Tyler Hamilton, "$26B cost killed nuclear bid," Toronto Star, July 14, 2009.

[The new Conservatives, in line with traditional neoliberal dogma, are looking to privatise AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd), the nation's nuclear manufacturer. We need to recite the Follies of Privatization yet another time. Shall we begin with prisons? or the new security contractor armies? -jlt]

The Ontario government put its nuclear power plans on hold last month because the bid from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the only "compliant" one received, was more than three times higher than what the province expected to pay, the Star has learned.

Sources close to the bidding, one involved directly in one of the bids, said that adding two next-generation Candu reactors at Darlington generating station would have cost around $26 billion.

It means a single project would have wiped out the province's nuclear-power expansion budget for the next 20 years, leaving no money for at least two more multibillion-dollar refurbishment projects.

AECL is virtually worthless if it fails to secure the Ontario contract.

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Queen's Park Bureau Chief Robert Benzie picks up the story, "'Good news' in stalled reactor plan" (Toronto Star Jul 15 09). =>Recommend this Post

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"No consensus on Iran," World Report, June 23, 2009.

[Here is a text for Tuesday's broadcast. A longer version is coming soon. -jlt]

Naomi Klein doesn't say much about Iran in her book Shock Doctrine. But what she does say is worth repeating.

After World War II, the Western powers accepted the idea that “market economies needed to guarantee enough basic dignity that disillusioned citizens would not go looking once again for a more apealing ideology, whether fascism or Communism” (62-63). In a similar spirit, economic nationalists in the developing world articulated the position that poverty could be eliminated only if they adopted an “inward-oriented” or nationalistic (some today would say “protectionist”) industrializing strategy instead of relying on the export to Europe and North America of natural resources and the profits from them.

"Election fraud in Iran is no different than what happens in liberal states during elections. The struggle over the election results in Iran is internal and is unconnected to its strategic aspirations, including its nuclear program." Meir Dagan Head of Mossad

Pursuing policies such as “import substitution” and “supply management” these “developmentalist economists” advocated the nationalization of oil, mineral and other key industries. They invested public money in infrastructure and local businesses, manufactured their own “cars and washing machines,” used tariffs to keep out foreign competition, and restricted foreign ownership.

American and European corporations saw their products blocked at the borders. Their workers demanded higher wages and owners feared nationalization of their enterprizes. That meant their companies would be purchased by governments, and operated by locals. Natural resources and the profits from them would stay in-country. And it was working.

This was during the height of Senator Joseph Macarthy's anti-Communist witch hunts in the United States. So it was an easy step to portray leaders like Argentina's Peron, Guatamala's Arbenz, and the Congo's Lamumba as evil reds.

Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was one of these. His crime was that he nationalized the Iranian oil industry which had been under British control through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), (later known as British Petroleum or BP). He was removed from power on August 19, 1953 in a coup supported and funded by the British and American governments. Reactionary members of the clergy dissatisfied with his secular government may have been part of the mix as well.

Klein also writes a few sentences about Iran's 1979 revolution which brought the ayatollahs to power.

“the US-backed shah was overthrown by a coalition of leftists and Islamists. While the stories of hostages and ayatollahs made the news, the economic side of the program was also raising alarms in Washington. The Islamic regime, which had not yet transitioned to full-blown authoritarianism, nationalized the banking sector and then brought in a land redistrubution program. It also imposed controls on imports and exports, a reversal of the shah's free-trade policies.”

Even if we were not to view the events of the last few weeks against this background, part of what is so difficult about the Iranian elections of June 2009 is that they are multi-faceted. There is, of course, the question of of whether or not the results are legitimate. There is the probability that both the American and British governments have been trying replace the Iranian regime using Azeris in the northern part of the country and Balochis along the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan possibly going as far as to bomb mosques. Then thereis the authoritarian crackdown on the press and the demonstrators.

As if all this weren't enough, the Iranian nuclear program and the threat posed by continued proliferation of nuclear weapons, not only to Israel but to stability of the Eurasian continent which is home to about 75 per cent of the world's people, most of the world's physical wealth, and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources—the threat, whatever the intentions of this particular country's particular government, the threat to all that is real.
Finally, there is Obama. Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a senior advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently asked Reuters, “What is the new administration actually offering, that George Bush didn't?” This echos a perspective on the left in the US that Obama is following Bush's policies but with different rhetoric.

It's not possible in 12 minutes to go detail the essential complexities of these different facets of the issue. So I will cut directly to some comments on the nuclear issue and then wrap up with a few highlights that have not received the mind-numbing repetition from the mainstream. To summarize, I would say that there is no consensus about the issues associated with the Iranian elections and no basis for the usual good-guys-versus-the-bad-guys dualism propagated in our media.

Iran's nuclear program

Two weeks ago, I pointed out that that in my experience stories that deal with the Iranian elections have little to say about the Iranian nuclear program and stories about the nuclear program say little if anything at all about the nuclear program.

The most common mainstream line is that Mousavi offers some chance that Iran can be persuaded to abandon its nuclear program.

Yossi Alpher concludes that “any Iranian government will pursue the country's nuclear program, if only as a bargaining card (Mousavi, after all, inaugurated that project some 20 years ago)” when he was Prime Minister. (Alpher bitterlemons international Edition 23 Volume 7 - June 18, 2009)

As far as I can tell, there is no Iranian anti-nuclear movement and all four presidential candidates support their country's nuclear program.

Meanwhile, the West is witnessing a significant rebirth of the disarmament movement, this time with big time support in the form of a new group called Global Zero.

In an article for the American Center for Defense Information's newsletter, the Defense Monitor, the new group argues that now is the time to begin eliminating nuclear weapons.

The group includes nine former heads of state; eight former foreign ministers from the United States, Russia, Britain and India; six former national security advisors from the United States, India and Pakistan; and 19 former top military commanders from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, India and Pakistan.

They write:

“With a clear, realistic and pragmatic appreciation of the challenges of achieving our goal, Global Zero is developing a step-by-step plan for getting to zero.
"This will not happen overnight nor unilaterally. Getting to global zero will require the reduction of all nations' arsenals over many years. Because American and Russian stockpiles account for 96 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, these two countries should begin with deep reductions to their arsenals, while beginning a dialogue with the other nuclear weapons states. Clearly, multilateral negotiations for global zero with China, France, India, Britain, Pakistan and Israel must deal effectively with concrete national and regional security concerns. Progress on this agenda will be accelerated if the pressing issues of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and getting North Korea to relinquish its nuclear arsenal are solved. A commitment by nuclear powers to begin serious negotiations for global zero would strengthen the case against any non-nuclear nation that strives to acquire nuclear weapons." (The moment for eliminating nuclear weapons is now, Defense Monitor, vol 38, April-June 2009, p 5)

About Iran, they say simply, "Progress on this agenda will be accelerated if the pressing issues of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and getting North Korea to relinquish its nuclear arsenal are solved."

Asia Times's Bhadrakumar suggests that “paradoxically, negotiating with Ahmadinejad might prove easier for the West, as he has a genuine constituency.”

Francesco Sisci, the Asia Editor of La Stampa adds some detail to this view: "China,” he says, “has a further political calculus. If Ahmadinejad, already domestically weak, were to emerge from elections that everybody knows he lost and to come to the fore to speak about Iran's nuclear program, he may be very vulnerable and thus willing to accommodate foreign requests. Conversely, if someone else, perhaps Mousavi, surfaces out of the ongoing demonstrations, he will have strong popular support and thus might be unwilling to make concessions on something considered a matter of national security and pride: Iran's nuclear program" (China makes a choice in Iran, Asia Times, June 25, 2009).

Bhadrakumar's analysis is based on two unlikely sources. The first is the leaked testimony to Israel's Knesset Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense by Mossad head, Meir Dagan:

"Election fraud in Iran is no different than what happens in liberal states during elections. The struggle over the election results in Iran is internal and is unconnected to its strategic aspirations, including its nuclear program."

The second is prominent Iranian-born US neocon and advocate of regime change in Iran, Amir Tahiri, who is quoted at length. For example,

"So-called 'Iran experts' did not realize that Mousavi was a balloon that a section of the Iranian middle class inflated to show its anger not only at Ahmadinejad but also at the entire Khomeinist regime. Otherwise, there is nothing in Mousavi's record ... to make him more attractive than Ahmadinejad."

Bhadrakumar concludes that

"At the end of it all, the international community can only heave a sigh of relief that while this complex and extremely confusing political drama unfolded, George W Bush was no more in the White House in Washington. United States President Barack Obama could grasp the subtleties of the situation and adopted a well-thought-out, measured policy and broadly stuck to it despite apparent pressure from conservatives."

Listeners wondering how Canada is involved in US-led black ops in Iran will find some clues in Dawn Paley's contribution to the Dominion Blogs.

She cites a cryptic June 19 press release by Ontario based Psiphon Inc.

"The company is employing dedicated 'psi-operators' - staff whose job it is to propagate Psiphon nodes and engage with the Iranian community both inside and outside Iran - working 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

"The psi-operators are using social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook, as well as emails [sic] lists and forums, to propagate connection information to Psiphon's 'Right2know' nodes, which contain customized content sourced from BBC BBC Persian, Radio Farda, YouTube and other websites and services banned by Iranian authorities."

Psiphon Inc., is a recent spinoff from Citizen Lab, which is itself a branch of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto.Recommend this Post

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Daniela Estrada, "SOUTH AMERICA: Anti-Nuclear Activists to Form Common Front," IPS, June 22, 2009.

SANTIAGO, Jun 22 (IPS) - Environmental organisations in Chile plan to revive the anti-nuclear movement in the Southern Cone of South America, in response to vigorous lobbying by corporations and politicians in favour of nuclear energy in the region.

"The anti-nuclear movement in Latin America has lapsed and no longer exists. We have to rebuild it. If we can get through the next three years we will have won the battle; if not, we will be in trouble," said Sara Larraín, head of the non-governmental Sustainable Chile Programme.

The front-runners for the December presidential elections are sitting on the fence.

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"The moment for eliminating nuclear weapons is now," Defense Monitor, April-June 2009.

When presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev meet today for the first time, they will have an historic opportunity to confront the most urgent security threat to our world: the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear terrorism. The two leaders can move beyond traditional arms control and, in a bold move, set the world on a course towards the total eliminationof all nuclear weapons--global zero.

Our group includes nine former heads of state; eight former foreign ministers from the United States, Russia, Britain and India; six former national security advisors from the United States, India and Pakistan; and 19 former top military commanders from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, India and Pakistan. With a clear, realistic and pragmatic appreciation of the challenges of achieving our goal, Global Zero is developing a step-by-step plan for getting to zero.

In Lodon, they should agree that the United States and the Russian Federation will begin work immediately to achieve an accord for deep reductions in their arsenals and then lead a longer-term effort with other nuclear powers to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide through phased and verified reductions.

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M K Bhadrakumar, "'Color' revolution fizzles in Iran," Asia Times, June 26, 2009.

[Bhadrakumar's analysis is based on two unlikely sources. The first is the leaked testimony to Israel's Knesset Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense by Mossad head, Meir Dagan:

"Election fraud in Iran is no different than what happens in liberal states during elections. The struggle over the election results in Iran is internal and is unconnected to its strategic aspirations, including its nuclear program."

The second is prominent Iranian-born US neocon and advocate of regime change in Iran, Amir Tahiri, who is quoted at length. For example,

"So-called 'Iran experts' did not realize that Mousavi was a balloon that a section of the Iranian middle class inflated to show its anger not only at Ahmadinejad but also at the entire Khomeinist regime. Otherwise, there is nothing in Mousavi's record ... to make him more attractive than Ahmadinejad."

Bhadrakumar concludes that

"At the end of it all, the international community can only heave a sigh of relief that while this complex and extremely confusing political drama unfolded, George W Bush was no more in the White House in Washington. United States President Barack Obama could grasp the subtleties of the situation and adopted a well-thought-out, measured policy and broadly stuck to it despite apparent pressure from conservatives.

-jlt]

Israelis are realists par excellence. This is why it is always gainful to buttonhole an Israeli counterpart over a single-malt on the diplomatic circuit. He will invariably weave into the tapestry of the plain tale a nylon thread until then obscure to the naked eye.

Thus, the first warning that the adventurous project to mount a "Twitter revolution" in Iran was doomed to fail had to come from the Israelis. It meshes well with the indications that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's capacity to command the seemingly explosive political situation was never really been in doubt, no matter the hype in the Western media that Tehran was on the 'knife's edge".

If any doubt lingers, that also is dispelled by the fury in the state-controlled Saudi Arabian media's unprecedented, vicious personal attack on both Khamenei and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad - of a kind alien to the culture of ta'arof (politesse) or even taqiyah (dissimulation) in that part of the world. Riyadh's fond hopes of witnessing the Iranian regime debilitated by a protracted crisis have been dashed. Its principal interlocutor, former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has vanished from the chessboard. Riyadh seems bracing for Tehran's wrath.

Paradoxically, negotiating with Ahmadinejad might prove easier for the West, as he has a genuine constituency.

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David Orchard, "The future of uranium development and nuclear power in Canada," Global Research, May 29, 2009.

Gaza under attack ? Photo by WAfA

Quotation Author

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"Isotope shortage looms with Chalk River shutdown," CTV, May 19, 2009.

[There's no excuse for this. It's a labour problem that started under the Liberals. Harper failed to fix it because he was more concerned about optics than safety--and it's a problem that started under the Liberals. That raises the central question about toxic technology: who do you trust to manage it? And what do you do when they don't live here any more, if they ever did? You would think, in a culture so happy with it's pseudo-capitalist principles that multiple sources of supply would be an obvious solution. Here, kick this football, Charlie Brown. -jlt]

A shortage of diagnostic isotopes could occur as early as Saturday after yet another shutdown of the nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ont.

Power outages in eastern Ontario and western Quebec led to the shutdown of the NRU reactor last Thursday, according to Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.

In May 2008, a health panel established by then-Health Minister Tony Clement...recommended that more facilities be built to reduce dependence on the aging reactor. Author

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Melissa Pistilli, "Uranium: Out of Africa," Uranium Investing News, March 24, 2009.

During much of the twentieth century, the U.S. was the world’s leading uranium producer until Canada and Australia surpassed U.S. levels. In 2007, Canada and Australia accounted for 23 per cent and 21 per cent respectively of world uranium output, while output from the U.S. represented merely 4 per cent.

Uranium mining and production is now on the rise in African nations such as Namibia (7 per cent in 2007), Niger (8 per cent ) and South Africa (1 per cent). Botswana may soon join the ranks of its neighbor, Namibia. The government of Botswana recently issued around 138 uranium prospecting licenses for uranium and exploration is occurring “across the length and breadth of Botswana,” said Minerals Minister Ponatshego Kedikilwe.

Latest reports out of the continent are Nigeria is working with Russia to establish uranium mining and nuclear power plants, Tanzania has recently issued 70 uranium exploration licenses, and South Korea is attempting to secure energy supplies out of Niger."

Nigeria is now seeking support from the International Atomic Energy Agency to help it develop up to 4000 MWe of nuclear capacity by 2025.

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"141 states support second uranium weapons resolution in UN General Assembly vote," International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, December 12, 2008.

The United Nations General Assembly has passed, by a huge majority, a resolution requesting its agencies to update their positions on the health and environmental effects of uranium weapons.

12 December 2008 - ICBUW

The voting explained:

• Overwhelming majority of states support action on uranium weapons
  
• EU and NATO members split on the issue
  
• US, UK, Israel and France isolated
  
• UN Agencies forced to update positions on uranium weapons by 2010
  
• 141 vote in favour, 34 abstain, four vote against.
  
• Canada abstained.

The resolution, which had passed the First Committee stage on October 31st by 127 states to four, calls on three UN agencies - the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to update their positions on uranium weapons. The overwhelming support for the text reflects increasing international concern over the long-term impact of uranium contamination in post-conflict environments and military ranges.

In the 17 years since uranium weapons were first used on a large scale in the 1991 Gulf War, a huge volume of peer-reviewed research has highlighted previously unknown pathways through which exposure to uranium’s heavy metal toxicity and radioactivity may damage human health.

Throughout the world, parliamentarians have responded by supporting calls for a moratorium and ban, urging governments and the military to take a precautionary approach. However the WHO and IAEA have been slow to react to this wealth of new evidence and it is hoped that this resolution will go some way to resolving this situation.

Until now, most research by UN member states has focused on exposure in veterans and not on the civilian populations living in contaminated areas.

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Ernie Regehr, "NATO’s strategic concept and the emerging nuclear abolition imperative," Project Ploughshares Briefing, February 2009.

Even as NATO’s official strategic doctrine continues to describe nuclear weapons as “essential to peace,” the world is undergoing an extraordinary reawakening to the unique threats posed by nuclear weapons and the need to finally eliminate them.

For some in the growing gallery of nuclear abolitionists, the focus is on the 20,000-plus nuclear warheads, several thousand of them poised on missiles ready for firing at a moment’s notice, that remain in the arsenals of the nine states with nuclear weapons.1 Sixty-four years into the nuclear age, the destructive power of these arsenals remains well beyond imagining. For others, including many of those more recently converted to the pursuit of zero nuclear weapons, the focus is on the growing fears that these weapons, as well as weapons-friendly technologies and nuclear materials, will spread to more and more states, and even to non-state groups.

These concerns have produced a series of public appeals by a broad range of world figures (see “Recent statements” below2), all insisting anew that our collective well-being, and that of our fragile planet, requires that nuclear arsenals be eliminated and permanently banned.

This briefing a) reviews NATO’s current nuclear posture; b) reviews the growing calls among security professionals and political leaders for concrete measures in pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons; and c) suggests ways in which NATO’s Strategic Concept should be amended to bring it into sync with the emerging nuclear disarmament imperative and the obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Read the rest here => (PDF, 8pp)
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"Canada backs Israeli attack on Iran?" Press TV, March 1, 2009.

Canada casts new aspersions on Iran's nuclear activities, vowing to throw its weight behind Israel in the event of a military conflict.

In his harshest rhetoric so far, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed steadfast support for Israel and claimed that the Iranian government has "evil" purposes for its technological achievements.

"My government is a very strong supporter of the state of Israel and considers the Iranian threats to be absolutely unacceptable and beyond the pale," said The Canadian prime minister, the Wall Street Journal's online edition reported.

The comments come while The Islamic Republic has long been a supporter of peace in the region and is among the states that have never invaded or threatened to invade another country.

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Nuclear regulator goes public with radioactive leaks

I was just thinking that now is probably a good time to call for a serious safety upgrade to Canada's medical isotope production facility in Chalk River when this story started seeping out.

Binder testified that he didn’t think the public needed to know about small leaks

Remember, Canada's nuclear regulator, formerly the Atomic Energy Control Board, has been re-branded as the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Back on January 17, 2008 the president and CEO, Linda Keen, was fired before she had a chance to speak about her agency's decision to close the ageing medical isotope reactor in Chalk River.

"Inspectors had found that a backup system for controlling the reactor's temperature after a natural disaster was not installed despite assurances to the contrary from its operator two years earlier" (International Herald Tribune Jan 17 08).

The CNSC's new president and CEO is Michael Binder. Monday he told the Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources that the 52-year old reactor has had three small leaks since December. Binder testified that he didn’t think the public needed to know about small leaks because they pose no threat to health or the drinking water supply in Ottawa which is downstream from the reactor.

"The Canadian government owns, and heavily subsidizes, Atomic Energy. It recently asked the National Bank of Canada, a private bank, to propose an escape plan for taxpayers. That study remains secret. But The Globe and Mail, citing unnamed sources, reported on Wednesday that the study recommends that the government sell at least 51 percent of company to the private sector" (IHT Jan 17 09).

"The United States must abandon the "unreliable and unsafe" supply of medical isotopes from Canada and other nations and start producing its own, says a leading expert on non-proliferation and nuclear terrorism prevention.

Meanwhile, Edwin S. Lyman, (Lyman BullAtomS Dec 18 08), a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington renewed the call to create a domestic American supply of medical isotoopes. He challenges the incoming U.S. administration to end Canada's dominance in the multi-billion-dollar isotope industry while increasing global security" (Ottawa Citizen Jan 9 09).

According to Lyman,

"...the reliance on old reactors causes more than just supply problems; it also poses safety and security dangers. Small-sized medical isotope reactors aren't required to have the same extensive safety and security features (i.e., robust containments and armed guards against terror attacks) that larger nuclear power plants have, leaving them vulnerable to accidents or sabotage that could endanger nearby communities by releasing significant quantities of radioactive iodine and other hazardous radionuclides into the environment.

"Worse yet, the largest medical isotope suppliers continue to employ a production process that irradiates targets made from nuclear weapons-usable highly enriched uranium (HEU), while refusing to consider using more secure low-enriched uranium (LEU)." (See "Nuclear Medicine's Double Hazard." PDF)

Thomas Ruth, a research scientist at TRIUMF and a senior scientist at the British Columbia Cancer Agency, both in Vancouver, Canada, says The global problem of a safe and reliable supply of radioactive isotopes for use in critical hospital procedures can be solved with accelerators, not nuclear reactors. (Nature magazine Jan 29 09).

The CNSC is governed by the Nuclear Safety and Control Act (NSCA).

Webcasts of recent proceedings of the Commission are available at their website.

In theory the meeting of the Parliamentary Committee can be heard at ParlVu. I had trouble making it work.


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"North Korean leader pledges support for denuclearization," Global Security Newswire, January 23, 2009.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il today pledged his nation's support for ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons, Reuters reported (see GSN, Jan. 22).

Pyongyang recently said it would give up its nuclear weapons only after achieving diplomatic relations with the United States and verifying that there were no U.S. nuclear weapons in South Korea.

Kim offered the statement during a meeting in Pyongyang with Wang Jiarui, head of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party. It was the regime chief's first such meeting since he reportedly suffered a stroke in August.

"The North Korean side will commit itself to the denuclearization of the North Korean Peninsula, and hopes to co-exist peacefully with other involved parties," Kim said, according to the Xinhua News Agency. "North Korea is not willing to see tensions emerge in the peninsula, and is willing to strengthen consultation and cooperation with China to push forward the six-party talks."

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"Delhi scorns to sign CTBT, NPT," The Daily Mail, January 17, 2009.

New Delhi—India has asserted that it will not sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) notwithstanding its bilateral atomic agreement with the US, which is expected to pursue these pacts during the Obama government.

Prime Minister Gilani said Pakistan expected similar treatment as far as the US-India nuclear deal were concerned.

“We will not sign CTBT or NPT and we have made it absolutely clear to the US that we are bound by the bilateral agreement with it and India-specific safeguards with the IAEA,” External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in an interview.

His comments came while responding to remarks by incoming US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that CTBT would be a priority for the new US government.

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Lawrence S. Wittner and David Samuels, "Atomic John: The Bomb as Fetish," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 1-2-09, December 29, 2008.

In the midst of this chilling evasion of the broad issues raised by nuclear weapons, it is worth remembering that millions of people—including many Americans—have gone beyond fetishizing the bomb to addressing in word and deed more profound issues.

"Atomic John," an intriguing article that appeared in the New Yorker on December 15, 2008, is particularly remarkable for what it reveals about the inability of some Americans to confront the consequences of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan.

On the surface, it is the story of John Coster-Mullen, a 61-year-old "truck driver" from Waukesha, Wisconsin, who, through years of painstaking effort, has succeeded better than the ostensible experts have in constructing a precise model of the weapon that annihilated Hiroshima. This is a formidable intellectual achievement, and the author of the article, David Samuels, emphasizes this fact. Moreover, Coster-Mullen has made available his findings about the bomb's technology in a self-published book and on the Internet.

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"Nuclear Plant Owners Pays Massive Settlement to Cancer Victims," Daily Tech, June 10, 2008.

The citizens began to develop brain tumors, cancer, and beryllium disease at alarming rates.

Nuclear plants have had their success stories -- for example the plants that survived an earthquake in Japan largely unharmed. However, despite the fair share of success stories, there are also some grim cautionary tales of what to avoid in nuclear power and why safety precautions, regulations, and adopting modern designs are of an utmost importance to nuclear power plants and nuclear processing facilities.

One largely unnoticed example is gaining big national attention [in the US] thanks to a hefty $27.5M USD settlement awarded to the 250 plaintiffs who suffered disease and death due to poor regulation and flaws in the technology. The story begins in Apollo and Parks Township in Armstrong county Pennsylvania, back in the late 1950s. The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., eager to profit at the booming trend to exploit nuclear energy, jumped at the chance of opening new facilities to process nuclear fuel. In 1959 they opened two new plants in the respective townships, which processed both uranium and plutonium fuels.

[...]

Johnson and other plaintiffs received little support from the government. Despite an expert epidemiologist analysis during the case which concluded that disease levels "[fell] outside the normal range", the state refused to classify the area as a cancer cluster. With nowhere else to turn the families sued ARCO in federal court. Eight plaintiffs were represented. The jury ordered a settlement of $35M USD in 1998, finally promising some relief to the families' suffering. However to the family's dismay, U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose ordered a retrial due to errors in the trial. Says one plaintiff, "All of the verdicts were taken away."

Babcock & Wilcox then filed bankruptcy and the cases were not retried. Finally after years of inaction, a new suit against Atlantic Richfield Co. with 250 plaintiffs has succeeded securing a settlement of $27.5 million. Another new suit is pending against Babcock & Wilcox in federal court, but due to the company's uncertain financial status it is unclear how much damages could be collected.

Average payouts from the settlement will be about $35,000 and a few of the sicker plaintiffs will get as much as $500,000. Park and other plant employees may soon also be eligible for $150,000 in relief offered by the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act passed by Congress in 2000. The final approval for the plants' eligibility designation will be made sometime next year.

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Julio Godoy, "Cesium-137 leaks from German nuclear waste, Raise More Nuclear Fears," IPS.

...from Laura Savinkoff at the Boundary Peace Initiative.

We did not have the
feeling that the public would be interested in knowing that
radioactive brine is leaking in Asse II."

BERLIN, Jul 8 (IPS) - Confirmation that radioactive brine has been leaking for two decades from a German underground deposit for nuclear waste is yet another blow to the idea that nuclear power can safely increase electricity generation and simultaneously reduce emissions.

Radioactive leaks from the nuclear waste deposit Asse II near Braunschweig in Lower Saxony, some 225 km southwest of Berlin, were first discovered in 1988. The state-owned Helmholtz Institute for Scientific Research, which operates the centre, officially admitted the leaks only Jun. 16, under pressure from the German press.

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Free Mordechai Vanunu, Ad in Ha'aretz, July 7, 2008.

The Israeli Committee for a Middle East free from Atomic, Biological and Chemical Weapons ran this ad in the Monday Ha'aretz. Vanunu is charged with "speaking to foreigners."

TO THE GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL, STOP THE HARASSMENT OF MORDECHAI VANUNU – LET HIM GO FREE.

“Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country”.

Article 13.2, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The ad names nine Nobel Laureates for Peace and one for Literature as signatories.

For more information call Gideon Spiro at 052-5404822 or go to the website of the Israeli Committee for a Middle East Free from Atomic, Biological and Chemical Weapons at http://www.armagedon.org.il/.Recommend this Post

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"Aligning public and private interests to tackle climate change," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 64, No. 3, pp. 8-9.

[The editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists repeat the view, articulated in greatest detail by the Stern Report, that climate change is a massive market failure. They conclude that relying on the market to sort out the details of our response is shortsighted. -jlt]

the cost of carbon dioxide
emissions, measured as damage to the biosphere, has not been factored into the price of energy.

Climate change is the result of a colossal market failure. At least, that is one way to view the unimpeded dumping of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere. In the case
of climate change, the cost of carbon dioxide emissions, measured as damage to the biosphere, has not been factored into the price of energy. The failure to account
for these hidden costs encouraged the overuse of carbon-emitting technologies and has led ultimately to the market failure known as global warming.

When markets fail, government institutions often intervene to bail out those companies that face dissolution, as we have seen most recently in U.S. credit markets. Government prevents the market from collapsing completely and staves off even greater losses of jobs, earnings, and livelihoods by providing loans to keep firms in business and by establishing new rules to restructure the industry, with an eye to averting even greater future failures.

Given the enormity of the market failure that has resulted in climate change, one might expect government institutions, with their mandate to serve the greater public good, to intervene to cope with the waste products of fossil fuel–based energy production. For example, the U.S. federal government could step in to increase funding for research and development of technologies that don’t contribute to climate change, and help bring new solar, wind, and nuclear technologies
to market more quickly. Using public money to restructure the energy market could save the biosphere and prevent further climate change.

Instead, government officials talk of finding market solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without seriously considering substantial public investment in developing new energy sources. During the past 30 years, federal government expenditures for research and development in energy have declined and, at $3 billion in 2007, are less than half what they were in 1978, in real terms. The greatest reductions were in nuclear and renewable sources—that is, the main supply-side alternatives to fossil fuels.

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Barak Ravid, "Israel gives UN watchdog secret briefing on Iran," Ha'aretz, June 26, 2008.

[Arabs are not the only ones critical of Israel's nuclear secrecy--a policy it likes to describe as "ambiguous." And Israel is critical of the IAEA. More going on here than meets the eye. -jlt]

Foreign Ministry Director General Aaron Abramovich secretly visited the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna Wednesday and briefed a group of ambassadors from countries involved in the agency's efforts to stop Iran's nuclear project. Abramovich emphasized that the IAEA must act more quickly and efficiently to block Iranian nuclear ambitions.

The unusual visit was the first senior Israeli briefing of IAEA member ambassadors in several years. The IAEA is considered relatively hostile to Israel, a tool in Arab world attacks on Israel for rebuffing efforts to monitor the Dimona nuclear reactor.

About a week ago, the New York Times reported that over 100 IAF fighter planes and cargo craft as well as special forces drilled a simulated attack on an Iranian nuclear facility at a site near Greece, 1,500 kilometers from Israel. An Israeli source told The Times of London, "This was a general rehearsal for an Iran attack."

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