Nukewatch

Working for a nuclear-free future since 1979

  • Issues
    • Weekly Column
    • Depleted Uranium
    • Direct Action
    • Lake Superior Barrels
    • Environmental Justice
    • North Korea
    • Nuclear Power
      • Chernobyl
      • Fukushima
    • Nuclear Weapons
    • On The Bright Side
    • Radiation Exposure
    • Radioactive Waste
    • Renewable Energy
    • Uranium Mining
  • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Newsletter Archives
    • Mailing List Sign-Up
  • Resources
    • Nuclear Heartland Book
    • Fact Sheets
    • Reports, Studies & Publications
      • The New Nuclear Weapons: $1.74 Trillion for H-bomb Profiteers and Fake Cleanups
      • Nuclear Power: Dead In the Water It Poisoned
      • Thorium Fuel’s Advantages as Mythical as Thor
      • Greenpeace on Fukushima 2016
      • Drinking Water at Risk: Toxic Military Wastes Haunt Lake Superior
    • New Page! Nukewatch in the News
    • Links
    • Videos
  • About
    • About Nukewatch
    • Contact Us
  • Get Involved
    • Action Alerts!
    • Calendar
    • Workshops
  • Donate

December 28, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Scholar: “Freeze-for-Freeze” a Solution for Korea US “Dotard,” “Moron” President Threatens Mass Destruction

Mass fires caused by nuclear weapons would dwarf the deadly fires that hit California this year.

Editor’s note: Korea scholar Bruce Cumings teaches at the University of Chicago and is the author, most recently of, The Korean War: A History. Professor Cumings was interviewed on Democracy Now November 10. A partial transcript of his remarks follows.

Bruce Cumings: “Pyeongtaek, South Korea is the largest military base in the world outside the United States. The US has operational control over 650 thousand South Korean soldiers. Yet National Security Council head General McMaster chided South Korea for ‘not protecting its sovereignty’ over a deal South Korea made with China” just before Trump’s arrival.

“In what is likely the most important event of Trump’s Asia junket, China and South Korea agreed that there would be no more anti-missile batteries installed in South Korea. And South Korean president Moon Jae-in said explicitly that he would not join an alliance of the US and Japan, whether it’s targeted at China or anywhere else. [President Moon] pointedly said ‘the US is an ally,’ (we have a mutual defense treaty with Korea) ‘Japan is not an ally.’

“He or his staff brought a ‘comfort woman,’ 88 years old, in other words a sex slave of the Japanese Army, to meet with Trump when he was in South Korea. The Japanese weren’t too happy with that.

“But it’s absolutely ridiculous that the US keeps trying to knock together a tripartite alliance between Japan, South Korea and the US, when relations between Korea and Japan are still as bad as they are and Japan has never really issued a proper apology for putting more than 100,000 Korean women into sex slavery….

“There’s no military solution in North Korea. What would solve the problem … is for the US to agree to freeze its own huge military exercises in South Korea, in return for a freeze on North Korean testing of its missiles and atomic bombs. This is a so-called ‘freeze for freeze’ proposal that, for example, former Secretary of Defense William Perry supports. [China and Russia have jointly proposed such a freeze.]

“It’s not clear that North Korea supports it, but we haven’t tried. Then, once that freeze is in place, to open diplomatic relations with North Korea.

“Diplomacy is not something you do among friends. Diplomacy arose in world history to deal with enemies. We’ve had no diplomatic relations with North Korea for 72 years, and it hasn’t hurt them any more than the sanctions. … If the US sent an ambassador to Pyongyang it could finally gain some influence over the regime. North Korea has wanted diplomatic relations for 25 years.

“North Korea is building toward an end-point that is coming soon. This is a clear signal that North Korea would like to begin diplomatic relations. Its last [bomb] test was Sept. 15.

“When you put these relatively modest steps alongside the catastrophic nature of a new war in Korea, it seems to me the overwhelming choice.”

*************

In an address to the UN General Assembly Sept. 19, Trump issued a bald threat to “totally destroy” North Korea, a nation of 25 million people. The obscenity drew audible gasps from UN delegates. Elsewhere, Trump has raged about being “locked and loaded” and bringing US “fire and fury” against the North.

In the same speech Trump sounded like critics of his own White House, warning “If the righteous many don’t confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph.”

In response to his UN harangue, North Korean President Kim Jong-un said Mr. Trump was a “mentally deranged US dotard.” Christopher Hill, a former ambassador to South Korea told The New York Times, “The comments give the world the sense that [Trump] is increasingly unhinged and unreliable.” One month earlier, after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon where Trump called for a tenfold increase in US nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a “fucking moron,” NBC News reported.

In November, the dotard reversed himself while visiting South Korea, saying it would be in the North’s interest to “come to the table and make a deal.” Any US attack on the North would endanger millions of South Koreans, 38,000 US military, and 57,000 Japanese citizens living there.

To most observers, it is absurd to believe that the North would fire a nuclear weapon at the US without first being attacked. “The view that North Korea would start war to communize Korea [as some in the White House believe] doesn’t make sense anymore,” Kim Yong-hyun, at Dong-guk University in Seoul told the press, “North Korea knows that if it ever uses a nuclear weapon, it means self-destruction.”

North Korea believes that giving up its nuclear weapons would invite a US invasion, like the unprovoked US attacks on Iraq and Libya after they eliminated their warheads. Even National Intelligence Director James Clapper said last year that the North thinks its nuclear weapons are “their ticket to survival.”

Acronyms: ALCM: air-launched cruise missile; ICBM: intercontinental ballistic missile; LGM: silo-launched ground-attack missile; MIRV: multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle; UGM: underwater launched ground-attack missile.
a) This Notebook lists total warheads available.
b) Roughly 200 of these are deployed on 200 Minuteman III missiles equipped with the Mk12A [warhead]. The rest are in central storage.
c) The W87 was initially deployed on the MX missile in 1986 but transferred to the Minuteman in 2006.
d) There are a total of 540 W87s in the stockpile. The 200 Mk21-equipped ICBMs can each carry one W87. The remaining 320 W87s are in storage.
e) Of these ICBM warheads, 400 are deployed on operational missiles and the rest are in long-term storage.
f) The Navy is reducing the number of missile tubes on each nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) from 24 to 20. As of early 2017, the force included 10 SSBNs with 20 tubes each and two SSBNs with 24 tubes each, for a total of 12 deployable submarines. Two additional submarines, each still with 24 missile tubes, are in refueling overhaul. They are not available for deployment and not assigned nuclear weapons.
g) All W76-0 warheads have been replaced on SSBNs by W76-1 warheads but several hundred are still in storage and more have been retired. When the W76-1 use-extension program production is completed in FY 2019, the remaining W76-0 warheads will be scrapped.
h) Of these submarine warheads, approximately 890 are deployed on missiles loaded in SSBN launchers.
i) The first figure is the aircraft inventory, including those used for training, testing, and backup; the second is the portion of the primary-mission aircraft inventory estimated to be tasked for nuclear [war planning]. As of September 2016, nuclear-[armed] bombers counted under New START included roughly 70 B-52s and 20 B-2s.
j) Of these bomber weapons, only about 300 are deployed at bomber bases. This includes an estimated 200 ALCMs at Minot Air Force Base, ND, and approximately 100 bombs at Whiteman Air Force Base, MO. The remaining 738 weapons are in long-term storage. B-52s are no longer tasked to deliver gravity bombs.
k) Roughly 150 B61-3 and -4 bombs are deployed in five European countries and the rest are in central storage in the United States.
l) This includes 4,322 warheads for the operational forces (listed above) plus roughly 160 spare warheads (part of the reserve).
m) Deployed warheads include approximately 1,290 on ballistic missiles (400 on ICBMs and 890 on submarine missiles), 300 weapons at heavy bomber bases, and 150 midrange B61 gravity bombs deployed across five European countries. Another 320 bombs are in storage in the United States, for a total estimated inventory of 500 B61s.
* The bomb used by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945 was about 15 kilotons.
** The B83 is a 1,000 kiloton (1 “megaton”) bomb, 66 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter

December 28, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nuclear Shorts

US EPA Says Higher Radiation Levels Pose ‘No Harmful Health Effect’

In the event of a radioactive dirty bomb or a reactor disaster in the United States, emergency responders can safely tolerate radiation levels equivalent to thousands of chest X-rays, the Environmental Protection Agency said in new guidelines that ease off on established safety levels. The EPA’s determination sets a level 10 times the drinking water standard for radiation recommended under President Barack Obama. It could lead to the Trump Administration weakening radiation exposure rules, say watchdog groups critical of the move. —Ari Natter, Bloomberg.com, Oct. 16, 2017

Republican Chair of US Radiation Watchdog Agency Secretly Urges its Abolition

The chairman of a panel charged with protecting workers at nuclear weapons facilities as well as nearby communities has told the White House he favors downsizing or abolishing the group, despite recent radiation and workplace safety problems that injured or endangered people at the sites it helps oversee.

Republican appointee Sean Sullivan, a former Navy submarine officer, told the director of the Office of Management and Budget in a private letter that closing or shrinking the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board he chairs is consistent with President Trump’s ambition to cut the size of the federal workforce, according to a copy of Sullivan’s letter. It was written in June and obtained recently by the Center for Public Integrity. —Patrick Malonee and R. Jeffrey Smithe, Center for Public Integrity, Oct. 19, 2017

German Greens Want Last US Nuclear Weapons Ousted

The German Green Party wants the next coalition government to push for the removal of all nuclear warheads stationed in Germany, a document seen Nov. 15 by Reuters showed. The discussion paper on military and foreign policy did not mention the United States, which is believed to have 20 nuclear warheads at a military base in Büchel in western Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, is trying to secure a fourth term through an unlikely coalition with the ecologist Greens and pro-business Free Democrats after her conservative bloc lost support to the far-right in an election in September. During the campaign last summer both the Social Democrat candidate for Chancellor, Martin Schulz and Germany’s current Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, called for the removal of US nuclear weapons.
“Within NATO, we want to ensure that the remaining nuclear weapons in Germany are withdrawn and we want to suspend the modernization programme,” read a section in the document stating the Green Party’s position. —Reuters, Nov. 15, 2017

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, US Bombs Out of Germany

December 28, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Plume of Radiation Douses Europe Again

Ruthenium-106 Persists in the Environment for 10 years

Russia Denies Responsibility for Major Release Recorded in 43 Countries

By Bonnie Urfer

Sometime in the last week of September, somewhere south of the Ural Mountains, 1,000 miles east of Moscow near Mayak, Russia, something happened that sent a plume of radioactive ruthenium-106 across Europe. Detectors in France showed the radiation between September 27 and October 13. Italy picked it up on Sept. 29. In all, according the International Atomic Energy Agency, the release affected 43 countries, including Russia. Production of ruthenium-106 occurs in the core of a nuclear reactor or during reprocessing of used reactor fuel. In response to the unclaimed, yet significant release, an independent commission of scientists from Russia and Europe hopes to pinpoint the source of the contamination, their greatest fears being additional accidents or releases from the unidentified source.

A map from the French agency IRSN identified, on the basis of the model-measurement comparison, the most plausible release zone. The mesaurements suggest that the release came from the near the border of Russia and Kazakhstan.

Bellona, the international environmental NGO based in Oslo, reported Nov. 27: “Since late September, it’s become clear that a huge release of the radioactive isotope ruthenium-106 took place at the Mayak Chemical Combine, Russia’s notorious and sprawling nuclear fuel reprocessing complex located near Chelyabinsk in the southern Ural Mountains. … But you won’t be hearing that from the Russians,” because they are busy denying or criticizing reports of the plume, and floating alternative theories.

Moscow’s history of denials, including waiting 30 years to admit the 1957 Mayak, Kyshtym nuclear fuel explosion that released 50-100 tons of high-level radioactive waste to the environment, its delay in admitting a Chernobyl reactor had exploded in 1986, and more recently, an iodine-131 plume detected in July of 2017, make today’s disavows worthless.

Since the only origin of ruthenium-106 is a nuclear reactor, and because monitors detected no other isotopes, the search narrows to several possibilities near the Russia/Kazakhstan border: a facility that either separates the isotope from a “bouquet” of others produced in a reactor; a factory that uses it to produce medical isotopes for cancer and tumor treatment; the Mayak facility itself during “vitrification” or processing of waste fuel; or a road accident involving transport of the radioactive material. Another possibility is a metal smelting mishap like happened in Spain in May 1998. The metal recycling company Acerinox melted scrap containing cesium-137, and detectors in Switzerland alerted authorities to the cesium plume that doused much of Western Europe then.

Russia denies culpability although officials there monitored the spread of the radiation and admitted something happened. Some 368 confirmations recorded the plume in Europe. A spokesperson with Russia’s nuclear entity, Rosatom, claims the level of contamination registers 20,000 times less than the allowed annual dose. “Allowed dose” sounds harmless, cumulative exposure over a lifetime increases the risks of cancer. Russia, as reported in the New York Times on Nov. 15, said, “One of the countries in the eastern part of the European Union was more likely to be the source, according to Rosatom, due to the high radiation levels over Italy, Romania and Ukraine.”

Ruthenium-106 has a half-life of 373.6 days, meaning that after one year half will have decayed (to rhodium-106) and half remains. Radioactive elements remain in the environment and the food chain for the 10 half-lives it takes to decay away.
“Ruthenium compounds should be regarded as highly toxic and as carcinogenic,” says the Royal Society of Chemistry. News organizations reporting on the contamination uniformly failed to inform the public that this dispersal adds to the radioactivity that carpeted Europe when Chernobyl burned for 40 days in 1986. Not a single story we reviewed noted that, as with all radioactive substances, 10 half-lives are needed for the ruthenium to decay away. In addition, ruthenium is a beta particle emitter, and beta radiation does the greatest damage when inhaled or ingested. In the body, ruthenium goes to the bone.

The radiation present in the village of Argayash in the Chelyabinsk region, measured nearly 1,000 times higher than normal. France’s Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) reported the contamination “major.” Russia monitored ruthenium-106 above the southern Ural Mountains in September. Nice, in southern France, experienced the worst concentrations of the isotopes between Oct. 2 and 9. The IRSN’s report of Oct. 9 says that if the accident had happened in France, people for miles around would have been evacuated and warned.

Director for health at IRSN, Jean-Christophe Gariel told National Public Radio that the matter might be referred to the United Nations. In spite of the alarm, the press repeated the standard nuclear mantra, “No danger to the public.”
The New York Times reported that “German and French nuclear security agencies concluded that the pollution had not threatened the health of Europeans or the environment in which they live.” Germany’s radiation agency commented, “You could inhale from that country’s Ruthenium cloud for a straight week and still have breathed in no more radiation than you naturally do in an hour.” Time magazine claimed on Nov. 10, that “The cloud was harmless and has dissipated.” Deutsche Welle reported on Oct. 5 that “Officials say there is no risk to human health whatsoever” and assured readers that ruthenium is one of the safer isotopes.

The radioactive plume began dissipating in the first week of October, and by the 13th the IRSN declared the air clear. Random testing of mushrooms and milk may take place although the agency says contamination of food from the dispersal is “unlikely” and export of food from the area is scarce so deems food monitoring unnecessary.

The story continues as the Russian/European scientific commission gets to work. Environmental groups have demanded a full investigation, an end to waste fuel reprocessing, and the phase-out of power reactor operations that produce the waste.

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure

December 28, 2017 by Nukewatch 2 Comments

Wind Power Blows Away Nuclear

Electric power generated in 2017 by wind turbines in Germany exceeded the amount from hard coal and nuclear reactors for the first time, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems reports. Wind power in Germany has an installed capacity of about 54 gigawatts, outstripping all other main sources of electric power. On Nov. 23, about 46% of Germany’s electrical generation came from wind farms, according to WindEurope.org.

The financial firm Lazard reports that the life-cycle cost of nuclear power ranges from $112 to $183 per megawatt hour, while wind power ranges from $30 to $60. And the cost of utility-scale solar photovoltaic generation is $43 to $53 per megawatt hour. Adding storage, solar photovoltaic comes in at $82 per megawatt hour, down from $92 just a year ago.

— Brian Parkin, Bloomberg, Nov. 24, 2017; Philip Warburg, Institute for Sustainable Energy, Boston University.

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

December 28, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Elected Officials Slam Canadian Radioactive Waste Dump Plan

More than 100 Great Lakes mayors and elected officials want the Canadian government to say ‘No’ to a plan to bury radioactive waste within one mile of Lake Huron at the Bruce Nuclear station in Kincardine, Ontario.
The officials from both sides of the US-Canadian border slammed Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) plan in a Nov. 30, 2017 letter to Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna. McKenna has twice pushed back against OPG’s proposal, demanding extensive and more detailed answers to questions about the advisability of the near-lake location.

The open letter from mayors said OPG’s proposal to bury the waste so near Lake Huron “threatens the water supply of 40 million people” and notes that 230 resolutions having been passed by local, county and state governments representing over 23 million people opposing the construction of the dump.

Traverse City, Michigan Mayor Jim Carruthers who signed the letter, told Michigan Public Radio, “We know that there are other available sites in Canada that could house this kind of waste that are not so close…. That’s why I speak out for our environment and for our fresh water.”

The letter to McKenna is the latest in a series of efforts to oppose OPG’s plan by citizen groups and more than 200 local governments on both sides of the border in the Great Lakes area. Forty-six of the 104 signers of the letter were Michigan elected officials.

The letter said in part, “We find it irresponsible and deeply troubling that OPG failed and continues to refuse to investigate any other actual sites for its proposed nuclear waste repository despite being required to do so under regulatory guidelines and further as required by you in your Feb. 18, 2016, request.”

—Michigan Public Radio; and “Open Letter,” from 104 mayors to Minister McKenna, Port Huron, MI Times Herald, Nov. 30, 2017

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • …
  • 29
  • Next Page »

Stay Connected

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Subscribe

Donate

Facebook

Facebook By Weblizar Powered By Weblizar

Categories

  • Chernobyl
  • Depleted Uranium
  • Direct Action
  • Environment
  • Environmental Justice
  • Fukushima
  • Lake Superior Barrels
  • Military spending
  • Newsletter Archives
  • North Korea
  • Nuclear Power
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Office News
  • On The Bright Side
  • Photo Gallery
  • Quarterly Newsletter
  • Radiation Exposure
  • Radioactive Waste
  • Renewable Energy
  • Sulfide Mining
  • Through the Prism of Nonviolence
  • Uncategorized
  • Uranium Mining
  • US Bombs Out of Germany
  • War
  • Weekly Column

Contact Us

(715) 472-4185
nukewatch1@lakeland.ws

Address:
740A Round Lake Road
Luck, Wisconsin 54853
USA

Donate To Nukewatch

News & Information on Nuclear Weapons,
Power, Waste & Nonviolent Resistance

Stay Connected

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

© 2019 · Nukewatch