edit: changed title from ‘False Fukushima Fears’ to ‘Exaggerated Fukushima Fears’, sacrificing my lovely alliteration as others have pointed out that it would be too much to say that the fears of radiation leakages are unfounded, but merely to say that this is the least bad option given previous precedent as cynesthesia has pointed out.
Image is of the large array of water storage tanks holding the tritium-contaminated water.
This week’s preamble is very kindly provided by our beautiful poster @cynesthesia@hexbear.net, with some light editing. In periods where not much of earth-shattering importance is happening in the news, I hope to do this more often!
In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear incident occurred. Since then, water has been used to cool radioactive waste and debris, which contaminates the water with radioactive isotopes. Currently, TEPCO, the Japanese energy company that is reponsible to Fukushima, is storing about 1.3 million m3 of contaminated water (equivalent to about 500 Olympic swimming pools for our American friends) in about 1000 tanks. Approximately 100,000 m3 of contaminated cooling water is generated per year to this day. TEPCO doesn’t want to store escalating volumes of nuclear waste for decades until half-lives are spent. This would mean adding substantial storage capacity every year at increased cost and risk of tank spills.
The contaminated water includes heavier isotopes like caesium as well as hydrogen’s isotope, tritum. Caesium is a big atom at 137 molar mass (we love our tremendous atoms, folks) while tritium is heavy hydrogen and has only a molar mass of 3 (pathetic, low energy). The TEPCO people are using water treatment to remove heavy isotopes from water, but not tritium. The large adult isotopes are easy to remove with treatment but tritium is incorporated into water, so it blends in with the others. The treated Fukushima water contains low levels of the big isotopes but still contains tritium.
Isotopes release radiation that damages the body’s cells. The longer an individual molecule containing an isotope is in a body, the more likely it is that the isotope will go BRAZAP and release radiation that fucks up the cells. Bioaccumulation is a toxicology term for how certain contaminants can accumulate in the food cycle. For example, algae eat contaminants, then the algae is eaten by bugs, then bugs by fish, then fish by people. Isotopes that are bioaccumulative like our large adult son caesium are more hazardous. Tritium is not bioaccumulative because it is effectively part of water. Water cycles through bodies quickly - that’s why you sweat and pee and get thirsty.
Fukushima water would be treated and then then mixed with seawater at a ratio of 1:800 before it is pumped 1km offshore. Each year approximately 166,000 m3 of treated water will be released, which will draw down the volume of contaminated water being stored over a few decades. Real-time stats associated with the release are found here. At the point of discharge, water contains about 207 Bq/L of radioactivity, about 16 times greater than the 10-15 Bq/L background level in the ocean overall. Drinking water guidelines for tritium radioactivity range from 1,000-10,000 Bq/L, if one were to drink seawater.
In wastewater treatment terms, this is a small amount of dilution in a very large body of water. It is unlikely to have any measurable impact per the terms of Western science. In the context of mother nature taking yet another one for the team and environmental distress, this sucks. In the context of making the best of a shitty situation, the Fukushima water release is peanuts compared to the many other environmental liabilities that are not addressed. For example, the Hanford Site is an example of a nuclear wastewater storage facility gone/going wrong in Oregon.
Ending note by 72: By far the biggest impact of the release of this water won’t be its direct effects, but those on commerce and international relations. Almost half of Japanese aquatic exports go to China, comprising 8% of all Japanese firms shipping goods to China, and they have now been cut off due to their anger at Japan. Perhaps this reaction and the cancellation of imports was inevitable, as nuclear power and radiation in general is a poorly understood, frightening, and thus easily exploitable topic in every country. China is not the first country to use a misunderstanding of radiation risk to try and achieve a goal - Germany seems very pleased with itself - and they will not be the last.
In all: it is unequivocal that China is massively exaggerating the risks of this water’s release. However, the bellicose rhetoric and actions of Japan, South Korea, and America are a much greater danger to the region, and none of the three seem to be in any hurry to try diplomacy instead of increasing military budgets and gearing up for war.
It’s that time again - every two months I give myself a week off, to rest and recalibrate. Your regularly scheduled programming will resume next week.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week’s discussion post.
Who’s afraid of Prigozhin and Wagner?
In which Bhadrakumar argues that Putin did not assassinate Prigozhin.
First, why such a crude method reminiscent of the murder of the charismatic Iranian general Qasem Suleimani, the spearhead of Tehran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’ against America, by former US president Donald Trump?
In his celebrated 1827 essay titled On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, Thomas De Quincey wrote, “Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle… and that, I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it, that is, in relation to good taste.” The aesthetic of Prigozhin’s murder is, simply put, the least appealing by the principle of murder connoisseurship if the motivation were revenge .
Second, Prigozhin was a dead man walking for staging such an idiotic act, after his security cover was withdrawn by the state. Imagine ex-president Barack Obama without secret service protection after the murder of Osama bin Laden — or Mike Pompeo and Trump walking around without security after murdering Soleimani.
But Putin made it clear that Wagner still would have a future and the nation will remember its role in the Ukraine war. Putin even invited Prigozhin to a Kremlin meeting. Arguably, Putin’s first remarks on Prigozhin’s death betray a trace of pity. (here and here)
Putin said, “I’ve known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 1990s. He was a man of no easy fate. He made some serious mistakes in his life, but he also achieved the needed results – both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause. The way it was in recent months.”
“As far as I know, he returned from Africa only yesterday. He met with some officials here. He worked not only in our country – and he worked successfully, but also abroad, especially in Africa. There, he dealt with oil, gas, precious metals and stones,” Putin added.
In the excessive zeal to focus on Prigozhin’s murder to demonise Putin, what is overlooked is that whoever choreographed the crime also ensured that Wagner’s entire command structure has been eliminated. Bye, bye, Africa!
There isn’t going to be anyone in the foreseeable future to challenge the hegemony of the French Legion in the Sahel or match the vast network of 29 bases under Pentagon’s Africa Command spread across the continent from Djibouti in the north to Botswana in the south. Put differently, the long arm of Russia’s “smart power” has been chopped off with one single swing of the blade. Who stands to gain?
Third, Prigozhin’s murder was staged on a special day that in a historical perspective, must be counted as the finest hour of Russian diplomacy ever since the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. The reality of “a new starting point for BRICS” — as Chinese President Xi Jinping stated — is yet to sink in fully, but what is beyond doubt is that Russia is walking away as the winner.
I must admit, I am completely unconvinced by the first two arguments. There are all sorts of reasons why Putin would kill Prigozhin in this dramatic way instead of poison or being pushed out of a skyscraper window. And Wagner’s influence in Africa is certainly notable but not especially effective as far as I can tell - and, sure, the people in the plane may have been good commanders (I don’t actually know) but it’s not as if new ones can’t be found. Wagner’s forces still exist, in one form or another. His argument that it’s a very odd time to do so given the BRICS summit gives me a bit of pause, but it’s still fairly unconvincing. He also mentions that many people wanted Prigozhin dead, from France, to America, to Ukraine. True enough, but so might Putin, regardless of what he has said in the past. It’s realpolitik, baby.
Anyway, Bhadrakumar then moves on to the BRICS summit:
Make no mistake that the BRICS unity held firm and rubbished all western prognosis; BRICS expansion means that the issue of a single settlement currency is on the table, and the international financial system is not going to be the same again; de-dollarisation is knocking at the gates; a new global trading system is taking shape which renders obsolete the exploitative 4-century old western regime geared to transfer wealth to the rich countries; BRICS has graduated, finally, from an informal club to an institution that will eclipse the G7.
The host country South Africa delivered big-time for the Russian and Chinese agenda of multipolarity. The joint statement issued by South Africa and China and the induction of Ethiopia (where the West tried to stage a regime change) as BRICS member underscore the emerging alignment in Africa. Doesn’t all that add up to something?
And, above all, the big message coming out of Johannesburg is that with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, the Biden administration has failed miserably to “isolate” Russia — it is there writ large in the resplendent glow of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s effulgent smile. Russia is capping its gains in the battlefields of Ukraine with an outstanding diplomatic victory by being on the right side of history alongside the global majority.
This also wouldn’t be the first time that Putin did something to an airplane. I can’t remember but one of the more America-friendly oligarchs died in a plane crash that people are pretty sure was caused by a small explosive in the engine compartment. This is just a more extreme version of that.
BRICS: getting bigger, but is it any stronger?
Michael Roberts is a little too doomer for my tastes in this article about the power of the G7 vs the new BRICS - I think he overstates the power of the G7 and dramatically understates the POTENTIAL power of the new BRICS (this does depend on what they plan on doing with their newfound influence over the oil market, to name but one market, which could range from “not much” to “a great deal”) - but nonetheless I generally agree that there’s still a long way to go, and that the New Development Bank is leagues away from being an IMF replacement. We are at the beginning of the global transformation, not the middle, and certainly not the end. The 21st century will, hopefully, be the story of how the old, America-centric world died and the new world fought to take its place, and win. Like the 20th century before it with the European imperialist powers.
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The five BRICS nations now have a combined GDP larger than that of the G7 in purchasing power parity terms (a measure of what GDP can buy domestically in goods and services).
This sounds like a turning point in the world economic order. But that would be an illusion. First, within the BRICS, China (accounting for 17.6 per cent of global GDP) is dominant, followed by India at a distant second (7 per cent); while Russia (3.1 per cent), Brazil (2.4 per cent), and South Africa (0.6 per cent) together made up just 6.1 per cent of world GDP. So this is no equally shared economic power.
Moreover, in nominal dollar terms, which in my opinion is what matters, the BRICS countries are still well behind the G7. Combined, the BRICS bloc had a GDP of USD26trn in 2022, which is about the same as the US alone. And when we measure GDP per person, the BRICS are nowhere. Even using PPP-adjusted international dollars, the United States’ per-capita GDP amounts to $80,035, more than three times that of China, which amounts to $23,382.
From this summit, more countries have been invited to join as full members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But even if that happens, the BRICS group will remain a much smaller and weaker economic force than the G7 imperialist bloc. Moreover, the BRICS are very diverse in population, GDP per head, geographically and in trade composition. And the ruling elites in these countries are often at loggerheads (China v India; Brazil v Russia).
So, unlike the G7, which has increasingly homogenous economic objectives under the hegemonic control of the US, the BRICS group is disparate in wealth and income and without any unified economic objectives – except maybe to try and move away from the economic dominance of the US and in particular, the US dollar.
And even that objective is going to be difficult to achieve. As I have pointed out in previous posts, even though there has been a relative decline in US economic dominance globally and in the dollar, the latter remains the most important currency by far for trade, investment and national reserves.
Approximately half of all global trade is invoiced in dollars and this share has hardly changed. The USD was involved in nearly 90% of global FX transactions, making it the single most traded currency in the FX market. Approximately half of all cross-border loans, international debt securities, and trade invoices are denominated in US dollars, while roughly 40 percent of SWIFT messages and 60 percent of global foreign exchange reserves are in dollars. The Chinese yuan continues to make gradual gains and the renminbi’s share in global FX turnover has increased from less than 1% 20 years ago to more than 7% now. But the Chinese currency still only represents 3 percent of global FX reserves, up from 1 percent in 2017.
And it’s even the case that ‘anti-US’ China remains heavily committed in its FX reserves to the US dollar. China publicly reported that it reduced the dollar share of its reserves from 79% to 58% between 2005 and 2014. But China doesn’t appear to have changed the dollar share of its reserves in the last ten years.
Moreover, multilateral institutions that could be an alternative to the existing IMF and World Bank (controlled by the imperialist economies) are still tiny and weak. For example, there is the New Development Bank set up in 2015. The NDB has now appointed Brazil’s former leftist President Dilma Roussef as head, based in Shanghai.
There is much noise that the NDB can provide an opposite pole of credit to the imperialist institutions of the IMF and World Bank. But there is a long way to go in doing that. One ex-official of South African Reserve bank (SARB) commented: “the idea that Brics initiatives, of which the most prominent thus far has been the NDB, will supplant Western-dominated multilateral financial institutions is a pipe dream.”
Even so, international rivalry, politically, economically and militarily, is going to hot up in this decade. The days of complete domination by the imperialist bloc under the US are over – because globalization ie unimpeded trade and financial flows of the last two decades of the 20th century, is over.
As the profitability of capital fell back in the major economies in the first two decades of this century, the struggle for surplus value by the major capitalist economies has intensified. And this is leading to a fragmentation of economic power. The US-led imperialist bloc is still dominant, but its dominance is being questioned as never before.
Navigating by the stars under cloudy skies – and holed below the water line
… Powell made it clear that inflation was “still too high” and while the rate of inflation was falling, it would be necessary to keep the policy rate high for some time i.e. well into 2025, and it may be necessary to raise it again before the year is out.
Powell sort of admitted for the first time that inflation had spiked to levels not seen since the 1980s because of “supply distortions”, but continued to claim that it was a combination of ‘excessive demand’ and weak supply. That was stating the obvious in the sense that it takes two to dance i.e. if the supply of commodities is lower than demand for them, then prices would rise and vice versa. But the question is: which was the leading the dance, supply or demand?
The evidence is now overwhelming that it was the former, with rocketing energy and food prices caused by the collapse of supply chains internationally, very low productivity growth and the loss of skilled workers after the pandemic.
