Depleted Uranium – NATO’s Dark Secret (3 min)

Using uranium shells is war crimes to the max. Why can’t we have an international court of justice to deal with these barbarians? France, USA, Israel, you are a bunch of petty arrogant terrorists of the worse kind. Assholes. (Sorry but there is no other word to describe these cave dwellers.)

It remains radioactive for 1.5 million years!

The US and NATO militaries began using bullets made of DU in the 1991 Gulf War and have been using it in every major armed conflict since that time. It is used because it is extremely dense (1.6 times as dense as lead) which makes it ideal for piercing heavy armor. The U.S. used 640,000 pounds of DU ammunition just in the first gulf war alone. In the 2003 invasion they used an estimated 4,000,000 pounds.
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Nuclear Weapons Ban? What Needs to be Banned Is U.S. Arrogance

“In a context of almost total indifference, marked by outright hostility, representatives of over a hundred of the world’s least powerful countries are currently opening another three-week session of United Nations talks aimed at achieving a legally binding ban on nuclear weapons.  Very few people even know this is happening.”

Source: Nuclear Weapons Ban? What Needs to be Banned Is U.S. Arrogance

With permission from

http://www.counterpunch.org

by Diana Johnstone

June 16, 2017

Photo by Justin Ennis | CC BY 2.0

In a context of almost total indifference, marked by outright hostility, representatives of over a hundred of the world’s least powerful countries are currently opening another three-week session of United Nations talks aimed at achieving a legally binding ban on nuclear weapons.  Very few people even know this is happening.

Ban nuclear weapons?  Ho hum… Let’s change the subject.

Let’s talk about Russian hacking instead, or the rights of trans-sexuals to use the toilet of their choice, or even about something really important: climate change.

But wait a minute. The damage to human society, and to “the planet”, from the projected rise of a few degrees of global temperature, while commonly described as apocalyptic, would be minor compared to the results of all-out nuclear war.  More to the point, the degree of human responsibility in climate change is more disputed among serious scientists than the public is aware, due to the role of such contributing factors as solar variations.  But the degree of human responsibility for nuclear weapons is unquestionably total.  The nuclear war peril is manmade, and some of the men who made it can even be named, such as James Byrnes, Harry Truman and General Lester Groves.  The United States government consciously and deliberately created this danger to human life on earth. Faced with the United States’ demonstrated capacity and moral readiness to wipe out whole cities with their devices, other countries built their own deadly devices as deterrents.  Those deterrents have never been used, which lulls the public into believing the danger is past.

But the United States, the only power already guilty of nuclear manslaughter, continues to perfect its nuclear arsenal and to proclaim its “right” to launch a “first strike” whenever it chooses.

The United States naturally calls for boycotting the nuclear arms ban conference.

On the occasion of an earlier such conference last March, President Trump’s gormless U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, wrapped her lame excuse in womanliness: “As a mom and a daughter there is nothing I want more for my family than a world with no nuclear weapons,” she shamelessly uttered. “But we have to be realistic. Is there anyone that believes that North Korea would agree to a ban on nuclear weapons?”

Well, yes.  There are many people who have obviously thought more about this than Nikki Haley and who are well aware that North Korea, surrounded by aggressive U.S. forces for seven decades, considers its little nuclear arsenal to be a deterrent, and would certainly give it up in exchange for a convincing end to the U.S. threat.

North Korea is a very odd country, an heir to the medieval “Hermit Kingdom” with an ideology forged in communist resistance to Japanese imperialism of the previous century.  Its highly eccentric leadership is using advanced technology as an imitation Great Wall.  An all-Korean peace settlement would solve the issue.

It is absurd to claim that the threat of nuclear war comes from Pyongyang rather than from the Pentagon.  Hyping up Pyongyang’s “threat” is a way to pretend that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is “defensive”, when the reality is the other way around.

A legally binding ban on nuclear weapons is an excellent idea, approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations, and it would be fine for experts to work out all the technical and legal details, just in case – in case there is a huge change in the mental outlook that reigns in and around the District of Columbia.

NRA advocates like to defend their cause by proclaiming that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”.  It is more precise to say that people with guns kill people.  Nuclear weapons don’t destroy the world. But people with nuclear weapons could destroy the world.  What matters is what is in people’s heads.

During the height of the Cold War, my father, Dr. Paul H. Johnstone, worked for twenty years as senior analyst in the Pentagon’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), where teams of experts tried to figure out what would happen in a nuclear war between the United States and Russia (the Soviet Union at that time, although they commonly referred to it as “Russia”).  In his retirement he wrote a book recounting what he had learned from that experience, which has now been published by Clarity Press with the title From MAD to Madness.  He found that apparently normal, even kind and considerate men were able to contemplate initiating general nuclear war and killing millions of fellow humans as a reasonable possibility.  Even if some of those millions were fellow Americans.

The result of one high-level study went like this: “the general consensus has been that while a nuclear exchange would leave the U.S. in a seriously damaged condition, with many millions of casualties and little immediate war supporting capability, the U.S. would continue to exist as an organized and viable nation, and ultimately would prevail, whereas the USSR would not.”

Twenty year later, my father commented: “This basic situation has not changed. Nuclear weapons are still there and analysts are still analyzing how to use them.”

And still forty years after that, the basic situation has not changed, except possibly for the worse.  What is worse is not only the arsenal, which now aims at achieving such accuracy and underground penetration that it could wipe out an adversary’s command structure before it realizes what has happened. What is really much worse is the mentality that goes with those pretensions, notably the rise of a power-hungry clique called the “neoconservatives” that has in the past thirty years won official Washington over to its ambitions of US global supremacy. There is no longer an ideological enemy.  There is just somebody else there who feels equally at home on this planet.

The current anti-Russia hysteria is nothing but a symptom of that mentality, which finds any challenge to US world domination to be intolerable.

Plans are surely being made to remove such intolerable challenges.  This is not done in open congressional hearings with cameras.  It is done in the military planning division of the Pentagon, preparing for any possible contingency.  Plans are surely being made right now to wage nuclear war against Russia and China, not to mention Iran.  The executive summary for busy political leaders is apt to conclude optimistically that despite problems, the United States “will prevail”.

The United States with its nuclear arsenal is like a demented maniac with delusions of grandeur.  The delusions are institutional rather than individual.  Psychologists may be brought to the scene to try to cajole an individual maniac who has taken a schoolroom of children as hostages, but there is no known psychological treatment for such a mass delusion.  Ostensibly normal Americans truly believe that their nation is “exceptional”.  Their military doctrine does not talk about “defeating” but “destroying”.  You may “defeat” an enemy in a war over some issue, but for the Pentagon, the enemy must be destroyed.  To eventually serve this death machine, young Americans are being trained by movies and video games to view enemies as extraterrestrials, intruders in our world who can be wiped out, not real humans the way Americans are.

The fundamental reason that United States leaders feel obliged to maintain nuclear supremacy is their belief that “exceptional” America has a right and duty to possess an absolute power of destruction.  So long as that mentality rules in Washington, there is no possibility of nuclear disarmament, and every possibility of nuclear war sooner or later.  Nuclear disarmament – a totally necessary safety precaution for humanity – will be possible only when leaders in Washington recognize that other peoples also have a right and a will to live.

The real question is how to achieve this psychological transformation.

Ever since August 1945, we have heard it said that “Hiroshima must be a moral awakening”, bringing people together in common concern for humanity.  That has not happened.  Indeed, today, the moral slumber is deeper than ever.

Diana Johnstone is author of the introduction to her father’s book, From MAD to Madness, by Paul H. Johnstone, Clarity Press, 2017. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr

More articles by:Diana Johnstone

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr

Bill and Hillary received $2.85M selling U.S. uranium to the Russians

Source: Bill and Hillary received $2.85M selling U.S. uranium to the Russians

With permission from

http://www.intellihub.com

By Shepard Ambellas

June 8, 2017

The Clintons actually did business with the Russians and the media is ignoring it

(INTELLIHUB) — At least $2.85 million dollars flowed to the Clinton Family through a series of five Russian-backed donations after a massive uranium deal was signed off by the State Department and other agencies during Hillary’s tenure.

Shockingly, between the years of 2009-2013 Russian-backed interests assumed control of one-fifth (20%) of the U.S. uranium supply along with several highly-lucrative mines in Kazakhstan through a secret backdoor deal with the Clintons, as reported by Joe Becker and Mike McIntire in April of 2015.

The report was groundbreaking. And if you think about it, the report should have triggered the real Russian narrative. You know, the one where the Clinton’s sold America’s most strategic asset (i.e. uranium: used to produce nuclear fuel and weapons of mass destruction). Of course, such a narrative never came to pass because to the contrary the fake Trump-Russia narrative was born, sidetracking the general public from what’s really going on.

According to Becker and McIntire: “Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.”

And if that’s not enough, Mr. Clinton received an additional $500,000 from a Russian investment bank with ties to Uranium One, bringing the grand total influx from Russia to $2,800,000. To top it off, the donations went unreported by the Clinton Foundation.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Clintons actually did shady business with the Russians against the best interest of the United States of America and personally benefited from doing so. They must be held accountable.

Please share this powerful report with everyone you know. Get the truth out!

Iran raps West’s double standards on Israeli nukes

I was just reading my crystal ball and it told me that the Middle East will soon become a nuclear devastated zone with no life in it. Too many weapons of mass destruction are in the hands of unbalanced hateful individuals.

Iran warns the UN nuclear agency against the threats posed by Israel’s nuclear activities to regional and global security.

Source: PressTV-Iran raps West’s double standards on Israeli nukes

PressTV

Jun 16, 2017

Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA Reza Najafi speaking to reporters (Photo by AP)

Iran asks the United Nations nuclear agency to take Israel’s nuclear activities into “serious” consideration, lambasting the West’s duplicitous policies concerning the regime’s military nuclear capability.

Reza Najafi, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), made the remarks to the quarterly meeting of the agency’s Board of Governors on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, the Zionist regime [of Israel], has over the past years, continued to advance its military nuclear program in contravention of all international regulations by ignoring the international community’s legitimate calls, and thanks to the blind support by some countries,” he stated.

Israel is estimated to have 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal. The regime, however, refuses to either accept or deny having the weapons.

It has also evaded signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) amid staunch endeavor by the United States and other Western states on international levels in favor of its non-commitment to the accord.

Najafi considered Israel’s nuclear activities to be a source of concern for regional countries and the entire international community, accusing the West of double standards in its treatment of Tel Aviv’s nuclear program.

The Iranian official further highlighted repeated international calls for Israel to join the NPT and put all its nuclear facilities under IAEA supervision, stressing that Israel’s continued non-membership of the treaty sullies its reputation.

He added that Israeli scientists enjoy free access to the nuclear facilities of some nuclear-armed countries, while Tel Aviv-hired terrorists assassinate nuclear scientists of NPT members.

Addressing the Board’s previous meeting, the Iranian official said the Israeli regime had hired hit men to assassinate nuclear scientists all over the Middle East.

Read more:

• Israel killing nuclear scientists in Mideast: Iran

Four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated by the Israeli regime between 2010 and 2012. Iran has incriminated the IAEA for leaking information about the four scientists to the Israeli regime.

The American and European delegations to the session reportedly took great exception to the envoy’s comments.

‘Up to 15 tons of depleted uranium used in 1999 Serbia bombing’ – lead lawyer in suit against NATO

Source: ‘Up to 15 tons of depleted uranium used in 1999 Serbia bombing’ – lead lawyer in suit against NATO — RT News

RT News

14 Jun, 2017

 Armament personnel load bombs at NATO Aviano air base, on March 29, 1999 © US Air Force / AFP

An international legal team is preparing a lawsuit against NATO over the alliance’s alleged use of depleted uranium munitions during its bombing of Yugoslavia. These have allegedly caused a rise in cancer-related illnesses across the region over the years.

“The NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 used between 10 and 15 tons of depleted uranium, which caused a major environmental disaster,” said Srdjan Aleksic, a Serbian lawyer who leads the legal team, which includes lawyers from the EU, Russia, China and India.

