Zelensky’s spectacular Operation Spiderweb has backfired spectacularly
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 11 June 25
The June 1 Ukraine drone attack on air bases deep in Russia was spectacular only insofar as it galvanized the Ukraine war dead enders to proclaim Ukraine can prevail in the war Ukraine lost on Day One.
The attack was strategically insignificant for Ukraine. Russia, as expected, launched devastating retaliatory attacks that will dramatically weaken Ukraine’s ability to keep fighting.
What was Ukraine President Zelensky thinking in allowing an attack that had no strategic importance but guaranteed to bring a strategically devastating response?
A likely explanation is Zelensky’s hope that the Russian retaliation might shame Trump into expanding his military aid to Ukraine rather than reduce or even end it. That desperate gambit will likely fail. Trump is determined to end the war so he can continue the process of withdrawing from European defense. Trump prefers expanding the US military Asia pivot to counter China’s growing regional dominance there. Trump also needs his highly stretched military resources for possible war with Iran. If that’s the worst possible reason for ending the war, so be it.
Zelensky has been on a reckless suicide mission with Russia virtually guaranteeing a Ukraine military collapse ahead of Ukraine’s descent into a weakened rump state.
Zelensky has been pursuing this self destructive policy for all 1,200 days of this war. And every time he attacks deep into Russia, he’s guaranteeing Russia will expand the buffer zone they’re creating in Ukraine to prevent such attacks.
Zelensky has been Ukraine’ worst enemy thruout this senseless war. Filled with delusions of grandeur, he keeps fighting to win back all 45,000 square miles of lost territory he could have avoided by signing the Istanbul Agreement 3 years ago. He even demands return of Crimea lost in 2014 after a US inspired coup disposed Russian friendly Ukraine President Yanukovych. That madness is not only destroying Ukraine, its keeping the world in fear this now escalating war could possibly go nuclear.
To save the remainder of Ukraine, Zelensky must be pushed out, replaced by sensible leaders willing to make peace on the best terms possible, none of which are recognized by Zelensky.
And Trump must stop waffling and withdraw all US military support that squandered nearly $200 billion of US treasure on a lost war.
If both happen, not only will the war end, the three and a half year threat of nuclear war over Ukraine will end as well.
We must never abandon that hope.
Revealed: three tonnes of uranium legally dumped in protected English estuary in nine years
Expert raises concerns over quantities allowed to be discharged from nuclear fuel factory near Preston
The Environment Agency has allowed a firm to dump three tonnes of uranium into one of England’s most protected sites over the past nine years, it can be revealed, with experts sounding alarm over the potential environmental impact of these discharges.
Documents obtained by the Guardian and the Ends Report through freedom of information requests show that a nuclear fuel factory near Preston discharged large quantities of uranium – legally, under its environmental permit conditions – into the River Ribble between 2015 and 2024. The discharges peaked in 2015 when 703kg of uranium was discharged, according to the documents.
Raw uranium rock mined from all over the world is brought to the Springfields Fuels factory in Lea Town, a small village roughly five miles from Preston, where the rock is treated and purified to create uranium fuel rods.
According to the factory’s website, it has supplied several million fuel elements to reactors in 11 different countries.
The discharge point for the uranium releases is located within the Ribble estuary marine conservation zone – and about 800m upstream of the Ribble estuary, which is one of the most protected sites in the country, classified as a site of special scientific interest, a special protection area (SPA) and a Ramsar site (a wetland designated as being of international importance).
The government’s latest Radioactivity in Food and the Environment report, published in November 2024, notes that in 2023 the total dose of radiation from Springfields Fuels was approximately 4% of the dose limit that is set to protect members of the public from radiation.
However, Dr Ian Fairlile, an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment, who was a scientific secretary to the UK government’s committee examining radiation risks of internal emitters, said that in terms of radioactivity, the discharges from Springfields Fuels were a “very large amount”.
“I’m concerned at this high level. It’s worrying”, he said, referring specifically to the 2015 discharge.
In a 2009 assessment, the Environment Agency concluded that the total dose rate of radioactivity for the Ribble and Alt estuaries SPA was “significantly in excess” of the agreed threshold of 40 microgray/h, below which regulators have agreed there would be no adverse effect to the integrity of a protected site. The report found the calculated total dose rate for the worst affected organism in the estuary was more than 10 times higher than this threshold, with discharges of radionuclides from the Springfields Fuels site to blame.
As a result, a more detailed assessment was undertaken. In this latter report, it was concluded that based on new permitted discharge limits, which had been lowered due to planned operational changes at Springfields Fuels, the dose rates to wildlife were below the agreed threshold and therefore there was no adverse effect on the integrity of the protected site.
Under the site’s current environmental permit, there is no limit on the weight of uranium discharges, which in itself has raised eyebrows. Instead, the uranium discharge is limited in terms of its radioactivity, with an annual limit of 0.04 terabecquerels. Prior to this, the discharge limit in terms of radioactivity was 0.1 terabecquerels.
A terabecquerel is a unit of radioactivity equal to 1tn becquerels. One becquerel represents a rate of radioactive decay equal to one radioactive decay per second.
Despite this tighter limit having been agreed six years ago, experts have raised concerns over the continued authorised discharges from the site.
Fairlile specifically questioned the Environment Agency’s modelling of how this discharge level could be classified as safe. “This is a very high level. The Environment Agency’s risk modelling might be unreliable. Which would make its discharge limits unsafe”, he said.
The Environment Agency said its processes for assessing impacts to habitats were “robust and follow international best practice, including the use of a tiered assessment approach”.
Dr Patrick Byrne, a reader in hydrology and environmental pollution at Liverpool John Moores University, said the 703kg of uranium discharged in 2015 was an “exceptionally high volume”
Dr Doug Parr, a policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “Discharges of heavy metals into the environment are never good, especially when those metals are radioactive.”
An Environment Agency spokesperson declined to comment directly, but the regulator said it set “strict environmental permit conditions for all nuclear operators in England, including Springfields Fuels Limited”.
It said these permits were based on “detailed technical assessments and are designed to ensure that any discharges of radioactive substances, including uranium, do not pose an unacceptable risk to people or the environment”.
While the government’s Radioactivity in Food and the Environment report found sources of radiation from Springfield Fuels were approximately 4% of the dose limit to members of the public, it also concluded that radionuclides – specifically isotopes of uranium – were detected downstream in sediment and biota in the Ribble estuary due to discharges from Springfields.
This is not the first time uranium levels in the estuary silt have been noted. Research conducted by the British Geological Survey (BGS) in 2002 detected “anomalously high” concentrations of uranium in a silt sample downstream of the Springfields facility.
The highest level recorded in the BGS report was 60μg/g of uranium in the silt – compared with a background level of 3-4μg/g. The researchers described this as a “significant anomaly”.
The UK is looking to expand its nuclear fuel production capabilities, including at Springfields Fuels. This is in order to increase energy security and reduce reliance on Russian fuel, and to deliver on a target of 24GW of new nuclear capacity by 2050.
A spokesperson from Westinghouse Electric Company UK, the operator of the factory), said: “Springfields is committed to strong environmental stewardship in our Lancashire community. The plant is monitored and regulated by the Environment Agency and operates well within those regulations. For nearly the past 80 years, Springfields has provided high-quality jobs to the local community and the fuel we provide to the UK’s nuclear power plants has avoided billions of tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuels.”
An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “The Environment Agency strictly regulates Springfields Fuels through robust environmental permits that control radioactive discharges, ensuring they pose no unacceptable risk to people or the environment. These permits are based on international best practice and are routinely reviewed, including detailed habitat assessments. Discharge limits have been progressively reduced over time, and monitoring by both the operator and the Environment Agency confirms no cause for concern.
UK pledges £11.5bn of new state funding for Sizewell C nuclear plant.
Latest money raises total taxpayer investment in power station site to
£17.8bn. The move marks a return to significant state funding for nuclear
energy after the UK chose the private sector to finance and build its last
project, Hinkley Point C in Somerset, which is heavily delayed and over
budget.
The previous record public investment in nuclear energy was £2bn
for the Sizewell B plant in 1987, or £7bn in today’s prices. The UK
government already has a partnership with French state-owned energy group
EDF, which has kept a 15 per cent stake in Sizewell C.
The pair are now seeking financial commitments from several other investors before they can sign off a “final investment decision”, expected next month during an
Anglo-French summit in London.
The chancellor will promise £14.2bn of
taxpayer funding for the 3.2 gigawatt plant over the current parliament,
including a £2.7bn commitment she previously made in the autumn Budget. The
Treasury had already committed £3.6bn over the past two years.
EDF has said the final investment decision will depend on securing private investment
and on whether it can make its expected return on capital, but Simone
Rossi, the company’s UK chief executive, said the project would benefit the
UK’s “energy security and economic growth”. Private investors expected
to bid for stakes in Sizewell C include Canadian pension fund CDPQ, Amber
Infrastructure Partners, Brookfield Asset Management, pension fund USS,
Schroders Greencoat, Equitix, Centrica and insurer Rothesay.
The total cost of the project could be close to £40bn by the time it is built, industry
figures believe. State-owned Great British Nuclear will soon announce the
outcome of its competition to choose a company to start building a fleet of
“small modular reactors”. The government said it would also invest more
than £2.5bn in nuclear fusion over five years in what it called a “record
investment” in the nascent technology. Melanie Windridge, head of
advisory group Fusion Energy Insights, praised the government for
recognising the “economic value of developing fusion in this country”.
The sum is slightly less than the US is spending on fusion and one-third of
China’s annual investment on the technology.
FT 9th June 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/e017efeb-0a9c-4d30-894f-86037a096984
Securing the nuclear nation, (Russia)
Cambridge University Press: Kate Brown 20 November 2018, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/abs/securing-the-nuclear-nation/9D92C7AA447CC337F56999FC8C03C4D4
Abstract
In 1946, in the Southern Urals, construction of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics first plutonium plant fell to the GULAG-Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD). The chief officers in charge of the program – Lavrentii Beria, Sergei Kruglov, and Ivan Tkachenko – had been pivotal figures in the deportation and political and ethnic cleansing of territories retaken from Axis forces during WWII.
These men were charged with building a nuclear weapons complex to defend the Soviet Union from the American nuclear monopoly. In part thanks to the criminalization and deportation of ethnic minorities, Gulag territories grew crowded with foreign nationals and ethnic minorities in the postwar years. The NKVD generals were appalled to find that masses of forced laborers employed at the plutonium construction site were members of enemy nations. Beria issued orders to cleanse the ranks of foreign enemies, but construction managers could not spare a single healthy body as they raced to complete their deadlines.
To solve this problem, they created two zones: an interior, affluent zone for plutonium workers made up almost exclusively of Russians; and anterior zones of prisoners, soldiers, ex-cons, and local farmers, many of whom were non-Russian. The selective quality of Soviet “nuclearity” meant that many people who were exposed to the plant’s secret plutonium disasters were ethnic minorities, people whose exposures went unrecorded or under-recorded because of their invisibility and low social value.
Iran says it will release Israeli nuclear secrets as pressure grows to reimpose sanctions
Tehran threat comes as European powers press for vote that could lead to reimposition of UN sanctions
Guardian Patrick Wintour, 9 June 25
Iran has said it will soon start releasing information from a hoard of Israeli nuclear secrets it claims to have obtained, as European countries push for a vote this week on reimposing UN sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear programme.
The unverified claims by Iranian intelligence of a massive leak of Israeli secrets may be designed to turn the focus away from what Iran argues is its own excessively monitored civil nuclear programme.
On Sunday, Iran’s intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib, claimed Tehran had obtained “a vast collection of strategic and sensitive [Israeli] documents, including plans and data on the nuclear facilities”. He added evidence would be released shortly, and implied some of the documentation was linked to Israel’s arrest of two Israeli nationals, Roi Mizrahi and Almog Attias, over alleged spying for Iran………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/09/iran-says-it-will-release-israeli-nuclear-secrets-as-pressure-grows-to-reimpose-sanctions
Golden Dome Idiocy
A “shield” against nuclear attack makes nuclear war more likely
Bill Astore, Jun 10, 2025, https://bracingviews.substack.com/p/golden-dome-idiocy?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1156402&post_id=164965873&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Donald Trump has a dream: a “golden dome” over America to defend the country against nuclear missiles. It’s a repeat of Ronald Reagan’s dream, the Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars” after the movie. The problem is that the dream represents a nightmare.
How so? Golden Dome would be dangerously escalatory, wildly expensive, and unlikely to work as a “shield” to America. It is worse than a mistake: it is a crime. It represents a massive theft from those who hunger and suffer in America. As Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1953, wasting enormous resources on weapons systems is no way of life at all. It is humanity crucifying itself on a cross of iron. Crucifixion is not made more pleasant when the cross is golden.
Put differently, the Golden Dome is a golden idol, a false god, one that by making a massive nuclear strike more likely endangers all of us and God’s creation.
Golden Dome is a grotesque example of makework militarism and warfare as welfare for weapons makers. Though it’s unlikely to work, if it did (partially) it would make a massive nuclear strike more likely, not less, endangering the world with the ecocidal terror of nuclear winter.
Golden Dome and the so-called investment in America’s nuclear triad are both examples of socio-technological madness–America’s leaders are like the mutants in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” worshipping the bombs that twisted them and which can only destroy what’s left of civilization.
Some Christians today await the apocalypse when Christ is supposed to return–but the most likely apocalypse features not the second coming of a God-man but a third world war featuring bomb-gods of thermonuclear destruction.
As Daniel Ellsberg once noted, U.S. nuclear attack plans in the early 1960s envisioned 600 million killed, or 100 Holocausts (before we knew such an attack would lead to nuclear winter). We’re lucky this insanity never came to pass. The only sane policy is to cancel Golden Dome and end “investment” in a new nuclear triad. Disarmament, not rearmament, is what’s needed.
The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space has released a statement against Golden Dome that you can read here. You can add your name to the statement, as I have. Here are some bullet points released along with the statement:
- Golden Dome is financially reckless and unsustainable. Early cost estimates range from $550 billion to several trillion dollars over two decades. This dwarfs even the Pentagon’s annual budget and adds to the US’s $37 trillion national debt—a price tag that makes the project fiscally indefensible.
- Experts overwhelmingly agree that 100% effective missile interception is a fantasy, especially against complex attacks involving decoys, hypersonic missiles, and maneuverable warheads. Even Israel’s Iron Dome has been bypassed by more rudimentary drone and missile attacks.
- Golden Dome includes space-based interceptors—effectively weaponizing the Earth’s orbit and triggering an arms race. This violates the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty and pushes nations like China and Russia to accelerate space weapons development.
- By giving the illusion of first-strike survivability, it runs counter to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine that has prevented so far a nuclear holocaust and incentivizes other powers to retain or expand their nuclear arsenals, blocking disarmament efforts permanently.
- Thousands of rocket launches for satellite interceptors would further damage the ozone layer, could generate dangerous orbital debris (Kessler Syndrome), and will harm our already fragile space environment.
- The only guaranteed winners of Golden Dome are weapons giants like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Palantir, which stand to profit enormously regardless of the system’s effectiveness or risks.
- The trillions funneled into Golden Dome could be used for urgent domestic priorities—such as healthcare, infrastructure, climate action, and education, directly benefiting millions of Americans.
In short, Golden Dome is a massive, dangerous, and futile vanity project, cloaked in patriotism but driven by profit, politics, and illusion.
How the ‘evil twin’ of the climate crisis is threatening our oceans
There’s frustration among researchers that falling pH levels in seas
around the globe are not being taken seriously enough, and that until the
buildup of CO2 is addressed, the consequences for marine life will be
devastating.
“At the end of the day, we know CO2 is going up, pH is going
down, and that’s an urgent issue that people are not talking about,”
says Turner. “It’s an overlooked consequence of carbon in our ocean
that governments can no longer afford to overlook in mainstream policy
agendas, and the time to address it is running out.”
Guardian 9th June 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/09/the-scientists-warning-the-world-about-ocean-acidification-evil-twin-of-the-climate-crisis
Lincolnshire council pulls out of nuclear waste disposal siting process
Lincolnshire County Council has decided to withdraw from the geological
disposal facility (GDF) siting process – ending plans to potentially
store nuclear waste in the county. The council’s new executive voted to
withdraw from the Nuclear Waste Services’ (NWS’s) Community Partnership
on 3 June.
A Community Partnership in Theddlethorpe had been established by
the NWS as part of its search to find a GDF site with suitable geology for
storing higher activity radioactive waste underground. The council’s vote
means that it will no longer be a member of Theddlethorpe GDF Community
Partnership. The GDF siting process cannot continue without the support of
the council as the relevant principal local authority, and the Community
Partnership closed with immediate effect.
Ground Engineering 09 June, 2025 By Thames Menteth, https://www.geplus.co.uk/news/lincolnshire-council-pulls-out-of-nuclear-waste-disposal-siting-process-09-06-2025/
NFLAs welcome new group opposed to nuke waste dump in South Copeland
Hot on the heels of the victory in Lincolnshire, the UK/Ireland Nuclear
Free Local Authorities have welcomed the formation of a new ‘Anti GDF
Community Group’ in opposition to a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) on
land near Millom and Haverigg in West Cumbria.
The GDF would be the final
repository for Britain’s inventory of legacy and future high-level
radioactive waste. Nuclear Waste Services has declared its interest in land
surrounding His Majesty’s Prison Haverigg and Bank Head Estate West of
Haverigg as the potential location for a future surface site for this
facility. This site is designated the Area of Focus in the South Copeland
GDF Search Area.
Following a meeting held by Whicham Parish Council on
Wednesday, at which a resolution was carried unanimously calling on NWS to
withdraw this area from consideration, a statement was issued by the new
group. There is also now a new private Facebook group for impacted
residents to join and a group logo.
The ‘Anti GDF Community Group’ will
aim to support and seek support from both Whicham and Millom Council in
their respective rejections of the area of focus and try to ensure that NWS
and Cumberland Council abide by the NWS statement “that express consent
must be given by those living alongside a GDF” Presently the group is
formed by a small committee and is seeking members to support the group
objective of removal from the process of the Kirksanton/Haverigg site. The
group will aim to support those who have and are being severely impacted
now and seek to demonstrate the flawed process and the contempt our
communities have been shown within that process.
NFLA 9th June 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nflas-welcome-new-group-opposed-to-nuke-waste-dump-in-south-copeland/
Cumbrians receive postal call to back nuke dump democracy petition
NFLA 9th June 2025, https://www.change.org/p/massive-mine-shafts-and-nuclear-dump-for-cumbria-coast-tell-cumberland-council-vote-now
Residents of Millom, Seascale and Gosforth have just received a flyer from campaign group Radiation Free Lakeland calling on them to back a petition which asks Cumberland Councillors to host a debate followed by a vote about their engagement with the siting process for a Geological Disposal Facility in West Cumbria.
The GDF would be the eventual repository for Britain’s high-level radioactive waste which would be placed in tunnels beneath the seabed. A site in East Lincolnshire was also under consideration as a possible site. With the withdrawal of Lincolnshire County Council from the process last week, only sites in Mid and South Copeland in West Cumbria remain in contention and then only because Cumberland Council remains engaged in the process.
Bizarrely Cumberland Council only became involved in the process by default. The new authority on replacing Copeland District Council chose to accept unquestionably that Council’s decision to participate in the GDF process, even though the decision to participate had been taken by only four Copeland Councillors. There has never been any debate or vote amongst Cumberland Councillors about whether they should have accepted this obligation or still wish to continue with the process.
The petition calls on Cumberland Council to convene a belated special meeting of the Full Council where Councillors can debate and then vote on whether to continue to remain engaged or remain represented on the Mid and South Copeland GDF Community Partnerships. If Councillors say no, then the process would end, and NWS would withdraw. The NFLAs is happy to support Radiation Free Lakeland in urging all Cumbrians to sign it.
Here are links to the petition:
www.change.org/CumbriaNuclearDump https://www.change.org/p/massive-mine-shafts-and-nuclear-dump-for-cumbria-coast-tell-cumberland-council-vote-now
Today is World Ocean Day – Protect the Lake District Coast and Irish Sea from an Unprecedented Atomic Experiment
On By mariannewildart,
https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2025/06/08/today-is-world-ocean-day-protect-the-lake-district-coast-and-irish-sea-from-an-unprecedented-atomic-experiment/
This World Ocean Day Do Something Amazing and Sign and Share the Petition to Protect The Lake District Coast from a Giant Atomic Heat Sink. There are 1,753 signatures – lets make it tens of thousands! This plan is going forward on the say so of just four councillors in Cumberland (the West of Cumbria, UK). The Petition is calling for a FULL debate and FULL vote by the whole Cumberland Council on whether to continue in partnership with the developer Nuclear Waste Services to deliver a “geological disposal facility” aka an up to 50km square, wholly experimental, sub-sea nuclear dump for HOT nuclear wastes. Note the developer NWS is a Government owned limited liability company.
Here is why you should support the Global Network’s Golden Dome statement.
Golden Dome is financially reckless and unsustainable. Early cost estimates range from $550 billion to several trillion dollars over two decades. This dwarfs even the Pentagon’s annual budget and adds to the US’s $37 trillion national debt—a price tag that makes the project fiscally indefensible.
- Experts overwhelmingly agree that 100% effective missile interception is a fantasy, especially against complex attacks involving decoys, hypersonic missiles, and maneuverable warheads. Even Israel’s Iron Dome has been bypassed by more rudimentary drone and missile attacks.
- Golden Dome includes space-based interceptors—effectively weaponizing the Earth’s orbit and triggering an arms race. This violates the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty and pushes nations like China and Russia to accelerate space weapons development.
- By giving the illusion of first-strike survivability, it runs counter to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine that has prevented so far a nuclear holocaust and incentivizes other powers to retain or expand their nuclear arsenals, blocking disarmament efforts permanently.
- Thousands of rocket launches for satellite interceptors would further damage the ozone layer, could generate dangerous orbital debris (Kessler Syndrome), and will harm our already fragile space environment.
The only guaranteed winners of Golden Dome are weapons giants like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Palantir, which stand to profit enormously regardless of the system’s effectiveness or risks.
The trillions funneled into Golden Dome could be used for urgent domestic priorities—such as healthcare, infrastructure, climate action, and education, directly benefiting millions of Americans.
In short, Golden Dome is a massive, dangerous, and futile vanity project, cloaked in patriotism but driven by profit, politics, and illusion.
You may view the full Global Network statement of opposition to the Golden Dome and see the growing list of endorsers here
If you wish you add your group/individual name (along with your location) please send us an email at globalnet@mindspring.com
‘Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.’
~ Henry David Thoreau
Paris wants to manufacture drones in Ukraine
9 June 25 https://www.rt.com/news/618818-paris-renault-produce-drones-ukraine/
The French Defense Ministry has asked Renault to set up military production for Kiev.
Paris is pushing France’s largest automaker, Renault, to establish a military drone production operation in Ukraine, the company has confirmed. Kiev has been significantly intensifying drone attacks on Russian infrastructure.
During the final week of May, 2,300 Ukrainian UAVs were shot down after being sent across the border to target Moscow and other regions, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
“We have been contacted by the [French] Defense Ministry about the possibility of producing drones,” Renault said in a statement to several media outlets, including Reuters, on Sunday. Although “discussions” on the issue have taken place, the company insisted that “no decision has been taken at this stage,” and that it is awaiting further details from the ministry.
French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu first revealed the plan on Friday, describing it as an “unprecedented partnership” in an interview with broadcaster LCI.
“We are going to embark on a completely unprecedented partnership… to equip production lines in Ukraine to… produce drones,” Lecornu said, noting that the project would involve both a major carmaker and a smaller defense contractor.
Renault could be tasked with setting up drone assembly lines “a few dozen or hundreds of kilometers from the front line” in Ukraine, France Info reported on Sunday.
According to the newspaper Ouest-France, the project could also involve Delair – a Toulouse-based drone manufacturer that supplies UAVs for border surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, and special operations forces. The company has previously delivered kamikaze drones to the French Defense Ministry, which were later sent to Ukraine.
Lecornu described the initiative as a “win-win” for Paris and Kiev, claiming no French personnel would be deployed to Ukraine.
The production lines would be operated by Ukrainian workers, and the drones built for the country’s military would also be used by the French Armed Forces for “tactical and operational training that reflects the reality” of modern warfare, he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov condemned the strikes as deliberate attempts to sabotage peace talks. Moscow has repeatedly warned that any weapons production facilities in Ukraine are considered legitimate military targets and subject to “unequivocal destruction.”
Firm fined £26k after worker exposed to radiation at Teesside site
Mistras Group Limited was fined £26,000 after a radiographer was overexposed to ionising radiation while working at a site in Hartlepool.
By Nicole Goodwin, City Centre Reporter, Jade McElwee, Content Editor,
Teesside Gazette 7th June 2025, https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/mistras-group-limited-radiation-hartlepool-31808465
A global firm has been slapped with a £26,000 fine after a radiographer was exposed to ionising radiation at a North East site.
The 69-year-old man was working for Mistras Group Limited in December 2020 when the company was alerted by their approved dosimetry service that he had received a dose exceeding legal limits. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) was also informed, leading to the prosecution of the company following an investigation.
Ionising radiation is widely used in various industries including energy production, manufacturing, medicine and research. While it offers numerous benefits to society, it’s crucial that its risks are sensibly managed to safeguard workers and the public.
The incident occurred at Mistras Group Limited’s former Hartlepool site when a gamma emitting radioactive source used for radiography failed to return to its shielded container. Due to lax adherence to the company’s own radiation safety protocols, this wasn’t promptly identified, resulting in the radiographer being overexposed to radiation.
Although no symptoms were reported, excessive exposure to ionising radiation can heighten the risk of developing certain cancers. The HSE investigation discovered that pre-use safety checks hadn’t been completed and recorded by the radiographer, reports Chronicle Live. These checks are vital stages in verifying that radiography systems are functioning properly and ensuring the safe use of equipment.
The firm Mistras Group Limited was hit with a £26,000 fine and must pay £11,353 in costs after admitting to breaches of radiation safety regulations at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court on May 22. The company, based in Norman Way, Cambridge, had provided alarming Electronic Personal Dosemeters (EPDs) and radiation monitors to employees, yet it emerged that a radiographer failed to use the equipment; this could have alerted them to dangerous radiation levels allowing for a safe retreat.
Radiation incidents had not been reported correctly. Additional failings by the company to ensure adherence to radiation protection rules and procedures included not following local rule instructions and insufficient supervision leading to a lack of compliance. Moreover, the firm previously faced enforcement actions from HSE for similar shortcomings.
Commenting on the case, HSE’s radiation specialist inspector Elizabeth Reeves stated: “Industrial radiography is a hazardous practice if not managed properly. Radiation protection is an area where employers and employees must not become complacent with.
“Safety checks and the use of monitoring equipment such as EPD’s and radiation monitors are essential elements to ensuring the safe operation of equipment and protection to personnel. This prosecution demonstrates that the courts, and HSE, take failure to comply with the regulations extremely seriously.”
The HSE’s enforcement lawyer, Jonathan Bambro, and paralegal officer, Rebecca Forman, led the prosecution in this case.
A Mar-a-Lago in the sky?
Meanwhile, as Trump is due to parade his military hardware through the streets and skies of Washington, DC this week, at a cost of $45 million to US taxpayers, we are told there is too much wasteful spending, so Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps must be slashed.
by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/06/08/a-mar-a-lago-in-the-sky/
US taxpayers are about to get golden fleeced, again, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
Last week we reported on the White House executive orders that would lay waste to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and put an end to any meaningful safety oversight of the US commercial nuclear sector.
Not that there was a whole lot to begin with. None of us will be standing outside the agency’s Rockville Maryland headquarters any time soon holding “Save the NRC” signs.
I mentioned last week that there were five orders affecting the nuclear sector. Technically, the fifth – Restoring Gold Standard Science — didn’t mention nuclear, but its overarching mission— to do the opposite of what its title says — will most certainly negatively affect the integrity of any evaluation of new reactor designs, with the stamp of approval given to the Department of Energy and even the Department of Defense, rather than the NRC.
The Gold Standard order served to remind us of Trump’s perennial obsession with everything gold and golden, also reflected, as it were, in his cheap bordello-style aesthetic on display at Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.
The wannabe king boasted during his January 20 inaugural address that “The Golden Age of America begins right now,” then reminded us six weeks later, during his March 4 Joint Address to Congress, that his Golden Age truly was coming. “Get ready for an incredible future,” he said. “The Golden Age of America has only just begun. It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before.”
That last part was certainly true.
As if all this golden fleecing of American taxpayers wasn’t enough, cue the next fanfare — but without any actual golden trumpeters — the Golden Dome for America!
“Golden Dome for America is a revolutionary concept to further the goals of peace through strength,” asserts its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, our first clue that the Golden Dome has nothing whatever to do with peace, as Lockheed Martin is a major player in the US nuclear weapons complex.
The Golden Dome is effectively a reboot of Ronald Reagan’s ill-fated Strategic Defense Initiative, mockingly nicknamed Star Wars, which was supposed to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles. That was just the latest failed iteration of a US missile defense concept that has been in the works since the 1950s.
Reagan’s SDI arguably cost us a chance to rid the world of nuclear weapons altogether when in 1986, he and then Russian premier Mikhail Gorbachev were poised to do just that. Gorbachev wanted Star Wars consigned to the laboratory. Reagan refused. The arms race continued.
Trump brags he has already picked out the architecture he likes for his Golden Dome, which makes you wonder whether he thinks it’s some sort of floating palace, a Mar-a-Lago in the sky?
The price tag for the Golden Dome is a whopping $175 billion (there’s austerity for you!) and apparently it will all be up and running before Trump’s term is out in January 2029, (assuming Trump willingly leaves office and we still have a democratic election process by then.)
That’s a timeline longtime national security and nuclear policy expert, Joe Cirincione, called “insane” in an interview with The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “You probably won’t even get the architecture of the system settled by the end of his administration,” Cirincione said.
Even more insane is that, far from enhancing the safety of the US, the Golden Dome is entirely provocative and, as a nervous China has already warned, will only increase the risks of militarizing space and could even relaunch a global arms race (arguably something that is already underway).
In any case, there’s not much use in a Golden Dome unless it’s one hundred percent effective, which it has a one hundred percent probability of not being. Its predecessor certainly didn’t achieve that and was what Cirincione described as “the longest-running scam in the history of the Department of Defense.”
If just one missile does get through, the level of destruction would be devastating, and the US would then likely retaliate after which all bets are off.
So far, US missile defense interception attempts (fortunately all tests), have had a success rate that spans a range of 41% to 88% depending on whether you accept an independent analysis, which generates the lower number, or “official” tallies, which produce the higher one. Either way, it’s not 100%.
The whole sorry saga, which began with the deployment of the earliest iterations of US missile defense in 1962, has cost at least $531 billion to date, according to Stephen Schwartz, a longtime analyst on nuclear weapons costs.
On BlueSky, Schwartz called the Golden Dome project “delusional and reckless. There’s no way to design, test, construct, and deploy a comprehensive system to reliably stop any missiles launched from land, sea, or space, and do it in ‘two-and-a-half to three years’ for $175 billion.”
The White House counters that none of this matters as the Golden Dome is meant as a deterrent to frighten off aggressors. It’s the same flawed argument that says spending billions to have our own nuclear weapons is worth it because then our adversaries will never use theirs, either. This, of course, exposes the ludicrousness of the whole deterrence myth, since clearly we could achieve the same end if we all abolished our nuclear weapons, and save a whole lot of money to boot.
But if we proceed on the basis of the White House assertion, then it means we are about to spend $175 billion on something the US would never actually use.
The Golden Dome, it turns out, is no golden ticket to survival.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Any opinions are her own.
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