Not the corporate nuclear news -this week
Some bits of good news – Superpowers united on a shared green energy vision. Japanese ‘Rental Grandmother’ Service Provides Much-Needed and Much-Loved Purpose for Older WomenUK’s Rarest Breeding Birds Raise Chicks for First Time in Six Years
TOP STORIES.
Remembering Hiroshima 80 years on – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgU-Vc958-k
Jeremy Corbyn: Nuclear Disarmament Now.
Why no Hollywood movie on Nagasaki A Bombing?
As Netanyahu moves toward full takeover of Gaza, Israel faces a crisis of international credibility.
Trump’s Suicidal Nuclear Brinksmanship.The new space race: How the US, China, and Russia are all vying to be the first to build a nuclear reactor on the MOON.
Environment and health. The Lancet Countdown on health and plastics.
AUSTRALIA. Australia to chart its own course on Palestinian statehood, without Trump’s say-so.
Dare To Hope. Julian Assange Joins Historic Anti-Genocide March Across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge.
The lethal legacy of Aukus nuclear submarines will remain for millennia – and there’s no plan to deal with it. The AUKUS Submarine Deal is Dead. AUKUS delusions– More rivets pop in submarine drama.
Those left behind: The long shadow of Britain’s nuclear testing in Western Australia.
NUCLEAR ITEMS.
| ARTS and CULTURE. Patrick Lawrence: Yes, It’s a Genocide. |
| ATROCITIES. The Genocidal Partnership of Israel and the United States.1,500 Killed While Seeking Aid in Gaza Since May: UN. |
| CLIMATE. Europe’s electricity system tested by heatwaves as air-conditioning use soars – nuclear power plants affected- ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2025/08/07/2-a-europes-electricity-system-tested-by-heatwaves-as-air-conditioning-use-soars-nuclear-power-plants-affected/ |
ECONOMICS. EDF shifts nuclear strategy to domestic projects.
How industry is positioning itself for the giant Golden Dome budget.
EMPLOYMENT. Miliband’s Nuclear Quango Chief In Line for £200,000 for Working Three Days a Week. Sellafield nuclear plant contractors to strike. Sizewell C to give jobs to hundreds of ex-offenders.
ETHICS and RELIGION. The Satanic Nature of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Christian Zionist View of Foreign Policy Is Holy War. Chris Hedges: The Gaza Riviera.
To Future Generations: They Knew-They All Knew What Was Happening In Gaza.
| HEALTH. The Bombs Still Ticking.“Memories that do not heal”: the legacy of uranium mining at Laguna Pueblo. |
| HISTORY. Hiroshima’s fading legacy: the race to secure survivors’ memories amid a new era of nuclear brinkmanship.SEEDS OF PEACE -AUGUST 2025.Atomic testament: Yoshito Matsushige and the first photos of Hiroshima’s nuclear toll. |
| MEDIA. When the Press Becomes the Enemy: The Erosion of Media Independence in Trump’s America. YouTube bans prominent Zelensky critic. |
| OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . No Nukes for Power, Posturing or Destruction. |
POLITICS. Weekly Briefing: A tipping point for Israel’s legitimacy.
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Nuclear Roulette.
80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki — time for a nuclear-free world for a peaceful, sustainable future.
Zelensky and the EU increasingly desperate over the inevitable outcome of the conflict.
As the world hurtles ever closer to nuclear oblivion, where is the opposition?
| SAFETY. Trump’s Nuclear Energy Overhaul Sparks Alarms Over Safety.Fire safety improvements required at Dungeness A. |
| SECRETS and LIES. Ukraine hacks Russian submarine as Moscow expands Arctic presence.Microsoft helping Israel spy on millions of Palestinians since 2021: Report. |
| SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS.Who’s Protecting the Moon? We may not survive a nuclear war but some plan to carry on. Nasa to put nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030 – US media. A NASA Nuclear Reactor On The Moon? Bold Proposal Is Unfeasible By 2030– Here’s Why. From boots to orbits: Army develops space skills amid growing battlefield reliance on satellites. |
| SPINBUSTER. 80 Years of Lies: The US Finally Admits It Knew It Didn’t Need to Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. |
| TECHNOLOGY. A Second CANDU Reactor for Point Lepreau? Let’s Ponder. |
| WASTES. Tepco wraps up latest round of treated water release in Fukushima. |
WAR and CONFLICT.
Israeli military plans to occupy Gaza City in major escalation of war. Israel Preparing To Escalate Military Offensive in Gaza. Occupation and Slaughter: Netanyahu and Taking Over Gaza.
Trump and Zelensky, two cornered rats with no way out of Ukraine catastrophe.
Threat of Nuclear War Is Rising, But Scientists Say the Public Can Change That.
WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.
No more Hiroshimas. Hiroshima anniversary: mayor says Ukraine and Middle East crises show world ignoring nuclear ‘tragedies.
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Expands Nuclear Bomb Production, Rejects Cleanup, Still Plans to Release Tritium.
$10 billion, 10 year US Army contract elevates Palantir to defense contracting royalty.
Pete Hegseth Doesn’t Want to Talk About Golden Dome
Does Trump have the guts to end America’s lost proxy war against Russia?
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 12 Aug 25.
For seven months Trump has reneged on his promise to end in one day America’s proxy war against Russia destroying Ukraine. Ukraine loses more soldiers and more territory every day with no chance of prevailing.
Tho a one day settlement was impossible, Trump came close to following thru by publicly berating Ukraine President Zelensky for continuing the war and threatening to cease all US weapons which keep Ukraine fighting. Then he pivoted back to war, demanding Russia’s Putin implement immediate ceasefire or face draconian sanctions. Putin responded to that nonsense with increased military attacks. Now with the upcoming summit this Friday, Trump has the opportunity to achieve peace in Ukraine.
Russia has already signaled concessions to achieve ceasefire. According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia told US envoy Steve Witkoff Russia would implement a full ceasefire if Ukraine would withdraw its remaining troops in the Donbas almost entirely controlled by Russia. In return Russia would freeze the lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the other 2 Ukraine oblasts Russia demanded full control over, rather than push on for full annexation. Russia would require Ukraine to remain neutral between East and West, giving up all intentions to join NATO.
Implementing that ceasefire would be a good start to permanently ending hostilities. But neither Ukraine President Zelensky nor European NATO leaders have bought into this sensible solution.
Zelensky maintains his delusional refusal to give up a single square mile of territory that will never return to Ukraine control. He could have kept every square mile of territory had he completed the peace deal with Russia in April 2022 that the US and UK sabotaged. Seventy percent of Ukrainians want the war to end forthwith. But the fool Zelensky keeps demanding ‘push on.’
European NATO leaders, especially UK’s Starmer, France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz are still committed to this failed war to maintain NATO dominance and isolation of Russia. They fear the loss of the US gravy train that pumps up their economies. They are as delusional as Zelensky.
Trump’s third obstacle to peace is the US national security state which abhors the US losing a senseless war of choice. War fanatics like Senator Lindsey Graham and retired generals paid off by the weapons makers, dominate mainstream news condemning inevitable US surrender. No voice for ending this proxy war madness is allowed to pitch peace on the airwaves or op ed columns. They will pound on Trump relentlessly should he chalk up another US war loss, albeit one bringing peace to Ukraine.
The only ceasefire and permanent war settlement possible will go down as a US/NATO defeat. Wonderful. NATO needs to disband as it has gone on trying to weaken, isolate Russia 34 years after becoming obsolete upon dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
Does Trump have the guts to force a settlement that overcomes the resistance of Zelensky, NATO leaders and the US war party? We may soon find out.
Conveniently forgotten and ignored – the 8 years war in Ukraine up to 2022.
https://theaimn.net/conveniently-forgotten-and-ignored-the-8-years-war-in-ukraine-up-to-2022/ 22 Feb 25
There’s uproar in the Western media, about Donald Trump wanting to negotiate with Putin, a peace deal in Ukraine. And Trump called Ukraine’s President Zelensky a dictator and blamed him for starting the present war Ukraine.war. And he said that that Zelensky’s approval rating has fallen to 4%. General agreement that Donald Trump was “rewriting history”.
Well, Trump is well known for lying, and it’s just so easy to scrutinise those statements and smugly assert that they are incorrect, and obviously Donald Trump has no idea of what he’s talking about.
And yet, and yet…. all those statements deserve further scrutiny. Because underneath their careless inaccuracy lies the real history of the Ukraine mess.
Historically, Ukraine as a sovereign State goes back only until 1991. In its previous history, it was dominated by a motley succession of European powers, but in the 19th and 20th.Century, by Russia. Cruel exploitation by Stalin’s rule in the 1930’s, was followed in 1941 by a brutal Nazi regime, and after 1944 back under oppressive Soviet control.
It is no surprise that there are long-standing resentments among both Ukrainian dwellers and in the diaspora. There is also a variety of ethnic backgrounds, and a clear difference between the ‘West-leaning” culture of Western Ukraine, and the more pro-Russian culture to the East.
At the end of World War 2, the Allies had the opportunity to include Russia in some co-operative Council of the powers, as was done by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars. Instead, the USA, Britain and France chose to set up a co-operative group, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), that excluded Russia. American triumphalism gradually encouraged this into a defensive group against Russia, and encouraged former Soviet States to be part of America’s “sphere of influence” and to join NATO.
As Ukraine is the largest Western State on Russia’s border, it is obvious that Russia would not want it to be NATO state, potentially with U.S military bases aimed at Russia
Now, to go to the forgotten 8 years Ukrainian war.
In 2014, an American-sponsored coup overthrew the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych. He was subsequently followed by oligarch Petro Poroshenko, who removed Russian as an official language, – causing opposition in the Eastern provinces. The result was fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk). The rebels of Donetsk and Lugansk held referendums, seeking not to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language .
2014-15 Minsk Agreements. Leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine gathered in Minsk, and supported the agreements between Russia, Ukraine, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the leaders of separatist-held regions Donetsk and Luhansk. This formally gave Donetsk an Luhansk autonomous status within Ukraine.
2015 – 2022 . The agreements were never implemented. The Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko launched a massive “anti-terrorist operation” against the Donbass, and the fighting continued. This war was not popular, reservists failed to tun up. “. In October/November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up for the “Fall 2017” recall campaign. This is not counting suicides and desertions (often over to the autonomists), which reached up to 30 percent of the workforce in the ATO area”. Young Ukrainians refused to go and fight in the Donbass and preferred emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country.”
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)OHCHR estimates the total number of war-related casualties in Ukraine from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021 to be 51,000–54,000
This entire 8 years of war is rarely mentioned by the Western media. There’s no recognition of the impact of imposing the Ukrainian language on Russian-speakers. No consideration of some loyalties to Russia and her role in WW2. No consideration of the influence of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, and the role of the minority neo-Nazis. There was one exceptional coverage by The Guardian in 2014 – It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war.
2019. Volodymr Zelensky was elected with a huge majority, on his pledge to uphold the Minsk agreements, and bring peace to Ukraine. But soon after coming to power, Zelensky reneged on that pledge. He later made it clear that he intentionally chose to sabotage Minsk, give his country more time to prepare for war. A large-scale militarisation of Ukraine began. The build-up of the Ukrainian army was accompanied by the development of militias, notoriously the Azov brigade, with links to the Nazi past and the philosophy of past far-right leader Stepan Bandera.
2022. February 24. Russia launched its Special Military Operation into Ukraine, claiming that it was a limited operation, not a war. Russia argued that this was lawful under Article 51 of the UN Charter, that it may use force against Ukraine in order to defend the Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples Peoples Republics. Anyway it soon turned into a full-scale war against Ukraine, which certainly was not legal, and Ukraine got the enthusiastic backing of the USA and NATO, though no foreign troops.
The Political situation in Ukraine. The Zelensky regime has banned opposition parties, cracked down on the use of the Russian language, restricted media and freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, violating international law. Zelensky signed a law that threatens to effectively shut down the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – the largest faith-based organization in the country. He signed a law that restricted import of books from Russia.
So – to go back to Donald Trump’s inaccurate claims and “rewriting history”. How far off the mark was Trump? In fact, Zelensky was elected democratically, but has now turned Ukraine into a dictatorship. Zelensky did not start the war, but he provoked it, by overturning his election policy to implement the Minsk agreements. Zelensky’s approval rating is still above 50%, but has slipped over the past year.
It is Western dogma that you can’t approve of anything that Donald Trump does. So for anyone to even mention the 8 years’ war in Ukraine is to invite being branded as an idiotic puppet of Russian propaganda and disinformation.
The “progressive” West notices with disapproval, that Donald Trump’s aim is to get American business’s control of Ukraine’s mineral resources, in exchange for Russia getting territorial concessions. Well, what else would you expect from Trump – whose whole aim is to get American (and his) control of business, preferably everywhere? It still might be a better deal for Ukrainians than obliteration. Way back, the West, and Zelensky could have honoured the Minsk agreement, and given the Donbass provinces self-government within the state of Ukraine.
Heat Waves Are a Growing Threat to Europe’s Nuclear Power Supply
Bloomberg News, Eamon Akil Farhat, Aug 08, 2025, https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/heat-waves-are-a-growing-threat-to-europes-nuclear-power-supply
Heat waves across Europe are increasing the need for nuclear power plants to be taken offline, with the situation expected to worsen in the coming decades and few options for mitigation.
(Bloomberg) — Heat waves across Europe are increasing the need for nuclear power plants to be taken offline, with the situation expected to worsen in the coming decades and few options for mitigation.
Weather-related nuclear outages, mainly caused by elevated temperatures of cooling water, increased threefold in the period from 2010 to 2019, compared with 1990 to 2009, according to a study published in Energy Economics. Due to climate change, the intensity and length of these heat waves is expected to increase.
“Summer heat waves are climbing fast — 0.85 more days each year since 2010,” said Jess Hicks, a weather analyst at BloombergNEF. “That trajectory spells growing cooling-water risks for French nuclear plants.”
…………………………….A separate study published in the journal Energy in April looked at two reactors operated by Electricite de France SA, Chooz and Golfech, which rely on river water for cooling. It concluded that climate change will increase water temperature and also reduce flow volumes. If both plants are still operating by 2050, the level of outages would have doubled at Chooz and increased tenfold for Golfech. In the worst years, about 14% of Chooz’s generation would need to be curtailed.
When faced with high water temperatures and low flows, nuclear operators have limited options.
A closed-cycle cooling system, which relies less on the external environment, is one option. However, the Energy Economics study found that retrofitting such systems would cost about $500 million per nuclear power plant.
Another option would be to relax environmental limits on river temperatures, allowing reactors to keep operating for longer during heat waves. Such restrictions have been waived in the past, for example in 2022 when the French nuclear regulator ASN temporarily allowed five nuclear plants to discharge hotter water into rivers as the nation struggled with an energy crisis.
EDF has been studying other methods to reduce water consumption at nuclear power plants, such as capturing the cooling vapor given off by the facilities.
Germany’s Merz to Israel’s Netanyahu: ‘No more genocide weapons for you.’
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 12 Aug 25
Germany, conductor of the worst genocide in the 20th century, is pushing back against Israel, conductor of the worst genocide this century.
German Chancellor Merz halted all offensive weapons sales to Israel in a vailed understatement, “The even harsher military action by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, approved by the Israeli Cabinet last night, makes it increasingly difficult for the German government to see how these goals will be achieved. Under these circumstances, the German government will not authorize any exports of military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip until further notice.”
Given that Israel, with near total US complicity, is determined to eliminate all 2,300,000 Palestinians from Gaza’s 139 square miles to expand Greater Israel, its unlikely German weapons exports will ever resume.
Germany’s principled action is not insignificant in the effort to cripple Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people. That’s because Germany accounts for 30% of Israel’s grisly genocide arsenal. Sadly, the US accounts for 69% of the remaining 70%. The Trump administration is so ecstatic about Israel clearing out the remaining 2 million or so Palestinians not yet murdered, that it may simply increase its grotesque weaponizing of the genocide to make up the slack.
Americans should contemplate that would equate with America supplying Nazi Germany with the Zyklon B gas to eliminate European Jewry and other Nazi undesirables in WWII.
Trump can fuel Israel’s genocide because not a single member of the Trump administration dare call US policy genocide. Nor does a single member mainstream media. Congress is a teensy better with just 10 of 535 congresspersons having the moral clarity to charge Israel with the G word.
Until Trump channels Germany’s Merz and tells Netanyahu, ‘No more genocide weapons for you’, the genocide will continue till all 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza are dead and gone.
Swarm of jellyfish shuts nuclear power plant in France.
‘Massive and unpredictable’ swarm entered filter drums that pull in water, Gravelines operator EDF says.
Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent, 11 Aug 25
‘Massive and unpredictable’ swarm entered filter drums that pull in water, Gravelines
operator EDF says.
A swarm of jellyfish has forced the shutdown of one of
the largest nuclear power plants in France after entering the water intake
systems used to cool the coastal reactors. Three reactors at the Gravelines
nuclear power plant in northern France shut down automatically late on
Sunday, according to the French nuclear company EDF, after the filter drums
of the pumping stations became packed with a “massive and
unpredictable” swarm of the marine creatures.
The entire nuclear plant,
capable of powering about 5m homes, was brought offline when a fourth
reactor shut down shortly after the free-swimming invertebrates jammed the
power plant, which had already lost its two other reactors for planned
summer maintenance work. Jellyfish have a long history of derailing the
normal operations of coastal power plants, which tap the ocean for the vast
amounts of cool water needed to keep temperatures in check.
The repeated
problems caused by unexpected jellyfish numbers prompted scientists at the
University of Bristol to develop an “early warning tool” to predict the
sudden, en masse appearance of jellyfish swarms that might disrupt coastal
power plants. The Torness nuclear plant in Scotland, which is also owned by
EDF, was forced to shut for a week in 2021 after jellyfish clogged the
seaweed filters on its water intake pipes, a decade after jellyfish shut
the plant for a week in 2011.
Jellyfish swarms have also closed nuclear and
coal power plants in Sweden, the US, Japan, and even caused a major
blackout in the Phillipines in 1999 that some mistakenly feared was linked
to the Y2K bug or a government coup.
Guardian 11th Aug 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/11/swarm-of-jellyfish-shuts-nuclear-power-plant-in-france
Zelensky Rejects Idea of Ceding Territory to Russia as Trump and Putin Prepare for Alaska Summit.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Putin has proposed halting the war in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing from Donetsk
by Dave DeCamp | August 10, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/10/zelensky-rejects-idea-of-ceding-territory-to-russia-as-trump-and-putin-prepare-for-alaska-summit/
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the idea of ceding territory to Russia to end the war in Ukraine, as President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are preparing for a summit that will be held this Friday, August 15, in the US state of Alaska.
“Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier,” Zelensky said in a video address on Saturday. “We will not reward Russia for what it has perpetrated.
Zelensky’s comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported that Putin told US envoy Steve Witkoff that he would agree to a full ceasefire if Ukraine withdrew its forces from Donetsk, one of the two oblasts in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Russia controls most of Donetsk and virtually all of Luhansk, the other half of the Donbas region.
Based on another Journal report, Russia is seeking to freeze the lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — a potential climbdown from Moscow’s earlier demand for a full Ukrainian withdrawal from both oblasts.
A European counter-proposal that was presented to US officials on Saturday called for any territorial exchanges to happen in a reciprocal manner, meaning Russia would have to withdraw from some land if Ukraine ceded the territory it still controls in Donetsk. Some European officials said Moscow would have to cede control of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
The European proposal also calls for a ceasefire to be implemented immediately before any other steps are taken and says that any territorial concession from Ukraine must include concrete security guarantees, including potential NATO membership, which is a non-starter for Russia.
Much of how the peace process will go depends on how much pressure the US is willing to put on Ukraine to make a deal, since Zelensky’s war effort is reliant on US military support. The idea of a peace deal is popular in Ukraine as a recent poll from Gallup found that 69% of Ukrainians want a negotiated end to the conflict as soon as possible, while only 24% want to keep fighting until “victory.”
Cowardly Israeli Murder of 5 Journalists, including Anas al-Sharif, Smearing them as Hamas
Note that firing a rocket at a tent known to be inhabited by unarmed civilian journalists is an act of cowardice and is the sort of thing for which German and Japanese officers were tried at Nuremberg.
Informed Comment, Juan Cole, 08/11/2025, https://www.juancole.com/2025/08/cowardly-journalists-including.html
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli state by now has a long and sanguinary history of murdering writers and journalists in cold blood. In 1972, Israeli commandos murdered novelist, painter and short story writer Ghassan Kanafani in Beirut with a car bomb — the weapon of choice for terrorists ever since — killing his niece Lamis as well. Kanafani’s crime was to be an effective voice of the 1948 Palestinian Nakba or catastrophic expulsion from their homeland by the militant Zionist settler-colonialists and then by the newly formed Israeli army. Anyone who hasn’t read his Men in the Sun has a hole in their knowledge of the issue.
On May 11, 2022, an Israeli sniper was ordered to murder American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The powerful Israeli propaganda machine (which is not different than that of Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, and the effectiveness of which is plummeting) initially asserted that Palestinians had killed her. Then it “might” have been an Israeli sniper. Then it was an Israeli sniper but it was an unfortunate accident. If that was the case, why did Israeli authorities disrupt even her funeral (she was a Greek Catholic)? Her crime was to report on the Israeli slow colonization of the Palestinian West Bank for 17 years for Al Jazeera. As a careful journalist, she became a trusted narrator of what was being done to the occupied Palestinians. She was eliminated, rubbed out, whacked, by the Israeli army, deliberately and calculatedly, which lied about the hit job.
Now on Sunday comes the news that the Israeli army assassinated five journalists, one of them lead Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, 28, who had become known as the “voice of Gaza,” watched by millions throughout the world. The Israeli military fired a rocket at the tent he and four other journalists were sheltering in near the al-Shifa’ Hospital in Gaza City.
They join 178 journalists killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. Most of these killings appear to have been deliberate.
Russia appears to have killed 18 journalists in the field since February 2022. It has killed other journalists, but they were fighting in the Ukrainian military as soldiers and so weren’t killed qua journalists. The Ukraine War is pretty vicious and Putin’s minions are ruthless. But they’ve only rubbed out 18 practicing journalists, versus 178 for Israel. This is not to mention that Ukraine has a population of 37 million, while Gaza’s at least used to be 2.2 million. So killing 178 journalists in Gaza would be like killing nearly 3,000 journalists in Ukraine.
Note that firing a rocket at a tent known to be inhabited by unarmed civilian journalists is an act of cowardice and is the sort of thing for which German and Japanese officers were tried at Nuremberg.
The Israeli propaganda charges against al-Sharif, that he was an active-duty Hamas commando in charge of firing rockets at Israel, would be laughable if they weren’t so sinister in a Kim Jong Un sort of way. We saw al-Sharif all day every day huddling in Gaza, undernourished, staring into the camera and reporting. Is he Superman, to sneak off and fire a rocket between screen appearances and intensive news gathering?
Al-Sharif had prerecorded a statement for this eventuality, which was released on Sunday: By Anas Al-Sharif / X August 11, 2025, https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/11/anas-al-sharifs-final-message/
‘Disarm now’: Anti-nuke advocate’s message to world leaders at Pine Gap protest
Following the breakdown of a nuclear treaty, an antinuclear advocate wants world leaders to hear a message she’s made from the doors of a top secret Territory spy base.
12 Aug 25,https://www.ntnews.com.au/journalists/gera-kazakov
An antinuclear ambassador for a Nobel prize winning group has delivered a message to world leaders at the edge of a Red Centre spy base, days after Russia pulled out of an arms treaty following an American missile test in the Top End.
ICAN ambassador Karina Lester was one of a dozen demonstrators who gathered at the edge of the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility restricted area on Sunday, where she told world leaders to “disarm now” when speaking with this masthead.
“Get rid of your weapons. Lets fund and focus on world peace, not arm up and test missiles,” she said.
Ms Lester’s visit to the border of the Pine Gap restricted zone on Hatt Rd comes a day after she gave a speech at the sixth Yami Lester memorial event in Alice Springs – an event named after her father.
Mr Lester, a Yankunytjatjara elder who died in 2017, was blinded by the British nuclear tests in northern South Australia in the 1950s.
He was blinded as a child, and spent his life advocating against nuclear weapons – a mantle his daughter has taken up with ICAN, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for their antinuclear advocacy.
The group got to the edge of the Pine Gap restricted at about 4.30pm Sunday, where they were again met with a police blockade at where the restricted zone begins.
Two unmarked Toyota LandCruisers followed the convoy to their meeting place, and a police drone was also observed overhead.
The group heard from speakers who opposed the US-run base, with members of the crowd holding signs reading “Yankee go home” while others held Palestinian flags.
At the conclusion of the demonstration, the group gathered for a photo and chanted “land back, close Pine Gap” while various media outlets filmed and photographed them.
Federal NSW Greens senator David Shoebridge was also billed to be at the Pine Gap demonstration on Sunday, but pulled out due to covid, this masthead understands.
The Greens defence and foreign affairs spokesman said the political party has opposed the US-run base “for decades” but did not comment on why he was unable to come on Sunday when asked by this masthead.
Tehran faults UN nuclear watchdog over response to Israeli, US attacks
12 Aug 25, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202508110446
Iran on Monday criticized the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for what it called a failure to act over Israeli and US attacks in June after talks in Tehran with the UN nuclear watchdog’s deputy director general earlier in the day.
“The Islamic Republic expressed its objection to the failure of the agency to fulfill its responsibilities regarding the Israeli and US attack and raised its demands for correcting the agency’s improper processes,” deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi said.
Gharibabadi’s remarks came following a meeting with IAEA deputy director general Massimo Aparo, who was in Tehran for a brief trip on Monday. The visit marked the highest-level meeting between the IAEA and Iran since the attacks on Iranian nuclear sites badly frayed ties.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi had stressed earlier that the visit would not involve nuclear inspections but rather dialogue with the agency.
In June, Iran’s parliament approved a bill to suspend the country’s cooperation with the IAEA, a day after a ceasefire with Israel.
The bill, passed with 221 votes in favor, none against, and one abstention out of 223 members present, and bars the UN nuclear watchdog’s inspectors from accessing Iran’s nuclear facilities.
At the time, Iran also accused IAEA chief Rafael Grossi of bias and failing to condemn the attacks.
On July 4, Grossi said that the agency’s team of inspectors had departed Iran to return to its headquarters in Vienna after the new law barred cooperation with the IAEA.
Israel launched a surprise military campaign on June 13 targeting military and nuclear sites, killing hundreds of military personnel, nuclear scientists and civilians.
Iran responded with missile strikes that killed 31 civilians and one off-duty soldier, according to official figures published by the Israeli government.
The Islamic Republic says 1,062 people were also killed by Israel during the 12-day conflict, including 786 military personnel and 276 civilians.
On June 22, the US carried out airstrikes on Iran’s key nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
The full extent of the damage remains unclear but President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that the strikes “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program.
TASC’s new legal challenge against Sizewell C’s secret flood defences
by Together Against Sizewell C (TASC)
TASC’s new Judicial Review claim calling for Sizewell C’s Development
Consent Order (DCO) to be revoked or varied has been granted a permission
hearing in the High Court.
At a date to be confirmed, a judge will hear why
TASC consider it is unlawful to delay, for decades, assessment and public
scrutiny of two huge additional flood barriers kept secret by EDF since
2015. If the court grants permission, then there would be a full JR hearing
in due course.
TASC writes: “Sizewell C’s attempt to avoid scrutiny of
these additional sea defences now means the project is proceeding without
its full environmental impact having been assessed, this being in
contravention of the UK Habitat Regulations. Sizewell C clearly believe
they can do as they see fit with our Heritage Coast, National Landscape and
designated wildlife sites irrespective of the damage they will cause –
this government, the largest shareholder in Sizewell C, must be challenged
on this.” If you would like to help with TASC’s fundraising, visit their
Crowd Justice page –
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/sizewell-c-legal-challenge/
TASC 11th Aug 2025.
https://tasizewellc.org.uk/#
UK Labour eye ‘utterly reckless’ bonfire of nuclear energy regulations.
SAFETY concerns have been raised by the UK Government’s “utterly
reckless” approach to nuclear energy – as a new report recommends
ministers tear up “needless” regulations.
A taskforce commissioned by
the UK Government to look into nuclear regulations has recommended a
“radical reset” to speed up projects. Fears have been sparked after the
taskforce criticised the “unnecessarily slow, inefficient and costly”
system which governs new nuclear projects.
Its final report is expected to
focus on tackling what the UK Government described as a “culture of risk
aversion” in nuclear energy regulation. Earlier this year, the UK
Government announced it was scrapping a raft of nuclear regulations,
including changing the rules so that new projects could be built across the
entirety of England and Wales. New nuclear projects are de facto banned in
Scotland.
The National 11th Aug 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25381085.labour-eye-utterly-reckless-bonfire-nuclear-energy-regulations/
Slaying and Censoring the Journalists: The Murder of Anas al-Sharif
12 August 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, Australian Independent Media
“Assassination,” wrote George Bernard Shaw in The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, “is the extreme form of censorship.” Such extremism visited Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues in Gaza City late on August 10. Resting in a tent located outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, he was killed alongside Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, and freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khaldi.
Palestinian journalist Wadi Abu al-Saud recalls the drone attack taking place at 11.22pm. Having entered the tent opposite, he had raised his phone to make a call when an explosion occurred. “A piece of shrapnel hit my phone. I looked back and saw people burning in flames. I tried to extinguish them. Anas and the others had died instantly from the airstrike.” In two subsequent videos, al-Saud vows to “return to my life as a citizen. The truth has died and the coverage has ended.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The murder of al-Sharif and his colleagues by Israeli forces constituted the effective wiping out of Al Jazeera’s team, one of the few able to offer consistent, unsmothered coverage about the IDF’s remorseless campaign in Gaza. Since the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, Israel has prohibited foreign reporters from entering Gaza except under strict invigilation by the Israeli military. Those accompanied by the IDF have been at the mercy of Israeli selectiveness as to where to go and barred from speaking to Palestinians. ………………………………………………. https://theaimn.net/slaying-and-censoring-the-journalists-the-murder-of-anas-al-sharif/
Kaliningrad Gambit: NATO’s Last Desperate Bluff /Spark for World War III?
Jeffrey Silverman, New Eastern Outlook, August 08, 2025
With Ukraine’s defences collapsing and Russia gaining the upper hand, NATO’s provocative focus on Kaliningrad risks triggering a nuclear escalation that could end any remaining prospects for diplomacy.
As many foresaw, the situation for Ukraine’s Western-backed proxy regime is unraveling fast. Russian forces are pushing forward with increasing momentum — Chasov Yar has reportedly fallen, and Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka facing operational encirclement. The Eastern Front may soon collapse entirely.
Kiev appears outgunned and undermanned, the result of Russia’s grinding attritional strategy — high firepower, low casualties — not the reckless assault tactics portrayed in Western media.
In response, Washington is shifting gears — talking nuclear subs and floating threats against Kaliningrad, Russia’s fortified Baltic enclave, a move that may only harden Moscow’s resolve — and shift the conflict into a far more dangerous phase.
Russian military production has far outstripped that of the entire combined West by a factor of roughly four to one. Getting beyond lame Western rhetoric, the Russian Federation is producing weapons that actually work, unlike their NATO rivals, at a price far less than the West is capable of matching. Needless to say, the West claims plans are in progress to “close the gap in 2025” but they have been saying that since 2022, with no result in sight.
Sayings with punch!
They say tactics win battles, but logistics wins wars. The Russians took that to heart — favoring firepower and endurance over flashy maneuvers. The West, still chasing its blitzkrieg fantasies, missed the memo.
With Ukraine’s proxy army buckling, NATO faces a sobering question: what now?
Sanctions fizzled. The so-called “global consensus” crumbled as China, India, and Brazil shrugged off Washington’s threats and kept buying Russian energy. Trump’s bluster over secondary sanctions rings hollow — especially after Beijing humbled him in the last rare earth standoff.
Meanwhile, the West’s wunderwaffen parade — HIMARS, Javelins, Patriots, Leopards, F-16s — may have dazzled in brochures, but has done little to shift the battlefield calculus. Ukraine bleeds, Russia raises battle flags over liberated towns and cities, and NATO grows increasingly desperate.
And now, with few cards left to play, NATO’s gaze turns ominously to Kaliningrad — the heavily armed Russian exclave boxed in by Poland and the Baltics. A target? A bargaining chip? Or the next red line in a war spiraling out of control?
NATO Doctrine
General Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, unveiled the new NATO doctrinefor Eastern Flank Defence at the inaugural LandEuro conference on Wednesday 30th July, by talking about NATO plans to attack Kaliningrad in the event of open conflict with Russia.
Speaking specifically about Kaliningrad, Donahue said modern allied capabilities could “take that down from the ground” faster than ever before:
“We’ve already planned that and we’ve already developed it. The mass and momentum problem that Russia poses to us…we’ve developed the capability to make sure that we can stop that mass and momentum problem.”
Sounds a bit too optimistic to me!
Apparently, NATO planners have learned little from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, even less from the debacle in Afghanistan and Iraq, where offensives into built up areas require long preparation in terms of artillery and missile strikes. Modern satellite and drone observation makes it practically impossible to build up sufficient forces unobserved for “coup-de-main” surprise attacks of the type the western military still dream of, and the sheer level of destruction that modern weapons systems can unleash, such as the TOS-1, and FAB-3000 glide bombs, various cruise and Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, and conventionally armed Oreshnik IRBMs can unleash makes concentration of troops an extremely risky business.
Quite how NATO intends to square this circle is anyone’s guess, as the statements by Donahue are, to put it mildly, light on details………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Method in Madness
What Western planners often ignore — or conveniently forget — is that Ukraine’s internal policies toward its Russian-speaking population were a major trigger for the conflict. Now, with the battlefield turning in Russia’s favor, NATO appears to be scrambling for leverage……………………………………………………….
Using Kaliningrad to poke the bear is just the spark that could set into motion the end of times, whether it is a military incursion, blockade, or a full-fledged attack, and this would be the end of diplomacy and humanity as we knew it.
The US and its NATO partners should never underestimate Russian resolve, as the portrayal of Russia as a defeated, overextended, or crumbling power is a story of another time and reality. Times have changed, and the world has changed, with new realities between East and West. https://journal-neo.su/2025/08/08/kaliningrad-gambit-natos-last-desperate-bluff-spark-for-world-war-iii/
1 This Month.
5 January -Webinar-What is Trump’s Golden Dome?
Let’s keep radioactive waste away from our river!
Nuclear Power? -Never again
(Switzerland –https://www.greenpeace.ch/de/handeln/atomkraft-nie-wieder/+)
PETITION – Close Down the Monticello Nuclear Reactor on the Mississippi River!
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
-
Archives
- December 2025 (223)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (377)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
- February 2025 (234)
- January 2025 (250)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 