National Nuclear Science Week on October, 2024: Pakistan nuclear report disputed?

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Pakistan nuclear report disputed?

The United States and Pakistan have disputed a recent report by a nuclear monitoring institute which says that Pakistan is building a new reactor.

Last month, the US-based Institute for Science and International Security (Isis) published satellite images of the Khushab nuclear site.

The report said that it could produce enough plutonium to make 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year.

The report sparked worldwide concerns, but both US and Pakistan downplayed it.

The US said the administration was aware of the developments at the nuclear complex.

And Pakistan's foreign ministry refused to comment on the charges, saying the Khushab nuclear site was well known.

Wrong analysis

But now for the first time the two governments have spoken out against the report.

Last week, The New York Times quoted the US National Security Council spokesman, Frederick Jones, as saying that Isis analysis was wrong.

"After assessing the Isis findings, the US government experts believe that the reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported," he said.

A day later, the US State Department spokesman, Edgar Matthews, said "the reactor will be over ten times less capable" than estimated.

why was the power shut off at the fukushima plant?

why was the power shut off at the fukushima plant?

(Reuters) - Japan unveiled new plans on Tuesday to contain the crisis at a crippled nuclear plant after admitting it faced greater challenges than first disclosed, but it kept to a goal of bringing the reactors under control by January.

More than two months after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a deadly tsunami set off the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, officials say the risk of another explosion at the Fukushima plant has receded but each step toward gaining control has been matched by new setbacks.

The crisis has also prompted a blank-slate review of Japan's national energy policy, which had included a goal of generating half of the nation's power from nuclear plants by 2030.

From the start, the timetable for stabilizing Fukushima, announced just over a month ago, has faced skepticism from experts and the Japanese public, but any changes in the original target were seen as too costly politically for the government.

Tokyo Electric Power Co, the plant's operator, said it had dropped an initial plan to flood the reactors with water after last week's discovery of a large leak in the main vessel of the plant's No. 1 reactor.

Instead, the embattled utility said it would now try to cool the reactors by circulating the radioactive water that has pooled throughout the Fukushima complex. Most of the water is within the reactor buildings but some is outside in trenches.

The new approach will involve costly steps to decontaminate tens of thousands of tons water and the construction of a large storage area for the remaining low-level waste.

In a move that acknowledged a risk that it had previously downplayed, Tokyo Electric said it would step up its monitoring of radiation in nearby seawater and attempt to build a kind of underground fence to prevent groundwater contamination.

The utility, also known as Tepco, said it still aimed to complete initial steps to limit the release of further radiation from the plant 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo and to shut down its three unstable reactors by January 2012.

"We know that there are a lot of defining factors and risks, but we still want to complete the first steps by July and the remainder of the plan within nine months," Sakae Muto, a Tepco vice president said at a news conference.

He added it was impossible to estimate how much the clean-up of Fukushima, which has six reactors in total, would cost. "It's something we will have to study over time."

"BETRAYAL"

Aware of growing public frustration over the protracted crisis, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said that the government would support those who had been displaced and lost work because of the nuclear crisis.

That included aiming to start paying out compensation by late July for a crisis that has displaced some 80,000 people. Outside analysts have said the final cost for compensation for the damage caused by the crisis could range up to $130 billion.

The government said it would build 15,200 temporary housing units by mid-August for those who have evacuated from the plant's vicinity and step up health monitoring for nearby residents and workers.

"Japan must deal head-on with the feeling of betrayal that the people who lived near the plant are experiencing, having long shown understanding for Japan's nuclear power policy believing that it was safe," Kaieda told a news conference.

Kan's government has been under fire for its response to the quake and tsunami, which left almost 25,000 dead or missing, and 116,000 still without homes.

Tepco has also drawn ire for downplaying the severity of the situation. The utility said only this week that it believed three of the reactors had suffered a meltdown, where the fuel rods at the core of the reactor melted, leading to a larger release of radiation.

Still, in an endorsement of Japan's efforts, the U.S. State Department revised its travel advisory, saying it was the "unanimous opinion" of American experts that it was now safe to travel through the Fukushima evacuation zone by train and on a major highway.

"While the situation remains serious, and there is still a possibility of unanticipated developments, cooling efforts are ongoing and successful, power, water supply, and back-up services have been partially or fully restored, and planning has begun to control radioactive contamination and mitigate future dangers," it said Monday.

Should we not listen to the country’s best economists and political scientists on global warming

Should we not listen to the country's best economists and political scientists on global warming policy?

Of course it's valuable.  Eventually the weight of information will overwhelm the AGW denialists just as it overwhelmed the tobacco-disease denialists.  What the denialists say is unimportant.

But I didn't click the comment button just to say that.

What's far more interesting are the talking points used by the obfuscators.  The canard that we need more research is getting pretty old; I've seen it what must be dozens of times now.  This research is supposed to make GHG-free energy CHEAPER than coal and gas, and when it is, people will switch over.  Talk about the obvious!

But it's all about misdirection; it doesn't even acknowledge that there's a problem.  Would the same people argue that we should have waited until unleaded gas and cars with catalytic converters were CHEAPER than carburetors and tetraethyl lead before trying to clean up Los Angeles smog?  That's more or less what their argument amounts to:  a massive evasion, a red herring.

What would this accomplish?  It would turn carbon-free energy into a charity or hobby activity.  If we had delayed sulfur-free or fly ash-free power until it was cheaper than coal without scrubbers or baghouses, we'd still be waiting for that too.

Who benefits from this?  Follow the money.  Peabody Energy is the 800-lb gorilla in the US market for steam coal.  They're sitting on huge tracts of coal which is worth hundreds of billions... IF and ONLY IF they can sell it.  The greater the delay in competitive electric supplies, the more their companies are worth and the fatter their portfolio of stock options.  Obstruction is worth literally billions to them.

This isn't exclusive to RE; coal interests have long opposed nuclear power because it is a direct competitor for baseload generation.  They've gone so far as to finance anti-nuclear groups to keep a stranglehold on the market.  And they want to keep it until there's no more economically-recoverable coal.

So we've got the 3 elements of the propaganda crime:  method, motive and opportunity.  These talking points may have come from a think tank, but the fingerprints show who paid for them.

Edit:  What do you want to bet that Bob can't describe how the 2LOT is violated by the atmospheric heat engine?  The fact that wind is powered by solar radiation, converting heat energy to work, is a trivial disproof of the claim, but he's either too dumb to understand or too trollish to care.

Holidays also on this date Tuesday, October 1, 2024...