2026 January 22 « nuclear-news

Summary comments on the Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) Project for Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel.

The nuclear waste will be radioactive for, say, a period of time that is close to eternity, whereas the project covers a period of 160 years. The solution is therefore very far from permanent.

We are swimming here in the middle of a pro-nuclear religion.

by Miguel Deschênes, 20 Jan 26

a translation of comments submitted in French to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) by Miguel Deschêne on this subject.

Seven major objections stand out:

1- Developers are not trustworthy

On page v of the document, it states that “Canada’s nuclear power plants have been providing clean energy for decades,… ». Then, on page vii, it is explained that the project itself “would contain and isolate approximately 5.9 million spent fuel assemblies,” representing approximately 112,750 tonnes of irradiated and highly radioactive heavy metals. This waste contains a wide variety of radioactive substances that are dangerous to living beings. One of the most famous isotopes found in these spent fuel bundles is plutonium-239. Need we remind you that Canadian plutonium was used in the bomb that destroyed the city of Nagasaki in 1945? To say on page v of the document that nuclear energy is clean and to specify on page vii that it will generate 112,750 tonnes of highly radioactive (and potentially destructive) heavy metals in Canada is staggering incoherent.

On page iv of the document, there is a list of twelve specialists and managers who prepared, reviewed, approved and accepted this document, which includes this glaring logical error. This leads to the conclusion that the developers seem willing to present all possible arguments, however incongruous, to defend this project, while concealing the negative aspects that could overshadow it. They therefore have neither the capacity for reflection nor the objectivity required to manage this project, when it would be essential to protect the safety of the public and the environment in complete transparency.

2- The objective(s) are unattainable

The document presents the objective of the project in two places, but they are two different objectives. These objectives look strangely like advertising slogans or the creeds of a pro-nuclear cult. Neither is attainable in practice, but they make it easy to project yourself into a world of unicorns:

a- On page viii, it is stated that: “The objective of the Project is to ensure the safe long-term management of used nuclear fuel so that it does not pose a risk to human health or the environment.”

We are talking about guaranteeing, for 160 years. A great Quebec poet would say “it’s better to laugh than to cry.” A car, which is one of the most advanced technological objects on the planet, is guaranteed for 3 or 5 years. How can we believe that we can guarantee a new landfill technology for a period of 160 years? It’s simply delusional.

In addition, even a simple plastic bottle carries risks to human health or the environment. And they want us to believe that this project will make it possible to store 112,750 tonnes of radioactive nuclear waste so that it does not pose any risk to human health or the environment? What sensible person can believe such a statement?

b- On page 20, it states that: “The objective of the Project is to provide a permanent, safe and environmentally responsible solution for the management of all of Canada’s used nuclear fuel.”

The nuclear waste will be radioactive for, say, a period of time that is close to eternity, whereas the project covers a period of 160 years; The solution is therefore very far from permanent. The solution is also presented as safe and environmentally friendly: based on what? The solution is safe as long as it is sold by convinced developers, but everyone knows that it involves enormous risks. And environmentally friendly? How can we say that burying 112,750 tonnes of radioactive nuclear waste is an environmentally friendly solution? We are swimming here in the middle of a pro-nuclear religion.

Obviously, neither of these two objectives is achievable in practice.

What is the real objective of the project? Indirectly extract as much money as possible from the public treasury and taxpayers? Putting hundreds of highly paid employees to work unnecessarily for decades? Shovel the problem of nuclear waste to our descendants?

The project is therefore, even before it has begun, doomed to failure, since it is impossible for it to achieve its totally utopian objectives. To believe in the success of this project, it is absolutely necessary to be overwhelmed by the pro-nuclear faith.

3- The budget is not presented

On page 52, it states that “Federal authorities are not providing any financial support to the Project.”

On page 65, it states that: “In addition, although the NWMO is a regulated entity by the CNSC, it is not a federal agency or authority. Rather, it is a question of a not-for-profit organization mandated by the federal government under the NFCA to managing Canada’s nuclear waste. The NWMO is fully funded by industry nuclear power. »

However, the Government of Canada and some provincial governments subsidize and financially encourage the nuclear industry.

So, in a nutshell, taxpayers are giving money to governments, which in turn subsidizes the nuclear industry, and which in turn funds the NWMO. The present project is therefore indirectly financed by taxpayers and by the federal authorities, which is not revealed by the sentence on page 52. Could we conclude that it is not necessary to call on an accountant if you have a good conjurer?

A detailed budget is one of the essential elements of project planning and monitoring. Where is the budget? How is it cut? And how much will it indirectly cost taxpayers? It would be reasonable to describe the sums required as potentially pharaonic and to require a project plan that includes a complete financial plan.

The absence of a budget in the presentation of a project is an unacceptable shortcoming.

4- The project’s time scale is doubly absurd

On page v, it states that “The Project is expected to span approximately 160 years, including site preparation, construction, operation (approximately 50 years), decommissioning and closure, and post-closure monitoring.”

This duration is both too short and too long:

a- Too short: the half-life of plutonium-239 is about 24,130 years. It is calculated that after a duration of approximately seven times the half-life of an isotope, less than 1% (more precisely, 1/128) of the initial radioactive atoms remain. In the case of plutonium-239, it would therefore be necessary to wait about 168,000 years to reach this target. Obviously, this calculation would have to be done for all the isotopes found in the original waste and for all the isotopes created during subsequent decays in order to properly assess the hazardousness of the waste as a function of time, which is very complex. But we can see right away that the 160-year period is far too short to ensure the safety of the public and the environment.

b- too long: if we go back 160 years in time, we find ourselves in 1866, when the Canadian federation did not even exist. Since that time, humanity has experienced various epidemics (plague, cholera, Spanish flu, covid, etc.), two world wars and a multitude of other wars, major geopolitical reorganizations and major economic crises. It is perfectly utopian to think that a human project that has no other objective than to bury waste will be able to be carried out without hindrance for 160 years. What happens if there is a major epidemic, a world war, a coup d’état by an outsized geographic neighbour, a split in Canada, an unforeseen IT upheaval? How can we seriously believe that all the governments and political parties that will succeed each other will have at heart, for 160 years (if each party remains in power for 4 years, we are talking about 40 different governments), to adequately supervise this project?

In general, the longer a project lasts, the greater the likelihood of not achieving objectives, exceeding costs and exceeding the originally planned schedule. It is therefore quite reasonable and prudent to predict that the 160-year deep geological repository project is likely to be a complete failure: it will not achieve its objectives, while exceeding the planned deadlines and costs.

5- The responsibility for the project in the medium and long term cannot be assumed

What will be the responsibility for the project in the medium and long term, i.e. in 10, 20, 50 or 100 years? What if there is a design problem, a technical problem, a supplier problem, a funding problem, a nuclear incident or whatever? Who will be responsible when most of us are dead? To whom can our descendants turn to ask for accountability and rectification if necessary? No one can imagine or predict it, and it is likely that any assumption today about it will prove wrong tomorrow.

6- The risks associated with transportation are far too high

No means of transportation is perfectly safe. Regularly, planes crash, trains derail (the Lac-Mégantic rail accident in 2013 is a sad example) and trucks are involved in pile-ups. Sometimes, a space shuttle explodes in mid-flight.

On page vii, it states that “The Project does not include: the transportation of used fuel from the reactor sites to the Project beyond the primary and secondary access roads to the Project site, as the Project site is regulated separately under CNSC certification and uses existing transportation infrastructure.”

This seems to be, once again, a tactic to make the authorities and citizens swallow the pill of the project. The risks associated with a possible incident during the transportation of 112,750 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste on Canada’s roads, over a period of about fifty years (according to the projected schedule on page 31), are obviously far too high. It is therefore easy to understand why the developer prefers not to include this aspect in his project.

The excessive risk associated with transporting radioactive waste is an argument used by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization itself on its information page about Canada’s used nuclear fuel (https://www.nwmo.ca/fr/Canadas-used-nuclear-fuel): “Related questions: Couldn’t spent nuclear fuel be sent into space? No. In a three-year dialogue with experts and the public on possible long-term management options, the disposal of used nuclear fuel into space was one of the options of limited interest that we eliminated. Space-based evacuation has been ruled out as a solution because it is an unproven concept, not implemented anywhere in the world and not part of any national research and development plan. Concerns about the risk of accidents and the risks to human health and the environment have been amplified in particular by the accidents of the American space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. »

Why should the risk of an accident not be a consistent factor in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s reasoning? There have certainly been more train derailments and truck accidents than space shuttle incidents in human history. By what form of logic can we conclude that it is too risky to send used nuclear fuel into space, but that it is safe to transport it by train or truck? The only plausible explanation may be that we must have pro-nuclear faith.

7- Governments do not have a strategy to exit the nuclear industry

On page vii of the document, it states that: “The Project would contain and isolate approximately 5.9 million used fuel assemblies, which is the total anticipated inventory of used nuclear fuel that is expected to be produced in Canada by the current fleet of reactors until the end of their lifetime, as outlined in the NWMO’s 2024 Nuclear Fuel Waste Projections Report (NWMO, 2024). This projection is based on published plans for the refurbishment and life extension of the Darlington and Bruce reactors, as well as the continued operation of the Pickering A (until the end of 2024) and Pickering B (until the end of 2026) reactors, and the assumptions used by the NWMO for planning purposes. »

However, in October 2025, Ottawa and Ontario announced the construction of 4 new nuclear reactors (https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2201625/darlington-nucleaire-reacteur-opg-ontario). What about the waste that will be generated by these plants, which is not part of the inventory considered by the project? And what about those generated by other hypothetical power plants to come? Or those that the government could import from other countries?

Successive governments are constantly creating, recreating and amplifying the problem of nuclear waste, with no intention of ending this mess. The only decision that would limit this ecological disaster would be to abandon the nuclear industry, which would include stopping uranium mining, no longer building new nuclear power plants and never importing nuclear waste from other countries. Unfortunately, no decision-maker seems to have the foresight to move in this direction.

Even before the project begins, we already understand that the planned landfill will not be able to store all of Canada’s nuclear waste. Without a clear direction on the denuclearization of the country, the problem of radioactive waste is far from being solved.

In any case, a deep geological repository will never be a good solution for nuclear waste; This far too risky avenue is really only used to shovel the problems created by today’s decision-makers until a time when they will all be dead and will not have to assume the disastrous consequences.

Conclusion :

In my view, these arguments are more than enough to justify never authorizing the Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) Project for Canada’s used nuclear fuel. It seems that the “original project description” seeks to conceal the real issues related to nuclear waste management, in order to obtain the required authorizations, spend obscure (but potentially staggering) amounts of money, and perpetuate nuclear madness, with no regard for public safety and the environment. Unfortunately, this is a typical project of the nuclear industry, which relies on the blind complacency of the authorities and on daydreams rather than on transparency and objective arguments.

January 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Europe Economic Panic

Lorenzo Maria Pacini, January 18, 2026, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/01/18/europe-economic-panic/

Europeans are tired. They want peace, stability, and the quiet dignity of prosperity.

When a prime minister advises his staff to rest because the coming year will be much more difficult, it is neither black humor nor fatigue. It is a moment of sincerity, the kind that only emerges when internal projections no longer support the public narrative.

Giorgia Meloni was not addressing the electorate. She was addressing the machinery of the state itself, the administrative core charged with implementing decisions whose effects can no longer be hidden. Her observation was not about a normal increase in workload. She was talking about constraints, about limits being reached, about a Europe that has moved from crisis response to a phase of controlled contraction, fully aware that 2026 is the year when deferred costs will eventually converge.

What has leaked out is what European ruling circles have already understood: the Western strategy in Ukraine has run up against material limits. Not with Russian messages, not with disinformation, not with populist dissent, but with steel, ammunition, energy, manpower, and time. Once these realities assert themselves, political legitimacy begins to erode.

The EU cannot sustain this war economically. Europe can strike poses of readiness. It cannot manufacture war.

After years of high-intensity conflict, both the US and Europe are rediscovering a long-forgotten truth: wars of this nature cannot be sustained with speeches, sanctions, or the abandonment of diplomacy. They require bullets, missiles, trained personnel, maintenance cycles, and industrial production that consistently exceeds battlefield losses. None of this exists, not in sufficient quantities, and it is not feasible in the timeframe preached in Brussels.

Russia is producing artillery ammunition in quantities that Western officials now openly admit exceed NATO’s total production. Its industrial base has shifted to near-continuous wartime production, with centralized procurement, streamlined logistics, and state-led manufacturing, without even total mobilization. Estimates place Russian production at several million artillery shells per year, already delivered, not just projected.

Europe, meanwhile, spent 2025 congratulating itself on targets it is structurally incapable of achieving. The EU’s stated commitment of two million shells per year depends on facilities, contracts, and labor that will not be available by the decisive period of the war, if ever. Even if achieved, the figure would still be less than Russian production. The US, despite emergency expansion, expects about one million shells per year once full ramp-up is complete, and only if that happens. Even on paper, combined Western production struggles to match what Russia is already producing in practice. The imbalance is clear.

This is not just a deficit, but a misalignment of timing. Russia is producing now. Europe is planning for the future. And time is the only factor immune to sanctions.

Washington, in fact, cannot indefinitely compensate for Europe’s eroded capacity because it faces its own industrial difficulties. Patriot interceptor production remains in the order of a few hundred per year, while demand simultaneously concerns Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and the replenishment of US stocks: an imbalance that, as Pentagon officials admit, cannot be resolved quickly. Shipbuilding tells a similar story: submarines and surface ships are years behind schedule due to labor shortages, aging infrastructure, and skyrocketing costs, pushing significant expansion toward 2030. The assumption that America can indefinitely support Europe is no longer in line with reality. This is a systemic Western problem.

Unfounded war rhetoric

European leaders talk about a “state of war” as if it were a rhetorical position, but in reality, it is an industrial condition that Europe does not meet.

New artillery lines take years to reach stable production. Air defense interceptors are produced in long, batch-based cycles, not in sudden spikes. Even basic components such as explosives remain a critical issue, with plants that closed decades ago only now reopening and some not expected to reach full capacity until the late 2020s. This timeline is in itself an admission.

Europe’s weakness is not intellectual, but institutional: huge sums have been authorized, but procurement inertia, fragmented contracts, and a depleted supplier base have meant that deliveries are years behind schedule. France, often described as Europe’s most capable arms manufacturer, is capable of building advanced systems, but only in limited quantities, counted in dozens, while a war of attrition requires thousands. EU ammunition initiatives have expanded capacity on paper, while the front has exhausted ammunition in a matter of weeks.

These are not ideological shortcomings, but administrative and industrial failures, which are exacerbated in stressful situations. It is yet another example of the failure of European Community policy, so much so that the structural contrast is stark. Western industry has been optimized for shareholder returns and peacetime efficiency, while Russian industry has been reoriented to withstand pressure. NATO announces aid packages. Russia counts deliveries. You can already guess what the outcome of this situation will be, right?

This industrial reality explains why the debate on asset freezing was so important and why it failed. Europe did not pursue the seizure of Russian sovereign assets out of legal ingenuity or moral determination, but because it needed time: time to avoid admitting that the war was unsustainable in Western industrial terms, time to replace production with financial maneuvers.

When the effort to confiscate some €210 billion in Russian assets failed on December 20, blocked by legal risks, market repercussions, and opposition led by Belgium, with Italy, Malta, Slovakia, and Hungary opposing total confiscation, the Brussels technocracy settled for a reduced alternative: a €90 billion loan to Ukraine for 2026-27, with interest payments of around €3 billion per year. This further mortgages Europe’s future. This is not a strategy, but emergency triage. A collapsing political hospital. Pure panic.

Narrative, crisis, disaster

The deeper reality is that Ukraine is no longer primarily a military dilemma, it is a question of solvency. Washington recognizes this, because it cannot absorb the reputational discomfort, but they cannot take on unlimited responsibility forever. A way out is being explored, discreetly, inconsistently, and shrouded in rhetorical cover.

Europe cannot admit the same necessity, because it has ultimately adopted ‘Putin’s version’, i.e. it has framed the war as existential, civilising, moral – but do you remember when European politicians enjoyed calling Putin crazy for talking about a clash of civilisations?

Compromise has become appeasement, negotiation surrender. In doing so, Europe has eliminated its own escape routes. Well done, ladies and gentlemen!

On the narrative front, greetings to all. The aggressive enforcement of the EU’s Digital Services Act has less to do with security than with containment: building an information perimeter around a consensus that cannot survive open scrutiny. Translated: censorship as a solution. The truth of the matter must not be made known, and those who try to do so must be suppressed in an exemplary manner. This also explains why regulatory pressure now extends beyond European borders, generating transatlantic friction over freedom of expression and jurisdiction. Confident systems welcome debate. Fragile ones suppress it. In this case, censorship is not ideology, but a form of insurance.

The information crisis, rest assured, will very soon become… a social crisis ready to detonate into domestic conflict.

And the crisis is also one of resources and energy. We are witnessing the securitization of decline, whereby obligations are postponed while the productive base needed to sustain them continues to shrink. It’s a cat chasing its tail. Here too, you know how it will end, don’t you?

Europe has not only sanctioned Russia. It has sanctioned itself. European industry will continue to pay energy prices well above those of its competitors in the United States or Russia throughout 2026. Take a trip around Europe, read the headlines in local newspapers, look at people’s faces: the fabric of small and medium-sized enterprises, the true beating heart of entire EU countries, is quietly disappearing. And this is logically reflected in large companies too. This is why Europe cannot increase its production of ammunition and why rearmament remains an aspiration rather than a concrete operation.

Energy, we said. Low-cost energy was not a convenience, it was essential. If it is eliminated through self-inflicted damage, the entire structure is emptied. Even the most ambitious plans preached for years, such as the IMEC corridor, are still a mirage. There is a stampede towards Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to try to scrape together a few kilowatts. A ridiculous attempt to save what is now tragically unsalvageable.

China, observing all this, represents the other half of Europe’s strategic nightmare. It controls the world’s deepest manufacturing base without having entered into a position of war. Russia does not need China’s full capacity, only its strategic depth in reserve. Europe has neither.

A frightening 2026

2026 therefore looks set to be a terrible year, I’m sorry to say. The European elites find themselves losing control on three fronts at once. On finance, because the budget will be bitter and the money for the insane support to Kiev will no longer be the same. On narrative, because the question citizens will ask themselves will be ‘what was the point of all this?’. On the cohesion of the Alliance, both NATO and the EU, because Washington’s disengagement will force a review of the balance of power on the European continent to the point of no return and, perhaps, a break between the two sides divided by the ocean.

Panic, again. Not a sudden defeat, but the slow erosion of legitimacy as reality creeps in through gas that costs as much as gold, closed plants, empty stockpiles, obsolete rifles, and a future that is turning away.

This is not just a difficult situation for Europe, but a matter of civilization. A system incapable of producing, supplying, speaking honestly, or retreating without collapsing in credibility has reached its limit. When leaders begin to prepare their institutions for worse years, they are not anticipating inconveniences, but recognizing structural failure.

Empires proclaim victory loudly. Declining systems quietly lower expectations or, in this case, momentarily say the quiet part out loud. But the truth is that nothing is the same as before, and it is obvious.

For most Europeans, the reckoning will not come as an abstract debate about strategy or supply chains, but as a simple realization: this was never a war they consented to. It did not defend their homes, their prosperity, or their future. And so, again, how do you think it will end?

An ideological war has been fought in the name of imperial ambition and financed through declining living standards, industrial decline, and the prospects of their children. In the name of big pro-European capital, of the privileged few with robes, stars, and crowns.

For months, even years, it was said that “there was no alternative” and that this was the only course of action. And now?

Europeans are tired. They want peace, stability, and the quiet dignity of prosperity: affordable energy, a functioning industry, and a future unencumbered by conflicts they NEVER chose and, above all, they do not want the decline of millennia-old civilizations.

And when this awareness has taken hold, when the fear has faded and the spell has been broken, the question Europeans will ask themselves will not be technical or ideological. It will be existential. And all existential questions lead to radical choices, even terrible ones.

May this dramatic fear keep the mad leaders of this Europe awake at night.

January 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

15 years after Fukushima, Japan prepares to restart the world’s biggest nuclear plant.

Tepco is set to defy local public opinion and restart one of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s seven reactors.

for many of the 420,000 people living within a 30km (19-mile) radius of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa who would have to evacuate in the event of a Fukushima-style incident, Tepco’s imminent return to nuclear power generation is fraught with danger.

A return to nuclear power is at the heart of Japan’s energy policy but, in the wake of the 2011 disaster, residents’ fears about tsunamis, earthquakes and evacuation plans remain

Justin McCurry Guardian, in KashiwazakiMon 19 Jan 2026

The activity around the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is reaching its peak: workers remove earth to expand the width of a main road, while lorries arrive at its heavily guarded entrance. A long perimeter fence is lined with countless coils of razor wire, and in a layby, a police patrol car monitors visitors to the beach – one of the few locations with a clear view of the reactors, framed by a snowy Mount Yoneyama.

When all seven of its reactors are working, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa generates 8.2 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power millions of households. Occupying 4.2 sq km of land in Niigata prefecture on the Japan Sea coast, it is the biggest nuclear power plant in the world.

Since 2012, however, the plant has not generated a single watt of electricity, after being shut down, along with dozens of other reactors, in the wake of the March 2011 triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chornobyl.

Located about 220km (136 miles) north-west of Tokyo, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is run by Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the same utility in charge of the Fukushima facility when a powerful tsunami crashed through its defences, triggering a power outage that sent three of its reactors into meltdown and forcing 160,000 people to evacuate.

Weeks before the 15th anniversary of the accident, and the wider tsunami disaster that killed an estimated 20,000 people along Japan’s north-east coast, Tepco is set to defy local public opinion and restart one of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s seven reactors.

On Monday, Tepco said it would delay the restart, originally scheduled for the following day, after an alarm malfunctioned during a test of equipment over the weekend, according to public broadcaster NHK. The reactor is now expected to go back online in the coming days, NHK added.

Restarting reactor No 6, which could boost the electricity supply to the Tokyo area by about 2%, will be a milestone in Japan’s slow return to nuclear energy, a strategy its government says will help the country reach its emissions targets and strengthen its energy security.

But for many of the 420,000 people living within a 30km (19-mile) radius of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa who would have to evacuate in the event of a Fukushima-style incident, Tepco’s imminent return to nuclear power generation is fraught with danger.

They include Ryusuke Yoshida, whose home is less than a mile and a half from the plant in the sleepy village of Kariwa. Asked what worries him most about the restart, the 76-year-old has a simple answer. “Everything,” he says, as waves crash on to the shore, the reactors looming in the background.

“The evacuation plans are obviously ineffective,” adds Yoshida, a potter and member of an association of people living closest to the facility. “When it snows in winter the roads are blocked, and a lot of people who live here are old. What about them, and other people who can’t move freely? This is a human rights issue.”……………………………..

“The core of the nuclear power business is ensuring safety above all else, and the understanding of local residents is a prerequisite,” says Tatsuya Matoba, a Tepco spokesperson.

That is the one hurdle residents say Tepco has failed to overcome after local authorities ignored calls for a prefectural referendum to determine the plant’s future. In the absence of a vote, anti-restart campaigners point to surveys showing clear opposition to putting the reactor back online.

They include a prefectural government poll conducted late last year in which more than 60% of people living within 30km of the plant said they did not believe the conditions for restarting the facility had been met…………

Kazuyuki Takemoto, a member of the Kariwa village council, says seismic activity in this region of north-west Japan means it is impossible to guarantee the plant’s safety.

“But there has been no proper discussion of that,” says Takemoto, 76. “They say that safety improvements have been made since the Fukushima disaster, but I don’t think there is any valid reason to restart the reactor. It’s beyond my comprehension.”

‘The priority should be to protect people’s lives’

Just weeks before the planned restart, the nuclear industry attracted fresh criticism after it emerged that Chubu Electric Power, a utility in central Japan, had fabricated seismic risk data during a regulatory review, conducted before a possible restart, of two reactors at its idle Hamaoka plant.

“When you look at what’s happened with Hamaoka, do you seriously think it’s possible to trust Japan’s nuclear industry?” Takemoto says. “It used to be said that nuclear power was necessary, safe and cheap … We now know that was an illusion.”

Adding to local concerns are the presence of seismic faults in and around the site, which sustained damage during a 6.8-magnitude offshore earthquake in July 2007, including a fire that broke out in a transformer. Three reactors that were in operation at the time shut down automatically.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa restart is a gamble for Japan’s government, which has put an ambitious return to nuclear power generation at the centre of its new energy policy as it struggles to reach its emissions targets and bolster its energy security.

Before the Fukushima disaster, 54 reactors were in operation, supplying about 30% of the country’s power. Now, of 33 operable reactors, just 14 are in service, while attempts to restart others have faced strong local opposition.

Now, 15 years after the Fukushima meltdown, criticism of the country’s “nuclear village” of operators, regulators and politicians has shifted to this snowy coastal town.

Pointing out one of the many security cameras near the plant, Yoshida says the restart has been forced on residents by the nuclear industry and its political allies. “The local authorities have folded in the face of immense pressure from the central government,” he says.

“The priority of any government should be to protect people’s lives, but we feel like we have been deceived. Japan’s nuclear village is alive and well. You only have to look at what’s happening here to know that.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/19/japan-nuclear-plant-restart-kashiwazaki-kariwa-fukushima

January 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, politics | Leave a comment

Britain to extend life of ageing nuclear plants to keep the lights on.

Hartlepool and Heysham 1 licenses prolonged to 2030 due to ‘dangerous gap’ in power supplies.

Jonathan Leake, Energy Editor, 21 January 2026

Two of Britain’s oldest nuclear power plants
could be kept running for an extra two years because of an acute
electricity shortage in the UK. Hartlepool and Heysham 1, owned by EDF,
were due to shut down in 2028, but ministers want to extend the operating
licences to at least 2030 because the UK faces “a dangerous gap” in
power supplies if they shut.

Both have already been operating for 42 years
despite being scheduled to close for safety reasons in 2008. EDF,
France’s state-owned power utility, which operates all five UK nuclear
stations, said it was working to keep the stations operational without
compromising safety. Mark Hartley, from EDF, said: “In November, the UK
Government said that the retirement of these Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactors
(AGRs) risks leaving a dangerous gap in Britain’s low-carbon energy
supply. “It is our ambition to generate from the remaining AGR stations
for as long as it is safe and commercially viable to do so, and we will
keep their lifetimes under review to assess whether further life extensions
can be achieved.”

Sizewell B, the UK’s largest nuclear plant, is
already due to operate until 2035, and EDF hopes to extend this to 2055.
Two other stations, Torness and Heysham 2, were originally scheduled to
close in 2023 and have been cleared to generate until March 2030 after EDF
invested £8.6bn in the fleet.

The fate of Heysham 1 and Hartlepool is less
certain and will depend on the results of safety assessments. AGR reactors
contain radioactive uranium fuel pellets surrounded by massive graphite
blocks that absorb the high-energy neutrons emitted by the fuel, thereby
controlling the nuclear reaction.

However, over time, these blocks tend to
crack due to the intense radiation and heat to which they are exposed. Such
cracks have already forced the closure of several other UK power stations.
EDF’s safety assessment will need to be ratified by the Office for
Nuclear Regulation, which will need to approve the extensions as safe.

Telegraph 21st Jan 2026, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/01/21/britain-extend-life-ageing-nuclear-plants-keep-lights-on/

January 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Welcome to the Peace IPO: Gaza, Rebranded as a Prospectus

21 January 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/welcome-to-the-peace-ipo-gaza-rebranded-as-a-prospectus/

Trump’s so‑called “Board of Peace” looks less like a new deal than Jared Kushner’s “Peace to Prosperity” 2019 plan re-branded. It’s as flash as a rat with a gold tooth in a new suit and a limited‑edition Speedmaster, but woefully vapid. It’s a real‑estate pitch pimped as an opportunity to the canny. Palestinians appear merely as background labour: extras, porters, shoeshine boys and waiters in a production where they’re expected to serve, not share.

While Israel’s Likud‑led far‑right coalition continues its military actions, attacks and land grabs that UN experts and human‑rights organisations describe as genocidal in effect.

The difference is not the logic. The difference is the volume. And a crass vulgarity meter off the scale. But nothing can distract from the monumental inhumanity and asinine stupidity of the whole project.

Not to mention calculated cruelty. In 2019, the sales pitch was polite. It spoke in the soothing language of workshops and investment frameworks; a $50 billion vision to “unlock” Palestinian potential, as if the West Bank and Gaza were a start-up stuck in beta because it hadn’t embraced enough deregulation. Palestinians boycotted it because the plan put money in the driver’s seat and rights in the boot.

In 2026, the pitch is blunt: join the Board, bring capital, buy a seat at the table, said to be a US$1 billion buy-in for “permanent” membership, while the souls whose land is now an upscale reno, get “technocratic committees,” “transition governance,” and the home comforts of Israeli management.

Peace, in other words, has gone subscription-tier.

How we got this Frankenstein

The Frankenstein story begins with another colour-coded Excel spreadsheet. As so many other, modern horrors do.

Kushner’s original “Peace to Prosperity” treated Palestine as an underperforming asset. The cure was foreign capital, investment corridors, industrial parks, tax-free zones, economic carrots without a match-stick of political liberation. The occupation, the siege, the “asymmetry” or inequality of power was left intact, politely ignored, like rust and dried blood, under a quick new paint-job.

Of course, the plan didn’t just sideline Palestinians’ political agency, the elephant in the room. It shut them out. Local and global fat cats would use Palestinians as a labour pool and a “stability problem,” while sovereignty, restitution and justice sat outside, like poor, uninvited relatives at a wedding.

Then came the moment where the whole philosophy slipped its tie and revealed the raw instinct underneath it.

In a February 2024 bull-session at Harvard, Kushner gazed at Gaza and saw—not a besieged enclave packed with families and memory – but “very valuable” waterfront property, and he floated the idea of moving civilians out so Israel could “clean it up.” As you do. That is not a diplomatic remark. It is a hard-nosed developer’s call. It is the real-estate gaze: people only get in the way, land is your opportunity.

Fast-forward to Trump’s “Board of Peace,” and you can see the same gaze. Formulated.

The language is a sales brochure parody. The White House frames the Board as part of a “Comprehensive Plan” and celebrates the creation of a Gaza administrative committee as a “vital step” in a multi-phase roadmap for “peace, stability, reconstruction, and prosperity.” Al Jazeera notes a three-tier structure that puts Trump and pro-Israel officials at the top while Palestinians get to take out the garbage. The landowners are relegated to municipal duties. ABC says invitation mail-outs are thick and fast. It worries that Trump is setting up as an alternative, $uperior, model to UN mechanisms.

Satire is writing itself by the time we get to the seat price. Bloomberg reports Trump wants nations to pay $1 billion for permanent membership, with renewable term options for non-paying participants.

This is not diplomacy. This is a club. It is peace by buy-in. A moral authority with an admission fee?

Why it could be proposed at all

Something this offensive to Gaza’s actual inhabitants only makes sense once Palestine is reclassified, from homeland to high-yield opportunity zone.

That reclassification didn’t happen overnight. It took decades of a broader architecture of policy and language to reduce Palestinian rights to “final status issues”; treat their political claims as a negotiating inconvenience, and normalise de facto control on the ground as an unchangeable reality.

Once you perform that trick; once you turn rights into “issues,” and a people into an “administrative challenge”, then the next step becomes conceivable: the coastline becomes an asset; the survivors become “human resources”; and peace becomes a portfolio strategy.

Trump’s political brand fits perfectly. He fuses branding with foreign policy. He doesn’t ask, “What is just?” He asks, “What sells?” He doesn’t ask, “What do people consent to?” He asks, “Who’s paying?”

CounterPunch repeatedly frames the Trump approach to “peace” as chaotic, self-interested statecraft where the prize is not justice but leverage, contracts, and strategic positioning; the kind of diplomacy that behaves like a market raid.

So the Board of Peace is not an aberration. It is the system, finally saying the quiet part out loud.

Satire interlude: Peace, now with equity options

There is, apparently, a new path to peace in Gaza: an Initial Public Offering.

The prospectus is glossy. The board is illustrious. Only one thing missing from the term sheet is the consent of the people who actually live there.

Trump, now moonlighting as Chair of Global Serenity LLC, has got up a committee that includes himself, Kushner, and Tony Blair: a trio whose track record is a museum of modern hubris. It’s less a diplomatic team than a support group for men who believe history is a distressed asset they were born to privatise.

The sales pitch is an elegantly simple Levantine Walz:

One. Label Gaza “valuable waterfront property”; a phrase typically intoned just before someone proposes a golf course over a mass grave.

Two. Announce that peace comes with tiers. A “permanent seat”? $1 billion, thank you. Peace, but make it premium.

Three. Invite governments and investors to bid for moral authority while Palestinians are quietly sidelined into the business plan as “local capacity.”

Kushner, once tasked with making peace by people who confused “son-in-law” with “diplomat,” returns as the visionary architect. The same man who dismissed political claims as obstacles and mused that Gazans could be moved out so someone could finally do something tasteful with the shoreline.

Having failed at “Peace to Prosperity,” he has now moved on to “Peace to Portfolio Diversification.”

What it really represents

Strip away the PR turd-polish and the Board of Peace represents three deeper trends:

Neoliberal occupation

Economic-first “solutions” that treat Palestinians as an economic population to be “developed” rather than a political people to be free. This was the Bahrain model: investment theatre without dismantling the structures that make normal economic life impossible.

Financialisation of justice

A $1 billion buy-in doesn’t just raise governance questions; it changes the moral architecture. It says legitimacy can be bought. It says peace is an asset class. It says the right to influence the future of Gaza belongs to whoever can wire the funds.

Erasure by technocracy

National claims, refugees, restitution, the right of return are all swept aside and replaced with “governance development,” “capacity building,” “administrative transition.” The jargon fog in which an occupied people are recoded as an admin problem consultants can solve.

The real genius is euphemism density. Layer upon layer. Occupation becomes “security architecture.” Siege becomes “border management.” External control becomes “oversight.” And the bombed-out landscape becomes “an opportunity corridor.”

What’s likely to happen next

Here the satire ends and the stakes bite. Legitimacy will be radioactive so long as Palestinians remain excluded from real sovereignty while the conditions of coercion persist. A structure unveiled about them, without them, is not peace, it’s administration.

Those positioned to profit will circle early. Reconstruction is always where politics, contracts, and influence meet. A pay-to-play architecture is an engraved invitation to opportunists and aligned states seeking leverage.

Civil society backlash will grow precisely because the moral inversion is so blatant: catastrophe monetised; rights treated as optional add-ons.

And the core problem, the one no amount of branding can fix, remains brutally simple:

If you build “peace” on the denial of self-determination, on the absence of accountability, and on the conversion of a people’s catastrophe into a capital project, you won’t get peace.

You’ll get a prospectus. You’ll get a boardroom. You’ll get a beachfront brochure printed on the ashes.

The Debt That Cannot Be Traded

The “Board of Peace” is a gamble that history can be treated as a distressed asset, and that a people’s identity can be diluted into a dividend. It assumes that if you make the brochure glossy enough, the ghosts of the past and the demands of the present will simply vanish into the “transition committees.”

But there is a flaw in the real-estate gaze: it mistakes silence for consent and rubble for a blank slate.

True peace is not a subscription service, and it certainly isn’t a premium tier accessible only to those with a billion dollars to burn. If we have learned anything from the century that birthed this Frankenstein, it is that human dignity is the one currency that cannot be devalued by an Excel spreadsheet. The “Board” may try to privatise the future, but they cannot buy the air, the memory, or the sheer, stubborn persistence of fifteen million people who refuse to be “extras” in their own story.

The old truth remains: you can build a boardroom on a shoreline, and you can print a prospectus on the ashes, but you cannot govern a people who haven’t been seen, only managed. In the end, the most “valuable property” in Gaza isn’t the waterfront; it is the unyielding agency of those who live there.

That is the debt that eventually comes due, and it is the only one that can’t be settled at a discount and the only one we keep turning away from at incalculable cost to our collective humanity.

This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES

January 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Government funding for Saskatchewan SMR test facility

World Nuclear News 20th Jan 2026

Western Canada’s first Small Modular Reactor Safety, Licensing, and Testing Centre at the University of Regina is to receive nearly CAD6 million (USD4.3 million) in funding from the federal and provincial governments.

The facility – the SMR-SLT – will be located at the Innovation Saskatchewan Research and Technology Park. It will house two test loops that simulate a part of a small modular reactor (SMR), modelling water-cooled systems using electrical heat, allowing researchers to test components under conditions similar to those in operating reactors.

The funding was announced by Buckley Belanger, Canada’s Secretary of State (Rural Development), on behalf of Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience and Minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada Eleanor Olszewski. The federal government is investing CAD1.96 million (USD1.4 million) in the SMR-SLT through Olszewski’s department, PrairiesCan – a federal government department supporting business growth, innovation and community economic development across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Provincial government support for the project is through SaskPower, the principal supplier of electricity in Saskatchewan, and a Crown Corporation – a commercial entity owned by the Government of Saskatchewan. It will be investing CAD4 million in the SMR-LT……………………..

Innovation Saskatchewan is contributing CAD1 million plus an in-kind contribution of the leased space at the Innovation Saskatchewan R+T Park for the first three years of operation. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) will also provide in-kind design support. The centre will be led by University of Regina researchers, with the Global Institute for Energy, Minerals and Society (GIEMS) partnership between the University of Regina, University of Saskatchewan, and Saskatchewan Polytechnic playing a key role to ensure all three institutions have access to the test loops for training and research, SaskPower said.

The government of Saskatchewan signalled its commitment to incorporating nuclear capacity into its provincial electricity system in a long-term policy document released last year. SaskPower has previously selected GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s BWRX-300 SMR for potential deployment in the province in the mid-2030s and has identified two potential sites for SMR deployment, both in the Estevan area in the south-east of the province…………………

Arthur Situm, Canada Research Chair in SMR Safety and Licensing at the University of Regina, said the facility will help train the next generation of nuclear professionals by providing hands-on experience with safety systems and processes that define modern nuclear technology.

“Together, this work positions the University of Regina and Saskatchewan as a leader in safe, responsible, small modular reactor research with a global impact,” he said on YouTube…….
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/government-funding-for-saskatchewan-smr-test-facility

January 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Education | Leave a comment

IAEA chief warns Iran nuclear standoff ‘cannot go on forever’

The UN nuclear watchdog’s chief warned Tuesday that a standoff with Iran over inspections and its near-bomb-grade uranium stockpiles cannot continue indefinitely, raising the prospect that Tehran could be declared in non-compliance with its obligations.

“This cannot go on forever because at some point I will have to say, ‘I don’t have any idea where this material is,’” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said.

“This cannot go on like this for a long time without me having to declare them in non-compliance.”

Grossi said he was exercising diplomatic restraint but stressed that Iran, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, does not have the option to pick and choose which obligations to meet.

Iran said in December last year it will not yield to international pressure to allow renewed inspections of nuclear sites hit by the United States in June.

Grossi also acknowledged parallel diplomatic efforts aimed at easing tensions between Iran and the United States, saying he hoped they would avert renewed military confrontation.

The IAEA has long sought answers from Iran over past nuclear activities and the whereabouts of undeclared nuclear material, issues Grossi has said cannot be resolved without access to relevant sites.

Iran International 21st Jan 2026, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601205064

January 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Chernobyl cooling systems have lost power but meltdown risk is low

An electrical outage at Chernobyl nuclear power plant risks dangerous fuel overheating, but experts say that the chances are extremely slim due to the age of the reactors, which were shut down over two decades ago

New Scientist, By Matthew Sparkes, 20 January 2026

An electrical outage at Ukraine’s Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has taken spent fuel cooling systems offline, leading to a potential risk of overheating and the release of dangerous levels of radiation – but due to the age of the fuel, it should be safe until power is restored.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that several Ukrainian electrical substations have been hit by Russian military strikes, causing power outages at Chernobyl. “The IAEA is actively following developments in order to assess impact on nuclear safety,” wrote IAEA director general Rafael Grossi in a post on X.

Spent nuclear fuel from reactors continues to emit radiation for years, creating heat that must be shed, or else the fuel can melt and emit a spike of dangerous radiation. The fuel from Chernobyl’s former reactors is stored in a large cooling pond that is constantly replenished with fresh, cold water to keep its temperature down.

But without an electricity supply – which the IAEA says the site now lacks – this cooling has stopped, which will allow the water temperature to rise and increase the rate of evaporation.

“When the fuel comes out of a reactor, it will be hot for a while, because there will be fission products and there will be radioactive and giving off gammas and betas and alphas – just emitting energy, which needs to be removed, otherwise it will eventually melt,” says Paul Cosgrove at the University of Cambridge.

Working in Chernobyl’s favour, however, is that its stored fuel is older and therefore has already had time to emit much of its radioactive energy and cool down. The risk now is lower than the risk was in 2022, for example, when New Scientist reported on similar power outages at Chernobyl.

“It is always a worry when a nuclear site loses power, but worry about nuclear risks is often several orders of magnitude above the risks associated with other events with similar consequences,” says Ian Farnan, also at Cambridge.

Chernobyl’s reactor 4 exploded in 1986, but reactor 2 was shut down in 1991, reactor 1 ceased generating power in 1996 and reactor 3 – the final one at the site – was decommissioned in 2000.

The exact specifications of the storage pools that contain the fuel left over from those reactors at Chernobyl are kept classified, says Cosgrove. But he is aware of an inspection by regulators in 2022, which found that the risk of spent fuel overheating in the case of a power outage was low. “This fuel has been sat in there for 20 years, so it will have decayed. More and more of that energy will be gone,” he says………………. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2512468-chernobyl-cooling-systems-have-lost-power-but-meltdown-risk-is-low/

January 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Make Nuclear Weapons the Target

Five years of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons., https://www.redcross.org.au/stories/ihl/five-years-of-the-treaty/

Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to humanity and to the planet itself. Their catastrophic humanitarian consequences are undeniable: immediate mass casualties, long-term radiation effects, and unthinkable environmental devastation. Yet, despite these risks, thousands of nuclear weapons still exist today.

On 22 January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force, transforming the legal landscape by outlawing the use, threat, development, possession, and deployment of nuclear weapons.

There are currently 95 signatories and 74 States parties to the TPNW. These numbers represent a strong global majority and demonstrate a growing momentum towards banning nuclear weapons altogether.

Today, on the fifth anniversary of the TPNW, Australian Red Cross reiterates its call for all remaining States, including Australia, to sign and ratify the TPNW and join the global movement to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons once and for all.

Position of Australian Red Cross

Read the Australian Red Cross Position Statement.

Australian Red Cross has a clear and simple stance: nuclear weapons must never be used again, and they must be eliminated completely.

In addition to the obvious humanitarian imperative of eliminating nuclear weapons, Australian Red Cross is driven by our unique humanitarian mandate to promote international humanitarian law (IHL), also known as the laws of war. This body of law is designed to limit unnecessary human suffering during times of armed conflict.

The use of nuclear weapons is inherently incompatible with the core principles of IHL, which include humanity, distinction, and proportionality.

In general, IHL prohibits the use of weapons that are indiscriminate, meaning they cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians or civilian objects. Weapons that cause unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury are also banned, as are those that cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment.

It is impossible to imagine any scenario of nuclear weapon use that could comply with these principles.

Why elimination is urgent

Nuclear weapons pose an unacceptable human cost: A single nuclear detonation would cause indiscriminate destruction, overwhelming health systems and leaving survivors with lifelong suffering.
Devastating environmental impact: Fallout and radiation contamination could cause extreme environmental damage, including the destruction of habitats, and the irreparable pollution of water, soil, and air. This could lead to famine and displacement on a global scale.
A clear legal responsibility: Under IHL, States must not use weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering. Nuclear weapons clearly fall into this category.

A stark reminder from history

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 caused unprecedented and unimaginable devastation, killing hundreds of thousands and leaving survivors to suffer life-long health impacts. Yet, the bombs that were used in 1945 were relatively small by today’s standards. Modern nuclear weapons are many times more powerful, capable of obliterating entire cities in an instant and triggering cascading humanitarian and environmental consequences across borders. This reality reinforces the urgent need to eliminate these weapons before they are ever used again.

What can you do?

Raise awareness: Share information about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.
Support the TPNW: Encourage your government to join and implement the treaty.
Engage in dialogue: Promote conversations about disarmament and the role of IHL in protecting humanity.

The elimination of nuclear weapons is not just a legal obligation. It is a moral imperative.

Find out how to take action to support the elimination of nuclear weapons by downloading our discussion cards and toolkit. You can also read our Position Statement for more information.

January 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment