Japan Has Enough Plutonium For 5,000 Warheads

Japan To Make More Plutonium Despite Big Stockpile

BY ERIC TALMADGE AND MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press
Jun 1, 7:32 AM EDT
Courtesy Of "Stars and Stripes"

TOKYO (AP) -- Last year's tsunami disaster in Japan clouded the nation's nuclear future, idled its reactors and rendered its huge stockpile of plutonium useless for now. So, the industry's plan to produce even more has raised a red flag.

Nuclear industry officials say they hope to start producing a half-ton of plutonium within months, in addition to the more than 35 tons Japan already has stored around the world. 

That's even though all the reactors that might use it are either inoperable or offline while the country rethinks its nuclear policy after the tsunami-generated Fukushima crisis.

"It's crazy," said Princeton University professor Frank von Hippel, a leading authority on nonproliferation issues and a former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology. "There is absolutely no reason to do that."

Japan's nuclear industry produces plutonium - which is strictly regulated globally because it also is used for nuclear weapons - by reprocessing spent, uranium-based fuel in a procedure aimed at decreasing radioactive waste that otherwise would require long-term storage.

The industry wants to reprocess more to build up reserves in anticipation of when it has a network of reactors that run on a next-generation fuel that includes plutonium and that can be reused in a self-contained cycle - but that much-delayed day is still far off.

Japanese officials argue that, once those plans are in place, the reactors will draw down the stockpile and use up most of it by 2030.

"There is no excess plutonium in this country," said Koichi Imafuku, an official at the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. "It's not just lying around without purpose."

In the meantime, the country's post-Fukushima review of nuclear policy is pitting a growing number of critics who want to turn away from plutonium altogether against an entrenched nuclear industry that wants to push forward with it.

Other countries, including the United States, have scaled back the separation of plutonium because it is a proliferation concern and is more expensive than other alternatives, including long-term storage of spent fuel.

Fuel reprocessing remains unreliable and it is questionable whether it is a viable way of reducing Japan's massive amounts of spent fuel rods, said Takeo Kikkawa, a Hitotsubashi University professor specializing in energy issues.

"Japan should abandon the program altogether," said Hideyuki Ban, co-director of a respected anti-nuclear Citizens' Nuclear Information Center. "Then we can also contribute to the global effort for nuclear non-proliferation."

Von Hippel stressed that only two other countries reprocess on a large scale: France and Britain, and Britain has decided to stop. Japan's civilian-use plutonium stockpile is already the fifth-largest in the world, and it has enough plutonium to make about 5,000 simple nuclear warheads, although it does not manufacture them.

Because of inherent dangers of plutonium stockpiles, government regulations require industry representatives to announce by March 31 how much plutonium they intend to produce in the year ahead and explain how they will use it.

But, for the second year in a row, the industry has failed to do so. They blame the government for failing to come up with a long-term policy after Fukushima, but say they nevertheless want to make more plutonium if they can get a reprocessing plant going by October.

Kimitake Yoshida, a spokesman for the Federation of Electric Power Companies, said the plutonium would be converted into MOX - a mixture of plutonium and uranium - which can be loaded back into reactors and reused in a cycle. But technical glitches, cost overruns and local opposition have kept Japan from actually putting the moving parts of that plan into action.

In the meantime, Japan's plutonium stockpile - most of which is stored in France and Britain - has swelled despite Tokyo's promise to international regulators not to produce a plutonium surplus.

Its plutonium holdings have increased fivefold from about 7 tons in 1993 to 37 tons at the end of 2010. Japan initially said the stockpile would shrink rapidly in early 2000s as its fuel cycle kicked in, but that hasn't happened.

Critics argue that since no additional spent fuel is being created, and there are questions about how the plutonium would be used, this is not a good time start producing more. They also say it makes no sense for Japan to minimize its plutonium glut by calling it a "stockpile" rather than a "surplus."

"It's a simple accounting trick," said Edwin Lyman, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's laughable. And it sends the wrong signal all around the world."

Officials stress that, like other plutonium-holding nations, Japan files a yearly report detailing its stockpile with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But it has repeatedly failed to live up to its own schedules for how the plutonium will be used.

From 2006 until three years ago, the nuclear industry said the plutonium-consuming MOX fuel would be used in 16-18 conventional reactors "in or after" 2010. In fact, only two reactors used MOX that year. By the time of the earthquake and tsunami last year, the number was still just three - including one at the Fukushima plant.

In response to the delays, the industry has simply revised its plans farther off into the future. It is now shooting for the end of fiscal 2015.

"There really is a credibility problem here," said Princeton's von Hippel, who also is a member of the independent International Panel on Fissile Materials. "They keep making up these schedules which are never realized. I think the ship is sinking beneath them."

© 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

“The Ultimate Catastrophe”

Former Ambassador: No. 4 Reactor A Top National Security Issue For Entire World — Could Start “The Ultimate Catastrophe”

Published: May 11th, 2012 at 2:28 pm ET
Courtesy Of "Energy News"

[...] Mitsuhei Murata, 74, a professor emeritus at Tokaigakuen University who once served as Japan’s ambassador to Switzerland, said, “The existence of the No. 4 reactor has become a major national security issue for the entire world that does not take a back seat even to North Korea’s missile issue.”

He had called for a halt to operations at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant even before the Great East Japan Earthquake struck last year, leading to the nuclear crisis.

“If an accident should occur at the No. 4 reactor, it could be called the start of the ultimate catastrophe for the world,” Murata said as a witness at an Upper House Budget Committee hearing in March. [...]

Mankind’s Most Desperate Hour

Posted by "Dr. Mark Sircus"
On 03 May 2012

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This is a close-up look into the insanity of the main governments of the world over the last 67 years.

It’s totally amazing what we have had to live with and get used to in the modern age. Increasing radiation is just one of the menaces building up in the background as we badly pollute our world with heavy metals like mercury and with a host of other chemicals and plastic. It looks increasingly like we are drawing the curtains over the future of all our children and that is profoundly sad.

We are being blindsided from multiple sources, kicked and buffeted around on the parts per million, billion and even trillion levels and this is polluting our bodies and gumming up the works. What I call the Hun Hordes of mercury is now being joined with the Hun Hordes of uranium, Hun Hordes of a host of other radioactive particles, and even Hun Hordes of plutonium because just a little bit of that will subdue the human race, putting many into their graves.

Our governments and the nuclear power industry have created a strong nuclear wind that has been circling the globe for decades but is now intensifying because of what is happening in Fukushima. This past year alone we have changed the radioactive profile of the entire northern hemisphere.

Imagine a nuclear war starting tomorrow and for the next 2053 days (approximately five years) a nuclear bomb going off somewhere in the world. Would you be frightened? All I hear these days from informal sources is that cancer rates are going through the roof. If so, would they tell us? Perhaps in a few years when it’s too late they might.

One does not have to be a prophet to see what is coming at this point. The earthquakes are real and are intensifying and so are the volcanoes. This weekend is a super moon (see below) and the gravitational forces will be a shade different because of the closer proximity of the moon. The earth has been threatening. Yesterday Mexico got hit with two big earthquakes. I think there is a good chance something is going to tear along the ring of fire in the Pacific this weekend—could come anywhere but the last place we want this to happen is off the northern coast of Japan.

The creation, accumulation, “stock-piling” and dispersal of incomprehensibly astronomical quantities of synthetic radio-nuclides represents a planetary biological weapons system aimed right down the throat of humanity and its children. We have failed ourselves and we have certainly failed humanity’s children. We are robbing them of their future and this is one of the ugliest truths about us. You can clearly see the banks and top government officials around the world doing that financially, but when it comes to radiation contamination, it’s forever.

We really should all probably being praying that building No. 4 does not come down. If there was ever a moment that humanity should be praying together, it is now. If that dirty, radioactive spent-fuel pool goes down, the consequences are really too horrible to imagine. It’s mankind’s most desperate hour but you would never know that by looking at the news.

Christians should know what Christ meant when he said to himself, “Devil get thee behind me.” A saint knows when their mind fabricates insane thoughts and ideas, and that is what makes them a saint. The rest of us fail pretty miserably (that’s why we are not saints). Few people know of or admit to their own ignorance and how that contributes to a matrix that is weaving our downfall.

Our desperate hour is, in part, created by our failure to see or properly define what human insanity is. Everyone I know would agree that it would be insanity to inject lead into a kid’s veins via the childhood vaccination program, but doctors get away with injecting children with mercury, which is much more toxic. Dumping toxic fluoride into public water supplies is insane, but they do it and get away with it.

While we are talking about Christ, he also said that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Well we can see our civilization is going to end on this point so beware and take care. It is the rich men who are running the world into the ground and we are letting them. 

Most of us are actually with them, with the mainstream that is helpless before their supreme handlers that pull the strings from behind the curtains. They are insane and are permanently barred from the kingdom of heaven so they really don’t care the havoc they wreak and the ruin they create, it seems.

Immanuel Velikovsky wrote in his book, Earth in Upheaval, “Denial, omission, marginalization, disinformation and outright lies have surrounded every aspect of ‘the peaceful atom.’ In the wake of Fukushima, public relations, the engineering of consent, and reality-inversion have reached unprecedented levels of incredulity. The global mass-media apparatus continues to be instrumental in maintaining the ‘deafening silence’ on all things nuclear. 

Meanwhile, the radioactive fires rage on, bringing ‘hot particles’, cancer and mutation to every corner of the globe.”

May 1, 2012 – SPACE – Skywatchers take note: The biggest full moon of the year is due to arrive this weekend. The moon will officially become full Saturday (May 5) at 11:35 p.m. EDT. And because this month’s full moon coincides with the moon’s perigee—its closest approach to Earth—it will also be the year’s biggest. The moon will swing in 221,802 miles (356,955 kilometers) from our planet, offering skywatchers a spectacular view of an extra-big, extra-bright moon, nicknamed a super moon. And not only does the moon’s perigee coincide with full moon this month, but this perigee will be the nearest to Earth of any this year, as the distance of the moon’s close approach varies by about 3%, according to meteorologist Joe Rao, SPACE.com’s skywatching columnist. This happens because the moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular. This month’s full moon is due to be about 16% brighter than average. In contrast, later this year on Nov. 28, the full moon will coincide with apogee, the moon’s farthest approach, offering a particularly small and dim full moon. Though the unusual appearance of this month’s full moon may be surprising to some, there’s no reason for alarm, scientists warn. The slight distance difference isn’t enough to cause any earthquakes or extreme tidal effects, experts say. However, the normal tides around the world will be particularly high and low. At perigee, the moon will exert about 42% more tidal force than it will during its next apogee two weeks later, Rao said. The last super moon occurred in March 2011. – SPACE

Majority Of US Nuclear Plants Are Leaking Radioactivity

By James Brewer
Source: "WSWS"
Thursday, Jun 23, 2011
Courtesy Of "Axis Of Logic"

Weeks of flooding in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri have threatened two nuclear plants in eastern Nebraska. Both have issued “unusual event” alerts (the lowest of four emergency levels) to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The Missouri River is expected to rise five to seven feet above flood stage in the state of Missouri in the next few days. The Cooper Nuclear Power Station, located about 70 miles south of Omaha, is operating at full capacity. Early last Sunday, the plant issued an “unusual event” alert when the river rose to 899 feet above sea level. By late Sunday the river was up to 900.56 feet above sea level.

Mark Becker, a spokesman for the Nebraska Public Power District, the utility that runs the both nuclear plants, was quoted in the New York Times saying that the river would need to rise more than a foot and a half to force a shutdown, adding, “We’ll continue to operate until we reach that level.”

An Associated Press aerial photo published by msnbc.com, showing the Fort Calhoun nuclear power station, 19 miles north of Omaha, surrounded on all sides by water from the overflowing Missouri River, has been widely circulated on the Internet. While government and industry officials claim that the flooding presents no danger, on June 6, the same day the plant informed the NRC of the “unusual event” alert, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an indefinite no-fly “hazards” restrictionover the immediate area of the plant. The NRC has stated that neither of the two Nebraska nuclear power stations affected by the flooding is viewed as being at risk for a disaster.

Just last year, the NRC issued a safety violation to the Fort Calhoun plant for not being sufficiently prepared for floods. A “yellow” rating, the second most serious, was issued, and changes were ordered by the federal agency to prevent possible core damage in the event of flood. Even though the Fort Calhoun plant has been offline, not generating power, since April, flooding still poses a danger to the reactors’ cores.

The disaster at the Japan Fukushima nuclear power plants, resulting from the earthquake and tsunami and exacerbated by the negligence of corporate interests and regulators, has focused public attention on nuclear safety worldwide. In the face of growing popular concern, both industry and government representatives are responding with indifference, seeing the problem the nuclear power industry faces as a matter of image and public perception.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press issued a scathing study on tritium leaks from US nuclear plants.

In its year-long investigation, AP found that of the 65 nuclear power sites in the US, at least 48 of them are leaking water containing tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. The report states, “The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.”

The aging nuclear power plants have underground piping systems, often encased in concrete, which make it impossible to properly inspect and maintain them for corrosion and leaks. Most US nuclear power plants were built more than 40 years ago, and no entirely new plant has been brought on line since the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979.

The response of the NRC and the industry is indifference. Tony Pietrangelo, chief nuclear officer of the industry’s Nuclear Energy Institute, stated, “The public health and safety impact of this is next to zero. This is a public confidence issue.”

According to the National Academy of Sciences, any exposure to radiation, no matter how slight, increases risk of cancer. The AP report adds, “It’s hard to know how far some leaks have traveled into groundwater. Tritium moves through soil quickly, and when it is detected it often indicates the presence of more powerful radioactive isotopes that are often spilled at the same time.”

At the same Fort Calhoun nuclear power station that is now surrounded by floodwaters in Nebraska, cesium-137 was found along with tritium in groundwater in 2007.

Two years prior, strontium-90 was discovered with tritium at the Indian Point nuclear plant, just 25 miles north of New York City.

Though the main risk of tritium is in drinking water, the leaks have created doubts by independent engineers about the reliability of emergency safety systems in all 104 US reactors. The Union of Concerned Scientists reported in September that in the history of the industry over 400 radioactive leaks of many different substances are known to have occurred.

The largest nuclear operator in the US, Exelon, acknowledged at a meeting with regulators in 2009 that “100 percent verification of piping integrity is not practical.”

The leaks usually arise from corroded piping which is buried, often under reactors themselves, as part of the cooling systems of the plants. Though often the leaks are contained within the plant boundaries, groundwater leaks at sites in Illinois and Minnesota have contaminated drinking wells of nearby homes.

Exelon, the operator of the two-unit Braidwood nuclear facility in Illinois, has leaked more than six million gallons of tritium-laden water since the 1990s from pipes that carried “monitored” discharges of tritium into the river. These leaks weren’t publicly reported until 2005. Last year Exelon was fined $1.2 million after it acknowledged violating Illinois state groundwater standards.

In this case, while tritium levels were below the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) limit of 20,000 picocuries per liter of drinking water, property values of the homes in the area plummeted. After a joint lawsuit from local homeowners was dismissed, Exelon bought several homes, so the residents could leave. Though never made public, county real estate records show that it bought at least nine properties since 2006 for a total of $6.1 million.

Other residents weren’t as lucky. Exelon found tritium directly adjacent to but not on their properties. One of these residents, Bob Scamen, had actually worked at the Braidwood facility. He said, “They say our property is not contaminated, and if they buy property that is not contaminated, it will set a precedent, and they’ll have to buy everybody’s property.”

Though AP’s reporting is based on the records of leaks that have been in the records of the NRC, it has only been recently that these have been made public. The report concludes with the observation that the NRC’s reports and actions “suggest a preoccupation with image and perception.”

The NRC issued 40-year licenses to new nuclear facilities when they were being built. Now, as reactors are getting older, 66 have been approved for 20-year extensions.

An NRC staff report issued last June openly acknowledged that the agency “has not placed an emphasis on preventing” the leaks.

What Happens To All That Uranium?

By Tim Buchholz
Online Journal Contributing Writer
May 6, 2010, 00:38
Courtesy Of "The Online Journal"

The United States, in an effort to be “as transparent as we can be” in the words of Hillary Clinton, recently announced it has 5,113 in its nuclear stockpile, and thousands more retired warheads awaiting the junk-pile.

President Obama recently signed a new agreement with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called The New START Treaty that will reduce current American and Russian stockpiles to 1,550. So I started thinking, “What happens to all that uranium after the bombs are dismantled?”

It seems a lot of the disarming process is merely paperwork. According to an article, “Where nuclear weapons go to die,” by Jeffrey Lewis and Meri Lugo, a nuclear weapon is taken off the active list and put in storage, if it is not there already, or shipped to a company called Pantex in Texas to be disassembled. The authors say that during the Clinton administration, more than 1,000 warheads were dismantled a year, but since 2000, employees at Pantex have spent most of their time “refurbishing operational nuclear warheads to extend their life.” They say there are some 4,000 nuclear weapons waiting in line to be dismantled. But this doesn’t answer the question of where the uranium ends up once the bomb has been taken apart.

I was able to find a program set up between The United States and Russia called “Megatons for Megawatts.” The program is handled in the US by the company USEC, Inc. The company’s website calls the program “a 20 year, $8 billion, commercially funded nuclear nonproliferation of the U.S. and Russian governments.”They say the “program is recycling 500 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium taken from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads (the equivalent of 20,000 warheads) into low enriched uranium used by USEC’s customers to generate electricity.”

The process starts in Russia, where the weapons are dismantled and the weapons grade uranium (HEU) is converted to low enriched uranium (LEU). Then USEC purchases this material from Russia, and sells it to utility companies in the United States. USEC says this program has “significantly enhanced world security by steadily reducing stockpiles of nuclear-grade materials, while creating a clean, valuable resource-uranium for use in nuclear fuel.” They say one in 10 customers in the United States receives this fuel and by the program’s end in 2013, enough LEU will be created to power the entire US for two years.

What if the US did the same thing with our nuclear warheads? Now, get this: we already own this nuclear material. We paid for it the first time when we built the bomb. What if we dismantle our own bombs, just like Russia, and we sell it to USEC, who then sells it to the nuclear power plants? We take the profits, and invest in alternative energy development; creating an energy source to power our transition to renewable resources and the funding to pay for it.

The Pentagon says the US has 5,113 nuclear weapons, and several thousand more retired. Robert S. Norris, a longtime analyst of US and Russian nuclear arsenals, and Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, estimated in a recent Associated Press article that several thousand to be roughly 4,200 retired warheads. This gives us a grand total of roughly 9,313 nuclear warheads. The new agreement between Obama and Medvedev of Russia brings the limits to 1,550.

So, let’s forget about the 70,000 the US is said to have built since the program began, and the 32,193 the US is said to have had at its peak in 1966, and just look at the 9,313 warheads we have to reduce to 1,550. If we comply with this treaty that leaves us with roughly 7,763 bombs that will need to be “retired.” If 20,000 dismantled Russian warheads could power the entire US for two years, this gives us nearly one year’s worth of energy for the entire country, give or take a few megatons.

The International Panel on Fissile Materials says much of the world’s excess highly enriched uranium is held in reserve for nuclear submarines. The US has the largest supply at 128 tons, enough reactor fuel to keep them running for 60 years. The panel says if the US and Russia were to agree to cut their total stockpiles to 1,000 and convert their subs to run on LEU, as most countries are now doing, they could “dispose of perhaps 360 and 700 tons of weapon-grade uranium respectively,” If we could get Russia to sell us their leftovers we would have enough to power the US for over four years.

Let me make it clear that I am not a fan of nuclear energy. I do not see it as the solution for the future. But I am even less of a fan of nuclear weapons. Short of firing them all into the sun, or deep into the earth’s core, two proposed ideas by the way and neither of which sound like that great of an idea to me, how else can we get rid of the nuclear material? Nuclear power does leave us with nuclear waste, which isn’t that much better, but at least it won’t explode and kill millions of people. Nuclear power plants are left storing this waste until a suitable dumping ground is found. The US has been preparing Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the site has not yet been approved.

How about this?

According to “Recycling Nuclear Fuel: The French Do It, Why Can’t Oui?” by Jack Spencer, The United States’ nuclear power industry has produced 56,000 tons of used fuel, which, if recycled, could power every US household for 12 years. He says the US developed the technology to recycle spent fuel, but banned its use in 1977 over fears of proliferation and cost effectiveness. France, on the other hand, has recycled spent nuclear fuel successfully for 30 years, and the 23,000 tons of spent fuel they have processed could power all of France for 14 years. He says the US has already created enough waste to nearly fill Yucca Mountain, and we haven’t even begun storing anything there yet. Spencer says the French have helped Japan get a recycling program going, and are looking into building a plant in China. He also says that the British, Indians, and Russians all engage in some form of reprocessing. And while recycling fuel does not render it harmless, recycling decreases the harmful levels of nuclear material, and reduces the chances of making it into an effective nuclear weapon.

The French government says that recycling nuclear waste reduces the radioactivity by a factor of four or five by taking plutonium and uranium out of the equation, according to E&E reporter Katherine Ling. She says that the United States has the biggest nuclear power market on the planet, and that Areva, France’s majority state owned complex of nuclear companies, is already building a reprocessing plant in South Carolina with its partner the Shaw Group, with the intent of reprocessing excess plutonium from the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Do you think they will remember who owns that excess plutonium? Many say the US is waiting for the price of uranium to increase, which it has recently, before it begins recycling. But with no approved place to store this waste, maybe it is time they reconsider.

So, the US is sitting on an awful lot of power that the American taxpayer has already paid for, enough to power the entire country for several years, and 12 more if we start recycling. The US is already involved in a program with Russia that converts weapons-grade uranium into nuclear fuel, set to expire in 2013. The United States has agreed to reduce their nuclear weapon levels. The US is also facing massive debt and a constantly decreasing oil supply. If we converted some of our nuclear weapons into low enriched uranium, complying with treaties we have already signed, and then sold it to the power companies just like USEC and Russia does, (or cut out the middleman and sell it ourselves), we could invest that money in alternative energy. Then we use the new energy supply and our recycled waste to make our transition to renewable resources and energy independence.

The safest way to get rid of our nuclear weapons is to use them as energy. How else can we prove that we are really disarming? The question really is, are we serious about disarming? Does the US really mean it when they say they want to see a world without nuclear weapons? If so, they should prove it and actually get rid of some, not just store them away with a few loose screws for quick access. Are we buying the converted uranium from Russia just to know for sure they have less of it? Are we not converting our subs to run on LEU so we can keep more HEU on hand, ready to make into more bombs? If we made this change, it might just help in our negotiations with Iran too. If the United States is really serious about a world without nuclear weapons, let’s take the first step. Turn our weapons of mass destruction into energy for our people, and fix both our economy at home and our reputation in the world.

Tim Buchholz is a freelance writer living in Ohio.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

US Has Own Nuclear Security Issues

SPIN METER: As Obama Talks Nuclear Security With World, US Has Own Issues Guarding Stockpile

SHARON THEIMER
Source: AP News
Apr 12, 2010 14:33 EDT
Courtesy Of Anti-War News

President Barack Obama, holding a summit to urge world leaders to secure their nuclear material, frequently calls the risk of terrorists getting a nuke "the single biggest threat to U.S. security." What he is less likely to talk about is the United States' own shortcomings in safeguarding its nuclear stockpile.

In one of the U.S. government's most alarming and embarrassing incidents, nuclear cruise missiles were mistakenly loaded onto a B-52 bomber in 2007 and flown from North Dakota to a military base in Louisiana. That gaffe occurred during President George W. Bush's tenure.

Attracting less attention, several reviews since Obama became president have found weaknesses in the government's stewardship of its nuclear cache, from weapons to the ingredients and classified information that go into them. Among the findings:

_ The Air Force in January removed an entire squadron overseeing a bunker of nuclear warheads at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., citing a failed inspection that it blamed on administrative problems.

_ In March, the congressional Government Accountability Office detailed problems with a program under which at least 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium is to be disposed of in fuel for nuclear power plants. Among other things, the Energy Department's Office of Health, Safety and Security hadn't performed any oversight or taken part in project reviews of one of the facilities used for the project despite its rating as a "high-hazard nuclear facility."

_ The Energy Department inspector general reported in January that the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico had not removed some highly enriched uranium while carrying out a department plan to consolidate nuclear materials into the most secure environments possible. The report said while the lab had removed material classified as Categories I and II — the most risky — and scaled back security accordingly, it had designated the enriched uranium in question as a lower Category III, using a method that wasn't formally approved.

_ Last fall, the GAO reported that the Los Alamos National Laboratory, another nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico, had several security lapses in protecting classified information on its computers.

_ In September, the congressional investigators recommended that the Pentagon make several improvements in its process for assessing threats to installations where nuclear weapons are stored, maintained or transported.

"Unfortunately, we have a situation in which there is a lot of loose nuclear material around the world," Obama said Sunday, before opening the nuclear summit Monday in Washington. "And so the central focus for this summit is getting the international community on the path in which we are locking down that nuclear material in a very specific time frame with a specific work plan."

The goal: securing all nuclear materials worldwide from theft or diversion, within four years. The president may have his work cut out for him, starting at home.

Source: AP News

Ships Of Poison

By Michael Leonardi
Counterpunch
Sunday, Oct 11, 2009
Courtesy Of Axis Of Logic

As reported in the Calabria daily newspaper “Calabria Ora” by director Paolo Pollichieni, 55 are the number of ships confirmed by Italian navy admiral and chief of Italian intelligence organization AISE (formerly SISMI), Bruno Branicoforte; 55 Ships containing a toxic and dangerous mix of radioactive and other industrial contaminants that were traded in the international traffic of the world’s hazardous wastes on the high seas. Others unofficially talk of upwards to 140 ships. Only NATO knows for sure but has not yet revealed this information to the public, and who knows if they ever will? Now these 55 ships, cargos of waste aboard and possibly seeping into the waters of the Mediterranean, are said to be lying on the sea floor, intentionally sunk across international waters over the past twenty years. Branicoforte made his affirmation to the Italian parliamentary committee for the Security of the Republic, Copsair on the 25th of September.

The threat to public health is alarming to the coastal population of Italy as it should be to all of the 23 countries that border the Mediterranean Basin. Health reports from the Region of Calabria show elevated cases of cancerous tumors, especially among the younger population along the coasts. The culprits of this International tragedy: organized criminal elements, the corporate producers of this waste and the government’s that knowingly allowed this contamination of the sea to unfold; are now gathering forces and talking of confirmations of these ships and a clean-up of the Sea.

The assessor of the Environment in the Region of Calabria Doctor Silvio Greco, a marine biologist, reminds us that the majority of these wastes came from Industries outside of Italy. This makes it again clear that there must be an International effort monitored by citizen watchdog groups to contain the effects of this catastrophe. It is hard to trust those that made this mess in the first place to clean up this unthinkable man made disaster, but they may have the only means.

A ship from the Italian energy giant ENI is now in route from Cyprus to Calabria. As reported in the Calabrian daily il Quotidiano on the 8th of October, the vessel is specialized to verify the contents of the first ship to be photographed in the seas depths, 11 kilometers from Cetraro. ENI has offered the assistance of this vessel free of charge, recognizing the gravity of the situation. Another research vessel from the Italian environmental research institute called ISPRA is being retrofitted with special equipment to provide 3 dimensional images of the ship thought to be the Cunsky,

The regional fishing industry, especially around Cetraro, is being harshly affected and there is talk of public aid to families feeling the economic brunt from the crash in fish consumption. There is also concern about a blow to the tourism industry. This area is usually overrun with tourists during the month of August and many families here base their livelihoods around the tourist industry. Contaminated land from illegal dumping of hazardous wastes is also a large problem in this area and a threat to local agricultural practices, confounding an already ugly situation.

In Italy as a whole, Berlusconi and his harem of ministers continue to hold the public interest. Stefania Prestigiacomo, the young environmental minister from Sicily, said on the 7th of October that there will be every effort made on the part of the government to assess and clean up the situation in the Calabrian coastal waters near the towns of Cetraro, Fuscaldo, Guardia Piemontese, San Lucido and the cities of Paola, Diamante and Amantea on the Tyrennian Sea, where the first ship to be photographed lies off the coast. But nothing has yet been said by Prime Minister Berlusconi, President Napolitano or environmental minister Prestigiacomo about the other 54 ships confirmed by Admiral Branicoforte. Other regions beyond Calabria, including Tuscany, Basilicata and Campania, are asking for more action and communication from the Berlusconi government as Berlusconi himself has yet to address the issue publicly and Prestigiacomo has done so only sparingly. The opposition is accusing the government of negligent inaction, while Prestigiacomo says that she is doing all she can as she begins to break her silence on this global calamity.

The Berlusconi government is also under pressure to for it’s decision to bring back nuclear power to Italy. In 1987 Italians voted overwhelmingly against the use of nuclear power and existing plants were phased out by 1990. In 2008 the Berlusconi led government reversed this decision and announced a renewed investment in nuclear energy and a new generation of plants.

The recent landslides in the Sicilian province of Messina that caused the death of at least 21 people have combined with Berlusconi’s continuing legal saga and sex scandal to temporarily shift attention here from the Ships of Poison. The Landslides in Messina are seen as another result of the neglect of the South by the national government and abusive criminal practices in the Southern regions.

At the European level there is interest coming from the European Parliament to address the horrible reality coming to light here. The Calabrian Environmental Assessor Greco will lead an Italian delegation to Strausburg in order to further elaborate the gravity of this situation of the Ships of Poison to the European Community on the 20th of October.

Throughout the world there is growing attention and focus on this story while at the local level there is a mass mobilization underway. On the 24th of October organizers are planning an International day of action with a large demonstration in the small city of Amantea near the river Oliva. This area is largely seen here as ground zero for this horrid reality. Along the shores of Amantea in 1990, a ship called the Jolly Rosso, laiden with toxic and radioactive waste, beached ashore after a failed attempt to sink it off the coast. The contents of the Jolly Rosso were then dumped on land nearby. The area suffers from elevated deaths due to leucemia and cancerous tumors thought to be linked to findings of the highly toxic Cesium 137, Mercury and other poisonous substances contaminating the land, river and sea. On the 24th of October it is hoped that this situation will be given the attention it deserves and that a global cooperation may begin to heal the waters of our beautiful Mediterranean Sea. We hope this for our children and children’s children.

The Calabrian daily newspaper il Quoitidiano has created an on-line petition to call on the Italian government to move quickly to both assess and begin to address this International disaster. It calls on the Italian government to contain the damage from the radioactive waste at sea and on land. There have been an average of 2000 signatures a day from all over the world. The link is here and you can sign where it says firma la petizione. If you would like to take part in the International Day of Action on the 24th by organizing a local event in solidarity or attending the demonstration in Amantea you can send an email to me and I will forward it to the local organizers here.

Counterpunch