Netanyahu will soon find that Israel has lost America – and the rest of the world, too.
‘Gaza is on fire; the Jewish state will not relent’, Israeli Defence Minister Katz excitedly proclaims: “The IDF is striking with an Iron fist at terrorist infrastructure”. In fact, over recent weeks Israel has struck at ‘infrastructure’ in West Bank, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Tunisia – besides Gaza.
The so-called ‘Rules-Based Order’ blueprint (if it ever truly existed beyond narrative) has been ripped up in favour of violent Zionism: Genocide, sneak attacks under the guise of on-going peace negotiations, assassinations, and the de-capitation of political leaderships. It is war without limits; without rules; without law; and in complete disdain for the UN Charter. Ethical boundaries, more particularly, are dismissed as mere ‘moral relativism’.
Something profound is re-shaping Israeli foreign policy. The transformation needs be understood as a U-turn within the very core of Zionist thinking (a journey from Ben Gurion to Kahane), as Yossi Klein has written.
Israel’s strategy from past decades continues to rest on the hope of achieving some literal Chimeric transformative ‘de-radicalisation’ of both Palestinians and of the Region, writ large – a de-radicalisation that will make ‘Israel safe’. This has been the ‘holy grail’ objective for Zionists since Israel was first founded.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer claims that such radical mutation in consciousness will only come from the bombing of opponents into utter submission. (The lesson which he draws from WWII). One aspect – Israel’s foreign policy – then is clear: It is the ‘War of the Jungle’.
But there is another aspect; one perhaps more troubling: These norms and ethical principles that Israel openly seeks to tear apart are, in the last resort, American proclaimed norms and values. Strikingly, the U.S. has abandoned its traditional ethos when it comes to Israel. And rather than criticise or seek to limit Israel’s use of such norm-busting military actions, the Trump Administration emulates them – sneak attacks under the guise of talking peace, de-capitation attempts, and striking with missiles at unknown vessels off Venezuela, vaporising the crew.
The U.S. is doing this openly – thumbing its nose, like Israel, at international law and conventions.
It does appear that key components of the U.S. Establishment increasingly favour the military strategies of Israel and even are shifting from the moral ethos of a ‘Just War’, shall we say, to one closer to the Hebraic ethos of ‘Amalek’. It amounts to updating western moral ‘software’ with the alternative ‘justice’ of absolute war.
Does the Israel state have a future? Israel is now carrying out a second Nakba in Gaza and the West Bank, with Jewish society remaining trapped in repression and denial – just as it was back in 1948. Israeli Historian, Ilan Pappe wrote in 2006 in his seminal work on the 1948 Nakba the fundamental importance of “retrieving [the events of 1948] from oblivion”:
Once the decision was taken [on 10 March 1948], it took six months to complete the mission. When it was over, more than half of Palestine’s native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages … destroyed, and eleven urban neighbourhoods emptied of their inhabitants. The plan … and above all its systematic implementation in the following months, was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity …
The story of 1948 is not complicated … It is the simple but horrific story of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, a crime against humanity that Israel has wanted to deny and cause the world to forget. Retrieving it from oblivion is incumbent upon us, not just as a greatly overdue act of historiographical reconstruction or professional duty; it is … a moral decision, the very first step we must take if we ever want reconciliation to have a chance.
I wrote recently how Israeli film-maker Neta Shoshani’s controversial documentary about the 1948 Nakba showed Israeli ethical and legal boundaries to have been erased in a bout of bloodletting and rape. The absolute loss of ethos (there was no accounting or justice), Shoshani says, imperilled the then-legitimacy of the State founding project. Repeated a second time – the current war – she warns, “could be the one That Ends Israel”.
Shoshani’s comments hint at the trauma felt by secular liberal Jews at witnessing the norms and lifestyle of their largely secular-liberal society upended by the swivel towards the militaristic and eschatological objectives of the Israeli Right. Finance Minister Smotrich declared recently that the Jewish people are experiencing “the process of redemption and the return of the divine presence to Zion – as they engage in the ‘conquest of the land’”.
Many European Jews did arrive in the new Israeli state to find safety and protection, however, they also came to participate in the Zionist project in Palestine.
For now, Netanyahu states he has Trump’s “100%” support and “unlimited credit” for the maelstrom unleashed across the region. As Ben Caspit writes, quoting a senior Israeli diplomat:
“The fact that Rubio landed here just days after the [Doha] attack, and voiced almost no criticism — in fact, the opposite — gives a tailwind to Israel’s operation in Gaza … Israel has not received such a generous and long line of credit from any American administration”.
And Trump seems to be moving away from the ‘global peacemaker’ moniker to concentrate more narrowly on demonstrating American ‘exceptional greatness’ – through tariffs, sanctions or military operations – thus demonstrating a dominating, if not Great, America.
Yet the problems are all too apparent: In previous years, Israel had been largely relegated to the sidelines at the U.S. National Conservatism Conference. This time around, the Jewish state and its wars couldn’t be avoided. The latest Conservatism conference slid into ‘civil war’ between the neo-con ‘realists’ supporting Israel, and those asking: “Why are these our wars? Why are Israel’s endless problems America’s liabilities? Why should we accept [Israel as being part of] ‘America First’?”, as the editor of The American Conservative exploded: “We f***ing shouldn’t!”
The tension within the Republican Party is obvious: MAGA supporters wish to support Trump, but the big Jewish donors and commentators, such as pro-Israel hawk Max Abrahms, mocked Tucker Carlson-loving “MAGA isolationists” at the conference, who had gone “insane” in their push to disengage from the Middle East.
Trump warned Netanyahu that the genocide in Gaza is causing Israel to bleed support among Republicans, including especially among younger people. Nonetheless, Trump has not modified his unwavering support for Israel (for whatever reason), but he has taken notice of the ‘mood vibe’ amongst his base.
If Trump has indeed noticed the change, Netanyahu doesn’t care. As Amir Tibon in Haaretz reports:
“If Trump thinks his comments on Israel’s loss of ‘control over Congress’ will be a wake-up call for Netanyahu, he’s mistaken. Israelis didn’t need Trump to know that their country is losing the battle over global public opinion”.
“Netanyahu and Ron Dermer … are at peace with Israel’s loss of international support, heightened isolation, the threats of sanctions against it, and arrest warrants for its leaders (including Netanyahu himself). The two don’t seem to care, and the reason, ironically, is the very man sounding the alarm: Donald Trump”.
“From Netanyahu’s point of view, as long as he’s got Trump’s backing – none of it matters”.
Well, Israel’s wars have lost a generation of young American conservatives – and they’re not coming back. Whatever the circumstances to the killing of Charlie Kirk, his death has let loose the genie of ‘Israeli First’ dominance in Republican politics to escape from the bottle.
When Netanyahu does peer out, he will find that Israel has lost America (and the rest of the world, too).
Sixteen people have also been injured in the strike, the Russian Defense Ministry has said.
At least three people were killed and sixteen injured by a Ukrainian drone strike on a wellness complex in Crimea on Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry has said. A school building was also damaged, according to Crimean regional head Sergey Aksyonov.
The Russian Defense Ministry ministry stated that the attack targeted a “resort area of the Republic of Crimea, where there are no military facilities.”
Aksyonov said emergency services were working at the site and urged residents to “remain calm and trust only official information.”
The drone strike led to a fire at a school in the town of Foros, where the sanatorium is located, according to the regional arm of the Russian emergencies ministry. The 80 square meter fire has now been extinguished, it said.
In the peninsula’s largest city, Sevastopol, regional head Mikhail Razvozhaev reported that the Russian Black Sea fleet and air defenses are defending against a Ukrainian drone attack near the city.
“3 drones have been shot down so far,” he said on Telegram on Sunday.
Ukraine has been increasingly turning to long-range drone attacks for strikes inside Russia in recent months as its forces have been beaten back on the battlefield.
The attacks have targeted Russian energy and civilian infrastructure, killing and injuring dozens of civilians. Moscow has long accused Kiev of deliberately going after Russian civilians and often targeting children.
Donald Trump has torched atomic power’s last illusion of credible regulation. He’s destroyed the last shreds of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, exponentially raising the likelihood of an apocalyptic radioactive disaster while escalating America’s transition to energy fascism. His nuclear boosterism has been joined by the core of the Democratic Party, including California’s Governor Gavin Newsom among many others.
But the low-cost zero-carbon tsunami of green Solartopian technology may yet prove unstoppable in the marketplace.
For the first time in US history, a president has fired a sitting NRC commissioner. Another has resigned. A DOGE flunky with zero nuclear expertise has decimated the NRC’s technical support staff.
The NRC has always acted, as the Boston Globe has put it, “more like an industry booster than a watchdog.” But a recent Washington Examiner headline may comprise the Commission’s ultimate epitaph: “Regulators fear dismissal if they slow Trump nuclear power plans.”
The commissioners themselves have nearly all been absurdly industry-friendly. But the rank-and-file NRC staff offered significant expertise. Now even that is gone.
Trump now loudly demands the commissioners “rubber stamp” Small Modular Reactors that are untested, unproven, uninsured and hyper-expensive. Industry supporters worry that soaring delays and prices followed by underperformance, accidents and radiation releases due to unreliable, unregulated construction could doom the technology.
Safety concerns have been confirmed by the refusal of the insurance industry to cover damages from an accident. The refusal stretches back to 1957, when Congress approved the Price-Anderson Act, shielding the industry from a requirement to get private insurance. Thus the “nuclear clause” in every U.S. homeowners policy says: “This policy does not cover loss or damage caused by nuclear reaction or nuclear radiation or radioactive contamination.”
“The NRC has always been a nuclear lapdog, not a watchdog. But under the Trump Administration’s new executive orders” expediting a drive for nuclear power in the U.S. “the lapdog has had its teeth removed. Its vocal cords cut. It can’t bite. It can’t bark, even if it wanted to!” said Arnie Gundersen, a form top executive in the nuclear power industry and now as chief engineer of Fairewinds Associates a leading challenger nuclear power.
As the orders, notes the U.S. Department of Energy, state: “The executive orders instruct the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to create an expedited pathway to approve reactors” and “expand American nuclear energy capacity from around 100 GW [gigawatts] today to 400 GW by 2050.”
Under Trump, “Nuclear safety is in complete free fall at NRC, and there is no parachute,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at the organization Beyond Nuclear. “For example, the agency’s staff and licensing board have already shockingly approved an unprecedented, extremely risky restart of the closed Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan. To restore the operating license, the NRC cobbled together an ad hoc and convoluted regulatory pathway in close collusion with Palisades’ owner, reckless Holtec International. Holtec has zero experience or competence with operating a reactor, repairing one, building or restarting one, let alone at a problem-plagued nuclear lemon like Palisades.”
Palisades is “a badly designed, poorly built, and now dangerously age-degraded 60-year-old reactor that cannot begin to meet modern-day safety standards, which are themselves under serious attack by Trump, DOGE, and the industry,” said Kamps. “If the NRC commissioners reject our appeals and rubberstamp Palisades’ unneeded restart, it will risk a Chornobyl- or Fukushima-scale radioactive catastrophe, an existential threat to 21 percent of the entire planet’s surface freshwater supply, the Great Lakes.”
Further, by approving the Palisades restart, the NRC appears to be getting ready to approve “copycat closed reactor restarts at Three Mile Island-1 nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, and the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Iowa,” he said.
Said Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service: “The atmosphere in the agency is clearly one where people who speak out will likely be first on the DOGE reduction-in-force list and everyone left is on notice that they could be next. As much as the chilling effect, my concern is also that inspections and enforcement could well be ending. Even if they keep resident inspectors at reactors to comply with the Atomic Energy Act, they may be taken off inspection duty and told to work on license applications and rewriting the regulations.”
Said Michel Lee, chairman of the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy:
“To truly understand the developing safety and security threat, you have to connect the dots.”
“First you have the series of Trump executive orders demanding a rushed buildout of the nuclear-military-industrial complex. These orders and other actions being undertaken by administration, especially DOGE, are effectively dismantling the nation’s long-established nuclear regulatory scheme,” said Lee, an attorney.
“Cost-benefit analysis is being directed to focus on the ‘benefits’ of nuclear,” she continued. “Transparency is being drastically reduced. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is being ‘reformed,’ and its mission now explicitly includes ‘facilitating nuclear power.’ The Department of Energy and the Department of Defense—apparently now the “Department of War”—are now designated as facilitators in the processing of nuclear reactor license applications. This whole enterprise is stated as needed for national security and to promote energy intensive industries, namely AI.”
“So, all that is worrisome enough. Now connect the dots with the demolition derby going on across the broader federal regulatory landscape, with other independent agencies and boards deemed no longer independent and the vast numbers of federal employees—the ones not laid off—losing labor union rights and protections,” said Lee. “Connect the dots and draw your own picture.”
Among the complex of 94 licensed nuclear power plants in the United States, the myriad owners display wildly varying levels of competence, corruption and criminal behavior.
In the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster, the NRC and plant owners lied about radiation releases, their health impacts, and the reactor’s melted core. They produced no credible epidemiological studies of radiation impacts on nearby downwinders but still claim without basis that “no one was harmed.”
In California, NRC resident site inspector Dr. Michael Peck was purged by the NRC for warning that Diablo Canyon’s reactors cannot withstand a credible earthquake. His warning was trashed. Had any of the many large earthquakes that have recently shaken our planet hit in central California in the fault-studded area where Diablo Canyon is located, downwind Los Angeles could now be a radioactive wasteland.
Diablo’s owner, Pacific Gas & Electric, has pleaded guilty to 92 federal manslaughter felonies for incinerating eight San Bruno, California residents in an avoidable 2010 gas pipeline fire, and more than 80 people who perished after PG&E ignited the Northern California infernos that destroyed the California town of Paradise.
The owners of the decrepit Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants bribed Ohio’sHouse Speaker, now in federal prison, with $61 million.
Despite the vulnerability of all nuclear power plants in the U.S. and the criminal incompetence of so many atomic owner/operators, there are no realistic plans to evacuate any major American city facing radioactive clouds like those that spewed from Chernobyl and Fukushima. And with Trump destroying FEMA and the NRC, the public can expect no workable warning. Without insurance, a public health safety net, or a feasible emergency response apparatus, countless residents of Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, et. al, will lose their lives, health, homes and property. Martial law will become inevitable.
As renewables advance, the economics of atomic power make ever less sense. Zero new large reactors are under construction in the U.S. The two at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina have been abandoned, wasting $9 billion. Two at the Vogtle, Georgia nuclear plant site took 15 years to build and cost $40 billon, double their original time frame and price tag.
The 94 operating US plants can’t compete with renewables.
Nor can much-hyped Small Modular Reactors, already plagued with massive overruns, delays, cancellations, and no promise of significant power generation for at least a decade. Unproven plans to reopen dead reactors like Palisades and TMI-1 involve cost projections very far beyond already proven, readily available renewables.
All commercial reactors emit radioactive Carbon14. Additional greenhouse gases come with both reactor operations and the mining, milling, and enrichment of radioactive fuel, along with the as-yet unsolved demands of storing spent stuff.
All nuclear power plants scorch the planet at 300 degrees Centigrade, killing billions of fish with hot water outtakes that have repeatedly forced much of the French fleet—among others—to shut. Immensely expensive fusion reactors would burn at 100 million degrees Centigrade, far hotter than the sun.
Major breakthroughs in renewables have made wind, solar, geothermal, wave energy, batteries, and efficiency far cheaper, safer, cleaner, faster-to-build, and more job-producing than nukes or fossil fuels.
Renewables are now capable of producing all the planet’s energy needs at far less cost than any fossil/nuclear generators while operationally creating virtually zero greenhouse gases. Recent advances in wave energy, solar panels installed over aqueducts and canals, “balcony solar” in Germany and elsewhere keep the technology ever on the rise.
But there are powerful forces still pushing nukes, all of them bound up with fascism. Atomic reactors were first meant to produce fissionable material for atomic weapons. The nuclear power/nuclear war connection has always been intimate.
Trump’s fierce attacks on wind and solar aim primarily to preserve market share for the fossil/nuke billionaires who buy his elections. That income is at the core of American fascism.
Nuke apologists who claim to simultaneously support both atomic power and renewables suffer a deadly delusion. Every dollar wasted on the “Peaceful Atom” delays the vital transition to the green-powered Earth that the human species must have to survive.
Renewable technologies offer the public the power to own and control the
decentralized nature-based power supply essential to any future democracy on this planet—which is precisely what the fossil/nuke industry most hates about them.
Atomic power is a corporate/military-based technology designed to keep all electric and political power under the firm fascist grip of the likes of Donald Trump and his billionaire beneficiaries. Its mission in their eyes is to obliterate all renewables, not to co-exist in some “all the above” delusion.
Nuke reactors burn the planet at 300 degrees Centigrade while spewing radioactive carbon 14, and even more carbon in the mining, milling, enriching, transporting and then burying nuclear fuel. Should any reactor explode it would turn much of the US into a radioactive wasteland while opening the door to martial law and a Trumpian dictatorship.
The astonishing success of new green supply, storage and efficiency has completely dwarfed nukes and fossil fuels in terms of cash, climate and competitive economics.
It’s a revolution that’s been seized by China, handing it near-total control of the export market in wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, electric cars—and thus the global economic future. Worldwide roughly 90% of new energy installations involve wind, solar or batteries, with the vast majority being controlled by the Chinese. The New York Times has recently reported on how China is spectacularly advancing, “pulling away” in “selling clean energy to the world.”
Thus Trump and California Governor Newsom have teamed up with an insane death squad of “liberal” pro-nuke Democrats to decimate the America’s once-vanguard green industries and their long-lost lead in the global economy.
They’re at the same time dooming our democracy to permanent nuclear dictatorship and our economy to the dead-end radioactive dump of a profoundly failed technology—all at once dooming our democracy, our prosperity and our planet. Thankfully, Solartopian green technologies can reverse the death spiral—if we make it happen.
As physicist Amory Lovins, professor of Energy and Environment at Stanford University, has just written: “An intensive influence campaign seeks to resurrect a ‘nuclear renaissance’ from the industry’s slow-motion collapse documented in the independent annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. Claims that past failures won’t recur have convinced many politicians that socializing nuclear investments rejected by private capital markets, weakening or bypassing rigorous safety regulation, suppressing market competition, and commanding military reactor and data-center projects as a national-security imperative will restore nuclear expansion and transform the economy. This illusion neatly fits the industry’s business-model shift from selling products to harvesting subsidies.”
“A few awkward facts intrude,” Lovins continues. “Even the most skilled firms and nations keep delivering big reactors with several times the promised cost and construction time. A swarm of startup firms that have never built a reactor are dubiously rebranding their inexperience as a winning advantage. New designs are said to be so safe they don’t need normal precautions (though not safe enough to waive nuclear energy’s unique exemption from accident liability). Political interference in nuclear licensing is eroding public confidence. Proposed smaller reactors cost more per kWh, produce more nuclear waste per kWh, and often need more concentrated fuel directly usable for nuclear weapons.”
“And nuclear power faces the same fundamental challenges as fossil fuels: uncompetitive costs, runaway competitors, dwindling profits, and uncertain demand. Few, if any, vendors have made profits selling reactors—only fueling and fixing them. Nuclear electricity loses in open auctions, so only Congressional bailouts–$27 billion ($15 billion paid out) in 2005, $133 billion in 2021-22, tens of billions more in 2025 — saved most existing U.S. reactors from closure.”
“Now comes another vision: powering the glorious new world of artificial intelligence,” Lovins went on. “This may be a trillion-dollar bubble, but it’s sellable until market realities intervene. The International Energy Agency expects data centers, mostly non-AI, to cause only a tenth of global electricity demand growth to 2030, doubling their share of usage—to just 3%. So AI won’t eat the grid. But IEA forecasts renewables will power data-center growth10-20 times over, while Bloomberg NEF predicts over 100. Nuclear lost the race to power the grid, so new reactors have no business case or operational need.”
Harvey Wasserman wrote the books Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and The Peoples Spiral of US History. He helped coin the phrase “No Nukes.” He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition at www.electionprotection2024.org Karl Grossman is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and Power Crazy. He the host of the nationally-aired TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman (www.envirovideo.com)
Perhaps the most significant stumbling block, acknowledged by Tepco on July 29, is the “unprecedented” technical complexity of locating, contacting, removing, and containerizing 880 tonnes of highly radioactive melted reactor fuel still smoldering at the bottom of the three devastated reactors.
In 14 years’ time, engineers managed to design, build, test, and rebuild a one-of-a-kind robot that removed less than one-gram of the waste fuel from reactor No. 2 last year. That November “breakthrough” was three years behind schedule, “and some experts estimate that the decommissioning work could take more than a century,” CBS News and Mainichi Japan reported.
Melted fuel, radioactive soil and a struggling fishing industry are some of the lingering legacies of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, writes John LaForge
Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world, and the regular quakes raise traumatic memories of the March 11, 2011, record-breaker that left 19,000 dead and smashed the six-reactor Fukushima-Daiichi site. This summer, a magnitude 5.5 quake struck just off Japan’s southeast Tokara coast on July 3; a mag. 4.2 quake hit east of Iwaki, in Fukushima Prefecture July 12; and a mag. 4.1 quake shook the same area July 25.
In late July, a mighty 8.8-magnitude quake struck Avacha Bay in Russia’s Far East, triggering tsunami warnings and evacuations across the entire Pacific Rim. The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was one of the strongest ever recorded.
The owner/operator of the wrecked reactor complex, Tokyo Electric Power Co., evacuated its entire staffof 4,000 in response to warnings of a possible nine-foot tsunami, after first halting its pumping of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific.
Elsewhere in Japan, over 1.9 million people were urged to evacuate the eastern seaboard, and a 4-foot tsunami wave did strike north of Fukushima at Iwate Prefecture, some 1,090 miles from Avacha Bay, site of the major Russian earthquake.
China partially lifts ban on Japanese seafood imports
China “conditionally resumed” the importation of Japanese seafood products on June 30 ⸺ except from the 10 prefectures closest to the Fukushima disaster site ⸺ after conducting water sample inspections off the coast of the site. Beijing had banned all such imports from Japan as a protest and precaution, following the 2023 start of deliberately discharging large volumes of radioactively contaminated cooling water into the Pacific Ocean.
