Renewables are taking the wind out of new nuclear’s sails.

THERE’S been a lot of talk about and PR for new
nuclear in Scotland – but awkward facts intrude. Greenland, the
planet’s thermostat, lost 105 billion tonnes of ice last year, with sea
ice the lowest in the 47-year satellite record. The climate crisis is here
and the choices we make now will determine the success or failure of our
climate actions.

Cost is important, but time is the critical variable –
and time is running out. Global data reveals construction of a new nuclear
station takes 17 or more years. Nuclear power construction has an average
time over-run of 64%.

In comparison, utility-scale wind and solar take on
average only two to five years from planning phase to operation, and
rooftop solar PV projects are down to six months.

At a time when so much
looks grim, the renewable revolution holds out real hope. In 2025, more
power was generated worldwide from renewable energy than from coal and 91%
of new renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels. The UN confirms that
renewables have increased their lead over fossil and nuclear in terms of
cost.

The result is, wind and solar worldwide now generate 70% more
electricity than nuclear. With each year nuclear adding only as much net
global power capacity as renewables add every two days, nuclear is facing
the same challenges as fossil fuel: uncompetitive costs, stranded assets, a
polluting legacy and severe competition from renewables.

Can new nuclear
generate power in time? In 2025, world net nuclear capacity increased by
4.4 GW, not much more than the UK’s Hinkley Point C project, and 180
times less than new solar and wind capacity. The International Energy
Agency (IEA) predicts 4600 GW new renewable capacity by 2030, meeting 90%
of global electricity demand growth.

Over the past decade we’ve seen
renewable electricity generation increase to triple that of nuclear. By the
end of this decade renewables will out-generate nuclear by up to seven
times. It is entirely possible to mitigate climate impact and sustain a
reliable power system by expanding renewable energy in all sectors, rapid
growth and modernisation of the electricity grid, storage technology
roll-out, increased international interconnections, and using power far
more effectively and efficiently via energy efficiency and management.

The compelling economics of renewables unmask those of fossil and nuclear. With
all key international and national energy organisations and institutes
agreeing that renewables will be doing the heavy lifting for the energy
transition, the future backbone of the global power supply system will be
renewable, sustainable and cost-effective. Scotland has very great
renewables potential and should play to its strengths. New nuclear is
already too late and too costly for the climate and energy crises.

The National 23rd March 2026,
https://www.thenational.scot/comment/25958295.renewables-taking-wind-new-nuclears-sails/

March 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable | Leave a comment

A Remotely-Piloted Weapon That Targets Civilians in War Zones

By Thalif Deen, https://www.ipsnews.net/2026/03/a-remotely-piloted-weapon-that-targets-civilians-in-war-zones/?utm_source=email_marketing&utm_admin=146128&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=A_RemotelyPiloted_Weapon_That_Targets_Civilians_in_War_Zones_Africas_Minerals_Boon_Cautious_Optimism

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2026 (IPS) – As the world continues to be weighed down in political and military turmoil, drones are being increasingly used as weapons of war in a rash of ongoing conflicts—including Ukraine vs Russia, Israel vs Palestine, US vs Iran and Israel vs Lebanon, plus in civil wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan and Haiti.

Described as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), drones have fundamentally transformed modern warfare, “offering a low-cost, high-impact form of air power, challenging traditional military doctrines and giving rise to new tactics and ethical debates”.

Once limited to major military powers like the U.S. and Israel, drones are now being used by numerous state and non-state actors, including militant groups and even organized crime cartels.

The use of drones, particularly in targeted killings and with increasing autonomy, has raised significant international debate regarding accountability, civilian casualties, and compliance with international humanitarian law

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said last week he was “appalled by the devastating impact on civilians of increasing drone attacks”, amid reports that more than 200 civilians have been killed by drones since 4 March alone in the Kordofan region, and in White Nile state.

“It is deeply troubling that despite multiple reminders, warnings and appeals, parties to the conflict in Sudan continue to use increasingly powerful drones to deploy explosive weapons with wide-area impacts in populated areas,” said Türk.

“I renew my call on them to abide fully with international humanitarian law in their use of these weapons, particularly the clear prohibition on directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects and infrastructure, and against any form of indiscriminate attacks.”

Many homes, schools, markets and health facilities were damaged or destroyed in the attacks, compounding the impacts on civilians and local communities, he said.

Meanwhile drones are also being used in the politically-troubled Haiti and also in the conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda despite a peace agreement brokered by the US last year.

According to a report in Cable News Network (CNN) March 17, the war in Iran is continuing to disrupt travel across the Gulf after Iranian drone strikes triggered two major air incidents in recent days. Flights at Dubai International Airport were briefly suspended on Monday after a drone struck a nearby fuel tank, igniting a large fire.

The shutdown forced cancellations and diversions as aviation authorities closed the airport. Part of the UAE’s airspace was also closed for a few hours overnight after the country said it was responding to incoming missiles and drone strikes from Iran.

Meanwhile, the prices of many global airfares that bypass the Middle East are rising, as the conflict drives up oil prices and airlines warn of higher fuel costs ahead, said CNN.

Focusing on a military perspective, Siemon Wezeman, Senior Researcher, Arms Transfers Programme, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS more and more states, (and also non-state armed- rebel – groups) acquire drones of all sizes.

“Some of the numbers are quite amazing – Ukraine getting not a few 1,000, but far over 10,000 drones from various suppliers, and Russia, Ukraine and Iran each use drones by the 100s almost every day in the current conflicts.”

And different from some 10 years ago, when most of the drones where for reconnaissance roles, he pointed out, today many drones are armed and many more are ‘one-way attack drones’ (also called suicide or kamikaze drones). The latter are becoming a cheap alternative for long-range missiles against ground targets.

In the SIPRI arms transfers database (https://armstransfers.sipri.org), he said, “we record transfers of all armed drones, and reconnaissance drones with a weight of at least 150kg (we had to put a weight limit to be able to keep monitoring drone transfers with the resources and sources we have)”.

“And we clearly see in recent years that a) the total numbers of drones transferred between states has grown, b) several non-state actors (e.g. Houthis and Hezbollah) have also been supplied with drones, c) the number of states and non-state actors that have acquired drone has grown – most states in the world have now acquired drones, many of them from foreign suppliers, d) the number of producers and suppliers has grown – the simpler drones are offered by dozens if not 100s of large and very small companies and that number is growing, and e) drones, and especially armed drones.”

That is the picture for flying drones, Wezeman said.

But also, sea drones (surface or submarine) are starting to become popular – even if not yet transferred in any significant number. And land drones are also starting to become popular, he declared.

At a press conference March 10, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher said: “I’m really worried about drones in particular. I think the world has decided that it’s far more interested in spending enormous amounts of money developing these increasingly deadly weapons than it is on saving lives, and it seems to have decided that it hasn’t got time to work on ensuring that the rules that govern these weapons, these lethal autonomous weapons, keep up with the pace of technology.”

So you’ve got this dangerous alliance between very innovative technology and huge amounts of money and people’s desire to kill more people – and that’s a toxic combination, he said.

“And last year, 90 per cent of all deaths caused by drones were civilians, many of them humanitarians. And we’re seeing that across the crises on which we work – whether it’s Gaza, Sudan or in Ukraine, we’re seeing these bad practices move between crises”.

In the DRC last week, a senior official of the UN children’s agency UNICEF and two civilians were killed in drone strikes.

Amplifying further Wezeman said all these drones and one-way attack drones have become more capable, especially in range (the simple Shahed, one-way attack drones used by Iran and sold to Russia have a range of up to 1500 to 2000km), changing them from tactical battlefield weapons to more strategic weapons.

Development is very rapidly continuing for all type of drones, including making them more autonomous and intelligent to be capable of independent targeting and other decision-making. AI plays a growing role in this process. This process leads to questions about control, but right now it seems the process is moving faster than the discussion on controlling the autonomous aspects (see also our programme on emerging technologies.

https://www.sipri.org/research/armament-and-disarmament/emerging-military-and-security-technologies.

Will they replace systems with a human on board or in the loop? The development goes certainly that way and for missiles and one-way attack drones that has already started. For the larger, more capable and more complex systems such as combat aircraft, warships and larger combat vehicles that is still a future – but not a distant dream as development of for example drone combat aircraft is already moving into prototypes in the USA, China, Australia and Europe.

There still is an element of doubt however – drones need navigation that now is largely based on GPS-type systems, something that is not free from the risks of being jammed or stopped.

The simpler drones, with their simple technology, cheap and easy to produce are also not as effective as hoped. Most of them are rather easy prey for air-defence systems (or jamming) – while Russia, Iran and Ukraine send every day dozens or 100s to attack their opponents, most do no reach their target but are shot down or lost due to jamming or other causes, declared Wezeman.

Meanwhile Human Rights Watch said last week its latest research on “how Haitian security forces and private contractors working with them have conducted extensive and apparently unlawful lethal drone strikes in densely populated areas killing and injuring residents who were not members of criminal groups, including children”.

“We call on Haitian authorities to urgently rein in the security forces and private contractors working for them before more children die”, said HRW.

According to data from multiple sources reviewed by Human Rights Watch, at least 1,243 people were killed by drone strikes in 141 operations between March 1, 2025, and January 21, 2026, including at least 43 adults who were reportedly not members of criminal groups, and 17 children. The data also shows that the drone strikes injured 738 people, at least 49 of whom were reportedly not members of criminal groups.

“Dozens of ordinary people, including many children, have been killed and injured in these lethal drone operations,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Haitian authorities should urgently rein in the security forces and private contractors working for them before more children die.”

The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti has attributed the drone attacks in Haiti to a specialized “Task Force” established by Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé that is operated with support from the private military company Vectus Global.

The US ambassador to Haiti has confirmed that the US State Department issued a license to Vectus Global to export defense services to Haiti.

Thalif Deen, Senior Editor, Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, was a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group and UN correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly, London.

March 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Fears huge nuclear dump buried under concrete dome could be unleashed into the sea

Rory McKeown March 25, 2026,
https://metro.co.uk/2026/03/25/climate-change-unleash-huge-nuclear-dump-buried-concrete-dome-sea-27664599/

A Pacific Island is sitting atop a nuclear time bomb that could pollute the oceans for centuries.

Scientists have discovered that a concrete structure built to contain radioactive waste from Cold War-era testing is showing signs of deterioration.

The site, known as Runit Dome, sits on Runit Island in the Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Although Runit itself is uninhabitable, the atoll is home to around 300.

The dome sits close to the ocean’s edge and rising sea levels and shifting groundwater bring seawater into close contact.

It dates back to a period of intensive nuclear testing. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests across Enewetak Atoll and Bikini Atoll, displacing more than 300 Marshallese people.

One test in particular, an 18-kiloton explosion known as “Cactus”, destroyed part of Runit Island and sent a mushroom cloud approximately six kilometres into the sky.

The Crater created by the Cactus explosion on May 5, 1958. It was later used as a burial pit to inter 84, 000 cubic meters of radioactive soil (Picture: US Defense Special Weapons Agency/Cover Media)

In the late 1970s, the 10 metre deep crater left by the blast was used to store more than 120,000 tonnes of radioactive soil and debris collected from across the atoll.

The site was then sealed with an 18-inch (46cm) concrete cap, forming what is now known as the Runit Dome.

More than five decades later, the structure is showing visible signs of ageing. Cracks have appeared across its surface, and groundwater is able to flow beneath it.

Researchers say this water moves in and out with the tides, potentially carrying radioactive material into the surrounding lagoon. Studies have also indicated that the dome is not watertight.

Ivana Nikolic-Hughes, of Columbia University and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, observed cracks during a visit in 2018 while measuring radiation levels.

‘These results provide further demonstration of the continuing impact of radioactive fallout on the Marshall Islands and will inform future work to understand how the presence of this isotope might affect current inhabitants and potential resettlement,’ she writes.

American officials have said the structure is not at immediate risk of collapse.

But experts have warned that some of the radioactive elements involved pose extremely long-term risks. Plutonium-239, used in nuclear weapons, remains hazardous for more than 24,000 years.

Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said no concrete structure could be expected to last even a fraction of that time.

He noted that cracks have already appeared within decades, highlighting the challenge of containing radioactive material over such long timescales.

‘There are already cracks in it in less than 50 years,’ he told Australian broadcaster ABC.

Scientists say the dome illustrates a broader problem. Certain places we regard as being safe spaces to dump toxic waste, may become less so due to climate change. If sea levels rise and rain increases, water and food supplies change.

March 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, OCEANIA | Leave a comment

Trump’s battle plan for Iran

Bruce Gagnon, Mar 26, 2026, https://brucegagnon177089.substack.com/p/trumps-battle-plan-for-iran?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3720343&post_id=192096004&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Europe key to US ops in Iran

Another very interesting piece from the WSJ. These details have been available through OSINT sources but it’s a good roundup showing how key Europe is to US operations against Iran:

The central command center for US operations against Iran is within Ramstein Air Base in Germany (unsurprising)
US drone operations are conducted from there as well
Ramstein is increasingly being used as a hub by the Americans. Military transport aircraft, in particular, land there and took off for the Middle East, including several Boeing C-17 Globemaster III (77.5 tons of load) and Lockheed C-130 aircraft (20 tons).
American media reported that F-16 fighter jets had been transferred from US Spangdahlem AFB, Germany to the Middle East. According to the trade magazine Air and Space Forces, they are to be used in Iran to combat air defenses. BBC reported that the base is now operating “around the clock.”
American aircraft stationed in Spain have been relocated to France and Germany after the Spanish government denied the use of the Morón and Rota air bases for attacks on Iran
Bomber aircraft sorties out of bases in the UK like RAF Fairford
Refueling operations are based out of Aviano Air Base in Italy and Tubé Air Base in France
Lajes Air Base in the Azores (Portugal) is serving as a major logistical hub, with dozens of aircraft stationed there at various times during the conflict
RC-135 Rivet Joint spy planes are operating out of Souda Bay in Crete
Unspecified “logistics and intelligence assets” are being hosted by Romania
The piece paints an amusing picture of European attitudes towards this. Keir Starmer’s justification for overcoming his reticence to allow the US to base out of British facilities in the initial wave of strikes is that bomber operations are now “defensive” in nature.
Merz has said publicly that this “isn’t [Germany’s] war,” but he has no choice but to allow US operations out of German air bases due to pre-existing legal agreements.
Meloni has spun Italian involvement as minor because only refueling missions are flown out of Aviano. Similarly, French defense minister Vautrin said, “a refueling aircraft is a gas station, not a fighter jet.”
These technicalities may work on the European public, but it’s difficult to imagine they’ll work on the Iranians.

Let’s focus not on what Trump says, but on what he does.

These are the U.S. military units recently deployed to the Middle East against Iran.

160th SOAR (Night Hunters): An elite helicopter unit that secretly inserts and extracts special forces, often at night, using skilled pilots and modified aircraft.
75th Airborne Brigade: A light infantry force for rapid raids, airfield seizures, and close-quarters combat missions against high-value targets.
Delta Force (1st SFOD-D): A top-tier counterterrorism and hostage rescue unit focused on high-risk, precision missions targeting high-value individuals.
1st Special Forces Group (1st SFG): Operates primarily in the Asia-Pacific; trains allied forces, conducts unconventional warfare, and supports insurgencies or partner militaries.
5th Special Forces Group (5th SFG): Focused on the Middle East; It specializes in counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, and advising local forces.
US Navy SEALs: Special operations focused on the sea—raids, reconnaissance, direct action, and covert missions from the sea, air, or land.
But for what mission?
Islands within or near the Strait of Hormuz—Small but strategically important islands used by Iran to control shipping lanes. US special forces could quickly seize them to reopen the strait.
An island outside—Iran’s main oil export terminal. Seizing or destroying it would cripple Iranian oil revenues.
Iranian nuclear facilities or other high-value sites—Potential raids to destroy stockpiles of enriched uranium or related infrastructure.

March 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The war against Iran: Lessons still unlearned

By William Briggs | 26 March 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/the-war-against-iran-lessons-still-unlearned,20853

The dreams of the U.S. President, that it would all be over in days – that the Iranian people would rise against their tyrannical regime – is now a nightmare that Trump has visited upon the world.

The global economy is on the brink of disaster as oil dries up. America and Israel have further isolated themselves from world public opinion and, apart from an ever- shrinking clique of semi-vassal states like Australia, Trump appears to be alone and increasingly dangerous.

The war offers a great many lessons, but while life and history can be great teachers, there seem to be precious few pupils ready to learn those lessons. This applies equally to apologists for U.S. power, to governments of all stripes and to many of those who inhabit the Left and lay claim to Marxist credentials.

The war was never about “liberating” the Iranian people from the right-wing theocracy. It was about securing a compliant regime that would ensure the flow of oil and to make sure that the USA, as a fading imperial power, maintained global hegemony — both politically and economically.

The slogan that accompanied the wars of aggression against Iraq, that tore Libya apart and which laid waste to so much of the Middle East was simply, No Blood for Oil! The years have slipped by, and yet the same foul motivation for despoiling the globe and destroying a people remains.

Our mainstream media know this to be true, even as the “story” turns its focus to the retaliation by Iran and to the oil pressure that the blocking of the Straits of Hormuz entails. The same media focuses on potential oil shortages, and rightly so, but seems less keen to link that invasion to the fact that people are paying stupid prices for petrol and diesel.

Fewer voices can be heard that would remind the people of how the war started and who is responsible. That has become largely the responsibility of the Left — the Marxists, the campaigners against war and imperialism.

This is as it should be, but something is very wrong. Marxism is quite clear that economics is the defining factor and that politics works with and responds to economic demands. The war, then, can only be understood from an economic perspective. But is it being understood in this way? Sadly, no.

Some see it as a political gamble by a beleaguered and dangerously unhinged U.S. President. Some portray it as a means, by Israel, of destroying any potential risk to its domination of the region. Some come a step closer by recognising the strategic desire to weaken China, as it is a principal customer for Iranian oil.

Any and all of these considerations are enough to allow blame to be sheeted home to the USA and Israel, but there is a deeper, more worrying aspect to this. The United States has been and remains the single biggest military force and greatest economic power that the world has seen. It is, as the Marxist Left will say, an imperialist power. It is also a declining power.

For decades, its main preoccupation has been how to hold back the rising tide of its one great rival. China’s rise, accompanied by a global capitalist economy that has run out of ideas and resilience, ensures that wars are either finishing, beginning, or in the planning stage. A failing economic structure is driving the world to the point of no return. The war against Iran is one battle in this endless spiral into decay. The USA, as the central power in the capitalist global economy, is more than willing to destroy entire nations in its quest to keep the sinking ship afloat.

No crime is too much. The U.S. bombing the girls’ school in Iran, the Israeli destruction of oil facilities on the edge of Tehran that have led to acid rain and an unimaginable civilian health disaster, sicken all reasonable people. But those who plan such actions are not among the reasonable.

These acts need to be condemned. Governments need to show at least a modicum of decency. Our Prime Minister needs to stop slinking in the shadows and act. He needs to denounce such actions. He needs to find the courage to say “No!” and to work to secure the natural resources needed to keep Australia functioning. This is unlikely. Our political structures are such that we remain totally subservient to the demands and interests of the USA..

Those whose anger compels them to take to the streets deserve better than the Babel that has become the protest movement. The most recent action in Melbourne, which was dominated by ever more shrill denunciations of Israel, while mention of the USA and its causal responsibility for the war was at best an afterthought. Protest has merit, it is necessary and has purpose. It also needs focus, if it is to have either merit or purpose.

Protest is also about winning the hearts and minds of people. Sound and fury might be a therapy for some, but numbers count and numbers must grow, people must be educated, encouraged to talk to others, to build a movement that can go beyond noise.

Part of that building process must include the raising of collective consciousness. It must be able to show and convince people that this or that crime of the USA, of Israel, of imperialism, is not isolated, or in any way an aberrant thing, but is a symptom of a deeper, structural crisis. It is not enough for the ideologues to make demands that cannot be achieved. The protest movement, the anti-war movement, should aim at providing a vehicle, a voice for those who want something better than news screens full of war stories and a Federal Government pathetically marching to the fifes and drums of a fading U.S. empire.

European Union leaders have been prepared to stand back a little; to say that the war is not their war. It is hard to imagine an Australian government being daring enough to question anything that comes from Washington. As the sun sinks on U.S. hegemony, Australia seems ready to go down with the American ship.

March 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear to take up to quarter of British defence budget

26 Mar 2026
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/nuclear-to-take-up-to-quarter-of-british-defence-budget/

The UK nuclear enterprise is expected to absorb between 20 and 25 percent of the Ministry of Defence budget in the coming years, as spending rises across a growing portfolio of submarine, warhead, infrastructure and fuel programmes.

Giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, Permanent Secretary Jeremy Pocklington said defence nuclear spending totalled about £10.9 billion in 2024-25, equivalent to 18% of the department’s budget, and is expected to rise to around 20% in the current financial year.

He told MPs that the share would continue to grow, saying the Defence Nuclear Enterprise was on course to account for “between about 20% and 25% of the MOD’s overall budget.” That growth, he said, reflects both inflation and a broader expansion in the nuclear portfolio.

Pocklington said the increase was not being driven primarily by the core Dreadnought submarine build, which he said remains within the range previously set out to Parliament. “For Dreadnought, we are still within the range that the Department stated to Parliament,” he said, referring to the longstanding £31 billion programme cost plus £10 billion contingency.

Instead, he pointed to other pressures within the wider enterprise, including “scope changes related to AUKUS” and the re-establishment of a defence nuclear fuel capability, which he said had not featured in earlier forecasts in the same way.

He described the Defence Nuclear Enterprise as a large and increasingly complex portfolio, covering not only Dreadnought and Astute, but also warhead work, infrastructure at Barrow, naval bases at Clyde and Devonport, and fuel production. “There are nine programmes with a whole-life cost of over £10 billion in the Defence Nuclear Enterprise,” he said

Pressed repeatedly for a 10-year forecast, a more specific Dreadnought in-service date, and an update on how much of the £10 billion contingency has been drawn down, Pocklington declined to provide further detail, saying much of that would have to wait for the delayed Defence Investment Plan.

On timing, he said there had been no change to the government’s position that the first Dreadnought boat would enter service in the “early 2030s,” but did not narrow that window further.

Committee chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown argued that the exact date mattered, given the pressure on the existing deterrent fleet and the implications for long submarine patrols and support arrangements if replacement boats arrive later in the decade.

March 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Taxpayers to cough up £65.6 million for nuclear “industry-informed” education in British universities

University of Derby helps drive UK nuclear skills expansion

The University of Derby is part of two university consortia that have been awarded funding to lead new doctoral training programmes designed to develop the UK’s future nuclear workforce. The Government has announced a £65.6 million investment for a bespoke nuclear Doctoral Focal Award

Delivered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and match-funded by industry, the programmes will train more than 500 doctoral students at universities across the country, over the next four academic intakes. The University of Derby is a partner in two of the six new national doctoral training programmes announced.

The first consortium, led by Bangor University, has secured funding to establish PANDA (the Programme for Accelerating Nuclear Development and Applications), which will train up to 100 doctoral researchers. PANDA will be delivered in partnership with the UK National Nuclear Laboratory and the universities of Bristol, Birmingham, Cambridge, Derby, Imperial College London and Manchester. Together, these partners will support a new generation of researchers equipped to meet the UK’s future nuclear and clean‑energy needs, including a specific focus on defence.

Derby is also a partner in the STAND-UP (Skills and Training driving availability of National Defence Assets UP skilling) programme, led by the University of Strathclyde, which will train 80 Engineering Doctorate researchers.

This programme aims to develop the next generation of nuclear engineers and support the transition to ‘net zero’. It will help strengthen the UK’s capabilities in nuclear engineering, advanced manufacturing, digital technologies and nuclear decommissioning, bringing together partner universities Cumbria, Lancaster, Nottingham, Birmingham and Surrey.

Professor Kathryn Mitchell, vice-chancellor and chief executive of the University of Derby, said: “Developing the skills and expertise of the next generation is essential to securing a sustainable talent pipeline for the nuclear sector. The University of Derby is committed to working with partners to drive bold action on the UK’s nuclear skills shortage.”

She continued: “Together with our partners, we are creating clear pathways into specialised careers, delivering industry-informed education, and supporting cutting edge research. Through this work, we are helping to build a stronger national workforce and ensuring the future success of this vital sector.”

The announcement follows the Nuclear Skills Plan, launched in May 2024, which contained a recommendation to quadruple the number of nuclear fission doctoral students to address the shortage of high-level nuclear skills across both civil and defence and replace an aging workforce.

Over 500 doctoral students will be trained at universities across the country in academic years 2026/27 to 2033/34, quadrupling today’s intake of nuclear doctoral students. These doctoral students will be equipped with a broad range of advanced technical skills essential for the UK’s future civil and defence nuclear programmes, supporting the UK’s economic growth, energy and national security, and ‘net zero’ objectives.

March 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Education, UK | Leave a comment

Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data Centers

The race to power AI is already remaking the physical world

The Atlanic By Matteo Wong, Photographs by Landon Speers, April 2026

s we drove through southwest Memphis, KeShaun Pearson told me to keep my window down—our destination was best tasted, not viewed. Along the way, we passed an abandoned coal plant to our right, then an active power plant to our left, equipped with enormous natural-gas turbines. Pearson, who directs the nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution, was bringing me to his hometown’s latest industrial megaproject.

Already, the air smelled of soot, gasoline, and asphalt. Then I felt a tickle sliding up my nostrils and down into my throat, like I was getting a cold.

This is Colossus: a data center that Musk’s artificial-intelligence company, xAI, is using as a training ground for Grok, one of the world’s most advanced generative-AI models. Training these models takes a staggering amount of energy; if run at full strength for a year, Colossus would use as much electricity as 200,000 American homes. When fully operational, Musk has written on X, this facility and two other xAI data centers nearby will require nearly two gigawatts of power. Annually, those facilities could consume roughly twice as much electricity as the city of Seattle.

To get Colossus up and running fast, xAI built its own power plant, setting up as many as 35 natural-gas turbines—railcar-size engines that can be major sources of smog—according to imagery obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center. Pearson coughed as we drove by the facility. The scratch in my throat worsened, and I rolled up my window. As we approached, I heard the rumble of cranes and trucks, and then from behind a patch of trees emerged a forest of electrical towers. Finally, I saw it—a white-walled hangar, bigger than a dozen football fields, where Elon Musk intends to build a god.

xAI’s rivals are all building similarly large data centers to develop their most powerful generative-AI models; a metropolis’s worth of electricity will surge through facilities that occupy a few city blocks. These companies have primarily made their chatbots “smarter” not by writing niftier code but by making them bigger: ramming more data through more powerful computer chips that use more electricity. OpenAI has announced plans for facilities requiring more than 30 gigawatts of power in total—more than the largest recorded demand for all of New England. Since ChatGPT’s launch, in November 2022, the capital expenditures of Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google have exceeded $600 billion, and much of that spending has gone toward data centers—more, even after adjusting for inflation, than the government spent to build the entire interstate-highway system. “These are the largest single points of consumption of electricity in history,” Jesse Jenkins, a climate modeler at Princeton, told me……………………………………………………………………….(Subscribers only) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/ai-data-centers-energy-demands/686064/

March 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ENERGY, technology | Leave a comment

Trump’s $200 billion Iran spending request reveals scale of US war plans.

In reality, the administration is planning the most endless of all endless wars—an open-ended invasion aimed at subjugating or destroying a country of 90 million people.

The $200 billion is a supplemental—on top of the $839 billion defense bill Congress already passed for fiscal year 2026, the largest military budget in American history. If approved, direct military spending this year will exceed $1 trillion. US President Donald Trump has called for a $1.5 trillion military budget for fiscal year 2027—a 50 percent increase.

Andre Damon, 19 March 2026, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/20/iuck-m20.html

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is seeking more than $200 billion to fund the war against Iran.

At a press briefing Thursday, a reporter asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “why a package this large is necessary?” Hegseth not only confirmed the $200 billion figure but suggested it could grow. “I think that number could move,” he said. “It takes money to kill bad guys. So we’re going back to Congress to ensure that we’re properly funded for what’s been done, for what we may have to do in the future.”

And what, exactly, are these unspecified things the administration “may have to do”?

In 2003, when 150,000 American soldiers invaded and occupied Iraq, Congress appropriated $51 billion—a quarter of what the Trump administration is requesting before a single ground soldier has entered Iran. At the height of the 2007-2008 surge, when nearly 170,000 American soldiers occupied the country, the war cost roughly $144 billion a year.

In reality, the $200 billion is not about “what we may have to do in the future” but about what the White House is actively conspiring to do in the present. The budget request comes as the administration prepares a ground invasion of Iran, deploying 5,000 Marines from the Pacific to the Middle East amid demands by the Wall Street Journal and leading Republicans for the seizure of Kharg Island and the Strait of Hormuz.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the Trump administration has discussed sending ground forces to seize Kharg Island, the hub for 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, and has separately discussed deploying US forces to secure Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium. They are operational plans for the invasion and occupation of Iranian territory—and they explain why the administration is demanding more money than was appropriated for any single year of the Iraq invasion.

Just as with the months and years of planning that preceded the US-Israeli attack on Iran, the ground invasion is being prepared behind the backs of the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose the war. Trump called the war an “excursion.” Vice President JD Vance promised it would not become a “quagmire.” At the same briefing where he confirmed the $200 billion request, Hegseth told reporters: “The media wants you to think, just 19 days into this conflict, that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss or a Forever War or a quagmire. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

In reality, the administration is planning the most endless of all endless wars—an open-ended invasion aimed at subjugating or destroying a country of 90 million people.

The administration sees the Iran war as a prelude to an effort to subjugate China, the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity. As former Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry put it on ABC’s This Week, the wars in Venezuela and Iran are “targets of opportunity to reshape the world.” He added: “Venezuela was in service to American energy dominance. The issue with Iran was a target of opportunity… The results here will mean that, with China, the president’s hand will be enhanced.”

And $200 billion is only what the administration will admit to. In 2002, Bush’s chief economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was fired for estimating the Iraq war would cost $100 to $200 billion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the figure at “something under $50 billion.” When told outside estimates ran to $300 billion, Rumsfeld replied: “Baloney.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured Congress that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for reconstruction. The actual cost, including veterans’ care, disability payments and interest on the debt, is now estimated by Brown University’s Costs of War Project at more than $8 trillion.

The waging of continuous wars, combined with the 2008 and 2020 bank bailouts, has produced an explosion of US debt. In 2000, before the Iraq war, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. By 2010, after the Iraq surge and the $700 billion TARP bank bailout, it had reached $12.3 trillion. By 2020, after $4.6 trillion in COVID bailouts, it hit $27 trillion. It now stands at $39 trillion—nearly seven times what it was a quarter century ago.

The United States credit rating has been downgraded three times—by Standard & Poor’s in 2011, Fitch in 2023 and Moody’s in 2025—each time because of military spending and the refusal of either party to cut the military budget. The Vietnam War destroyed Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and produced the inflation of the 1970s, which the ruling class broke through the Volcker shock—mass unemployment to crush wages. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were waged alongside tax cuts for the wealthy and the gutting of public services.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed last July, imposed $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade, $536 billion in cuts to Medicare and $186 billion in cuts to food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the largest cut to food aid in American history. The fiscal year 2026 budget slashed domestic spending by 22.6 percent—cutting the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by 44 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by 44 percent and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $18 billion—while increasing the military budget by 13 percent.

Within 24 hours of the administration confirming it is seeking $200 billion for the war, the Postmaster General testified to Congress that the United States Postal Service (USPS) could run out of cash as soon as October—with just $8.2 billion in reserves, enough to cover 33 days of operations. The USPS employs more than 500,000 workers and holds billions in pension and retirement obligations. The manufactured insolvency is a pretext for raiding those funds—taking workers’ pension money and spending it on the war.

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security represent trillions more. The ruling class sees these programs as money to be seized. The administration does not see pensions and healthcare as social programs. It sees them as collateral.

Trump has promised the economic pain will be a temporary “blip.” This will not pass in weeks. It will mean a permanent reduction in working-class living standards, just as the Iraq war did.

The struggle to defend Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, pensions and public services cannot be separated from the struggle against war. They are the same struggle. The $200 billion the administration demands is money taken from the programs working people depend on to survive.

The Democrats have systematically enabled Trump’s wars. In January, as Trump declared that a massive armada was steaming toward Iran, every leading Democrat in Congress voted for the $839 billion military budget—Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Whip Dick Durbin all voted in favor. Their criticism of the war has centered on procedural issues, along with demands that US imperialism direct its fire at Russia and China.

Opposition must come from below—from workers in the United States, in Iran, across the Middle East and around the world—organized independently of both capitalist parties, armed with a socialist and internationalist program, and fighting to build the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) as the revolutionary leadership of the working class. The fight against imperialist war is the fight against the capitalist system that produces it.

March 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear Power: The Real Effects 14m (Gordon Edwards 2026)

March 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Uranium | Leave a comment

UK’s Astute nuclear submarine timeline is very unlikely to be met.

Brief Update on the SSN Programme

17.03.2026, https://www.nuclearinfo.org/article/brief-update-on-the-ssn-programme/

The Astute project has the objective of delivering conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Navy, otherwise acronymised as SSNs. Seven submarines are planned to be delivered, with five currently operational: HMS Astute, HMS Ambush, HMS Artful, HMS Audacious, and HMS Anson. During February, HMS Anson arrived in Australia at HMAS Stirling. This visit was intended to be for maintenance and a symbolic demonstration of the trilateral AUKUS partnership between the UK, US, and Australia, which aims to develop nuclear-powered submarines with advanced conventional capabilities. AUKUS submarines are planned to succeed the Astute class. The sixth Astute-class submarine, HMS Agamemnon, was commissioned into the Royal Navy and completed its first dive last year, while HMS Achilles is currently under construction. The seven Astute submarines were once hoped to be delivered by the end of this year, but this timeline is very unlikely to be met.

This reflects the persistent challenges that have long bedevilled submarine construction in the UK, including delays, technical issues, accidents, and rising costs. HMS Anson itself for instance was delayed (among other factors) due to setbacks with HMS Audacious, while the 2024 fire in Barrow, the main shipyard for manufacturing the UK’s nuclear submarines, will further delay progress on the final Astute submarine. Also, AUKUS may generate geopolitical tensions among its partners. A US Congressional report earlier from this year has raised the possibility of withholding submarines from Australia due to concerns that the sale may divert US submarine capacity from a potential conflict with China. Meanwhile, some analysts question the strategic trade-offs of deploying HMS Anson to the Indo-Pacific, given the UK’s defence commitments in Europe and the Atlantic. These issues point to dual risks facing the SSN programme: first, achieving successful and timely delivery, and second, achieving agreement among allies over its strategic objectives and operational use.

March 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Next-gen nuclear has a chicken-and-egg problem

A new report suggests that advanced reactor companies face a difficult path to success — and that the U.S. would be better off narrowing in on fewer designs.

By Alexander C. Kaufman, 20 March 2026, https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/scaling-construction-supply-chain-challenges

Nuclear energy developers have historically operated by a simple principle: Go big.

Reactors cost a lot of money to build, so the logic has been that it’s easier to recoup that investment if the project produces more electricity. Of late, a new generation of companies has made waves by bucking that conventional wisdom and instead aiming to build smaller reactors that can be made cheaper through bulk orders and mass production.

But with few advanced reactors built to date, that argument remains theoretical — and a new report shared exclusively with Canary Media suggests the path to proving it out is harder than many in the industry acknowledge.

It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Next-gen nuclear startups must establish supplies of rare and legally sensitive types of fuel while also competing for a small pool of skilled workers and a limited output of valves, pumps, heat exchangers, and other equipment. Manufacturers are hesitant to ramp up production without a clear signal that advanced reactors will pan out. Investors, in turn, are leery of reactors meant for mass production that rely on unprepared supply chains.

That’s the core takeaway from the new analysis by the Nuclear Scaling Initiative, a campaign by the nonprofits Clean Air Task Force, the EFI Foundation, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative. The Nuclear Scaling Initiative launched in 2024 and aims to promote fleet-scale construction of reactors in a bid to start bringing at least 50 gigawatts of atomic power capacity online worldwide every year at some point in the 2030s.

The study, conducted by the nuclear consultancy Solestiss, highlights two paths it says are promising for the industry: either sticking to proven designs or simplifying supply chains to tap into the traditional nuclear business’ existing materials and know-how.

It comes as the Trump administration pumps billions of dollars into advanced reactors while also courting developers of more conventional large-scale reactors — and amid a high-stakes debate over which approach is best.

Earlier this month, the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower won the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval to begin construction on the country’s first commercial plant with sodium-cooled fast reactors in Wyoming. In December, the decommissioner-turned-developer Holtec International won a $400 million Department of Energy grant to build its first 300-megawatt small modular reactors in Michigan, using a pressurized-water-cooled design. The DOE awarded another $400 million grant to help American-Japanese joint venture GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy build its first 300-megawatt SMR in Tennessee, based on a traditional boiling water design.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, is trying to get developers to commit to building more AP1000s — the flagship large-scale reactor from Westinghouse Electric Co. The only two nuclear reactors designed and constructed in the U.S. this century used the Westinghouse design. (A third came online in 2016 but first started construction in 1973.)

The variety of designs racing to become the nation’s fourth new reactor in decades calls into question the feasibility of rapidly scaling up production of any one model.

“We can do any one of these first projects all at once. But can we sustain a build-out of TerraPower, GE, Westinghouse, and Holtec? All the ones that are just moving forward right now? The answer to that is not yet,” said Dillon Allen, president of the advisory services division at Solestiss, who started his career working on nuclear propulsion in the U.S. Navy before moving into the utility business. “Once you’re building four to eight AP1000s and a handful of SMRs of other sizes, you start to run into smaller component bottlenecks.”

Those bottlenecks would worsen if microreactor companies succeed in their objective of securing dozens and dozens of orders for their designs.

“While small reactors have been tried before, mass-manufactured small reactors have not,” Aalo Atomics CEO Matt Loszak, whose 10-megawatt reactors also use liquid sodium as a coolant, wrote in a post on X this week. “Small is more expensive than large, if you only make one reactor. But if you make 1000s per year, small could be cheaper than large. This is what Aalo is setting out to prove.”

One major obstacle to this plan is transportation. To build something and send it without prior testing is no problem, since a reactor that hasn’t been fired up and irradiated “is just a big hunk of metal,” Allen said. But once it’s irradiated, it’s subject to different considerations.

National laboratory researchers have started to discuss a framework for a U.S.-wide transportation network with established logistics and safety standards, the report notes, but no such rules have yet materialized.

The biggest barrier for next-gen nuclear, however, is likely to be the fuel supply. Some small reactor companies have been proactive here. Aalo, for example, has opted for the most commonly used reactor fuel on the planet, low-enriched uranium, so it can tap into the existing global supply chain.

But most advanced nuclear startups are banking on what’s known as fourth-generation reactors. These designs rely on coolants other than water and mostly aim to use one of two types of fuel: high-assay low-enriched uranium, commonly known as HALEU (pronounced HAY–loo), or tristructural isotropic fuel, for which HALEU is typically an input. Tristructural isotropic fuel is also known as TRISO.

HALEU, which firms like TerraPower and microreactor developer Oklo plan to use, is only really produced at a commercial scale by Russian and Chinese state-owned companies. Efforts to bring new centrifuges online in America are slow-going. Meanwhile, the TRISO fuel that startups such as Valar Atomics or Radiant need requires not only securing HALEU but also separating that enriched uranium into ceramic-coated pellets the size of poppy seeds. Manufacturers admit that TRISO may never cost less than low-enriched uranium.

The complications don’t stop there. Because HALEU is up to four times more enriched than traditional reactor fuel, it comes with stricter regulations. On the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s security-clearance scale of category one, which allows for handling normal reactor fuel, to three, which includes military-grade enrichment levels, facilities with HALEU need to be rated at a category two. No such facilities exist in the U.S. today, though the commission just issued its debut permit for one last month.

As for traditional fuel, the existing supply of low-enriched uranium falls short of what would be required to meet the U.S. goal of quadrupling the nation’s nuclear capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050.

“The supply chain is pretty well suited to support a fleet of 100 operating reactors,” Allen said, referring to the 94 commercial reactors in service in the U.S. “But then you can have 150, then 180, and pretty soon 200 after that. If you double that demand on the LEU supply, it’s not just the enrichment” that’s a limiting factor.

It’s also, he said, the production of raw uranium and the facilities to carry out conversion, where purified uranium ore is turned into a gas, and deconversion, where it’s solidified once again.

Expanding these upstream operations may be challenging, but it isn’t impossible. In fact, Allen said he came away from writing the report with the impression that supply chains are more capable of scaling up than he previously thought. But his team’s work demonstrates the steep obstacles faced by the entire industry — not only advanced reactor firms — as it attempts to bolt into action following decades of anemic construction in America.

The biggest impression the research left on Allen, he said, is that the AP1000 has a good shot at becoming the next reactor built in the U.S. Its costs are more predictable — and thus easier to finance — thanks to the lessons learned during construction of the two units that came online at Southern Co.’s Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in central Georgia in 2023 and 2024.

“I’m more bullish on the AP1000 than I was when I started this effort,” he said. “I’m broadly bullish on the supply chain.”

The DOE is considering alternatives to the AP1000 to satisfy President Donald Trump’s order to facilitate construction on at least 10 large-scale reactors by the end of the decade. In response to the news that the administration held talks with its rivals, Westinghouse said the AP1000 is“the only construction-ready, gigawatt-scale, advanced modular reactor that is fully licensed and operating in the U.S.”

The U.S. ultimately should focus on designs it can scale up rather than spreading its efforts in many different directions, said Stephen Comello, the executive director of the Nuclear Scaling Initiative. At that point, nuclear power will become cheap enough to be “boring.”

“Once you start accumulating that knowledge from repetition, nuclear construction becomes boring — just like natural gas combined-cycle plants, just like all other complex megaprojects and energy infrastructure that’s out there,” he said.

There’s little doubt that the AP1000 has a well-established supply chain and data showing it runs well, he said.

The question is, “Can you do it in a repeatable, cost-effective way? That’s where the risk lies with the AP1000,” Comello said. “It runs, the technology is great. But we have to prove to investors that we can overcome the execution risk. But here’s the thing: All reactors share execution risk to some extent. Others have a technology risk because they are still not proven at scale.”

March 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Nuclear Deregulation – DOGE Goes Nuclear: How Trump Invited Silicon Valley Into America’s Nuclear Power Regulator

ProPublica, by Avi Asher-Schapiro, March 20, 2026

Reporting Highlights

Fast Nuclear Buildout: The Trump administration is rapidly rewriting rules to support the development of nuclear power plants.
Aligning With Industry: Staffers from DOGE are revamping rules in ways to ease regulations and provide financial breaks for industry.
“No Longer Independent”: Nuclear Regulatory Commission veterans say the administration is limiting oversight in dangerous ways.

Last summer, a group of officials from the Department of Energy gathered at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling 890-square-mile complex in the eastern desert of Idaho where the U.S. government built its first rudimentary nuclear power plant in 1951 and continues to test cutting-edge technology.

On the agenda that day: the future of nuclear energy in the Trump era. The meeting was convened by 31-year-old lawyer Seth Cohen. Just five years out of law school, Cohen brought no significant experience in nuclear law or policy; he had just entered government through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team.

As Cohen led the group through a technical conversation about licensing nuclear reactor designs, he repeatedly downplayed health and safety concerns. When staff brought up the topic of radiation exposure from nuclear test sites, Cohen broke in.

“They are testing in Utah. … I don’t know, like 70 people live there,” he said.

“But … there’s lots of babies,” one staffer pushed back. Babies, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups are thought to be potentially more susceptible to cancers brought on by low-level radiation exposure, and they are usually afforded greater protections.

“They’ve been downwind before,” another staffer joked.

“This is why we don’t use AI transcription in meetings,” another added.

ProPublica reviewed records of that meeting, providing a rare look at a dramatic shift underway in one of the most sensitive domains of public policy. The Trump administration is upending the way nuclear energy is regulated, driven by a desire to dramatically increase the amount of energy available to power artificial intelligence.

Career experts have been forced out and thousands of pages of regulations are being rewritten at a sprint. A new generation of nuclear energy companies — flush with Silicon Valley cash and boasting strong political connections — wield increasing influence over policy. Figures like Cohen are forcing a “move fast and break things” Silicon Valley ethos on one of the country’s most important regulators.

The Trump administration has been particularly aggressive in its attacks on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the bipartisan independent regulator that approves commercial nuclear power plants and monitors their safety. The agency is not a household name. But it’s considered the international gold standard, often influencing safety rules around the world.

The NRC has critics, especially in Silicon Valley, where the often-cautious commission is portrayed as an impediment to innovation. In an early salvo, President Donald Trump fired NRC Commissioner Christopher Hanson last June after Hanson spoke out about the importance of agency independence. It was the first time an NRC commissioner had been fired.

During that Idaho meeting, Cohen shot down any notion of NRC independence in the new era.

“Assume the NRC is going to do whatever we tell the NRC to do,” he said, records reviewed by ProPublica show. In November, Cohen was made chief counsel for nuclear policy at the Department of Energy, where he oversees a broad nuclear portfolio.

The aggressive moves have sent shock waves through the nuclear energy world. Many longtime promoters of the industry say they worry recklessness from the Trump administration could discredit responsible nuclear energy initiatives.

“The regulator is no longer an independent regulator — we do not know whose interests it is serving,” warned Allison Macfarlane, who served as NRC chair during the Obama administration. “The safety culture is under threat.”

A ProPublica analysis of staffing data from the NRC and the Office of Personnel Management shows a rush to the exits: Over 400 people have left the agency since Trump took office. The losses are particularly pronounced in the teams that handle reactor and nuclear materials safety and among veteran staffers with 10 or more years of experience. Meanwhile, hiring of new staff has proceeded at a snail’s pace, with nearly 60 new arrivals in the first year of the Trump administration compared with nearly 350 in the last year of the Biden administration…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Meanwhile, some staff members, other career officials say, are afraid to voice dissenting views for fear of being fired. “It feels like being a lobster in a slowly boiling pot,” one NRC official who has been working on the rule changes told ProPublica, describing the erosion of independence.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. “Nuke Bros” in Silicon Valley

One Trump administration priority has been making it easier for so-called advanced reactor companies to navigate the regulatory process. These firms, mostly backed by Silicon Valley tech and venture money, are often working on designs for much smaller reactors that they hope to mass produce in factories.

“There are two nuclear industries,” said Macfarlane, the former NRC chair. “There are the actual people who use nuclear reactors to produce power and put it on the grid … and then there are the ‘nuke bros’” in Silicon Valley.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-nuclear-power-nrc-safety-doge-vought

March 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

No Good Exit

21 March 2026 David Tyler, Australian Independent Media

John Mearsheimer sees war with Iran as a strategic folly, arguing it is unwinnable, will not destroy Iran’s nuclear knowledge, and could, instead, boost Iran’s interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

No stranger to irony, or paradox, Dr Mearsheimer does not mince words. The West Point graduate and former Air Force Captain, now a distinguished scholar at Cornell, has spent two decades documenting exactly how an American Eagle could get sucked into the vortex of wars that serve its bovver-boy, or Middle-East proxy, Israel, and its bellicose aspirations at enormous cost.

When Mearsheimer speaks about a US military adventure in Iran, he is not waffling. He is quoting from the autopsy he wrote in advance. And Mearsheimer’s verdict on Operation Epic Fury, is that Trump has dug himself into a deep hole; an opinion all the more damning for its formal, almost courteous understatement:

“I think President Trump has put himself in a situation where he really doesn’t have a good exit strategy.”

Trump’s catastrophe may be complex and irretrievable, but it was not inevitable. It was predicted, in detail, by experts whose job it was to predict it, and who were systematically ignored, discredited or sacked for saying so. Trump ignored the experts. This is how he can always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The pretext for the attack doesn’t bear scrutiny. Before the first double-tap Tomahawk missile crushed and burned alive 168 schoolchildren on 28 February, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi was announcing what could have been a diplomatic coup: Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, had accepted full IAEA verification, and was prepared to irreversibly downgrade its enriched uranium to the lowest level possible.

Peace, he said, was “within reach.” Further talks were due to resume on 2 March.

Iran now says that the US President never intended to avoid war and that the talks were a ruse to get more time to set up a military attack. It’s true. It’s also true that Trump and Netanyahu are driven by the need to stay out of court. Both are hell-bent in quest of a more enduring diversion-and both would have always pulled the trigger anyway. Even without Saudi encouragement……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………….. Many missile strikes in the war’s opening phase are seen by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes under the Rome Statute. At least a million Lebanese people have been displaced.

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Meanwhile, Donald Trump, on his Truth Social, calls Iran “militarily ineffective and weak.”…………………………………………………………………………………..

Trump is demanding NATO allies help secure the Strait of Hormuz. NATO is, to put it charitably, otherwise engaged.

Retreat? Mearsheimer is equally clear-eyed. Declare victory and withdraw, and it will be “perceived as a humiliating defeat for the US.” And that assumes Iran cooperates. “They have many cards to play,” he notes. “They can inflict significant losses. Therefore, even if we retreat, it’s unclear whether this will solve the problem.”

Trump promised a generation of winning. He has delivered a generation’s worth of losing, compressed into twenty days. And let’s not forget his Latin American fiasco. El Presidente, who endeared himself to millions south of the border with his talk of “shithole” countries, has rather a lot of Venezuelans on the warpath after his regime change curdled almost on contact into a neocolonial farce, with Maduro gone, sovereignty shredded and the gringos already with their fingers in the till.

Cuba could be next on Hegseth’s hit-list? Trump does need to keep the distractions going. Meanwhile disinformation is being pumped as vigorously as the Ford plumbing. And with similar effect.

Fox News cheerleaders and the Netanyahu communications office have been carefully not telling the American public: Iran is not the isolated, backward, sanction-crippled military of the pre-war briefings.

It is fighting with Russian eyes and Chinese precision. Together, those two contributions have changed the strategic calculus in ways that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv appear to have seriously gamed………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The Netanyahu Factor: Closing Every Window

Mearsheimer’s analysis cuts deepest on the question of diplomacy.

On Day 19, Israeli strikes killed two of Iran’s most consequential figures: security chief Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani. Larijani’s death was not a military decapitation strike in the conventional sense. It was the targeted elimination of Iran’s most experienced nuclear negotiator; a pragmatic, sophisticated operator whom analysts had consistently identified as one of the few figures capable of opening a negotiated exit.

Israel killed the man who could have brokered the ceasefire Netanyahu claims to want.

Netanyahu told Sean Hannity that Operation Epic Fury “will usher in an era of peace that we haven’t even dreamed of” and create conditions for Iranians to form “their own democratically elected government.” He said something substantially similar about Iraq in 2003. About Libya in 2011. The script is laminated. The outcomes are identical. The lesson is never drawn.

He is currently in a bunker, hinting with characteristic coyness that perhaps the Iranian regime survives after all. Of course it does. The Islamic Republic has outlasted everything the West has thrown at it: the Iran-Iraq war, decades of sanctions, assassination campaigns, Stuxnet, and the twelve-day bombing campaign of last June………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The Intelligence Scandal Underneath It All

One more thread demands to be pulled. Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, has been accused of altering her Senate testimony on Iran; specifically, of omitting intelligence details that contradicted Trump’s claim that Tehran posed an imminent threat. The IAEA had found no evidence Iran was moving toward a nuclear weapon. Oman had just brokered what its foreign minister described as a breakthrough agreement……………………………….

What Australia Needs to Ask

An Iranian projectile struck near Australia’s military headquarters in the UAE this week. Anthony Albanese confirmed it. Then said nothing else useful.

Pine Gap is almost certainly providing targeting intelligence that has enabled strikes now characterised by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes. Under laws amended by the Howard government in 2001 and never restored, the Prime Minister can take Australia to war on Cabinet agreement alone, no parliamentary debate, no public mandate, no vote. Nobody in the national media is asking whether that authority has been invoked. Nobody is asking whether it should be.

The question Mearsheimer asks about Washington; what’s the exit, and who owns the consequences, deserves to be asked in Canberra. With the same urgency. And considerably more honesty than we are currently getting.

……………………. Trump got his war with Iran, on the urging of a foreign government, on the basis of intelligence his own Director of National Intelligence allegedly falsified, over a diplomatic resolution that was days from signature.

History won’t be interested in who did the urging. He owns this. Every schoolgirl in Minab. Every barrel at Ras Laffan. Every day the Hormuz stays closed.

It has, as Mearsheimer warned, no good exit. https://theaimn.net/no-good-exit/

March 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump ready to put boots on the ground in Iran

Pentagon draws up plans to seize strategic Kharg Island after US president calls Nato allies ‘cowards’

Benedict Smith US Reporter, in Washington. Henry Bodkin Jerusalem Correspondent, 21 Mar 26

Donald Trump is considering putting American troops on the ground in Iran.
The Pentagon has drawn up plans that could involve seizing Kharg Island,
Iran’s key oil terminal in the Persian Gulf. Mr Trump’s top spokeswoman
confirmed the details to The Telegraph but cautioned that the president had
not made a final decision.

Telegraph 21st March 2026,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/20/us-launch-offensive-reopen-strait-of-hormuz-iran-war-drones/

March 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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