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What does France’s nuclear waste plan in Bure mean for Luxembourg?

burying radioactive waste underground risks making the problem invisible rather than fully addressing its implications, particularly since some of the materials involved will remain hazardous for up to 100,000 years.

Christophe Wantz, adapted for RTL Today,  11.06.2026 

The Cigéo project in Bure, in the Meuse region of France, is one of the country’s most controversial projects. If approved, underground facilities for the long-term storage of radioactive waste from France’s nuclear power plants will be built.

The facility is located in the rural Meuse region, far from populated areas and close to the Haute-Marne border. Its remote location was not the main reason for its selection, but rather its geology.

Around 500 metres beneath the surface lies a thick layer of clay that formed around 160 million years ago. This rock formation has remained remarkably stable for millions of years and is highly impermeable, making it particularly well suited to long-term underground storage.

The underground laboratory, a unique scientific facility designed to support the development of the Cigéo project, was built here.

Despite its 2.5 kilometres of tunnels, the laboratory itself will never house radioactive waste. Instead, it serves as a research centre where scientists can study and measure the properties of the Callovo-Oxfordian clay formation in its natural environment.

The underground laboratory is used to develop and test the engineering techniques required for excavating and supporting the future repository. In preparation for the first construction phase, France’s National Radioactive Waste Management Agency (Andra) is constructing and testing structures in the laboratory that closely resemble those planned for the Cigéo facility.

However, it is not expected that any radioactive waste will be stored at Bure before 2050.

Once all the necessary approvals have been received, the Cigéo project will begin the permanent disposal of France’s most hazardous radioactive waste at a depth of around 500 metres.

The repository is intended to house waste generated by reprocessing spent fuel from the country’s nuclear power plants.

In total, the site is designed to hold 83,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste, which is roughly equivalent to the volume of 33 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

This includes 10,000 cubic metres of high-level waste and 73,000 cubic metres of long-lived intermediate-level waste that can remain radioactive for up to 100,000 years.

A one of a kind underground facility

………………………………………………………………. The planned facility will comprise around 250 kilometres of underground tunnels and galleries. The project is expected to cost more than €33 billion, which will be financed by France’s nuclear waste producers, including EDF, Orano, and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

A highly contested project

Beyond its technical and scientific aspects, the Cigéo project has become a focal point in the debate about nuclear energy in France.

Since the early 2000s, the town of Bure has faced sustained opposition from local residents, activist groups, and environmental organisations, who see the project as an irreversible commitment with consequences that will affect future generations.

One such critic is the Collective Against the Burial of Radioactive Waste (Cedra), which questions whether safety models can reliably predict the behaviour of a geological repository over such immense timescales.

Opposition to the project extends well beyond the local level. During a demonstration in Bure last September, Green Party lawmaker Sandrine Rousseau criticised the overly optimistic faith placed in humanity’s ability to control and manage the long-term consequences of nuclear technology.

She argued that burying radioactive waste underground risks making the problem invisible rather than fully addressing its implications, particularly since some of the materials involved will remain hazardous for up to 100,000 years.

Roger Spautz, Greenpeace Luxembourg’s nuclear policy specialist, has also raised concerns about the project’s long-term reliability and irreversible nature.

While he does not consider the repository itself to pose a direct threat to Luxembourg, he highlights the scale of the transportation operation required to supply the site.

According to Spautz, between 70,000 and 80,000 shipments would be needed to transport highly radioactive waste from France’s La Hague reprocessing facilities to Bure.

In his view, the possibility of an accident during transportation that could release radioactive material can never be entirely eliminated.

Critics are questioning whether local communities have genuinely consented to the project. While some local officials support Cigéo for its potential economic benefits, opponents argue that the region is being asked to bear an unfair share of the burden for the rest of the country.

Meanwhile, supporters point to the project’s economic benefits. Cigéo is expected to create over 3,000 direct and indirect jobs in an area that has experienced decades of industrial decline.

However, for many residents, the development remains controversial, with some describing the region as a ‘sacrificial territory’ chosen to bear the long-term consequences of France’s nuclear waste.

Cigéo is part of France’s wider nuclear strategy. The government is promoting a revival of nuclear energy to meet climate objectives, but the long-term management of radioactive waste remains politically and socially sensitive.

Although the project has already passed several administrative milestones, it still depends on key approvals, including a declaration of public utility and a construction permit. Environmental groups have challenged it multiple times, contributing to delays in the overall timetable.

In May, Cigéo entered a major new phase with the launch of a public inquiry. Thousands of pages of documents prepared by France’s National Radioactive Waste Management Agency have been made available in town halls in affected municipalities, and residents there have until 2 July to submit comments or questions.

Neighbouring countries have also been notified. So far, only Luxembourg has formally requested to be kept informed about the process.

A national debate

At the centre of the controversy is a basic question: what should be done with high-level nuclear waste in the long term? According to France’s National Radioactive Waste Management Agency, more than half of the waste destined for storage in the Meuse region has already been produced, and current surface storage solutions are considered to be no safer than burying the waste 500 metres underground.

Some in the scientific community currently believe that deep geological disposal is the most reliable way to keep radioactive waste away from human activity and environmental hazards.

The clay formation at Bure is believed to significantly limit the spread of radionuclides over long periods, and Andra’s studies suggest that the site has remained stable for over one million years.

However, other experts argue that further research is needed into alternative approaches, such as reducing the radiotoxicity of waste or developing controlled near-surface storage solutions.

Ultimately, the Cigéo project reflects the broader dilemma of the energy transition: how to meet present-day energy needs while taking responsibility for consequences that extend far into the future.

In Bure, beneath layers of clay, decisions are being made that will have consequences lasting well beyond human timescales.

Watch the report here: – (on original ) https://today.rtl.lu/news/world/what-does-frances-nuclear-waste-plan-in-bure-mean-for-luxembourg-1621893378

June 16, 2026 Posted by | France, wastes | Leave a comment

We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way

Our roadmap has been shaped by experts across the world, from UN agencies to grassroots movements. We call on political leaders at all levels to use it

Olivier De Schutter, Joseph Stiglitz, Jayati Ghosh, Thomas Piketty, Kate Raworth and Jason Hickel, 10 June 26, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/10/economists-maths-growth-doomed-strategy-un-agencies-political-leaders

We live in an age of manufactured scarcity. In a world richer than ever before, roughly one 10th of the world’s population still lives in extreme destitution. Millions of people cannot afford enough food, proper housing or basic healthcare, while a tiny minority accumulates unprecedented wealth and power. At the same time, droughts, megafires, floods and heatwaves remind us that our economies are pushing the planet beyond its limits.

These are not separate crises. They are symptoms of an economic model that has reached the end of the road. Poverty and inequality are not accidents; they are predictable outcomes of policy choices: how we design tax systems, regulate labour markets, value care, structure public services and decide whose needs and whose voices matter. Crucially, if governments can manufacture poverty, they can also dismantle it.

For decades, the recipe was simple: grow the economy, and poverty would gradually disappear. But the promise that economic growth would “lift all boats” has not been kept. While national incomes expanded, wages stagnated, work became more precarious and public services were cut. At the top, fortunes ballooned; at the bottom, families turned to food banks. Growth has become decoupled from shared prosperity.

It has also become ecologically unsustainable. We are edging towards a “hothouse Earth”, where rising emissions and biodiversity loss are destabilising the conditions that support human life. Around 92% of excess global carbon emissions can be attributed to the global north, and the wealthiest 10% of individuals are responsible for nearly half of global emissions, while people in poverty are the first to face crop failures and rising food prices. An economic model that depends on endless expansion on a finite planet is not just unfair; it is dangerous.

Many low‑income countries still need growth to build roads, hospitals, schools, renewable energy and decent jobs. But the dominant path to growth – based on resource extraction, cheap and compliant labour, export dependence and deepening debt – has widened inequality and degraded the environment. The real question today is not whether growth continues, but what kind of economies we are building, who they serve and whether they allow everyone to live in dignity within planetary boundaries.

That is why we have come together to develop and support the “roadmap for eradicating poverty beyond growth”. The roadmap provides a range of alternatives on how to move beyond the narrow “grow-tax-transfer” approach that has shaped policy for decades. It is not a blueprint shaped by a handful of experts. It is the exact opposite: over 18 months, more than 400 people – UN agencies, national governments, academic experts, civil society organisations, trade unions, social and solidarity economy actors and grassroots movements, from the global north and south – worked to answer a simple question: how can we end poverty and reduce inequalities without treating GDP growth as the primary condition for progress? More than 350 signatories have put their names to the plan, including Jean Drèze, Pavlina Tcherneva, Tim Jackson, Bhumika Muchhala, Julia Steinberger, Ndongo Samba Sylla, Timothée Parrique.

We do not agree on every policy detail. But we are united in the conviction that our economies must be redesigned around the fulfilment of rights and collective wellbeing within planetary boundaries, rather than maximising output at any cost. Human rights here are not an afterthought; they are the organising principle for how we measure progress, set priorities and resolve trade‑offs. Social protection and public services are essential, but they cannot indefinitely compensate for economies that by design generate poverty wages, insecure jobs and unaffordable housing.

We need to change the rules upstream. That means, for instance, decent work and employment guarantees, living wages and fair remuneration, stronger unions and workplace democracy, tackling discrimination and valuing the paid and unpaid care work on which our societies depend. It means investing in children, housing, health, education and transport through universal public provisioning. It means public control of strategic assets, credit guidance to steer investment towards social and ecological priorities, and support for the development of the social and solidarity economy.

Implementing this vision means changing the rules of the global economy. Today, governments in the global south are chided for not doing enough to tackle poverty, while being squeezed by unilateral sanctions, restrictive trade agreements, unequal exchange and debt burdens rooted in centuries of colonial dispossession. About 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt servicing than on healthcare or education. Meanwhile, global supply chains enable a vast net transfer of labour and resources from south to north. International solidarity is therefore a legal and moral obligation rooted in the historical reality that many rich countries built their wealth by impoverishing the south, through patterns of extraction that continue today in new forms. A just transition beyond growth must include debt justice, increased south-south cooperation, reparative climate finance and support for universal social protection floors, rooted in the principles of non-domination and self-determination so that countries can chart their own sovereign economic futures.

Equally crucial is who gets to shape this transition. All too often, policies affecting people in poverty are designed without them – and sometimes against them. When welfare systems are built around suspicion, sanctions and humiliating conditions, they deepen stigma and deter people from claiming their entitlements. Those who live in poverty know better than anyone how systems can fail in practice. Their expertise must guide the design, implementation and monitoring of anti‑poverty strategies, from local councils to parliaments and international forums.

We are not starting from zero. Around the world, Indigenous struggles, feminist organising, trade unions and climate justice movements are defending and building alternative futures rooted in collective care and territorial rights. New coalitions of states are advancing new visions of global economic governance, and governments are experimenting with rights‑based anti‑poverty strategies, citizens’ assemblies and community wealth building. The UN and many partners are exploring “beyond GDP” indicators and new institutions, such as an international panel on inequality, to help chart this shift.

Our roadmap builds on these efforts, connects them and pushes them further. We offer it now as a common reference point for those who refuse to accept that poverty and ecological breakdown are the price to pay for how we currently define economic “success”. Governments and multilateral institutions have a choice: double down on a failing growth-first model or commit to eradicating poverty by transforming the economic rules that produce it.

Poverty is manufactured. That is the bad news – and the good news. What has been manufactured can be dismantled and replaced. We are putting concrete options on the table, all backed by detailed policy profiles that spell out evidence, implementation steps and real‑world examples. We call on political leaders at all levels to use them, to listen to those most affected, and to treat the end of poverty, the reduction of inequalities and the effective realisation of human rights as the measure by which economic policy should be judged.

  • Olivier De Schutter is the chair of New Economies for Eradicating Poverty; Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in economics; Jayati Ghosh is professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst; Thomas Piketty is professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics; Kate Raworth is an economist at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute; JJason Hickel is a political economist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona

June 16, 2026 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

Campaigners demand answers over Sizewell C costs and completion date

It comes one year after £14bn Government backing for the nuclear power plant

Author: Jasmine Oak, 10th Jun 2026

Anti-nuclear campaigners are calling on the Government to release more information about the future of Sizewell C, arguing that key questions about the project’s costs and completion date remain unanswered a year after ministers committed £14.2 billion to the Suffolk development.

Campaign group Stop Sizewell C has published a new report to mark the first anniversary of the Government’s investment in the power station, claiming there is still insufficient transparency around how much the project will ultimately cost and when it will begin generating electricity.

The group is urging ministers to publish what it describes as an unredacted Full Business Case and a detailed delivery plan, arguing that both local communities and bill payers deserve greater clarity.

What questions they want answered

Alison Downes, founder of Stop Sizewell C, said the most significant unanswered question was when the power station would be completed.

“It’s been a year since the government committed £14 billion pounds to Sizewell C and that paved the way for a final investment decision and there’s still a lot we don’t know,” she said.

“The biggest single question is when Sizewell C will be finished and the government seems absolutely determined to keep this a secret.

“Local people need to know how long this nightmare is going to go on for. The British public needs to know how long they have to pay for it until they get any electricity.”

The Government and Sizewell C have previously said the project is expected to begin generating electricity in the mid-2030s. However, Ms Downes questioned whether that timeline remained realistic, citing references contained within reports examining the project.

The campaign group is also seeking greater transparency over the financial implications of the development.

Under the Regulated Asset Base funding model, consumers contribute towards the cost of constructing the power station before it begins generating electricity.

Ms Downes said uncertainty remained over the eventual impact on household energy bills.

“The reality is we don’t know what the impact of Sizewell C on energy bills is going to be because we don’t know what it ultimately will cost,” she said.

“We don’t know how long we’ll be paying for it before it’s even generating any electricity.”

They’re seeking transparency

The report also calls on ministers to publish further project documentation, including a full business case and delivery strategy.

“The government needs to publish the unredacted Sizewell C full business case so we can all see the information withheld when only a summary was published last year,” Ms Downes said.

“We also need to see a strategy and delivery plan. It needs to be transparent about the costs and schedule in a way that’s easy for people to understand.”

The campaign group argues ministers should be prepared to reconsider the project if costs or delays escalate significantly.

“The Secretary of State has the power to cancel Sizewell C under certain circumstances and we want more assurances that the government is actually prepared to do this,” Ms Downes said.

“It would be completely immoral to force the public to carry on paying for something that spiralled out of control.”

Sizewell C is expected to provide enough low-carbon electricity to power around six million homes and is one of the Government’s flagship infrastructure projects aimed at improving the UK’s energy security and reducing carbon emissions.

Ministers have consistently argued that Sizewell C will play a vital role in the UK’s future energy mix. The Government says the power station will help strengthen energy security, reduce exposure to volatile international gas markets and provide enough low-carbon electricity to power around six million homes for decades to come…………………………………….. https://www.hellorayo.co.uk/hits-radio/suffolk/news/campaigners-demand-answers-over-sizewell-c-costs-and-completion-date

June 16, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Western Media Normalize Ethnic Cleansing of Lebanon by Viewing It Through Israel’s Eyes

Belén Fernández, FAIR, 11 June 26

In October 2024, one year into Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and attendant assault on Lebanon, the Israeli army did a thing. It invited journalists from major Western corporate media outlets on an incursion into Lebanon’s ravaged south, accompanied by Israeli military personnel who would interpret the wreckage in Israel’s favor—not that the Western media have ever required much assistance in this regard.

Reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, Fox News and a handful of other special guests signed up for the cross-border sortie. It was, as Habib Battah and Christina Cavalcanti note in an investigation for the Public Source (8/27/25), an “awkward hybrid between a traditional embed and the kind of all-expense-paid publicity trip that journalists refer to as junkets, freebies and dog-and-pony shows.”

Never mind that it is entirely illegal for journalists or anyone else to enter Lebanon from Israel—what’s one more illegal invasion from a country that has been invading Lebanon pretty much since its founding? As Battah and Cavalcanti emphasize, these media professionals were also embedding themselves “within a national project of extraordinary transnational violence,” hosted by an “extrajudicial occupying military power—a critical point that all of them would fail to mention in their coverage.”

The Israelis certainly hit the jackpot with the coverage, as reporters excitedly discovered boots and helmets allegedly belonging to Hezbollah—clear proof that the group had been plotting a nefarious attack on Israel. New York Times Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner, an old pro at conducting preemptive journalistic strikes on Lebanon, did not disappoint with her dispatch (10/13/24), “Just Over the Border From Israel, a Hezbollah Cache of Explosives and Mines.”

And in report after embedded report, Israel’s chosen journalists faithfully transmitted the tiresome and counter-logical notion that Hezbollah was somehow the aggressor in the arrangement—as opposed to the army that was busily slaughtering thousands of people in Lebanon while implementing a scorched-earth strategy.

‘Urgent evacuation warnings’

While the October 2024 embed was one of the more preposterous embodiments of Western corporate media’s special relationship with Israel, outlets continue to do a fine job of sanitizing Israeli brutality even when their reporters are not physically viewing the region from inside an Israeli armored vehicle. Since March of this year, Israel has killed at least 3,613 people in Lebanon and displaced 1.2 million, obliterating entire villages and otherwise expanding the ecocidal policy honed in the Gaza Strip.

There has been no remotely comparable destruction on the Israeli side, and a recent Reuters article (5/31/26) that had attempted to suggest some symmetry now comes with the preface: “This May 31 story has been corrected to remove a reference to tens of thousands of Israelis being displaced by Hezbollah fire, in paragraph 3.”

Like in Gaza, where genocide proceeds apace in spite of a declared ceasefire (FAIR.org, 10/21/25), the media tend to report “ceasefires” in Lebanon without caring to highlight the fact that it’s not a ceasefire when Israel is still pummeling the country and massacring people, all the while setting the stage for a massive land grab with its creeping so-called “evacuation orders.” These “evacuations” have been focused on the Shiite demographic, with Israel warning Christian and Druze communities not to allow Shiite neighbors to take refuge in their towns (New York Times, 4/1/26).

Lebanese journalist Habib Battah, co-author of the aforementioned Public Source investigation, suggested to me that such orders might be more accurately termed “ethnic cleansing directives.” But that, of course, would be way too much for corporate media outlets to handle—and so it is that we learn about Israel’s “urgent evacuation warnings” and “large-scale evacuation orders,” as though it’s some sort of public service announcement, fire drill or other fundamentally legitimate Israeli undertaking, rather than entirely illegal in addition to downright psychopathic. From a legal and moral perspective, after all, you can’t just go around ordering people in other countries out of their homes, oftentimes only to bomb them when they comply.


Then there’s the matter of the “Yellow Line” or “security zone”—more terminology borrowed from Gaza (FAIR.org, 5/19/26)—which denotes the portion of south Lebanon that Israel is currently illegally occupying. But Israel has never been very good at staying within the lines, and its latest “evacuation orders” spanned no less than one-fifth of the entire country, far beyond its own unilaterally appointed Yellow Line.

As Battah remarked to me, the media’s acceptance and deployment of such arbitrary vocabulary creates “artificial structures” and a sense of orderliness, when in reality “there’s no yellow lines, there’s no yellow, there’s no colors—these are just illegal invasions.” And because media are committed to sanitizing Israel’s behavior rather than questioning it, “colonization becomes normalized.”

‘A warning to residents’

The eagerness of journalists to do Israel’s bidding is all the more confounding given that Israel is currently the No. 1 killer of journalists in the world. A recent Associated Press article (5/29/26), for example, reduced the pulverization of Lebanon to simply “ongoing fighting in southern Lebanon between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.”

A June 4 Reuters writeup blamed Hezbollah for having “rejected” the latest US-mediated “ceasefire” plan—which, mind you, would basically have given Israel the green light to seize south Lebanon outright. Reuters refrained from referencing the thousands of Lebanese casualties since March, but did allow Israel the usual space to defend its depredations: “The Israeli military, in a warning to residents of the south, said it was continuing to target Hezbollah facilities.”

This is not to say that corporate media do not report on the destruction, displacement and killing in Lebanon; they do—and sometimes even sympathetically. But the refusal to paint a consistent and properly contextualized picture of what is actually going on in the country means that they mostly just end up legitimizing Israel’s war crimes…………………………………………………………………………………….. https://fair.org/home/western-media-normalize-ethnic-cleansing-of-lebanon-by-viewing-it-through-israels-eyes/

June 16, 2026 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

Record winter temperatures in Antarctic raise fears over speed of climate breakdown

Temperatures above 15C ‘very strange’ say scientists, as snow melts and rain falls on glaciers in usually frozen region

Jonathan Watts , 11 June 26, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/10/record-winter-temperatures-in-antarctic-raise-fears-over-speed-of-climate-breakdown

Temperatures in the Antarctic climbed above 15C this month, shattering the previous winter heat record for the usually frozen region and raising concerns about the speed of climate breakdown.

The new winter peak temperature was logged by the Argentinian Esperanza base on the Trinity peninsula on 6 June amid a protracted heatwave, when the maximum daily temperature exceeded zero degrees for three consecutive weeks.

Scientists said the high of 15.4C broke the previous record set at the same station in 1998 by 2C. “This is absolutely crazy,” said Raúl Cordero, an Ecuadorian climate professor at the University of Groningen. “It is also about 20C above normal for this time of the year. That is a huge anomaly.”

Unusually strong warm winds from the north blew across much of the Antarctic peninsula. One Chilean weather station, Boonen Rivera, registered temperatures of close to 13C, Cordero said.

On King George Island, 100 miles (160km) from Esperanza, researchers said the landscape had changed from mostly white to brown, grey and green after temperatures hit 4.6C on 6 June.

“Last weekend was very strange. The temperatures here went very high so everything outside melted,” said Luis Muñoz, a Chilean glaciologist. “Usually there is 20cm of snow and a lot of ice on the ground at this time.”

Muñoz said he and a colleague, Natalia Mestre, climbed to the 500-metre peak of the nearby Collins glacier last Wednesday and were surprised to find rain melting the ice. “There was a direct impact on the glacier, which should be receiving snow now. It should not be suffering ablation at this time of the year. This is obviously not good for the glacier.”

The Antarctic region is coming under increasing human pressure, directly in the form of resource exploration and tourism and indirectly through the burning of fossil fuels, which is heating the planet.

Scientists warn that some of the region’s biggest glaciers, such as Thwaites and Pine Island, are approaching or may even have passed a tipping point that could push up global sea levels by four metres. Antarctic ice melt has also been found to slow global ocean circulation.

Cordero said a single winter of heatwaves, no matter how amazing, would not by itself make a huge difference to sea levels, but it signified more alarming long-term trends. “This heatwave happened because of extremely strong westerlies,” he said. “This has been happening with increasing frequency since the 1980s, and that is known to be related to climate change.”

June 16, 2026 Posted by | ANTARCTICA, climate change | Leave a comment

Putin Powerfully Rebuffed The Hawks Who Want Him To Attack NATO

Andrew Korybko, Jun 10, 2026, https://korybko.substack.com/p/putin-powerfully-rebuffed-the-hawks

In his words, talk about Russia attacking NATO “is not simply nonsense; it is a provocation.”

Several top “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” (NRPR) influencers rang the alarm last month about Russia’s alleged plans to attack NATO, which were inspired by top hawk Sergey Karaganov and then Russian Ambassador to the OSCE Dmitry Polyanskiy ominously channeling his rhetoric. Readers can review examples of their warnings here, here, here, here, and here. Casual NRPRs therefore braced themselves for what would have in that scenario almost certainly been the start of World War III had it come to pass.

It obviously hasn’t and it likely won’t ever, however, judging by Putin’s response when he was recently asked about these alleged plans during a meeting with foreign journalists. In his words, “Why would Russia attack Europe or go to war with NATO? What would be the purpose? As I have said before, these claims are not merely nonsense. In my view, they are a deliberate provocation designed to create the impression of a threat that does not actually exist.”

Putin then elaborated that “The objective is to persuade their populations to increase defence spending and, as a first step, to pay for the regime that seized power in Kiev. That, I believe, is the real explanation. It is not simply nonsense; it is a provocation. What surprises me, however, is that some people in European countries appear to believe it. I find that astonishing. The whole notion is simply absurd. It would be amusing if it were not so sad.”

It’s not just “some people in European countries” who “appear to believe it”, but his own top hawk is championing this policy and it was recently amplified to the max by top NRPR influencers, many of whom can be described as “state-adjacent” due to being platformed by publicly financed media, attending government-organized conferences, and/or taking state-secured tours of Donbass. Casual NRPRs are therefore left to wonder whether Putin is telling the truth or is “psyching out the West”.

It’s always best to defer to what Putin himself says in such cases whenever confusion arises, which is due to top NRPR influencers practicing what’s been called “Potemkinism”, or the creation of “alternative realities” about Russian interests and policy for “strategic purposes” (whatever they might be). The most infamous example is that Putin is an anti-Zionist secretly allied with Iran against Israel despite him being a proud lifelong philo-Semite as proven by his many quotes to this end from the official Kremlin website.

