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Tell NRC: Do Not Weaken Radiation Protection!

Tell the NRC – https://www.protectbetter.org/nrc-comments?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=7a7efaf6-d89b-4f2a-bc04-cb2330ac6bc4

Nuclear Information & Resource Service, Fri, Aug 28,

Radiation harms. There is no safe level of exposure—and now the federal government is moving to weaken the standards meant to protect us.

President Trump’s Executive Orders are pushing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to weaken radiation protections as part of an effort to accelerate the construction of more nuclear reactors, nuclear-powered data centers, and the expansion of the nuclear weapons complex. These changes could expose people and communities to dramatically more radiation while disregarding decades of evidence about the health risks of even low-dose exposure.

WE MUST MAKE CLEAR:


  • No exemptions for radiation exposure.     Nuclear licensees must be required to track and count all radiation doses and radioactive emissions, with no minimum threshold. Any proposal allowing 25 millirem per year—or any millirem or microrem level—before exposures begin to “count” would effectively permit additional radiation exposure to go untracked. That could mean higher worker doses and increased radioactive releases into our air, water, and sewage, while making it harder to understand the true health impacts of cumulative, low-dose radiation exposure. If radiation is released and people are exposed, it should be tracked and reported and kept to a minimum.  
  • If new nuclear reactors are as safe and clean as the industry claims, why do our existing health and safety protections need to be weakened to build them? The rush to expand nuclear power should not come at the expense of safeguards designed to protect workers, communities, and the public. If nuclear expansion requires weaker radiation standards to move forward, that should raise serious questions—not justify lowering the bar. Don’t weaken the regulations. 
  • We MUST retain the goal of keeping exposures to radiation As Low As Reasonably Achievable.

This is not an abstract regulatory debate. It is about how much radiation the government considers acceptable for you, your family, and your community to be exposed to.

Weakening already inadequate radiation standards could  double or more allowable exposure—and the resulting cancer risk— And that risk is not distributed equally. Women, children, older adults, workers, and communities living near nuclear facilities face greater risks.

The science is clear that radiation’s harms extend far beyond cancer. Radiation causes  immune dysfunction and heart and cardiovascular disease. It could cause infertility, and disruption of pregnancy. In 2021, after a six-year review, the NRC itself rejected the industry proposal to do away with the Linear NoThreshold model.  NRC should rely on that decision, not weaken it. 

Yet instead of strengthening protections, the federal government is trying to move in the opposite direction.

We know what happens when regulators underestimate radiation risk. Billions of dollars in government compensation have already been paid to people harmed by radiation exposure—including people whose exposures occurred below legal levels  at the time. We  must not repeat those mistakes  to make nuclear expansion dirtier and cheaper.

If radiation standards are weakened while nuclear facilities proliferate, more radioactive materials will be produced, transported, processed, stored, and released into our environment. Once radioactive contamination is released, we cannot simply take it back.

This is a moment when we have to act. Regulators and lawmakers need to hear that public health protections are not an inconvenience to be eliminated in the rush to build more nuclear facilities.

NIRS is fighting to defend science-based radiation protections and ensure that the health of our communities comes before the nuclear industry’s expansion plans.

August 30, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

Port Hope’s past fuels pushback on nuclear reactor


The Canadian Press, 21 Aug 2026

The Ontario government announced earlier this year that it will build one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants in Port Hope, Ontario. Though the news was welcomed by some, it shocked a generation of Port Hope residents old enough to have lived through or learned of the community’s fraught history with the nuclear industry.

August 30, 2026 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Port Hope’s radioactive past fuels pushback against proposed nuclear reactor

August 21, 2026, The Canadian Press 

When the Ontario government announced plans earlier this year to build what could become one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants in a picturesque community of roughly 18,000 people, the news came wrapped in a series of celebratory speeches.

The province’s energy minister, Stephen Lecce, hailed the project as “another positive step” toward a secure energy future, while the local mayor said it would help usher in a “stronger and more resilient future” not only for the community about 100 kilometres east of Toronto, but for the entire province and country.

Though the news was welcomed by some, it shocked a generation of Port Hope residents old enough to have lived through the community’s fraught history with the nuclear industry, a legacy that permeates backyards and public properties to this day.

“I personally was outraged when I heard this announcement, and elected officials of every level were lined up here making this announcement as if this was good news,” said Faye More, a 75-year-old resident rallying opposition to the project in the community.

The community has felt “invisible for about 80 years in the matter of the operation of these plants,” and is feeling the same once again as the province forges ahead with the new project, More said in an interview.

It has been almost a century since the Eldorado mining company, which later became a Crown corporation, opened a radium refinery plant in Port Hope in the 1930s. When uranium suddenly became a prized commodity about a decade later, ore that was once considered a waste product was in demand. The plant began refining uranium instead, supplying the material to the United States military during the Second World War where its uses included the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government program that produced the first atomic bombs.

Over several decades, the plant dumped contaminated soil, rocks and building materials across Port Hope. The materials were used mainly as backfill, but also in the construction of parks, roads, schools and homes — including the home where More grew up and the one where she later raised a family of her own.

In 2001, the federal government signed an agreement with Port Hope and nearby Clarington, committing to cleaning up, isolating and managing the historic, low-level radioactive waste that contaminated the region.

The project, known as Port Hope Area Initiative, in being implemented by the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which manages historic waste sites on behalf of the Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.

The provincially owned company in charge of the new nuclear power project is assuring residents that the sector operates much differently than when it was in its infancy………………………………………………..

Those assurances haven’t swayed critics.

The municipality is already home to two nuclear operations on top of the decades-long remediation project, More said. Another nuclear plant is not welcome, she said.

The community is being “treated like (it’s) expendable” as the government seeks to expand nuclear power generation, More said. “But the people here have been exploited and they have borne the price of this and we say no more.”

To many, the new power plant may seem like a done deal, but More and several other residents who oppose the project said they are optimistic their efforts will bear fruit.

More, who heads a local committee focused on health concerns, said the group will keep raising awareness of the proposal as well as lobbying the government to reverse its decision.

In June, she sent a petition to Canada’s auditor general, seeking protection under the upcoming National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice. The strategy, according to the federal government, aims to promote efforts to recognize and address the “existing inequalities faced by Indigenous, racialized or otherwise marginalized communities” when decisions are made about the environment.

Consultations on the draft strategy closed this week and the final version is expected to be tabled this fall.

Turning to the courts could also be an option, More said……..

Port Hope is one of the most contaminated towns in Canada when it comes to low-level radioactive waste; the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says the bulk of historic waste is there and in nearby Clarington.

The $2.6-billion remediation plan currently underway is “pretty much the largest environmental cleanup that’s ever been undertaken in the country,” said Bill Daly, the director of communications for the Port Hope Area Initiative, the organization behind the cleanup and long-term monitoring project.

Daly said some 5,000 sites in the municipality have been tested and about 1,200 were found to have some level of contamination…………………………

Like several others in the municipality, Erland said he can’t fathom why Port Hope was chosen to house a nuclear reactor.

“The irony couldn’t be lost that just while this remediation is being undertaken on our property, we’re learning that the government now wants to build the largest nuclear power plant in the world in this area,” the 66-year-old said…….

Autumn Woolsey said she and her family have gone through a long and painful cycle of testing, remediation and restoration on their property.

“This summer has been the first summer in eight years that we have not had anything going on,” she said.

