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January 23, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Calif. Peace Activist Convicted in Germany for Protests Against U.S. Nuclear Weapons

A long-time U.S. peace activist was found guilty of four counts of trespassing January 17 in Cochem, Germany, charges that stemmed from multiple protests against the stationing of U.S. nuclear weapons at Germany’s Büchel Air Force Base* in the west-central state of Rhineland-Pfalz.

Susan Crane, a member of the Redwood City, California Catholic Worker House and a Plowshares disarmament activist, was tried by District Judge Alexander Fleckenstein who imposed a fine of 1,000 Euros or 200 days in jail. The sentence was heavier than in recent related protest cases, the judge explained, because Crane showed no remorse for joining several “go-in” actions involving entry into the base.

In her testimony, Crane said in part, “The four actions I was part of in 2019 were an attempt to stop an ongoing crime: the criminal planning and preparation of attacks with US nuclear weapons at Büchel air base. This unlawful planning and preparation is criminal under international humanitarian laws, treaties and agreements because it violates the Hague Conventions, the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Principles, and the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which Germany and the United States are obligated to uphold under federal constitutions.”

In his ruling, Judge Fleckenstein said that international laws regarding nuclear weapons didn’t apply in his court, and instead focused on the cost of nuts and bolts used to repair openings in the chain link fence. Frits ter Kuile of the Amsterdam Catholic Worker who attended the trial was alarmed by the focus of the Court, saying, “Susan was talking from the heart about the big picture of lawful responsibility, and the death of the planet, and the judge talked about 30-cent bolts.”

In a written declaration submitted on behalf of Crane, legal scholar Anabel Dwyer of Ann Arbor, Michigan wrote that Crane, “correctly asserts that the charges should be withdrawn” because “all citizens … have a duty to nonviolently or symbolically resist complicity with the violations of the intransgressible principles of international customary law that the ongoing threatened use of those nuclear bombs constitute.” Crane’s attorney Milan Martin of Frankfurt urged the judge to allow the declaration into evidence, explaining that the principle of “competing harms” excuses minor offenses done in order to prevent greater crimes. Because Crane’s actions were nonviolent attempts at crime prevention, she must be acquitted, Martin said. The judge ruled that the declaration could not be submitted as evidence. Crane said she would appeal the conviction, “in hope that the higher court would consider the international humanitarian law which holds the US weapons illegal.”

In September 2021, Crane was in the same courtroom and was convicted of two similar charges and sentenced to a fine or 50 days in jail. Crane was a part of delegations of US peace activists to Germany organized by Nukewatch in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021.

The Büchel air base maintains at least 20 U.S. hydrogen bombs known as B61-3s and B61-4s, which are managed there by the U.S. Air Force’s 702nd Munitions Support Squadron. German Tornado fighter jet pilots train to overfly Poland and attack Russia, a mere 1,000 miles to the east, using the US bombs. The US B61s are also stationed in The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey, all in range of the Russian Federation using the Tornado jets that fly up to 1,490 mph.

Disarmament activists have focused on the Büchel base for 25 years demanding the ouster of the U.S. nuclear weapons and a cancellation of plans to replace today’s bombs with the new “B61-12,” now under production in the United States.

Since 1997, when the group Nonviolent Action to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (GAAA, www.gaaa.org) began a campaign of civil resistance in Büchel, at least 97 activists have been charges with “crimes” following nonviolent go-in actions.

*De Morgen [Antwerp], July 16, 2019 (https://www.demorgen.be/nieuws/eindelijk-zwart-op-wit-er-liggen-amerikaanse-kernwapens-in-belgie~b051dc18/)

Filed Under: Direct Action, Nuclear Weapons, US Bombs Out of Germany

December 28, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

The Hype About Thorium Reactors

by Gordon Edwards*, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, December 26 2021.

www.ccnr.org/thorium_hype_2021.pdf

There has recently been an upsurge of uninformed babble about thorium as if it were a new discovery with astounding potentiality. Some describe it as a nearly miraculous material that can provide unlimited amounts of problem-free energy. Such hype is grossly exaggerated.

Thorium and Nuclear Weapons

One of the most irresponsible statements is that thorium has no connection with nuclear weapons. On the contrary, the initial motivation for using thorium in nuclear reactors was precisely for the purposes of nuclear weaponry.

It was known from the earliest days of nuclear fission that naturally-occurring thorium can be converted into a powerful nuclear explosive – not found in nature – called uranium-233, in much the same way that naturally-occurring uranium can be converted into plutonium.

Working at a secret laboratory in Montreal during World War II, nuclear scientists from France and Britain collaborated with Canadians and others to study the best way to obtain human-made nuclear explosives for bombs. That objective can be met by converting natural uranium into human-made plutonium-239, or by converting natural thorium into human-made uranium-233. These conversions can only be made inside a nuclear reactor.

The Montreal team designed the famous and very powerful NRX research reactor for that military purpose as well as other non-military objectives. The war-time decision to allow the building of the NRX reactor was made in Washington DC by a six-person committee (3 Americans, 2 Brits and 1 Canadian) in the spring of 1944.

The NRX reactor began operation in 1947 at Chalk River, Ontario, on the Ottawa River, 200 kilometres northwest of the nation’s capital. The American military insisted that thorium rods as well as uranium rods be inserted into the reactor core. Two chemical “reprocessing” plants were built and operated at Chalk River, one to extract plutonium-239 from irradiated uranium rods, and a second to extract uranium-233 from irradiated thorium rods. This dangerous operation required dissolving intensely radioactive rods in boiling nitric acid and chemically separating out the small quantity of nuclear explosive material contained in those rods. Both plants were shut down in the 1950s after three men were killed in an explosion.

The USA detonated a nuclear weapon made from a mix of uranium-233 and plutonium-239 in 1955. In that same year the Soviet Union detonated its first H-bomb (a thermonuclear weapon, using nuclear fusion as well as nuclear fission) with a fissile core of natural uranium-235 and human-made uranium-233.

In 1998, India tested a nuclear weapon using uranium-233 as part of its series of nuclear test explosions in that year. A few years earlier, In 1994, the US government declassified a 1966 memo that states that uranium-233 has been demonstrated to be highly satisfactory as a weapons material.

Uranium Reactors are really U-235 reactors

Uranium is the only naturally-occurring material that can be used to make an atomic bomb or to fuel a nuclear reactor. In either case, the energy release is due to the fissioning of uranium-235 atoms in a self-sustaining “chain reaction”. But uranium-235 is rather scarce. When uranium is found in nature, usually as a metallic ore in a rocky formation, it is about 99.3 percent uranium-238 and only 0.7 percent uranium-235. That’s just seven atoms out of a thousand!

Uranium-238, the heavier and more abundant isotope of uranium, cannot be used to make an A-Bomb or to fuel a reactor. It is only the lighter isotope, uranium-235, that can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. If the chain reaction is uncontrolled, you have a nuclear explosion; if it is controlled, as it is in a nuclear reactor, you have a steady supply of energy.

But you cannot make a nuclear explosion with uranium unless the concentration of uranium-238 is greatly reduced and the concentration of uranium-235 is drastically increased. This procedure is called “uranium enrichment”, and the enrichment must be to a high degree – preferably more than 90 percent U-235, or at the very least 20 percent U-235 – to get a nuclear explosion. For this reason, the ordinary uranium fuel used in commercial power reactors is not weapons-usable; the concentration of U-235 is typically less than five percent.

However, as these uranium-235 atoms are split inside a nuclear reactor, the broken fragments form new smaller atoms called “fission products”. There are hundreds of varieties of fission products, and they are collectively millions of times more radioactive than the uranium fuel itself. They are the main constituents of “high-level radioactive waste” (or “irradiated nuclear fuel”) that must be kept out of the environment of living things for millions of years.

In addition, stray neutrons from the fissioning U-235 atoms convert many of the uranium-238 atoms into atoms if plutonium-239. Reactor-produced plutonium is always weapons-usable, regardless of the mixture of different isotopes; no enrichment is needed! But that plutonium can only be extracted from the used nuclear fuel by “reprocessing” the used fuel. That requires separating the plutonium from the fiercely radioactive fission products that will otherwise give a lethal dose of radiation to workers in a short time.

Thorium Reactors are really U-233 reactors

Unlike uranium, thorium cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction under any circumstances. Thorium can therefore not be used to make an atomic bomb or to fuel a nuclear reactor. However, if thorium is inserted into an operating nuclear reactor (fuelled by uranium or plutonium), some of the thorium atoms are converted to uranium-233 atoms by absorbing stray neutrons. That newly created material, uranium-233, is even better than uranium-235 at sustaining a chain reaction.  That’s why uranium-233 can be used as a powerful nuclear explosive or as an exemplary reactor fuel.

But thorium cannot be used directly as a nuclear fuel.  It has to be converted into uranium-233 and then the human-made isotope uranium-233 becomes the reactor fuel. And to perform that conversion, some other nuclear fuel must be used – either enriched uranium or plutonium

Of course, when uranium-233 atoms are split, hundreds of fission products are created from the broken fragments, and they are collectively far more radioactive than the uranium-233 itself – or the thorium from which it was created.  So once again, we see that high-level radioactive waste is being produced even in a thorium reactor (as in a normal present-day uranium reactor).

In summary, a so-called “thorium reactor” is in reality a uranium-233 reactor. Some other nuclear fuel (enriched uranium-235 or plutonium) must be used to convert thorium atoms into uranium-233 atoms. Some form of reprocessing must then be used to extract uranium-233 from the irradiated thorium. The fissioning of uranium-233, like the fissioning of uranium-235 or plutonium, creates hundreds of new fission products that make up the bulk of the high-level radioactive waste from any nuclear reactor. And, as previously remarked, uranium-233 is also a powerful nuclear explosive, posing serious weapons proliferation risks. Moreover, uranium-233 – unlike the uranium fuel that is currently used in commercial power reactors around the world – is immediately usable as a nuclear explosive. The moment uranium-233 is created it is very close to 100 percent enriched – perfect for use in any nuclear weapon of suitable design.

Uranium-232 — A Fly in the Ointment

There is a complication that arises in the form of another human-made uranium isotope, uranium-232. In a thorium reactor, the uranium-233 that is created is accompanied by a very small quantity of uranium-232. As it happens, U-232 (along with its decay products) gives off very powerful gamma radiation that makes it difficult to fabricate an atomic bomb, given the danger to the workers and the heat generated by the intense radioactivity of U-232 and its decay products. But these difficulties can be overcome, or even avoided altogether, by making suitable adjustments to the reactor operation.

Without going into too much detail, when a thorium-232 atom absorbs a neutron, it is transformed into an atom of protactinium-233, which in turn is spontaneously transformed into an atom of uranium-233. But if either of those two non-thorium atoms absorbs an additional neutron, before the conversion is complete, atoms of uranium-232 can be created – which act as unwanted pollutants. However, if the protactinium atoms are removed from the reactor core, addition neutron collisions are avoided and an uncontaminated supply of almost 100 percent pure uranium 233 can be obtained by just waiting for the spontaneous conversion to be completed.

Is the thorium-fueled “Molten Salt” reactor a proven technology?

The first thorium-fueled molten salt reactor ever built was intended to power an aircraft engine in a long-range strategic bomber armed with nuclear weapons. Despite massive expenditures, the project proved unviable as well as prohibitively costly and was ultimately cancelled by President Kennedy. However, the Oak Ridge team responsible for the aircraft engine reactor project, under the direction of Alvin Weinberg, was allowed to conduct a further thorium-fuelled molten salt reactor experiment for a period of four years, from 1965 to 1969. At the beginning, only U-235 was used; soon afterwards, a smaller amount of U-233 was used.

During its four years of operation under experimental conditions, the Oak Ridge molten salt reactor experienced over 250 shutdowns, most of them completely unplanned.  The molten-salt thorium fuelled experience of 52 years ago at Oak Ridge – the only such experience available to date – consumed about one quarter of the total budget of the entire Oak Ridge nuclear complex. It is difficult to understand how anyone could construe this experiment as demonstrating that such a technology would be viable in a commercial environment.

There are, at the present time, no thorium reactors operating anywhere in the world.

Summary (Thorium Reactors)

It appears that thorium-fuelled reactors pose the same kinds of problems, qualitatively speaking, that afflict existing nuclear reactors. Problems associated with the long-term management of nuclear waste, and the potential for proliferating nuclear weapons, are not fundamentally different even though the detailed considerations are by no means identical. Since a nuclear reactor accident will have off-site consequences only due to the unintended release of high-level nuclear waste materials into the environment, there is no qualitative difference there either.  Thorium reactors pose the same risk of reactor accident risks as in the case of a comparable non-thorium reactor.

The “Front End” of the Nuclear Fuel Chain

So much for the “back end” of the fuel chain, but what about the “front end”? What about the dangers and environmental consequences associated with mining a radioactive ore body to obtain the uranium or thorium needed to sustain a uranium-based or thorium-based reactor system?

Thorium versus Uranium

Uranium and thorium are naturally occurring heavy metals, both discovered a couple of centuries ago. Uranium was identified in 1789. It was named after the planet Uranus, that was discovered just 8 years earlier. Thorium was identified in 1828. It was named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder.

In 1896, Henri Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity. He found that rocks containing either uranium or thorium give off a kind of invisible penetrating light (gamma radiation) that can expose photographic plates even if they are wrapped in thick black paper.

In 1898, Marie Curie discovered that when uranium ore is crushed and the uranium itself is extracted, it is indeed found to be a radioactive substance, but the crushed rock contains much more radioactivity (5 to 7 times more) than the uranium itself. She identified two new elements in the crushed rock, radium and polonium – both radioactive and highly dangerous – and won two Nobel Prizes, one in Physics and one in Chemistry.

The radioactive properties of both radium and thorium were used in medical treatments prior to the discovery of fission in 1939. Because of the extraordinary damage done to living tissues by atomic radiation (a fact that was observed before the advent of the twentieth century) these radioactive materials derived from natural sources were used to shrink cancerous tumours and to destroy ringworm infections in the scalps of young children. It was later observed that while acute doses of atomic radiation can indeed kill malignant as well as benign growths, atomic radiation can also cause latent cancers that will not appear until decades later, even at chronic low dose radiation levels that cause no immediately perceptible biological damage.

Uranium Mining and Mill Tailings

It turns out that 85 percent of the radioactivity in uranium ore is found in the pulverized residues after uranium is extracted, as a result of many natural radioactive byproducts of uranium called “decay products” or “progeny” that are left behind. They include radioactive isotopes of lead, bismuth, polonium, radium, radon gas, and others. Uranium mining is dangerous mainly because of the harmful effects of these radioactive byproducts, which are invariably discarded in the voluminous sand-like tailings left over from milling the ore. All of these radioactive decay products are much more radioactive and much more biologically damaging than uranium itself.

See www.ccnr.org/U-238_decay_chain.png .

Thorium Mining and Mill Tailings

Thorium is estimated to be about three to four times more plentiful than uranium. Like uranium, it also produces radioactive “decay products” or “progeny” – including additional radioactive isotopes of lead, bismuth, polonium, radium, radon gas, thallium, and others. These radioactive byproducts are discarded in the mill tailings when thorium ore is milled. See

www.ccnr.org/Th-232_decay_chain.png .

Most of the naturally-occurring radioactivity found in the soil and rocks of planet Earth are due to the two primordial radioactive elements, uranium and thorium, and their many decay products. There is one additional primordial radioactive element, potassium-40, but it has no radioactive decay products and so contributes much less to the natural radioactive inventory.

*Dr. Gordon Edwards is a mathematician, physicist, nuclear consultant, and president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (www.ccnr.org ).

P.S. I have written about thorium as a nuclear fuel several times before, beginning in 1978.

See www.ccnr.org/AECL_plute.html  ;  www.ccnr.org/aecl_plute_seminar.html ;

www.ccnr.org/think_about_thorium.pdf ;  and  www.ccnr.org/Thorium_Reactors.html

 

 

Filed Under: Environment, Nuclear Weapons, Uranium Mining

December 26, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

US and NATO Nuclear Lunacy Still Raving

DECEMBER 24, 2021

US and NATO Nuclear Lunacy Still Raving

BY JOHN LAFORGE

While Civil Society and a global movement work steadfastly across dozens of fields for the abolition of nuclear weapons, planning, preparations, and rehearsals for attacks using deployed H-bombs and nuclear missiles are routine in the US military and NATO.  Two years ago, the US Joint Chief of Staff published online, then quickly deleted, its thermonuclear mass destruction plan titled “Nuclear Operations, Joint Publication 3-72.”

Before the Joint Chiefs took it down, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists managed to preserve a copy.  The manual relies on abstractions and euphemism to depict the unthinkable.  It says, “The employment of nuclear weapons could have a significant influence on ground operations.”  Of course “employment” means detonation, and “significant influence” means searing fireballs, vaporized victims, blast and shock-wave devastation, demolished hospitals and schools, vast firestorms, and permanent radioactive contamination of water, soil, and the food chain.

The manual explains that nuclear attacks create “conditions” without describing them.  It says, “Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability.”  Then, as if US presidents had never said, “Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the report pretends it can and should.  “[T]he use of a nuclear weapon will…create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”

US nuclear war practice takes place routinely with allied European militaries.  “Steadfast Noon” is NATO’s code name for its annual nuclear attack practice, and Hans Kristensen reports for the Federation of American Scientists that, “This is the exercise that practices NATO’s nuclear strike mission with the B61 … nuclear bombs the US deploys in Europe.”  Jan Merička wrote in European Security Journal News Oct. 19, 2017, that Steadfast Noon is designed “to simulate nuclear strikes…and was conducted from the Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium and Büchel Air Base in Germany, where US B61 thermonuclear bombs with the force of up to 340 kilotons of TNT are stored.”  (FYI: Hiroshima was incinerated with a 15 kiloton US bomb.)

To illustrate the Pentagon’s ho-hum acceptance of mass destruction, it recently opened in Omaha its new, $1.3 billion Strategic Command headquarters for supervising and targeting the nuclear arsenal, and it named the building after General Curtis LeMay, who, the Omaha World Herald reported, designed and conducted the incendiary bombing of 60 Japanese cities at the end of WWII, bombing that “incinerated entire cities” killing as many as 900,000 civilians.  General LeMay’s motto and that of Strategic Command used to be “Death from Above,” but after the war it was changed to “Peace is Our Profession.”

In Germany, readiness for attacks with nuclear weapons is maintained by the USAF 702nd Munitions Support Squadron, which tends to Germany’s 33rd Fighter-Bomber Wing at Büchel Air Force Base.  Headlines from last October’s bombing “theater” included, and “NATO Holds Secret Nuclear War Exercises in Germany,” “German Air Force training for nuclear war as part of NATO;” from 2017, “NATO nuclear weapons exercise unusually open”; and in 2015, “NATO nuclear weapons exercise Steadfast Noon in Büchel.”

While the uninitiated might be aghast, the US military plans and prepares all year round for nuclear attacks at its far-flung “Defense Nuclear Weapons School” of the Air Force Nuclear College.  According to the school’s website, one branch (of “Armageddon Academy”) is at the Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, the largest US military base outside the country.  Other branches are in New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio.  Outlines for this school’s ghoulish courses can been read online.  (The site may have been altered since I first reported on it in last June.)  For example, the school says boastfully that it “is responsible for delivering, sustaining and supporting air-delivered nuclear weapon systems for our warfighters … every day.”

Course outlines on the website include, “Theater Nuclear Operations, a 4.5-day course that provides training for planners, support staff, targeteers, and staff nuclear planners for joint operations and targeting.  The course provides an overview of nuclear weapon design, capabilities, and effects…. Objectives: …Understand the US nuclear planning and execution process; Understand the targeting effects of nuclear weapon employment.”  

Another class is, “Integrated Munitions Effects Assessment … a five-day course that provides students … proficiency in creating target models, developing attack plans using … nuclear weapons….”  Students “will be able to import, edit, and modify target sites”, “Calculate probabilistic attacks against predefined targets; [and] develop attack plans using … nuclear weapons….”

I am of the mind that setting the stage for nuclear attacks is both criminal and insane.  Luckily, millions of people are involved in the newly invigorated movement to rid the world of such madness, via the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  Read it sometime.

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.

Filed Under: B61 Bombs in Europe, Nuclear Weapons, US Bombs Out of Germany, War, Weekly Column

December 21, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

“Astonishment and Stupefaction” at US/UK Double-Cross for Australian Submarine Deal

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

President Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Australian PM Scott Morrison declared September 15 that they would rename their three-way military alliance “AUKUS” and then announced that they had wrested the multi-billion dollar contract to build at least eight Australian nuclear-powered submarines from French warship builders following secret negotiations.

The shocking announcement came as a sucker punch to France’s submarine industry, cancelling without warning a $90 billion agreement signed in 2016 to build diesel-powered subs for Australia. The head of the French military contractor Naval Group, Pierre Eric Pommellet, spoke of “astonishment and stupefaction” at being told the nearly $90 billion dollar submarine contract with Australia was being torn up, the Guardian reported October 7.

The nuclear-powered fast-attack sub USS San Francisco was severely damaged in 2005 after smashing into an undersea mountain south of Guam. On Oct. 2, 2021 the USS Connecticut did likewise in the South China Sea. See p. 4.

Reacting to what appears to be a case of industrial sabotage among fierce global rivals — France reportedly already spent $2 billion on the diesel- powered attack submarines — Paris recalled its ambassadors from Australia and the United States, and its foreign affairs minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the cancellation betrayed “the letter and spirit” of cooperation between France and Australia.

Australia has not built a submarine for 20 years and because of the plan’s immense complexities, its exorbitant industrial and technical hurdles “could be insurmountable,” the New York Times reported November 9. “I don’t think this is a done deal in any way, shape or form,” said Marcus Hellyer, an expert on naval policy at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Hinting at the deadly disasters that haunt nuclear submarines, Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said during an October 19 visit to Washington, DC, “To have a nuclear reactor in a submarine operating safely is a very difficult thing to do,” the Guardian noted.

Grossi said the onus is on the US and the UK to ensure that radioactive material and technology is transferred to Australia in a way that does not risk nuclear weapons proliferation. But proliferation risks can only be compounded by Australia’s embrace of military reactors, because US and British nuclear submarines run only on highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel, and HEU can be made into nuclear weapons. For the Australian submarines, a new low-enriched uranium fuel system must be developed, or Australia will gain access to weapons-grade material.

The Aussie’s decision to promote nuclear militarism — when the country has no nuclear power expertise, no reactor industry or uranium fuel production program, no radioactive waste control system, and no infrastructure for radiological disaster response — is shockingly counter-intuitive.

Andy Stirling and Phil Johnstone in the November 9 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted that building, maintaining, and operating reactor-propelled submarines depends on “expensive access to specific skills, supply chains, regulatory and design capabilities, educational and research institutions, and waste management and security infrastructures.” All Australia has now are uranium mines.

“Australia is not seeking to establish nuclear weapons or establish a civil nuclear capability,” PM Morrison said September 15. But Friends of the Earth Australia’s spokesperson Jim Green told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the country’s “nuclear power lobby” had “been quick off the mark,” and was already using the submarine announcement to push for further involvement with the uranium fuel cycle, including nuclear reactors and radioactive waste storage.

“No country in the world has got a repository to dispose of high-level nuclear waste, and the only repository in the world to dispose of intermediate-level nuclear waste, which is in the United States [the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico], was shut for three years from 2014 to 2017 because of a chemical explosion.”

In the face of a dozen severe, urgent, and daunting global crises — climate change, sea-level rise, increasingly extreme weather events, deforestation, desertification, over-fishing, mass migration, disease control and prevention, and resource depletion among others — Australia’s decision to throw $90 billion into the black hole of uranium, reactor and waste production for nuclear-powered warships could not be more bewildering.

Australia could still reverse its blindingly expensive, dirty, and risk-intensive decision before adding to the naval parade of sunken billions and wasted lives. It should reject this deal with the nuclear devil and refuse to deliberately generate radioactive waste materials that will permanently pollute our shared environment, the oceanic commons. – John LaForge

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter

December 21, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Congress Forces Weapons Spending the Pentagon Wanted Cancelled 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

Writing in Roll Call October 18, John Donnelly analyzed federal spending on weapons unwanted by the Pentagon. A report made public in early October shows that Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord attempted to save about $1 billion in weapons spending, but was stopped by the Appropriations and the Armed Services Committees in both the Senate and the House.

These four committees have repeatedly kept hundreds of millions of tax dollars gushing into the coffers of the world biggest weapons contractors — for weapons declared unnecessary by the military. The committees can even refuse to reject the savings recommendations without saying why. Donnelly wrote, “None of the four defense panels provided CQ Roll Call an explanation for forcing the Pentagon to keep spending money on particular initiatives.”

“The Pentagon had said it does not need the $500 million-plus that was appropriated for the fighter jets, helicopters, ships, vehicles, and bombs made by four of its top five contractors” (Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman). But, Roll Call reports, “Congressional Appropriations and Armed Services committees, for reasons that none of them would divulge, insisted that the military spend the money anyway.”

Last year’s political contributions by some of the companies whose contracts were saved by congress, were: Lockheed: $5,055,874; Northrup Grumman: $5,269,016; General Dynamics: $3,378,838; and Boeing: $464,629, according to OpenSecrets online whose researchers also found that the top 20 weapons contractors contributed $47 million to federal candidates, parties, and outside groups in 2020. Capitol Hill arm-twisting by the top 20’s 675 registered lobbyists (1.2 for each member on the hill) totaled more than $87 million in 2021.

Some of the rejected savings were: 

M $60 million for Air Force F-35 fighter jet procurements, and going to Lockheed Martin

M $2 billion a year for the last seven years on F-35s that the Pentagon did not order

M $15 million for Lockheed Martin’s CH-53K helicopter program

M $194 million for Boeing’s Grey Wolf helicopters

M $18 million for procurement and modifications for Boeing’s Super Hornet fighter jet

M $15 million for modifications to Boeing’s Super Hornet and Growler planes

M $73 million for an unrequested Expeditionary Sea Base ship made by General Dynamics

M $66 million on unneeded “General Purpose Bombs,” mostly made by General Dynamics

M$59 million for a Northrup Grumman bomb fuse

In a related case, Boeing won a $1.62 billion contract in September to repair guidance systems on the Air Force’s 400 Minuteman III ICBMs. The 18- year contract will run simultaneously with a $2.6 billion deal for Northrup Grumman for the Minuteman III’s replacement rocket, dubbed the G.B.S.D. — emphasis on the BS.

The swamp was further described in a November 9 piece by Joe Cirincione titled “How the nuclear game is rigged to maintain the status quo,” which notes that the same giant weapons contractors also build nuclear weapons. “To protect those contracts, these arms firms deploy a small army of lobbyists in Washington, run a revolving door that shuttles officials between top policy jobs and top contractor jobs, disperse contracts to nearly every congressional district, contribute generously to lawmakers on the key committees that oversee their programs, are major advertisers in all the publications covering national security, and have flooded Washington think tanks over the past 20 years with grants to mute criticism of their programs.”

—Rollcall online, “Congress Blocks Cuts to Top Contractors Weapons Budgets,” Oct. 18; William Hartung, “Profiteers of Armageddon,” Inkstick.com, Oct. 12; Opensecrets.org; and Responsible Statecraft, Nov. 9, 2021

Filed Under: Military Spending, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter

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