Don't fall for the ruse - The truth about Iran's nuclear program

James Corbett
Corbett Report

"Be afraid!" say the repeaters of mockingbird media. Afraid of who? Afraid of Iran, of course.

Oh, haven't you heard? The Iranian government's stockpile of enriched uranium is about to surpass 300 kilograms! And Iran's store of heavy water is about to surpass 130 metric tons! Don't you understand? This will exceed the limits on these materials set out in the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)! And the dastardly Iranian government is not only embarrassed by these actions, but openly taking steps to end (some of) their commitments under the JCPOA!
Sounds chilling, doesn't it? But there's one little disclaimer that seems missing from a lot of the MSM's scaremongering coverage of these developments: None of this has anything to do with an offensive nuclear weapons program.

Confused? Of course you are. The highly-technical details of the 159-page nuclear agreement were never meant to be scrutinized by (much less understood by) the average Joe Sixpack and Jane Soccermom. Words like "enriched" and "highly enriched," "heavy water" and "tritium," "nuclear program" and "nuclear weapons program" are thrown around by the media as if these terms are all the same, even though they describe fundamentally different materials and processes. And the whole point is to make the public afraid of a nuclear weapons program that both US and Israeli intelligence has confirmed doesn't exist.

So what's the real story on the Iran nuclear deal?

Well, as I had cause to point out on The Corbett Report podcast quite recently, defining our terms is the first step toward understanding the world. So let's do some defining.

First, "enrichment." As the World Nuclear Association explains:

Natural uranium contains 0.7% of the U-235 isotope. The remaining 99.3% is mostly the U-238 isotope which does not contribute directly to the fission process (though it does so indirectly by the formation of fissile isotopes of plutonium). Isotope separation is a physical process to concentrate ('enrich') one isotope relative to others. Most reactors are light water reactors (of two types-PWR and BWR) and require uranium to be enriched from 0.7% to 3-5% U-235 in their fuel. This is normal low-enriched uranium (LEU). There is some interest in taking enrichment levels to about 7%, and even close to 20% for certain special power reactor fuels, as high-assay LEU (HALEU).

Note that there is a large difference between low-enriched uranium (less than 20% U-235) used for fuel in nuclear power plants and research reactors, and high-enriched uranium (over 90% U-235) used for nuclear weapons. One guess which kind Iran is producing. That's right: low-enriched uranium! To be precise, 3.67% U-235 enriched uranium, also known as " not even close to being used in a nuclear weapon" enriched uranium. 

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Russia set to air TV series that reveals US role in Chernobyl nuclear disaster

Press TV

Russia is set to air a TV series based on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that implicates the United States as playing a role in the worst nuclear accident in history.

Currently in post-production, the series by the Russian company NTV tells the story of the 1986 explosion that ripped through reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The explosion led to a huge radioactive leak, which permanently affected areas in places across three quarters of Europe. Thirty workers and firemen were killed in the immediate aftermath of the explosion and rescue operations. Most of them died of severe radiation-related illnesses.

The plot revolves around a CIA agent dispatched to Pripyat — the town inhabited by Chernobyl workers — to gather intelligence on the nuclear power plant.

The series will follow KGB officers in their attempts to hunt the espionage operation.

Director Aleksey Muradov said that his version, filmed in Belarus, will show “what really happened back then.”

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See also: Cracks Found On Nuclear Reactor Could Lead To Evacuation Of Edinburgh And Glasgow

Fukushima at Eight: Ongoing Cover-Up of the Nuclear Hazards in Japan and Abroad

Michael Welch, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and Arnie Gundersen
Global Research

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

– Albert Einstein

The eight year old Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster marks a critical turning point in human history. 

As of November 2018, 18,434 people are known to have died from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and the follow-up tsunami which struck the nuclear facility leading to the inundation of electric generators powering the circulation of coolant in the reactors. When the generators failed, three units experienced catastrophic meltdowns. [1]

Radioactive water has for years now been draining into the Pacific Ocean. Toxic debris spewed into the Earth’s atmosphere. More than 73,000 people remain evacuated, and fully 3,600 dies of illness from causes like illness and suicide linked to the aftermath of the event. [2]



The group Simplyinfo.org has been undertaking extensive ongoing research and analysis of the Fukushima disaster and its aftereffects. In its recently released annual report, Simplyinfo presented a number of astonishing and grim revelations.

The report estimated the threat of radioactive microparticles created by the meltdowns as possibly “the single largest ongoing risk to public health from the Fukushima disaster.” According to the research, these pieces of material from the nuclear fuel meltdowns are small enough to be inhaled or ingested and lodge in major organs of the human body where they continually irradiate cancer-causing levels of radiation, making them much more hazardous than the external sources of radiation being monitored by health authorities. [3]

The report also highlighted startling instances of negligence and cover-up. One notable example was the case of Dr. Shunichi Yamashita. He had downplayed the health risks in public meetings, but was discovered through an internal memo retrieved from an ‘off-site center’ set up as a central commend for the disaster to have warned of ‘a serious possibility of thyroid damage to children in the region.’ [4]

As the radioactive contamination continues to be a concern the Japanese government of Shinzō Abe is inviting the world to visit Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics. The authorities are maintaining that the situation has been contained. Officials have decided to have the city of Fukushima host baseball and softball games, and are even having the iconic torch run start in Fukushima. [5]

Efforts to normalize life in Fukushima 8 years after the meltdowns appear to be successful if trends in media consumption are any indication. Articles marking the anniversary were eclipsed by other breaking stories.[6]

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Iran FM: Deal Doesn’t Require ‘Dismantling’ Anything White House Misleading In Claims About Pact

antiwar.com

In an interview today with CNN, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused the White House of misleading the public with comments about the nuclear deal, particularly the repeated use of the term "dismantling" in public comments.

Zarif noted the term "dismantling" doesn’t appear even once in the P5+1 deal, and that while the interim deal has them stopping some enrichment activity, it does not oblige them to dismantle anything at all.

"The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitments," Zarif added. 

The comments may be deliberate, as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted he will accept nothing less than the full dismantling of Iran’s entire civilian nuclear program, and President Obama may be trying to paint the deal, incorrectly, as roughly what Israel wants.

Israel, by contrast, was only pushing for full dismantling because it knew Iran wouldn’t agree, and that could be a pretext for a war. Israeli lobbies have repeatedly tried to undermine the deal, urging the US Senate to violate the deal so the talks would collapse.

 

Italian cold fusion machine passes another test

MSNBC

Italian physicist and inventor Andrea Rossi has conducted a public demonstration of his "cold fusion" machine, the E-Cat, at the University of Bologna, showing that a small amount of input energy drives an unexplained reaction between atoms of hydrogen and nickel that leads to a large outpouring of energy, more than 10 times what was put in. 

The first seemingly successful cold fusion experiment was reported two decades ago. Two types of atoms, typically a light element and a heavier metal, seem to fuse together, releasing pure heat that can be converted into electricity. The process is an attractive energy solution for two reasons: Unlike in nuclear fission, the reaction doesn't give off dangerous radiation. Unlike the fusion processes that take place in the sun, cold fusion doesn't require extremely high temperatures. In April ... Rossi and fellow physicist Sergio Focardi successfully demonstrated the device for a group of Swedish physicists. At the demo in October, after an initial energy input of 400 watts into each module, each one then produced a sustained, continuous output of 10 kilowatts (470 kW altogether) for three to four hours. Peter Hagelstein, an MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science and one of the most mainstream proponents of cold fusion research, thinks the process may involve vibrational energy in the metal's lattice driving nuclear transitions that lead to fusion.

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What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?

prwatch.org

While the U.S. media has been occupied with Anthony Weiner, the Republican presidential candidates and Bristol Palin's memoir, coverage of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster has practially fallen off the map. Poor mainstream media coverage of Japan's now months-long struggle to gain control over the Fukushima disaster has deprived Americans of crucial information about the risks of nuclear power following natural disasters. After a few weeks of covering the early aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami, the U.S. media moved on, leaving behind the crisis at Fukushima which continues to unfold. U.S. politicians, like Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, have made disappointing and misleading statements about the relative safety of nuclear power and have vowed to stick by our nuclear program, while other countries, like Germany and Italy, have taken serious steps to address the obvious risks of nuclear power -- risks that the Fukushima disaster made painfully evident, at least to the rest of the world. [...]

TEPCO now admits that three Fukushima reactors have melted, large holes present in containment vessels

 naturalnews.com/

May 27, 2011

The Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) house of cards is toppling, as it has now been revealed that three reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility all melted shortly after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit them on March 11 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...). TEPCO also now admits that holes likely exist in the reactors' containment vessels as a result, which explains the persistent water leaks and drastic temperature fluctuations that led to continuous containment problems (http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english...).

TEPCO officials claim that the company has never hidden any of this information from the public, but that recent data analysis has confirmed what many scientists and experts had correctly predicted weeks ago based on observation of the situation. And rightfully so, many remain critical of TEPCO's drastic underestimation of the true condition of the plant, and say the company's unrealistic optimism since the disaster first occurred has been wholly misleading, and not at all based in reality. ....

Angry Parents in Japan Confront Government Over Radiation Levels

May 26th, 2011

New York Times:

 “Do you really care about our children’s health?” one parent shouted. “Why have you acted so late?” said another. Among other concerns: isn’t radiation still raining down on Fukushima? Shouldn’t the entire school building be decontaminated? The entire city? Can we trust you? 

“We are doing all we can,” pleaded Tomio Watanabe, a senior official of Fukushima’s education board. 

A huge outcry is erupting in Fukushima over what parents say is a blatant government failure to protect their children from dangerous levels of radiation. The issue has prompted unusually direct confrontations in this conflict-averse society, and has quickly become a focal point for anger over Japan’s handling of the accident at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, ravaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. 

At issue are updated government guidelines that allow schoolchildren to be exposed to radiation doses that are more than 20 times the previously permissible levels. That dose is equal to the international standard for adult nuclear power plant workers.