No health monitoring was conducted in that time, even after Woolsey repeatedly asked for it, she added.

Woolsey, who fiercely opposes the new reactor, said she’s fighting for future generations.

“I can’t change what has happened and what we’ve been exposed to, but if I can advocate and fight for my children, their children … that is what my goal, my mission is in life,” she said.

“Do not come in here to a community that has suffered for decades and think that we’re going to be happy to hear about this.”…

Few might be affected as directly as Sarah Sculthorpe and her family if the new plant goes ahead. The farm property where Sculthorpe moved nearly 50 years ago after marrying an eighth-generation Port Hope resident shoulders the site chosen for the project.

Over the last several months, Sculthorpe has been knocking on neighbours’ doors, talking to politicians and nuclear experts, doing online research and taking copious notes — all aimed at preventing what seems to be the inevitable.

“The only way to win a battle is to raise the knowledge and the voices of people,” she said. “And if we cannot educate people and let them know why we don’t want this, it will happen, because (for) most people, it’s out of sight, out of mind.”

The land earmarked for the plant spans 1,300 acres, with 700 acres deemed environmentally sensitive, she said.

Sculthorpe’s biggest concern, she said, is that building one of the country’s largest reactor sites on a plot of that size might mean there’s no space for a buffer zone between the plant and her property.

She argues Ontario Power Generation has not been transparent with the plant’s potential neighbours — an accusation denied by the corporation, which said it has “engaged extensively” with residents near the site and throughout the municipality.

Sculthorpe said her husband remembers seeing yellowcake, a powdery form of uranium oxide, in the ditches when he walked to school as a child, and later became of a member Citizens for Responsible Nuclear Waste Disposal. The grassroots group successfully lobbied for the environmental cleanup of Port Hope in 1980s.

She said she doesn’t want her grandchildren to be raised next door to a nuclear reactor.

“For me it’s a very emotional battle,” she said. https://www.cp24.com/local/2026/08/21/port-hopes-radioactive-past-fuels-pushback-against-proposed-nuclear-reactor/

August 25, 2026 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

“ We will not capitulate ”: 30 years of battle against nuclear waste.

Reporterre 15th Aug 2026,
https://reporterre.net/Nous-ne-capitulerons-pas-30-ans-de-bataille-contre-les-dechets-nucleaires

Opponents of radioactive waste gathered near Bure for a weekend under heavy security. It was an opportunity to reiterate their opposition to the Cigéo project, whose problems threaten to become a defining feature of this century.

This weekend, in a field in Saint-Amand-sur-Ornain (Meuse), about fifteen kilometers from Bure, people will be discussing nuclear waste, listening to lectures and concerts, watching films, and, above all, saying no again. From August 14 to 16, 
the fifth edition of the Bure’lesques festival brings together opponents 
of the Cigéo project , this gigantic facility that the French government and the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (Andra) want to dig 500 meters underground to bury the most dangerous radioactive waste produced by France’s nuclear power plants.

The festival will be held under close surveillance. Two decrees issued on August 4 by the prefect of the Meuse have established a particularly wide police presence: prohibitions on transporting various materials, such as wood, pyrotechnic objects or elements to conceal one’s face, restrictions on alcohol, but also the capture and recording of images by two drones and a gendarmerie helicopter.

Read also: ”  We’ve lost a battle but not the war  “: how anti-nuclear activists are continuing the fight

Around forty individuals and fifteen organizations, including the Human Rights League, the French Lawyers’ Union, and the anti-nuclear network Sortir du nucléaire, filed an emergency appeal with the Nancy Administrative Court, denouncing a disproportionate measure and yet another attempt to criminalize opposition to the Cigéo nuclear waste repository project. According to the plaintiffs, some of the restrictions covered 23 municipalities and approximately 300 square kilometers, even though the festival takes place in a field  !

On August 12, the administrative court ruled in their favor on only one point: the use of sound equipment would be permitted. This is the bare minimum for a festival. For the rest, the court determined that the use of drones and a helicopter was not ”  manifestly disproportionate ,  “ given the context surrounding the Cigéo protests.

”  We will not surrender  .”

This only reinforces the feeling among opponents that they are being monitored far beyond their weekend activities. In Bure, the confrontation with the state is nothing new. For nearly thirty years, public meetings, legal appeals, demonstrations, occupations, prosecutions, and police checks have accompanied the project. Generations of activists have now followed one another in the face of an industrial project whose timescale is an invitation to despair.

Reporterre has long followed this battle, documenting both the moments of jubilation and victory, as well as its brutal repression. In the 2000s, opponents bought an old farmhouse to build a “house of resistance,” creating a permanent residence and a focal point for anti-nuclear struggles. In 2013, the boycott of the public consultation gave new impetus to the fight, and then in 2016, the occupation of the Lejuc forest stalled the project for nearly two years. Before the numerous lawsuits and the criminal conspiracy charges attempted to stifle the struggle. Since then, the mobilizations have continued, and the opponents are still searching for a way to block the project.

“  The mindset is to keep fighting ,” assures Corinne François, a member of the Burestop collective, which co-organizes the festival with a myriad of associations. “ This edition is important; we are in a pivotal year: the decision to authorize creation ( DAC ) could be granted at the end of 2026/2027.  ”

”  The mindset is to keep fighting  .”

“ 
 We will not capitulate , 
 ” insists Régine, from the Stop Cigéo coordination, who boasts over thirty-five years (!) of activism. Almost a lifetime spent reminding everyone that this monumental project is a one-way ticket to nuisances 
“ for all eternity”
  . 
” Residents need to understand that as soon as Andra obtains its authorization, work can begin immediately, starting with the clearing of the Lejuc forest. Massive construction projects are on the horizon. ”


If Cigéo is built, its operation must last at least a century. Then the repository will be closed to isolate substances from the biosphere, some of which will remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years. Here, time no longer has quite the same consistency as elsewhere. The site’s security will have to become passive: it’s impossible to rely indefinitely on technicians, a state, institutions, or even a civilization to monitor the tunnels. But to get to that point, the project must first be completed.

This is the dizzying feeling that pervades the struggle in Bure. Those who oppose the project today know they will never see its end, should it be completed. The construction site would span generations, and the waste would still be there long after borders, languages, and landscapes have changed.

A decisive step

The project has reached a crucial stage. In January 2023, Andra submitted its application for authorization to create the facility. After nearly three years of review, the Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority ( ASNR ) issued a generally favorable opinion at the end of 2025 , concluding that Andra possessed a sufficient knowledge base to proceed with the application, while requesting several additional items (more than 40 in total). The public inquiry was held from May 18 to July 2, 2026 .

The government can now prepare the decree for the Council of State authorizing—or not—the creation of Cigéo. 
“ If Andra obtains the authorization request, it will be based on an iterative process, meaning one that will evolve over time ,” fumes Corinne François.“ 
This is unique in the world. Major projects are budgeted today. Here, it’s complete chaos: they’re going to allocate 7 billion euros for the pilot phase. Then, it’s up to future generations to solve the problems that will arise. “

The two organizations are questioning, among other things, the criteria for declaring an experiment a failure. At what point does a malfunction, a difficulty in retrieving a package, or a deviation from the established models lead to a decision to stop 
 ? Because problems are likely to become commonplace this century. 
” 
 We can imagine what could happen in 150 years, particularly with climate change, political systems, and so on, 
 “ adds Bernard Laponche.
 

This is perhaps where technology and politics intersect. Cigéo is officially presented as a reversible project: future generations must be able to modify the choices, retrieve waste packages, or change the strategy. 
” But the more billions of euros are spent, the more kilometers of tunnels are dug, and the first waste materials are brought down, the more difficult it becomes to reverse course ,  “ says Bernard Laponche.

Under the big tops of the Bure’lesques, behind the acronyms, the cells and the clay, it is ultimately this question that has returned for thirty years: at what point does an experience become a fait accompli 
 ? And how to keep the drive to fight against it 
 ?

August 20, 2026 Posted by | France, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Anti-uranium advocates wrest control of public hearing on proposed mine near Navajo Nation

NMDOJ also weighs in on NuFuels’ nuclear license renewal, saying company is making false promises about unproven extraction technology 

By Patrick Lohmann-August 10, 2026 , https://sourcenm.com/2026/08/10/anti-uranium-advocates-wrest-control-of-public-hearing-on-proposed-mine-near-navajo-nation/

GALLUP — A recent hearing meant to inform the public about a new uranium mine proposal near Church Rock instead exposed wounds around the legacy of mining’s impacts on Navajo communities, as well as fresh concerns about whether technology that promises to safely extract the mineral is as clean as the industry claims. 

Laramide Resources, a Canadian mining company, and its subsidiary NuFuels, Inc., held a public hearing Thursday at a casino near Gallup as it seeks a permit from the New Mexico Environment Department to discharge. 

But Navajo anti-mining advocates, as well as those who still remember the cascading consequences  from the 1979 Church Rock mine spill, shouted out repeatedly during the company’s presentation. They expressed frustration that NuFuels would pursue a uranium mine in an area still contending with the biggest uranium spill in the nation’s history, as well as numerous other public health and environmental harms from decades of uranium mining.

About half way through company Vice President Josh Leftwich’s presentation, advocate Jenn Nez slowly got to her feet and walked toward Leftwich, ultimately convincing him to hand her his microphone. 

Through tears, Nez described cancer and other health issues she said uranium contamination caused in her family. Leftwich did not get the microphone back for most of the rest of the 90-minute meeting, as a line of fellow opponents gathered alongside Nez and waited for their chance to speak. 

“Thank you for giving us this opportunity, because we took it from you,” Teracita Keyanna, vice president of the Red Water Pond Road Community Association Executive Committee, told Leftwich. “This is my community. This is my family. That’s my home you’re talking about.”

Leftwich’s presentation centered on a proposed uranium project called Church Rock Section 8, which the company hopes to build on a 175-acre site of private land surrounded by the Navajo Nation, which bans uranium mining. Before Leftwich was interrupted, he detailed how the company sought to use a mining method known as in situ recovery to access roughly 10 million pounds of uranium contained in sandstone formations in the underground aquifer. 

In situ recovery entails the injection of lixiviant — a chemical solution composed of water, oxygen and either carbon dioxide or sodium bicarbonate — to dissolve the uranium underground. From there, pumps extract the uranium liquid into recovery wells, where the uranium is separated. The leftover water is then discharged back into the aquifer. 

“It’s a closed-loop system,” Leftwich said. “There won’t be any other discharges. The water just circulates through the formation to extract the uranium.”

The company’s permit application notes that, when fully operational, it will seek to discharge roughly 4,000 gallons of leftover water a minute back into the aquifer, which provides drinking water to the Crownpoint community. That would be the equivalent of about nine Olympic-size swimming pools’ worth of water a day. 

The company cannot begin mining until the NMED rules on the permit application, which officials said will take at least a year.

Still, Leftwich’s presentation extolled the virtues of in situ recovery as a low-emissions means of extracting uranium without risking the lives of workers underground.

The company would also employ monitoring wells to ensure the water quality meets federal and state standards, and the company is in preliminary stages of a research project with Los Alamos National Laboratories that aims to restore the groundwater supply with “approaches tailored to the geology of the Churchrock deposit.”

However, state officials are dubious about the company’s promises to restore the groundwater to its pre-mining condition. Earlier Thursday, the New Mexico Department of Justice weighed in on the company’s pending license renewal application to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission with a 39-page rebuttal of numerous claims the company has made regarding its operation and in situ recovery more broadly. 

The NMDOJ’s “petition to intervene” argues that in situ recovery has never been proven to restore groundwater supplies to their pre-mining states and that no technology yet exists to do so. It cites NuFuels’ own statements in an unrelated filing before the NRC in 2023, in which the company states that, “to date, no ISR site has restored all groundwater constituents of concern to pre-operational concentrations” and that uranium levels “tend to gradually rebound” in aquifers after the treatment.

Therefore, the NMDOJ wrote, the company has acknowledged “that the technology needed to ensure compliance with the governing restoration standard does not yet exist and that developing it is the object of ongoing research.” 

Advocates who wrested the microphone from Leftwich on Thursday also raised concerns about what they said is untested technology, with one woman shouting that the NuFuels was making “Guinea pigs” out of the communities downstream of the mine site. 

Leftwich told Source NM after the hearing that he was surprised the New Mexico Department of Justice would weigh in on what he sees as a “pretty small issue” regarding a single mine in the Church Rock area, “compared to big issues, like across the state.” 

As for the hearing itself, he said he was content to let people “speak their minds” about the issue, but also that legacy uranium issues and “misinformation” are preventing a productive community debate. The hearing also marked the beginning of a 60-day public comment period. 

“This is the first of hopefully multiple meetings that we can get more in-depth,” he said. “I really wish we could have good meetings.”

August 20, 2026 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear, Uranium | Leave a comment

Enough is Enough

a report submitted by the
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
to the
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

regarding OPG’s requested
authorization for the
Proposed Pickering B Refurbishment

August 12 2026
Dr. Gordon Edwards, Ph.D. and Dr. Sunil Nijhawan, Ph.D.

Recommendation 1: The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility regards it asan unreasonable risk to expose the City of Toronto and environs to the unnecessary threat of a devastating nuclear disaster, however low the estimated probability might be. CCNR therefore recommends that CNSC refuse to grant the licence requested byOPG to refurbish and continue to operate four nuclear power reactors (units 5 to 8) atthe Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. This recommendation is reinforced by the

following facts:

(1)There are more than 1.1 million people living within 20 kilometres of Pickering NGS, and twice as many living within a 30-kilometre radius;

(2)Every homeowner’s insurance policy has a “nuclear exclusion clause” which voids coverage in case of radioactive contamination from a nuclear accident’

(3)As recently as 2016, OPG confirmed its earlier decision that refurbishment of the Pickering B reactors even at a lower cost ($10.7 billion) is unjustified

(4)As of 2010, OPG was fully prepared to see its Pickering Nuclear GeneratingStation completely shut down by 2030;

(5)The current estimated cost of refurbishing Pickering B is prohibitively expensive compared to other energy options, both nuclear and non-nuclear.

Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President,

Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility

www.ccnr.org/PNGS_CCNR_CNSC_2026.pdf

August 20, 2026 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear | 2 Comments

Looking Back….Going Forward

Andrew and Varrie Blowers writing for the Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG) for Energy and Environment Regional Life Column for August, 2026

This month we’ve decided to look back over previous August issues of
this column to reflect on our preoccupations over the past decade. We’ve
picked on two themes – radioactive wastes and new nuclear power – covered
in four columns which focus on our successes as well as our continuing
concerns during these years. August 2017: BANNG led a successful campaign
to force the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to abandon its
experimental scheme to flush dissolved Fuel Element Debris (FED) residue
into the Blackwater. As a result, Magnox cancelled its plans to use FED
dissolution at its other sites. August 2020: In the midst of the pandemic,
the Chinese project to build reactors at Bradwell reached its apotheosis
with its pre-application for planning consent. The outrage against the
project was palpable. Combined with local political and public opposition
and government concerns around national security risks, BANNG was
emboldened to conclude the project was dying. Later, when the Chinese
walked away, we could presume the project dead.

BANNG 5th Aug 2026, https://www.banng.info/news/regional-life/looking-back-going-forward/

August 19, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

It’s Time For Movements To Rethink Social Media

 What you post no longer goes to the people who chose to hear from you — it goes wherever the algorithm sends it, if it goes anywhere at all. Attention is concentrated on a handful of corporate platforms whose incentive is to keep you scrolling, not to help you organize.

 August 15, 2026 , Mehran Khalili  Waging Nonviolence, https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/15/its-time-for-movements-to-rethink-social-media/

Movements can still find people on social media. But the real organizing has to happen somewhere else — and getting people there is the part we keep skipping.

Last September I made a short video that was by far the most viral piece of content I’ve ever put out.

I can’t trace all the views, but at least a million people watched it across Instagram and TikTok, and possibly elsewhere. Neighbors in Athens, Greece told me they’d come across my face in their feed; Chinese accounts captioned the video and reposted it. I felt like I’d made a dent in the universe and — I’m not going to lie — a little bit special.

The video wasn’t pop wisdom or a dance routine. It had a job to do: get people to sign a petition, created by DiEM25 and Progressive International, to block Germany’s genocide-enabling former foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, from becoming president of the U.N. General Assembly. 

And on that, it failed. By the end of my week of internet mini-fame, the number of signatures had barely shifted. It had 49,000 signatures that July, two months before I posted. I watched it closely that week, and it barely moved.  Baerbock got the job – the petition now asks her to resign. 


I know a few things about digital communication. For two decades it’s been a key part of what I do — I’ve written about it, researched it, advised movements on it. The petition wasn’t mine, but the video was. And I couldn’t make it work. 

Maybe the video could have been packaged better, or the petition link made easier to find. Maybe my pitch was entertaining but not compelling. Maybe a petition was never the right vehicle for stopping Baerbock in the first place.

My organizer friends thought it went great. They congratulated me on the numbers. Nobody asked about the petition.

That last part is what’s bothered me since. Because if a million views and no signatures is considered a success, we’re measuring the wrong thing.

And that opens up a bigger question, one I don’t think we ask often enough: When we use social media in our organizing, what are we actually doing? Is it worth the time we put into it? And is there a way of doing it that actually builds something?

Why we’re all on there anyway

Social media is now a given for organizers, and for good reason. We’ve been using it to fill public squares for well over a decade, from Occupy to Black Lives Matter to last year’s Gen Z protests across the Global South. To get around media blackouts and show the world what power does when it thinks no one’s filming, from Ferguson to Gaza. To make and sink political careers. To tank the stock prices of corporations that deserve it. 

Social media has changed how we communicate. It’s forced us to be quicker, sharper and more entertaining. Because attention is scarce — and we’re competing for it against everything else.

But beneath all of this, most of us are working from the same assumption: that platforms are where the work happens. That the posting is the organizing. That if we get the reach, the rest will follow.

What changed

That assumption has a history. Those of us who were around in 2011 will remember that social media held a different kind of promise. We thought we could topple governments and kings, if only we could get enough people onto the streets. And social media was very good at getting people onto the streets, as long as the anger was already there.

Sometimes that was enough. Tunisian dictator Ben Ali went. Egyptian dictator Mubarak went. But when it didn’t hold — when Occupy dissolved, when Tahrir Square gave way to a military government, when the squares emptied — we told ourselves it wasn’t the right moment, or that the repression was too heavy.

My sense is that a lot of us still carry that same idealism about social media’s power. But two things have changed since then.

The first is that governments got very good at pushing us back. They stifle protest at the source now, with monitoring, arrests and social media operations of their own. Movements can still get around censorship, and often do. But the state has learned to work on the same terrain. Amnesty International has documented how last year Kenyan authorities used the same platforms as the Gen Z movement to threaten and discredit organizers.  And where that isn’t enough, the state can reach for the platform itself — banning it, as Nepal did in 2025, or changing who owns it, as happened with TikTok in the U.S.

The second is that the platforms themselves changed shape. We went from follower feeds to recommendation feeds. What you post no longer goes to the people who chose to hear from you — it goes wherever the algorithm sends it, if it goes anywhere at all. Attention is concentrated on a handful of corporate platforms whose incentive is to keep you scrolling, not to help you organize.

That second shift is the one we’ve underrated in terms of its impact on our ability to organize. In 2011 we posted, our followers saw it and we organized in the replies — as I did during the Athens riots. Distribution and coordination happened in the same place, at the same time.

Comments still exist, of course. But when a post reaches few of your followers, and reaches strangers instead, the reply thread stops being a place where a group can form. It becomes a place where individuals arrive one at a time and leave the same way.

And yet we still use these platforms like it’s 2011. We shoot things off into the ether and hope something will stick — that people will hear our calls to rise up and somehow self-organize. Or that if we point at a problem often enough, everyone will arrive at the same solutions we did. And each time something or someone does break through, it feels like luck.

That doesn’t mean a post can’t start something. In India, after the chief justice called unemployed young people cockroaches, a student in Boston asked on social media what would happen if all the cockroaches came together. Within weeks the Cockroach Party had formed, with millions of followers and protests in several states, and almost no organizing in between. That was three months ago. They have since won a major victory, but nobody yet knows what it will become.

A spontaneous movement can still form from social media. You just can’t plan for it, and you can’t repeat it. And yet a lot of what we do is built on waiting for it.

The tools changed. Our habits didn’t.

Why we didn’t change with them

In some ways this is understandable. Social media is the shiniest and most responsive part of our toolkit. It’s free. We all know how to use it. We understand the algorithms, the buzzwords, the memes, how to play the game. And above all, it answers immediately.

Nothing else in organizing does that. A meeting doesn’t tell you how it went. A training doesn’t report back for six months. And a list doesn’t tell you anything at all until you ask it to do something.

So we borrow like crazy from the people for whom social media genuinely is the whole job: activist influencers. They build an audience out of perceived closeness — a parasocial relationship, the illusion of intimacy and reciprocity. That’s a real skill, and it has its uses. But an audience is only enough if attention is the goal. It isn’t a base. Nobody shows up on a Tuesday night because they feel close to someone on a screen. 

Meanwhile, the dull part of the work gets skipped — the meetings, the follow-up calls, the trainings, the arguments about what we’re actually demanding and from whom. And that’s the part that turns attention into power. As Zeynep Tufekci argues, social media allows networked movements to reach scale without building the capacity that scale used to require.

You can see what that costs. In Bangladesh, Nepal and Madagascar, protests driven by social media brought governments down — but in each case, what filled the space was something that already existed. An established party in Dhaka, a party formed three years earlier in Kathmandu, the army in Antananarivo. Not the movements themselves.

Worse, I think our use of these platforms has begun to shape our strategy. We optimize for what the platform rewards, because that’s the number that gets sent straight back to us. The silent but vital parts of the organizing work get subtly deprioritized — or stop happening at all.

What it looks like when someone gets it right

In February 2025, Americans angry about Elon Musk’s growing political influence started posting about his company, Tesla. Selling their cars, filming these sales and complaining online. It could have stayed there.

What moved it off the feed was small and specific. A Boston University professor saw a showroom protest in New York City run by the group Rise and Resist, held the same action in her own city and posted about it on Bluesky. Others copied her. A few people built a website and a map, and the whole thing ran under one hashtag: #TeslaTakedown. 

Tesla’s weak spot was its showrooms: physical places, with addresses and opening hours, belonging to a company whose value rested heavily on its founder’s reputation. Organizers picked a time and stuck to it — they protested at the same place, every week. By March there were protests at Tesla showrooms in more than 250 cities across the globe.

The organizers’ own account of why it worked comes down to two things: Presence beats planning, and regularity builds community. That isn‘t an argument against strategy — choosing the showrooms was a strategy, and a good one. It’s an argument against making people wait while you perfect it. In a moment of anger, people didn’t need a planning document. They needed to be told where to go and what to do.

And the sign-ups ran through Action Network, the organizing platform. Not through the comments of the movement’s social media posts. So when those posts stopped performing, the movement still had its list.

Morocco’s Gen Z protests are another example of how to do it right. Last year brought a wave of protests in Morocco, against corruption, inequality and the state of public services. The movement called itself GenZ 212, after Morocco’s country code.

It got the word out on Instagram and TikTok, but it used the communications platform Discord as its backbone. People were sorted into regional channels, reflecting where they actually lived, and decisions were taken in nightly discussions that ended in votes. One estimate put the number of people on the channels at 250,000 last October.

It was untidy; it was sometimes chaotic. But Discord, which has no recommendation feed, did something for Morocco’s protesters that a feed couldn’t: It enabled them to make decisions under pressure, as a group, and to adapt. When the first days brought arrests, the movement moved its protests into working-class neighborhoods. When deaths followed police intervention, members reconvened to establish what had actually happened and to argue for peaceful protest, countering attempts to paint them as reckless.

Like most of the major Gen Z movements we’ve seen, GenZ 212 was leaderless and decentralized. The distinction here isn’t leaders versus no leaders. It’s whether there’s a room where a question can be settled and a decision can be made.

What these movements have in common

One word: a handoff.

In both cases organizers recruited on social media, just as in 2011. But they didn’t stay there. They moved people quickly into spaces they controlled. Here it happened to be Action Network and Discord; it could as easily have been a mailing list, a forum, a group chat or a room with chairs in it. What matters is that it wasn’t an algorithmic feed.

This reframes the arguments we keep having about which social media platforms to be on and which to quit. Platforms rise and fall, and whichever one holds the attention next, it will still only be the top of the funnel. The better question is: What does a movement need to own so that an algorithm change, or a ban, can’t decapitate it?

Case in point: The Gen Z movement in Nepal, operating on Discord, was able to simply route around the sweeping government ban of social media platforms last year. And the movement brought the government down. 

The handoff has to be engineered

But there’s a catch to the handoff: The architecture of the platforms works against you.

Platforms downrate anything that makes people leave the app — that’s the one behavior the whole system is built to prevent.  Their architecture says it plainly: Instagram doesn’t let you put a link in a caption. TikTok confines them to your bio. And on Facebook, posts containing a link have gone from about one in seven to one in 66 — by Meta’s own count.

So the handoff can’t be an afterthought. It has to be designed as carefully and deliberately as the hook.

Platforms downrate anything that makes people leave the app — that’s the one behavior the whole system is built to prevent.  Their architecture says it plainly: Instagram doesn’t let you put a link in a caption. TikTok confines them to your bio. And on Facebook, posts containing a link have gone from about one in seven to one in 66 — by Meta’s own count.

So the handoff can’t be an afterthought. It has to be designed as carefully and deliberately as the hook.

Be clear about what you’re counting

The other half is measurement, and it’s the half we get wrong most often. The platforms hand us a pile of data for free, and we take it, because it’s there. But going viral is not a win. It was never the goal.

Mehran Khalili is a political consultant and organizer based in Athens, Greece. He writes Subvrt, a newsletter on practical organizing, and works with DiEM25, where he produces and hosts public conversations on how to confront power. He has advised movements and NGOs, and has run grassroots campaigns in Greece. After hours, he makes black-and-white photographs.

August 18, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Where has all the disarmament gone?

    by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/08/06/where-has-all-the-disarmament-gone/

The rulers of the nine nuclear-armed nations are busily upgrading their nuclear weapons arsenals, writes Lawrence Wittner

Although 81 years have passed since the atomic bombing of Japan in August 1945, the rulers of major nations continue their reckless march toward a nuclear holocaust.

The nine nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea), possessing some 12,100 nuclear warheads, are all busily upgrading and expanding their nuclear weapons arsenals at an accelerating pace.  Nuclear weapons spending rose to an all-time high of $119 billion in 2025―a 19 percent increase over the preceding year.  The U.S. government alone, which accounted for more than half of this spending, is embarked on a $1.7 trillion, decades-long nuclear weapons buildup.

As the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has observed, “this overwhelming spending on nuclear weapons shows a willingness to research, develop, finance and build tools to exterminate humanity.”

Moreover, international nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements among the nuclear powers have collapsed.  Russia and the United States own 86 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons and, although they signed numerous treaties in the past to limit or reduce the size of their nuclear arsenals, the last of these treaties, New START, expired this February.

The accelerating nuclear arms race is accompanied by repeated threats of nuclear war.  Russian officials are particularly notorious in this connection.  According to the Voice of America, from early 2022 to late 2024 Russian officials publicly issued 135 nuclear threats, with 27 of them coming from Vladimir Putin.  But America’s Donald Trump has also publicly and repeatedly threatened other countries with nuclear destruction, as has North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Early this year, the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, assessing this deteriorating situation, moved the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous setting in its history.

Of course, there have been a great many warnings that nuclear weapons portend global disaster, including many beginning right after the shocking annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  “Seldom, if ever,” reported CBS radio commentator Edward R. Murrow, “has war ended leaving the victors . . . with such a realization that . . . survival is not assured.”  

The Chicago Tribune warned that a future atomic war would leave the world “a barren waste, in which the survivors . . . will hide in caves.”  In France, the resistance leader Albert Camus declared that the modern world had “reached the last degree of savagery,” in which nations were faced with the prospect of “collective suicide.”

As nuclear fear swept around the world, large numbers of people sought to avert catastrophe.  Some called for dramatically strengthened global governance to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war, while others, with the same goal in mind, championed nuclear disarmament.  Speaking on behalf of the newly-formed Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Albert Einstein typified this popular uprising by arguing that “a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive.”

Over subsequent decades, the antinuclear movement ebbed and flowed, but, at times of mass mobilization, it had an important effect on nuclear weapons policies.  Naturally, the leaders of many nations felt the allure of nuclear weapons, especially after thousands of years of human history in which national security often seemed to rest upon military strength.  Nevertheless, as indicated by opinion polls and massive demonstrations, antinuclear agitation inspired revulsion against nuclear weapons and nuclear war among large portions of the public.  Consequently, most governments decided not to build nuclear weapons or even to deploy them on their territory.  

Hard-pressed by antinuclear campaigners and public opinion, even the small number of governments that built nuclear weapons found themselves unable to resist agreement on nuclear arms control and disarmament measures.  Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush were not nuclear “doves” when they entered office, but, in response to popular pressure, they took significant action to curb nuclear dangers.  Some government officials, like Mikhail Gorbachev, even became fervent converts to the antinuclear cause.

As the 20th century came to an end, however, progress in rolling back the nuclear menace began to unravel.  Popular protest declined, and nuclear disarmament organizations dwindled in size.  By contrast, conservative and militarist forces grew more assertive, blocking U.S. Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, demanding the building of new nuclear weapons, and derailing Barack Obama’s initiative for creating a nuclear weapons-free world.

Although nuclear disarmament organizations were on the defensive during the early 21st century, they retained enough strength to produce one major victory.  Joining together in the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, they cooperated closely with officials in small, non-nuclear nations to produce a series of UN conferences on nuclear issues.  Then, at the 2017 conference, the national delegates voted 122 to 1 to adopt the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which banned nuclear weapons.  Entering into force in January 2021, the treaty has been signed, thus far, by 100 countries―a majority of the world’s nations.

Even so, the situation remains dire.  Today, most rulers of the nuclear powers are nationalistic, militaristic, and authoritarian, with no interest in nuclear disarmament.  Instead, they are busy readying their nations for a disastrous nuclear war.  Not surprisingly, none of them is willing to sign or even abide by the TPNW.  Although the antinuclear movement continues to oppose their priorities, it remains weak and unable to halt the momentum toward nuclear catastrophe.

Thus, unless there is an advent of new, less hawkish rulers, a movement revival, or both, a nuclear war seems likely.

Admittedly, it’s possible that, when a calamitous nuclear war does occur, it will finally convince even the slow learners among government officials that the nuclear age requires new thinking about international relations.  Unfortunately, that recognition will arrive too late to matter, for such a war will snuff out most life on earth.

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

August 11, 2026 Posted by | history, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Stop Hinkley campaigners highlight storage of nuclear waste in West Somerset

By John Thorne, Saturday 8th August 2026, https://www.wsfp.co.uk/news/stop-hinkley-campaigners-highlight-storage-of-nuclear-waste-in-west-somerset-935418

ANTI-nuclear campaigners staged a protest near the cluster of Hinkley Point power stations on the West Somerset coast on Thursday (August 6) to coincide with ‘Hiroshima Day’.

It was the 81st anniversary of the dropping of the world’s first nuclear bomb on the Japanese city in 1945. Members of the Stop Hinkley group gathered beneath the Hinkley Point sea wall to also highlight how nuclear waste would be stored on the site for centuries.

Stop Hinkley has been focussed on holding Hinkley C owner EDF to account for the protection of the public, wildlife, and the environment since the early 1980s.

The building of Hinkley C was initially blocked by Margaret Thatcher in 1984 because it was considered financially unviable.

It was eventually given the go-ahead under Theresa May’s Government in 2016.

One campaigner, Katy Attwater, from Timberscombe, said: “I have been campaigning against the building of Hinkley Point C nuclear power station since 2008 when I joined this amazing local protest group.

“We felt Thursday was an appropriate day to be reminded, given the danger of nuclear energy and its deadly by-product, highly-reactive spent fuel, which requires isolation for thousands to hundreds of thousands of years – nobody actually knows how long.

“We wished to draw attention to the danger arising from the radioactive waste that will be stored on site at Hinkley Point for at least 100 years.

“This was not envisaged at the outset, but, due to Sellafield no longer accepting high level nuclear waste and the continuing failure to find a site for a geological disposal facility (GDF), aka ‘nuclear dump’, there is nowhere for it to go.”

Ms Attwater said Hinkley C would have a scheduled refuelling outage every 12 to 24 months when about one-third of the nuclear reactor’s core 241 fuel assemblies were taken out and replaced with fresh fuel.

She said: “These assemblies, fuel rods, are so highly radioactive that they have to be stored under water for 10 years before they can be moved.

“There is currently no solution in the planning stage for where this hot and deadly substance can be taken.

“With predicted sea level rises and extreme weather events, this process will become increasingly dangerous on the low-level eroding coastline of Hinkley Point.

“We would encourage people to contact their local MPs to ask why this is being allowed to proceed, especially in the context of the obvious acceleration of climate change on our beloved planet earth.”

The Hinkley Point site houses three nuclear power stations, A, B, and C.

Hinkley A, opened in 1965 and was shut down after 35 years in 2000, and is currently being decommissioned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority subsidiary Magnox Ltd.

It will store intermediate level waste on site until a GDF becomes available.

The B station opened in 1976 and ceased generation in 2022 and has had its fuel removed and taken to Sellafield.

Decommissioning is expected to be approved in October this year.

Hinkley C is under construction and expected to start generating power in 2029.

August 9, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

Campaign steps up opposition to south Wales nuclear project

They noted that Last Energy had not yet installed any SMRs anywhere in the world, branding nuclear projects unsafe, unclean, expensive, and unnecessary.

26 Jul 2026, Nation.Cymru Staff, https://nation.cymru/news/campaign-steps-up-opposition-to-south-wales-nuclear-project/

Campaigners have stepped up efforts to oppose plans for a new nuclear power project in a south Wales valley as public consultations come to a close.

Friends of the Earth Cymru is backing a campaign against proposals by micro-reactor company Last Energy to build four small modular nuclear reactors at Cwm Llynfi, near Maesteg.


Last Energy is a commercial developer of micro-modular PWR-20 nuclear power plants headquartered in Washington D.C.

Last Energy UK Limited, the company’s British subsidiary, announced plans to develop the clean energy project in south Wales in October 2024.

Formally titled ‘Prosiect Egni Glan Llynfi’, it is to be built on the 14-acre site of the former Llyfni coal-fired power station which ceased operation in 1977.

“Working to power and decarbonise industry in South Wales”, the company’s proposal includes development of up to four 20-megawatt micro-modular nuclear power plants, “intended to provide electricity to local industrial customers and to be privately financed”.

Last Energy UK intended to provide £300m financing, and expects the project to power 250,000 homes and create around 100 jobs for the local community.

In February 2025, Last Energy UK formally entered the site licensing process for the project, as the first commercial nuclear power reactor to seek licensing since 1978.

Michael Jenner, CEO of Last Energy UK, said that the process was “another critical milestone necessary to unlock nuclear power at scale in the UK, which will help meet growing energy demand and alleviate grid restraints.”

At the time, the company had said it aimed to complete construction on the first micro reactor in Wales by 2027. However, in July 2025 after a Preliminary Design Review by the Office for Nuclear Regulation, it was reported that they do not expect to receive site licensing until December 2027, “if necessary submissions to the required standard” are delivered according to schedule.

Friends of the Earth Cymru, local campaigners and anti-nuclear groups had voiced early opposition to the proposals, arguing the development would have long-term consequences for the environment and surrounding communities

In a May 2025 FoE Cymru blog post, Jenny Lloyd, Local Action and Community Campaigns Officer, supported by anti-nuclear activist Brian Jones, said: “The struggle to protect Wales from the dangers of nuclear is one that has been fought by communities for decades.

“Activists persuaded every county council in Wales to declare themselves “Nuclear Free Zones” in the 80s, marched to Greenham common to protest against the siting of guided nuclear missiles at the RAF base, and rallied against the redevelopment of Wylfa nuclear power station…”

They noted that Last Energy had not yet installed any SMRs anywhere in the world, branding nuclear projects unsafe, unclean, expensive, and unnecessary.

They continued: “If this proposal is allowed to go ahead it threatens our health, our environment and our communities for generations to come.”

In June 2026, Last Energy UK notified Welsh ministers that, in line with the Infrastructure (Wales) Act 2024, it would make an application for a Significant Infrastructure Project.

It said: “The project comprises four PWR-20 modular reactor units with associated plant, substation, buildings, security and access infrastructure.”

They also provided two images to the Welsh Government’s planning portal, one with four reactors, and another with only one reactor and other operational buildings.

The company held four public consultations on the project in Bridgend, Porthcawl, and Maesteg throughout July.

FoE Cymru once again voiced their opposition with grassroots campaign group No Nuclear Llyfni, this time directing supporters to “show that we are against this damaging proposal” and sign a petition ‘No nuclear in Cwm Llynfi’.

Currently at almost 1,500 of 2,000 signatures, the petition via ActionNetwork reiterates that the project is unsafe, unclean, and expensive, adding that “To make a profit, the company aims to mostly sell the energy straight to businesses – we won’t benefit from this energy.”

They affirm that “Our community and our beautiful valley deserve better than this!”

 The petition is available here.

July 29, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

How Fear of Nuclear Armageddon Leads Me to Protest

Simply put, the U.S. maintains a first-strike nuclear option to be deployed against even a non-nuclear enemy. Paradoxically, China does have a “no first use” policy for its nuclear arsenal. Hey, U.S. adversaries, don’t even look at us the wrong way!

How radically and overtly hypocritical that the U.S., the greatest military power in the world—holding such a nuclear posture—initiated a war with Iran on the basis that the country might one day develop nuclear weapons, even though there is no conclusive evidence that it intends to do so. But then, this is how big bullies operate.

The blindness of Americans to the reality of nuclear annihilation begins with a national hypocrisy, one that we hold as the first and only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in war, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It is a striking example of our hypocrisy that is blatantly clear to most of the world beyond our borders.

For nearly two decades, I have been arrested, ignored, and dismissed for protesting nuclear weapons—but as the Doomsday Clock inches toward midnight, giving up is not an option.

Scott Fina, Current Affairs, July 2026

Our tiny protest gathering at Vandenberg had a “micro-Woodstock” feel to it. One of us was dressed like an angel, in a white gown with flashing, battery-powered lights on wings attached to her back. She held a peace sign that also had blinking lights. She started beating a drum she had brought, and broke into an Indigenous chant she had learned from a local Chumash (Native American) community, whose descendants continue to protest military installations on their ancestral homelands. She had driven hours to the military base from her home in central Los Angeles—the likely source of her captivating creativity.

So, there we were, observing the flight of the most dangerous weapon ever created and possessed by humanity: an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that had been launched from an underground silo on the base. The Minuteman III ICBM we were watching could carry multiple nuclear warheads. Fortunately, the missile was not armed, and its launch was a test, sending it 4,200 miles over the Pacific Ocean to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The U.S. military has adopted a nickname for such missile flights: “Glory Trips.”

As protesting observers, we failed to see any glory in the exhibition of the ICBM test launch. But if watching an ICBM launch isn’t glorious enough for some folks, they can go to the U.S. Department of War (DOW) website and check out the “multimedia experience” of the military’s nuclear triad delivery system. The online presentation blatantly and unabashedly explains in detail how the U.S. military can readily make nuclear strikes against its adversaries using not only land-based, silo-launched missiles, but also submarine and fighter plane launchings of nuclear bombs.

The DOW’s flashy, action-filled nuclear triad website is full of bravado, and seemingly overloaded with testosterone. It looks like a violent video game. One can imagine Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, messing around with the website, tapping at the keyboard with one hand, while holding a beer in the other.

Interestingly, the introductory section of the DOW nuclear triad website includes a statement which reads, in part, “…the triad ensures a credible and flexible nuclear deterrent, providing the president of the United States with options to accomplish objectives if deterrence fails.”

Those are nuclear options currently available for Donald Trump, who alone has the authority to order a nuclear attack. Having such choices on which weapons to use has got to be alluring, if not tempting, for our president. Imagine what goes on in his brain at times when he thinks about the power he has over nuclear weapons and the fate of humanity. Think, “eeny, meeny, miny, moe…”

On top of all its muscle flexing, there is another feature in the U.S. nuclear weapons policy that exhibits a kind of bullying. I refer here to the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) published by the Biden Administration in 2022. The NPR remains operative under the Trump Administration.

Consider this statement in the NPR, which is readily available for the world to see:

We conducted a thorough review of a broad range of options for nuclear declaratory policy – including both No First Use and Sole Purpose policies – and concluded that those approaches would result in an unacceptable level of risk in light of the range of non-nuclear capabilities being developed and fielded by competitors that could inflict strategic-level damage to the United States and its Allies and partners.

Simply put, the U.S. maintains a first-strike nuclear option to be deployed against even a non-nuclear enemy. Paradoxically, China does have a “no first use” policy for its nuclear arsenal. Hey, U.S. adversaries, don’t even look at us the wrong way!

But wait! There’s more going on with the U.S. nuclear arsenal: modernization.

The replacement of over 400 ICBM Minuteman III missiles is currently in the works. These weapons have been in use (on alert but not fired off) for over 55 years, and have been kept viable thanks to “a series of life extension programs,” according to the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center. In the early 2030s, even more deadly ICBM Sentinel missiles will take their place. According to the Air and Space Forces Magazine, these new ICBMs will cost over $140 billion.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Many protesters at Vandenberg have also gone to prison for their nonviolent, civil disobedience: crossing a green line that demarcated where protest was allowed. The case of one courageous protester, Dennis Apel, who was arrested 15 times at Vandenberg, landed at the U.S. Supreme Court……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Hundreds of Americans protest against nuclear weapons every year at various military bases, and also at private corporate facilities that are connected to the U.S. nuclear program (and make big bucks). Unfortunately, anti-nuclear protesters often go unheard in the U.S., regardless of the often deep, personal sacrifices they make. Also, those voices have been aging and declining in number over the years.

Since I first joined protesters at Vandenberg in 2008, our numbers have dwindled to less than a dozen who gather monthly at the main gate. Annually, on or around the dates of August 6 and August 9—the anniversaries of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively—the number of protesters grows to a few dozen at Vandenberg, with most coming from Los Angeles. The somewhat larger crowd draws a good number of well-armed, military security guards who line up in formation a hundred yards down the base entry road.

The soldiers wait for protesters to cross the green line, and every year, a few do. Over a loud speaker, the military officer in charge of the formation warns these brave folks to cross back over the line within two minutes or they will face arrest. The protesters ignore the command, are handcuffed, cited, and then driven off the base in a van by the soldiers.

This scene is both moving, and a little comical, depending on one’s perspective. You see, these days most of the protesters at Vandenberg are old and grey (including myself). We are also a motley group, and frumpy. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine us as a collection of outsized Ewoks from a Star Wars film, standing up to Stormtroopers of the Galactic Empire. If someone played a John Williams score over a music box in the background, we’d have a real show.

Admittedly, probably most Americans would see the protesters at Vandenberg as preposterous, daring to confront the most powerful military on the planet with little hope of disarming our nation of nuclear weapons. Perhaps we are. But we are driven by a moral and humane purpose. . And if observers—even those who are patriotic—were more objective and opened their eyes widely, they might see what we protesters deeply sense: that the huge and deadly U.S. nuclear arsenal and forces contain our nation’s own demise.

The blindness of Americans to the reality of nuclear annihilation begins with a national hypocrisy, one that we hold as the first and only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in war, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It is a striking example of our hypocrisy that is blatantly clear to most of the world beyond our borders……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The most recent, significant multilateral treaty, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), was adopted at the United Nations in 2017, and entered into force in 2021. In sum, this treaty calls for nations around the world to either commit to never creating, possessing, testing, or transferring nuclear weapons if they have not yet done so, or to fully rid themselves of nuclear weapons—disarm—if they already have them.

To date, 95 nations have signed onto the TPNW. While that seems promising, it really isn’t, yet. The TPNW has been ignored by all the nuclear states, including the U.S. Still, it’s premature to write the treaty off at this point. But consider what looms over humanity’s head in the meantime.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an international coalition of non-governmental organizations and winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, warns that even limited nuclear conflicts will cause global devastation.

………………………. The second Trump Administration has said it is pursuing a “peace through strength” policy in national security and foreign affairs. The National Defense Strategy emphasizes the importance of modernizing the U.S. nuclear deterrent in response to increased nuclear threats.

“Peace through strength!” That doesn’t quite sound like a winning catchphrase that could inspire adversaries to surrender their nuclear weapons. More accurately, the image I get is Pete Hegseth crushing an empty beer can against the side of his head. Add on the “weapons modernization” program and you don’t really improve nuclear deterrence, but embolden the arms race already in place by nuclear adversaries.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..What JFK described in his peace address is a very different America, one that respects other nations and treasures humanity. It presents an America that tries to lead, rather than rule the nations around the world. Consider these comments:

“What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. … I am talking about …the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, … that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”

Currently there is a movement in Congress echoing JFK’s thinking on peace……………………………………………………

JFK’s thinking on peace is radically different from Trump’s and Hegseth’s. In our day and age, Kennedy’s perspective would be widely held as preposterous—just like the case of protesters who make personal sacrifices in attempts to waken our nation to see its almost hypnotic violence and self-destruction threatened by nuclear weapons.

……………………………………………………………………………………………Recently, the DOW has posted television and social media ads about “peace through strength” that compliment its multimedia presentation on the nuclear triad. One asks: how do most Americans carry on daily life, seemingly unconscious of the deeply disconcerting possibility of nuclear Armageddon? Is it because our populace is errantly convinced that immense, superior weaponry will fully protect us from our adversaries? Have we drank a soon-fatal dose of the potion of military propaganda? https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-fear-of-nuclear-armageddon-leads-me-to-protest

July 21, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

Australian resistance to the war machine -500 march towards Pine Gap this morning demanding closure of the facility

Monday 20 July 2026, Mparntwe Alice Springs, Arrernte Country 

Hundreds from across the country have joined a rally on the road to Pine Gap this morning demanding the closure of the controversial military facility. The action closes out the Close Pine Gap Sacred Land Back Convergence 2026 organised by Mparntwe for Falastin and Anti Militarism Action Network, the biggest convergence of its kind since 1987. 

The Hayes family – Traditional Owners of Kuyunba, the sacred land that Pine Gap occupies – lead the rally, with a list of four demands: 

  1. Return of Kuyunba  
  2. The closure of Pine Gap 
  3. Compensation for the years Kuyunba has been occupied 
  4. Compensation to the families in Gaza for the lives lost there 

These actions have been echoed by rallies across the country.

The action follows two days of learning and discussion about militarism and colonialism. Experts from around the country addressed the violent reality and risks of Pine Gap. 

“If ever there was a message to end the world, it would come through Pine Gap. We would be the handmaidens of that,” said Senator David Shoebridge on the weekend, adding, “US bases have never made us safe, but right now they are especially making us a target.”

Felicity, Wyonna and Jacquita Hayes, Arrernte Apmereke-artweye Traditional Custodians, said earlier to supporters: 

“We want people to support us to close down Pine Gap. We want them to know it’s a sacred site. We don’t want to be feeling guilty all the time when bad things are happening overseas to little ones. We’re not the ones controlling that facility, but we feel guilty that it’s coming from our land.”

July 20, 2026 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Activists protest outside Pioneer Park nuclear event.

 by Gareth Cavanagh

ACTIVISTS held a protest outside The Peddler in Whitehaven yesterday as nuclear sector figures shared their plans for ‘Pioneer Park’, an AI data centre powered by nuclear energy, with the public.

Land at Moorside, neighbouring Sellafield, has been central to new nuclear ambitions for a
number of years. There were once ambitions to develop a ‘clean energy hub’
on the land with a mix of energy-generation solutions, including a fleet of
small modular reactors (SMR).

Now named Pioneer Park, the proposal is to
develop an SMR site which will provide the energy for an ‘innovative’ AI
data centre. It is hoped the development will attract more than £12billion
in investment from business giants, provide a jobs boost and a space for
emerging industries to thrive.

But Radiation Free Lakeland, which protested
a consultation event about the proposals yesterday, argues that benefits of
the development would not outweigh the environmental impact, pointing out
the proximity of the land to the River Ehen as well as the village of
Beckermet.

Pioneer Park is set to be located on land at Moorside,
neighbouring Sellafield. The activist group said: “This area of green
fields and River Ehen Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) should be
a buffer zone between the sprawling Sellafield site and the surrounding
villages.”

They said that the nuclear industry is “using public money like
there is no tomorrow to try and make this buffer zone a further nuclear
sacrifice zone and AI data centre.”

A spokesperson for Pioneer Park’s
developers said that the site at Moorside “has been identified through
Government policy for nuclear power generation since 2011″. Their ambition
is “to build on west Cumbria’s internationally recognised strengths in
energy and engineering by bringing forward new nuclear development,
alongside complementary clean energy and technology projects, helping to
diversify the economy, support the ongoing decommissioning mission at
Sellafield, generate secure, low-carbon energy and create long-term
opportunities for local people.”

 Carlisle News & Star 15th July 2026, https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/26276371.activists-protest-outside-pioneer-park-nuclear-event/

July 19, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

The Golden Rule and Crew are ready – Summer 2026 voyage


The VFP Golden Rule Committee plans to bring the Golden Rule to 12 ports-of-call this summer. However, weather on the Pacific coast has been wild this season. After arriving in Fort Bragg, we are waiting for a huge, strong storm to let up a bit before proceeding south.

An optimistic schedule is set out below – note that the order of stops and dates for San Diego, Ensenada, and Oceanside all depend on when the storm breaks. And the rest of the schedule may also shift and a stop or two canceled – stay tuned on our website and eNews, which will be posted as soon as we successfully leave Fort Bragg.

Please see vfpgoldenruleproject.org for the latest schedule.

Locate the Golden Rule with our Tracker.

See live videos from the boat on Facebook: GoldenRulePeaceBoat

Follow us on Instagram goldenrulepeaceboat

We look forward to presentations, peace picnics, concerts, film screenings, city council resolutions, press conferences, Peace Flotillas, “open boat” tours, and taking people sailing!

If you live in or near any of these coastal cities, we encourage you to help organize events and publicity. If you will be visiting the California coast this summer, please plan to join us.

July 6, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

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