UK’s Green Party goes nuclear
I still find the pro-nuclear case unconvincing. Though basically I’m a Faithfull trying to accept that a group of Traitors have won! At least for the moment, in this specific setting
COMMENT from Amory Lovins – on this article
Re land-use: my 2011 Electricity Journal article at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tej.2011.06.005 showed that including the nuclear fuel cycle makes land-use equivalent between groundmount solar and nuclear power. Newer data would probably give solar a modest advantage. Windpower’s land-use is one or two order of magnitude smaller than either, if one avoids the common confusion of area actually occupied by infrastructure (equipment, roads,…) with area spanned across. The latter confusion would say that the area of lampposts in a car park is the area of the car park (leaving no room for cars), when actually it’s roughly 1% of the total area. As noted, the other ~99% can be and often is used for farming, grazing, wildlife, recreation, or solar power. And solar power’s land-use can be displaced by mounting on roofs or other structures (then it’s ample to power the whole world), or by sharing the same land with agriculture via profitable agrivoltaics. In short, the claim that solar and wind use far more land than nuclear power is wrong.
Another point omitted in the discussion in the article below flows from nuclear power’s producing electricity manyfold costlier than solar or windpower (even if they’re equivalently firmed by now-ultracheap batteries or the nine other and generally cheaper carbon-free grid-balancing methods). That lack of a nuclear business case means there’s no climate case either. That’s because of opportunity cost: you can’t spend the same £ on two different things at the same time. Every £ spent on nuclear electricity would have bought far more solar or wind electricity (or efficient use of electricity) and hence displaced far more fossil fuel and carbon emissions. In other words, because nuclear power produces less electricity and displaces less fossil fuel per £ (and per year), it actually makes climate change worse than if more climate-effective competitors were bought instead.
, https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2026/10/green-party-goes-nuclear.html
The Green Party of England and Wales has abandoned it long standing opposition to nuclear power. A bit of a shock. However, its briefing paper on ‘Ending the Green Party’s Blanket Opposition to Nuclear Fission’, produced evidently by the ‘greens for nuclear’ group, says the proposed new policy, now accepted by the Party, ‘does not commit the green party to being a pro-nuclear party in any way beyond committing the party to following contemporary scientific research. We contend this is what the motion is really about: evidence’. OK so let’s look at its marshalling of the evidence.
First it points to an ‘Our World in Data’ chart which it says shows that ‘nuclear power has the lowest carbon footprint and the second lowest death rate of any energy source.’ It’s hard to know where to start with these much debated and controversial topics. It is true that nuclear plants do not generate carbon dioxide when running, but producing the fuel for them does. That’s not the case for renewables like wind and solar, so they also avoid the eco and social impacts of uranium mining and waste management, although their output per GW installed is less and is variable and dependent on location, making comparisons hard. But, though there are debates on the exact difference between nuclear and renewables in CO2 terms, it is small – fossil fuels are much worse.
In terms of the deaths, there are some big uncertainties and controversies. For example, in the video produced by Greens for Nuclear Energy, Prof Gerry Thomas puts the death toll for the Chernobyl disaster at 28 initially, followed by around 19 later. But others put it very much higher, in the thousands including from clean-up workers, and possibly even more globally. Whereas the highest figure I’ve seen for wind, from an anti-wind farm group, is 272 fatalities so far worldwide, while, as the World in Data chart shows, deaths for solar are very low.
It may be true that, thankfully, at Fukushima, with the wind blowing the radiation cloud eastward across the sea and the prompt evacuation of local people, public exposure was reduced and deaths avoided, as Greens for Nuclear note, but there were some staff impacts and the debate on health impacts of nuclear in normal operation on workers and the public globally continues, with, for example, a US study claiming new proof that proximity to nuclear plants can lead to increased local cancer rates.
What about nuclear waste? The background paper says that the risk from nuclear waste (and by implication leaks) were less than was commonly thought, since ‘radioisotopes with long half-lives are inherently less radioactive than ones with short half-lives as they spread their radioactivity over a longer time.’ Even so it did admit that ‘raw spent nuclear fuel remains more radioactive than uranium ore for around 300,000 years’. However, it claimed that ‘the Plutonium can be removed from the spent fuel and reprocessed into new fuel. Fuel treated in this way decays to be less radioactive than uranium ore in 9,000 years’. So that’s fine then! And in case you were worried, it adds that, while some countries did get nuclear bombs from reactor material, that is no longer the case and now ‘there is not a clear connection between states with civilian nuclear power programs and the acquisition of nuclear weapons’. Tell that to those who worry about Iran’s uranium enrichment programme!
Then it moves on to ‘Nuclear Power’s Greatest Advantage’- reliability. Last summer’s heat wave led to many reactors across Europe having to be shut down due to problems with cooling. And in any case, in normal circumstances, reactors have to shut down regularly for spent fuel replacement – unlike renewables such as wind and solar, which do not need any fuel. These renewables do depend on the weather, so there have to be balancing/backup systems, but then, as noted above, that is also true of nuclear plants- they can’t be relied on all the time. The issue is how much will that backup add to the cost of either of them. Some say it will add a lot more to the cost of renewables, but Lazarsd’s LCOE data, which now includes the cost of storage, still has most renewables doing much better than (US) nuclear over almost all the range of cost estimates.
The greens for nuclear briefing does concede that ‘per unit of energy generated wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear’, but it says that is irrelevant since the market ‘is structured so that all producers are paid the price of the most expensive producer – i.e. whatever the cost for wind, solar, and nuclear they are all paid the price of whatever the most expensive electricity source currently being used is, generally natural gas’. However, it adds ‘any Green government would fix the electricity market (likely by bringing it into government control).’. Fine! But how does that make nuclear cheaper? Or faster to install- something that renewables also beat nuclear at hands down.
The Briefing paper may be more convincing when it talks of land use. Wind and solar do take up more space than nuclear plants, although the land needed for uranium mines and waste repositories also has to be taken into account, and the land around wind turbine bases can be used for farming, while solar can be on roof tops and there are agri-solar options for solar farms. The higher use of scarce minerals and materials for some wind and solar technologies is another key issue- although that has to be set alongside the fact that nuclear plants need uranium and reserves of that are not infinite. While there are options for recycling of all materials, including nuclear wastes, perhaps what needs to be said in all cases of impact (including in relation to the use of land and materials), is that we need to reduce demand for energy- that is something greens should all agree on.
The Briefing note ends by reporting that a survey conducted by IPSOS for Greens 4 Nuclear Energy in 2022 ‘found that on balance members of the public would look more favourably on the Green Party if it dropped its anti-nuclear stance’. It said ‘this was especially pronounced for members of the wider green movement’. I thought this was surprising. But when I checked with Google it confirmed that the report said that ‘people involved in environmental campaigning and green groups continue to support nuclear energy for electricity production.’
Sadly the Green4 nuclear web site link on this report is broken, so I could not explore more. But it is true that views may be changing. That may not be surprising given the wave of pro-nuclear propaganda in recent years – even Nature seems to have succumbed. However, I still find the pro-nuclear case unconvincing. Though basically I’m a Faithfull trying to accept that a group of Traitors have won! At least for the moment, in this specific setting.
There may still be some battles ahead, internally and externally – after all there are many who don’t want nuclear, especially if it undermines renewables. And the conference vote may not reflect the views of the wider party membership. So there may yet be a challenge. Though, maybe the big political issue is likely to be what the Green Party will do when and if Small Modular Reactors start spreading, and, as seems likely, local people object. Its deputy leader had earlier spoken out against SMRs. And, more generally, what will it do over the battles for funding between renewables and nuclear as the latter tries to expand? Will try to to sit on the fence on that too?
How much will the AWE Aldermaston build cost West Berkshire in consultants?
By Niki Hinman Local Democracy Reporter, 19 October 2026, https://www.newburytoday.co.uk/news/questions-raised-over-council-ability-to-approve-nuclear-wea-9487315/
Questions over West Berkshire Council’s ability to scrutinise forthcoming planning applications into a multi-billion pound upgrade to AWE Aldermaston have been raised.
The plans are likely to cost the authority tens of thousands of pounds in specialist consultants to evaluate the proposal to upgrade the nuclear weapons facility into a state-of-the-art science park.
The council will have to handle the massive application in the coming weeks, and has said it will need specialist help to deal with it.
The Government’s £15bn defence investment is dedicated specifically to the UK’s nuclear warhead programme as a whole – which encompasses both the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Aldermaston and its sister site at Burghfield.
Security-cleared consultants working on defence or submarine programmes command a notable market premium.
A Google search puts them upwards of £1,000 per day.
The nuclear weapons factory is soon to submit plans described as ‘being on the scale of London 2012 in complexity’ to the authority, which must then figure out whether they pass planning policies.
The person leading the project from the AWE side is Andrew McNaughton CBE – a prominent British civil engineer.
He led on delivering key components for the London 2012 Olympics and is on record as saying the Future Materials Campus is on the same scale.
The matter came up before West Berkshire Council last night (Thursday).
“Government-funded plans for the multi-billion pound Future Materials Campus (FMC) at AWE’s Aldermaston site will see planning applications coming forward soon,” said Dominic Boeck (Con, Aldermaston).
“How will the council support and engage constructively with residents, local councils and businesses on this enormous development?
“AWE have compared the scale and complexity of the proposed FMC development with London 2012
“What specific assurance can the lead member give that council has sufficient planning, emergency planning and other relevant technical resources and expertise to undertake a thorough and independent assessment of the application, including its implications for residential safety, emergency preparedness and amenity within and around the Aldermaston DEPZ?”
