Iran does not need a nuclear weapon, nor has the bomb kept rival countries safe, said the country’s president Wednesday. timesofisrael.com

Nuclear Matters Event at Davis-Besse Highlights Broad, Bipartisan Support for Existing Nuclear Energy Plants in the State. marketwatch.com

Indian government says that nothing on nuclear deal done with U.S. outside the “4 corners of Indian law.” oneindia.com

Iran’s parliament wants to resume all nuclear activities if Congress passes new sanctions. businessinsider.com

 

         I have posted many articles on nuclear weapons. Since the end of the Cold War around 1990, there has been a steady decline in the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Russia, which inherited the Soviet Union’s arsenal. There have been several disarmament treaties between the two nations guiding this reduction of weapons. Unfortunately, lately there has been a change in their stance toward nuclear weapons. Both the U.S. and Russia have announced programs to refurbish, upgrade and expand nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery system. Each has thousands of nuclear warheads.

         Following the annexation of the Crimea by Russia, there has been growing concern among NATO nations about increasing Russian belligerence in Eastern Europe. There have been Russian statements disparaging NATO military strength and their lack of tactical nuclear weapons. Russia possessed tactical nuclear weapons and has said that they would use them if they were losing a ground war in Eastern Europe with NATO. Russian officials have mentioned the possibility of moving nuclear weapons into the Crimea.

        Defense ministers of NATO nations are meeting soon in Brussels. Prior to the meeting, a report was compiled that analyzed Russian nuclear strategy. The Russians have increasingly sent air and sea patrols off the borders of NATO nations including flying nuclear bombers over the English Channel just last week.

        NATO officials fear that Russia may be lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. “What worries us most in this strategy is the modernization of the Russian nuclear forces, the increase in the level of training of those forces and the possible combination between conventional actions and the use of nuclear forces, including possibly in the framework of a hybrid war,” one diplomat said. Hybrid war is a term that has been applied to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. They sent in troops without Russian uniforms and engaged in disinformation and cyber attacks. This has prompted NATO to reconsider their existing strategy for dealing with Russia.

        All of the 28 NATO countries including the U.S. will participate in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group meetings this week. A discussion of Russian nuclear strategy is not on the schedule for the formal meetings but there will be a discussion of Russia in a lunch meeting. Most likely, there will not be any immediate action on the part of NATO but there will be a call for further study of the situation to determine if any changes are needed for NATO’s nuclear strategy.

        Lately, Russia has been vocally belligerent about its status as a “leading nuclear nation.” The Russian President recently said, with respect to potential enemies which would include NATO, “It’s best not to mess with us.” A U.S. Congressional report last year stated that Russia “seems to have increased its reliance on nuclear weapons in its national security concept”. Late last year, the Russian President signed a new military doctrine that named NATO as a major security risk. The new doctrine says that Russia “reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear strike or a conventional attack that endangered the state’s existence.” Fortunately, calls to include a right for a first strike with nuclear weapons was ignored.

       I grew up during the Cold War and I was glad to see the end of it. As a child, I had nightmares about a nuclear holocaust. Now it looks like a new Cold War is brewing. Like dominos falling, Russia could start more aggressive behavior in Eastern Europe with conventional forces, an overwhelming NATO counter attack with conventional weapons could provoke Russia into using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield, NATO could strike back with nuclear weapons and we would wind up in the middle of World War III with intercontinental nuclear exchanges and the end of human civilization.

   

A cancer epidemic underway in Fukushima. enenews.com

Chinese and Argentine leaders on Wednesday signed a batch of agreements, including collaboration on two new nuclear power plants, as Beijing is strengthening its relations with the South American country. abcnews.com

China Power Investment Corp is merging with the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp, as Beijing drives consolidation in its rapidly expanding nuclear power sector with the aim of eventually exporting reactors. in.reuters.com

Exelon Corporation said that its seven nuclear reactors in the path of winter storm Juno ran at full capacity throughout the blizzard. nuclearstreet.com

 

 

        Austria is the most anti-nuclear power nation in the European Union. In 1978, Austria voted in a referendum to stop a newly constructed nuclear power plant from being turned on. This was a year before the disaster at Three Mile Island alerted the global community to the dangers of nuclear power. Following the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan in March of 2011, the Austrian government announced that they were going to work on a blanket ban on importing electricity generated by nuclear reactors after 2014.

        One of the problems that Austria faced was the fact that when electricity is generated and fed into a distribution network from a variety of sources, it is impossible to know what source any particular watt came from. At the time, skeptics said that Austria needed electricity and could not separate electricity from nuclear sources from the electricity that they imported. They pointed out that Austria needed to import at least two terawatt hours of electricity each year. Even if Austria decided to build new non-nuclear power generation plants, public resistance and the government regulatory requirements could prevent construction of a proposed plant for up to ten years.

       Now that 2015 has arrived, have the Austrians managed to realize their vision of one hundred percent non-nuclear electricity? Apparently the critics were mistaken in their skepticism because as of January 1, 2015, Austria’s electricity is one hundred percent from non-nuclear sources. This includes all imported electricity. The Austrian government demands proof of the origin of any imported electricity. Utility companies in Austria are not bound by law to buy only non-nuclear electricity but are voluntarily complying with the ban. This means that mixed source electricity imported into Austria will not find a market if ANY of the electricity is generated by nuclear power reactors.

        Austria has been careful to implement a system that would make it difficult for the European Union to take any legal action against Austria on the grounds that it is denying foreign power generators access to the Austrian market. The Austrians, however, have filed suit with the European Union from prevent Britain from offering special financial incentives for the construction of a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley. Along with Germany, which is turning off all its nuclear power reactors, Austria and several other European nations have been pressuring the Czech utility CEZ AS to abandon plans for spending twenty five billion dollars to build five new nuclear power reactors. The Czechs get about forty five percent of their power from their existing six nuclear reactors and are exporting electricity.

       Throughout the European Union, there is wide-spread public rejection of nuclear power. Now there is a growing group of E.U. countries which have totally rejected nuclear power and are exerting political and economic pressure on other E.U. countries to also abandon nuclear power. The nuclear industry in the E.U. is fighting back with political and economic power of their own. As renewable alternative sources of energy such as solar and wind become cheaper and more available, it will be interesting to see who wins this contest.

U.S. West Coast hit by radioactive plumes from both massive Fukushima explosions. enenews.com

Four years after the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami caused the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the nuclear industry is preparing for a comeback this year. aljazeera.com

On 1 January 2015, Austria’s “ban” on imports of nuclear power went into effect as planned. renewablesinternational.net

Arizona is one step closer to officially declaring nuclear power a renewable-energy source.  phoenixnewtimes.com

 

 

 

         India is moving forward with plans to build more nuclear reactors to supply power for their energy starved nation. Russia announced that they were in discussion to build twenty new reactors in India. The U.S. President just returned from a trip to India where he discussed one hundred and fifty eight billion dollars worth of nuclear reactor business for U.S. nuclear technology companies. I expressed my concern about the possibility of corruption leading to poor reactor construction and lax governmental regulation.

         There are many critics of nuclear power in India and now a Parliamentary committee has issued a report that says that “India’s nuclear safety regime is fraught with grave risks because the country’s nuclear regulator was weak, under-resourced and  slow in adopting international benchmarks and good practices in the areas of nuclear and radiation operation”. The bipartisan Public Accounts Committee eighty one page report was called “scathing.” It was highly critical of the fact that after decades of delays, India still does not have an independent nuclear regulatory agency.

         Australia refused to sell any of its huge reserves of uranium to India for years until the Gillard government authorized sales recently. India and Australia are currently discussing a nuclear safeguards agreement. Australia will only sell uranium for peaceful purposes and it has strict tracking rules for nuclear materials that are more stringent than the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

        It is estimated that India currently has about a hundred nuclear warheads. India has refused to sign the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty because it says that the treaty is discriminatory to new nuclear states. India insists that it needs to have these nuclear weapons because its neighbour and enemy Pakistan has nuclear weapons. During the recent visit by the U.S. President, the U.S. requirement for strict tacking of nuclear materials and technology was dropped in order to advance negotiations.

        The committee report pointed out that India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) is a government agency and not an independent statutory body. The report said that “although AERB maintains liaison with international nuclear organisations, it has been slow in adopting international benchmarks and good practices in the areas of nuclear and radiation operation.” The AERB cannot set or enforce regulations governing radiation and nuclear safety. Currently, in many areas, there are no such regulations at all. The AERB was charged with developing such regulations by the Indian government in 1983 but has still not accomplished the task.

        The report flatly stated that India was just not prepared to deal with a nuclear emergency. “Off-site emergency exercises carried out highlighted inadequate emergency preparedness even for situations where the radiological effects of an emergency origination from nuclear power plants are likely to extend beyond the site and affect the people around.” The maximum fine that the AERB can impose for infractions of what regulations do exist is about nine dollars.

         India’s auditor-general discovered last year that sixty percent of regulatory inspections for India’s fleet of exiting nuclear power reactors were delayed for months or not carried out at all. With respect to nuclear plants under construction, delayed or absent inspections were about sixty six percent.

        The Indian government remains strongly committed to nuclear power. It will be interesting to see what happens to public support when India has its first serious nuclear accident.

Obama should stop pushing nuclear energy on India. washingtonpost.com

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) began special inspections at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Massachusetts. power-eng.com

Iranian parliamentarians have drafted a bill that would accelerate nuclear activity if the US imposes additional sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported Monday. timesofisrael.com

Southern California Edison’s Citizens Engagement Panel focused recently on how to get more political action on how to store radioactive spent nuclear fuel. kpbs.org