It is Saturday, the 1st weekend day I will not be looking hard at evaluating and making “Issues & Comments”, usually concerning the most dangerous, worthy, or sensitive of the Google AI articles I receive from my “Daily Digest” that I created on Google two years ago.
Sundays will be a day off for me, too, but I will, recognizing that “All Things Nuclear” don’t stop on weekends, continue to take the time to format the TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS section of this daily blog for you on both days to allow you to read the “best” information AI can find on a daily basis from all around the world, with nuclear news outlets from news organizations that you’ve never heard of, not just American sources, that bear your attention.
Among several really interesting headlines over the weekends, I will provide a link just below as the one I think may be the most important to you. This is the one for today:
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Not everything was easy, of course. I was intimidated, harassed by motorbikes and, twice, treated to the cycling-in-traffic hallmark of being shouted …
“We’ve innovated beyond other reactor designs and engaged early and often with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to make atomic energy a viable option …
Vladimir Putin’s ‘Iron Doll’ makes WW3 threat – ‘we are a nuclear power’ … Fears of World War 3 have ramped up as a top Russian pundit, often dubbed ..
This all sounds like double standards to me. Putin’s anger or indignant attitude seems to be based on some mystical rule that turnabout is not fair, even in a long, drawn out war that is taking a heavy toll on both countries.
Is it any different than when Russia attacked the Ukraine more than three years ago and took over the Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southeast Ukraine? Russian military personnel also are in charge of the plant’s operations, although the plant is currently primarily shut down due to the nearby Russia/Ukraine ground war that has threatened the safety of the plant many time over, and has also insanely disabled the electrical grid system that feeds the plant with its operational electrical power, resulting in diesel generators saving the day, creating a situation that could have caused a meltdown, threatening the lives of millions of citizens in Ukraine and parts of Europe.
Putin must not believe in the old adage, “All is fair in love and war.” ~llaw
Kursk nuclear plant is one of Russia’s top atomic power stations
By Reuters
August 22, 2024 6:10 AM PDT Updated a day ago
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting on situation in Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions following an incursion of Ukrainian troops in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, via video link at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia August 22, 2024. Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via REUTERS
MOSCOW, Aug 22 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine on Thursday of trying to strike Russia’s Kursk nuclear power station in an overnight attack.
He provided no documentary evidence to back up his assertion and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Here are some details about the plant.
* The Kursk plant is one of Russia’s top nuclear power stations. It supplies about half of the electricity used in the Black Earth region of southern Russia.
* It is located on the Seym River near the town of Kurchatov, named after Soviet nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov, in Russia’s western region of Kursk. Ukrainian forces launched a cross-border incursion in the Kursk region on Aug. 6.
* The plant has four Soviet graphite-moderated RBMK-1000 reactors – the same design as those at the Chernobyl nuclear plant which in 1986, when part of the Soviet Union, became the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
* Reactor Number 1, which dates from 1976, was shut down at the Kursk plant in 2021 to operate in non-generation mode. Reactor Number 2, which dates from 1979, was shut down in 2024. Reactor Number 3, from 1983, and Reactor Number 4, from 1985, are both operational.
* Construction of Kursk-2, essentially new reactors of the VVER-TOI type, was begun in 2018. The two reactors are not operational yet.
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been informed by the Russian Federation today that the remains of a drone were found within the territory of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. The drone fragments were reported to have been located roughly 100 metres from the plant’s spent fuel nuclear storage facility. The IAEA was informed that the drone was suppressed in the early morning of 22 August. In this context, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi confirmed his intention to personally assess the situation at the site during his visit next week. Read more →
With women significantly underrepresented in the field of nuclear security, the IAEA actively promotes gender equality through various initiatives to foster a more diverse and sustainable workforce. Read more →
The IAEA, Kenya and South Africa have been working together to apply a more environmentally friendly method of tracing ocean sediments, in order to keep East Africa’s largest international seaport open for trade. Read more →
Newly released nuclear power data for 2023 collected by the IAEA, paint a picture of a clean energy technology at a crossroads amid the emergence of a new global consensus to accelerate its deployment. Read more →
Food fraud can be defined as any intentional action, taken to deceive customers about the quality and content of the food products for financial gain. The selling of fake food around the world has become a highly lucrative illegal activity. Read more →
Wow! Today is the 2nd Anniversary of “All Things Nuclear”! How on Earth could two trips around our Sun have possibly gone so rapidly, leaving nothing but memories so seemingly quickly? And with nary a day off with a “LLAW’s All Things Nuclear” blog post That’s 730 posts, one a day following right behind the latter. That is, I will say, dedication to my purpose here, which is to warn us all around the world that we humans are rapidly moving forward to our collective deaths from ‘all things nuclear’, especially from nuclear war and nuclear power, or a combination of the two with maybe a little help from Greenhous gasses. We could turn around and go back where we came from, but we won’t, and that is the shame and horror of it all . . . but even though I, and a handful of others, know how it could be done, it takes a world of unity, and we humans will not allow unity to happen. The only thing that could save us from ourselves is an unknown intervention from a higher form of life, and even that may not be a pleasant blessing either. But we should know that a life-giving and thriving planet Earth is, in every way possible, worth saving . . . I’ve never understood why we don’t en-masse understand that, but I do know it has something to do with our ability to think and use our natural intellect conclusively and collectively, or rather the lack of it.
I have linked these daily Blog Posts from two of their several source platforms by posting them to Facebook (because Facebook reaches far more people than any other social media platform —numbering in the multiple billions world-wide. Yet, so far, I have just a handful of faithful followers and a few hundred sporadic or occasional visitors. Of course these smallish steps over the two years will not convince me to stop or to throw my hands up and quit, even though Facebook has tried to shut my blog posts down several times, and has attempted to permanently delete about 8 or 10 of them for various violations of their so-called “Community Standards” varying from ‘Cyber Security’ to ‘SPAM’. One way or another, though, I have and will continue on because I am old, set in my ways, and have long known the nuclear industry from its uranium mining roots, uranium fuel processing, and the many dangers ‘all things nuclear’ poses to all of human and other life on this beautiful blue-green planet.
Even if we humans, who have blindly allowed ourselves to be led down a crooked path toward inevitable extinction by governments, corporations, and the nuclear industry’s propaganda, there are those of us who know the industry and who understand the ‘armageddon-like’ trip to and over the proverbial cliff to our demise. But we are never able to convince a world full of apathetic, uncaring, fatalistic, or even simply fearful, nor, most of all, those millions of enthusiastic followers of the mythical future of nuclear power as our ultimate savior. Yet we should still do ourselves the intellectual favor and honor to know the true nature and mechanics of ‘all things nuclear’ and what atomic energy, nuclear fuel, nuclear power plants, and nuclear war are all about and why they will ultimately destroy us and most other innocent life, too, leaving planet Earth a barren and dead planet. Education is all-important, and that is what my anti-nuclear blog is all about.
(And, by the way, I also post my blog to “Linked In”, not only because it is of University of Wyoming origin — where I was born and raised — a venture that has grown internationally, and has a huge well-rounded professional following and I am looking for just the right Sponsor that could allow me to expand the dalily information and purposes that are provided in the blog.)
So those are the reasons I will continue on with the blog and these posts with one exception: Beginning Saturday, I will no longer post on weekends or holidays in deference to my health (both mental and physical) combined with my seemingly Methusalahian-like years of age . . . so I am more likely to be able to continue on with this dramatic global murder mystery of a tale that I have to tell you all for many more years — provided we have “many more years”, which I highly doubt, but at least until there is no more story to tell except the last chapter. ~llaw
Speaking of stories, there are several extra-interesting ones in TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS below. (I’m taking the rest of the day off . . .)
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Evelyn Farkas is watching all this. She was a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration and now leads a nonpartisan think tank …
During the cold war America and the Soviet Union both planned to use lots of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy large and dispersed troop formations, …
… Yellowstone caldera following the Huckleberry Ridge eruption over 2 million years ago. The Yellowstone volcano is a hotspot, which means the volcano …
This article is an interview by two brilliant people, one who despises the nuclear industry, and one who supports it to a degree, discuss the nuclear industry and the mythical dream of an ‘explosion’ of nuclear produced power that will save us from global warming and climate change.
Nuclear energy will not do either because it just simply takes way too long to put nuclear power plants into nuclear power production, among other issues including the survival of life on planet Earth. CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are ‘breathing down our throats’ and those of us who know the nuclear industry know that, aside from its nasty, dirty, radioactive leftovers and propensity for nuclear “accidents” (that the industry laughably calls ‘clean energy’) the time frame of nuclear power production to adequately solve the fossil fuel problem is far too far away and far too dangerous.
Those clear-thinking scientists like M.V. Ramana, and others with ‘hands-on’ experience know that nuclear energy is incapable of solving the environmental problems we have ignorantly created everywhere around the world, and nuclear products of every kind, including the much ballyhooed SMRs, only compound the problem and increase the dangers of our own method of a potential, even likely, mass extinction of our own suicidal making on planet Earth. ~llaw
Challenging the nuclear industry: interview with M.V. Ramana
20 years ago, you would have been laughed out of the room for claiming that nuclear energy is clean technology. The urgency of the climate crisis has drawn some people to some strange conclusions. -Commentary
Despite nuclear energy’s notorious problems, the industry remains remarkably resilient, receiving solid support from governments around the world.
Most recently, in Canada, a ministerial working group of federal cabinet members issued “a plan to modernize federal assessment and permitting processes to get clean growth projects built faster.” The plan includes aligning resources so that “nuclear energy remains a strategic asset to Canada now and into the future.”
A prolific and well-known critic of the nuclear industry in Canada – including in New Brunswick – is physicist and professor M.V. Ramana. Ramana is Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the University of British Columbia. He is back in Vancouver after spending the winter academic term at Princeton University in the U.S., where he previously worked as a researcher for many years.
O’Donnell: Your last book was about nuclear power in India. Your new book is about nuclear energy and the climate crisis. Why did you want to write about that?
Ramana: About 20 or 30 years ago, if someone had talked about nuclear energy as an environmentally friendly, clean technology, they probably would have been laughed out of the room. But in the last decade or two, the nuclear industry seems to be succeeding in changing how people think of this technology, including some environmentalists and people broadly on the left who one would expect to be critical of the industry’s claims.
Much of that is the emergency framing, in which climate change is seen as the overwhelming problem, and we are asked to ignore every other consideration in addressing that.
Nuclear energy has several well-known problems. The fact that there could be catastrophic accidents has been proven time and again. There is no demonstrated solution to managing radioactive waste for the hundreds of thousands of years it will be hazardous. The link between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. Climate change is framed as such an existential risk that we should overlook all these other problems.
This argument misses the question of whether nuclear energy is a feasible solution. This is the larger context in which I was trying to address the problem.
As well, these framings of nuclear energy as a solution to climate change miss the relationship between the nuclear industry and the fossil fuel industry and other industries that prefer to maintain the status quo.
O’Donnell: I was at a meeting recently with climate activists who support more nuclear development, and someone said that my opposition to nuclear energy is helping the fossil fuel industry. You just suggested the opposite.
Ramana: Their argument presumes that fossil fuels can only be replaced by nuclear power and ignores the possibility that one might switch to renewables. It’s a standard logical fallacy. Both the fossil fuel industry and the nuclear industry use this narrative. Both will claim that you cannot operate an electricity grid without so-called “baseload” sources of power, and fossil fuels and nuclear power are portrayed as the only options for producing that kind of power.
That form of thinking is outdated at this point. It was how people thought about managing an electricity grid back in the early part of the 20th century, ideas about trying to have power plants operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So-called “baseload” plants meet the minimal electricity demand that is always present. And then for the much higher demands during certain periods of the day or the year, we will run other kinds of plants.
The growth of renewables goes against that form of thinking because renewables cannot be classified either as baseload or peak power. They generate when the wind the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, and their inclusion forces us to rethink how we manage the grid.
We have come a long way from the idea that we cannot operate a grid using only renewables to understanding that the grid will be stable even with a very high proportion of renewables. If at all there’s any question, it’s about the last 10% or so.
O’Donnell: Right now, among my colleagues, we’re wondering if the “SMR era” is coming to an end in Canada. Here in New Brunswick, it looks like the ARC reactor design is on its way out. Much of the hype in Canada now is about big reactors. We’re seeing SNC Lavalin/ AtkinsRéalis more prominently, trying to sell their big new 1000 MW CANDU design, we hear Bruce Power talking about building multiple new big reactors. The buzz is about big reactors and meanwhile the SMR companies are having money problems. The SMR companies are not getting the resources they need to reach the stage of applying for a license to construct their reactor designs. Maybe in Canada we will skip over the SMR era, except for the one at Darlington, whenever that might be built, and just focus on refurbishments and big reactors.
Ramana: It depends on what you mean by “end of the SMR era.” Even the reactor at Darlington, the BWRX-300, is going to take another 10 to 15 years. During that period, at least, the SMR dream will be alive. The reactor will be much more expensive and take much longer, and so on, but one shouldn’t underestimate the power of both the nuclear industry and its supporters within the government to keep pushing the idea that the next time around, it’s going to be all fine. That has been their standard argument.
In the United States, for example, the AP 1000 reactors built in Vogtle were a complete failure by most measures, right? But now that the reactors have started functioning, you see people from the nuclear industry counting this as a great success. And it’s not that they’re going to decide to build another set of reactors anytime soon, but you cannot rule out that possibility within, let’s say, the next 10 or 15 years.
We see that in people like Jennifer Granholm, the U.S. Energy Secretary, talking about how much nuclear energy must expand over the next few decades, making an argument for more nuclear plants, whether they be small or big. The nuclear industry would want to argue that it’s not a question of small versus large, it’s going to be both. That’s going to be their talking point, and they don’t want to be asked to make a choice, because that infighting is going to weaken the other side, they understand that quite well.
O’Donnell: A chapter in your book deals with the high financial and temporal cost of nuclear energy. You show conclusively, and independent analysis backs you up, that nuclear power is more expensive and takes longer to build than renewable energy and storage.
You found this quote by President Macron of France, which is the most nuclearized state in the world, admitting that France needs to massively develop renewable energy to meet its immediate electricity needs because it takes 15 years to build a nuclear reactor. In the face of clear evidence, a lot of people question why France, and other countries including the U.K. and Canada, seem to be determined to build more nuclear reactors.
Ramana: The first reason is related to how these governments get advice on their energy strategies and policies. The advice tends to come from the very institutions invested in promoting nuclear energy. In the United States, it’s the Department of Energy deciding on energy policy, and one of the Department of Energy’s priorities is to promote nuclear energy. It’s the same in Canada, it’s Natural Resources Canada giving the advice. There’s an institutional bias towards nuclear energy present in the decisions made about energy policies.
The second reason is that in two of the countries you mentioned, the U.K. and France, both have nuclear weapons. In both countries, the relationship between the nuclear energy sector and the capacity to make nuclear weapons as well as the nuclear submarines used to deliver nuclear weapons, has been a talking point the nuclear industry uses to get government support. It’s clear that policymakers are thinking about this connection as a reason to support nuclear energy and make it flourish to the extent that it can.
The last thing is that these countries only look at the low carbon nature of nuclear energy and they see climate change as primarily a technical, maybe economic, issue. They think it can be fixed by changing what technologies we use to generate energy, and some taxes or cap and trade schemes to try and make sure that the market values carbon in an adequate way.
There is no consideration of any deeper changes that we might need to make, towards society and the way we produce and consume materials and energy. That means that nuclear energy or renewables are the only two options that they can think about.
O’Donnell: Coming back to the financial aspects of nuclear power, I often hear that Bill Gates is famously supporting nuclear power, and you do mention him in your book. It’s a puzzle why billionaires, who you would assume are savvy with money, would support nuclear power if it’s such a bad investment.
Ramana: They do invest some money, but only when they expect public funding to be a significant part of whatever project they are proposing. They can use public funding to then raise more money from private markets.
After the 2008 financial crisis, Silicon Valley billionaires have a dearth of investment opportunities for the financial holdings that many of them have. They are trying to find things to invest in. Many of these investors have large portfolios, with every expectation that most of those investments will not materialize in major gains. But the hope is that if you put in 20 investments, and one of them makes a lot of money and becomes like a Facebook type success, then that will more than compensate for all the other investments. And so, they usually look at these long shots. Even if there is a 1% probability, it’s worth investing in.
