March, 14 2011, 11:35am EDT
Experts Comment on U.S. Implications of Japanese Reactor Crisis
Cautions Issued on Use of Same Aging Reactors, Huge Exposure for Taxpayers/Ratepayers, Lack of Emergency Preparedness, and Emergence of Risky MOX Fuel
WASHINGTON
The following points were made today by nuclear experts on the implications for the U.S of the rapidly evolving Japanese reactor crisis:
1.The U.S. makes widespread use of the same aging reactors that are in crisis in Japan. Five of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi 1 site are General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors, including Unit 1, which suffered an explosion that destroyed part of its containment building on Saturday, and Unit 3, which uses plutonium-based MOX fuel and has been the subject of major efforts to cool the reactor.
Michael Mariotte, executive director and the chief spokesperson for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said: "Nearly one out of five -- 23 - of the operating reactors in the U.S. use the GE Mark I design. All but two of these began commercial operation between 1971 and 1976. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved 20-year license extensions for 18 of these aging GE Mark I reactors. Two applications are currently under review; three reactors have not filed for license renewal. When the reactor designs are the same, and the reactor's ages are the same, comparisons seem more than appropriate -- indeed, it would be irresponsible not to understand what lessons may be learned from the Japanese experience that would apply to so many aging U.S. reactors that are still in use."
For more information on Japanese-U.S. use of aging General Electric Mark I reactors, including a list of all such U.S. reactors, see https://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/gemk1reactorsinus.pdf. For more information on General Electric Boiling Water Reactors, go to https://www.nirs.org/factsheets/bwrfact.htm. To contact Michael Mariotte, call 301-270-6477.
2. The nuclear catastrophe in Japan illustrates in vivid terms the risks to U.S. taxpayers and ratepayers of taking on even more of the risk of paying for nuclear power. "For decades, Wall Street hasn't been willing to invest in new reactors because of their enormous cost and risk. Obviously, Wall Street has it right," said Dr. Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment, Vermont Law School. "This is yet another example of how a multi-billion dollar investment can turn into a multi-billion dollar liability within minutes. The only way that new reactors will be built in the United States is if the economic risk is put upon the taxpayer through federal loan guarantees and/or upon ratepayers through advanced cost recovery."
President Obama has requested an additional $36 billion in loan guarantee authority for new reactors in FY2012. If authorized, this would make a total of $54.5 billion in nuclear loan guarantees. Of the currently authorized $18.5 billion in nuclear loan guarantees, $8.3 billion has been allocated to Southern Company and its partners for two proposed reactors in Georgia. Ratepayers in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina are paying the construction of proposed new reactors, most of which have been delayed post-2020. Several others states, including Iowa, Indiana and Missouri, are also considering legislation that will allow utilities to charge ratepayers in advance for the cost of new reactors. For more information, see https://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/11_03_09_Cooper%20All%20Risk%20Full%20Report.pdf, https://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/IEE/20100322_cooperTestimony.pdf and https://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/IEE/020811_CooperMinnesotaMoratoriumTestimony.pdf. To contact Mark Cooper, call (301) 384-22045.
3.U.S. emergency planning for nuclear accidents is in disarray. "Were a nuclear accident to occur in the U.S., we are woefully unprepared to deal with it," said Daniel Hirsch, a lecturer in Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz and president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap. "The agencies can't agree on who would be in charge of long-term cleanup, what standards would be applied, or where the money would come from. The attitude is basically the opposite of planning: 'If there is a nuclear release, we'll try to figure out something then.'" For the text of a March 13th letter from Rep. Ed Markey, D-MA., on this topic, go to https://tinyurl.com/6yodh69. To contact Daniel Hirsch, call 831-336-8003 or send email to dhirsch1@cruzio.com.
4. As in Japan's Fukushima Unit 3, the use of plutonium fuel (MOX) in U.S. reactors poses special radiation and safety risks. One of the Japanese reactors under risk of continued fuel melting or explosion is now operating for the first time with part of the core being plutonium fuel. This plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, shipped from Europe and inserted in Fukushima Unit 3 in September 2010, poses greater risks than traditional uranium fuel. MOX, made from plutonium which is capable of being used in nuclear weapons, is harder to control during reactor operation and results in a more serious radiation release in the event of an accident. The plutonium in the MOX is a result of the reprocessing of Japanese spent fuel and that reprocessing program. MOX use has long been opposed by public interest groups due to safety, cost and non-proliferation concerns.
Tom Clements, Southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator, Friends of the Earth, said: "In the U.S., the Department of Energy is considering use of MOX fuel in the Tennessee Valley Authority's Browns Ferry reactors, of the same aging Mark I boiling water reactor design as Fukushima Unit 3. Analysis by the Tennessee Valley Authority of unsafe MOX fuel made from surplus weapons plutonium must be halted and the $850 million request related to this in President Obama's FY2012 must be rejected. The cost of the MOX plant now under construction at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site has skyrocketed from $1.4 billion in FY 2004 to $4.9 billion in FY 2009 and has become a program driven by special interests that profit from it."
See https://www.fissilematerials.org/blog/2011/03/us_plutonium_disposition_.html and
https://www.foe.org/secret-plan-exposed-use-surplus-weapons-plutonium-washington-state-nuclear-reactor. Contact Tom Clements at 803-834-3084 (landline) or 803-240-7268 (cell).
The following experts are also available to members of the news media:
Peter Bradford
Peter A. Bradford is a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and former chair of the Maine and New York utility commissions. He teaches energy policy and law at the Vermont Law School and has taught at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Robert Alvarez
Robert Alvarez is a senior scholar at IPS, where he is focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies. Between 1993 and 1999, Mr. Alvarez served at the Department of Energy as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary and deputy assistant secretary for National Security and the Environment. In 1994 and 1995, Bob led teams in North Korea to establish control of nuclear weapons materials. He coordinated nuclear material strategic planning for the department and established the department's first asset management program.
Kenneth Bergeron
Kenneth Bergeron is a physicist and former Sandia scientist who worked on nuclear reactor accident simulation. Bergeron is the author of "Tritium on Ice: The Dangerous New Alliance of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power"
Dr. Ira Helfand, MD
Ira Helfand, MD, is a member of the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He is an expert on nuclear power, nuclear waste, and radiation exposure issues.
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D.
Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental research, holds a Ph.D. in engineering (specialization: nuclear fusion) from the University of California at Berkeley. He has produced many studies and articles on nuclear fuel cycle related issues, including weapons production, testing, and nuclear waste, over the past twenty years.
Damon Moglen
Damon Moglen is director of the climate and energy project of Friends of the Earth. He has extensive expertise on nuclear issues and the nuclear industry in Japan. For more than a decade, Moglen ran Greenpeace's International's plutonium campaign, including more than a year spent inside Japan focused on nuclear issues.
Aileen Mioko Smith
Alieen Mioko Smith, Executive Green Action, in Kyoto, Japan, is a long-time activist in Japan on nuclear power issues who lived near Three Mile Island from 1980-82. She is currently visiting the United States.
Kevin Kamps
Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear specializes in high-level waste management and transportation; new and existing reactors; decommissioning; Congress watch; climate change; federal subsidies.
A streaming audio replay of a related Saturday media briefing is available on the Web at https://www.foe.org. For additional background information, please refer to https://www.foe.org/us-experts-comment-japan-reactor-crisisand https://www.psr.org/nuclear-bailout/japan-earthquakenuclear.pdf.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
(202) 783-7400LATEST NEWS
Blinken Hasn't Ended Aid for Israeli Military Units Tied to Killings, Rapes
"Blinken continues a very long American tradition of very selective enforcement of human rights laws," said one critic.
Apr 18, 2024
Amid global condemnation of Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip and the Biden administration's complicity, ProPublicarevealed Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has for months ignored staff recommendations to cut off American aid to Israeli military and police units accused of human rights violations including killings and rapes.
"The incidents under review mostly took place in the West Bank and occurred before Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel," which was the catalyst for the current Israeli escalation in Gaza, reported ProPublica's Brett Murphy. "They include reports of extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed, and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails."
Murphy obtained government documents and emails and spoke with current and former U.S. State Department officials, who said the recommendations from the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum—named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who authored laws restricting aid to human rights abuses—were sent to Blinken in December and "they've been sitting in his briefcase since then."
While U.S. President Joe Biden has gradually increased his criticism of Israeli forces killing civilians in Gaza, "multiple State Department officials who have worked on Israeli relations said that Blinken's inaction has undermined Biden's public criticism, sending a message to the Israelis that the administration was not willing to take serious steps," Murphy wrote.
The Israeli government did not respond to the reporter's request for comment, but a U.S. State Department spokesperson did. "This process is one that demands a careful and full review," the American representative said, "and the department undergoes a fact-specific investigation applying the same standards and procedures regardless of the country in question."
Global critics have long accused the U.S. government of giving Israel special treatment while Israeli officials and troops subject Palestinians to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, settler colonization, and now "plausibly" genocide, according to the International Court of Justice. Since October, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed at least 33,970 people in Gaza.
The reporting sparked a fresh wave of outrage. The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights declared that "this is how Antony Blinken will go down in history: for enabling Israel to commit the gravest of war crimes with U.S. tax dollars."
Alex Kingsbury, a member of The New York Times editorial board, noted that "Blinken continues a very long American tradition of very selective enforcement of human rights laws," while Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official, said that "this would be a career ender for a normal Cabinet secretary under normal circumstances."
Democracy for the Arab World Now "submitted Leahy sanctions requests for two of the Israeli units that Antony Blinken has putzed and punted on, in breach of U.S. law, despite clear evidence of despicable abuses—[including] torture, executions, and even murder of an American," according to executive director Sarah Leah Whitson. "But Antony Blinken insists on special privileges and exemptions for Israel, refusing to hold it accountable, U.S. law be damned."
@StateDept In 2023, we documented Israel counter-terrorism YAMAM unit\u2019s abuses, including two extrajudicial killings & two indiscriminate and reckless killings, including of a child in Jenin in March 2023, constituting gross violations of human rights under Leahy Law & war crimes under Rome\u2026— (@)
The Council on American-Islamic Relations' Robert S. McCaw said in a statement that "despite these internal report State Department reports detailing egregious human rights abuses by the Israeli government, including allegations of rape and torturing children in the West Bank, Secretary Blinken has ignored his own staff and continued to greenlight weapon shipments to the responsible Israeli military and police units."
"The glaring disconnect between the gravity of the accusations and his refusal to act on them is deeply disturbing," McCaw added. "Secretary Blinken must halt any further weapons transfers that the Israeli government will use to commit more human rights violations."
Human rights attorney Qasim Rashid pointed out that in contrast with how the Biden administration has treated Israel, the U.S. government pulled funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East—as Palestinians in Gaza starve to death—over the "mere allegation" that a small number of staff were involved with Hamas.
"If we had been applying Leahy effectively in Israel like we do in other countries, maybe you wouldn't have the IDF filming TikToks of their war crimes now because we have contributed to a culture of impunity," Josh Paul, a former director in the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and a member of the forum who resigned in protest in October, told Murphy.
Another State Department official, Annelle Sheline, stepped down late last month as a foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. She said that with the U.S. government continuing to arm Israel as it devastates Gaza, "trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible."
Sheline's resignation came just days after the Biden administration accepted Israeli government assurances that its use of U.S.-supplied weapons complies with international law—which human rights advocates and officials worldwide, including some congressional Democrats, have challenged over the past few weeks.
Over two dozen Democrats wrote Wednesday to Blinken and two other top officials that "we remain concerned by the stark differences and gaps in the statements being made by the State Department and White House on how Israel has not been found to be in violation of international humanitarian law, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance, which are contradictory to those made by prominent experts and global institutions."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Eyes Social Security Cuts By Slashing Payroll Tax
"He is dusting off the old Republican playbook and bringing back the strategy known informally as 'Starve the Beast,'" said one advocate. "In this case, Social Security is the beast."
Apr 18, 2024
Amid new reporting that former U.S. President Donald Trump's economic advisers are urging him to cut the federal payroll tax, a key revenue source for Social Security and Medicare, advocates on Thursday urged voters to remember that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has long threatened to do just that.
"Don't be fooled," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, which lobbies to strengthen the social safety net for retired Americans. "At the end of his term in office, Trump delayed Social Security's dedicated revenue paid from workers and their employers. He was quite explicit that, if reelected, he would convert that delay into a permanent cut."
Altman was referring to an executive order Trump signed in August 2020, allowing companies to delay payroll tax payments—an option most companies declined to take as the Treasury Department made clear they would have to pay all of the deferred taxes the following year and that employees would see smaller paychecks as a result of the program.
Trump promised to make the payroll tax cut permanent, and as Reutersreported late Wednesday, the former president is discussing the proposal with economic advisers including Fox News host and former National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and right-wing commentator Stephen Moore.
The former president is weighing cuts to Social Security's revenue stream even as Republicans complain that the popular program is unaffordable and push to raise the retirement age to delay Americans' use of the funds.
The GOP has long claimed Social Security is headed toward insolvency and pushed to privatize the program or cut benefits, but last year's Social Security trustees report found that the program's trust fund currently has a $2.85 trillion surplus and could pay 80% of benefits for the next 75 years even if Congress takes no action to expand it—as long as it continues to be funded through taxes.
"Social Security can only pay benefits if it has sufficient dedicated revenue to pay its costs. That is why it doesn't contribute even a penny to the deficit," said Altman. "If Trump succeeds in slashing that dedicated revenue so that it is no longer sufficient to fully cover the cost, it will result in an automatic benefit reduction. This would happen without any Republicans having to vote for the cuts, or Trump having to sign them into law."
"He is dusting off the old Republican playbook and bringing back the strategy known informally as 'Starve the Beast,'" said Altman of Trump. "In this case, Social Security is the beast."
Along with cutting payroll taxes, which are paid by workers and employees and amount to 7.65% of each employee's gross pay in order to fund senior citizens' post-retirement income, Trump has proposed extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the vast majority of which benefited the wealthiest Americans, according to the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy.
Altman noted the contrast between Trump's tax proposals and those of President Joe Biden, who has proposed strengthening Social Security and extending its solvency by requiring people with wealth over $100 million to pay at least 25% in income taxes, raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, and quadrupling the stock buyback tax to disincentive companies lavishing their shareholders with their profits instead of investing in their workforce.
"The choice this election is clear: Trump and the Republicans will cut Social Security and give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires," said Altman. "The Democrats will expand Social Security, paid for by requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Watchdogs' Database Details Right-Wing Efforts to Sway US Supreme Court
"Supreme corruption demands supreme transparency," said one campaigner behind the new effort.
Apr 18, 2024
A trio of progressive watchdog groups on Thursday unveiled a new database detailing the "troubling connections" between the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing justices, the conservative organizations that have intervened in cases before the court, and the wealthy donors funding them.
Take Back the Court, Revolving Door Project, and True North Research published the database at SupremeTransparency.org, which "shines a spotlight on the complex web connecting justices to powerbrokers and the organizations that those powerbrokers fund, lead, and are otherwise linked to."
The watchdogs found that nearly 1 in 7 amicus briefs filed during the 2023-24 Supreme Court term were lodged by at least one powerbroker-affiliated organization. This affects 32 different cases before the court.
"The current U.S. Supreme Court has gone rogue."
For example, in Moore v. United States—in which the Supreme Court could preemptively ban or limit wealth taxes—half of all amicus briefs were filed by groups affiliated with right-wing powerbrokers.
In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, groups funded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch want to scupper the Chevron deference, a 40-year precedent under which judges defer to the legal interpretations of federal agencies if Congress has not passed any laws on an issue. Powerbroker-affiliated organizations have filed more than one-third of the amicus briefs seeking to overturn the Chevron doctrine.
"Far too often people with insidiously close ties to justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, such as Harlan Crow and Paul Singer, signal their interest in the outcome of cases by funding, leading, or influencing organizations that file amicus briefs," Revolving Door Project executive director Jeff Hauser said in a statement.
"There is just as much of a conflict of interest when a justice hears a case involving a benefactor as a named party and one in which the person who illicitly enabled their luxurious lifestyle is 'merely' similarly situated to one of the parties," Hauser added.
According to SupremeTransparency.org:
The current U.S. Supreme Court has gone rogue. The right-wing justices that make up the court's supermajority frequently toy with precedent and the rule of law to issue opinions that not only defy the will of a majority of Americans, but also rewrite constitutional principles, overturn widely respected legal precedents, and gut longstanding rules that protect the public interest.
In just the 2021 and 2022 Supreme Court terms alone, the court overturned Roe v. Wadeafter 49 years; gutted both the decades-old Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act; overturned a 100+ year old gun safety law; eroded the National Labor Relations Act (adopted as part of New Deal reforms to protect workers); broke with their own procedures regarding standing to sue in order to block student debt relief; and reversed decades of precedent to end the decadeslong practice of race-conscious college admissions policies that promoted diversity and redressed discrimination. But this radically reactionary court and its radically reactionary justices aren't acting alone.
"Supreme corruption demands supreme transparency," said Take Back the Court president Sarah Lipton-Lubet. "It's no secret that the many of the rich benefactors cozying up to the conservative justices are the same people who fund right-wing organizations with business before the court."
"But too often, stories about the Supreme Court don't connect these dots—and as a result, they leave us with an incomplete picture," she continued. "The truth is right-wing powerbrokers are seemingly paying to play; they're funding groups that are weighing in on court cases even as they buy access to the justices who will rule on those cases."
"It's just one of the ways our Supreme Court is deeply, fundamentally broken," Lipton-Lubet added. "And it's a reminder of how urgent and necessary it is that we reform this corrupt court."
Last year, the Supreme Court adopted a Code of Conduct that contained few new rules, no enforcement mechanism, and was widely panned as a toothless public relations stunt. Bolder proposals for reforming the high court include term limits and increasing the number of justices.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular