In advance of Hurricane Irma, officials from Florida Power and Light (FPL) announced on Thursday that the utility would start shutting down the state’s only two nuclear power plants—Turkey Point, just south of Miami, and St. Lucie, north of West Palm Beach—as a safety measure. Arstechnica.com
Zoe Williams’ article is a timely and thoughtful reminder of why civil society must respond to the present US-North Korea nuclear crisis if we are to avert catastrophe. Protesters clashed with police in Seoul on Thursday while demonstrating against the deployment and expansion of the US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (Thaad) missile-defence system. The South Korean protesters realise what many of our leaders don’t: deploying more weapons, conducting more military drills, and intensifying the war of words could soon tip the balance in favour of a real nuclear war that would kill millions. There will be no winners, whatever Donald Trump might imagine. Theguardian.com
After successfully testing two intercontinental ballistic missiles and a bomb with far more destructive power than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the North Korean nuclear threat has never been more credible. When asked on Wednesday about possible military action, President Donald Trump said, “We’ll see what happens.” That did little to reassure those still shaken by his remarks last month that the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” and that further threats from Pyongyang would be met with “fire and fury.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, for his part, is still pushing for a diplomatic solution and hoping to calm fears of nuclear war, saying “Americans should sleep well at night.” But should we? Bloomberg.com
On Friday, one inland area still well within Irma's threat zone was the Savannah River Site: a sprawling 310-square-mile nuclear reservation in South Carolina that borders northeast Georgia. During the Cold War, scientists and technicians there produced weapons-grade bomb material for the US military as well as plutonium-238 for NASA's pluckiest spacecraft. These activities also created millions of gallons of nuclear waste that's stored in dozens of tanks, plus burial grounds filled with contaminated objects. Businessinsider.com
