About 100 people at the construction site of a controversial nuclear power plant in Belarus have become infected with the coronavirus, the head of Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear corporation, has said in a new video address to the company’s employees.
The Japanese government intends to release 1.2 million cubic meters of water contaminated with radioiodine, radiocesium, radiostrontium and tritium into the ocean. This water, which exceeds emission concentration standards, has been accumulating since the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdowns and explosions in 2011. Yet more contaminated water will likely be dumped from the ruined reactor sites in the future. Japan civil society groups and Fukushima fishing unions are strongly opposed to ocean discharge. For the fishing industry, this is a matter of life and death.Please sign a related petition.
The Nevada Nuclear Security Site, formerly called the Nevada Test Site, is just 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It is located on Western Shoshone Indian land, as affirmed by the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, as signed by the U.S. government. The Western Shoshone have led the resistance to nuclear weapons testing, and radioactive waste dumping (Yucca Mountain), on their lands, for many decades.
Despite this highest law of the land, equal in stature to the U.S. Constitution itself, the U.S. has detonated nuclear wepaons there since 1951. For a dozen years, testing took place at the surface, with large-scale radioactive fallout downwind, across North America. This caused large-scale harm to human health and the planet.
After the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty went into effect, the testing moved underground. But the National Security Archives revealed earlier this decade, that around one-third of the underground tests leaked or vented to the atmosphere. This was kept largely secret from the American people, although some leaks were so big, the truth did not take long to come out, despite efforts to keep it secret. In the case of the "Mighty Oak" underground test in April 1986, large-scale hazardous radioactivity releases to the environment took place. The Department of Energy tried to mask its intentional venting releases as having been caused by the Chernobyl nuclear power catastrophe in the U.S.S.R., but Dr. Rosalie Bertell outed the subterfuge.
After a moratorium on full-scale testing was declared in September 1992, sub-critical testing has continued at the NTS/NNSS. Sub-critical testing involves conventional explosives, packed with plutonium. The data from the sub-critical tests is fed into supercomputers; nuclear weapons designs can be "advanced" that way, even without full-scale testing.
In 2006, a very large-scale conventional explosion, codenamed "Divine Strake," was proposed at the NTS/NNSS. The data collected would have been used to "advance" (calibrate) bunker buster nuclear weaponry. The test was a thinly veiled Bush/Cheney administration threat against Iran's nuclear facilities. But an environmental coalition -- including Toledo attorney Terry Lodge, and Michael Keegan of Don't Waste Michigan and Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes -- intervened, successfully challenging the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Agency's plans. The coalition showed that the National Environmental Policy Act had been violated, due to the large environmental and human health impacts downwind, that would be caused by stirring up so much radioactive contamination from past nuclear tests. The "Divine Strake" test in Nevada was cancelled; and everywhere else in the country where DOE/NNSA later attempted to carry out the test, it was also successfully blocked.
And also read: As reported by the Washington Post.
admin
Press statement by U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), a nearly half-century long watch-dog on the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industries. For example, he was the only elected official who spoke at the Nuclear Freeze Rally in Central Park, New York City, on June 12, 1982, attended by a million people.
Markey will soon introduce legislation to prohibit new nuclear testing, bring Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force
Markey is House co-author of key amendment that lay foundation for moratorium on all U.S. nuclear tests
Beyond Nuclear today issued a press release calling on the NRC and FEMA to fulfill their emergency preparedness obligations pertaining to evacuations due to a nuclear accident during a pandemic. Beyond Nuclear also reiterated its demand that potassium iodide (KI) be distributed to residents living within 10 miles of an operating reactor -- and made available to those living up to 50 miles away -- to be taken promptly upon notification of a nuclear accident while simultaneously evacuating.
U.S. unprepared for a nuclear accident during a pandemic
Michigan floods expose impossible challenges of mass evacuations during Covid-19
Emergency preparedness must include direct delivery of potassium iodide to all residents around nuclear plants
Takoma Park, MD, Date— Two dam failures and catastrophic flooding in central Michigan, which also prompted a low-level emergency notification (NCR event #54719) at a nearby nuclear research reactor in Midland, have exposed the almost impossible challenge of evacuating people to safety during simultaneous catastrophic events.
The sudden need to evacuate large numbers of people from severe flooding — also threatening to compromise a Dow chemical facility that uses a research reactor — during a time of national lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, raises “serious questions and concerns about the emergency response readiness and the viability of evacuation that might simultaneously include a radiological accident,” said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear, a national anti-nuclear advocacy organization.
Michigan authorities were forced to face a “no-win compromise” between protecting the public from exposure to Covid-19 while at the same time moving people out of harm’s way after heavy rains caused failures at the Edenville and Sanford dams, leading to devastating floods. The Dow plant insists there have been no chemical or radiological releases, but the situation will be evaluated once floodwaters recede. Fortunately, no full scale commercial nuclear power plant was in the path of the Michigan floods.
Operating nuclear power stations are required by federal and state laws to maintain radiological emergency preparedness to protect populations within a ten-mile radius from the release of radioactivity following a serious nuclear accident. These measures include mass evacuations. Read the rest of the press release.
President Trump’s decision, the third major retreat from arms control agreements, will be viewed as evidence that he also plans an exit from the last major weapons treaty with Russia: New START.
As reported by the New York Times.
The Washington Post has also reported on this story.
admin
See also:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 21, 2020
Contact: Monica Matoush // 202-226-5048
Follow us on Twitter and Facebook
Smith, Cooper Statement on Trump Administration’s Withdrawal From the Open Skies Treaty
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representatives Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Jim Cooper (D-TN), Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, today issued the following statement in response to reports that the Trump Administration plans to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty:
“The Administration’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Open Skies Treaty is a slap in the face to our allies in Europe, leaves our deployed forces in the region at risk, and is in blatant violation of the law. This decision weakens our national security interests, isolates the United States since the Treaty will continue without us, and abandons a useful tool to hold Russia accountable.
“What’s more, this decision has been made without any consultation with Congress. Not only does the FY20 National Defense Authorization Act require a minimum 120-days’ notification of the withdrawal notice, but also multiple communications from the House Armed Services Committee and other congressional chairmen have gone unanswered.
“The Trump Administration continues to give Russia the upper hand with regards to arms control, which leaves our allies and deployed forces less protected in Europe. Despite the Department of Defense’s rhetoric about the dire need to prepare for ‘great power competition,’ this decision will undoubtedly do the exact opposite, and further fracture our relationships with allies needed to push back against Russian aggression in the region.”
admin
Beyond Nuclear was hosted on "By Any Means Necessary" to discuss this story:
