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Trump Says New Iran Deal Must Allow US To ‘Blow Up Whatever We Want’

A senior Iranian adviser said the proposal would amount to “submission and surrender”

by Will Porter May 30, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/05/30/trump-says-new-iran-deal-must-allow-us-to-blow-up-whatever-we-want/

President Donald Trump argued that any revived nuclear accord with Iran should permit the United States to destroy the country’s nuclear infrastructure and send inspectors to Iranian facilities at any time.

The president outlined his vision for a new agreement during a White House presser on Wednesday, calling for a “very strong document” that would effectively give Washington carte blanche over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.

“I want it very strong – where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but [with] nobody getting killed,” he told reporters. “We can blow up a lab, but nobody is gonna be in the lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up.”

He did not elaborate on those remarks, however, leaving it unclear whether Washington had actually pushed for such major concessions at the negotiating table. The Islamic Republic would be unlikely to accept a deal under those terms.

Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, later denounced Trump’s comments in a social media post, suggesting his proposal would cross Tehran’s “red lines.”

“Efforts to reach Iran’s nuclear plants and ‘blow up their facilities’ have been a dream of previous US presidents,” he wrote. “Iran is an independent state with a strong defense structure, a resilient people, and clear red lines. Negotiations are a means to progress and preserve national interests and honor, not submission and surrender.”

During the same news conference on Wednesday, Trump said he had urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from military action against Iran amid the ongoing nuclear talks, arguing the move would be “inappropriate” as the two sides were “very close to a solution.” He went on to claim that a new agreement could be reached with Tehran in “a couple weeks,” though his previous assessments have proven overly optimistic.

The threat of an Israeli attack has loomed large over the US-Iran negotiations, as Tel Aviv continues to accuse Tehran of pursuing nuclear weapons despite repeated American intelligence assessments to the contrary.

During a visit to Iran last month, Saudi Arabia’s defense chief reportedly warned top Iranian officials that failure to “quickly” reach a deal with the US could prompt airstrikes by Israel. The Saudi minister added that Trump had “little patience for drawn-out negotiations,” and suggested that a new conflict with Tel Aviv would destabilize the region, according to sources cited by Reuters.

Will Porter is assistant news editor and book editor at the Libertarian Institute, and a regular contributor at Antiwar.com. Find more of his work at Consortium News and ZeroHedge.

June 3, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s Fool’s Gold

“Golden Dome for America is a revolutionary concept to further the goals of peace through strength,” asserts its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, our first clue that the Golden Dome has nothing whatever to do with peace.

there’s not much use in a Golden Dome unless it’s one hundred percent effective, which it has a one hundred percent probability of not being………….. If just one missile gets through, the level of destruction would be devastating, and the US would then likely retaliate after which all bets are off.

the Golden Dome is merely a deterrent meant to frighten off aggressors. That means we are about to spend $175 billion on something the US would never actually use.

Linda Pentz Gunter, May 30, 2025, https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/30/donald-trumps-fools-gold/

Alright, as it turns out, the golden toilet was just a myth. Donald Trump doesn’t have one. But not to fret. President Trump’s private Boeing 757 jet (not the even more lavish one he may shortly be gifted by Qatar) reportedly has gold-plated seat belts. His Trump Tower apartment features a 24-carat gold front door. Inside, there are gold ceilings, golden plant pots and even a gold elevator!

Fancy a visit to Mar-a-Lago? Its imitation Versailles aesthetic has been described as that of an upscale bordello.

Trump’s favorite restaurant is, of course, the Golden Arches, (also known as McDonald’s). And then there’s his lustrous golden tan with the reverse raccoon eyes. We could suggest that Trump’s three trophy wives were all gold diggers, but that wouldn’t be very golden hearted. Remember the golden showers kompromat rumor? Ick, let’s not go there, either.

The wannabe king boasted during his January 20 inaugural address that “The Golden Age of America begins right now.” Six weeks later, during his March 4 Joint Address to Congress, Trump reassured the audience that his Golden Age truly was coming. “Get ready for an incredible future,” he said. “The Golden Age of America has only just begun. It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before.”

That last part was certainly true.Next came Trump’s embarrassingly titled One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would cause almost 14 million Americans to lose health care, 11 million to be deprived of food stamps, and slashes $700 billion from Medicaid and $500 billion from Medicare. This was necessary, insists the Trump junta, because there’s just so much wasteful spending in Washington — except of course the $45 million US taxpayers will spend on Trump’s June 14 he-man vanity project, that will parade tanks on the streets of the capital and fighter jets overhead.

The Big Beautiful Bill was followed a day later with much fanfare — but surprisingly without any actual golden trumpeters — by the signing of Trump’s five executive orders on nuclear power. “President Trump Signs Executive Orders to Usher in a Nuclear Renaissance, Restore Gold Standard Science,” announced the press release that presaged these disastrous directives.

The orders dramatically weaken nuclear regulatory and safety oversight, put new reactor development on an entirely unrealistic timetable, knit the civil and military nuclear sectors firmly back together again and make a major nuclear accident more likely.

They also endeavor to drastically weaken existing and inadequate radiation protection standards that already don’t account for the heightened vulnerability to harm of pregnant women, infants and children.

However, since we are now entering the age of enlightenment, the press release went on to explain: “Gold Standard Science is just that—science that meets the Gold Standard.” Thank you for clearing that up.

All of these dangerous developments have arrived wrapped — or should I say gilded — in a nausea-inducing level of overblown rhetoric that showcases Trump’s obsession with all things gold, both literal and metaphorical.

And now, as if all this golden fleecing of American taxpayers wasn’t enough, we have the Golden Dome for America!

“Golden Dome for America is a revolutionary concept to further the goals of peace through strength,” asserts its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, our first clue that the Golden Dome has nothing whatever to do with peace. Lockheed Martin is integrally involved in the US nuclear weapons complex, and is a key partner in the development and production of US submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles, specifically the Trident II D5, the most lethal destructive force on earth.

The idea of having an invincible missile defense system that could intercept and destroy all missiles targeting the United States, has been around since the 1950s and was developed in various iterations, garnering headlines under the Ronald Reagan administration with the announcement of his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), quickly nicknamed “Star Wars” by its detractors.

SDI was highly ambitious, complex, expensive and controversial, and arguably led to the failure of what promised to be a bilateral elimination of nuclear weapons agreed by Reagan and then Russian premier, Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986 when Reagan refused to place limitations on SDI.

“Unexpectedly, the two leaders agreed that they could eliminate ‘all [U.S. and Soviet] nuclear weapons,’ but Gorbachev added the contingency that SDI be confined to the laboratory,” wrote Aaron Bateman for the Arms Control Association in a 2023 article on SDI. “After Reagan refused to accept any limits on SDI, the two leaders departed Reykjavik without a deal in hand.”

By the end of the 20th century, the SDI program had been renamed National Missile Defense (NMD), eventually shifting to a focus on a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, whose primary task is to defend against incoming long-range ballistic missiles aimed at the US.

As the Union of Concerned Scientists states in the headline to its history of US missile defense, “Since the system’s deployment in 2002, six out of ten test intercepts have failed.”

The Golden Dome is fundamentally another ambitious reboot of SDI. Trump claims he has already settled on what he calls the “architecture”, which makes you wonder if he sees this as some sort of floating palace, a Mar-a-Lago in the sky? When the plan was unveiled in the White House, Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, stood by the glittery poster looking for all the world like some sort of game show host.

The Golden Dome price tag is a whopping $175 billion (there’s austerity for you!) and apparently it will all be up and running before Trump’s term is out in January 2029, (assuming Trump willingly leaves office and we still have a democratic election process by then.)

It’s a goal longtime national security and nuclear policy expert, Joe Cirincione, called “insane” in an interview with The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “You probably won’t even get the architecture of the system settled by the end of his administration,” Cirincione said.

Even more insane is that, far from enhancing the safety of the US, the Golden Dome is entirely provocative and, as a nervous China has already warned, will only increase the risks of militarizing space and could even relaunch a global arms race (arguably something that is already underway).

In any case, there’s not much use in a Golden Dome unless it’s one hundred percent effective, which it has a one hundred percent probability of not being. Its predecessor certainly didn’t achieve that and was what Cirincione described as “the longest-running scam in the history of the Department of Defense.”

If just one missile gets through, the level of destruction would be devastating, and the US would then likely retaliate after which all bets are off.

Our current missile defense system, whose earliest iteration was deployed in 1962, has cost at least $531 billion so far according to Stephen Schwartz, a longtime analyst on nuclear weapons costs.

On BlueSky, Schwartz called the Golden Dome project “delusional and reckless. There’s no way to design, test, construct, and deploy a comprehensive system to reliably stop any missiles launched from land, sea, or space, and do it in ‘two-and-a-half to three years’ for $175 billion.”

So far, US missile defense interception attempts (fortunately all tests), have had a success rate that spans a range of 41% to 88% depending on whether you accept an independent analysis, which generates the lower number, or “official” tallies, which produce the higher one. Either way, it’s not 100%.

The Golden Dome, it turns out, is no golden ticket to survival.

But no matter, since, its proponents argue, the Golden Dome is merely a deterrent meant to frighten off aggressors. That means we are about to spend $175 billion on something the US would never actually use.

Trump would do well to take a lesson from Shakespeare’s Prince of Morocco who, in The Merchant of Venice, discovers that “All that glisters is not gold.” Indeed, when he chooses the golden box (of course) over the other less sparkly ones, he learns that what tends to lurk inside such “gilded tombs” are merely “worms.”

Or maybe Trump should just stop talking and heed the most important lesson of all? Silence is golden.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland. She is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear. 

June 2, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear power is back. Will it work out this time?

 Britain used to lead the world but lost its way over decades of false starts. The planet’s
first small reactors could win us energy independence — at a price. The
energy secretary was very clear about the urgency of the problem. “The
British nuclear power programme has been in decline over the last
decade,” he told the House of Commons. “If we are to reverse this trend
and ensure that the industry is on a sound footing we must act now.”

This would be a very fair summary of Britain’s nuclear industry today. But
these comments were made nearly half a century ago, by David Howell in
December 1979. Fortunately, Howell, a key member of Margaret Thatcher’s
cabinet (and future father-in-law to one George Osborne), had a plan to put
things right. Construction would begin on ten new nuclear power stations in
the decade from 1982 — one a year. “We consider this a reasonable
prospect,” he assured the Commons.

Yet only one of those stations was
ever built: Sizewell B on the Suffolk coast. It was switched on in 1995.
Britain hasn’t completed a station since. This failure is not down to a
lack of ambition. Thirty years after the hubris of Howell, Ed Miliband,
during his first stint as energy secretary, again announced ten new power
stations. When he re-entered the energy department last summer, another 15
years later, construction had started on only one: Hinkley Point C.

On June 11, Milliband will confirm £2.7 billion of funding for Sizewell C, in
Suffolk, where ground preparation has begun. He will also announce a new
generation of small modular reactors (SMRs) — factory-built miniature
nuclear power generators that are seen by many as the future of the sector.
SMRs will cost a fraction of the price and take a fraction of the time to
build, and by the early 2030s will be sending vital power into our homes
… in theory.

Nobody in Britain, or indeed anywhere else, has even built a
prototype SMR. Why, one wonders, is it so fiendishly difficult to build
nuclear power stations in this country? With the sector’s questionable
safety record and such eye-watering costs, to be met through our energy
bills, do we even need new nuclear power? Next week Great British Nuclear
will announce the winner of a competition to build the UK’s first SMRs,
which will also be the world’s first if they get a move on. Four
companies are in the running: GE Hitachi, Rolls-Royce, Holtec and a
restructured Westinghouse.

 Times 1st June 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/energy/article/british-nuclear-energy-what-went-wrong-future-wx2qtxqnd

June 2, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Trump’s nuclear vision collides with Trump’s actual policies

Some nuclear-watchers are more explicitly worried that the EOs could backfire — specifically, that the Trump administration’s anti-bureaucratic mission of overhauling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could lead to the kind of disaster that would threaten the fragile new bipartisan consensus around nuclear power.

By DEREK ROBERTSON , 05/28/2025 With help from Gabby Mille, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2025/05/28/trumps-nuclear-vision-collides-with-trumps-actual-policies-00373330

Many of these nuclear boosters have noted — echoing the Secretary of Energy himself, in a hearing last week — that continued nuclear innovation could hinge on Congress continuing to fund the Loan Programs Office, an increasingly high-profile sub-office of the DOE responsible for funding experimental nuclear projects. Thomas Hochman, infrastructure director at the Foundation for American Innovation, in a conversation with POLITICO claimed some momentum for the pro-nuclear cadre’s cause of the moment, saying, “if things go the right way in Congress [the LPO] will continue to have authority.”

With a slate of splashy executive orders Friday, president Donald Trump promised to “usher in a nuclear energy renaissance …providing a path forward for nuclear innovation.”

By streamlining the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, exploring building reactors on federal land and ordering the quadrupling of the U.S.’ nuclear energy capacity, the administration moved to, as Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a statement, “unshackle our civil nuclear energy industry and ensure it can meet this critical moment.”

That all should be music to the ears of the burgeoning pro-nuclear revival, which has seen energy and infrastructure wonks across the political spectrum advocate for nuclear energy as a cleaner, scalable alternative to fossil fuels.

But it also raises a question that is becoming familiar in the second Trump administration: How is this all supposed to happen amid Trump’s radical cutbacks to research — to say nothing of government oversight or safety rules?

As with similar administration goals on supercomputing, or innovation, or artificial intelligence, these big promises aren’t happening in a policy vacuum. They’re happening amid an all-fronts rollback of America’s massive research and regulation infrastructure. Even some of those cheering the nuclear EOs are worried that Trump’s bone-deep cuts to the federal government could doom the nuclear revival before it kicks off.

The Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit cheerleader for advanced nuclear reactor development, took the moment to urge GOP-controlled Washington to “adequately resource and staff DOE to meet this moment.” President and CEO Judi Greenwald wrote in a statement that Trump’s cuts — actual and proposed — at the Department of Energy “undermine the Department’s efforts and make it harder to implement these executive orders.”

The progressive pro-nuclear Breakthrough Institute, in its own response to the EOs, enumerated the new staffing levels it would require just to license new plants, and worried that the EOs focused on regulatory overhaul “threaten to reduce the NRC’s workforce, independence, and resources.”

Many of these nuclear boosters have noted — echoing the Secretary of Energy himself, in a hearing last week — that continued nuclear innovation could hinge on Congress continuing to fund the Loan Programs Office, an increasingly high-profile sub-office of the DOE responsible for funding experimental nuclear projects. Thomas Hochman, infrastructure director at the Foundation for American Innovation, in a conversation with POLITICO claimed some momentum for the pro-nuclear cadre’s cause of the moment, saying, “if things go the right way in Congress [the LPO] will continue to have authority.”

Some nuclear-watchers are more explicitly worried that the EOs could backfire — specifically, that the Trump administration’s anti-bureaucratic mission of overhauling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could lead to the kind of disaster that would threaten the fragile new bipartisan consensus around nuclear power.

In an op-ed for The Hill published this morning, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Toby Dalton and Ariel Levite argued that the ADVANCE Act, passed in 2024, has already gone a long way toward overhauling licensing processes for new reactors and that the Trump administration risks gilding the lily.

“What Americans need is confidence that any nuclear power plant built and operated in the U.S. is safe, secure and ultimately beneficial to American and host community prosperity,” Dalton and Levite wrote, while concluding “the net result of these executive orders, coupled with the additional impact of other administration actions to reform governmental regulatory processes to align with White House policies, is to risk public trust in nuclear energy.”

The nuclear revival has largely been inspired by the massive thirst for energy that cutting-edge technologies carry with them, from enormous AI data centers to semiconductor manufacturing to even cryptocurrency mining. Nuclear is an attractive, relatively clean option for solving these problems, with an attractive retrofuturist sheen to boot.

It’s always been a risky bet, though, given its unique safety concerns and steep costs — and that was in the pre-Trump days of relative policy stability. As even its allies have pointed out, the Trump administration’s lurching, unpredictable approach — taking big, sometimes contradictory swings at issues of “American greatness” — could backfire in a major way, especially when public safety is a factor.

But with so much wind at their sails, and relatively few bipartisan, technocratic wins to be had in the early Trump era, nuclear supporters are still willing to be cautiously optimistic.

“I don’t think any of that stuff is sort of like, you know, so complex as to be unachievable,” Hochman said. “The worst possible outcome is just that nothing really gets done.”

June 2, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

 Labour ministers under pressure as viral video shows broken promises to nuclear veterans.

A video showing Labour ministers promising compensation to nuclear veterans has gone viral, putting the government under pressure to keep its word.

Susie Boniface Reporter, Mirror UK, 30 May 2025

Pressure is growing on the Labour government to keep its years of promises to nuclear veterans, after a social media video went viral.

It includes clips of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard all insisting that when in power they would offer full recognition to Britain’s most mistreated heroes.

More than a million people have now seen the video, compiled by social justice campaigner Peter Stefanovic. He is calling on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to sit down with the families affected by involvement with Cold War nuclear weapons tests.

In Opposition and the shadow cabinet, the three gave unscripted and unasked-for offers of compensation, saying “there was no good reason” not to and it was “really dumb” of the Tories not to have done it already. Mr Starmer himself told them: “The country owes you a huge debt of honour. Your campaign is our campaign.” Yet after almost a year in power, nothing has changed.

Mr Stefanovic said: “Despite expressing his “gratitude” to the veterans in opposition, after becoming PM, Keir Starmer has made no public comment on the nuclear blood test programme, and 10 months since Labour came to power, there is no compensation scheme, no recognition, beyond a commemorative medal which was authorised by the Tories.

“A ‘thorough’ review of the archives promised to Parliament by Mr Healey has been given no budget with which to find answers. Our nuclear test veterans – national heroes to whom this country owes a huge debt of honour and gratitude, most of whom are now in their eighties and with chronic ill health – are calling on the PM to meet with them and honour the commitment which his party to them in opposition… it’s the very least the veterans deserve.”

The pledges were all made before evidence emerged in November 2022 of the Nuked Blood Scandal, a secret biological monitoring programme on troops involving blood tests, urinalysis and chest x-rays to determine whether radiation had entered their bodies. The MoD had long denied such a programme existed, but a three-year investigation by the Mirror has uncovered thousands of pages of evidence hidden on a secret database at the Atomic Weapons Establishment.

Discovery of the cover-up has led to a civil lawsuit, a police complaint, and a decision to declassify the entire historic archive. After it featured in a BBC documentary, a review was launched but six months on ministers have refused to reveal any findings, and admitted it has no deadline.

The video shows Ms Rayner addressing a conference of the forgotten Cold War heroes in 2022, telling them: “Myself and my Labour colleagues are calling on the Secretary of State for Defence to…. liaise with the Treasury to set up an appropriate financial compensation programme for veterans and their descendants, as America, France, China, Russia, Fiji and the Isle of Man have done.”………………………………………………. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/labour-ministers-under-pressure-viral-35314341

June 2, 2025 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Lincolnshire County Councillors move to pull the plug on nuclear waste site talks

 Councillors have moved to pull the plug on talks to bury nuclear waste in
open countryside near the coast. Members of Lincolnshire County Council’s
Overview and Scrutiny Management Board have recommended the council’s
Executive withdraw from a community partnership it joined with Nuclear
Waste Services (NWS) in 2021, ending Lincolnshire’s involvement in the
Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) siting process.

 Lincolnshire Live 30th May 2025, https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/lincoln-news/lincolnshire-county-councillors-move-pull-10225069

June 2, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Councillors move to end nuclear waste talks

James Turner, Local Democracy Reporting Service,  BBC 29th May 2025

Councillors have moved to end talks to bury nuclear waste close to the Lincolnshire coast.

Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), a government body, had earmarked an area near Louth, in East Lindsey, as a possible site for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF).

At a meeting earlier, members of Lincolnshire County Council’s overview and scrutiny management board recommended the authority’s executive withdraws its involvement in the process.

A final decision is due to be made at the next executive meeting on 3 June……………………………………………………………………….. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czdyg8365llo

June 2, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Reform leader hits back after Tories saying he’s gone back on nuclear waste site promise.

By James Turner, Lincolnshire World, 28th May 2025, https://www.lincolnshireworld.com/news/environment/reform-leader-hits-back-after-tories-saying-hes-gone-back-on-nuclear-waste-site-promise-5149751

The new Reform UK leader of Lincolnshire County Council has hit back at accusations of failing to deliver on his election promises regarding a nuclear waste site.

The Lincolnshire Conservative group has highlighted that Coun Sean Matthews, recently elected as council leader, has yet to pull out of talks with government agency Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) about a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) — despite saying he would cancel Lincolnshire’s involvement in the project on day one if elected.

NWS, formerly known as Radioactive Waste Management Limited, outlined three potential sites for its Geological Disposal Facility in January, including East Lindsey, and communities in Mid Copeland and South Copeland in Cumbria.

East Lindsey District Council withdrew from talks with NWS after the proposed location changed from the former gas terminal in Theddlethorpe to open countryside on land between the villages of Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton.

The former Conservative administration of Lincolnshire County Council announced its intention to withdraw from talks in March, effectively cancelling the company’s consideration of the Lincolnshire coast for the facility. However, this had yet to be formalised before the local elections in May, when the administration switched to Reform UK.

During a demonstration outside East Lindsey District Council offices in early March, dozens of protesters called on Lincolnshire County Council to withdraw from the talks. Councillor Matthews attended with four of his Reform UK colleagues.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “On day one if elected as the leader of the Reform council, we will withdraw from the agreement.”

Coun Richard Davies, leader of the Conservative opposition group on the county council, said: “This is a clear U-turn from Sean Matthews and Reform UK.

“Local people were told the project would be scrapped on day one. Instead, the new Reform administration is delaying, consulting, and refusing to give communities the certainty they deserve.”

He added: “We call on Sean Matthews to explain why he has not kept his word to Lincolnshire residents. Reform UK cannot have it both ways — either they stand by their promises or admit they misled the public to win votes.”

Responding to the comments from his Tory counterpart, Coun Matthews said: “As Richard is well aware, there is a democratic process that needs to be followed to officially review the council’s membership of the Community Partnership. And he knows that if we don’t follow that process, we could open ourselves up to challenge, causing further uncertainty for local residents.

“We were clear in the campaign about our intentions, and on my first day as leader of the Reform group, I started that process — even enacting the council’s urgency protocol to allow us to have these important discussions as quickly as possible.

“It took me less than a day to start a process that the previous Conservative administration couldn’t complete in the several years they were in power. In fact, the mere fact they entertained the plans to bury nuclear waste under Lincolnshire in the first place is why this community has had to live with uncertainty for so many years.

“As far as I am concerned, in just one week a decision will have been made and then residents can judge for themselves whether their Reform councillors stick to their word.”

Councillors on Lincolnshire County Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Management Board were to review the council’s participation in the Community Partnership at a meeting on Thursday, May 29. A final decision on the council’s future involvement is expected to be taken by the Executive on Tuesday, June 3.

May 31, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Dysfunctional: review reveals South Copeland GDF partnership at war

 It reads like the potential plot for a sequel novel to J K Rowling’s
‘A Casual Vacancy’. For the report of the review of the South Copeland
GDF Community Partnership highlights internal disarray, with members in
conflict with an overbearing Nuclear Waste Services, whilst experiencing
increasing opposition within the local community.

The catalyst for the
review was the letter of withdrawal of Millom Town Council dated 28
November 2024, detailing numerous criticisms of its composition and
function. No consideration appears to have been given by NWS to have
convened a Task and Finish Group with Community Partnership members.

Such a group could have been charged with discretely, though earnestly,
considering the criticisms raised in the Millom Town Council letter, and
then to bring back its own report to the Partnership with its own
recommendations.

Instead, NWS commissioned an ‘external review of the
South Copeland GDF Community to ensure that is effectively fulfilling its
purpose and meeting the needs of the local community’; which for the
NFLAs begs two key questions, who determines its purpose and how are local
needs defined? For the review, Mary Bradley, the former Chair of the
Allerdale GDF Community Partnership, was commissioned by NWS to conduct
interviews with Partnership members and the NWS team and write a report
with her recommendations………………..

 NFLA 29th May 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/dysfunctional-review-reveals-south-copeland-gdf-partnership-at-war/

May 31, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Lincolnshire County Council leader Sean Matthews defends stance on nuclear waste site amid criticism from Tories

 By James Turner, Local Democracy Reporter, 27 May 2025, https://www.lincsonline.co.uk/louth/reform-leader-hits-back-at-accusation-that-he-s-gone-back-on-9418880/

The new Reform UK leader of Lincolnshire County Council has hit back at accusations of failing to deliver on his election promises regarding a nuclear waste site.

The Lincolnshire Conservative group has highlighted that Coun Sean Matthews, recently elected as council leader, has yet to pull out of talks with government agency Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) about a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF)—despite saying he would cancel Lincolnshire’s involvement in the project on day one if elected.

NWS, formerly known as Radioactive Waste Management Limited, outlined three potential sites for its Geological Disposal Facility in January, including East Lindsey, and communities in Mid Copeland and South Copeland in Cumbria.

East Lindsey District Council withdrew from talks with NWS after the proposed location changed from the former gas terminal in Theddlethorpe to open countryside on land between the villages of Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton.

The former Conservative administration of Lincolnshire County Council announced its intention to withdraw from talks in March, effectively cancelling the company’s consideration of the Lincolnshire coast for the facility. However, this had yet to be formalised before the local elections in May, when the administration switched to Reform UK.

During a demonstration outside East Lindsey District Council offices in early March, dozens of protesters called on Lincolnshire County Council to withdraw from the talks. Councillor Matthews attended with four of his Reform UK colleagues.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “On day one if elected as the leader of the Reform council, we will withdraw from the agreement.”

Coun Richard Davies, leader of the Conservative opposition group on the county council, said: “This is a clear U-turn from Sean Matthews and Reform UK.

“Local people were told the project would be scrapped on day one. Instead, the new Reform administration is delaying, consulting, and refusing to give communities the certainty they deserve.”

He added: “We call on Sean Matthews to explain why he has not kept his word to Lincolnshire residents. Reform UK cannot have it both ways—either they stand by their promises or admit they misled the public to win votes.”

Responding to the comments from his Tory counterpart, Coun Matthews said: “As Richard is well aware, there is a democratic process that needs to be followed to officially review the council’s membership of the Community Partnership. And he knows that if we don’t follow that process, we could open ourselves up to challenge, causing further uncertainty for local residents.

“We were clear in the campaign about our intentions, and on my first day as leader of the Reform group, I started that process—even enacting the council’s urgency protocol to allow us to have these important discussions as quickly as possible.

“It took me less than a day to start a process that the previous Conservative administration couldn’t complete in the several years they were in power. In fact, the mere fact they entertained the plans to bury nuclear waste under Lincolnshire in the first place is why this community has had to live with uncertainty for so many years.

“As far as I am concerned, in just one week a decision will have been made and then residents can judge for themselves whether their Reform councillors stick to their word.”

Councillors on Lincolnshire County Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Management Board will review the council’s participation in the Community Partnership at a meeting on Thursday, May 29. A final decision on the council’s future involvement is expected to be taken by the Executive on Tuesday, June 3.

May 30, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s nine-word question to aide about executive order raises alarm bells

Indy100, 24 May 25

US president Donald Trump signed several new executive orders on Friday, but not without causing concern – again – around whether the Republican actually knows what he’s doing.

Alongside an EO about “restoring gold standard science”, Trump was also handed three orders pertaining to nuclear energy, including reform of nuclear reactor testing at the Department of Energy and nuclear energy production.

After an aide explained the context around the EOs, Trump asked him: “Are we doing something about the regulatory in here?”

The official replied: “Yes, sir, you are. That issue I just described will be addressed in this EO.”

Erm… one of the four executive orders you signed on Friday is genuinely titled ‘Ordering the reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”, Donald.

And so, the basic question asked by the US president about an order he was about to put his name to has concerned social media users who think he “doesn’t know” what he is signing:

It’s not the first time social media users have expressed alarm at a question asked by Trump in the Oval Office, as just one week ago he had to ask an aide what the Biden administration did around energy efficiency requirements.

May 27, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Republican Calls for Gaza to Be “Nuked” Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Rep. Randy Fine said “the Palestinian cause” is “evil” in stunning remarks on Fox

By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, May 22, 2025

A House Republican has called for Gaza to be “nuked” akin to the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and said that “Palestinianism” is “evil” in genocidal remarks on Fox News following the shooting of two Israeli embassy workers on Wednesday.

When asked about the killing of the two embassy workers in Washington, D.C., Rep. Randy Fine (Florida) launched into a tirade, calling for unhindered violence against Palestinians and the movement for Palestinian rights.

“This is what globalizing the intifada looks like. Palestinianism is built on violence,” said Fine. “This is a culture built on violence and we need to start treating it that way.”

“We need to start to call evil for what it is, and not make excuses for it. And the fact of the matter is, the Palestinian cause is an evil one,” he went on.

When asked about the stalled negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Fine said that the only solution is nuclear warfare — and yet more horrific civilian dea

“The only end of the conflict is complete and total surrender by those who support Muslim terror. In World War II, we did not negotiate a surrender with the Nazis, we did not negotiate a surrender with the Japanese,” said Fine, ignoring historical records showing that the U.S. did negotiate with the Axis Powers to try to end WWII.

“We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here,” the Republican went on. “There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture and it needs to be defeated.”

The nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians, and spread radiation that caused diseases still affecting survivors today.

Another Republican, Rep. Tim Walberg (Michigan), made similar comments during a town hall in March of 2024.

Fine, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump during his run for Congress, is known for making bigoted, inflammatory remarks, often specifically aimed at inciting violence against Muslims, Arabs, and other groups.

Earlier this month, Fine called Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) a “Muslim terrorist” in response to a post by Tlaib highlighting widespread famine conditions caused by Israel’s blockade of Gaza. “#StarveAway,” Fine wrote.

This came after Fine had celebrated Israel’s killing of American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the occupied West Bank in September. “One less #MuslimTerrorist. #FireAway,” Fine wrote.

During his time in the Florida state legislature, Fine also introduced legislation to suppress speech supporting the movements for Palestinian, Black and transgender lives, once again referencing supposed “Muslim terror.”

Sharon Zhang

Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies.

May 26, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | 1 Comment

Trump sets out aim to quadruple US nuclear capacity

WNN, Saturday, 24 May 2025

US President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders titled Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base, Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy and Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the goal of “re-establishing the United States as the global leader in nuclear energy”.

The aim is to increase US nuclear energy capacity from 100GW to 400GW by 2050, including the Department of Energy (DOE) prioritising work “with the nuclear energy industry to facilitate 5 gigawatt of power uprates to existing nuclear reactors and have 10 new large reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030”.

Among the measures included are a reorganisation and cuts to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and an order for licence decisions on the construction and operation of new reactors to be taken within a maximum 18 months.

The president was joined in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon for the announcements by representatives from the US nuclear industry and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who is Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

A White House statement summarising the impact of the orders, said: “Today’s executive orders allow for reactor design testing at DOE  labs, clear the way for construction on federal lands to protect national and economic security, and remove regulatory barriers by requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue timely licensing decisions.”

‘Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base’………………………………………………….

Answering questions from reporters after signing the orders. President Trump said that nuclear was “safe and clean” and said the country aimed to build small modular reactors but “we’ll build the big ones too … I think we’re going to be second to none because we are starting very strong. But it’s time for nuclear and we’re going to do it very big”.

Among those attending the Oval Office event was Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) President and CEO Maria Korsnick who thanked the president for “leaning in” to support and bring attention to commercial nuclear energy. ………….. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/trump-sets-out-aim-to-quadruple-us-nuclear-capacity

May 26, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

I wrote a speech for Trump’s Golden Dome defense. Get ready to feel something.

Golden comes first, of course, because the entire thing will be made of gold, which everyone knows is the strongest of all the metals. That’s why I use it in all my properties.

Rex Huppke, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/05/22/trump-golden-dome-missile-defense/83776830007/

After watching President Donald Trump announce plans for a $175 billion “Golden Dome” missile-defense system, I took the liberty of preparing him a speech to better introduce the country to this sure-to-be fabulous and best-ever multilayered space-weapon extravaganza. He says it will be “fully operational before the end of my term,” so it seems a strong sales pitch is in order.

Here goes:

Hello America, it’s me, your favorite president of all time, currently polling higher than any president in history, except for in a few FAKE polls. In keeping with my promise to protect all Americans, except for the few I might accidentally deport or imprison because they say mean things about me — nobody will miss them, and it will all be totally legal and totally cool — I’m excited to give you some more details about our big, beautiful, totally golden Golden Dome, a super-impenetrable anti-missile — it’s so anti-missile you won’t believe it — defense system.

Let’s look at these two beautiful words: golden and dome. Golden comes first, of course, because the entire thing will be made of gold, which everyone knows is the strongest of all the metals. That’s why I use it in all my properties. Tough stuff. I had a big contractor come up to me one time — a huge, tough guy, tears in his eyes — and he said, “Mr. President, you’re the only one smart enough to use gold this much. Nobody else gets it like you do.” It’s so true.

The second word is DOME. I love domes. They’re like a ball, only half. The best half, of course, that being the one on top. Ask any basketball player and they’ll tell you the top half of the ball — what they call the dome — is the best. So many baskets.

Now this dome, aside from being made of gold, will be a slightly different shape than most domes. Not a lot of people know this, but America is not round. I pointed this out to some of my people the other day, and they said, “Sir, that’s such a good point. We never thought of that.”

So I came up with the fact that America is not round. If you look at a map, it’s more kind of a rectangle. And of course it’s flat. Completely flat. They say the earth is round — although some very smart people don’t agree with that — but it’s clear from any map that America, at least, is completely flat.

So you have this big, flat rectangle, and we’re going to protect it from missiles using a Golden Dome that will be more of a rectangle-ish-shaped dome. It could also be a series of domes, I suppose. But like a bunch of domes forming a giant, flat rectangle. We’ll see.

But as I said, it will be impenetrable, and that will be thanks to space and lasers and other things that very smart people like myself totally understand. It’s going to be so fantastic, really. Our Golden Dome will be the best roughly rectangular dome anyone has ever seen.

Now, some losers out there are already complaining about this perfect plan. A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman named Mao Ning said our beautiful, perfect flat-and-rectangular dome of gold “heightens the risk of space becoming a battlefield.”

Well, I’ve got news for you, Mao. I’m pretty sure space is already a battlefield. Love is a battlefield — I’ve heard many say that — and that means space is definitely a battlefield too. And it’s a battlefield we’re going to win with our precious, precious gold and tough lasers.

Some in the fake news have whined like little losers about the cost. We have $25 billion in the big, beautiful tax bill that is currently moving through Congress. And the cost of the whole thing — and can you really put a cost on gold or domes? — will be easily covered by cuts to services that for far too long have been going to ungrateful poor people who have no gold.

Many of those poor people are supporters of mine, of course, and I love them dearly, and they love me. But they’ll understand if we make a few little — or possibly very large, because large is good, we love large — cuts to Medicaid and Medicare while also adding trillions to the debt Republicans used to care about. They’ll understand that’s a perfect decision when they look into the sky and see those giant sheets of beautiful gold protecting us from missiles, and they’ll know their hunger is worth it for our protection. Trust me, they will. Those people will believe anything.

As everyone knows, everything I’ve ever built is perfect and infallible. And that will be the case with our amazing, patriotic Golden Dome. You can now purchase scale models of the dome — gold-plated and of the very highest quality — on my website, and 1% of all sales will go to building the dome or to dome marketing.

MAKE AMERICA DOME AGAIN!

May 25, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Civil society says nuclear deserves no place in Prime Minister Carney’s “Energy Superpower” project.

Gordon Edwards, May 21, 2025

Today 131 civil society and Indigenous groups representing many thousands of members across Canada reminded Prime Minister Mark Carney that climate action requires renewable – not nuclear – energy.

In an open letter to Prime Minister Carney, available HERE, representatives from the civil society and Indigenous groups wrote that building more nuclear reactors is not a cost-effective, clean or smart climate option. The government’s “Energy Superpower” project should include renewable energy and exclude nuclear reactor development from public subsidies.

The groups reminded the Prime Minister that, as an economist, he must appreciate that energy efficiency, renewables and energy storage are the best investments for energy supply, requiring less capital investment and providing the best return on the dollar for energy production, job creation, and rapid greenhouse gas reduction.

New nuclear projects are already far more expensive than proven renewable energy sources and there is no guarantee that new nuclear reactor designs will ever generate electricity safely and affordably. Spending on nuclear development is wasting time that must be spent urgently on genuine climate action.

“The nuclear industry, led by American corporations and start-ups, has failed to convince us that new reactor designs will address the climate crisis and overcome the exorbitant cost, toxic radioactive waste and threats of nuclear disasters that have plagued the nuclear industry for decades,” said Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR).

“Quebec has rejected nuclear power. We object to our federal taxpayer dollars being spent on developing more nuclear reactors that could be abandoned in place, ultimately transforming communities into radioactively contaminated sites and nuclear waste dumps that will require more federal dollars to clean up,” said Jean-Pierre Finet, spokesperson for le Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie (ROEÉ).

The groups are asking for a meeting with Prime Minister Carney to discuss Canada’s energy future.

Read the letter HERE with the list of 131 signatory groups.

May 24, 2025 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

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