Sunday, September 23, 2018

▶ ECU #628 TURNING THE HEAVENS INTO A WAR ZONE | Karl Grossman



Karl Grossman​ :: “Turning the Heavens Into a War Zone.” This just-out TV program, part of the "Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman" series, spotlights how if Trump gets his way on formation of a U.S. Space Force, the heavens would become a war zone.

Inevitably, there would be military conflict in space. The program details how the Space Force scheme flies in the face of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 that designates space as the global commons to be used for peaceful purposes. It tells of how space weaponry would be nuclear-powered—as Reagan's “Star Wars” scheme was to be, with nuclear reactors and plutonium systems on orbiting battle platforms providing the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons. Amid the many horrible things being done by the Trump administration, turning the heavens into a war zone would be the most terribly destructive. The coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Bruce Gagnon, is featured in the program and discusses what people can do to stop this.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Brunswick Nuclear Hurricane Florence UPDATE w/Dave Lochbaum | NUCLEAR HOTSEAT


Brunswick Nuclear site map of vulnerability to flooding from ocean surge, Cape Fear River.
From Dave Lochbaum powerpoint (available below)

LISTEN NOW


#Brunswick #Nuclear reactors - is it in hot or cold shutdown? What's ongoing flooding danger f/Cape Fear River now that Brunswick is a nuclear island unreachable by land? Dave Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists, explains. Plus plutonium-laced #RockyFlats "wildlife refuge" opens - Leroy Moore. Nuclear Hotseat #378

This Week’s Featured Interviews:

  • BRUNSWICK NUCLEAR UPDATE – Dave Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, explains the safety status of Brunswick Nuclear Reactors 1 & 2, both the same model as melted down at Fukushima Daiichi.  Learn the difference between hot shutdown and cold shutdown – and how the industry simply uses “shutdown” to spinspeak us all!
    LINK to Dave Lochbaum’s pdf on Brunswick specs, CLICK HERE.
  • LeRoy Moore is a writer and former academic   closely associated with Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, who since 1979 has focused on issues of public health, environmental well-being, and nuclear abolition related to the now closed Rocky Flats nuclear bomb factory.


Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness):

So many choices, so hard to choose, when the entire industry is out of it’s f’ing mind!

Activist Links:

  • Intertribal Gathering at Red Butte, Montana – Oct. 5 – tribal members only; open to the public Oct. 6-7.  Sponsored by the Havasupai Tribal Council.  CONTACT:  928-448-2731

LISTEN NOW: Brunswick Nuclear Hurricane Florence UPDATE w/Dave Lochbaum


Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Space Force has Nazi Roots?! Bruce Gagnon & Space4Peace - NuclearHotseat #377


LISTEN NOW

Space Force – will it make the U.S. the Evil Empire? Global Network’s 2018 Keep Space for Peace week poster.

This Week’s Featured Interview:

  • SPACE FORCE / EVIL FORCE?  Bruce Gagnon, Co-Founder and Secretary/Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and a 30 year veteran of actions against nuclear weaponry and expansionism in space.   Bruce reveals the shocking roots of our space program and NASA, corporate/military/industrial goals for space, and what China and Russia are doing to sidestep our best laid plans.


  • Category 4-5 Hurricane Florence bearing down on N. Carolina coast, with Brunswick 1 and 2 nuclear reactors – THE EXACT SAME MODEL GE MARK I REACTOR MODEL AS MELTED DOWN AT FUKUSHIMA – dead center at landfall. 
and more!

LISTEN: Space Force has Nazi Roots?! Bruce Gagnon & Space4Peace - NH #377



Tuesday, September 11, 2018

What Are Coastal Nuclear Power Plants Doing to Address Climate Threats? | Truthout




…According to maps prepared by the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), around one in four of the world’s 460 working commercial nuclear reactors are situated on coastlines. Many were built only 10–20 meters (30–70 feet) above sea level at a time when climate change was barely considered a threat. 
In the US, where nine nuclear plants are within 2 miles (3 kilometers) of the ocean and four reactors have been identified by Stanford academicsas vulnerable to storm surges and sea-level rise, flooding is common, says David Lochbaum, a former nuclear engineer and director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). 
Lochbaum says over 20 flooding incidents have been recorded at US nuclear plants since the early 1980s. “The most likely [cause of flooding] is the increasing frequency of extreme events,” he says.
“There was no consideration of climate change when most US plants were built,” says Natalie Kopytko, a University of Leeds researcher who has studied nuclear power plant adaptations to climate change. “They used conservative models of historical reference. Also, they were largely built at a calm period, when there were not many major storms.”
“While an accident has never yet happened due solely to sea-level rise and storms, the flooding experienced at Fukushima resembles what could occur in the future from sea-level rise,” says Kopytko.

Considering Climate Change

IAEA’s current global safety standards were published in 2011. These state that operators should only “take into account” the 18- to 59-centimeter (7- to 23-inch) sea-level rise projected by 2100 in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s fourth assessment report, published in 2007. 
But those safety standards don’t factor in the most recent assessment of the IPCC, published in 2013–14. This scientific consensus report has seas rising 26 centimeters (10 inches) to 1 meter (39 inches) by 2100, depending on how far temperature continue to rise and the speed at which the polar ice caps melt. 
1-meter (39-inch) increase, combined with high tides and a storm surge, significantly increases the risk of coasts and nuclear stations being swamped, says Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. 
“Nuclear stations are on the front line of climate change impacts both figuratively and quite literally,” Mann says. “We are likely profoundly underestimating climate change risk and damages in coastal areas…”

read: What Are Coastal Nuclear Power Plants Doing to Address Climate Threats? 


Wednesday, September 5, 2018

United Nations Lies re: Fukushima Radiation - IPPNW's Dr. Alex Rosen | Nuclear Hotseat

Nuclear Hotseat #375




United Nations UNSCEAR report maintains nothing bad happened to people’s health after Fukushima.  Photos of explosion at Fukushima Daiichi, March 14, 2011. Look harmless to you?


This Week’s Featured Interview:

Dr. Alex Rosen is a German pediatrician and Vice President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Germany. We spoke originally in July of 2014, just after the United Nations UNSCEAR report was released.

LINK to Full IPPNW report in English, Critical Analysis of the UNSCEAR Report “Levels and effects of radiation exposure due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East-Japan Earthquake and tsunami”

Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness):

A practice run dropping a nuclear bomb from a B-2 stealth bomber?  What are they practicing FOR?

Activist Links:

Olympics and Paralympics Warning…

more / LISTEN NOW: United Nations Lies re: Fukushima Radiation - IPPNW's Dr. Alex Rosen | Nuclear Hotseat #375



Monday, September 3, 2018

An A-Z against nuclear power | Beyond Nuclear International



The Overview section of our new Handbook provides simple explanations of the entire nuclear fuel chain

What is the difference between an open pit and an in-situ leach uranium mine? How does a nuclear power plant produce electricity? What happens to reactor fuel once it’s no longer usable? What is the difference between high-level and low-level radioactive waste and where is it stored? Why isn’t reprocessing really “recycling”?
We may know the answers to some or all of these questions. But can we deliver a succinct, clear, accessible answer to explain them to someone not already steeped in the issue?
As any activist engaged in anti-nuclear advocacy knows, nuclear power is a complex topic and describing each phase of the nuclear fuel chain can quickly bog us down in long, technical explanations. And once we go there, eyes glaze and we lose our audience.
Proponents of nuclear energy have taken full advantage of this, downplaying and minimizing the risks and using facile and superficially appealing sound bites, unsupported by facts, to convince people that nuclear power is benign and useful for climate change.
Facts are what we believe will change people’s minds. But the idea that bombarding someone with a deluge of irrefutable facts about the dangers of nuclear power will automatically win them to our cause has proven to be an illusion. It doesn’t necessarily work.
We do need facts, of course. And that is where our Handbook — The Case Against Nuclear Power: Facts and Arguments from A-Z — comes in. We must be able to accurately describe why nuclear power is dangerous, uneconomical and unjust. But we must do so in succinct, simple lay language. And then, once the basics are understood, we need to move people. And that is why the Beyond Nuclear International website came to be born, providing a natural home for the Handbook and expanding from facts to compelling narratives…