The Nobel Peace Prize for 2017: ICAN!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has announced the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded to ICAN, the International Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons! ICAN, also a laureate of the Nuclear-Free Future Award, recently succeeded in the passage of a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations.

The Nobel Committee's announcement begins:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The organization is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.

We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time. Some states are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, and there is a real danger that more countries will try to procure nuclear weapons, as exemplified by North Korea. Nuclear weapons pose a constant threat to humanity and all life on earth. Through binding international agreements, the international community has previously adopted prohibitions against land mines, cluster munitions and biological and chemical weapons. Nuclear weapons are even more destructive, but have not yet been made the object of a similar international legal prohibition.

Update on October 6, 2017 by admin

See the New York Times coverage, as well as the Washington Post's.

Trump plans to declare that Iran nuclear deal is not in the national interest

As reported by the Washington Post.

See Peace Action's alert, for what you can do!

Nuclear power & coal lobbyists cheer on Energy Secretary Perry's many money moves

Trump's DOE seeks to further heavily subsidize new and old atomic reactors, which would put renewables at a massive competitive disadvantage! On the very same day that Energy Secretary Rick Perry offered Southern Co. et al. additional billions of dollars worth of taxpayer-backed nuclear loan guarantees, to prop up two very troubled new reactors under construction at Vogtle, GA (see related entry, above), he also wrote the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), urging "compensation" to dirty, dangerous, and expensive coal burners and atomic reactors. His supposed rationale? To "compensate" these already long-massively subsidized industries, for their supposed electrical grid "reliability and resilience" benefits.  

 

As Dave Kraft of Nuclear Energy Info. Service in Chicago has pushed back, what about the nuclear weapons non-proliferation advantages of renewables, or the fact that they don't generate forever deadly radioactive wastes?! Perry's moves were loudly cheered by nuclear and coal industry lobbyists. But they were widely protested by renewable energy and other competitors, ratepayer, taxpayer, and free market advocates, as well as environmentalists. This latest proposed round of massive subsidies, if enacted, could end the competitive marketplace for electricity in the U.S., and would help prop up such dangerously age-degraded atomic reactors as Palisades in Michigan, Davis-Besse in Ohio (each of which put the drinking water supply for tens of millions of people, the Great Lakes, at risk), and dozens of others. Perry's polluting-industry-friendly moves come at the very same time that the Trump administration seeks to repeal the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan* (which sought to reduce global warming emissions, while doing few to no favors for the nuclear industry). Please contact your U.S. Rep., and both your U.S. Senators -- as via the Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121 -- and urge they do all they can to block these latest attempts to massively subsidize the nuclear (and coal) industry at public (taxpayer, and ratepayer) expense! More 

Update on October 9, 2017 by admin

*Trump's EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, has done the dirty deed. See the Washington Post's coverage: "EPA chief Scott Pruitt tells coal miners he will repeal power plant rule Tuesday: The war against coal is over."

Trump DOE ups nuclear loans to $12 billion despite multiple investigations

The Trump administration's Department of Energy (DOE) has, shockingly, just offered Southern Nuclear and its partners in the construction of the Vogtle 3 & 4 new reactors in Georgia a $3.7 billion (yes, with a B!) federal taxpayer-backed loan guarantee, in a bid to shore up the faltering new build project. This is on top of the $8.3 billion nuclear loan guarantee awarded by President Obama's DOE a few years ago, making a tidy $12 billion overall. That's more than half of the total approved for nuclear loan guarantees nationwide a decade ago during the George W. Bush administration. This is more than 22 times the amount of taxpayer money put at risk, than was lost in the Solyndra solar loan guarantee default several years ago, which congressional Republicans like U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (St. Joe, MI) made such a stink about at the time. It obviously puts all that federal taxpayer funding at very high risk of a loan default at Vogtle 3 & 4. Energy Secretary Rick Perry's largesse with taxpayer funds, to benefit filthy rich nuclear corporations, flies in the face of the cautionary tale at Summer nuclear power plant in South Carolina.

Multiple federal and state investigations are now under way, probing wrongdoing associated with the recent cancellation of two proposed new reactors of the same design as at Vogtle -- Toshiba-Westinghouse AP1000s. The bankruptcy of Westinghouse, announced on March 29th, has led to Summer 2 & 3's cancellation, representing a huge loss of billions of dollars of ratepayer funding. Westinghouse's historic bankruptcy was due to the massive cost overruns, and years-long schedule delays, at these four AP1000 new builds in the Southeast. Please contact your U.S. Rep., as well as both your U.S. Senators, via the Capitol Switchboard (202-224-3121), and urge them to do all they can to block this latest giveaway of taxpayer money to the nuclear power industry! (The image, above left, "Burning Money," is compliments of the late Gene Case, of Avenging Angels; it was featured on the cover of The Nation magazine in 2003, accompanying Christian Parenti's feature article about the nuclear power relapse, of which Summer 2 & 3, and Vogtle 3 & 4, are the dubious flagships.) More

Stop uranium mining in Tanzania

Sometimes the best way to spread the message and communicate the injustice of the nuclear industry is through music. Here are Hatutaki-Wakazi feat and Sophie & the Harmonies on uranium mining plans in Tanzania.