2026 June 06 « nuclear-news

The atomic clock is ticking

Western countries build far more slowly, when they build at all. The Darlington SMR is one of only six in the entire Western Hemisphere to begin construction in the past 40 years. Of those, only two, located in the U.S., completed construction, both spectacularly late.

A nuclear project’s schedule and cost are inextricably linked: Any delay will eat into contingencies, and, if sustained, will blow budgets to smithereens. Moreover, delays compound the already daunting challenge of financing the project.

even within the nuclear industry, many doubt SMRs can offer sufficient advantages to attract orders; the results of the first SMR in a G7 country could settle the matter.

Will Canada’s first new nuclear reactor in decades be built on time? Here’s how an Ontario utility’s promises stack up against the numbers

Matthew McClearn, The Globe and Mail, June 4, 2026, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-nuclear-reactor-ontario-power-generation-utility/

The race to build Canada’s first new nuclear reactor in more than three decades has officially begun on the north shore of Lake Ontario.

In late April, the Ontario government announced that the foundation of the building that will house the reactor had been lifted to its final resting place, down a 35-metre-deep vertical shaft, by one of the world’s largest crawler cranes. The foundation weighed more than 950 tonnes – heavier than three Airbus A380s, the government said.

With that, a clock started ticking.

As far as Ontario Power Generation is concerned, the Darlington small modular reactor, or SMR, has been under construction for about a year now. But according to nuclear industry bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and Mycle Schneider Consulting, which compile data on nuclear projects globally, construction officially begins with the placing of concrete for the foundation of the reactor building.

OPG and its partners – including reactor developer GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy, construction company Aecon Group Inc., and architect-engineer AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. – have just four years and seven months to complete construction and connect the reactor to the grid, as promised, by the end of 2030. Once built, the reactor could supply enough electricity to power 300,000 homes. It’s a crucial first step for Ontario’s energy plans, which envision building many more reactors in the coming years.

Nuclear plants join high-speed rail, large bridges and tunnels, hydroelectric dams (think Site C) and major IT initiatives (think the federal Phoenix payroll system) on the list of complex engineering works that are highly likely to suffer lengthy delays. They’re akin to the Olympics for project managers; by promising the SMR in less than five years, OPG has effectively promised a gold medal.

Don’t let the “small” moniker fool you: The Darlington SMR is no minor undertaking. Lately, as many as 1,500 workers have been on-site on a typical work day.

OPG’s lengthy task list includes building the first-ever BWRX-300 reactor, a robust containment building to house it, a control building which will include the main control room, and another structure to house the turbine generator. It must also complete support structures for the other three planned units. They include a water cooling system complete with underground tunnels, and a switchyard.

According to an analysis of data from Mycle Schneider Consulting by The Globe and Mail, few reactors have been built in less than five years in recent history.

The fortunes of corporate executives, politicians, suppliers and even the nuclear industry itself depend on whether OPG’s team can demonstrate they are as exceptional as their political masters claim.

Why would completing a reactor in five years be difficult?

Canada’s nuclear industry finished building its last nuclear power reactor more than three decades ago. The 25 Candu reactors that started construction between 1958 and 1985 took an average of slightly longer than seven years to bring into commercial operations. Many of those reactors have been refurbished, which has reinvigorated Ontario’s nuclear industry. Even so, many of the skills required to build a plant from scratch have atrophied.

The closest Canadian analogue to the Darlington SMR might be Douglas Point, the earliest attempt to construct a commercial nuclear power plant. When work began in 1960 in Tiverton, Ont., Canada had limited experience building nuclear plants. Just like Douglas Point, the Darlington SMR is essentially a prototype. Douglas Point’s 200-megawatt output placed it in the same class. It took 8½ years to build.

Canada’s fastest build was Pickering-3, running from late 1967 to early 1972. Those years spanned a period when Ontario hit its stride building multiple reactors, but shows tight timelines were achievable back then.

How long has it taken to build nuclear plants globally?

China dominates modern reactor construction: According to Mycle Schneider Consulting data, 44 of the 75 reactors that began construction worldwide since 2016 are there. Yet few Chinese reactors are delivered within five years.

Boasting about modular construction techniques, American reactor developer Westinghouse promised it could build its AP1000 reactor in just 36 months. Four AP1000s eventually started construction in the U.S. in 2013. Two of them, Vogtle Units 3 and 4, took more than a decade each. The other two, V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3, in South Carolina, were abandoned after roughly four years; efforts to restart their construction are now under way.

The only reactor attempted in France so far this century, Flamanville-3, was planned to take a little more than four years. It took 17. The only two reactors started in the United Kingdom since 2016 were at the Hinkley Point station, Britain’s largest nuclear power site; they’re approaching 12 years and counting, still under construction.

Why are nuclear builds so frequently delayed?

Nuclear projects face delays for numerous reasons. But some cardinal sins occur regularly, such as proceeding without a complete set of detailed blueprints.

The two V.C. Summer units in South Carolina, for example, began construction when engineering designs were incomplete. Drawings often turned out to be not constructible, sending designs back to the drawing board. Those changes, in turn, led to more work for subcontractors, which provoked disputes over who’d pay the resulting costs. Any changes also had to be approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

A report by Jean-Martin Folz, former head of French automaker Peugeot, found that construction at France’s Flamanville-3 also began without a complete set of validated plans. The result was that the plant’s design continuously changed during construction, and lots of work had to be redone.
Quality control is another common stumbling block. At Flamanville-3, Mr. Folz catalogued a wide range of defects including poor welds and badly-manufactured forged components. Defects can lead to a cycle of delays, rework and disputes.

Once delays start piling up, it’s hard to recover. At Flamanville, Mr. Folz noted that Électricité de France tried to accelerate work schedules to get back on track. That only led to other problems, leading to further rework and delays, not to mention overloaded and demoralized crews.

After years of poor performance, the construction of the Vogtle units in Georgia was placed under new management. Don Grace was an engineer hired by the Georgia Public Service Commission to evaluate the project’s progress. During testimony in 2022, he explained that the new proponents “prematurely” started testing equipment at the plant, even as construction continued.

The problem? Mr. Grace said it resulted in too many workers toiling alongside one another on compressed timetables – a problem dubbed “stacking of crafts.” That was exacerbated by management’s tendency to defer planned work to achieve near-term milestones that provided “an inaccurate impression of having made significant progress.”

Mr. Grace put it this way: “The scope of work for a new nuclear plant is so large, and how the proper scoping and sequencing of all the activities comes together is highly important.”

What’s behind OPG’s confidence?

OPG believes the BWRX-300, while being first of its kind, is the simplest-ever boiling water reactor, a mature American-designed technology. There are more than 100 of them operating worldwide, so many of its basic principles have been demonstrated before.

OPG also counts on modular construction techniques to speed things up. The Darlington SMR’s base mat is a good example: It is comprised of 56 sections that were manufactured off-site. Upon delivery to Darlington, they were welded together in a special building with a retractable roof, then lifted into place by crane. In theory, this should be more efficient than assembling a warren of rebar, erecting forms and then pouring huge volumes of concrete.

“Many components will be pre-assembled offsite into larger modules and lifted into place – such as skid-mounted systems and pre-assembled piping – reducing onsite duration and risk,” wrote OPG spokesperson Neal Kelly in a written response to questions.

OPG is also taking an off-the-shelf approach wherever possible. For example, the plant’s turbine and generator are to be the same standard units already proven in natural gas plants.

And OPG is using what it calls an “integrated project delivery contract model,” which it says will encourage partners to collaborate, share risks and rewards, and maximize efficiency. Previous nuclear projects have demonstrated that how contracts are written, and how the various stakeholders work together, matters a great deal – especially when unforeseen challenges arise.

Of note, Mr. Kelly wrote that the plant’s design was completed in December.

What’s at stake?

Most immediately, the fate of the Darlington SMR. A nuclear project’s schedule and cost are inextricably linked: Any delay will eat into contingencies, and, if sustained, will blow budgets to smithereens. Moreover, delays compound the already daunting challenge of financing the project: Owners must wait that much longer to start earning revenue by generating electricity.

Though contracts haven’t been signed yet, Ontario has already committed to build three more BWRX-300s. Its existing nuclear plants all have four identical reactors, an approach that has demonstrated significant benefits. An $8-billion one-off lemon would be a costly miss.

The Darlington SMR is the signature project of Nicole Butcher, who assumed OPG’s top job in early 2025. Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce, who approved it, has bet heavily on OPG’s prowess, insisting the utility stands alone in building on-time and on-budget.

Mr. Lecce’s entire vision for Ontario’s electricity hinges on that statement being true. His plan involves a major expansion of nuclear power, in which the SMR would be followed by two much larger projects, the combined cost of which would likely be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Failure to deliver the comparatively modest Darlington SMR might compel a rethink.

Similarly, the federal government has invested considerable political and financial capital in SMRs. Yet of all the research clusters and demonstration units promised over the past decade, the Darlington SMR is just about the only one still standing. Ottawa has provided billions of dollars in financing, thus becoming a substantial minority owner in the project, and referred it to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new Major Projects Office.

Other utilities around the world have expressed interest in building their own BWRX-300s. More than 100 Canadian companies have signed agreements to provide components and services for the Darlington SMR; successful delivery could lead to contracts if global utilities feel bold enough to build their own.

SMRs represent a promising but untested approach to manufacturing reactors – one that emphasizes simplification and mass production. Whereas large reactors are purchased almost exclusively by resource-rich utilities, SMRs are marketed as being cheaper and quicker to build – and thus suitable for a broader range of customers. Yet even within the nuclear industry, many doubt SMRs can offer sufficient advantages to attract orders; the results of the first SMR in a G7 country could settle the matter.

