nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Australia’s MUMS FOR NUCLEAR – propaganda wheels within wheels.

March 30, 2025,  https://theaimn.net/australias-mums-for-nuclear-propaganda-wheels-within-wheels/

I’ve only just discovered “Mums for Nuclear” – and they sound just so lovely. They are an Australian offshoot of “Mothers for Nuclear”, which is a very lovely global organisation, full of joy and delight in nature, and of course – all are lovely ladies with lovely children. Here’s a sample of their philosophy:

“I personally went from a fear of nuclear to understanding how many of my assumptions about it were astonishingly far from the truth. The more I read, the more I realized that we direly need more nuclear power to help solve some of the greatest threats to the environment and humanity, including mitigation of climate change, protection of natural resources, reductions in air pollution, and lifting people from poverty. I joined Mothers for Nuclear because I want to help leave a better world for our children.”

That was written by Iida Ruishalme – A Finnish mother, and one of nine women featured on the Mothers for Nuclear website She works as a science writer, and by the way, is the only one who is not directly involved with the nuclear industry. Most of the others are nuclear engineers.

Anyway, the website is beautiful – and it’s easy to come away from it with enthusiasm for nuclear power.

Those nine women represent the USA, Finland, Germany, and the UK. You don’t learn how many members the organisation has, nor where it gets its funding.

From their website:

“In 2022 Mothers for Nuclear became a fiscal sponsor of Stand Up for Nuclear. Stand Up for Nuclear is the world’s 1st global initiative that fights for the protection and expansion of nuclear energy. We are long-term partners who have worked together on multiple campaigns including in California, Europe, Kenya, and many others.”

Mmm..mm – I wondered – “What is a fiscal sponsor“?

“Fiscal sponsorship refers to the practice of non-profit organizations offering their legal and tax-exempt status to groups – typically projects – engaged in activities related to the sponsoring organization’s mission. It typically involves a fee-based contractual arrangement between a project and an established non-profit.”

Mmmmm – sounds as though Mothers for Nuclear is a real help to the nuclear industry, and quite useful to its own members. Though I don’t for a moment doubt their sincerity.

Now we come to the new – and what a timely newness – Australian version – the more relaxed sounding “Mums for Nuclear“. It has joined the “charity” nuclear front group Nuclear for Australia.

Once again, I’ve found it hard to discover just how many members are in Mums for Nuclear. And also – where it gets its funding.

I have found one member, Jasmin Diab, who is the face of the outfit, but doesn’t call herself a CEO or anything formal like that: “Hi, I’m Jaz! I’m a mum of one human and two dogs.”

However, Jaz does have another role, which is quite a bit more formal.

Jasmin Diab is a nuclear engineer and is the Managing Director for Global Nuclear Security Partners (GNSP) in Australia. Global Nuclear Security Partners is a world leading nuclear management consultancy:

“We work with partners, clients and relevant authorities to ensure that novel technology is secure. Across SMR, AMR and fusion we work to make sure that projects, programmes, processes and products are protected and commercially viable.”

“Our clients include: the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero; the UK Ministry of Defence; UK National Nuclear Laboratory; the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organistion; the Ukrainian Government and nuclear industry; Magnox; Babcock International; BAE Submarines; University of Bristol; University of Manchester and SMR developers. We’ve worked with the armed police capability of the Ministry of Defence Police, Civil Nuclear Constabulary and US teams in protecting nuclear material and developing doctrine, and with the infrastructure police of some Middle Eastern Governments.”

I don’t doubt that Jasmin Diab is sincere, and that she is a good mum to one human and two dogs. And she can provide for them well, with that good job with GNSP. I’m not sure that her message will go down that well with Australian women. A recent national survey shows that Australian women are strongly opposed to nuclear energy and are most concerned any consideration of the controversial power source will delay the switch to renewables.

The Mums for Nuclear groups seem curiously uninterested in the fact that women, and children, are significantly more vulnerable to illness from nuclear radiation than men are.

March 29, 2025 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, spinbuster, Women | Leave a comment

I’m Oppenheimer’s grandson. I support Trump’s pursuit of nuclear diplomacy.

President Donald Trump is right to propose direct talks with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China on nuclear arms control.

USA Today, Charles Oppenheimer, 28 Mar 25

Amid all the chaos in the world, I want to provide a ray of light, a sliver of hope: We may be on the verge of radically reducing the gravest global existential danger ‒ that of nuclear weapons. 

Many people and countries have felt threatened by the rapidly changing world order, and many increasingly look to nuclear weapons for supposed protection. But an uncontrolled global nuclear arms race would be the worst outcome, as global nuclear risks have already surged to the highest level since the end of the Cold War. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently pushed its famed Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest ever to humanity’s destruction.

To his credit, President Donald Trump has proposed confronting the growing global nuclear danger head-on. He is right to be repeatedly calling for bold denuclearization talks among the United States, China and Russia ‒ the world’s three biggest nuclear powers ‒ to de-escalate the new nuclear arms race. 

If Trump is serious about pursuing nuclear diplomacy, I’ll strongly support his initiative ‒ and there is much work to be done.

How many countries now have nuclear weapons? 9.

As Trump has pointed out, nothing in the world is more dangerous than the persistent threat that nuclear weapons pose to our very existence. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union waged a dangerous, costly and ultimately unwinnable nuclear arms race under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD). At its peak, the two countries amassed more than 70,000 nuclear weapons and repeatedly brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.

MAD was always a crazy gamble, positing that more nuclear weapons make us safer. But if it had any merit, it was designed for two nuclear peers, not for three nuclear superpowers. Nor did it account for the growing number of countries looking to acquire their own nuclear weapons or irrational leaders with their fingers on the button.

Yet, MAD still dominates countries’ nuclear thinking.

At a time of profound global changes and instability, following the dangerous and outdated Cold War playbook will only lead to another futile nuclear arms race among the world’s now nine nuclear powers and encourage even more countries to build their own nukes.

Instead of increasing security, such a nuclear free-for-all will only hasten our own demise.

We don’t need to go down this path. There is a reason for hope. A new opening for peace.  Not to solve all conflicts and all problems ‒ but the world’s most important and dangerous one.   

As the president suggested, the best shot at reducing the growing nuclear threat is directly de-escalating the arms race among the United States, China and Russia. China’s rise as a world power has led it to increase its once-small nuclear arsenal.

China now has roughly 600 nuclear weapons and is on a path to match America’s and Russia’s deployed arsenals of about 1,500 each (thousands more are in reserve).

Many U.S. politicians see the growth of China’s power as a reason to escalate tensions. The military-industrial complex still sells the old lie: The more nuclear weapons we have, the more we can “deter” China and Russia, and the safer we will be………………………………………………………………………………………………….

President Trump is right to propose direct talks with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China on nuclear arms control. Though nuclear negotiations are often held by bureaucrats with no real power and don’t go anywhere, it’s time the leaders themselves step up to lead.  

A meaningful commitment from these three leaders to reducing global nuclear threats would be the biggest breakthrough on this most important of issues since the 1986 summit between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan ‒ a hawkish leader who ended up embracing nuclear disarmament.

Such an accomplishment would be worthy of a Nobel Peace prize for Trump, Putin and Xi, regardless of what you think of their respective politics. 

There are many great ideas out there on how trilateral nuclear negotiations could work. My recommendation is to start with prohibiting artificial intelligence from launching nuclear weapons, something all parties could agree to. Washington and Moscow could then explore reducing their respective arsenals from thousands toward Beijing’s much lower level. They can further negotiate with China on a mutual pledge not to use nuclear weapons first, which China has already committed to………………………………… https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2025/03/28/trump-nuclear-diplomacy-russia-china-oppenheimer/82651474007/

March 29, 2025 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Calls to restart nuclear weapons tests stir dismay and debate among scientists

Testing “has tremendous symbolic importance,” says Frank von Hippel, a physicist at Princeton University. “During the Cold War, when we were shooting these things off all the time, it was like war drums: ‘We have nuclear weapons and they work. Better watch out.’ ” The cessation of testing, he says, was an acknowledgment that “these [weapons] are so unusable that we don’t even test them.”

A U.S. return to underground detonations would have wide-ranging implications.

Science News, By Emily Conover, March 27, 2025

hen the countdown hit zero on September 23, 1992, the desert surface puffed up into the air, as if a giant balloon had inflated it from below.

It wasn’t a balloon. Scientists had exploded a nuclear device hundreds of meters below the Nevada desert, equivalent to thousands of tons of TNT. The ensuing fireball reached pressures and temperatures well beyond those in Earth’s core. Within milliseconds of the detonation, shock waves rammed outward. The rock melted, vaporized and fractured, leaving behind a cavity oozing with liquid radioactive rock that puddled on the cavity’s floor.

As the temperature and pressure abated, rocks collapsed into the cavity. The desert surface slumped, forming a subsidence crater about 3 meters deep and wider than the length of a football field. Unknown to the scientists.

working on this test, named Divider, it would be the end of the line. Soon after, the United States halted nuclear testing.

Beginning with the first explosive test, known as Trinity, in 1945, more than 2,000 atomic blasts have rattled the globe. Today, that nuclear din has been largely silenced, thanks to the norms set by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, or CTBT, negotiated in the mid-1990s.

Only one nation — North Korea — has conducted a nuclear test this century. But researchers and policy makers are increasingly grappling with the possibility that the fragile quiet will soon be shattered.

Some in the United States have called for resuming testing, including a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump. Officials in the previous Trump administration considered testing, according to a 2020 Washington Post article. And there may be temptation in coming years. The United States is in the midst of a sweeping, decades-long overhaul of its aging nuclear arsenal. Tests could confirm that old weapons still work, check that updated weapons perform as expected or help develop new types of weapons.

Meanwhile, the two major nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, remain ready to obliterate one another at a moment’s notice. If tensions escalate, a test could serve as a signal of willingness to use the weapons.

Testing “has tremendous symbolic importance,” says Frank von Hippel, a physicist at Princeton University. “During the Cold War, when we were shooting these things off all the time, it was like war drums: ‘We have nuclear weapons and they work. Better watch out.’ ” The cessation of testing, he says, was an acknowledgment that “these [weapons] are so unusable that we don’t even test them.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“A single United States test could trigger a global chain reaction,” says geologist Sulgiye Park of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group. Other nuclear powers would likely follow by setting off their own test blasts. Countries without nuclear weapons might be spurred to develop and test them. One test could kick off a free-for-all.

“It’s like striking a match in a roomful of dynamite,” Park says.

The rising nuclear threat

The logic behind nuclear weapons involves mental gymnastics. The weapons can annihilate entire cities with one strike, yet their existence is touted as a force for peace. The thinking is that nuclear weapons act as a deterrent — other countries will resist using a nuclear weapon, or making any major attack, in fear of retaliation. The idea is so embedded in U.S. military circles that a type of intercontinental ballistic missile developed during the Cold War was dubbed Peacekeeper…………………………………………………

….. . The last remaining arms-control treaty between the United States and Russia, New START, is set to expire in 2026, giving the countries free rein on numbers of deployed weapons………………………………………………………………………………..

The United States regularly considers the possibility of testing nuclear weapons……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Is there a need to test nuclear weapons?

Subcritical experiments are focused in particular on the quandary over how plutonium ages. Since 1989, the United States hasn’t fabricated significant numbers of plutonium pits. That means the pits in the U.S. arsenal are decades old, raising questions about whether weapons will still work.

An aging pit, some scientists worry, might cause the multistep process in a nuclear warhead to fizzle. For example, if the implosion in the first stage doesn’t proceed properly, the second stage might not go off at all.

Plutonium ages not only from the outside in — akin to rusting iron — but also from the inside out, says Siegfried Hecker, who was director of Los Alamos from 1986 to 1997. “It’s constantly bombarding itself by radioactive decay. And that destroys the metallic lattice, the crystal structure of plutonium.”

The decay leaves behind a helium nucleus, which over time may result in tiny bubbles of helium throughout the lattice of plutonium atoms. Each decay also produces a uranium atom that zings through the material and “beats the daylights out of the lattice,” Hecker says. “We don’t quite know how much the damage is … and how that damaged material will behave under the shock and temperature conditions of a nuclear weapon. That’s the tricky part.”

One way to circumvent this issue is to produce new pits. A major effort under way will ramp up production. In 2024, the NNSA “diamond stamped” the first of these pits, meaning that the pit was certified for use in a weapon. The aim is for the United States to make 80 pits per year by 2030. But questions remain about new plutonium pits as well, Hecker says, as they rely on an updated manufacturing process………………………

 the benefits of performing a test would be outweighed by the big drawback: Other countries would likely return to testing. And those countries would have more to learn than the United States. China, for instance, has performed only 45 tests, while the United States has performed over 1,000. “We have to find other ways that we can reassure ourselves,” Hecker says…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Underground tests are not risk-free

Tests that clearly break the rules, however, can be swiftly detected. The CTBT monitoring system can spot underground explosions as small as 0.1 kilotons, less than a hundredth that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That includes the most recent nuclear explosive test, performed by North Korea in 2017.

Despite being invisible, underground nuclear explosive tests have an impact. While an underground test is generally much safer than an open-air nuclear test, “it’s not not risky,” Park says……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Even if the initial containment is successful, radioactive materials could travel via groundwater. Although tests are designed to avoid groundwater, scientists have detected traces of plutonium in groundwater from the Nevada site. The plutonium traveled a little more than a kilometer in 30 years. “To a lot of people, that’s not very far,” Park says. But “from a geology time scale, that’s really fast.” Although not at a level where it would cause health effects, the plutonium had been expected to stay put.

The craters left in the Nevada desert are a mark of each test’s impact on structures deep below the surface. “There was a time when detonating either above ground or underground in the desert seemed like — well, that’s just wasteland,” Jeanloz says. “Many would view it very differently now, and say, ‘No, these are very fragile ecosystems, so perturbing the water table, putting radioactive debris, has serious consequences.’ ”…………………………………..
more https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nuclear-weapons-tests-comeback-threats

March 29, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Massive Mine Shafts and Nuclear Dump For Cumbria Coast? Tell Cumberland Council “Vote NOW

A Very Hot Nuclear Waste Dump Under the Irish Sea Bed ? Decision Maker: Cumberland Council

,  By mariannewildart. https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2025/03/27/massive-mine-shafts-and-nuclear-dump-for-cumbria-coast-tell-cumberland-council-vote-now/

The Issue

We, the undersigned, including residents, Council taxpayers and electors of Cumberland in Cumbria, UK, call upon Cumberland Council to schedule a debate at a specially convened meeting of Full Council on the question of whether Cumberland Council: 


1. Continues to support Nuclear Waste Services in its investigations to identify potential locations for a Geological Disposal Facility for Heat Generating Nuclear Wastes in either the Mid or South Copeland Search Areas and

2. Continues to remain a partner in the two Community Partnerships.This debate to be followed by a vote in which all elected members be invited to vote yes or no to continuing these arrangements, with a majority no vote signifying that Cumberland Council withdraws its support and withdraws from membership of the two Community Partnerships ending the process. 

In making this appeal, the petitioners are aware that:

1. An Executive of only four members at Copeland Borough Council originally decided to engage with Nuclear Waste Services in initiating a search for a site in either Mid or South Copeland, and that no vote ever took place amongst all the Councillors of that authority.

2. The Executive of the successor authority Cumberland Council assumed that commitment to GDF engagement, despite the facts that –

Cumbria County Council, which like Copeland was replaced by the new unitary authority and was its biggest component, was manifestly opposed to any GDF in the county.

    There has never been a vote amongst all elected Councillors of Cumberland Council as to whether the authority should have assumed this commitment made by just four Copeland Councillors.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Cumberland Council in Cumbria is unique in becoming a “Partner” in the UKs dangerous nuclear dump proposal while having had no debate or full council vote.  Other areas who were persuaded to go into Partnership with the developer, Nuclear Waste Services, later held full council debates and a vote.  South Holderness and Theddlethorpe in Lincolnshire decided that they were not to be fobbed off with the bribe of £2 Million a year to host a dangerous experimental “geological disposal facility.” 

The beautiful and fragile Cumbrian coastline and already vulnerable ocean is in the firing line for the biggest infrastructure project ever in the UK.  This construction site would be active for 100+ years with massive industrial sprawl, movements of highly radioactive materials and pollution.  Mine shafts on the Cumbrian coast would be tunnelled by giant tunnel boring machines leading to a mined out void the size of the country of Tuvalu (26km square) up to the size of Bermuda (50 km square). 

 

The massive amount of rock spoil from an area up to 1000 metres deep and 50km square would be an industrial hazard in itself with naturally occurring radioactive material leaching out of the mountain of spoil.

Tourism is Cumbria’s biggest industry closely followed by Farming and despite ongoing pressures both these industries support tens of thousands of people many in the Cumberland Council area.  Both tourism and farming would be disastrously impacted by the plan for a 100+ year massive mine in which to dump high level nuclear wastes, a plan which now includes plutonium, under the Cumbrian coastline and ocean.

The reason the proposed “geological disposal facility” (sub-sea nuclear dump) has to be so huge is to dissipate the enormous heat from widely spaced out containers of highly radioactive nuclear wastes which are currently stacked together and kept cool by millions of gallons of fresh water a day from the top quality fresh water in Wastwater and the rivers Ehen and Calder (Nuclear is the most wasteful means of producing electricity as a vanishingly small percentage of heat from uranium fuel is used to turn the turbines while the rest is waste and has to “cool off” for tens of thousands, in some cases millions of years).

Where is this planned?

The Lake District coast adjacent to the National Park.  

“Mid-Copeland Community Partnership Area of Focus.” Despite Sellafield, the biggest industrialised mass in the North West or an “atomic carbuncle” as Wainwright called it, this is an ancient and beautiful area with Viking hoards, stone circle and Abbey.

“South Copeland Community Partnership Areas of Focus” are rising up against the plan to host the access mine shafts and associated industrial sprawl for a sub-sea nuclear dump in their beautiful and historic area. 

SIGN HERE

March 29, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

DOE Reissues $900M Nuclear SMR Opportunity, Scraps Community Criteria to Focus on Technical Merit

Power, Mar 26, 2025, by Sonal Patel

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has reissued a $900 million funding opportunity to accelerate deployment of Generation III+ small modular reactors (SMRs), removing community benefit requirements and shifting the focus solely to technical merit—a move that reflects the Trump administration’s revised energy and industrial priorities.

The funding opportunity announcement (FOA)—officially designated DE-FOA-0003485—was first issued in October 2024, backed by funds appropriated through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and authorized under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024. The effort remains jointly administered by the Office of Nuclear Energy and the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), with technical support from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Community Requirements Dropped 

According to the FOA, eligible Tier 1 projects must feature Generation III+ light-water reactor (LWR) designs ranging between 50 MWe and 350 MWe per unit. (To be considered, total plant output, including process heat loads, must be below 350 MWe.) Projects may involve single-unit or multi-unit configurations with no cap on total site output. Designs must meet a minimum Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 6, signaling sufficient maturity for system-level validation and procurement.

The FOA also stresses that cost-sharing is a core requirement. “DOE cannot contribute more than 50% of the overall project cost; therefore, the total award value will be no less than $1.6 billion, if the full government share is awarded.” It adds that “DOE will pay out based on previously agreed milestone amounts upon their completion,” and that “the agreed upon milestone payment from DOE cannot account for more than 50% of the project costs incurred in completing the milestone.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The most prominent change— as highlighted above—is that the March 24 submission formally eliminates all community benefit obligations that were central to the October 2024 solicitation. That includes the removal of the Community Benefits Plan, which had been a required five-page submission outlining how projects would support community and labor engagement, workforce investment, and equity objectives. It also eliminates the “Program Policy Factors” section, which the DOE previously used after technical review to prioritize projects based on geographic diversity, local job creation, engagement with disadvantaged communities, and alignment with broader social goals such as the Justice40 Initiative. The reissued FOA now states that “applications will be evaluated solely on technical merit.”……………………………………………………………………………………………more https://www.powermag.com/doe-reissues-900m-nuclear-smr-opportunity-scraps-community-criteria-to-focus-on-technical-merit/

March 29, 2025 Posted by | politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Walt Zlotow: UK to push 250,000 Brits into poverty to increase unneeded defense spending.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 28 Mar 25

Now that President Trump has bailed on endless US funding of failed Ukraine war, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has picked up the slack.

Starmer is delusional that Russia seeks to recreate the Soviet empire. He joins equally delusional French President Emmanuel Macron that the EU must replace the disappearing $175 Billion in US treasure to continue the lost Ukraine war.

Starmer wants to boost UK defense spending to 3% of GDP from the current 2.3% tho no foreign enemy is anywhere in sight. To pay for this senseless squandering of UK treasure, Starmer proposes cuts in welfare spending. He appears oblivious of reports that such cuts may push 250,000 Brits into poverty, including 50,000 kids.

Alas, Starmer also remains oblivious that the hundreds of billions the US and EU has squandered in Ukraine has merely cost Ukraine hundreds of thousands of casualties, 10 million fled and 45,000 lost square miles of land. But the only words echoing in Starmer’s brain are: ‘The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.’

March 29, 2025 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump Killed Public War Research. Stargate Will Make It Secret—and Far More Dangerous

By Kit Klarenberg / MintPress News, 26 Mar 25

ays after a Pentagon spokesperson celebrated the work of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the Minerva Initiative—a little-known but influential research program—was killed without fanfare. No mainstream outlet covered it. But the reasons behind its demise reveal the next frontier of American war planning: AI, surveillance, and full-spectrum social control.

On March 4, chief Department of Defence spokesperson Sean Parnell took to ‘X’ to announce that Elon Musk’s notorious Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was hard at work identifying tens of millions of dollars in savings to make the U.S. military “more lethal.” In addition to various DEI programs, several grants provided to universities to investigate climate change-related issues were listed for the chop. Unstated by Parnell, these efforts were funded by Minerva Initiative, a little-known Pentagon project founded in 2008.

Under its auspices, the Department of Defense gave grants to researchers at U.S. universities to investigate particular topics, emphasizing social and behavioral sciences. In addition to helping D.C. military apparatchiks better understand foreign cultures and societies in their crosshairs, recent topics of interest have included climate change and “disinformation.” Minerva Initiative was launched with much initial fanfare as a public mechanism for connecting academia and government, but despite operating in the open, its activities typically generated little mainstream interest.

Accordingly, no major news outlet reported when, mere days later, the Minerva Initiative was permanently axed in its entirety. It fell to the academic journal Science to break the news, its report quoting several academics—including recipients of Minerva grants—harshly condemning the move as “harmful to U.S. national security.” One warned, “Any savings will be outweighed by new gaps and blind spots in our knowledge about current and emerging threats.”

Minerva Initiative’s budget was modest by Pentagon standards – in August 2024, under its last funding round, $46.8 million was granted to 19 research projects. Yet, its impact was evidently seismic. “The initiative has helped build up a generation of social science researchers engaged with national security,” Science previously reported, with “many” academics in the field having “cut [their] teeth” with Minerva support. While beneficiaries may mourn its passing, Aaron Goode, host of the political podcast “American Exception” and a critic of U.S. foreign policy, offers MintPress News a less glowing appraisal:

Minerva Initiative was yet another example of the U.S. national security state corrupting civil society and academia in order to maintain U.S. global dominance. It was a way to weaponize social science to evolve US battlefield tactics – all in service of the grand imperial strategy of ‘full-spectrum dominance.’ This strategy has created the wealthiest and most powerful set of oligarchs in human history, killing untold millions around the world in the process.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

‘Algorithmic Personalization’

A February 7 MintPress News investigation delved into the little-acknowledged profusion of individuals and organizations in intimate proximity to the President, including members of his cabinet, with extensive financial, ideological and political interests in artificial intelligence. The Trump administration’s AI fixation is manifested publicly in Stargate, a $500 billion initiative to construct 20 large AI data centers across the U.S. by 2029, managed by a consortium of major tech firms and financial institutions.

Oddly, the project dropped off the radar entirely after an initial surge of media and tech sector excitement about Stargate. Details on its progress are stubbornly unforthcoming, and the purposes for which the vast forecast investment will be put remain sketchy. Nonetheless, in a January press release hailing Stargate’s launch, consortium member OpenAI boasted the endeavor would “provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”

Notably, the Minerva Initiative awarded sizable grants to study AI and its applications. On their surface, some of these efforts seem mundane. For example, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was given $2.1 million to develop AI tools to bolster the Pentagon’s “role as a science funder.” Meanwhile, Utah State received $1.49 million to assess the impact of AI surveillance technology on governance systems.

Other Minerva-financed AI research appears considerably more sinister. In July 2020, the University of Iowa’s Initiative for Artificial Intelligence was granted an undisclosed sum over three years to investigate “the relationship between algorithmic personalization and online radicalization” and “uncover the technological, psychological, and cultural factors” that can lead individuals to adopt “extremist ideologies.” If the effort concerned public safety, this would be all well and good – but its proposal document points to a far darker set of objectives.

Iowa researchers surveyed politically engaged U.S. adults for a year, tracking their views on social, cultural, and political topics—and their susceptibility to conspiracy theories. This was intended to determine “psychological factors that make an individual more or less vulnerable to radicalization” and whether “algorithmic personalization” could play a role either way. “Communities vulnerable to future exposure to extremist ideologies” would also be identified.

The proposal’s reference to “conspiracy theories” is ominous. The term is nebulous and highly contested – so too are “extremist” and “radical.” Critics reasonably charge that these phrases are routinely employed in the mainstream to delegitimize dissenting opinions, inconvenient truths, awkward questions, and those voicing them. The U.S. government has long sought to infiltrate and subvert online spaces in the name of battling “conspiracy theories” and “extremists,” replicating historic covert state attacks on civil society and independent activists such as COINTELPRO in the process.

“Minerva Initiative research projects studying the phenomenon of ‘extremism’ in and around conflict zones is ironic,” Patrick Hennigsen believes……………………………………………………………………………………………………

Was the Minerva Initiative shut down to push Pentagon AI research further into secrecy—and profitability—via Stargate? That’s one theory. Another is that the administration wanted to remove external oversight completely. Jeffrey Kaye, an investigative journalist who has extensively documented U.S. psychological warfare operations, tells MintPress News the Initiative’s closure does not spell the end of the abuse of academia by the Department of Defense or other U.S. government agencies:

Last I heard, DARPA and RAND Corporation were not shuttered. And CIA and Fort Detrick certainly still engage U.S. universities and professors for a multitude of research projects for the war industry. Minerva’s closure may send a chill through the social science portion of the academic community that supports Washington’s war drive in China and elsewhere, but I expect long-term, there will be very little change in relations between the U.S. national security state and academic world.” https://www.mintpressnews.com/trump-killed-minerva-stargate-make-secret-more-dangerous/289313/

March 29, 2025 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

CODEPINK Responds to US Senate McCarthy-Style Attack

March 26, 2025 By Ann Wright,  https://consortiumnews.com/2025/03/26/codepink-responds-to-us-senate-mccarthy-style-attack/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJSve9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHfT5qi0QWquXKXsyVWAvmWYbVHJu31jtYa8i4R2SJ2Xs8jadVioQ-kJknA_aem_7QqiWhe1geDtZ6x-PdskAg

We must push back” —  Retired Army Colonel Ann Wright takes on AIPAC-funded Tom Cotton, charging him with reckless libel.

Yesterday, in the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, Sen. Tom Cotton, accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.

During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to US national security and yelled “Stop Funding Israel,’ since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton and Vice Chair Mark Warner had mentioned Israel in their opening statement nor  had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.

As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist party of China.”  Cotton then said if anyone had something to say, to do so.

Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army Colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK and it is not funded by Communist China.”  I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.

After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarty lie: “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK which interrupts a hearing about Israel illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”

Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s intelligence committee.

Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends and family. 

In today’s polarized political environment we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on Jan. 6, 2021, with President Donald Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s Capitol building in their attempt to stop the presidential election proceedings.

CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the George W. Bush administration’s wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Cotton was elected as a U.S. senator in 2014.  We have been in the U.S. Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and now Trump again.

After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to this office staff.

We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee for the untrue and libelous statements Senator Cotton made in the hearing.

The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests against U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country and now the McCarthy intimidating tactics used by Cotton in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge U.S. government politics, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza must be called out and pushed back.

And we must push back against U.S. senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries.  Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.

Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.  She was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in US embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia.  She resigned from the U.S. government 22 years ago in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq.  She is a member of CODEPINK, Veterans For Peace, Women Cross DMZ and many other peace groups.  She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience.

March 29, 2025 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

China calls for strict, long-term international supervision over Fukushima wastewater discharge: spokesman

2025-03-26,  https://www.bastillepost.com/global/article/4690031-china-calls-for-strict-long-term-international-supervision-over-fukushima-wastewater-discharge-spokesman?fbclid=IwY2xjawJSuCVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRXbhJz-aEa94Wd_9BghnsxtDEzzaxDZiiCBsWn9LWkvzinWWdeZIhe3Zg_aem_9apdp3Teicc2HwmyoEjwCw
Guo made the statement at a press conference in Beijing in response to a media query about Japan’s wastewater discharge.

China calls for strict and long-term international supervision over Japan’s discharge of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the ocean, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said on Wednesday.

“I would like to emphasize that China opposes Japan’s unilateral discharge of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean, and this position remains unchanged. Since last year, Chinese experts have visited Japan twice to independently collect samples and announced the relevant test results in a timely manner. On the basis that Japan has fulfilled its commitments and the test results haven’t shown any abnormalities, the General Administration of Customs of China held in Beijing on March 12 technical exchanges with Japan over the safety of Japanese aquatic products,” Guo said.

“China will continue to work with the rest of the international community to urge Japan to earnestly fulfill its commitments and ensure that the discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea is always under strict international supervision,” said the spokesman.

Hit by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and an ensuing tsunami on March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suffered core meltdowns in three reactors that released radiation, resulting in a level-7 nuclear accident, the highest on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.

The plant then generated a massive amount of wastewater tainted with radioactive substances from cooling down the nuclear fuel in the reactor buildings.

Disregarding domestic and foreign questioning and protests, the Japanese government decided in April 2021 to “filter and dilute” the nuclear contaminated wastewater from the plant and started the ocean discharge of the radioactive wastewater on August 24, 2023. This process is expected to last 20 to 30 years, until the nuclear power plant is scrapped.

March 29, 2025 Posted by | China, Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

UK Government investment continues squeeze on EDF’s share of Sizewell C

 By Tom Pashby

EDF’s stake in Sizewell C has decreased by a further 1.6% following investment by the UK government using its Devex (development expenditure) subsidy scheme.  Two days ago NCE reported EDF’s share had dropped to
16.2%. This has now dropped a further 1.6%

 New Civil Engineer 27th March 2025, https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/uk-government-investment-continues-squeeze-on-edfs-share-of-sizewell-c-27-03-2025/

March 29, 2025 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment