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Nuclear Monitor #865 - 6 September 2018

Nuclear Monitor Issue: 
#865
06/09/2018
Full issue

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Nuclear lobbyist Michael Shellenberger learns to love the bomb, goes down a rabbit hole: Michael Shellenberger is the latest nuclear lobbyist to acknowledge systemic connections between the civil nuclear fuel cycle and weapons proliferation. Bizarrely, he argues that nuclear weapons are a force for peace and he promotes worldwide weapons proliferation.

'Almost Trumpian in its incoherence': Critical responses to Michael Shellenberger's promotion of nuclear weapons proliferation: Michael Shellenberger's promotion of nuclear weapons proliferation has attracted little or no support from nuclear enthusiasts but a good deal of criticism. Environmental Progress attorney Frank Jablonski argues that Shellenberger "seems to presume that if the nuclear non-proliferation framework is eliminated, nuclear capabilities will be quickly equalized through some kind of dystopian Oprah episode in which "YOU get a weapon, YOU get a weapon, EVERYBODY gets a weapon!!!". The resulting equalization of capabilities will lead to peace, kind of in the vein of the NRA slogan that "an armed (international) society is a polite society".

Social peripheries and the siting of nuclear facilities in South Korea and Japan: Jinyoung Park ‒ a Ph.D. student in the School of Law, Seoul National University ‒ writes: "Governments and firms promise large economic incentives to win support for nuclear projects. Marginal communities ‒ hollowed, aged communities and those which already host similar facilities ‒ tend to accept the trade-off between financial support and safety risks."

The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2018: As always there is much of interest in the latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report. We reprint the report's 'key insights'.

Energy: Missing from the nuclear story: Don Fitz critically reviews Richard Rhodes' book 'Energy: A Human History'. He writes: "The extreme threat of climate change will not move closer to resolution by trivializing the menace of nuclear power. Rhodes' book on Energy epitomizes what environmentalists should avoid – it does not chart the path that humanity should tread."