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US admits 1980s aid to Israel’s H-bomb program

RT | February 13, 2015

Conceding to a federal lawsuit, the US government agreed to release a 1987 Defense Department report detailing US assistance to Israel in its development of a hydrogen bomb, which skirted international standards.

The 386-page report, “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,” likens top Israeli nuclear facilities to the Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories that were key in the development of US nuclear weaponry.

Israelis are “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,” said the report, the release of which comes before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech in front of the US Congress in which he will oppose any deal that allows Iran’s legal nuclear program to persist.

“I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the US,” Roger Mattson, a formerly of the Atomic Energy Commission’s technical staff, said of the report, according to Courthouse News.

The report’s release earlier this week was initiated by a Freedom of Information Act request made three years ago by Grant Smith, director of the Washington think tank Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. Smith filed a lawsuit in September in order to compel the Pentagon to substantially address the request.

“It’s our basic position that in 1987 the Department of Defense discovered that Israel had a nuclear weapons program, detailed it and then has covered it up for 25 years in violation of the Symington and Glenn amendments, costing taxpayers $86 billion,” Smith said during a hearing in late 2014 before Judge Tanya Chutkan in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Smith described in his federal court complaint how those federal laws were violated by the US in the midst of Israel’s budding nuclear program.

“The Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits most U.S. foreign aid to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards,” Smith wrote.

“The Glenn Amendment of 1977 calls for an end to U.S. foreign aid to countries that import nuclear reprocessing technology.”

In November, Judge Chutkan asked government lawyers resistant to the report’s release why it had taken years for the government to prepare the report for public consumption.

“I’d like to know what is taking so long for a 386-page document. The document was located some time ago,” Chutkan said, according to Courthouse News Service.

“I’ve reviewed my share of documents in my career. It should not take that long to review that document and decide what needs to be redacted.”

The government’s representatives in the case — Special Assistant US Attorney Laura Jennings and Defense Department counsel Mark Herrington — initially said confidentiality agreements required a “line by line” review of the Defense Department’s report. They later shifted, arguing that its release is optional and not mandatory, as “diplomatic relations dictate that DoD seeks Israel’s review.”

Smith and the US agreed that the government would redact sections of the report on NATO countries, though the passages on Israel remain intact.

“The capability of SOREQ [Soreq Nuclear Research Center] to support SDIO [Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or “Star Wars”] and nuclear technologies is almost an exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories,” said the report, written by the Institute for Defense Analysis for the Department of Defense.

“SOREQ and Dimona/Beer Sheva facilities are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories…[and have] the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”

The report’s authors Edwin Townsley and Clarence Robinson found that Israel had Category 1 capability regarding its anti-tactical ballistic missile and “Star Wars” weapons programs.

“As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. [w]as in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960,” the report said. “It should be noted that the Israelis are developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs.”

In a statement on the report’s release, Smith said Thursday, “Informal and Freedom of Information Act release of such information is rare. Under two known gag orders — punishable by imprisonment — U.S. security-cleared government agency employees and contractors may not disclose that Israel has a nuclear weapons program.”

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s planned address before the US Congress was controversially arranged by Republican leadership without consultation of congressional Democrats or the White House.

The speech will occur weeks before Netanyahu will seek reelection, and is to center around his opposition to any agreement with Iran over its [civilian] nuclear program, a deal the US — while levying heavy sanctions on Tehran — has pursued despite protests from its preeminent ally [sic] in the Middle East, Israel.

Tehran’s nuclear program is legal under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Israel is one of the few United Nations members that is not a signatory.

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

California nuclear plant gets thumbs down from expert over quake fears

RT | August 26, 2014

A confidential report by a senior nuclear expert calls on regulators to close California’s last nuclear plant until it can be established the facility can survive a powerful earthquake, according to an exclusive AP report.

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which was built near three geographical fault lines, provides electricity needs for more than 2.2 million people in America’s largest state. However, a confidential report by the plant’s former inspector, Michael Peck, is calling on federal regulators to pull the plug on the facility.

Following the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013, 30-year-old Diablo Canyon is the sole remaining nuclear energy supplier in California.

Peck warned in his 2013 report, which was obtained and verified by the Associated Press, that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is failing to maintain safety standards previously put in place for the facility’s operation.

The primary issue, as described by AP, is that “no one knows whether the facility’s equipment can withstand strong shaking from those faults – the potential for which was realized decades after the facility was built.”

Continuing to operate Diablo Canyon plant “challenges the presumption of nuclear safety,” the nuclear expert, who is employed as an instructor by the NRC, warned.

The surfacing of the confidential report comes after a magnitude-6 earthquake hit northern California on Sunday, injuring dozens of people and causing over $1 billion dollars in property losses. Fears that Sunday’s earthquake was just a precursor to the much-feared ‘Big One’ have once again sparked debate on the ability of California’s aging infrastructure to withstand an earthquake.

Meanwhile, nuclear experts continue to be haunted by the nuclear accident at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, which suffered severe damage following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011. To this day, Japanese authorities, amid a very concerned public, are attempting to halt the leak of radiation from the damaged structure.

In a report put out in July entitled, “Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety of US Nuclear Plants,” it is advised that the nuclear industry should “access their preparedness for severe nuclear accidents associated with offsite-scale disasters.”

It adds that the current approach to nuclear safety is “clearly inadequate for preventing core-melt accidents and mitigating their consequences.”

After the Fukushima disaster, the NRC ordered US nuclear plants to reevaluate the risks posed by earthquakes, with studies due by March 2015.

Much of the current debate over the viability of California’s last nuclear facility originates from the 2008 discovery of the Shoreline fault, which, together with a number of other potentially active regions, including the large Hosgri fault, arguably places Diablo Canyon in a vulnerable geographical position.

Peck says Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the company that owns the nuclear facility, failed to prove that the plant would withstand the vibrations of a powerful earthquake, thereby violating its operating license. PG&E has challenged those claims, saying the structure is sound.

Blair Jones, a spokesman for PG&E, the company that owns the nuclear facility, said the NRC has conducted extensive analysis to prove the plant is “seismically safe.”

Jones told AP that concerns regarding earthquake-generated movements of the nuclear plant, which could potentially lead to a disaster, were put to rest in the 1970s following “seismic retrofitting” of the facility.

In 2012, the NRC supported preliminary studies that said vibrations and aftershocks coming from the Shoreline fault would not jeopardize the structural integrity of the reactors.

Meanwhile, the release of the confidential report has sent shockwaves through California’s political circles.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, expressed alarm that Peck’s report has only surfaced now.

“The NRC’s failure to act constitutes an abdication of its responsibility to protect public health and safety,” she said.

The committee announced it would hold hearings into how the NRC has responded to Peck’s suggestions.

Peck, currently an instructor at the NRC’s Technical Training Center, declined to comment on the AP report.

August 26, 2014 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | , , | Leave a comment

Israel gags famous nuclear whistleblower invited to speak at human rights conference

RT | June 2, 2014

A decade after his release from prison for leaking information on Israel’s nuclear weapon program, Mordechai Vanunu has been denied permission to attend a human rights conference in London.

Vanunu, who was released in 2004 after spending 18 years in prison for leaking details of Israel’s nuclear program to British media, had planned to visit the UK capital for three days to attend a conference sponsored by Amnesty International and address the British parliament, Haaretz, the Israeli daily reported on Monday.

Israeli Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, however, refused to approve the trip. Vanunu petitioned the High Court of Justice to reverse the decision, but judging by previous appeals that does not seem likely.

Since leaving prison in June 2004, the nuclear technician has been forbidden to leave the country or speak with foreigners without permission from the Shin Bet security service.

The High Court has rejected seven successive petitions presented by Vanunu’s lawyers to reverse course. Most recently, in December 2013, the court said the top-secret material they were shown proves that Vanunu “still has a treasure of classified information and hasn’t recanted his intent to disseminate this information.”

In last week’s petition, Vanunu’s attorney, Avigdor Feldman, reiterated the argument he has made in previous petitions: their client’s information no longer presents much of a threat to Israel’s national security.

“The information about Israel’s nuclear capabilities that has been published since the petitioner’s release is incomparably greater, both quantitatively and qualitatively, than anything the petitioner could add today, more than 20 years after he stopped working at the Dimona nuclear reactor,” Feldman wrote.

Feldman further argued that preventing Vanunu from traveling abroad actually works more to Israel’s disadvantage because, he said, the petitioner’s failure to appear at the Amnesty conference and the British parliament “would spark international protests against this severe administrative restriction on Citizen Vanunu.”

Although Vanunu is no longer behind bars, his lawyers say he is, for all intent and purposes, still a prisoner.

“It’s true the petitioner was released from jail, but his freedom is still limited,” the petition said. “This is a harsh punishment that has been imposed on the petitioner. It’s not enough that he served a lengthy prison sentence; now, he is restrained, and his freedom limited, as if he hadn’t finished serving his sentence.”

Feldman told Haaretz that – to the best of his knowledge – the constraints imposed on their client has no precedent anywhere in the world. The ban on speaking with foreigners without the security service’s permission “would surely be acceptable in North Korea, but not in a country that defines itself as the only democracy in the Middle East,” he complained.

In 2012, Nobel-Prize winning German poet Gunter Grass praised Vanunu in a poem entitled ‘A Hero in Our Time’, in which Grass describes the former worker at Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility as a “hero” and a “model,” admiring his decision to pass Israeli nuclear secrets to the Sunday Times in 1986.

Meanwhile, Vanunu’s lawyer had harsh words for the High Court for continuing the restrictions for the last decade on the basis of material that neither he nor Vanunu were authorized to see, “and about which it’s doubtful that any of the Supreme Court justices understood anything,” but which they nevertheless accepted as evidence that “Vanunu, who worked at the Dimona nuclear reactor 40 years ago, knows information that would almost certainly endanger Israel’s security.”

Israeli officials, meanwhile, insist that Vanunu’s determination to threaten national security has not subsided, and the information in his possession is still relevant.

Sa’ar wrote in his rejection of Vanunu’s request, “Your client retains the ability to cause… damage, which would be irreversible, via the information in his possession that hasn’t yet been published, and which, as has been proven in court, is still relevant even today.”

Following the failed petition to travel abroad in December, Vanunu’s lawyer said his client merely wishes to leave the country to “marry his girlfriend and live out his life quietly.”

The Justice Ministry said that in accordance with the court’s instructions, it would file a response to the latest petition by June 10.

June 2, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Radioactive water overruns Fukushima barrier – TEPCO

RT | August 10, 2013

Contaminated groundwater accumulating under the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant has risen 60cm above the protective barrier, and is now freely leaking into the Pacific Ocean, the plant’s operator TEPCO has admitted.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which is responsible for decommissioning the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, on Saturday said the protective barriers that were installed to prevent the flow of toxic water into the ocean are no longer coping with the groundwater levels, Itar-Tass reports.

The contaminated groundwater, which mixes with radioactive leaks seeping out of the plant, has already risen to 60cm above the barriers – the fact which TEPCO calls a major cause of the massive daily leak of toxic substances.

Earlier on Friday, the company announced it started pumping out contaminated groundwater from under Fukushima, and managed to pump out 13 tons of water in six hours on Friday. TEPCO also said it plans to boost the pumped-out amount to some 100 tons a day with the help of a special system, which will be completed by mid-August. This will be enough to seal off most of the ongoing ocean contamination, according to TEPCO’s estimates.

However, Japan’s Ministry of Industry has recently estimated that some 300 tons of contaminated groundwater have been flowing into the ocean daily ever since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that triggered the disaster.

TEPCO also promised it will urgently reinforce the protective shields to keep radioactive leaks at bay. The company has repeatedly complained it is running out of space and has had to resort to pumping water into hastily-built tanks of questionable reliability, as more than 20,000 tons of water with high levels of radioactive substances has accumulated in the plant’s drainage system.

Water samples recently taken at an underground passage below the Fukushima nuclear plant showed extreme levels of radiation comparable to those taken immediately after the March 2011 catastrophe. The tested water, which had been mixing with ground water and flowing into the ocean, contained 2.35 billion Becquerels of cesium per liter – some 16 million times above the limit.

August 10, 2013 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

People power: Сhina shelves plans for $6bn nuclear plant after wave of protest

RT | July 13, 2013

The Chinese government says it will ‘respect public opinion’ and scrap a planned $6 billion nuclear processing plant in the southern province of Guandong after hundreds of protesters took to the streets to voice opposition to the project.

A statement released by the Chinese authorities reads, “The people’s government of the City of Heshan has decided to respect public opinion and will not consider the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC’s) Longwan industrial park project.”

The proposed nuclear complex was meant to have been a uranium processing facility, but the plans caused considerable unease in the neighboring financial district of Hong Kong and in nearby Macau, as well as among local residents. The project was designed to produce 1,000 tonnes of nuclear fuel by 2020.

The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based English language newspaper, reported that the authorities in Macau had formally raised the issue with officials in Guandong.

Saturday’s announcement came after hundreds of protesters paraded through the streets of Jiangmen on Friday holding banners and wearing phrases opposing the project and chanting slogans like “give us back our rural homes. We are against nuclear radiation.”

The protest sprang up after a risk evaluation report, which was released on July 4 with a 10-day public comments period. Observers say those reports are only usually released as a formality once permission to begin construction has already been granted.

More protests in Guandong had been expected on Sunday, while the original 10-day public consultation period was only extended on Saturday after demonstrators had marched to the city offices. Soon after its extension, officials said the project was scrapped.

A Beijing nuclear expert, who did not wish to give his name as he is not authorized to speak to the press, told the Independent that he was surprised the project had been canceled.

“Compared to a nuclear power plant, a uranium processing facility is way safer, as there is no fusion or reaction taking place in the production process.”

The sudden dropping of the project reflects a change in Chinese government policy on environmental issues. The authorities have recently canceled, postponed or relocated several metal and petrochemical plants following strong public opposition.

There have been a number of reports in the Chinese and international media about the extent of pollution from rapid Chinese economic growth, including ‘cancer towns’, which are blighted by heavy metals polluting the ground water, rivers and top soil.

China is expanding its nuclear capacity from 12.6 GW at present to 60-70 GW by the end of the decade.

Guandong is already one of the country’s largest centers of nuclear power generation. It operates five nuclear reactors and plans to build another dozen. The CNNC plans are part of a concerted national effort to reduce China’s dependence on coal and boost the use of other forms of cleaner [sic] energy production.

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July 14, 2013 Posted by | Nuclear Power, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Low-Dose Radiation ☢ Department of Energy Study

| January 22, 2012

Sources cited:

DOE: “Supporting Our Nation’s Nuclear Industry”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LkHYerK8y8

DOE low-dose study:
http://lowdose.energy.gov/pdf/2011/PNAS.pdf

DOE low-dose study press release
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2011/12/20/low-dose-radiation

DOE Low Dose Radiation Research Program:
http://lowdose.energy.gov

Evidence Pyramid
http://library.downstate.edu/EBM2/2100.htm

Bhatti et al (2010) finds high genetic damage at low doses in vivo
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3075914

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January 24, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Nuclear Power, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | 1 Comment