People like Bill Gates, and Sam Altman and other people also, see technology as a kind of saviour for whatever they want to do. Climate change is a problem for them, because it looks like the effects of climate change might prevent business as usual from continuing, and business as usual is what has allowed them to become the very wealthy people they are. They want people to believe that climate change can be fixed using technological changes and that they themselves will be leading the investment in these technologies and solving climate change.
The challenge they see is that if people don’t have this belief, then they might start making more radical demands. I think I quote Sam Altman in one of my chapters, saying, “People then start thinking this crazy degrowth stuff,” which he calls “immoral” if I remember right. That kind of radical demand is something they don’t want to see become more prominent. And so, technology is always portrayed as not just a savior but also capable of solving climate change. They want that belief to be very central and not questioned. Nuclear energy is part of that portfolio of technologies they envision as solving the problem.
For these investors, the environmental and other risks associated with nuclear power are not challenges they envision as having to deal with. They are not going to live near a nuclear waste repository, or uranium mine, or even a nuclear plant, so they’re not particularly concerned about all these environmental impacts.
Susan O’Donnell is adjunct research professor and lead investigator of the CEDAR project in the Environment & Society program at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She edited this interview for publication..
An earlier version of this article was published by The Energy Mix on August 3, 2024
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are 2 Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… nuclear reactor system at Pilgrim as part of the plant decommissioning … All Things Considered · Ways To Listen · All Radio Programs. Podcasts. The …
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, including during a crisis in October 2022, …
U.S. and Chinese officials both frequently speak of the dangers of nuclear war, but efforts to hold dialogue on the issue have failed. Last year, U.S. ..
I intentionally did not listen to this “X” conversation between Trump and Musk on August 12th because I knew my anger would drive my blood pressure through the top of my head or at least LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Tuesday, (08/20/2024)out of my ears. And, just reading this annotated article, it no doubt would have. llolloll! The simple reading of this incomprehensible, untrue, and childish (as always) abbreviated 2 hour long discussion with Trump clearly demonstrates his inability to think coherently, and, as is Trump’s wont, filled with lies.
And I, for the life of me, cannot understand what he means when he claims that Putin’s Russia would never have invaded Ukraine had he been President in 2022. Putin ignored Trump then, so why would Putin not have ignored him in 2022. Trump blamed the Russia/Ukraine war on Biden during their fiasco of a debate.
To simply answer the author of this article, Walter Pincus, a Pulitzer Prize recipient for journalism and many other prestigious awards, who asks at the end of his story: “In short, do you want a leader whose word cannot be trusted?” Pincus says he doesn’t; and I, for sure, don’t either . . . ~llaw
Donald Trump and Elon Musk – the Annotated Version
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.
OPINION — “One of the things we’re going to do is we’re going to build an Iron Dome over us. Israel has it. We’re going to have the best Iron Dome in the world. We need it and we’re going to make it all in the United States, but we’re going to have protection because it just takes one maniac to start something. We’re going to have protection and we’re going to have…Why shouldn’t we have an Iron Dome? Israel has one. Some other places have one that nobody even knows about frankly. Israel has it. We’re going to have an Iron Dome.”
That was former President Donald Trump speaking on August 12, during his live-streamed, two-hour discussion with Elon Musk on the latter’s X platform.
It was one of Trump’s many references to national-security matters during his exchanges with Musk that showed how limited his knowledge is of military subjects, despite his earlier four years as U.S. Commander-in-Chief – and how often he claims wrong information as facts to present his view of things.
Much of what Trump says on defense matters remains unchallenged, so I want to deal with a few statements he made during his Musk conversation, not least because its 1.1-million-person audience may actually believe what he said.
The facts about “Iron Dome”
For example, Iron Dome is recognized as a short-range defense system, useful perhaps in the U.S. for border protection, but not to provide what Trump seems to imply – protection for the entire U.S. from nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Iron Dome is an Israeli-developed system, designed originally to defend Israeli cities from enemy artillery and short-range rockets fired from up to 40 miles away. Its range has since been increased to up to 150 miles. A typical Iron Dome battery has three or four launchers (20 missiles per launcher) and each battery can defend up to 60 square miles, so they are strategically placed around cities. They can operate day and night, under adverse weather conditions, and can respond to multiple threats simultaneously.
The U.S. has for more than a decade contributed more than $2 billion to Iron Dome’s development, and a Raytheon/Israeli joint venture in the U.S. produces an interceptor missile used by the Iron Dome system. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps have purchased Iron Dome batteries for tactical defense purposes.
Perhaps Trump had in mind two other Israeli missile defense systems that the U.S. has helped in funding – “David’s Sling,” designed to intercept enemy planes, drones, tactical ballistic missiles, long-range rockets, or cruise missiles; or “Arrow 3,” which intercepts ICBMs during space flight.
It’s also possible that Trump was just using Iron Dome as a stand-in for his desire for a nationwide U.S. missile defense system that does not exist; and maybe he wants to build one because Iron Dome seems to have protected Israeli cities.
However, 35 minutes later, in the same conversation with Musk, Trump referred to the current fear of a mass Iranian attack on Israel “from hundreds and maybe thousands of rockets.” In that situation, Trump said, “You know, their Iron Dome, as they call it, as we all call it, but their shield that they built, that can be swamped. We’ll use the term that’s appropriate, swamped. But they swamp it by shooting enough missiles. You [referring to Musk] know this better than anybody. By shooting enough missiles, they can’t defend themselves. You know, they [Iran] just obliterate the whole place [Israeli cities]. And that’s what some people think they’re looking to do.”
So suddenly Iron Dome, which Trump earlier saw as protecting Israel, and by analogy the U.S., can be overcome – “can be swamped” – by “enough” of Iran’s missiles. Trump’s shifting faith in Iron Dome can be explained, not by the actual capabilities of the weapon system, but what Trump wants to appear saying at any given moment.
In this case, when Trump first brought up Iron Dome it was after Musk had said, “People have become complacent about, but they actually have forgotten that there are currently a lot of nuclear missiles that have targeting parameters for the United States and other countries.”
Trump initially wanted to show what he would do in response, and somehow Iron Dome, which has recently been much publicized in helping to safeguard Israel, was in his mind.
When he returned to the subject some 35 minutes later, the context was different – Trump then wanted to criticize the Biden-Harris administration for not supporting a possibly “swamped” Israel and so, as he put it, “if you vote for her, you ought to have your head examined.”
The case of Nord Stream 2
Trump also used national security situations, and inaccurate information, to promote himself.
“Ishut down Nord Stream 2.” Trump said early in the Musk conversation, adding, “That was the big oil pipeline, the biggest, I think the biggest pipeline in the world going all over Europe. I shut it down. Biden came, and then they say, I loved Russia. I was a friend of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and I loved Russia. No, he [Putin] actually said to me one time, ‘If you are my friend, I’d hate to see you as an enemy.’ I shut down his pipeline.”
The first thing to note is that Nord Stream 2 is a natural gas pipeline, not used to carry oil. More important, Trump did not shut it down. Instead, Congress imposed sanctions on international companies building the pipeline as an amendment to the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Bill. Ultimately, however, although the legislation held up Nord Stream 2’s construction for almost a year, it began again in 2020 during the Trump administration, with Russian companies doing the work, unaffected by U.S. sanctions.
Putin announced completion of the pipeline in September 2021, and the Biden administration reached agreement with Germany – which had regulatory authority over Nord Stream 2 – that the U.S. would apply new sanctions if Russia used Nord Stream 2 as a “political weapon.”
After Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Germany suspended certification of Nord Stream 2, and the U.S. applied sanctions to Swiss-based Nord Stream 2 AG, a subsidiary of Russia’s Gazprom, that was to operate the pipeline. It never went into operation and in September 2022, undersea explosions damaged both Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2.
In short, Trump had nothing to do with shutting down Nord Stream 2.
Trump’s “axis of evil”
Perhaps the most confused part of the foreign policy Trump shared during his conversation with Musk conversation came when he tried to articulate what he actually thinks about Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
At one point Trump described them as a “modern day axis of evil,” and said, “These are powerful countries, very heavy nuclear, which is the biggest threat,” apparently a reference to nuclear weapons. To date, Iran has not acquired nuclear weapons, though Tehran is much closer to having them than it was in 2017, when Trump withdrew the U.S. from the international agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear activities.
