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Category: Ukraine

Ukraine’s Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility: a well-calculated project or an unwarranted risk?

Photo credit: Bellona

Concerns have been raising among environmentalists and nuclear power engineers as Ukraine continues the loading of used fuel into the into the containerized dry storage systems of the new Chernobyl Interim Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility (ISF-2).

Designed by Holtec International, the project poses dangerous risks to the global environment, and here is why.

According to the official website of Holtec International and John Heaton’s presentation at the “ELEA – Holtec International” Congress, the U.S. company claims to have some competences and expertise in storing the nuclear energy waste. Among them are: technologies for the construction of dry storage facilities of the CISF type for the temporary storage of containers with spent nuclear fuel and radioactive wastes; the reliability of the storage facilities that is ensured by a dry climate system, which prevents corrosion of structural materials and excludes the ingress of water into the waste tanks. Finally, the company already has its own functioning storage.

However, the Holtec International has no expertise in building large, capacious storage facilities for long-term (more than 50 years) storage of spent nuclear fuel in a humid and cold climate, with a pronounced change of seasons.

For 6 years of work on the territory of Ukraine, “Holtec International” has so far the only one achievement concerning the loading of the two double-walled tanks with spent nuclear fuel from the RBMK reactor in the Interim Storage Facility (ISF-2) at the Chernobyl NPP site. It is shown that containers with nuclear waste are placed in the ISF-2 building that is already under operation, and not in a dry storage facility of the CISF type. In addition, the arrangement of tanks in the ISF-2 storage facility is horizontal, not vertical (i.e., it does not correspond to the American technology of storage of tanks), and it is not known what risks and consequences this may lead to. For this reason, the launch of ISF-2 by “Holtec International” specialists was delayed, since it was not known in advance whether it would be possible to safely place the canister in the storage facility.

According to the study by Ukrainian experts, Ukraine’s 15 reactors – all of which were built while the country was still a republic of the Soviet Union – supply more than half of the domestic electricity supply. This means that reactors built during the Soviet era in Ukraine has more trust among nuclear power engineers rather than an ambitious U.S. project.

Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, during the negotiations over the project last year, said Ukraine would embrace nuclear power as a national priority.

“In the coming years, many countries will work against nuclear power generation,” he said. “We, on the other hand, will defend it. We must do this because today we have every opportunity to be among the first [in nuclear energy], both in Europe and in the world.”

But at the same time the Ukrainian government is creating an extremely dangerous situation for the global environment and its border neighbors.

By entrusting the project to a company with no experience in building large nuclear storage facilities and limited scientific and technological base for the elimination of nuclear accidents and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel planned for accumulation, the Ukrainian authorities might yet but provoke an uncontrolled environmental disaster that might dramatically change the Eurasia’s landscape.

November 1, 2021
Ukraine’s another Church dissent is on edge

Photo credit: press-office of Vladimir Zelensky

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has blamed Volodymyr Zelensky for pressure by the authorities. Its followers hoped to end persecution with the new Ukrainian President coming to power. Yet, Zelensky who stayed away from the Church affairs during the first months of his presidential term is taking on the course on further Church dissent started by the former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Back in 2019, 49 parliamentarians requested from the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to cancel the controversial draft law “On renaming the Ukrainian Orthodox Church”. This religious organization was obliged to change its name to “Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine” in order to indicate that it was allegedly “governed by an aggressor country”.

This bill was passed two years ago. The document was part of a larger strategic plan by President Petro Poroshenko to create an “independent church.” He won the support of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and then gathered the dissenters together, promising them the role of the leading religious group in the country. This explains why the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has become so powerful.

But the majority of Ukrainians, followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, did not want to join the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, so the government organized persecutions against them and the canonical church. Moreover, it legalized the takeover of its temples widely known in the world.

In October 2020, Volodymyr Zelensky with his spouse made a visit to Istanbul to hold a meeting with Bartholomew I of Constantinople. The Ukrainian President made it clear that the Ukrainian authorities will support further expansion of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The reaction of dissenters was swift: they announced a new wave of temple seizure making everyone believe that the power was again on their side. The courage that Ukraine has not seen since Poroshenko’s days in the office.

According to local Ukrainian experts, Bartholomew, who officially calls himself a peacemaker of all Christian world is in fact supporting the religious dissent in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian authorities, who claimed that the index of religious freedom in the country is equal to the one in Belgium (according to Andrei Yurash, the head of the Religion Division of the Ministry of Culture, this indicator was 3,2 in February, 2021, that points to the high level of religious tolerance), are also fueling the national protests in the country with their hypocritical and at times irrational policy.

April 14, 2021
Ukraine on the brink of losing its last values

With the current political regime and the policy that contradicts to the Ukraine’s national identity the country seems to be once again on the brink of a religious war. The conflict that started last year between the Ukraine’s Institute of Church and the national Parliament, The Verkhovna Rada, is getting to the new extreme today.

A number of Ukrainian politicians representing the political party “Svoboda” along with some members of the Rada have requested the Ukraine’s Ministry of culture for religious affairs to change the official name of the Ukrainian Orthodox church for the “Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine” claiming that Moscow had “grabbed” the Ukrainian national shrines. The move is allegedly explained by the growing Russian “aggression” in the Crimea and the Ukrainian region of Donbass.

According to experts from the Ukrainian Analytical Institute for policy management, the claims should be regarded as a typical blackmail policy aiming to undermine Russia’s credibility in Ukraine and among the Ukrainian authorities. Experts also suggest that the real reason behind these claims is to get the control over the Church and 12 million of its members to secure the victory of the ruling party in the upcoming elections. The fact that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church does not fall under the regulation of the Ukrainian Parliament by its Constitution adds even more irony to the overall situation.

However, such policy can lead to much more dramatic outcomes and destruct one of the last national values that still holds the country together – the people’s faith. Known for its deep cultural background defined by its history and religion that find its roots back in the 10th century the dominant part of the Ukrainian population is orthodox Slavic people who accurately keep their traditions and culture. Once they are destroyed the entire country might disappear from the map.

April 18, 2018
AND SO PASSES A WOMAN’S LIFE IN TURKEY

Serena Shim (1984-19 October 2014)

I never met her. I wish I had. But I knew she was a reporter, a good reporter telling of bad wars, and telling all the sides. And this one in Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) has many more sides than two, all of them bloody, all of them reeking of criminality. This carnage in Syria is perhaps the most corrupt, criminal, imperial assault in modern history. There are no “good guys” in this slaughter on the rapidly crumbling edge of Turkey. It’s all lies, deceit and power politics. Call it murder. Call it the ultimate man’s tough-guy game—bombardment, siege, street-fighting, and always the stupidity.

The dogs of war run wild and ignorantly. For what? For a nothing town destroyed by chaos. She was telling as much as she could. The Turks there, the intelligence guys, the cops, the Turkish army, all the government “watchers” watched her and her partner, Judy Irish. She was called a spy. Watch out, they said. Maybe you’ll even be arrested, they mumbled. And the word got around. Not an easy assignment. She confessed that she was worried. Who wouldn’t be?

Note the eyes. They would tell exactly what they saw, wouldn’t they? She had two children, this beautiful Lebanese-American woman. She was 30 years-old, hard-working and dedicated. Perhaps it was Napoleon who spoke about his Marshalls “marching towards the sound of the guns.” She didn’t need the advice. She followed the danger instinctively. Maybe she could make sense of it all in Iraq, Lebanon, the Ukraine, and lastly, Turkey? Maybe? Maybe not? She told of the ISIS killers being smuggled into Syria in trucks with NGO labels like World Food Organization. Turkey has been at this double-dealing game for years. But this kind of truth hurts and it did not endear her to the Turkish “watchers” and “handlers” and “muscle-guys.”

On the way back to the hotel in a town called Suruç a cement-mixer truck, massive and deadly accurate, somehow, some way, intervened to crush her car and her. It all had the stink of bad fish. Based on the historic violence visited upon journalists and other dissenters in Turkey such a first impression of foul play is logical.

The governor of that area immediately said that “Turkey is a democratic state of law. The allegations are completely untrue.” What is completely untrue is exactly what he said. Democracy and the rule of law have both been crushed by the cement-mixer truck known as the Turkish government. And Serena confirmed that in her reportage. And so passes a brave young woman’s life in Turkey. And so continues the war.

James (Cem) Ryan

Istanbul

21 October 2013

Brightening Glance http://www.brighteningglance.org/

October 22, 2014
Ukraine Presidential Frontrunner Petro Poroshenko and His Secret Jewish Roots

‘Chocolate King’s’ Father Was Jew Who Took Wife’s Name

Mezuzah in the Closet? Confectionary mogul Petro Poroshenko is leading the polls in Ukraine’s presidential race. Does he have a secret Jewish family history?

By Cnaan Lipshiz

(JTA) — Even in normal times, Kiev can feel like a city perpetually under construction. Potholes are “fixed” with flimsy coverings, ramshackle scaffolding clings precariously to the sides of buildings, and tangles of electric wires seem ever ready to combust.

But since the outbreak of anti-government protests in November, the sense of flux in the Ukrainian capital has been greater than ever. Two kinds of tents now dot the city center: Hundreds of khaki-colored bivouacs housing the revolutionaries whose protest movement led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February, and more recently erected campaign booths making bold promises of a brighter future ahead of Sunday’s presidential elections.

Politicians describe the vote, the first since a wave of civil unrest broke out in the capital in November, as the most crucial since Ukraine emerged as an independent country in 1991 following the breakup of the Soviet Union. But many disillusioned voters here seem to place more faith in the tired men and women inside the khaki tents — and their pledge to speak truth to power — than in any of the candidates featured in the election posters.

Marina Lysak, a Jewish activist who participated in the protest movement known as Maidan, after the central Kiev square where they took place, told JTA that the tent people are there to send a message to whomever prevails in the election.

“The statement is: ‘We are watching you. If you betray us again, we will not remain silent,’ ” Lysak said. Whoever wins on Sunday faces a herculean set of challenges. The first order of business will be dealing with pro-Russian separatist militias that now hold several cities in eastern Ukraine, where Russian speakers constitute a majority.

The new president also must address a looming economic crisis. Since November, the Ukrainian currency, the hryvna, has plummeted, losing 35 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar. Some analysts worry that the heavily indebted nation will soon default.

And then there’s the sensitive question of clearing encampments from the scorched earth of Maidan, where most tents are pitched on asphalt laid bare by demonstrators who pried the cobblestones loose to hurl them at government forces.

The leading candidate for these tasks is Petro Poroshenko, 48, an oligarch from Odessa and the head of a confectionary empire. Polls predict Poroshenko will take 30 percent of the vote in the first round of balloting.

Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister recently released from jail after serving three years on what she claims were charges trumped up by the Yanukovych regime, is expected to finish second with anywhere from 6 to 18 percent.

Assuming no candidate takes more than 50 percent of the vote — more than 20 are competing — a runoff election between the top two finishers would take place on the following Sunday.

Jewish community leaders have remained officially neutral about the candidates, but many Ukrainian Jews support Poroshenko, a former foreign minister rumored to have Jewish roots.

“He has a unique set of skills that absolutely make him the man for the job,” said Igor Schupak, a Jewish historian and director of the Dnepropetrovsk-based Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine Museum. Business know-how and foreign relations experience “give Poroshenko a toolbox that places him in a league of his own in comparison to the other candidates.”

The sense that Poroshenko is the preferred candidate only when compared to other lesser options isn’t an uncommon one, even among those working to put the oligarch in office.

“He’s no saint — none of them are,” said Svetlana Golnik, who volunteers with the Poroshenko headquarters twice a week in downtown Kiev. “But he is cleaner than most other oligarchs and he delivers on his promises. Anyway, right now he’s what we have to work with.”

James Temerty, a non-Jewish Canadian business magnate who founded the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter to promote interethnic dialogue, said it would be very difficult for Poroshenko to make significant changes without further destabilizing the economy.

“The best hope here is to move toward Europe, and that will stop the corruption gradually,” Temerty said. “He said he’d do it.”

According to the popular Russian television channel Russia-1, Poroshenko’s father was a Jew named Alexei Valtsman from the Odessa region who in 1956 took on the last name of his wife, Yevgenya Poroshenko.

Poroshenko’s media team did not reply to JTA requests for comment, but they are not indifferent about the subject.

Last year, Poroshenko’s spokeswoman asked Forbes Israel to remove her boss’ name from a list of the world’s richest Jews, a magazine source confirmed.

Moshe Azman, a chief rabbi of Ukraine, said he asked Poroshenko directly about the rumors.

“He told me he wasn’t Jewish,” Azman said.

Even if the rumors were true, Poroshenko wouldn’t be the only candidate for president with Jewish roots. Vadim Rabinovich, a billionaire media mogul and founder of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, is running on a platform combining a tolerant attitude toward Ukrainian minorities with plans to dispense with Ukraine’s quasi-federal political system and reduce taxes.

Although he barely registers in the polls — current figures show him taking just over half-a-percent of the vote — his candidacy has at least one high-profile supporter: Rostislav Melnyk, who became famous in Ukraine after surviving a savage beating by Yanukovych forces.

“I support Rabinovich’s platform and I will vote for him,” Melnyk said, “also because he is good for the future of the Jewish community.”

forward.com, May 23, 2014

May 25, 2014
This isn’t Ukraine Or Venezuela, This is Turkey Right Now

By Eileen Shim

This isn’t Ukraine Or Venezuela, This is Turkey Right Now — 11 Pictures Explain What’s Happening Image Credit: AP

A fresh new wave of protests is rocking Turkey, as tens of thousands march on the streets to demonstrate against the government. But unlike what’s going on in Ukraine and Venezuela, the protests in Turkey mark a second, renewed round of protests that began last summer. If you have not caught up on the latest developments, or don’t know what the people are protesting about, here are 11 photos that sum up what’s been happening on the ground:

via This isn’t Ukraine Or Venezuela, This is Turkey Right Now — 11 Pictures Explain What’s Happening – PolicyMic.

March 15, 2014