Sharing Sarin

How easy is it to make sarin?
By Paul Woodward, 2013

“It’s not hard to make sarin. You could mix it in the backyard. Two chemicals melded together.” — Seymour Hersh interviewed on CNN, December 9, 2013.

The idea that the chemical warfare agent, sarin, is easy to make is central to Seymour Hersh’s claim that the August 21 attacks killing hundreds of Syrians could have been carried out by the rebel group, the Al Nusra Front. (With unquestioning confidence in the reliability of his source(s), Hersh rests this claim on classified intelligence reports none of which he claims to have seen.)

Hersh’s backyard sarin production appears to be concocted from fiction. The only non-state actor known to have engaged in large-scale sarin production was the Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo.

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Ungrateful for Sarin

World can thank Nazis for invention of sarin
By H.P. Albarelli Jr. and Ran Daniel, 2013

Over the past several months the world has witnessed the heinous and lethal effects of sarin gas being deployed in Syria, where an estimated 1,500 people died from its effects in just one attack on the outskirts of Damascus. Yet virtually unknown is the long history of this deadly chemical compound, including its roots entangled with Nazi Germany and the United States’ acquisition and exploitation.

Sarin was invented in 1938 in Germany by I.G. Farben company chemists […]. Quickly found to be a lethal nerve agent to humans, the compound was further refined and then named in honor of its developers: Gerhard Schrader, Otto Ambros, Franz Ritter and H.J. Van der Linde.

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New Nuclear Cumbria

Details of new nuclear power station project in Cumbria revealed
From News and Stars, 16 May 2016

NuGen has detailed what will be involved in its £10bn Moorside project as it gets set to apply to the Government for a development consent order that will licence and authorise construction near Sellafield. As part of the application to the Secretary of State, NuGen – a joint venture between Toshiba and ENGIE – has released more information about the huge project.

The public get their chance to have their say when a major 11-week consultation begins on Saturday. This consultation … is an opportunity for the public to see how the project has developed. Fergus McMorrow, NuGen’s planning lead in Cumbria, said:

“It is extremely important that everyone gets an opportunity to come and have their say.
“This consultation is the second of two public consultations. The first took place over 10 weeks from May 2015 and we welcomed over 1,800 people through the doors of our events.

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Safe Nuclear Radiation

The Woman Who Knew Too Much
By Matt Henry

When, during the Second World War, 150,00 people took part in a secret scientific project that spanned the U.S. and Canada, even Congress and the Vice-President remained ignorant of what was being produced. It was this project that gave birth to the nuclear phenomenon; a scheme that was conceived in the same deliberately secretive manner in which it has been run ever since. Only a few people have really managed to penetrate the US nuclear industry’s self-imposed veil of secrecy over the past few decades, and emerge to tell the world what is really going on with nuclear power. One of those people is Alice Stewart.

Born in Sellafield [UK] in 1906, Alice Stewart was educated at Cambridge and went on to achieve honours in clinical medicine, becoming the youngest ever woman to enter the Royal College of Physicians. By 1945, she had branched out into a new field of study that planned to explore the socio-economic factors of disease and illness — a more preventative form of treatment.

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Testing One two Nine Eleven

What do the 1992 crash of El Al Flt 1862 and 9/11 have in common?
From WTC Demolition, by Keenan, 2009-10-10

October 4, 2009 marked the 17th anniversary of the worst air disaster in Dutch history. It also was the date of the beginning of one of the largest scandals and cover-ups in the history of the Dutch government and it involved Israel, Mossad, the US, El Al, secret and illegal chemical weapons transfers, unconfirmed allegations of weapons-grade plutonium, and as many as 2,000 local residents and firemen eventually reporting health complaints they believe were caused by the crash. Many reported loss of hair in the weeks after the crash, a sign of radiation disease.

Oh, and what was the US doing sending massive amounts of WMD’s to the Middle East? So, the US has long been concerned about keeping Weapons of Mass Destruction out of the Middle East – MY ASS!

Remember this story when you next hear some cable news pundit pontificating about why we have to bomb those nasty people in the Middle East.

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Soldiers High On Yellow Cake

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Yellow Cake Market

 

Uranium market
From Wikipedia

The uranium market, like all commodity markets, has a history of volatility, moving not only with the standard forces of supply and demand, but also to whims of geopolitics. It has also evolved particularities of its own in response to the unique nature and use of this material.

Historically, uranium has been mined in countries willing to export, including Australia and Canada. However, countries now responsible for more than 30% of the world’s uranium production include Kazakhstan, Namibia, Niger, and Uzbekistan.

Uranium from mining is used almost entirely as fuel for nuclear power plants. Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the global uranium market remains depressed, with the uranium price falling more than 50%, declining share values, and reduced profitability of uranium producers since March 2011. As a result, uranium companies worldwide are reducing capacity, closing operations and deferring new production.

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El All Ill

Chemical plane crash inquiry

From BBC News, Jan. 27 1999 [Edited]

A long-awaited inquiry into the crash of an Israeli cargo jet into an Amsterdam apartment complex has opened in The Hague.

A Dutch parliamentary commission is to find out whether the crash six years ago was responsible for serious medical problems subsequently reported by rescue workers and local residents. It will also look into the cause of the disaster.

Israel admitted last year that the plane was carrying a chemical used to produce a deadly nerve gas. The inquiry will look at whether this or possibly radioactive substances contributed to the illnesses.

The commission, sitting in the upper house of parliament, plans to interview 75 people by the end of March.

Black box never found
The El Al Boeing 747 crashed on 4 October 1992 shortly after take-off from Schipol Airport, killing 43 people, most of them on the ground.

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Porter Ranch?

Longer than Deepwater Horizon: 87 Days and Counting for Porter Ranch Leak
By Jo Miles (01.20.16)

Remember how long it took BP to plug the Deepwater Horizon spill? A massive leak in California has been spewing methane since October, and it’s still not fixed.

Eighty-seven days. That’s how long it took BP to end the spill at their Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010. Yesterday, a massive natural gas blowout at the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility run by SoCalGas in California surpassed that mark – and the fix remains weeks away.

The SoCalGas blowout at Aliso Canyon is a climate catastrophe. Every day it spews 110,000 pounds of methane – a greenhouse gas 87 times more potent over 20 years than carbon dioxide. Despite claims from SoCalGas that the leaking gas was safe, residents soon reported nausea, nosebleeds, headaches, rashes, shortness of breath, burning eyes, sore throats, sick pets and more, and over 10,000 residents have had to evacuate as the gas found to contain toxins like mercaptan, benzene and even hydrogen sulfide.

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Kalamazoo River Spoil

In this July 29, 2010 photo, a worker monitors water in Talmadge Creek in Marshall Township, Mich., near the Kalamazoo River as oil from a ruptured pipeline, owned by Enbridge Inc., is attempted to be trapped by booms. CREDIT: AP Photo/Paul Sancya

Michigan River Remains Poisoned By Oil Five Years After Massive Spill
By Natasha Geiling (2015)

Five years ago, a pipeline carrying crude oil from Canadian tar sands ruptured in Michigan, spilling over 1 million gallons into the Kalamazoo River, in what would become the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. Now, as oil companies attempt to expand pipelines across the upper Midwest, and as the Keystone Pipeline that would carry similar crude waits for approval from the State Department, activists and residents are gathering to remember the historic spill — and add their voices to a groundswell of local pipeline opposition that began five years ago.

“It’s telling that when we have been citing pipelines, even in Minnesota, the Kalamazoo spill is brought up an awful lot,” Andy Pearson, Midwest tar sands coordinator for MN350.org told ThinkProgress. “Kalamazoo is not in the past. It’s still really in the present for the people on the ground there. It’s something that shows how wrong it can go.”

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