Various religions and cults have predicted the imminent end of the world for thousands of years. Some have been content to merely comment while others have actively sought to prevent it and others work to make it happen. There has been a worrisome trend among Christians who believe that we are currently in what they call the End Times and that Jesus will soon return to judge mankind. The Christian Dominionists believe that the U.S. should become a theocracy before the world ends. They have members and supporters in the U.S. Congress. Some of the U.S. support for Israel is predicated on the idea that certain things have to happen in the Middle East before Jesus can return. The reason that I bring up the subject is that I recently read about a doomsday cult in Japan that believes that nuclear war will inevitably destroy the world.

          The Japanese cult called Sukyo Mahikari is said to be the fastest growing doomsday cult in the world with over a million members. They believe in Jewish Freemasons are conspiring to take over the world. The holy book of the cult is called the Goseigen or the “Book of Warnings.” It was “revealed” by the “Creator God” to Yoshikazu Okada in the early 1960s. The book says that the “perishing , ending and collapse of civilization is imminent ” and that “the subhumans will be destroyed in nuclear fireballs. It says that “Earth must be burnt away with the Ball of Fire in order for God to descend from Heaven” and “the production of fireballs in the world cannot be stopped.” The chosen – members of the cult – will create a new holy Japanese empire after the necessary purging of the unworthy.

           The cult enjoys the support of high level politicians such as the neo-nationalist Shintaro Ishihara who is featured in cult literature and referred to as a friend of Okada. In order for an organization to have legitimacy in Japan, it must be sponsored by influential people. Ishihara was the mayor of Tokyo and became a leader of the Japan Restoration Party which was founded in 2012. It is dedicated to “reasserting Japan’s correct place in the world.” They currently have fifty four seats in the lower house of the Japanese Diet and nine seats in the upper house. They are opposed to the close relationship of the U.S. and Japan.

           Mixing politics and religions is a very bad idea. When doomsday religion intrudes into the halls of power, there is a danger that policy decisions might be aimed at bringing about the apocalypse, not avoiding it. Japan is a powerful industrial nation with mature nuclear industry. Their constitution forbids them from having nuclear weapons but there have been calls for that prohibition to end. With their plutonium reactor and their technological expertise, it would not take long for Japan to build nuclear weapons and delivery systems if they wanted to. Considering the unstable regime in North Korea which has been threatening Japan with nuclear attacks and the new belligerence of China in claiming control of disputed islands to the south of Japan, there is very real pressure on Japan to become a nuclear nation. If that should happen and the Mahikari cult continues to gain adherents and political power, the danger of a nuclear exchange in western Pacific increases.

Sukyo Mahikari Temple Number 2:

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Due to radiation fears, Fukushima Prefecture fishermen have to dump most of their catch. rt.com

Russian Experts say that Fukushima pollution is spreading all over Earth polluting a large amount of fish, seaweeds, and everything in the ocean. enenews.com

Chinese state media is once again bragging about Beijing’s military prowess, touting the fact that China’s new H-6K strategic bomber can attack U.S. military bases in South Korea as well as the Japanese mainland using long range nuclear cruise missiles. infowars.com

US nuclear plant operators must provide information to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by February about an electrical vulnerability that could affect safety systems and how each plant plans to mitigate it, the agency said in a letter made public Friday. platts.com

              I have been blogging on radiation, radioactive materials, nuclear power and nuclear issues for about a year and a half now. During that time I have learned an enormous amount about nuclear issues. Being completely honest, I will say that I have never been a fan of nuclear power. When I was a kid during the cold war, we had nuclear attack drills and people were building bomb shelters. I resented the fact that it was possible that international tensions could escalate to the point where a nuclear war could end human civilization. At least now we are working hard on nuclear disarmament and the major nuclear arsenals have been significantly reduced but there is a worrying trend in nuclear nations towards “modernizing” their nuclear forces that may slow down disarmament. And then there are countries like Iran and North Korea who are working on acquiring or multiplying nuclear warheads while spouting violent rhetoric.

             Nuclear power has had a bad year with several U.S. reactors being closed because they can no longer compete with cheap natural gas. (Don’t get me started on fracking!) Most of the reactors in the U.S. are nearing the end of their operational life-spans and one reactor was shut down because it became too expensive to repair. Other U.S. reactors are at risk from floods or lakes, rivers and the ocean becoming too hot to use for cooling. There is talk of reaching peak uranium production this year which means there will be price spikes and shortages coming. There is still no permanent nuclear waste repository in the U.S. and all the spent fuel pools at the U.S. reactors will be full of old fuel rods in a few years. All in all, the prospects of the U.S. nuclear industry are not very bright.

           The nuclear industry is not taking all this lying down. There is a major push to promote nuclear power as the answer to carbon dioxide generation and climate change. For a lot of reasons, this is not really a good idea. New small modular reactors are being developed but do not exist yet. There is a major push among nations with mature nuclear industries to sell reactors to developing nations. This is a very bad idea because of problems with oversight, corruption, political pressure, water, waste and other issues.

           In Japan Fukushima continues to be a huge problem that has largely faded from the headlines but is still leaking radiation into the Pacific Ocean which will impact the west coast of the United States. They are in the process of removing fuel rods from the damaged spent fuel pool of the Unit 4 reactor. If they screw up, it could cause fires, explosions and a huge release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere and could threaten the whole northern hemisphere.

          As I said at the beginning of this post, I have never been a fan of nuclear power. All that I have learned has convinced me that I was right from the start and that nuclear power generation poses a much bigger threat to the world than any benefit it could possibly supply. In my own small way, I am trying to educate people about the problems with nuclear power and hopefully contribute to the end of this dangerous and fantastically complicated way of boiling water.

          In conclusion, I would like to thank my readers and encourage them to tell others about my blog. I would also  like to wish everyone Happy Holidays and I hope that 2014 will be a good year for everyone.

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New model shows U.S. was hit by Fukushima cloud that dispersed little over Pacific. enenews.com

Japanese expert says that the Fukushima cleanup is a “comedy of errors.” youtube.com

Iran’s hard-line lawmakers are seeking to increase uranium enrichment under the country’s nuclear program to a level that can produce bomb-grade material, a state-run website said on Wednesday. ca.news.yahoo.com

Kim Jong-Un has warned war could break out “without any prior notice” amid heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula. aljazeera.com

          I have devoted a number of posts to issues involving nuclear weapons. The world has been moving towards nuclear disarmament through various treaties and agreements for decades. On the other hand, there has been a worrying trend of late on the part of major nuclear powers such as the U.S. and Russia to modernize their nuclear forces. It was recently announced that the U.S. will spend three hundred and fifty five billion dollars in the next decade to enhance our nuclear arsenal. The project includes modernizing bombs, delivery systems and laboratories. This project is “the start of multi-decade effort to recapitalize our nuclear deterrent force and its supporting infrastructure.”

          Last year the Obama administration stated in a report to Congress that it estimated the cost of the modernization project to be around two hundred billion dollars.
This new projected cost is about a hundred and fifty billion dollars more than the 2012 estimate. For 2014, the administration is asking for twenty three billion dollars to maintain nuclear weapons and the associated laboratories and delivery systems. Maintenance and modernization over the next decade is projected to cost about one hundred and thirty six billion dollars. Weapons labs, nuclear warheads and naval reactors will require one hundred and five billion dollars. Another fifty six billion dollars will be spent on command and control systems. Adding in another sixty billion dollars for expected cost increases yields the three hundred and fifty billion dollar number mentioned above. However, given the was that nuclear programs often exceed their expected cost, a great deal more than three hundred and fifty five billion dollars will probably be spent on the U.S. nuclear weapons program in the next decade.

         Apparently some of the old nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal still incorporate vacuum tubes. These will have to be replaced by modern electronics. The triad of delivery systems which includes bombers, submarines and missiles are aging and there are plans for a new class of submarines and a new class of long range bombers. While they are working on the hardware, they also need to be doing something about personnel problems that I have dealt with in prior posts.

        The Obama administration has been supporting full global nuclear disarmament since Obama was elected. Their explanation for this modernization of our nuclear force is that it is needed to “boost security of our nuclear weapons and to give U.S. military and political leaders the confidence they need to negotiate further reductions in the nuclear arsenal.”

        While I appreciate their desire to enhance disarmament negotiations, I am afraid that I do not share their enthusiasm about how modernizing our nuclear deterrence is going to really contribute to the reduction of nuclear arms. Given that we are facing tight federal budget constraints, opponents of nuclear weapons question the wisdom of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons that we hope will never be used while many social support programs, jobs programs, education programs and national infrastructure are losing funding. One big concern that critics have is that some of the U.S. plans for modernization violate the disarmament treaties prohibitions against developing new nuclear weapons. Those nations that foresee the U.S. as a possible future enemy will be encouraged to develop their own new weapons which undermines the whole movement toward global nuclear disarmament.

New U.S. long range nuclear bomber:

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The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) says it has detected record levels of radiation at the Japanese Fukushima nuclear power plant’s Unit  2 reactor. press.ir

Reports say that we can expect an enormous amount of cancers around Pacific from the Fukushima disaster. enenews.com

Enel and ArcelorMittal plan to sell their stake in new reactors proposed in Romania following China General Nuclear Power Corp.’s announcement that it would invest in the units. nuclearstreet.com

The United States is planning to build two new underground plutonium production labs that will expand plutonium production for the next decades, an analyst says.  press.ir

          I have talked about the costs of nuclear waste disposal in a lot of my blog posts. The people promoting nuclear power don’t seem to be factoring all the costs of waste disposal into their rosy picture of nuclear economics. Recently economist Mark Cooper of the Vermont Law School addressed some of these issues. He says that if the full costs of nuclear power were publicized, the interest in nuclear power as an answer to our future energy needs might be significantly diminished. Cooper expressed his opinions in a filing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that was part of the court-ordered Draft Waste Confidence Generic Environmental Impact Statement process.

           Cooper asks a question about whether the real total cost of nuclear waste storage at reactors sites and eventual disposal in a permanent geological repository were large enough to merit more consideration by the NRC in nuclear power plant licensing decisions. He goes on to argue that his estimated cost of up to three hundred and fifty billion dollars is certainly big enough to require inclusion in licensing deliberations. He says that although some of these costs have been taken on by the government and are not being born by the nuclear industry, that does not mean that they are not real and can be discounted in any discussion of the costs of nuclear power. He also says that the costs of waste storage and disposal will be subject to the same runaway cost increases that are seen when estimating the cost of construction of new reactors.

          Cooper estimates that the additional waste storage and disposal costs that are not currently being included in the cost of electricity generated by nuclear power could amount to as much ten to twenty dollars per megawatt hour. This translates to around one to two cents per kilowatt hour. Based on the cost estimates of the Energy Information Administration for new electricity generated by nuclear power, inclusion of hidden waste costs could add as much as ten to twenty percent to the cost of new nuclear power generation.

          With respect to existing reactors, factoring in the extra cost of waste storage and disposal could make them uneconomical to operate. Recently several existing reactors in the U.S. have been shut down because the existing operating margin of nine dollars per megawatt hour in not sufficient for the operators to make a profit. The NRC has a regulation that states that if an operator cannot demonstrate the ability to make a profit with their reactor(s), they will have their license(s) revoked. Inclusion of hidden waste costs could result in many old reactors having their licenses pulled. If a reactor is shut down, the cost of storing the waste onsite can be up to five times the cost of storing the same amount of waste at an operating reactor.

         What Cooper is saying about the hidden costs of nuclear waste handling is sufficient to call for a reevaluation for nuclear power generation as a viable source of electricity in the future. However, he did not factor in the cost of recovery from a major nuclear accident or the cost of decommissioning old reactors. Had these additional costs been included in his filling, the argument against expanding nuclear power generation would have been even more compelling. 

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