bananas
bananas's JournalFederal government worked to scuttle New Zealand statement against nuclear weapons
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
The federal government led secret diplomatic efforts to frustrate a New Zealand-led push for nuclear disarmament, according to documents released under freedom of information laws.
Declassified ministerial submissions, cables and emails from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade show Australian diplomats worked energetically against nuclear disarmament efforts by other countries, because ''we rely on US nuclear forces to deter nuclear attack on Australia''.
In October last year, following the election of the Coalition government, Australia refused a New Zealand request to endorse a 125-nation joint statement at the United Nations highlighting the humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons.
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This diplomatic campaign is intended to lay the ground for negotiation of a convention that would prohibit nuclear weapons - putting them in the same category as chemical and biological weapons which are already prohibited under international law.
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Australia's diplomacy suffered a blow when Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida agreed that Japan would sign the New Zealand-led statement. Australian diplomats consulted closely with the US State Department. Email exchanges between Australian diplomats reveal Washington reprimanded Tokyo over its decision.
Anti-nuclear campaigners labelled Australia's intervention a ''weasel statement … a last-minute rival announcement … seemingly in an effort to undermine the efforts of pro-ban activists''.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/federal-government-worked-to-scuttle-new-zealand-statement-against-nuclear-weapons-20140309-34fe8.html
Discoveries: Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Ariz.
Discoveries: Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Ariz.
By Sam McManis
Published: Sunday, Mar. 9, 2014 - 1:00 am
ORACLE, Ariz. -- The nine of us, plus guide Marsha Colbert, stepped through an airlocked portal and, as the door closed with a clang of finality, we found ourselves hermetically sealed under glass. We were like peaches canned for the winter or, more chillingly, lizards on display in some “Twilight Zone”-style terrarium. Trapped, I tell you. Trapped.
Yes, I’m being overly dramatic. But when you set foot inside Biosphere 2, deep in the desert outside of Tucson, and embark on a 1 1/2-hour tour of this ecosystem in an oversized Mason jar, you start to wonder how in the world those eight scientists ever lasted two years sealed away without either killing each other or breaking the glass and making a run for it.
See, for a structure that spans 3.14 acres under 7.2 million cubic feet of glass supported by a 500-ton steel liner, for a man-made series of biomes that include a rain forest, desert, savanna, ocean and orchard (what, no simulated strip-malled suburbs?), it still feels curiously claustrophobic to be inside with no direct contact with Biosphere 1, which, of course, is our beloved Earth.
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But what transpired, both scientifically and psychologically, during their two years behind the glass is what fascinates the approximately 100,000 tourists who yearly visit Biosphere 2, since 2007 managed by the University of Arizona.
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“Yes, human relations was an issue,” she said. “I never said they all got along. It was a big building. You could be at opposite sides. ... There were probably a couple romances inside. Jane (Poynter, agriculture expert) and Taber (MacCallum, chemist) had known each other for 10 years before going inside and had not been romantically involved. Maybe something about being inside apparently bonded them. They got married in 1994.”
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Cape Cod Residents Want Pilgrim Nuclear Plant Closed
Source: Associated Press
Residents from across Cape Cod are planning to converge on the Statehouse to call on Gov. Deval Patrick to help shut down the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth.
Activists are tying their visit Monday to the eve of the third anniversary of the meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan.
Residents say they want Patrick to press the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to shutter the plant. The commission voted in 2012 to relicense Pilgrim through 2032.
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Patrick said last year that it was not clear to him that Massachusetts needs Pilgrim to meet all of the state’s electricity needs.
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Read more: http://www.wbur.org/2014/03/08/cape-cod-residents-want-pilgrim-nuclear-plant-closed
Regional Nuclear War Would Still Wreak Global Climate Havoc, Says Study
- This is the first study to include interactive effects of atmospheric physics, ozone chemistry, deep-ocean and sea ice response, and land vegetation all in one earth system model.
- “(We were) expecting to confirm earlier studies that there would be about a decade of cooler temperatures following such an exchange,” said Mills.
- Instead, the team found that cooling would last longer than 25 years.
- Large amounts of ultraviolet radiation would destroy both land- and sea-based ecosystems, as well as agricultural food crops.
Regional Nuclear War Would Still Wreak Global Climate Havoc, Says Study
3/08/2014 @ 7:03AM
With Ukrainian tensions mounting, the notion that such regional conflicts could morph into something nuclear is now dogging Western leaders in a way not seen in a generation.
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But even a limited regional nuclear conflict would have catastrophic global impact, as detailed in new atmospheric and climate models in a forthcoming paper in the journal Earth’s Future.
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A follow-on increase in summertime ultraviolet (UV) surface radiation of as much as 80 percent would be “off the charts” says Michael Mills, an atmospheric scientist at NCAR (the National Center for Atmospheric Research) in Boulder, Colorado, and the study’s lead author.
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... large amounts of ultraviolet radiation would destroy both land- and sea-based ecosystems, as well as agricultural food crops, potentially leading to global nuclear famine.
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Mills says this is the first study to include interactive effects of atmospheric physics, ozone chemistry, deep-ocean and sea ice response, and land vegetation all in one earth system model.
The team ran seven models using NASA’s Pleiades Supercomputer at the space agency’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.
“(We were) expecting to confirm earlier studies that there would be about a decade of cooler temperatures following such an exchange,” said Mills.
But, instead, he says, the team found that cooling would last longer than 25 years; causing growing seasons worldwide to be reduced by as much as 40 days.
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MEA says Khobragade issue caused 'misunderstanding' between India, US
Source: Business Standard
US has recently threatened that it might put India in the 'Priority Foreign Country' list, allowing a closer scrutiny on India
The diplomatic row that emerged between India and US concerning Indian diplomat Deyani Khobragade did create “misunderstanding” even though the relationship between both countries continue to “grow” according to Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh.
“The issue (concerning Devyani Khobragade) caused a certain degree of misunderstanding for a certain period of time … The India-US relationship is strong and will continue to grow from strength to strength,” Singh said here today while addressing women reporters on the occasion of the International Women’s Day.
Singh said India will continue to engage with US on policy and strategic matters. She highlighted the visit of US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz here next week as an indication of the relation being “normal.”
Last year in December, India’s Deputy Consul General in New York Devyani Khobragade was arrested strip-searched over visa fraud charges and underpaying her housekeeper triggering a huge diplomatic spat between India and US.
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Read more: http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/mea-says-khobragade-issue-caused-misunderstanding-between-india-us-114030800463_1.html
Batteries May Vie With U.S. Oil Boom as Energy Changer
Batteries May Vie With U.S. Oil Boom as Energy Changer
By Bradley Olson and Mark Chediak 2014-03-06T07:21:16Z
The rapid development of rooftop solar and battery storage technology could be as transformative to the economy and modern life as the U.S. oil and gas boom, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said.
“It’s pretty dramatic,” Moniz said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg News at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston. “They are growing very, very fast.”
Batteries allow customers with solar panels to store energy during the day and then tap the excess overnight when the sun goes down. The widespread use of electric vehicles could reshape the development of cities, and applying the same battery storage technology to transform the U.S. energy system has “huge potential,” Moniz said.
Battery storage advances could threaten the 100-year-old monopoly utility business model that books about $360 billion in annual power sales. An increasing number of customers are reducing their dependence on the grid, turning to solar panels and battery storage as a way to reduce their bills.
“Storage is a huge deal,” Moniz said.
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Greenpeace says nuclear risks rising; BUND says phase out nuclear by 2030
Greenpeace says nuclear risks rising in the EU
Date 07.03.2014
Author Gero Rueter / al
Editor Nicole Goebel
In a new report, Greenpeace is demanding immediate action to protect the bloc's citizens from a rising risk of nuclear accidents. The environmental NGO has found out that many nuclear power plants in Europe are too old.
Environmental organization Greenpeace says that the risk of a nuclear accident in Europe is on the rise. A new 146 page report, commissioned by the organization, finds that risk levels in Europe's nuclear facilities are rising due to various reasons. The document cites the ongoing use of nuclear power plants beyond their original used-by date, as well as increased power demands in the bloc, as the main problems.
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At the same time as Greenpeace's findings, BUND, the German branch of Friends of the Earth, has released a related report. According to the authors of that study, Europe can turn off nuclear power by 2030 completely and still meet its planned climate protection goals. Until now, supporters of nuclear power have argued that it would have to play a part in Europe's future energy mix due to its low carbon emissions, in comparison to fossil fuel energy sources.
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Mission to Mars blasted by religious watchdog in UAE
euronews (in English)
Published on Mar 7, 2014
A controversial mission to establish life on the Red Planet has been deemed un-Islamic by a religious watchdog in the United Arab Emirates.
The General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments (GAIAE) argued that the mission to Mars would be dangerous enough to be considered suicidal, and therefore un-Islamic.
"If this man goes to Mars and brings a profitable science to humanity and then returns safely to earth, this is undoubtedly allowed by religion," said Dr Ahmed Abdul Aziz Al Haddad,...
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2014/03/07/mission-to-mars-blasted-by-religious-watchdog
euronews: the most watched news channel in Europe
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Uranium Producer USEC Files for Bankruptcy Protection
Uranium Producer USEC Files for Bankruptcy Protection
By Dawn McCarty and Phil Milford 2014-03-05T15:33:45Z
USEC Inc. (USU), a producer of enriched uranium for nuclear power plants that was sold by the U.S. government in 1998, sought bankruptcy protection with a plan to hand control to noteholders after an oversupply of the fuel hurt its business. The shares fell as much as 29 percent.
The Bethesda, Maryland-based company, which buys some uranium from Russia under a 10-year contract, listed assets of $70 million and debt of $1.07 billion in Chapter 11 papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. USEC said in December that it would file bankruptcy to replace $530 million in senior convertible notes coming due in October.
USEC is seeking to clean up its balance sheet as it teams with the U.S. government to finance construction of the American Centrifuge plant in Ohio, which will replace USEC’s facility in Paducah, Kentucky. USEC posted net losses in the past two years over costs to end uranium enrichment at the Kentucky plant and return the site to the Energy Department.
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Construction has been delayed by difficulties in obtaining permanent financing and a global oversupply of nuclear fuel following the tsunami that damaged Japan’s Fukushima reactors in 2011 and led to reactor shutdowns in Germany, USEC said.
“The resulting oversupply caused nuclear fuel prices to drop to their lowest levels in a decade, which has negatively affected the economics of deploying the American Centrifuge technology in the near term,” USEC said in today’s statement.
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The link between Castle Bravo and modern environmentalism
The link between Castle Bravo and modern environmentalism
William Souder 03/03/2014
William Souder is the author of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, which was published in September 2012 on the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring.
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Terrified, the crew began the long process of hauling in their line. After a few hours it began to snow—or, rather, something like snow started to fall from the sky. When the men looked at it closely—a few tasted it—the stuff seemed more like ash or sand. It was sticky and irritated the men’s hands as they worked to get under way. Down it came, coating the ship and the men, getting into their hair and clothing, and in due course finding its way inside, into the crew’s quarters, the galley, everywhere. As the “Lucky Dragon” headed for home, the crew fell sick with nausea. A yellowish discharge oozed from their eyes, and their skin steadily darkened until it was nearly black. By then they were convinced they had somehow gotten too close to a test of an atomic bomb. They hadn’t been lucky after all.
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The Castle Bravo incident caused international consternation. The United States and the Soviet Union were already locked in a fierce nuclear arms race that would continue through the 1950s and into the 1960s. And as these much more powerful fusion devices began to be routinely tested above ground, the Earth’s atmosphere would become steadily more contaminated with bomb debris. This fell back to earth—much more quickly than many scientists expected—as radioactive fallout, which would come to be seen as the greatest danger in a nuclear war.
A few years later, marine biologist and author Rachel Carson recounted Kuboyama’s death in the most sensational book of 1962: Silent Spring. A stern polemic on the dangerous overuse of synthetic pesticides such as DDT, Carson’s book explained how these chemical poisons were a threat to wildlife and to human health. Silent Spring alarmed the public and made Carson the target of an angry, well-financed smear campaign by the chemical industry.
One of Carson’s challenges in writing Silent Spring was how to convince her readers of the then-novel idea that an unseen chemical contaminant that might be anywhere (or everywhere) might cause unanticipated collateral damage to ecosystems. She solved this problem by perceiving a parallel between pesticides and radiation. Invisible, ubiquitous, and accumulating in the tissues of living things over time, pesticides and radioactive fallout from nuclear testing were, Carson argued, the twin existential problems of the modern age.
In June 1962, as Silent Spring was being serialized in The New Yorker magazine, the United States alone tested 17 nuclear devices. That year, a nuclear explosion occurred somewhere in the world every few days. Fearful of the steady rain of fallout—which had begun turning up in cow’s milk in the American Midwest—the public was receptive to the idea that pesticides belonged in the same category as radiation. In Silent Spring, Carson told the story of a farmer who had died after spending a day dusting his land with DDT, and how it was reminiscent of the story of the radio operator Kuboyama. “Like Kuboyama, the farmer had been a healthy man gleaning his living from the land as Kuboyama had taken his from the sea,” Carson wrote. “For each man a poison drifting out of the sky carried a death sentence.”
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