Deputy council leader Denise Gaines (Lib Dem, Hungerford and Kintbury) said: “We take the safety of residents and people at AWE very seriously.
“The anticipated planning application is going through the process.
“At this stage of the proposal it is a pre application.
“This is a confidential part of the process between council officers and the applicant.
“This sets out a clear timetable for a major and complex application.
“As with any planning application it will be assessed by a team of qualified professionals to ensure that all relvant technical and environmental matters are considered and evaluated either in house or by specialist external consultants.”
There is a statement of community involvement.
And the consultation will involve talks with the council’s emergency planning service and the Office for Nuclear Regulation.
“My concern and my community’s concern is the scale of this project,” added Mr Boeck.
“Of course we understand it is a matter of national security, but there are concerns about how this multi-billion pound project will impact us here.
“I appreciate much will be done behind the wire, but the trucks have got to roll.”
When local authorities deal with ‘enormous’ or hyper-scale planning applications like the London 2012 Olympic Games or major urban regenerations, the standard local planning mechanisms are usually adapted, bypassed, or heavily augmented.
Because these applications are far too large, complex, and politically sensitive for a standard local authority planning department to process normally, they are managed through a combination of special purpose vehicles, and strategic planning frameworks
New nuclear cannot save us from climate change
Letter Dr Paul Dorfman, Chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group
Lord Foster of Thames Bank suggests that new nuclear will help save us from the impact
of climate change (“We must go nuclear to save our natural wonders”,
Oct 11).
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. British households already pay
what amounts to a nuclear tax to fund Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, which
are among the world’s most expensive nuclear projects. Meanwhile,
renewables generate 52 per cent of UK electricity, more than four times the
contribution of nuclear power.
Globally, the contrast is starker. In 2025,
renewables supplied 85.6 per cent of new global generating capacity; in
that year solar capacity grew by 510GW and wind by 159GW, against just
1.5GW for nuclear.
Nuclear now adds in a year roughly what renewables add
every two days. With 20-year build times, delays and huge cost overruns,
new nuclear diverts resources from faster options. It is simply too slow
and costly to counteract our climate and energy crises.
Sunday Times 17th Oct 2026, https://www.thetimes.com/comment/letters-to-editor/article/sunday-times-letters-rwanda-scheme-small-boat-deterrent-62b2srrjx
Stop Japan’s Failed Nuclear Plant Waste Coming to Cumbria
Please sign the petition here: https://www.change.org/p/stop-japan-s…
Cumberland Council plans to import sodium coolant, a type of nuclear waste, thousands of miles from Japan to Cumbria, for processing at the Port of Workington, just 885m from Northside Primary School and nearby residential areas including many towns and villages.
Sodium coolant is extremely hazardous, and carries a high risk of violent explosion or fire if exposed to air or water.
It may also contain radioactive elements.
Further concerns include:
- Less than a mile from Northside Primary School, the chemical plant is being designed to convert the hazardous coolant into caustic soda.
- Caustic soda is also a hazardous material and carries enormous risks to the environment over decades if spilled.
- £4.5m of the Workington Town Deal government funding is being used to develop this site, despite the development planning to employ just 20 people over a period of 7 years.
- The Workington Town Deal was promoted as being for the public benefit, not for creating profit for a handful of private businesses.
- The £25m that the site construction phase is predicted to generate is meaningless compared to the certain risk our children and local environments would face as a result of the site’s operation and the £Billions that would likely be required for clean up following operation of this proposed chemical plant for Japan’s failed fast breeder nuclear reactor wastes.
Further Info
Japan’s prototype fast-breeder reactor (FBR), ‘Monju’, was a disaster from the start. It was shut down due to an accident less than 9 months after achieving criticality, and remained closed for 15 years. Reopening in 2008, a second accident closed it for good. Overall, Monju generated electricity for exactly one hour after achieving criticality in 1994 and will cost £Billions to decommission.
Fast breeder reactors use liquid metal as a coolant – usually liquid sodium, which violently explodes on contact with air water. Dounreay, which ran the UK’s own Fast Breeder Reactors, processed the coolant onsite at both reactors. Sodium coolant at Dounreay did contain radioactive caesium.
Cumberland Council are partners in the plan to bring the Monju’s sodium coolant to the Port of Workington.
Ironically, ‘Monju’ was named to represent transcendent wisdom in Buddhist tradition. It has achieved neither wisdom nor its stated aim of electricity generation apart from one hour’s worth.
It has produced tonnes of chemical and radioactive waste some of which the operators the Japan Atomic Energy Agency want to ship thousands of miles to Cumbria instead of dealing with in Japan..
The Language of Extermination: NAZA, Artificial Intelligence and Gaza
18 October 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark AIM Extra, https://theaimn.net/the-language-of-extermination-naza-artificial-intelligence-and-gaza/
The 80-minute documentary NAZA, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is chastening. It examines the conduct of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) during its ferocious, unremitting war in Gaza, drawing upon the interviews of 24 anonymised military and intelligence personnel. The interviews were filmed on Tel Aviv rooftops at night, with profiles and voices appropriately altered. The name of the documentary draws on a Hebrew acronym for nezek agavi or collateral damage, an obscene term used when counting the estimated number of civilians who will perish in a military strike. Last month, the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, receiving a standing ovation lasting 25 minutes.
The interviewees focus on the terrifyingly relevant role played by artificial intelligence (AI) targeting systems used in guiding the bombing campaign launched in response to the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. In Abraham’s words, “the Israeli intelligence officers we spoke with talked to us about how this mass killing is systemic: not by accident, but by design, actions of murder and policies that are based on the total dehumanization of Palestinians.” One of the interviewed subjects speaks of the goal being “quantity, not quality.” Another notes the conscious decision to target Hamas members, some even in the lower echelons, when they would be at home even if it meant killing family members and neighbours. In one recalled instance, the phone of a 12-year-old girl was hacked to learn when her father would arrive home. The subsequent strike killed her. The cold logic is revealed in the rhetorical question posed by one of the interviewees: “When people talk about ‘flattening Gaza,’ what do you mean if not executing people?’
Despite being placed in a “too hot to handle” category by prominent indie studios, the self-distributed documentary managed to pass the US$500,000 mark in the United States after two weeks of release. Eight days after premiering at New York’s IFC Center, it went on to earn US$125,000. A further 85 theatres across 30 cities across North America then showed the film. Michelle Goldberg, writing in The New York Times, was impressed by the drawing power of the production when attending Walter Reade Theater for a screening. The venue, seating 268, was at capacity. “This is, in my experience, very unusual for documentaries of any sort, even those that, like ‘NAZA,’ win the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.”
Militaries specialise in euphemised killing. A dedicated process of terminology and assessment sanitises and exsanguinates: death and murder become justifiable, necessary measures against an enemy bloated with wickedness and venality. In that process, mock tributes are paid to the canon of international law, notably international humanitarian law and doctrines of targeting. The more honest generals do us a favour by boasting about high casualty figures and mass mortality: they are not hiding matters and lurking behind worn ceremonies and the emperor’s non-existent clothes. Take the remarks of a former head of Israeli military intelligence made in a leaked audio: “For every one person [killed] on Oct. 7, 50 Palestinians must die.” Those militaries with a heavily staffed legal department supposedly providing guidance in striking a target, largely to reassure the squeamish that they are not implicated in acts of murder, are always suspect. In that regard, the IDF provides a model example, always claiming to do things differently from other powers in the region, yet resorting to the selective language of exculpation.
The reception of the film in Israel has been markedly hysterical. This was to be expected: the film unmasks and discomfits. It demolishes shibboleths. The IDF chief of staff Eyal Zamir vowed to use “every tool at our disposal” against the production. The Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar thought the film treasonous. Abraham and Szor were “willing to harm their homeland in order just to get applause from antisemites around the world.” The irate minister was keen to “act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for treason against the state,” he thundered in a social media post. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also called upon the passing of legislation stripping the duo of their citizenship, a curious point given the existing provisions of Israel’s Citizenship Law. (Making German Jews stateless was a specialty of the Third Reich: that the Jewish state would consider this to its citizens is a distinct, bitter irony, yet sadly permissible in light of the Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 2022 validating revocation for acts done in “breach of loyalty to the State of Israel”.)
Activists and members of the far-right party Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir protested outside the parents of Szor’s house, with a speaker calling for both directors to be executed and the homes of their families to be demolished (collective punishment remains a great inspiration for tribal sentiment).
The IDF has marshalled its own response in a document accusing the filmmakers of presenting “a distorted, misleading and disingenuous picture of the IDF’s target planning and striking process.” The narrative of the documentary drew upon “substantial factual errors stemming from manipulative misrepresentations of reality.” Worth noting here is the lower register of critique that does not entirely repudiate the targeting practices of the IDF, dressed up in the apologetics of collateral damage. Concessions and confessions are always evident from those in and of power who resort to such dismissive language as “misrepresentative” and “disingenuous.”
Be that as it may, the agitated response is illuminating. The Lavender database, to take one objection, was apparently not one of targets, merely “a database that assists intelligence analysts.” This represents a distinction without a difference. The faith placed by militaries in the divinities of technology are hard to shake; there is nothing here to say that such analysts do not treat these data sets as unimpeachable. AI and religious deities serve to do the imagination for others; they discourage independent thinking and verification. Why bother when you have someone, or something else, doing it for you?
