holtec's scheme to restart it is unprecedented, unneeded, insanely expensive for the public, and extremely high risk. Our environmental coalition has intervened, hoping to nip zombie reactors in the bud. Now, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River has formed in Minnesota, to shut down Xcel's Monticello reactor. Both reactors have had significant tritium (radioactive hydrogen) leaks.

Yo,

Here ya'll go, here's more nuke-madness to shake-up lore than your bowels & common sense...And as guessed, Fukushima has opened the door for people to start considering dumping their nuke-waste into our oceans...No shyte...



THE PILGRIM PLUME

Release would reach communities


The radioactive waste water that Pilgrim nuclear power plant owner, Holtec, has been pushing to discharge into Cape Cod Bay from the permanently closed reactor, would not quickly disperse into the wider ocean, says an important new study. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution findings instead showed that the 900,000 gallons of wastewater Holtec wants to release would linger in the bay and drift to the shores of area communities. The study did not look at the health impacts of such an outcome, only at the likely plume pathways. Massachusetts senator, Democrat Ed Markey, a longtime champion of nuclear safety, welcomed the report, noting that Holtec had promised an open and transparent decommissioning process, but has fallen woefully short on this commitment.





HOLTEC RISKS

Threats to agriculture, from MI to NM


Investigate Midwest has published Risky Revival: How Michigans Palisades nuclear plant could impact agriculture: While state leaders champion Palisades reopening as an energy solution, local farmers remain divided over the potential threats to their land and water. Holtec's scheme is unprecedented, unneeded, insanely expensive for the public (to the tune of more than $8 billion!), and extremely risky for health, safety, security, and the environment. Holtec's risks to agriculture extend to New Mexico, where it proposes a consolidated interim storage facility for up to 173,600 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel. Beyond Nuclear and allies have long resisted that dump, and its sibling, Interim Storage Partners in Texas. The cases are now before the United States Supreme Court.





ANA FALL MEETING

SRS tour, focus on Environmental Justice


We are one of three-dozen Alliance for Nuclear Accountability member groups. ANA held its first in-person Fall Meeting since the pandemic. Georgia WAND hosted in Atlanta. The gathering focused on Environmental Justice issues, especially at Savannah River Site (SRS) and Plant Vogtle, on the South Carolina border. Vogtle is the largest nuclear power plant in the country, by both number of reactors (four), as well as megawattage-electric (they are gigantic). SRS, a nuclear weapons complex facility, is nearby. It is very radioactively contaminated, but you would not learn that on the official site tour which we took, "a total greenwash." Rural, African American majority, low income Burke County downstream, where Georgia WAND works, suffers health and other impacts.





Nihon Hidankyo receives award


The very moving December 10 (UN Human Rights Day) ceremony, including several musical performances, was held in Oslo. It was attended by the Norwegian royal family, and numerous Hibakusha, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, by the United States, in August 1945. The presentation speech was delivered by the Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes. The Nobel lecture by Nihon Hidankyo was presented by Mr. Terumi Tanaka (pictured), a Co-Chair of the organization founded in 1956. We join with anti-nuclear colleagues worldwide to thank and congratulate Nihon Hidankyo for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.

Yo,

Here's end-of-year nuclear summary from Beyond Nuclear, direct cut & paste from my mailbox...






What didn't happen in 2024

Success on the ground and in court


For the anti-nuclear movement, success is often measured by what didn't happen; what got delayed or stopped. These wins don't necessarily make for an exciting story, but they are no less important.


When we delay, derail or prevent yet another dangerous, expensive and unnecessary nuclear project, it's a result not only of our own persistence but also your steadfast support. A few of those "wins" in 2024 include:


*Still no sign of SMRs! The much hyped and subsidized small modular reactors remain idle boasts on paper, with none built and no hope of any answering the climate crisis effectively or in time. We continue to promote the safer, faster, cheaper renewable energy alternatives.


*Still no dumps in W. Texas and New Mexico! Our court battles continue as we support besieged communities in the Southwest who don't want the country's high-level radioactive reactor waste dumped where they live, supposedly as an "interim" measure but more likely permanently.


*NRC busted on climate! License extension proceedings for currently operating reactors -- out to 60 and even 80 years -- have stalled as even a US Nuclear Regulatory Commission judge sided with our view that the agency is failing to consider the impact of the worsening climate crisis on a technology unsafe at any age.


*There is much more to do in 2025 when we will continue to support community resistance and to face battles in court. Can we count on your donation toward this work? Please consider becoming a monthly sustaining donor by selecting "Make it monthly" when you give via our secure online platform.




Thank you for your continued support!

www.beyondnuclear.org

Shawnee_B wrote:

---

My farts are nuclear fallout, WMD's

---

 

No doubt Shawnee...

Combined with the shyte that used to spew-forth from Stoma's mouth, would almost make the fall-out from Fukushima seem far less tragic.

Shawnee_B wrote:

---

Never met Stoma.

---

 

Stoma was banned shortly before Mr.Trumpdt won his first election as POTUS from memory...He over-stepped his reach by giving our hosts wife some-lip, & has never returned, even after being allowed back in here, & after a crowd-funding-effort to source his location.

He remains a mystery person for sure, but always gave our host a hard-time, & yet, when our host was being fried good & proper by PowerStroker or someone, he would mysteriously appear, & save our hosts ass...Confusing to say the least...

Our host once started a thread in an effort to discover the identity of Stoma, but with no result.

IMO, & after years now of visiting these parts & getting to know everyone a little, I tend to think that Stoma was actually our host playing a double identity role, which is why our host killed-him-off, since his cover was blown, & the fun was over.

The similarities in the way they go about their business is what gives-it-away imo, typically via visiting other web-sites, & causing distress to others resulting in a banning from posting, typically with a bogus name-sake / avatar. Our host would come back here & reveal what happened via cut & paste where possible, & discussion would follow.

A Mercedes nut known as Gerry VZ would often side with our host in their combined assault on anyone who was fair-bait, but that came to a close after fitting an after-market camshaft to his 560SEC that soon failed. This caused a rift between our host & Gerry, since Gerry always specified using OEM Benz parts to everyone.

Gerry sometimes pops-in-here, & I thought perhaps that he was Stoma in disguise, but time says Stoma was likely our host getting kicks out of being Stoma, as that's what these folks do for a laugh.

 

Yo,

Here's some more nuclear shyte to deal with this week folks, but it isn't as bad as usual, & you can vote on some topic too....



VOTE ASAP!

Arms Control Person(s) of the Year



Voting is easy at ArmsControl.org/ACPOY/2024! BUT, the deadline is Monday, January 13! Savannah River Site (SRS) Watch, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, Nuclear Watch New Mexico (all three groups are our Alliance for Nuclear Accountability colleagues!), the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, and the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, have been nominated, for filing a National Environmental Policy Act lawsuit challenging the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) plan to produce 80 plutonium (Pu) cores, for new nuclear weapons, per year. A U.S. district court has ruled that NNSA violated the law by not properly considering alternatives. Unprecedented Pu "pit" production at SRS is part of a provocative $2 trillion U.S. nuclear arsenal "modernization" scheme...





SPEAK OUT!

Critical Palisades meeting January 14



A safety-critical public meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, January 14. Holtec is requesting permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do mere BAND-AID fixes on dangerously degraded steam generator tubes, and then to restart the supposedly closed for good, problem-plagued, more than half-century old Palisades atomic reactor in s.w. MI, which is unprecedented, unneeded, insanely expensive for the public, and extremely risky for health, safety, security, and the environment. Pre-register for the webinar, and/or take part via teleconference. See our sample talking points, to prepare your own verbal comments for the meeting. Study our environmental coalition's expert witness, Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds', insightful backgrounder. (Our initial "day in court" is scheduled for February 12.)




CISFs@SCOTUS

Deadlines Loom re: Dumps



Opponents against so-called "consolidated interim storage facilities " in the Permian Basin, for highly radioactive wastes, face imminent filing deadlines before the Supreme Court of the United States. Our strange bedfellows allies, the State of Texas, as well as Fasken Land and Minerals/Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners, will submit briefs by SCOTUS's January 15 deadline, opposing Interim Storage Partners' CISF in Andrews County, Texas, as well as Holtec's, just 40-some miles west, in southeast New Mexico. A week later, parties allied with Texas and Fasken against the dumps -- including Beyond Nuclear, Sierra Club, and a national grassroots environmental coalition -- must file their Friend of the Court briefs. Oral arguments are scheduled for March 5. SCOTUS will rule by July.





