Five years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan when three nuclear power reactors melted down following a massive tsunami caused by an earthquake. All of the Japanese power reactors were shut down after the disaster. During the past five years, the Japanese have tried to clean up the contamination of the disaster and move on. Unfortunately, radioactive ground water is still leaking into the Pacific Ocean, there is still widespread radioactive fallout scattered around Japan, huge amounts of radioactive debris are still awaiting disposal, and the exact location of the melted reactor cores is unknown. It will take decades and many billions of dollars to finished cleaning up.

      Studies of problems that contributed to the disaster were carried out and blame was assigned. Lawsuits were filed and are still going on. People were evacuated from their homes in the area near the reactors and now some have returned. There have been huge impacts on the economics, politics and society of Japan. The Japanese government has not been fully candid about the causes of and responsibilities for the disaster. Laws have been passed to censor independent reports trying to get to the truth of all that happened and is going on.

       The current Prime Minister Abe and his administration remain committed to nuclear power as a critical part of Japanese energy sources as well as a major export market. They are beginning to turn some of the reactors back on but a recent reactor that is being reactivated is sitting close to an active volcano. About a third of the reactors will not be turned back on because they are too near active fault lines and at risk from earthquakes. So far only two reactors have actually been restarted and the governors of the provinces where they are located are saying that they will be shut down. There are many among the Japanese people who would rather that none of the reactors are ever restarted again.

       The Japan Association of Corporate Executives (JACE) is a top business lobbying group in Japan. It has around fourteen hundred executives from nine hundred and fifty companies.

       The JACE has come out against nuclear power as a major energy source which represents a major shift in corporate support for nuclear power in Japan. Prior to the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power generation accounted for about thirty percent of the electricity generated in Japan.  The JACE is saying that P.M. Abe should give up his ambition of supply twenty percent of Japan’s power by 2030 and concentrate on renewables instead. JACE is saying that given the current circumstances, they doubt that Japan will ever get more than ten percent of its power from nuclear energy in the future.

       Renewable energy sources supplied about fourteen percent of Japan’s electricity in 2016 and current plans call for raising that to as much as twenty four percent by 2030. However, recently, incentives for renewables were cut back.

      Abe’s administration has publicly reaffirmed its commitment to nuclear power recently. JACE is pushing for a strong move into renewables. There are reports that the Japanese government will cut back nuclear ambitions and move forward with more support for renewables in a new national energy roadmap to be published early next year.

Japan anti-nuclear protest rally in Tokyo in 2011:

One of the UK’s newest nuclear-powered submarines has docked in Gibraltar after a collision with a merchant vessel during a training exercise. bbc.com

 A group of ten Democratic senators have penned a letter to US President Barack Obama urging him to cancel development of a new nuclear-capable cruise missile, in what appears to be the next salvo from nonproliferation advocates on Capitol Hill against the weapon. defensenews.com

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that the U.S. had accepted an invitation to send a Navy ship to New Zealand for the first time in three decades, signaling an end to a stalemate between the two countries that was sparked by New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy. usnews.com

Last summer’s Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, declares that it does not set “precedents for any other state.” Yet given the decade-long centrality of the Iran nuclear issue to international nonproliferation, the agreement will certainly influence future debates over nuclear nonproliferation and verification. nationalinterest.org

      Yesterday, I spoke about the terrible danger of global nuclear war and new technology for identifying nuclear warheads in the reduction of nuclear arsenals. I mentioned the rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia. Following the coup and government change in Ukraine in 2014, the Russians annexed the Crimea and supported rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

      This Russian aggression generated great turbulence in eastern Europe as countries that shared borders with Russia feared that they might be next for Russian aggression. This includes the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia as well as Poland.  Recently Russia has been massing troops on its side of the borders of these countries and holding military exercises. The three Baltic states became members of NATO in 2004 which committed NATO including the U.S. to defend these countries in any conflict with Russia. This defense includes the possible use of nuclear weapons against Russia if a conflict escalates.

       The U.S. currently maintains about two hundred tactical B-61 nuclear gravity bombs in Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Bombers which can deliver these weapons are stationed in other NATO members. Russia has a large arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons including cruise missiles and nuclear artillery. Russia has publically stated that it would consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons against NATO if it were losing a conventional ground war.

       Recently, NATO committed to move a thousand troops into each of these at-risk countries to act as “trip wires” against possible Russian invasion. Russia is also considering moving mid range missiles into the Russian province of KIalingrad on the Baltic Sea as a counter move. As tensions in eastern Europe ratchet up, it is the Baltic states that might be the area where an all out nuclear war begins.

       The Baltic states are close to important military and governmental centers in Russia. Moscow, the capital of Russia is only a few hundred miles away. An attack launched from the Baltic states could be devastating for Russia. The U.S. considers the protection of the Baltic states to be integral to maintaining the credibility of NATO. The U.S. has said that protecting the Baltic states was as important as defending Berlin, Paris and London.

       From a military perspective, the defense of the Baltic states is virtually impossible. Russia has enormous military resources in the region and could overrun the Baltic states in a matter of days regardless of NATO resistance in a ground war. The U.S. has not made a commitment to send troops and weapons to the Baltic states that could turn back such a Russian invasion.

        If a ground war broke out in the Baltic states, it is inevitable that the conflict would spill over the border into Russia. If that happened, the Russians would have to consider that their capital could be under threat and they would escalate with the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons as they have threatened. NATO also insists that an escalating conflict in eastern Europe could be justification for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Both Russia and the U.S. have tactical nuclear weapons in the area that could be quickly deployed in an escalating conflict.

        There are also new weapons being developed and deployed that could further destabilize the balance of forces in the Baltic states. The U.S. is replacing old fighters with the F-35 stealth fighter that is invisible to Russian radar. Russia is developing integrated air defenses in the area which would permit it to control the air space above a battlefield.

        All in all, the situation in the Baltic states is ripe for conflict and escalation. Russian aggression countered by NATO could quickly escalate into the exchange of tactical nuclear weapons. This in turn could easily escalate into all out nuclear war between NATO and Russia which could spread to the U.S. mainland. This would be the end of human civilization. It is very important that the rising tensions in the Baltic states be dealt with diplomatically before World War III breaks out.

North Korea said Wednesday its latest ballistic missile tests were personally ordered and monitored by supreme leader Kim Jong-un and simulated nuclear strikes on US bases in South Korea.   aljezeera.com

A year after pact aimed at thwarting Tehran’s rogue nuclear program was signed, head of atomic agency and speaker of parliament discuss new enrichment plans. timesofisrael.com

Czech utility ČEZ has requested the Ministry of Environment carry out an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the potential construction of two new reactors at the Dukovany nuclear power plant. world-nuclear-news.org

The proposal to include zero emission credits (ZEC) as a component of New York’s draft clean energy standard has the potential to stave off the early retirement of three nuclear power plants in upstate New York, according to Fitch Ratings, one of the country’s three premier credit rating companies. nuclearstreet.com

 

          The single biggest and most imminent threat to the continued existence of human civilization is the possibility of all out nuclear war between the United States and Russia. For awhile after the Soviet Union fell twenty five years ago, it was believed that the threat of global nuclear war could be removed. There was talk of a “peace” dividend as money that had previously been allocated for nuclear weapons could be redirected to needed social programs. Major treaties were signed to reduce nuclear arsenals and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to other nations who did not have them. Some progress was made as tens of thousands of warheads were removed from the arsenals of the U.S. and Russia.

         Unfortunately, tensions are rising between the U.S. and Russia. Both countries still have thousands of missiles and nuclear warheads ready to launch at each other. Russia has been especially provocative about the possible use of nuclear weapons in the last few years. Both the U.S. and Russia are planning on spending hundreds of billions of dollars on upgrades to existing nuclear weapons.

        Many individuals, groups and nations around the world are still dedicated to the removal of all nuclear weapons on Earth. They continue to press for reduction in major nuclear arsenals under the international treaties. One of the major problems with nuclear disarmament is verification that the nuclear warheads that are being counted in a nation’s arsenal are real. Current and previous methods of verification were either not reliable or not acceptable to national governments because of the danger of revelation of national security secrets concerning the design of nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia are committed to reducing their deployed war heads to one thousand five hundred and fifty by 2018. However, there is currently no way to uniquely identify individual warheads slated for decommissioning.

         Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have now announced a possible solution to this problem which has been worked on since the 1960s. MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering say that their solution “involves nuclear resonance fluorescence, a new form of single-pixel tomography, and careful attention to the information content of physical processes.”

        Once a warhead is analyzed by the new technology, a profile of the warhead is created. This includes information about the materials in the warhead including the plutonium and the geometric structure of the warhead. If any materials or parts are removed, if the shape is changed, if any parts or replaced or any plutonium is removed, this will result in a mismatch between the profile and the warhead. Two measurements that take twenty one seconds are sufficient to tell that a warhead has been modified or replaced with any fake warhead that is cheaper and less complex than a real warhead with an accuracy of almost one hundred percent.

        The new system is far superior to all existing systems for verifying the identity and integrity of individual warheads. Existing systems often rely on electronic circuitry which can be tampered with. The new system does not rely on such vulnerable solutions but is based on simple physics which cannot be fooled. Although there is much work remaining to be done on the MIT system, it may usher in a new age of reliable retirement of nuclear warheads.

MIT Building 24 – Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering:

 

The European Commission has launched an investigation to determine whether the French government’s contribution of €4.0 billion ($4.4 billion) towards the financing of the restructuring of Areva meets EU rules on state aid.   world-nuclear-news.org

A serviceability certificate for one of the three steam generators installed at unit 2 of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, currently offline for maintenance, has been suspended by the French nuclear safety regulator. A number of anomalies were discovered last month in the steel of the component’s lower shell.  world-nuclear-news.org

A Japanese court on Wednesday turned down a class action lawsuit seeking damages from nuclear plant makers Toshiba, Hitachi and GE over the Fukushima meltdown disaster, the plaintiffs, one of the companies and a report said.  nuclearpowerdaily.com

A group of small businesses, community leaders and environmental groups is asking state regulators to stop letting South Carolina Electric & Gas pass all the costs of two nuclear plants under construction on to ratepayers. power-eng.com