How a Cheap Drone Punctured Chernobyl’s 40,000-Ton Shield
[Photo: Still image/screen grab taken from a handout video provided by the UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE]
March 25, 2025,
https://beyondnuclear.org/how-a-cheap-drone-punctured-chernobyls-40000-ton-shield/
The steel shell that encloses the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster was built to endure for a century. But war was a scenario its engineers never envisioned.
As reported by Kim Barker in the New York Times, with photographs by Brendan Hoffman. (Hoffman previously worked at Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project in Washington, D.C.)
The article cites and quotes Greenpeace International:
“The reason the international community spent so much money and time building this structure is because they know the scale of the threat radiologically inside,” said Shaun Burnie, a nuclear specialist at Greenpeace who visited the damaged reactor at Chernobyl after the drone attack.
“It’s an enormous intellectual achievement to build something that could protect Europe, Ukraine and the world from what’s inside,” he said. “And now the Russians have basically blown a hole in it, both physically and metaphorically.”
On Thursday, Greenpeace released a report saying the drone attack severely compromised plans for the damaged reactor and that the shell was no longer functioning as designed. Jan Vande Putte, a nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Ukraine, said the entire shell might have to be removed, dismantled and replaced — a view echoed by Mr. Schmieman [a civil engineer and senior technical adviser on the Chornobyl shell for 15 years] and Mr. Siryi [the head of the operations department for the structure, called the New Safe Confinement]. The I.A.E.A. said the shell’s confinement function had been compromised and that the structure needed “extensive repair efforts.”
Although the shell’s designers may not have considered the risks of military attacks, others did foresee such threats. For example, Dr. Bennett Ramberg published Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril in the 1980s. His book was recently republished by the University of California Press.
The New York Times article reports:
The explosion’s official death toll was 31. But many other people got sick or eventually died. Cancer rates, especially for thyroid cancer, increased in areas heavily exposed to radiation.
By the 20th annual commemoration of the Chornobyl nuclear catastrophe (Chornobyl is the anglicized Ukrainian spelling; Chernobyl is the anglicized Russian spelling), the United Nations actually acknowledged that more than 4,000 people would eventually die, over time, due to their exposure to radioactivity from the disaster.
However, Dr. Ian Fairlie, in his 2006 TORCH Report (The Other Chernobyl Report), put the figure at more than 90,000.
Yablokov, Nesterenko, and Nesterenko, in their survey of Belarussian, Russian, and Ukrainian scientific studies, put the Chornobyl death figure at nearly one million, just from 1986 to 2004. Their 2007 book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, was published in English by the New York Academy of Science Press in 2009.
Ukraine and Israel are not US allies.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 25 Mar 25
They are essentially US Trojan Horses used to project US power dominance in Europe and Middle East respectively.
Both US Trojan Horses have come up lame and are heading for the glue factory.
The US marched their Ukraine Trojan Horse up to Russia’s borders armed with NATO entrance papers and billions in US weapons. When Russia pleaded with the US for years to discuss Russia’s valid security concerns, the US replied ‘Nyet.’ Former President Biden knew Russia would attack but believed any invasion would be a Vietnam style quagmire for Russia. Biden saw the upcoming Russian collapse as the shining achievement of his half century anti-Russian Cold War mantra. That failed spectacularly.
The election of Trump has injected a healthy dose of realpolitik that acknowledges Biden’s folly. Trump is currently in negotiations to put America’s Ukraine Trojan Horse to pastoral retirement. Can’t come soon enough.
America’s Israeli Trojan Horse to dominate the Middle East is a horse of a different color. It’s more like Israel’s Trojan Horse near totally financed by Uncle Sam. America gets to sit back while Israel marches around their neighborhood committing genocide is Gaza, indiscriminately bombing innocents in Syria and Lebanon, and promoting US attacks on Yemen and eventually Iran. All this senseless carnage constitutes Israel serving as the US battering ram to recreate the Middle East according to its dominant worldview.
Like our Ukraine Trojan Horse, our Israeli Trojan Horse is failing to promote America’s true national interests. Most of the world’s 193 countries are aghast America promotes the most grotesque genocide this century. America’s standing may be at an all time low. Like with Ukraine, we’re enabling Israel to self destruct. It’s now a pariah state. Tourism and investment are in decline. Its military is demoralized both from significant casualties and having to commit genocide.
Both allies are flirting with wider war; nuclear in Ukraine, regional war in Israel.
America gets nothing from allies Ukraine and Israel except worldwide condemnation, squandered treasure and diminishing unipolar world dominance.
With allies like Ukraine and Israel, America does not need enemies.
Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to stay in Russian control, Moscow says
By Reuters, March 26, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-stay-russian-control-moscow-says-2025-03-25/
MOSCOW, March 25 (Reuters) – Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was a Russian facility and transferring control of it to Ukraine or any other country was impossible.
The ministry also said that jointly operating the plant was not admissible as it would be impossible to properly ensure the physical and nuclear safety of the station.
It said Zaporizhzhia region, partly controlled by Russian forces, was one of four in Ukraine that had been annexed by Russia by virtue of referendums staged seven months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour and a presidential decree had formally made the station Russian property.
Western nations have dismissed the referendums as shams.
“The return of the station to Russia’s nuclear sector has been a fait accompli for quite some time,” the ministry statement said. “Transferring the Zaporizhzhia plant to the control of Ukraine or another country is impossible.”
Russian forces seized the station early in the invasion and each side has since routinely accused the other of staging attacks that endanger safety at the plant, Europe’s largest with six reactors.
Although the plant now produces no electricity, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has monitors stationed there, as it does at all Ukrainian nuclear power sites.
Ukraine demands the return of the station to its jurisdiction and rejects the 2022 annexation of its territory as illegal.
U.S. President Donald Trump, during a phone conversation this month with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy suggested the United States could help run and possibly own Ukraine’s nuclear power plants.
Zelenskiy said the plants belong to the Ukrainian people. He said he and Trump had discussed potential U.S. investment in the plant. Reporting by Maxim Rodionov and Ron Popeski; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Rod Nickel
Trump’s Star Wars Revival: The Golden Dome Antimissile Fantasy
March 26, 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/trumps-star-wars-revival-the-golden-dome-antimissile-fantasy/
Bad ideas do not necessarily die; they retire to museums of failure and folly, awaiting to be revived by the next proponent who should know better. The Iron Dome shield vision of US President Donald Trump, intended to intercept and destroy incoming missiles and other malicious aerial objects, seems much like a previous dotty one advanced by President Ronald Reagan, known rather blandly as the Strategic Defense Initiative.
In its current iteration, it is inspired by the Israeli “Iron Dome” multilayered defensive shield, a matter that raised an immediate problem, given the trademark ownership of the name by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Given the current administration’s obsession with all things golden, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has dubbed this revived endeavour “Golden Dome for America”. The renaming was noted in a February 24 amendment to request for information from industry. Much sniggering is surely in order at, not only the name itself, but the stumbling.
Reagan, even as he began suffering amnesiac decline, believed that the United States could be protected by a shield against any attack by Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. The technology intended for that endeavour, much of it requiring a space component, was thin on research and non-existent in development. The envisaged use of laser weapons from space and terrestrial components drew much derision: the President had evidently been too engrossed by the Star Wars films of George Lucas.
The source for this latest initiative (“deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield”) is an executive order signed on January 27 titled “The Iron Dome for America.” (That was before the metallurgical change of name.) The order asserts from the outset that “The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles and other advanced aerial attacks remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.” It acknowledges Reagan’s SDI but strikes a note of disappointment at its cancellation “before its goal could be realized.” Progress on such a system since the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 had been confined to “limited homeland defense” efforts that “remained only to stay ahead of rogue-nation threats and accidental or unauthorized missile launches.”
The Secretary of Defense is also directed, within 60 days, to submit to Trump “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield.” Such a shield would defend the US from “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and the other next-generation attacks from peer, near-peer and rogue adversaries.” Among some of the plans are the accelerated deployment of a hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor layer; development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors and the development and deployment of capabilities that will neutralise missile assaults “prior to launch and in the boost phase.”
The original SDI was heavy on the intended development and use of energy weapons, lasers being foremost among them. But even after four decades, US technological prowess remains unable to deploy such weapons of sufficient power and accuracy to eliminate drones or missiles. The Israelis claim to have overcome this problem with their Iron Beam high energy laser weapon system, which should see deployment later this year. For that reason, Lockheed Martin has partnered with Israeli firm Rafael to bring that technology into the US arsenal.
To date, Steven J. Morani, currently discharging duties as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, has given little away about the herculean labours that have been set. “Consistent with protecting the homeland and per President Trump’s [executive order],” he told the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington earlier this month, “we’re working with the industrial base and [through] supply chain challenges associated with standing up the Golden Dome.” He admitted that this was “like the monster systems engineering problem” made even more difficult by being “the monster integration problem.”
The list of demerits to Golden Dome are many, and Morani alludes to them. For one, the Israeli Iron Dome operates across much smaller territory, not a continent. The sheer scale of any defence shield to protect such a vast swathe of land would be, not merely from a practical point but a budgetary one, absurd. A space-based interceptor system, a point that echoes Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy, would require thousands of units to successfully intercept one hefty ballistic missile. Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute has offered a calculation: a system of 1,900 satellites would cost somewhere between US$11 and US$27 billion to develop, build and launch.
A study for Defence and Peace Economics published this year goes further. The authors argue that, even if the US had appropriate ballistic missile defence technology and a sufficient number of interceptors to be distributed in a two-layer defence with an efficiency return of 90%, 8 times more would have to be spent than the attacker for a bill between US$60 and US$500 billion. If it was assumed that individual interceptor effectiveness was a mere 50%, and the system could not discriminate against decoys, the cost would be 70 times more, with a staggering bill of US$430 billion to US$5.3 trillion.
The most telling flaw in Golden Dome is one long identified, certainly by the more sober members of the establishment, in the annals of defence. “The fundamental problem with any plan for a national missile defense system against nuclear attack,” writes Xiaodon Liang in an Arms Control Association issues brief, “is that cost-exchange ratios favor the offense and US adversaries can always choose to build up or diversify their strategic forces to overwhelm a potential shield.” As Liang goes on to remark, the missile shield fantasy defies a cardinal rule of strategic competition: “the enemy always gets a vote.”
Monster system; monstrous integration issues. Confusion with the name and trademark problems. Strategically misguided, even foolish. Golden Dome, it would seem, is already being steadied for a swallow dive.
‘Protect our future’: Alaskan Indigenous town fights ‘destructive’ uranium mine project
Aisha Kehoe Down in Elim
This summer, the Canadian mining company Panther
Minerals is set to start exploration for a uranium mine at the headwaters
of the Tubuktulik river, adjacent to Elim’s land. David Hedderly-Smith, a
consultant to Panther and the owner of mining claims for the property, has
said the site could become the “uranium capital of America”.
The people of Elim have opposed the mine since last May, when Panther Minerals
announced its intention to apply for exploration permits. In interviews,
they said they feared for their health, and spoke of the cancer and
contamination that followed uranium mining on Navajo land in the 1960s, 70s
and 80s.
Guardian 25th March 2025,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/uranium-mine-elim-alaska-trump
‘Deeply concerning’: British General’s Israeli weapons job criticised.
“That the UK’s former chief of the defence staff is now advising Israeli arms companies exemplifies the extent of the links between the British state and Israel’s arms industry. “
General Carter signed a military treaty with Israel. Now he advises Israeli arms firms.
PHIL MILLER, 20 March 2025, https://www.declassifieduk.org/deeply-concerning-british-generals-israeli-weapons-job-criticised/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Image&utm_campaign=ICYMI&utm_content=Image
The former head of Britain’s armed forces is providing advice to Israeli arms firms, sparking questions over his role in a country whose prime minister is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
General Sir Nick Carter was chief of the defence staff – Britain’s most senior military position – from 2018-21. Months before stepping down, he signed a military cooperation agreement with Israel.
That pact has never been published – despite freedom of information requests and questions in parliament – but it was hailed as a landmark moment in relations between the two militaries.
Carter had visited Israel earlier in his tenure, touring military bases and shaking hands with his opposite number, General Aviv Kohavi.
That experience of rubbing shoulders with the top of the IDF is likely to come in handy for his new job at Exigent Capital, a boutique financial services firm based in Jerusalem.
Carter is one of Exigent’s two “domain experts” in its “strategic advisory” wing, with his focus on “aerospace and defence”.
His role there is to “develop international growth strategies for our clients as well as identify and open doors to new business opportunities that accelerate growth”, according to the company’s website.
Or, as the Jerusalem Post put it, Carter provides “strategic consulting services to Israeli companies operating in the defense sector.”
Doing business
Carter attended a military tech summit in Tel Aviv in December 2024 – before the ceasefire had been signed in Gaza – when he told a journalist: “Israel is very significant in the world of defense tech.”
Carter added: “We appreciate the extraordinary innovation that Israeli defense companies exhibit and sometimes adopt what we see in Israel. It’s impressive to see the innovation of Israeli companies”.
The British army has bought Israeli-made drones, rifle sights and air defence systems.
More recently, he felt “privileged” to have signed the “successful” UK-Israel military deal in 2020, commenting: “It’s very important for both militaries to work together, share the best training, and understand together the complexity of the modern battlefield. This is a very good way to do business.”
General Carter: Caught in the revolving door?
However campaigners are criticising Carter’s business decisions. Dr Sara Husseini, director of the British Palestinian Committee, told Declassified: “That the UK’s former chief of the defence staff is now advising Israeli arms companies exemplifies the extent of the links between the British state and Israel’s arms industry.
“These revelations are deeply concerning, particularly at this moment in which Israel is recommencing its large-scale bombardment of Gaza, killing more than 400 Palestinians in the past two days.
“Rather than aligning with a state which is on trial for genocide and – as the Foreign Secretary acknowledged earlier this week – is in breach of international law, Keir Starmer’s government must now halt its military collaboration with Israel, including scrapping the agreement signed by Sir Nick Carter.”
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said: “Serious questions arise from former defence officials working with arms companies in states that have a track record of serious violations of international law.”
Turning to Labour’s partial embargo on weapons exports to Israel, Doyle commented: “It also raises longer term questions about whether former officials should be allowed to work with arms companies in countries where there is a ban on arms exports because the government has already acknowledged a serious risk of human rights abuses.”
Arms trade expert Andrew Feinstein from Shadow World Investigations remarked: “This is an example of what used to be called the revolving door – or is now known as the open plan office – between the British state and arms companies. It raises the question of whose interests the most senior political and military figures are working in: their own material interests, or the interests of Britain?”
‘System is bust’
Under government rules supposed to prevent conflicts of interest, former Generals must inform Whitehall’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) of any job offers they receive for two years after leaving the military.
General Carter notified ACOBA of 12 jobs he had been offered since stepping down from the army in July 2022, although Exigent was not among them.
General Carter and Exigent did not respond to a request for comment on when they began working together. A LinkedIn post by the company shows they had started at least three months ago, when Exigent said: “We look forward to sharing his unparalleled expertise, insights and network with our clients.”
His other job offers encompassed unpaid roles at Harvard and Stanford universities, plus a trusteeship at the Royal United Services Institute think tank.
Paid positions included working part-time as a strategic advisor for Schroders bank, plus advisory roles at Helsing – a German AI defence start-up – and an insurance firm.
On top of this, Carter spends 30 days per year “as a thought partner for Tony Blair in his role as Executive Chairman” at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
And he is chairman of Equilibrium Gulf Limited, which advises the crown prince of Bahrain on the autocratic country’s notoriously brutal interior ministry.
While he claims no military experience is required for the Bahrain role, previous Equilibrium directors include another former defence chief, General David Richards, and MI6’s one-time Middle East controller Geoffrey Tantum.
Lord Pickles, who oversees ACOBA, has acknowledged there are weaknesses in the system supposed to regulate Whitehall’s ‘revolving door’ between government positions and corporate careers.
Pickles said of ACOBA last year: “The system is bust and needs fixing.”
Militarize Ukraine ‘to the teeth’ – Finnish president
Comment: Is the Finnish President among those that do not really want a settlement in Ukraine any time soon?
Thu, 20 Mar 2025 https://www.sott.net/article/498616-Militarize-Ukraine-to-the-teeth-Finnish-president
Alexander Stubb has also called for stronger sanctions against Russia and the seizure of its frozen assets
Finnish President Alexander Stubb has called on Kiev’s Western backers to pump Ukraine with military resources and financial aid, claiming that this will deter Russia. He made the call shortly after meeting Vladimir Zelensky in Helsinki and as EU lawmakers negotiate doubling the bloc’s weapons budget.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas had pitched a plan to increase the bloc’s cashflow for Ukraine from €20 billion ($20.9 billion) in 2024 to €40 billion ($43.7 billion) this year. However she admitted to La Stampa that she was opposed by Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. The Italian newspaper has reported that a €5 billion cap has been placed on the donation.
Stubb told Politico on Wednesday that “Deterrence – which is based on militarizing Ukraine to its teeth,” would be the best way to end the Ukraine conflict.
The Finnish president lamented the fact that Kallas failed to gather support for her plan, expressing hope that that heads of state and government would be able to salvage the package.
“It’s very important now to send a message from Europe that the military, political and economic support continues,” he said, emphasizing that sanctions against Russia should be bolstered, while its frozen assets should be seized to ramp up pressure.
Hungary has refused to sign a joint EU summit statement on Ukraine, according to TASS, which reported that both lethal and non-lethal aid had been rejected by Budapest.
The Finnish president also supported potential Ukrainian membership in the EU and in NATO. Finland, which only joined the US-led military bloc in 2023, has been a strong backer of Kiev since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in February 2022.
Moscow has consistently condemned NATO expansion towards its borders, describing the bloc as a threat to Russia’s national security. President Vladimir Putin and other officials have repeatedly stressed that efforts to include Ukraine in the military bloc had been one of the root causes of the escalation of the conflict in 2022.
Stubb’s comments come amid negotiations for a 30-day ceasefire aimed at halting long-range strikes on energy infrastructure by both sides advocated by US President Donald Trump. Another round of talks between Russian and US delegations is scheduled for March 24 in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
France delays EPR2 reactors to 2038
The 4th meeting of France’s Nuclear Policy Council (CPN – Conseil de
politique nucléaire), chaired by President Emmanuel Macron, decided to
delay the commissioning of EPR2 reactors to 2038 – a postponement of
three years. The CPN, which has been held regularly since 2022, defines the
main orientations of national nuclear policy.
The EPR2 programme, announced
in February 2022, envisages the construction of six upgraded EPR reactors
with an option for eight more. The first three pairs of EPR2 reactors are
planned for the Penly, Gravelines and Bugey NPP sites. Construction is
expected to start in 2027. The cost was originally estimated at €51.7bn
($56.4bn), but this was revised upwards to €67.4bn in 2023, according to
the Court of Auditors. Taking inflation into account, a total budget of
nearly €80bn is now being considered.
Nuclear Engineering International 21st March 2025, https://www.neimagazine.com/news/france-delays-epr2-reactors-to-2038/
Redirect Sizewell C funding to the Warm Homes Plan, say campaigners.
Alison Downes, https://stopsizewellc.org/sizewellcvswarmhomes/
Campaigners call on Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband to stop Sizewell C, redirect its funding to generate ‘Warm Homes’ jobs in every constituency by the next election.
Building Sizewell C would likely cost around £40bn over the next 15 years. Deducting money already spent, if Sizewell C is cancelled now, the public money saved by 2030 would be £7.1bn.
A paper from Stop Sizewell C and the Green New Deal Group calls for this saving to be added to the £6.6bn the government is committed to spend in the current Parliament on energy efficiency in the nation’s homes. Turbocharging this ‘Warm Homes Plan’ by more than doubling its budget will generate long term, secure jobs, particularly for young people across the UK. It will be quick to implement, so by the next election new jobs and cheaper, warmer, healthier homes will have appeared in every constituency.
Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C said: “The taxpayers’ money being ploughed into risky, expensive Sizewell C – which will inevitably soar higher due to cost overruns and building delays – would be far better spent improving the lives of households nationwide, bringing down their bills, and helping the UK meet its net zero target”.
Colin Hines of The Green New Deal Group said: “At absolutely no extra cost to the nation’s finances Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband could stop funding the nuclear white elephant that is Sizewell C and not only improve the living conditions for homes in every constituency, but create jobs in every constituency, thereby improving their chances of winning the next election.”
More lies from British nuclear power advocate Zion Lights
Jim Green: Zion Lights claims that a Friends of the Earth (FoE) webpage
responding to her nuclear nonsense is a “hit piece”. Judge for
yourself: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/zion-lights/ Lights claims I have
“relentlessly hounded” her ever since. That’s a lie. Lights didn’t
like me fact-checking her nuclear nonsense so blocked me on social media
and on substack shortly after I began fact-checking her nonsense. I’ve
written just four substack posts responding to her nonsense over 18 months
(five including this one):
Jim Green’s Blog 25th March 2025 https://jimkgreen1.substack.com/p/more-lies-from-zion-lights
1 This Month
Website of the Week
New book – https://www.amazon.com/dp/1923372157?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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