Studsvik Calls Extraordinary Meeting to Add UK Nuclear Executive Julia Pyke to Board
Tipranks – Tue Dec 23, 2025
Studsvik AB ( (SE:SVIK) ) has issued an announcement.
Studsvik AB has called an extraordinary general meeting for January 23, 2026, in Stockholm, inviting shareholders to resolve on changes to the board of directors, including registration, proxy and attendance procedures in line with Swedish corporate governance rules. The nomination committee proposes expanding the board to seven members and appointing UK nuclear executive Julia Pyke, noted for her leadership of the Sizewell C and involvement in Hinkley Point C projects, with her remuneration aligned pro rata to the levels set at the 2025 annual general meeting, underscoring Studsvik’s strategic ambition to strengthen its board with international nuclear infrastructure expertise……… https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/markets-news/Tipranks/36764331/studsvik-calls-extraordinary-meeting-to-add-uk-nuclear-executive-julia-pyke-to-board/
“Make Iran like Gaza”: Chilling insider view from Israel weapons expo
by Michael West and Stephanie Tran | Dec 23, 2025 , https://michaelwest.com.au/make-iran-like-gaza-chilling-insider-view-from-israel-weapons-expo/
How to make ‘Iran like Gaza’ and describing the genocide in Palestine as a weapons testing laboratory. Michael West and Stephanie Tran with the inside story of a weapons expo.
Inside a conference hall at Tel Aviv University, executives, generals and venture capitalists took turns boasting about “combat-proven” Israeli weapons and surveillance systems.
At Defense Tech Week 2025, senior figures from Israel’s defence establishment openly described how the genocide in Gaza has accelerated weapons development, unlocked new export markets and reshaped Israel’s global identity as a defence powerhouse.
Less than 70 kilometres from where the conference was held, Gaza has been reduced to rubble. More than two years of genocide, indiscriminate bombardment and mass displacement have left at least 70,000 Palestinians dead and 90% of the Strip destroyed.
Gaza weapons lab
Defense Tech Week advertises itself as a forum connecting startups, investors, defence primes and policymakers. According to its organisers, the event showcases “practical lessons from Israel’s cutting-edge solutions that are addressing global security challenges”.
MWM has obtained the footage with Drop Site News in the US.
The speakers resembled a roll call of Israel’s military-industrial complex with senior Israeli military leadership, officials from the Ministry of Defense, and executives from Israel’s largest arms manufacturers, including Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit Systems and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
Speaker after speaker framed the war as a lucrative opportunity for weapons development and sales.
“These are not lab projects or PowerPoint concepts,” said Amir Baram, Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Defense.
“They are combat-proven systems.”
Gili Drob-Heistein, Executive Director at the Blavatnik ICRC and Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security, described defence technology as Israel’s “next big economic engine”.
Israel is known for being the startup nation,” she said. “We all believe that defence tech has the potential to become the next big economic engine for Israel.”
She credited what she called Israel’s “technological leadership” and “out of the box thinking” for results “we’ve seen recently on the battlefield.”
For Boaz Levy, President and CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries, the war has presented an opportunity to showcase the company’s wares with IAI’s weapons being deployed in Gaza, Iran and Yemen.
“The war that we faced in the last two years enabled most of our products to become valid for the rest of the world,” he said.
“Starting with Gaza and moving on to Iran and to Yemen, I would say that many, many products of IAI were there.”
Real-time combat data
Elbit Systems CTO Yehoshua (Shuki) Yehuda spoke about deploying autonomous systems and mass data collection in real-time combat. He showed a video demonstrating how an AI-powered system developed by Elbit is used to select and track targets “less than a pixel.”
“All of it is done by collecting the data,” he said, describing the ability to track “small targets in a very tough background… less than a pixel.”
He explained that these systems were developed in collaboration with the IDF and refined through continuous data collection during military operations.
Profiting from genocide
The speakers were candid about the scale of the financial opportunity presented by genocide.
According to Amir Baram, more than 300 startups are now working with Israel’s military research directorate, MAFAT, with 130 joining during the current war alone. In 2024, he said, the ministry invested 1.2 billion shekels in defence startups.
Baram oriented Israel’s surge within the global boom in defence spending.
“Global defence spending reached $2.7 trillion in 2024,” he said, pointing to the increase in expenditure from NATO countries and US defence spending exceeding $1 trillion.
“By partnering with Israel, you gain access to our advanced technologies as well as the valuable insights and experience that make our system truly effective. The world has chosen to partner with Israel because trust in defence must be built on credibility, performance, and shared strategic purposes.”
In 2024 alone, Baram said, Israel signed 21 government-to-government defence agreements worth billions, positioning Tel Aviv as the world’s third largest defence tech hub.
At Israel Aerospace Industries, Levy said 80% of the company’s activity is export-oriented.
“IAI as of now has $27 billion of new orders,” he said, with annual sales of around $7 billion.
Elbit Systems reported $8 billion in annual revenue and a $25 billion backlog, with more than 20,000 employees worldwide.
‘Make Iran like Gaza’
The speakers were explicit about how techniques developed and used in Gaza could be deployed in future conflicts.
Dr Daniel Gold, head of Israel’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development, described scenarios in which Israel would replicate Gaza style control in Iran.
“Once we have operational freedom in the air,” he said, “we inject inside… our UAV fleet controlling Tehran and controlling Iran – which means we make Iran like Gaza.”
Gold highlighted the practicality of “dual use” technology which have both civilian and military applications.
“A swarm of drones that control the traffic in Tel Aviv can be the same swarm of drones that control in Gaza,” he said.
During his presentation, video footage was shown of a semi-autonomous drone targeting an individual inside an apartment building, imagery that bears striking resemblance to documented Israeli strikes that have killed civilians in residential homes, including the attack that killed Dr Marwan al-Sultan and his family.
“It is very simple to operate,” Gold explained. “Semi-autonomous.”
Mounting pressure
In her report on the “Economy of Genocide”, UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese stated that “for Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture.”
the report found.
Two years into Israel’s livestreamed genocide in Gaza, execs appear to be acutely aware of the mounting international pressure.
Shlomo Toaff, an executive at RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems, lamented that “Israel is experiencing a boycott.”
“I think Israel is experiencing a boycott,” he said, citing the company’s exclusion from the Paris Air Show last year. “This is something that we have to take into account when we’re talking about what we’re doing here in the industry.”
Instead of buying Venezuelan heavy crude…Trump just steals it
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL ,22 Dec 25
The US desperately needs Venezuelan heavy crude oil to run its Gulf Coast refineries. But 20 years of failed US sanctions to overthrow last 2 Venezuelan socialist presidents has caused Venezuela to pivot away from US petro dollars to sell their crude to China and Russia, and pay for it in Yuan and Rubles.
The rest of the world is looking at tiny (GDP, defense, population) Venezuela and realizing its cool to push back against America’s weaponized financial system that’s been holding them hostage to petro dollars for half a century. If Venezuela can do it so can many others, weakening America’s grip on them while undermining the US economy. And they are.
The dollar has fallen from 90% of energy transactions to 60% since 2000 and will likely be under 50% by 2035. As petrodollar usage goes bye bye, US debt will sour, interest rates balloon, presaging tough times ahead for the world’s second largest economy.
Maybe that’s why Trump has pivoted away from just sanctions to mass murder of small unarmed boats off Venezuela, seizing two oil tankers and threatening invasion. But Venezuela’s new economic pals China and Russia are rushing in to prop up Maduro’s regime which has essentially told Trump to pound sand. Maduro has the upper hand against the American colossus which can obliterate Venezuela but not without US cannon fodder arriving back at Arlington. That appears to be a criminal war too far even for mass murderer Trump.
Time for the US to drop all sanctions, withdraw the multibillion-dollar armada threatening Venezuela, and make nice with Maduro. Sure beats the economic suicide Trump and his deranged neoconservative advisors have chosen to foist upon the American people.
It was blindingly obvious that Europe wasn’t going to agree to the reparations loan.
It really is time to ditch the dreamers and get back to diplomacy
Ian Proud, Dec 22, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/it-was-blindingly-obvious-that-europe?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=182242521&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Brussels was the centre of the pro-war universe on 18 December as the European Commission tried to bludgeon the resistance out of Belgian Prime Minister, Bart de Wever. He had stood firm against the plan to use immobilised Russian assets to underwrite the war in Ukraine and never looked likely to budge. He didn’t budge and the European Commission gamble failed in spectacular fashion. This has left European taxpayers on the hook for a Euro 90 billion loan to Ukraine that, in all likelihood, may never be repaid.
De Wever didn’t dig his sturdy defensive positions out of any particular sympathy with Russia. He did so on the basis of a rational analysis of the significant legal and financial risks his country would face should it agree to an illegal expropriation of assets frozen in Belgium.
Any realist observer of events could see that the EU proposal was illegal, tantamount to theft and would never succeed. It was obvious that De Wever wasn’t going to shift his position, despite the procession of Europe’s finest who beat a path to his door in a bid to convince him to adopt a plan that he had already rejected.
The final denouement had been predictable since the idea of giving Ukraine Russia’s frozen assets with no questions asked was first raised in 2024.
The idea didn’t lose its lustre even after the refusal to ask questions of Ukraine’s leaderships has led to billions in foreign aid being pilfered by those in charge. Right up to the wire, the pro-war lobby was screaming from every vantage point for De Wever to stiffen his sinews and do the right thing.
This idea is really rooted in the need to protect the economic security of the European Union the Commission assured everyone. While at the same time calling it a reparations loan, when it was obvious to impartial observers that the money would simply be tipped into a massive gold rimmed hole of Ukrainian state finances.
That hole, by the way, will remain gaping for as long as the war continues, and for some years after it ends. And the loan the Commission has been forced to take out will only cover two years of budgetary shortfalls in Ukraine, with no one asking who would pay from 2028. Unless the war ends, European taxpayers will have to pay to keep Ukraine on life support.
And they’ll have to pay more than the Commission is letting on as the loan agreed last night will only cover two thirds of Ukraine’s financing needs, and when it runs out the Ukrainians will be back to ask for more.
Continue readingEDF faces the financial equation: Bernard Fontana is considering massive asset sales to generate 20 billion euros
December 16, BY Emma Ray
Barely installed at the helm of EDF, Bernard Fontana is embarking on a
major strategic shift. Faced with unprecedented investment needs and an
already substantial debt, the new CEO is preparing a sweeping adaptation
plan aimed at generating nearly €20 billion in financial flexibility over
three years.
This strategy comes as EDF’s financial situation continues to
be a cause for concern. At the end of 2024, net debt reached €54,3
billion, a level deemed worrying by the French Court of Auditors.
Entrevue 16th Dec 2025, https://entrevue.fr/en/societe/edf-face-a-lequation-financiere-bernard-fontana-envisage-des-cessions-massives-pour-degager-20-milliards-deuros/
Trump row threatens to delay Britain’s nuclear renaissance.
Concerns mount for power plant investment as US pauses tech trade deal.
Matt Oliver Industry Editor. James Titcomb Technology Editor. Matthew Field Senior Technology Reporter, 17 December 2025
Britain’s plans to usher in a “golden age” of nuclear power are at risk of being delayed amid a row with Donald Trump over the UK-US trade deal. Campaigners raised concerns that new projects face being hampered after the US paused the tech prosperity deal, in which Mr Trump and Sir Keir Starmer vowed to deepen co-operation on nuclear energy.
It was accompanied by pledges of investment in Britain by US-based X-Energy and
Centrica, the owner of British Gas, as well as the American nuclear company
Last Energy and the London port operator DP World.
Some nuclear industry
sources played down the dispute on Wednesday as a “negotiating tactic”,
but others said it could slow the deployment of American-designed mini
reactors in the UK if it was not resolved. It comes amid growing
frustration in Washington over Britain’s Online Safety Act, which critics
claim will stifle free speech and stymie American artificial intelligence
companies. Sam Dumitriu, of the pro-nuclear campaign group Britain Remade,
said: “This will undoubtedly concern Britain’s nuclear communities, who
have been promised new projects and the jobs that came with them.
Telegraph 17th Dec 2025, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/12/17/trump-row-threatens-to-delay-britains-nuclear-renaissance/
‘Huge conflict of interest’: Trump’s $600 million windfall after nuclear deal.
ByMatt O’Brien and Jennifer McDermott, Sydney Morning Herald, December 19, 2025
The parent company of US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social media platform is merging with a fusion power company, an unusual pairing of the Trump name with a futuristic clean energy venture that aims to power the next wave of artificial intelligence. Trump Media & Technology announced its merger with TAE Technologies in an all-stock deal that the companies said was valued at more than $US6 billion ($9.1 billion).
The combined company says it plans to find a site and begin construction next year on the “world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant,” with aims to provide the electricity needed for artificial intelligence.
Nuclear fusion is seen as a promising solution to climate change caused by burning fossil fuels, but one that is a long way off compared to today’s clean technologies like wind and solar. It will need huge investment as well as regulation to advance, which makes Trump’s ties a major conflict, said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.
“He’s jumping into this industry just like he jumped into cryptocurrency a couple of years ago,” Painter said. “Just as the United States government is gonna get all involved in it. And it’s so obvious that there’s a huge conflict of interest.”
Devin Nunes, the Republican congressman who resigned in 2021 to become the chief executive of Trump Media, will be co-CEO of the new company with TAE CEO Michl Binderbauer.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology have tumbled 70 per cent this year but jumped 34 per cent in afternoon trading on Thursday.
Trump is by far the largest stakeholder in Trump Media, owning 41 per cent of all outstanding shares. The share surge has added about $US400 million ($605 million) to Trump’s net worth, according to Forbes.
Backed by Google and other investors, TAE is a private company and the merger with Trump Media would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.
“We’re taking a big step forward toward a revolutionary technology that will cement America’s global energy dominance for generations,” Nunes said in a prepared statement.
TAE focuses on nuclear fusion, a technology that combines two light atomic nuclei to form a single heavier one. It releases enormous amount of energy, a process that occurs on the sun and other stars, according to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency.
TAE and Trump Media shareholders will each own approximately 50 per cent of the combined company.
In October, the US Department of Energy released what it called a “road map” for fusion technology, with the aim of fostering “a burgeoning fusion private sector industry in the US toward maturity on the most rapid timeline.” A number of tech companies, including Google, Microsoft and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, have shown interest in fusion technology as a way of powering the energy-hungry data centres needed to build and run their AI products…………………………………………
Holland said the Trump administration has said it strongly supports fusion, but has yet to make any new financial support available.
In the association’s surveys of the industry, companies are saying they expect to see fusion energy on the electricity grid in the 2030s, with most saying they expect it in the first half of the 2030s, Holland said.
TAE and Trump Media say the transaction values each TAE common stock at $US53.89 per share.
At closing, Trump Media & Technology Group will be the holding company for Truth Social and TAE, along with its subsidiaries TAE Power Solutions and TAE Life Sciences. https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/huge-conflict-of-interest-trump-media-to-merge-with-nuclear-fusion-company-in-9-1-billion-deal-20251219-p5nowl.html
Let the investor beware: why buying UK government Green Savings Bonds now means backing nuclear.
15th December 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/let-the-investor-beware-why-buying-government-green-savings-
In commercial transactions, prospective purchasers are often urged to exercise caution before signing on the dotted line with a Latin phrase, ‘caveat emptor’ or ‘let the buyer beware’. The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities would like to warn future purchasers of government savings products to be wary that they might be investing in nuclear projects.
The UK’s Green Financing Programme raises financing from investors through the issuance of green gilts via the Debt Management Office and the sale of retail Green Savings Bonds to the public via National Savings and Investments. This money has been invested in projects which help the government move toward their ambition to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Many savers desiring to help tackle climate change will have invested their hard-earned money into the three-year, interest-bearing bonds which were first launched in October 2021.
To date, the Green Financing Programme has raised over £51 billion.
The Green Financing Framework issued in 2021 included guidelines on the projects that could be backed; these fell into six categories: clean transportation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, pollution prevention and control, living and natural resources, and climate change adaptation.
Every year the government publishes a report identifying which projects have been backed into the last twelve months and their impact on climate emissions[i]. Typically this has including building offshore wind farms, investing in electric buses, offering discounts on electric vehicles, installing electric vehicle charging points, planting masses of trees, and insulating homes.
Now in a retrograde step, the government, obsessed with funnelling as much public money as possible into nuclear power, has issued a revised Green Financing Framework, with future investment in nuclear energy projects now included in the list of Eligible Green Expenditures.[ii]
The Framework makes clear that ‘the proceeds from sales of green gilts or Green Savings Bonds issued prior to 27 November 2025 will not be allocated to nuclear energy related expenditures’, but there will be no restriction on such investment after this date.
In the new supposedly ‘Green’ Category: Nuclear Energy, investment can be made in: ‘Electricity and/or heat (including cogeneration); support for the design, development, construction, commissioning, safe operation, lifetime extension, or supporting infrastructure of new or existing nuclear power generation assets (including enabling fuelcycle activities; radioactive waste and spent fuel storage, management and final disposal), and research and development for future fission and fusion energy technologies
Nuclear is NOT a green energy technology, but permitting the use of money raised from green investors in the management and disposal of high-level radioactive waste, which poisons people and our planet for millenia, must surely be the ultimate travesty. Our advice: avoid.
Elon Musk says small nuclear reactors ‘super dumb’
Eamonn Sheridan, 15 Dec 25, https://investinglive.com/news/musk-says-small-nuclear-reactors-super-dumb-20251214/
Musk coming out in favour or solar energy
Musk weighing in on nuclear reactors in a tweet:
- The Sun is an enormous, free fusion reactor in the sky. It is super dumb to make tiny fusion reactors on Earth.
- Even if you burned 4 Jupiters, the Sun would still round up to 100% of all power that will ever be produced in the solar system!!
- Stop wasting money on puny little reactors, unless actively acknowledging that they are just there for your pet science project jfc.
Sizewell C — the last of its kind
The deal to build the Sizewell C, two reactors using the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) design, using the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) finance model was inevitably a bad one for the UK public. It gives guaranteed profits to investors by placing the risks on consumers while the EPR has an unenviable record of huge cost and time overruns. It requires consumers to pay the finance charges in the construction period – of the same order as the construction cost – as a surcharge on their bills. However, the additional subsidies and risk removal that were necessary to persuade private investors to take stakes are shocking.
The new finance deal for Sizewell C
RAB financing deal, developed from 2018, was announced in 2021 and legislated for in 2021-2022 when Kwasi Kwarteng was Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and completed under Ed Miliband at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) in July 2025. The Regulated Asset Base (RAB) finance model for nuclear power plants was sold to the public on the basis that it would provide cheaper power than using the fixed power price financial model under which the Hinkley Point C reactors1 are being built.
It was claimed the model would bring in new sources of investment, particularly institutional investors such as pension funds. The power price reduction would be achieved if the public shared the economic risks with the investors and offered limited subsidies and guarantees. Reducing the risk borne by investors would reduce the cost of capital, a major element in the cost of power from a nuclear power plant, and hence the price of electricity. The subsidies were portrayed not so much as paying costs that would be expected to have been borne by investors, as is normal for subsidies, but as giving the investors guarantees they were not at risk from the consequences of low-probability, high-consequence events and from volatile wholesale electricity market prices.
After five years of effort by government to complete the deal, a Final Investment Decision (FID) for Sizewell C was finally taken on July 22, 2025. The contracts were finalised on November 4, 20252. The largest investor is the UK government (44.9%). The other investors are the Canadian pension fund, La Caisse (20%), Centrica (15%), EDF (12.5%) and Amber Infrastructure (7.6%). Amber Infrastructure is acting on behalf of the UK’s Nuclear Liabilities Fund, NLF, (4.6%), arguably public funds, and International Public Partnerships Limited 3.0%. So only 23% of the investment will come from institutional investors, 27.5% from energy companies and about half (if we include the NLF) from public sources.
An analysis of the Sizewell C deal shows that balance of risks is one-sided with the risks falling almost entirely on taxpayers and consumers, with minimal penalties and generous incentives offered to investors. The subsidies offered are far more extensive than those acknowledged by government and represent large amounts of public money being given to the private investors for no public return. The price of power from Sizewell C is unknown and will vary unpredictably from year to year, but there can be little confidence the RAB model will produce a lower power price than Hinkley Point C even if the cost of the subsidies is not factored in. The incentives required to bring in private investors are so expensive and risky to consumers that the model should not be repeated, and, like the Hinkley Point C deal, it ought to be a one-off, not a door-opener for new nuclear investments.
The Risk/Reward balance
The plan to use the Hinkley Point C finance model for Sizewell C was abandoned by EDF in 2018. This was because it was not willing to accept the financial risks it had signed up to for Hinkley by agreeing a fixed power purchase price with all construction cost and time risks falling on itself. Costs have escalated dramatically at Hinkley since the deal was signed in 2016, by up to 90% but cannot be passed through to the power purchase price: and this commitment led to EDF writing off €12.9bn of its investment in Hinkley Point C in 20233.
The investors in the Sizewell project frequently talk about the project being ‘derisked’4 by which they mean not that the risk has been reduced, but that it falls on others………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Subsidies…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… “The acknowledgement that ‘Difference’ payments will be substantial demonstrates that it is expected that consumers will be forced to buy power from Sizewell C that will cost more than alternatives in the market.”
…………………………………………………………………………………………….. Will the power be cheaper than for Hinkley?……………………………………………………………………….
Is the Sizewell deal repeatable?………………………………………………………………………………. If the deal proves not to be repeatable, the huge amount of government time and cost that has gone into completing the deal will, as with Hinkley Point C, have been a costly diversion of more than a decade from pursuing the cheaper, quicker and more reliable ways of meeting the government’s promises of net zero…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Is Sizewell the last large reactor for the UK?…………………………………………………………………………………
Endnotes -……… [copious] https://policybrief.org/briefs/sizewell-c-the-last-of-its-kind/
Could armed robots be the future of nuclear site security?
experiments to test the military potential of near-identical quadrupeds being carried out by the US armed forces, with Spot’s cousin converted into an armed platform by the addition of an artificial intelligence-enabled gun turret
16th October 2024, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/spot-to-robocop-could-armed-robots-be-the-future-of-nuclear-site-security/
Robots are becoming increasingly employed in decommissioning operations at Sellafield and Dounreay. Whilst the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities welcome their use in hazardous environments which are too radioactive and otherwise contaminated for human operators, we have concerns that in the long-term their use might expand into on-site security.
The Atomic Energy Authority Special Constable Act 1976 first permitted the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to raise an armed private police force. In 2005, the UKAEA Constabulary was replaced by the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. CNC officers are routinely armed with sub machine guns and authorised to use deadly force – in extremis – whilst guarding nuclear facilities, but also whilst engaged in hot pursuit outside.
However last month, seemingly to counter possible threats from sabotage or terrorism and the greater incidence of climate change protests, the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband instructed the CNC to redeploy officers from their traditional duties to protecting coastal gas plants with effect from April 2025[i]. It is likely that this role may further expand to cover oil depots.
In 2021, the NFLAs objected to planned legislation to widen the CNC’s remit to guarding non-nuclear sites. In our response to a consultation, we said that the ‘CNC’s role should continue to be explicitly confined to policing nuclear sites and facilities’ and that ‘protection of critical national infrastructure should be carried out by an adequately funded democratically controlled local police force’ rather than an unaccountable paramilitary police force.
If CNC numbers at nuclear sites are diluted, there could be pressure to employ robots on security duties in their stead, and in the long-term it is not inconceivable that they may even become armed and autonomous.
The ‘poster child’ of the robots is the quadruped first developed by Boston Dynamics in the United States, affectionately known as Spot the Dog. This variant is now routinely used in decommissioning operations in environments that are unsafe for human operators. The robot uses a specialist scanning system to create a 3D moveable image of its environment, allowing engineers to carry out remote inspections in support of clean-up operations[ii].
Spot can though operate entirely autonomously. Last month, it was reported that such a robot had completed a 35-day autonomous operation to inspect the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s Joint European Torus (JET) facility. Tasks successfully completed included ‘mapping the facility, taking sensor readings, avoiding obstacles and personnel involved in the decommissioning process, and collecting essential data on JET’s environment and overall status twice a day. The robot also knew when to dock and undock with its charging station, to ensure it could complete the task without humans having to intervene’.[iii]
So far, so benign, but a disturbing report appeared around the same time about experiments to test the military potential of near-identical quadrupeds being carried out by the US armed forces, with Spot’s cousin converted into an armed platform by the addition of an artificial intelligence-enabled gun turret to participate in exercises in Saudi Arabia. The flexible turret enabled ground fire, but also aerial fire against drones, which are also an increasing threat to civil nuclear facilities. The article in Military.Com records that robot dogs have already been engaged by the US Defence Department in several roles, including ‘boosting perimeter security at sensitive installations’, a task in which they excel as they can ‘patrol’ ‘without need to rest’.[iv]
The NFLAs cannot help thinking that in a dystopian nuclear future, in which the CNC increasingly overstretched and renamed the Civil Infrastructure Constabulary to reflect its ever-expanded role in providing armed protection to a wide range of critical sites, security forces might engage a force of armed Robocops to supplement the dwindling number of armed human officers, each charged with patrolling the perimeters of civil nuclear facilities, and granted autonomous decision-making to engage trespassers, protestors, and drones with deadly force.
The concept of Spot the Dog becoming SWAT the Dog, however unlikely, is truly terrifying.
Concerns about so-called killer robots animated the world community late last year. The Stop Killer Robots campaign, founded in October 2012, continues to work for a new international law to regulate autonomy in weapons systems. The coalition of over 250 civil society organisations in 70 countries successfully lobbied states to adopt the first ever resolution on autonomous weapons at the United Nations on December 22, 2023. 152 countries supported General Assembly Resolution 78/241 which acknowledged the ‘serious challenges and concerns’ raised by ‘new technological applications in the military domain, including those related to artificial intelligence and autonomy in weapons systems.’
Stop Killer Robots was recently awarded Archivio Disarmo’s Golden Dove for Peace Award at a ceremony in Rome on Saturday, 12 October. The award is given to an international figure or organisation which has made ‘a significant contribution to the cause of peace’.
More details of the campaign can be found at https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/
American-owned consortium assumes control of Canada’s premier nuclear research facility.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Matthew McClearn, 12 Dec 25
An American-owned consortium has assumed responsibility for managing Canada’s premier nuclear research facility, Chalk River Laboratories, along with cleaning up the federal government’s sizable inventory of radioactive waste spread across the country.
After a three-month delay, Nuclear Laboratory Partners of Canada Inc. formally took control on Thursday of the organization that runs Chalk River, known as Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
CNL manages the assets and liabilities of a federal Crown corporation called Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. under an arrangement Ottawa describes as a “government-owned, contractor-operated” model………………………………………………….
Earlier this year, AECL said the consortium’s contract is worth about $1.2-billion annually. It has been called the federal government’s largest contract at the moment, although key federal authorities – including the Treasury Board Secretariat, Auditor-General and AECL – have been unwilling or unable to confirm that. The term of the contract will be six years but it can be extended for up to another 14 years.
The consortium’s American ownership has provoked controversy. Since assuming office, Prime Minister Mark Carney has espoused a Buy Canadian policy – a key part of his government’s response to mounting conflict with its dominant trading partner, the United States.
Corey Tochor, a Conservative member of Parliament for Saskatoon-University, accused AECL of “selling out our nuclear secrets” to American interests, during the first of three scheduled hearings held before the House of Commons standing committee on natural resources to examine the consortium’s American ownership.
“What we have real deep concerns [about] is that we’re letting a foreign country manage our medical isotopes,” Mr. Tochor said.
Earlier this month, Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant from Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke characterized the awarded contract as an “elbows-down” approach that left Americans in control of Canadian intellectual property…………………………………………………………….
The American-owned consortium is led by a large nuclear specialty manufacturer focused on military equipment and nuclear fuel called BWX Technologies Inc…………………………………..
The U.S.-led consortium takes over from another partnership known as Canadian National Energy Alliance, which held the contract for a decade. Its members recently included Montreal-based AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. and two American companies, Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. and Fluor Corp………………………….
The American consortium was declared the winner of a competitive procurement process in June and had originally been scheduled to take over in September. The transfer was delayed pending a review by the Competition Bureau, which is responsible for enforcing federal antitrust rules. Late last month the Competition Bureau issued a “no-action letter” confirming it will not oppose the contract, which allowed the transfer to proceed. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-nuclear-laboratory-partners-chalk-river-laboratories-cnl-atomic-energy/
Revelation that UK’s Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) could be robotic prompts question over employment.
Where are the jobs? A question surely prompted by the revelation by New CivilEngineeri that NWS chief technical officer John Corderoy recently claimed that the organisation might build a future Geological Disposal Facility operated solely by an army of robots.
Due to become operational by the late 2050s, but this is a moveable feast, the GDF will be the final repository for Britain’s high-level legacy and future radioactive waste. Three Areas of
Focus in West Cumbria are currently being examined by Nuclear Waste Services as prospective locations for an approximately 1km2 surface facility to receive waste shipments prior to their being taken below ground and out through tunnels to engineered vaults deep under the Irish Sea bed.
Advocates for the GDF have raised as an economic benefit the generational employment that the facility might provide for local people over its (possibly) 150-year lifespan, but in his speech to the Nuclear Industry Association annual conference last week, Mr Corderoy conceded that with the advancement in robotics it might be possible to build a facility ‘that’s fully automated and run by robots on the ground’.
This also makes the NFLAs wonder if that would include dispensing with a human armed police force to patrol the perimeter and check entrants in favour of an AI version, as we presaged in our article of 16 October 2024:
Although, as Mr Corderoy rightly indicated, such a plan would mean ‘we don’t have to put humans in harm’s way deep underground’, for Nuclear Waste Services it would also mean a
workforce which toils without payment and without any expectation of a workplace pension, and which does not require catering, medical or welfare facilities, carparking, protective clothing, lit or heated workspaces, holidays, maternity or paternity leave, or time off for
sickness (aside from an occasional recharge, oil or parts change, or annual MOT). All representing significant cost savings for NWS.
Nor would robots be discovered leaving work
early or engaging in toxic workplace behaviour, nor would they become embroiled in an industrial dispute with their employer; things that cannot be said about some of the human
workforce at Sellafield in recent years.
The industry trades unions will also be horrified; for not only would it mean that their members, facing redundancy after the closure of storage facilities at Sellafield, would not be
able to access alternate operational jobs at the GDF site, but it would mean a loss of income to help sustain the salaries of officials as robots do not pay union subs.
Japan rejects EU plan to steal Russian assets – Politico.
09 Dec 2025, https://www.sott.net/article/503419-Japan-rejects-EU-plan-to-steal-Russian-assets-Politico
The bloc wants to use Moscow’s funds immobilized in the West to cover Ukraine’s budget deficit.
Japan has reportedly dismissed a European Union initiative to tap frozen Russian sovereign assets to help finance Ukraine’s massive budget shortfall.
Brussels hopes to issue a so-called “reparation loan” backed by Russian funds immobilized in the West – a plan that Moscow has denounced as outright theft. Belgium, where most of the money is held by the Euroclear clearinghouse, has refused to greenlight the proposal unless other nations agree to share associated legal and financial risks.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has said broader international backing, particularly from non-EU countries holding Russian assets, would bolster the European Commission’s case for what he called the effective confiscation of a foreign state’s funds. But at a meeting of G7 finance ministers on Monday, Japan’s Satsuki Katayama made clear her government would not support the plan due to legal constraints, Politico reported, citing EU diplomatic sources.
Officials told the outlet they believe Japan’s stance aligns with that of the United States, which also opposes the EU approach and views the frozen assets as leverage in negotiations with Moscow.
France has reportedly likewise declined to touch any assets held on its soil, while Canada and the UK have signaled possible participation if the EU ultimately pursues the scheme.
Ukraine’s parliament last week adopted a 2026 budget with a staggering $47.5 billion deficit, expecting foreign donors and creditors to fill the gap. Roughly half that anticipated support – an estimated $23.6 billion – remains uncertain pending the fate of the EU loan plan.
Ukrainian media noted that lawmakers pushed the budget through despite unresolved questions over foreign financing, in part to project stability following the removal of Andrey Yermak, formerly the most powerful aide to the country’s leader, Vladimir Zelensky. Yermak was dismissed as a corruption scandal engulfed Kiev’s political establishment.
Cashing in on war: Why stealing Russia’s assets actually makes things worse for the EU.
The loan is also, implicitly, seen as an invitation to keep the war going – thus not only keeping the Kiev regime afloat but complicating the prospects for a comprehensive settlement.
03 Dec 2025 , https://www.sott.net/article/503422-Cashing-in-on-war-Why-stealing-Russias-assets-actually-makes-things-worse-for-the-EU
For bloc taxpayers, it could mean Brussels has walked them into a fait accompli where they simply have to stump up for funding a corrupt regime in Kiev.
After a week of humiliation in which her much-touted plot to sequester Russian assets to fund Kiev’s war chest was outright rejected by both Belgium and the European Central Bank, European Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen has told EU member states they have two choices, both of which would send cash to Kiev’s coffers.
According to the embattled EC president, either EU countries will have to borrow cash for Ukraine and make their taxpayers foot the bill, or allow her to push through her – potentially illegal – “reparations plan” and kick the repayment can down the road.
Let’s take a look at what all the talk is about.
Russia’s frozen assets: How much is where?
It is known that Belgium-based clearinghouse Euroclear holds some €180 billion in Russian central-bank funds. Reports that Luxembourg held some €20 billion in Russian assets was denied by the country itself, which claimed it holds “less than €10,000.”
Switzerland, which is in neither the EU nor G7 and thus not subject to von der Leyen’s demands, has declared some 7.45 billion Swiss Francs (€8 billion).Germany has refused to disclose what it holds, citing data protection laws. Japan is thought to hold some €30 billion, while former French Finance Minister Bruno de Maire has spoken about immobilizing some €22.8 billion. The US is believed to hold around $5 billion.
What are the Russian assets frozen in the EU?
The assets mainly consist of European short- and mid-duration bonds that have mostly already come due. When the bonds matured, the principal was paid. Because Euroclear wasn’t prepared to hold that much money itself, the proceeds were invested by Euroclear’s house bank in an account at the European Central Bank. The money is earning interest that legally belongs to Euroclear, although in ordinary circumstances the clearinghouse would send those funds (minus fees) to the client (the Russian central bank).
What is the proposed reparations loan?
The plan entails the EU loaning Ukraine up to €140 billionusing the Russian assets as collateral. Technically, this would involve Euroclear making an interest-free loan of the same value as the Russian assets it holds.
The EU would sign for the cash and give it to Kiev where it would ostensibly be used to fight the war and cover budget expenses, although past experience indicates that much of it could end up in offshore accounts belonging to insiders close to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky.
The sweetener for Kiev is that Ukraine only has to pay back the EU in the highly unlikely event that Russia loses the war and agrees to pay Ukraine reparations. In that case, Kiev would then have to pass those reparations back to Brussels, which would pay back Euroclear, which, in turn, would be able to honor its liability to the Russian central bank.
Why is Belgium afraid to go through with the scheme?
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12 February – Webinar The Big Push: New Nuclear Projects in Canada
Thursday, February 12, 7 pm Eastern | 2nd of 4 sessions in the 2026 Nuclear Waste Online webinar series
Join a webinar on the push for new nuclear generation in Canada. Go to Northwatch.org to register or use the registration link https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZfWOf1GITqSRIZX8CB-A9w
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