China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins

By DAKE KANG, MARIA CHENG and SAM MCNEIL

yesterday


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Huanan market vendor Jiang Dafa tends to his pigeons at home in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on Oct. 22, 2020. China's search for the COVID-19 virus started in the Huanan Seafood market in Wuhan, a sprawling, low-slung complex where many of the first human coronavirus cases were detected. Scientists initially suspected the virus came from wild animals sold in the market. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

MOJIANG, China (AP) — Deep in the lush mountain valleys of southern China lies the entrance to a mine shaft that once harbored bats with the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus.

The area is of intense scientific interest because it may hold clues to the origins of the coronavirus that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide. Yet for scientists and journalists, it has become a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity and secrecy.

A bat research team visiting recently managed to take samples but had them confiscated, two people familiar with the matter said. Specialists in coronaviruses have been ordered not to speak to the press. And a team of Associated Press journalists was tailed by plainclothes police in multiple cars who blocked access to roads and sites in late November.

More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an AP investigation shows the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins, clamping down on some while actively promoting fringe theories that it could have come from outside China.

The government is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to scientists researching the virus’ origins in southern China and affiliated with the military, the AP has found. But it is monitoring their findings and mandating that the publication of any data or research must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping, according to internal documents obtained by the AP. A rare leak from within the government, the dozens of pages of unpublished documents confirm what many have long suspected: The clampdown comes from the top.





As a result, very little has been made public. Authorities are severely limiting information and impeding cooperation with international scientists.

“What did they find?” asked Gregory Gray, a Duke University epidemiologist who oversees a lab in China studying the transmission of infectious diseases from animals to people. “Maybe their data were not conclusive, or maybe they suppressed the data for some political reason. I don’t know … I wish I did.”

The AP investigation was based on dozens of interviews with Chinese and foreign scientists and officials, along with public notices, leaked emails, internal data and the documents from China’s cabinet and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It reveals a pattern of government secrecy and top-down control that has been evident throughout the pandemic.

As the AP previously documented, this culture has delayed warnings about the pandemic, blocked the sharing of information with the World Health Organization and hampered early testing. Scientists familiar with China’s public health system say the same practices apply to sensitive research.

“They only select people they can trust, those that they can control,” said a public health expert who works regularly with the China CDC, declining to be identified out of fear of retribution. “Military teams and others are working hard on this, but whether it gets published all depends on the outcome.”

The pandemic has crippled Beijing’s reputation on the global stage, and China’s leaders are wary of any findings that could suggest they were negligent in its spread. The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Health Commission, which are managing research into the coronavirus’ origins, did not respond to requests for comment.

“The novel coronavirus has been discovered in many parts of the world,” China’s foreign ministry said in a fax. “Scientists should carry out international scientific research and cooperation on a global scale.”

Notices obtained by The AP link new research restrictions to Xi Jinping, China's most authoritarian leader in decades.

Some Chinese scientists say little has been shared simply because nothing of significance has been discovered.

“We’ve been looking, but we haven’t found it,” said Zhang Yongzhen, a renowned Chinese virologist.

China’s leaders are far from alone in politicizing research into the origins of the virus. In April, President Donald Trump shelved a U.S.-funded project to identify dangerous animal diseases in China and Southeast Asia, effectively severing ties between Chinese and American scientists and complicating the search for virus origins. Trump also has accused China of setting off the pandemic through an accident at a Wuhan lab — a theory that some experts say cannot be ruled out but as yet has no evidence behind it.

Research into COVID-19’s origins is critical to the prevention of future pandemics. Although a World Health Organization international team plans to visit China in early January to investigate what started the pandemic, its members and agenda had to be approved by China.

Some public health experts warn that China’s refusal to grant further access to international scientists has jeopardized the global collaboration that pinpointed the source of the SARS outbreak nearly two decades ago. Jonna Mazet, a founding executive director of the UC Davis One Health Institute, said the lack of collaboration between Chinese and U.S. scientists was “a disappointment” and the inability of American scientists to work in China “devastating.”

“There’s so much speculation around the origins of this virus,” Mazet said. “We need to step back...and let scientists get the real answer without the finger-pointing.”

___

The hidden hunt for the origins of COVID-19 shows how the Chinese government has tried to steer the narrative.

The search started in the Huanan Seafood market in Wuhan, a sprawling, low-slung complex where many of the first human coronavirus cases were detected. Scientists initially suspected the virus came from wild animals sold in the market, such as civet cats implicated in the spread of SARS.

In mid-December last year, Huanan vendor Jiang Dafa started noticing people were falling ill. Among the first was a part-time worker in his 60s who helped clean carcasses at a stall; soon, a friend he played chess with also fell ill. A third, a seafood monger in his 40s, was infected and later died.

Patients began trickling into nearby hospitals, triggering alarms by late December that alerted the China CDC. CDC chief Gao Fu immediately sent a team to investigate.

At first, research appeared to be moving swiftly.

Overnight on Jan. 1, the market suddenly was ordered shut, barring vendors from fetching their belongings, Jiang said. China CDC researchers collected 585 environmental samples from door handles, sewage and the floor of the market, and authorities sprayed the complex down with sanitizer. Later, they would cart out everything inside and incinerate it.

Internal China CDC data obtained by the AP shows that by Jan. 10 and 11, researchers were sequencing dozens of environmental samples from Wuhan. Gary Kobinger, a Canadian microbiologist advising WHO, emailed his colleagues to share his concerns that the virus originated at the market.