And that’s why the Darlington SMR is one of the most important nuclear projects worldwide.

No pressure.

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, technology | Leave a comment

‘What’s happening is horrifying’: the rebel film-maker challenging AI’s march into Hollywood

While pro-Silicon Valley documentaries got major distribution deals, Valerie Veatch had to struggle to get her film, about Big Tech’s dark past and future, into the world. She talked to Charlotte O’Sullivan about what some attendees called ‘the scariest movie playing at Sundance’

Charlotte O’Sullivan, Jun 6, 2026, https://www.thenerve.news/p/valerie-veatch-interview-ghost-in-the-machine-documentary-ai-sundance-tech-bros?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekend-edition-gagged-facebook-s-whistleblower-james-mcavoy-q-a-nilufer-yanya&_bhlid=9a5a1970bb01aaa89602f0fb01add0f7ae856b22

Valerie Veatch doesn’t want to come across as “a crazy, bitter film-maker”. But she admits it’s “triggering” to talk about the challenges she faced when making Ghost in the Machine, her blisteringly enjoyable documentary about the dark past and present of AI, which hits UK cinemas today.

From the start, Ghost in the Machine was a hard sell. As Veatch says: “I couldn’t get funding from the usual places. People weren’t interested in a film that was tech-critical.” She wanted to talk about the “father of Silicon Valley”, Dr William Shockley, and his abiding interest in eugenics, to explore the sexism and racism that underpins “breathless, gushy” discussions about “superintelligence” and the “singularity” (the hypothetical moment when AI surpasses human intelligence). “I was so full of rage. This stuff is not inevitable.”

Veatch, who was born in Seattle but is now based in Kent, has made three critically acclaimed and zeitgeisty documentaries (including 2014’s Love Child and Me at the Zoo in 2012). For the new film, she talked to more than 30 US experts about the power dynamics behind the much-hyped, eye-wateringly lucrative AI revolution. She did the Zooms, and edited the Zooms, “compulsively, in the middle of the night, for a year; I did urgent listening and, somehow, I got a cut ready for Sundance”. Once Sundance 2026 accepted the film, Veatch got a grant, which paid for all the archival footage. And her dad and aunt came in as investors, she says proudly. “So this is an almost entirely homegrown film. I don’t think we could carry the message that we’re carrying if we were at all beholden to any large studio or distribution company.”

‘What is the difference between being in the pocket of Big Tech and being an independent voice? Well, a lot!’

Irreverence is Veatch’s thing and she cites the British director Adam Curtis as the biggest influence on her work (“I wanted to utilise the archive, the way he does … I wanted it to be surreal and sardonic”). Ghost in the Machine is crammed with jolting images: we see William Shockley, on TV, spewing his racist poison with the gentle patience of a man hawking encyclopaedias. Elsewhere, phrases chime in quietly chilling ways: the Victorian originator of eugenics, Francis Galton, wants to create a “galaxy of genius”.

Also shown at Sundance this year, and distributed by the mainstream giant Focus Features in the US (and Universal Studios elsewhere), was The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. Made by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell, this documentary, as its title suggests, manifests a cautious lack of pessimism on the subject of AI. Framed as a personal journey (Roher, about to become a father, wants to know if he’s bringing his baby into a safe world), it suggests this technology will always be with us. This film, which premieres at Sheffield DocFest next Friday, 12 June, and then goes on general release in the UK on 19 June, had the cooperation of the tech bros and includes on-camera interviews with Google Deepmind’s CEO, Demis Hassabis, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. In the words of Daniela Amodei, the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, “this train isn’t going to stop”.

Veatch draws my attention to the fact that Sundance now receives funding from Google, adding: “Last year, so I’m told, audiences clapped when film-makers said their movies didn’t contain AI … this year was so different.” Even before the festival began, she sensed unease about her project. As it happened, Ghost in the Machine connected with audiences. In fact, it was a huge success, with word of mouth suggesting it was “the scariest movie playing at Sundance”.

Still, Veatch gets infuriated when her film is compared to Roher’s. She says: “What is the difference, ultimately, between being in the pocket of Big Tech and being an independent voice? Well, a lot!”

Author and linguist Emily Bender (who appears in both Ghost in the Machine and The AI Doc) is on record as saying Veatch’s film is the better of the two. Bender says Roher “lets himself get buffeted by the imaginations of some of the most unhinged people in this space”, whereas Bender feels Veatch has “woven together an informed and engrossing essay”. Similarly, Timnit Gebru, a computer scientist and cofounder of Black in AI, who also shows up in both films, recently praised Ghost in the Machine while distancing herself from Roher’s movie. “She went on LinkedIn and said: “I reject [The AI Doc]. They used us like chocolate chips.’” Veatch nods grimly. “And they did. They sprinkled in diversity.”

‘This industry is rotten. I hate it! But this is why we need women film-makers’

Veatch insists this isn’t about individual movies getting it wrong. It’s about a trend to sideline or erase voices with a different point of view. A new British production called AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About, is showing at Tribeca this weekend. Veatch says she only heard about the movie through Bender, who was interviewed for it but didn’t make the final cut. The film-maker said something like: “Sorry we didn’t use your footage. In the end, we were just focusing on people who were in the room when big discoveries happened.” Veatch pulls a face. “In other words, ‘we focused on men’. This industry is rotten. I hate it! But this is why we need women film-makers.”

Veatch says repeatedly that she feels the need to be “aggressive” when talking about her film. That she’s willing to seem “negative”, because “what’s happening with AI is so urgent – the building of all these hyper-scale data centres is horrifying.” In the US, she says, “they’re trying to criminalise dissent”. (Wired recently reported that federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are targeting “anti-technology extremists”). Veatch jiggles in her seat. “The film’s going to get a release on PBS and YouTube in September. And we’re about to get a huge grant, to make data centres the theme of our summer push, in the US. I’ve invited Erin Brockovich [the environmental activist, who has started a database to track data centres around America] to one of our events. I’m like: “I really hope she says yes. She’s an icon. You can’t criminalise Erin Brockovich!”

Veatch says she’d “love to do something in the UK about data centres”, then pauses and, for the first and only time in the whole interview, sounds lost. She murmurs, “There are networks in the US. I don’t know anyone here …” Human contact means everything to Veatch. Concerned citizens of the UK, if you want to join forces with this formidable woman, drop her a line.

Ghost in the Machine is released in UK cinemas today, or can be rented through Kinema

The Nerve is a fearless, independent media title launched by five former Guardian / Observer journalists: investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, editors Sarah Donaldson, Jane Ferguson and Imogen Carter and creative director Lynsey Irvine. We cover culture, politics and tech,

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, technology, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear Injustice in New York

June 1, 2026, Gregory Kulacki , https://blog.ucs.org/gregory-kulacki/nuclear-injustice-in-new-york/

Is disarmament dead? There are nine nuclear armed nations. All of them continue to invest in the maintenance and improvement of their arsenals. Fifty-six years ago, when the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force, five of those nations promised the rest of the world they would eventually get rid of them. If justice delayed is justice denied, how much longer should the non-nuclear states wait?

On April 27, the 191 nations who are parties to the NPT sent representatives to the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York to confer for almost a month. I took three trips to Midtown Manhattan to interview NPT participants at the beginning, in the middle and near the end of their discussions. All expressed a pessimism that was justified by the outcome. The nuclear weapons states thwarted every effort to hold them accountable. I was happy the non-nuclear weapons states refused to agree to a final document that would have made this injustice appear acceptable.

Iran and Ukraine

The wars in Iran and Ukraine significantly influenced the discussions. Both are non-nuclear nations that were attacked by nuclear-armed aggressors. Both were given assurances by the five NPT nuclear weapons states that they would never threaten to attack a non-nuclear member state with nuclear weapons. No fair interpretation of the public statements and media discourse of the aggressors could claim those assurances were honored. The lesson for the rest of the non-nuclear world seems clear. Binding legal commitments from nuclear weapons states mean the least when they matter the most.

And yet, the nuclear taboo held. Not because of the NPT, or international diplomacy, but because there is something intangible about nuclear weapons that, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prevented them from being used again. Moreover, the non-nuclear states are, for the moment, defeating their nuclear-armed aggressors on the battlefield. If they prevail when the fighting stops, and the wars officially end, these outcomes may contribute more to nuclear nonproliferation than the treaty their nuclear aggressors failed to honor. Small and medium-sized states with limited defense budgets may be better off investing in cheap drones than in expensive empty threats.

The umbrella states

The most disappointing group of nations attending the conference was the small collection of non-nuclear armed US allies who imagine they enjoy some sort of benefit from the US nuclear arsenal. Shortly after his inauguration in 1969, President Richard Nixon famously told his national security council that the idea there was a nuclear umbrella that covered these allies was “a lot of crap.” Whether any US president would be willing to risk a retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States to aid an allied nation has always been an open and unanswerable question, which may be why there is no explicit nuclear use commitment included in any US mutual defense agreement.

In exchange for this imaginary protection these “umbrella states” consistently work with the nuclear weapons states to thwart efforts by the rest of the non-nuclear world to make the NPT a more effective legal instrument. The most disappointing of all may be the government of Japan, which leverages the remembered suffering of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to burnish its disarmament credentials while secretly lobbying the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons in East Asia.

China

The only other country approaching this level of nuclear hypocrisy may be China, which offered the conference a scathing condemnation of several Japanese behaviors that are not all that different than their own. It claimed Japan is reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from its nuclear energy program and stockpiling the separated plutonium for military purposes. At the same time Chinese officials refuse to address US claims China is using its civilian nuclear energy program to manufacture the plutonium it will need to fill hundreds of new silos with nuclear-armed missiles.

China accused the Japanese government of “ramping up its military spending for 14 consecutive years” while it has been doing the same for twice as long. It called upon the international community to insist on “open, transparent and effective measures” to monitor Japan’s nuclear energy program, while at the same time refusing to comment on why it stopped reporting the amount of civilian plutonium China is producing to the IAEA.

China associates itself with an emerging “global majority” of developing nations who seek to rebalance long-standing inequities in the international order. As China’s economic and political influence continues to grow, many nations, including other members of this “global majority,” justifiably wonder what kind of partner China will become. The Chinese government claims it will never seek hegemony, but it’s attitude towards nuclear weapons undercuts that claim. How can there be economic and political equity between a nuclear have and nuclear have nots? What is China saying to the world when it condemns the nuclear energy program of a non-nuclear weapons state – a nuclear energy program exactly like its own – while simultaneously increasing the size and capabilities of its nuclear arsenal?

The nongovernmental

Alongside the official deliberations, concerned civic organizations from all over the world hold events and activities they hope will contribute to a constructive outcome. These often take the form of stern reminders to member states of their treaty obligations, dire warnings of the potential consequences of failing to meet those obligations, and advice on how to succeed. While well-intended, it is difficult to argue, after so many decades, that these reminders, warnings and advice have had any impact.

What may be more important is that these nongovernmental organizations observe and record what happens with a great deal more objectivity and honesty than the participating member states. Decades from now, looking back, those reports may reveal that 2026 was the year the non-nuclear weapons states finally decided they’ve waited for nuclear justice long enough.

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

The World Has Rendered Its Verdict on American Power

June 2, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/02/the-world-has-rendered-its-verdict-on-american-power/

The World Is Voting With Its Opinion — And Washington Won’t Like the Results

For decades, U.S. leaders spoke as if history had already been settled. The Soviet Union had fallen, American power was unmatched, and the world would eventually follow Washington’s political and economic model. But a remarkable new international survey suggests that era may be ending — and ending far faster than many in the West are willing to admit.

According to the 2026 Democracy Perception Index, which surveyed tens of thousands of people across 84 countries, a majority of respondents now view the United States as the greatest threat to global peace and stability. Even more striking, people in most surveyed nations say they view China more favorably than the United States.

These findings do not come from Beijing or Moscow. The survey was conducted by the Alliance of Democracies, a Western organization backed by European institutions, major corporations, and figures closely associated with NATO. Yet the results paint a picture of a rapidly changing world order in which America’s endless wars, military footprint, economic coercion, and support for controversial foreign interventions have severely damaged its global standing.

As Washington escalates confrontations abroad—from Iran and China to renewed military tensions across multiple regions—the rest of the world appears increasingly skeptical of U.S. claims to moral leadership. The survey also reveals a growing divide between how Western elites define democracy and how much of the world understands it. While American political discourse often emphasizes electoral procedures and individual rights, many respondents defined democracy more simply: a government that improves people’s lives, delivers economic security, and promotes social well-being.

Whether one agrees with these conclusions or not, the message is difficult to ignore. The unipolar moment that followed the Cold War is fading. The assumption that the United States would remain the unquestioned center of global power is being challenged not only by rival governments but by public opinion itself.

The real question may no longer be whether the world is changing, but whether Washington is capable of recognizing that change before its credibility erodes even further.

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | public opinion | Leave a comment

The Disappearing Aid Check: The Future of US–Israel Defense Support

What top Israeli officials — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — are quietly backing is not a reduction in American support, but a reorganization of it: shifting billions in resources from State Department–administered foreign aid grants into general Pentagon procurement accounts, industrial partnerships, and sustainment pipelines. The shift will strip away the political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the relationship publicly accountable, moving it from a visible annual aid vote into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal. The result would be a defense relationship that is simultaneously deeper and less transparent.

Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Steven Simon, May 26, 2026

Executive Summary

The United States and Israel are now approaching the renegotiation of their 10-year defense Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU. Israeli officials have said they want to phase out US military grant aid — a position that sounds like a step toward ending US military assistance to Israel. It is not.

Since fiscal year 2019, the United States has provided $3.3 billion per year in Foreign Military Financing, or FMF, grants to Israel, plus an additional $500 million per year for missile defense cooperation. About 25 percent of this FMF grant money has gone toward offshore procurement, or OSP, funds allocated to Israel to spend domestically on its own defense industry and military equipment. Effectively, it is a US subsidy for Israel’s military industrial complex.

