U.S. Senator Russ Feingold honored for his leadership against nuclear risks

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat from Wisconsin.The Honorable Russ Feingold, Democratic U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, is receiving thanks for his long leadership on nuclear weapons and nuclear power issues. On Wed., Dec. 1st, Sen. Feingold is the guest of honor at a U.S. Capitol reception hosted by the arms control and non-proliferation community, to thank him for his leadership against nuclear weapons risks (also to be honored are U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, and U.S. Representative John Spratt, Democrat of South Carolina). In addition, Sen. Feingold was just thanked by Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps in an op-ed, published in the Madison, WI Cap Times, for his leadership in opposing the risks of radioactive waste transporation on the Great Lakes, as well as radioactive waste "recycling" into consumer products. Sen. Feingold, who has served Wisconsin for 18 years in the U.S. Senate, just lost his re-election bid on Nov. 2nd. He and his stellar staff will be sorely missed.

Time to go Beyond Nuclear with wind power in New England

Beyond Nuclear representative Paul Gunter went before a federal licensing board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to argue that rather than relicense New Hampshire’s Seabrook nuke for another 20 years, it can be replaced by wind power that is under development 10 to 50 miles out into the Gulf of Maine for five gigawatts of renewable baseload electricity by 2030. It is outrageous enough that NextEra Seabrook Nuclear LLC (aka Florida Power & Light) is submitting a license extension application 20-years before the current license even expires also in 2030.

In fact, NextEra is using the opportunity as an end run around the environmentally friendly renewable energy renaissance rapidly dawning offshore in the deep water of the Atlantic Ocean.  

Beyond Nuclear makes the legal case that NextEra’s application violates national environmental policy law by significantly misleading the federal government with a self-serving evaluation and dismissal of the  neighboring wind alternative which in fact will render the continued harmful operation of Seabrook obsolete.

Coincidently on December 1, 2010, the National Wildlife Federation released its own report “Offshore Wind in the Atlantic, Growing Momentum for Jobs, Clean Air and Job Protection” further validating Beyond Nuclear’s challenge to bring a halt to an unreasonable and dangerous extension of the nuclear age.

Update on December 1, 2010 by admin

And read print coverage in Foster's Daily Democrat.

WikiLeaks releases embassy cables showing nuclear build-up threat in Middle East

The latest major release of classified U.S. diplomatic cables by the whistleblower site, WikiLeaks underscores the argument we have been making; that the desire for nuclear power development in the Middle East is a covert strategy to develop – or to appear capable of developing – nuclear weapons. According to sources cited in the Financial Times, the sudden and recent interest in nuclear power by Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt is founded less on the need for electricity but more likely intended as “a message to Tehran.” That message was further articulated in a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh which reported that Saudi Arabian “King Abdullah had warned the Americans that if Iran developed nuclear weapons ‘everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia’". The cable also stated that Saudi Ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubeir, "recalled the King's frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. 'He told you to cut off the head of the snake,' he recalled to the Chargé [Charge D'Affaires] adding that working with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq is a strategic priority for the King and his government." The US embassy cables can be browsed on a special website set up by The Guardian (UK).

Karl Grossman: "Avoiding Nuclear Destruction: By the Skin of Our Teeth."

Karl Grossman, compliments of www.space4peace.org.Beyond Nuclear board member Karl Grossman has posted an article at the Huffington Post, "Avoiding Nuclear Destruction: By the Skin of Our Teeth." Karl, as chief investigative reporter for WVVH-TV in New York, toured long-closed Nike and BOMARC nuclear-tipped missile bases on Long Island. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the missile batteries were designed to obliterate Soviet nuclear bomber squadrons approaching New York City. Other U.S. cities were similarly "defended" by such missile bases. The problem was, the detonation of 10 kiloton BOMARC missiles, or up to 30 kiloton Nike missiles, would have rained down massive amounts of radioactive fallout on the cities below that they were supposedly defending! By way of comparison, the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was 13 kilotons. Karl's thirty minute television report is posted at YouTube.

North and South Korea exchange fire along disputed border

Nuclear-armed North Korea, and heavily conventionally-armed South Korea, have exchanged fire in one of the sharpest escalations of military violence since the end of the Korean War over 50 years ago. This comes just days after it was revealed that North Korea may have a fully operational, advanced uranium enrichment facility, capable -- as with any uranium enrichment facility in any country -- of enriching uranium to weapons-grade. And just days before that, it was revealed that North Korea is building a new atomic reactor, capable -- as with any reactor in any country -- of generating plutonium that can be extracted via reprocessing for weapons use. In fact, North Korea reprocessed irradiated nuclear fuel from a research reactor to extract the plutonium used in its 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons test explosions, as well as to fabricate the handful of atomic bombs it is assumed to now possess.