WEBINAR: EXPOSED

New book sheds light on radiation science



The Scientists Who Alerted Us to the Dangers of Radiation, a new book by Ian Fairlie and Beyond Nuclear's Cindy Folkers, will have its Canadian book launch and webinar, hosted by Canadian advocacy groups on Thursday, January 16 noon - 1 ET. Both authors will be present for discussion and questions. This book reveals that the harmful effects of radiation exposure are more pervasive and worse than thought; and that these impacts have been known or suspected for decades but suppressed by nuclear technology proponents. It explains radiation in easy-to-grasp language that clarifies its dangers and risks. Anyone who ever wondered about radiation should read the book and attend this webinar, especially with the current push for more nuclear power in the face of the climate crisis.

Yo,

Here's this weeks update from The Bulletin...Shorts only...Cut & paste...


*United States nuclear weapons, 2025

By Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight | January 13, 2025

The United States has embarked on a wide-ranging nuclear modernization program that will ultimately see every nuclear delivery system replaced with newer versions over the coming decades. In this issue of the Nuclear Notebook, we estimate that the United States maintains a stockpile of approximately 3,700 warheadsan unchanged estimate from the previous year. Of these, only about 1,770 warheads are deployed, while approximately 1,930 are held in reserve. Additionally, approximately 1,477 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement, giving a total inventory of approximately 5,177 nuclear warheads. Of the approximately 1,770 warheads that are deployed, 400 are on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, roughly 970 are on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 300 are at bomber bases in the United States, and approximately 100 tactical bombs are at European bases. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Information Project: director Hans M. Kristensen, associate director Matt Korda, and senior research associates Eliana Johns and Mackenzie Knight.

This article is freely available in PDF format in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists digital magazine (published by Taylor & Francis) at this link. To cite this article, please use the following citation, adapted to the appropriate citation style: Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight. 2025. United States nuclear weapons, 2025. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 81(1): 5379. DOI: doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2024.2441624




*Three nuclear policy challenges for the second Trump administration

By Stephen J. Cimbala, Lawrence J. Korb | January 16, 2025


The incoming Trump administration will have to deal with many challenges in domestic and foreign policy, including threats and dangers related to nuclear weapons, deterrence, and arms control. Three nuclear challenges will prove particularly difficult to address: Russias repeated threats of nuclear first use in Ukraine and their relationship to viable endgames for that conflict; Irans status as a threshold nuclear weapons state and its implications for regional stability; and the emergence of a Chinese nuclear superpower and its implications for global security.

The policies adopted and decisions made during the second Trump administration will involve the fate of the war in Europe, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and Chinas nuclear arsenal. If they incorporate military and diplomatic tools properly, those policies and decisions could open the door to a more peaceful and stable world. But in the absence of a balanced and thoughtful approach, the door may open wide to a world of continued war, nuclear weapons proliferation, and worldwide arms racing.




*Small and advanced nuclear reactors: Closing the fuel cycle?

By Claire Corkhill, Malcolm Joyce, Derek Lacey, Nigel Thrift | January 13, 2025


Undeniably, ambitions for a nuclear renaissance are thriving. The UK is building its first nuclear power station in 30 years, France plans a new fleet of 14 reactors and, in total worldwide, 100 new reactors are proposed. And it is not only energy firms who are leading the wayBig Tech companies, who require reliable low-carbon dioxide baseload electricity to provide for their energy-thirsty AI technologies and data storage, are supporting nuclear energy too. Microsofts Constellation Energy has suggested reopening the Three Mile Island power plant (Reuters 2024) in Pennsylvania, and Amazon recently purchased a nuclear-powered data center (Gardner 2024a).

But unlike Microsoft and Amazon, Google has agreed to buy power generated from a fleet of small modular nuclear reactors that are yet to leave the drawing board, by backing the start-up company Kairos Power and their conceptual molten salt reactor (Gardner 2024b). The primary driver for building small modular reactors like these is to avoid the cost over-runs and extended timescales that have plagued large conventional reactor construction, like the Flamanville light water reactor built and operated by Électricité de France, which was 12 years overdue and more than 10 billion euros (about $10.9 billion in US dollars) over budget. Moreover, the advent of Gen IV reactor designs, often termed advanced modular reactors, promises not only electricity generation but also hydrogen and heat, as well as medical isotope production.

Over 80 novel designs of small modular reactors and advanced modular reactors exist, with several under development by start-up and established nuclear technology providers (IAEA 2022). These designs, some of them revolutionary, tend to range in energy output from 30 megawatts of electricity (30 million watts of electricity, or 30 MWe) to 300 MWe. The vendors of these technologies have great ambitions...




*Risks of geologic disposal of weapons plutonium

By Cameron Tracy | January 13, 2025

The United States has a plutonium problem. This heavy metal, rarely found in nature but produced by nuclear reactors, is a primary ingredient of nuclear weaponry. A modern thermonuclear weapon, containing just a few kilograms of this material, could level much of a metropolitan area. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union produced enough plutonium to make tens of thousands of nuclear weapons (IPFM 2015). Both the United States and Russia, which inherited the Soviet nuclear weapons enterprise, have since declared large portions of their stockpiles to be excess: unnecessary for purposes of national defense. But after decades of effort and billions of dollars spent trying to dispose of this material, their weapons plutonium stockpiles remain undiminished (von Hippel and Takubo 2020).

The United States currently plans to bury about one third of this stockpile in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a geologic repository mined 650 meters below the surface of southeastern New Mexicos Delaware Basin (NASEM 2020). Preparation to dispose of this material is well underway, but key questions about this approach remain unresolved. Will the repository safely contain this radiotoxic material over the thousands of years for which it presents a threat to the environment? Can the repository be effectively secured against attempts to illicitly recover weaponizable material? Can all of this be accomplished on a realistic schedule and budget?




*Final thoughts: The fragile connection of safety and science in the geological disposal of radioactive waste

By Rodney C. Ewing, Bernd Grambow | January 13, 2025


. . . to shake all cares and business from our age/Conferring them on younger strengths, while we/Unburdened crawl toward death.

King Lear[1]



This presentation summarizes a series of reflections on the relation of science to safety in the geological disposal of radioactive waste. The first was presented at a conference Key Topics of Deep Geological Disposal, held in July 2022 in Cologne, Germany (Grambow and Ewing 2022), the second at the Migration conference in September 2023 in Nantes, France, and the third one was prepared for the Clay conference in November 2024 in Hanover, Germany, but was withdrawn after Rod Ewings passing in July 2024. The basic thesis of these presentations is that, despite decades of research at huge costs, the field of radioactive waste management and disposal has not, by and large, capitalized sufficiently on this research in the development of a basic understanding of the key issues that dominate the safety case.[2] As described by Grambow and Ewing (2022), there is a tension between the science of near-field processes and performance assessments of geologic repositories.[3] Here, we review spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste (HLW) glass, as these two waste forms have received considerable attention over the past decades.[4] Still, quantitative safety analyses have led some scientists and safety engineers to posit that the performance of these waste forms is of little consequence to the overall performance of a deep geological repository. To answer this position, we also discuss the role of redundancy in the multi-barrier concept of geological disposal.



What we have learned

The first issue is to answer the question of whether progress has been made in the understanding of the performance of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and HLW-glass in a geologic repository. The answer is emphatically: Yes! This is evident, for instance, when comparing the present state of knowledge with the review chapters on HLW-glass and spent nuclear fuel in Nuclear Waste Forms for the Future published in the late 1980s (Lutze and Ewing, 1988).

Nearly 40 years later, key advances in the understanding of spent fuel corrosion in a geological disposal environment include:

Quantification of the instant release fraction[5] for safety-relevant nuclides as a function of burnup (a way to measure how much uranium is burned in the reactor) and fuel type (Lemmens et al. 2017).
Recognition of the importance of reducing geochemical conditions.[6]
Understanding the role of hydrogen in assuring very low solubility of the fuel matrix in water; therefore, supporting the long-term stability of spent fuel in a repository (Carbol et al. 2009).
Recognition of the limited importance of temperature and hyperalkaline conditions (pH of 9 and above) on spent fuel performance (Lemmens et al. 2019).
Similarly, key advances in the understanding of HLW-glass performance include:

Identification of saturation effects in water of dissolved glass constituents and understanding of glass performance as a function of the geometry and water exchange rates in the disposal setting (Grambow 2006).
Ability to predict the formation of secondary phases[7] formed upon glass corrosion, fixing a large quantity of initially released and dissolved radionuclides.
Appreciation of the large differences in glass behavior for different glass compositions.
There was also considerable progress in the use of natural systems of geologic age to provide both quantitative data for long-term extrapolations of the behavior of waste forms in a geologic repository and qualitative data for the long-term safety case:

Assessment of the long-term performance of SNF and fission product release over billions of years using experimental results and observations from natural systems, such as the Oklo natural reactors in Gabon.
Confirmation of the low glass dissolution rates in confined spaces by comparing laboratory experiments with basaltic glasses formed in the ocean.

Yo,

More nuke-shyte to deal with folks ! Cut & paste from my mailbox, with a little editing for flow, yadda, yadda...( It seems that the nuke-industry has a plan to keep milking y'all of your money for at least another 15-years...Great ) !



NEW NRC CHAIR

Wright presided over 9+ billion debacle


Named by Trump, David Wright (pictured) is the new chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As Tom Clements of Savannah River Site Watch points out, Wright was a lead booster of the V.C. Summer 2 and 3 atomic reactor new builds, as chairman of the South Carolina Public Service Commission (PSC). Wright initially approved the scheme in 2009, and then voted for five rate hikes for the project, before leaving the PSC in 2013, when he became an NRC commissioner. The boondoggle collapsed in 2017, half built (although there is now talk of zombification). Unjustly, new Summer owner Dominion's ratepayers must pay more than 5% of their monthly electric bill for the cancelled reactors. This will continue for another 15 years!





ZOMBIE NUKE?!

Palisades ASLB hearings, 2/12


The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has ordered oral argument pre-hearings, beginning at 8:30am ET on February 12, regarding an environmental coalition's petition to intervene in opposition to Holtec's unprecedented, unneeded, dangerous, and costly restart of the closed Palisades atomic reactor on s.w. Michigan's Great Lakes shore. The coalition includes: Beyond Nuclear; Don't Waste MI; MI Safe Energy Future; Nuclear Energy Information Service; and Three Mile Island Alert. The hearing will be in person at NRC's HQ in Rockville, MD; a listen-only phone line will allow remote attendance. The coalition's legal counsel, Terry Lodge of Toledo and Wally Taylor of Iowa, have defended the intervention since filing it October 7.





CISFs@SCOTUS

Dump opponents file Amicus Briefs


By yesterday's deadline set by the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS), a diverse coalition of opponents to highly radioactive waste dumps targeting Texas and New Mexico filed Friend of the Court Briefs in the cases. These included: Beyond Nuclear; Don't Waste Michigan, et al. (a national grassroots environmental coalition); ten states (Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia); Fort Worth, Texas; a bipartisan, bicameral Texan congressional delegation; and others. These Amici Curiae support the State of TX, and Fasken Land and Minerals, in their resistance to both dumps. SCOTUS will hold oral argument beginning at 10am ET on Wednesday, March 5, and will likely rule by the end of June.

Yo,

Wait !!! Don't go to the can, until you've finished reading this below...It will help things flow better...



ZOMBIE NUKE?!

Legal resistance; bailouts in doubt


Beyond Nuclear and our allies have resisted the leading closed-reactor-restart, at Holtec's Palisades in Michigan, for nearly three years. Our environmental coalition has intervened against it, and will have a "day in court" at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in the near future. A listen-only call-in number will be provided. Meanwhile, more than $3 billion in federal and state bailouts already announced for the Palisades restart are now in doubt, since Trump has threatened to repeal and reverse them. Reportedly, Holtec paid a $5 million fine to avoid criminal indictment for fraud, in order to avoid losing out on the Palisades bailouts. Restarts at Duane Arnold and Three Mile Island are also being resisted.



CONCEALED TRUTHS

What nuclear proponents dont tell you


Beyond Nuclears Cindy Folkers, and Amanda Nichols, Ph.D. University of California Santa Barbaras Environmental Studies Program, have co-authored an article in The Hill, arguing that the harms of nuclear power well outweigh any perceived benefits. Arguments over radiations health impacts have been ongoing for more than 100 years, during which more danger, not less, has been revealed. But this knowledge is again being memory-holed. Of all the dangers of reckless nuclear boosterism, the most insidious is disinformation concealing and denying nuclears past, present and future harms while wildly exaggerating its benefits. These are the perennial tactics of the nuclear industry. They litter its history, and theyre again getting traction today.



TONIGHT: WEAPONS WORKSHOP

Expansion of LANL weapons program


Nuclear Watch New Mexico is hosting this workshop to engage the public in the review process of the Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). With LANL expanding its nuclear weapons programsdespite a history of environmental contamination and nuclear safety issuesthe SWEIS represents a vital opportunity for the public to demand transparency, accountability, and environmental justice. Key issues include: expanded plutonium pit bomb core production, proposed BioSafety Level-3 facility, tritium releases, new transmission line across Caja del Rio, nuclear waste cleanup. This workshop will include presentations on these issues and more, followed by ample time for Q&A.



IN MEMORIAM

Remembering departed colleagues


Three anti-nuclear colleagues have passed on in recent weeks. Judith Mohling, of Colorado, died January 12 at age 87. She was a watchdog on the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility for decades, and helped shut it down. She served at Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center and Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. Julie Weatherington-Rice, of Ohio, passed on January 26 at 76. She was a geologist, and served as expert witness for Ohio Nuclear-Free Network against the Perry atomic reactor's license extension. Francis Boyle, of Illinois, passed at 74 on January 30. He was an anti-nuclear weapons legal scholar, who testified against plutonium Mixed Oxide reactor fuel, and in defense of civil disobedience activists facing trial.

SELLC wrote:

---

Imma put this "nuke" under your ass right now Rastus...

Count on it pal.

---

 

 

Yo,

Such is life...And here's the summary of this great disappointment...

 

I can, I can, I can...

Yo,

It appears that Mr.Trumpdt is working hard for the Nuke industry, so perhaps not all the election funding & advertising stemmed from Elon lol...Make sure the can is loaded with toilet paper yo !





TRUMP CUTS NEPA

Eye on the NRC


The February 25, 2025 Federal Register officially announced that the Trump White Houses Council on Environmental Quality has set out to gut decades of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) case law. The Federal Register Notice starts out, The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is issuing this interim final rule to remove the existing implementing regulations for the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq., as amended (NEPA), in response to Executive Order (E.O.) 14154, Unleashing American Energy. Amongst the independent federal agencies being bandied around that Trump wants to tuck under his wing, is the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But NRC, as an acronym, has always been synonymous with nuclear regulatory capture since its 1975 inception.




NRC RELICENSING IS ILLEGAL

Ignoring adequate protection


In February 2025, Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club filed two legal actions challenging relicensing decisions by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that extend U.S. reactor operations beyond 60 years to 80 years. The NRC's license renewals are relying on faulty analyses of the environmental impacts for extreme reactor operations that are irrational, unreasonable, incomplete, unsupported, arbitrary and capricious. In the process, NRC has failed to satisfy protection requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act to take a hard look at operational aging on reactor safety margins over extreme license renewal periods. Of accelerating concern, NRCs environmental impact statements ignore climate change impacts as the risk of severe accidents increase with the frequency of more severe storms, floods and wildfires.




DEFEND EJ!

Double donations, stop dumps!


Thanks to very generous donors, we have recently raised $3,500 in matching funds for legal work to block two high-level radioactive waste dumps in the Southwest, Interim Storage Partners' in Texas, and Holtec's in New Mexico. Please donate today and your gift will be doubled. All online donations in February and March will contribute to this campaign. (If you would rather send a check, please write Stop the dumps on the notation line and send it to the address below.) Oral arguments at the Supreme Court of the U.S. are scheduled for March 5th. Your support will enable us to pay our topnotch legal counsel, who have already been challenging these illegal schemes on our behalf for nearly a decade.




WATCH HEALTH BRIEFING

What nuclear proponents won't tell you


Gender + Radiation Impact Project hosted a briefing featuring leading experts on the impacts of radiation from nuclear technologies. Cindy Folkers, author and radiation and health hazard specialist at Beyond Nuclear, and Amanda M. Nichols, Ph.D., author and Managing Editor of the peer-reviewed Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, spoke and answered questions about the current state of science concerning harmful impacts of the nuclear energy and weapons industries. Both have recently co-authored the oped They wont tell you these truths about nuclear energy in The Hill. Mary Olson, author and co-founder of the Gender + Radiation Impact Project, moderated.

-- Edited by Rastus on Thursday 27th of February 2025 04:54:41 PM