During the Musk conversation, Trump never referred to Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, he said, “Iran would not be attacking [Israel], believe me. You know, when I was there [as President], and I say it with respect, because I think we would have been good with Iran. I don’t wanna do anything bad to Iran, but they knew not to mess around.”
Trump went on to claim that as a result of sanctions his administration imposed in 2018, “Iran was broke…It’s all about the oil. That’s where the money is. But if you buy oil from Iran, you’re not gonna do any business with the United States. And I meant it…And they [Iran] were at a point where they were, they had no money for Hamas. They had no money for Hezbollah.”
That wasn’t true either. As Trump’s own Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put it during a May 2020 interview, when Trump was still in office, Iran’s leaders “are using the resources that they have to continue funding Hezbollah in Lebanon and threatening the state of Israel, funding Iraqi terrorist Shia groups, all the things that they have done historically – continuing to build out their capabilities even while the people inside of their own country are suffering.”
As for Russia, and as mentioned above, Trump has spoken repeatedly of his friendship with Putin. During the Musk conversation, Trump also reiterated, in an odd form, his oft-stated view that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had he been President in February 2022.
Trump claimed to have had the following exchange with the Russian President: “I said to Vladimir Putin, I said, ‘Don’t do it. You can’t do it, Vladimir. You do it, it’s gonna be a bad day. You cannot do it.’ And I told him things that what I’d do. And he said, ‘no way.’ And I said, ‘way.’ And it’s the last time we ever had the conversation. He would never have done it.”
Of course, Trump never said when that alleged conversation took place, how it came up, or what it was that he would have had the U.S. do if the invasion had taken place on his watch.
Perhaps some reporter at some future Trump press conference will ask about that.
Trump went on to say of Putin, “I got along well with him. I hope to get along well with him again. Getting along well with them [leaders of the modern-day axis of evil] is a good thing, not a bad thing.”
“I got along well with Kim Jong Un,” Trump told Musk, and he then went on to describe their meetings and exchanges while Trump was in the White House. In the end, Trump said, “I got along with him great. We were in no danger. But President Obama thought we were gonna end up in a war, a nuclear war with him. And let me tell you, he’s got a lot of nuclear stuff, too. He’s got plenty of nuclear. He can do plenty of damage.”
Unmentioned was that back in 2017, then-President Trump vowed to “confront very strongly” North Korea’s “very, very bad behavior” in test-launching ICBMs and other missiles. Back then, Trump also said that North Korea would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before” for its nuclear threats.
But despite Trump’s tough words, Kim went ahead with North Korea’s nuclear program, and now Trump appears to accept Kim’s having nuclear weapons – even admiring him for it.
Do you want a president as Commander-in-Chief who changes his-or-her mind on a weapons system to suit his-or-her current mood; a president who claims credit for events they did not affect; or who said they had told a foreign leader something, but may not have done so?
In short, do you want a leader whose word cannot be trusted?
I don’t.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.
Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… nuclear weapons to politics. … Trump went on to claim that as a result of sanctions his administration imposed in 2018, “Iran was broke…It’s all about …
Our 4,200 employees are the foundation of our accomplishments and are proud of the role they play in safely delivering clean, reliable nuclear power ..
America’s technological lead in anti-submarine warfare meant that, for much of the Cold War (and perhaps through to the present), US attack submarines …
Amid a historic low in inter-Korean relations and the wider Indo-Pacific region’s rapidly deteriorating security environment, the risk of nuclear war …
So, are we already seeing a growing, more serious, nuclear war in the making? I have long contended that the constant attacks on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine over the past couple of years is proof that nuclear power plants are easily used as nuclear weapons. And now we have the Russian nuclear power plant in Kursk also involved in attacks by Ukraine combatants. This is an alarming and extremely dangerous situation, and it could very easily get worse quickly. And it should be a dramatic lesson to us all.
This is what International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi had to say about the vulnerability of nuclear power plants suffering direct military attacks: “Nuclear power plants are designed to be resilient against technical or human failures and external events including extreme ones, but they are not built to withstand a direct military attack, and neither are they supposed to, just as with any other energy facility in the world. This latest attack highlights the vulnerability of such facilities in conflict zones and the need to continue monitoring the fragile situation.” (Read the article just below for more.)
To me, that means nuclear power plants can, if they’re not already, being used as weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and if such a menace can exist in the Russian/Ukraine war, it can happen anywhere in the world where nuclear power plants exist, and, yes, the United States leads the world in the number of operating nuclear power plants. Canada also has a large collection of nuclear power plants along the Eastern seaboard just north of the USA. These two nations are simply sitting ducks for nuclear warfare to radiate the entire central and eastern population in both countries.
In the early stages of her recent book, “Nuclear War: A Scenario”, Annie Jacobsen, in her alarming well-researched book describes how a nuclear power plant can easily be used as a WMD out of the blue, in just one shocking instant and, in a short time more, destroy a huge part of California. She creates a scenario of North Korea dropping a nuclear bomb on the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, owned by the infamous Pacific Gas & Electric utility (PG&E), the last commercially operating nuclear power plant in California. The scenario shows how chaos and death arrive virtually instantly in Southern California, also affecting downwind States to the west. Just one nuclear bomb can kill millions of people and other life in a matter of minutes and a few hours.
And yet we are anxious to quickly build more of these nuclear power plants, that are, in reality, vulnerable sitting ducks — waiting to be transformed into nuclear bombs that, as Mr. Grossi describes above, cannot withstand a military attack, much less a nuclear one, What on Earth are we thinking? ~llaw
IAEA urges ‘maximum restraint from all sides’ at Zaporizhzhia
19 August 2024
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warns that the nuclear safety situation is deteriorating after a drone strike on a road near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s perimeter.
(Image: ZNPP/Telegram)
The IAEA team stationed at the Zaporizhzhia plant (ZNPP) was informed on Saturday that an explosive carried by a drone detonated just outside the plant’s protected area, close to the cooling water sprinkler ponds and about 100 metres from the Dniprovska power line, which is the only remaining 750 kilovolt line providing external power supply to ZNPP.
“The team immediately visited the area (see picture above) and reported that the damage seemed to have been caused by a drone equipped with an explosive payload. There were no casualties and no impact on any NPP equipment. However, there was impact to the road between the two main gates of ZNPP,” the IAEA update said.
There has also been “intense” military activity close to the plant over the past week, the IAEA team reports. Recent days have seen a fire in one of the cooling towers and damage to a power and water substation in nearby Energodar, where many of the nuclear power plant workers and their families live.
Grossi said: “Yet again we see an escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers … I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides and for strict observance of the five concrete principles established for the protection of the plant.”
He added: “Nuclear power plants are designed to be resilient against technical or human failures and external events including extreme ones, but they are not built to withstand a direct military attack, and neither are they supposed to, just as with any other energy facility in the world. This latest attack highlights the vulnerability of such facilities in conflict zones and the need to continue monitoring the fragile situation.”
The six-unit ZNPP, Europe’s largest, has been under Russian military control since early March 2022. It is close to the frontline between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
Kursk nuclear power plant
Grossi reported that he had held talks at the weekend about the safety and security situation at Zaporizhzhia and also “recent events in the territory of the Russian Federation, including the proximity of military action to an important and operating nuclear power plant”.
The Director General of Russian nuclear corporation Rosatom, Alexei Likhachev, said that during talks with Grossi he had invited the IAEA’s head to visit the Kursk nuclear power plant. The IAEA statement said “Director General Grossi has expressed his readiness to assess the situation, including by making a visit to the plant”.
Ukraine and Russia each accuse the other side of putting nuclear safety at risk and breaching the IAEA’s central safety principles for nuclear facilities. Grossi explained at the United Nations in April that the IAEA would not attribute blame without “indisputable proof” and said the agency aims to “keep the information as accurate as we can and we do not trade into speculating”.
Researched and written by World Nuclear News
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GMT], the Ukrainian drone dropped a shell on the road that runs along the power units outside the perimeter. Personnel use this road all the time. No …
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I don’t believe there is such a thing as a “nuclear regional war”, because any war that includes nuclear weapons, no matter how regional, will be joined by major nuclear armed countries. For instance the U.S. would join Israel if nuclear arms were used in the Palestinians could be aided by several countries, including Iran (if they successfully build their intended nuclear arsenal) and even North Korea, which would make such a regional war an immediate international war which would become WWIII.
