Ukraine war pushes Germany to strengthen its bunker infrastructure



Fri, April 8, 2022

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany has started working on strengthening its basement shelters as well as building up crisis stocks in case of war, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported on Saturday, citing the country's interior minister.

After decades of attrition of Germany's armed forces, Russia's war in Ukraine has led to a major policy shift with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledging to increase defence spending and injecting 100 billion euros ($109 billion) into the army.

The government is also looking into upgrading its public shelter systems and will increase spending on civil protection, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told the newspaper.

"There are currently 599 public shelters in Germany. We will check whether we could upgrade more of such systems. In any case, the dismantling has stopped," Faeser said.

Germany is working on new concepts for strengthening underground parking lots, subway stations and basements to become possible shelters, she said, adding that the government has given the federal states 88 million euros to install new sirens.

"But as far as nationwide coverage is concerned, we're not even close," Faeser added.

The country will also build up crisis stocks with supplies including medical equipment, protective clothing, masks or medication, she said.

($1 = 0.9211 euros)

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Editing by Zuzanna Szymanska)

OMD ENOLA GAY

Chinese tests show nuclear bunkers are not what they used to be, with earth-penetrating weapons on the rise


Fri, April 8, 2022

China has built a new research facility to simulate an attack by nuclear bunker-busting weapons and learn how they damage defence facilities, even those built at extreme depths, according to military scientists involved in the project.

In the past, shelters buried several hundred metres deep were rated nuclear-proof but the Chinese test facility shows that a tunnel more than 2km (1.24 miles) under the surface could be destroyed, according to the researchers.

In one test, the simulated tunnel almost crumbled after taking hits the effective equivalent of five consecutive strikes by earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, an outcome that would have once been considered impossible.

For instance, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, home to the North American Aerospace Defence Command, was dubbed by the US military as the "most secure facility in the world" because it was protected by granite above more than 500 metres (1,600 feet) thick.

The Russian government's doomsday shelter was buried 300 metres deep in the Ural Mountains. West of Beijing, China's Joint Battle Command Centre, for extra precaution, was built in natural karst caves about 2km underground.

Openly available information suggests most ground-penetrating weapons could not reach a depth beyond 40 metres (130 feet).

But with the recent rapid development of technology, existing safety standards may be outdated and have "severely underestimated the actual impact" of nuclear weapons, said Li Jie, lead project scientist with the Army Engineering University of PLA in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, in a paper published in the peer-reviewed Chinese Journal of Rock Mechanics and Engineering last week.

According to some calculations by Chinese researchers based on underground nuclear testing data and computer simulation, the destruction caused by a nuclear bunker buster using the latest technology could reach three to 10 times deeper underground than previously thought.




If carefully planned, a tactical nuclear warhead could trigger seismic activity which would release total energy up to 1,000 times that produced by the weapon itself, causing irreparable damage to infrastructure far from the detonation site, Li and his colleagues said.

Major nuclear powers have a growing interest in small-yield bunker busters because these weapons produce little or no radioactive fallout to pollute the environment.

The latest model of the US B61 nuclear bomb, under development since 2019, has a yield ranging from 0.3 to 50 kilotons - just a fraction of the power of conventional nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.

These relatively "clean" nuclear weapons can be delivered by hypersonic missile to evade missile defence systems and hit the same strategic target - such as government and military headquarters far behind battle lines - multiple times.

Replicating a nuclear bunker-busting process in a laboratory has several challenges, according to Li.



The shock waves produced by a nuclear explosion were not only powerful but their shapes changed as the waves went through the ground, the team said, adding that a suitable simulating platform required the right waves to arrive at the right place at the right time - a difficult achievement.

Li and his colleagues found that a tunnel buried 2km deep would be squeezed by the rocks around it with the average stress reaching more than 600kg (1,300lbs) per square centimetre (0.2 square inches).

In the scale model testing facility, sample blocks of various rock types were put into a machine applying pressure from all sides, with high-strength liquid-filled capsules placed between the plates and rock samples.

The rocks were pressed over a long period until the structure stabilised before a tunnel could be bored slowly into the rocks to create a bunker.

A heavy metal bullet would be fired at the rocks from above, simulating the blast of a nuclear warhead with a yield up to 200 kilotons.



The results of some initial experiments at the facility suggested that a popular theory used to design most nuclear-proof bunkers around the world could be wrong, according to Li's team.

The theory assumed the Earth's crust was, more or less, one piece and that the shocks from a nuclear blast travelled in the ground like waves in water, losing energy as their distance increased.

But the test results showed that the shock waves could "jump" from one location to another, ultimately passing the destructive energy farther than previously thought possible.

Data from the experiments could lead to a more accurate mathematical model to predict how severely an underground facility would be damaged under multiple nuclear strikes and what measures could be taken to reduce the destruction, according to the researchers.

China has maintained a nuclear stockpile smaller than those in the United States and Russia and Beijing has said that it would not use a nuclear weapon unless China came under attack.

But to retaliate, its nuclear forces would need to survive the first wave of attack.

In January, five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council issued a rare joint statement declaring that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought" and must be avoided to the best of their ability.

Copyright (c) 2022. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

A NATION OF HACKERS

Ukraine's 285,000 IT specialists power apps and software around the globe, and many of them are still working from Ukraine as the war rages around them


Huileng Tan
Fri, April 8, 2022


Ukraine is an IT outsourcing powerhouse.

It exports $6.8 billion in services a year, accounting for about 4% of the country's GDP.

Many Ukraine IT workers are still working to serve clients globally amid the ongoing war with Russia.

Maxim Ivanov left the northeastern city of Kharkiv when Russian airstrikes started on February 24.

He and his wife bundled their seven-year-old twins and pet cat into a car and headed west. The family eventually ended up in the central Ukrainian city of Uman. More than a month later, part of Ivanov's life has taken on a hum of regularity as he continues to work at Aimprosoft, the software development firm he cofounded in 2005

Uman is in a safe zone, Ivanov told Insider, but "it can still be a stressful situation because there is always the possibility of airstrikes." He has been considering sending his kids abroad to get them away from the war, but he will stay on in Ukraine, where he services clients from as far as the US, the European Union, UAE, and Israel. Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are currently banned from leaving the country, as they may be drafted.

As the war in Ukraine progresses into its seventh week, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian IT specialists like Ivanov have continued to work in the country, keeping apps and services around the world going. While many are working from Ukrainian cities that are currently considered safe zones, others are still in dangerous locations.
Ukraine is an IT outsourcing powerhouse

Ukraine is an IT-outsourcing powerhouse, exporting $6.8 billion of services a year — about 4% of the country's GDP, according to the IT Ukraine Association. There were about 285,000 IT professionals in Ukraine in 2021, servicing clients around the world, per the industry association.

It has also a prominent tech-startup scene. Online-writing assistant Grammarly and code repository GitLab were both founded in Ukraine, though both have been based in the US for several years. Other tech companies, like Estonian ride-hailing startup Bolt and neo-bank Revolut, have had staff based out of the country. Both offered relocation support to employees based in the country after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Insider previously reported.

In Uman, which is not currently in a war zone, Ivanov said the internet connection and bank services have been relatively stable, and they have allowed him to keep Aimprosoft's operations going.

Ivanov is now working out of a hotel room in Uman.

Maxim Ivanov, CEO and co-founder of Aimprosoft working out of his hotel room in Uman, Ukraine.

The company has kept up with 50 to 70 projects, he said. One project was briefly put on hold due to security concerns that were eventually resolved.

"There were about three days of chaos at the beginning of the war, but we try to give support to everyone," he said. The COVID-19 pandemic also helped employees adjust to remote work before the war, he added.
Keeping their focus

According to a poll by IT Ukraine, more than 70% of IT professionals are working from the safe regions of Ukraine. Another 16% — who are mostly women — have left due to the war and are working overseas, per the survey published on March 23. The survey covered 30 IT companies in Ukraine that employ 34,000 IT professionals in total.

And the survey shows that 77% of companies have retained almost all customers and contracts.

Some IT staff are working from cities where multiple air-raid sirens could be going off in a day, so they need to hunker down to work in bomb shelters, said Mikki Kobvel, the CEO of Kobvel Software Consulting, a Ukrainian company that has staff based around the world.

Konstantin Vasyuk, the executive director of the IT Ukraine Association, was speaking to journalists virtually from an undisclosed location with air raid sirens in the background, Computerworld reported last week.

"My employees do work sometimes from bomb shelters," Kobvel told Insider of his Ukraine-based staff. "Even if you stay in the safe zone, which is Western Ukraine, you hear the air raid sirens at least twice a day, so it's a routine to go once or twice a day. They go inside, stay there for one hour and then go back. So some people they don't go out, they just stay inside and they just work from there."

When Russian troops started amassing at the Ukrainian border late last year, some Ukrainian companies developed contingency plans to move developers from at-risk areas. Aimprosoft, for example, set up an office in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk a month before the war started. Most of Ivanov's 350 staff members are now working from there.

And Kobvel said he is renting a safe house in Spain to shelter staff and other Ukrainians who need help on their way out of the country.

Ukrainian IT Aimprosoft's new office at Ivano-Frankivsk.

At Aimprosoft, programmers kept delivering on their work after a period of transition, one of the company's clients told Insider.

"Obviously, they dedicated time to making sure that they were safe and their family is safe but I can only describe it as a mental strength and fortitude to just keep on working," said Jordan Ellington, the founder and CEO of US-based SessionGuardian, which has been working with Aimprosoft for about a decade.
Triggering business contingency plans

Ultimately, however, amid the uncertainties of war, some Ukrainian IT firms are losing business, Kobvel told Insider.

"Because of business risk, a lot of companies just cut down on outsourcing to Ukraine or are cutting staff," Singapore-based Kobvel said. He runs a team of about 35 people, 25 of whom are currently still in Ukraine.

According to DOU.ua, a Ukrainian platform for IT professionals, job vacancies for various levels fell 40% to 80% over the three weeks after war broke out.

While Ellington said he intend to stand by his Ukrainian contractors, he also said he's planning for any risk to business continuity.

Ellington said he has resources in other geographies and is thinking of nearshoring in Latin America, Canada, or the US. "From a risk management perspective, I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket," he said.

Ukraine war: one possible casualty may be Beijing's economic relationship with Kyiv

Fri, April 8, 2022

A new metro line in Kyiv. A US$50 million revamp of a shipping port in Mariupol. A large wind farm on the Black Sea coast.

Since Ukraine signed on in 2017 to Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) - a sweeping trade and investment plan to bolster China's economic ties with the rest of the world - Chinese contractors and lenders have embarked on numerous ambitious infrastructure projects in the eastern European state.

Shelling has taken a heavy toll in the southern Ukraine city of Mariupol, raising uncertainty over the status of a China-sponsored US$50 million upgrade of the port. Photo: Reuters alt=Shelling has taken a heavy toll in the southern Ukraine city of Mariupol, raising uncertainty over the status of a China-sponsored US$50 million upgrade of the port. 

Those projects are in keeping with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's ambition for his nation to serve as a "bridge to Europe" for Chinese investment, as he told Chinese President Xi Jinping last year.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has now thrust that future into doubt, according to economists and BRI experts.

Not only has the conflict disrupted projects in Ukraine and threatened Russia's role as a critical BRI artery, Beijing's refusal to condemn Russia's invasion - or even recognise the attack as an invasion - has frustrated Kyiv and led some in Ukraine to question whether Beijing should remain its primary economic partner.

"We believe that China, as one of the most potent global leaders, should play a more noticeable role in bringing this war to the end," Andriy Yermak, head of Zelensky's presidential office, said recently at a virtual event organised by Chatham House.

China has abstained from or sided with Russia in all United Nations votes about the war. And while it has pledged neutrality, China's state media and diplomats have blamed Washington and Nato for the conflict.

China's nominal neutrality was "de facto" support for Russia, argued Vasyl Yurchyshyn, director of economic and social programmes at the Razumkov Centre, a leading think tank in Kyiv.

Ukrainians were "disappointed", Yurchyshyn said, suggesting that such frustrations may translate to public opposition to future BRI agreements.

"At the beginning of the initiative, we welcomed it," he said of the BRI. But as for the future? "We'll see."

"We believe that China, as one of the most potent global leaders, should play a more noticeable role in bringing this war to the end," said Andriy Yermak (right), shown with President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 16. Photo: Ukrinform/dpa alt="We believe that China, as one of the most potent global leaders, should play a more noticeable role in bringing this war to the end," said Andriy Yermak (right), shown with President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 16. 

Ukraine was now at a crossroads where it had to "clearly identify its main partner", said Yurchyshyn. "Of course, there should be no doubt here - the viability of Ukraine today definitely depends on the United States."

Yurchyshyn acknowledged that a pivot risked sacrificing the economic benefits of Ukraine's China ties, including those of the BRI. But Ukraine's shift from Russian markets after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 offers a guide. Ukraine moved swiftly to ramp up trade ties with the European Union, and Russia soon lost its status as the country's top trading partner.

Today, China occupies that spot, importing huge amounts of corn, seed oil and iron ore from Ukraine, with exports to China in 2021 totalling some US$8 billion, according to Ukrainian government data.

Ukraine's exports have cratered amid the conflict, sending shock waves through the global food market - the UN's World Food Programme sources half its supplies from the country, prompting fears of worsening famines in Africa and the Middle East.

But when agricultural exports eventually resume, Ukraine may be able to find other markets beyond China for goods, said Yurchyshyn. With global food demand expected to grow over the next decade, "Ukraine's reorientation to new markets - in particular, to the highly dynamic countries of Southeast Asia - may bring long-term benefits", he said.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, did not respond to questions about whether Beijing was preparing for a fraying of its economic ties with Kyiv. But he insisted that China would "carry out normal trade cooperation with Russia and Ukraine in the spirit of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit".

The Ukrainian ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to a request seeking comment on whether Kyiv anticipates any economic shift away from Beijing.

Political considerations aside, analysts said that any BRI agreements with Ukraine are now likely to have been put on ice amid the fighting.

Over the past five years, Chinese firms have taken part in more than 30 investment projects in Ukraine, according to Janes, an open-source intelligence firm that tracks Chinese investments.

Among the highest-profile projects was an agreement between a Chinese state-owned agricultural company and Ukrainian seaport authorities for China to pump US$50 million into the expansion of port facilities in Mariupol.

The status of that project is now uncertain, after weeks of sustained Russian attacks on Mariupol killed almost 5,000 civilians and damaged 90 per cent of the buildings there, according to city officials. Port infrastructure was reported to have been affected.

"It would be completely normal for China to take a pause, especially if there's active fighting, but even well after the fighting" as Chinese firms re-evaluate the commercial viability of projects in Ukraine, said Matthew Mingey, a senior analyst at the Rhodium Group.

An aerial view on April 3 of residential buildings damaged by shelling in Mariupol. 

Citing industry insiders, the Chinese state-owned Global Times tabloid has reported that following warnings from the Chinese embassy in Kyiv, large state-owned companies operating in Ukraine are making contingency plans and bracing for the prospect that future projects may get put on ice.

But Ukraine's need to rebuild after the war is a potential opportunity for BRI contractors to restart engagement, analysts said.

"Regardless of the outcome of the war, it seems likely that Chinese companies that already had a presence in Ukraine would directly transmit humanitarian assistance to affected communities," said Courtney Hulse, an analyst at Janes.

If the swift international response to punish Russia is any indication, the field is likely to be packed, with lenders like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development already lining up to assist Ukraine's rebuilding efforts.

Nations looking for development financing have often turned to BRI financing when there "wasn't a good option" from another multilateral development institution, said Michael Bennon, a research scholar at Stanford University specialising in global infrastructure policy.

"It's really just a function of the number of options. And my prediction would be that in a post-conflict scenario here, Ukraine is going to have a lot of options."

The US is also eyeing the war's potential economic fallout, which may present opportunities to its agency, the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) - Washington's alternative to the BRI.

Beyond the humanitarian cost, the Kremlin's actions had caused "acute economic shocks felt across the global community, particularly in the energy and agricultural sectors", Algene Sajery, DFC's vice-president for external affairs, said.

Sajery said that the DFC's strategy for Europe was focused on "breaking the grip of coercive economic relationships like those that Russia and the PRC employ".

Given the pace at which the Russia-Ukraine conflict has unfolded, analysts cautioned that a picture of the war's broader impact on the BRI would take time to come into focus.

For now, they said, it appeared that China's refusal to align itself with the West in condemning Russia has not yet affected its standing with its other BRI partners.

The EU's top diplomat said discussions last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders were a "dialogue of the deaf" when it came to Ukraine. 

"Although China's strategic partnership with Russia preceding and during the current war in Ukraine certainly puts stress on the already intense scrutiny that Chinese investment has received in recent years, many governments will prioritise their countries' economic security and prosperity over other issues," Hulse said.

But it was likely to cause policymakers in other countries that have taken a more hawkish approach to China's ambitions to double down on their critique of the BRI, Mingey said.

"If you were worried about Chinese influence, or you believed the 'debt-trap diplomacy' myth, it is fodder for you to see what you want to see, which is the spectre of a malign Chinese influence," he said. China's response to the invasion had already "poured gasoline" on existing China-EU tensions, he added.

On Tuesday, the EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, called talks last week with China a "dialogue of the deaf", chastising Beijing for refusing to weigh in on the crisis in Ukraine.

If the EU - which last year put the brakes on an investment deal with Beijing - decides to take an even harder line, that could pressure European BRI partners to re-evaluate their agreements, Bennon said.

One other area of concern: the war's impact on Russia as a primary rail freight conduit connecting China with its BRI partners in Eastern Europe.

US and EU financial sanctions on companies like the state-owned Russian Railways do not necessarily preclude businesses from using their services, but indications suggest that Moscow's political and economic isolation is already diminishing freight flows through the country.

A China-Europe freight train from Chengdu, arriving in Vienna, Austria, in 2018. The Ukraine war has already begun to affect such traffic, as freight companies reroute around Russia, and some companies stop sending goods by rail. 

And citing "ethical" reasons, the Dutch freight company Rail Bridge Cargo said it would halt all rail routes through Russia, shifting them southward to pass through countries including Kazakhstan, Georgia and Turkey.

Jacky Yan, a China-based freight industry professional whose company, New Silk Road Intermodal Co, specialises in shipments along BRI corridors, said there was already a noticeable shift in volume from rail freight through Russia to sea routes.

As for the major logistics businesses that had already sent "a signal to the market" by suspending service through Russia, Yan told a webinar hosted by RailFreight, an industry monitor: "I'm afraid that more companies will follow their steps."

Copyright (c) 2022. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Russia complains to Turkey over drones sales to Ukraine -Turkish bureaucrat



Fri, April 8, 2022

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Russia has complained to Turkey over its sale of Bayraktar TB2 armed drones to Ukraine, a high level Turkish bureaucrat said on Friday, but added the sales were by a private Turkish company and not state-to-state deals.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 on what he called a "special military operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine. Kyiv and the West say Putin launched an unprovoked war of aggression.

"Russians are upset and from time to time they are complaining about the drone sales. They used to complain and they are complaining right now," the bureaucrat said at a meeting with foreign media.

"But we have already given the answer ... that these are private companies and these drone purchases had been done before the war as well."

Turkey has forged close ties with Russia in energy, defence and trade, and relies heavily on Russian tourists. The Turkish defence firm Baykar had sold the drones to Kyiv despite Russian objections and signed a deal to co-produce more before the invasion, angering Moscow.

NATO member Turkey shares a maritime border with Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea, has good ties with both and has taken a mediating role in the conflict. It has hosted peace talks and is working to bring together the Ukrainian and Russian presidents.

While supporting Ukraine and criticising Russia's invasion, Turkey has also opposed widespread Western sanctions on Moscow, saying communication channels need to remain open and casting doubt on the effectiveness of the measures.

Ankara also opposes Russian policies in Syria and Libya, as well as its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

After peace talks between negotiators in Istanbul last week, Ukraine listed several nations, including Turkey and members of the UN Security Council, as possible guarantors for Kyiv's security. The bureaucrat said some countries listed would face "legal issues" as security guarantors, without elaborating.


Turkey has said it is ready, in principle, to be Ukraine's guarantor, but the details of the format need to be finalised.

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Writing by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Daren Butler and Nick Macfie)

USA

EXPLAINER: What to do with closed nuke plant’s wastewater?

By JENNIFER McDERMOTT

1 of 3

A portion of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is visible beyond houses along the coast of Cape Cod Bay, in Plymouth, Mass., March 30, 2011. Pilgrim, which closed in 2019, was a boiling water reactor. Water constantly circulated through the reactor vessel and nuclear fuel, converting it to steam to spin the turbine. The water was cooled and recirculated, picking up radioactive contamination. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

One million gallons of radioactive water is inside a former nuclear power plant along Cape Cod Bay and it has got to go.

But where, is the vexing question, and will the state intervene as the company dismantling the plant decides?

Holtec International is considering treating the water and discharging it into the bay, drawing fierce resistance from local residents, shell fishermen and politicians. Holtec is also considering evaporating the contaminated water or trucking it to a facility in another state.

The fight in Massachusetts mirrors a current, heated debate in Japan over a plan to release more than 1 million tons of treated radioactive wastewater into the ocean from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant in spring 2023. A massive tsunami in 2011 crashed into the plant. Three reactors melted down.

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Massachusetts, closed in 2019 after nearly half a century providing electricity to the region. U.S. Rep. William Keating, a Democrat whose district includes the Cape, wrote to Holtec with other top Massachusetts lawmakers in January to oppose releasing water into Cape Cod Bay. He asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to examine its regulations.

Keating said in late March that Holtec’s handling of the radioactive water could set a precedent because the U.S. decommissioning industry is in its infancy. Most U.S. nuclear plants were built between 1970 and 1990.

“If they’re listening, sensitive and work with these communities, it’s important,” he said. “That’s the message for future decommissioning sites.”

Holtec has acquired closed nuclear plants across the country as part of its dismantling business, including the former Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey and Indian Point Energy Center in New York. It’s taking ownership of the Palisades Nuclear Plant on Lake Michigan, which is closing this year.

Pilgrim was a boiling water reactor. Water constantly circulated through the reactor vessel and nuclear fuel, converting it to steam to spin the turbine. The water was cooled and recirculated, picking up radioactive contamination.

Cape Cod is a tourist hotspot. Having radioactive water in the bay, even low levels, isn’t great for marketing, said Democratic state Rep. Josh Cutler, who represents a district there. Cutler is working to pass legislation to prohibit discharging radioactive material into coastal or inland waters.

Holtec said Pilgrim already discharged water into the bay for 50 years while the plant was operating and environmental studies, conducted by the plant operators and now Holtec, have shown little or no environmental impact. Radiological environmental reports are shared with the NRC annually.

“We are working to provide scientific data, educate the public on the reality of radiation in everyday life, and working to have experts explain the true science versus the emotional fear of the unknown,” spokesperson Patrick O’Brien wrote in an email in March.

WHAT ARE HOLTEC’S OPTIONS?

Holtec could treat the water and discharge it in batches over multiple years, likely the least expensive option. Or, it could evaporate the water on site, as it says it has done with about 680,000 gallons (2,600 kiloliters) over the past two years.

Evaporating the water would be more challenging to do now because the spent nuclear fuel is in storage, and couldn’t be used as a heat source. Holtec would have to use a different — likely more expensive — method that would release gas.

Or, Holtec could truck the water to an out-of-state facility, where it could be mixed with clay and buried or placed in an evaporation pond, or released into local waterways. That’s what Keating wants.

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, another boiling water reactor, was shut down in Vernon, Vermont, in 2014. It’s sending wastewater to disposal specialists in Texas and other states. Entergy operated and sold both Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim. NorthStar, a separate and competing corporation in the decommissioning business, is dismantling Vermont Yankee.

Nuclear plants occasionally need to dispose of water with low levels of radioactivity when they’re operating, so a process to release it in batches into local waterways was developed early in the nuclear industry.

In recent years at Pilgrim, the two largest releases were in 2011, with 29 releases totaling about 325,000 gallons (1,500 kiloliters), and 2013, with 21 releases totaling about 310,000 gallons.

The water from those releases was well below the federal limits for the amount of radionuclides in millirems a person would be exposed to in a year if they ate local seafood or swam in nearby waters, according to the NRC.

NRC spokesperson for the Northeast Neil Sheehan said the limits are set very conservatively and are believed to be protective of the public and environment. He said it’s important to consider the role of dilution — once the discharges mix with vast quantities of water any radioactivity is typically not detectable.

WHY ARE PEOPLE WORRIED?

In Duxbury, Kingston and Plymouth Bays, there are 50 oyster farms — the largest concentration in the state, worth $5.1 million last year, according to the Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative. The collaborative said dumping the water would devastate the industry, and the local economy along with it.

Diane Turco, a Harwich resident and longtime Pilgrim watchdog, questions if the water is heavily contaminated, especially from the pool that covered the stored, spent fuel for cooling and shielded workers from radiation.

“Isn’t this a crazy idea for Holtec to use our bay as their dump? No way,” she said.

Others didn’t know Pilgrim’s water went into the bay in previous years and they don’t want it to happen again.

“We can’t change that, but we can change what’s happening in the future,” said Cutler, the state lawmaker. “It’s the first time it has ever been decommissioned, so to compare this to the past is a convenient excuse. ‘Well, we did it in the past,’ that sounds like my kid.”

Towns on the Cape are trying to prohibit the dispersal of radioactive materials in their waters. Tribal leaders, fishermen, lobstermen and real estate agents have publicly stated their opposition as well.

Sheehan, the NRC spokesperson, said the water is not different or distinct, compared to water released during the plant’s operations. Holtec would have to handle it the same way, by filtering it, putting it into a tank, analyzing the radio isotopes and calculating the environmental impacts if it was released in batches, he added.

WHO GETS THE FINAL SAY?

Holtec wouldn’t need a separate approval from the NRC to discharge the water into the bay. However, Holtec would need permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency if the water contained pollutants regulated by the Clean Water Act, such as dissolved metals.

If the water contained only radioactive materials regulated by the NRC, Holtec wouldn’t need to ask the EPA for a permit modification, according to the EPA’s water division for New England. Holtec has never given the EPA a pollutant characterization of the water associated with decommissioning, the division’s director said.

Mary Lampert, of Duxbury, is on a panel created by the state to look at issues related to the Pilgrim’s decommissioning. She believes the state could use its existing laws and regulations to stop the dumping and plans to press the Massachusetts attorney general to file a preliminary injunction to do so.

The attorney general’s office said it’s monitoring the issue and would take any Clean Water Act violations seriously.

Holtec said this week it’s examining the water for possible pollutants but the lab results won’t be available for awhile.

The company expects to decide what to do with the water later this year. Discharge, evaporation and some limited transportation will likely all be part of the solution, Holtec added.

Ogallala Aquifer dropped 12+ inches in 2021. Land value could lose billions as water source runs dry.


David Condos
Sat, April 9, 2022, 

An old water well stands next to a center pivot irrigation system in a Morton County field. This southwest corner of Kansas has been experiencing extreme drought since last fall.

HAYS — In increasingly dry western Kansas, underground water makes everything possible. Irrigation for crops. Stock water for cattle. Drinking water for towns.

In all, the Ogallala Aquifer provides 70-80% of water used by Kansans each day.

So how much is all that water worth?

A recent study from Kansas State University says the aquifer under western Kansas increases land values by nearly $4 billion.

But those billions are drying up at an accelerating rate.

Aquifer water levels across western and central Kansas dropped by more than a foot on average this past year. That’s the biggest single-year decrease since 2015, according to the Kansas Geological Survey’s annual report.

And while the aquifer is losing that foot of water, it’s barely being refilled. In most of western Kansas, less than one inch of water seeps underground to recharge the aquifer each year.

The declines were especially dire in southwest Kansas, where average water levels fell by 2.17 feet last year. That’s the region’s biggest drop since 2013, up from a 1.25-foot decline in 2020 and a 0.8-foot decline in 2019.

Parts of western Kansas haven't seen rain since May

Center pivot irrigation systems like this one in Finney County pump water up from the Ogallala aquifer to spray on crops. This part of southwest Kansas experienced some of the state's worst aquifer declines last year as drought pushed farmers to pump more water from underground.

But those accelerating depletion rates didn’t come as a surprise to Brownie Wilson, the survey’s water data manager. Western Kansas is a water-challenged place that gets about half as much precipitation as eastern Kansas in an average year.

Then the drought hit.

“For some of those folks, it hasn’t rained since May,” Wilson said. “That makes it really challenging.”

Even the snowfall from recent blizzards couldn’t make up the precipitation deficit. Most of western and central Kansas remains in severe, extreme or exceptional drought.

That puts the people trying to raise a crop there in a tough spot. So farmers turn to pumping more water from below to irrigate their fields and make up for how dry it is on the surface.

Wilson said 80-90% of the water used in the Ogallala aquifer region goes to irrigation. That averages out to about 2.5 billion gallons a day, pumped up and sprayed on crops.

It can’t go on like that forever.

Estimates show that if pumping trends continue, more than two-thirds of the water under Kansas will be gone within 40 years. In some parts of western Kansas, the aquifer has already depleted so much that it’s basically unusable for irrigation.


Water conservation in Kansas is a complicated issue

This map shows the drought conditions covering Kansas as of March 31, 2022.

So what does all that disappearing water mean in dollars and cents?

K-State agricultural economics professor Nathan Hendricks studied data from actual property sale and rental prices — comparing the prices of irrigated and nonirrigated land — to calculate the aquifer’s worth to western Kansas at $3.8 billion.

And if the decline of the aquifer isn’t drastically slowed, Hendricks said, western Kansas land will collectively lose $34 million in value each year by 2050.

That means property values will drop as acres that once had irrigation lose access to water.

Hendricks said the study isn’t intended to tell landowners what to do. But he hopes it can help them make decisions about their water use for the long term.

“For them to be able to say, ‘OK, what would be the costs of reducing water use today? And what would be the cost of not reducing water use in the future?’” Hendricks said. “There’s a trade-off there.”


For both individual farmers and the region as a whole, it’s a complicated question.

He said sometimes it’s easy to forget that shutting down irrigation from the aquifer would gut land values just like depletion would.

“We can stop irrigating and stop depleting the aquifer, but then you've lost all the value of the aquifer also,” Hendricks said. “The whole value of the aquifer is in using it.”

Hendricks said he’s already seeing some farmers voluntarily reduce the number of acres they’re irrigating in an effort to prolong their section of the aquifer’s life and expects that trend to continue.
‘Devil’s in the details’ for Kansas farmers

Wilson with the groundwater survey said he’s seeing farmers’ mindsets start to slowly shift, too.

He points to successful voluntary water conservation efforts led by farmers, such as the state’s first Local Enhanced Management Area, or LEMA, in northwest Kansas and a similar program recently approved in west-central Kansas.

“In the next 10, 20, 30 years of our lifetime, the biggest impact we can have is to use less water out of that aquifer,” Wilson said. “People are realizing they can still be economically viable and use less water.”

But understanding the problem, he said, isn’t the hard part.

“The solution to the aquifer is simple: you put more water into it or you quit taking so much out,” Wilson said. “But the solutions to get there, that's the challenging part. That's where the devil’s in the details.”

And thus far, finding consensus on broader statewide solutions has been difficult.

Recent legislation proposed in the Kansas House would have created a new cabinet-level department overseeing the state’s water issues and forced aquifer management districts in western and central Kansas to place stricter limits on water usage to curb the depletion rate.

But those sections of the bill were removed during committee discussions, leaving some legislators frustrated with how the agriculture industry’s influence continues to thwart water conservation measures. It appears unlikely that even a slimmed down version of that bill will be passed this year.

But figuring out some way to slow the aquifer’s depletion, Wilson said, isn’t just a critical issue for western Kansas.

While the aquifer drying up might impact western Kansas farmers most directly, the prosperity or decline of the multibillion-dollar agricultural economy that depends on that water will have ripple effects across the state.

“The declines in the western side of the state aren’t going to suddenly affect water flow in the Kansas River for people in Kansas City,” Wilson said. “But the viability of western Kansas is going to have an impact on the economy of Kansas, and that’s gonna affect everybody.”

David Condos covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter @davidcondos.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Western Kansas land value could lose billions as water levels decrease

US FACTORY FARMING 
What’s in your fridge? These 12 foods had the most pesticide residue, new report finds


Gerry Broome/AP

Alison Cutler
Fri, April 8, 2022, 

An environmental group just released its 2022 list of foods most prone to containing pesticide residue — and you might want to check your fridge.

The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization, has released annual lists of “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean Fifteen” fruits and vegetables since 2004 to help educate people on pesticides in U.S. agriculture.

But if it’s allowed to be on your local grocer’s shelf, why does it matter?

The Environmental Protection Agency reports the majority of people are not at risk from pesticides and will be exposed to only small amounts in their lives, but certain pesticides that are permitted for use in the U.S. have been banned in other countries due to health and environmental concerns, according to the EWG’s April 7 report.

Studies have suggested that exposure to certain pesticides may result in a higher chance of death from cardiovascular disease and diagnoses of ADHD in children and Alzheimer’s disease in adults over a lifetime.

More than 70% of non-organic produce in the United States contains potentially harmful pesticide residue, according to EWG’s latest report. The EWG analyzes data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine which foods are the most contaminated with pesticide residue.

Here are the foods that made the “Dirty Dozen” list for 2022:


Strawberries


Spinach


Kale, collard and mustard greens


Nectarines


Apples


Grapes


Bell and hot peppers


Cherries


Peaches


Pears


Celery


Tomatoes

The organization analyzes 46 common fruits and vegetables for pesticide residue contamination using samples from the USDA and Food and Drug Administration “from 2020 and nine years earlier.”

The USDA prepares each food sample by washing, scrubbing or peeling the produce to ensure the level of pesticide contamination reported will match a person’s expected exposure, according to the EWG.

The organization then ranks the 46 fruits by level of pesticide contamination.

This year, it found that more than 90% of strawberry, apple, cherry, spinach, nectarine and grape samples tested positive for residue of two or more pesticides. Spinach had the most pesticide residue when compared with the weight of each crop.

The residue of a possible harmful carcinogen was identified on produce, too, the report found. DCPA, or Dacthal, was classified by the EPA as a possible carcinogen to humans and was banned by the European Union in 2009, the report said. It was the most common pesticide found on collards, mustard greens and kale.

Avoiding foods that may be contaminated with higher levels of pesticide residue has been shown to reduce infertility, high body mass index and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in studies, although a definitive conclusion on the health benefits of an organic diet has yet to be made, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Nutrients.

If you’re looking for ways to avoid food with high pesticide residue stats, EWG included its “Clean Fifteen” produce list in the report:


Avocados


Sweet corn


Pineapple


Onions


Papaya


Frozen sweet peas


Asparagus


Honeydew melon


Kiwi


Cabbage


Mushrooms


Cantaloupe


Mangoes


Watermelon


Sweet Potatoes

Teresa Thorne, executive director of the Alliance for Food and Farming, told USA Today that she was concerned that lists about pesticide contamination may inadvertently deter people from eating fresh fruits and vegetables at all.

“We have 13 million children living in food-insecure households right now,” Thorne told the outlet. “To scare people away from conventional-grown, which is the more affordable and accessible fruits and vegetables in today’s environment, really needs to be better thought through.”

Taking just a few moments in your kitchen to clean your produce can help ensure you are protecting yourself from contamination, according to the FDA. People can learn about the administration’s seven tips for cleaning produce on its website.

White Americans are dragging down U.S. life expectancy. Here’s why


Eric Lee—Bloomberg via Getty Images

Andrew Marquardt
Fri, April 8, 2022

Life expectancy in the U.S. is now a full two years shorter than it was before the pandemic, according to a new study, reflecting the deadly toll of COVID across the country.

It’s the second straight annual drop in life expectancy, though the decline in 2021 was less dramatic than in 2020, when the pandemic started and effective vaccines had not yet been developed.

Overall, life expectancy across all groups dropped to 76.6 years in 2021, down from 77 in 2020 and 78.9 in 2019, according to the study.

The decrease in U.S. life expectancy in 2021 was split heavily across racial lines, with white Americans bearing the largest brunt. Among white Americans, life expectancy dropped roughly a third of a year in 2021, whereas among Hispanic Americans there was a slight increase in life expectancy, and among Black Americans, it rose by 0.4 years.

Things were far different in 2020, when deaths from COVID-19 disproportionately impacted communities of color. In 2020, U.S. life expectancy dropped 3.7 years among Hispanic Americans and 3.2 years among Black Americans, the study found.

The authors of the study said the reasons for the “surprising crossover” in racialized outcomes between 2020 and 2021 were “not entirely clear and likely have multiple explanations.” But they speculated that vaccine hesitancy among certain populations could have been a factor.

“It’s hard to imagine that willingness to be vaccinated is not a piece of that puzzle,” Laudan Aron, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and coauthor of the study, told The Washington Post.

While life expectancy for white Americans declined 0.3 years in 2021, life expectancy for all Americans dropped by 0.4 years. This is likely caused by lower life expectancy rates among populations that the study’s authors said were too small for estimates to be done separately, such as Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

The study, which was not peer-reviewed, noted that despite the racialized reversal in 2021, “Hispanic and Black populations clearly experienced much larger losses in life expectancy than did the White population” in the two years since the pandemic began.

Nearly 1 million Americans have died from COVID-19 during the two-year pandemic. Meanwhile, drug overdoses fueled by the opioid epidemic killed more than 100,000 Americans in 2021, a record. These are two of several factors that could have contributed to declining U.S life expectancy.

Among 19 other peer countries analyzed in the study, the U.S. experienced the largest decline in life expectancy over the last two years. 

Still, there is hope that things will improve in 2022.

As of April 7, more than 77% of Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, and roughly 66% of the nation has received at least two vaccines, according to data from the Mayo Clinic.

And as COVID-19 cases continue to remain relatively low in 2022, the current seven-day moving average of new deaths decreased 14% compared to the previous week, according to the Centers for Disease for Control and Prevention.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Average U.S. life expectancy drops in 2021 for second year in a row

By HealthDay News


Average U.S. life expectancy tumbled from 78.86 years in 2019 to 76.99 in 2020 

and to 76.60 years in 2021, a new report found

 Photo by toysf400/Shutterstock


Researchers report that life expectancy in the United States dropped in 2021, continuing a troubling trend that began in the first year of the pandemic.

Specifically, average U.S. life expectancy tumbled from 78.86 years in 2019 to 76.99 in 2020. It then fell by a smaller amount in 2021, to 76.60 years, the new report found.

One thing was different about the latest longevity numbers: Losses in life expectancy among White Americans were largely responsible for that continuing trajectory, the new study found.

In 2020, Black and Hispanic Americans were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic amid chronic health disparities.

The research team speculated that the reason for the changing dynamics in 2021 could be vaccine hesitancy among some White Americans and a resistance to pandemic restrictions, including in states with disproportionately White populations.

"We already knew that the U.S. experienced historic losses in life expectancy in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. What wasn't clear is what happened in 2021. To our knowledge this is the first study to report data for 2021, and the news isn't good," corresponding study author Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, said in a university news release.

"Early in 2021, knowing an excellent vaccine was being distributed, I was hopeful that the U.S. could recover some of its historic losses," said Woolf. "But I began to worry more when I saw what happened as the year unfolded. Even so, as a scientist, until I saw the data it remained an open question how U.S. life expectancy for that year would be affected. It was shocking to see that U.S. life expectancy, rather than having rebounded, had dropped even further."

The emergence of the faster-spreading Delta and Omicron COVID-19 variants played a big role, the experts said.

"Deaths from these variants occurred almost entirely among unvaccinated people," Woolf noted. However, he believes that "what happened in the U.S. is less about the variants than the levels of resistance to vaccination and the public's rejection of practices, such as masking and mandates, to reduce viral transmission."

Lead study author Ryan Masters, an assistant professor of sociology at University of Colorado Boulder (CU) and an affiliate with the CU Population Center, added that high rates of obesity and heart disease, along with inequities in access to health care, only made matters worse once the pandemic began.

RELATED Pandemic's unequal toll on people of color underlines U.S. health inequities

"Those same factors made the U.S. more vulnerable than other countries to the mortality consequences of COVID-19," Masters said.

For their study, the team used official data for 2018 to 2020, and then provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics for 2021. They used modeling to analyze the changes in life expectancy. Previous reports using the same modeling have been proved accurate when final numbers were available, Woolf noted.

Not only did longevity drop further in the United States, but America fared worse than 19 other wealthy countries during the pandemic.

The life expectancy decline for communities of color was huge in 2020 by all historical standards, but that did not continue in 2021.

Hispanic Americans maintained life expectancy between the two most recent years, after dropping 3.7 years in 2020. Black Americans rebounded 0.42 years in 2021, compared to their decline of 3.22 years in 2020. No estimates are available for Asian Americans, Native Americans or other demographics because of data limitations.

The study was posted Thursday on the MedRxiv preprint server and has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale School of Public Health epidemiologist not involved in the study, said the findings were important as well as "heartbreaking" for the "real lives lost."

"Yes, greater coverage of vaccination may have stemmed some of this suffering," he told the Washington Post. "But we also have had an overriding desire to put the pandemic behind us for over a year now in the United States, which shaped our decisions to forgo basic protections at a personal and community level, throwing us all into harm's way."

More information

The U.S. COVID website has more on COVID-19.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

THIRD WORLD USA

Detectable levels of uranium found in two-thirds of U.S. water systems

By HealthDay News

Between 2000 and 2011, 2.1% of U.S. water systems had average annual uranium concentrations that exceeded EPA maximums. Uranium was detected in water systems 63% of the time during compliance monitoring.

 Photo by Rewrite27/Pixabay

Two-thirds of U.S. community water systems have detectable levels of uranium, and the highest levels are in Hispanic communities, according to a new study.

"Previous studies have found associations between chronic uranium exposure and increased risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, kidney damage and lung cancer at high levels of exposure," said researcher Anne Nigra, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.

Even at low concentrations, uranium, a radioactive metal, is an important risk factor for chronic diseases, but there has been little research on chronic uranium exposure from tap water. About 90% of Americans rely on community water systems.

To learn more, Nigra's team analyzed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency records for 139,000 public water systems that serve 290 million people a year.

RELATED U.S. Supreme Court upholds Trump rule limiting Clean Water Act

Between 2000 and 2011, 2.1% of those water systems had average annual uranium concentrations that exceeded EPA maximums. Uranium was detected in water systems 63% of the time during compliance monitoring.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ingesting large quantities of uranium can cause several cancers and damage kidneys.

Semi-urban Hispanic communities had the highest levels of uranium, as well as selenium, barium, chromium and arsenic, the study found.

Elevated levels of these metals were found in Hispanic communities independent of location or region, raising concerns for these communities and the possibility of inequalities in public drinking water, according to findings published recently in The Lancet Planetary Health.

The consistent association between elevated levels of uranium and the other metals in the drinking water suggests a failure of regulatory policy or water treatment rather than underlying geology, Nigra and colleagues said.

They noted that Hispanic Americans have a number of health disparities, including increased death due to diabetes, as well as liver, kidney and heart disease.

"Additional regulatory policies, compliance enforcement, and improved infrastructure are therefore necessary to reduce disparities in [community water system] metal concentrations and protect communities served by public water systems with elevated metal concentrations," Nigra said in a Columbia news release. "Such interventions and policies should specifically protect the most highly exposed communities to advance environmental justice and protect public health."

More information

There's more on uranium at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.