Dinosaur bones are often radioactive and geologists searching for uranium get it! Alley Oop and Ooola figured out they might harm humans eons ago. lolloll! Actually it’s not funny that we still haven’t figured it out! . . . ~llaw
LLAW’s COMMENTARY, Sunday, (03/31/2024)
The media headlines today are too ridiculous to allow me to stop laughing. I am pretty sure we are all insane by now, myself included, and we’ve all taken the red or blue pill and drank (drunk) the water. Following is my review of today’s “All Things Nuclear” media articles . . .
“Voters believe Trump is better equipped to handle nuclear emergencies.” Trump is not capable of handling anything, including his own legal life, or so it appears to me! Just know it would be darn hard to handle anything, especially all things nuclear, from a prison cell . . . lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll!
The amazingly insane idea, still being quoted and evidently bankrolled, international agreement to triple nuclear power worldwide? lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll! Spending billions to create new nuclear power plants, or to restart others and keep still others operating that should be forever shutdown and mothballed before we contaminate the earth with radiation/nuclear fallout? That is pure insanity. There is a reason these nuclear reactor plants are shut down and that all others should be shut down, too . . . lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll!
Rethinking the dumping of nuclear waste from Fukushima after the fact? When the deed is already done? lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll!
A Republican congressman from Michigan wants to nuke Gaza and be done with it? lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll!
Annie’s book, ”Nuclear War: A Scenario” will make you start worrying? We should have started worrying many, many, years ago. lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll!
Uranium mining for refining nuclear fuel provides an unlimited supply? Uranium is not renewable energy, plus it is radioactive, meaning it is not “clean”. lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll, lolloll!
The Ukraine/Russia war may spark WWIII? Stay tuned! But to think we can survive and rebuild a better world? Ridiculous! WWIII would, if it was truly WWIII, would be the end of us and most all other life on Mother Earth. But I can’t laugh at this one; we are doing all this to ourselves despite being told 80+ years ago by the most brilliant minds on the planet to stop it, yet no one seems to have paid any attention. I suspect that these scientists/teachers/philosophers are not laughing in their graves, but rather pitying the ignorance of humanity, of which my own ignorance once also ruled . . . Sorry, but I am trying my best to help us all see the light now that the eleventh hour has arrived! ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
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.
… same thing of Biden. Missile strikes take out power plants in Ukrainian city Kharkiv. Loaded: 0%. Progress: 0%. 0:00. Previous. Play. Skip. LIVE. Mute.
Expert warns ‘there will be a third world war‘ after Putin’s latest threat … Putin’s latest threat to unleash nuclear … The threats and warnings from …
PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant — the last commercial plant in California.
LLAW’s COMMENTARY, Saturday, (03/30/2024)
Don’t count on this nuclear power plant to provide much more than trouble to the already problematic, was scheduled for retirement in 2025 due to old age, has had trouble with cracks leaking in the reactors and is owned by the most accident prone power company, Pacific Gas & Electric, in the United States, causing major damage and human suffering wherever it has operated over the years. It is also a principal subject of my new book, “El Nuclear Diablo”, that I am serializing here on my nightly blog, “All Things Nuclear”. Chapter 2 is schedule for April 11th. ~llaw
Read the PG&E article selected from today’s Categories. Here is a convenient link:
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
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.
All Things Considered · Ways To Listen · All Radio … TOKYO — “Oppenheimer” finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 …
But as the U.S. pursues its nuclear power potential, environmentalists and Native American leaders remain fearful of the consequences for communities …
Putin and senior Russian officials have repeatedly threatened nuclear escalation against Kyiv and its Western partners since Moscow launched its full- …
These two short combined articles (linked just below) may help us to understand the meaning of ‘nuclear-threat, which to my mind is a system of fabricating lies from one country to another until someone feels cornered and is power-driven to react. However, such threats could continue to go on for years, never happen, or carried out tonight. The truth is that the spoken words of desperate leaders (and their sympathizers, including militaries) are fabrications and lies until one day they are not . . . ~llaw
Lead “All Things Nuclear” story for today:
Nuclear War: A Scenario is a breathless, minute-by-minute description of one way in which, thanks to apparent North Korean paranoia, a global …
I hope those of you who read Chapter 1 of my 1st draft of “El Nuclear Diablo” are curious about what is to come. Early chapters are often hard to write because they have to deal with getting acquainted with principal characters, establishing some kind of hint about the later details of plots and events and clues to what the major storyline will be, for the most part, about for the entire novel.
(You might like to get an early idea of how I tell my tales by buying my recently published “Old West” two-volume historical tome (based on an actual incident) of the Wyoming conflict at the early beginning of the Range wars between the Cattle Ranchers and the Homesteaders when it was tragically between a treacherous vigilante group of cattlemen against a single young female homesteader who had the audacity and courage to homestead alone. The novels, available on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble websites are called “The Sweetwater Conspiracy”, with subtitles “The “Emergence” and “The Conspiracy”)
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
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.
All Things · Culture · Food and Drink · The Guide … TOKYO — “Oppenheimer” finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 …
… all aid, including the billions and billions … things. There is a notion among many Israelis … If its leaders want to secretly explode nuclear weapons …
Nuclear energy provided 50% of America’s carbon-free electricity in 2023, making it the largest domestic source of clean energy. Nuclear power plants …
… Nuclear Emergency Committee and Vice Governor of the Provincial People’s Government. … No leak at Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant, Wong says December 13, …
W.J. Hennigan, a correspondent for the Opinion section of the New York Times, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the risk of nuclear war in an …
… threats, likely seeking to delay and influence … attack will increase domestic support for the war in Ukraine. … nuclear submarine strategic missile …
PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on Avila Beach near San Luis Obispo
LLAW’s COMMENTARY, Thursday, (03/28/2024)
Today’s Post is dedicated to Chapter 1 of my new, in-progress, novel dubbed “El Nuclear Diablo”, which is being serialized here in a bi-weekly Post . . .
El Nuclear Diablo
(A novel by Lloyd Albert Williams-Pendergraft)
Chapter 1
We have reached Canada and passed through customs, mooring on Vancouver Island for the night, happy to find an open restaurant at the harbor, although we have more than ample food and other supplies on board the schooner, which, by the way, bears the title “The Pacifier”. It has certainly lived up to its name during the early days of our journey north. It will take us four or five or more days to travel the additional 800 nautical miles along the coastline to reach Juneau.
At dinner we are delighted to meet a team of six employees, four men and two women, from the Hanford Project, who are also on their way by boat to Juneau for essentially the same reasons we are and we agree to travel together, in our separate schooners, the rest of the way, giving us a safer and a more comforting feeling during the remainder of our trip. Over our dining, we discuss the implications and share our knowledge about the future of North America and, indeed, the world and what the prospects are to provide pockets of preservation for human life, and in general where we think those places might be. The discussion is not a confident one, nor is it at all pleasant. But we all realize that we have to do our best to have some success in our unexpected new mission in life.
After dinner we retire to the barroom for a nightcap, the younger set returning to their rooms. The rest of us would not be far behind, intending to depart by 8:00 in the morning. We chatted about the weather, the tides, and other mundane subjects, none of us wishing to discuss the nuclear situation nor other world issues. The burden on us all is just too heavy to discuss, but we all know that each of us would not be here if not for some important role that we have professionally played previously in the nuclear world. And the very idea of even thinking about the loss of human lives, for now limited to parts of the United States, but still with no doubt multi-millions already dead or dying, the sheer idea of such a discussion is unbearable.
No one is in a drinking mood, but we sip our way through after dinner Brandies continuing with the small talk when we are suddenly approached by two men, wearing Army and Air Force military uniforms, with their 4-star rankings on their shoulder patches. They stride directly to our table, mentioning our names, one by one, all of the names cordially directed to the proper person, before introducing themselves after we all shake hands, immediately wondering what is happening and why they are here even though it’s obviously solely because of us. They point to a larger table well away from the bar and suggest we all move over there for privacy, which puts me, and I’m sure, the rest of us on high alert. It does not take long to hear more.
#
“We have orders to divert you from your destination to Juneau, Mr. Williams,” the Army General said looking directly, piercingly, into my eyes. Your wife and children and the others will go on to Juneau as planned, but we will be escorting you to a hastily called meeting by the President. I cannot tell you where, but you will be able to contact your family as soon as the meeting is over, which will take place in the early afternoon or later tomorrow, allowing time to gather everyone else we need to attend.”
I found myself confounded, staring into my wife’s frightened wild eyes. At a loss for words, I took her hand in mine and remained silent. In seconds the military officers once again shook hands with the rest of them, detaching my hand from my wife’s, shaking hers as well, said goodbye, and led me from the bar. Yes, it happened that fast; I felt as though I was being kidnapped or marched off to jail somewhere unknown for reasons unknown. Why would they want only me? My two friends and at least one of the Hanford group were as familiar with all things nuclear as I was, so my mind was having trouble obeying my ability to remain calm, my thoughts spinning in elliptic circles. But I forced myself to remain silent as the Generals, the Air Force General on my right and the Army General on the left, ushered me out of the building into the darkness.
Approaching the parking lot, I saw a limousine idling with its lights on, the engine just loud enough to hear its quiet purr as the three of us walked toward it with me still in the middle. “Where are we going and why? You mentioned a meeting with the President . . .”, I asked unable to maintain my curiosity silently any longer.
“We will tell you after we are on the airplane,” the Air Force officer said amiably enough. We have a pilot, so we will be alone in the cabin. The driver, also in military uniform, had opened both doors on the passenger side of the limo, and closed them after we had settled into our seats, The Army General climbed into the front passenger seat and the Air Force General and I shared the rear bench seat.
We drove north a few miles in total silence, most of it among tall cedars and soon came to a locked chain link gate, which the driver, without stopping, opened with a hand held instrument, something like a garage door opener, but with colored lights he pressed with his fingers, with the gate closing automatically after we passed through and drove through another small forest of cedars. Suddenly, to my surprise, a well-lighted airport appeared with a concrete apron, several hangars, and an office or small passenger terminal arranged in a straight line to the left of a full-sized lighted runway. There was a 737 Boeing passenger jet under power idling at the near end of the runway, perhaps fifty yards from the passenger building. No doubt, I thought to myself, this is a top-secret military airport.
We exited the limo in the small parking area in front of the passenger building and walked through the unlocked building’s entrance door. A young air force officer sat behind an ‘L’ shaped counter where desks, electronic equipment, meteorological instruments and other computerized devices filled the space along the four foot high counters.
“If you need to relieve yourself, do so now, Mr. Williams,” the Army General said, pointing toward the well-marked rest rooms. He strode through a swinging gate into the office space and sat down at a radio instrument next to the desk of the young officer, and struck up a conversation just as the other officer who was driving the limo came in. There appeared to be no one else anywhere at the airport, except for the probability of a pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit of the 737, waiting for us. Seeing me standing in the middle of the lobby floor, he walked over to me and introduced himself.
“Mr. Williams, I am Captain Murphy Weston, and I will be your pilot tonight and tomorrow morning.” Pointing to the young officer conversing with the Air Force General, he said, and he is Captain Fred Gillis who will be your copilot. You will be travelling with the Generals whom you’ve already met, and your delightful acting Stewardess, who’s already aboard the airplane, is our Sergeant 1st Class, Mario-Ara Antionette, who we affectionately call Frenchie. We will be landing, if possible, to pick up a few passengers, in a few cities, as we cross the Continent to our destination. One or both of the Generals will explain the mission to you in flight, but I can tell you it’s going to be a long couple of days for you, and with little or no sleep. So you may want to sleep, if you can, on the first leg of the flight, which will be the longest and most quiet, I am sure.”
I thanked Captain Weston, and his presence full of positive confidence was reassuring to me, allowing my infinity-like figure-eight brain flow of thought to settle down into a usable tool for evaluating all that was so confusingly strange to me earlier. The whole mission, now that I knew that’s what it was called, became something that seemed reasonable and purposeful even though I had no idea what it was all about, and I was suddenly reassured further that we had a female passenger functioning as a stewardess to make the flight(s) feel reasonably comfortable with no demand for military décor. I assumed this was set up intentionally and that there would be other civilians joining me as we flew on toward, what I now assumed would be Washington D.C.. I wondered what damage the Capitol City had suffered from the nuclear accident (if it was an accident) and what this whole trip would tell me about the destruction, most of which I had hoped to find out by radio communications from Juneau. This trip was rapidly taking on a useful purpose for me personally, and I felt my entire body shift into the steady and smooth feeling of a higher gear. The relaxation suddenly felt positive and powerful, and I began to grasp a feeling about why the military had come looking for me and perhaps hoping that my knowledge and professional management of implicit understanding of the meaning of “nuclear power of many forms and uses” and its’ inherent dangers, especially now, would provide leadership at a much higher level than I most likely would have been assigned otherwise, by simply showing up in Juneau to help, even if I was returned there to do the work that I knew how to do. I had a reassuring feeling that I would have the opportunity to utilized my long nurtured and knife-sharpened tools that I had wedged between my ears over many years.
About 30 minutes later all of us were back together, ready to board the Boeing 737 where I was to be informed of the details of the mission, and I had to admit, I was a bit anxious to meet MarioAra, disguised as a lovely French stewardess, which made me smile for the first time in several days.
#
As we all left the passenger/office building together, the Air Force General turned off the lights, and the door closed behind us, locking itself. We crossed the apron as the access stairway opened and descended as we approached in the semi-darkness of the facility, the runway and the airplane lights. At the top of the stair-well I saw our “stewardess” dressed in military fatigues watching us approach. I was the first to climb the stairway, followed by the two Generals with the co-pilots following – the opposite of how I would have thought the procession to ascend. But upon second thought being that I was the only civilian in the proceeding, and a captive one at that, the order of our climb up the stairs seemed efficient, organized and logical. As I had often been, I was intrigued by the effective use of time and space that the military so matter-of-factly employed without seemingly a second thought. At the top of the stairway, Frenchie smiled at me, took my hand, and led me into the cabin while the two Generals followed and the pilots entered the cockpit, closing an automated door behind them. The Army General pointed to a seat in the 1st class area of the airplane and sat there next to the window while he sat down beside me in the aisle seat. The Air Force General sat across the aisle. Immediately we began to taxi toward the runway, and Frenchie arrived and took a seat in the 1st row, attaching her seatbelt. We buckled up as well, and immediately we were on our way down the runway, soon ascending to the north, and then turning west over the ocean and then south back toward the United States.
After a few minutes as the airplane reached cruising altitude, Frenchie vacated her seat and went forward to the Stewardess kitchen while the Army General extracted a folded map from his briefcase but did not open it. He looked at his fellow General across the aisle, shrugged, and turned his attention to me. “Okay, Mr. Williams, I have a lot to tell you about the situation and what we hope to do about it. We want you to work with us.” He paused and glanced across the aisle again, then turned back to me.
“You can call me Albert, if you’d like,” I muttered, not fond of being referred to as Mister nor, even worse, Sir.
He smiled and said, “Okay Albert. You can call me Daniel and my counterpart here, is Paul. No need for formality at all.”
He went on, “You may have guessed that this mission is a hastily planned, last minute, action and that’s why we had to catch up with you, track you down before you reached Juneau, and we’ve decided we had no time to waste while you’re sailing north some 800 miles wasting a few precious days. We want you to head-up a more formalized multi-faceted party of expertise and create a base of operations for what’s going to become a multi-national government with a new world order based on avoiding future war and as much death on the planet as humanly possible. You will have the final word in every decision made concerning, not only humanity’s survival, but also saving animals and nature to the degree possible. You can use every available resource, product, geographic location, and combination as you wish – with one exception, which I’m sure you know exactly what that is.”
“Yes,”, I said affirmatively, “and I am pleased you are not even using the term, but we, if there is a future we, must pledge now around the world that the product will be destroyed and/or buried in places where it can never again be accessed by humanity or whoever or whatever survives into Earth’s future, though I am not too sure anything will survive. All we can do is try our damndest. So what is the plan? And I do, genuinely, appreciate your confidence in me. In Juneau I would have had to campaign for this job, and there would’ve been no assurance that I would have been the popular choice.”
“We recognized that, Albert, and that’s why we intercepted you before you arrived in Juneau, which of course still remains as an atmospherics and meteorological outpost for what it is designated to do. Everyone will know by day after tomorrow that you are in charge there, here, and everywhere. But the instant problem is finding a safe, sound, radiation-free compound somewhere on the planet to allow thousands and thousands of specialized minds and personalities to work together to solve the problem before it dissolves us. Do you have any idea where such a safe zone could be?”
“No, and that’s the reason Juneau is so important to our future. The first mission there is to find and isolate areas, including caverns, and mountain peaks, even underwater safe zones, or any places where as much of humanity could survive as possible. But it will take months to make meaningful progress, and even then we will need many more safe zones, as I’m sure you both are aware.”
“Do you know what caused this terrible accident here in the United States, Albert?”, Daniel asked. “It seems that no one is sure other than it was almost like the spread of a seriously communicable disease, only the disease was unchecked nuclear reactor radiation.” We still have no idea how it spread all the way across the country so quickly, nor even where it originated. The only thing we know is that there is no place on the West Coast or in the Rocky Mountains that could have started it.”
“Yes, I know where it began, and I don’t know how or why, but it was like some kind of chain reaction that began to melt down reactors overriding computerized automated shut-down security associated via incoming electrical power grids to not only nuclear power plants but negatively affected fossil fuel plants, although most of them were able to restart in a few hours.”, I said.
“So, then where did it start?”, General Daniel asked.
“The first plant to be affected was PG&E’s nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo, California, that was oddly allowed its longevity to be expanded beyond it’s shutdown date in 2025 by the U.S. and California governments. So you are wrong about where it began, but there is no evidence that PG&E was anything more than just another victim, although rumors are flying, mostly due to PG&E’s long history of fatal accidents or mistakes all over the west where they operate. I am sure, though, that this entire catastrophe, which probably is already turning global, is the result of some kind of viral-like electronic automaton, if you will, that has been carried on interactive grid systems everywhere that have even minimal connections to larger grids. It really doesn’t matter where or how it started, our only chance to survive is to fight off the incredible flow of radiation around the entire planet. It reminds me very much of the old 1959 – ‘60s movie “On the Beach” in its global affect where, rather incredibly, the fictional story was caused by a suspected but unknown nuclear plant failure. Of course the movie, and the required degree of radiation, had no idea of the magnitude of radiation it would take to create armageddon, but we have always known that such an event is possible. Oddly, the culprit, or a part of it, was insinuated to be a California power plant near San Francisco.”, I told them without a smile.
Silence and perhaps a bit of shock was the non-existent response from both military Generals. Finally, Paul, shaking his head, muttered something under his breath. “Jesus Christ, a mechanical virus spreading radiation through a power grid system? Who the fuck would be able or even inclined to build such an instrument of terrorism causing world-wide death?” He got no response from Daniel or me, but we shared our concerned eye-contact.
Chapter 2 will be Posted on April 11
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
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.
Some 29 classified Russian military documents include discussions of war gaming and reportedly identify operational thresholds for the first use of so …
Annie Jacobsen’s long-awaited book “Nuclear War” subtitled “A Scenario” has finally arrived, and the whole world needs to read it, not just Every World Leader. I urge you to help make it the world’s best-seller in history. I duplicates and expands on what I have been writing about every evening for, let’s see now, 582 consecutive evenings. ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 tonight’s Post.)
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 war is a topic few care to think about. We sometimes call it unthinkable. But we need to think carefully, and to talk—particularly with high- …
Deeply worried about its looming obsolescence in this new age of atomic warfare, it planned a live-action series of three atomic bomb tests for all to …
Copyright 2024 by Annie M. Jacobsen. Nuclear war is madness. Were a nuclear weapon to be launched at the United States, including from a rogue nuclear …
Comments19 · Kremlin blames MI6 for Moscow terror attack & is Russia committing genocide in Ukraine? · What Happens AFTER Nuclear War? · ABC World News …
… war in Gaza … Israel moves forward with modifications to its F-35s to confront iranian nuclear threats … war in Gaza, will not create obstacles. Some …
Global Nuclear Winter (by Achilleas Ambatzidis – Courtesy of Vanity Fair)
LLAW’s COMMENTARY, Tuesday, (03/26/2024)
In an effort to shorten the length and avoid duplication of media stories and images, I will, as of this nightly Post, only reference a link to the story I am discussing or commenting about (whether or not it is listed in my “All Things Nuclear Daily Categories). This will save me copying, cutting, and pasting time, and you will have quicker and easier access to what I consider to be among the more important articles. (And I chose a day to make this change when the importance and quality of the Digest articles are, overall, the best I’ve ever seen in the 581 days this Blog has been operating. So I will probably be up most of the night reading about the world-wide nuclear mess we are in, even about what might happen to us all if Trump & Putin get back together, but that one is way down on the quality list to my mind . . .
As stated in the article, and an issue that I have often posted my concerns about in the the past, tells me that we can foolishly build all the nuclear reactor powered electrical plants we want, but if we have no fuel to run the reactors, they are just white elephants. So it seems to me have the cart way out in front of the horse. The reason is, as VOA states, in their lead-lines, “ Types of nuclear reactors. Courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy. Gov. Glenn Youngkin dropped one bombshell, figuratively speaking, when he announced … “Of those supplying nuclear fuel, Rosatom, Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation, “is the biggest supplier of uranium enrichment.”
This is the real reason, not the Ukraine War, that Bill Gates’ TerraPower plant with its new experimental liquid sodium, called a Natrium reactor, instead of the usual water-cooled nuclear power plant reactors, being built at an old coal minesite in Wyoming. So it is that TerraPower is suffering through a two-year wait for the type of fuel the one-of-its kind nuclear plant, because Russia will not provide the fuel — which only Rosatom produces. And who among us who know a bit about the nuclear business world and our relationship with Russia would wonder if TerraPower will ever get that Russian-made fuel?You can’t just have a convention of politicians and presidents of corporations, full of optimism against common sense, get together for a conference, make an irrational determination based on ‘hope’ and ‘hot air’ that we are going to triple the output of nuclear power world-wide by a certain date, and ignore all the roadblocks, mistakes, setbacks, necessary engineering, planning, construction, and governmental approvals that are sure to come. And if none of it ever happens, that would probably be our salvation. Maybe we simply have to learn to live with less.