That meant that the huge rise in interest rates, supposedly to bring down ‘excessive demand’ by reducing borrowing to spend or invest, would have limited effect on inflation rates. And so it has proved. While the ‘headline’ inflation rate has fallen globally as energy and food price inflation subsided (at least for now), ‘core’ inflation rates have remained stubbornly high.
Central banks and mainstream economists have not been able to answer why that is. Nevertheless, they have ploughed on with what they do: namely to raise interest rates and reduce money supply in order to bring the inflation rate down to some arbitrary target of 2% a year. As Powell put it at Jackson Hole: “although further unwinding of pandemic-related distortions should continue to put some downward pressure on inflation, restrictive monetary policy will likely play an increasingly important role.”
So, despite the hit to people’s living standards; despite the monstrous rise in mortgage borrowing costs; despite small banks and businesses going under, the Fed will continue to keep interest rates at record highs to ‘control inflation’, which is only coming down because the supply issues in energy and food have abated.
What high interest rates are doing is damaging the productive sectors of the economy, but not really affecting inflation. Powell admitted that “getting inflation sustainably back down to 2 percent is expected to require a period of below-trend economic growth as well as some softening in labor market conditions.” Indeed. The Fed and the the mainstream economists continue to proclaim how low unemployment is, not only in the US but in most of the other advanced economies.
So there is nothing to worry about – a ‘soft landing’ for the economy is probable, even if unemployment ticks up a bit. But Powell had to recognised that “payroll job growth has slowed significantly. Total hours worked has been flat over the past six months, and the average workweek has declined to the lower end of its pre-pandemic range”. He called this “a gradual normalization in labor market conditions“. More likely, it is another sign that the US economic ship, far from pulling into a safe economic harbour, is showing signs of listing with a hole appearing below the water line.
Actually, the ‘strong’ jobs data has been quietly revised down by the official statisticians just this month, with a reduction of over 350k jobs in the year to March. Moreover, a further downward revision is expected.
Anyway, employment is a lagging indicator of activity in a capitalist economy. The lead indicator starts with profits, then investment and production, then employment and consumer spending. Corporate profits and corporate profit margins have already been falling. Investment growth is slowing. And manufacturing is in recession. A high frequency indicator of economic activity, the JPM global PMI, is indicating that the manufacturing sector is contracting (any score below 50) and the services sector is now virtually doing so, both globally and in the US. As for the consumer, housing markets in the major economies are dead in the water.
…
While the economic ship is showing signs of leakage, up on the bridge, Captain Powell says that he is “navigating by the stars under cloudy skies.” In other words, he does not know if the ship will make port before sinking.
…
It seems that if world’s major economies sink into a slump or face unsustainable debts in the rest of this decade, there would be no ‘escape hatch’ from productivity growth or increased exports because innovation was being squeezed by high interest rates; and trade was being squeezed by US sanctions on Russia and China and by the rise in trade barriers. It all sounds like the 1930s not the roaring 20s.
I deeply enjoy when Michael writes these takedowns of papers and presentations at economist meetups.
It seems that if world’s major economies sink into a slump or face unsustainable debts in the rest of this decade, there would be no ‘escape hatch’ from productivity growth or increased exports because innovation was being squeezed by high interest rates; and trade was being squeezed by US sanctions on Russia and China and by the rise in trade barriers. It all sounds like the 1930s not the roaring 20s.
I feel like for the past 6 months I’ve just been waiting for the wheels finally fall off, but instead we just keep seeing the west treading water.
there’s a big hole in the ship but the economists have successfully been managing to bucket water out of it to stop the ship from sinking and pretending that everything is fine, actually
we’re basically just waiting until they can’t maintain the effort anymore and it’s just too much water
this isn’t to do, like, the “China will COLLAPSE in THREE DAYS” thing but in reverse to the United States, it’ll “only” be a recession, perhaps a depression idk, not collapse. but even so, when the world hegemon starts going down, they start clawing at other people and dragging them down with them. an acceleration of current processes, let’s say.
Idk, I am really skeptical that the same company responsible for building the Fukushima power plant are going to be completely honest about how they are filtering and releasing nuclear waste into the ocean.
I would imagine that the disaster would put them under intense scrutiny, I doubt they’re the only ones testing the water.
The practice of dumping power plant wastewater, nuclear or otherwise, is actually pretty common. The main concern is usually the high temperature of the water, since it’s used for cooling and immediately removed, which can damage local ecosystems. We probably need more comprehensive laws to deal with power plant wastewater in general
Yes.
