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China’s openness about its latest nuclear missile test shows growing confidence vis-à-vis the United States

The rare public ICBM test seems to have been specifically aimed at dissuading Washington from using nuclear weapons in a potential conflict across the Taiwan Strait

Bulletin, By Hui Zhang | October 16, 2024

China’s Ministry of National Defense announced last month that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) had successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) carrying a simulated warhead into the Pacific Ocean and that the missile accurately fell into the designated area. This was the first time since 1980 that China had test-fired an ICBM into international waters.

But the test launch was part of routine annual training, the ministry added, in line with international law and international practice, and not directed against any country or target.

Just as observers were vigorously speculating about the type of missile used in the test, China Junhao (China’s military media wing) cut short the discussions, releasing pictures of the launch site—a very rare step given that the Chinese army has not made public a photo of the launch of a new ICBM for decades.

China’s Ministry of National Defense announced last month that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) had successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) carrying a simulated warhead into the Pacific Ocean and that the missile accurately fell into the designated area. This was the first time since 1980 that China had test-fired an ICBM into international waters.

But the test launch was part of routine annual training, the ministry added, in line with international law and international practice, and not directed against any country or target.

Just as observers were vigorously speculating about the type of missile used in the test, China Junhao (China’s military media wing) cut short the discussions, releasing pictures of the launch site—a very rare step given that the Chinese army has not made public a photo of the launch of a new ICBM for decades…………………

With this new launch test, China certainly wants to show a forceful response to suspicion about its nuclear deterrence capabilities in the wake of recent corruption scandals and command instability in its rocket force. The test shows that the rocket force has an operational and credible nuclear force that can help ensure China’s ability to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent—a key element of President Xi Jinping’s long-held military objectives and emphasis on strengthening China’s nuclear forces, an emphasis initiated in 2015.

The rare public ICBM test seems to have been specifically aimed at dissuading Washington from using nuclear weapons in a potential conflict across the Taiwan Strait. The unusual transparency surrounding the test shows how China is becoming increasingly confident vis-à-vis the United States. It also could offer a rare opportunity for engaging in risk reduction talks.

A new missile type. Unlike the United States, which usually tests its ICBMs in international waters, China has usually fired its ICBMs over its homeland, using a lofted or depressed trajectory to keep the missile inside Chinese territory. China’s last full-trajectory flight test of an ICBM (the DF-5) was conducted in May 1980………………………………….

Where the 1980 test was meant to be a trump card for deterring Moscow, today’s DF-31AG test is aimed at deterring Washington………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Changing target. China now perceives the United States as being its main threat, and the question of whether China has a credible and reliable deterrent against a US first nuclear strike has become more important in Chinese government circles. At least, this appears to be the strategic calculation that Xi currently pursues………………………………………….

Since 2012 and Xi’s presidential tenure, however, China has been substantially modernizing, expanding, and diversifying its nuclear forces to address perceived threats from the United States. …………………………..

China has expanded its nuclear arsenal at unprecedented speed and scale. It has increased its total warhead count from about 260 in 2016 to about 500 in 2024. Most of the increase has come in the shape of ICBMs capable of reaching the continental United States—from about 65 in 2016 to about 240 in 2024. The US Defense Department projected that China would possess over 1,000 warheads by 2030.

The observable transformation of China’s nuclear posture and the projections for its expansion over the next decade raise the question of whether China has changed its nuclear strategy.[8] Until recently, Chinese officials and government documents reaffirmed China’s commitment to a no-first-use policy and a self-defense nuclear strategy.[9] Under this nuclear policy and strategy, China has always confirmed that it “keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security.” The major question is how to interpret the “minimum” needs of a nuclear force for a secured second-strike capability.

Searching for a minimum and “effective” deterrent. China’s officials have never declared a specific number of weapons required for its minimum level. Such a level is never static. It depends on several factors, including estimates of survivability during a nuclear attack and a projected enemy’s missile defense systems. …………………….

………….. since 2000, the US missile defense plan has been a major driver of China’s nuclear modernization and buildup…………………………….

At this stage, it is not clear whether Xi Jinping has decided to empower the country’s nuclear force beyond assuring such a reliable second-strike capability. However, while there is little evidence to show that China has changed its long-standing nuclear strategy and no-first-use policy, recent qualitative and quantitative improvements in the nuclear forces demonstrate that Chinese leaders may now pursue a more ambitious nuclear strategy.

A more confident China—and the need to reduce risk. Without a clear understanding of China’s goals and motivations, a new arms race could be triggered with the United States, which would reverse China’s long-standing policy against such engagements. It is now the time for both countries to conduct dialogues to avoid a nuclear arms race and reduce the risk of nuclear conflict. Both sides should undertake risk-reduction and military confidence-building measures to address security concerns, clarify strategic intentions, and increase transparency. They should also engage in “strategic stability” talks.

As a first step, China and the United States could negotiate a bilateral agreement on mutual notification for ballistic missile and space launches, which would significantly reduce the risk of misperception and miscalculation……………………..https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/chinas-openness-about-its-latest-nuclear-missile-test-shows-growing-confidence-vis-a-vis-the-united-states/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=ThursdayNewsletter10172024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_ChinaNuclearMissileTest_10162024

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October 19, 2024 Posted by | China, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Apollo Global Management Inc in Talks to Partly Finance EDF’s Hinkley UK Nuclear Power Plant

By Aaron Kirchfeld, Silas Brown, and Francois de BeaupuyOctober 15, 2024 

(Bloomberg) — Apollo Global Management Inc. is in talks with Electricite de France SA to provide financing for a nuclear power plant under construction in the UK, people with knowledge of the matter said. 

The alternative asset manager has held early discussions about providing a complex mix of equity and debt that may total billions of pounds, the people said, asking not to be identified because deliberations are private. 

EDF has been holding meetings with a series of investors including investment firms, sovereign wealth funds and infrastructure specialists to raise as much as £4 billion ($5.2 billion) through a deal that would give investors a stake in the Hinkley Point C project, Bloomberg News reported last week. Centrica Plc. is one of the companies considering investing. 