You may remember that CO2-caused climate change/global warming, if you are old enough to care, and have a good memory, was going to be totally under control and just a few short years away from being behind us not so long ago. However nothing has changed, except the CO2 problem has become more serious. And now we’re expecting uranium powered nuclear power plants to be our savior? Ya gotta be kidding! ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
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.
Types of nuclear reactors. Courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy. Gov. Glenn Youngkin dropped one bombshell, figuratively speaking, when he announced …
First, the various threats or inducements by other powers that they not pursue nuclear weapons. Second, the nuclear umbrella already provided to them …
First, the various threats or inducements by other powers that they not pursue nuclear weapons. Second, the nuclear umbrella already provided to them …
When a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went from a technological miracle to a pile of radioactive rubble in a matter of moments in 1979, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire office of the Clamshell Alliance became a hive of activity. I was working there at the time, fielding calls from activists and journalists from around the world. Everyone wanted our opinion since — over the previous few years — our nonviolent demonstrations to prevent the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant put us at the forefront of a growing social movement.
From the arrests of 18 New Hampshire residents in our first act of civil disobedience in 1976 to more than 1,400 arrests the following spring to a permitted rally that drew some 18,000 protesters in 1978, the Clamshell Alliance touched off a grassroots anti-nuclear rebellion that brought the “No Nukes” message to communities across the country and into the popular culture.
With that groundwork in place, Three Mile Island took our message to the next level. The idea that “nuclear power is a bad way to generate electricity” soon became accepted knowledge across the United States. Everyone from Wall Street tycoons to congressional staffers to ordinary voters now understood that the nuclear industry’s promise of safe, clean and affordable power was a fraud.
Unfortunately, in recent years this understanding has slowly eroded, as the industry has worked to tout its product as the answer to climate catastrophe. With the Biden administration now sinking billions into nuclear energy — and Congress on the verge of passing legislation to ease regulatory precautions on new reactors — the nuclear fraudsters are aiming for a comeback.
Now the co-director of Beyond Nuclear, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Takoma Park, Maryland, Gunter says “Nukes are just too expensive, take too long to build and feature too many pathways to catastrophic accidents.” What’s more, as he maintains, their continued use — along with building costly new reactors — make climate change worse and the world less safe.
With this in mind, “seasoned Clams,” as we jokingly call ourselves, have been holding regular meetings over Zoom — and occasionally in person — to strategize on how to bring our anti-nuclear message to younger generations, as well as fellow boomers, for whom Three Mile Island has become a faded memory. We ultimately want to refute the nuclear industry’s claims that it has solved the problems posed by the old reactors.
In a statement on our new website, we assert: “A tsunami of nuclear power propaganda is sweeping the globe.” According to Gunter, this propaganda is backed by a multi-billion-dollar nuclear promotion campaign funded by taxpayers via the Biden administration’s Department of Energy. “They even have a plan to convert coal-fired power plants to nuclear generation,” he said.
Billions of dollars in nuclear subsidies were loaded into Biden’s infrastructure bill, with billions more in the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Advancement Act — which sailed through the U.S. House 365-36 last month — extends nuclear subsidies further by continuing the $16.6 billion cap on liability from nuclear accidents for the next 40 years.
“The still unrealized total damage costs of a severe nuclear accident, as evidenced by ongoing nuclear catastrophes at Fukushima (13 year ago) and Chernobyl (38 years ago), are already running into the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Gunter said, adding that Congress didn’t even hold a public hearing on the liability cap extension.
As the new Clamshell website maintains, new nukes are not needed to avert a climate crisis. “Far better options are being built much faster than nuclear power plants, at a fraction of the cost and without the grave hazards. They include solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, efficiency and conservation.”
The idea for this statement came from Anna Gyorgy, author of the influential 1979 book “No Nukes: Everyone’s Guide to Nuclear Power.” And true to the Clams’ old principles, the statement was drafted by two writers after consultation with a larger group, reviewed by a committee and ultimately approved by consensus. We have also stuck to our belief that nonviolence is the best method for social movements to disrupt unjust systems and promote alternatives.
“Nonviolence, in the tradition of King and Gandhi, is an effective way to challenge institutional injustice,” said Gyorgy, who serves as communications coordinator for the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in Western Massachusetts. “Nonviolence is also the best way to build the communities we need to get through crises caused by violence, racism, predatory capitalism and climate disruption.” Nuclear power and its evil twin, nuclear weapons, have no role in the future Gyorgy has been trying to build for decades.
“Nukes just cannot compete with zero fuel cost solar and wind, and that means the era of base load plants running on fossil and nuclear fuel is ending,” said Roy Morrison, a former Clamshell staff member who has worked for years as a commercial solar energy developer. “Solar arrays combined with energy storage from home rooftops already are acting as virtual power plants to meet utility demands for peak power.”
According to Morrison, new battery technology and plunging prices for solar will displace fuels that produce carbon dioxide. “The future for our economy and our planet lies with renewables, not nukes, oil, gas or coal,” he said.
Morrison and I first met in 1977, when were among hundreds jailed in a National Guard armory following the mass arrests at Seabrook. In 1979, when Three Mile Island melted down, we were working together in Clamshell’s scruffy second-floor suite in downtown Portsmouth. With little money and a mimeograph machine — the most advanced technology in our possession — we did battle with a complex of utility companies, banks, engineering firms and government agencies that were doing their best to foist nukes on the American public.
When a reporter from a national news agency called for our comment on the unfolding accident in Pennsylvania, I was the one who happened to pick up the phone. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I do remember that, at roughly the same time, Dresser Industries — the company responsible for the valve that malfunctioned at Three Mile Island — was buying pro-nuke display ads featuring Edward Teller, the physicist known as “the father of the H-bomb” and a dedicated advocate for all things nuclear.
When the news story came out, it went something like, “Physicist Edward Teller says nukes are safe, but Arnie Alpert from the Clamshell Alliance says they aren’t.” It’s a good memory, but more than that, it’s a reminder that grassroots movements engaging in what John Lewis called “good trouble” can shake up power structures and bring about change.
In the current moment, when renewable alternatives to fossil and fissile energy are urgently needed, the Clams are trying to figure out how to make it happen again.
Arnie Alpert is a longtime nonviolent action trainer in New Hampshire. He blogs at inzanetimes.wordpress.com.
LLAW’s CONCERNS & COMMENTS, Monday, (03/25/2024)
We do need to stop this growing nuclear power plant and nuclear weapons of mass destruction created by the dark capital commercial, ignorant political, and fear-based military nuclear industries, who are peddling disgraceful propaganda from capitalists, and politicians at every level, who understand nothing at all about nuclear horrors, anything nuclear, and find world peace, making the world’s militaries, who understands all things nuclear all too well, impotent and useless, before they begin the 6th Extinction in earnest. We have very little time left to reverse our self-destructive direction and remove ‘all things nuclear’ from ourselves forever.
I departed from the nuclear industry in disgust over the industry attitude over the 3-Mile Island near meltdown and the fact that we in the industry (including me) were not sympathetic to the reality of what happened there, all of pretending that it was nothing, and that our rallying cry was “Let the Bastards freeze to death in the dark”, the words that turned me away from an entire industry that I had been mistakenly proud of since the 1960s. I left in May of 1980 and started my own minerals exploration corporation with a mission to evaluate useful metals deposits, including gold and silver.
I never looked back, but I also waited several years to begin speaking out against the nuclear industry in general and nuclear power specifically. But now I will spend the rest of my days speaking out (mainly in writing) against “All Things Nuclear” This nightly Blog Post is a beginning of my mission to help do away with public use of anything and everything nuclear. Tonight’s Post is #580 over a total of 580 days, so you, the reader, ought to be able to understand that I am serious about this project and also creating future projects to alert the world that uranium fuel with their reactors, bombs, and all other things nuclear are the most dangerous products on the face of the earth, especially in the irresponsible hands of us humans.
We are in the process of exterminating all of us, including all other life, with our own preferred uses of ‘all things nuclear’. It would sadly be the 6th Extinction, the 1st one that humans actually existed during such massive destruction of life, and we are solely responsible for the entire threat to all other life as well. ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 tonight’s Post.)
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.
Listen Live • Weekend All Things Considered. 00 … He did not specify how or where those jobs would be created, but said that increased demand for new …
“And nuclear delivers cheaper, cleaner home-grown energy for consumers.” “That’s why we are investing in Barrow, the home of UK submarines, and in the …
… nuclear power plant. Isar 1 and 2 (Image: Regine Rabanus / PreussenElektra). The Isar 2 plant – comprising a single 1400 MWe pressurised water reactor …
However, this principle that arguably prevented war for so many decades is now under the threat of becoming outright irrelevant. … threats. … nuclear …
And now Russia seems to be attacking the entire power system of Ukraine, keeping the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant as the final point of ending Ukraine’s sovereignty and possibly its existence, or so it seems to me. If that happens, WWIII will begin, and part of that possibility is the U.S. congress that is refusing to aid Ukraine in their defense, and have no chance to win a war against Russia that could easily turn nuclear without even a single bomb, but by virtue of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant being used as a nuclear weapon of mass destruction (WMD).
Russia’ military is attacking the citizenry of Ukraine, and humans cannot exist in today’s world without electrical power. And, I am ashamed to say, the U.S. is politically contributing to the possible deaths of as many as 40 million people.
The following article by the Associated Press must be read to understand the immanent danger the Ukrainian people are so suddenly faced with. We must demand that our U.S. Congress provide the $60 billion that Ukraine has needed to defend itself and has waited for for so long, and had they had the financial aide, the War may not have come to this. Are we, here in America, so selfish as to not help a suffering ‘free’ nation in an dictatorial part of the world? ~llaw
Russia launches sweeping attack on Ukraine’s power sector, a sign of possible escalation
Russian attacks destroyed residential areas in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson on Friday, and widespread outages were reported after electrical stations were hit. (Mar. 22)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed one of its most devastating attacks against Ukraine’s electric sector on Friday, an aerial assault it said was retaliation for recent strikes inside Russia and which could signal an escalation of the war just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a preordained election.
Many Ukrainians were plunged into darkness across several cities, at least five people were killed, and damage to the country’s largest hydroelectric plant briefly cut off power to a nuclear plant that has been a safety risk throughout the war.
Russia fired off more than 60 exploding drones and 90 missiles in what Ukrainian officials described as the most brutal attack against its energy infrastructure since the full-scale war began in early 2022.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, sustained the most damage, officials said, and the attack came a day after Russia had fired 31 missiles into the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been urging Western allies for weeks to provide it with additional air-defense systems and ammunition, a period in which $60 billion in U.S. aid has been held up by divisions in Congress.
“With Russian missiles, there are no delays, like with aid packages to our state,” Zelenskyy said. “It is important to understand the cost of delays and postponed decisions.”
Russia’s defense ministry called Friday attacks “strikes of retribution.” Ukraine has increased shelling of Russia’s Belgorod region along its northeast border and has launched drone strikes targeting Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities.
Ukraine’s latest strike inside Russia on Friday killed one and injured at least three, according to local officials.
Putin has described Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and other regions as an effort to frighten residents and derail the highly orchestrated election that ended Sunday. And he vowed to strike back.
The day after he declared victory, Putin said Russia would seek to create a buffer zone inside eastern Ukraine to help protect against long-range strikes and cross-border raids.
Russia has made progress on the battlefield in recent months against exhausted Ukrainian troops struggling with a shortage of manpower and ammunition along the front line that stretches over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles).
When Putin invaded in 2022, he called it a “special military operation,” and his officials have mostly eschewed the word “war.” But in a change of rhetoric Friday that may herald a new escalation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a Russian newspaper that “when the collective West became a participant in this on the side of Ukraine, for us it already became a war.”
In the winter of 2022-23, Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing frequent blackouts across the country. Many in Ukraine and the West expected that Russia might repeat this strategy this winter, but Russia instead focused its strikes on Ukraine’s defense industries.
While launching the strikes, Russia has combined sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles with waves of cheap Iranian-made Shahed drones in a bid to oversaturate and weaken Ukrainian air defenses.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, head of the national utility Ukrenergo, described Friday’s barrage as the largest assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since the full-scale war began.
“This attack was especially dangerous because the adversary combined different means of attack, kamikaze drones, ballistic and cruise missiles,” he said.
Kudrytskyi said that Russia “tried to destroy every significant energy object powering the city of Kharkiv,” leaving at least 700,000 without electricity. He estimated that several hundred thousand customers in other regions were also left without power.
Oleksiy Kuleba, deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, said that 31 people were injured in the strikes, that also left 200,000 people without constant access to electricity in the Odesa region. He said that power supplies for most of 400 000 customers in Dnipropetrovsk region was restored.
The huge Dnipro hydroelectric power plant, Ukraine’s largest, halted operation after sustaining at least six missile hits that caused massive damage. Ihor Syrota, the head of Ukrhidroenergo company overseeing the country’s hydroelectric plants, said it lost about a third of its generation capacity in a “significant loss for the Ukrainian energy system.”
Syrota said that the extent of damage to the plant remained unclear because its equipment has been buried under concrete and metal debris from the blasts, noting that the repairs will be a “long process.”
The strikes sparked a fire at the Dnipro plant, which supplies electricity to the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, the largest in Europe. Power to the nuclear plant was lost for several hours before it was restored, International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said early Friday. The Zaporizhzhia plant has been occupied by Russian troops since early days of the invasion, and fighting around it has raised the risk of a nuclear accident.
The dam at the hydroelectric station was not in danger of breaching, the country’s hydroelectric authority said. A dam breach could not only disrupt supplies to the nuclear plant but could potentially cause severe flooding similar to what occurred last year when a major dam at Kakhovka further down the Dnieper River collapsed.
Arhirova is an Associated Press reporter covering Ukraine. She is based in Kyiv.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 tonight’s Post.)
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.
When the author Tommy Orange received an impassioned email from a teacher in the Bronx, he dropped everything to visit the students who inspired it. A …
Daily Kos
Putin seems to be very fond of threatening to use nuclear weapons every time he gets his ego dinged by every consequence of his actions.
You only have to read the 1st paragraph of the “Vox/Verge” article below to understand why nuclear energy is not the answer to any problem, especially the strange and most unlikely concept that it can solve the CO2 global-warming/climate change issue. Common sense tells anyone with any sense that such a belief is utterly impossible. There are hundreds if not thousands of reasons that this will never happen. In the 1st place there is not enough uranium fuel left in the ground to allow nuclear power plants to take over for the other fossil fuels that are creating the global atmospheric carbon dioxide problem. We must spend our money for electric power only on advancing renewables like solar, wind, hydro and geo-thermal energy. Doing so is the only way to save ourselves from creating our own (and our other living critters) from extinction.
And then there are the “minor” problems like the time-lag between design, planning, constructing, licensing and operating nuclear power plants that take at best 12 to 15 years to produce power (meanwhile the fossil fuel global warming/climate change continues on unablated), and that is followed by leaking nuclear radiation, nuclear waste disposal, nuclear power plant human and/or AI accidents causing meltdowns, along with already enormous costs that can only grow upward forever, and the constant possibility of nuclear power plants being forcibly converted to stationary nuclear weapons of mass destruction or terrorism (as is happening as we read this nightly post in the Russia/Ukraine war). I could go on and on for hundreds of pages, but this ought to be enough to give you, the reader, a clue that such a dream will turn into a never-ending nightmare. ~llaw
THE VERGE IS A VOX MEDIA NETWORK
More than 30 countries have pledged to pursue nuclear energy as one way to meet global climate goals. Even so, nuclear energy is still a controversial energy source that’s bogged down by concerns about radioactive waste, safety, and high costs.
At a nuclear energy summit in Brussels yesterday, the countries pledged “to work to fully unlock the potential of nuclear energy by taking measures such as enabling conditions to support and competitively finance the lifetime extension of existing nuclear reactors, the construction of new nuclear power plants and the early deployment of advanced reactors,” The Associated Press reports. The US, China, Japan, France, Britain, and Saudi Arabia were among the 34 countries to sign the pledge.
It’s a bold statement to support a source of energy over which many governments and environmental groups are deeply divided. Nuclear energy doesn’t generate the greenhouse gas emissions heating up the planet, but the environmental footprint of its supply chain and waste creates other problems. And after decades of missteps, the technology still has to prove whether it can be an affordable, safe alternative to the fossil fuels causing climate change.
Nuclear energy doesn’t generate the greenhouse gas emissions heating up the planet, but the environmental footprint of its supply chain and waste creates other problems
Nearly every nation on Earth has committed to fighting climate change as part of the Paris agreement. That requires a transition from fossil fuels to clean energy over the next few decades. Fortunately, renewables like solar and wind energy are already cheaper than coal and gas and are forecast to make up a majority of new electricity sources deployed in coming years. The challenge is in finding backup energy sources for times when winds die down and the sun sets.
Proponents of nuclear energy say it’s the perfect complement to renewables since nuclear reactors are able to generate electricity around the clock. “Nuclear energy is indispensable along with renewable energy … We must devise strategy to attract further investment which is necessary to enhance the use of nuclear energy,” Japan’s Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Komura Masahiro said during the Nuclear Energy Summit held yesterday by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
It’s a remarkable turnaround from fears stoked more than a decade ago when an earthquake and tsunami triggered a catastrophic meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan. In December, Japan was one of more than 20 countries that agreed to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2050. The country still plans to prioritize renewable energy, Masahiro said, and “at the same time, Japan will continuously reflect upon the lessons from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and ensure that the use of nuclear power places safety as its top priority.”
At the summit, John Podesta, US senior adviser to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation, touted the construction of the country’s first completely new power plant in decades. The Vogtle Unit 3 reactor in Georgia finally started operating last year, no less than $17 billion over budget after seven years of delays.
Next-generation nuclear reactors are supposed to be easier and cheaper to build. But they haven’t overcome the radioactive waste problem. They’ll require more highly enriched uranium, of which Russia has been the largest supplier. And a key demonstration project using advanced small modular reactors in Utah was canceled in November after costs soared.
Protesters with the environmental group Greenpeace attempted to block roads leading to the Nuclear Energy Summit yesterday, claiming they were able to delay the arrival of some delegates.
“All the evidence shows that nuclear power is too slow to build, too expensive, and it remains highly polluting and dangerous,” Greenpeace EU senior campaigner Lorelei Limousin said. “We are in a climate emergency, so time is precious, and the governments here today are wasting it with nuclear energy fairy tales.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
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.
A hydraulic fluid leak caused a U.S.-bound United Airlines flight to return to Sydney for an emergency … Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Netishyn.
Oh, the depravity of men caught up in their self-importance and the temporary power they have been given during war. This story is typical, rather than unusual, and this woman and her daughter, and the others, fortunately were eventually able to escape into Kyiv, and obviously felt obligated to tell their story as a way to avoid retaliation and worse.
Very likely, in this war, and those that came before throughout human history, other innocent women and even children have suffered such physical and mental abuse, pain, and indignation at the hands of military men who overstepped their bounds. Rape, unthinkable torture, even death in the ravages of war are common to all wars where soldiers have access to the public — especially to those of the feminine way. ~llaw
Ukrainian women tell of beatings and threats under Russian occupation
KYIV, March 21 (Reuters) – Alla Antonova says she suffered beatings, had a plastic bag thrust over her head and endured many other threats from Russian soldiers in occupied Ukraine who wanted to know where her son-in-law was serving in the Ukrainian army.
Her mother Natalia Kucherova, 73, was made to sit in an adjacent room of their apartment, but says she was generally left alone – the soldiers were only interested in her daughter.
Reuters could not independently verify their accounts. Moscow has denied accusations that its forces have committed atrocities or deliberately attacked civilians during their invasion, which it calls a “special military operation”.
Now in Kyiv, escaping from the ordeal meant fleeing their home in the port of Berdiansk, in the occupied part of the southern Zaporizhzhia region and taking a circuitous five-day journey.
With the help of Ukrainian volunteer workers, the family and their dog travelled into southern Russia and then overland back over the border into Ukrainian-held territory in early February.
Speaking to Reuters in a rented apartment in the Ukrainian capital, Antonova, 53, said the Russian soldiers visited their Berdiansk home three times in the last few months of 2023 and as recently as January this year.
“They took me into the bedroom and mama into the kitchen,” Antonova said.
“Three of them. Interrogating me is the way I would put it. And they beat me. I had bruises on my legs, on my back.”
Antonova showed Reuters several photographs of severe bruises on her arm and legs.
Another soldier, she said, pulled the plastic bag over her head and pressed down to stop her breathing.
“I started to lose consciousness. They removed the bag and I felt ill,” Antonova said. “I told them: ‘Just kill me. It’s the truth, I know nothing’.”
Russia’s diplomatic mission in Geneva did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the women’s account.
Alla Antonova and her daughter Anastasia sit in a rental-apartment in Kyiv after Antonova escaped from her home in Russian-occupied Berdiansk amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, March 20, 2024. REUTERS/Anna Voitenko
A report on conditions in occupied areas released this week by the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine described a “climate of fear” in occupied areas more than two years after the Russian invasion. It reports the widespread use of such tactics that Antonova and her family describe.
Speaking at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday after the report’s publication, Russian senior diplomat Igor Sergeev accused U.N. human rights bodies of double standards and of turning a blind eye to violations committed by Kyiv.
BEATEN SENSELESS
Antonova said the soldiers beat her senseless during one of the “visits”, in January this year.
She showed Reuters a video she was made to record, sent to her own 29-year-old daughter, Anastasia, in which she says “good, polite people, soldiers” had come and asked the daughter to cooperate if she wanted to see her mother again.
“My daughter understood straight away and deleted it. And they just said ‘just think about it – we’ll come to see you’.”
Kucherova made it plain what she thought of the soldiers.
“‘What is it you want?’ I said, ‘Are you going to throw my daughter in a cellar and rape her?'” she told Reuters of the experience, prompting a soldier to ask where she had heard such things.
“I told him the whole town is talking about it. The whole town, about how you are abusing people there.”
Kucherova, who had lived all her life in Berdiansk, was tearful about leaving, but in the end needed little convincing.
“They said ‘we are here for a long time to come, in Berdiansk’. And that means ‘we will be paying you frequent visits’,” she said. “So, that’s what happened. We quickly got our things together and left. We were told to go quickly.”
The escalating violence made the women fearful for their lives so the three generations of women readied themselves for a long journey – and no notion of leaving behind Sonia, the family dog.
“We couldn’t bear the thought leaving her tied up with no water, nothing,” Kucherova said. “We all went together. No one was abandoned.”
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Writing by Ronald Popeski; Editing by Lucy Marks
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