But I have purposely avoided posting the Middle East war situation here until now, hoping that Israel would come to its senses, but when I read that Israeli leader Netanyahu wants a “larger war”, I was forced to change my mind. This article, which points out all the factions and discuses the possibilities of the future, seems like a logical place to begin . . . ~llaw
Still overlooked connections: Israel, “Palestine” and regional nuclear war
A “Two-State Solution” would enlarge not “only” the jihadist terror threat to Israel (conventional and unconventional), but also prospects for major regional war. In these existential security matters, Israel doesn’t need more common sense. It needs disciplined and dialectical thought. Opinion.
Though significant, connections between Palestinian Arab statehood and nuclear war remain generally ignored. For Israel, the seemingly discrete perils of war with Iran and Palestinian Arab statehood are potentially intertwined and mutually reinforcing. This means that continuing to treat these issues as separate security problems could represent an especially grievous policy error.
There are variously clarifying particulars. Once established, a Palestinian state could tilt the balance of power between Israel and Iran. For the moment, there is no law-based Palestinian state (i.e., no Palestinian Arab satisfaction of authoritative requirements delineated at the Montevideo Convention of 1934). But if there should sometime come a point where Palestinian statehood and a direct war with Iran would coincide, the effects could prove determinative. In a worst case scenario, the acceleration of competitive risk-taking in the region would enlarge the risks of unconventional warfare.
For the moment, any direct war between Israel and Iran would be fought without any “Palestine variable.” Ironically, however, one more-or-less plausible outcome of such a war would be more pressure on Israel to accept yet another enemy state. To be sure, Iran’s leaders are unconcerned about Palestinian Arab well-being per se, but even a continuously faux commitment to Palestinian statehood would strengthen their overall power position.
Additionally, any formal creation of “Palestine” would be viewed in Tehran as a favorable development regarding wars fought against Israel. While nothing scientifically meaningful can be said about an unprecedented scenario (in logic and mathematics, true probabilities must always be based upon the determinable frequency of pertinent past events), there are persuasive reasons to expect that “Palestine” would become a reliably belligerent proxy of Iran.
A “Two-State Solution” would enlarge not “only” the jihadist terror threat to Israel (conventional and unconventional), but also prospects for major regional war. Even if such a war were fought while Iran was still pre-nuclear, it could still use radiation dispersal weapons or electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMP) against Israel and/or target the Dimona nuclear reactor with conventional rockets. In a worst case scenario, Iran’s already nuclear North Korean ally would act in direct belligerency against the Jewish State.
In these complex strategic assessments, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations ought never be confined to “general principles.” Rather, variously specific issues will need to be addressed head-on: borders; Jerusalem; relations between Gaza and the “West Bank;” the Cairo Declaration of June 1974 (an annihilationist “phased plan”); the Arab “right of return” and cancellation of the “Palestine National Charter” (which still calls unambiguously and unapologetically for the eradication of Israel “in stages”).
Not to be overlooked by any means, any justice-based plan would need to acknowledge the historical and legal rights of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria. Such an acknowledgment would represent an indispensable corrective to lawless Hamas claims of “resistance by any means necessary” and to genocidal Palestinian calls for “liberating” all territories “from the river to the sea.” On its face, the unhidden Palestinian Arab expectation is that Israel would become part of “Palestine”. But this ought not to come as any surprise. All Islamist/Jihadist populations already regard Israel as “occupied Palestine.”
“Everything is very simple in war,” warns classical Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz in On War, “but the simplest thing is still very difficult.” American presidents have always insisted that regional peace be predicated on Arab recognition of the Jewish people’s right to security in their own sovereign nation- state.
Concurrently, most Arab leaders in the Middle East secretly hope for a decisive Israeli victory over Hamas in Gaza and over Hezbollah in Lebanon. For these leaders, Hamas represents a foreseeably unmanageable scion of the Egyptian “Moslem Brotherhood” and Hezbollah a terror-surrogate of Shiite and non-Arab “Persia.”
What about North Korea and future Middle Eastern war? Pyongyang has a documented history of active support for Iran and Syria. Regarding ties with Damascus, it was Kim Jung Un who built the Al Kibar nuclear reactor for the Syrians at Deir al-Zor. This is the same facility that was preemptively destroyed by Israel in its “Operation Orchard” (also known in certain Israeli circles as “Operation Outside the Box”) on September 6, 2007.
For Israel, nuclear weapons, doctrine and strategy will remain essential to national survival. In this connection, the country’s traditional policy of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” or “bomb in the basement” should promptly be updated. The key objective of such dramatic changes would be more credible Israeli nuclear deterrence, a goal that will correlate closely with “selective nuclear disclosure.” Despite being counter-intuitive, Iran will need to become convinced that Israel’s nuclear arms are not too destructive for purposeful operational use. Here, in an arguably supreme irony, the credibility of Israel’s nuclear deterrent could vary inversely with its presumed destructiveness.
In order for Israel to construct theory-based nuclear policies, not policies that are merely visceral, ad hoc or “seat-of-the-pants” creations, Iran should be considered a rational foe. It remains conceivable that Iran would sometime act irrationally, perhaps in alliance with other more-or-less rational states (e.g., Syria, North Korea) or with kindred terror groups (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthi).
In any event, such altogether realistic prospects should never be dealt with in Washington or Jerusalem as matters of “common sense.” In existential security matters, Israel doesn’t need more common sense. It needs disciplined and dialectical thought.
What about non-Arab Pakistan? Unless Jerusalem were to consider Pakistan a genuine enemy, Israel has no present-day nuclear foes. Still, as an unstable Islamic state, Pakistan is subject to coup d’état by assorted Jihadist elements and is closely aligned with Saudi Arabia. At some point, the Sunni Saudi kingdom could decide to “go nuclear” itself, in large part because of Iran’s “Shiite” nuclear program.
Would such a decision by Riyadh represent a net gain or net loss for Israel?
It’s not too soon to ask this question.
For Israeli nuclear deterrence to work longer-term, Iran will need to be told more rather than less about Israel’s nuclear targeting doctrine and about the invulnerability of Israel’s nuclear forces/infrastructures. In concert with such changes, Jerusalem will also need to clarify its still opaque “Samson Option.” The point of such clarifications would not be to suggest Israel’s willingness to “die with the Philistines,” but to enhance the “high destruction” pole of its nuclear deterrence continuum.
If the next US president maintains America’s support of Palestinian statehood,[1] Iran will more likely consider certain direct conflict options vis-à-vis Israel. At some point in these considerations, Israel could need to direct explicit nuclear threats (counter-value and/or counter-force) toward the Islamic Republic. As policy, this posture could represent a “point of no return.”
For Israel, the unprecedented risks of Palestinian statehood could prove irreversible and irremediable. These risks would likely be enlarged if they had to be faced concurrent with an Israel-Iran war. It follows that Jerusalem’s core security obligation should be to keep Iran non–nuclear and to simultaneously prevent Palestinian statehood. From the standpoint of authoritative international law, meeting this two-part obligation would be in the combined interests of counter-terrorism, nuclear war-avoidance and genocide prevention. Prime facie, meeting this overriding obligation would be in the interests of regional and global justice.
LOUIS RENÉ BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is Professor (Emer.) of International Law at Purdue. Born in Zürich at the end of World War II, he writes extensively on world politics, law, literature and philosophy and is a member of the Oxford University Press Editorial Advisory Board for the annual Yearbook on International Law and Jurisprudence. He is also a six-times contributor to this publication, including lead articles, and has been published at Horasis (Zurich); Jurist; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; global-e (U. of California); Yale Global Online; Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard); World Politics (Princeton); The Atlantic; The New York Times; Israel National News; US News & World Report; Air-Space Operations Review (USAF); The Brown Journal of World Affairs; Parameters: Journal of the U.S. Army War College; Modern War Institute (Pentagon); The War Room (Pentagon); BESA Perspectives (Israel); INSS (Israel); Israel Defense (Israel); The Hudson Review (New York) and others. His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2016 (2nd. ed., 2018)
[1] Supporters of a Palestinian state often argue that its prospective harms to Israel could be reduced or eliminated by expecting the new Arab state’s original “demilitarization.” For informed legal and diplomatic reasoning against this argument, see: Louis René Beres and (Ambassador) Zalman Shoval, “Why a Demilitarized Palestinian State Would Not Remain Demilitarized: A View Under International Law,” Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, Winter 1998, pp. 347-363; and Louis René Beres and Ambassador Shoval, “On Demilitarizing a Palestinian `Entity’ and the Golan Heights: An International Law Perspective,” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vo. 28., No.5., November 1995, pp. 959-972.
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The plant was seized by Russia’s forces early in the war and has come under repeated attacks which both sides have blamed the other for. ‘Russians are …
This dream is a nightmare waiting to happen, but the story is well prepared and thorough in it presentation from Freethink, but overly optimistic. I am not going to comment in detail on the article’s content until I have had time to study the graphics and the implied grandeur of the future of nuclear power only if we are indifferent and ignorant enough to lower our safety standards and management controls and related limitations on the most dangerous product ever devised on planet Earth.
That alone is enough to say that such a nuclear engineered world is far too complicated, expensive, limited, and life-threatening for humanity to control ‘all things nuclear’ from the most basic of applications upward to the most complicated nuclear weapons and nuclear power production. We are utter fools to think otherwise. ~llaw
America’s plan to resurrect nuclear power
The US is investing billions of dollars into nuclear. Will it pay off?
It’s 2035, and the US just reached its goal of 100% clean electricity. How did we do it? While solar, wind, and other renewables generate the majority of the nation’s electricity, we’d still be relying at least partially on fossil fuels — if not for a recent increase in clean nuclear power.
America’s nuclear future
It’s been 85 years since scientists first split a uranium atom, and today, the energy released by that process — nuclear fission — is generating about 20% of the United States’ electricity.
Because nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon emissions and is more dependable than solar and wind power, many see it as a key weapon in the battle against climate change, but rather than increasing, the number of reactors in the US has been declining in recent decades.
To find out what can be done to reverse this trend, let’s look at America’s history with nuclear power and the ideas that could help us reach net-zero as soon as possible.
Where we’ve been
Where we’re going (maybe)
The US is at a crossroads in its nuclear power journey.
Since the 1990s, the country has been relying on nuclear power to generate about 20% of its electricity, but its nuclear fleet is getting old — the average lifespan of a reactor is 20-40 years, and the average age of operating US reactors is 42 years.
Right now, older reactors are being decommissioned much faster than new ones are being built — in fact, there is only one new reactor under construction in the US today. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) now forecasts that nuclear power would provide just 13% of electricity in 2050.
But to reach the Biden administration’s goal of a 100% clean electricity sector by 2035, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory predicts we may need to increase nuclear capacity to the point that it can meet 27% of our electricity demand. Combine this with suddenly surging electricity demand, after decades with little growth, and the US is going to need a lot more clean energy.
So, what can be done to increase the amount of nuclear power in the US?
Reduce red tape
Normally, the more times you do something, the better you get at it — you become more efficient and learn to avoid mistakes that might have tripped you up as a beginner. But the US has had the opposite experience with building nuclear power plants.
If you started building a new reactor in the mid-1960s, the “overnight cost” (the cost not including any interest on financing) would likely be between $1000-1500/kW, but if you started in 1970s, you’d be paying $3000-$6000/kW (all in 2010 dollars).
The only reactors that have started construction since — the Vogtle reactors 3 and 4 that just went online in Georgia — had an overnight cost of $7000/kW (in 2010 dollars) and took seven years longer than planned to build.
Lovering et al. (2016)
There isn’t one single reason for this decreasing efficiency, but constantly evolving regulations are a major contributor — they can force builders to make changes to previously approved designs, even to plants currently under construction, increasing labor costs and delaying construction timelines.
Building a new nuclear reactor is already a lengthy, multi-billion dollar undertaking. Add in the potential for regulatory issues to extend timelines and increase costs, and it’s not hard to understand why developers are hesitant to get involved in nuclear.
In an attempt to make the investment less risky, Congress passed and President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which includes investment tax credits of up to 50% for new nuclear reactors. In 2024, it followed that up with the ADVANCE Act, a bill designed to make it easier to build and deploy new reactors in the US.
In addition to instructing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the chief nuclear regulator in the US, to reduce certain licensing fees and cut down on review times, the ADVANCE Act also updates the NRC’s mission statement to include that it will not “unnecessarily limit the…deployment of nuclear energy.”
Critics argue that the new law will make nuclear power less safe, but proponents like Ted Nordhaus, founder and executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, a research center that promotes technological solutions to environmental challenges, disagrees.
“For decades, the NRC has tried to regulate to make risk from nuclear energy as close to zero as possible, but has failed to consider the cost to the environment, public health, energy security, or prosperity of not building and operating nuclear energy plants,” Nordhaus said in a statement. “This reduces rather than improves public health and safety.”
“But with passage of the ADVANCE bill,” he continued, “Congress is telling the regulators that public benefits are and have always been part of their mission.”
As you’d expect from the names, SMRs and microreactors are smaller than the huge reactors mostly in use at current nuclear plants, which means they don’t generate as much electricity.
However, their smaller size means they can be deployed in more locations — such as near power-hungrydata centers, or as a complement to wind and solar farms — and multiple reactors can be added to a single site to scale up output to whatever is required.
SMRs and microreactors generally have simpler designs with safety characteristics that make them less likely to meltdown, and because they can (theoretically) be built on assembly lines in factories — rather than constructed on site like larger reactors — they have the potential to be cheaper and faster to deploy, too.
Radiant Industries
Radiant Industries’ Kaleidos microreactor is designed to fit inside a shipping container.
Potential, but not proven. The NRC has already approved one SMR, but its developer, NuScale Power, canceled its first planned project after the construction budget exploded from $5.3 billion to $9.3 billion. That was even more expensive, per kW, than the Vogtle reactors, which themselves took twice as long and cost twice as much as originally planned.
It’s not clear whether NuScale’s situation is a sign that SMRs aren’t going to be as cheap as hoped or an example of the kinds of growing pains that can be alleviated with more experience. The ADVANCE Act could help us find out by getting more SMR and microreactor developers licensed to deploy their tech.
The DoE’s recently announced plan to provide up to $900 million in funding to SMR developers could help get help, too, as could its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), which has issued $160 million in funding to get innovative reactors — including one being developed by TerraPower — up and running.
Address public concerns
Red tape and financial risks aren’t the only roadblocks to deploying more nuclear power in the US. While a slight majority of Americans support adding more nuclear power plants to the US electric grid, many who are opposed are staunchly against it, and that opposition can make it harder to build new plants or keep existing ones from closing.
People cite a lot of different reasons for opposing nuclear power, too.
Some are concerned that reactors will cause harm to people or the environment, from accidents or terrorist attacks. Others see the radioactive waste from reactors as a potential health threat or believe that living near or working at a plant is enough to cause health problems.
The potential for bad actors to use the materials needed to fuel nuclear power plants to make weapons is another concern, and even people who aren’t entirely against nuclear power may protest increasing the US’s reliance on it on the grounds that solar and wind are better options.
These concerns aren’t entirely unfounded — people have sometimes died due to accidents at nuclear power plants, and some recent research suggests that working at one may slightly increase a person’s risk of dying from a solid tumor.
However, there’s no evidence that simply living near a nuclear power plant in the US is harmful, and some newer reactor designs are essentially meltdown-proof.
Moreover, no form of electricity production is entirely without health risks. Compared to the death rates from other kinds of power, like coal and gas — widely used with minimal protest today, despite their role in climate change — nuclear is actually one of the safest forms of power.
Rather than being some green ooze with the potential to leak into our water and create three-eyed fish, spent nuclear fuel is solid, and reactors aren’t producing mountains of the stuff — according to the DoE, all of the waste generated since the invention of nuclear power “could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.”
“When it’s on the surface, it’s dependent on a government that’s going to continue to exist to protect it for 100, 200, 300 years,” Elizabeth Muller, cofounder of nuclear waste disposal startup Deep Isolation, told Freethink. “Whereas when it’s deep underground, you don’t need those sort of human mechanisms to keep us all safe.”
Deep Isolation proposes using directional drilling techniques, developed by the oil industry, to create deep boreholes in rock. These could be created in more places, eliminating the need to transport waste to a single large repository designed to store the entire nation’s waste.
Whether the US decides to pursue something like Deep Isolation’s storage solution or not is TBD, but it is working to alleviate public concerns about nuclear power and nuclear waste.
In 2022, the DoE invested $800,000 into a program focused on community outreach and education surrounding nuclear power, and in 2023, it awarded $26 million in funding to groups that will engage with people in communities being considered for new nuclear waste storage sites.
“This funding will help DoE learn from and involve communities across the country in the consent-based siting process, answer questions and concerns, and develop an understanding so that we are good neighbors even before moving in,” said US Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.
Ultimately, our electricity demand is increasing, and until we see some breakthroughs in battery tech, solar and wind likely won’t be affordable and dependable enough to support the grid by themselves. Nuclear power isn’t perfect, but the risks it poses to human health and the environment pale in comparison to those we face if we continue to burn fossil fuels.
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Okay, regarding the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant just southwest of San Luis Obispo, California, highlighted in yesterday’s “All Things Nuclear” issues and comments, here is the other side of that argument from Diablo Canyon’s own vice president of business and technical services, Maureen Zawalick, coupled with a re-post, in case you didn’t read it yesterday, by the Associated Press correspondent, Michael Blood’s opinion.
Please note that neither writer seriously considers or notes the grave danger to humanity that all nuclear power plants present to our health, safety, and environment. Ms. Zawalick mentions the existing tons of greenhouse gasses that fossil fuel plants in California, and compares that, a bit dishonestly, to such ‘zero’ emissions from Diablo Canyon, yet she completely fails to mention the nuclear waste and the other threatening nuclear power plant potential disasters that could occur over the sadly approved 5-year extended life of the nuclear power plant, including radiation leaks from the plant’s old age, which is why it was regulated to shut down next year. Such an attitude is like playing with fire that could easily get out of control.
But the big issue from both opinions is based, as usual, on money — financial disagreements — as the sole questionable impact on the State of California. This scheduled shutdown, though, is really not even about saving money, nor is it about the 9% that Diablo Canyon produces in electricity for the State. It is about human and other lives against the odds of continuing to operate the nuclear plant or shutting it down as scheduled.
California knows very well the sad truth about out-of-control forest fires, but playing against the odds of a nuclear disaster could be far more deadly than the loss of life and environmental damage of forest fires, and though they are tragic unto themselves, they can’t hold a proverbial candle to an out-of-control nuclear power plant. ~llaw
Opinion
PG&E: Here’s why the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is good for California | Opinion
Maureen Zawalick
Thu, August 15, 2024 at 10:16 a.m. PDT·3 min read
PG&E: Here’s why the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is good for California | Opinion
Joe Tarica/jtarica@thetribunenews.com
For nearly four decades, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant has been the backbone of California’s clean energy ambitions.
Today, Diablo Canyon — California’s only operating nuclear power plant — generates roughly 9% of California’s electricity, enough to meet the energy needs of more than 3 million people. All of this is clean, zero-emission, carbon-free energy. In fact, every year it operates, Diablo Canyon saves between 6 to 7 million tons of greenhouse gasses from entering the atmosphere compared to other generation sources.
In recent weeks, a lot has been said about the cost of keeping Diablo Canyon operating. I believe Californians deserve a full accounting of both the costs and financial benefits of operating California’s largest source of clean energy.
Opinion
The math is clear that keeping Diablo Canyon open through 2030 will not only ensure that California can keep the lights on without backsliding on its climate goals, it will also save customers $200 million per year on average — or more than $1 billion — over the duration of the extended operations period.
Here’s how things break down:
Operating Diablo Canyon from 2024 to 2030 will cost roughly $8.3 billion dollars, $1.2 billion of which is being paid for by state and federal programs. That leaves a remaining $7.1 billion that will be paid by customers over the six-year period in question.
For the average customer in PG&E’s service area, this works out to roughly $2 per month in 2025. The cost is significantly less for customers in Southern California, and the cost for all customers is expected to decrease significantly in the later years — to $0 in some years — of the plant’s extended operations.
These costs represent only one side of the financial equation. There are significant financial benefits for customers that come from extended operations of the plant, and when you add everything up, Diablo Canyon’s revenues and reliability value will be more than $8.2 billion — more than $1.1 billion higher than the operating costs to be paid by customers.
Here’s how:
The energy generated by Diablo Canyon will generate market revenues to the tune of $6.1 billion, 100% of which must be returned to customers to offset the costs of operations.
In addition, operating Diablo Canyon means that energy companies won’t be required to sign new and costly energy contracts to ensure that California’s grid can maintain electric reliability during periods of extreme demand. This reliability value comes out to roughly $2.1 billion in additional value, which is used to offset customers’ energy costs.
Simply put, Diablo is the most affordable way to maintain reliability. And, according to the California Energy Commission, the only resource available that wouldn’t rely on harmful fossil fuels to generate that power.
Together, these revenues and reliability values means California energy customers will see a net benefit of roughly $200 million per year on average.
But Diablo Canyon’s value doesn’t stop there. As aforementioned, Diablo Canyon saves between 6 to 7 million tons of greenhouse gasses from entering the atmosphere. These avoided emissions have societal benefits that can be quantified through things like avoided health care costs, agriculture impacts, medical expenses and impacts to the labor field and broader economy. For Diablo Canyon, the societal benefit of avoided greenhouse gas emissions has been pegged at nearly $400 million per year.
These figures, paired with the fact that keeping Diablo Canyon online prevents the state backsliding on its clean energy goals by having to integrate more fossil fuel generation into its energy, make Diablo Canyon a sound investment for all Californians — one that saves customers money and benefits society while keeping the lights on.
Maureen Zawalick is the vice president of business and technical services at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
California legislators break with Gov. Newsom over loan to keep state’s last nuclear plant running
Michael R. BloodThu, August 15, 2024 at 10:36 a.m. PDT·4 min read
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California Legislature signaled its intent on Thursday to cancel a $400 million loan payment to help finance a longer lifespan for the state’s last nuclear power plant, exposing a rift with Gov. Gavin Newsom who says that the power is critical to safeguarding energy supplies amid a warming climate.The votes in the state Senate and Assembly on funding for the twin-domed Diablo Canyon plant represented an interim step as Newsom and legislative leaders, all Democrats, continue to negotiate a new budget. But it sets up a public friction point involving one of the governor’s signature proposals, which he has championed alongside the state’s rapid push toward solar, wind and other renewable sources.The dispute unfolded in Sacramento as environmentalists and antinuclear activists warned that the estimated price tag for keeping the seaside reactors running beyond a planned closing by 2025 had ballooned to nearly $12 billion, roughly doubling earlier projections. That also has raised the prospect of higher fees for ratepayers.Operator Pacific Gas & Electric called those figures inaccurate and inflated by billions of dollars.H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the California Department of Finance, emphasized that budget negotiations are continuing and the legislative votes represented an “agreement between the Senate and the Assembly — not an agreement with the governor.”The votes in the Legislature mark the latest development in a decades-long fight over the operation and safety of the plant, which sits on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.Diablo Canyon, which began operating in the mid-1980s, produces up to 9% of the state’s electricity on any given day.The fight over the reactors’ future is playing out as the long-struggling U.S. nuclear industry sees a potential rebirth in the era of global warming. Nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but it leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.A Georgia utility just finished the first two scratch-built American reactors in a generation at a cost of nearly $35 billion. The price tag for the expansion of Plant Vogtle from two of the traditional large reactors to four includes almost $17 billion in cost overruns. In Wyoming, Bill Gates and his energy company have started construction on a next-generation nuclear power plant that the tech titan believes will “revolutionize” how power is generated.In 2016, PG&E, environmental groups and plant worker unions reached an agreement to close Diablo Canyon by 2025. But the Legislature voided the deal in 2022 at the urging of Newsom, who said the power is needed to ward off blackouts as a changing climate stresses the energy system. That agreement for a longer run included a $1.4 billion forgivable state loan for PG&E, to be paid in several installments.California energy regulators voted in December to extend the plant’s operating run for five years, to 2030.The legislators’ concerns were laid out in an exchange of letters with the Newsom administration, at a time when the state is trying to close an estimated $45 billion deficit. Among other concerns, they questioned if, and when, the state would be repaid by PG&E, and whether taxpayers could be out hundreds of millions of dollars if the proposed extension for Diablo Canyon falls through.Construction at Diablo Canyon began in the 1960s. Critics say potential earthquakes from nearby faults not known to exist when the design was approved could damage equipment and release radiation. One fault was not discovered until 2008. PG&E has long said the plant is safe, an assessment the NRC has supported.Last year, environmental groups called on federal regulators to immediately shut down one of two reactors at the site until tests can be conducted on critical machinery they believe could fail and cause a catastrophe. Weeks later, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took no action on the request and instead asked agency staff to review it.The questions raised by environmentalists about the potential for soaring costs stemmed from a review of state regulatory filings submitted by PG&E, they said. Initial estimates of about $5 billion to extend the life of the plant later rose to over $8 billion, then nearly $12 billion, they said.“It’s really quite shocking,” said attorney John Geesman, a former California Energy Commission member who represents the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, an advocacy group that opposes federal license renewals in California. The alliance told the state Public Utilities Commission in May that the cost would represent “by far the largest financial commitment to a single energy project the commission has ever been asked to endorse.”PG&E spokesperson Suzanne Hosn said the figures incorrectly included billions of dollars of costs unrelated to extending operations at the plant.The company has pegged the cost at $8.3 billion, Hosn said, adding that “the financial benefits exceed the costs.”___This story has been updated to correct the amount of cost overruns to build two reactors at the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia. It was almost $17 billion, not $11 billion.Michael R. Blood, for The Associated Press via the “Canadian Press
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International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi has already spoken out about the risk. “I would like to appeal to all sides …
From earthquakes to jellyfish: See 8 emergency alerts at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Stephanie Zappelli. Wed, August 14, 2024 at 1:18 p.m. CDT …
Full spectrum nuclear and conventional deterrence and Soviet appreciation of the costs of war kept the Cold War stand-off from escalating into a Third …
Old Faithful Geyser · Grand Prismatic Spring · Yellowstone Caldera · Lamar Valley Wildlife · Mammoth Hot Springs · Yellowstone Lake · Norris Geyser Basin.
IAEA Weekly News
16 August 2024
Read the top news and updates published on IAEA.org this week.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed that on 9 August 2024, TEPCO found a water leakage at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 2, involving an estimated 25 tons of water from the spent fuel cooling system pump room and the heat exchanger room. The leaked water flowed into drain on the floor connected to the water collection pit (floor sump) located in a room of the first basement floor. The Agency was also informed that TEPCO has not found any leakage spread to other rooms at this stage. Read more →
The Agency was informed that on 5 August 2024 the Agreement Among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion (the “Agreement”) was signed by representatives of the three countries in Washington D.C. and it has been submitted to their legislative authorities for consideration and approval. Read more →
The irradiation of gemstones in research reactors is a widespread practice, carried out to enhance their colour and increase their market value. The IAEA works with national regulators to ensure this practice is safe for workers and consumers. Read more →
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) viewed evidence provided to the team today that continues to indicate that Monday’s fire did not start at the base of the cooling tower, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said. Read more →
The first ever International Nuclear Science Olympiad has been held in the Philippines in the run up to today’s International Youth Day, with the support of the IAEA. Read more →
It will be interesting to see the eventual conclusion of this story. California needs to review the overall operating history of PG&E’s god-awful non-nuclear accidents and questionable operations and decide whether the risk of extending the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is considered feasible and worth the nearly one billion dollar “loan” to help operate the plant until 2030, while facing a $12 billion in operating costs for the remainder of the plant’s projected future beyond 2025, that will likely never be repaid considering the history of PG&E’s several bankruptcies from previous non-nuclear accidents, some of them lethal.
(I have reported their entire accident-prone history in previous blog posts, and I believe there is no reason to trust them for any practical reason, especially because the plant is dangerous from a nuclear standpoint, that the plant only produces 9% of California’s energy requirements, which could no doubt be covered by renewable resources, and the immense risks of continuing to operate the plant.
As a concerned Nevada next-door neighbor, Governor Newsom should consider the legislators’ second thoughts, and demand that the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant be shut down as scheduled in 2025. Even then may not be soon enough. ~llaw
California legislators break with Gov. Newsom over loan to keep state’s last nuclear plant running
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press Updated Aug 15, 2024 1:37 p.m.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California Legislature signaled its intent on Thursday to cancel a $400 million loan payment to help finance a longer lifespan for the state’s last nuclear power plant, exposing a rift with Gov. Gavin Newsom who says that the power is critical to safeguarding energy supplies amid a warming climate.
The votes in the state Senate and Assembly on funding for the twin-domed Diablo Canyon plant represented an interim step as Newsom and legislative leaders, all Democrats, continue to negotiate a new budget. But it sets up a public friction point involving one of the governor’s signature proposals, which he has championed alongside the state’s rapid push toward solar, wind and other renewable sources.
The dispute unfolded in Sacramento as environmentalists and antinuclear activists warned that the estimated price tag for keeping the seaside reactors running beyond a planned closing by 2025 had ballooned to nearly $12 billion, roughly doubling earlier projections. That also has raised the prospect of higher fees for ratepayers.
Operator Pacific Gas & Electric called those figures inaccurate and inflated by billions of dollars.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the California Department of Finance, emphasized that budget negotiations are continuing and the legislative votes represented an “agreement between the Senate and the Assembly — not an agreement with the governor.”
The votes in the Legislature mark the latest development in a decades-long fight over the operation and safety of the plant, which sits on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Diablo Canyon, which began operating in the mid-1980s, produces up to 9% of the state’s electricity on any given day.
The fight over the reactors’ future is playing out as the long-struggling U.S. nuclear industry sees a potential rebirth in the era of global warming. Nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but it leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.
A Georgia utility just finished the first two scratch-built American reactors in a generation at a cost of nearly $35 billion. The price tag for the expansion of Plant Vogtle from two of the traditional large reactors to four includes almost $17 billion in cost overruns. In Wyoming, Bill Gates and his energy company have started construction on a next-generation nuclear power plant that the tech titan believes will “revolutionize” how power is generated.
In 2016, PG&E, environmental groups and plant worker unions reached an agreement to close Diablo Canyon by 2025. But the Legislature voided the deal in 2022 at the urging of Newsom, who said the power is needed to ward off blackouts as a changing climate stresses the energy system. That agreement for a longer run included a $1.4 billion forgivable state loan for PG&E, to be paid in several installments.
California energy regulators voted in December to extend the plant’s operating run for five years, to 2030.
The legislators’ concerns were laid out in an exchange of letters with the Newsom administration, at a time when the state is trying to close an estimated $45 billion deficit. Among other concerns, they questioned if, and when, the state would be repaid by PG&E, and whether taxpayers could be out hundreds of millions of dollars if the proposed extension for Diablo Canyon falls through.
Construction at Diablo Canyon began in the 1960s. Critics say potential earthquakes from nearby faults not known to exist when the design was approved could damage equipment and release radiation. One fault was not discovered until 2008. PG&E has long said the plant is safe, an assessment the NRC has supported.
Last year, environmental groups called on federal regulators to immediately shut down one of two reactors at the site until tests can be conducted on critical machinery they believe could fail and cause a catastrophe. Weeks later, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took no action on the request and instead asked agency staff to review it.
The questions raised by environmentalists about the potential for soaring costs stemmed from a review of state regulatory filings submitted by PG&E, they said. Initial estimates of about $5 billion to extend the life of the plant later rose to over $8 billion, then nearly $12 billion, they said.
“It’s really quite shocking,” said attorney John Geesman, a former California Energy Commission member who represents the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, an advocacy group that opposes federal license renewals in California. The alliance told the state Public Utilities Commission in May that the cost would represent “by far the largest financial commitment to a single energy project the commission has ever been asked to endorse.”
PG&E spokesperson Suzanne Hosn said the figures incorrectly included billions of dollars of costs unrelated to extending operations at the plant.
The company has pegged the cost at $8.3 billion, Hosn said, adding that “the financial benefits exceed the costs.”
___
This story has been updated to correct the amount of cost overruns to build two reactors at the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia. It was almost $17 billion, not $11 billion.
Aug 15, 2024|Updated Aug 15, 2024 1:37 p.m.
MICHAEL R. BLOOD
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There are 7 categories, with the latest (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… that is all but unusable. The 2022 Nuclear Posture Review announced: “The U.S. would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances
The nuclear de-escalation that followed the cold war is over, the Pentagon warned this month. … Facing new nuclear threats will be a test for America, …
