Year: 2016

— In 1947, US Navy burned 600,000 gallons of radioactive fuel at San Francisco shipyard

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Originally from SF Weekly

BY LISA DAVIS
lisa.davis@sfweekly.com
SF Weekly
21st May 2003

With little fanfare, U.S. Navy officials in charge of cleaning up the Hunters Point Shipyard acknowledged last week that Navy personnel had burned large amounts of fuel contaminated with radioactive material in the shipyard’s boilers 56 years ago.

In its announcement, the Navy contended that the burning of more than 600,000 gallons of fuel oil containing traces of plutonium and other radioactive materials caused no harm to the environment or to people. But the Navy did not make clear how it determined there had been no harm.

Navy officials declined comment on the announcement, which was included in a fact sheet given to members of the Hunters Point community.

But representatives of federal environmental and health agencies said the revelation should prompt new radiation surveys in and around the shipyard. And residents of the Hunters Point and Bayview neighborhoods near the former shipyard — an area long plagued with health problems — expressed concern about the Navy’s disclosure, which comes after years of environmental cleanup at the shipyard and more than 50 years after the burning in question.

“Everything that happened, on the historical side, out there is significant,” says Lynne Brown, chairman of the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board, a community liaison committee. “The community would like to know what happened.”

The Hunters Point Shipyard was an active naval base for about 40 years; the Navy decommissioned it in 1974. After leasing significant portions of the base to private interests for a time, the Navy has overseen a long-running environmental cleanup that, once completed, would allow ownership of the base to be transferred to the city of San Francisco. The city wants to redevelop the site for commercial and residential use.

In March 2001, the Navy released a draft Historical Radiation Assessment, billed, at the time, as an exhaustive, five-year look at radiological activities at the shipyard. The report — which, many environmental authorities argue, should have been finished years ago, and certainly long before the shipyard cleanup began in 1989 — cost some $2 million to complete.

That initial report contained no mention of fuel-burning at the shipyard, and deficiencies in the report, including some revealed by SF Weekly, led the Navy to expand and extend its investigation of shipyard radiation. What the Navy describes as “newly discovered” information — the burning of contaminated fuel from ships used as targets in early nuclear weapons tests — comes out of that expanded investigation, being conducted by the Navy’s Radiation Affairs Support Office, based in Yorktown, Va.

Actually, however, the burning of radioactive fuel at the shipyard was first publicly documented by SF Weekly in the initial installment of its investigative series “Fallout,” published in May 2001. That series, which relied in large part on the government’s own records, focused on the activities of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, a research facility that grew out of America’s early nuclear tests.

In 1946, as part of its weapons testing program, the United States detonated two 23-kiloton atomic bombs — known as shots Able and Baker — over a fleet of target ships anchored near the Bikini atoll in the South Pacific Ocean. Many of the ships involved in these Operation Crossroads tests were towed back to Hunters Point Shipyard for research purposes. This research, which centered on attempts to clean the ships of radioactive contamination, was the earliest reported work of the NRDL.

Most of the ships from the Operation Crossroads tests were too damaged and “hot” to reuse and were eventually scuttled at sea — but not before the Navy burned the fuel from three of them, including the giant USS Independence, a 10,000-ton aircraft carrier that had been close enough to have been severely mangled in the blasts. Another ship, the USS Gasconade, was so contaminated that, government reports state, it could only be boarded by workers wearing respiratory gear.

Nonetheless, according to a fact sheet distributed recently by the Navy, in the summer of 1947 Navy personnel (with the approval of officials at the Atomic Energy Commission) burned some 610,000 gallons of contaminated fuel oil from the Independence, the Gasconade, and the USS Crittenden in boilers at the shipyard’s power plants, then known as Buildings 203 and 521. Neither building is mentioned in the Navy’s initial Historical Radiation Assessment. The buildings also were not mentioned as potential sources of radiation contamination in environmental documents provided to the public and regulators in conjunction with the cleanup at Hunters Point Shipyard.

The Navy’s announcement on the burning acknowledges that the fuel oil contained, among other contaminants, plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,000 years — meaning that plutonium particles released in the smoke produced by the burning will exist, somewhere in the environment, for thousands of years. The Navy claims that the amounts of radioactive contaminants released via burning were too small to harm either people or other organisms in the environment.

If inhaled and lodged in the lungs, even tiny particles of plutonium can cause cancer. Construction associated with redevelopment of the shipyard would, almost certainly, kick up large amounts of dust. The question is whether that dust might contain particles of plutonium. Not everyone is willing to simply accept the Navy’s safety claims.

“I’m glad we found out,” says Claire Trombadore, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s project manager for the shipyard site. “Our main concern is what is there now, and is there a risk to human health, or the environment, or both? In our minds, what needs to happen now is to survey that.”

Navy officials did not respond before press time to questions about the possibility of additional radiation surveys in and around the shipyard. The Navy also did not answer questions about how, precisely, fuel inside the Operation Crossroads target ships had been contaminated.

Last year, the EPA surveyed parts of the Hunters Point Shipyard with its Scanner Van — a vehicle that, as its name suggests, scans for radioactive contamination as it moves. But the equipment carried by the van is so delicate it cannot be used off-road, and areas surrounding at least one of the buildings where radioactive fuel was burned remain untested.

According to officials at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a federal agency that monitors environmental health threats, there is no way to determine how individuals exposed to the burning might have been harmed. Those officials say the only way to know what, if any, problems might exist now is to test the ground for radioactive contamination.

Community members may well be asking the Navy for such testing in the near future.

“My concern is that the radiological standards were lower then [in 1947], and when you’re burning radioactive materials, including plutonium, that stuff went into the community,” says Maurice Campbell, a member of the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board. “They’re trying to standardize this as a safe practice, when it wasn’t.”

http://www.eurocbc.org/usn_admits_burning_rdncontam_oil_21may2003page1032.html

— Radioactive Cesium 137 Is being intentionally placed Into our environment

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From Nuke Professional
May 16, 2016

Cesium 137 (and its shorter lived cousin Cesium 134 with a 2 year half life) is one of the most dangerous nuclear power plant “fission products”.

It goes into muscles, like the heart and does lots of damage quickly.

But the nucleo apes with their 3 pound monkey brains figure, hey this stuff is really cool!   Rather than finding another way to track oil shipments, we can add Cesium 137 to oil and use it to track shipments.   Then when the oil is burned, the radiation will be spread all over the atmosphere.   But is sure is “cool”.

As an example, cesium-137 can be used to monitor the flow of oil in a pipeline. In many cases, more than one oil company may use the same pipeline. How does a receiving station know whose oil is coming through the pipeline? One way to solve that problem is to add a little cesium-137 when a new batch of oil is being sent. The cesium-137 gives off radiation. That radiation can be detected easily by holding a detector at the end of the pipeline. When the detector shows the presence of radiation, a new batch of oil has arrived.

And in true Ape Like form, mankind’s deems is smart to put Cesium 137 into the dirt so that we can measure erosion—–

Cesium-137 is often used in scientific research also. For example, cesium tends to stick to particles of sand and gravel. This fact can be used to measure the speed of erosion in an area. Cesium-137 is injected into the ground at some point. Some time later, a detector is used to see how far the isotope has moved. The distance moved tells a scientist how fast soil is being carried away. In other words, it tells how fast erosion is taking place.

Stock here– this reads more like a death wish than science.

https://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2016/05/radioactive-cesium-137-is-being.html

— Washington State alert: Two ballot initiatives need signatures to shut down Columbia Nuclear Power Generating Station

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Washington State has a nuke plant. And it’s not Hanford. It’s the Columbia Generating Station.

These ballot initiatives aim to shut that plant down. Send this info to those you know in Washington State. 

The docs below are a great model for other states.

From RadCast

Hey folks. RadCast and No Nukes NW  have been working hard on getting these 2 initiatives ready to hit the streets of WA and get into WA Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, businesses, peace groups, schools, stores, you name it, and we are finally ready to roll.
WE NEED YOU TO CONTACT YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY IN WA STATE TO GATHER SIGNATURES ON THESE INITIATIVES.
 You will most likely have to print them at Kinkos as they are an odd size but made to legal specs that WA State requires.
Here are the directions.
Print on 11×17 ONLY.
Print these as a 2 Sided paper ONLY. You may not use 2 separate sheets per each Initiative…each one has a front and back only.
Please let your friends and family members in WA State know about these Initiatives!
They can print as many as they want to and carry them wherever they go while talking to people about CGS. Folks will most likely NOT know that we have a nuke plant and confuse it with Hanford. When talking to citizens,  let them know that all of us can help shut it down w/ these Initiatives and request that they please sign both Initiatives for us. Most likely they will be disgusted when they learn we have a nuke plant and will be glad to sign. Do have them sign both.
When you are done with the signature pages, please send back to the address given on the sheet.
I am hoping that you will all take this to heart and make this happen. This is a gift for us. Be glad we have the opportunity to do this. Do not think of this as a chore. This is a way for us not only to clean up WA State and the Pacific NW but also  to protect us from the real potential of a nuclear melt-down at CGS. These Initiatives are a blessing to help get our goals met:
1.Shut Down CGS
and
2. Stop making more waste at CGS.
This letter can be sent to a million people. Please take part in the efforts in WA by forwarding it to groups you are affiliated with. This is not an insurmountable task. We can make this happen if we all do our part.
Peace and No Nukes NW!
Mimi

— Lethal at the level of molecules and atoms

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From Geoengineering Crimes

fukushhhh

Long-lived radionuclides such as Cesium-137 are something new to us as a species. They did not exist on Earth in any appreciable quantities during the entire evolution of complex life. Although they are invisible to our senses they are millions of times more poisonous than most of the common poisons we are familiar with. They cause cancer, leukemia, genetic mutations, birth defects, malformations, and abortions at concentrations almost below human recognition and comprehension. They are lethal at the atomic or molecular level.

They emit radiation, invisible forms of matter and energy that we might compare to fire, because radiation burns and destroys human tissue. But unlike the fire of fossil fuels, the nuclear fire that issues forth from radioactive elements cannot be extinguished. It is not a fire that can be scattered or suffocated because it burns at the atomic level—it comes from the disintegration of single atoms.

— Steven Starr, Clinical Laboratory Science Program, University of Missouri
Speaking at New York Academy of Science
March 11, 2013

Article and entire presentation: https://geoengineeringcrimes.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/the-implications-of-the-massive-contamination-of-japan-with-radioactive-cesium/

— Diablo Canyon: Letter to California Committee on Energy in opposition to SB 968

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From San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace:

San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace is one of 30 organizations going on record as opposing SB 968. That bill as proposed would focus on the adverse economic impacts to be expected when the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant shuts down. It fails to look at the advantages of plant closure or at opportunities for creating jobs by investing in more sources of renewable energy.

San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace
Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles Southern California Federation of Scientists
Food and Water Watch
Green Action for Health and Environmental Justice Desert Protection Society
Committee to Bridge the Gap
Azul
Ecological Options Network
CodePink Women for Peace, Golden Gate Chapter
No Nukes Action Team
Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS)
Nuclear Hotseat
Nuclear Watch South
People of Faith for Justice
Residents Organized for Safe Energy (ROSE) Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition
San Francisco Occupy Forum Environmental Working Group San Onofre Safety
Sunflower Alliance
Teens Against Toxins

Women for: Orange County
Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Energy and Safe Jobs Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Santa Cruz Green Party of San Luis Obispo
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Public Citizen
Northern Chumash Tribal Council
Greenpeace

March 23, 2016

The Honorable Ben Hueso, Chair
And Members
Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications California Senate
State Capitol
Sacramento, CA 95814

Re: SB 968 (Monning) – Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant – OPPOSE

Dear Chair Hueso and Committee Members:

SB968 would require Pacific Gas and Electric Company to submit an assessment of the adverse economic impact for the region surrounding the County of San Luis Obispo that could occur if the Diablo Canyon power plant Units 1 and 2 were to temporarily or permanently shut down. We urge a “no” vote.

Background

Diablo Canyon represents one of the greatest environmental, public health, and economic threats to much of California. Each reactor contains 1000 times the long-lived radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. The plant was built based on the assertion that there were no active earthquake faults within 30 kilometers. We now know there are at least FOUR faults, one of which is just a few hundred meters from the plant. The ground motion from an earthquake on any of those faults could be far greater than the plant was built to withstand. Just as at Fukushima, the fifth anniversary of which is now, a quake larger than the plant was designed for could release massive radioactivity and devastate a significant part of our state.

The original construction began in 1967. Diablo was designed and licensed to operate for 40 years. Unit 1 was licensed in 1984 and Unit 2 in 1985. Some of the equipment is already over 40 years old. Nuclear proponents are pushing to extend operations for decades more. The risks are just too great. We need to quickly transition from Diablo to renewables, and it must not be allowed to run beyond its design life and original license period.

Reasons for Opposition to Bill

  1. The bill is unbalanced. It orders a study of the adverse economic impacts of a plant shutdown. It does not consider the benefits of such a shutdown. Intentionally or not, the bill’s provisions pave the way for approval to extend Diablo Canyon operations beyond its original design life. As written, the bill does not address the adverse environmental, health, and economic impacts of a meltdown or other types of radiation releases.
  2. The bill is conceptually flawed. When Diablo closes—as it must at some point—that isn’t the end of the story. The electricity produced by Diablo will be replaced by new power sources, many of them renewables. These will produce jobs and tax revenues and other economic, environmental and health benefits. The issue is not simply what will be lost by a shutdown, but also what will be gained.
  3. There is no need for the requested analysis. PG&E in 2013 sponsored a study of the economic impacts of the plant. The number of jobs and the taxes paid are already well known. The requested new report is redundant and unnecessary, and would impose on ratepayers an expense for no benefit.
  4. We recognize that the idea, briefly referenced in the bill, of also studying mitigation measures for job and tax loss may seem at first glance attractive, but the bill doesn’t do anything substantive in that regard, and the harmful aspects of the rest of the bill in terms of aiding in the push for continued operation beyond the original license period far outweighs that.
  1. The real need, which is not addressed in the bill, is for the state (e.g., the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission) to commence planning for the transition from Diablo Canyon to renewables. The licenses for Diablo expire 8-9 years from now. Thoughtful planning for transitioning to new renewables needs to begin now. This would be a triple win: eliminating the risk of a nuclear disaster in California, building up more renewables, and the jobs and other economic benefits from them. But the bill does nothing to get the state on the path to that transition.
  2. The bill would have PG&E identify contractors to perform the study, from which the CPUC would select a supposedly “independent 3rd party” to do the analysis. Given the troubled nature of the CPUC, the history of a too-cozy relationship with PG&E, the controversy over the illegal ex parte communications with PG&E, and the CPUC’s weak oversight of PG&E that contributed to the San Bruno disaster, the prospect remains high that the CPUC would merely select whomever PG&E wants. We note that a similar process resulted in a failure to select a truly “independent 3rd party” to conduct a review of PG&E’s proposal for an exemption from the Water Board’s Once Through Cooling (OTC) Policy. The Water Board was supposed to arrange for an “independent 3rd party” for this purpose, to be paid for by PG&E, but PG&E’s influence resulted in the selection of the Bechtel Corporation, which had in fact helped PG&E construct Diablo Canyon and which produced a report backing PG&E. The Bechtel report was called into question by many observers.
  3. The bill fails to put the state on record that Diablo Canyon should not run for decades longer than it was originally designed and licensed.

In summary the analysis the bill calls for is unnecessary and unbalanced and could amount to a state-ordered piece of advocacy for forces pushing for Diablo Canyon to operate far beyond its original design and license life. This could have great negative impacts on California. We recognize that this is not the intent of the author or co-authors, but nonetheless conclude there would be serious unintended consequences of the bill. We urge a “NO” vote.

Sincerely,

Azul, Marce Gutiérrez-Graudiņš

CodePink Women for Peace, Golden Gate Chapter, Cynthia Papermaster

Committee to Bridge the Gap, Catherine Lincoln

Desert Protection Society, Donna Charpied

Ecological Options Network
Mary Beth Brangan and James Heddle

Food and Water Watch, Wenonah Hauter

Green Action for Health and Environmental Justice, Bradley Angel

Green Party of San Luis Obispo, Peggy Koteen

Greenpeace, Jim Riccio

No Nukes Action Team, Chizu Hamada

Northern Chumash Tribal Council, Fred Collins

Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), David Kraft

Nuclear Hotseat, Libbe HaLevy

Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Diane D’Arrigo

Nuclear Watch South, Glenn Carroll

People of Faith for Justice, Richard Kurrash

Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, Denise Duffield

Public Citizen, Allison Fisher

Residents Organized for Safe Energy (ROSE), Gene Stone

Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition, Cindi Gortner

San Francisco Occupy Forum Environmental Working, Group Cynthia Papermaster

San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Jane Swanson

San Onofre Safety, Donna Gilmore

Southern California Federation of Scientists, Sheldon C. Plotkin, Ph.D.

Sunflower Alliance, Shoshanna Wäscher

Teens Against Toxins, Davis Gortner

Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), Marylia Kelley

West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Energy and Safe Jobs, Janice Schroeder

Women for: Orange County, Judy Curry

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Santa Cruz Sandy Silver

https://mothersforpeace.org/data/2016/2016-03-23-letter-to-california-committee-on-energy-in-opposition-to-sb-968-1

— Comments on “consent-based siting” to Department of Energy, 4-26-16

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From San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace

April 26, 2016

In 2016 the Department of Energy (DOE) held eight public meetings around the country on the Department’s consent-based siting initiative for facilities to manage the nation’s nuclear waste. The DOE is planning siting facilities to store, transport, and dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace

Comments on Consent-Based Siting D.O. E. meeting, Sacramento

April 26, 2016

1. San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace (SLOMFP) does not support or ‘consent’ to the plan of solving the nuclear waste problem with the goal of guaranteeing the FUTURE of nuclear energy in the USA. We do not support the intention of continuing the use of nuclear energy. SLOMFP is concerned that these public meetings are ultimately being conducted to rationalize the continued production of spent fuel through the operation of nuclear reactors, and thereby serve the needs of the nuclear industry, not the needs or the desires of the public.

2. After more than 60 years spent searching for an effective solution to the disposal of radioactive waste, there remains no viable plan. Furthermore, an increasing number of options are available for generating electrical energy using renewable resources that do not create lethal wastes. Thus, as a condition for going forward with a consent-based process for spent fuel disposal, the United States should enter a process for the orderly shutdown of all nuclear reactors. The problem of long-term storage would remain, but at least the quantity of wastes would remain stable.

The term “consent-based siting” is not clearly defined. There are no assurances that such “consent” will be fully informed. In a medical context, informed consent means the patient has been told and shown in writing all of the possible negative outcomes of a treatment as well as the hoped-for positive results The patient can make an objective decision about proceeding or not. SLOMFP sees no indication that the probable negatives of allowing storage of lethal radioactive wastes on a given site will be clearly spelled out BEFORE the community in question can give “consent”. This is essential.

Furthermore, there is no process defined for securing so-called consent. Would consent be determined by a letter from elected local officials? Or would the population affected have an opportunity to vote? If so, what plurality would be required to qualify as “consent”? And who is authorized to speak for future generations?

If legitimate consent is to be obtained for the interim storage of highly irradiated “spent” nuclear fuel in or near a community, each individual in that community must be given adequate, unbiased information about the potential short-term and long-term risks of living in proximity to the site. Then a legal vote must be obtained from the community members. Elected officials do not have the authority to make such an important decision without the fully informed consent of every member of the community. An example of failure to hear those who dissent comes from New Mexico. “We do not consent to the plan to dump dangerous radioactive waste on us,” said Rose Gardner who lives in Eunice, New Mexico, a town of nearly 3000 people that is 40% Hispanic. It lies five miles west of the Waste Control Specialists site proposed for interim storage of nuclear waste. “Andrews County officials say that we want this waste, but no one has ever asked me if I consent. I would definitely say no, and many others here feel the same way. We never got to vote on this issue. The Department of Energy is saying that our community consents to having radioactive waste dumped in our backyard, but this isn’t true. The DOE scheduled eight hearings around the country, but not a single one for New Mexico or Texas, the targeted region. Clearly they don’t want to hear our voices.”

  1. It is also essential that states and communities with responsibility for caring for nuclear waste be given the authority to regulate it to a greater degree of safety than the federal government. And states and communities should have the prerogative of opting out of consent throughout the process, as additional information is developed about the site and the risks of disposal.
  2. We agree with the recommendation of the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future that DOE should be replaced with a new agency to manage high-level radioactive waste. Given the DOE’s dismal record and the public’s lack of trust in its work, replacement of the DOE with a new agency is an essential step.
  3. SLOMFP supports the creation of a permanent geological repository for nuclear waste that is scientifically selected to guarantee that the radioactive materials will be secure from the environment for the length of time they are radioactive. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that time period may extend to 1 million years. See http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/hlwfcst.htm

https://mothersforpeace.org/data/2016/2016-04-26-comments-on-consent-based-siting-to-department-of-energy

— PG&E (and other utility companies) promote “Nuclear Science Week” in our public schools

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This same event happens at school districts across the United States and probably other countries sponsored by the nuclear industry and related utility companies.

Adapt this sample letter for your area.

From Mothers for Peace

Below is a sample letter to public school administrators that we encourage parents and tax-payers to adapt and send to their local school boards, superintendents and principals.

Dear School Administrator:

The third week of October is annually designated “Nuclear Science Week” by the nuclear industry, and representatives from Diablo Canyon nuclear plant are giving talks and demonstrations in our public schools, touting nuclear energy as “safe,” “clean,” “reliable,” and “of good benefit.”

These representatives from Diablo Canyon do NOT tell the students that radioactive releases are routinely allowed into our air, land and water. They don’t mention that Diablo Canyon, storing over 64 million pounds of highly radioactive nuclear waste, is built at the intersection of at least 13 earthquake faults, two of which have been identified as “active” and “major.” This lethal waste will remain on site at Diablo Canyon far beyond the day the nuclear plant has generated its last watt of energy, and that waste will be the responsibility of these same children who are being given just one side of the nuclear power story – that of Pacific Gas and Electric.

California does not need the electricity supplied by Diablo Canyon. Equivalent energy is already available through renewable energy sources. Nuclear energy has no place in future power generation.  California’s clean energy future rests on wind, solar, wave, and geothermal energy. Our children and grandchildren will thank us for investing in it.

Sincerely,

 

https://mothersforpeace.org/blog/pg-e-promotes-nuclear-science-week-in-our-public-schools

— 12 nuclear realities whose names must not be spoken

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From No Nukes California

Beyond Obama’s ‘Nuclear Security’ Hokus POTUS

By James Heddle
April 6. 2016

[ First published on Counterpunch.org ]

‘Nuclear Security’ – The Quintessential Oxymoron?

It ended, with no apparent sense of irony, on April Fools’ Day. Obama’s much-heralded ‘Nuclear Security Summit’ came to a close on April 1st in Washington, D.C., having drawn representatives from about 50 countries…minus Russia, which declined to attend citing a “shortage of mutual cooperation” and the exclusion of some of its allies from the invitation list.

Compared to the lofty vision outlined in Obama’s famous 2009 Prague speech of a ‘world without nuclear weapons,’ the POTUS conference marked a sad measure of how far short of his stated intentions his actual accomplishments have fallen.

To be fair, by no means all of that failure can be said to be Obama’s fault. There are many counter-forces.

There’s a global system that profits handsomely from the combined nuclear energy-weapons-waste economy.

There’s a worldwide elite whose members derive much power and privilege from it.

There’s the domestic ‘deep state’ system of the ‘defense and security’ industry with its revolving door to government, which is heavily invested in the permanent war economy.

Then there are the people the President has chosen to surround himself with, some of whom disagree with him and work to undermine his stated policies.

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/03/obama-disappointing-nuclear-weapons-legacy/127068/

It remains to be seen if the controversial ‘Iran Deal’ will stand as a signature accomplishment of Obama’s tenure. But the facts remain that, despite his boasts that he has ‘reduced’ the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the actual cuts amount to a mere 5% – from 4,950 operational nuclear warheads to 4,700, according to the Federation of American Scientists. As former Defense Secretary William Perry points out, that’s more than enough to destroy the world many times over.

http://www.planetarianperspectives.net/?p=2741

https://www.edcast.com/wjperryproject

And, as Perry and other former U.S. officials disapprovingly observe, Obama’s plan to spend over $1 trillion to ‘upgrade’ America’s stockpile of nuclear bombs and their delivery systems not only makes their use more likely, but has also triggered a New Arms Race.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/warnings-of-global-arms-race-ahead-of-nuclear-security-summit/5517478

Finally, the President’s ‘all of the above’ energy policy treats nuclear energy generation as ‘clean,’ ignoring the massive carbon footprint of the atomic fuel chain that makes uranium essentially a fossil fuel. It also gives massive funding and support to developing a new generation of nuclear reactors, as well as marketing existing U.S. designs world-wide to such clients as warring Arab oil states. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2015-05-25/nuclear-power-people

12 Unspeakable Realities

Those who advocate for nuclear energy as a response to climate change, or for new nuclear weapons in pursuit of ‘national security,’ must ignore or deny an overwhelming burden of facts from the history and legacy of these nuclear technologies so far.

Here are just a few:

Continue reading →

— As food levels plummet, unusual number of humpback whales seen in San Francisco Bay looking for food

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“Humpbacks normally feed farther offshore.”

What happens when the food runs out everywhere?

Associated Press
Unusual number of whales seen in San Francisco Bay
May 12, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Migrating humpback whales have been swimming into San Francisco Bay in unprecedented numbers during the past two weeks — an onslaught that experts say could be caused by an unusual concentration of anchovies near shore.

As many as four humpbacks at a time have been spotted flapping their tails and breaching in bay waters, apparently feeding on the anchovies and other schooling fish during incoming tides, the San Francisco Chronicle reported (http://bit.ly/1TB4C8p) Thursday.

It’s normal for gray whales to wander into the bay, but humpbacks generally feed farther offshore and are not accustomed to navigating shallow water and narrow straits such as those in San Francisco Bay, the newspaper reported.

Mary Jane Schramm, a spokeswoman for the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, said she and other marine experts worry that the whales could swamp boats while breaching, get hit by a ship or spooked by people who paddle or sail out to see them.

KSBW-TV reports a humpback whale was rescued in Monterey Bay this week after it became tangled in crab gear. On Thursday afternoon, a pair of whales surfaced near Golden Gate Bridge as two kite surfers came dangerously close to them.

Some have expressed excitement at seeing the whales.

“I had never seen humpback whales before, and it was awesome,” said Laurie Duke, 54, who volunteers at the Marine Mammal Center and Golden Gate Cetacean Research. “They were mostly coming partially out of the water, showing their tails.’

Schramm said the animals could get into trouble if they head any direction except west because the potential for disease and skin problems is greater in fresh and brackish water.

“The deeper they get into the bay, the more acoustically confusing it becomes,” she said of the whale’s sense of direction.

The whales are migrating north after likely giving birth in the waters off Mexico and Central America, Schramm said.

Schramm’s biggest fear is that the giant visitors will go the way of Humphrey, a famous 40-ton humpback who caused pandemonium in 1985 when he swam through the Carquinez Strait, up the Sacramento River and into a creek.

Large numbers of whales were reported last year near the Golden Gate Bridge due to a concentration of anchovies.

http://www.bdtonline.com/news/unusual-number-of-whales-seen-in-san-francisco-bay/article_25b7bc2f-200c-56f3-8aa5-2b4ff979c316.html

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/San-Francisco-Bay-humpback-whale-sightings-alarm-7464427.php

Posted under Fair Use Rules.

 

 

 

— Squid are part of ocean’s core food web; in 2014, California sardines crashed

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In recent years scientists have gained a deeper understanding of sardines’ value as “forage fish,” small but nutrition-packed species such as herring and market squid that form the core of the ocean food web, funneling energy upward by eating tiny plankton and being preyed on by big fish, seabirds, seals and whales.

From the Los Angeles Times
January 5, 2014
By Tony Barboza

The sardine fishing boat Eileen motored slowly through moonlit waters from San Pedro to Santa Catalina Island, its weary-eyed captain growing more desperate as the night wore on. After 12 hours and $1,000 worth of fuel, Corbin Hanson and his crew returned to port without a single fish.

“Tonight’s pretty reflective of how things have been going,” Hanson said. “Not very well.”

To blame is the biggest sardine crash in generations, which has made schools of the small, silvery fish a rarity on the West Coast. The decline has prompted steep cuts in the amount fishermen are allowed to catch, and scientists say the effects are probably radiating throughout the ecosystem, starving brown pelicans, sea lions and other predators that rely on the oily, energy-rich fish for food.

If sardines don’t recover soon, experts warn, the West Coast’s marine mammals, seabirds and fishermen could suffer for years.

The reason for the drop is unclear. Sardine populations are famously volatile, but the decline is the steepest since the collapse of the sardine fishery in the mid-20th century. And their numbers are projected to keep sliding.

One factor is a naturally occurring climate cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which in recent years has brought cold, nutrient-rich water to the West Coast. While those conditions have brought a boom in some species, such as market squid, they have repelled sardines.

If nature is responsible for the decline, history shows the fish will bounce back when ocean conditions improve. But without a full understanding of the causes, the crash is raising alarm.

An assessment last fall found the population had dropped 72% since its last peak in 2006. Spawning has taken a dive too.

In November, federal fishery managers slashed harvest limits by more than two-thirds, but some environmental groups have argued the catch should be halted outright.

“We shouldn’t be harvesting sardines any time the population is this low,” said Geoff Shester, California program director for the conservation group Oceana, which contends that continuing to fish for them could speed their decline and arrest any recovery.

The Pacific sardine is the ocean’s quintessential boom-bust fish. It is short-lived and prolific, and its numbers are wildly unpredictable, surging up and down in decades-long cycles in response to natural shifts in the ocean environment. When conditions are poor, sardine populations plunge. When seas are favorable, they flourish in massive schools.

It was one of those seemingly inexhaustible swells that propelled California’s sardine fishery to a zenith in the 1940s. Aggressive pursuit of the species transformed Monterey into one of the world’s top fishing ports.

And then it collapsed.

By mid-century sardines had practically vanished, and in the 1960s California established a moratorium on sardine fishing that lasted 18 years. The population rebounded in the 1980s and fishing resumed, but never at the level of its heyday.

Since the 1940s scientists have debated how much of the collapse was caused by ocean conditions and how much by overfishing. Now, researchers are posing the same question.

“It’s a terribly difficult scientific problem,” said Russ Vetter, director of the Fisheries Resources Division at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

Separate sardine populations off Japan, Peru and Chile fluctuate in the same 50- to 70-year climate cycle but have been more heavily exploited, Vetter said. West Coast sardines are considered one of the most cautiously fished stocks in the world, a practice that could explain why their latest rebound lasted as long as it did. The West Coast’s last sardine decline began in 1999, but the population shot back up by the mid-2000s.

In recent years scientists have gained a deeper understanding of sardines’ value as “forage fish,” small but nutrition-packed species such as herring and market squid that form the core of the ocean food web, funneling energy upward by eating tiny plankton and being preyed on by big fish, seabirds, seals and whales.

Now, they say, there is evidence some ocean predators are starving without sardines. Scarcity of prey is the leading theory behind the 1,600 malnourished sea lion pups that washed up along beaches from Santa Barbara to San Diego in early 2013, said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Melin’s research indicates that nursing sea lion mothers could not find fatty sardines, so they fed on less nutritious market squid, rockfish and hake and produced less milk for their young in 2012. The following year their pups showed up on the coast in overwhelming numbers, stranded and emaciated.

“We are likely to see more local events like this if sardines disappear or redistribute along the coast and into deeper water,” said Selina Heppell, a fisheries ecologist at Oregon State University.

Biologists also suspect the drop is hurting brown pelicans that breed on California’s northern Channel Islands. The seabirds, which scoop up sardines close to the ocean surface, have shown signs of starvation and have largely failed to breed or rear chicks there since 2010.

Brown pelicans were listed as endangered in 1970 after they were pushed nearly to extinction by DDT, which thinned their eggshells. They were taken off the list in 2009 and now number about 150,000 along the West Coast.

Though pelicans have had more success recently in Mexico, where about 90% of the population breeds, environmental groups think the lack of food at the northern end of their range could threaten the species’ recovery.

Normally, pelicans and sea lions would adapt by instead gobbling up anchovies. But aside from an unusual boom in Monterey Bay, anchovy numbers are depressed too.

“That does not bode well for everything in the ocean that relies on sardines to get big and fat and healthy,” said Steve Marx, policy analyst for the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit that advocates for ecosystem-based management of fisheries.

Fishermen also attest to the scarcity.

The West Coast sardine catch oscillates with the market and was valued at about $14.5 million in 2013, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. But California fishermen pulled in just $1.5 million worth of sardines last year, preliminary data from state Department of Fish and Wildlife show.

Just a few years ago, Hanson, the sardine captain, didn’t have to travel far from port to pull in nets bulging with sardines.

Not anymore. If his crew catches sardines these days, they are larger, older fish that are mostly shipped overseas and ground up for pet or fish food. Largely absent are the small and valuable young fish that can be sold for bait or canned and eaten.

Still, when he embarked for Catalina Island on a December evening, Hanson tried to stay optimistic. “We’re going to get a lot of fish tonight,” he told a fellow sardine boat over the radio.

After hours of cruising the island’s shallow waters, the voice of another boat captain lamented over the radio, “I haven’t seen a scratch.” So the Eileen and other boats made an about-face for the Orange County coast, hoping to net sardines in their usual hideouts.

No such luck.

By daybreak, Hanson was piloting the hulking boat back to the docks with nothing in its holds.

tony.barboza@latimes.com

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/05/local/la-me-sardine-crash-20140106

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