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Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Progresses

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
By Christine Manwiller

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which opened for signatures in New York on Sept. 20, 2017, is winning increasing support from nations around the world. Malta became the 84th state to sign on August 25, 2020.

Ireland, Nigeria, Niue, and Saint Kitts & Nevis ratified the treaty in August, honoring the 75th anniversaries of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The number of treaty ratifications is now 44, just six short of the 50 required for it to enter into force as international law. The progress comes in spite of the effect that Covid-19 restrictions have on campaigning for the Ban Treaty.

On July 15, the African Commission on Nuclear Energy marked the 11th anniversary of the Treaty of Pelindaba, establishing Africa as a nuclear-weapons-free zone. The commission called on all African states to ratify the TPNW, while also noting the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Bringing into force the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons would be a most fitting tribute to the victims and survivors of the atomic bombings.”

In Minnesota, a petition calling for support of the Treaty now has 23,000 signatures. Although face-to-face meetings with the state’s congressional delegation are postponed due to pandemic rules, the End War Committee of Women Against Military Madness and the Minneapolis/St. Paul chapter of Veterans for Peace have organized over 100 people who are calling the state’s US Senators monthly, urging their support of the Treaty. Please join this effort if you live in Minn., or start the ball rolling in your own state.

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Huge Cost Overruns May Defeat Small Reactor Prototype as Investors Flee

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020

With projected costs leaping from a 2017 estimate of $3.6 billion, to $4.2 billion in Nov. 2019, and reaching $6.1 billion last July, municipal investment in a Utah scheme to build the nation’s first so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) is starting to dry up.

To date, Logan, Utah and Lehi City have quit the project, and Bountiful, Utah’s power department says the chances are greater than 50-50 that it too will withdraw.

“[I]f we can’t bring this power in at a competitive price we just won’t build this project,” said LaVarr Webb, a spokesperson for the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), Reuters reported. UAMPS is the Utah state agency that delivers electricity to member cities in six western states. Webb told the Washington Examiner he expected other members could decide to leave too.

The experimental reactor venture is being built at the Idaho National Laboratory. UAMPS is partnered with dozens of regional cities, the companies NuScale, Fluor, and Worldwide Construction, and the US Dept. of Energy. The plan is to build the first of 12 small modular reactors by 2029. Cities including Brigham City, Hyrum, Logan and Lehi joined the effort to subsidize some of the development costs for the first SMR, which is being engineered to produce 60 megawatts.

A major financial shock was the Energy Department reneging on its promise to provide $1.4 billion for the first reactor, the Cache Valley Daily reported. Then in early August, the Utah Taxpayer’s Association issued a scathing report urging all the municipalities to quit the project citing cost overruns, construction delays, and “dependence on unpredictable federal subsidies.”

Edwin Lyman, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Director of Nuclear Power Safety, told Reuters, “the only hope for the UAMPS project, or any other of these first-of-a-kind projects, is that the Department of Energy will end up financing it.”

—JL

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Renewables Outshine Nuclear; Reactor Futures Slammed by Investors’ S&P 500

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
By Christine Manwiller

As renewable energy sources become more cost effective, nuclear power is being seen as a losing investment. In its November 2019 report “The Energy Transition: Nuclear Dead and Alive” S&P Global Ratings stated, “Renewables are significantly cheaper and offer quicker payback on scalable investments at a time when power demand is stagnating.” Indeed, current international energy investment trends favor renewables, largely because nuclear power is not considered “clean.” Building nuclear reactors is hugely expensive due to increasing construction costs, and the complexity of meeting safety requirements imposed after Fukushima. Significantly, the S&P report even tells investors that nuclear power would not exist without “massive government support.”

S&P also advises against investing in small modular reactors (SMRs), which may eventually be permitted, but which can’t be developed without government funding. Although SMRs are considered a low initial investment, the reactors’ safety can’t be assured, high-level radioactive waste leaves the same disastrous legacy, while renewables are far less expensive and quicker to bring online.

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Bribery Scandals Prove Nuclear Industry Must Cheat to Beat Safe Renewables

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
Excerpted from Op/Ed by Tim Judson, David Kraft and Pat Marida, Augusta Free Press, 8 Sept. 2020

In Ohio, Republican House Speaker Larry Householder has been arrested, along with his chief of staff and three lobbyists. They were charged as co-conspirators in a [$60 million] bribery and racketeering scheme involving the passage of a controversial nuclear bailout. In Illinois, House Speaker and state Democratic Party Chair Michael Madigan is under investigation, while the state’s largest utility company, Commonwealth Edison (ComEd, a subsidiary of Exelon) is cooperating under a deferred prosecution agreement and paying $200 million in fines. The investigation includes ComEd’s maneuverings to attain a nuclear bailout….

Mr. Householder and his co-accused funneled dark money to statehouse candidates, all but one of whom voted for the bailout after getting into office. Then they conspired to kill a ballot measure seeking to repeal the bailout….

In Illinois, ComEd admitted that it provided $1.3 million in payments to associates of Speaker Madigan from 2011 through 2019. ComEd admitted that the payments were to curry favor with Madigan over matters important to the utility, including the nuclear bailout….

The $200-million slap-on-the-wrist that ComEd is paying in fines is less than one year’s worth of the $2.4 billion bailout it secured from the Illinois legislature….

[T]he Illinois and Ohio subsidies are among the smaller ones: $7.6 billion for Exelon in New York; up to $3 billion for Exelon and PSEG in New Jersey; and a proposal for up $500 million per year for Exelon and FirstEnergy in Pennsylvania … have power companies done the same in other states, where even larger subsidies are on the table?…

Aging, uncompetitive nuclear reactors cannot keep up with the technological leaps and bounds and plummeting costs of renewable energy….

It’s time for lawmakers to repeal the nuclear bailouts and let the people of their states choose their energy future in an atmosphere free of corruption. If public opinion is any guide, they will always choose clean, renewable energy over dirty nuclear.

See full article: https://augustafreepress.com/corruption-scandals-expose-nuclear-industry-for-what-it-is/

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Majority of Millennials Support Banning Nuclear Weapons

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2020

The majority of young people around the world support banning nuclear weapons, according to a new poll commissioned by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The poll surveyed over 16,000 millennials (aged 20-35) across 16 countries and territories (Afghanistan, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Occupied Palestinian territory, Syria, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States) in 2019.

The use of nuclear weapons is “never acceptable” in wars or armed conflicts, say 84% of respondents. Support for this statement remains strong in nuclear-armed countries; 77% of in Israel, 81% in France, 86% in Russia, 83% in the United Kingdom, and 73% in the United States responded that nuclear bomb use in wars or armed conflicts is never acceptable. An even greater percentage of those surveyed in some countries find that the use of nuclear weapons is “never acceptable”—92% in Switzerland and 98% in Syria.

“The next generation has spoken: they don’t want nuclear weapons in their future,” said Alicia Sanders-Zakre, ICAN Policy and Research Coordinator, in response to the poll. “Today’s leaders should take heed and join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a first step towards a nuclear-weapon-free future.”

—ICAN

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