“In Serbia, 33,000 people fall sick because of this every year. That is one child every day,” he claimed.

NATO’s press office says it’s now aware of Serbia’s allegations, but gave no further comment.

Read more

US admits using toxic depleted uranium against ISIS in Syria

When asked as of why Serbia has decided to sue NATO 19 years after the attacks, the lawyer said “considering the horrific consequences for our population… it is never too late to sue someone who has caused an environmental catastrophe, someone [who] bombed Serbia with a quasi-nuclear weapon, i.e. depleted uranium.”

The Serbian lawyer says 19 countries that were part of NATO at the time need to pay compensation for “for the financial and non-financial damages… to all the citizens who died or fell sick as a proven result of the NATO bombing.”

“We expect the members of NATO to provide treatment to our citizens who are suffering from cancer,” Aleksic said, adding that the bloc “must also provide the necessary technology and equipment to remove all traces of the depleted uranium” from Serbia.

“The use of banned weapons” by the US-led military alliance in the Balkans “was a violation of all the international conventions and rules that protect people” from such kind of weapons, the lawyer claimed, adding that NATO also used depleted uranium in Iraq in 1991.

An USAF E-3B Awacs early warning airplane lands past air-to-air AIM-9L/M Sidewinder missiles waiting to be loaded onto jets at Aviano Nato air base in norther Italy, February 23, 1999 © Reuters

“The alliance has not been put on trial for this act, but the consequences are disastrous,” he said.

In its 2000 report on depleted uranium, NATO confirmed the use of the munitions both in Iraq and in the Balkans.

“In Iraq, about 300 metric tons of DU [depleted uranium] ammunition were fired by American and British troops. Recently, NATO confirmed the use of DU ammunition in Kosovo battlefields, where approximately 10 metric tons of DU were used,” the report says.

Read more

Serbia marks 18 years since start of NATO bombing

The UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has also admitted“there is evidence of use of depleted uranium (DU) projectiles by NATO aircraft during the bombing campaign.” However, the UN tribunal has pointed out that “there is no specific treaty ban on the use of DU projectiles.”

Reporting on the consequences of the use of such munitions for civil population and the environment, a NATO report said that “in the vicinity of the impact point of DU ammunitions, it is not excluded that individuals unaware of the contamination… could have accumulated radiation doses and/or could have incorporated uranium quantities exceeding the internationally recognized limits.”

In May, Balkan Insight reported that around 50 people from the Serbian city of Nis, who have been suffering from cancer and have “seemingly relevant medical documentation” have asked the legal team of 26 lawyers and professors to represent them in the case against NATO.

NATO launched airstrikes in what was then Yugoslavia in March 1999, having interfered in a sectarian conflict between Serbians and Kosovan Albanians. As clashes between the local population turned violent, the US-led military alliance made a decision to respond to what the it said was ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population of Kosovo, without the backing of the UN Security Council.

With no UN mandate, NATO bombing of Serbia lasted for three months, having resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths.

North Korea Provocation: The Background and Context You’re Not Being Told

Source: North Korea Provocation: The Background and Context You’re Not Being Told | The Freedom Articles

freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com

Makia Freeman

June 2, 2017

The North Korea provocation: who’s provoking whom? Is North Korea provoking the US or the other way around?

The North Korea provocation

is dominating the attention of the media and many people around the world, who are fearful the tensions between North Korea and the US may erupt into a war. If China gets involved (and let’s face it – how can China not get involved if fighting breaks out on the Korean peninsula which is right on its doorstep?), we could be into a World War 3 scenario with the US on one side and China (and therefore Russia) on the other. The term North Korea provocation itself is ambiguous, because it could imply that the North Korea is the active party doing the provoking, or it could imply that North Korea is the passive party being provoked. History clearly shows wherever Team USA is involved, the American political and military elite are always at least partly (and usually fully) the active agents doing the provoking, although they do a masterful job of spinning it to trick you into thinking the other party is the crazy, unlawful and aggressive one. So what’s the background and context to the current North Korean provocation?

Soldiers in the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) of the border between South Korea and North Korea.

The Missing Background: The Korean War (1950-1953)

Listening only to the MSM, you would believe that North Korea is being run by an irrational madman Kim Jong Un who is provoking the US, is hellbent on war and who is too crazy for diplomacy to be a serious option. Yet … are you aware that:

– the US entered the Korean War and proceeded to bomb North Korea into smithereens under the leadership of bloodthirsty generals like Douglas MacArthur (who led the United Nations Command) and Curtis LeMay?

– the US used 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,557 tons of napalm against North Korea, more than they used in the entire Pacific War against the Japanese during World War II?

– LeMay stated, “We killed off … 20 percent of the population” and “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea”?

– That MacArthur’s MAD plan was to try to win the war against North Korea in 10 days by dropping “between 30 and 50 atomic bombs … strung across the neck of Manchuria” that would have “spread behind … a belt of radioactive cobalt”?

– That the Korean War ended in 1953 only with an armistice, not a Peace Treaty? That this technically means the war is still going? And that this gives the US the excuse to continue treating South Korea as its ally vassal state (as it treats Japan, Australia, Germany, France and many, many nations in the world), because if there were a formal Korean Peace Treaty in existence, the US would have no legal basis for the occupation of South Korea with American military bases and troops?

North Korea provocation: the US is provoking North Korea by installing the THAAD missile “defense” system (i.e. offense system) in South Korea right near North Korea’s border, but there are some South Koreans protesting it.

The Missing Context: Constant US Provocation of North Korea

If you knew all of the above, did you also know that:

– Many South Koreans are tired of South Korea being a US puppet state? The opposition party and other forces behind the impeachment of the South Korean president want the US out of South Korea? They also want the THAAD missile system recently installed by the US dismantled?

– George W. Bush, Dubya or George Bush Jr. (you know, the same one who proved that evolution goes in reverse), being a neocon puppet, declared that North Korea was part of the axis of evil? This is the same George Bush that stated that the US would grant itself the right of striking first by way of a preemptive attack? That because of this American policy, North Korea left the nuclear NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty), since the US wasn’t following its own rules?

– Bush reportedly claimed he wanted to “topple [the North Korean] regime”?

– The Koreans tried re-uniting despite all the forces against them wanting to keep them separated? It was called the Sunshine Policy.

The Korea reunification monument (located south of Pyongyang and opened in 2001 to commemorate Korean reunification proposals put forward by Kim Il-sung). Sadly, reunification has yet to happen in Korea due to the divide-and-conquer strategies of the New World Order.

More Missing Background: The Sunshine Policy

Korea had a Sunshine Policy (policy of reunification) from 1998-2008. Yes, it’s true: South Korea and North Korea were moving closely towards reunification when the Bush-Cheney Administration, a hotbed of traitors, globalists, Zionists and neocons, moved to demonize and isolate North Korea. Stuart Bramhall writes:

“… in 1998 South Korean president Kim Dae Jung began his Sunshine Policy aimed at lessening tensions and building reconciliation between North and South Korea. In June 2000, leaders of the two countries held a historic three-day summit in Pyongyang (the first in 50 years) and signed a pact in which they agreed to work towards reunification. Among other provisions, the agreement included substantial South Korean humanitarian aid to address North Korea’s chronic food shortages, loosening of restrictions on South Korean investment in North Korea, the opening of North Korea’s Kumgang Tourist Region to South Korean visitors, the establishment of a family reunification program, the opening of rail links through the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and a worker exchange program permitting South Korean workers to work at North Korea’s Kaesang Industrial Park.

In 2000, Kim Dae Jung won the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful implementation of the Sunshine Policy.

Unfortunately George W Bush, who took office in 2001, had very different plans for the Korean peninsula. In his view, a paranoid militarist North Korean threatening US allies South Korea and Japan was the most potent argument he had to justify his obsession with building a missile defense system … the immediate trigger for these moves was a visit by Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi to North Korea in a first effort to normalize relations between the two countries. In the view of the Bush administration, an independent economic-political block consisting of Japan and a unified Korea posed a serious strategic threat to US dominance in Asia and had to be stopped.”

More Missing Context: Foal Eagle

If you knew all of that, did you further know that:

– The US and South Korea have been conducting joint annual military drills and war games for decades (now called Foal Eagle) which simulate engaging North Korea in war? That this year the games were given the name Operation Decapitation and practiced for the attack and overthrow of North Korea? That this year almost 400,000 soldiers participated?

– North Korea agreed to suspend its nuclear tests if the US agrees to end these annual war games along its border?

– The entire military budget of North Korea is $7.5 billion, which is less than the amount (US$54 billion) that Trump just approved to be increased in the US military budget? That the 2017 budget for the entire US military is now $582.7 billion?

– As Joe Clifford writes in his article What The Corporate Media Never Tells You About North Korea: “North Korea, China, and India are the only 3 nations who have committed to a “no nuclear first” policy? They have pledged never to use nuclear weapons first, but of course reserve the right to use them if attacked.”

Funny, but the PM of staunch US ally Great Britain, Theresa May, shocked many people by recently declaring that the UK would be willing to use nuclear weapons in a first strike (just as the intellectually challenged Dubya had claimed). Why are the US and UK allowed to openly and brazenly claim the right to attack (and not be dismissed as aggressive, mad and irrational), but other country’s leaders cannot?

Who’s threatening whom? Who’s provoking whom? What’s the reality – is the North Korea provocation about North Korea provoking the US, or the US provocation of North Korea?

Demonization of Leaders the US Doesn’t Like

I would not like to live in North Korea, nor live under Kim Jong Un. That being said, do you really think the complicit Anglo-American-Zionist MSM is demonizing him because they care so deeply about the plight of the average North Korean? Any leader who doesn’t play ball with the US get demonized as a repressive dictator. He gets targeted for assassination while his country gets targeted for war. Just look at Manuel Noriega in Panama, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Mummer Gaddafi in Libya and Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. As Clifford again writes:

“… the demonizing of Kim Jong-un continues as we move towards another war, and once again the public buys into the myth … Sixteen years later we are still at war in Afghanistan. War is the result of failed diplomacy, or the absence of diplomacy. Perhaps we did not want diplomacy, perhaps we don’t want diplomacy now.

…

Do you know that North Korea has repeatedly asked the US to engage in bilateral talks, to cool off the ever-escalating tension? The offer was flatly rejected by both Obama and Trump. Can you resolve differences within your family without dialog? No dialogue, no peace. Why won’t the US talk to North Korea??”

Conclusion: Look Carefully at all Sides of the North Korea Provocation

The propaganda is thick, and you have to take a step back and really think for yourself. Astute readers of the news will ask themselves why North Korea and why now? The US bombed North Korea into oblivion in 1953, the same year it also embarked on massive foreign meddling programs by violently overthrowing the democratically elected prime minister of Iran (Mossadegh) and also violently interfering in the affairs of Guatemala. Since 1953, the US has bombed, invaded and attacked over 30 countries, while North Korea has not even invaded a single one. Experts suggest North Korea has around 8-10 nuclear weapons (with no effective delivery system) while it is a fact that the US has 6800 (of which a large number are deployed against North Korea).

And yet we are supposed to believe that North Korea is a dangerous rogue state that is posing a genuine threat to the US?

The propaganda is thick.

Time to wake up.

Time to see the truth about the North Korea provocation.

Time to rein in the the most destructive nation in the history of the world: the USA.

*****

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com, writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwide conspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance.

Sources:

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0E9Kel8BtE

*http://www.nytimes.com/1964/04/09/texts-of-accounts-by-lucas-and-considine-on-interviews-with-macarthur-in-1954.html?_r=0

*http://www.globalresearch.ca/koreas-sunshine-policythe-reunification-of-north-and-south-korea/5585282

*http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-the-corporate-media-never-tells-you-about-north-korea/5587728

*http://38north.org/2014/02/rcollins022714/

*https://theintercept.com/2017/05/03/why-do-north-koreans-hate-us-one-reason-they-remember-the-korean-war/

*http://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=north-korea

*https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/652687/department-of-defense-dod-releases-fiscal-year-2017-presidents-budget-proposal/

*http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-nuclear-weapons-first-strike-michael-fallon-general-election-jeremy-corbyn-trident-a7698621.html

*https://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list

*https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat

Hanford is Ripe for a Radioactive Explosion

Let us relocate all those in favor of nuclear energy to the surrounding areas of nuclear plants. Those who argue for nuclear energy are damned arrogant pinheads who clearly do not understand the science of nuclear energy. Radiation remains for thousands of years! Who gave the right to destroy our only planet to these pricks?

Source: Hanford is Ripe for a Radioactive Explosion

http://www.counterpunch.org

by Joshua Frank

May 18, 2017

 

Photo by No Nukes NW | CC BY 2.0

Last week, an underground tunnel storing radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear facility in Washington state collapsed, leaving a gaping 400 square foot hole. The tunnel, made up of dirt and wood, finally gave in.

How surprising was the accident, which forced thousands of workers to find safety? Not very, according to a report uncovered by the Seattle-based advocacy group Hanford Challenge.

In 1991, Westinghouse Hanford Company requested Los Alamos Technical Associates, Inc. (LATA) to evaluate the structural integrity of PUREX Storage Tunnel #1, where the collapse occurred. While the 1991 study of the tunnel indicated a low probability of any degradation of the pressure-treated timber in the tunnel, the report noted that the “only structural degradation that is occurring is due to the continued exposure of the timbers to the high gamma radiation field in the tunnel.”

While the report noted the effect of this exposure was minor at the time, the strength of the timber walls in a 1980 evaluation was only 65.4% of its original strength. The study recommended that another test be conducted in 2001 by the United States Forest Product Laboratory to check the integrity of the tunnel’s wood beams.

There’s no evidence any further tests were carried out in 2001, or any other time since the 1991 recommendation. The United States Forest Product Laboratory and Department of Energy (DOE) did not respond to several requests for comment.

“How can waste be left in a tunnel? Whose idea was that?” asks Rod Ewing, a Stanford University nuclear security researcher. “I’ve been to Hanford many, many times for conferences and things like that, and I don’t recall anyone saying that there was waste in tunnels underground. I can’t imagine why that would be the case.”

The Department of Energy said there were no signs of a radioactive release and opted to fill the hole with 50 truckloads of dirt and a plastic cover.

While this seems like a short-term fix to a serious problem, the question remains, will this stop more collapses that could have far more dangerous impacts? According to Doug Shoop, manager of the Department of Energy Richland Operations Office, the answer is no.

“There is potential for more collapse,” says Shoop.

“One of the main problems at Hanford is that DOE is understaffed and overtasked,” Dr. Donald Alexander, a high-level DOE physical chemist working at Hanford, told me. “As such, we cannot conduct in-depth reviews of each of the individual systems in the facilities. Therefore there is a high likelihood that several systems will be found to be inoperable or not perform to expectations.”

Dr. Alexander says that Hanford could see an event comparable to the 1957 explosion, known as the Kyshtym disaster, at Russia’s Mayak nuclear facility. Kyshtym is considered the world’s third largest nuclear disaster after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Considered Hanford’s”sister-facility,” Mayak also produced plutonium for nuclear bombs. At least 22 villages and 10,000 people were forced to evacuate when Mayak blew. According to one estimate by the Soviet Health Ministry in Chelyabinsk, the ultimate death toll caused by the Mayak explosion was 8,015 people over a 32 year period.

Hanford has total of 177 underground storage waste tanks, of which there are 149 that are single-shelled and considered leak-prone by the EPA.

“In the extreme,” says Dr. Alexander, “another Mayak-scale incident” could occur at Hanford.

Poor oversight and a culture of cutting-corners could well lead to a deadly explosion like the one feared by Dr. Alexander.

So, what’s the big deal?

Just another aging nuclear facility on the brink of disaster.

JOSHUA FRANK is managing editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair and published by AK Press. He can be reached at joshua@counterpunch.org. You can troll him on Twitter @joshua__frank. 

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