The estimated cost of building Hinkley has risen to as much as £47.9 billion in current terms, due in part to lingering labor shortages and supply chain issues. The first of the two reactors at the site is scheduled to become operational in 2030 — five years later than initially planned — under EDF’s base-case scenario. 

Talks about financing Hinkley are at an early stage and may not result in a deal, the people said. Representatives for Apollo and EDF declined to comment………………… https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/10/15/apollo-in-talks-to-partly-finance-edfs-hinkley-uk-nuclear-power-plant/

October 19, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

North Somerset MP objects to salt marsh at Kingston Seymour

North Somerset Times 16th Oct 2024

NORTH Somerset’s MP, Sadik Al-Hassan, objects to the creation of a salt marsh in the corner of his constituency, claiming his constituents are being “shut out of the conversation.” 

The proposed salt marsh at Kingston Seymour, which sits on the boundary with the neighbouring Wells and Mendip Hills constituency, is one of four sites earmarked on the Severn Estuary by EDF as environmental mitigation measures for its construction of Hinkley Point C. The other sites include Littleton, Arlingham and Rodley………………………………………….. https://www.northsomersettimes.co.uk/news/24657962.north-somerset-mp-objects-salt-marsh-kingston-seymour/

October 19, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

How carbon capture and storage and nuclear are adding little to decarbonisation compared to solar and wind

CCS, like nuclear is going not very far in terms of future increases in decarbonisation capacity, but it will be at very great cost to taxpayers.

David Toke, Oct 16, 2024

We’ve heard a lot in the news recently about how carbon capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major solution to decarbonisation. But the global figures suggest otherwise. The results so far are that this is having an almost insignificant effect on global decarbonisation. Rather it is looking like CCS funding from Governments is a good way of funneling money into the fossil fuel and chemicals industry with very little to show for combatting climate change. Indeed this CCS sector is eerily technologically redundant in many of the same ways as nuclear power.

You can see this in the chart below [on original]. This shows the respective global contributions to carbon dioxide abatement from three sources a) solar plus wind power, b) nuclear power and c) carbon capture and storage (CCS).

I have taken global capacity figures for CCS from the Global CCS Institute (HERE). They have data available for the period since 2010 showing how the global capacity for CO2 removal has changed. I have used data on carbon intensity of global electricity production drawn from Ember (See HERE) to determine how much CO2 is saved by each unit of nuclear, solar and wind generation. Then I combine this with data on nuclear, solar and wind electricity generation from the Energy Institute (See HERE).

The result is a calculation of the annual carbon dioxide saved by global solar plus wind generation, nuclear generation and CCS (since 2010). There is a notable caveat with regard to the CCS figures. Whilst I have confidence in the reported production figures from solar, wind and nuclear power, I have no information that the ‘capacity’ of CCS reported is actually being completely filled each year. Therefore the CCS annual capacity figures must each be regarded as a ‘maximum’.

It is apparent that whilst solar and wind are increasing rapidly, and nuclear production has stagnated, CCS contributes a very small amount to world carbon removal capacity by comparison. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Meanwhile, technologies, which do stand a chance of being optimised and do not involve fossil fuels or nuclear power are ignored. Recent UK Government announcements talk of around £20 billion being made available for CCS activities over the coming years. Yet there is no direct budget to develop deep underground or closed loop geothermal energy, new technologies, which have seen considerable technical interest in recent years (see HERE and HERE)………………………………………………This trend of low output compared to public money spent seems likely to continue for many years to come!

CCS – eerily like nuclear?

What is striking about CCS processes is that they are seriously dogged by environmental problems…………………………………….The technology starts off as an inferior commercial proposition to conventional fossil fuel commercial activities, and the pressures for improvements are going to increase costs, not reduce them. Have we heard this before? Well, yes.

This is actually much the same general problem that nuclear power has faced. Nuclear power is a mature technology relying on a low-productivity construction industry. On top of this its costs have increased since its inception because of the need to build-in safety requirements. New designs have tended to be made with safety in mind (eg ‘passive’ safety designs) rather than improvements in economic productivity. This, in general, is the same sort of problem that fossil fuel CCS faces. See my earlier blog post on nuclear’s productivity problems HERE. Like nuclear CCS is forced to pursue non-market objectives rather than improve productivity to reduce costs of production.

The contrast with solar and wind is staggering. These technologies can devote their efforts into reducing costs and improving productivity. Solar panels today are made with a small fraction of the polysilicon used in the past. The production lines are much longer and efficiently organised and the machines to make the panels are much better and cheaper etc etc. In the case of wind power the wind capture rates have been improved through computer-aided design of the turbine blades, making the machines of lighter material and also making them a great deal bigger etc etc.

CCS, like nuclear is going not very far in terms of future increases in decarbonisation capacity, but it will be at very great cost to taxpayers. No commercial operation is going to contract for the CCS ‘product’. There is a very limited market for CO2 itself and no commercial market for storing carbon dioxide outside of direct Government support. For how long can this drain on our public spending resources carry on?
https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/how-carbon-capture-and-storage-and

October 19, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

To make nuclear fusion a reliable energy source one day, scientists will first need to design heat- and radiation-resilient materials

Fusion energy has the potential to be an effective clean energy source, as its reactions
generate incredibly large amounts of energy. Fusion reactors aim to
reproduce on Earth what happens in the core of the Sun, where very light
elements merge and release energy in the process. Engineers can harness
this energy to heat water and generate electricity through a steam turbine,
but the path to fusion isn’t completely straightforward.

Controlled nuclear fusion has several advantages over other power sources for
generating electricity. For one, the fusion reaction itself doesn’t
produce any carbon dioxide. There is no risk of meltdown, and the reaction
doesn’t generate any long-lived radioactive waste. I’m a nuclear
engineer who studies materials that scientists could use in fusion
reactors.

Fusion takes place at incredibly high temperatures. So to one day
make fusion a feasible energy source, reactors will need to be built with
materials that can survive the heat and irradiation generated by fusion
reactions.

The Conversation 18th Oct 2024 https://theconversation.com/to-make-nuclear-fusion-a-reliable-energy-source-one-day-scientists-will-first-need-to-design-heat-and-radiation-resilient-materials-238489

October 19, 2024 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

The Energy Department just made one plutonium pit. Making more is uncertain

Bulletin, By Dylan Spaulding | October 10, 2024

Two conflicting developments arose this month in US efforts to produce new plutonium pits for its nuclear weapons: The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced it had produced a warhead-ready pit—the explosive core of a nuclear weapon—for the first time in decades, and a federal court ruled that NNSA will be required to consider the cumulative environmental and health impacts of its pit production program.

Overshadowing these events is a vigorous debate over the necessity for new pits at all. Previous analyses have found that plutonium pits have viable lifespans well beyond the expected service life of the current stockpile, whereas production of pits for new weapons is part of a sweeping US nuclear modernization that raises concern over the future of arms control and any possibility for stockpile reductions at a time of deteriorating international relations.

The two most recent developments illustrate a critical tension in the US nuclear weapons program: New pit production demonstrates a doubling down of US reliance on nuclear weapons for the 21st century. The failure to adhere to environmental policy in doing so highlights the unwitting cost that US citizens may bear for this policy choice—as they have repeatedly in the past………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

…….Production challenges. Despite any fanfare, demonstrating the ability to certify one plutonium pit doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing toward Los Alamos’s mandated production goals.

The Los Alamos’ Plutonium Facility at Technical Area 55 (PF-4) is conducting the dangerous and difficult work of pit production while also undergoing construction and modernization, with work happening round-the-clock—several other plutonium-related missions are pursued under the same roof. The facility has been criticized for deficiencies in personal safety and safety-related engineering, including recent glovebox fires, floods, worker exposure to plutonium and beryllium, and violations of criticality safety rules. The likelihood of such incidents increases as a result of fast-paced work in close-quarters with a mostly new  workforce. In 2013, the PF-4 facility was shut down for three years following a severe criticality safety violation; a repeat could prove fatal, literally and figuratively.

…………………………………………… Regardless of Los Alamos’ success, the congressionally mandated quota of 80 pits per year remains impossible to meet by NNSA’s own admission. This number relies on completion and commissioning of a second production facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which won’t be operational until the mid-2030s at the earliest.

Just as the future rate of plutonium pit production is uncertain, the missile these pits are intended for—the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile—is also not likely to be completed on schedule. The troubled Sentinel project remains vastly over budget and behind schedule, putting its future at risk and making coordination of the warhead and missile difficult to foresee. Problems or changes in scope for either program will affect the other.

A federal court ruling.  Coinciding with NNSA’s announcement of the first diamond-stamped pit, a US District Court ruled that the Energy Department and the NNSA violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with pit production, requiring the agency to conduct a programmatic environmental impact assessment.

This was a victory for transparency and the community groups—among them, Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition—who, for years, have been asking for such an assessment.

Reestablishing pit production on the scale now contemplated is potentially the biggest investment in the nuclear weapons complex since the Manhattan Project. With it comes hiring and training of thousands of new employees, increased transportation between sites, new construction, safely handing radioactive material, and the generation of new nuclear waste. The cumulative nature of these activities, occurring across many Energy Department’s sites, demands that the impacts of pit production be considered holistically in the form of a programmatic environmental impact assessment.

The environmental impact statements issued by the national laboratories offer perhaps the best public-facing analyses of whether their plans comply with standards for protection of public safety and the environment, including the likelihood of specific scenarios and associated risk of public exposure to hazards such as chemicals or radiation. Still, the NNSA has—until now—resisted issuing such a programmatic statement.

The agency clearly recognizes that pit production involves much of the US nuclear weapons complex. The press release announcing the first diamond-stamped pit thanked workers in Kansas City, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Los Alamos, and the Pantex plant in Texas. But the NNSA has so far relied on a series of addenda and supplements to a 2008 environmental impact statement for work at Los Alamos and considers Savannah River separately. These assessments largely ignore the cross-complex collaboration required and the subsequent risks, including impacts on the potentially overburdened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico that must absorb the prolific—and complex—waste stream from the pit production process.

The court ruling—which holds that the Energy Department and the NNSA did not follow environmental requirements in pursuing two production sites—will require the NNSA to conduct a new review, bringing renewed public scrutiny and allowing a new opportunity for input from concerned opponents.

An unclear horizon. A programmatic environmental impact statement can take years before it’s finalized. The judge in the case declined to halt construction at NNSA’s second pit production site at Savannah River while the new assessment is being carried out, and the two parties have until October 21st to seek an agreement.  It’s likely that the NNSA will argue that stopping pit-production work would be too expensive, too disruptive, and too damaging to national security to consider. It remains unclear what the potential consequences could be if the NNSA decides to challenge the ruling.

While work at Los Alamos is likely to continue amid a programmatic assessment, design choices are still underway at the Savannah River Site, where the NNSA is attempting to retrofit the troubled former mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication plant which never reached productivity despite more than $7 billion of investment. This site is years away from being active and will require extensive transformation that may cost as much as $25 billion. Given this enormous investment, a programmatic environmental impact statement can ensure that this transformation better addresses the actual hazards and better protects communities, workers, and the environment.

Reestablishing pit production in the United States is a massive undertaking. It involves resurrecting a lost capacity that requires complicated engineering, construction, and extremely hazardous work processes that will be carried out by a largely new work force with little to no prior experience. NNSA and its contractors must manage safety risks across multiple sites where new hazardous waste will be generated in communities that don’t want it and where the Energy Department has a poor historic track record of environmental stewardship.

Congress and the Biden administration should eliminate the mandated 80 pit per year requirement while the NNSA conducts a new, thorough environmental assessment that would go a long way toward promoting increased safety and public protection—a challenge that the NNSA and the labs should take seriously.  https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/the-energy-department-just-made-one-plutonium-pit-making-more-is-uncertain/

October 18, 2024 Posted by | - plutonium, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Small nuclear reactors won’t be ready in time for the needs of energy-guzzling needs of Artificial Intelligence.

As of last month, when [data centres] were classed as critical national
infrastructure, data centres are on a par with utilities, meaning the
government would step in were there a risk to connectivity. Nonetheless, as
Rohan Kelkar, the executive vice-president of power products at Schneider
Electric, puts it, the “lack of grid capacity puts UK’s AI and data
centre ambitions and energy transition goals at risk”.

So much so that we have seen the boroughs of Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow all rejecting
data centre projects in order to retain supply for housing. This is far
from a UK-specific issue. In Ireland, the pressure on the national grid
from computing needs is so acute they have had to pause some data centre
approvals over concerns that excessive demand from data centres could lead
to blackouts.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Big Tech companies are
also grappling with the energy conundrum: how to find low-carbon, reliable
sources of power for their power-hungry warehouses without jeopardising
customer needs or their net zero goals. Along with renewable energy and
improving battery storage, right now they all seem to be turning in one
direction: towards nuclear power. Microsoft signed a deal last month to
help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.
Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data centre earlier in the year. On Monday,
Google became the latest to announce a nuclear energy deal to meet the
needs of its data centres, looking at mini reactors developed by a
Californian company.

A cocktail of technological innovation means this
could happen in the UK, too. Rolls-Royce, the engineer, is at the forefront
of developing mini reactors and is already having conversations with
operators in the UK about their use. While mini nukes would not have been
commercially viable in the past, now that demand for data centres has
jumped exponentially, their potential use has become more feasible. Another
key component in the future marriage of computing and nuclear power is that
data centres are becoming less location driven because of improvements in
latency, the time it takes for data to travel from one point to another.


The immediate problem with the introduction of small nuclear reactors?
Rolls-Royce estimates that they remain a decade or more away, with none
currently operating and generating electricity in the UK. In the meantime,
connection to the “constrained” grid, remains all-important headache
for those looking to build data centres.

 Times 16th Oct 2024

https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/technology/article/nuclear-powered-data-centres-looking-to-become-cost-effective-qpgskj8xv

October 18, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Another Phony Biden PR Stunt About Humanitarian Aid In Gaza

Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 16, 2024,  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/another-phony-biden-pr-stunt-about?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=150283330&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The Biden administration is performing another PR stunt about getting humanitarian aid into Gaza as election day approaches.

The White House has given Israel a 30-day notice that it needs to improve humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip or risk losing military aid—a deadline which you will notice conveniently falls after US election day on November 5. 

Rather than releasing this information itself, the Biden administration published it in its customary manner by laundering it through Axios as a letter that was “obtained” by the outlet and its Israeli intelligence insider Barak Ravid, thereby framing this as a news story and not a White House press release.

Not only does the 30-day deadline fall after election day, it also falls after Israel’s planned attack on Iran in response to Iran’s retaliatory missile strike on Israel. Anonymous officials have told The Washington Post that Israel will be launching this attack before the election in the US.

This narrative the Biden administration is trying to insert into public consciousness is already falling apart. The Washington Post’s John Hudson reports via Twitter:

“Biden’s spokesmen at the White House and State Department declined to say the U.S. will restrict arms sales to Israel if it continues to block aid, raising doubts for some about the seriousness of the U.S. warning.”

Hudson also cited the analysis of former senior Biden administration official Jeremy Konyndyk, now the president of Refugees International, regarding this development:

“After the past year, Netanyahu will be understandably skeptical that Biden will put real teeth behind this sort of warning. He has blown through every guardrail the U.S. has tried to erect, and has done so with total impunity so far.”

If this was a real thing with real teeth and not an incredibly cynical eleventh-hour election ploy, it would have happened a full year ago. As with all words the US government releases about Israel, it can be safely ignored without missing out on anything of value. The Biden administration’s actions speak for themselves, and have done so for a year.

Ignore their words. Watch their actions. If you just look at the material actions of the US government and Israel and mentally mute all their mountains of verbiage about it, you simply see a big country pouring weapons into a little country who uses them to attack its neighbors.

If you tune out all the words expressing “concern” for the people of Gaza, about how Israel must do more to get humanitarian aid to civilians and try to kill fewer people, about how sad and tragic and unfortunate this whole thing is but it’s oh so very important that Israel has the ability to “defend itself”, and plus Hamas and Hezbollah are hiding behind the civilians and blah blah blah blah — if you tune all that out and just look at the raw data of what’s happening, you just see a state raining hellfire on civilian populations packed full of children and using siege warfare to starve hundreds of thousands of people.

Ignore their words and watch their actions. That’s how you sort out fact from fiction in an information environment that’s saturated in propaganda and manipulation — not just with Israel, but with everything. Watch where the war machinery is going, where the money is going, and where the resources are going, and ignore all the words about why it makes perfect sense for this to be happening. Do this and you’ll have an infinitely better understanding of what’s going on in the world than you could ever hope to glean from watching CNN or Fox News.

This is a great way to see through the manipulations in your personal life as well. If you’re in a relationship with someone who keeps letting you down in various ways and always has sensible-sounding reasons for doing so, but when you look at where the resources and/or relaxation and/or pleasure are going in your relationship you see it’s mostly going toward your partner, that tells you what’s really going on there. It tells you you’re in an unequal and exploitative relationship, regardless of what words they use to explain why they keep getting their way at your expense.

Manipulators understand that you can trade words for real material benefits. Say the right words in the right way and you can get people to agree to let you commit mass atrocities. You can get them to give you control over their material circumstances. You can get them to consent to wildly unfair economic and political systems. You can persuade them to let you destroy the biosphere they depend on for survival. You can get them to give you power, money, sex, egoic gratification — whatever it is you’re after — just by saying the right words in the right way.

And that’s basically our entire problem as a species right now. That’s why the world looks the way it looks. A few clever manipulators have figured out how to use mass-scale psychological manipulation to get us to trade away real material benefits for empty narrative fluff. That’s the only reason this genocidal, ecocidal, exploitative, bat shit insane political status quo has been permitted to exist by people who vastly outnumber the few who benefit from it.

This will keep happening until humanity becomes a conscious species. To become a conscious human is to awaken from the trance of the believed narratives in your skull and begin perceiving life as it truly is.


The difference between our mental stories about how life is happening and how it really is could not be more different — which is why manipulators are able to extract so much benefit from manipulating our mental stories about how life is happening. Manipulators will always have the ability to do this until we make the necessary adaptation as a species from believing mental narratives to perceiving life as it truly is.

Every species eventually hits an adaptation-or-extinction juncture as its conditioning runs into changing material realities on this planet. We’re at ours right now, and unlike other species who have gone extinct before us, our own behavior is responsible for the changing material realities we are running up against. Since our behavior at mass scale is being driven by mass-scale psychological manipulation via the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed, in order to see a change in the way humans behave on this planet, we’re going to have to see a mass-scale shift in our species’ relationship with mental narrative.

It is possible for an individual to stop imbuing their mental chatter with the power of belief and start seeing life as it is, and if it is possible to do this individually it is possible to do it collectively as well. We all have this potentiality sleeping within us. It will either awaken and carry us beyond the adaptation-or-extinction juncture we now face, or we will go the way of the dinosaur.

That’s where we’re at right now. We have the freedom to go either way.

October 18, 2024 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Germany Dismisses Ukraine’s Demands for Taurus Missiles and NATO Membership

By Ahmed Adel, Global Research, October 14, 2024

Berlin has spurned two key demands that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to “sell” during his European tour to promote his so-called Victory Plan: getting the green light for deep strikes into Russian territory (which would require German Taurus missiles, among others) and speeding up Ukraine’s accession to NATO, German media reported.

According to Bild, Zelensky had a packed itinerary that included a whirlwind tour of the UK, France, Italy, and Germany in a bid to garner Western support for his “Victory Plan.” However, the outlet emphasised that although German Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not give a categorical “no”, he did not respond positively to the Ukrainian requests.

Moreover, Bild said the chancellor’s talk about the promised “billions in aid for Ukraine” at a press conference with Zelensky was nothing more than a farce. This package does not include any new weapons since the amount and projects mentioned were, in fact, “already approved and financed last year.”

The outlet said Kiev’s hopes of obtaining more Leopard 2 tanks had been dashed despite the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) still having around 300 of the main battle tanks in its inventory. The same applies to infantry fighting vehicles and armoured howitzers. The decision comes as the German Defence Ministry does not believe that Kiev will be able to carry out a new counteroffensive in the near future, the sources told the newspaper.

“By the end of the year, with the support of Belgium, Denmark and Norway, we will deliver another package to Ukraine worth €1.4 billion,” Scholz announced on October 11.

According to him, the package includes IRIS-T and Skynex air defence systems, Gepard anti-aircraft guns, self-propelled artillery systems, armoured vehicles, combat drones and radars.

Germany, Ukraine’s second-largest military donor after the US, has so far provided (or planned) military assistance worth approximately €28 billion. However, according to the draft budget, it has halved its military aid to Ukraine for 2025 compared to this year.

Although Zelensky has long insisted that there can be no peace negotiations with the Kremlin and that Russian forces must be driven back to its pre-2014 borders, officials in Kiev reportedly realise this position is unrealistic. The leadership of the current Ukrainian administration is beginning to discuss the handover of territories claimed by Ukraine as part of a peace agreement with Russia, a high-ranking Ukrainian official admitted to a German magazine.

The unnamed source also expressed concern that Washington will cut its previously generous support for Ukraine no matter who wins next month’s US presidential election. The prospects of losing foreign military aid, which has prolonged the conflict so far, coupled with growing discontent in Ukrainian society, may explain Kiev’s shift in position from refusing to negotiate with Russia and its other irreducible demands.

However, the magazine warned that powerful figures in Ukraine still remain staunchly opposed to peace talks.

Kiev’s insistence on joining NATO is a major obstacle to efforts to resolve the Ukrainian conflict through diplomacy. In addition to recognising the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, Russia insists that Ukraine must remain neutral, non-nuclear and unaligned with any military bloc. The Kiev regime, which cancelled elections scheduled for this year and remains in power without being re-elected, is losing Western support and has been considering negotiating with Russia because of this………………………………….more https://www.globalresearch.ca/germany-dismisses-ukraine-demands-taurus-missiles-nato-membership/5870164

October 18, 2024 Posted by | Germany, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ignore Their Words; Watch Their Actions

October 18, 2024 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

‘A catastrophically poor bargain for the UK’: Experts verdict on government plan for new nuclear finance


 NFLA 14th Oct 2024

As Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer meets world finance leaders today at the UK International Investment Summit, the Chair of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities has co-signed a letter sent to the Energy Secretary and government departments challenging plans to use the Regulated Asset Base model to finance future nuclear power plants.

The letter, drafted by the former Chief Statistician of the Scottish Office, has been endorsed by thirty high-level experts, comprising senior academics, former civil servants, nuclear regulators, citizen scientists and NGOs. It has been sent to Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, and several Whitehall departments – the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, and the Comptroller and Auditor General.

14th October 2024

‘A catastrophically poor bargain for the UK’: Experts verdict on government plan for new nuclear finance

As Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer meets world finance leaders today at the UK International Investment Summit, the Chair of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities has co-signed a letter sent to the Energy Secretary and government departments challenging plans to use the Regulated Asset Base model to finance future nuclear power plants.

The letter, drafted by the former Chief Statistician of the Scottish Office, has been endorsed by thirty high-level experts, comprising senior academics, former civil servants, nuclear regulators, citizen scientists and NGOs. It has been sent to Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, and several Whitehall departments – the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, and the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Due to the inevitable huge costs and construction delays, the private sector is loath to finance new nuclear power projects; Sizewell C is struggling to find financial backers. Consequently, new plants can only be built with a significant public subsidy.

The latest subsidy mechanism to be adopted by the UK Government is the Regulated Asset Base model, in which an additional nuclear levy will be imposed on hard-pressed electricity consumers to make interim payments to developers of new nuclear projects to periodically offset their construction costs; this lifts the burden of rising costs and costly delays from the shoulders of developers and places this upon those of the customer. In so doing, not only is the project derisked for the developer, but the latter has less incentive to arrest costs or prevent delays because they know electricity consumers will have to meet them.

The experts have labelled RAB ‘a catastrophically poor bargain for the UK’.

The NFLAs have labelled RAB ‘ROB’, calling it daylight robbery and especially iniquitous when imposed upon the poorest and oldest customers. Many households are already struggling to pay huge, and rising, energy bills, and will be further burdened by a nuclear levy, and as new nuclear plants take so long to build many older customers are unlikely to be around to access any electricity from them.

In a response to a 2022 government consultation by the Business Department,[1] we denounced the proposal to impose a RAB levy on these groups, who are most vulnerable to cold and fuel poverty, and called for them to be exempted from the levy or promptly recompensed by the government if they are required to pay it.

14th October 2024

‘A catastrophically poor bargain for the UK’: Experts verdict on government plan for new nuclear finance

As Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer meets world finance leaders today at the UK International Investment Summit, the Chair of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities has co-signed a letter sent to the Energy Secretary and government departments challenging plans to use the Regulated Asset Base model to finance future nuclear power plants.

The letter, drafted by the former Chief Statistician of the Scottish Office, has been endorsed by thirty high-level experts, comprising senior academics, former civil servants, nuclear regulators, citizen scientists and NGOs. It has been sent to Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, and several Whitehall departments – the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, and the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Due to the inevitable huge costs and construction delays, the private sector is loath to finance new nuclear power projects; Sizewell C is struggling to find financial backers. Consequently, new plants can only be built with a significant public subsidy.

The latest subsidy mechanism to be adopted by the UK Government is the Regulated Asset Base model, in which an additional nuclear levy will be imposed on hard-pressed electricity consumers to make interim payments to developers of new nuclear projects to periodically offset their construction costs; this lifts the burden of rising costs and costly delays from the shoulders of developers and places this upon those of the customer. In so doing, not only is the project derisked for the developer, but the latter has less incentive to arrest costs or prevent delays because they know electricity consumers will have to meet them.

The experts have labelled RAB ‘a catastrophically poor bargain for the UK’.

The NFLAs have labelled RAB ‘ROB’, calling it daylight robbery and especially iniquitous when imposed upon the poorest and oldest customers. Many households are already struggling to pay huge, and rising, energy bills, and will be further burdened by a nuclear levy, and as new nuclear plants take so long to build many older customers are unlikely to be around to access any electricity from them.

In a response to a 2022 government consultation by the Business Department,[1] we denounced the proposal to impose a RAB levy on these groups, who are most vulnerable to cold and fuel poverty, and called for them to be exempted from the levy or promptly recompensed by the government if they are required to pay it.

Letter………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/a-catastrophically-poor-bargain-for-the-uk-experts-verdict-on-government-plan-for-new-nuclear-finance/

October 18, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

A nuclear kettle of fish at Hinkley Point C

Is a trawler’s worth of fish getting in the way of our nuclear
ambitions? Tali Fraser investigates something fishy going on around Hinkley
Point C. Among ministers of the last government, it is known as “the fish
disco”, and it is, they say, a cautionary tale that illustrates the
nation’s inability to build critical infrastructure.

The story centres on
the massive construction site on the Bristol Channel where EDF is building
the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station that is essential to meet the
nation’s future energy needs. Nuclear reactors need to be cooled – one
reason they are often based on the coast – but the intake of the water
poses a risk to fish. EDF’s initial solution included what they called an
“acoustic fish deterrent”, essentially a series of 280 underwater
speakers blasting a series of high-pitched sound pulses louder than a jumbo
jet. The company, however, has begun to argue that the deterrent, mockingly
dubbed “the fish disco” by former environment secretary Michael Gove,
is unnecessary and wants instead to mitigate the risk by other means.

Critics, however, say the company is reneging on a promise it made to win
planning consent because it wants to save cash (the cost of the deterrent
is estimated to run to the tens of millions of pounds).

 Politics Home, 15th Oct 2024
https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/fish-disco-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-energy

October 18, 2024 Posted by | oceans, UK | Leave a comment

TODAY. Media enthusiasm for dodgy “cutting edge Lego-like micro-nuclear power plants” , (but doubts creep in).

modules assembled “like a LEGO kit” and designed to be fabricated, transported, and assembled within 24 months”

BUT -“the tech is still in the early stages and faces a myriad of hurdles.”

“has yet to obtain licensing and planning approvals“

“How the new fleet of SMRs will be funded has yet to be established. The technology is not yet generating power anywhere in the world”

I am fascinated with the way that the media continues to obediently trot out the official dogma that small nuclear reactors are the new great white hope – for everything – jobs, reduce carbon emissions, revitalise the economy, cheap, clean, plentiful energy, – blah blah. The interesting thing is that, in the midst of their enthusiasm, some respectable news outlets occasionally now slip in a little bit of doubt.

A couple of examples of doubt from the UK.:

Guy Taylor, Transport and Infrastructure Correspondent at City A.M. enthuses over a “hotly anticipated tender“ surrounding the development of Small Modular Reactors (SMR)’s in the UK. A micro reactor project in Wales will bring  energy for 244,000 UK homes – “will pump around £30m into the local economy”.

But he also mentions that  “the tech is still in the early stages and faces a myriad of hurdles.”

  Ian Weinfass, in Construction News gives a positive, optimistic, story on this micro nuclear reactor development, but clearly states that the company (Last Energy) “has yet to obtain licensing and planning approvals for its technology.“ He tellingly concludes “How the new fleet of SMRs will be funded has yet to be established. The technology is not yet generating power anywhere in the world”

However, don’t fret, little nuclear rent-seekers! Most of the media is still obedient, and they know which side their bread is buttered on . Sion Barry, writing in Wales Online, describes the same “24/7 clean energy” project as “of national significance“. There’s a reassuring note about wastes, and the barest mention of “planning and licensing approvals“. Business Green discusses the Last Energy plan as “clean energy”  – modules assembled “like a LEGO kit” and designed to be fabricated, transported, and assembled within 24 months”

News media, on the whole, are happy to uncritically trot out a nuclear company’s line – as we find this same project touted in Reuters, in Power, Sustainable Times, in New Civil Engineer. On Google News today, there are 15 similar articles, with only Yahoo! News including a tad of doubt about local public reaction.

And by the way, Tom Pashby in New Civil Engineer also adds to the joy by telling us that the company involved, Last Energy is working with Nato on military applications of micro-reactors.

October 17, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Israel attacks the United Nations

Contrary to popular belief, the United Nations General Assembly has only accepted Israel’s membership conditionally (resolution 273). However, Tel Aviv has never respected its commitments. It refuses to implement 229 resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly. It has just declared a UN agency a “terrorist organization,” called for its headquarters in New York to be razed, designated its Secretary General António Guterres persona non grata, and has just attacked four times UN peacekeepers in Lebanon (UNIFIL), wounding two blue helmets.

Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 15 October 2024 by Thierry Meyssan, https://www.voltairenet.org/article221376.html

Israel has just attacked a position of the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. When the British withdrew from Mandatory Palestine (i.e. Palestine placed by the League of Nations under the provisional administration of the United Kingdom) on May 14, 1948, the Zionist General Council, an offshoot of the Haganah (i.e. the main militia of the immigrant Jewish community), unilaterally proclaimed the independence of the State of Israel. It was announced by the chairman of the Jewish Agency (i.e. the executive of the World Zionist Organization).

It is important to note here that the British occupier withdrew from only about a quarter of Mandatory Palestine. It had already officially left the other three quarters, constituting Mandatory Transjordan, the future Jordan.

After a few days of reflection, the United Nations General Assembly decided to recognize the new state, not without having emphasized that in principle, it was not up to a militia, the Haganah, to proclaim a state, even if this proclamation came to fill the void left by the departure of the mandatory authority, that is to say the British. The General Assembly had noted that the proclamation of independence said nothing about the regime of this state (theocracy or republic), nor about its borders. It intended to pursue its plan for the creation of a binational state, both Arab and Jewish, without territorial continuity between the two entities (Jerusalem and Bethlehem having an international status). It had been reassured by the new state’s reference to “complete equality of social and political rights for all citizens without distinction of belief, race and sex.”

The day after independence, Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen sent their armies to Palestine. Official history today assures that these six countries (the “Arabs”, understand the “Muslims”) did not accept a Jewish state, while five of them opposed Jewish colonization after British colonization and the sixth supported Israel. Religion was a problem only for Izz al-Din al-Qassam, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazi mufti Mohammed Amin al-Husseini.

 Identicaly, propaganda assures that these armies were defeated by the valiant Israeli army, implying “from the first day, the Jews are morally superior to the Arabs”. The reality was quite different. The world war had just ended and none of these countries, except Transjordan, had an army worthy of the name.

Their troops were exclusively formed of volunteers. In addition, the Transjordanian army, which ended the conflict, fought on the side of Israel against the other Arabs. Indeed, Transjordan, still under British influence, hoped to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and annex its territory. Its army was none other than that of the British (the “Arab Legion”) and was still placed under the command of General John Bagot Glubb (alias “Glubb Pasha”). It was the Transjordanians (in fact the British) and not the Israelis who defeated the other Arab armies.

During the conflict, its sovereign, King Abdullah I was also proclaimed “King of Palestine.” During this conflict, the Israeli forces let the British of Transjordan fight against the Arabs and applied Plan D (in Hebrew: Plan “Dalet”). The Haganh intended to share as little territory as possible with Transjordan. Israeli forces illegally imported weapons from Czechoslovakia (already ruled by the communists), probably with the agreement of the USSR, supposedly to fight against British colonization, in reality to expel the Palestinians. This is the Nakhba (catastrophe). 750,000 Palestinians (between 50 and 80% of the population) were forcibly displaced.

Israel requested and obtained, the following year, its membership in the United Nations. At that time, no decolonized state was part of it. The countries under Anglo-Saxon influence were in the majority. However, they only accepted Israel under conditions. In its resolution 273, the UN General Assembly referred to a written commitment by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the provisional government of Israel, Moshe Shertok, by which he “accepts without any reservation the obligations arising from the Charter of the United Nations and undertakes to observe them from the day it becomes a Member of the United Nations” [1].

To date, Israel has failed to uphold this commitment and has failed to comply with 229 Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. Its membership could therefore be suspended at any time.

In recent months,

• Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on March 23 that the UN had become “an anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli organization that harbors and encourages terrorism.”
• Israel has campaigned against a UN agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), accusing it of serving Hamas. Last July, the Knesset passed three laws (1) banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory (2) stripping its staff of diplomatic immunities (3) declaring it a terrorist organization.


• Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, declared at the end of his term last August, speaking from the UN headquarters in New York, that “this edifice must be razed from the face of the Earth.”
• Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared UN Secretary-General António Guterres persona non grata.
• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deliberately targeted French, Italian and Irish soldiers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

The bottom line:
• Israel was not created by its people, but by its army.
• The first Arab-Israeli war was not won by the Israelis, but by the Arabs of Transjordan under British command.
• By joining the United Nations, Israel committed itself to respecting all its resolutions, which it has violated 229 times.
• After Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran, the Netanyahu government has opened an eighth front against the United Nations.

October 17, 2024 Posted by | history, Israel, politics international, Reference | Leave a comment

What does Google’s move into nuclear power mean for AI – and the world?

” tech companies operate: as supranational organisations that manage to bend countries’ regulation to their will,”

In today’s newsletter: Google will soon use nuclear reactors to run its AI datacentres. What are the economic, ethical and environmental implications?

Archie Bland, Wed 16 Oct 2024

Good morning. If you were looking for an inkblot test for your view of big tech’s investment in artificial intelligence, you could hardly do better than the news that Google is ordering the construction of at least six small nuclear reactors to power the growth of the technology.

Here, in one view, is an enlightened business leveraging its size to invest in infrastructure that could change the world for the better. Here, in another, is a poorly regulated corporation ignoring democratic objections in the brutal race for control of an innovation with great potential to do harm – and leaving the rest of us with little say in its development.

Google is making this eye-catching move because the datacentres that power the explosive growth of generative AI consume huge amounts of electricity – more than the existing grid in the US or other western nations can readily supply. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to technology journalist Chris Stokel-Walker, author of How AI Ate the World, about why the demand for power is growing so quickly – and whether we can trust big tech to handle the consequences. Here are the headlines.

In depth: Why AI needs so much power – and what big tech will do to get it

They might be called “small nuclear reactors”, but don’t be fooled: the 500MW Google is buying from Kairos Power is enough to power a midsize city. To begin to understand the scale of the demand AI puts on the electricity grid, keep in mind that this is only enough to cover one datacentre campus equipped to handle the growing demands of AI. One company alone, OpenAI, is trying to get the White House to sign off on building at least five datacentres, needing 5GW each of power – 10 times as big.

The reason for this nuclear power rush: the vast energy consumption of the computer chips (called graphics processing units or GPUs) that power the training of the large language models crucial to the development of AI. Meanwhile, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search.

“GPUs are more advanced and more powerful than the CPUs [central processing units] of the previous generation of datacentres,” Chris Stokel-Walker said. “So there’s more demand there immediately. But we are also starting to see massive ‘megaclusters’ of GPUs. It’s not just the individual chips getting bigger and needing more power: it’s the race to get as many together to amplify their power as possible.”

How much impact will AI’s demand for power have?

“The challenge in estimating this is that the companies are pretty coy about telling us their power usage,” said Chris. “But there is a settled understanding that the energy used by datacentres is going to increase hugely as AI becomes layered into everything we do.”

The increase in demand already is significant: where the average datacentre drew 10MW of power a decade ago, they need 100MW today. And the biggest can already demand more than 600MW each.

The New York-based Uptime Institute, which has created a benchmarking system that is now industry standard, predicts that whereas AI only accounts for 2% of global datacentres’ power use today, that will reach 10% by next year. “The growth in power consumption is not linear,” Chris said. “In the same way that we used to have whacking great transistors behind our TVs and now we have flatscreens with eco-friendly modes, they are getting more efficient. But that doesn’t mean it’s not going upwards – just that it’s going up more slowly.”

How are tech companies trying to get the power to meet their needs?

By building it or paying others to do so. And because most governments expect that control of AI will be crucial to their ability to compete globally in the future, tech firms have a very strong hand when negotiating what to build and where.

“The argument tech companies are making, and that they’re trying to cement in the minds of decision-makers around the world, is: you either buy into this and sign up, or you run the risk of falling behind,” Chris said.

This New York Times piece lays out a case study of how that plays out in practice. It reports that as part of a recent fundraising effort, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, told executives at a Taiwanese semiconductor company that it would cost about $7tn (£5.6tn) to fulfil his vision of 36 semiconductor plants and additional datacentres. That’s about a quarter of the total US annual economic output. OpenAI denies that claim, and says that its plans run to the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, Altman has also been considering building these centres in other countries, including the United Arab Emirates. But there are fears in Washington that placing the centres there could give China a back door to American AI advances, because of the links between Chinese and Emirati universities. And at the same time, Altman is exploring plans for centres within the US.

“The warning is being used as a stick alongside the carrot,” Chris said. “They’re saying: if you don’t do this, we will go elsewhere, and you will not just lose the investment, but face a national security risk.”

What is the potential impact on the climate?

Big tech companies insist they are leaning into renewable sources of power as much as possible – and argue that AI could ultimately be a crucial tool to limit the damage caused by the climate crisis.

It is true that tech firms’ investment in renewable sources of energy has played an important part in their growth. But claiming that AI will help defeat the climate crisis is a theoretical benefit that won’t be seen until some point in the fairly distant future. And there are claims that emissions caused by current energy usage from datacentres owned by the likes of Google, Microsoft and Meta are much higher than they admit publicly.

In this piece published last month, Isabel O’Brien reported that big tech firms are using renewable energy credits – which may not actually be used to power the datacentres themselves and which may not even reduce emissions – to artificially deflate their reported emissions. That means the actual figures could be more than seven times higher than the numbers they report.

What about the use of nuclear power?

Google says its experiment makes it the first company in the world to buy nuclear energy from small nuclear reactors. But Amazon and Microsoft have already struck deals with conventional, larger nuclear power plants in the US this year. Don’t panic, but Microsoft’s deal will for the first time in five years activate a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania – the site of the worst nuclear meltdown in US history. Sensibly, they’re emphasising its history of safe operation since the 1979 disaster at another reactor there – and renaming it.

With datacentres estimated to be on track to produce about 2.5bn tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent emissions by 2030, there is an environmental argument for the use of nuclear power. But that is a highly controversial case, which, because of the associated risks, has been the subject of charged democratic debate for many years. Wherever you stand on that question, it is remarkable that these companies appear to be able to simply decide on their own.

“One of the things that’s really striking here is what it says about how tech companies operate: as supranational organisations that manage to bend countries’ regulation to their will,” Chris said.

On the other hand, Google argues its investment in small nuclear reactors could be a necessary boost to a technology that has struggled to get off the ground. “In the end, some of this does trickle down,” said Chris. “They tend to commercialise technologies in a safe way. But it takes a long time, and the benefits are unequally distributed.”

Can governments bring these changes under control?

There are well-documented issues with regulating tech firms: without globally enforced agreements, there will always be another country ready to offer a better deal. See, for example, Ireland’s status as the European home of many big techfirms because of its favourable tax regime.

Regulation does not necessarily need to be globally agreed to be effective, however: in California, for example, new legislation intended to combat greenwashing will soon require all private companies with global revenue above $1bn to publish details of their carbon footprint. Since any big tech firm is bound to want to maintain operations in California, that could have much wider ramifications.

And big tech firms have a valuable card in their hand: the desperate desire among governments around the world to win the AI race. “These companies point to astronomical figures of expected improvements in GDP and they say, this is the wave that is coming,” Chris said. “You can either ride it, or drown.”

October 17, 2024 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

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