Tag: nuclear power

CANADIAN JOURNALIST HIRES LAW FIRM AFTER BEING DENIED ACCESS TO FILES ON UAP SIGHTINGS AT NUCLEAR POWER FACILITIES

Senior military and intelligence personnel have consistently reported the presence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in proximity to locations linked to nuclear power, weaponry, and technology across the United States for the past 75 years. 

However, the U.S. is not the only country in which unknown aerial objects have been observed, and sometimes close to sites of national security significance.

“Canadians report seeing UFOs in the sky at a rate of 3 times a day,” says Chris Rutkowski, a Canadian ufologist and media expert. “There are about 1,000 UFO reports filed in Canada every year, and the number remains high.”

However, amidst this extensive reporting of the phenomena, another question arises: where are the official Canadian records involving UAP observed near nuclear power facilities?

Now, The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), a national and non-partisan charity with the mission to defend constitutionally protected rights and freedoms, is supporting a Canadian freelance investigative journalist, Daniel Otis, in his effort to appeal a decision made by Ontario Power Generation (OPG), involving the denial of access to records pertaining to UAP detected at or near nuclear power plants in Canada.

Daniel Otis’s UAP investigations, reporting on UAP activity, and social-political commentary on the topic have been extensively published in national outlets such as CTV News and Motherboard. Through his reports, Otis plays a vital role in enhancing Canadians’ understanding of how government agencies are addressing these enigmatic phenomena. 

In support of his investigative work, Otis has submitted over 200 requests under federal and provincial freedom of information laws to various Canadian agencies, including the Department of National Defense, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Royal Canadian Air Force. Historically, these agencies have nearly always provided the records requested with information that poses a security risk redacted.  

“For more than two years, I have used freedom of information requests to uncover case files, procedures, and briefing material about unidentified objects and lights in Canadian airspace,” Otis says. “While this might seem outlandish at first, I have obtained thousands of pages of relevant material, including 70 years of reports from Canadian pilots, soldiers, and police officers.”

Last year, OPG turned down Otis’s inquiry under Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act (FIPPA) for the supply of records concerning Unidentified Aerial Phenomena identified near Ontario’s nuclear power plants.

Otis launched the request based on an anonymous tip he received. Even though the existence of records was acknowledged, OPG initially refused to provide the copies, insisting on an exemption within FIPPA. This exemption states that records need not be disclosed if their revelation could reasonably be expected to seriously threaten an individual’s safety or health.

On March 2, 2023, during a meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) officials were asked by Committee Vice-Chair and Member of Parliament Larry Maguire if the government shared any information it had on UAP or drone reports from nuclear power facilities throughout the country.

“The CNSC can report that there have been no reported drone intrusions or attempted intrusions at Canadian high-security nuclear facilities,” wrote Kathleen Heppell-Masys, Director General Directorate of Security and Safeguards, in a response on March 11.

She added that “All CNSC licensees, including operators of high-security sites such as nuclear power plants and Chalk River Laboratories, are required as conditions of their licenses and under NSC regulations to report on any attempted or actual breaches of security, or attempted or actual acts of sabotage at their sites. This requirement applies to any actual or attempted intrusion of the facilities by ‘drones’ including autonomous, semi-autonomous, and remotely piloted aircraft systems.”

“The excessive secrecy is absurd,” House of Parliament Member Larry Maguire told The Debrief. “It is my sincere hope the Chief Science Advisor’s Sky Canada Project will include specific recommendations on how information can be released into the public domain for further study and investigation.”

“By making information publicly available, it will help scientists and researchers analyze the data and cross reference it with other open-source material.  We also need to see a scientific plan and best practices the government could adopt,” Maguire said. 

Maguire told The Debrief that he had made his own inquiries about UAP sightings near Canadian nuclear facilities, to which officials provided lackluster responses.

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Radioactive Fish Discovered Near Fukushima Renews Concerns Over Plans To Dump Nuclear Wastewater Into Ocean

Japanese plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) studied a black rockfish in May and found that it contained levels of radioactive cesium that were 180 times over Japan’s regulatory limit.

The radioactive fish was caught near drainage outlets at the TEPCO plant, where three nuclear reactors melted down amidst a tsunami in March 2011. Rainwater from areas near the reactors flows into the area where the fish was caught.

The alarming discovery reignited concerns over TEPCO’s plans to start releasing 1.3 million tons of treated wastewater from the former Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant by August.

A report from July 23 showed that the problem is still unaddressed, prompting questions about how dangerous the company’s plans are for the public.

Radioactive cesium health risks

Radioactive cesium has been detected in surface water and different kinds of food, such as breast milk and pasteurized milk. The amount of radioactive cesium in food and milk depends on several factors.

The most important factor is whether or not there has been a recent fallout from a nuclear explosion, like a weapons test or an accident at a nuclear power plant.

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‘Dangerous Moment’: Zelensky Issues Nuclear Plant False Flag Warning As Counteroffensive Fails

Not for the first time thus far in the conflict, accusations of false flag events involving radioactive material are flying, after Ukraine’s President Zelensky accused Russia of plotting a “terrorist attack” on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant which is to result in an intentional radiation leak, according to a Thursday video statement.

“Intelligence has received information that Russia is considering the scenario of a terrorist act at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – a terrorist act with radiation leakage,” he claimed. “Radiation has no state borders. Whomever it will hit is deterred only by the direction of the wind,” Zelensky added.

The Ukrainian leader further claimed to have evidence to back his assertions about the plot, but the Kremlin has blasted all of this as “another lie”. Russia has also stressed that an international team of UN-backed nuclear experts have been on-site observing safety protocol and proper operations.

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Rolls-Royce wins UK funds for ‘Moon’ nuclear reactors

British aerospace giant Rolls-Royce said Friday it had secured UK funding to develop small nuclear reactors that could provide power on the Moon.

Rolls said the UK Space Agency had offered it £2.9 million ($3.5 million) to help research “how nuclear power could be used to support a future Moon base for astronauts”.

“Scientists and engineers at Rolls-Royce are working on the micro-reactor program to develop technology that will provide power needed for humans to live and work on the Moon,” the aerospace company added in a statement.

Rolls forecast its first car-sized reactor would be ready to be sent to the Moon by 2029.

Friday’s news comes as US space agency NASA aims to return humans to the Moon in 2025.

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US nuclear plant admits to radioactive leak

The authorities in the northern US state of Minnesota revealed on Thursday that a nuclear power plant near Minneapolis had suffered a radioactive water spill amounting to over 1.5 million liters. Xcel Energy, which owns the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant, is working to clean up the spill and insists there is no danger to the general public.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) said that around 400,000 gallons of tritiated water leaked from a broken pipe at the facility. The leak was first discovered on November 22, and its source was found on December 19 and patched “soon after.”

The authorities decided to keep the public in the dark about the incident, while Xcel Energy and the state were “actively managing” the situation to prevent the underground plume of irradiated water from spreading to the nearby Mississippi River, MPCA assistant commissioner Kirk Koudelka told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

“Now that we have all the information about where the leak occurred, how much was released into groundwater, and that contaminated groundwater had moved beyond the original location, we are sharing this information,” MPCA spokesman Michael Rafferty added on Thursday.

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Dumping 1M gallons of radioactive water in Hudson is ‘best option,’ per Indian Point nuclear plant owner

The owner of the defunct Indian Point nuclear facility says it’s planning to dump about 1 million gallons of radioactive water into the Hudson River. The move, which the company describes as the “best option” for the waste, could happen as early as August.

A Feb. 2 meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board heated up when the plant’s owner Holtec International disclosed the plan as part of its lengthy closure process. The contaminated water could just naturally — and safely — decay in storage onsite.

Environmental groups and residents are also concerned this could harm their community, as the Hudson River is already a federally designated toxic Superfund site. Rich Burroni, Holtec’s site vice president for Indian Point, agreed to give the community at least a month’s notice before any radioactive discharge into the Hudson River begins.

But Holtec is well within its legal rights and permits to discharge waste at the same rate as it did when operating, and it does not need federal, state or local approval to dump the contaminated water. This practice is standard for nuclear plants.

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NASA, DARPA Testing Nuclear Engine For Future Mars Missions

NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced a plan on Tuesday to test out a nuclear-powered thermal rocket engine which will enable NASA-crewed missions to Mars, according to NASA.

The program, called Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, could allow for faster transit time, an increased payload capacity, and higher power for instrumentation and communication.

In a nuclear thermal rocket engine, a fission reactor is used to generate extremely high temperatures. The engine transfers the heat produced by the reactor to a liquid propellant, which is expanded and exhausted through a nozzle to propel the spacecraft. Nuclear thermal rockets can be three or more times more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion. -NASA

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‘Major breakthrough’ in nuclear fusion that will go down in history: Scientists produce more energy than what was used to activate it – unlocking potential for endless clean energy

The US Department of Energy announced an accomplishment in nuclear fusion that will go down in history – scientists have produced more energy in fusion than what was used to activate it.

The feat, called ‘net energy gain,’ has been the holy grail of scientists who have been on a decades-long quest to harness the same energy that powers the sun and stars 

A team of scientists made the breakthrough at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California on December 5, which houses a sports stadium-sized facility equipped with 192 lasers. 

The experiment saw the high-energy laser converge on a target about the size of a peppercorn, heating a capsule of hydrogen to more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit and ‘briefly simulated the conditions of a star,’ said Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories Director Dr Kim Budil.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the breakthrough a ‘landmark achievement.’ 

Granholm said scientists at Livermore and other national labs do work that will help the US ‘solve humanity’s most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change and maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.’

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China and the US Are Racing to Go Nuclear in Space

China has disclosed new details of its space exploration plan in the next decade, including the use of nuclear energy to power its moon base, intensifying its space race with the U.S. 

“We are now developing a new system that uses nuclear energy to address the moon station’s long-term, high-power energy demands,” said Wu Weiren, chief designer of the country’s Lunar Exploration Program, in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV on Monday. 

The outpost is developed in conjunction with Russia and is expected to be built by 2028 on the lunar south pole, which has patches of sunny spots as well as permanently shadowed craters. The U.S. has identified potential landing sites in the same area for its Artemis 3 mission, which is scheduled to launch in late 2025 to put Americans back on the moon using a SpaceX lander.

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Where Will the Nuclear Waste Go?

“Where will the state’s nuclear waste go?” was the headline of a story bannered last month across the front page of Connecticut’s largest newspaper, the Hartford Courant.

What, indeed, is to be done about the nuclear waste that has been produced at the two Millstone nuclear power plants which have been operating in Connecticut? (They are now the only nuclear power plants running in New England.)

And what is to be done about the nuclear waste at other nuclear power plants?

Decades ago, one scheme was to put it on rockets to be sent to the sun. But the very big problem, it was realized, is that one-in-100 rockets undergo major malfunctions on launch, mostly by blowing up.

As Forbes magazine has pointed out, because of the “possibility of launch failure” if “your payload is radioactive or hazardous and you have an explosion on launch…all of that waste will be uncontrollably distributed across Earth.”

So, scratch that idea.

Then there has been the plan to construct a “repository” for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It was designated the nation’s “permanent nuclear repository” in 1987 and $15 billion was spent preparing it.

The very big problem concerning Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump: it’s in “an active earthquake zone, with 33 faults on site.”

So, that idea was scratched.

Now, Finland has built a nuclear waste site for its four nuclear power plants. “Finland wants to bury nuclear waste for 100,000 years,” was the title of an CNBC’s piece about it and how it uses “a labyrinth of underground tunnels.”

The very big problem: nuclear waste needs to be isolated from life for way more than 100,000 years. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2004 ordered the EPA to rewrite its Yucca Mountain regulations to acknowledge a million years of hazard, notes Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for the organization Beyond Nuclear.

“And that’s actually a low-ball figure,” said Kamps in an interview.

Some nuclear waste stays radioactive for millions of years, Kamps points out: “Iodine-129 that is produced in reactors has a 15.7 million-year half-life.”

After a half-life, a radioactive material is half as radioactive as when it was produced. For determining a “hazardous lifetime,” a half-life is multiplied by 20.

Thus Iodine-129 remains radioactive for 314 million years.

“The design of the storage facility” for nuclear waste in Finland “has taken into account the potential impact of earthquakes and even future ice ages,” related CNBC. But not for anything close to millions of years.

So, what should be done about nuclear waste?

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