Accordingly, while it would be inaccurate describe the fiercely loyal Karaganov as a “provocateur” in the spirit of how Putin condemned such folks who advocate for Russia to attack NATO, he nevertheless powerfully rebuffed hawks such as him as well as the top NRPR influencers who hyped up his rhetoric. That said, Russia’s foreign spy service did indeed warn last month that their country might carry out retaliatory strikes against Latvia if Ukraine launches drones from there, which should be taken seriously.

That’s altogether different than what Karaganov has been pushing for, namely a first strike against NATO that could easily spiral into World War III, and it’s important for casual NRPRs to understand this. As Putin himself phrased it, such talk “is not simply nonsense; it is a provocation.” When those on Russia’s side do it, no matter what their intentions might be, they inadvertently “persuade [Westerners] to increase defence spending and, as a first step, to pay for the regime that seized power in Kiev.”

June 16, 2026 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Begins Another Round of Attacks on Iran

Trump had said earlier that he would launch more strikes on the country

by Dave DeCamp | June 10, 2026 , https://news.antiwar.com/2026/06/10/trump-threatens-more-attacks-on-iran-after-exchange-of-heavy-strikes/

On Wednesday night, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced it was launching a round of attacks on Iran for the second night in a row as Iranian media began reporting blasts across the southern part of the country.

In response to the US attacks, Iran’s military said that it would fully close the Strait of Hormuz. “From this moment, due to insecurity in the region, the Strait of Hormuz is declared closed to the passage of all vessels, including oil tankers and commercial ships, and any traffic will be targeted,” Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said in a statement.

CENTCOM then claimed that the Iranian statement was false and that ships were still transiting the strait, but the denial came just a short while after Iran’s announcement. President Trump had earlier claimed that over the past month, the US military was conducting a “secret mission” to allow tankers to exit the Strait of Hormuz. He claimed the US helped bring 100 million barrels out of the strait, which, if true, is still a fraction of the oil that was transiting through the waterway before he launched the war.

After the start of the US strikes, Iranian media reported blasts across Iran’s southern Hormozgan province and said that at least two residents of the city of Kargan were wounded by shrapnel. Iran appears to be striking back as air raid sirens were sounded in Bahrain and the IRGC said it was targeting 18 US military installations across the region.

The fresh US attacks came after President Trump threatened more bombings, and US War Secretary Pete Hegseth also said that the US would be attacking the Islamic Republic.

“CENTCOM will be busy tonight because President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard, and we will be,” Hegseth told reporters outside CENTCOM headquarters in Florida not long before the strikes started.

On Wednesday morning, the president said on Truth Social that Iran has “taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price.” He also claimed in the post that Iran had been “completely defeated” despite its ability to launch missile and drone attacks across the Middle East.

In comments to reporters in the Oval Office later in the day, Trump was more explicit in his threat. “We hit them hard yesterday, and we’re going to hit them again hard today,” he said.

Trump also told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that he may “keep going” with his attacks on Iran and that he is “getting closer to the targeting of Iranian power plants and bridges.”

During the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, Trump repeatedly threatened to launch massive attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure and bridges, part of his threats to turn the country into “hell” and end a “whole civilization.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Wednesday that its forces targeted the US military in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, and vowed it would launch stronger strikes if the US attacked again.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said that Iran’s military dealt a heavy blow to the US following its “savage attacks” on Iran that were launched under the pretext of Iran allegedly downing a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz as it was enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports. “With these aggressive actions, the US ruling administration once again demonstrated its criminal and warmongering nature,” the ministry said.

US officials said the US strikes on Iran targeted air defense and radar systems, while Iranian media also reported that strikes hit two water reservoirs, cutting off drinking water to thousands of Iranians.

June 16, 2026 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

War crime -US ‘precision strikes’ cut water access to 20,000 people in southern Iran

The ‘self-defense’ strikes that Washington said it carried out destroyed part of a key water facility in Hormozgan province

News Desk, JUN 11, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/us-precision-strikes-cut-water-access-to-20000-people-in-southern-iran

The US military’s recent airstrikes on a drinking water facility in southern Iran “could constitute a war crime,” a 10 June New York Times (NYT) investigation said after an attac

After the strike, US Central Command (CENTCOM) described its attacks as “self-defense” that was carried out with “precision” munitions.

In response to NYT, a CENTCOM spokesman said he was “aware” of the reports about destroyed water infrastructure, but declined to provide any further information. 

The US strikes hit Iran early on Wednesday. 

The CEO of Hormozgan province’s water and wastewater company announced before NYT released its investigation that the US struck a 500-cubic-meter tank and a 2,000-cubic-meter tank that both played a key role in supplying drinking water to Sirik.

Authorities said the strikes cut off water to 20,000 people living in nearby areas. 

“Mobile water tankers brought in water to supply residents while crews built a new service line that bypassed the damaged tanks,” Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, the head of the provincial water authority, told NYT, adding that the task was completed within 12 hours. k by Washington cut off water to tens of thousands of people.

ranian forces targeted US bases in the region on Wednesday in response to the attacks that destroyed the facility.

Since then, more US strikes have targeted the Islamic Republic. 

Iran carried out retaliatory missile operations targeting key US sites in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan on Thursday. 

US President Donald Trump has threatened more strikes on Iran since Tehran’s latest retaliation. 

June 16, 2026 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How Far Right Fanatics Ruined Ukraine -Historian Tells the Story the West Hides | Marta Havryshko

The Burning Archive, 18 Apr 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuL6pInMWfs

Ukrainian historian Marta Havryshko tells the story Western media hides – how far right ethnonationalism and war has ruined Ukraine. Marta Havryshko is a Faculty Member, Clark University, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Department of Contemporary History. She presents research on Holocaust, WWII, USSR, Russia-Ukraine war, far-right, neo-Nazis, Ukrainian nationalism, antisemitism, gender, sexual violence in war, and memory politics at https://x.com/HavryshkoMarta

June 16, 2026 Posted by | history, Ukraine | Leave a comment

US anti-nuclear campaigner to back campaign against siting of nuclear reactors in Maesteg

12 Jun 2026, Martin Shipton, https://nation.cymru/news/us-anti-nuclear-campaigner-to-back-campaign-against-siting-of-nuclear-reactors-in-maesteg/

A leading anti-nuclear campaigner from the United States is due to speak at two public meetings about controversial plans to build four small nuclear reactors at Maesteg.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland. She is the author of the book, No to Nuclear: How Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress And Provokes War.

June 16, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How Israel Planned The Gaza Genocide Decades Ago

In October 2023, Israel found an excuse to breathe new life into an old story of slaughter and expulsion. The chief differences this time have been of scale and duration

Jonathan Cook Substack,  SCHEERPOSTJune 11, 2026

The truth slowly comes to light: Israel‘s genocide in Gaza was planned decades ago.

Listen to the testimonies of four Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza.

Soldier 1: “Human lives didn’t matter. You could kill, there was no law. No one would say a word to you. But it’s not a good feeling. It mainly kills your humanity.”

Soldier 2: “At first I wasn’t willing to execute Arabs who weren’t resisting [that is, civilians]. Then we came to the conclusion that we had to kill. We went through the process of ceasing to see them as human beings.”

Soldier 3: “We caught guys, lined them up and eliminated them. In retrospect, it looks like murder.”

Soldier 4: “We would roam through refugee camps in Gaza and carry out purges… Every soldier who was there created a ‘concentration camp’, and they didn’t hesitate to kill people who caused a slight disturbance.”

No, these testimonies are not new. The whistleblowers did not serve in Gaza during the current, ongoing genocide there. These accounts are nearly 60 years old, published last week by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline “We were ordered to kill”.

Israeli soldiers interviewed shortly after the 1967 war – often referred to as the Six-Day War – not only confessed that they and others routinely committed war crimes but they pointed out that they did so under orders from their commanders.

The accounts were compiled into a book, The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six-Day War, by Avraham Shapira, though many testimonies were not included because they were too shocking.

None of this should be simply of historical interest. These accounts are a vivid reminder that what Israel has been doing during its current, near three-year destruction of Gaza – levelling all homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries and government offices; murdering tens of thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands, of Palestinian civilians; and blocking aid and starving the population – is part of a decades-old pattern of Israeli military conduct.

Nothing “started” on 7 October 2023, when Hamas broke out for a single day of the Gaza “concentration camp” – the plight of Gaza’s Palestinians noted 59 years ago by Soldier 4.

Rather, Israel found an excuse that day to breathe new life into an old story, one in which it has been slaughtering and expelling Palestinians for decades. The chief difference this time is simply one of scale and duration.

Washington and other western capitals have given Israel the time and space to finish in Gaza what, earlier, it had only been able to achieve in part. Israel’s much greater firepower today, provided by modern munitions supplied by the United States, has allowed Israel to realise what before it could only dream of doing: wiping Gaza off the map.

Starvation policy

The whistleblowing soldiers of 1967 admitted their job was not to “fight the enemy” – or “eradicate the terrorists”, as Israeli leaders now term it. It was to kill and terrorise Palestinian civilians under cover of war.

Few soldiers were shy of saying why they were committing atrocities. Their task was to create a reign of terror, integral to Israel’s efforts to expel as many Palestinians as possible from the last remaining parts of the Palestinian homeland, the territories captured by the Israeli military in 1967 and then illegally occupied.

This was seen as a new opportunity to complete the ethnic cleansing campaign begun by Zionist militias in earnest in 1947 and 1948 as the British Mandate authorities withdrew from Palestine. By the end of that campaign, some 80 percent of Palestinians had been expelled from their homes inside the borders of the newly declared Jewish state…………………………………………………………………………..


Targeting innocents

The crimes of 1967 were understood long ago by Palestinian historians, who were, of course, not listened to. Israeli historians took much longer to start piecing together the story as they gained access to parts of Israel’s military archives.

Haaretz’s new investigation, based on research by the Akevot Institute, provides details of the ruthlessness of the mass expulsions of Palestinians beginning in 1967.

As the paper reports: “The historical inquiry shows that Israel expelled and drove out some 300,000 Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and the [Syrian] Golan Heights. And as in 1948, the expulsion included killing civilians, sowing terror in Arab communities, looting and ultimately, destruction.”

Having managed in 1967 to again expel large numbers of Palestinians, the next task – as in 1948 – was to prevent their return…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Squeezed out

Israel’s 1967 campaign of expulsions in Gaza and the West Bank was not improvised, nor was it done on the spur of the moment. According to Haaretz, the policy had been carefully planned many years in advance.

Unlike their predecessors in the 1960s, today’s western leaders and their media chose to buy Israel the diplomatic time and space it needed – as well as providing the weapons and intelligence – to destroy Gaza. The genocide would have been impossible without their assistance.

Buoyed by this impunity, Israel has tried to spread the destruction further afield, with limited success in Iran and much greater success in south Lebanon.

As western politicians and media happily forget Gaza, Israel keeps up the relentless pressure and misery there. A so-called “Yellow Line”, demarcating Israeli military control over the destroyed enclave, an area off-limits to Palestinians, has gradually expanded from half the land to 70 percent.

The people of Gaza are quite literally being squeezed out of the ruins of their homeland, as Israel scrambles to find a third country – Egypt, or perhaps Somaliland – willing to take them in.

Erasing context

As the US cosmologist Carl Sagan famously observed: “You have to know the past to understand the present.”

Which is precisely why western politicians and media have been so careful to strip out the past, excising the context and background, such as Israel’s violent ethnic cleansing campaigns of 1948 and 1967, that explain Israel’s behaviour in the present – in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon.

Western audiences, deprived of the region’s history, have been more easily manipulated into believing that Israeli atrocities are a response – and a supposedly “proportionate” one, at that – to Hamas’ one-day attack on Israel in late 2023.

An obvious truth has been obscured: that for at least eight decades, Israel has been exploiting any opportunity it could find to expel the Palestinians from their homeland.

The October 2023 Hamas attack was not a turning-point or a rupture, as it is so often presented in the West.

In 1967 – that is, 56 years before the Hamas attack – Eshkol advised that unforeseen events might accelerate Israel’s stealthy programme of ethnic cleansing. A moment might arrive in the future – what he called an “unexpected luxury solution” – when Israel could rapidly realise its dream of a Palestinian-free Palestine…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Prisons of complicity

Gaza is not an aberration. It is fully in accord with an eight-decade-long Israeli military strategy. Westerners aren’t aware of that only because their political and media class have worked strenuously to stop them from learning about it………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/11/how-israel-planned-the-gaza-genocide-decades-ago/

June 15, 2026 Posted by | history, Israel | Leave a comment

Reactor reboot at world’s largest nuclear plant highlights flaws in Japan’s radioactive waste plans

With a lot of spent fuel accumulating at nuclear power plants across the country, a final disposal of radioactive waste is a crucial challenge that must be resolved,”

Finding a community willing to host a highly radioactive dump site has been difficult, even with a raft of financial enticements.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11 June 2026,
https://www.dailymail.com/wires/ap/article-15890689/Reactor-reboot-worlds-largest-nuclear-plant-highlights-flaws-Japans-radioactive-waste-plans.html

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan (AP) – Japan has resumed operations at the world´s largest nuclear power plant to help the country meet huge electricity demands during a global oil crisis, but the reboot highlights a big problem: Japan is running out of space for spent nuclear fuel and has no viable plans for permanent disposal of the radioactive waste.

The restart of No. 6 reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station earlier this year was meant to spur a movement to bring more nuclear reactors online. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is one of three plants whose cooling pools will be full in five years, according to the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan.

“Without solid (fuel management) plans, our power generation will stall sooner or later,” Kashiwazaki-Kariwa General Manager Takeyuki Inagaki said.

After decades of seeking permanent storage for highly radioactive spent fuel, the government is considering Minamitorishima, a remote Pacific island south of Tokyo. But the selection has faced skepticism and criticism stemming from Japan’s arbitrary actions on spent fuel and radioactive waste management.

Only 15 of Japan´s 54 reactors have restarted since the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, when a 9.0 earthquake off Japan´s northeastern coast and a subsequent tsunami caused meltdowns at three reactors operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO. About 160,000 people fled from Fukushima and some areas remain unlivable.

Kashiazaki-Kariwa, also run by TEPCO, was shut down after the Fukushima disaster as part of a nationwide nuclear power stoppage.

The spent fuel in a cooling pool at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa No. 6 reactor, which is 88% filled, can be seen from a top-floor observation area. TEPCO has installed filtered venting systems and devices to prevent hydrogen explosions among additional safety measures based on lessons from Fukushima.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is pushing to bring more nuclear plants online, resulting in more spent fuel. Without a viable permanent storage plan, there are worries that reactors will have to close when storage space runs out.

There are two options for dealing with spent nuclear fuel: direct disposal as waste or recycling to extract plutonium and uranium for reuse.

Japan insists on recycling, saying it will help the resource-poor nation’s energy needs while reducing the toxicity and volume of radioactive waste. But a reactor designed for plutonium reuse, a key part of the recycling, has failed. Reprocessing also won´t be able to handle all the spent fuel, adding to a plutonium stockpile that already is large enough to arm thousands of atomic bombs.

Experts say Japan should also consider the direct disposal option.

As of December 2025, cooling pools at 17 Japanese nuclear power plants held more than 17,000 tons (15,422 metric tons) of spent fuel, using nearly 80% of total storage capacity, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Beyond the large amount of radioactive waste from normal reactors, Japan also “has to deal with massive and largely unknown high-level nuclear waste from the Fukushima disaster,” said Lila Okamura, a Senshu University professor and expert on environmental politics and nuclear waste management.

Choosing a final disposal site for spent fuel and building a facility would require 100 years and tens of thousands of years to monitor the storage deep underground. For a generations-long project, Japan should plan carefully and not rush the current plan that is full of uncertainties, Okamura said.

Weeks after Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s No. 6 reactor came back online for the first time in 14 years since the Fukushima disaster, Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa approached Ogasawara village to request a feasibility study for a high-level radioactive waste site on Minamitorishima, an island administered by Ogasawara, which is part of Tokyo.

“With a lot of spent fuel accumulating at nuclear power plants across the country, a final disposal of radioactive waste is a crucial challenge that must be resolved,” Akazawa said in a letter to Ogasawara Mayor Masaaki Shibuya.

The government-owned Minamitorishima, about 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) south of Tokyo, has no permanent residents. The Japanese army is constructing a firing range for long-range, surface-to-ship missiles as a deterrent to China. The island also has deep sea deposits rich with rare earth minerals.

“The move seems political,” said Satoshi Takano, a member of a government panel looking at final disposal of spent fuel. “There will be little opposition from a government-owned remote island.”

Some experts say the island, which sits on a geologically stable tectonic plate, could be suitable. Many residents on Ogasawara and two nearby islands raised concerns about safety and tourism.

“I was baffled when I heard about the plan,” Ogasawara assembly member Yusuke Hirano told an assembly meeting. “I think nuclear waste is incompatible with islands that are a UNESCO Natural World Heritage site.”

Finding a community willing to host a highly radioactive dump site has been difficult, even with a raft of financial enticements. Minamitorishima is the fourth location to have a feasibility study since the government started looking in the early 2000s.

The whole review process will take about two decades. Municipalities participating in the first stage can receive up to 2 billion yen ($12.8 million) in government subsidies. The next stage would bring up to 7 billion yen ($44.7 million). Funding details for a final study haven’t been disclosed.

The world´s first final disposal site for spent nuclear fuel is set to open in Finland later this year. Britain, Germany and the United States have abandoned reprocessing largely because of high costs and technical challenges, while several other countries are discussing plans for direct disposal sites.

Inagaki, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa general manager, said TEPCO is transferring spent fuel from No. 6 reactor to other reactors at the plant with more space, but the utility hopes to resume shipments to a dry cask storage in northern Japan as a near-term solution. Other utilities with nearly full pools have announced plans to build dry-cask storage at their plants.

Many residents worry about Japan’s growing stockpile because high-density storage of spent fuel could also increase overheating risks.

Mie Kuwabara, a civil activist in Niigata, wondered “where will it go next?”

“It’s irresponsible to accelerate restarts and produce more spent fuel without deciding its final destination,” said Kuwabara, who also is skeptical about using Minamitorishima.

“It’s like saying that it’s OK to put a facility there because nobody is around to complain if there is a problem,” Kuwabara said. “It’s scary.”

June 15, 2026 Posted by | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could destroy the ozone layer

Climate models suggest a small nuclear war in the tropics would do even more damage to the ozone layer than a larger nuclear war in more northerly latitudes, increasing exposure to dangerous ultraviolet radiation all over the world

By Michael Le Page, 10 June 2026,
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529589-a-nuclear-war-between-india-and-pakistan-could-destroy-the-ozone-layer/

A nuclear war would not only trigger a nuclear winter, but also severely damage the ozone layer, making recovery even harder. Now, a study has shown that a relatively small nuclear war between India and Pakistan could do just as much damage to the ozone layer as a larger nuclear war between the US and Russia.

“We want to emphasise that even a small-scale nuclear war can produce far-reaching global side effects beyond the conflict regions,” says Zhihong Zhuo at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

A nuclear war would devastate the areas where bombs or warheads explode, with the explosions, heat and radiation potentially killing many millions directly. The explosions and fires would be so large that huge quantities of smoke would be pumped into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and causing global temperatures to plummet – a nuclear winter.

“There’s strong surface cooling in the first several years,” says Zhuo, who presented her team’s results at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna last month.

For instance, a 2007 study estimated that a billion people could die of starvation as a result of a nuclear winter caused by a war between India and Pakistan.

Recovery from a nuclear winter would be delayed by damage to the ozone layer in the stratosphere that blocks harmful ultraviolet light – volcanic eruptions and even large wildfires can also damage the ozone layer. High UV levels can harm plants as well as animals, meaning lower yields from farming even as temperatures recover.

Recent studies with advanced climate models suggest the extent of ozone damage after a nuclear war has been underestimated. So, concerned by the many conflicts around the world, Kuo and her colleagues decided to look at the possible consequences if one went nuclear. Drawing on estimates from previous studies, they modelled an India-Pakistan nuclear war that would release 5 million tonnes of soot into the atmosphere and a US-Russia war releasing 16 million tonnes. Unlike previous studies, they also took into account other pollutants such as organic carbon.

Their climate model suggests that air circulation patterns in the tropics would allow the pollutants from an India-Pakistan war to rise higher into the atmosphere, stay there longer and spread more widely around the world.

“The upward transport is stronger for the tropical cases,” Kuo says. So although the quantities of pollutants are smaller than from a US-Russia war, the effects on the ozone layer are actually greater.

The damage to the ozone layer would be greatest over the poles, similar to the situation caused by ozone-damaging pollutants known as CFCs. But there could be an increase in UV levels of up to 30 per cent even in tropical areas, the model suggests, with serious impacts on the health of people and wildlife.

June 15, 2026 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Britain has become third-largest nuclear weapons spender – CND

, https://labouroutlook.org/2026/06/10/britain-has-become-third-largest-nuclear-weapons-spender-cnd/

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has called on the government to cut wasted billions on nukes ahead of its Defence Investment Plan announcement.

CND is calling on the government to stop wasting public money on its nuclear black hole, after the latest nuclear weapons spending report from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) reveals that Britain is now spending more on its nuclear weapons than Russia.

Collectively, the nine nuclear-weapon states spent a record $119 billion in 2025 on maintaining, modernising, and expanding their nuclear arsenals, an increase of 19% ($16.8 billion) on their 2024 bill.

Britain overtook Russia as the world’s third biggest spender, spending $12.6 billion (£9.6 billion), an increase of 17%.


This spending includes:

  • operating costs of Britain’s current four Vanguard nuclear-armed submarines
  • building the replacement to Vanguard – the Dreadnought submarine
  • maintenance of Britain’s nuclear weapons stockpile
  • development of a new nuclear warhead, Project Astraea

It does not include the costs of the 12 F-35A nuclear-capable fighter jets that the government announced it was purchasing in June 2025. This shocking surge in nuclear spending comes as the government’s own Public Accounts Committee criticised the MoD for a lack of transparency over its ‘ever-increasing nuclear expenditure’, which is expected to rise to 20% of the total MoD budget for 2025–26, and again increase further to up to 25% in the coming years.

According to ICAN, the top nuclear spender globally was again the US, which spent $69.2 billion, an increase of 22% from 2024, outspending all other nuclear weapons states combined. China was second, spending $13.5 billion, an increase of 7%. Behind Britain was Russia, with an increase by 6% to $9.5 billion. Of the others, France spent $7.7 billion, India spent $2.8 billion, Pakistan spent $1.5 billion, Israel spent £1.2 billion, and North Korea spent $656 million.


The report also found that arms companies involved in the manufacture of Britain’s weapons had sought to influence government policy. According to Open Access data cited in the report, senior government figures met with representatives of the following arms companies: Airbus, Amentum, Babcock International, BAE Systems, Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell International, Leidos, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Peraton, Rolls Royce, RTX (Raytheon), Safran and Thales. The report noted that Airbus and BAE Systems, which had 44 and 35 meetings respectively, also included meetings with the Prime Minister’s office.

CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said:

“This is a timely report that comes when the British government is planning to make savage cuts to public spending in order to fund more hikes to military spending. Britain’s nuclear weapons are a black hole, swallowing up even greater proportions of the Ministry of Defence’s already ballooning budget.

“It is Britain’s replacement of its nuclear weapons system which is driving these huge nuclear weapons spending increases. This is contributing to a much more dangerous world where the threat of these world-ending weapons being used in war is the highest it has been since the Cold War.

Far from keeping us safe, Britain’s nuclear-armed submarines are totally dependent on the US administration, which ties us even more closely to Trump’s reckless leadership that is dragging the world into more and more reckless wars that could go nuclear.

“With the government’s upcoming Defence Investment Plan expected to give at least £15 billion more to the military, it’s time to end the wasteful spending on war and nuclear weapons and redirect it into tackling the real security issues we face – from climate breakdown and the looming cost of living crisis.”

June 15, 2026 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Are the Sizewell C financing arrangements a model for other European countries?

Steve Thomas, Presentation to AT OM Day, May 22, 2026, TUB, Berlin

Government claimed Sizewell RAB could be funded by
institutional investors, mostly UK-based.

Government took 49.5%,
institutional investors 23%, UK private investors 15%/. Government talked
about seeking a balance of risk & reward between investors & consumers, but
risk is with consumers/taxpayers, rewards are with investor. The government
strategy appears to have been to offer whatever terms were needed with no
regard for cost & risk to the public. Still, investors will only finance
half the cost. The model will not be used again so the huge effort
completing the Sizewell deal was wasted

 TUB Berlin 22nd May 2026, https://www.static.tu.berlin/fileadmin/www/10002415/WIP_Vortraege_PDF/veranstaltung_atom_day_2026/EB414a_Fr_10-15_Thomas_Stephen.pdf

June 15, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

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