nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Anatomy of an AI Coup

It is political offloading, shifting the messy work of winning political debates to the false authority of machine analytics. It’s a way of displacing the collective decision-making at the core of representative politics.

Tech Policy Press, Eryk Salvaggio / Feb 9, 2025

DOGE is gutting federal agencies to install AI across the government. Democracy is on the line, writes Tech Policy Press fellow Eryk Salvaggio.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology for manufacturing excuses. While lacking clear definitions or tools for assessment, AI has nonetheless seized the imagination of politicians and managers across government, academia, and industry. But what AI is best at producing is justifications. If you want a labor force, a regulatory bureaucracy, or accountability to disappear, you simply say, “AI can do it.” Then, the conversation shifts from explaining why these things should or should not go away to questions about how AI would work in their place.

We are in the midst of a political coup that, if successful, would forever change the nature of American government. It is not taking place in the streets. There is no martial law. It is taking place cubicle by cubicle in federal agencies and in the mundane automation of bureaucracy. The rationale is based on a productivity myth that the goal of bureaucracy is merely what it produces (services, information, governance) and can be isolated from the process through which democracy achieves those ends: debate, deliberation, and consensus.

AI then becomes a tool for replacing politics. The Trump administration frames generative AI as a remedy to “government waste.” However, what it seeks to automate is not paperwork but democratic decision-making. Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are banking on a popular but false delusion that word prediction technologies make meaningful inferences about the world. They are using it to sidestep Congressional oversight of the budget, which is, Constitutionally, the allotment of resources to government programs through representative politics.

While discussing an AI coup may seem conspiratorial or paranoid, it’s banal. In contrast to Musk and his acolytes’ ongoing claims of “existential risk,” which envision AI taking over the world through brute force, an AI coup rises from collective decisions about how much power we hand to machines. It is political offloading, shifting the messy work of winning political debates to the false authority of machine analytics. It’s a way of displacing the collective decision-making at the core of representative politics.

The Cast

We can set the stage by describing the cast. In Elon Musk’s part-time job at DOGE, he takes the lead role. His team aims to use generative AI to find budget efficiencies even as he eviscerates the civil service. The DOGE entity has already attempted to take over the Treasury Department’s computer system to distribute funds and effectively disbanded USAID. Musk hopes to deliver an “AI-first strategy” for government agencies, such as GSAi, “a custom generative AI chatbot for the US General Services Administration.”

…………………………Then there is the supporting cast. ………………………………………………………………….

The Plan

Amidst the chaos in Washington, Silicon Valley firms will continue to build their case that they are the answer…………………………………………………………………………………. The solution will be a “centralized data repository” hooked to a chatbot and a suite of promises.

………………………………………………………….. OpenAI’s ChatGPTGov is a prime example of a system that is ready to come into play. By shifting government decisions to AI systems they must know are unsuitable, these tech elites avoid a political debate they would probably lose. Instead, they create a nationwide IT crisis that they alone can fix.

Weaken the Opposition

As the technical elite embeds generative AI into hollowed-out institutions, the administration will carry on its effort to eviscerate independent research institutions. Trump campaigned in 2023 for an “American University,” an online resource presenting “study groups, mentors, industry partnerships, and the latest breakthrough in computing” that “will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed.” Trump proposed that American University would be funded by “taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments.”

………………………………………….. Eventually, this would create a crisis through which higher education, with its commitments to diversity already neutered, could be starved to death. A weakened university research ecosystem would strengthen the private sector by luring scientists to their labs, diminishing independent research oversight.

……………………………………………….DOGE aims to replace government bureaucracy with technical infrastructure. Reversing and dismantling dependencies embedded in infrastructure is slow and difficult, especially when efforts to study systemic bias are prohibited. The ingredients for “technofascism” will be assembled.

Generating a Crisis

Eventually, the shoddy infrastructure of these automated government agencies and services will produce language or code that creates an AI-driven national crisis. Because no AI system is presently suited to the complex task of governance, failure is inevitable. Deploying that system anyway is a human decision, and humans should be held accountable.

The designers of AI have repeatedly told us that it poses a threat akin to the atomic bomb.

……………………………………….. Years of bipartisan lobbying by groups focused narrowly on AI’s “existential risks” have positioned it as a security threat controllable only by Silicon Valley’s technical elite. They now stand poised to benefit from any crisis……………………………………………….

Algorithmic Resistance

The AI coup emerged not just from the union of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. It is born of practices and beliefs now standard among Silicon Valley ideologues that are obscure to most Americans. However, the tech industry’s weakness is that it has never understood the emotional and social complexity of actual human beings.

…………………….Speed is essential to their work. They know they cannot create a public consensus for this effort and must move before it takes shape. By moving fast and breaking things, DOGE forces a collapse of the system where unanswered questions are met with technological solutions. Shifting the conversation to the technical is a way of locking policymakers and the public out of decisions and shifting that power to the code they write.

…………………………………..Do not fall for the trap. Democratic participation and representative politics in government are not “waste.” Nor should arguments focus on the technical limits of particular systems, as the tech elites are constantly revising expectations upward through endless promises of exponential improvements. The argument must be that no computerized system should replace the voice of voters. Do not ask if the machine can be trusted. Ask who controls them.  
https://www.techpolicy.press/anatomy-of-an-ai-coup/

February 12, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Labour’s growth policy is fantasy fiction

 Richard J Murphy, Tax Research 9th Feb 2025 

Labour is promising growth based on carbon capture and storage, new nuclear power stations and sustainable flying, and none of them are known to work. They’re gambling on economic fantasies.

Labour’s economic policies are increasingly based upon fantasy. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but let me explain.

Labour says it’s going to deliver economic growth in the UK, and at the same time, it’s going to deliver net zero. I don’t believe them. On the basis of their policies, I think they’re talking utter rubbish, and their ideas are based upon economic fantasies.

There are three issues that illustrate this point, and I’m going to try and keep them as simple as possible.

Those three issues are carbon capture and storage, which they are planning to use to control the emissions of big business and therefore achieve net zero, and nuclear power, which is based upon the idea that there can be a new series of at least ten nuclear power stations built in the UK, and a third runway for Heathrow.

Let’s run through those. Carbon capture and storage was announced first of these three, so perhaps I will pick it for that reason.

Carbon capture and storage is a relatively simple idea. What it says is that we don’t have to stop industry from producing carbon, which we all know is polluting the atmosphere and, therefore, creating climate change. Instead, we capture the carbon that is created by business in its industrial processes, and then store it underground, in the case of the UK, almost certainly in the old oil and gas fields under the North Sea. There’s just one little problem with this idea: nobody’s actually done it. ……………………………………………………………

What else could he have done with that money? He could have talked about putting insulation into UK houses and cutting the demand for energy.

He could have literally talked about putting solar panels on the roofs of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of households.

But no, he didn’t want to do that. He instead wants to undertake an economic fantasy; something that has not been proven to be possible, is what he’s choosing over actual deliverables that would create jobs in streets throughout the UK, for real people in the UK, in every constituency in the UK, and which would work. This is what I mean by economic fantasy.

And the nuclear program, to which he has also signed up, which is supposedly going to deliver clean energy from ten new nuclear power stations, is just as fantastical as is carbon capture and storage. The reason why is that these are all based upon a technology created by Rolls Royce called the Small Modular Reactor. And absolutely nobody has any idea whether they will work or not. The technology is, once again, totally unproven. But we are apparently going to have ten of them.

Will they work? Who knows.

How will the waste be managed? Who knows.

What will be the cost from managing the waste from ten new nuclear power stations? Who knows? But I do know that the cost of clearing the first ever nuclear establishment in Scotland – Dounreay – a tiny little reactor built in the 1950s, has recently been increased from £2 billion to £8 billion, and it won’t be clean for another century as yet, which actually means nobody knows when or if it will ever happen.

So, this isn’t clean energy. It is actually about creating long-term, dangerous waste that we don’t know how to manage and at what cost. And yet, Labour is pursuing it because this is another economic fantasy on its part. Growth is apparently all that matters. The fact that we might destroy significant parts of the countryside that can never be used again as a consequence of doing so is neither here nor there.

And then we come to Heathrow………………………………………………………………………..

So, what is Labour up to here? They are living with the most extraordinary short-term thinking, which is totally based upon fantasy because Heathrow Airport hasn’t actually asked for a third runway yet, Rolls Royce hasn’t proved that their reactors work as yet, and absolutely nobody on the planet knows whether carbon capture and storage work as yet. But Labour is putting all its faith into these unproven situations to supposedly create the economic growth which is going to let us have nurses and education and everything else.

They could, of course, do something else. They could, of course, simply fund nurses and education and whatever else it is, because they have the power to do so because they create the money in this country and direct how it is used. Instead, they want to play games of economic fantasy.

And I don’t trust them for that reason.

These are dangerous games. They should not be being pursued.

They are playing with our planet.

They’re putting lives at risk.

They’re putting futures at risk.

They aren’t going to deliver growth, and they are threatening the well-being of generations to come. They’re dangerous people, and I really don’t think they deserve to be in office. https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/02/09/labours-growth-policy-is-fantasy-fiction/

February 11, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

‘Build baby build’, says PM as he sets out nuclear plan

 BBC 6th Feb 2025, Hafsa Khalil. BBC News, Becky Morton, Political reporter,  
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c805mjxe2y9o

Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to “build baby build”, as he announced plans to make it easier to construct mini nuclear power stations in England and Wales.

The prime minister told the BBC the government was going to “take on the blockers” and change planning rules so new reactors could be built in more parts of the country.

Sir Keir said he wanted the country to return to being “one of the world leaders on nuclear”, helping to create thousands of highly skilled jobs and boosting economic growth.

Unions and business groups welcomed the move, but some environmentalists criticised the government, saying it had “swallowed nuclear industry spin whole”.

Currently, progress building nuclear power stations in the UK can be slow – to get from planning to “power on” can take nearly 20 years.

Speaking on a visit to the UK National Nuclear Laboratory in Lancashire, Sir Keir said the process was too long and that changes announced by the government would speed it up.

Asked by the BBC’s Chris Mason if “build baby build” was his mantra like US President Donald Trump’s “drill baby drill”, Sir Keir said: “I say build baby build. I say we’re going to take on the blockers so that we can build.”

He said the government had already changed the rules to allow onshore wind farms and was now acting to ensure “we can fast forward on nuclear”.

Pressed over whether people who live near nuclear infrastructure could get money off their electricity bills, the prime minister said while this was not part of the announcement the government had already backed the idea of benefits for local communities hosting energy infrastructure.

In the 1990s, nuclear power generated about 25% of the UK’s electricity but that figure has fallen to around 15%, with no new power stations built since then and many of the country’s ageing reactors due to be decommissioned over the next decade.

Mini nuclear power stations – or small modular reactors (SMRs) – are smaller and cheaper than traditional nuclear power plants, and produce much less power.

However, while there are some 80 different designs under development globally, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the concept has yet to be proven commercially.

The plans announced on Thursday mark the first time SMRs will be included in planning rules. A list of the only places a nuclear reactor could be built – made up of just eight sites – will also be scrapped.

Sir Keir said the plans would improve the country’s energy security by increasing the supply of clean, homegrown power.

He added that Britain had been “held hostage” by Russian President Vladimir Putin for “too long”, which has resulted in energy prices “skyrocketing at his whims”.

The process of choosing to loosen rules on where nuclear reactors could be built began under Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government with a consultation in January 2024.

Ministers said Britain is considered one of the world’s most expensive countries in which to build nuclear power, and a new Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce will be established to speed up the approval of new reactor designs and stream line how developers engage with regulators.

Conservative shadow energy secretary Andrew Bowie said it was “about time” Labour followed his party’s lead in recognising the benefits “of stable, reliable, baseload nuclear power”.

But Doug Parr, policy director of Greenpeace UK, claimed the government had not applied “so much as a pinch of critical scrutiny or asking for a sprinkling of evidence”.

“The Labour government has swallowed [the] nuclear industry spin whole,” he said, adding: “They present as fact things which are merely optimistic conjecture on small nuclear reactor cost, speed of delivery and safety.”

While the overall cost of nuclear power is comparable with other forms of energy, nuclear plants are extremely expensive to build.

The head of the Nuclear Industry Association, Tom Greatrex, said the changes would give investors certainty and enable them to get on with building new plants.

Gary Smith, GMB’s general secretary, said the union has repeatedly said “there can be no net zero without new nuclear”.

The previous Conservative government gave the go-ahead for a new nuclear reactor on the Suffolk coast – Sizewell C – in 2022.

The new Labour government committed a further £2.7bn to the project in October but a final decision on its future is not due to come until the spending review later this year.

Two new nuclear reactors are also being built at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, which are due to open in 2030.

February 11, 2025 Posted by | Christina's notes, politics, UK | Leave a comment

NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE: SOLAR REVOLUTION

Sir Jonathon Porritt, 7 Feb 25

So, what was Keir Starmer’s response to news yesterday that not only was 2024 the hottest year ever, but that January 2025 was the hottest January ever – when it had been widely predicted that it would be a lot cooler than January 2024: we’re going to double down on our endlessly recycled nuclear fantasies as the best way of achieving instant economic growth.

At the same time, the once-quite-sensible Ed Miliband was reduced to mouthing growthist inanities: “build, baby, build”.

OMG! What drugs are these pro-nuclear politicians on? Was their mothers’ milk radioactive? Do they really have to regurgitate every last gobbet of the nuclear industry’s manic and mostly dishonest hype?

Here’s what this nuclear growth agenda looks like in reality.

Over the next decade, both the big stuff (another of EDF’s Hinkley Point look-alikes at Sizewell C on the Suffolk coast) and the small stuff (as in the spectacularly over-hyped Small Modular Reactors) will make zero difference to consumers’ energy bills; zero difference to UK energy security; and zero difference to achieving our Net Zero targets . 

During that time, new nuclear’s contribution to economic growth will be marginal at best, non-existent at worst. Sizewell C is may never get a Final Investment Decision – after six years of “best efforts” to sign up investors by both the Tories and Labour. Contrary to what you might think, Small Modular Reactors do not, at the moment, actually exist outside of the fevered brains of the nuclear industry. And even if the investment required, for either big or small, was somehow cobbled together, any new nuclear projects are GUARANTEED to be massively over-budget (good for growth, I agree, but disastrous for taxpayers) and massively delayed.

Which is why, dear Keir and dear Ed, easing planning conditions for new nuclear projects will make literally ZERO difference to achieving any additional economic growth.

To mitigate the despair you might now be feeling, thinking about the nuclear-powered Starmer/ Reeves/ Miliband troika, here’s a quick pick-me-up to end the week on a cheerier note.

Just a week ago, a consortium of financial institutions (led by the World Bank and the African Development Bank) agreed the biggest roll out of solar energy in the continent of Africa’s history: $35 billion in loans (at below-market interest rates) to provide electricity for roughly half of the 600 million Africans who are currently deprived of that basic necessity. And roughly half of that $35 billion will be invested in solar mini-grids at the village level. All to be rolled out over the next five years.

It’s so much easier to stay hopeful when one can deal in reality not fantasy.

February 11, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

With calls for nuclear, are Scottish Labour stuck in the 70s?

BE careful what you wish for. I’ve dreamt all my life of the harnessing of robots
and artificial intelligence, enabling a wondrous and liberated human
civilisation. And now you tell me their power needs mean we must build more
domestic nuclear reactors? Sometimes the big narratives really don’t line
up.

We live in a country where renewable energy provided 113% of
Scotland’s overall electricity consumption in 2022 – and it’s set to
ascend over the coming decades. It’s an infrastructural build-out which
is, rightly, one solid plank in the economic and societal case for
independence.

The sense that a Scottish national future is desirable comes
significantly from the vigour, the virtue – and the permanence – of our
renewables sector. So it was jarring, as well as embarrassing, to hear Anas
Sarwar deride John Swinney in Holyrood on Thursday as “trapped in the
1970s”, as the First Minister resisted Labour’s calls for a new wave of
nuclear power plants across the UK. What could be more 70s than
atomics+computers = progress!

 The National 8th Feb 2025 https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24920161.calls-nuclear-scottish-labour-stuck-70s/

February 11, 2025 Posted by | politics, renewable, UK | Leave a comment

Trump Says He’ll Audit the Pentagon-Will it prove to be a bridge too far?

Bill Astore, Feb 09, 2025,  https://bracingviews.substack.com/p/trump-says-hell-audit-the-pentagon?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1156402&post_id=156757346&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

President Donald Trump says he’s ready to tackle the Pentagon, which has failed seven audits in a row. He says America might save “trillions” after effective audits. Will it happen?

The Pentagon budget currently sits at roughly $900 billion for this fiscal year, representing more than half of federal discretionary spending. This vast sum doesn’t include (among other things) Homeland Security, nuclear weapons covered by the Department of Energy, the VA (Veterans Administration), and interest on the national debt due to wasteful failed wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

A successful audit of the Pentagon would be a monumental victory for what’s left of American democracy. It may also prove to be a bridge too far for Trump. The National Security State is America’s unofficial fourth branch of government and arguably its most powerful. It is a colossus that hides malfeasance and corruption behind a “top secret” security classification. It deters and prevents efforts at transparency by crying that those who try to expose its crimes are endangering national security. It expects your obedience and praise, not your questions and criticism.

Presidents, of course, are supposed to serve as the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. They rarely do. Not nowadays. The U.S. system may in theory rest on civilian control of the military, but the military has been out of control since at least 1947, when it rebranded itself the “Department of Defense” instead of the old War Department. Not coincidentally, every war America has fought since then has been undeclared, i.e. lacking a formal Congressional declaration of war.

America has fought a mind-blowing number of wasteful and illegal wars that have been sold to the people through lies, whether in Vietnam (“The Pentagon Papers”), Iraq (No WMD), Afghanistan (“The Afghan War Papers”), and elsewhere. Few things are needed more in America than an honest reckoning of Pentagon spending—and future Pentagon war plans.

Such a reckoning could very well save our lives—indeed, the world, if done honestly and transparently by true patriots. It could also prove to be a bridge too far—for any president.

February 10, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Is “Bad Faith”‘s Council for National Policy the Atlas Network’s half-brother?

Ed COMMENT. I put this article up on the Australian website. You might think that it has nothing to do with Australia.

But it does! The fascist chaos now developing in the USA could spread to Australia, as the Atlas Network promotes its Australian off-shoot “Advance”. Advance will funnel $millions into Trumpian-style propaganda, to influence the coming Australian federal election.

The long game of the Mont Pelerin Society that spawned the Atlas Network became colonising government and the law, to make them the servants of the largest players in the economy.

February 6, 2025 Lucy Hamilton,  https://theaimn.net/is-bad-faiths-council-for-national-policy-the-atlas-networks-half-brother/

The Council for National Policy is the ultra-secret body tracked in the documentary Bad Faith. Are the Mont Pelerin Society fingerprints there just by chance?

The chaos that is erupting from the people around Trump was forecast in the 900 pages of Project 2025 for those paying attention. The firehose of brutality and stupidity is coming too fast for observers to encompass. Whether it’s 25 year olds with the power to alter code in the Bureau of Fiscal Service or a Christian Nationalist-driven freeze on all public spending or trying to deport Navajo people, the whole project reeks of reckless cruelty and apparent irrationality.

Just as Ronald Reagan implemented 2/3 of the first Mandate for Leadership, Donald Trump implemented 2/3 of his first iteration. Now the Mandate is known as Project 2025 and it’s no longer just a “business republican” project. It’s a Christian Nationalist project too. And 2/3 of the first executive orders of this Trump administration came from Project 2025.

The man likely to take the helm of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was revealed as the Christian Nationalist radical he is in this undercover sting operation last year. The chaos is intended to continue. He has said he intends to put career civil servants “in trauma.” He also intends to use the military to crush protests.

This domestic chaos will be deadly; the freeze on USAID spending will kill people sooner. These radicals around Trump do not care: their eugenicist beliefs run deep. It’s a longterm goal: this 2006 annual Atlas Network report contains an essay repeating disdain for foreign aid as a failed concept by (MPS member since 1984, erstwhile president and critical figure in the growth of Atlas and several junktanks), Leonard Liggio. There is no reflection on how many nations need foreign aid because of MPS-driven restructuring and neoliberal interventions to keep those nations impoverished and dependent.

Ronald Reagan, the first de facto Atlas Network US president said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” The Trump apparatchiks are trying to make that a vicious reality.

The long game of the Mont Pelerin Society that spawned the Atlas Network became colonising government and the law, to make them the servants of the largest players in the economy. They sold the mission as “freedom” in a “free market,” with “small government” staying out of the little guy’s way. That was not the real intent. Democratic projects, rights or a decent life for the individual (below enabler class) were intended by few in the project. Neofeudalism is a more apt label. You are not even to be allowed to protest your (or others’) immiseration.

People committed to the neoliberal project have a firm commitment to making government look ineffective and wasteful. It may be that government efforts to tackle the pandemic risked making people trust government. The steps towards a UBI might have stung badly for people who believe government spending should only serve the already rich. It is likely also that coercive measures like lockdowns, mask wearing and vaccine mandates triggered their socialism-alarms. There is extensive evidence of junktank partners’ investmentin pandemic disinformation and the fighting of public health measures including masking.

It’s possible that the greater inclusivity of a pluralist society might have been enough on its own to repulse the narrow-minds of this machinery; it could be that the pandemic broke them.

Either way, after the worst of the pandemic, one of the Atlas Network’s most pivotal junktanks appointed a Rad Trad Catholic extremist with connections to Opus Dei as its president, in September 2021. Kevin Roberts was an Atlas operative before this. He used to run the Atlas Texas Public Policy Foundation.

He was also however, by 2022, already on the Council for National Policy board.

The Bad Faith (2024) documentary reveals in grim detail how the Council for National Policy (CNP) was the theocratic machine that built the Moral Majority. It was the network that brought together the extremist Evangelical preachers of that movement, media organisations and funders with some of the Republican Party’s most effective strategists. The documentary is based on journalist Anne Nelson’s extensive investigations in Shadow Network.

Key figures amongst the Republican Party strategists that founded the CNP belonged to the Mont Pelerin Society, just as the key operators in the Atlas Network did – and do.

(Atlas has, since it was founded in 1981, vacuumed up other junktanks and networks into its web of shared strategies and personnel connections: whether they are Atlas spawned or interlinked can be complex to disentangle. Whether CNP was in part an MPS project at its foundation is opaque. It could be that class interests of a small band of operatives led to overlaps in strategising. The two networks are, however, overtly operating in concert now with both strongly represented in the Project 2025 Advisory Board.)

Catholic zealot Paul Weyrich co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973. Many historic clips of Weyrich uttering his extreme beliefs are to be viewed in Bad Faith. In 1981, the CNP was founded to galvanise the 1978 undertaking to use the issue of abortion to create a Christian Republican voter bloc. (In 1978, abortion was a fringe Catholic issue, of little interest to Evangelicals.)

Weyrich’s co-founder at Heritage was Catholic Edwin Feulner, later an MPS president, but a member from 1972. He is also a CNP member.

The CNP’s Republican founders included Episcopalian (Anglican) Morton Blackwell, an MPS member from 2007, who created the Atlas Network-and-CNP’s Leadership Institute founded in 1979. It aims to increase “the number and effectiveness of conservative leaders in the public policy process. More than 300,000 conservatives have become leaders through Leadership Institute training.”

Fellow CNP founder was Evangelical? Edwin Meese III who worked with Atlas’s Ronald Reagan from 1966, and was later one of his attorney-generals. Meese was involved with Heritage from 1988. A third was Catholic Richard Viguerie who invented the direct mail scam that fostered the demonising of Democrats to scare grannies out of their pittance.

Both Atlas and the CNP receive funding from Charles Koch and his circle including the Bradleys. On the CNP leaked membership list, Lawson Bader is identified. He is an MPS member and has been president and CEO of Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund since 2015. Donors Trust is known as the “dark money ATM of the right.” The Mercer family, that funded Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica, is also listed as a CNP donor. The united Devos and Prince families are key donors. Betsy DeVos has roles at several Atlas junktanks. Peter Thiel, tech plutocrat, is now a significant funder of Donors Trust.

Boeing, Coors, Cinemark, Forbes media and Morgan Stanley all have senior figures affiliated with CNP. (Coors money was central to the Heritage Foundation’s funding, with Joseph Coors, Evangelical and white supremacist, a co-founder.)

Currently the CNP and Atlas share several critical partner organisations apart from Heritage and Leadership such as the Federalist Society which has been described as creating the imperial juristocracy around Donald Trump’s second presidency. Another is the American Legislative Exchange (ALEC) that produces reactionary and anti-labour model bills for state legislatures to reproduce. A thirdis Americans For Tax Reform, which Grover Norquist (CNP member) founded at Ronald Reagan’s “request.”

The Acton Institute, Media Research Center, Capital Research Center, Buckeye Institute, National Center for Public Policy Research, Center for Security Policy, Young America’s Foundation, American Conservative Union (parent of CPAC), Discovery Institute and Americans for Prosperity are other joint members. Tea Party Patriots is a CNP member that is spawned as an astroturf outfit out of Atlas’s Freedomworks.

The CNP’s members include the Club for Growth, which is another Koch-supported entity. It funds Republican candidates who fight labour rights. The farce of fighting for the working man that Trump’s campaign feigns is exposed by the many junktanks here strategising to suppress workers.(1)

The CNP is a particularly ugly partner for the Atlas Network which advertises itself as “strengthening the worldwide freedom movement.” It unites the NRA with Turning Point USA with a range of hate groups promoting Islamophobia and homophobia. Its Christofascist members fight rights for women as well.

A key member is the Alliance Defending Freedom which the SPLC summarises as having supported “the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia; and claims that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society.” Not much freedom there.

The Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) founded by Senator Jim DeMint, former Heritage Foundation president, in 2017, is a CNP member since 2020. This sub-network has spawned a range of extreme election denial and reactionary policy junktanks. One notable CPI entity is America First Legal, white supremacist Stephen Miller’s critical creation. It is largely funded by Bradley donations.

One of the significant names on the CNP list is Steve Bannon. He has been fighting for the “deconstruction of the administrative state” for years. His esoteric traditionalist beliefs call for the destruction of the age of slaves (democracy) to be replaced by the age of priests. His ally Curtis Yarvin, inspiration of many of the tech-fascist oligarchs, argues a CEO-monarch should replace the democratic experiment. It looks like Elon Musk thinks that should be him.

Many of the Christofascist organisations and individuals in the CNP are anti-democratic, believing that a theocracy is the answer to America’s ills. There is, at minimum, no freedom of religion allowed.

The destruction around Trump is a genuine threat to American’s democratic experiment.

That Reagan’s Mandate for Leadership should have become Project 2025 is startling on its own. The linking of Atlas’s ostensible campaign for freedom with the CNP’s campaign for theocratic coercion illustrates starkly that the freedom is only for a few.

* * * * *

Mont Pelerin is a secretive, invitation only organisation, but some of its leaked members can be found here. The Council for National Policy is ultra-secretive but its leaked members can be found here.

(1) (Business donors who had captured former Democrat Kirsten Sinema years back seem to have sent her back from early retirement to vote down Biden’s choice for a Labor Relations Board that might have been able to protect workers’ rights into the Trump era.)

This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

February 10, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Planners recommended against nuclear plant in 2019 citing fears for Welsh language

the inspectors’ report concluded that “the matters weighing against the proposed development outweigh the matters weighing in favour of it” and that despite planned mitigations the project could “adversely affect tourism, the local economy, health and wellbeing and Welsh language and culture”

Industry figures say fate of Anglesey facility to have been built by Hitachi shows problems with planning system

Guardian, Eleni Courea 7 Feb 25

Planning inspectors recommended against a Hitachi-built nuclear power plant in Anglesey on the basis that it could dilute the island’s Welsh language and culture, it has emerged.

Hitachi scrapped plans to build a £20bn nuclear power plant at Wylfa in 2020 over cost concerns after failing to reach a funding agreement with UK ministers.

Keir Starmer’s government has vowed to make it easier to build major infrastructure projects by reforming the planning system and stopping campaigners from launching “excessive” legal challenges.

The prime minister unveiled plans for a historic expansion in nuclear power this week, vowing to “push past nimbyism” and make sites across the country available for new power stations.

Nuclear industry figures believe that the fate of Hitachi’s proposed plant at Wylfa demonstrates the problems with the UK’s planning system.

Planning inspectors appointed by the UK government recommended that the project be rejected in 2019, warning of its impact on biodiversity, the local economy, housing stock and the Welsh language.

The inspectors’ 906-page report said the additional workers required by the project would put pressure on local housing and schools and that “given the number of Welsh-speaking residents, this could adversely affect Welsh language and culture”.

Hitachi carried out a Welsh language impact assessment as part of its application, which found that the project would need to bring 7,500 workers from outside the area. Anglesey has 70,000 residents and one of the highest concentrations of Welsh speakers in the country.

The impact assessment concluded the extra workers “could have a major adverse effect on the balance of Welsh and non-Welsh speakers” in the area and “could adversely affect the use and prominence of the Welsh language within communities”.

But the assessment also found that by creating high-skilled jobs for young people, the project would help preserve the Welsh language on the island. It would have created more than 2,000 local construction jobs for nine years, and about 85% of the plant’s workforce would be local under the plans.

Nevertheless, the inspectors’ report concluded that “the matters weighing against the proposed development outweigh the matters weighing in favour of it” and that despite planned mitigations the project could “adversely affect tourism, the local economy, health and wellbeing and Welsh language and culture”

It also found that the developers had not put forward enough evidence to demonstrate that the arctic and sandwich tern populations around the Cemlyn Bay area, where the plant was going to be built, would not be disturbed by construction. There were fears that the birds would abandon the area as a result.

The last Conservative government revived plans for a large-scale nuclear power station at Wylfa and bought the site from Hitachi for £160m. In its election manifesto, Labour pledged to “explore the opportunities for new nuclear at Wylfa”………………………………..


Linda Rogers of the campaign group People Against Wylfa B said Hitachi withdrew “because the government wasn’t able to provide adequate funding as far as they were concerned”.

She added: “[The plans] broke environmental regulations – which this present government is laughing at, at a time when we need to increase biodiversity – and affected very much the local wildlife, particularly terns. And it was bad for the Welsh language. There were a lot of issues why it was not appropriate to build at Wylfa.” https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/07/planners-recommended-against-nuclear-plant-in-2019-over-welsh-language-and-cultural-concerns-hitachi

February 10, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

The twelve ideal sites for mini nuclear reactors, according to an expert.

The Government might be pushing SMRs hard and they may be based on existing technology but they are still unproven.

A new generation of smaller nuclear reactors could be based on
decommissioned sites, speeding up the process considerably, a Government
adviser argues. The first generation of new mini nuclear reactors planned
by the government could be built on the sites of previous decommissioned
nuclear power stations, a leading expert has said.

The stations include 12
of the earliest nuclear sites in the UK, some of which date back to the
1960s and were much smaller than later nuclear power stations. Using a type
of reactor called Magnox, these first-generation nuclear sites were found
in counties such Gloucestershire, Essex, Kent, Oxfordshire, Dumfriesshire
in Scotland and Snowdonia in Wales – and are well placed to be used again
for so-called small modular reactors (SMRs), according to Dr Simon
Harrison, a member of the Government’s new advisory commission on hitting
its net zero target.

SMRs, or small nuclear reactors, are typically about a
tenth or a quarter of the size of a traditional nuclear power plant –
roughly the size of a school bus but six stories high.

The Government might be pushing SMRs hard and they may be based on existing technology but they are still unproven. While they are being promoted as quick and cheap there
is a risk that they could end up running over time and budget.

There are also questions over how SMRS could be financed, given that SMR projects
around the world need financial support from governments. The UK is
expected to use a ‘funding framework’, known as a regulated asset base
(RAB) model, which puts part of the upfront cost on to household energy
bills before the plants start generating electricity, effectively putting
households on the hook for any delays.

The Government is to loosen planning
regulations to allow SMRs to be built in the countryside, with Starmer
insisting he would use Labour’s massive majority to push through the
changes. Dr Harrison, of the Mott MacDonald engineering consultancy, told
The i Paper: “To get the first small modular reactors deployed quickly I
would expect there to be a focus on the old Magnox sites in the first
instance. Dr Harrison said the amount of space available on some of these
Magnox could limit the size of the SMR deployed. And he pointed out
“there has also been interest in old coal power station sites”, meaning
the list can’t be taken to represent the 12 best options. Which sites are
ideally suited to small nuclear reactors. Berkeley, Bradwell, Chapelcross
Dungeness, Harwell, Hinkley Point A, Hunterston A, Oldbury, Sizewell,
Trawsfynydd, Winfrith and Wylfa.

 iNews 6th Feb 2025 https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/sites-mini-nuclear-reactors-experts-3522717

February 9, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

  Starmer’s “anti-democratic” push to put Nuclear Reactors incommunities without consultation

 Starmer has announced plans to reform the
planning system around nuclear power. Under plans proposed on Wednesday,
nuclear development will not be restricted to the eight current designated
nuclear sites, but opened up to the general planning process.

Starmer, speaking in the commons, vowed to “break through” resistance by
utilising the party’s majority to ensure there is no dissent. These plans
are part of a package announced to encourage AI datacentres to be
established in the UK, with SMRs (small modular nuclear reactors) to power
them.

SMRs are an unproven technology sold as an alternative to massive
reactor sites such as those currently being built in Hinkley Point C and
proposed at Sizewell C. SMR development is often reliant on government
funding to do the R&D and eventual construction work – often funded by
“nuclear levies” via the RAB (Regulated Asset Base) on local
communities.

Communities charged by RAB models are often promised returns
in the form of lower bills, a claim hotly disputed. Research in Going
Nuclear, a book by CND Cymru chair Mabon ap Gwynfor MS shows that when
Trawsfynydd was operational in Gwynedd, the area paid some of the highest
per-unit cost of electricity anywhere in Britain. CND Cymru has already
recently raised concerns about inappropriate nuclear development in
Bridgend.

Last Energy, a US-based company, is currently consulting on a bid
to build 4 SMnRs in a site on the old Llynfi Power Station. CND Cymru
National Secretary, Dylan Lewis-Rowlands, said “If the proposals from
Westminster are to be believed, then not only could plans similar to this
pop up anywhere in Wales or England, but could also be pushed through
against community will from the UK Government.

The current ultimaten planning authority for projects under 300MW of generation, which includes this proposal, currently lies with Welsh Government Ministers – are the
plans here also a proposal to run roughshod over devolution?”

CND Cymru
vice-chair, Brian Jones, added: “This is not just a question of nuclear
development, but of democracy. The intention of this move by Starmer seems
to be something that the nuclear power and weapons industry has only dreamt
of before – the ability to ignore communities wishes and focus their vast
lobbying budgets on getting the central government to allow them to build
wherever they want, without opposition. It is fundamentally putting profit
before people and planet, and turning Britain into a nuclear power test
site for SMRs. It is, in one word, anti-democratic”.

 CND Cymru 6th Feb 2024  Starmer has announced plans to reform the
planning system around nuclear power. Under plans proposed on Wednesday,
nuclear development will not be restricted to the eight current designated
nuclear sites, but opened up to the general planning process. Starmer,
speaking in the commons, vowed to “break through” resistance by
utilising the party’s majority to ensure there is no dissent. These plans
are part of a package announced to encourage AI datacentres to be
established in the UK, with SMRs (small modular nuclear reactors) to power
them. SMRs are an unproven technology sold as an alternative to massive
reactor sites such as those currently being built in Hinkley Point C and
proposed at Sizewell C. SMR development is often reliant on government
funding to do the R&D and eventual construction work – often funded by
“nuclear levies” via the RAB (Regulated Asset Base) on local
communities. Communities charged by RAB models are often promised returns
in the form of lower bills, a claim hotly disputed. Research in Going
Nuclear, a book by CND Cymru chair Mabon ap Gwynfor MS shows that when
Trawsfynydd was operational in Gwynedd, the area paid some of the highest
per-unit cost of electricity anywhere in Britain. CND Cymru has already
recently raised concerns about inappropriate nuclear development in
Bridgend. Last Energy, a US-based company, is currently consulting on a bid
to build 4 SMnRs in a site on the old Llynfi Power Station. CND Cymru
National Secretary, Dylan Lewis-Rowlands, said “If the proposals from
Westminster are to be believed, then not only could plans similar to this
pop up anywhere in Wales or England, but could also be pushed through
against community will from the UK Government. The current ultimate
planning authority for projects under 300MW of generation, which includes
this proposal, currently lies with Welsh Government Ministers – are the
plans here also a proposal to run roughshod over devolution?” CND Cymru
vice-chair, Brian Jones, added: “This is not just a question of nuclear
development, but of democracy. The intention of this move by Starmer seems
to be something that the nuclear power and weapons industry has only dreamt
of before – the ability to ignore communities wishes and focus their vast
lobbying budgets on getting the central government to allow them to build
wherever they want, without opposition. It is fundamentally putting profit
before people and planet, and turning Britain into a nuclear power test
site for SMRs. It is, in one word, anti-democratic”.

 CND Cymru 6th Feb 2024  Starmer has announced plans to reform the
planning system around nuclear power. Under plans proposed on Wednesday,
nuclear development will not be restricted to the eight current designated
nuclear sites, but opened up to the general planning process. Starmer,
speaking in the commons, vowed to “break through” resistance by
utilising the party’s majority to ensure there is no dissent. These plans
are part of a package announced to encourage AI datacentres to be
established in the UK, with SMRs (small modular nuclear reactors) to power
them. SMRs are an unproven technology sold as an alternative to massive
reactor sites such as those currently being built in Hinkley Point C and
proposed at Sizewell C. SMR development is often reliant on government
funding to do the R&D and eventual construction work – often funded by
“nuclear levies” via the RAB (Regulated Asset Base) on local
communities. Communities charged by RAB models are often promised returns
in the form of lower bills, a claim hotly disputed. Research in Going
Nuclear, a book by CND Cymru chair Mabon ap Gwynfor MS shows that when
Trawsfynydd was operational in Gwynedd, the area paid some of the highest
per-unit cost of electricity anywhere in Britain. CND Cymru has already
recently raised concerns about inappropriate nuclear development in
Bridgend. Last Energy, a US-based company, is currently consulting on a bid
to build 4 SMnRs in a site on the old Llynfi Power Station. CND Cymru
National Secretary, Dylan Lewis-Rowlands, said “If the proposals from
Westminster are to be believed, then not only could plans similar to this
pop up anywhere in Wales or England, but could also be pushed through
against community will from the UK Government. The current ultimate
planning authority for projects under 300MW of generation, which includes
this proposal, currently lies with Welsh Government Ministers – are the
plans here also a proposal to run roughshod over devolution?” CND Cymru
vice-chair, Brian Jones, added: “This is not just a question of nuclear
development, but of democracy. The intention of this move by Starmer seems
to be something that the nuclear power and weapons industry has only dreamt
of before – the ability to ignore communities wishes and focus their vast
lobbying budgets on getting the central government to allow them to build
wherever they want, without opposition. It is fundamentally putting profit
before people and planet, and turning Britain into a nuclear power test
site for SMRs. It is, in one word, anti-democratic”.

 CND Cymru 6th Feb 2024 https://www.cndcymru.org/en/about-us2/

February 8, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Starmer pledges to ‘build, baby, build’ as green groups criticise nuclear plans

Greenpeace says PM has ‘swallowed industry spin whole’ after plans unveiled to expand in England and Wales

Peter Walker and Matthew Taylor, Guardian 6th Feb 2025

Keir Starmer has channelled his inner Donald Trump and promised to “build, baby, build” in his push for more nuclear power stations, despite warnings from environmental groups about the industry’s record for soaring costs and long delays.

A day after the prime minister unveiled his plans to revamp planning rules to bring in a series of small modular reactors (SMRs) across England and Wales, Greenpeace said Starmer had “swallowed the nuclear industry spin whole”, and Friends of the Earth described the plans as “overblown, costly hype”.

Formally announcing the plans on Thursday, however, Starmer insisted the recent glacial pace of nuclear power development was precisely why things had to change.

Asked if, much like Trump’s pro-fossil fuels mantra of “drill, baby, drill”, he now advocated “build, baby, build”, Starmer replied: “I say: build, baby, build. I say: we’re going to take on the blockers so that we can build.”………………………………………………………………………………………………..

However ambitious, the project faces obstacles, including likely local opposition, despite hints from Starmer that people could get lower bills if they lived near a new reactor. The technology also remains untested, there is not a single commercial SMR operating in the world, and the sector is heavily reliant on government support.

Dale Vince, a green electricity entrepreneur and a major donor to Labour under Starmer, said even large nuclear power stations made “the most expensive power known to mankind”, adding: “And the widely understood and experienced concept of economies of scale is all about things getting cheaper as they get bigger. The opposite is true in the other direction – miniaturisation always costs more.”

Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s policy director, said Starmer’s plan was unrealistic. “The Labour government has swallowed nuclear industry spin whole, seemingly without applying so much as a pinch of critical scrutiny or asking for a sprinkling of evidence,” he said.

“They present as fact things which are merely optimistic conjecture on small nuclear reactor cost, speed of delivery and safety, which is courageous – or stupid – given that not a single one has been built, and with the nuclear industry’s record of being over time and over budget unmatched by any other sector.”

Mike Childs, the head of policy for Friends of the Earth, said nuclear power was “extremely expensive and creates a legacy of radioactive waste that lasts for thousands of years”.

“The Hinkley C nuclear plant in Somerset, which is a decade late and almost £30bn over budget, makes HS2 look like a runaway success,” he said. “If ministers want to build a clean, affordable and energy-secure future they should focus on renewables, such as wind and solar, and better energy storage – not the overblown, costly hype offered by the nuclear industry.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/06/starmer-pledges-to-build-baby-build-as-green-groups-criticise-nuclear-plans

February 8, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Trump’s attack on Biden’s IRA spending could complicate Palisades restart effort

 https://beyondnuclear.org/trumps-attack-on-bidens-ira-spending-could-complicate-palisades-restart-effort/ January 24, 2025

Trump’s executive order regarding the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and similar action against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, or Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) of 2021, could starve the Palisades zombie reactor of massive taxpayer funding requested by Holtec International for its unprecedented restart. Holtec is looking to various troughs of funding from both laws, totaling a shocking $8+ billion (with a B!) in mostly federal, but also State of Michigan, bailouts.

Palisades is located in Covert Township, just south of the City of South Haven, in Van Buren County, s.w. Michigan. It is immediately upon the beach of Lake Michigan, drinking water supply for 16 million people along its shores, including the City of Chicago.

Palisades was permanently shut down by its previous owner, Entergy, on May 20, 2022, supposedly for good. But Palisades took over the site, supposedly to decommission it, only to instead secretively apply to the U.S. Department of Energy and State of Michigan for many billions of dollars in taxpayer funds, to restart the more than half-century old, extremely problem-plagued reactor.

NIRS’s analysis of the IRA revealed that more than $380 billion (with a B!) in nuclear power subsidies had been authorized therein. The analysis also addressed additional billions of dollars in nuclear power subsidies contained in the IIJA.


Another $7.4 billion in federal funds, in the form of loan guarantees, for so-called “Small Modular Reactor” (SMR) design certification, construction, and operation, would come from the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and the follow on December 23, 2007 appropriations. Holtec has targeted Palisades for two SMR-300s (300 Megawatts-electric each), which would nearly double the tiny 432-acre site’s nuclear Mega-wattage. Holtec has also targeted Palisades’ sibling nuclear site, the closed and decommissioned Big Rock Point hundreds of miles north, in Hayes Township, between Charlevoix and Petoskey, likewise on the Lake Michigan shore. Whether Trump will order a freeze on these funds as well, remains to be seen.

Self-inflicted steam tube degradation, due to two years of neglect by the inexperienced and incompetent company, also puts in doubt Holtec’s late 2025 restart plans at Palisades.

The article quotes Beyond Nuclear’s radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps:

Kevin Kamps, an activist with Maryland-based Beyond Nuclear who grew up near the plant, said that safety assurances are “very dubious, as [the] NRC is completely captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate.”

To learn more about Beyond Nuclear’s and our allies’ resistance to the Palisades zombification, see our one-stop-shop for related website posts, dating back to 2002:

“Newest Nuke Nightmares at Palisades.”

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

Somerset Green councillor slams Sir Keir Starmer over Hinkley Point C comments

Why should UK environmental protection be sacrificed for the profit of the French nationalised electricity industry?”

Sir Keir Starmer is trying to make it harder to oppose major infrastructure projects

By Daniel Mumby, Local Democracy Reporter,  Somerset Live 28th Jan 2025, https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/somerset-green-councillor-slams-sir-9900421
The leader of the Green Party on Somerset Council has attacked the prime minister following his recent comments on Hinkley Point C. EDF Energy has courted controversy over plans to create new saltmarshes in the Severn estuary to offset the environmental impact of Somerset‘s new nuclear power station.

In an article for Mail Online, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer lambasted efforts to block major infrastructure projects, singling out opposition to the acoustic fish deterrent which EDF had originally proposed for Hinkley Point C. These comments have drawn the ire of Councillor Martin Dimery, who warned Mr Starmer that his stance would lose him support across the south west.

Mr Starmer’s comments came as the government announced reforms to the judicial review system, restricting the grounds on which such reviews could be lodged to “stop blockers getting in the way” of infrastructure projects. He said in his article: “There are countless examples of nimbys and zealots gumming up the legal system often for their own ideological blind spots to stop the government building the infrastructure the country needs……………………………………

In an open letter to Mr Starmer, he said: “I wish I was joking when I point out that the sonar device due to be installed at Hinkley Point C was agreed from the outset to avoid the mass carnage of fish being sucked into the reactor’s mechanism, thus destroying huge quantities of the Bristol Channel’s fish stock. Fish remnants can also cause blockage and mechanical failure in nuclear power plants.

“Last year, EDF applied to Somerset Council to scrap the sonar device in an attempt to cut construction costs. As chairman of the climate and place scrutiny committee, I refused to sign off this appalling attempt to disregard the natural environment and the region’s fishing industry for the sake of EDF’s profits. Why should UK environmental protection be sacrificed for the profit of the French nationalised electricity industry?”

Reports recently resurfaced in the national press that Mr Starmer stated “I hate tree-huggers” at a shadow cabinet meeting in July 2023, at which current net zero secretary Ed Miliband MP unveiled new energy policies to combat climate change.

Mr Starmer denied using this phrase, telling BBC correspondent Laura Kuennsberg that his comments about green energy had been taken out of context.

Mr Dimery added, in direct reference to these claims: “‘Tree hugger’ I may be, prime minister, but if you’re so appalled at the prospect of individuals standing for the environment and against disreputable business practice, then you may find you lose a great deal of support from elected councillors of all political persuasions.”

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

Heysham power station debate sparks questions on safety and incidents

By Robbie Macdonald, Lancaster Guardian 24th Jan 2025

Heysham nuclear power station safety, public health, waste, jobs, clean energy and the roles of councillors, from scrutiny to enthusiastic support, were raised in a Lancaster City Council debate.

It followed a recent announcement by the government and EDF about extending the generating lives of Heysham’s two nuclear reactors and the possibility of smaller reactors being there in the future.

Labour Coun Phillip Black, the former city council leader who resigned in November, put forward a motion backed by others, welcoming the news about extending Heysham 1’s and Heysham 2’s generating lives to 2027 and 2030.

Labour councillors and some others also wanted the council to state it had ‘confidence’ in the safety considerations underpinning the date extensions. And they also wanted the council to state support for new nuclear’ activity at Heysham in future.

However, others including many Greens, said Labour was irresponsible with the motion, given the wide spectrum of responsibilities councillors were supposed to consider.

Green Coun Gina Dowding said: “It’s really irresponsible to bring these two issues into one motion. Both are really important and deserve separate consideration.

“I recently asked a qualified architect, who has spent her working life on nuclear issues, about this. She said it would be deeply irresponsible for the council to ‘welcome’ the extensions. Extending the operating dates beyond the sites’ lifetimes should be questioned by the council – that is our role,” she emphasised. “These buildings were built in the 1980s based on reactor designs in the 1970s.”

She added: “We should also look at anomalies, such as an unforeseen circumstances , which are increasingly happening. There have been unplanned shut-downs. There was one last week. A loud bang was heard and a cloud seen, which concerned residents and the fire brigade was called.”

She also highlighted the proximity of the Heysham nuclear site, along with one at Hartlepool in the north-east, to areas with populations of over 100,000. She added: “At Heysham, the majority of people would be down-wind of any incident. So any motion saying this is ‘great for the future’ is not appropriate. Just because nothing has happened so far does not mean it couldn’t happen in future.

“Of course, there are skills and jobs in nuclear energy. But there are also skills and jobs in the decommissioning stages. Also in renewable energy, along with the potential to create more jobs and generate electricity for less cost.”

…………………………………….Fellow Green Tim Hamilton-Cox said. “Small modular reactors are still beyond the horizon and we have not yet got a permanent solution for nuclear waste. Some councillors have been against having that discussion. Speaking personally, I am not against nuclear power per se. But there are still many considerations and still no permanent solution for waste.”

Lib-Dem Peter Jackson, a member of the city council’s new cabinet, said: “I invite Labour councillors to bring forward a separate discussion about future Heysham questions as soon as possible.”

Morecambe Bay Independent Martin Bottoms, also on the new cabinet, also argued the extensions and any future developments should be treated separately. New modular reactors would not be on the horizon until at least 2025……………………………………

But Labour councillors opposed separating current and future topics. https://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/news/national/heysham-power-station-debate-sparks-questions-on-safety-and-incidents-4958881

January 27, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Trump says he will approve power plants for AI through emergency declaration.

Spencer Kimball,  https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/23/trump-says-he-will-approve-ai-power-plants-using-emergency-declaration.html

  • President Donald Trump said he will expedite the construction of power plants for artificial intelligence through an emergency declaration.
  • Trump said the plants can use whatever fuel they want, including coal.

President Donald Trump said Thursday he will expedite the construction of power plants for artificial intelligence through an emergency declaration, as the U.S. races against China for dominance in the industry.

“We’re going to build electric generating facilities. I’m going to get the approval under emergency declaration. I can get the approvals done myself without having to go through years of waiting,” Trump said in a virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The plants can use whatever fuel they want, the president said, making clear that his administration won’t hold the AI industry to any climate targets. 

There are some companies in the U.S. that have coal sitting right by the plant so that if there’s an emergency, they can go to that,” the president said.

Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day in office, directing federal agencies to use whatever emergency authorities they have at their disposal to expedite energy infrastructure projects.

One day later, Trump unveiled a joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure through a project called Stargate.

Power demand from artificial intelligence data centers is forecast to surge in coming years. The tech companies building the centers that support AI have primarily focused on procuring renewable energy, though they have shown a growing interest in nuclear power to meet their growing electricity needs.

While the tech sector has invested in carbon-free power to meet its climate goals, analysts believe natural gas will play a pivotal role in powering AI because it’s plentiful, is more reliable than renewables and can be deployed faster than nuclear.

Trump said he wants power plants to connect directly to data centers rather than supplying electricity through the grid.

“You don’t have to hook into the grid, which is old and could be taken out,” Trump said. This arrangement, called co-location, has faced opposition from some utilities, who are worried about losing fees and have warned that taking power off the grid could lead to supply shortages.

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

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »