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Trump wants Russia, China to stop making nuclear weapons, so all can cut defence spending by half

SMH, Zeke Miller and Michelle Price, February 14, 2025 

Washington: US President Donald Trump says he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that he eventually hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defence budgets in half.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and he said he hoped to gain commitments from the US adversaries to cut their own spending.

“There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump said.

The US and Russia hold massive stockpiles of weapons built since the Cold War. Trump predicted China would catch up in its capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years”.

He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion”.

Trump said he would look to engage in nuclear talks with the two countries once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine.

“One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say, ‘let’s cut our military budget in half’. And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.”

It is not clear if the other countries with nuclear weapon stockpiles – Israel, Iran, North Korea, France, Britain, Pakistan and India – would be included in such negotiations……………………………. more https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/trump-wants-russia-china-to-stop-making-nuclear-weapons-so-all-can-cut-defence-spending-by-half-20250214-p5lc59.html]

February 16, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Republican urges Trump to overrule court and open Grand Canyon to uranium mining

Shondiin Silversmith, Arizona Mirror, Raw Story 12th Feb 2025

A top Arizona Republican is hoping the Trump administration will do what a federal court wouldn’t: overturn a national monument protecting lands around the Grand Canyon so that mining companies can extract uranium and other valuable minerals from the land.

Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen sent a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior on Feb. 7 requesting a meeting with Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to discuss ending the “government overreach” of the national monument and ban on uranium mining in the area.

At issue is the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which President Joe Bidencreated in 2023. Petersen and Ben Toma, who was at the time the speaker of the state House of Representatives, sued to have the designation revoked…………………………………

The Grand Canyon is the ancestral homeland of multiple tribal nations across the Southwest, and tribes still rely on the canyon for natural and cultural resources that are significant and sacred to their communities.

The monument protects thousands of historical and scientific objects, sacred sites, vital water sources and the ancestral homelands of many Indigenous communities. ……… https://www.rawstory.com/after-court-loss-gop-targets-grand-canyon-monument-through-trump/

February 16, 2025 Posted by | Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

‘Deeply Concerned’ Dems Want to Know If DOGE Can Access Nuclear Weapons Data

Common Dreams, Brett Wilkins, 12 Feb 25

“The nation and the world need to know that U.S. nuclear secrets are robustly safeguarded,” argue Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Don Beyer.

A pair of Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday asked the Trump administration to clarify whether any members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have access to classified information about the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

Responding to U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s admission that he granted DOGE associates access to the Department of Energy, and to reporting that a 23-year-old former intern at Musk’s SpaceX was allowed into DOE’s IT systems without the requisite security clearances, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.)—both members of the congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group—wrote to Wright to voice their concerns.

“The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an integral part of the Department of Energy, is entrusted with protecting the nation’s most sensitive nuclear weapons secrets. The nation and the world need to know that U.S. nuclear secrets are robustly safeguarded,” the lawmakers wrote.

“It is, therefore, dangerously unacceptable that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—including individuals lacking adequate security clearances—has been granted access to DOE’s information technology (IT) system despite legitimate security concerns inside the agency,” they added………………………………………………… more https://www.commondreams.org/news/doge-nuclear-access?fbclid=IwY2xjawIbZXRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHbA6z6FjvC4GlquaoKQ8r8aITLOLFc__JZxKMtuKaj69sCBrQ9lN5_mJ_A_aem_azkG9HYTMg9NxlbYp67XYA

February 16, 2025 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

India PM Modi ends foreign tour with nuclear deals in pipeline

By AFP, 14 February 2025 Daily Mail

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi concluded a whistle-stop diplomatic tour Friday having secured significant pledges of support from Washington and Paris to help step up his country’s nuclear energy programme.

New Delhi has vowed to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070 partly by increasing the number of nuclear plants in the country from eight, which currently account for around three percent of power generation in India.

Modi’s White House meeting with President Donald Trump resulted in an agreement to build US-designed nuclear reactors in India.

“This path forward will unlock plans to build large US-designed reactors and enable collaboration to develop, deploy and scale up nuclear power generation with advanced small modular reactors,” a joint statement said Thursday.

India revealed a similar deal with France following Modi’s meeting with President Emmanuel Macron earlier this week.

Foreign secretary Vikram Misri said Wednesday that India and France aimed to initiate cooperation on developing small modular nuclear reactors, nothing that the technology was still in its “initial stages”.

“Our intent is to be able to cooperate in co-designing the reactors, co-developing them, and co-producing them,” he told reporters.

Both partnerships come days after Modi’s government announced plans to amend its strict nuclear liability law, which holds operators liable for any damage or accident, with exceptions made for certain situations including natural disasters……………………… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-14396859/India-PM-Modi-ends-foreign-tour-nuclear-deals-pipeline.html

February 16, 2025 Posted by | India, marketing | Leave a comment

Germany has no realistic way back to nuclear power.

 Germany has no realistic way back to nuclear power, the vice-chancellor
and energy minister has said. In an interview with The Times, Robert Habeck
also said the country’s economic model was in jeopardy because it had
mistakenly clung on to 20th-century technologies and assumptions about
global politics.

The future of German energy is one of the most contentious
issues in the country’s Bundestag election, which will be held on
February 23. Costs rose dramatically after the Kremlin’s full-scale
invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced Berlin to jettison its dependency on
Russian gas imports at the same time as it switched off its last three
nuclear power stations.

Habeck, 55, who is the Green party’s candidate
for the chancellorship and has presided over the sprawling energy and
economics ministry since the end of 2021, has faced heavy criticism and a
parliamentary commission of inquiry for refusing to extend the lifespan of
the remaining reactors in the midst of the crisis. The conservative
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is leading in the polls and is
likely to dominate the next government, has promised to look into reviving
nuclear power. The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has gone
further, pledging to bring the reactors back online “as quickly as
possible”.

However, Habeck said: “A return to nuclear energy is not a
realistic option. Nor do I know anyone in the energy industry who seriously
wants it.” Executives in the German energy sector, including the firms
that used to operate the reactors, broadly agree with Habeck that they have
passed the “point of no return”. Most German officials balk at the long
construction times and the costs, which according to one recent estimate
from the Fraunhofer institute in Munich would be anything from two to ten
times as expensive as the equivalent amount of wind power.

 Times 12th Feb 2025 https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/germany-wont-turn-back-to-nuclear-power-nobody-wants-it-9pdxfkqg2

February 16, 2025 Posted by | Germany, politics | Leave a comment

Trouble at t’mill: local Councils rebel over nuke dump plan

The NFLAs have welcomed today’s statement made by the Leader of East Lindsey District Council that he shall recommend to his Executive that they ‘unanimously withdraw’ the council from the Theddlethorpe Community Partnership and the GDF process at their next meeting.

Coupled with the withdrawal of Millom Town Council from the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership and condemnation by Seascale Parish Council of the imposition of an Area of Focus for Mid-Copeland east of the village, this demonstrates that there is increasing disaffection amongst politicians with the process.

In his statement, ELDC Council Leader Craig Leyland cited the change of prospective site for a possible GDF surface facility from the former Theddlethorpe Conoco gas terminal to a 4km square parcel of farmland between the inland villages of Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton. This he describes as prime agricultural land that has not had any previous industrial use and that is ‘nestling close to the Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’…………….

 
 NFLA 12th Feb 2025,
https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/trouble-at-tmill-local-councils-rebel-over-nuke-dump-plan/

February 16, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

NFLAs endorse international appeal for justice over French nuclear tests

 NFLA 13th Feb 2025

Sixty-five years ago (13 February 1960), the first French nuclear test was conducted in its colony of Algeria, exposing French soldiers and Indigenous Tuareg civilians to radiation.

The NFLAs have been campaigning for justice for veterans and local communities impacted by British atomic and nuclear bomb tests in Australia and the Pacific Islands, so in the spirit of solidarity we have joined UK and international partners in endorsing a similar appeal to the French and Algerian Governments over the impact of the ‘Gerboise Bleue’ (‘Blue Jerboa’) test and those which followed.

President Charles de Gaulle ordered a nuclear test in the first quarter of 1960. After a plan to explode a device in Corsica was prevented by public protests, the Nuclear Experiments Operational Group relocated to the Saharan Military Experiments Centre near Reggane in (then) French Algeria.


‘Gerboise Bleue’ (or ‘Blue Jerboa’) was the operational name for the first test of a series. The name combined a reference to one of the colours of the French flag with a rodent that resided in the Sahara Desert. On 13 February 1960, the plutonium bomb was detonated atop a 100-metre steel tower. No journalists were allowed on site, but an eyewitness account given to the French press stated that “the desert was lit up by a vast flash, followed 45 seconds later by an appreciable shock-wave” with “enormous ball of bluish fire with an orange-red centre” followed by a mushroom cloud.

Following the test, France followed the United States, the USSR and the United Kingdom as the world’s fourth nuclear armed power.

With a yield of 70 kilotons, ‘Gerboise Bleue’ was over three times more powerful than the Fat Boy plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki and the largest by far of the first test bombs used by any of the previous nuclear powers.

Following this test until 1966, France carried out a further three atmospheric nuclear tests and another thirteen underground tests as the ‘Gerboise’ series at this location.

The French treatment of test veterans and Indigenous communities mirrored that of the UK.

The French Ministry of the Armed Forces maintained that the radioactive effects on humans present at the site would be “weak”, and “well below annual doses.” However, test veterans said that protection gear was lacking and charged the military authorities with using them  to study the effects of nuclear radiation on humans. After the later ‘Gerboise Verte’ test, soldiers were sent within 1 km of the hypocentre to practice combat exercises and to drive tanks, being subjected to high levels of radiation for three hours before being offered only a shower as a method to decontaminate.

After the tests, nuclear fallout was detected as far away as Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Sudan. According to the French NGO, ACRO, Saharan dust blown northwards by strong seasonal winds to France in early 2021 carried measurable levels of radioactive caesium-137 attributable to the ‘Gerboise’ tests……………………………………………………………….. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nflas-endorse-international-appeal-for-justice-over-french-nuclear-tests/

February 16, 2025 Posted by | France, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste plan ‘would scar Lincolnshire Wolds’

BBC UK Sharon Edwards, Political reporter, Lincolnshire, 12th Feb 2025

A council is set to withdraw from talks to bury nuclear waste in the countryside.

Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), a government body, has earmarked an area near Louth, Lincolnshire, to build a disposal facility.

However, East Lindsey District Council (ELDC) leader Craig Leyland said the scheme would “scar” agricultural land, and a consultation process had served only to “antagonise and distress” residents.

NWS thanked the district council for taking part in the talks and said it would continue working with Lincolnshire County Council.

In 2021, the district council joined a community partnership group with NWS to examine a previous proposal to bury waste at a former gas terminal in Theddlethorpe, near Mablethorpe.

Last month, NWS announced it had moved the proposed location of the facility to land between Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton.

But Leyland said the new proposal would “scar several kilometres of Lincolnshire farmland on the margins of the Lincolnshire Wolds”.

He also said the consultation process had “not been effective” and the council had not been given all the information it needed from NWS.

East Lindsey councillors will be asked to formally vote to withdraw from the consultation.

‘A key role’

The move will not automatically kill the plan, which requires “community consent” to go ahead, as NWS is still working with the county council……………………………

Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) remains in the process, but leader Councillor Martin Hill said the authority shared some of ELDC’s concerns about the new location…………………………….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnvqljq77p0o

February 16, 2025 Posted by | environment, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Safety Issues and Impact on Marine Environment of Extension of British Nuclear Plant Lifespan Queried by NGO

The Celtic League has noted that there was a previous review of a decision to extend Torness’s lifespan, after the discovery of cracks in the graphite bricks, which make up the reactor cores of some advanced gas-cooled power stations.

 Afloat 12th February 2025, https://afloat.ie/resources/news-update/item/66295-safety-issues-and-impact-on-marine-environment-of-extension-of-british-nuclear-plant-lifespan-queried-by-ngo

The Celtic League NGO has queried the impact on the marine environment of the British government’s decision to extend the life of four old nuclear power plants.

It has also said that the decision is one that both the Irish and Manx governments should be concerned about, given the potential environmental impact.

Last month, French state-owned company EDF Energy said that the lifespan of Scotland’s last remaining nuclear power station and three other plants in England would be extended.

The company said that Torness, in East Lothian, and its sister site  Heysham 2, in Lancashire, would continue generating for an extra two years until 2030.

Two other sites – Hartlepool and  Heysham 1 – will continue for an extra year until 2027, it said, and it planned to invest £1.3bn (sterling) across its operational nuclear estate over the next three years.

The Celtic League has noted that there was a previous review of a decision to extend Torness’s lifespan, after the discovery of cracks in the graphite bricks, which make up the reactor cores of some advanced gas-cooled power stations.

Bernard Moffatt of the Celtic League has submitted a number of questions relating to safety to British Chief Nuclear Inspector Mark Foy at the Office of Nuclear Regulation, and says it will publish any response it receives.

February 16, 2025 Posted by | environment, safety, UK | Leave a comment

Media must unshackle itself

A responsibility to civic groups

February 16, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment