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Trump tightens control of independent agency overseeing nuclear safety

Geoff Brumfiel, NPR. May 9, 2025

The Trump administration has tightened its control over the independent agency responsible for overseeing America’s nuclear reactors, and it is considering an executive order that could further erode its autonomy, two U.S. officials who declined to speak publicly because they feared retribution told NPR.

Going forward, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must send new rules regarding reactor safety to the White House, where they will be reviewed and possibly edited. That is a radical departure for the watchdog agency, which historically has been among the most independent in the government. The new procedures for White House review have been in the works for months, but they were just recently finalized and are now in full effect.

NPR has also seen a draft of an executive order “ordering the reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.” The draft calls for reducing the size of the NRC’s staff, conducting a “wholesale revision” of its regulations in coordination with the White House and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, shortening the time to review reactor designs and possibly loosening the current, strict standards for radiation exposure.

“It’s the end of the independence of the agency,” says Allison Macfarlane, director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Canada who was nominated by President Obama to serve as Chair of the NRC from 2012 to 2014. Macfarlane believes the changes will make Americans less safe.

“If you aren’t independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident, frankly,” Macfarlane says.

The draft executive order was marked pre-decisional and deliberative. It was one of several draft orders seen by NPR that appeared to be aimed at promoting the nuclear industry. Other draft orders called for the construction of small modular nuclear reactors at military bases, and for the development of advanced nuclear fuels. Axios first reported on the existence of the executive orders.

It remains unclear which, if any, will be signed by President Trump.

In a statement, the NRC said it was working with the White House “as part of our commitment to make NRC regulatory processes more efficient. We have no additional details at this time.”

“The President of the United States is the head of the executive branch,” a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget wrote to NPR in an email. “The President issued an independent agencies executive order which aligns with the president’s power given to him by the constitution. This idea has been talked about for nearly 40 years and should not be a surprise.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Going nuclear

The NRC has been working to respond to the new law, but it has historically operated largely outside the purview of the White House. That began to change with an executive order signed by the president in February that called for independent agencies to begin reporting directly to the White House Office of Management and Budget………………………………………………………..

Only after the rule is finalized will the commissioners’ votes be made public. It was not immediately clear how the public would know whether the White House had changed a safety rule for a nuclear reactor.

Some questioned what the White House could gain from reviewing abstruse rules for nuclear safety.

“Who has the technical knowledge to actually do a substantive review?” asks Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit that has been critical of the nuclear industry. “To have political appointees meddling in these technical decisions is just a recipe for confusion and chaos.” https://www.npr.org/2025/05/09/nx-s1-5392382/trump-nuclear-regulatory-commission-watchdog-safety-radiation

May 11, 2025 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Trump administration considers orders expediting nuclear plant construction, NYT reports.

By Reuters, May 10, 2025,
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-administration-considers-orders-expediting-nuclear-plant-construction-nyt-2025-05-09/
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering several executive orders to expedite the construction of nuclear power plants, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing drafts it has reviewed.

May 11, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Chernobyl shelter’s drone damage includes 330 openings in outer cladding.


 World Nuclear News 9th May 2025

The International Atomic Energy Agency has outlined the scale of the damage caused by a drone strike and subsequent fires to the giant shelter built over the ruins of Chernobyl’s unit 4.

The agency said that investigations continue to determine the extent of the damage sustained by the arch-shaped New Safe Confinement (NSC) shelter following the drone strike on 14 February.

The impact caused a 15-square-metre hole in the external cladding of the arch, with further damage to a wider area of about 200-square-metres, as well as to some joints and bolts. It took about three weeks to fully extinguish smouldering fires in the insulation layers of the shelter.

n its update on the situation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said: “It took several weeks to completely extinguish the fires caused by the strike. The emergency work resulted in approximately 330 openings in the outer cladding of the NSC arch, each with an average size of 30-50 cm.

“According to information provided to the IAEA team at the site, a preliminary assessment of the physical integrity of the large arch-shaped building identified extensive damage, for example to the stainless-steel panels of the outer cladding, insulation materials as well as to a large part of the membrane – located between the layers of insulation materials – that keep out water, moisture and air.”

The main crane system, including the maintenance garage area, was damaged and it is not currently operational, the IAEA said. The heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems are functional but have not been in service since the strike. Radiation and other monitoring systems remain functional, the IAEA said. There has been no increase in radiation levels at any time during or since the drone strike.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said: “We are gradually getting a more complete picture of the severe damage caused by the drone strike. It will take both considerable time and money to repair all of it.”

…………………………………………………………………………………The New Safe Confinement was financed via the Chernobyl Shelter Fund which was run by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It received EUR1.6 billion (USD1.7 billion) from 45 donor countries and the EBRD provided EUR480 million of its own resources.

On 4 March the EBRD allocated EUR400,000 from the administrative budget of the continuing fund for specialist-led damage assessment……………………………..https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chernobyl-shelters-drone-damage-includes-330-openings-in-outer-cladding

May 11, 2025 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Ontario’s Darlington SMR project to cost nearly $21-billion, significantly higher than expected.

Matthew McClearn, May 8, 2025

The Ontario government approved Ontario Power Generation’s plan to spend $7.7-billion to construct the first small modular reactor in a G7 country – a price far greater than independent observers deem necessary to spark widespread adoption.

On Thursday, the government announced its wholly-owned utility can spend $6.1-billion to build the first BWRX-300 reactor adjacent to OPG’s existing Darlington Nuclear Generating Station. In addition, it can spend another $1.6-billion on common infrastructure such as administrative buildings and cooling water tunnels the new reactor will share with three additional BWRX-300s to be built later.

Those remaining units are expected to cost substantially less: all told, the 1,200-megawatt plant‘s estimated cost is $20.9-billion, expressed in 2024 dollars and including interest charges and contingencies.

Those costs are far higher than what independent observers argue are necessary for widespread adoption of SMRs. For comparison, a recently-completed 377-megawatt natural gas-fired power station in Saskatchewan cost $825-million.

High costs, overruns and delays contributed to the decline of nuclear power in advanced economies such as the U.S., France and Canada, all former leaders in reactor construction. The global reactor fleet‘s collective generating capacity has been largely flat since the 1990s, around the same time Canada’s newest reactor (Darlington Unit 4) was built. Most reactors under construction today are of Chinese and Russian design. Only one reactor is currently under construction in the Western hemisphere, and two in Western Europe, according to Mycle Schneider Consulting.

OPG’s project, known as the Darlington New Nuclear Project, is being watched closely by utilities around the world. The BWRX-300 is a candidate for proposed projects in the U.S., U.K., Poland, Estonia and elsewhere.

Thursday’s announcement marks a significant milestone for major capital projects. Proposals and memorandums of understanding for nuclear power plants abound, but very few advance to this stage.

Construction was scheduled to wrap up in 2028, but OPG has pushed that back by one year. It attributed the delay to a construction licence the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission granted in April, later than expected; the scheduled months between breaking ground and completion remain unchanged.

OPG’s costs are several times greater than Wilmington, N.C.-based GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy originally promised. Early in the BWRX-300’s development, GE Hitachi emphasized it was designing to achieve a specific cost: US$700-million per reactor, or US$2.25-million per megawatt, low enough to compete with natural gas.

OPG said the government is not funding the project: the utility will pay for it using its own funds, including cash on hand, cash flow from generating stations and debt.

Ontarians will pay OPG back over time through their electricity bills.

Officials estimated the average cost of power from the four reactors at 14.9 cents per kilowatt hour, contingent on the federal government providing investment tax credits.

The IESO said an alternative would be to build between 5,600 and 8,900 megawatts of wind and solar generators supported by batteries. Their capacity would need to be far greater, it reasoned, to account for the intermittent nature of wind and sunlight, and they would also require far more new transmission infrastructure. The IESO estimated the costs for all that at between 13.5 and 18.4 cents per kilowatt hour. Building the BWRX-300, the IESO concluded, is the lower-risk option.

Clean Prosperity, a Canadian climate policy think tank, said in a report last year that the final construction cost of the first BWRX-300 will be influential in determining how many other utilities will be interested in building their own. A cost of $3-billion, or $10.16-million per megawatt, would encourage rapid adoption of SMRs – a level some countries have achieved.

“Russia, India, South Korea and Japan have had average construction costs of $3.4-million to $4.6-million per megawatt since 2000,” the report said.

“In contrast, France and the U.S. built reactors for $12.5-million and $17.5-million per megawatt, respectively, over the same time frame.”

In a January report, the International Energy Agency said costs must come down; SMRs need to reach US$4.5-million per megawatt by 2040 to enjoy rapid uptake, far less than OPG’s estimated costs.

OPG said it‘s confident it will stick to its schedule and budget. The utility pointed to its ongoing $12.8-billion refurbishment of Darlington’s existing four reactors, a complex project it said remains on schedule and on-budget and is scheduled to wrap up next year. But if overruns do occur on the Darlington SMR, OPG and its partners (which include GE Hitachi, architect/engineer AtkinsRéalis and constructor Aecon) will share those costs.

The utility added that 80 per cent of its spending on the project will go to Ontario companies; just 5 per cent goes to U.S. companies, primarily GE Hitachi for its design and development work.

Last fall, the Ford government passed legislation dubbed the Affordable Energy Act, which committed to prioritizing nuclear power to meet future increases in electricity demand. The province plans up to 4,800 megawatts of new nuclear capacity at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, and as much as 10,000 megawatts at Wesleyville, a proposed new OPG station in Port Hope.

May 11, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, Canada | 1 Comment

Improvement notice issued at Dounreay nuclear power plant

By Gabriel McKay, 8 May 25, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25146874.improvement-notice-issued-dounreay-nuclear-power-plant/

An improvement notice has been issued at Dounreay nuclear power plant following a “significant potential risk to work safety”.

In February of this year a worker sustained a minor injury when a radiological contamination monitor, which weighed around two tonnes, toppled over.

Though there were no serious injuries, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said there was a “significant potential risk to worker safety”.

Dounreay operated from 1955 until 1994 – though research reactors continued to function until 2015 – and is now Scotland’s largest nuclear clean-up and demolition project.

All plutonium on the site had been transferred to Sellafield by December 23, 2019.

The site upon which it stands is scheduled to become available for other uses by 2333.

Tom Eagleton, ONR Superintending Inspector, said: “This was a preventable incident that could have had serious consequences for those nearby.

“The improvement notice requires the Dounreay site to implement measures that will reduce the risk of similar occurrences in the future. 

“Specifically, they must identify all operations involving the movement of heavy equipment and ensure comprehensive risk assessments and appropriate control measures are implemented before the work starts.” 

Nuclear Restoration Services, which owns the plant has until 25 July 2025 to comply with the notice.

The company said: “We take the protection of people and the environment from harm very seriously.

We are taking action to strengthen our practices and management in this area, and will comply with the requirements of the notice received in April, having reported the incident to ONR and carried out an investigation.”

Torness in East Lothian is the last remaining nuclear power station in Scotland still generating electricity.

It is scheduled for shutdown in 2030, following Hunterston B in North Ayrshire in 2022, Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway in 2004 and Hunterston A in 1990.

May 11, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Hearts and Minds: Report highlights East Lincolnshire still not a ‘willing community’.

A report recently published by campaigners opposed to a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) in Lincolnshire demonstrates that theirs is still ‘not a willing community’ when it comes to the nuclear waste dump.

‘The Nuclear War for Lincolnshire’ published by Guardians of the East Coast (GOTEC) may conjure up an image of a decimated, burnt out waste land in the aftermath of an attack by nuclear weapons, but fortunately the publication is instead a detailed narrative of the relentless struggle to win public ‘hearts and minds’ support for a GDF first began by Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) in the middle of 2020, and continually valiantly resisted by GOTEC and its allies, amongst them local elected members and the Nuclear Free Local Authorities.

Following the announcement of a new inland ‘Area of Focus’ between Gayton le Marsh and the Carltons at the end of January, NWS ran a series of public events across the Theddlethorpe GDF Search Area. At each of these events, activists from Guardians of the East Coast offered attendees the opportunity to vote outside in a special private ‘ballot box’, built for the purpose by local Councillor Travis Hesketh.

535 members of the public attended these events. 93% took up the opportunity to vote. The result was decisive. 93% of those who voted wanted a public vote on the proposal now and 93% wanted the GDF to end now. The result was consistent across all the events.

A separate parish poll was also held in Gayton le Marsh in February 2025. 88% of parishioners voted and 93% expressed a desire to see an immediate vote.

These are just the latest expressions of the pronounced opposition to the GDF amongst residents…………………………………………………………………………………………………

 NFLA 8th May 2025

https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/hearts-and-minds-report-highlights-east-lincolnshire-still-not-a-willing-community/

May 11, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

Google tries to greenwash massive AI energy consumption with another vague nuclear deal

The nuclear developer, founded in 2022, presents itself as a facilitator of advanced reactor projects. But it has not built any reactors to date and describes itself as a “technology-agnostic nuclear power developer

Elementl’s CEO and chairman, Christopher Colbert previously served as CFO, COO, and chief strategy officer at NuScale Power.

Chocolate Factory promises early-stage capital to atomic upstart Elementl

Brandon Vigliarolo, 7 May 25

Google has signed a strategic agreement with nuclear project developer Elementl Power to support the early development of three potential fission reactor sites in the US.

But with no selected reactor tech and no construction timeline, the announcement sounds more like a handwaving exercise to distract onlookers from the massive amount of energy that will be expended as Google and other companies race to capitalize on the AI boom.

Google and Elementl announced the partnership in a press release Wednesday. The tech giant will provide early-stage development capital to help prepare three sites for potential advanced atomic nuclear facilities, each targeting at least 600 megawatts of capacity, the pair said.

Typically, the term “advanced” refers to future nuclear fission plant designs that are meant to be quicker to build, but which generate less power than traditional nuclear stations. By way of comparison, the recently completed Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, which is the largest in the US, has four atomic reactors producing a total of 4,500 megawatts, according to the US Energy Information Administration. A 2024 McKinsey report claims that a “normal” datacenter being planned today consumes 200MW, up from 30MW a decade ago thanks partly to the AI boom.

Unlike burning natural gas or coal, nuclear power adds no climate-warming carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, allowing Elementl CEO Chris Colbert to claim in the release, “We look forward to working with Google to execute these projects and bring safe, carbon-free, baseload electricity to the grid.”

Elementl also claims the agreement supports its ambition to “bring more than 10 gigawatts online in the United States by 2035.” But since Google’s involvement only covers three sites, that 10 GW target clearly extends beyond this deal. The companies didn’t disclose locations, reactor vendors, nor the specific technologies under consideration.

Google declined to provide further details beyond its joint statement with Elementl.

Elementl didn’t respond to questions by press time. Its public materials offer little clarity on its actual operations—aside from broad claims about providing “turn-key project development, financing and ownership solutions customized to meet our customers’ needs while mitigating risks and maximizing benefit.” 

The nuclear developer, founded in 2022, presents itself as a facilitator of advanced reactor projects. But it has not built any reactors to date and describes itself as a “technology-agnostic nuclear power developer and independent power producer,” signaling it does not back any specific reactor design.

This approach aligns with the background of Elementl’s CEO and chairman, Christopher Colbert, who previously served as CFO, COO, and chief strategy officer at NuScale Power.

NuScale was the first (and so far only) company in the United States to receive regulatory certification for a small modular reactor (SMR) design. Despite this approval, NuScale has not yet built an operational reactor. Its flagship Carbon Free Power Project in Idaho was canceled in 2023 due to escalating costs and insufficient customer commitment.

Ambitions vs. reality

This is the second nuclear power deal that Google signed in recent months. The first came in October of last year when the search giant partnered with Kairos Power to advance its molten salt SMR design as a potential source of datacenter fuel. 

Kairos has received construction permits from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its Hermes and Hermes 2 demonstration reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with the first reactor projected to be operational by 2027. The agreement with Google aims to bring the first reactor online by 2030, followed by additional deployments through 2035.

But as The Register pointed out recently, Google’s nuclear plans – along with those backed by Meta, Amazon, and others – may be too little too late to address the growing concerns that there isn’t enough power to fuel the growing demand from datacenters and AI. Experts predict an “unprecedented” spike in demand, driven in part by datacenter and AI growth, that could require 3,500 TWh of new energy generation by 2027.

Google’s own plans for AI expansion are gigantic. Google parent company Alphabet said in its most recent earnings call last month that it intended to invest $75 billion in CapEx in 2025, much of that going to servers and datacenters to support the expansion of Google services and DeepMind AI products. At least a portion of the electricity going into those data centers is generated by burning fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming: Google itself admitted in its 2024 environmental report AI investments were a big factor as Google’s carbon emissions to increase by 13 percent year-over-year, writing “Overall, our total GHG emissions increased by 13% — highlighting the challenge of reducing emissions while compute intensity increases and we grow our technical infrastructure investment to support this AI transition.” Overall, the report said, its emissions grew 48% between 2019 and 2024.

Google isn’t alone, either: Microsoft has admitted its AI aspirations were pushing its attempts to be sustainable further out of reach, and the datacenter industry as a whole is being increasingly blamed for allowing AI growth to trump concerns about climate change.

Another abstract agreement to bring 1,800 MW of energy online by 2035 through a company that has yet to build anything is unlikely to help now, when we really need it to, but that’s par for the course with the tech industry’s clean energy investments in the AI era. ®

May 11, 2025 Posted by | spinbuster | Leave a comment

Google agrees to fund the development of three new nuclear sites

 Nuclear developer Elementl Power said Wednesday it’s signed an agreement
with Google. to develop three sites for advanced reactors. It’s the
latest example of tech giants teaming up with the nuclear industry in an
effort to meet the vast energy needs of data centers. Google will commit
early-stage development capital to the three projects, although the exact
terms of the deal remain private. Each site will generate at least 600
megawatts of power capacity, and Google will have the option to buy the
power once the sites are up and running. The proposed locations remain
private, but Elementl said Google’s funding will be used for things like
site permitting, securing interconnection rights to the transmission
system, contract negotiations and other early-stage matters.

 CNBC 7th May 2025, https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/07/google-agrees-to-fund-the-development-of-three-new-nuclear-sites.html

May 11, 2025 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

The dark cloud of Murdoch has no silver lining

News Corp, Sky after dark, Fox News … they spew lies and propaganda around the globe, and the evil empire’s tentacles keep wrapping around the fearful and the ignorant.

by Nicole Chvastek, 7 May 2025, https://thepolitics.com.au/the-dark-cloud-of-murdoch-has-no-silver-lining/

As Saturday’s bloodbath washes through the Liberal corridors of no power, the electoral train wreck has turned attention to other overly cocky players: the Murdoch media. 

From the moment the poll was called, Rupert Murdoch’s news culture warriors turned up the heat on Labor, exhorting the brilliance of Peter Dutton’s failed nuclear fantasy and his war on migrants, “woke” schools, people who work from home and Welcomes to Country — while tearing down anyone who dared suggest he and his party were not fit for office.   

But on election night none of that mattered. None of the confected outrage, the miles of newsprint, the spin and the bullying had made a jot of difference and was more likely to have worked against the Liberals’ interests. Australians it seems have a finely tuned bullshit radar. 

Sky pirates

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young nailed it when she told Radio National on Monday: 

“I think what has happened to the Coalition is they spent a bit too much time hangin’ out with Sky News and they forgot to really hear what people were saying. The other big loser is the Murdoch press. They created an echo chamber for themselves.”

Dr Denis Muller of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne said the Murdoch media were “agents of disaster” for the Coalition:

“I see the sun beginning to set on Rupert’s influence in Australian politics. News Corp created a bubble in which their journalists and Coalition politicians cocooned themselves, talking to each other on Sky after dark, persuading each other that everything was going to be fine.”

A setting sun? It’s a big call. Australian politicians of all persuasions famously make the trek to Murdoch headquarters after an election for a ritual known as “kissing the ring”, and Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles and Penny Wong were quick to do their duty in 2022.

Strings attached 

Eric Beecher, a former News Corp employee, recalls being sued (unsuccessfully) by Lachlan Murdoch who issued a writ for defamation over an opinion piece linking the Murdoch news empire with 2021’s January 6 Capitol riots: 

“The day after the defamation writ was issued, a large Commonwealth government car pulled up outside the Holt Street Surry Hills headquarters in Sydney of News Corp. Three people got out of that car to go upstairs and visit Lachlan in his office: the prime minister, the deputy prime minister and the foreign [affairs] minister of Australia. It’s been going on for 100 years and it should stop.”  

The reach of puppetmaster Rupert Murdoch into governments and policy making knows no bounds and there have been countless exposés on unethical business practices. But the machine roars on, a powerhouse of global disinformation and propaganda while pretending to be a news-gathering organisation. 

In January, Murdoch was photographed reclining in the Oval Office as Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a sovereign wealth fund. Fox News cable spits out Trump propaganda daily and is credited with helping to return the convicted felon and sex predator to office. Murdoch has called Trump “increasingly mad” and yet publicly admitted he knew Fox commentators were lying when they broadcast falsehoods about a “stolen rigged election” in 2020. But hey, it was good for business.  

Nuke the enemy

The habitual process of retribution and vendetta from News Corp is bitter and legendary. The Australian Financial Review reports that Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd blame Murdoch for their political demise. In 1974, Murdoch famously directed his editors to “kill Whitlam” 10 months before Gough Whitlam’s electoral ousting. 

Every day, Murdoch’s media rival, the ABC, is a target of sneering “hit jobs”, and any politician or voice that suggests climate change is real or nuclear reactors are a fantasy or billionaires don’t deserve tax breaks are hounded, possibly for life. The Herald Sun still runs revelations about former Labor premier Dan Andrews and sporadic pieces of condemnation over a car accident his wife had 20 years ago. According to Beecher in his book The Men Who Killed The News, Andrews was the only premier who refused to schlep up to News Corp headquarters for the compulsory kissing of the ring. 

In Australia, the power base is the print media, overwhelmingly controlled by News Corp with a huge digital presence and backed by Sky News. In 2020, Rudd and Turnbull joined forces to call for a royal commission into Murdoch’s concentrated media holdings. Rudd claimed his media power is “routinely used to attack opponents in business and politics by blending editorial opinion with news reporting”.

Break the News

How is it that such deep, lasting damage to democracy, businesses and people’s lives can be inflicted with precisely zero repercussions? One part of the answer is the acceptance that democracies cannot flourish without a free press. Section 65A of the Trade Practices Act provides a general exemption to most of the media as publishers of news and current affairs from liability for publishing misleading or deceptive material. Former chairman of the ACCC Allan Fels said concerns around Murdoch’s practices are more likely to be addressed by a royal commission, an idea the government and opposition have not supported.


 “I don’t have a view on whether he should be reined in. All media mislead to some extent. It’s not the sort of thing consumer protection law addresses.”

Dr Victoria Fielding, senior lecturer in strategic communication at the University of Adelaide, was bolder. She said legislative change was needed to rein in Murdoch excesses. She agrees a healthy democracy needs an independent free press populated by balanced journalists who hold the powerful to account and publish verifiable information — but that’s not what the Murdoch media are: 

 “If there was some legislation that said if you want to be a commentary organisation you can only have a particular share of the market — like any competition commissioner can do — you break it up. You say: ‘You can no longer be that large.’ It’s distorting our democracy.”

Running scared

The other part of the answer is fear, fear of taking on a monolithic disinformation machine which countless readers think is a news outlet and being publicly torn down and repeatedly shredded by a media gorilla with few scruples and deep pockets. 

Remarkably, after cheerleading the Liberals to disaster on May 3, The Australian leapt back up onto its feet to brush off its flesh wound and lecture the Coalition on “missing the warnings”: 

“Of all the mistakes that led to this result, one was fatal: the untested assumption that Labor was out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians. There can be no other interpretation that that this is fundamentally wrong.”

This from the paper that tells us pretty much every day that Labor is out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians. 

Culture vultures

Reports of the death of the Murdoch brand in Australia may well be exaggerated. Like any good parasite it is known to stew and grow before attacking the host again. Fielding reminds us that backed by the Murdoch press, Dutton was on track to win the federal election as recently as January — until the catastrophic reality of the Trump presidency became obvious to Australians. 

Murdoch has withstood worse setbacks than crashing an election and, like Monty Python’s Black Knight, his culture warriors rebound after each atrocity and, still bleeding, berate their victims for taking the advice.

I’d like to think the tide is turning on news outlets that amplify bullshit while bragging they are society’s moral pulse and insisting their bullshit is good for you. But if the tide is not for turning, you can always join the Liberals, and learn the hard way.

May 11, 2025 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, media | Leave a comment

The pro-nuclear drive and Zionism are inter-twined.

https://theaimn.net/the-pro-nuclear-drive-and-zionism-are-inter-twined/ 10 May 25

For many years, I’ve been running websites devoted to the nuclear-free movement. People have asked me why, over the past two years, I’ve been including news about Israel and Gaza.

What on earth do Israel and Gaza have to do with the pro-nuclear cause?

Well, unfortunately, quite a lot.

Here’s a report from 2015 –

“While everyone believes that the Israelis possess a sizable nuclear arsenal, no one really knows how big that arsenal is.  In 2008, President Jimmy Carter estimated that Israel probably had a minimum of 150 weapons in stock ready to use if the most dire circumstances warrant.  Six years later, the former President revised that estimate and put the figure in the 300 range, which—based on Carter’s calculations—would mean that Israel doubled its arsenal from the 2008-2014 time-period. “

Of course the Israeli government “does not confirm or deny” that they’ve got nuclear weapons, and the cowardly governments that support Israel similarly do not officially confirm it. And of course Israel has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), or participated in any kind of weapons control negotiations.

In Sep 22, 2023 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran at the United Nations of a “nuclear threat” in what his office quickly walked back as a slip of the tongue. In July 2024  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged in a scathing speech to Congress on Wednesday to achieve “total victory” against Hamas.

The Zionist philosophy means that the Jews are God’s chosen people. And the Islamics certainly are not. The attitude of Israel towards the Palestinians is that they are not the same kind of human being as the Jews are. Indeed, it’s OK to starve Gazan children to death – after all, they are some kind of untermenchen.

Well, the genocide of Gazans is being achieved without any need for nuclear weapons. But what about the other Islamics? There’s Yemen, and there’s Iran. Netanyahu believes that Iran poses an existential threat to the Zionist state, and could make a nuclear weapon in a short period of time, making Israel and even the US unable to defeat or contain it.

To what lengths might Netanyahu go, to prevent that? Bomb Iran’s nuclear sites?

And would Donald Trump, an enthusiastic fan of Israel, support that option.

Here’s Trump, seven months ago, urging Israel to make such a strike,

While I’ve been thinking about this for some time, I was prompted to write about it now, after reading an article by Lucy Hamilton in Australian Independent Media, about the close involvement of Australian pro-nuclear front groups with the Zionist movement.

It’s not only Israel that we must worry about, in Australia, and presumably world-wide. If we aim to be nuclear-free, we are up against a lobby determined to have nuclear-weapons superiority, and the Zionist movement is right up there in that determination.

May 10, 2025 Posted by | Christina's notes, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Why Is US Congress Silent on the Manmade Nightmare It Is Enabling in Gaza? -Bernie Sanders

With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government.

  Bernie Sanders, May 08, 2025 , https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/congress-silent-gaza

I want to say a few words about an issue that people all over the world are thinking about—are appalled by—but for some strange reason gets very little discussion here in the nation’s capital or in the halls of Congress. And that is the horrific humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in Gaza.

Thursday marks 68 days and counting since ANY humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza. For more than nine weeks, Israel has blocked all supplies: no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel.

Hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving supplies are waiting to enter Gaza, sitting just across the border, but are denied entry by Israeli authorities.

There is no ambiguity here: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government talks openly about using humanitarian aid as a weapon. Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “Israel’s policy is clear: No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers.”

Starving children to death as a weapon of war is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. Civilized people do not starve children to death.

What is going on in Gaza is a war crime, committed openly and in broad daylight, and continuing every single day.

There are 2.2 million people who live in Gaza. Today, these people are trapped. The borders are sealed. And Israel has pushed the population into an ever-smaller area.

With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government.

Without fuel, there is no ability to pump fresh water, leaving people increasingly desperate, unable to find clean water to drink, wash with, or cook properly. Disease is once again spreading in Gaza.

Most of the bakeries in Gaza have now shut down, having run out of fuel and flour. The few remaining community kitchens are also shutting down. Most people are now surviving on scarce canned goods, often a single can of beans or some lentils, shared between a family once a day.

The United Nations reports that more than 2 million people out of a population of 2.2 million face severe food shortages.

The starvation hits children hardest. At least 65,000 children now show symptoms of malnutrition, and dozens have already starved to death.

Malnutrition rates increased 80% in March, the last month for which data is available, after Netanyahu began the siege, but the situation has severely deteriorated since then.

UNICEF reported Wednesday that “the situation is getting worse every day,” and that they are treating about 10,000 children for severe malnutrition.

Without adequate nutrition or access to clean water, many children will die of easily preventable diseases, killed by something as simple as diarrhea.

For the tens of thousands of injured people in Gaza, particularly the countless burn victims from Israeli bombing, their wounds cannot heal without adequate food and clean water. Left to fester, infections will kill many who should have survived.

With no infant formula, and with malnourished mothers unable to breastfeed, many infants are also at severe risk of death. Those that survive will bear the scars of their suffering for the rest of their lives.

And with little medicine available, easily treatable illnesses and chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease can be a death sentence in Gaza.

What is going on there is not some terrible earthquake, it is not a hurricane, it is not a storm. What is going on in Gaza today is a manmade nightmare. And nothing can justify this.

What is happening in Gaza will be a permanent stain on the world’s collective conscience. History will never forget that we allowed this to happen and, for us here in the United States, that we, in fact, enabled this atrocity.

There is no doubt that Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this terrible war with its barbaric October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages.

The International Criminal Court was right to indict Yahya Sinwar and other leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities.

Clearly, Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas.

But Netanyahu’s extremist government has not just waged war against Hamas. Instead, they have waged an all-out barbaric war of annihilation against the Palestinian people.

They have intentionally made life unlivable in Gaza.

Israel, up to now, has killed more than 52,000 people and injured more than 118,000—60% of whom are women, children, and the elderly. More than 15,000 children have been killed.

Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment has damaged or destroyed two-thirds of all structures in Gaza, including 92% of the housing units. Most of the population now is living in tents or other makeshift structures.

The healthcare system in Gaza has been essentially destroyed. Most of the territory’s hospitals and primary healthcare facilities have been bombed.

Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90% of water and sanitation facilities. Most of the roads have been destroyed.

Gaza’s education system has been obliterated. Hundreds of schools have been bombed, as has every single one of Gaza’s 12 universities.

And there has been no electricity in Gaza for 18 months.

Given this reality, nobody should have any doubts that Netanyahu is a war criminal. Just like his counterparts in Hamas, he has a massive amount of innocent blood on his hands.

And now Netanyahu and his extremist ministers have a new plan: to indefinitely reoccupy all of Gaza, flatten the few buildings that are still standing, and force the entire population of 2.2 million people into a single tiny area, where hired U.S. security contractors will distribute rations to the survivors.

Israeli officials are quite open about the goal here: to force Palestinians to leave for other countries “in line with President [Donald] Trump’s vision for Gaza,” as one Israeli official said this week.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said this week that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” and that its population will “leave in great numbers.”

For many in Netanyahu’s extremist government, this has been the plan all along: It’s called ethnic cleansing.

This would be a terrible tragedy, no matter where or why it was happening. But what makes this tragedy so much worse for us in America is that it is our government, the United States government, that is absolutely complicit in creating and sustaining this humanitarian disaster.

Last year alone, the United States provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel. This year, the Trump administration has approved $12 billion more in bombs and weapons.

And for months, Trump has offered blanket support for Netanyahu. More than that, he has repeatedly said that the United States will actually take over Gaza after the war, that the Palestinians will be pushed out, and that the U.S. will redevelop it into what Trump calls “the Riviera of the Middle East,” a playground for billionaires.

This war has killed or injured more than 170,000 people in Gaza. It has cost American taxpayers well over $20 billion in the last year. And right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death. And the U.S. president is actively encouraging the ethnic cleansing of over 2 million people.

Given that reality, one might think that there would be a vigorous discussion right here in the Senate: Do we really want to spend billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza? You tell me why spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu’s war and starving children in Gaza is a good idea. I’d love to hear it.

But we are not having that debate. And let me suggest to you why I think we are not having that debate.

That is because we have a corrupt campaign finance system that allows the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to set the agenda here in Washington.

In the last election cycle, AIPAC’s PAC and Super PAC spent nearly $127 million combined.

And the fact is that, if you are a member of Congress and you vote against Netanyahu’s war in Gaza, AIPAC is there to punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements to see that you’re defeated.

One might think that in a democracy there would be a vigorous debate on an issue of such consequence. But because of our corrupt campaign finance system, people are literally afraid to stand up. If they do, suddenly you will have all kinds of ads coming in to your district to defeat you.

Sadly, I must confess, that this political corruption works. Many of my colleagues will privately express their horror at Netanyahu’s war crimes, but will do or say very little publicly about it.

History will not forgive our complicity in this nightmare. The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu’s destruction of the Palestinian people. We must not put another nickel into Netanyahu’s war machine. We must demand an immediate cease-fire, a surge in humanitarian aid, the release of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza—not for billionaires to enjoy their Riviera there—but rebuilding Gaza for the Palestinian people.

May 10, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, politics, USA | Leave a comment

The Deep State & the Death of Democracy

This is a must read – The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government

Bruce Gagnon, May 10, 2025, https://brucegagnon177089.substack.com/p/the-deep-state-and-the-death-of-democracy?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3720343&post_id=163213827&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1vapg7&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

This is an important book – The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. I would say without any hesitation that this is one of the top 3-4 most important books that I have ever read. I highly recommend that everyone read it.

There is so much I learned from the book and I’ve been studying the whole US-Nazi connection after WW II for many years – but author David Talbot really wrote a spell-binding book – it’s like reading a real life mystery story. You come away from the book with a very clear understanding how the US became the corporate fascist state that we have today.

“During the war [Maj. Gen.] Gehlen had served as Hitler’s intelligence chief on the eastern front. His Foreign Armies East (Fremde Heere Ost) apparatus relentlessly probed for weaknesses in the Soviet defenses as the Nazi juggernaut made its eastward thrust. Gehlen’s FHO also pinpointed the location of Jews, Communists, and other enemies of the Reich in the ‘bloodlands’ overrun by Hitler’s forces, so they could be rounded up and executed by the Einsatzgruppen death squads. Most of the intelligence gathered by Gehlen’s men was extracted from the enormous population of Soviet prisoners of war – which eventually totaled four million – that fell under Nazi control. Gehlen’s exalted reputation as an intelligence wizard, which won him the Fuhrer’s admiration and his major general’s rank, derived from his organization’s widespread use of torture.”

To make it quick and simple, Maj. Gen. Gehlen made a deal with Allen Dulles (then running the precursor of the CIA called the OSS) that if he and his team were spared trial at Nuremberg he’d turn over his ‘rat line’ of fascist operatives throughout Europe and would work for the US. Gehlen was brought to the US and put through loyalty tests and eventually sent back to the newly created West Germany where he was put in charge of intelligence in the post war ‘free’ Germany.

Gehlen’s post-war operatives across Europe where used to disrupt and destroy left-wing attempts to win electoral victories in European countries (Operation Gladio). His death squads were used to target the Algerian independence movement. Gehlen and Dulles worked overtime to destabilize the Soviet eastern bloc taking great pleasure in making Stalin hyper-paranoid thus getting him to overreact and launch brutal internal crackdowns on innocent Soviet citizens.

Talbot quotes JFK White House staffer Arthur Schlesinger Jr. saying he was offended by “the notion of American spooks” like Dulles and other leading post-war CIA operatives “cheerfully consorting with people like General Reinhard Gehlen….There was something aesthetically displeasing about Americans plotting with Nazis, who had recently been killing us, against Russians, whose sacrifices [27 million killed during the war] had made the allied victory possible.”

Talbot painstakingly reveals how Dulles used his CIA rat line to set up the JFK assassination in 1963. One of the key players in the killing of President Kennedy was the CIA agent William Harvey who worked closely with Gehlen’s notorious fascist organization, and Gehlen came to consider Harvey a “very esteemed [and] really reliable friend.”

In the spring of 1968, soon after the killing of Sen. Bobby Kennedy, Allen Dulles took the time to write to the last Kennedy brother Ted sending his “sympathy and regards”. Talbot reports that Dulles hated Bobby and had used his seat on the President Lyndon Johnson appointed Warren Commission to smash any hopes for a true investigation into the killing of JFK that Dulles had been a mastermind in executing. Bobby had been privately hoping to expose Dulles and the CIA as the killer of his big brother if he were to be elected president.


Talbot shares that in the fall of 1968 the main social event of the season for Dulles was “the Washington fete in honor of Reinhard Gehlen, the West German spy chief Dulles had resurrected from the poison ashes of the Third Reich. On September 12, Gehlen’s US sponsors threw a luncheon for him, and that night there was a dinner for Hitler’s old spy chief at the Maryland home of Heinz Herre – Gehlen’s former staff officer on the eastern front, who had become West Germany’s top intelligence liaison in Washington.”

One could easily say that the US and German fascists had all the bases covered.

Why then have the American people, and the people of the world, been largely ignorant about this ugly history of the resurrection of the Nazi war machine during the post WW II years? After viewing the video [ Operation Mockingbird, CIA Media Control Program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDCfTIapds0&t=89s ]about the CIA’s clandestine infiltration of US and international media it is no surprise that the public has been spoon fed only what the propagandists, disguised as democratic patriots, wanted people to know. History has been rewritten to suit the needs of the deep state.

In 1977, Rolling Stone Magazine alleged that one of the most important journalists under the thumb of the CIA’s media control program called Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by Rolling Stone to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (The Miami News), Herb Gold (The Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by the CIA’s Frank Wisner (director of the Office of Special Projects). The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.

Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O’Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian Science Monitor).

The American democracy story is illusion created by what author Bertram Gross called “three piece suit fascism” years ago in his book entitled Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America. But to emerging democracy movements around the world, brutally suppressed by the CIA and its death squad agents, there was nothing friendly or democratic about these tactics. Because of the relative affluence of America during this period the public was docile and easily keep under control by the manipulations of the media and the political circles controlled by the deep state.

Now that the American imperial project is crashing and burning the story has begun to emerge and the blinders of deception are steadily falling from the public’s eyes. What comes next is unknown but until the American people learn the real story behind this ‘Hollywood democracy’ little can change for the good.

May 10, 2025 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Depleted Uranium by Lynda Williams 2025

May 10, 2025 Posted by | depleted uranium | Leave a comment

How Miliband can make renewables cheaper – but there is really no alternative to renewables

giving longer term contracts to renewable energy developers will make solar and wind schemes even cheaper

In a world where the costs of building all sorts of power plants are
increasing, the Government has a powerful card up its sleeve to keep down
the cost of new renewable energy projects. The Government is considering
extending the contract length under which new renewable energy projects
receive their fixed payments per MWh that is generated.

If contracts for
difference (CfDs) are issued to last for 20 years instead of 15 years, this
could reduce the price of power from the renewable projects by at least 10
per cent (according to my calculations). By offering lower annual returns
over a longer period, the projects can be delivered for a lower fixed price
per MWh that is generated. Such a cost reduction seems likely to offset any
temporary (Trump-induced) cost increases for renewables.

The ‘Trump
effect’ may have led Orsted to discontinue its massive 2.4 GW Hornsea 4
offshore wind project near East Anglia. However, some commentators such as
Jerome Guillet argue that Orsted should have planned better to avoid this
outcome. Other countries operating the CfD system for renewable energy
employ 20-year contracts, and it has always been a mystery to me why the UK
Treasury plumped for a 15 year period. This is an artificially short period
compared to the project lifetime of 25 or 30 years.

Hinkley C, by contrast,
was given a 35-year premium price contract. Meanwhile, the French
Government is pressing the UK Government to put more money into the
long-delayed construction of the Hinkley C power plant. This, it seems, is
part of the price for EDF agreeing to the construction of the successor
Sizewell C plant. This is even though Hinkley C was given a contract that
pays it over £130 per MWh in today’s prices.

That compares to the most
recent auctions of wind and solar PV, whose contracts are worth £71-£83
per MWh at 2025 prices. As I write this, there appears to be a standoff in
negotiations over the terms for Sizewell C between the British and French
governments.

Quite apart from the cost, the idea that nuclear power is
going to be delivered anytime soon is fanciful. The idea that so-called
small modular reactors are any sort of alternative to the big ones is
ridiculous. They are just more expensive still!

At the end of the day,
energy efficiency and renewables are the only real options. After all, over
90 per cent of the new generation being deployed in the world last year was
renewable, almost all of it being solar or wind. The reason this is
happening is that their costs are falling and they continue to fall.
Renewables are the present and future. We need more electricity to
electrify transport, heating, and much else. Sceptics may rail and sneer at
Miliband’s clean power programme. If it has any faults, it is because it
is too mainstream, wasting money and time on carbon capture and storage and
nuclear power.

 Dave Toke’s Blog 8th May 2025 https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/how-milband-can-make-renewables-cheaper

May 10, 2025 Posted by | renewable, UK | Leave a comment

Ontario signs up for a huge financial and security risk

Ontario Clean Air Alliance 9 May 25

1 Yesterday the Ford Government announced it is rolling the dice on building four untested, first-of-their-kind nuclear reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Station. 

It’s an expensive and risky roll. The government claims these four reactors will cost $20.9 billion and will take 10 years to build. A much more realistic cost estimate based on real-world experience says these reactors will cost at least $27 billion. 

Of course, these American-designed reactors will also depend on enriched uranium imports from the United States. So much for sending Donald Trump a message and protecting Canada’s national security.

Today we released a report which compares the costs of these never-before-built reactors with much lower cost, safer and more climate effective options such as solar and wind power.

It finds that power from these new nuclear reactors will cost up to 8 times more than power from onshore wind turbines; almost 6 times more than power from solar farms; and up to 2.7 times more than Great Lakes offshore wind power.

That’s according to the highly respected Energy Futures Group, not the nuclear insiders the government is depending on for its estimates. While they used data from Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the Energy Futures Group made realistic estimates about the capital costs of new reactors and their performance based on real-world data that the IESO chose to pass over in favour of assumptions with little grounding in reality.

Why would we spend many, many times more for power from risky reactors rather than doing what the rest of the world is doing and fully develop low-cost renewable power? Remember, Ontario has not contracted for a single kilowatt-hour of new wind and solar electricity during that last 7 years while use of solar, in particular, has skyrocketed in much of the rest of the world.

The Ford Government doesn’t want to talk about the real costs and alternatives to its nuclear fantasy plans. But we can’t afford to live in a fantasy world, especially now. We need to get real about the best way to control energy costs and to protect our province. Splashing out on unproven nuclear reactors is not a good choice when we can save billions with reliable, already available and proven renewable options.

See our report for all the fine print on the Energy Futures Group’s calculations. Then tell the Ford Government that it’s time to get real and invest in our lowest cost power options, not expensive nuclear pipe dreams.

May 10, 2025 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

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