The response remains weak in claiming that the IDF believes itself “bound by and committed to international humanitarian law, its operational procedures are designed to implement those legal obligations, and it operates dedicated units and mechanisms to mitigate civilian harm.” The staggering death toll in Gaza, always sneered and jeered at by the Israeli authorities and their defenders, would suggest otherwise. NAZA serves to, as the Israeli American historian Omer Bartov points out, address a “state of denial” by “actually speaking about the issue of what happened in Gaza rather than refusing to speak about it.”
Caitlin Johnstone – Military-Industrial Complex Assures Investors That Wars Will Be Endless, And Other Notes
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 17, 2026
Today in dystopia, the military-industrial complex is reassuring investors that the wars will indeed be endless.
Asked about concerns over falling defense stocks in a recent interview on CNBC, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet replied, “Investors need to know and understand that this demand is not fleeting — it’s permanent.”
In 2023 Taiclet called Washington’s soaring military budget “as good an outcome as our industry or our company could ask for.”
These people are such evil freaks. War profiteering should be fucking illegal.
A Washington Post photojournalist was savagely beaten by a gang of Israeli settlers who were attacking Palestinian villagers on Friday, reportedly with the support of the IDF.
The reporter, Heidi Levine, said her assailants “just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times” while she was wearing a clearly marked PRESS vest.
This is why everyone hates Israel now. They just can’t seem to stop themselves from doing evil things in broad daylight.
The western political/media class are always making up bogus excuses for Israel’s plummeting worldwide approval rating, from antisemitism to TikTok to Iranian propaganda, but ultimately public opinion of Israel is falling because there’s a glaring contradiction between Israel’s PR interests and the way Israelis actually conduct themselves.
In other words, Israel’s PR problem is caused by Israeli behavior. They can increase their propaganda budget as much as they like and western hasbarists can churn out all the narrative spin in the world, but it still won’t cancel out what happens when you just film Israelis doing Israeli things…………………………………………………………..
A judge in Brazil’s top electoral court ruled on Thursday that Meta has been algorithmically favoring right wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro over President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, instructing the social media titan to cease its election interference and begin providing equal treatment to both candidates.
Meta’s own employees have acknowledged election interference favoring Bolsonaro over Lula, as Reuters reports:…………………………………………………….
This Zuckerberg scale-tilting is a reminder of why right wing “populism” has been so successful: it is able to posture as a revolutionary anti-establishment movement while still retaining the backing of western oligarchs and empire managers. It gets the votes that come with opposing the status quo without actually opposing the status quo. It gets the popularity of revolutionary politics with none of the cost………………………………………………………………………..
Sinesto on Twitter asks, “Hi Caitlin. You are brilliant on Palestine, but I still don’t get why you are not sympathetic to the people of Ukraine?”
Well Sinesto I am sympathetic to the people of Ukraine. That’s why I want a negotiated settlement to end the war, which is what polls say the people of Ukraine want, rather than continuing to force them to keep fighting and dying in a war they don’t support like the people of Washington want to do…………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/military-industrial-complex-assures?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=220842792&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The World is Not Trump’s Playground: Has the International Community Finally had Enough?
Australian Independent Media, 17 October 2026Michael Taylor
When the President of the United States mistakes global leadership for personal entitlement, the rest of the world eventually discovers that it has options.
There comes a point in every relationship when the other party stops making excuses for your behaviour.
You can forgive the occasional tantrum. You can overlook a misplaced insult, an unreasonable demand or even the odd diplomatic incident. You might tolerate somebody who thinks rather highly of themselves, provided they occasionally remember that other people exist.
But eventually, patience runs out.
Welcome to international relations in the age of Donald Trump.
The President of the United States appears to regard diplomacy as a peculiar game in which he makes the rules, changes them whenever circumstances become inconvenient, and declares victory regardless of the outcome. Allies are expected to demonstrate their loyalty through obedience. Adversaries are expected to surrender when threatened. International institutions are useful when they serve American interests and troublesome when they don’t.
And anyone who disagrees risks becoming the next target of a presidential outburst.
It is an extraordinary way to conduct relations between nations. It is also becoming increasingly expensive.
The world’s most powerful schoolyard bully?
Let’s be clear about something. The United States is entitled to pursue its national interests. Every sovereign country is. American presidents are elected to represent American citizens, not to spend their days worrying about whether foreign leaders find them agreeable.
But there is a considerable difference between defending national interests and behaving as though the interests of every other country are somehow subordinate to your own.
Trump’s approach appears to confuse the two.
Tariffs become instruments of punishment. Military alliances become opportunities to demand tribute. Trade agreements become personal victories. Diplomatic disagreements become public feuds.
And the demands keep coming.
At NATO’s July 2026 summit in Ankara, Trump attacked several European allies over their positions on the war with Iran, threatened to halt trade with Spain and renewed his controversial claims concerning Greenland. The summit subsequently produced declarations of unity, but the public disagreements demonstrated just how difficult it has become for America’s partners to anticipate Washington’s next move.
Imagine running an international alliance on the principle that everyone must demonstrate their friendship by agreeing with you, while reserving the right to punish them if they don’t.
That isn’t a partnership. It’s a protection racket with considerably better stationery.
NATO members have legitimate disagreements about defence spending, military commitments and national priorities. Those disagreements are precisely why alliances require negotiation, established procedures and mutual respect.
The purpose of an alliance is not to eliminate differences of opinion. It is to enable countries to cooperate despite them.
Apparently, somebody forgot to explain that to the President.
Friendship is not a subscription service
One of the great ironies of Trump’s approach is that he seems to regard American power as an unlimited personal resource.
He can threaten tariffs against allies, question their commitment to collective defence, demand concessions and then expect them to turn up smiling at the next summit.
But international relationships do not work like a subscription service. Countries cannot be charged an additional fee every time the American president becomes dissatisfied with their behaviour.
Nor can decades of diplomatic cooperation simply be switched on and off according to the mood of the occupant of the White House.
Consider the implications for Australia.
Our alliance with the United States has been central to Australian defence and strategic planning for generations. It involves intelligence cooperation, military coordination, technology sharing and the (unpopular and finance-draining) AUKUS partnership.
These arrangements matter. They cannot be dismissed lightly, and Australia has good reasons to maintain a close relationship with Washington.
But an alliance is only as dependable as the trust underpinning it.
If an American president can threaten one ally today, impose economic penalties on another tomorrow and question established commitments the following week, Australian governments must ask an uncomfortable question.
What happens when our interests diverge from his?
Australia cannot simply assume that friendship, history and military cooperation will guarantee predictable American support under every conceivable circumstance.
That does not mean abandoning the alliance. It means approaching it with open eyes.
A sensible government maintains its relationships while ensuring that the country’s security does not depend entirely on the goodwill of one foreign leader.
That is not disloyalty. It is responsible government.
The curious case of the disappearing trust…………………………………………………….
International law is not an inconvenience
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Trump’s approach is his relationship with the international institutions designed to restrain the arbitrary exercise of power.
On 9 October 2026, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court, prompting criticism from the Court, United Nations officials, European institutions and several allied governments. The dispute raised further concerns about the independence of international justice and the willingness of powerful countries to accept legal scrutiny.
One need not agree with every decision made by an international court to recognise the importance of judicial independence………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Ukraine: another lesson in uncertainty
Ukraine offers another example of the difficulties created when diplomatic signals become unpredictable.
For European governments, the war is not an abstract negotiating exercise. It concerns the security of the continent, the future of European borders and the consequences of allowing military aggression to succeed.
Yet Trump’s shifting approach to American support for Ukraine has repeatedly forced European allies to consider how much they can rely on Washington………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://theaimn.net/the-world-is-not-trumps-playground-has-the-international-community-finally-had-enough/
Congress has the power to fix the Trump-Saudi nuclear deal
By Alan J. Kuperman, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, October 13, 2026
Press reports claim that Congress cannot stop the Trump administration’s nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, despite significant proliferation concerns, because it will enter force automatically in a mere 90 days after its August 24 submittal to Capitol Hill. Democrats and a handful of dissenting Republicans could try to pass a disapproval resolution that was introduced recently in both houses. But President Donald Trump could veto it, and Republicans in Congress would not override that veto, which means the deal is essentially a fait accompli.
In reality, however, the prospects of Congressional action are not so bleak. Because of the US Atomic Energy Act’s fine print and the deal’s legal shortcomings, Congress has at least 9 months and considerable leverage to make things right.
Proliferation concerns. Three aspects of the Saudi deal are most objectionable. First, the agreement explicitly refers to uranium enrichment “technologies that could be deployed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” The danger is that any enrichment technology provided for peaceful purposes could also make weapons-grade uranium or be duplicated to do so secretly elsewhere in the country. Moreover, allowing Saudi enrichment could spur similar demands from other countries in the region and beyond, spreading the risks.
Second, the Saudis have refused to sign the Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which allows “environmental sampling” to detect illicit nuclear activity at sites “other than those” disclosed by the country. Riyadh instead has signed a bilateral safeguards agreement with Washington, which does not permit such inspections of undeclared facilities. This feeds suspicion that the Saudis are contemplating secret bomb plants.
Third, the Saudis have said repeatedly that if Iran were to get nuclear weapons, they would pursue them too, which would violate their promises under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This means their commitment in the US deal to exclusively “peaceful uses” is, at best, conditional.
An illegal deal? Fortunately for Congressional Democrats, the Atomic Energy Act does not allow nuclear agreements to enter force automatically unless they are fully compliant with the law’s nonproliferation requirements. If such an agreement violates even one of those requirements, according to Section 123d of the act, it “shall not become effective unless the Congress adopts, and there is enacted, a joint resolution stating that the Congress does favor such agreement.” The Saudi deal currently appears not to comply on four grounds……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
https://thebulletin.org/2026/10/congress-has-the-power-to-fix-the-trump-saudi-nuclear-deal/
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) welcomes G7 commitment to finance urgent repairs to Chornobyl’s protective shield
EBRD 15th Oct 2026,
https://www.ebrd.com/home/news-and-events/news/2026/ebrd-welcomes-g7-commitment-to-finance-urgent-repairs-to-chornob.html
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) welcomes the announcement by the Group of Seven (G7)that as leading industrialised nations, they will provide €260 million to fund urgent repairs to the New Safe Confinement at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, following the Russian drone strike that severely damaged the structure in February 2025.
The G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) expressed grave concern over the nuclear safety risks caused by the strike and pledged to mobilise funding to repair the New Safe Confinement. The structure contains the remains of Reactor Four and enables the safe dismantling of the original containment sarcophagus built after the 1986 accident.
The G7 also called on other international partners to join the effort and contribute to covering the remaining financing needs.
The announcement was made at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Autumn Meetings in Bangkok, following a meeting of the G7 finance ministers.
EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso said: “The EBRD is grateful to the G7 nations for their continued leadership and commitment to nuclear safety at Chornobyl. We join the G7 in calling on the wider international community to contribute to these efforts at a donor conference we are convening in Paris on 9 November 2026, co-chaired by France, Ukraine and the EBRD.”
Chornobyl’s New Safe Confinement was severely damaged by a Russian drone strike on 14 February 2025. The attack breached the structure’s inner and outer cladding, damaged critical systems and severely compromised its two primary functions: containing radioactive material and enabling the safe dismantling of the unstable original sarcophagus over Reactor Four.
Preliminary assessments indicate that at least €500 million will be needed to repair the damage and restore the structure to full functionality. The work needs to be completed by 2030 to limit the risk of corrosion of the steel arch and safeguard the structure’s 100-year design life.
The EBRD has led global efforts to stabilise and manage risks at Chornobyl since 1995, mobilising over €2.5 billion in international contributions – much of it from the G7 nations – and providing more than €700 million of its own resources to fund nuclear safety and decommissioning projects linked to the site.
The Bank is now leading international efforts to restore the full functionality of the New Safe Confinement and to mobilise the remaining funding needed for urgent repairs.
Britain funds Chornobyl repairs after Russian drone hit
Britain is putting £17 million towards repairing the protective shelter over the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, which was punctured by a Russian drone strike last year, according to the government.
UK Defence Journal 15th Oct 2026,
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-funds-chornobyl-repairs-after-russian-drone-hit/
The money forms part of an international programme coordinated by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development alongside the Ukrainian government and G7 donors, and will pay for work to restore the structure’s confinement and ventilation functions and protect its intended lifespan. Corrosion threatens to undermine decades of international investment and create longer term environmental and safety risks if the damage is left.
John Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: “As the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Putin continues, our commitment to the Ukrainian people is unshakeable. We are curtailing the war chest funding Putin so desperately wants and backing the reconstruction of Ukraine that has suffered at the hands of his barbaric attacks.”
Ed Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: “Our message to Putin is clear, we stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine and will do so until they prevail. Working with our allies, we are strengthening Ukraine’s security, raising the cost of Russia’s aggression and working towards a just and lasting peace.”
The structure in question is the New Safe Confinement, the arch built over the remains of reactor four and the Soviet-era sarcophagus around it, which was slid into position in 2016 and handed over in 2019 after an international effort costing around €1.5 billion. It was designed to hold for a century while the reactor underneath is dismantled, and its outer skin and ventilation system are what keep moisture out of the space where that work has to happen. A drone strike that breaches it turns a sealed structure into one that corrodes.
Attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have continued through the autumn at a heavy rate. Between 5 and 11 October Russia carried out more than two hundred strikes on electricity infrastructure and a further seventeen on oil and gas facilities, six of them after President Trump announced an energy ceasefire on Sunday. On 13 October Russia fired thirty-nine ballistic missiles at Ukraine in one of the largest such attacks of the war, much of it aimed at energy targets, leaving six hundred thousand civilians without power.
Britain has been involved in nuclear safety at the site for years. It was a founding donor to the International Chornobyl Cooperation Account in 2020, when that account took over responsibility for safety in the exclusion zone, and has given €8 million to it, making it the third largest individual donor behind Norway and France.
The Foreign Secretary visited Kyiv last week for the first time since taking office and announced £54 million of winter support, including £20 million in energy funding. The Prime Minister hosted President Zelensky in Downing Street on Wednesday, where he set out a further package of Lightweight Multirole Missiles built by Thales in Belfast.
Why Putin Is Threatening Nuclear War Over Kaliningrad
If an increasingly vulnerable Kaliningrad holds strategic value for Russia and can only be defended by nuclear weapons, then perhaps Western leaders shouldn’t threaten it—and perhaps Western analysts should take more seriously Moscow’s repeated warnings that such threats could meet a nuclear response.
Russia experts shed light on the Kremlin’s calculations.
Andrew Day, Oct 3, 2026, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/why-putin-is-threatening-nuclear-war-over-kaliningrad/
If the world blows up in a conflict over Kaliningrad—the diminutive Russian exclave sandwiched between Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic Sea—at least there would be a silver lining for survivors to appreciate: It would be darkly humorous and ironic.
Kaliningrad—or Koenigsberg, as the formerly German city was called before its capture in 1945 by the Soviet Union—was the birthplace of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose most enduring contribution to political theory was a long essay on international relations, Toward Perpetual Peace. In it, Kant outlines some big-brained ideas that governments should implement to not only end active hostilities but create the political conditions for, well, perpetual peace.
Old Kant published that hopeful essay 231 years ago and would certainly be disturbed and disappointed by this week’s headlines. The most riveting came from the New York Post: “Moscow threatens nuclear response over tiny fortress wedged between US allies as clash fears grow.” (The Post really has a knack for this kind of thing, doesn’t it?)
The one from the Associated Press more aptly, if less dramatically, described the latest development. “Russia warns NATO of a possible nuclear response if Kaliningrad is cut off,” it blared.
So, what’s got the Russians so worked up? Top Russia experts told The American Conservative that Moscow assigns profound strategic significance to the exclave and perceives a Western threat against it.
“Kaliningrad gives Russia another warm water port on the Baltic Sea,” said Thomas Graham, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former White House expert under President George W. Bush. “It also holds major military assets to defend Russia’s interest in the region, including access routes to St. Petersburg.”
Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute noted an even more straightforward Russian interest than that. “Russia cares about this because it is internationally-recognized Russian national territory,” Lieven said. “Any attack on it or blockade is therefore legally an act of war against the Russian Federation, to which the Russian government would have to respond or face deep humiliation.”
Those are important points with which few experts would quibble. But what really distinguishes Graham and Lieven is their ability to discern—from Russia’s point of view—a Western threat against Kaliningrad, and to take it seriously. Judging by the comments both men provided, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin didn’t issue the nuclear threats lightly.
“In some NATO countries there has been talk of blockading Kaliningrad, that is, isolating the region from the rest of Russia by land and sea,” Graham said. “Putin would see a blockade as an act of war against Russia. So he is making sure that Europe understands that he will defend Russian land with all necessary means, which could include nuclear weapons.”
Moscow had already been inclined, even before the latest tensions exploded between Russia and the West, to view Kaliningrad as exposed to NATO’s predations. “NATO expansion to Poland, Lithuania, Sweden, and Finland means that Kaliningrad is now surrounded by NATO countries both by land and sea,” Lieven noted.
Sadly, not all Western experts perform such acts of perspective taking. Consider a recent article in The Hill, which, in the view of this editor-cum-columnist at least, actually brought the week’s most disturbing headline: “Kaliningrad is just Putin’s red herring.”
The coauthors—Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet—write that the Kremlin is engaged in “nuclear bluffing” designed to intimidate the West and distract from its own military failures in Ukraine. Early in the piece, the only context they provide for Moscow’s warnings is a new British television miniseries called The Wargame, in which the UK launches retaliatory strikes on Kaliningrad after a Russian attack.
A casual reader of their article could be left with the impression that this TV show was the main thing, perhaps the only thing, motivating Putin’s threatening rhetoric. But a careful reader would learn otherwise, for the authors inadvertently illuminate the kinds of Western behavior that prompted Putin’s warnings.
“Kaliningrad is a hollowed-out shell of what it was before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” they write. “As Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski pointed out earlier this month, ‘There are hardly any [Russian] troops [in the Kaliningrad exclave].’”
But that’s not all that Sikorski said. Toth and Sweet link to an article in Defense News, the first sentence of which is this:
NATO allies could hold drills in proximity of Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave in an attempt to push Moscow to weaken its military posture in Ukraine and withdraw some of its troops there, said Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister
Clearly, Sikorski went far beyond merely commenting on Russia’s force posture in the region. The article emphasizes that he didn’t recommend “offensive” actions against Kaliningrad, but you could hardly blame Putin for failing to appreciate the distinction. Indeed, in the relevant quotes, Sikorski recommends that NATO “aggressively” exercise around Kaliningrad and start treating the exclave as a front in the confrontation between Russia and the West.
Toth and Sweet’s article continues: “Although Kaliningrad is still the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet, the Baltic Sea itself has effectively become a NATO-controlled lake, after the accession of Sweden and Finland as the newest members of NATO.” Kaliningrad, they write, “is highly vulnerable,” and these days it merely hosts nuclear missiles, its conventional forces having been deployed to Ukraine.
Thus, “Moscow’s nuclear Armageddon bluffing is simply the latest attempt by Putin and his Kremlin cronies to paper over this problem.”
Here the premises lead to the conclusion only in the sense that they crash violently into it. If an increasingly vulnerable Kaliningrad holds strategic value for Russia and can only be defended by nuclear weapons, then perhaps Western leaders shouldn’t threaten it—and perhaps Western analysts should take more seriously Moscow’s repeated warnings that such threats could meet a nuclear response.
And those analysts should understand that the Russian political establishment in general—not just Putin—perceives a Western threat against Kaliningrad that, if acted upon, could precipitate a devastating Russia–NATO conflict. Referring to Sikorski’s apparent suggestion that NATO might isolate the exclave, forcing its surrender, Lieven said, “If this did happen, every Russian with whom I have spoken has said that Russia would have credibly to threaten the use of nuclear weapons, followed by their actual use if NATO failed to back down.”
Tensions between Russia and the West are worse than they’ve been since the Cold War, and mutual understanding perhaps worse than even then. In our age, Kant’s dreams of perpetual peace may seem naive if not delusional, but surely our leaders have enough wisdom not to let inexcusable miscalculations over his homeland on the Baltic lead to nuclear war. Right?
The politics of deterrence
Nuclear deterrence rests on a paradox. The purpose of nuclear weapons is to prevent their use.
Britain maintains its Trident system on the assumption that the credible threat of devastating retaliation will deter an adversary from attacking. The logic of mutually assured destruction is that neither side can launch a nuclear strike without risking its own destruction. The weapons preserve peace because the consequences of using them would be catastrophic.
But deterrence is a theory about behaviour, not a guarantee of safety.………………….
15 Oct, By Megan Davidson, https://www.commonweal.scot/articles/the-politics-of-deterrence
Does nuclear deterrence really make us safer? As Britain doubles down on military preparedness, we must question whether the logic of deterrence is undermining the pursuit of lasting peace, and whether Scotland could offer a different vision of security.
We are being told to prepare for war. The language of escalation, deterrence and national resilience has returned to British politics, accompanied by warnings that Europe must be ready for a major conflict by 2030. Scotland is now expected to contribute to renewed UK-wide contingency planning, including a modern version of the Cold War-era War Book. These preparations may be prudent. But there is a danger in allowing the possibility of war to become the organising principle of our politics, rather than a danger we should be working to prevent.
Neil Mackay’s argument that Scotland’s opposition to nuclear weapons undermines European security raises an important question: what does it mean to take the threat of war seriously? The answer cannot simply be to prepare to fight one. We must also ask whether the security arrangements we maintain are making conflict less likely, and whether we have become so accustomed to the logic of deterrence that we struggle to imagine security beyond it.
Nuclear deterrence rests on a paradox. The purpose of nuclear weapons is to prevent their use. Britain maintains its Trident system on the assumption that the credible threat of devastating retaliation will deter an adversary from attacking. The logic of mutually assured destruction is that neither side can launch a nuclear strike without risking its own destruction. The weapons preserve peace because the consequences of using them would be catastrophic.
But deterrence is a theory about behaviour, not a guarantee of safety. It depends on leaders making rational calculations, correctly interpreting their adversaries’ intentions and maintaining control during moments of extreme pressure. It cannot eliminate the possibility of miscalculation, accident or escalation. Nor can it ensure that every crisis will unfold according to the assumptions on which the system depends.
There is a fundamental tension here. To deter an attack, the threat of retaliation must be credible. Yet the credibility of that threat depends on maintaining the possibility of an act whose consequences could be irreversible. We are asked to trust that nuclear weapons will preserve peace while accepting that their continued effectiveness depends on the willingness to use them.
This does not prove that deterrence has never prevented conflict. It may have contributed to restraining direct military confrontation between nuclear-armed powers. Nor does it follow that abandoning nuclear weapons would automatically produce a more peaceful world. But the fact that deterrence may have prevented certain attacks does not settle the question of whether our present dependence on it is sustainable, or whether it creates risks of its own.
International relations offers a useful way of understanding this problem: the security dilemma. When one state increases its military capabilities to protect itself, another may interpret that expansion as a threat and respond in kind. The first state then sees the response as confirmation of its original fears. Each side’s attempt to become more secure can leave both feeling less safe.
This does not mean that all states are equally responsible for conflict, or that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can be excused as a misunderstanding. Russia chose to invade, and Ukraine has every right to defend itself. The security dilemma is not a device for erasing responsibility. It helps explain how military competition can become self-reinforcing, even as individual states claim to be acting defensively.
The question, then, is not whether Britain should ignore Russian aggression. It is whether responding to insecurity through military expansion alone can provide a durable solution. If every increase in capability prompts another increase in response, the result may be a more heavily armed continent without a corresponding increase in trust or stability.
That is important as the UK prepares for the possibility of a major European conflict. Contingency planning is not evidence that war is inevitable, and governments have a responsibility to prepare for emergencies. But warnings about a possible conflict by 2030 should be scrutinised, not treated as predictions that settle the debate. We should ask what evidence supports these assessments, what kinds of conflict are being anticipated, and what is being done alongside military preparation to reduce the likelihood of them occurring.
We should also recognise the interests that shape defence policy. Military institutions have legitimate responsibilities to identify threats and secure the capabilities they need. Defence companies, meanwhile, stand to benefit from government contracts and long-term procurement programmes. The existence of those interests does not demonstrate that warnings about war are manufactured. It does mean that decisions involving enormous public expenditure should be open to scrutiny, particularly when urgency risks narrowing the range of policies considered politically acceptable.
There is a further problem with treating nuclear deterrence as synonymous with national security: it can obscure the other vulnerabilities that governments must address. Scotland’s dependence on undersea cables and other critical infrastructure is a case in point. The disruption of communications infrastructure could have serious consequences for economic and social life, particularly for island communities. The UK Government has recognised the need for stronger coordination and resilience in protecting subsea cables. Nuclear weapons cannot, by themselves, solve these practical problems of national security.
“Preparation is not prevention, and the capacity to destroy an adversary is not the same as the capacity to build a more secure world.”
A country can possess the capacity to inflict catastrophic destruction and remain vulnerable to disruption of the systems on which its population depends. A serious defence policy must consider both. This is not an argument for replacing one form of defence with another, but for asking whether our priorities reflect the full range of threats we face.
It is also why diplomacy cannot be treated as a secondary consideration, something to return to once military preparations are complete. Negotiation is not a guarantee of peace. States can negotiate in bad faith, agreements can be broken, and dialogue cannot substitute for the capacity to resist aggression. Yet military strength cannot resolve every political dispute, and the ability to retaliate is not the same as the ability to prevent a crisis from escalating.
In his discussion of negotiation, George Friedman argues that the outcome of a war depends not only on military capability but also on resources, public support and the political survival of leaders. When neither side can achieve its objectives outright, the possibility of a settlement becomes increasingly important. The implication is not that negotiation will always succeed, but that wars ultimately confront political limits that military power alone cannot overcome.
That is a useful corrective to a political culture in which strength is increasingly measured through weapons, spending and readiness. Security requires the capacity to defend against aggression, but it also requires channels of communication, arms-control agreements and diplomatic relationships that reduce the risks of miscalculation. These mechanisms do not eliminate conflict. They can help prevent disputes from becoming catastrophic.
The distinction between deterrence and peacebuilding is crucial here. Preventing an attack is not the same as creating the conditions for lasting peace. A nuclear deterrent may be intended to discourage a particular form of aggression, but it cannot resolve territorial disputes, rebuild diplomatic relationships or establish the limits necessary to manage military competition. Nor would unilateral disarmament automatically accomplish those things.
The international movement behind the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons represents an attempt to challenge the assumption that nuclear weapons must remain a permanent feature of international security. As of October 2026, 75 states are parties to the treaty, which prohibits its members from developing, possessing or using nuclear weapons. The nuclear-armed states have not joined, limiting its immediate reach. Nevertheless, its existence demonstrates that the international community is not unanimous in accepting nuclear deterrence as the only credible foundation for security.
For Scotland, this opens a question larger than whether Trident should remain on the Clyde. Britain maintains a continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent, but the Trident missile system depends on American technology and a leased stock of missiles, while the UK retains its own warheads and operational responsibility. This is a close strategic partnership, not a simple arrangement in which Washington controls every British nuclear decision. Yet it raises legitimate questions about dependence, sovereignty and the relationship between Britain’s nuclear ambitions and its actual security needs.
An independent Scotland could choose a different role in international affairs: one that combines conventional defence and cooperation with European partners with a stronger commitment to nuclear disarmament. The current suggestion of a Celtic peace alliance offers a possible starting point. Scotland, Wales and Ireland have different constitutional positions and security arrangements, and shared opposition to nuclear weapons would not automatically make them a coherent geopolitical bloc. But cooperation on arms control, disarmament and conflict prevention could give that idea substance.
Such a role would require more than removing nuclear weapons from Scottish territory. It would mean investing in diplomacy, supporting international agreements and developing a credible approach to the practical defence of Scotland. It would also require acknowledging that peace cannot be secured by good intentions alone. A peace-promoting foreign policy must be capable of confronting aggression without accepting permanent escalation as inevitable.
The choice is not between preparing for war and pretending war cannot happen. It is between treating military preparedness as the entirety of security and recognising that preventing conflict is also a strategic responsibility.
Nuclear weapons may be defended as instruments of peace, but that claim deserves the same scrutiny as any other defence policy. If our security depends on the permanent threat of catastrophic retaliation, we should ask what happens when deterrence fails, when leaders miscalculate or when a crisis escapes their control. And we should ask whether sufficient political effort is being devoted to reducing those risks in the first place.
Preparing for war may sometimes be necessary. But preparation is not prevention, and the capacity to destroy an adversary is not the same as the capacity to build a more secure world. If Scotland is to have a meaningful debate about Trident, it must be about more than whether nuclear weapons are necessary. It must also be about what kind of security we want, what risks we are willing to accept, and whether we are prepared to invest as seriously in preventing catastrophe as we are in preparing for it.
Worried About Russian Meddling In UK Politics? Wait Till You See What Israel Is Up To
Burnham’s exclusive focus on Russian influence almost laughably beside the point. This furious finger-pointing at the Kremlin is designed with one purpose in mind only: to distract the British public from where the real external meddling in our politics is coming from.
October 16, 2026, Jonathan Cook Substack
Andy Burnham’s government is rolling out a new “Centre for Information Defence”. But the outside actors most aggressively undermining what little remains of British democracy are nowhere in its sights
Russia “interfered” in the 2016 Brexit vote by running some “anti-EU” articles on its RT channel and promoting a few internet trolls. Even MI5 has to admit that this activity had no tangible impact on the referendum campaign.
No matter. British prime minister Andy Burnham has once again revived the incendiary claim that Russian disinformation is an especial threat to British democracy. At the United Nations a few weeks ago he announced plans for a National Centre for Information Defence “to detect, attribute and disrupt these kinds of hostile state information attacks”.
For the new British prime minister, as for his predecessors, this is all about Moscow and the UK’s favourite bogeyman, Vladimir Putin. At the UN, Burnham promised British expertise to other European nations to protect them from Kremlin disinformation.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that another foreign actor is meddling even more aggressively in British politics – and neither Burnham nor MI5 have a word to say about it.
Any evidence of Russia disinformation-peddling in the UK pales in comparison to Israeli influence operations – and that’s just the ones we know about. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, noted that Russian disinformation was neither sophisticated nor successful. The same cannot be said for Israel’s handiwork.
Israel has been using “hasbara” trolls on social media platforms to manipulate public debates in Britain for years – the thrust of the accusation against Russia. But in Israel’s case, it goes much further than that.
This year the Israeli state massively increased its public diplomacy budget to $730 million to expand its influence operations. That includes flying even more politicians, clergy, academics and influencers to bombard them with pro-Israel propaganda they are then likely to spread back home. According to foreign minister Gideon Saar, Israeli advocacy should be treated “like investing in jets, bombs, and missile interceptors”.
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There was already plenty of evidence through the late 2010s, as I reported at the time, that Israel was helping to organise, stoke and amplify a campaign to smear its arch-critic, Jeremy Corbyn, as an antisemite, in order to prevent him from reaching No 10 Downing Street.
Not least, Israel did so by advancing a new, bogus definition of Jew hatred through the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Usefully, for Israel, that definition largely ignores hatred of Jews to focus instead on criticism of Israel.
That was the most blatant meddling possible in what remains of Britain’s democratic processes. UK politicians and media not only failed to oppose it, but actively sought to amplify the smears.
Civil war
This week the fanatically pro-Israel US lobby group the Anti-Defamation League revealed that it had been working with leading AI firms, which are increasingly being integrated into social media platforms, to suppress what it calls “antisemitism” – or what the rest of us would refer to as criticism of Israel.
CEO Jonathan Greenblatt observed: “We’ve had excellent collaboration with Silicon Valley.” The platforms, he said, would tackle content the ADL doesn’t like “right in the source code” – that is, before users can see it.
That is likely not only to remove criticism of Israeli atrocities and criticism of western governments, such as the UK’s, for colluding in Israel’s genocide but turn social media into a playground for bots and Israel apologists, giving them free reign to spread their propaganda without challenge.
We also know, thanks to the work of the French security services – maybe MI5 was too busy chasing Russian bots to notice – that an Israeli cyber agency called Blackcore targeted the SNP in May’s Scottish elections, as well as meddling in elections in France and New York.
Israeli tech firms, especially those dealing in spyware, intelligence and influence operations, are typically closely aligned with the Israeli state and its military. Most of the founders of tech start-ups are alumnae of the Israeli army’s 8200 intelligence unit.
Alongside the SNP, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and a leftwing French party headed by Jean-Luc Melenchon were targeted. Why? Because, unlike their political rivals, all had dared to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza
With echoes of what happened to Corbyn, Blackcore’s campaigns were designed to smear candidates. In the case of the French elections, fake accounts were created to accuse one candidate of rape and another of paedophilia.
A new documentary, NAZA, shows how Israel has paved the way in using AI in pioneering new ways to kill on a mass scale in Gaza. It selected banks of targets for assassination, often by murdering those “suspects” when they are in family compounds, slaughtering large numbers of bystanders in the process.
It is therefore hardly surprising that tech firms in Israel have been caught using AI in similarly innovative and indiscriminate ways online, to target western publics with disinformation.
In the summer it emerged that the Israeli government had created a website for a fake “scholarly” think-tank. In a short period of time, it produced prodigious quantities of AI-generated content on Israel, optimised for common search terms, that promoted Israeli talking points and constantly suggested criticism of Israel risked fuelling antisemitism.
It was set up not only to influence internet chatbots into echoing its pro-Israel disinformation but also to integrate its content into what experts call the “underlying training data”: that is, the unquestioned assumptions on which chatbots operate.
Back in May 2024 Meta identified fake Israel-based accounts, “posing as Jewish students, African Americans and other concerned citizens”, peddling pro-Israel content in the US and Canada in support of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Two months ago, Meta again found the same kind of dirty tricks emanating from Israel, this time targeting Britain, France and Australia among other countries. The AI-generated accounts posed “as local, civically-engaged brands, news sources, religious organizations, and political activists”.
Notably in the case of the UK and France, the influence campaigns were designed to stoke “anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim” sentiment. Israel has been critically involved in advancing Islamophobic content, fuelling fears of a supposed “Muslim takeover” of Europe to mobilise support for Israel as a bulwark in the Middle East against Islam, and thereby encourage sympathy for its genocidal attacks on Gaza.
As a consequence, the political landscape in Britain has been disfigured. Support for the far-right has been artificially inflated, polarising British society. The path is being paved towards deeper authoritarianism and the possibility of civil war.
Death knell
None of these dire outcomes, the death knell for what little remains of British democracy, is attracting even the mildest interest from the Burnham government or MI5. Instead, they are chasing what so far appears to have been far more marginal Russian output.
But it isn’t just the influence of Israel we should be worried about. The problem runs much deeper, with a host of other noxious outside actors trying to warp and disfigure British politics in ways that closely accord with Israel’s malign intent. Burnham’s Centre for Information Defence will do precisely nothing to tackle any of it.
Here are two other powerful external actors aligned with Israel in distorting British politics.
The billionaire class, a transnational elite that has no loyalty to Britain, interfere in our politics by making our political parties dependent on their donations. They use their money to buy influence with the main parties – which is why for decades it has made little difference whether we vote for the Conservatives or Labour. We get austerity either way, while the billionaires get permission for their forever wars, directing public wealth away from public services into the arms industries and resource grabs.
Jeremy Corbyn tried to break with this model by funding Labour with small donations from ordinary people instead of the billionaires. As a result, he was destroyed by a confected campaign run by the billionaires, in association with Israel and its trolls, to smear him as an antisemite.
Sir Keir Starmer, Corbyn’s successor, went right back to begging for money from Big Business, got the billionaires behind him, and rolled on with the austerity programme.
Is Nigel Farage’s Reform different? Of course, not. Even before reaching power, he’s dependent on crypto-billionaires living in Thailand and Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, the sometime US trillionaire Elon Musk is busy rallying Britain’s new blackshirts, led by serial fraudster Tommy Robinson, to chase after a few “illegal” migrants rather than identifying the real criminals tearing apart Britain: the super-rich like Musk.
The billionaires both wield and conceal their influence through their ownership of the corporate media. They use the media to aggressively promote their own causes – political and economic policies ensuring their further enrichment – by normalising the extreme ideology of neoliberal capitalism, with its promotion of endless resource extraction through forever wars and the fuelling of needless consumption.
The consequence is the destruction of the conditions for human life on the planet. The billionaires hope they can ride out the catastrophe in their bunkers, or cryogenically freeze their bodies until a point in the future when they can be uploaded to the cloud.
One of the media’s most important jobs is to use smear campaigns to destroy anyone, such as Corbyn and now Zack Polanski, who threatens the billionaires’ privileged position by offering a mildly socialist programme of wealth redistribution..
Vassal state
If the UK media wasn’t entirely captured by the billionaire class – serving as its PR division – then we might know more about the role of the United States in meddling in our politics.
The recent claims of a supposed “terrorist plot” outside RAF Fairford – really a US airforce base pretending to be a British base and one from which the US has waged an illegal war of aggression against Iran – should have reminded us that the Pentagon is largely in charge of UK foreign policy.
The US has some 15 major military bases on British soil, plus half a dozen smaller intelligence sites. As the rightwing US podcaster Tucker Carlson recently observed, the fact that Britain has foreign troops crawling all over it makes us little more than an occupied “vassal state”.
The US recently announced a $4 billion upgrade of its UK bases, including establishing storage sites for its nuclear arsenal. The plan caused barely a ripple of interest among British politicians or the media .
Although our political and media class pretend the UK is an equal partner in a western defence alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the reality is very different. Nato takes its orders from the US, doing Washington’s bidding. That’s why Nato has been pivoting towards America’s biggest economic rival, China, which is, of course, nowhere near the North Atlantic.
When the US snaps its fingers, Britain stands to attention and hikes its spending on the war industries. Along with European governments, the UK is willing to drain its national coffers and scythe through public spending with yet more austerity cuts to support Washington’s military agenda for “full-spectrum global dominance”.
Hidden influence
Much of the US influence on British politics is carefully concealed from view, operating behind closed doors.
In the early 2010s, the US was desperately seeking a pretext to extradite Julian Assange from the UK and lock him up in a super-max jail, hiding him out of sight after his organisation Wikileaks revealed US and British war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was during this period that Starmer, as the director of public prosecutions, repeatedly jetted off to Washington for secret meetings with US officials.
We will never know what was discussed. Freedom of information requests discovered that his own officials destroyed all records of those meetings.
Once he became a politician, Starmer was recruited to the shadowy Trilateral Commission, originally founded in the 1970s by officials in Jimmy Carter’s administration to deal with the supposed problem of “an excess of democracy” in the US. The commission’s view was that voters were becoming dangerously less passive, at that time over the Vietnam war, and ways needed to be found to return them to docility.
A similar British-American Project cements ties between rising stars in British politics, business and journalism and Washington elites. The power imbalance between the two sides ensures up-and-coming British leaders are readily groomed into an Atlanticist worldview in which the UK is very much the junior partner.
There are a plethora of other “respected’ think-tanks and organisations whose chief role is to embed US policy ideas, especially those relating to foreign policy, in the thinking of British elites. They include the Bilderberg Group, Chatham House, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, The British-American Parliamentary Group, and BritishAmerican Business.
The US uses its financial muscle through these organisations and many others to manufacture consent for its extreme neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies. The latest example are massive grants to organisations willing to export Trump’s MAGA ideology to the UK, masquerading as a “public education” initiative.
There is plenty of evidence to show that it was pressure from the Trump administration that led to the unprecedented decision by Starmer’s government to proscribe a civil disobedience group, Palestine Action, for the first time in Britain’s history as a terrorist organisation.
Palestine Action had incensed Israel by targeting its weapons factories on UK soil, highlighting another aspect of British collusion in the Gaza genocide, and had infuriated Trump personally by spraying one of his golf courses in Scotland with the words “Gaza is not 4 sale”.
In truth, the ways that the US meddles directly in British politics are so numerous it is virtually impossible to quantify them. Britain is little more than a colony of the US, receiving diktats on important foreign policy issues – especially regarding US and Israeli interests – that the UK is invariably too frightened to oppose.
Burnham is already rolling over to reverse the UK’s decision to honour a ruling from the International Court of Justice and other international tribunals that Britain has no claim to sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and must return them to Mauritius. The UK has faced a temper tantrum from Trump on the matter because the US operates an illegal military base on one of the islands.
Disobedience by the UK is the exception, not the rule. Which makes Burnham’s exclusive focus on Russian influence almost laughably beside the point. This furious finger-pointing at the Kremlin is designed with one purpose in mind only: to distract the British public from where the real external meddling in our politics is coming from.
Why Boris Johnson Must Answer for Ukraine’s Destruction — and Why the Public Should Decide on Future Ukraine Aid
A conversation with Mary Dejevsky and Commodore RN (Ret’d) Steve Jermy
Ian Proud, Oct 15, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/why-boris-johnson-must-answer-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=220504822&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
In this wide-ranging discussion, I am joined by two of Britain’s most experienced and independent voices on the Ukraine war and European security: Mary Dejevsky, former Moscow correspondent for The Times and long-time foreign affairs commentator, and Commodore Steve Jermy RN (Rtd), a decorated naval officer with combat experience dating back to the Falklands War and the author of Strategy for Action.
Prompted by Mary’s powerful Substack essay J’Accuse – Boris Johnson, we examine Boris Johnson’s role in the early phase of the war, the collapse of the April 2022 Istanbul talks, the broader strategic failures of Western policy, the gap between political narrative and military reality, and what a realistic security architecture for Europe might look like once the fighting ends. We also discuss Steve’s support for a petition calling for a pause in UK military aid and a proper public debate (and possible referendum) on Britain’s involvement.
In this conversation we discuss:
– Mary Dejevsky’s case for holding Boris Johnson to account after the war
– The Istanbul negotiations of April 2022 and why the draft agreement collapsed
– Johnson’s Churchillian framing of Zelensky and the early Western response
– Military analysis of Russia’s initial operation and the West’s strategic misjudgements
– The role of other key figures (Liz Truss, Ben Wallace, Tony Radakin)
– Why the West continues to rely on one-sided information and propaganda
– Russia’s actual security objectives versus the “restore the empire” narrative
– Neutrality for Ukraine and the case for reforming or replacing NATO
– A possible future European security architecture centred on the OSCE
– The petition to pause UK support and open a national debate on aid spending
– What a post-war reckoning in Britain might look like.
BRIEFING sent to all Cumberland Councillors Partners in Plan to Bring Failed Japanese Nuclear Reactors Sodium Coolant Process Plant to the Port of Workington
Conclusion The Sodium Coolant Process Plant at the Port of Workington would be an unprecedented and dangerous development, putting residents and primary school children in direct danger of both chemical and potential radiological hazards.
These hazards have not been explained to the public by the developers, which includes the regional planning authority, Cumberland Council, as an enthusiastic and facilitating ‘partner.
There has been a lack of clarity on issues
The following briefing has been shared with all Cumberland Councillors. Cumberland Council are partners in the scheme to bring sodium coolant from the Japanese failed Monju fast breeder nuclear reactors to Cumbria. The council has, we believe, not voted on this so the councillors are unwitting partners (much the same as Cumberland’s partnership with the nuclear dump plan).
For the original briefing with full links not reproduced here please contact: wastwater @ protonmail.com
BRIEFING: Failed Japanese Nuclear Reactors Sodium Coolant Process Plant for the Port of Workington?
by Radiation Free Lakeland 12th October, 2026
History
The Japanese Atomic Energy Agency is proposing to send sodium coolant from the failedMonju Fast Breeder Reactor to the Port of Workington in the UK for processing. A company in the UK has been set up to facilitate this.
ALKALI METAL PROCESSING LIMITED was incorporated at Companies House on 26 July, 2023 by Jacobs Clean Energy Ltd. (the name of this company was changed to Amentum Clean Energy Ltd. on 30 September, 2023) and Cavendish Nuclear.
According to the Director’s Report for the year ending 31 March, 2025: “The company’s sole purpose is to deliver a single contract to design, manufacture, construct, operate and decommission a Sodium Treatment Facility in the United Kingdom,” and,
“the entity, via Cavendish Nuclear Ltd., has beenawarded the next phase of work by the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) to support the decommissioning of the Monju Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR), in Fukui Prefecture, Japan. The next phase of work covers the construction, commissioning, and securing of regulatory permissions for a new facility in the UK which will treat the sodium coolant removed from the Japanese reactor.”
Democratic Deficit:
Cumberland Council Responsible for Regulatory Oversight while also Development Partner.
There has been no standard planning assessment, or democratic scrutiny of technical details, or vote by Cumberland Council to justify Leader Mark Fryer’s enthusiastic promotion of the plan to import and process Japanese nuclear and chemical waste to the Port of Workington.
“This is fantastic news for the port as this new development, subject to the necessary approvals, will bring good quality jobs to Workington and support the wider supply chain and local economy. We’re extending a warm welcome to our new partners and look forward to working with all those involved over the coming weeks and months.“ Cllr Mark Fryer, Leader of Cumberland Council
Meanwhile the developers, “Cavendish Nuclear and Amentum are grateful to Cumberland Council and the Port’s management team for their support in enabling our design and construction programme to move to the next phase. We are fully committed to adding real social value to West Cumbia and this new venture will contribute to the regeneration of the Port of Workington and support the local economy. ” Cavendish Nuclear and Amentum
The Monju Fast Breeder Reactor, Fire and Accidents.
The Monju Fast Breeder Reactor, in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, has had a history of safety failures, cover ups, and operational redundancy.
In 1995, just months after achieving criticality (power transmission), 640 kg of liquid sodium leaked from a cooling system, causing a fire so hot that it buckled steel girders. The reactor was shut down for 15 years, after the operator was found to have covered up the scale of the damage.
Monju was restarted in May 2010 after a public battle in the courts and a number of safety repairs. However, it never connected to the electrical grid.
“Operations were again suspended in August 2010 after a fuel handling machine was accidentally dropped in the reactor during a refuelling outage. The device was retrieved almost one year later.”
Alkali Metal Processing’s client, the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency, was declared in 2015, “not fit to operate the Monju Fast Breeder Reactor” by the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority, following failure to carry out regular inspections on almost 10,000 out of 39,000 pieces of equipment at the Monju.” Source: Nucnet Independent Nuclear News.“
Violently Reactive,” requiring “Chemically Resistant Bunds”and “Nuclear Licenced Zones”
The “Nature of business” is listed on Companies House by Alkali Metal Processing Ltd (AMP Ltd) as “Treatment and disposal of non-hazardous waste.”
While legal definitions of ‘hazardous’ and ‘non-hazardous’ waste are necessarily complex and prevaricated, a reasonable definition of ‘non-hazardous’ would be ‘that which does not constitute a direct threat to human and environmental health’
.The description of Alkali Metal Processing Ltd as “Treatment and disposal of non-hazardous waste” is very much at odds with the Technical Brief published by Geomechanics which states:
● Sodium coolant’s violent reaction with water and air drives stringent segregation of drainage, fire and ventilation systems.
● Port (of Workington) siting demands blast- and fire-resisting structures around offloading and treatment units to contain exothermic events.
● Marine berths and transfer lines must be designed to prevent any seawater ingress intosodium-bearing systems.
● Civil design will likely require chemically resistant bunds and sumps to capture and neutralise any sodium leaks.
● Construction phasing must separate conventional port works from nuclear-licensed zones with controlled access and radiological monitoring.
● Emergency planning will centre on sodium fire scenarios, with specialised extinguishing media and exclusion distances.
● Similar import-treatment concepts could be replicated at other UK ports, but only where nuclear licensing constraints are manageable.
Source: Technical Brief from Geomechanics July 28th 2026
Experience of Dounreay’s Sodium Coolant.
The UK has experience of decommissioning the Dounreay fast breeder reactors. The two Dounreay reactors were fast breeder types, similar to the Japanese Monju reactor, and also used alkali metal coolant. The Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) shut down in 1977, while the larger Prototype Fast Reactor shut down in 1994.
Jason Casper, the reactors’ project director at Dounreay, has written at length about the hazardous nature of disposal of sodium coolant. In previous roles, he led clean-up projects in Idaho in the US, and has experience developing and implementing new technologies for sodium treatment, waste monitoring, and characterisation. He writes, at NS Energy that:
“Dealing with the nature of the coolant—commonly sodium or the sodium-potassium alloy NaK—is a major consideration and one of the most demanding and potentially hazardous aspects in decommissioning liquid metal-cooled reactors. Sodium metal reacts vigorously when exposed to water, releasing hydrogen and large quantities of heat, thereby providing not only an explosive gas mixture but also a source of ignition.
2Na + 2H2O = 2NaOH + H2+ Heat
NaK + 2H2O = NaOH + KOH + H2 + Heat
“The products of combustion are also toxic, and can cause severe caustic and thermal burns on coming into contact with skin, as well as being hazardous to ingest or inhale. Methods of destruction or disposal can range from a purpose-built sodium disposal plant (which essentially treats and neutralises the sodium to produce salt water) to high-temperature incineration, among others.
Around 130 m3 of hydrogen gas and 1100 MJ (30 kW) of heat is generated in the ten-hour process to destroy 160 kg of NaK”
Caustic soda production, however, is not a risk-free venture, especially near to residential areas.
A proposed housing development in Runcorn was cancelled over its proximity to a chemical plant producing caustic soda and chlorine.
The housing development masterplan for the Heath Park Development won two national awards, and the plans were approved by Halton Borough Council in May 2024. However, less than 1 km away, the Inovyn ChlorVinyls chemical plant posed a risk to the people who would live on the development that was too severe to ignore.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) lodged an objection to the plans based on modelling scenarios such as chemical leaks and spills, and the potential impact on local residents. Information published following a site visit in 2023 warned that an accident at the INEOS Inovyn site may produce a toxic gas cloud or smoke plume, or a “drifting cloud of flammable gas” that “may ignite”
.The HSE report added: “Fires may generate smoke clouds which may lead to breathing difficulties and deposition of soot on property and vegetation.“
The HSE warned that the consequences of a major accident would be a “potential for burns to body” that would be “possibly life threatening”, and that gas could be “potentially fatal if inhaled.“
Despite the accolades for much-needed housing in Runcorn, the development was cancelled by the Secretary of State, Steve Reed, following a public inquiry held in 2025.
Inovyn ChlorVinyls Ltd claims: “Our operations at the Runcorn site are of strategic national importance to the UK and focus mainly on the production of chlorine, caustic soda and chlorinated derivatives” INEOS
The Dounreay experience of dealing with sodium coolant did not include the production of “usable caustic soda.”
While the Waste Hierarchy encourages re-use and recycling of industrial waste, the production of caustic soda represents an additional risk to the local area on top of the already discussed risks of managing sodium coolant.
The inference is that the ‘production of caustic soda’ is a fig leaf attempt to justify bringing Japanese chemical/nuclear all the way across the sea, from the failed Monju reactor, to Cumbria.
Radioactive Elements: High Level Waste and Low Level Waste. Press reports play down the presence of radioactive elements in the sodium coolant earmarked for delivery to Workington from Japan. However a 2020 ‘White Paper:
Disposition Options for Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactors’ from Idaho National Laboratory states:
“The sodium wastes from Sodium Fast Reactor operations will be in two forms, the bulk sodium from the primary and secondary coolant loops and the residual sodium on Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF), piping, and other such components. Sodium bearing wastes not considered SNF or High Level Waste will require disposition at Low Level Waste disposal sites. These wastes will also require chemical deactivation or physical removal prior to disposal. The bulk sodium coolant can often be decontaminated and reused.
The wastes from this decontamination will require storage until disposal either as High Level Waste or Low Level Waste.
The (EBR-II) bulk sodium measured a final concentration of cesium within the primary coolant of approximately 370 Bq/g of cesium before it was decommissioned (Newton et al. 2002). The contamination can be remediated with a suitable cesium trap system. The traps act as a filter for the sodium passing through it, trapping the cesium. Successive traps are installed until acceptable levels of cesium are achieved. The cesium traps will require shielding and storage and eventual disposition either as LLW or Greater Than Class C depending on the activity limits. The bulk sodium can then be drained and converted into anhydrous sodium hydroxide, which is a solid form that can be stored indrums.”
Close Proximity of Sodium Coolant Chemical/Nuclear Plant to Schools and Residential Areas.
The Port of Workington is surrounded by schools and residential areas. Northside Primary School for example, is less than 1 km from the proposed chemical/nuclear process plant
As described above, at Runcorn a housing development was turned down last year following a public inquiry as the residential area would have been just over 1 km away from the INEOS caustic soda and chlorine plant. The refusal, citing safety concerns, was without the additional concern of radioactivity.
As well as being close to schools and residential areas the proposed nuclear waste/chemical plant would be around 1km from “Siddick Ponds … a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Local Nature Reserve and one of Cumbria’s most important bird sites. ”
Questions remain
Democratic Deficit
The proposal to import Japanese sodium coolant from the failed Monju reactor is being presented to the public as a fait accompli. The regional regulatory planning authority, Cumberland Council is acting as a promotional and facilitating arm of the nuclear industry rather than as an independent local authority responsible for planning oversight. We urge both Parish and Cumberland councillors to question this “partnership” with the developers.
How can Cumberland be both “partner” and planning authority especially on such a controversial, dangerous and largely experimental development?
Questions both here and in Japan
The lack of detailed information from the developers and their partner Cumberland Council has led to questions being asked in Japan by civic society groups of the JAEA and the Office for Nuclear Regulation.
These questions include:
● Media reports and the website of the receiving company state that the receiving plant does not handle radioactive materials. How, then, will the primary system sodium be handled?
Cavendish/Amentum JV win Monju D&D contract:
“Alkali Metal Processing Ltd., a joint venture between Cavendish Nuclear and Amentum, will construct, commission, and secure regulatory permissions for a new facility in the U.K. to treat nonradiological sodium coolant removed from the reactor. The sodium coolant is to be converted into sodium hydroxide for general industrial reuse.”
Cavendish Nuclear and Amentum awarded next phase of contract to support Japan’s Monju reactor decommissioning:
“The material, which presents no radiological hazards, will be safely converted into sodium hydroxide for general industrial reuse.”
And in many ways, a more pressing question, is:
● Given the supposed radiation-free nature of the sodium coolant, why is it being transported allthe way to the UK for processing?
In the UK, Radiation Free Lakeland asked the Office of Nuclear Regulation to detail the volume of sodium being transported; its chemical content; and its radiological content.
In reply, the ONR explained: “we understand that the Port of Workington will handle secondary sodium coolant, which is not radioactive and therefore not in scope of ONR’s purposes.”
However, according to Geomechanics July 28th 2026 Technical Brief, which discusses these exact proposals for the Port of Workington: “Construction phasing must separate conventional port works from nuclear-licensed zones with controlled access and radiological monitoring.”
The only reason for a nuclear-licensed zone is the presence of radioactive materials.
Radiation Free Lakeland have asked the Japanese Atomic Energy Authority the following questions:
●“Why is the sodium coolant proposed to be shipped to the UK when the companies involved are already working with their client, JAEA in Japan at the Monju?
●We would like to know:
a) the quantity of sodium coolant proposed to be imported.
b) details of the chemical content of the sodium coolant proposed to be imported
c) details of the radiological content of the sodium coolant proposed to be imported.
Conclusion
The Sodium Coolant Process Plant at the Port of Workington would be an unprecedented and dangerous development, putting residents and primary school children in direct danger of both chemical and potential radiological hazards.
These hazards have not been explained to the public by the developers, which includes the regional planning authority, Cumberland Council, as an enthusiastic and facilitating ‘partner.
There has been a lack of clarity on issues such as:
● Whether or not the sodium coolant will have radiological content
● Why the development needs to be a nuclear-licensed zone if it does not (as claimed) have radiological content.
● Why the coolant needs to be processed in the UK when the companies involved are already working with JAEA in Japan.
● Why the processing must turn one difficult-to-handle product (sodium coolant) into another which is potentially harmful in the event of an accident (caustic soda), given its proximity to residential areas.
● How a caustic soda plant can be considered safe to develop within 1 km of primary schools and residential areas in Workington when previously such areas have been prevented from development due to the presence of such a plant.
There is also a large question around the democratic processes in local government. Cumberland Council is the planning authority yet, without considering the safety aspects, has gone ahead to welcome the development without scrutiny or due process.
Briefing prepared by Radiation Free Lakeland
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