The 2023 ban was imposed to “comprehensively prevent the food safety risks of radioactive contamination caused by the discharge of nuclear wastewater from Fukushima into the sea,” China’s General Administration of Customs said then. Shocked by Japan’s action, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry added that the discharge was an “extremely selfish and irresponsible act,” which would “push the risks onto the whole world (and) pass on the pain to future generations of human beings,” the Agence France-Presse reported.
Chinese customs officials said June 30 the seafood import ban would continue for ten prefectures, namely Fukushima and its nine closest neighboring states. Products from other regions will need health certificates, radioactive substance detection qualification certificates, and production area certificates issued by the Japanese government for Chinese customs declarations, the government said.
Relatedly, Hong Kong announced that it will maintain its ban on Japanese seafood, sea salt, and seaweed imports from the same ten prefectures still targeted by mainland China ⎯ Fukushima, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Miyagi, Niigata, Nagano, Saitama, Tokyo, and Chiba ⎯ citing ongoing concerns about the risks associated with the discharge of radioactive wastewater.
Tepco Lost $6 Billion as Meltdown Recovery Falters
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings corporation (Tepco) lost $5.8 billion (903 billion yen) between April and June this year as the owner and operator of the triple reactor meltdown at Fukushima became overrun with the costs of inventing, designing, building, and testing robotic machines with which to remotely extract the ferociously radioactive melted reactor fuel from deep inside the earth-quake and tsunami-wrecked reactors.
There are a total of over 880 metric tonnes of “corium” or melted and rubblized uranium and plutonium fuel in three reactors that Tepco claims it will extract. Nikkei-Asia reported August 1 that Tepco says it has $4.7 billion “earmarked for future demolition work” (700 billion yen), which doesn’t even cover this spring’s one-quarter loss. Tepco has said that its preparations for the extraction are “expected to take 12 to 15 years.”
The quarterly financial loss makes a mockery of announced plans by the government and TEPCO to fully complete decommissioning of the rubbished reactors by 2051.
Two out of 14-to-20-million tonnes of radioactive soil buried on PM’s office grounds, in “safety” parody
In a surreal display of political slapstick on July 19th, the office of Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba buried on his office’s garden grounds two cubic meters of radioactive soil scraped up during Fukushima clean-up operations (in which some 14-to-20 million cubic meters of topsoil and debris were collected) ⎯ “to show it is safe to reuse.”
Nippon Television reported that “The radioactive cesium concentration in the soil being buried is 6,400 Becquerels per kilogram” (Bq/kg). “Becquerels” are a standard measuring unit of radioactivity. The 6,400 is below the legally permitted limit of 8,000 Bq/Kg.
The radiation emitted by the soil originates from cesium-137, which was released in large amounts by Fukushima’s melting and exploding reactors and subsequently fell to the ground as fallout. Cesium fallout continues to contaminate vast areas of forest and farmland in the region.
The millions of tons of collected soil now in storage are being tested and sorted to identify material with cesium at 8,000 Bq/Kg or less. Several million tons of it may then be used as fill in construction projects, road-building, and railway embankments all around Japan. Asphalt, farm soil, “or layers of other materials should be used to seal in the radioactivity,” Akira Asakawa, an Environment Ministry official with the soil project, told the Agence France-Presse.
The PM’s demonstration plot is the first “reuse” of the poisoned waste, while experiments elsewhere have been halted due to public protest. The PM’s contaminated dirt was covered up with about eight inches of normal soil to provide some radiation shielding.
Any radiation exposure is unsafe, but adverse effects like radiation sickness, immune disorders, or cancers caused by contact with the radioactive soil would take years or decades to appear, owing to the latency period between radiation exposure and the onset of induced health problems. The joke seems to be that since Prime Minister Ishiba hasn’t dropped dead after walking by, low-dose exposure must be harmless.
Readers may remember a very similar high-level comedy sketch performed by former President Barack Obama, who traveled to Flint, Michigan in May 2016. Drinking water supplies there had been contaminated with lead and to calm the public uproar, Obama sat before the cameras and theatrically downed a glass of water. The straight-faced routine was proof positive and rock-solid confirmation beyond a doubt that Flint’s tap water was safe to drink. Bottom’s up!
Fukushima Disaster Response to Last Eons
Countless dilemmas and setbacks have plagued the now 14-year-long emergency response to the triple reactor meltdown and widespread radiation releases that began on March 11, 2011, at Fukushima on Japan’s northeast coast.
Perhaps the most significant stumbling block, acknowledged by Tepco on July 29, is the “unprecedented” technical complexity of locating, contacting, removing, and containerizing 880 tonnes of highly radioactive melted reactor fuel still smoldering at the bottom of the three devastated reactors.
Unprecedented is the key word here, since the industry has never before had to contain such a large mass of wasted and unapproachable radioactivity. All the work of dealing with the wasted fuel must be done robotically and remotely, since the waste’s fierce radioactivity kills living things that come near. Just planning and preparing to remove the “corium” material will take at least another 12 years.
Toyoshi Fuketa, head of a regulatory body overseeing the site, said at a press conference earlier that “The difficulty of retrieving the first handful of debris has become apparent,” the Kyodo News agency reported.
In 14 years’ time, engineers managed to design, build, test, and rebuild a one-of-a-kind robot that removed less than one-gram of the waste fuel from reactor No. 2 last year. That November “breakthrough” was three years behind schedule, “and some experts estimate that the decommissioning work could take more than a century,” CBS News and Mainichi Japan reported.
The torturously slow process has made Tepco’s early prediction of complete cleanup by 2051 (40 years’ time) appear to have been made up for PR reasons.
Tepco said July 29 that it would need another 12 to 15 years’ worth of preparation ⎯ until 2040 ⎯ “before starting the full-scale removal of melted fuel” at the No. 3 reactor. Tepco earlier claimed that “full-scale” extraction would begin four years ago, in 2021 according to the daily Asahi Shimbun August 1.
Of an estimated 880 tons of debris, only 0.9 grams have been recovered to date. With one million grams in a tonne, Tepco has only 879 million-plus grams to go, and “A simple calculation based on the time since the accident suggests the removal process could take another 13.6 billion years to complete,” the Asahi Shimbun smirked.
China issues annual reports on its extensive nuclear power operations known as “China Nuclear Energy.” The 2024 edition, its latest, made headlines by omitting for the first time information on the routine radioactive gases and liquids released from its operating reactors.
Kyodo News reported that the omission may be a way to avoid accusations of hypocrisy, as China has strenuously condemned Japan’s discharge of radioactively contaminated wastewater into the Pacific. At the same time China’s domestic reactors in 2022 reportedly “released wastewater containing tritium at levels up to nine times higher than the annual discharge limit” set by Japan’s discharge authorities. ###
John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.This article first appeared on Counterpunch.
UK, Canada and Australia: Never fear, Palestinians! We’re here to save the day!
Palestinians: You’re going to stop the genocide?
UK, Canada and Australia: HAHAHAHAHA! No! Oh god no. Haha! No, we are going to give a great big Thumbs Up to the idea of your eventual statehood!
Palestinians: Will you at least stop sending them weapons?
UK, Canada and Australia: LOL no.
In response to the UK, Canada and Australia announcing their recognition of a Palestinian state, Benjamin Netanyahu has proclaimed that Israel will never allow such a state to exist.
“It’s not going to happen. There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel will continue expanding settlements in the West bank.
It’s funny how Israel supporters will claim it’s a genocidal hate crime to say “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free”, but apparently it’s fine to say from the river to the sea Palestine will not be free. Even if you say it while actually committing genocide.
Israeli officials coming out saying there will never be a Palestinian state are completely discrediting all the two-state solution western liberals who’ve spent two years condemning Hamas because they didn’t pursue their liberation by going through the proper channels.
Reminds me of that Jon Stone quote you see going around sometimes, “One reason people insist that you use the proper channels to change things is because they have control of the proper channels and they’re confident it won’t work.”
Westerner: I support a two-state solution.
Israel: There will never be a Palestinian state.
Westerner: Okay then I support a one-state solution where everyone has equal rights.
Israel: You’re calling for an end to the Jewish state you monster.
Westerner: Alright then I support the Palestinian resistance.
Israel: That’s supporting terrorism. You are Hamas and we can legally murder you.
Westerner: Well can I at least support a permanent ceasefire to end the genocide?
Israel: [cocks pistol] What did I just tell you about supporting Hamas?
Westerner: Okay then, I support Palestinians living as a permanent underclass until they can be slowly salami sliced out of existence as a people.
Israel: Getting warmer.
Westerner: I support removing all Palestinians from their historic homeland via ethnic cleansing or extermination before the end of Donald Trump’s presidential term.
Israel: [puts away gun] That’s more like it.
I saw a video where two Australian doctors described how they had to deliver a baby via emergency c-section because the baby’s mother had been decapitated by an Israeli airstrike. Information like this always reminds me of that period last year when all the western politicians and media outlets were telling us that the worst people in the entire world were the university students who were protesting against this genocide.
The Global Sumud Flotilla is saying they’re seeing drones around their ships again just days out from their planned arrival to bring aid into Gaza. Earlier this month drones repeatedly dropped incendiary firebombs on the boats.
This comes as Israel’s Foreign Ministry declares that the flotilla is a Hamas ally, and as Google runs Israel-sponsored ads spinning the flotilla as a terrorist operation.
I don’t know if the Israelis are going to kill these courageous activists, but you can tell they really, really want to.
Remember that time we spent two years watching a horrific live-streamed genocide and then everyone tried to tell us we’re supposed to cry and express our deepest condolences when one of the propagandists for that genocide got shot? That was weird, right?
When Biden finally fucking dies I’m going to be much more insensitive and hostile than I ever was about Charlie Kirk, because he was objectively more murderous and destructive. And when I do, right wingers won’t be shrieking at me about how evil it is to speak ill of the dead. These people have no principles; they’re just herd-minded NPCs trying to canonize a horrible man because he has the same ideology as them.
You’re never going to believe this, but it turns out that news story everyone’s been yelling hysterically about is being used to advance many pre-existing agendas of the US empire.
Officials at the US War Department have announced that they’re considering using Charlie Kirk as a tool for military recruitment. You can add that to the list of all the other agendas they’re using Kirk’s death to advance like increased censorship and surveillance and attacks on leftist dissident groups.
This was predictable from the very beginning. Never play along with their games.
Federal authorities plan to store the remains of the Bécancour nuclear power plant, Gentilly-1, in a dump in Chalk River, on the edge of the drinking water source for millions of Quebecers.
At a time when the Carney government is promoting nuclear power as one of the ways to make Canada an energy superpower, our investigative team has obtained rare access to this ultra-secure complex, which Ottawa wants to hand over to the Americans. We spoke with citizens and experts who are concerned about the environment and the country’s sovereignty.
There are only 365 Anishinabeg living in the tiny Kebaowek First Nation reserve in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. But through their lawyers, they have succeeded in putting a hold on a multi-million-dollar federal radioactive waste dump project on their traditional territory.
In February, the Federal Court ruled that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission had not obtained the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples before authorizing the construction of the dump, in violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In March, the court determined that the project endangers several species, including the spotted turtle, a threatened species less than 30 centimeters long that lives for about 50 years and reproduces infrequently, as it does not reach sexual maturity until around 20 years of age.
Federal lawyers have appealed both decisions. If they fail to convince the courts, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) will have to go back to the drawing board and resume consultations. In the meantime, the project, called the “near-surface waste management facility,” is on hold.
A geotextile membrane to contain radioactivity
It is intended to be a permanent storage and disposal site for up to one million cubic meters of radioactive waste. The waste will be placed on a layer of clay, sand, and geotextile approximately 1.5 meters thick, and covered with another layer of sand, rock, and a membrane.
This is not enough to protect the environment from PCBs, asbestos, heavy metals, and dozens of radioactive elements that CNSC plans to bury there, fears physicist Ginette Charbonneau of the Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive (Coalition Against Radioactive Pollution).
” Radioactive waste cannot be disposed of, it can only be isolated. For that, you need more than a membrane,” she insists.
CNSC assures that this buried waste will have “low-level” contamination and will therefore no longer pose a danger to the environment and health in 500 years, at the end of the containment cells’ useful life.
A pile of waste
But nuclear chemist Kerry Burns has his doubts. Retired from Atomic Energy of Canada since 2010, he was tasked with analyzing waste from the Chalk River laboratories to determine its radioactive content.
He explains that, in the past, CNL buried tons of waste in the sand, which they now plan to exhume and place in their new landfill. However, there are no records indicating the precise level of contamination, he says, describing a gigantic pile of mixed waste.
The project site has too much risk to leave anything to chance, insists the scientist: the landfill will be only one kilometer from the Ottawa River in sandy, porous soil.
“If the contamination escapes from the cells, it will very quickly find its way into the water, and it will be extremely difficult to measure and stop,” he warns.
Like Ms. Chabonneau, Mr. Burns argues that the materials should be isolated in a deep geological repository far from water sources.
This is the method used by one of the American companies chosen to manage CNL, Amentum: it isolates low-level waste in New Mexico in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), which has isolation chambers 660 meters underground.
In recent months, accusations that Donald Trump and his administration embody fascism have become more frequent. The word carries historical weight, and using it carelessly risks turning it into a mere insult. But the question is worth asking seriously: how many characteristics of fascism can be seen in Trump’s presidency – and his ongoing movement?
Political theorists have identified common traits of fascist regimes: cult of personality, scapegoating of minorities, attacks on the press, obsession with law and order, disinformation, and disdain for democratic norms. Viewed through this lens, Trump and his administration tick many of the boxes.
Trump has built a cult of personality unlike any modern U.S. president, insisting that loyalty to him is more important than loyalty to law or country. He scapegoats immigrants, Muslims, and political opponents, framing them as existential threats to “real Americans.” He repeatedly called the media “the enemy of the people,” sought to revoke press credentials, and encouraged investigations into his critics.
Perhaps most concerning was his open disdain for democratic norms. From loyalty tests for judges and civil servants to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Trump treats democracy as conditional – acceptable only if it delivered the outcome he wanted.
Where the comparison to fascism is less exact is in the total control of society and the economy. Trump has not dissolved Congress, suspended elections (yet), or nationalised industry. The courts, press, and opposition party remain functional, though under immense and constant pressure. This distinction is crucial, but it may also reveal fascism’s modern adaptation rather than its absence. Historical fascism seized power through overt revolution; the Trumpist method appears to be the exploitation of democratic institutions from within, using their inherent weaknesses and freedoms – such as free speech and political polarisation – to consolidate power. The goal seems not to be to abolish the system outright, but to render it so subservient to a single leader that its formal structures become a façade.
What we are left with is not a carbon copy of 1930s Europe but something closer to what scholars call “authoritarian populism” or “illiberal democracy.” Still, the overlap is close enough to warrant alarm. The cult of personality, the scapegoating, the attacks on democratic institutions – these are not harmless quirks of an unconventional politician. They are warning signs.
These signs are amplified by a key tactic of modern authoritarianism: the creation of a parallel information ecosystem. Through relentless propaganda, the delegitimisation of factual reporting, the embrace of conspiracy theories, and the promotion of outlets that serve as state-media proxies, a significant portion of the population is persuaded to live in a reality defined not by shared facts, but by the leader’s will. This breaks the common ground necessary for democratic debate and makes accountability impossible.
If anything, Trump’s movement shows how easily a democracy can slide toward authoritarianism without formally abolishing elections or rewriting constitutions. The question now is not whether Trumpism matches fascism perfectly, but whether we are willing to ignore the unmistakable echoes. The history of the 20th century teaches us that fascism does not arrive in a day; it arrives in degrees, often masked by populist appeal and enabled by those who believe the institutions are too strong to fail. The warning is not that America has become a fascist state, but that it has proven vulnerable to the very playbook that leads there.
The first of four flanged tritium waste containers awaiting removal from Los Alamos National Laboratory has been vented, the New Mexico Environment Department announced Tuesday afternoon.
The container can now be moved for treatment at LANL and then, eventually, to an off-site disposal area.
No internal pressure was found in the first container, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration, suggesting the inner containers in the flanged tritium waste container hadn’t leaked. Air monitoring did not show an increase of tritium beyond background levels, the federal agency wrote…………………………………
This weekend, several groups, including Communities for Clean Water, urged state and federal officials to stay the venting and requested additional guidance on precautionary measures. The New Mexico Environmental Law Center drafted a letter to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday asking the state leader to halt the process.
Imagine there was a violent cult that used scriptures from an ancient religion to convince its followers to do evil things.
Imagine the cult was given its own state.
Imagine the cult was given machine guns, tanks and war planes.
Imagine the cult obtained nuclear weapons.
Imagine the cult started committing genocide against the indigenous people who’d been living in the area where the cult’s state was established.
Imagine the cult had huge branches in the most powerful nation on earth, and the powerful nation defended the cult no matter what it did.
Imagine the cult flipped out and started relentlessly attacking and invading the surrounding nations.
Imagine the cult had so much influence and support in western society that western governments and institutions would censor, silence, fire, marginalize and deport anyone who criticized the cult’s actions.
Imagine the western media sympathized highly with the cult and spent the entire time framing its atrocities as entirely reasonable defensive actions, and framing critics of the cult as malicious bigots.
Imagine the cult kept getting crazier and crazier and more and more violent, but nobody could find a way to stop it because its actions were backed by this giant western power structure.
That’d suck, huh?
I think that’d be just about the most bat shit insane situation anyone could possibly imagine.
A nuclear-armed death cult just murdering and massacring mountains of human beings with total impunity, backed by the most powerful people on earth? That would be an unfathomable madness.
If someone made a movie about such a thing I’d stop watching halfway through, because I would find it too unbelievable.
I’d be like, come on man. Come up with a more realistic plot line. And come up with a more believable antagonist; nobody is that evil.
I’d be like come on Hollywood, you seriously expect me to maintain my suspension of disbelief when you’re putting out a movie about these cartoonishly evil bad guys who blow up hospitals and assassinate journalists and murder humanitarian workers and deliberately massacre starving civilians seeking food?
I’d be like, you really expect me to believe a violent cult could get all this power and do all these evil things and get away with it, just by lying about it all the time? Eventually people would stop believing their lies!
I’d be like, somebody would stop them. Not only does this movie have unbelievable antagonists, it also lacks any believable protagonists. Basic human decency would compel the world to stop all these atrocities being committed right out in the open. Where are the heroes in this story?
And then I’d storm out of the movie theater, glad to be outside that horrible fictional world where such freakish absurdities were taking place.
And then I’d stand in the parking lot and look up at the sky, and thank God I’m back in reality again.
Aside from the spectacle of our leaders openly prostrating before Trump, the truth of Britain’s “special relationship” with the US was mostly found in unscripted moments around his visit.
I don’t know about you, but I find myself increasingly at a loss to put into words the extraordinary times we are living through.
Even the best satirists cannot compete with the astonishing, comic scenes offered to us by the British and US ruling classes during Donald Trump’s visit to Windsor Castle and Chequers.
King Charles giving Trump the run-around of his taxpayer-funded mansion and grounds simply served to underscore Britain’s vassal status.
But the king’s flaunting of his, and our, servitude to the US imperial order somehow failed – as it might have done in times of old – to contribute any greater stature to the perma-tanned gangster-in-chief. He just looked even more the spoilt, giant toddler in need of constant distraction and pacification.
Stuff him in the golden carriage-pram and let him roll around the grounds, out of sight, for an hour or so. Let him play with some soldiers and watch fast planes flying overhead. Let him dress up and have a party in the big dining hall.
All of this in the hope that he wouldn’t throw a temper tantrum and stick nasty tariffs on our goods.
Maybe his scriptwriter understood that postmodern irony was the only proper response. He slipped into Trump’s after-dinner speech an approving reference to George Orwell, the author of the dystopian novel 1984 about a society where everyone is enslaved to Big Brother.
What might Orwell have made of that?
Aside from the spectacle of our ruling class openly prostrating before Trump, the truth of Britain’s “special relationship” with the US was mostly found in the unscripted moments around his visit.
It was Trump explaining to a rogue Australian reporter, who tried to question the US President about his corrupt personal affairs, the implicitly transactional relationship between world leaders and the media: journalists get access to the centres of power but only if they don’t probe too deeply.
Trump made clear: “You are hurting Australia very much right now. They want to get along with me. Your leader is coming to see me soon. I’m going to tell him about you.”
Which career-minded journalist wants to lose their job – or to be held personally responsible for the imposition of a new round of US tariffs?
Which perhaps explains why, when Trump and Starmer faced the press after their meeting today, the journalists selected to address the pair obediently delivered only softball questions.
Those not in fear of their professional standing – that is, ordinary people – were free to take to the streets to protest the visit. So long as there was no danger Trump might be exposed to their clamour.
Four members of the group Led By Donkeys who dared to organise a protest that might actually be heard were arrested for “malicious communication”. They projected onto one of Windsor Castle’s towers a nine-minute documentary charting the decades-long, intimate relationship between Trump and notorious child-sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
According to the 1988 law, a communication is malicious if it is “threatening, indecent, grossly offensive, or a known falsehood”. As the film was entirely truthful and nothing in it indecent or threatening (except to the US President’s reputation), the British police are presumably interpreting “grossly offensive” to mean anything that might offend Trump – which covers a huge number of truthful things.
It is not just journalists who have an entirely transactional, principle-free relationship with power. The visit was a potent reminder that politicians do too.
Yvette Cooper, the new foreign secretary, warmly greeted Trump as he stepped off his Air Force One plane in London. That is the same Cooper who a few years ago, when safely in opposition of course, made an impassioned speech denouncing Trump in no uncertain terms as a sexual predator we should have nothing to do with.
If that turnaround seemed baffling, Tory politician Penny Mordaunt was on hand to remind us what political principle looks like.
Questioned by the new Green Party leader Zack Polanksi, she called out as “student politics” his – and presumably most reasonable people’s – opposition to Trump banning books, militarising the police and reversing women’s long-fought-for reproductive rights.
Mordaunt, like King Charles, Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper, is an adult in the room. They understand that principles are a luxury we cannot afford.
Let genocide in Gaza roll on. Describe the starvation of children as “self-defence”. Define anyone trying to stop it a “terrorist”.
Because the worst crime in the world is to behave like principles matter, and to imagine that saving innocent lives is more than just silly “student politics”.
The UN Security Council’s rejection of sanctions relief for Iran marks the final collapse of the JCPOA, pushing Tehran toward confrontation and closing the door on future diplomacy.
This Friday, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) voted to reject the continuation of sanctions relief for Iran, meaning that the end result of the Obama-era nuclear deal has been an even greater economic blow to Tehran. Not only does this send the message of war, but it also eliminates any hope for future agreements and cooperation.
The UNSC vote represented a death blow to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran Nuclear Deal. As a result of this vote, a major shift is about to occur that will have enormous violent reverberations.
When the JCPOA was originally negotiated back in 2015, part of the agreement was an in-built mechanism that would permit “snap-back” sanctions to be applied against Iran, should it fail to apply to its side of the agreement.
In late August, the E3 countries – Britain, France, and Germany – had initiated a 30-day process, which would lead to the imposition of these “snap-back” sanctions, unless Iran decided to meet unrealistic demands that they knew wouldn’t be met. Now, as per the UNSC vote to block sanctions relief on Iran, the Islamic Republic has been given until September 28 to reach a significant deal to block the imposition of sanctions.
In response to this, Russia, China, Algeria, and Pakistan, who had voted for the continuation of sanctions relief, condemned the move of the Security Council and even indicated they would not comply with such sanctions.
So, why is this a bombshell decision?
Some media commentators and analysts are treating this UNSC decision as a simple road to more sanctions and pressure on Tehran. As is usually the case, however, the devil is in the details, and to understand this, we must look to the knock-on effects.
To begin with, there are the implications of domestic Iranian politics. The current President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, is from what is known as the Reformist Camp in Iranian politics. This political movement appealed to more liberal leaning Iranians and advocates opening up ties with the West, making the JCPOA one of their primary projects.
Under the former leadership of Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian negotiating team that was headed by Javad Zarif, managed to pull off the Nuclear Deal with the administration of then US President Barack Obama. At the time, it was hailed as a major deal and had even convinced many Iranians that the path of pursuing cordial relations with the West was not only possible, but favorable.
It wasn’t long, however, until the agreement began to come under greater scrutiny, due to an American-European refusal to implement their sides of the bargain. Then came the Presidency of Donald Trump, who in 2018 decided to unilaterally withdraw from the deal and impose a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign on Iran instead.
At this stage, not only did it appear that the deal had completely fallen apart, but now the sanctions that were being imposed were even more severe than they were prior to the JCPOA in 2015. Yet, there were still efforts being made between the Iranian government and its European counterparts, despite the lack of the EU nations’ willingness to disobey the United States.
Meanwhile, the sanctions against Iran were blocking vital medical supplies from entering the country and further impacting their already suffering economy. Amidst this, the US attempted to stir civil unrest inside of Iran and in 2020 launched an assassination strike against Iran’s top General, Qassem Soleimani, of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’s Quds Forces.
When it came time for a political change inside the United States, during Joe Biden’s campaign, he had promised to revive the Iran deal. Yet, he failed to follow up on this pledge upon taking office in 2021. Instead, he continued to implement the sanctions of his predecessor…………………………………………………
Ultimately, the Biden administration stalled and failed to achieve any breakthrough, refusing to revive the deal, instead requesting all kinds of additional elements that were considered non-starters by Iran.
On May 19, 2024, tragedy struck inside Iran as its President and other prominent officials were killed in a helicopter crash. This led to a new election cycle, where the Reformists yet again gained power.
Iran’s President, Massoud Pezeshkian, has repeatedly made it clear that he seeks to open up relations with the West and, through his foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has sought to make this happen.
When the Trump administration took power, it was clear that the Israelis and the US sought to attack Iran, not to pursue genuine dialogue. Yet, the reformist government pursued diplomacy regardless, as Oman stepped in to mediate talks between delegations headed by Abbas Araghchi and his American counterpart Steve Witkoff.
During the course of these negotiations, on June 13, the Israelis decided to launch an attack that assassinated Iranian generals and nuclear scientists, while striking Iran’s nuclear project. This led to the 12-day war, as it is now being called. The Iranian public, whom the Israelis and US had expected to rebel against their government, did the very opposite and decided instead to rally behind the flag.
The US decided to participate in the Israeli attack, even further weakening the credibility of the United States. What’s more is that Iranian military officials had accused the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, of providing the Israelis with sensitive information about Iran’s nuclear program.
As a result of this, the Iranian parliament passed a bill that barred the IAEA from the country, as various lawmakers called for pressing legislation that would lead to Tehran’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Instead, the reformist government decided to still desperately pursue talks with the Europeans, signed another agreement that re-invited the IAEA into their country to monitor the nuclear program, and reached out to try to pursue talks to revive the JCPOA.
This brings us to the broader implications of the UNSC vote and where this leads……………………………………………………………………………..
Either way this goes, the result is going to be conflict, and the more that the reformists attempt to desperately negotiate and are humiliated, the more aggressive the US and Israelis are likely going to be. What this UNSC vote signals is a major shift that has just occurred, from which there can be no going back………………………………………………………………
REACTORS: A tremor yesterday posed minimal danger to Kinmen, but a greater risk would come from tsunamis striking Chinese coastal nuclear plants, an expert said
Taiwan’s nuclear engineers and the Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said that an earthquake near Kinmen County was less concerning than the potential risk posed by earthquake-triggered tsunamis striking nuclear power plants along China’s coast.
A magnitude 5.0 quake on the Richter scale, the strongest recorded in the Kinmen region in 32 years, struck at 6:56am yesterday.
The CWA said its epicenter was in the Taiwan Strait, about 93.9km east of Kinmen County Hall, at a depth of 17.2km.
Nuclear engineer Ho Li-wei (賀立維) said that while nuclear power plants are designed to withstand strong earthquakes, their cooling systems are more vulnerable.
Ho cited the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster, where the plant’s cooling system was damaged by a tsunami triggered by the Tohoku earthquake, ultimately leading to hydrogen explosions that destabilized the facility.
If the same happened to Chinese coastal nuclear power plants, irradiated water could seep into underground aquifers or be carried into the sea, posing a devastating threat to Taiwan’s fisheries, he said.
Kinmen and Lienchiang counties would face particular risk due to their proximity to China, he said.
On the issue of spent fuel pools, Ho said that used fuel rods are stored in pools to dissipate heat and radiation, often requiring years of cooling before they can be transferred to dry storage.
The number of spent fuel rods in pools far exceeds those in active reactors, making them a significant security risk, he said.
CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) said that the Kinmen earthquake was not on a fault line and carried little risk of causing a major quake.
Tsunami-generating earthquakes must reach at least magnitude 7 on the Richter scale and occur at depths of less than 30km, Wu said, adding that the likelihood of such conditions arising in the Taiwan Strait is not high.
While the Strait’s shallow waters make it theoretically vulnerable to tsunamis, Wu said that even waves generated by distant quakes would be greatly diminished by the time they reached the area.
The crowd broke into laughter as the audience was invited to attend a planned “fun day” to learn more about nuclear.
“This event really highlighted the deep level of community concern and opposition to AUKUS … The officials did all they could to avoid answering the hard questions,” -WA Greens MLC Sophie McNeill
The agency in charge of arming the nation with nuclear submarines has sought to earn the trust of residents in Perth’s south by holding a community information session.
The event drew protesters opposed to the AUKUS pact and a local defence hub being used to maintain nuclear submarines.
The Australian Submarine Agency assured event attendees about nuclear’s safety and Australia’s sovereignty, but many people seemed unconvinced.
Rigour, precision and safety, safety, safety — these are the values of the “nuclear mindset” the agency in charge of arming the nation with nuclear submarines has urged Australians to adopt.
The Australian Submarine Agency (ASA) has taken its self-described first steps towards earning the trust of the public.
A line-up of uniformed naval officers and delegates travelled to Western Australia to front the City of Fremantle’s community on Thursday night.
The meeting was touted as an “information session”, but a protest outside the town hall just before it started gave an early indication of how the night would go.
Nuclear fun day
The agency’s AUKUS advocate, Paul Myler, leaned on the US and UK’s seven decades of nuclear experience to assure the crowd of its safety credentials.
“We don’t get to automatically rely on that reputation. We have to earn that part, that legacy, and build our trust with our communities — and that’s what we’re starting here,” he said.
But the delegates made it clear they were not there to pitch AUKUS.
“That decision has been made by a succession of Australian governments,” the crowd was told in a preamble before the floor was opened to questions.
The crowd broke into laughter as the audience was invited to attend a planned “fun day” to learn more about nuclear.
WA Greens MLC Sophie McNeill, who attended the session, said it was alarming how removed the government was from the communities on the doorsteps of AUKUS.
“This event really highlighted the deep level of community concern and opposition to AUKUS … The officials did all they could to avoid answering the hard questions,” she said.
“It felt like an episode of Utopia.”
S for safety and sovereignty
Safety and sovereignty were the hot topics being thrown at the ASA.
One local questioned the record of Australia’s AUKUS partners on nuclear, citing the UK’s weapons testing in the 1950s which has left nuclear contamination at the Monte Bello Islands off WA’s coast and at Maralinga and Emu Field in South Australia.
“Nuclear weapons and nuclear testing are a completely separate issue … Australia’s position on that is very, very clear,” the crowd was told in response.
“We are not, and will not be, a nuclear weapon state.”
The agency also returned with its own S-word, stewardship, which it said described the “responsible planning, operation, application and management of nuclear material”.
Part of that stewardship includes planning for how nuclear waste will be managed.
In short, low-level nuclear waste will be temporarily stored at the HMAS Stirling naval base on Garden Island.
“The technical solutions can keep that waste safe for many years, decades I believe as a contingency, [but] we do expect the waste to be able to be moved much sooner,” a spokesperson said.
There are no plans as of yet for where high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel will be stored long term or disposed of. However,ASA said it would not be required until at least 2050.
The public also queried who would have command of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines once they were built.
“I get asked a lot of hard questions. That one has a simple answer,” ASA director-general Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead said.
“Australian sovereignty, Australian officers, the Australian government — no other answer.”
Murmurs in the crowd indicated they were not convinced.
Protected or pawns
The room filled with claps and cheers when one local questioned the true intentions of AUKUS and labelled it an “appalling waste” of taxpayer dollars.
“We are being used as pawns to line up in a war against China, and it’s just not acceptable,” the resident said.
Mr Myler insisted it was about defence, and said developing Australia’s “strike capability” was key to protecting the nation.
“I can’t convince you, but I can only give you my own insight,” the AUKUS advocate said.
“Australian defence staff and Australian diplomatic staff and Australian government staff fight every day. Our sovereignty is absolutely at the core of everything we do.”
“They [Rio Tinto] paid no penalty, and then we found out that the maximum penalty for dropping [the capsule] in WA is only a thousand dollars,” they said.
Mr Myler offered a contrary view, describing the response to the missing capsule as impressive.
“It proved that West Australians had their act together, knew how to do this, knew how to respond, and the whole ecosystem coordinated and got that solved,” he said.
Mr Myler went on to say the “nuclear mindset” put the agency at a level “well above where private sector industry is”.
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) social licence adviser Cassandra Casey noted Australia’s nuclear experience with research and nuclear medicines at a facility in Engadine, in New South Wales.
“The community, which is also my community, has grown up around ANSTO, and today the nearest homes in Engadine are just 820 metres … from that facility,” she said.
The information session began with an introduction about ASA earning the nation’s trust. The reaction of attendees indicated few minds were changed, something Mr Myler acknowledged.
“We all understand the risks around some nuclear programs. We have to do a lot more to build confidence in our nuclear program,” he said.
Iran has hit out at European states that have threatened to revive international sanctions over the monitoring of its nuclear programme.
Tehran officials on Friday accused the European states, which have said they will reimpose international sanctions if Tehran does not meet conditions, of “political bias” and insisted that they have presented fair proposals to resolve the issue.
The complaints come ahead of a scheduled United Nations Security Council (UNSC) vote later on Friday on a resolution that would permanently lift UN sanctions.
The resolution is unlikely to get the nine votes needed to pass, diplomats told news agencies, and if it did, it would be vetoed by the United States, Britain or France.
Britain, France and Germany – known as the E3 – launched a 30-day process in late August to reimpose sanctions unless Tehran meets their demands.
Iranian officials have accused the trio of abusing the dispute mechanism contained in the 2015 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which allows for the application of sanctions under a “snapback mechanism”.
“What Europeans are doing is politically biased and politically motivated … They are wrong on different levels by trying to misuse the mechanism embedded in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said.
The Europeans offered to delay the snapback for up to six months if Iran restored access for UN nuclear inspectors and engaged in talks with the US.
However, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that sanctions are likely to be reinstated, with European officials claiming that Iran has not engaged seriously in negotiations.
Following Macron’s statement, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had said that Tehran had presented a “reasonable and actionable plan” and insisted Iran remains committed to the NPT.
Khatibzadeh cautioned that “all options are on the table if diplomacy fails,” although he did not offer details.
“If Europeans go on this path, they are making the level of unpredictability to the highest level possible, and they are responsible for… any possible future risks,” he declared.
Dirty work
The E3 accuse Tehran of breaching the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was signed by Iran, the US, China, Russia, and the EU.
Under the deal, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. The agreement unravelled in 2018 after then-US President Donald Trump pulled out and reimposed unilateral sanctions.
Tensions escalated further earlier this summer, when Israel launched a 12-day war on Iran, with Israeli and US forces striking several nuclear facilities.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz caused anger in Tehran at the time when he declared: “This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.”
Iranian officials have also criticised the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for accusing Tehran of noncompliance with its nuclear obligations ahead of the attacks.
Iran has repeatedly denied seeking a nuclear weapon, while Israel is widely believed to possess an undeclared nuclear arsenal of dozens of atomic bombs.
Last month, France, Germany and the UK triggered the snapback provision of the deal after Iran refused to cooperate with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, which is tasked with monitoring implementation of the deal.
Two weeks later, Iran agreed to resume cooperation with the IAEA, but it has not yet been able to carry out all of its inspection activities and the body’s ability to operate in the country has been restricted for years.
Since the initiation of the snapback mechanism, intense diplomacy has taken place between mainly European powers and Iran to reach a deal to prevent the sanctions. Talks have not been fruitful, though the UK indicated on Friday after the vote that it was still open to diplomacy.
“The United Kingdom remains committed to a diplomatic solution. We are ready for further engagements diplomatically in the next week and beyond to seek to resolve differences,” said Barbara Woodward, the British ambassador to the UN.
The Iranian foreign ministry said in a Friday statement that it had consistently kept the path of diplomacy open and that it viewed the reimposition of sanctions as “unlawful, unfounded and proactive”.
Iran is still dealing with the impact of the 12-day Iran-Israel war, when Israel launched surprise attacks that it said was a pre-emptive move against the country’s nuclear programme. Iran insists that its nuclear programme is of a civilian nature and that it does not seek to create a nuclear bomb.
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