politics

Tony Blair let off for lying to UK parliament and electorate

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You may have missed this story which was not covered by major news corporations.

Artwork by Lichty 1994. Caption reads "All hypotheses of political manipulation are reversible in an endless whirligig....."
Artwork by Lichty 1994. Caption reads “All hypotheses of political manipulation are reversible in an endless whirligig…..”

http://www.sunherald.com/news/nation-world/article138780373.html

LONDON

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair won’t face an investigation into whether he misled Parliament before the 2003 Iraq invasion unless new evidence emerges, a committee of lawmakers said Thursday.

A seven-year official inquiry into the war had cleared Blair of allegations that he had made a “personal and demonstrable decision to deceive Parliament or the public,” Parliament’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee said.

The committee said that several probes into the divisive war don’t “provide a sufficient basis” for a parliamentary investigation.

…

So Blair and Campbell’s two dodgy dossiers don’t count as deliberate attempts to deceive the UK parliament and electorate? That’s exactly what they were for.

Continue ReadingTony Blair let off for lying to UK parliament and electorate

I need to do a series on Israel and Palestine because that is so important in contemporary politics

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An iron fist hides the shining star

The gun’s dark black shadow over Bethlehem

The shadow over the streets of Palestine are so dark

They build walls and shut roads

…

Despite this evil

There are those that know that the message is more that words

that from the darkness the lightness of the Dawn comes

that justice will bring the evil dark walls down

the hour will come for me to sing Halleluliah

…

There are people who see clearly, see the truth

 

Continue ReadingI need to do a series on Israel and Palestine because that is so important in contemporary politics

The Nonsense of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing

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Dr. Ian Fairlie

The Nonsense of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing

Many readers will have seen the interesting Panorama programme on the poor safety
record at Sellafield broadcast on BBC 1 on September 5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07v80s4/panorama-sellafields-nuclear-safety-
The BBC press release stated this was a “special investigation into the shocking state of
Britain’s most hazardous nuclear plant…” and it certainly was. Perhaps the most important
of several whistleblower revelations was that the previous US managers had been shocked
at the state of the plant when they took over its running in 2008.
Although the programme producers are to be congratulated for tackling the subject, it was
only 30 minutes long and tells only a small part of the whole sorry story.
This article tries to give more background information, and importantly, more analysis and
explanation. The full story would require several books and would be painful reading.

What is reprocessing?

Reprocessing is the name given to the physico-chemical treatment of spent nuclear fuel
carried on at Sellafield in Cumbria since the 1950s. This involves the stripping of metal
cladding from spent nuclear fuel assemblies, dissolving the inner uranium fuel in boiling
concentrated nitric acid, chemically separating out the uranium and plutonium isotopes and
storing the remaining dissolved fission products in large storage tanks.
It is a dirty, dangerous, unhealthy, polluting, expensive process which results high radiation
doses to the ~9,000 workers employed at Sellafield.

Environmental consequences

The Sellafield plant is host to several hundred radioactive waste streams and processes
which result in large discharges of radioactive liquids to sea and emissions of radioactive
gases and aerosols to the atmosphere. Raised levels of childhood leukemias in some villages
nearby are considered to be linked to the inhalation and ingestion of these radionuclides.
Sellafield, and a similar plant in La Hague France, continue to be, by some margin, the
largest sources of radioactive pollution in the world. For example, the Irish Sea is the most
radioactively polluted sea in the world with about half a tonne of plutonium sitting on its
seabed from reprocessing.
The collective doses to the world’s population from the long-lived gaseous nuclides C-14,
and I-129, and from medium-lived Kr-85 and H-3 (tritium) emitted at Sellafield are huge and
are estimated by radiation biologists to cause tens of thousands of early deaths throughout
the world.
Another result is the 140 tonnes of unneeded, highly radiotoxic, plutonium (Pu) stored on
site at a cost of £50 million a year. Pu is fissile and, in the wrong hands, this amount could
be made into ~20,000 warheads, ie it is a serious nuclear proliferation danger.

The Liquid Waste Tanks

Shitty open-air pond at Sellafield nuclear waste dump containing spent nuclear fuel rods.
Shitty open-air pond at Sellafield nuclear waste dump containing spent nuclear fuel rods.
Not discussed in the BBC programme, but perhaps most serious of all, are the ~20 large
holding tanks at Sellafield containing thousands of litres of extremely radiotoxic fission
products, including long-lived Cs-137and Sr-90. Discussing these tanks, the previous
management consortium Nuclear Management Partners stated in 2012 “there is a mass of
very hazardous (nuclear) waste onsite in storage conditions that are extraordinarily
vulnerable, and in facilities that are well past their designated life”.
The National Audit Office (NAO) stated these tanks pose “significant risks to people and the
environment”. One official review concluded that, at worst, an explosive release from the
tanks could kill two million Britons and require the evacuation of an area reaching from
Glasgow to Liverpool. These dangerous tanks have also been the subject of complaints from
Ireland and Norway who fear their countries could be contaminated if explosions or fires
were to occur.

…

 

Let’s not mince words, the practice of reprocessing at Sellafield has been and remains a
monumental national disgrace.
…
Another seabird in one of Sellafield nuclear dump's open-air ponds.
Another seabird in one of Sellafield nuclear dump’s open-air ponds.

The shocking state of the Sellafield nuclear shitehole

Continue ReadingThe Nonsense of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing

Wales can object to Hinkley Point C because they were not adequately consulted. All and everyone who can should object to HP3.

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I encourage any and everyone and anyone with a legitimate objection to Hinley Point C to pursue that objection.

Continue ReadingWales can object to Hinkley Point C because they were not adequately consulted. All and everyone who can should object to HP3.

I watched that Panorama program about Sellafield last night :: This is draft

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I got the impression that the people supposedly in charge were far too relaxed and too fast to excuse anything and everything, that the people in charge of Sellafield were not taking it all seriously.

Isn’t that the impression you got? Oh radioactive half life of Plutonium Pu-239 of 24,100 years. We’ll just put it in this pond here, forget and ignore it and let seagulls

I got the impression that they had no idea about anything – that they were totally inept. they were treating it like it was nothing. Oh yes, no need to worry that we have got this serious radioactive waste which we have ignored for the past 60 years. There’s no need to worry about that we put it in water in these concrete ponds that are falling to bits.

ed: Sellafield is a nuclear waste shithole

ed:

Sellafield needs urgent inspections. Please get in there urgently. International, EU inspectors?

ed: I intend to do an article on the Radioactive Pollution of Irish Sea which is largely due to Sellafield.

16/9/16: it has been announced that Theresa May’s Conservative government are going for Sellafield C in partnership with EDF and China.

I intend to further investigate and publish on Sellafield’s irrsponsible and fantastically negligent actions of pollution of the Irish Sea and their ridiculous shite pools.

Continue ReadingI watched that Panorama program about Sellafield last night :: This is draft