October, 13 2017, 12:45pm EDT
Peace Action: Trump Recklessly Decertifies Iran Deal Without Cause
President Trump gave a speech today outlining a new strategy on Iran that includes, among other things, decertifying the Iran Nuclear Agreement. Under legislation passed ahead of the signing of the agreement, the president is required to certify or decertify the agreement every 90 days. Trump's speech took place ahead of the upcoming October 15th deadline for recertification.
WASHINGTON
President Trump gave a speech today outlining a new strategy on Iran that includes, among other things, decertifying the Iran Nuclear Agreement. Under legislation passed ahead of the signing of the agreement, the president is required to certify or decertify the agreement every 90 days. Trump's speech took place ahead of the upcoming October 15th deadline for recertification.
Responding to the president's speech, Jon Rainwater, Executive Director of Peace Action, offered his take. "Once again, Trump is hazarding U.S. and global security interests to protect his fragile ego and spite his predecessor," said Rainwater. "With the Iran agreement in place, the world has unprecedented access to Iran's nuclear facilities and rigorous mechanisms in place to ensure Iran's compliance. If we walk away from this deal, all of the hard-won access, limits and monitoring will end and that puts the U.S. and Iran back on the path to military conflict."
Following the last certification deadline in July, reports surfaced that Trump did not want to certify Iran's compliance, and that top aides had to talk him out of decertifying it. Subsequently, the president told reporters that he did not believe Iran was in compliance.
Responding to those signals, more than 80 nuclear policy experts issued a joint statement in September affirming Iran's compliance with the agreement and urging Congress and the president to stand by it, calling the agreement a "net plus for international nuclear nonproliferation efforts." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the monitoring body charged with verifying Iran's compliance with the agreement, also recently reassured the world that Iran is fulfilling its obligations. Even Trump's key military advisors, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, have said that Iran is in compliance.
The new strategy Trump outlined stopped short of calling on Congress to reimpose sanctions lifted under the agreement, but the president's failure to recertify the deal still leaves Congress with that option. According to Rainwater, "Trump is effectively putting the fate of the deal back in the hands of Congress. Their options include doing nothing, abrogating the agreement by reimposing sanctions, or trying to renegotiate the terms of the agreement. Congress will destroy the deal if it tries to unilaterally renegotiate a multilateral agreement that was years in the making. Trump may not be blowing up the deal himself, but he's setting the explosives and handing Congress the detonator."
Addressing the potential consequences of Trump's new approach to Iran, Rainwater emphasized the damage it could do to America's credibility. "Walking away from the agreement despite Iran's well-established compliance would decimate U.S. credibility on the world stage. While that would be bad news for any future efforts to negotiate international agreements, it's particularly distressing in the context of dangerously high tensions with North Korea. Diplomacy is the only viable path for curbing North Korea's nuclear program, and we've just sent a clear message that any commitments we might make at the negotiating table are completely vulnerable to the whims of domestic U.S. politics."
Speaking to the decision now facing Congress, Rainwater explained, "each member of Congress, whether they supported the agreement initially or not, will have to decide whether siding with the president is worth the risks of ending all restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities, undermining America's credibility, and escalating the threat of war with both Iran and North Korea. With U.S. and global security interests on the line, partisan politics need to take a back seat."
Peace Action is the United States' largest peace and disarmament organization with over 100,000 members and nearly 100 chapters in 34 states, works to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs and encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights.
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Nuclear Plant, Minnesota Officials Hid 400,000-Gallon Leak of Radioactive Water for Months
Xcel Energy reported a leak of tritium-contaminated water at its Monticello nuclear power plant on November 22. State authorities just acknowledged they're monitoring the ongoing cleanup effort.
Mar 17, 2023
Xcel Energy in late November told Minnesota and federal officials about a leak of 400,000 gallons of water contaminated with radioactive tritium at its Monticello nuclear power plant, but it wasn't until Thursday that the incident and ongoing cleanup effort were made public.
In a statement, Xcel said Thursday that it "took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment."
"Ongoing monitoring from over two dozen on-site monitoring wells confirms that the leaked water is fully contained on-site and has not been detected beyond the facility or in any local drinking water," the company added.
The Monticello plant, adjacent to the Mississippi River, is roughly 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
Asked why it didn't notify the public sooner, the Minneapolis-based utility giant said: "We understand the importance of quickly informing the communities we serve if a situation poses an immediate threat to health and safety. In this case, there was no such threat."
But Excel wasn't the only entity with knowledge of the situation. The company said it alerted the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and state authorities on November 22, the day the leak was confirmed.
According toThe Star Tribune: "A high level of tritium in groundwater was reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when first discovered, which published the 'nonemergency' report in its public list of nuclear events the next day. The listing said the source of the tritium was being investigated."
As Minnesota Public Radioexplained, "The NRC's November public notice was not in a news release" and was only visible "online at the bottom of a list of 'non-emergency' event notification reports."
Asked why they waited four months to inform residents, state regulators who are monitoring the cleanup said they were waiting for more information.
"We knew there was a presence of tritium in one monitoring well, however Xcel had not yet identified the source of the leak and its location," Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) spokesperson Michael Rafferty said Thursday.
The source of the leak—a broken pipe connecting two buildings—was detected on December 19 and quickly patched.
"Now that we have all the information about where the leak occurred, how much was released into groundwater, and that contaminated groundwater had moved beyond the original location, we are sharing this information," said Rafferty.
Dan Huff, assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), said, "If at any time someone's health is at risk, we would notify folks immediately." However, he continued, "this is a contained site underneath the Xcel plant and it has not threatened any Minnesotans' health."
Echoing Xcel and MDH officials, MPCA said in a statement: "The leak has been stopped and has not reached the Mississippi River or contaminated drinking water sources. There is no evidence at this time to indicate a risk to any drinking water wells in the vicinity of the plant."
Kirk Koudelka, MPCA assistant commissioner for land and strategic initiatives, declared that "our top priority is protecting residents and the environment."
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Since reporting the leak, Xcel has been pumping, storing, and processing contaminated groundwater, which "contains tritium levels below federal thresholds," according toThe Associated Press.
As the news outlet reported:
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that occurs naturally in the environment and is a common by-product of nuclear plant operations. It emits a weak form of beta radiation that does not travel very far and cannot penetrate human skin, according to the NRC. A person who drank water from a spill would get only a low dose, the NRC says.
The NRC says tritium spills happen from time to time at nuclear plants, but that it has repeatedly determined that they've either remained limited to the plant property or involved such low offsite levels that they didn't affect public health or safety. Xcel reported a small tritium leak at Monticello in 2009.
Xcel said it has recovered about 25% of the spilled tritium so far, that recovery efforts will continue and that it will install a permanent solution this spring.
"Xcel Energy is considering building above-ground storage tanks to store the contaminated water it recovers, and is considering options for the treatment, reuse, or final disposal of the collected tritium and water," AP noted. "State regulators will review the options the company selects."
As MPR reported, news of the leak "comes as Xcel is asking federal regulators to extend Monticello's operating license through 2050—when the plant will be nearly 80 years old."
The company says that doing so "is critical to meeting a new state law mandating fully carbon-free electricity by 2040," The Star Tribune reported.
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The International Criminal Court on Friday issued international arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for allegedly abducting Ukrainian children and transporting them to Russia.
The Hague-based ICC said that there are "reasonable grounds to believe" that Putin and Lvova-Belova bear "individual criminal responsibility" for "the war crime of unlawful deportation" of Ukrainian children "from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation."
ICC President Judge Piotr Hofmański said in a video statement announcing the warrant that "it is forbidden by international law for occupying powers to transfer civilians from the territory they live in to other territories. Children enjoy special protection under the Geneva Convention."
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According to an Associated Pressinvestigation published last month:
Russian law prohibits the adoption of foreign children without consent of the home country, which Ukraine has not given. But in May, Putin signed a decree making it easier for Russia to adopt and give citizenship to Ukrainian children without parental care—and harder for Ukraine and surviving relatives to win them back.
Russia also has prepared a register of suitable Russian families for Ukrainian children, and pays them for each child who gets citizenship—up to $1,000 for those with disabilities. It holds summer camps for Ukrainian orphans, offers "patriotic education" classes, and even runs a hotline to pair Russian families with children from Donbas.
Lvova-Belova has defended the deportations as "saving" lost or orphaned children.
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Ahead of the first United Nations conference on water in more than four decades, experts from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water released a landmark report Friday to warn the international community that the world is "heading for massive collective failure" in the management of the planet's water supply and demand that governments treat water as a "global common good."
Policymakers' failure to ensure equal access to water, protect freshwater ecosystems, and recognize that communities and countries are interdependent when it comes to the global water cycle has resulted in two billion people lacking a safe drinking supply and "the prospect of a 40% shortfall in freshwater supply by 2030, with severe shortages in water-constrained regions," according to the report.
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In a video released ahead of the report, co-author Johan Rockström, who directs the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, noted that the expected freshwater shortage is partially due to the fact that "we're changing the very source of freshwater precipitation" as human activities including fossil fuel extraction drive planetary heating.
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The Global Commission on the Economics of Water will present its findings at the U.N. Water Conference on March 22.
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