The United States is estimated to have spent more than $400 billion on the kinds of antimissile goals that the president now says will provide “for the common defense.”
Star Wars is back, with an executive order from President Trump that the White House said “directs the building of the Iron Dome missile defense shield for America.”
The order, issued on Monday night, didn’t quite do that. It was more a vaguely worded set of instructions to accelerate current programs or explore new approaches to defending the continental United States than a blueprint for arming the heavens with thousands of antimissile weapons, sensors and tracking devices.
But two blocks away, on the same evening, the Office of Management and Budget issued a 56-page spreadsheet that detailed the suspension of funding for thousands of programs. They included most of the major U.S. efforts to reduce the amount of nuclear fuel that terrorists might seize, to guard against biological weapon attacks and to manage initiatives around the globe to curb the spread of nuclear arms.
The two announcements seemed to encapsulate the administration’s conflicting instincts in its opening weeks. Mr. Trump wants to build big and take the Space Force he created to new heights, even at the risk of new arms races. That effort has been underway since Ronald Reagan’s day, with only mixed results.
But in its drive to shut down programs it believes could be creations of the so-called deep state, the administration wants to cut off funding for many programs that seek to reduce the chances of an attack on the United States — an attack that could very well come in forms other than a missile launched from North Korea, China or Russia.
A judge paused Mr. Trump’s spending freeze on Tuesday, but the president’s intentions are clear.
Though Mr. Trump calls his plan the Iron Dome, it has little if any resemblance to the Israeli system of the same name that has succeeded in destroying small missiles that move at a snail’s pace compared with the blinding speeds of intercontinental warheads………………………………………………………..
Missile defense has long been a favorite topic for Mr. Trump, who has envisioned the project as the next step for the Space Force, which he created in his first term.
But it could also trigger a new arms race, some experts fear. And unaddressed in Mr. Trump’s new initiative is the threat of nuclear terrorism and blackmail with an atomic bomb, which might be smuggled into the United States on a truck or a boat. Many experts see the terrorism threat as far bigger than an enemy firing a single missile or a swarm.
In 2001, after Sept. 11 attacks, the federal government scrambled to get wide-ranging advice on how outwit terrorists and better protect Americans from the threats of germ, computer, chemical and nuclear attacks.
“The combination of simultaneously deploying a missile defense system of questionable effectiveness against any real threat” while “suspending operative programs against nuclear or bioterrorists, sophisticated cyberattackers or others” is a “terrible trade-off,” said Ernest Moniz, the energy secretary under President Barack Obama who now heads the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
“The Iron Dome reference conjures up the success of the Israeli missile defense, but that’s misleading given the relatively short-range missiles that Israel defends against and the small territory it needs to defend,” said Mr. Moniz, a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with long experience in nuclear weapons ………………
Critics of the executive order say it is more a list than a program, and includes systems that have never panned out. In an interview, Theodore A. Postol, an emeritus professor of science and national security at M.I.T., called Mr. Trump’s missile plan “a compendium of flawed weapons systems that have been shown to be unworkable.”…………………………………………
The nuclear watchdog has issued an improvement notice after two railway wagons carrying nuclear waste crashed.
It happened on the Sellafield site, in Cumbria, which manages more radioactive waste in one place than any other nuclear facility in the world.
The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said although no-one was injured and there were no radiation risks during the incident, which happened in November, it could have had “serious consequences”.
A Sellafield spokesman said: “An internal investigation was initiated to understand the root cause and to prevent this from happening again in future.”
The ONR said one of the wagons on the site’s railway had not been properly secured and it rolled about 200ft (60m), hitting a stationary wagon.
They added the wagons were left with minor damage and the nuclear containers were unaffected “due to their robust construction”, however health and safety improvements were needed to prevent future incidents.
Ian Bramwell, ONR’s head of regulation for Sellafield, said: “This will include improving how Sellafield plan, organise, monitor and review the measures in place to protect personnel directly and indirectly involved in rail activities on the site.”
The ONR will reinspect the site in the coming months and Sellafield has until 13 June to comply with the notice.
A Sellafield spokesman said it was working with the ONR to review its processes.
Recent events on the Ukraine-Russia war front have drawn widespread attention to a terrifying new reality: According to a dispatch from C.J. Chivers published by The New York Times Magazine in December, remote drone operators can now overcome virtually any defensive barrier or evasive maneuver, fundamentally altering the nature of warfare between the two countries and raising new concerns about nuclear reactor safety in the region.
From safe bunkers that are sometimes as far as miles away, Ukrainian operators have begun sending small unmanned devices that cost as little as US $400 to destroy tanks and heavy artillery pieces worth millions. While militaries have traditionally relied on larger, “purpose-built” drones in the past, fighters in Ukraine have recently turned to small, relatively inexpensive hobbyist drones used around the world for everything from firefighting to aerial photography. Many of the drone operators are young and not extensively trained. But their work has allowed the vastly outnumbered Ukrainian fighters to overcome highly complex, sophisticated defensive barriers, and inflict brutal, lethal, and enormously expensive damage with shocking ease.
This new turn in weaponized drone use bears startling implications in relation to nuclear reactor safety. There are eight atomic power plants in the Russo-Ukrainian war zone—six at the Zaporizhzhia site in Ukraine, and two at Kursk in Russia—whose security is continually threatened by the ongoing conflict and by a lack of skilled, reliable operators in the area. If severely damaged, deprived of cooling water, or cut off from back-up power supplies, any one of these plants could melt or explode. Such an event could blanket large swaths of the planet and many of Europe and Asia’s largest cities with deadly radiation, inflicting tremendous human suffering as well as permanent ecological devastation. The damage could exceed that of the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl Unit Four, which contained significantly less core radiation than at Zaporizhzhia and Kursk, both of which have operated far longer.
Reactor containment domes are often constructed with thick, reinforced concrete. But they are far from invulnerable. The routes to major catastrophe—from loss of coolant and back-up power to operator error and structural defects—are too numerous to delineate or discount. A combination of these risks plagues each of the more than 400 nuclear power plants licensed worldwide, including the more than ninety in the United States.
Another recent Times report warns that weaponized drones have become part of a “hybrid” global conflict operating in an amorphous “Gray Zone.” The ability of these drones to wreak lethal and exorbitantly expensive havoc is virtually unlimited. With easily deployed drones like those now ravaging Eastern Europe, hostile nations, rogue armies, small terror groups, or even a lone psychopath could handily turn any number of commercial reactors into lethal engines of a radioactive apocalypse.
Atomic technology has been in civilian use since the 1957 opening of Pennsylvania’s Shippingport reactor. The U.S. Congress at the time promised the public that the “Peaceful Atom” would have comprehensive liability insurance within fifteen years. But nearly seven decades later, no commercial U.S. atomic power plant has blanket private accident insurance against a major catastrophe. Homeowners policies nationwide specifically exempt a nuclear disaster: When push comes to shove, homeowners will pay for their own irradiation.
All atomic power plants cause environmental damage on both the local and global level. They emit radioactive Carbon-14, expand global CO2 levels in the mining and fuel fabrication process, burn at 540-plus degrees Fahrenheit that heats the atmosphere and nearby bodies of water, bathe their neighborhoods in “low level” radiation, and create unmanageable wastes. What’s more, they cost far more than renewables by factors of 2 to 400 percent, while producing inflexible “baseload” power that clogs the grid.
Atomic power plants have always been vulnerable to explosion due to natural disasters such as the one at Fukushima in 2011, systemic mismanagement such as that at Chernobyl, or military and terror attacks. The advent of drone warfare in addition to all of this has raised the threat level to a terrifying new height. But in spite of this, Congress approved a forty-year extension of the original federal insurance exemption in 2024. This means that by the 2060s, the industry may have operated an entire century without ever obtaining the basic private insurance necessary to protect the public from a major radiation release.
A new level of terror is now being inflicted in the Ukraine-Russian war zone by drones once considered to be harmless, frivolous techno-gadgets. The nuclear industry’s insistence that we have nothing to fear from military or terror attacks on its uninsured fleet has lost any residual credibility. Given the horrific new reality of drone warfare, generating hyper-expensive radioactive power and waste from hot, dirty, decrepit reactors is less defensible than ever.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said he is growing increasingly concerned that the organisation’s efforts to prevent a major nuclear incident in war-torn Ukraine in under increasing threat.
It comes as Rafael Mariano Grossi (above) revealed the agency’s team based at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has heard frequent explosions from outside the site over the past week.
He added The team reported hearing multiple instances of such military activity in recent days, at varying distances from the ZNPP. There was no damage reported to the plant itself. Although the sound of nearby military action has been a common occurrence ever since the IAEA established a continued presence at the ZNPP in September 2022, it has happened virtually daily in recent weeks.
“For almost three years now, we have been doing everything we can to help prevent a nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant and elsewhere in Ukraine,” Grossi explained. “An accident has not occurred, but the situation is not improving. It is still precarious. I remain seriously concerned about nuclear safety and security in Ukraine, including at the Zaporizhzhya site. Our work is far from over.”
He continued as part of the ongoing work to monitor developments relevant for nuclear safety and security, the IAEA team has continued to conduct walkdowns across the site – including but not limited to the main and emergency control rooms of four reactor units and one turbine hall – and observed and discussed various safety-related maintenance activities with the plant.
The IAEA team was also informed that the ZNPP is procuring three new mobile diesel generators, similar to those received late last year. They are in addition to the site’s 20 fixed emergency diesel generators that are designed to provide on-site power if there is a total loss of off-site power.
Separately, the ZNPP said that four diesel steam generators were put into operation for ten days to provide the steam needed to process liquid radioactive waste. These generators were commissioned a year ago.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the IAEA said air raid alarms were heard on several occasions at Ukraine’s three operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) – Khmelnytskyy, Rivne and South Ukraine – as well as at the Chornobyl site. At the Khmelnytskyy NPP, the IAEA team members have taken shelter at their residence three times in recent days due to such alerts.
At the Khmelnytskyy and South Ukraine NPPs and the Chornobyl site, the IAEA teams were informed of instances of drones being detected at distances ranging from 2 to 30 km from the sites.
Despite such military activities, Ukraine’s nine operating nuclear power reactors have been operating at full capacity this week, safely generating much-needed electricity during the cold winter months.
Separately, the Agency continued with deliveries under its comprehensive programme of nuclear safety and security assistance to Ukraine. Last week, the Chornobyl site received equipment to enhance its nuclear security system. The delivery, the 104th organised by the IAEA since the start of the armed conflict, was supported with funds from the United Kingdom.
Russia and Ukraine continue to swap daily barrages, with the prospects of ceasefire talks appearing slim.
Aljazeera, 29 Jan 2025
A nuclear power plant was among targets during a massive Ukrainian drone attack, Russian officials have said.
Moscow said on Wednesday that the country’s energy infrastructure had come under attack by at least 100 drones overnight. Ukraine also reported strikes. The continuing barrages were accompanied by barbs from the two countries’ presidents, suggesting little prospect of peace talks.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said on Telegram that 104 drones were involved in raids across western Russia, many targeting power and oil facilities.
Local officials claimed that air defence systems had destroyed one drone that had attempted to strike the nuclear power plant in the western region of Smolensk.
“According to preliminary information, one of the drones was shot down during an attempt to attack a nuclear power facility,” Governor Vasily Anokhin said on the Telegram messaging app. “There were no casualties or damage.”
The Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant, the largest power generating plant in Russia’s northwest, was working normally on Wednesday morning, RIA state news agency reported, citing the plant’s press service.
Russia’s air defences reportedly destroyed drones over nine regions, including 11 over Smolensk, which sits on the border with Belarus. Nearly half were hit over Kursk, where Ukrainian troops have occupied several villages for months following an incursion.
Ukraine and Russia have been swapping drone and missile strikes on an almost daily basis, with energy infrastructure a particular target amid winter.
The new artificial intelligence (AI) model from China called DeepSeek created a stock market meltdown on Monday, with the Nasdaq composite dropping 3% and the S&P 500 falling 1.5%. Beyond hammering the share prices of the world’s most valuable companies, DeepSeek has potential implications on vast swaths of America’s innovation industries—including energy.
While U.S. technology companies must quickly respond to the challenges posed by the new DeepSeek model, and the AI innovations to come, other businesses—like the energy companies currently exploring uses for AI in their operations—have a different responsibility. Utilities, independent power producers, and energy companies of all stripes, must take a more measured approach and use this as a teachable moment for their employees to understand the safety and security risks inherent in AI tools. They have to underscore that employees should treat new AI tools no differently from other technologies that enter the enterprise, and use the safety and security standards that inform every decision on technology adoption.
Artificial intelligence has the incredible potential to make energy facilities—and particularly nuclear energy facilities—easier to develop, operate, orchestrate, and maintain. But only if these applications can adhere to the strictest standards of data security, privacy, and operational integrity. Nowhere is this more important than among the nation’s nuclear fleet operators……………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.powermag.com/deepseek-launch-should-prompt-ai-security-reviews-across-the-nuclear-industry/
The dramatic collision happened at 03.51 am on the night to January 26 but did not become known to the public before the press service of Rosatomflot confirmed the facts to several Russian media in the evening of January 28.
Murmansk-based Arctic Observer said in its Telegram channel that the collision happened as the powerful icebreaker was assisting a cargo ship sailing through the ice-covered waters.
According to Rosatomflot, the nuclear powered icebreaker continues to operate in normal mode along the Northern Sea Route, despite the damage to the hull.
Rosatomflot says in the press statement that “seaworthiness has not been lost” and “there were no casualties.”
The state owned operator of Russia’s icebreaker fleet underlines that the two onboard reactors were not harmed in the collision. The information has not been confirmed by independent sources.
Rosatomflot does not provide any information about what caused the navigation mistake leading to the huge icebreaker smashing into the smaller cargo ship.
The 50 Let Pobedy is the newest of the older Arktika-class nuclear-powered icebreakers. Construction of the vessel started in the late Soviet era (1989), but she was not commissioned before 2007.
The icebreaker has Murmansk as homeport, but can operate independently for months at a time during the icy navigation season along the Northern Sea Route.
The cargo vessel Yamal Krechet was according to MarineTraffic.com on her way from Arkhangelsk towards Sabetta, the port where Novatek’s Yamal LNG production facilitates are located.
There are no public reports about the possible damages to the cargo vessel. Several tens of containers can be seen on deck of the Yamal Krechet at the time of the collision, but it is not known immediately known what content the cargo includes.
EDF has signalled that Britain’s fleet of ageing nuclear power plants can keep running into the next decade amid a scramble to hit Ed Miliband’s [?]clean power targets. The company on Monday said it aimed to “maximise output” from the remaining gas-cooled nuclear reactors to “2030+”, providing this can be agreed with regulators.
It is the strongest sign yet that EDF, which is owned by the French state, believes the plants can go even further beyond their planned lifespans after extensions were most recently announced in December. Further extensions would deliver a boost to Mr Miliband, the Energy Secretary, as he seeks to make the electricity grid at least 95pc reliant on “clean” sources of power – including wind, solar, batteries and nuclear – in just five years.
Two of EDF’s oldest nuclear power stations, Heysham 1 in Lancashire and Hartlepool in Teesside, have had their shutdowns postponed from spring 2026 to 2027, while the other two, Heysham 2 and Torness in East Lothian, were extended from 2028 to 2030. But in a newly-published fleet update, EDF says there is a potential opportunity for all four plants to remain online until at least 2030.
The Norwegian rocket incident, which took place on this day in 1995, marked the only known activation of a nuclear briefcase in response to a possible attack
When the Cold War ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it greatly reduced the threat of global nuclear war. But on January 25, 1995, that threat once again came front and center when Russian officers mistook a Norwegian rocket sent to study the aurora borealis for a weapon of mass destruction.
In the early morning hours of January 25, a team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a Black Brant XII four-stage sounding rocket from Norway’s Andoya Rocket Range, a launch site off the country’s northwestern coast. Its purpose: to study the northern lights over Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.
Although the scientists had notified dozens of countries, including Russia, in advance of their high-altitude scientific experiment, the information never made its way to Russia’s radar technicians.
Just four years after the Cold War’s end, tensions between the former USSR and the United States remained high. So when Russian officers at the Olenegorsk Radar Station detected a fast-moving object that was traveling on a high northbound trajectory above the Barents Sea, near Russia’s northern border, they feared it might be a nuclear attack from U.S. submarines. After all, it was similar in speed and flight pattern to a missile. It reached an altitude of 903 miles, separating into several sections as it flew, in the same way warheads would detach from a submarine-launched Trident missile.
Russia’s modus operandi was to identify an attack, assess it and decide whether to retaliate, all within ten minutes. Tracking the trajectory of the “missile” had already taken up the bulk of that time.
As a result, Russian submarine commanders were put on alert and ordered to prepare for a nuclear response. Russian President Boris Yeltsin was notified and given the Cheget, Russia’s nuclear briefcase—typically kept near the leader of a nuclear-weapons state at all times. This holds the launch codes for the country’s missile arsenal, which can be used to order a nuclear strike. To this day, it’s the only known activation of a nuclear briefcase in response to a possible attack.
After conferring with his top advisers, Yeltsin concluded that the rocket was heading away from Russian airspace and didn’t pose any threat to the country.
Twenty-four minutes after its launch, the rocket fell into the sea near Spitsbergen, the only permanently inhabited island on the Svalbard archipelago. The entire incident was over as quickly as it seemingly began.
It was a harrowing false alarm, and one that had the potential to cause widespread casualties. Though the incident has largely flown beneath history’s radar, it did lead to the re-evaluation and redesign of notification and disclosure protocols in both the U.S. and Russia
“US nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath will present a major threat, not only to communities near the base but to Britain as a whole, by putting us all on the US/Nato nuclear front line.”
Matt Precey, BBC News, Suffolk, 25th Jan 2025
The government is facing fresh demands to disclose whether US nuclear weapons are on British soil.
It comes as a senior American official confirmed the deployment of a new generation of bombs had been completed.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has written to the prime minister and the defence secretary to ask whether RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk is housing B61-12 munitions.
The UK and Nato have a long-standing policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at a given location.
……………………………..The B61-12 is a thermonuclear bomb which can be carried by F-35A Lightning II aircraft, which are stationed at RAF Lakenheath.
US Department of Defense documents revealed $50m was being allocated to build new facilities at RAF Lakenheath known as “surety dormitories”, which the Federation of American Scientists claimed pointed to the arrival of nuclear weapons.
Another document seen by the BBC, which has since been removed from the internet, stated there was related work at the base in preparation for its “upcoming nuclear mission”.
The US and its Nato partners do not disclose figures for their European-deployed weapons but the Washington-based Center for Arms Proliferation and Control estimates there are 100 warheads stored across five countries.
Security risks
In a letter to the government, CND general secretary Sophie Bolt said Ms Hruby’s disclosure suggested the nuclear bombs could now be in the UK.
She said: “There has been no information presented to local communities about the new security risks that they face.
“US nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath will present a major threat, not only to communities near the base but to Britain as a whole, by putting us all on the US/Nato nuclear front line.”
The letter added that the public “has a right to know about the risks posed by such a deployment – and the right to express their opposition to it”.
In November, the US Air Force confirmed that unidentified drones had been spotted over three of its airbases in the UK, including RAF Lakenheath.
No further information has emerged as to the origin or intentions of these aircraft.
But CND said the sightings “increased risks” at the base.
Ms Bolt told the BBC: “An accident involving drones and an aircraft carrying nuclear material, or drones causing aircraft to crash on the base near where nuclear weapons are stored, could have catastrophic consequences.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20kwzyg721o
Mr. President, in the closing days of your first administration, you issued an executive order spotlighting the growing dangers of drone attacks against America’s critical energy infrastructure. Your order asked the Federal Aviation Administration to propose regulations restricting overflights of critical infrastructure. Four years later, large drones overflying nuclear plants both here and abroad demonstrate your request was spot on.
Our government, however, continues to discount the dangers such overflights pose. As for the threats facing the most frightening of civilian targets—nuclear power plants—Washington has been all too silent. While there are many other infrastructure nodes drones can hit, the effects of striking nuclear plants exceed that of almost any other civilian target set. Your second administration urgently needs to address this new threat.
………………….. drones—far larger than those commercially available to hobbyists—have overflown US dams, power lines, and nuclear reactors. Recently, the NRC itself has observed a sharp increase in the number of drone sightings over nuclear plants, with drone reports nearly doubling in just one week in December. This led the 10th largest electrical utility company in the United States to urge the Federal Aviation Administration to ban all air traffic over its two nuclear plants after drones were sighted flying over its reactors. Now, Republican governors, including Jeff Landry of Louisiana, are asking you to do something about drones overflying reactors in Louisiana and other states. Overseas, Russian military drones overflew a German nuclear plant in August, prompting the German government to announce a formal investigation.
Security implications
All of this comes as the United States, South Korea, and Russia are pushing the export and construction of scores of large and small reactors in Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia. You and your cabinet should understand that new and existing nuclear plants are potential military targets—now and in the future. Certainly, Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian nuclear reactors and their critical electrical supply systems demonstrates a willingness to attack these dangerous targets.
……………………………………Your administration should start by refocusing on the concerns you rightly raised in 2021. In specific, within your first 100 days in office, you and your cabinet should:
Have the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence assess within 90 days the threat that drone and missile attacks pose to US and allied electrical supply systems, nuclear plants, and other key infrastructure nodes. This report should be published both in classified form—to you, key members of your cabinet, and the national security leadership in the House and Senate—and in unclassified form to the public.
Ask the Defense Department, National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security to explain how they will either require or provide active and passive defenses for existing and planned US civilian and military nuclear plants here and abroad. This report should also describe how the US government should respond to drone and missile attacks on such plants which, if hit, could release harmful amounts of radiation.
Direct the Energy Department and the Federal Aviation Administration to contract JASON (the government’s scientific advisory group), to explore what technologies might better detect and counter hostile drone and missile attacks and mitigate the effects of such attacks. These technologies could include hardening nuclear reactors, active and passive defenses, and research on nuclear fuels that might be able to survive advanced conventional attacks with thermobaric and other advanced conventional explosives.
Direct the Energy Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Defense Department to devise a program of realistic testing to clarify the military vulnerabilities and safety thresholds of reactors and other nuclear plants against missile and drone attacks.
Mr. President, in the closing days of your first administration, you issued an executive order spotlighting the growing dangers of drone attacks against America’s critical energy infrastructure. Your order asked the Federal Aviation Administration to propose regulations restricting overflights of critical infrastructure. Four years later, large drones overflying nuclear plants both here and abroad demonstrate your request was spot on.
Our government, however, continues to discount the dangers such overflights pose. As for the threats facing the most frightening of civilian targets—nuclear power plants—Washington has been all too silent. While there are many other infrastructure nodes drones can hit, the effects of striking nuclear plants exceed that of almost any other civilian target set. Your second administration urgently needs to address this new threat.
Background
Your January 2021 order followed an October 2020 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report that downplayed the dangers posed by nearly 60 previous drone overflights of US nuclear plants. The commission based its conclusion on a Sandia Laboratory technical analysis that focused on “commercially available” drones. The NRC insisted that attacks against reactors with such aircraft posed no risk of inducing a major radiological release.
Since then, drones—far larger than those commercially available to hobbyists—have overflown US dams, power lines, and nuclear reactors. Recently, the NRC itself has observed a sharp increase in the number of drone sightings over nuclear plants, with drone reports nearly doubling in just one week in December. This led the 10th largest electrical utility company in the United States to urge the Federal Aviation Administration to ban all air traffic over its two nuclear plants after drones were sighted flying over its reactors. Now, Republican governors, including Jeff Landry of Louisiana, are asking you to do something about drones overflying reactors in Louisiana and other states. Overseas, Russian military drones overflew a German nuclear plant in August, prompting the German government to announce a formal investigation.
Security implications
All of this comes as the United States, South Korea, and Russia are pushing the export and construction of scores of large and small reactors in Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia. You and your cabinet should understand that new and existing nuclear plants are potential military targets—now and in the future. Certainly, Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian nuclear reactors and their critical electrical supply systems demonstrates a willingness to attack these dangerous targets.
Meanwhile, several recent war games graphically detailed how China, North Korea, and Russia could use such attacks against Taiwan, Europe, and South Korea to disrupt US military operations and force the evacuation of millions to help achieve their military objectives.
Recommendations
If nuclear power is to have the promising future that you and previous administrations have pledged to promote, your administration needs to address the vulnerability of its reactors to drone attacks.
Your administration should start by refocusing on the concerns you rightly raised in 2021. In specific, within your first 100 days in office, you and your cabinet should:
Again ask the Federal Aviation Administration to update its regulations under the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016 (Public Law 114-190). At the very least, the United States needs clearer protocols restricting and countering the use of drones on or over critical infrastructure and other sensitive sites, including nuclear plants, which, if hit, risk a significant release of harmful radiation. Currently, shooting suspect drones down is all but prohibited.
Have the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence assess within 90 days the threat that drone and missile attacks pose to US and allied electrical supply systems, nuclear plants, and other key infrastructure nodes. This report should be published both in classified form—to you, key members of your cabinet, and the national security leadership in the House and Senate—and in unclassified form to the public.
Ask the Defense Department, National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security to explain how they will either require or provide active and passive defenses for existing and planned US civilian and military nuclear plants here and abroad. This report should also describe how the US government should respond to drone and missile attacks on such plants which, if hit, could release harmful amounts of radiation.
Direct the Energy Department and the Federal Aviation Administration to contract JASON (the government’s scientific advisory group), to explore what technologies might better detect and counter hostile drone and missile attacks and mitigate the effects of such attacks. These technologies could include hardening nuclear reactors, active and passive defenses, and research on nuclear fuels that might be able to survive advanced conventional attacks with thermobaric and other advanced conventional explosives.
Direct the Energy Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Defense Department to devise a program of realistic testing to clarify the military vulnerabilities and safety thresholds of reactors and other nuclear plants against missile and drone attacks.
Keys, phones, headphones, socks, thermonuclear weapons – some things just always seem to go missing. Believe it or not, there were at least six instances when the US lost atomic bombs or weapons-grade nuclear material during the Cold War.
Not only that, but the US is responsible for at least 32 documented instances of a nuclear weapons accident, known as a “Broken Arrow” in military lingo. These atomic-grade mishaps can involve an accidental launching or detonation, theft, or loss – yep loss – of a nuclear weapon.
February 13, 1950
The first of these unlikely instances occurred in 1950, less than five years after the first atomic bomb was detonated. In a mock nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, a US B-36 bomber en route from Alaska to Texas began to experience engine trouble. An icy landing and stuttering engine meant the landing was going to be near-impossible, so the crew jettisoned the plane’s Mark 4 nuclear bomb over the Pacific. The crew witnessed a flash, a bang, and a sound wave.
The military claims the mock-up bomb was filled with “just” uranium and TNT but no plutonium core, meaning it wasn’t capable of a conventional nuclear explosion. Nevertheless, the uranium and the weapon have reportedly never been recovered.
March 10, 1956
On March 10, a Boeing B-47 Stratojet set off from MacDill Air Force Base Florida for a non-stop flight to Morocco with “two nuclear capsules” onboard. The jet was scheduled for its second mid-flight refueling over the Mediterranean Sea, but it never made contact. No trace of the jet was ever found.
February 5, 1958
In the early hours of February 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber with a 3,400-kilogram (7,500-pound) Mark 15 nuclear bomb on board accidentally collided with an F-86 aircraft during a simulated combat mission. The battered and bruised bomber attempted to land numerous times, but to no avail. Eventually, they made the decision to jettison the bomb into the mouth of the Savannah River near Savannah, Georgia, to make the landing possible. Luckily for them, the plane successfully landed and the bomb did not detonate. However, it has remained “irretrievably lost” to this day.
January 24, 1961
On January 24, 1961, the wing of a B-52 bomber split apart while on an alert mission above Goldsboro, North Carolina. Onboard were two nuclear bombs. One of these successfully deployed its emergency parachute, while the other fell and crashed to the ground. It’s believed the unexploded bomb smashed into farmland around the town, but it has never been recovered. In 2012, North Carolina put up a sign near the supposed crash site to commemorate the incident
December 5, 1965
An A-4E Skyhawk aircraft loaded with a nuclear weapon rolled off the back of an aircraft carrier, USS Ticonderoga, stationed in the Philippine Sea near Japan. The plane, pilot, and nuclear bomb have never been found.
In 1989, the US eventually admitted their bomb was still sitting on the seabed around 128 kilometers (80 miles) from a small Japanese island. Needless to say, the Japanese government and environmental groups were pretty annoyed about it.
Spring, 1968
At some point during the Spring of 1968, the US military lost some kind of nuclear weapon. The Pentagon still keeps information about the incident tightly under wraps. However, some have speculated that the incident refers to the nuclear-powered Scorpion submarine. In May 1968, the attack submarine went missing along with its 99-strong crew in the Atlantic Ocean after being sent on a secret mission to spy on the Soviet Navy. This, however, remains conjecture.
The Dounreay nuclear facility in Caithness was found to be in breach of rules on eleven occasions in recent years, making it one of the most frequent offenders in Scotland. Dounreay – which houses radioactive waste – was a hub of nuclear research between the 1950s and 1990s but is now the site of the largest nuclear clean up in Scotland.
There was also a breach at the Faslane naval base, although this did not involve radioactivity. The findings come from data released to The Ferret by the Scottish Government’s green watchdog, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa). The agency kept a further 25 sites which had broken rules secret. The Ferret understands this is because they house radioactive materials which governments fear could be targeted by terrorists aiming to build a dirty bomb.
Next will be the “Big One” earthquake everyone knows is coming.
And then—unless we take immediate action—Diablo Canyon’s radioactive cloud will make this region a radioactive dead zone.
My family is now besieged by four fires raging less than four miles away. We don’t know how long our luck will hold.
We are eternally grateful to the brave fire-fighters and public servants who are doing their selfless best to save us all.
We are NOT grateful that Gavin Newsom has recklessly endangered us by forcing continued operation at two unsafe, decrepit nuclear power plants perched on active earthquake faults, set to pour radioactive clouds on us from just four hours north of here.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s resident site inspector—Dr. Michael Peck—after five years at Diablo warned that it cannot withstand the earthquakes we all know are coming.
In 2006 the NRC confirmed that Unit One was already seriously embrittled. Its fragile core makes a melt-down virtually certain to cause a catastrophic explosion, shooting a lethal apocalyptic cloud right at us…and then across the state and continent.
These wildfires make clear that these city, state and federal governments—maybe NO government ANYWHERE—can begin to cope with these kinds of mega-crises.
Imagine watching our public servants trying to cope while dressed in radiation suits, knowing everything around us has been permanently contaminated.
Imagine leaving all you own forever behind while racing to get yourself and your family out of here under the universal evacuation order demanded by radioactive clouds like those that decimated the downwind regions from Chernobyl and Fukushima, not to mention Santa Susanna and Three Mile Island, Windscale and Kyshtym.
Pre-empting such a catastrophe was a major motivation for the 2018 plan to phase out the two Diablo nukes in 2024 and 2025,
That landmark blueprint was crafted over a two-year period with hundreds of meetings, scores of hearings involving the best and brightest in energy, the economy, the ecology and the hard engineering realities of aging atomic power reactors.
It was signed by the then-Governor (Jerry Brown), Lieutenant Governor (Gavin Newsom), state legislature, state regulatory agencies, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plant owner (PG&E), labor unions, local governments, environmental groups and many more, .
The economic and energy security goals of this plan have been far exceeded by advances in renewable generation and battery storage. California now regularly gets 100% of its electricity from solar, wind and geothermal. Battery back-up capabilities exceed Diablo’s capacity by a factor of four or more. Its inflexible baseload productions unfortunately interferes with far cheaper renewables filling our grid.
The grid’s most serious blackout threats now come from disruptive malfunctions and potential disasters at Diablo Canyon.
All this has been well known since 2018, when Newsom signed the Diablo agreement.
The phase-out proceeded smoothly for four years, largely exceeding expectations.
But in 2022, Newsom strongarmed the legislature into trashing the phase-out plan. His Public Utilities Commission decimated the statewide rate structure, costing our solar industry, billions in revenues and at least 17,000 jobs.
Instead Newsom fed PG&E about $1.4 billion in public subsidies and $11 billion in over-market charges to keep Diablo running through 2030.
Neither the NRC nor state nor PG&E have done the necessary tests to guarantee Diablo’s safety, refusing to re-test for embrittlement even though such defects forced the NRC to shut the Yankee Rowe reactor in 1991.
Diablo has no private liability insurance. Should it irradiate Los Angeles, NONE of us can expect compensation.
So as we shudder amidst the horrors of this firestorm, we know that our loss of life, health and property will be orders of magnitude—literally, infinitely—more devastating when, by quake or error, the reactors at Diablo Canyon melt and explode.
Responsibility for this needless, unconscionable threat lies strictly with Gavin Newsom. There is no sane economic, electric supply or common sense reason for him to impose this gamble on us.
Governor Newsom: NOTHING can make public sense of this radioactive throw of the dice.
We respectfully beg, request, demand, beseech that you honor the sacred word you gave in 2018 to phase out the Diablo Canyon atomic reactors.
As we see the devastation engulfing us, and the inability of government to make it right, there is zero mystery as to why these nukes must shut.
nuclear-news 