This OSP precedent is slated to end with the expiration of the current MOU. This has fueled Israeli proposals to phase out FMF grants altogether, replacing them with a relationship centered on US–Israeli defense integration. This would embed Israeli firms and Israeli–origin intellectual property inside larger Pentagon programs and production. Unlike the foreign assistance process, the military procurement framework would not be subject to the political scrutiny of Congress and the State Department, but would be evaluated on bureaucratic criteria such as cost, readiness, and capability. This shift would likely be justified by reframing US support not as a handout to Israel, but as an investment in American military readiness, industrial capacity, and jobs.

At a time when the US–Israel relationship should be scrutinized in light of Israeli actions that run counter to US interests, such a structural shift would be counterproductive. To avoid this outcome, any procurement-centered relationship should meet these three basic requirements:

Clear metrics to assess whether Israeli participation in Pentagon programs serves US defense requirements.
Program-level transparency regarding the existence, scale, cost, and rationale of each procurement program.
Cross-committee coordination in Congress to ensure visibility and accountability to non-military congressional oversight committees.

The current deal — and why it is running out of road

This brief explains what the shift in US aid for Israel means: where the money actually goes, who controls it, who benefits, and why the standard debate about ending aid misses the consequential change.¹……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

What “ending aid” actually means

…………………………………. ending aid in this context does not mean ending US financial support for Israel’s military and defense sector. It means changing the institutional form through which that support is delivered. The concept, in effect, is not to reduce support for Israel’s military; it is to shift it from the foreign-operations budget and the State Department’s oversight to the Pentagon’s procurement, research and development, industrial base, and sustainment machinery…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The new architecture — how money moves in a defense-industrial model

To understand what replaces the grant, it helps to understand how the Pentagon actually spends money on defense cooperation, and why that process looks so different from foreign aid…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Conclusion — quieter does not mean smaller

The post-2028 US–Israel defense relationship will likely be recast to reduce its political profile. The annual aid vote, one of the most predictably contentious moments in future US foreign-policy debates, may fade away, replaced by procurement decisions that attract little public attention and even less organized opposition. Israeli officials will be able to claim, accurately in formal terms, that Israel no longer receives American aid. American officials will be able to defend the spending as investment in US readiness rather than largesse to a foreign partner…………………………………………………….

For observers trying to understand US–Israel relations, the practical implication is methodological. The aid vote is no longer the right place to look. Instead, the key data will be located in the procurement budget, industrial-base investments, sustainment pipeline, IP licensing arrangements, and workshare provisions. The consequential decisions will be made in those domains.

Annex: Key terms and reference figures………………………………https://quincyinst.org/research/the-disappearing-aid-check-the-future-of-us-israel-defense-support/?ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_1_21_2025_13_26_COPY_01)&mc_cid=3131e3a216#h-annex-key-terms-and-reference-figures

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Step forward in £4.6 billion Sellafield nuclear decommissioning programme

Hundreds of delegates gathered for an event which saw SMEs meet with
industry leaders to discuss how a £4.6 billion programme of work will be
delivered over the next 15 years. The Decommissioning Nuclear Waste
Partnership Supply Chain Engagement event saw dozens of SMEs meet with DNWP
partners, Sellafield leaders, and the wider supply chain. The full-day
event at Energus, at Lillyhall, near Workington, gave suppliers early
visibility of upcoming opportunities in the decommissioning process. They
had direct access to buyers, project teams and decision-makers, and were
given a clear understanding of how work will flow. The event was organised
by Industrial Solutions Hub (iSH) in collaboration with the BECBC Nuclear
Sector Group.

Business Crack 3rd June 2026, https://businesscrack.co.uk/2026/06/03/step-forward-in-4-6-billion-sellafield-nuclear-decommissioning-programme/

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

A safer nuclear fuel is gaining steam — but cost remains a hurdle

New U.S. regulations and a wave of startup interest are breathing new life into TRISO-fueled reactors, which have struggled to take off due to high fuel costs.

Canary Media, By Alexander C. Kaufman, 2 June 2026

As the U.S. looks to revive its stagnant nuclear industry, a group of companies is racing to realize the promise of a “meltdown-proof” fuel that for decades has struggled to progress beyond federal lab experiments.

Tri-structural isotropic fuel, known as TRISO, is safer and more stable than the fuel rods used by the large-scale water-cooled reactors that make up the vast majority of the world’s nuclear power plants. Both fuel sources use enriched uranium, but in TRISO, the element is balled into poppyseed-sized spheres with ceramic coating that can absorb dangerous radioactive materials.

The hitch is the cost: TRISO is orders of magnitude more expensive than conventional assemblies of low-enriched uranium. Given that hefty price tag, only a few TRISO-fueled reactors have ever been built worldwide, even though the technology has existed for years and the world is hungry for nuclear projects that promise to avoid the worst accidents of the past…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Companies looking to go the route of microreactors and small modular reactors, however, face not only the challenges that plague large-scale reactors, such as pushback over radioactive waste and costly fuel sources, but new ones, too. For TRISO, those challenges are cost and an immature supply chain — plus the fact that the fuel’s performance remains largely untested at any commercial scale……………………………………https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/safer-nuclear-fuel-gaining-steam

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology | Leave a comment

Trump blasts Netanyahu as Iran Talks Stall over Beirut

Juan Cole, 06/02/2026, https://www.juancole.com/2026/06/blasts-netanyahu-beirut.html

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Monday began with a statement issued by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs cautioning that the United States and Israel, by their egregious violations of the ceasefire concluded on April 8, are jeopardizing the ongoing talks aimed at achieving an armistice. The ministry, which is headed by Abbas Araghchi, underlined that the ceasefire involved a cessation of hostilities on all fronts.

The ministry accused the United States of repeatedly violating the ceasefire by its attacks on commercial Iranian shipping. Moreover, it said, Israel has grossly violated the ceasefire by launching a vicious attack on Lebanon, violating its sovereignty and killing or wounding thousands of Lebanese and displacing two million, while destroying essential infrastructure.

The ministry said that the US has a direct responsibility to cease attacking Iranian shipping and an indirect responsibility to rein in the Israel atrocities, warning that Iran will take measures to act in self-defense to ensure its interests.

The Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, reported that these violations of the ceasefire, especially the Israeli invasion and devastation of south Lebanon, had led the Iranian side to cease all talks and the exchange of texts through mediators.

The agency said that the Iranian government insists on the end of Israeli operations in Gaza and Lebanon and its complete withdrawal from Lebanon. Otherwise there will be no further dialogue with the United States.

Moreover, the report said, Iran is determined to block the Strait of Hormuz completely, and to activate further fronts, including the Bab al-Mandeb or “Strait of Tears” at the mouth of the Red Sea. The Red Sea has been an alternative route for shipping, including of oil and gas, given the closure of the Persian Gulf.

The official status of these threats is unclear, according to BBC Monitoring .

Israel has sent troops deep into Lebanon and has expelled some 275,000 people from the metropolitan area of the coastal city of Tyre in the south, making threats to level the suburbs of Beirut where Shia Muslims predominate and to bomb the Lebanese capital. Hezbollah has continued to fight back against the Israeli invasion, showering northern Israel with rockets and sometimes managing to kill or wound Israeli troops and to take out Merkava tanks.

Asked about these reports of a halt to negotiations by CNBC’s Eamon Javers, President Donald J. Trump replied , “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly.” In case the message wasn’t clear, he repeated, “I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less.” He complained that the talks had “started to get very boring.”

Trump attempted to intervene in reality by Tweet, saying he would ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “what’s going on with Lebanon.” He thundered, “There will be no Troops going to Beirut, and any Troops that are on their way, have already been turned back.”

He claimed to have spoken to Hezbollah indirectly, saying, “they agreed that all shooting will stop — That Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel.”

Netanyahu remained defiant, boasting of having taken the Crusader castle Beaufort and threatening, “if Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens—Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut. This stance of ours remains unchanged. In parallel, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”

Barak Ravid at Axios reported that according to a US official, Trump’s phone call to Netanyahu was explosive, with the American president “pissed off” about Netanyahu’s threat to bomb Beirut. Ravid reports that his source alleged Trump told the prime minister, “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

Trump for his part insisted that the negotiations with Iran were continuing “at a rapid pace.”

Many energy analysts believe that if the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continues through the summer, by September we could see $200 a barrel petroleum and a severe global economic recession. The consequent economic crisis domestically could produce a blue wave, i.e. a big Democratic victory in the midterms, which would hobble Trump in his final two years in the White House.

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Israeli Authorities Refuse To Return Massive Trove Of Oct 7 Video. What Are They Hiding?

June 1, 2026, Michelle Witte· The Grayzone, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/01/israeli-authorities-refuse-to-return-massive-trove-of-oct-7-video-what-are-they-hiding/

Israeli citizens wonder why the state won’t return October 7 footage it confiscated from them. The mother of an Israeli victim says authorities deleted video of her son’s death. Others complain “someone is hiding” the videos.

The Israeli government is still holding a massive trove of video documentation of the Oct. 7 attack captured by individuals and communities caught up in the fighting. One bereaved parent even accuses Israeli authorities of deleting a video of her son’s last moments before returning his phone to her.

According to Israel’s Channel 13, “all the cameras, memory cards and films that documented the atrocities were collected, but two and a half years later, these materials have not been returned to the communities and bereaved families who are desperate for information, and even feel that someone is hiding it from them.”

Soon after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, special units from the IDF, the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet and Israel’s investigation unit Lahav 433 collected photo and video documentation of the violence, confiscating cell phones, individual cameras, kibbutz security cameras and more.

“They disconnected what was needed, took it and moved on – that was the last time we saw the materials,” said an Israeli army reservist who participated in the collection mission.

According to the head of the Kfar Aza kibbutz – the site of a number of a series of atrocity hoaxes spun out in the early days after the attack – community members cooperated with investigators at the time. Now, years after the events, these families are wondering why documentation of their loved ones’ fates has yet to be returned to them.

Even Sabine Taasa, who was made an emblem of Israeli victimhood after her husband and one of her sons were killed on Oct. 7, is now clashing with Israeli authorities over footage of that day.

Taasa’s 17-year-old son, Or, was killed on Zikim beach. According to Channel 13, Taasa says she saw a video her son filmed in the moments leading up to his death, but when authorities returned his phone to her, no such video remained. The outlet says this is not an isolated incident.

An IDF probe found that soldiers abandoned civilians hiding in a bathroom there and then left their bodies for a week.

Channel 13 reports that Israeli police claimed Lahav 433 is still investigating the events in kibbutz Kfar Aza and no indictments have yet been filed, so returning evidence at this stage could jeopardize their criminal case. Meanwhile, the IDF rejected all accusations that it is withholding documentation and says it is in the final stages of adopting policies for how this type of evidence will be returned to communities and families.

On October 7, the Israeli government issued video Hannibal Directive orders which led Apache helicopter pilots and tank gunners to take aim at Israel’s own citizens in the Gaza envelope, supposedly to prevent them from being taken hostage. Israeli Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram personally ordered a tank crew to shell a home in Kibbutz Be’eri, knowing it was filled with Israeli citizens who had been taken captive by Hamas fighters seeking to negotiate a way out of the standoff. A dozen Israelis were killed in the strike, leaving behind “a house full of corpses,” according to the lone Israeli survivor. One Israeli tank gunner from an all-female unit similarly revealed that she was ordered to shell Israeli homes without knowing who was inside. An Israeli police investigation subsequently revealed that Israeli helicopters shelled the Nova Electronic Music festival on October 7.

Given Israel’s track record of targeting its own citizens on October 7 and misleading the public about it, the Israeli state might be holding on to as much video as possible to ensure no further evidence of the Israeli army massacring its own citizens is made public.

Israel has demonstrated a keen interest in collecting documentation of the events of October 7 and controlling narratives through careful curation and dissemination. At the same time, it has refused to participate in independent, international investigations of the attack, Israel’s response, or the widely distributed and now widely debunked claims of mass sexual violence by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups. According to the Israeli state, Israel and Israel alone is justified in and capable of conducting such probes.

However, the state has strangely neglected to launch its own comprehensive special investigation into the apparent massive intelligence failure and military debacle. In fact, the Israeli government has had to be prodded by its own high court to establish a state commission of inquiry into the events, according to reporting by the Times of Israel. The Israeli government now has until July 1 to come up with a “suitable framework” to investigate the events, following years of pressure by the families of Israelis killed that day.

With the Israeli military-intelligence apparatus refusing to return possibly hundreds of hours of footage to its owners, some Israelis who lived through the October 7 attacks are beginning to wonder if they could be hiding something.

Michelle Witte is a writer, editor and broadcaster who previously co-hosted the news radio show, “Political Misfits.”

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Trump Finally Admits Aloud: “We Shouldn’t Have Been in Iran”

June 1, 2026 Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/01/trump-finally-admits-aloud-we-shouldnt-have-been-in-iran/

Donald Trump may have delivered the most honest assessment of the Iran War yet — entirely by accident.

In an interview conducted not by a journalist but by his daughter-in-law on Fox News, Trump stumbled into a confession that cuts through months of White House triumphalism, media cheerleading, and endless declarations of victory. After boasting that Iran’s navy was “100% gone,” its air force was “100% gone,” and that the United States had effectively defeated the country militarily, Trump casually admitted something extraordinary:

“We should not have been in Iran.”

There it was. Buried beneath the bluster, threats, and self-congratulation was the truth opponents of the war have been shouting since the first bombs fell.

The problem is that Trump wasn’t offering a reckoning. He wasn’t acknowledging the thousands killed, the billions spent, the global economic disruption, or the dangerous precedent of launching another war based on claims that Iran was racing toward a nuclear weapon despite years of intelligence assessments saying otherwise. Instead, he delivered the admission while simultaneously threatening to “finish it off militarily” if negotiations fail.

This is the defining contradiction of American empire. Leaders admit the wars were mistakes only after they’ve launched them. They acknowledge the disasters while preparing the next escalation. Iraq was a mistake. Afghanistan was a mistake. Libya was a mistake. Yet the machinery that produced those catastrophes continues to operate exactly as designed.

Trump’s interview wasn’t merely a display of contradiction. It was a rare glimpse into a political system so detached from accountability that a president can openly admit a war should never have happened while still insisting it was necessary, successful, and ready to resume at any moment.

For the families burying loved ones, for Americans paying the bill, and for a region left smoldering in the wake of another U.S. intervention, that isn’t leadership.

It’s a confession.

June 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment