The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported earlier this year that radioactive contamination in the Marshall Islands, Greenland, and Spain could be disturbed or unearthed as a result of climate change. In the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. tested 67 nuclear weapons, rising sea levels may flood the Runit Dome, where U.S. troops buried 3.1 million cubic feet of radioactive material in a crater left by one of 11 bomb tests done on the island, covering it with a cement lid. Congress ordered a remediation plan for the cracking cement dome — now threatened by rising sea levels — which was never produced. In Greenland, radioactive, chemical, and human waste, including polychlorinated biphenyls, were buried in the ice at Camp Century U.S. military base. The camp itself was a series of 21 tunnels carved into the ice and was powered by a nuclear reactor. As Arctic ice sheets melt, this contamination could enter the oceans, the water cycle, and the food chain.
— ZME Science, July 16; Grist, Feb. 26, 2024
Solar Power Leaving Nuclear in the Dust
Nuclear power makes up an ever-shrinking portion of global power generation, despite claims from COP 28 and corporate and tech giants pushing a nuclear “renaissance” as the “energy wave of the future.” In contrast, in its June 22 solar special issue, The Economist reported that solar power is on track to outpace all other sources of electricity globally in the next decade. According to a July article in The Conversation, “installed solar capacity is doubling every three years, meaning it has grown tenfold in the past ten years,” and, “the next tenfold increase will be the equivalent of multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight, in less time than it usually takes to build one of them.”
Twenty years ago, it took a year to install a single gigawatt of solar capacity, and this year, it is predicted that global solar capacity will expand by one gigawatt a day. One of the biggest challenges facing solar is battery production, which requires critical minerals lithium, nickel, and cobalt. These minerals are environmentally harmful to mine and sourcing is often rife with human rights abuses and unjust economic boon for countries where this mining takes place. But the efficiency of batteries has increased dramatically in the last thirty years, and with improvements to the technology it becomes more practical to implement storage for solar energy. According to the International Energy Agency, global renewable energy capacity will need to triple in the next five years to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
— The Conversation, July 4; The Economist, June 22, 2024
Weapons Giants Manufacture China Nuclear Threat
Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and other war profiteers behind China bashing and out-of-control nuclear weapons budget
Opinion by Alex Lo, in Toronto, Ontario. Originally for the South China Morning Post, this version has been edited by Nukewatch.
There is threat inflation, and then there is threat hyperinflation. The U.S. under Joe Biden has gone full throttle with the latter over China and the nuclear threat.
It seems that the unquestioned “China threat,” even backed with nuclear weapons, is not enough in itself to scare the U.S. public into acquiescence. The myth now has to be [coupled] with a “coordinated” nuclear attack threat by Russia and North Korea. Seriously.
A front-page story in the New York Times and duly — and uncritically — used by other major news outlets, reported on an “updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance [to] deter Russia, the PRC [China], and North Korea simultaneously.”
“President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan … that, for the first time, reorients [U.S.] deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal,” it said. “The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade. [The] revised strategy, called the ‘Nuclear Employment Guidance,’ seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia, and North Korea,” the Times said.
Questions? How likely is it these three countries will coordinate a nuclear attack knowing full well it would mean retaliatory annihilation for themselves? Even dictators are concerned with self-preservation. Will China want to tie its own “no first use” nuclear weapons pledge (and its own survival) to what happens in Moscow or Pyongyang?
It is at least conceivable that out of desperation, Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un could “go nuclear” in a Hitler-style Götterdämmerung. But should that ever happen, the first thing the Chinese would do is run for cover, not join them!
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the currently deployable U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile is roughly nine times as large as China’s, and the Pentagon budget is three times what Beijing spends on its military. So, given the sheer implausibility of this “coordinated nuclear attack” scenario, why is the U.S. under Biden committing to the new nuclear attack program?
It makes no sense in terms of deterrence. The U.S. has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, enough to annihilate life on Earth multiple times. However, it makes sense if you want to increase military spending, and take the Pentagon’s world-destroying capability to an even more cosmic level. But why? Well, follow the money.
Sharon Weiner, an Associate Professor of International Relations at American University, and author of Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise, wrote in Scientific American in May: “Unfortunately, that [bipartisan] consensus seems to extend to turning a blind eye to the exploding costs, which helps explain why the original $1 trillion [nuclear] modernization program proposed in 2010 today has a price tag approaching $2 trillion. That estimate is likely to escalate even further by 2050 — the supposed end date for modernization.”
Escalating costs from the supply-side economics of the military-industrial complex demands a growing threat, otherwise the spending could face Congressional challenges and could be scaled back or cancelled.
According to the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the U.S. arms industry has between 800 and 1,000 lobbyists working in Washington. “Most of those lobbyists … come through the ‘revolving door’ from careers in the Pentagon, Congress, or the Executive Branch,” it said. The ongoing so-called “modernization” of the nuclear arsenal refers to production of a new generation of missiles, bombers, submarines, warheads and the arsenal’s whole manufacturing base. It’s this rebuild program that’s projected to cost at least $1.7 trillion. And the tax monies are going to the world’s biggest arms producers — Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.
These corporate war profiteers, not China, are the real reason the U.S. intends to spend $2 trillion or more on nuclear weapons.
Opinion: Unfriendly Fire in Arms-Flooded Ukraine War Zone
By John LaForge
Giant military contractors might be just too big when their own weapons so overcrowd a war zone that their own missiles shoot down their own fighter jets.
This could be what happened in Ukraine in August, when a Lockheed Martin F-16 jet fighter, piloted by Ukrainian Lt. Col. Oleksiy Mes, was most likely shot down by a Patriot air-defense missile. Six of Lockheed Martin’s F-16s were delivered to Ukraine in August. An undisclosed number of Patriot missile systems arrived there earlier, from a General Dynamics program which was bought by Lockheed Martin in 1993.
The deputy head of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense committee, Mariana Bezuhla, made the allegation of so-called “friendly fire” and demanded consequences for parties responsible for the blunder. According to the Associated Press, Ukraine’s Air Force has not directly denied that the F-16 was hit by a Patriot missile. Four days after the crash President Zelenskyy fired the head of Ukraine’s Air Force, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, who had accused Bezuhla of illegally “discrediting U.S. arms manufacturers.” The gall!
Lockheed Martin is the $137-billion global weapons giant, with 115,000 employees, that sells — to willing buyers — anywhere all manner of war machines, from jet fighters to missiles, from helicopter gun systems, to rocket motors.
One Lockheed program making a real killing today is the F-35 jet fighter, now being sold all over the world.
Of course, Lockheed’s crash- and accident-prone F-35 is notoriously faulty. The jet’s 13 major crashes or disappearances over the last ten years hint at a shaky future performance in war. Lockheed Martin currently has around 100 F-35s in stock because they are not being delivered due to various technical problems and software modifications.
Lockheed boasts that by the 2030s, over 600 of its F-35s will be operating in ten European NATO states, the better to gear-up for permanent war with Russia.
Four NATO countries that now station U.S. hydrogen bombs at their air bases — Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Holland — are purchasing F-35s by the dozens.
The F-35s are being built to carry the Pentagon’s newest nuclear weapon, the B61-12 air-drop H-bomb. On March 8, 2024, the company declared the F-35A had officially been “certified” to carry the B61-12. These new thermonuclear weapons are set to be delivered to the allied NATO bases this year or in 2025, replacing the B61s already deployed there.
So, the Russians can sleep a little less easily as the newest U.S. fighter jets, carrying the newest U.S. air-drop nuclear bombs, will be ready and purposed for incinerating their cities on orders from the U.S. president. The F-35s are the first ever stealth (radar-evading) warplane certified to carry nuclear weapons.
Beyond the Pentagon’s “nuclear sharing” NATO partners, the F-35s are being peddled to other compliant militaries including those of Greece, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Singapore, South Korea, Israel, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Canada, and Japan.
With the Pentagon itself buying 1,855 F-35s, and nineteen other air forces in line for their share, a rough calculation is that Lockheed will sell 3,615 of the $110-million jets, pocketing at least $433 billion.
Starting last year, the U.S. deployed several of the nuclear-capable F-35s to the eastern borders of NATO, operating from Estonia, Lithuania, and Romania. The Royal Netherlands Air Force has trained to carry the U.S. B61 nuclear bombs for decades. Since the start of the Ukraine war, the Dutch have twice deployed their newly purchased F-35s in shows of force against Moscow, first to Poland which borders Russia, and later to Bulgaria.
In 2024, Lockheed Martin spent $6,434,005 on lobbying Congressional offices in Washington. On September 19, Lockheed sponsored the “Future of Defense Summit,” on Capitol Hill “to discuss how to build a more advanced defense industry and enhance deterrence.”
This bribery and lying in support of gargantuan military spending only leads to crimes of war or self-inflicted fatalities like Lockheed’s likely shoot-down of its own jet. Although it sells in Congress, Lockheed’s nuclear weapons systems and the means of delivering them are not for defense. They only produce billions in profits at the expense of the world’s crying need for basic necessities.
With the colossal volume of U.S.-made jets, tanks, bombs, missiles, helicopters, artillery, and intelligence programs being sold, traded, or gifted all over the world, it was inevitable that the empire’s guns would eventually be fired against itself — intentionally or by accident. If the Ukrainian F-16 crash and the death of Col. Mes is not to be repeated endlessly, and if accidental nuclear detonations are to be avoided, the United States will have to be forced to end its weaponization of international conflict, and to replace its militarized foreign policy with a diplomatic one.
Fukushima: Stumbling Through Deconstruction of Reactor Meltdowns
By John LaForge, Z Network. Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.
Melted fuel still vexing test extraction methods
Thirteen years on from the catastrophic triple explosions and reactor meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi in NE Japan, emergency responders are still trying to observe and examine the melted fuel under the reactors (sometimes called “corium”). Contractors from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) have repeatedly failed in attempts to robotically collect a mere three-grams (one 10th of an ounce) of the corium from reactor 2, a project that started three years ago.
The company Amentum [1] working for Mitzubishi Heavy Industries, has built some robotic machinery to try and retrieve a smidgeon of corium to find out what state the meltdown is in [2] because, as National Public Radio reported, “the exact nature of the debris is currently unknown.” [3]
Amentum is trying to build an extraction tool that can function in a radiation zone so fierce that it wrecks most machinery. A 2015 attempt to look inside Unit 1 with a device built by Hitachi-GE Nuclear failed after three hours.[4] Amentum’s first attempt in reactor 2 was stalled August 22 after the long pipe system was found to have been mis-assembled. Then Sept. 18, video problems halted the second try. The AP reported that the probe is “maneuvered remotely by operators at another building because of the fatally high radiation emitted by the melted debris.” [5]
Still, teams of workers have to do15-minute rotating shifts — to limit their exposure to the wreckage’s radioactivity level — preparing the probe for another attempt. Industry slang for the team members is “sponges.” Recovering a mere 3 grams is scheduled to take two weeks because the slow-moving robotic plucker tends to get stuck in the tangled debris and takes a tortured path past meltdown-produced obstacles.
The mission of the 3-gram retrieval program is to determine whether if it’s possible to eventually retrieve and containerize all 880 metric tonnes — 300 tonnes per reactor — of what the Associated Press called “fatally radioactive” wreckage, to keep it out of the environment for eons. Some critics have said decommissioning the whole site could take 100 years.
The idea of covering the whole radioactive malignancy with a roof — like the shed that was installed over the Chernobyl reactor site — is unpopular because of the area’s continuous earthquake activity and the risk of another major quake and tsunami.
Plutonium on the Wind
Nuclear reactors at Fukushima and everywhere smash apart uranium atoms creating a lot of heat to boil water. This atom smashing inside reactors produces radioactive poisons like cesium, iodine, strontium and dozens of others — including plutonium. In addition to this reactor-borne plutonium at Fukushima, about 6% of the fuel in reactor No. 3 was made of plutonium itself. [6]
Some of this plutonium from inside the three destroyed reactors was released to the environment by the meltdowns and explosions of March 2011. On Nov. 15, 2020, the Journal Science of the Total Environment published the report, “Particulate plutonium released from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns” noting that plutonium-239 was dispersed widely disaster.[7]
Plutonium, the most toxic substance known to science, was dispersed “up to 230 km away” (142 miles) from the reactor site, the researchers found.
Long-distance dispersion of plutonium was the result of micro-particles being blown by the wind. Five isotopes of plutonium were released including Pu-238, -239, -240, -241, and -242. Some plutonium persists environmentally and contaminates the food chain for 240,000 years.
In 2023, the journal Chemosphere reported a study’s findings of large amounts of highly radioactive cesium-rich micro-particles (CsMPs) in an abandoned school building close to the Fukushima Daiichi site. [8]
Plumes of the microparticles penetrated the building during the meltdowns of March 2011. Phys.org reports that the contamination poses “a threat to human health if inhaled. The study shows that indoor CsMPs should be considered in safety assessments and in building clean-up efforts.”
Long-term Effects of Dumping Unknown, Scientist Warns
Japan hosted the 10th Pacific Island Leaders Meeting in Tokyo last July, which was attended by most leaders of the18-member Pacific Islands Forum.
A hot topic was Japan’s dumping of tens of thousands of tons of contaminated Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. The dumping was protested by Pacific rim countries and many, including China and Russia have banned imports of seafood products from the region’s waters. Some 60,000 tons of the wastewater has been discharged by August 2024.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida assured the island leaders gathering that the discharge of the wastewater was being done “in compliance with international safety standards and practices.” [9] Yet the controversial dumping continues to be criticized by scientists.
In Tokyo, director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory at the University of Hawaii, Research Professor Robert Richmond, complained that questions remain regarding the effectiveness of the water filtration system, known as ALPS, and about the radioactive contents of the thousands of storage tanks of wastewater.
In October 2018, Tepco admitted that its wastewater filter system, had failed to remove dangerous elements and the company publicly apologized. [10] Tepco promising to re-filter the wastewater, noting that 84% of the 890,000 tonnes then held in tanks (today there are 1.3 million tonnes) still contained high concentrations of iodine-129, ruthenium-106, technetium-99, and cabon-14. Levels of strontium-90, a severe human health hazard, were detected in some tanks at 20,000 times the legal limit. Tepco for years has insisted, and most media still report, that its ALPS treatment process removes everything but tritium, including strontium and 61 other radioactive elements, from the contaminated water.
“The long-term effects of this discharge on Pacific marine ecosystems and those who depend on them are still unknown. Even small doses of radiation can cause cancer or genetic damage,” Prof. Richmond said in a statement to BenarNews after the gathering.
Richmond called Japan’s current radiation monitoring system as inadequate and poorly designed, and said it’s failing to protect ocean and human health.
“The discharge, planned to continue for decades, is irreversible. Radionuclides bioaccumulate in marine organisms and can be passed up the food web, affecting marine life and humans who consume affected seafood,” Richmond said.
The professor also raised concerns about additional hazards already harming the Pacific Ocean and marine life, such as pollution, overfishing, and climate change. He urged Japan to reconsider its approach. Building the contaminated water into cement structures like sea walls is one alternative.
You can hear Prof. Richardson explain the risks of tritium contamination in an NPR interview, here.
Water Treatment Leaves Highly Radioactive Sludge in Search of Containment
Tons of highly radioactive chemicals collected in the ALPS filters are collected as sludge and transferred to heavy plastic casks called “high integrity containers” or HICs, that moved to temporary storage.
The Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun, published a report on the wastewater August 24, 2024 that clearly outlines some problems with the sludge. [11] The end of article reads as follows:
In addition to the release of treated water, there are many other issues to be tackled.
The amount of highly radioactive sludge, or “slurry,” produced in the process of treating contaminated water continues to increase, but no effective treatment method has been decided upon.
The increasing amount of slurry is stored in tanks, but since there is still a risk of leakage when it is in liquid form, plans call for it to be dehydrated to reduce its volume and then process the substance into solid form.
In 2021, TEPCO filed an application to build a device for this purpose. But the Nuclear Regulation Authority pointed out the risk of radiation exposure to workers, and TEPCO was told to review the design.
As a result, the start of the dehydration process has been delayed from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2026.
Furthermore, no concrete method has been decided on for solidifying the dehydrated slurry.
TEPCO is aiming to determine the solidification method by the end of fiscal 2025 and start solidification around fiscal 2035.
Advocates Demand Stricter Limits on Nuclear Poisons
The Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network in Japan is an alliance of parents, concerned citizens, and affiliated organizations. The group writes:
“The U.S. FDA has set a potentially hazardous level of ‘allowable’ radiation in food: 1,200 Becquerel (Bq) per kilogram (kg) of cesium-134 and cesium-137.” “Becquerels-per-kilogram” is a reference to the amount of highly radioactive cesium-137, which spewed in large quantities by the three burning reactor meltdowns and which persists in the environment for 300 years.
Alarmingly, this is merely a recommendation and holds no legal weight. Such a high threshold exposes a significant portion of the U.S. population, particularly children and women, to considerable health risks.
FFAN is urging the United States to lower its allowable cesium limit to five Bq/kg for food, nutritional supplements and pharmaceuticals, and that the government quickly institute widespread, transparent testing to ensure the limit. The demand aligns with a similar call by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Germany, which promotes a European Union-wide standard of four to eight (4-to-8) Bq/kg. To sign FFAN’s petition see here.
Kimberly Roberson, Project Director for the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network, commented on this scandal for Food Safety News, Sept. 4, 2024. [12]
Roberson wrote, “At 1,200 Becquerels per kilogram, FDA has among the highest DILs in the world.
“Standards limiting radiation in food in Japan are 12 times more protective for adults and 24 times more protective for children than U.S. standards. Food too radioactive to be sold to Japanese consumers is allowed to be sold to U.S. consumers and served to U.S. service members and their families on military bases overseas. FDA [limits] for radioactivity in food are non-binding and unenforceable.
“To confront and mitigate the growing public health threat of radioactive contamination in food, Congress should pass the Federal Food Administration Act, establish the FFA to focus like a laser beam on food safety, and empanel independent scientists and experts who understand radiation’s environmental and health effects to advise it.”
The IAEA: International Allowances for Environmental Assaults?
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which ignored its own guidelines in approving the dumping of Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific, has granted approval to Japan’s plan to use some of the 14 million tons of cesium-contaminated soil and debris collected after the Fukushima meltdowns in construction work. [13]
The government intends to get rid of roughly 75 percent of the radioactive soil — if it’s contaminated at or below 8,000 becquerels per kilogram — by using it in road embankments, railways, agricultural land, and land reclamation.
“We are extremely concerned. The IAEA has consistently stated in the past that radioactive waste should be stored centrally and we have supported that position,” said Hajime Matsukubo, the secretary general of the Nuclear Information Centre in Tokyo. He said the limit for soil contamination was previously set at just 100 becquerels per kilogram, and has now been lifted to 8,000 Bq/Kg. “But now they are going against their own recommendations,” he said, reported the South China Morning Post. “My fear is that once they relax this rule, they can then go on and ease all sorts of other rules,” he said. ###
— Originally at Znetwork.com. John LaForge, is Co-director of Nukewatch, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.
Endnotes:
[1] Fukushima-MHI, September 29, 2024 [2] The Register online, September 11, 2024 [3] NPR, March 16, 2011, “Plutonium In Fuel Rods: Cause For Concern?” March 16, 2011 [4] The Guardian, April 13, 2015 [5] Associated Press, September 15, 2024 [6] NPR, Mar. 16, 2011, “Plutonium in Fuel Rods: Cause For Concern?” March 16, 2011 [7] “Particulate plutonium released from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns,” Science of The Total Environment, Vol. 743, Nov. 15, 2020; and “Particulate plutonium released from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns,” July 14, 2020, by University of Helsinki [8] Physics.org, May 29, 2023 [9] Radio New Zealand, RNZ Pacific, July 19, 2024 [10] “Fukushima nuclear plant owner apologizes for still-radioactive water”, Reuters, October 11, 2018 [11] “60,000 tons of treated water from nuclear site discharged so far,” The Asahi Shimbun, August 24, 2024 [12] Food Safety News, September 4, 2024, [13] South China Morning Post, September 12, 2024; and The Independent, September12, 2024- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- …
- 266
- Next Page »