“This corona(virus) is very close to SARS,” he wrote on Jan. 13. “If we put aside an accident ... then I would look at the bats in these markets (sold and ‘wild’).”

By late January, Chinese state media announced that 33 of the environmental samples had tested positive. In a report to WHO, officials said 11 specimens were more than 99% similar to the new coronavirus. They also told the U.N. health agency that rats and mice were common in the market, and that most of the positive samples were clustered in an area where vendors traded in wildlife.

In the meantime, Jiang avoided telling people he worked at Huanan because of the stigma. He criticized the political tussle between China and the U.S.

“It’s pointless to blame anyone for this disease,” Jiang said.

As the virus continued spreading rapidly into February, Chinese scientists published a burst of research papers on COVID-19. Then a paper by two Chinese scientists proposed without concrete evidence that the virus could have leaked from a Wuhan laboratory near the market. It was later taken down, but it raised the need for image control.

Internal documents show that the state soon began requiring all coronavirus studies in China to be approved by high-level government officials — a policy that critics say paralyzed research efforts.

A China CDC lab notice on Feb. 24 put in new approval processes for publication under “important instructions” from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Other notices ordered CDC staff not to share any data, specimens or other information related to the coronavirus with outside institutions or individuals.

Then on March 2, Xi emphasized “coordination” on coronavirus research, state media reported.

The next day, China’s cabinet, the State Council, centralized all COVID-19 publication under a special task force. The notice, obtained by the AP and marked “not to be made public,” was far more sweeping in scope than the earlier CDC notices, applying to all universities, companies and medical and research institutions.

The order said communication and publication of research had to be orchestrated like “a game of chess” under instructions from Xi, and propaganda and public opinion teams were to “guide publication.” It went on to warn that those who publish without permission, “causing serious adverse social impact, shall be held accountable.”

“The regulations are very strict, and they don’t make any sense,” said a former China CDC deputy director, who declined to be named because they were told not to speak to the media. “I think it’s political, because people overseas could find things being said there that might contradict what China says, so it’s all being controlled.”

After the secret orders, the tide of research papers slowed to a trickle. Although China CDC researcher Liu Jun returned to the market nearly 20 times to collect some 2,000 samples over the following months, nothing was released about what they revealed.

On May 25, CDC chief Gao finally broke the silence around the market in an interview with China’s Phoenix TV. He said that, unlike the environmental samples, no animal samples from the market had tested positive.

The announcement surprised scientists who didn’t even know Chinese officials had taken samples from animals. It also ruled out the market as the likely source of the virus, along with further research that showed many of the first cases had no ties to it.

___

With the market proving a dead end, scientists turned more attention to hunting for the virus at its likely source: bats.

Nearly a thousand miles away from the wet market in Wuhan, bats inhabit the maze of underground limestone caves in Yunnan province. With its rich, loamy soil, fog banks and dense plant growth, this area in southern China bordering Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar is one of the most biologically diverse on earth.

Scientists worry about contact between bats and humans in caves like this one, in southern China's Yunnan province.

At one Yunnan cave visited by the AP, with thick roots hanging over the entrance, bats fluttered out at dusk and flew over the roofs of a nearby small village. White droppings splattered the ground near an altar in the rear of the cave, and Buddhist prayer strings of red and yellow twine hung from the stalactites. Villagers said the cave had been used as a sacred place presided over by a Buddhist monk from Thailand.

Contact like this between bats and people praying, hunting or mining in caves alarms scientists. The coronavirus’ genetic code is strikingly similar to that of bat coronaviruses, and most scientists suspect COVID-19 jumped into humans either directly from a bat or via an intermediary animal.

Since bats harboring coronaviruses are found in China and throughout Southeast Asia, the wild animal host of COVID-19 could be anywhere in the region, said Linfa Wang at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.

“There is a bat somewhere with a 99.9% similar virus to the coronavirus,” Wang said. “Bats don’t respect these borders.

COVID-19 research is proceeding in countries such as Thailand, where Dr. Supaporn Wacharapluesadee, a coronavirus expert, is leading teams of scientists deep into the countryside to collect samples from bats. During one expedition in August, Supaporn told the AP the virus could be found “anywhere” there were bats.

Chinese scientists quickly started testing potential animal hosts. Records show that Xia Xueshan, an infectious diseases expert, received a 1.4 million RMB ($214,000) grant to screen animals in Yunnan for COVID-19. State media reported in February that his team collected hundreds of samples from bats, snakes, bamboo rats and other animals, and ran a picture of masked scientists in white lab coats huddled around a large, caged porcupine.

Then the government restrictions kicked in. Data on the samples still has not been made public, and Xia did not respond to requests for an interview. Although Xia has co-authored more than a dozen papers this year, an AP review shows, only two were on COVID-19, and neither focused on its origins.

Today, the caves that scientists once surveyed are under close watch by the authorities. Security agents tailed the AP team in three locations across Yunnan, and stopped journalists from visiting the cave where researchers in 2017 identified the species of bats responsible for SARS. At an entrance to a second location, a massive cave teeming with tourists taking selfies, authorities shut the gate on the AP.

“We just got a call from the county,” said a park official, before an armed policeman showed up.

Vehicles blocking AP journalists from visiting a mine shaft where the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus was found.

Particularly sensitive is the mine shaft where the closest relative of the COVID-19 virus — called “RaTG13” — was found.

RaTG13 was discovered after an outbreak in 2012, when six men cleaning the bat-filled shaft fell ill with mysterious bouts of pneumonia, killing three. The Wuhan Institute of Virology and the China CDC both studied bat coronaviruses from this shaft. And although most scientists believe the COVID-19 virus had its origins in nature, some say it or a close relative could have been transported to Wuhan and leaked by mistake.

Wuhan Institute of Virology bat expert Shi Zhengli has repeatedly denied this theory, but Chinese authorities haven’t yet allowed foreign scientists in to investigate.

Some state-backed scientists say research is proceeding as usual. Famed virologist Zhang, who received a 1.5 million RMB ($230,000) grant to search for the virus’ origins, said partnering scientists are sending him samples from all over, including from bats in Guizhou in southern China and rats in Henan hundreds of miles north.

“Bats, mice, are there any new coronaviruses in them? Do they have this particular coronavirus?” Zhang said. “We’ve been doing this work for over a decade. It’s not like we just started today.”

Zhang declined to confirm or comment on reports that his lab was briefly closed after publishing the virus’ genetic sequence ahead of authorities. He said he hasn’t heard of any special restrictions on publishing papers, and the only review his papers go through is a routine scientific one by his institution.

But scientists without state backing complain that getting approval to sample animals in southern China is now extremely difficult, and that little is known about the findings of government-sponsored teams.

___

Even as they controlled research within China, Chinese authorities promoted theories that suggested the virus came from elsewhere.

The government gave Bi Yuhai, the Chinese Academy of Sciences scientist tapped to spearhead origins research, a 1.5 million RMB grant ($230,000), records show. A paper co-authored by Bi suggested an outbreak in a Beijing market in June could have been caused by packages of contaminated frozen fish from Europe.

China’s government-controlled media used the theory to suggest the original outbreak in Wuhan could have started with seafood imported from abroad — a notion international scientists reject. WHO has said it is very unlikely that people can be infected with COVID-19 via packaged food, and that it is “highly speculative” to suggest COVID-19 did not start in China. Bi did not respond to requests for an interview, and China has not provided enough virus samples for a definitive analysis.

Posters in southern China's Yunnan province advising people not to eat wild animals.

#BUSHMEAT BY ANY OTHER NAME

The Chinese state press also has widely covered initial studies from Europe suggesting COVID-19 was found in wastewater samples in Italy and Spain last year. But scientists have largely dismissed these studies, and the researchers themselves acknowledged they did not find enough virus fragments to determine conclusively if it was the coronavirus.

And in the last few weeks, Chinese state media has taken out of context research from a German scientist, interpreting it to suggest that the pandemic began in Italy. The scientist, Alexander Kekule, director of the Institute for Biosecurity Research, has said repeatedly that he believes the virus first emerged in China.

Internal documents show that various government bodies also sponsored studies on the possible role of the Southeast Asian pangolin, a scaly anteater once prized in traditional Chinese medicine, as an intermediary animal host. Within the span of three days in February, Chinese scientists put out four separate papers on coronaviruses related to COVID-19 in trafficked Malayan pangolins from Southeast Asia seized by customs officials in Guangdong.

But many experts now say the theory is unlikely. Wang of the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore said the search for the coronavirus in pangolins did not appear to be “scientifically driven.” He said blood samples would be the most conclusive evidence of COVID-19’s presence in the rare mammals, and so far, no incriminating matches have been found.

WHO has said more than 500 species of other animals, including cats, ferrets and hamsters, are being studied as possible intermediary hosts for COVID-19.

The Chinese government is also limiting and controlling the search for patient zero through the re-testing of old flu samples.

Chinese hospitals collect thousands of samples from patients with flu-like symptoms every week and store them in freezers. They could easily be tested again for COVID-19, although politics could then determine whether the results are made public, said Ray Yip, the founding director of the U.S. CDC office in China.

“They’d be crazy not to do it,” Yip said. “The political leadership will wait for that information to see, does this information make China look stupid or not? ... If it makes China look stupid, they won’t.”

In the U.S., CDC officials long ago tested roughly 11,000 early samples collected under the flu surveillance program since Jan. 1. And in Italy, researchers recently found a boy who had fallen ill in November 2019 and later tested positive for the coronavirus.

But in China, scientists have only published retrospective testing data from two Wuhan flu surveillance hospitals — out of at least 18 in Hubei province alone and well over 500 across the country. The data includes just 520 samples out of the 330,000 collected in China last year.

These enormous gaps in the research aren’t due just to a lack of testing but also to a lack of transparency. Internal data obtained by the AP shows that by Feb. 6, the Hubei CDC had tested over 100 samples in Huanggang, a city southeast of Wuhan. But the results have not been made public.

The little information that has dribbled out suggests the virus was circulating well outside Wuhan in 2019 — a finding that could raise awkward questions for Chinese officials about their early handling of the outbreak. Chinese researchers found that a child over a hundred kilometers from Wuhan had fallen ill with the virus by Jan. 2, suggesting it was spreading widely in December. But earlier samples weren’t tested, according to a scientist with direct knowledge of the study.

“There was a very deliberate choice of the time period to study, because going too early could have been too sensitive,” said the scientist, who declined to be named out of fear of retribution.

A WHO report written in July but published in November said Chinese authorities had identified 124 cases in December 2019, including five cases outside Wuhan. Among WHO’s aims for its upcoming visit to China are reviews of hospital records before December.

Coronavirus expert Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO team, said identifying the pandemic’s source should not be used to assign guilt.

“We’re all part of this together,” he said. “And until we realize that, we’re never going to get rid of this problem.”

___

Kang reported from Beijing and Cheng reported from London. Associated Press journalists Han Guan Ng and Emily Wang in Wuhan, China, Haven Daley in Stinson Beach, California, and Tassanee Vejpongsa in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Dake Kang, Sam McNeil and Maria Cheng on Twitter at @dakekang, @stmcneil and @mylcheng.

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@

Nashville bombing spotlights vulnerable voice, data networks
By TALI ARBEL

FILE - In this Dec. 29, 2020 file photo, debris remains on the sidewalk in front of buildings damaged in a Christmas Day explosion in Nashville, Tenn. The Christmas Day bombing in downtown Nashville led to communications outages over hundreds of miles in the southern U.S., raising concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. networks. Widespread service outages followed the explosion, which damaged a major AT&T network hub, extended hundreds of miles to at least four neighboring states, disrupting 911 call centers, hospitals and flights out of the Nashville airport. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

IN THE SEVENTIES AT&T AKA MA BELL WAS THE MOST HATED MONOPOLY IN THE USA. ONE OF THE REASONS IT WOULD EVENTUALLY BE BROKEN UP. IN THE SEVENTIES WE HAD MAD BOMBERS TOO (DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEES OR CUSTOMERS OR PEOPLE WITH TINFOIL HATS)

PHOENIX (AP) — The Christmas Day bombing in downtown Nashville led to phone and data service outages and disruptions over hundreds of miles in the southern U.S., raising new concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. communications.

The blast seriously damaged a key AT&T network facility, an important hub that provides local wireless, internet and video service and connects to regional networks. Backup generators went down, which took service out hours after the blast. A fire broke out and forced an evacuation. The building flooded, with more than three feet of water later pumped out of the basement; AT&T said there was still water on the second floor as of Monday.

The immediate repercussions were surprisingly widespread. AT&T customers lost service — phones, internet or video — across large parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. There were 911 centers in the region that couldn’t take calls; others didn’t receive crucial data associated with callers, such as their locations. The Nashville police department’s phones and internet failed. Stores went cash-only.

At some hospitals, electronic medical records, internet service or phones stopped working. The Nashville airport halted flights for about three hours on Christmas. Rival carrier T-Mobile also had service issues as far away as Atlanta, 250 miles away, because the company uses AT&T equipment for moving customer data from towers to the T-Mobile network.

“People didn’t even realize their dependencies until it failed,” said Doug Schmidt, a Vanderbilt University computer science professor. “I don’t think anyone recognized the crucial role that particular building played” in the region’s telecom infrastructure, he said.

The explosion, which took place in the heart of the Nashville’s historic downtown, killed the bomber, injured several people and damaged dozens of buildings. Federal officials are investigating the motive and haven’t said whether the AT&T building was specifically targeted.

AT&T said 96% of its wireless network was restored Sunday. As of Monday evening, AT&T said “nearly all services” were back up. On Wednesday, it was “activating the last of the remaining wireline equipment.”

AT&T said it sent temporary cell towers to help in affected areas and rerouted traffic to other facilities as it worked to restore power to the Nashville building . But not all traffic can be rerouted, spokesperson Jim Greer said, and there was physical equipment that had to be fixed in a building that was part of an active crime scene, which complicated AT&T workers’ access.

“We are all too dependent on phone, cell phone, TV and internet to have outages for any reason,” Rep. Jim Cooper, the Democrat who represents Nashville in Congress, said in an emailed statement Wednesday. He said the U.S. “needs to harden our telecom facilities so we have greater redundancy and reliability” and called for congressional hearings on reducing telecom vulnerabilities.

The impact on emergency services may have raised the most serious flags. At one point, roughly a hundred 911 centers had service problems in Tennessee alone, said Brian Fontes, head of the National Emergency Number Association. A 911 call center should still be operational even if there is damage to a phone company’s hub, said David Turetsky, a lecturer at the University at Albany and a former public safety official at the Federal Communications Commission. If multiple call centers were out of service for several days, “that is of concern,” he said.

Cooper and experts like Fontes also gave AT&T credit for their work on reinstating services. “To be able to get some services up and running within 24 to 48 hours of a catastrophic blast in this case is pretty amazing,” Fontes said.

Local authorities turned to social media on Christmas Day, posting on Facebook and Twitter that 911 was down and trying to reassure residents by offering other numbers to call. A Facebook page for Morgan County 911 in northern Alabama said Saturday that Alabama 911 centers were up and running but advised AT&T customers with issues to try calling via internet, and to go to the local police or fire station for help if they couldn’t get through.

The Nashville police department uses the FirstNet system built by AT&T, which the carrier boasts can provide “fast, highly reliable interoperable communications” in emergencies and that is meant to prioritize first responders when networks are stressed. But problems emerged around midday Friday, said spokesperson Kristin Mumford. The department had to turn to a backup provider, CenturyLink, for its landlines and internet at headquarters and precincts and obtained loaner cellphones and mobile hotspots from Verizon.

The transition to backups was “actually rather seamless,” Mumford said, although the public couldn’t make calls to police precincts. She said the AT&T service started coming back Sunday and as of Wednesday morning, overall service with cellphones, internet and landlines was “about 90% up.”

The Parthenon, a museum replica of the Parthenon in Athens located about three miles from the explosion, still didn’t have a working phone four days after the blast. But its credit-card system came back online Tuesday, said John Holmes, an assistant director of Metro Parks, the museum’s owner. During the weekend, the museum was cash-only, although it let in people without cash for free.

It’s not as if the physical vulnerability of communications networks comes as a surprise. Natural disasters like hurricanes frequently wipe out service as the power goes out and wind, water or fire damage infrastructure. Recovery can take days, weeks or even longer. Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico in a near communications blackout with destroyed telephone poles, cell towers and power lines. Six months later there were still areas without service.

Software bugs and equipment failures have also caused widespread problems. A December 2018 CenturyLink outage lasted for more than a day and disrupted 911 calls in over two dozen states and affected as many as 22 million people. That included blocked calls for Verizon customers and busy signals for Comcast customers, which both used CenturyLink’s network.

“Avoiding single points of failure is vital for any number of reasons, whether it has to do with physical damage, human error, hostile action or any of the above,” Turetsky said. “We need our networks to be resilient regardless of earthquake, tornado, terrorist, cyber attacker or other threat.”

The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell"), as it held a vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services in most areas of the United States and Canada. 

Bell System - Wikipedia

Ma Bell is back. Should you be afraid?

slate.com › news-and-politics › 2007/01 › ma-bell-is-ba...

Jan 4, 2007 — Today, that would mean messing with search engines, slowing down your cousin's blog, degrading YouTube or voice-over-IP, and so on

"The President's Analyst" fights back against the phone company and its accomplice, J. Edgar Hoover and his Electric G-Men. It is one of the funniest movies of the year, ranking with " The Graduate " and "Bedazzled" in the sharp edge of its satire. James Coburn stars as an analyst who is called in to give the President someone to talk to.

The President's Analyst movie review (1968) | Roger Ebert

www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-presidents-analyst-1968

CAPITALI$M IN SPACE

US NRC considers extending nuclear power plant operating licenses to 100 years


The nuclear industry and nuclear power advocates in government are “desperately trying to hold on.”

By Karl Grossman
-December 31, 2020
SOURCE NationofChange



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Nuclear power plants when they began being constructed were not seen as running for more than 40 years because of radioactivity embrittling metal parts and otherwise causing safety problems. But in recent decades, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has extended the operating licenses of nuclear power plants from 40 years to 60 years and then 80 years, and is now considering 100 years.

“It is crazy,” declares Robert Alvarez, a former senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy and a U.S. Senate senior investigator and now senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is an author of the book Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation.

“No reactor in history has lasted that long,” comments Alvarez. The oldest nuclear power plant in the U.S. was Oyster Creek, five miles south of Toms River, New Jersey, which opened in 1969 and was shut down 49 years later in 2018.

The move is “an act of desperation in response to the collapse of the nuclear program in this country and the rest of the world,” he declares.

The nuclear industry and nuclear power advocates in government are “desperately trying to hold on,” says Alvarez. With hardly any new nuclear power plants being constructed in the U.S. and the total number down to 94, they seek to have the operating licenses of existing nuclear power plants extended, he says, to keep the nuclear industry alive.

It’s a sign of “the end of the messy romance with nuclear power.”

The NRC will be holding a webinar on January 21 to consider the extending of nuclear plant operating licenses to 100 years. As its announcement is headed: “PUBLIC MEETING ON DEVELOPMENT OF GUIDANCE DOCUMENTS TO SUPPORT LICENSE RENEWAL FOR 100 YEARS OF PLANT OPERATION.”

Nuclear power plant construction has been in a deep depression for some time. Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia are “the first new nuclear units built in the United States in the last three decades,” notes on its website Georgia Power, one of the companies involved in that project. The cost projection in 2008 to build the two nuclear plants was $14.3 billion. “Now, updated estimates put the total project cost at roughly $28 billion,” states Taxpayers for Common Sense, and construction is more than five years behind schedule.

It’s not just the gargantuan price of nuclear power, and the preferability economically today of green, renewable energy led by solar and wind. Nuclear plant construction in the U.S. and much of the world has been in the doldrums because of the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plant catastrophes. People not only don’t want to waste their money—they don’t want to lose their lives to nuclear power.

“There is no empirical evidence” to support the notion that nuclear plants can have a century-long life span, says Alvarez. There “is no penciling away the problems of age” of nuclear power plants which operate under high-pressure, high-heat conditions and are subject to radiation fatigue. “The reality of wear-and-tear can’t be wished away.”

“Who would want to ride in a 100 year-old car?” he asks.

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project of the organization Beyond Nuclear, says: “The new construction of nuclear power plants is proving to be more expensive and more dubious than ever before. So, the nuclear industry and the NRC are in the process of developing a plan to get these existing aging and inherently dangerous machines to run for 100 years.”

“This raises all kinds of problems that have never been addressed,” says Gunter.

And the NRC and the U.S. Department of Energy don’t want to address them.

Gunter points to what happened to a report which the NRC commissioned the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to make. “The federal laboratory was contracted by the NRC to develop the criteria and guidance document to address and close numerous ‘knowledge gaps’ in the license renewal safety review process to provide the ‘reasonable assurance’ that the reactors could be operated reliably and safely into the license extension period,” relates Gunter. The 2017 report raised many significant issues regarding extending the operating licenses of nuclear plants.

The report is titled “Criteria and Planning Guidance for Ex-Plant Harvesting to Support Subsequent License Renewal.”

It “was publicly posted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to its website in December 2017,” relates Gunter, “as well as to the websites of the Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information and the International Atomic Energy Commission’s International Nuclear Information System.”

But then Gunter attended a public meeting at the NRC’s headquarters in Rockville, Maryland on September 26, 2018, on operating license extensions “and I started asking questions citing the report” of the year before. The NRC officials there “were quite surprised.”

And the NRC “wiped all three websites of the report.”

The NRC was to repost the report, but it was then “scrubbed clean of dozens of references to safety-critical knowledge ‘gaps’ pertaining to many known age-related degradation mechanisms described in the original published report,” says Gunter. “The NRC revision also scrubbed Pacific Northwest National Laboratory findings and recommendations to ‘require’ the harvesting of realistic and representative aged materials from decommissioning nuclear power stations—base metals, weld materials, electric cables, insulation and jacketing, reactor internals and safety-related concrete structures like the containment and spent fuel pool—for laboratory analyses of age degradation. The laboratory analyses are intended to provide ‘reasonable assurance’ of the license extension safety review process for the projected extension period.”

However, Beyond Nuclear had downloaded and saved a copy of the original report which you can view here.

And you can view what Gunter terms the “sanitized version” of the report which has the same title but is dated March 2019. It’s here.

The omissions start with what is headed “Abstract” in the 2017 report. The “Abstract” states: “As U.S. nuclear power plants look to subsequent license renewal (SLR) to operate for a 20-year period beyond 60 years, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry will be addressing technical issues around the capability of long-lived passive components to meet their functionality objectives. A key challenge will be to better understand likely materials degradation mechanisms in these components and their impacts on component functionality and safety margins. Research addressing many of the remaining technical gaps in these areas for SLR may greatly benefit from materials sampled from plants (decommissioned or operating). Because of the cost and inefficiency of piecemeal sampling, there is a need for a strategic and systematic approach to sampling materials from structures, systems and components in both operating and decommissioned plants.”

But in the 2019 version of the report, this “Abstract,” among other material, is gone.

Meanwhile, says Gunter, it is the practice of the nuclear industry as part of decommissioning nuclear power plants “to knock these plants down and bury them as quickly as they can” and “ignore having critical post-mortem autopsies.” Components of the plants are not studied to determine the extent of wear including “how radiation affects concrete and impacts on what had been inaccessible areas of the plants.” Not being done are analyses of the impacts of embrittlement of metals notably on the reactor pressure vessel caused by radiation exposure, as well as “extreme temperatures and vibration.” The industry resistance, he said, is based on the cost of such examinations. Further, there “are 600 miles of electrical cable in a typical nuclear power plant” which energizes control monitors and other components. Cabling and its “insulation and jacketing” are also not being inspected but “buried with the plant.” Overall, the “real world effects of aging” are not being gauged, says Gunter. And the original Pacific Northwest National Laboratory report, he emphasizes, would “require” this be done.

The first nuclear power plants given permission by the NRC to operate for 60 years were, in 1999, the two Calvert Cliffs plants located on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay near Lusby, Maryland 45 miles southeast of Washington D.C. Most U.S. nuclear power plants are now licensed to operate for 60 years. Originally, 40 years was the operating license limit.

The first U.S. nuclear power plants to have their operating licenses extended to 80 years were, in 2019, Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point Units 3 and 4 near Homestead, Florida, 25 miles south of Miami.

The Associated Press conducted “a yearlong investigation of aging issues at the nation’s nuclear power plants” and, in an article in June 2011 by Jeff Donn, reported: “Regulators contend that the 40-year limit was chosen for economic reasons and to satisfy safety concerns, not for safety issues. They contend that a nuclear plant has no technical limit on its life. But an AP review of historical records, along with an interview with an engineer who helped develop nuclear power, shows just the opposite: Reactors were made to last only 40 years. Period.”

Further, the piece—”Aging Nukes: NRC and industry rewrite nuke history”—said “the AP found that the relicensing process often lacks fully independent safety reviews. Records show that paperwork of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometimes matches word-for-word the language used in a plant operator’s application.”

Getting operating license extensions “is a lucrative deal for operators,” said AP.

Priscilla Star, director of the Coalition Against Nukes, said of extending the operating licenses of nuclear power plants to 100 years: “There is no sane argument to perpetuate the lifespan of our already decrepit nuclear reactors other than the NRC seeking to perpetuate the endless profits to its licensees.”

“All kinds of technical foul-ups occur in the daily operations of a nuclear power plant,” she continued. “It’s a crap shoot running any of them safely on any given day because human error plays such a big part of operational safety. More frequent cyber hacking will also put hs at greater risk if this form of energy production is not abolished in favor of renewables. It’s time for a presidential administration to curb the noblesse oblige appetite of the NRC and once and for all consider it unsafe and unsound as a regulatory agency putting profit before public safety.”

What the NRC has also done in extending nuclear power plant licenses to 60 and then 80 years is to allow the plants to be “uprated” to generate more electricity—to run hotter and harder increasing the chance of accidents.

It is asking for nuclear disaster.

The late Alvin M. Weinberg, long-time director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a major promoter of nuclear technology, in 2004 published an essay in the journal Technology in Society titled: “On ‘immortal’ nuclear power plants.” He wrote about that a nuclear power plant could operate “100 years or more.” Earlier Weinberg coined the term “nuclear priesthood” for scientists being in a leading role in what he called the “Faustian bargain” of using nuclear power.

The link to the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. NRC webinar on January 21 is on its announcement which states that the “NRC is seeking public dialogue.” The meeting’s agenda on the announcement lists several time segments for “Open Discussion…Including General Public.” The announcement is here.

 

Last Day Of A Bummer Year - New Year's Message from Zeena

This WWII song "We'll Meet Again" sung by Vera Lynn, who died this year at the age of 103 years shortly after the first lockdown, is as relevant to our feelings of loss and disconnect in the current world-wide situation today as it was eighty years ago. 

ZEENA SCHRECK FORMERLY LAVEY

     

https://www.zeenaschreck.com/blog/last-day-of-a-bummer-year-new-years-message-from-zeena

Sinkhole swallows houses, 21 people missing as landslide hits Norway village

31 Dec, 2020 

This aerial picture provided by the Norwegian Rescue Service shows the damage after a landslide hit the village of Ask, near Norway's capital. Photo / NTB via AP

AP

A landslide has smashed into a residential area near the Norwegian capital, injuring at least 10 people, leaving 21 unaccounted for and destroying several homes.

Some 700 people have been evacuated amid fears of further landslides.

Norwegian police were alerted at 4am Wednesday (local time) to the slide in the village of Ask, in the municipality of Gjerdrum, some 20km northeast of Oslo.

The landslide cut across a road through Ask, leaving a deep ravine. Photo / AP

The landslide cut across a road through Ask, leaving a deep ravine that cars could not pass. Video footage showed dramatic scenes including one house falling into the ravine. Photos showed at least eight homes destroyed.

A house teeters on the edge of the ravine. Photo / AP

Police spokesman Roger Pettersen told Norwegian media there were no reports of missing people, but officials could not rule out the possibility of people in collapsed buildings. He said some 21 people registered to live in the area are unaccounted for.

"The 21 people may have evacuated themselves but may also still be in the landslide area," Pettersen told news agency NTB.

Rescue personnel arrive at the scene. Ten people are injured and 21 are missing after the landslide. Photo / AP

One of the injured was seriously hurt, while nine had lighter injuries. Weather at the time was reported to be challenging, with snow and full winter conditions.

Ask is home to some 5000 people.

At least eight homes were destroyed in the landslide. Photo / AP

"It hurts to see how the forces of nature have ravaged Gjerdrum. My thoughts go to all those affected by the landslide. Now it is important that the emergency services get their job done," Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg tweeted.

In a separate statement, she called the disaster "probably one of the biggest landslides we have had, and with the biggest consequences".

Quebec leaders forced to confront systemic racism in 2020

MONTREAL — It was a former CFL player and community activist who helped push the concept of systemic racism to the forefront in Quebec politics this year, after forcing the city of Montreal to confront the issue. 

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Balarama Holness used a provision in the city's charter to trigger a public consultation that would include 7,000 participants and produce 38 recommendations, including that Montreal recognize the systemic nature of racism and discrimination against racialized groups.

Holness's petition — signed by more than 22,000 people — was launched in 2018, but the results were released last June, shortly after the police-involved killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, which sparked anti-racism protests in the United States, Canada and around the world.

“The actions taken in Quebec and Montreal right now on issues of racism are directly derived from the public consultation that was forced on the city,” Holness said during a recent interview.

And while Montreal's mayor has said she recognized systemic racism existed and has vowed changes, the Quebec government has refused to accept the term. Instead, Premier Francois Legault created an anti-racism task force the same day in June the report in Montreal came out.

Holness said he believes the reticence toward using the term "systemic racism" comes from a fear among the majority of white Quebecers of seeing an erosion of their rights. “Their miscomprehension of the term also fuels this level of ignorance whereby systemic racism means all Quebecers are racist, which is simply not the case," Holness said.

The current debate over the term in Quebec is years in the making. Three years ago, the Liberals tried to hold a public consultation on systemic racism but cancelled the event after outcry from the public and the opposition. The government at the time said the consultation would amount to putting Quebecers on trial — an argument Legault has often repeated.

Quebec's unwillingness to address the systemic nature of racism — those biases, policies and practices entrenched in institutions — makes it difficult to address the issues, according to Dr. Myrna Lashley, assistant professor in McGill's psychiatry department.

"How do you fix the hole in your roof if you don't acknowledge there's a hole in your roof?" she said in a recent interview. "How do you think you're fixing something that doesn't exist?"

Part of the problem, Lashley said, is that people don't realize the oppressions racialized people are denouncing are rooted in 17th century colonialism. "It has become so inherited that people subconsciously just buy into it because it's all they've seen," Lashley said. "And those below the line, they've incorporated they are below the line."

She dismissed the idea that white Quebecers would be put on trial if the government aknowledged the systemic nature of racism. "I don't think they've looked at it from that perspective," she said of white Quebecers. "I don't think these are bad people, they've never lived it, they don't understand it.

"It's quite annoying when someone who hasn't lived the reality tells you it doesn't exist."

And despite the government's attempts to move on from aknowledging the term, Legault and his cabinet have been confronted with a number of cases this year from groups urging they recognize systemic racism in Quebec.

One of those cases involved the death of Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw mother of seven who died in hospital in Joliette, Que., in September, after filming staff using derogatory slurs against her.

In the wake of her death, her family and her community produced a document called "Joyce's Principle," which called for a series of measures to assure that Indigenous people have equitable access to health services without discrimination.

The Legault government said it agreed with most aspects of the document, except the reference to systemic racism — about which it said it agreed to disagree.

Unlike other anti-racism activists, Holness, who played four years in the CFL and won a Grey Cup with Montreal in 2010, said he believes Quebec doesn't need to recognize systemic racism to address the problem. He said the Legault government recognizes many underlying issues in society such as racial profiling, under-representation of racialized people in the civil service and high unemployment among some immigrant communities.

“What they deem to be racism is what we call systemic racism — they’re still dealing with the issue, they’re just not saying the word," Holness said. “We can still advance these issues and move beyond the debate of the term.”

The anti-racism task force that Legault created in June produced a report at the end of 2020 with 25 recommendations, including that the province create a cabinet position to address racism and discrimination.

Whether or not there's consensus on the term, one civil rights advocate said that sooner or later, it will be the courts that will set the record straight.

Fo Niemi, co-founder of a Montreal non-profit that helps victims of discrimination and profiling navigate the legal system, said the courts have already issued rulings on systemic discrimination based on disability, gender and employment.

"At the political level, politicians and legislators can continue to deny systemic racism," Niemi said. "But we believe that eventually, it'll be through the courts that it will be more recognized in Quebec."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 30, 2020.

Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press

TRUMP'S WET DREAM

Putin targets U.S. social media, secret agent leaks and protests with new laws


MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin signed an array of laws on Wednesday handing Russia new powers to restrict U.S. social media giants, label individuals "foreign agents", and to crack down on the disclosure of its security officers' personal data.

© Reuters/SPUTNIK FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting outside Moscow

The laws, which also introduce new restrictions for protests, cap a year of constitutional reforms allowing Putin, 68, to stand for two more six-year terms in the Kremlin instead of stepping down in 2024 as he had been legally required to do.

Other reforms such as one granting former presidents lifelong immunity from prosecution have kept analysts guessing about his plans as Moscow's ties with the West have come under new strain over the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

One of Wednesday's laws enables Russia to block or restrict access to sites that "discriminate" against its media, part of a campaign under Putin to increase Russia's internet "sovereignty" that has fuelled fears of creeping China-style controls.

Twitter currently labels some Russian media "state-affiliated media", a move decried by Moscow. The law's backers cited complaints made about prejudice shown by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.


Video: Russia opens new criminal case against Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny (Reuters)

A second law introduces hefty fines of up to 20% of their previous year's Russia-based turnover for sites that repeatedly fail to remove banned content, something that YouTube and Facebook have often failed to do according to Russian lawmakers.

A third law prohibits the disclosure of the personal data of Russian security officials, records that are sometimes leaked online and have been used by investigative journalists to track clandestine operations.

Earlier this month, investigative website Bellingcat used flight records and other data to identify a group of alleged Federal Security Service agents whom Navalny has accused of trying to poison him in August, an allegation denied by Moscow.

Other new laws introduced jail sentences of up to two years for slander online as well as new regulations that would prohibit the funding of protests by "foreign agents" and allow rallies to be banned due to emergencies.

Another law granted authorities new powers to label individuals "foreign agents" and also jail them for five years if they fail to report their activities correctly.

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; editing by Angus MacSwan)

A 'very tough conversation' and a rockin' New Year’s Eve: In The News for Dec. 31

FDA: Pet food recalled after at least 28 dogs die
Jack Ma's wealth tumbles by $12 billion in 2 months as China seeks to shrink the billionaire's financial empire

© Shu Zhang/Reuters Alibaba founder Jack Ma. Shu Zhang/Reuters

Alibaba founder Jack Ma's wealth has fallen by $12 billion in just two months, from about $62 billion to $50.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Ma's net worth has dropped as China tightens rules for the financial technology industry in the country.
Beijing wants more oversight of Ma's financial empire: Ma's Ant Group has reportedly been forced to create a separate holding company for the group's financial operations.

The holding company will be regulated by China's central bank, potentially curbing its ability to expand at the rate it has been in the past few years

Jack Ma's net worth has dropped $12 billion since October, when China's regulators began implementing new rules for the fintech industry.

The 56-year-old Ma's stake in Alibaba and his many other ventures took his wealth to about $62 billion this year in October, setting him on track to become the richest man in Asia. But he has since dropped to 25th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks the 500 wealthiest people in the world.

His net worth currently stands at $50.9 billion, according to the index.

Regulators in October implemented new rules for the financial technology industry and online lenders, directly impacting the lucrative lending and credit business for Ma's Ant Group.

The rules are aimed at preventing monopolistic behavior by the country's large internet firms. Officials said there were "major issues" with Ant's planned IPO under the new rules, leading to its suspension.

Over the weekend, Chinese regulators ordered Ant Group to revamp parts of its business and "return to its payment origins," multiple outlets reported. Regulators met with company executives, the Telegraph reported, instructing the firm to rectify its "illegal" financial services, such as its lucrative online lending business.

Ant's consumer lending unit, wealth management services, and other profitable businesses will soon form a separate financial holding company regulated by the People's Bank of China, Bloomberg reported, citing sources.

Under the new structure, the fintech would be subject to further capital restrictions that may suppress its ability to expand at the rate it has been in the past few years, Bloomberg reported.

Furthermore, China is seeking to potentially secure a larger stake in Ma's businesses than he himself owns, according to the Wall Street Journal. The billionaire is the controlling shareholder of Ant, while Alibaba holds a roughly 33% non-controlling share in the group.

Pan Gongsheng, a deputy governor at China's central bank, said Ant had become indifferent to China's regulations, accusing the fintech of "turning a blind eye to compliance requirements," the FT reported.

Although Ant has transformed its business multiple times in accordance with regulatory oversight, the central bank deputy governor said this weekend that it "must integrate its development into the overall plan of the country's development."

China's order comes after Ma suggested giving up parts of Ant to the Chinese government. "You can take any of the platforms Ant has, as long as the country needs it," the billionaire told regulators at a November 2 meeting, according to the Journal.

But his offer failed to win acceptance, as China was unwilling to give up on a full crackdown.

Alibaba's shares have fallen by almost 23% since regulators pulled down Alibaba affiliate Ant's IPO plans.