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Securing the nuclear nation, (Russia)

Cambridge University Press: Kate Brown  20 November 2018, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/abs/securing-the-nuclear-nation/9D92C7AA447CC337F56999FC8C03C4D4

Abstract

In 1946, in the Southern Urals, construction of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics first plutonium plant fell to the GULAG-Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD). The chief officers in charge of the program – Lavrentii Beria, Sergei Kruglov, and Ivan Tkachenko – had been pivotal figures in the deportation and political and ethnic cleansing of territories retaken from Axis forces during WWII.

These men were charged with building a nuclear weapons complex to defend the Soviet Union from the American nuclear monopoly. In part thanks to the criminalization and deportation of ethnic minorities, Gulag territories grew crowded with foreign nationals and ethnic minorities in the postwar years. The NKVD generals were appalled to find that masses of forced laborers employed at the plutonium construction site were members of enemy nations. Beria issued orders to cleanse the ranks of foreign enemies, but construction managers could not spare a single healthy body as they raced to complete their deadlines.

To solve this problem, they created two zones: an interior, affluent zone for plutonium workers made up almost exclusively of Russians; and anterior zones of prisoners, soldiers, ex-cons, and local farmers, many of whom were non-Russian. The selective quality of Soviet “nuclearity” meant that many people who were exposed to the plant’s secret plutonium disasters were ethnic minorities, people whose exposures went unrecorded or under-recorded because of their invisibility and low social value.

June 11, 2025 Posted by | history, Russia | Leave a comment

Israeli attack could drive Iran to seek nuclear weapons, IAEA chief warns

Head of nuclear watchdog warns Israeli strike may harden Iran’s resolve on nuclear arms as diplomacy stalls.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, has warned that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could push Tehran closer to developing nuclear weapons as indirect talks between the United States and Iran continue through Omani mediation.

Speaking to i24 News and The Jerusalem Post, Grossi said Iranian officials had cautioned him about the potential consequences of a strike.

“A strike could potentially have an amalgamating effect, solidifying Iran’s determination – I will say it plainly – to pursue a nuclear weapon or withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” he said in an interview that was published on Monday.

Grossi added that he did not believe Israel would launch such an operation.

“But one thing is certain,” he said, “The [Iranian] programme runs wide and deep. And when I say ‘deep’, I mean it. Many of these facilities are extremely well-protected. Disrupting them would require overwhelming and devastating force.”

He made his comments as Iran prepares a counteroffer to a US proposal for a new nuclear deal.

Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday that the US offer lacked key elements and failed to address sanctions relief – a longstanding demand from Tehran.

“We’re doing a lot of work on Iran right now,” Trump said during a White House economic event. “It’s tough … They’re great negotiators.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed the two leaders spoke on Monday, with Trump assuring him that negotiations with Iran would continue later in the week.

In a surprise comment last week, Trump said he had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to jeopardise the fragile negotiations.

“I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution,” Trump said.

June 11, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Iran says it will release Israeli nuclear secrets as pressure grows to reimpose sanctions

Tehran threat comes as European powers press for vote that could lead to reimposition of UN sanctions

Guardian Patrick Wintour, 9 June 25

Iran has said it will soon start releasing information from a hoard of Israeli nuclear secrets it claims to have obtained, as European countries push for a vote this week on reimposing UN sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear programme.

The unverified claims by Iranian intelligence of a massive leak of Israeli secrets may be designed to turn the focus away from what Iran argues is its own excessively monitored civil nuclear programme.

On Sunday, Iran’s intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib, claimed Tehran had obtained “a vast collection of strategic and sensitive [Israeli] documents, including plans and data on the nuclear facilities”. He added evidence would be released shortly, and implied some of the documentation was linked to Israel’s arrest of two Israeli nationals, Roi Mizrahi and Almog Attias, over alleged spying for Iran………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/09/iran-says-it-will-release-israeli-nuclear-secrets-as-pressure-grows-to-reimpose-sanctions

June 11, 2025 Posted by | Iran, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Golden Dome Idiocy

A “shield” against nuclear attack makes nuclear war more likely

Bill Astore, Jun 10, 2025, https://bracingviews.substack.com/p/golden-dome-idiocy?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1156402&post_id=164965873&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Donald Trump has a dream: a “golden dome” over America to defend the country against nuclear missiles. It’s a repeat of Ronald Reagan’s dream, the Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars” after the movie. The problem is that the dream represents a nightmare.

How so? Golden Dome would be dangerously escalatory, wildly expensive, and unlikely to work as a “shield” to America. It is worse than a mistake: it is a crime. It represents a massive theft from those who hunger and suffer in America. As Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1953, wasting enormous resources on weapons systems is no way of life at all. It is humanity crucifying itself on a cross of iron. Crucifixion is not made more pleasant when the cross is golden.

Put differently, the Golden Dome is a golden idol, a false god, one that by making a massive nuclear strike more likely endangers all of us and God’s creation.

Golden Dome is a grotesque example of makework militarism and warfare as welfare for weapons makers. Though it’s unlikely to work, if it did (partially) it would make a massive nuclear strike more likely, not less, endangering the world with the ecocidal terror of nuclear winter.

Golden Dome and the so-called investment in America’s nuclear triad are both examples of socio-technological madness–America’s leaders are like the mutants in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” worshipping the bombs that twisted them and which can only destroy what’s left of civilization.

Some Christians today await the apocalypse when Christ is supposed to return–but the most likely apocalypse features not the second coming of a God-man but a third world war featuring bomb-gods of thermonuclear destruction.

As Daniel Ellsberg once noted, U.S. nuclear attack plans in the early 1960s envisioned 600 million killed, or 100 Holocausts (before we knew such an attack would lead to nuclear winter). We’re lucky this insanity never came to pass. The only sane policy is to cancel Golden Dome and end “investment” in a new nuclear triad. Disarmament, not rearmament, is what’s needed.

The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space has released a statement against Golden Dome that you can read here. You can add your name to the statement, as I have. Here are some bullet points released along with the statement:

  • Golden Dome is financially reckless and unsustainable. Early cost estimates range from $550 billion to several trillion dollars over two decades. This dwarfs even the Pentagon’s annual budget and adds to the US’s $37 trillion national debt—a price tag that makes the project fiscally indefensible.
  • Experts overwhelmingly agree that 100% effective missile interception is a fantasy, especially against complex attacks involving decoys, hypersonic missiles, and maneuverable warheads. Even Israel’s Iron Dome has been bypassed by more rudimentary drone and missile attacks.
  • Golden Dome includes space-based interceptors—effectively weaponizing the Earth’s orbit and triggering an arms race. This violates the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty and pushes nations like China and Russia to accelerate space weapons development.
  • By giving the illusion of first-strike survivability, it runs counter to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine that has prevented so far a nuclear holocaust and incentivizes other powers to retain or expand their nuclear arsenals, blocking disarmament efforts permanently.
  • Thousands of rocket launches for satellite interceptors would further damage the ozone layer, could generate dangerous orbital debris (Kessler Syndrome), and will harm our already fragile space environment.
  • The only guaranteed winners of Golden Dome are weapons giants like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Palantir, which stand to profit enormously regardless of the system’s effectiveness or risks.
  • The trillions funneled into Golden Dome could be used for urgent domestic priorities—such as healthcare, infrastructure, climate action, and education, directly benefiting millions of Americans.

In short, Golden Dome is a massive, dangerous, and futile vanity project, cloaked in patriotism but driven by profit, politics, and illusion.

June 11, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How the ‘evil twin’ of the climate crisis is threatening our oceans

 There’s frustration among researchers that falling pH levels in seas
around the globe are not being taken seriously enough, and that until the
buildup of CO2 is addressed, the consequences for marine life will be
devastating.

“At the end of the day, we know CO2 is going up, pH is going
down, and that’s an urgent issue that people are not talking about,”
says Turner. “It’s an overlooked consequence of carbon in our ocean
that governments can no longer afford to overlook in mainstream policy
agendas, and the time to address it is running out.”

 Guardian 9th June 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/09/the-scientists-warning-the-world-about-ocean-acidification-evil-twin-of-the-climate-crisis

June 11, 2025 Posted by | climate change, oceans | Leave a comment

Lincolnshire council pulls out of nuclear waste disposal siting process

Lincolnshire County Council has decided to withdraw from the geological
disposal facility (GDF) siting process – ending plans to potentially
store nuclear waste in the county. The council’s new executive voted to
withdraw from the Nuclear Waste Services’ (NWS’s) Community Partnership
on 3 June.

A Community Partnership in Theddlethorpe had been established by
the NWS as part of its search to find a GDF site with suitable geology for
storing higher activity radioactive waste underground. The council’s vote
means that it will no longer be a member of Theddlethorpe GDF Community
Partnership. The GDF siting process cannot continue without the support of
the council as the relevant principal local authority, and the Community
Partnership closed with immediate effect.

 Ground Engineering 09 June, 2025 By Thames Menteth, https://www.geplus.co.uk/news/lincolnshire-council-pulls-out-of-nuclear-waste-disposal-siting-process-09-06-2025/

June 11, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

NFLAs welcome new group opposed to nuke waste dump in South Copeland

 Hot on the heels of the victory in Lincolnshire, the UK/Ireland Nuclear
Free Local Authorities have welcomed the formation of a new ‘Anti GDF
Community Group’ in opposition to a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) on
land near Millom and Haverigg in West Cumbria.

The GDF would be the final
repository for Britain’s inventory of legacy and future high-level
radioactive waste. Nuclear Waste Services has declared its interest in land
surrounding His Majesty’s Prison Haverigg and Bank Head Estate West of
Haverigg as the potential location for a future surface site for this
facility. This site is designated the Area of Focus in the South Copeland
GDF Search Area.

Following a meeting held by Whicham Parish Council on
Wednesday, at which a resolution was carried unanimously calling on NWS to
withdraw this area from consideration, a statement was issued by the new
group. There is also now a new private Facebook group for impacted
residents to join and a group logo.

The ‘Anti GDF Community Group’ will
aim to support and seek support from both Whicham and Millom Council in
their respective rejections of the area of focus and try to ensure that NWS
and Cumberland Council abide by the NWS statement “that express consent
must be given by those living alongside a GDF” Presently the group is
formed by a small committee and is seeking members to support the group
objective of removal from the process of the Kirksanton/Haverigg site. The
group will aim to support those who have and are being severely impacted
now and seek to demonstrate the flawed process and the contempt our
communities have been shown within that process.

 NFLA 9th June 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nflas-welcome-new-group-opposed-to-nuke-waste-dump-in-south-copeland/

June 11, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Cumbrians receive postal call to back nuke dump democracy petition

NFLA 9th June 2025, https://www.change.org/p/massive-mine-shafts-and-nuclear-dump-for-cumbria-coast-tell-cumberland-council-vote-now

Residents of Millom, Seascale and Gosforth have just received a flyer from campaign group Radiation Free Lakeland calling on them to back a petition which asks Cumberland Councillors to host a debate followed by a vote about their engagement with the siting process for a Geological Disposal Facility in West Cumbria.

The GDF would be the eventual repository for Britain’s high-level radioactive waste which would be placed in tunnels beneath the seabed. A site in East Lincolnshire was also under consideration as a possible site. With the withdrawal of Lincolnshire County Council from the process last week, only sites in Mid and South Copeland in West Cumbria remain in contention and then only because Cumberland Council remains engaged in the process.

Bizarrely Cumberland Council only became involved in the process by default. The new authority on replacing Copeland District Council chose to accept unquestionably that Council’s decision to participate in the GDF process, even though the decision to participate had been taken by only four Copeland Councillors. There has never been any debate or vote amongst Cumberland Councillors about whether they should have accepted this obligation or still wish to continue with the process.

The petition calls on Cumberland Council to convene a belated special meeting of the Full Council where Councillors can debate and then vote on whether to continue to remain engaged or remain represented on the Mid and South Copeland GDF Community Partnerships. If Councillors say no, then the process would end, and NWS would withdraw. The NFLAs is happy to support Radiation Free Lakeland in urging all Cumbrians to sign it.

Here are links to the petition:

www.change.org/CumbriaNuclearDump https://www.change.org/p/massive-mine-shafts-and-nuclear-dump-for-cumbria-coast-tell-cumberland-council-vote-now

June 11, 2025 Posted by | oceans, opposition to nuclear, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Today is World Ocean Day – Protect the Lake District Coast and Irish Sea from an Unprecedented Atomic Experiment

On  By mariannewildart,
https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2025/06/08/today-is-world-ocean-day-protect-the-lake-district-coast-and-irish-sea-from-an-unprecedented-atomic-experiment/

This World Ocean Day Do Something Amazing and Sign and Share the Petition to Protect The Lake District Coast from a Giant Atomic Heat Sink. There are 1,753 signatures – lets make it tens of thousands! This plan is going forward on the say so of just four councillors in Cumberland (the West of Cumbria, UK). The Petition is calling for a FULL debate and FULL vote by the whole Cumberland Council on whether to continue in partnership with the developer Nuclear Waste Services to deliver a “geological disposal facility” aka an up to 50km square, wholly experimental, sub-sea nuclear dump for HOT nuclear wastes. Note the developer NWS is a Government owned limited liability company. 

June 11, 2025 Posted by | oceans, opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

Here is why you should support the Global Network’s Golden Dome statement.


  • Golden Dome is financially reckless and unsustainable. Early cost estimates range from $550 billion to several trillion dollars over two decades. This dwarfs even the Pentagon’s annual budget and adds to the US’s $37 trillion national debt—a price tag that makes the project fiscally indefensible. 
  • Experts overwhelmingly agree that 100% effective missile interception is a fantasy, especially against complex attacks involving decoys, hypersonic missiles, and maneuverable warheads. Even Israel’s Iron Dome has been bypassed by more rudimentary drone and missile attacks. 
  • Golden Dome includes space-based interceptors—effectively weaponizing the Earth’s orbit and triggering an arms race. This violates the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty and pushes nations like China and Russia to accelerate space weapons development.
  • By giving the illusion of first-strike survivability, it runs counter to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine that has prevented so far a nuclear holocaust and incentivizes other powers to retain or expand their nuclear arsenals, blocking disarmament efforts permanently.
  • Thousands of rocket launches for satellite interceptors would further damage the ozone layer, could generate dangerous orbital debris (Kessler Syndrome), and will harm our already fragile space environment. 

  • The only guaranteed winners of Golden Dome are weapons giants like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Palantir, which stand to profit enormously regardless of the system’s effectiveness or risks. 
     
    The trillions funneled into Golden Dome could be used for urgent domestic priorities—such as healthcare, infrastructure, climate action, and education, directly benefiting millions of Americans.

    In short, Golden Dome is a massive, dangerous, and futile vanity project, cloaked in patriotism but driven by profit, politics, and illusion.
     
    You may view the full Global Network statement of opposition to the Golden Dome and see the growing list of endorsers here
     
    If you wish you add your group/individual name (along with your location) please send us an email at globalnet@mindspring.com
     
    ­
    ‘Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.’
    ~ Henry David Thoreau

June 11, 2025 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment