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Podcast | The 30-year journey to an underground facility for long-term nuclear waste storage

 This month’s podcast discusses the UK’s long-term plan for a vast
underground storage facility for nuclear waste – known as a geological
disposal facility (GDF) – with Nuclear Waste Services (NWS).

NWS chief
scientific adviser Neil Hyatt and NWS head of major permissions Malcolm
Orford join host Rob Hakimian to discuss the need for a GDF, especially in
the context of the UK ramping up its nuclear power intentions. They discuss
examples of similar facilities being developed elsewhere in the world and
how the UK’s will compare.

Malcolm and Neil also talk about the long
process to getting to build a GDF, including the extensive dialogue and
collaboration with the communities that could potentially host it, the
in-depth siting process and what NWS is looking for to determine its final
location. Looking even further into the future, the guests tell Rob about
the potential construction and engineering that would be required to
undertake an infrastructure of this scale and when we might see work begin.


 New Civil Engineer 28th Aug 2025, https://www.newcivilengineer.com/podcast/podcast-the-30-year-journey-to-an-underground-facility-for-long-term-nuclear-waste-storage-28-08-2025/

August 30, 2025 Posted by | UK | Leave a comment

The evolution of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Israel-Ukraine bond.

Orinoco Tribune By Sarah B. – Aug 20, 2025

Volodymyr Zelenskyy: The Pragmatist Who Normalized the Extreme,

Volodymyr Aleksandrovich Zelenskyy, born in 1978 in Krivoy Rog, is one of the most paradoxical figures to emerge from the war. A Jewish comedian turned wartime leader, he has become an international symbol of “resistance” and Western liberal values. But beneath the cultivated myth lies a far more uncomfortable truth: Zelenskyy is the keystone legitimizer in Ukraine’s normalization of far-right extremism, not in spite of his identity, but because of it.

Raised in a Russian-speaking Jewish family in the industrial city of Krivoy Rog, Zelenskyy experienced firsthand the Soviet-era antisemitism and post-Soviet chaos that shaped a generation. He earned a law degree from the Krivoy Rog Economic Institute in 2000, but chose a career in comedy and satire, eventually founding the Kvartal 95 troupe. His 2015 television show Servant of the People, in which he played a humble schoolteacher who unexpectedly becomes president, catapulted him into national fame.

In 2018, life imitated art. Riding a wave of anti-oligarch sentiment and public fatigue with Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy launched his own political party, borrowing the name of his TV show, and won the 2019 presidential election in a landslide, taking over 70% of the vote.

At the time, Zelenskyy appeared ideologically distant from Ukraine’s far-right fringe. His campaign promised peace with Donbass and normalization of relations with Russia. But once in power, his rhetoric softened, his promises evaporated, and the machinery of war began grinding forward with the same paramilitary formations he once distanced himself from now integrated into the state apparatus under his watch.

Zelenskyy’s presidency coincided with the formal mainstreaming of extremist militias like the Azov Regiment, the Tornado Battalion, and Right Sector. Though Azov had been absorbed into Ukraine’s National Guard in 2014, it was under Zelenskyy that it achieved full symbolic legitimacy. In 2023, Azov members were publicly awarded medals despite their use of SS-style insignia, and Zelenskyy referred to them in national speeches as “defenders of freedom.”

Zelenskyy’s defenders argued these moves were necessary under conditions of war. But the symbolic shift was profound: the Jewish president of Ukraine had now become the key validator of openly neo-Nazi formations and, more broadly, of a political culture that increasingly erased the boundaries between patriotism and fascism.

Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity played a central role in shaping his geopolitical posture. Early in his presidency, he gained support from prominent Jewish donors and Western liberal institutions. But it was his alignment with Israeli ideology and strategy that proved most consequential.

In a 2022 interview with Haaretz, Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine’s future should resemble a “big Israel,” a state built on constant mobilization, militarism, and national unity. The comparison wasn’t metaphorical. Zelenskyy repeatedly cited Israel’s compulsory service, hardened identity, and “resilience” as ideals for a wartime Ukraine.

“I think all our people will be our great army. We cannot talk about “Switzerland of the future.” But we will definitely become a “big Israel” with its own face. We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas, there will be people with weapons.

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy, April 2022

In practice, this meant close coordination with Israeli and Zionist networks. Zelenskyy has consistently refused to condemn Israel’s military actions in Gaza, including the 2024–2025 bombardments that employed starvation tactics and AI-guided strikes. Instead, he echoed Israeli rhetoric about terrorism and security, drawing direct parallels between Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Israel’s war with Iran and its regional proxies.

Military cooperation followed suit. Israeli-made drones and surveillance systems flowed to Ukraine through third parties. Ukrainian forces supplied intelligence to Israel on Iranian missile tech recovered from Russian stockpiles and downed drones. Zelenskyy hosted Israeli officials, sought Iron Dome defense systems, and oversaw joint data-sharing agreements between Ukraine’s cyber units and Israeli partners.

Zelenskyy’s personal connections only deepen the alignment. His parents have reportedly lived in Israel for years, a fact often omitted in mainstream profiles but acknowledged in Jewish community outlets. In 2020, Zelenskyy visited Yad Vashem and gave a carefully worded speech reframing Ukrainian nationalism as compatible with Holocaust memory. Instead of confronting Ukraine’s role in the Shoah, Zelenskyy emphasized shared trauma and unity, an appeal that resonated with Israeli officials eager for a strategic partner in Eastern Europe.

Zelenskyy’s ties to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement also run deep. Chabad maintains a large presence in Dnepropetrovsk, historically bankrolled by oligarch Igor Kolomoyskiy. Zelenskyy has also attended Chabad-sponsored events and leaned heavily on global Jewish networks to secure diplomatic and military aid.

The Shifting Center
Zelenskyy’s ideological transformation can be summarized in three phases:

· Pre-2019: A secular liberal, anti-corruption satirist with no links to the far-right.

· 2019–2022: A centrist reformer forced into security pragmatism by war.

· 2022–Present: A full convert to the “big Israel” model, integrating far-right forces and prioritizing militarized nationalism over liberal pluralism.

In the end, Volodymyr Zelenskyy may not be a fascist. But he has become the indispensable manager of a system that rehabilitates fascism, at home, abroad, and in the name of something larger. His legacy will not be one of purity or resistance, but of convergence.

An extract from Gaza to Donbass: How Israel and Ukraine Built a Fascist, Transnational War Machine.

August 29, 2025 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, Ukraine | Leave a comment

UK aware of Israel’s ‘terror’ for over 20 years

Declassified files show Britain has long known of Israel’s criminality against Palestinians, as Whitehall has deepened its military, trade and diplomatic support.

MARK CURTIS, 15 August 2025, https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-aware-of-israels-terror-for-over-20-years/

The parallels are remarkable. 

There were “numerous reports that the Israeli authorities have prevented medical and other humanitarian assistance from reaching those in need”.

The Red Cross was saying “that their staff have been threatened at gunpoint, warning shots have been fired at their vehicles and two ICRC [Red Cross] vehicles have been damaged by tanks”.

There were “media reports of people dying for lack of treatment” and on the “humanitarian impact of curfews affecting over 1 million people”.

There were Israeli soldiers indulging in “theft and looting from homes and shops and the vandalism of people’s homes”. 

And “many reports of the killing of unarmed Palestinians”.

Sound familiar? 

But this is not Gaza in 2025. It was the occupied West Bank in 2002, described in an internal Foreign Office report revealed in the British archives. 

‘Defensive shield’ 

Then as now, Israel claimed to be acting “defensively”. 

In April 2002, it launched “Operation Defensive Shield”, a large-scale military intervention in the major cities and surrounding areas of the West Bank. 

Ordered by then prime minister Ariel Sharon in response to numerous suicide bombings against Israelis by Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas, the Israeli military killed nearly 500 Palestinians within a month.

An official in the Foreign Office’s Middle East Peace Process Section wrote that the intervention in the West Bank involved a “pattern” of “human rights abuses” by the Israeli military.

Some British officials protested at the nature of those Israeli military operations. Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain’s ambassador to Israel, privately told Sharon’s foreign policy adviser, Danny Ayalon, that he was “appalled at the military assault on the Palestinian areas”. 

“The IDF’s behaviour was worthy more of the Russian army than that of a supposedly civilised country”, he told him. “There was no doubt that individual soldiers were out of control, and committing acts which were outraging international opinion”.

Lord Michael Levy, prime minister Tony Blair’s special envoy to the Middle East, was just as blunt. He told Israeli defence minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer in another private meeting that “There was no military solution to this kind of problem. We condemned terror from either side, Palestinian or the IDF”.

Ben-Eliezer responded by repeating that Israel sought to “destroy all terrorist infrastructure”.

Indeed, as in Gaza today, the onslaught in 2002 was supposedly meant to end terrorism against Israel. 

Two weeks before major operations began, Ayalon told Cowper-Coles that “the plan was to mount long-term, large-scale military operations in the Territories, which would dismantle once and for all the terrorist infrastructures there”.

‘Routine excessive force’

The files, released last year, contain an extraordinary report by an unnamed senior British army officer, who wrote that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were a “second rate, ill disciplined, swaggering and bullying force”. 

“They routinely use excessive force such as firing at the ‘legs’ of stone throwers or at ‘car tyres’ with the inevitable stream of ambulances ferrying youths to hospital with fatal bullet wounds to the head and body”, he wrote.

The officer added, in another echo of the present: “The only area where individuals have been held accountable is where IDF actions have resulted in deaths of their own as opposed to the deaths of Palestinians”. 

He believed the IDF “look down on the Arabs and despise them… It needs to be said that the average Israeli does not value an Arab life as equal to a Jewish one.”

Then as now, Israeli actions involved war crimes. The files contain a report from Oxfam lamenting that in April 2002 the Israeli military used its tanks and bulldozers to cut the main water supply pipelines at 24 different places in Ramallah and other towns in the West Bank.

When Israel cut off water supplies in Gaza in October 2023 Keir Starmer notoriously supported it. When asked on LBC, he said Israel had the “right” to do that. 

Indeed, Oxfam’s 2002 report could virtually have been written at any time during Israel’s latest onslaught against Gaza. 

It noted “grave breaches of humanitarian law, including the targeting of medical personnel, denial of medical care to the injured and chronically ill, actual and threatened violence against clearly-identified staff of the ICRC, Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the UN, wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure for water and electricity, and a basic lack of respect for civilian life and welfare”.

20 years of support

What has the UK been doing in the 23 years since officials were privately horrified by Israeli war crimes during Operation Defensive Shield?

The answer is that it has been deepening relations with Israel across the board. 

In April 2002, the UK was supplying less than £1m a year in arms to Israel, the files state. Even since 2008, the UK has exported no less than £590m worth of military equipment to Israel. 

At times, during other episodes in Israel’s criminality, Britain has temporarily halted some arms exports, as it has today. But then they always resume, supplying the same army known to have committed war crimes.

Then there’s the military training and exercises, across all branches of the UK and Israeli services, ongoing over the decades, again benefitting the forces promoting “terror” against Palestinians. 

There’s the secret military agreement the UK signed with Israel in December 2020 and the strategic ‘Roadmap’ accord agreed between Britain and Israel in 2023.

Not to mention the 2022 “strategic approach” to securing a new trade agreement and a host of further financial and diplomatic backing emanating from Whitehall, in Westminster and at the UN and globally.

Over the past 20 years, Britain has been one of the leading world forces aiding Israel, helping to prevent international action against it as the brutal occupation and illegal settling of Palestine have intensified.  

Promoting terrorism

All this has been done in the knowledge that Israel’s repressive policies and “routine excessive force” have inspired the terrorism that Israel says it is fighting. The 2002 files are explicit on this point. 

Levy told Ben-Eliezer in April 2002, referring to Israel’s military activities, that “all it would do was produce more suicide bombers”.

Indeed, Levy wrote to Blair and foreign secretary Jack Straw on 1 April 2002 stating: “Dreadful suicide bombs almost daily and motivation only increased by current IDF operations”. 

He added: “My experience in the region is that it is just not possible to keep 3½ million Palestinians under formal occupation against their will. If a 16 year old girl is prepared to join the ranks of suicide bombers something is fundamentally wrong”.

But still helping Israel

Yet these officials, while coldly recognising the reality of Israel’s actions, still couldn’t bring themselves to make Britain seriously challenge it. 

The write–up of Levy’s meeting with Ben-Eliezer states: “Lord Levy ended the meeting by underlining our wish to help Israel get out of the mess into which it has got itself by launching the campaign into Palestinian areas.”

On 9 April, Blair’s private secretary Matthew Rycroft suggested that his boss “reaffirm my own commitment to Israel” in being awarded an honorary doctorate from Haifa University. 

Neither could those officials bring themselves to  unequivocally recognise Palestine as a state.

The 2002 files contain a ten-page report by the Cabinet Office called “Making a Palestinian State”. Twenty three years on, the conditions for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state are far worse, with hundreds of thousands of illegal Israeli settlers now living in the West Bank.

British officials knew then of Israel’s effective opposition to a Palestinian state. David Manning, Blair’s foreign policy adviser, wrote on 2 April that Sharon’s government offered only “some extremely vague idea of a Palestinian state that might at some point acquire the attributes of true statehood, but only when it suited Israel”.

Two years later, Blair even considered establishing a “privileged Israeli partnership” with Nato and the European Union in the event of a peace deal with the Palestinians, the British files also show.

There were no red lines, there are no red lines. British ministers, in both 2002 and in 2025, remain knee-deep in aiding and abetting what they know is Israel’s brutal criminality.

August 29, 2025 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

Peace in Ukraine spells disaster for mainstream political parties in Europe.

we are living in an era of high debts and constant pressure for cuts, while carrying on funnelling billions into Zelensky’s life ending gravy train. It’s quite remarkable.

In discussion with Jamarl Thomas

Ian Proud, Aug 27, 2025 https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/peace-in-ukraine-spells-disaster?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=172084456&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I enjoyed talking today for the first time to Jamarl Thomas, an American commentator, currently living in Indonesia (a country I have a soft spot for from my time as Head of the Indonesia and East Timor Section at the start of my Foreign Office career). The conversation covers the first 45 minutes of the video.

We covered the normal topic – Ukraine. I set out my view that peace in Ukraine spells disaster for mainstream political parties in Europe, because they would have to admit a massive foreign policy blunder in the face of a rising tide of nationalism, including in the UK, Germany and France.

Of course, cutting their losses now and pushing Zelensky to sue for peace would increase their chances to repairing the damage before the next rounds of elections. Instead, they are pushing increasingly unsustainable policies, including massive welfare upheaval in Germany at a time when that country wants to boost defence spending by 100bn Euros per year by 2029! Britain, apparently, is edging closer to an IMF bailout – I personally think that story is overblown by the right wing media in the UK. However, we are living in an era of high debts and constant pressure for cuts, while carrying on funnelling billions into Zelensky’s life ending gravy train. It’s quite remarkable.

Partly, this is a bi-product of the erosion of democracy in Europe, characterised best by the ever centralising tendencies of the European Institutions.

Keir Starmer may wonder why his seemingly unassailable lead has been gobbled up by Reform (who, by the way, I’d personally never vote for). Rather than worry about English people putting up English flags, he might wonder whether, in fact, British voters want him to put British interests first.

Seems obvious, right? Clearly not, though..

I hope you find the discussion interesting. Also note I am setting up a new area in my study for podcast interviews which is a bit more personal.

The red plate over my shoulder is my Diplomatic number plate from Moscow.

August 29, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

Russia outsmarts France with nuclear power move in Niger

BBC, Paul Melly, West Africa analyst, 26 Aug 25

Russia has dangled the possibility of building a nuclear power plant in uranium-rich Niger – a vast, arid state on the edge of the Sahara desert that has to import most of its electricity.

It may be deemed impractical and may never happen, but the concept is yet another move by Moscow to seek a geopolitical advantage over Western nations.

Niger has historically exported the metal for further refining in France, but that is changing as the military-led country cuts off ties with the former colonial power.

The uranium-mining operation operated by French nuclear group Orano was nationalised in June, which cleared the way for Russia to put itself forward as a new partner.

It is talking about power generation and medical applications, with a focus on training local expertise under a co-operation agreement signed between Russian-state corporation Rosatom and the Nigerien authorities.

If ever brought to fruition this would be the first nuclear power project in West Africa.

Beyond initial discussions, it is unclear how far down this road things will progress. But already, with this first move, Moscow has shown that it grasps the depth of local frustrations.

For more than five decades Orano – which until 2018 was known as Areva – mined Niger’s uranium, to supply the nuclear power sector that is at the heart of France’s energy strategy.

The French government-owned company now gets most of its supplies from Canada and Kazakhstan and has projects in development in Mongolia and Uzbekistan.

But the Nigerien connection remained significant and freighted with a degree of political and perhaps even cultural weight.

Yet Paris did not share its nuclear energy knowhow with its loyal African supplier. Niger, meanwhile, has to rely largely on coal-fired generation and imports of electricity from Nigeria.

But now, the rupture in relations between Niger’s junta and France has allowed Moscow to offer the hope, however distant, of a nuclear future, something that Areva/Orano, over so many years of local operation, had failed to do.

“Our task is not simply to participate in uranium mining. We must create an entire system for the development of peaceful atomic energy in Niger,” Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev declared on 28 July during a visit to Niamey.

Naturally, this is not entirely altruistic. There are economic benefits for Russia and it is part of a broader push to displace Western influence from the Sahel region.

The Russians could get the chance to develop the mine in Imouraren, one of the world’s largest uranium deposits……………………………………………………………………………….

Building a nuclear plant can take years and such projects require a huge amount of capital investment, and once operational they need a large and secure power supply.

Furthermore, viability depends on the availability of industrial and domestic consumers who can afford the price of the power being generated.

There are also questions over whether a nuclear power plant could be safely built and protected in today’s fragile and violent Sahel region. Jihadist armed groups control large areas of terrain in Mali and Burkina Faso, and parts of western Niger which makes the area highly insecure.

Given the time, the costs and the complications of developing the nuclear sector in Niger, this remains a distant prospect…………………………………………………………………

 the junta in power today now seems determined to bring the era of French uranium mining in Niger to an end, with one official telling the Paris newspaper Le Monde that Orano had been “stuffing itself with our country’s natural resources”.

Who can say what Moscow’s proposals for nuclear scientific partnership and perhaps even power generation will ever amount to in concrete terms?

But one thing is clear, in Niger it is the Russians who have correctly read the political mood. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y23lvm05no

August 29, 2025 Posted by | Niger, politics international, Russia | Leave a comment

Gaza to Donbass: How Israel and Ukraine Built a Fascist, Transnational War Machine.

 Orinoco Tribune By Sarah B. – Aug 20, 2025

From Bandera to Ben-Gurion, a new axis of ethno-supremacy is rising, fueled by U.S. backing. Same guns. Same flags. Same ideology. Gaza and Donbass are not separate wars. They are one machine.

The Ukraine–Israel Nexus: Pragmatic Alliances Amid Paradoxes and Shared Challenges
From Bandera to Ben-Gurion, echoes of ethno-nationalist revival resonate in the modern trajectories of Ukraine and Israel, two states forged through war, hardened by siege mentalities, and fueled by historical narratives of existential struggle. But these similarities are no accident of parallel development. They reflect a deepening alignment shaped by shared adversaries like Russia and Iran, backed and brokered by the same Western patrons.

In 2022, an officer of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, toured Israel after surviving the siege of Mariupol. By 2025, Israeli drones were flying missions over Rafah, while American-made PSRL-1 rocket launchers, initially supplied to Ukraine, were spotted in conflict zones across the Middle East. Some experts suggest these may have reached Gaza through black-market channels, though a direct transfer remains unproven. What is undeniable, however, is the convergence of military technologies, intelligence doctrines, and battlefield logistics spanning both theaters.

In April 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, himself a stalwart ally to the Zionist cause, declared that he envisioned Ukraine becoming “a big Israel.” In doing so, he abandoned the pretense of liberal reform and embraced a future defined by permanent militarization, domestic surveillance, and an ideologically mobilized citizenry. Ukraine, he suggested, would survive not by joining Europe’s post-national dream, only by imitating the ethos of a heavily securitized Middle Eastern state.

Zelenskyy’s statement didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It followed decades of quietly intensifying Ukrainian–Israeli ties, in historical memory, military cooperation, tech integration, and shared narratives of victimhood. But it also exposed a deeper and more disturbing fusion. When the president of a country still reckoning with the legacy of the Holocaust and its own fascist collaborators calls for the building of a “Big Israel,” he is not just invoking a model of defense, he is invoking a model of justified violence, permanent siege, and a long tradition of selective memory, one that both Ukraine and Israel have wielded to reconcile uncomfortable historical alliances of culpability.

Just as the OUN’s collaboration with Nazi Germany is selectively reframed within the Ukrainian national mythos, Israel’s founding story often omits its own moments of strategic accommodation with fascism.

In the 1930s and ’40s, elements of the Zionist movement, most notably the Haavara Agreement between Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency, facilitated Jewish emigration to Palestine while bypassing international boycotts of the Nazi regime. Revisionist factions like Lehi (the Stern Gang) and Irgun Zvai Leumi even sought military cooperation with the Axis powers against the British. These uncomfortable truths, long buried beneath the moral absolutism of Holocaust remembrance, underscore a shared willingness, Ukrainian and Zionist alike, to collaborate with and even become genocidal regimes when national aspirations were at stake.

What binds Gaza and Donbass is not a monolithic “machine of violence” but a transnational matrix of ideological alignment, technical cooperation, and strategic utility. Ukraine’s campaign of “decommunization” often mirrors Israel’s internal securitization and demographic engineering, both clad in the moral armor of historical trauma. In practice, both states justify aggressive internal and external policies through the language of survival.

This article maps the ideological, military, economic, and cultural architecture of the Ukraine–Israel relationship. From Soviet-era tensions to the post-2014 reconfiguration of alliances, we explore how pragmatic imperatives have forged a new axis of ethno-nationalist power, increasingly central to NATO’s long-term vision of regional dominance.

I. Historical Ties
To understand the modern partnership between Ukraine and Israel, one must begin with their shared, and often contradictory past. Ukraine was both a cradle of early Zionism and a site of violent antisemitic pogroms. Movements like Hibbat Zion, emerged in the 1880s in cities like Odessa and Kiev, decades before Theodor Herzl’s more famous Vienna-based political Zionism. Their mission: to restore the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland in Palestine. Ukraine, in this sense, was an incubator for the ideological DNA of the Israeli state……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

…………………….The historical relationship between Israel and Ukraine is not one of ideological clarity. It is a pragmatic evolution, shaped by war, memory, trauma, and strategy. The next sections will examine how these contradictions manifest on the battlefield through weapons, doctrine, personnel, and propaganda, across Gaza and Donbass alike.

Selective Memory: How Competing Genocides Forged Strategic Amnesia
In the narrative war between historical truth and political utility, few examples are as revealing, or as cynical, as the ways Ukraine and Israel have reframed and often embellished their respective traumas to enable strategic cooperation.

By the 1980s, Ukrainian nationalist émigrés began aggressively promoting the 1932–33 Soviet famine, or Holodomor, as the “Ukrainian Holocaust.” This was a calculated response to the rising global awareness of Jewish suffering, spurred by the 1978 NBC miniseries Holocaust, which explicitly portrayed Ukrainians as Nazi collaborators. For diaspora groups still loyal to Stepan Bandera’s legacy, the documentary posed a threat to their rehabilitated image, which they had worked fervently to whitewash. In turn, they constructed a counter-narrative of equal, if not greater, Ukrainian victimhood, one that would cast the Soviet state as genocidal and reframe Ukrainian history through the lens of national martyrdom.

This rhetorical project relied on inflating death tolls,………………………………………………………………..

The result is a pact built on strategic amnesia: a cold alliance between two states whose foundational traumas have been rewritten to serve military alignment, ideological affinity, and common enemies………………………….

…………II. Blood Ties and Battle Lines: Commanders, Crusaders, and Collaborators
The machinery of transnational warfare is not only built with weapons, laws, and doctrines, but with men. Individuals who embody the ideological convergence between Zionist ethno-nationalism and Ukrainian fascism do not operate in the shadows; they are often celebrated, recruited, and strategically deployed across theaters like Gaza and Donbass. These figures serve as ideological evangelists, field commanders, propaganda tools, and networking nodes between far-right militias, Western intelligence networks, and private security structures.

Some are Azov veterans turned actors and influencers. Others are American-Israeli contractors building bridges between Tel Aviv and Kiev. ……………………..

Continue reading →

August 28, 2025 Posted by | Israel, politics international, Reference, Ukraine | Leave a comment

How France’s nuclear dream became a financial nightmare

Decades of neglect, spiralling costs and political denial have turned France’s once-vaunted nuclear program into a cautionary tale, writes Jean-Luc Porquet (translated by Dr Evan Jones).

By Jean-Luc Porquet | 22 August 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/how-frances-nuclear-dream-became-a-financial-nightmare,20076

Translator’s note: The French nuclear power sector is in deep trouble technically and financially. Formally a cheap source of power, embedded costs have not been counted. There has been a dramatic loss of skills over the decades, inhibiting effective maintenance of existing plants and turning the construction of France’s then most powerful reactor at Flamanville on the Normandy coast into a nightmare.

Technological and resource challenges have escalated, including water availability in the face of climate change. The plan to bury accumulated highly radioactive waste at Bure, 250 kilometres east of Paris, remains at an impasse. And the political class lives in denial.

Meanwhile, sections of the Coalition parties cling to nuclear power as Australia’s post-coal salvation. Australia has uranium. However, regarding nuclear power prospects, there is no history, no capacities, no acceptable locations, no acceptable burial sites and no water. In short, local nuclear power adherents have no brains.

EVERYTHING WAS SUPPOSED to work to plan.

The 58 French nuclear reactors built at an accelerated pace between 1977 and 1996 were due to tranquilly finish their life after 30 years of good and faithful service. And the new super-powerful EPRs [European Pressurised Reactors], designed and built by Éléctricité de France, were to effect a seamless transition.

It was estimated that, by 2012, the first French EPR would be put into operation at Flamanville.

Kapow! Not only has its cost, initially fixed at €3.3 billion [AU$5.9 billion], multiplied by six (!), but its construction site has proved a nightmare. The EPR was connected to the grid only in 2024. And it has hardly run since (it is currently in shutdown).

An emergency patch-up job has been necessary on the aged French nuclear park so that its tired reactors can hang on for another 20 years. Total cost of this major overhaul now in progress: €100 billion [AU$180 billion].

At the moment when the urgent necessity to find €40 billion [AU$72 billion] in economies for the 2026 budget obsesses the Bayrou Government [under pressure from Brussels], Reporterre publishes on YouTube a remarkable documentary by journalist Laure Noualhat, titled Nucléaire – Comment il va ruiner la France. (See also Noulhat’s book, Le nucléaire va ruiner la France, Seuil-Reporterre, 224p.) It is noted there that, in the fairytale world that is nuclear energy, billions waltz out by the dozens. The golden rule is: “Whatever it costs!”

Other inescapable costs to come? To prolong the life of the plant at The Hague, where nuclear fuel is processed and which is at the end of its life — rough estimate: €34 billion [AU$61 billion]. To continue to dig deep at Bure, where the most dangerous nuclear waste will be buried 500 metres below ground — estimated cost: €35 billion [AU$63 billion]. To dismantle the 58 reactors, which, even patched up, will finish by being at the end of their life in ten or 20 years — cost: €50 billion. Total: €219 billion [AU$395.8 billion] to find. This is not all.

The EDF has sold an EPR to Finland for €3 billion [AU$5.4 billion] and two others to the United Kingdom for €22 billion [AU$39.7 billion]. And has promised to take care of any additional costs. Such comes in at €12 billion [AU$21.6 billion] for the former, €56 billion [AU$101 billion] for the latter. Do the maths.

Thomas Piquemal, the EDF’s chief financial officer at the time, went into meltdown. And resigned [in March 2016]. And this is not all.

In 2022, President Macron announced that, at his demand, the EDF will launch six “new generation” EPRs [initially, then eight more to 2050]. Hand on heart, it will happen (in fact, one knows nothing about them). Estimated total price: €100 billion [AU$180.7 billion] (more or less). A former EDF Director, Philippe Huet, interviewed by Laure Noualhat, called this a “crazy gamble”.

If ever this delusional program (transparently dismissed by the Cour des comptes [equivalent to the National Audit Office] as inadvisable) sees the day, who will pay for it? Not the EDF, already indebted to the tune of €55 billion [AU$99 billion]. Nor any private investor (not mad!). Guess… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjfHyhkpef8

Jean-Luc Porquet has been a journalist at Le Canard enchaîné since 1994, where this article appeared on 9 July. He writes a column on ecology and technocratic society, as well as theatre reviews. He has written a dozen books, the latest of which, Le grand procès des animaux, is a satirical fictional account of the sixth extinction in progress.

August 27, 2025 Posted by | France, politics | Leave a comment

‘Nuclear Priests’ could warn future people about wastes under the Irish Sea

 When Sir Keir Starmer entered No 10 last summer, it did not take long for
him to pick up where his predecessors left off on delivering more nuclear
power stations with a promise to “build, baby, build”. The Prime
Minister has vowed to “fast forward on nuclear” and so far has stuck
true to his word, with the Government taking up a larger stake in the
Sizewell C power plant in Suffolk, while loosening planning rules to allow
new small modular reactors to be built across the country.

But with the push for more nuclear power, bringing with it a steady supply of low-carbon energy, the question is inevitably asked: what do you do with all the
nuclear waste?

The answer is to dig a hole nearly the size of Wembley
Stadium 1km down beneath the Irish Sea, that could one day see the rise of
a new “atomic priesthood” and even, some have jokingly claimed, the
creation of glow in the dark cats.

But policymakers are aware that to push
ahead with this new nuclear drive, they will need to develop a stable,
long-term storage facility in which to hold not just future nuclear waste,
but all the nuclear waste the country has produced since the dawn of the
nuclear energy age in the 1950s. This is what the proposed Geological
Disposal Facility will provide.

And when they say long term, they mean long
term. “The purpose of the facility is to keep the radioactivity away from
humans and the environment so that it can’t cause harm for a sufficient
period of time – and that’s of the order of a few hundred thousand
years,” Neil Hyatt, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Nuclear Waste
Services, tells The i Paper.

 iNews 24th Aug 2025, https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/nuclear-priests-glowing-cats-how-warn-future-generations-atomic-danger-3875319

August 27, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Ukraine drone hits Russian nuclear plant, sparks huge fire at Novatek’s Ust-Luga terminal

Reuters, By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly, August 24, 2025

  • Summary
  • Ukrainian drone sparks fire at nuclear plant
  • Nuclear reactor cuts capacity after attack
  • Ukrainian drones strike Ust-Luga fuel export terminal
  • Attacks come on Ukraine’s Independence Day

MOSCOW, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Ukraine launched a drone attack on Russia on Sunday, forcing a sharp fall in the capacity of a reactor at one of Russia’s biggest nuclear power plants and sparking a huge blaze at the major Ust-Luga fuel export terminal, Russian officials said.

Despite talk of peace by Russia and Ukraine, the deadliest European war since World War Two is continuing along the 2,000 km (1,250 mile) front line accompanied by missile and drone attacks deep into both Russia and Ukraine.

Russia’s defence ministry said at least 95 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted across more than a dozen Russian regions on August 24, the day that Ukraine celebrates its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Kursk nuclear power plant, just 60 km (38 miles) from the border with Ukraine, said that air defences shot down a drone that detonated near the plant just after midnight, damaging an auxiliary transformer and forcing a 50% reduction in the operating capacity at reactor No. 3.

Radiation levels were normal and there were no injuries from the fire which the drone sparked, the plant said. Two other reactors are operating without power generation and one is undergoing scheduled repairs.

The United Nations’ nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it was aware of reports that a transformer at the plant caught fire due to military activity and stressed that every nuclear facility should be protected at all times.

A thousand km north, on the Gulf of Finland, at least 10 Ukrainian drones were downed over the port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s northern Leningrad region, with debris sparking fire at the Novatek-operated terminal – a huge Baltic Sea fuel export terminal and processing complex, the regional governor said.

PLUME OF BLACK SMOKE

Unverified footage on Russian Telegram channels showed a drone flying directly into a fuel terminal, followed by a huge ball of fire rising high into the sky followed by a plume of black smoke billowing into the horizon.

“Firefighters and emergency services are currently working to extinguish the blaze,” Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Russia’s Leningrad region, said. There were no injuries, he added……………………..

Ukrainian drones also attacked an industrial enterprise in the southern Russian city of Syzran, the governor of the Samara region said on Sunday. A child was injured in the attack, according to the governor, who did not specify exactly what had been attacked.

………………………………………………………………….Earlier this month, the Ukrainian military said it had struck the Syzran oil refinery. The Rosneft-owned (ROSN.MM)
, opens new tab refinery was forced to suspend production and crude intake after the attack, sources told Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-drone-hits-russian-nuclear-plant-sparks-huge-fire-novateks-ust-luga-2025-08-24/

August 27, 2025 Posted by | incidents, Russia, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Russia reports blaze at one of its biggest nuclear power plants.

Guy Faulconbridge & Lidia Kelly, Sunday 24 August 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/ukraine-russia-kursk-nuclear-power-plant-b2813260.html


  • Russia     accused Ukraine of launching multiple drone attacks on Sunday, targeting critical infrastructure.
  • A drone strike near the Kursk nuclear power plant damaged an auxiliary transformer, leading to a 50 per cent reduction in operating capacity at reactor No. 3, though radiation levels remained normal and there were no injuries from the fire that the drone sparked.
  • A separate significant blaze erupted at the Novatek-operated Ust-Luga fuel export terminal in Russia’s Leningrad region after it was reportedly hit by Ukrainian drones.
  • Drone activity resulted in temporary flight suspensions at several Russian airports, including Pulkovo.
  • Ukrainian drones also attacked an industrial enterprise in Syzran, with Ukraine stating its strikes target infrastructure crucial to Russia’s military efforts.

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Russia, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Fears are rising about the safety of a nuclear power plant in Russia after a Ukrainian attack overnight

Metro, 24 Aug 25

A fire broke out at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant after military forces shot down what they claimed was a Ukrainian drone flying near the site.

The ‘device detonated’ upon impact, sparking a blaze which the facility said ‘was extinguished by fire crews,’ authorities in Kursk said in a statement.

It added: ‘A combat unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) belonging to the Armed Forces of Ukraine was shot down by air defence systems near the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant………………….

Alexander Khinshtein, the regional acting governor, blamed Ukraine for the strikes in a post on Telegram, adding: ‘They are a threat to nuclear safety and a violation of all international conventions.’

The incident marks one of the most serious escalations in the targeting of energy facilities, fueling anxiety about fighting creeping dangerously close to nuclear assets.

Ukraine’s drone strike on Kursk was one of several reported overnights by Russian authorities.

Firefighters were also sent to an explosion and a fire at the port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s Leningrad region, which holds a large fuel export terminal.

The regional governor said about 10 Ukrainian drones were brought down and debris had sparked the fire.

Ukraine has not commented on the Russian accusations………….

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Russia, safety | Leave a comment

Ukraine Drone Strikes Hit Russia’s Nuclear Plant & Fuel Terminal | War Escalates

India Times 24 Aug 25

Ukraine has carried out a powerful drone strike on Russia, crippling the Kursk nuclear power plant and setting the Ust-Luga fuel export terminal ablaze. On Ukraine’s Independence Day (August 24), Russia reported intercepting 95 drones across more than a dozen regions.

At Kursk, a drone explosion damaged a transformer, forcing reactor No. 3 to reduce capacity by 50%. Meanwhile, in Ust-Luga, a drone slammed into a Novatek fuel tank, triggering a massive fire and black smoke visible for miles. The terminal is one of Russia’s most important energy hubs, exporting jet fuel and fuel oil to China, Singapore, and Turkey.

Earlier this month, Ukraine also struck the Rosneft refinery in Syzran, intensifying pressure on Russia’s military-industrial infrastructure. Despite Putin’s downplaying of casualties and radiation risk, Ukraine insists these strikes are retaliation for Russia’s relentless missile and drone attacks. This video covers the full story, analysis, and global implications.

August 26, 2025 Posted by | Russia, Ukraine, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Downed Ukrainian Drone Causes Fire At Kursk Nuclear Power Plant

23 Aug 25, https://www.rferl.org/a/kursk-nuclear-power-plant-fire-ukraine-drone/33511527.html

A fire broke out at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in Russia after Russian military forces shot down a Ukrainian drone flying near the plant, the press service of the plant said.

The drone — one of several reported on August 23 by Russian authorities — fell on an auxiliary transformer, sparking the fire, which has been extinguished. There were no injuries, according to the press service’s statement.

“A combat unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) belonging to the Armed Forces of Ukraine was shot down by air defense systems near the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant,” the press service said in a statement on Telegram.

“Upon impact, the drone detonated, resulting in damage to an auxiliary transformer,” the statement said.

As a result of the explosion, unit three of the plant was reduced to 50 percent capacity, the press service said.

Radiation levels at the site and in the surrounding area have not exceeded normal limits, it added.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Kyiv has increased its drones strikes inside Russia over the past several months in response to Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine. It says the attacks are aimed at destroying infrastructure that is crucial to Moscow’s military efforts.

The story was first reported by Russia’s federal television network REN TV. It reported that the transformer is not a part of the nuclear section of the plant, citing the plant’s press service. It was not immediately clear in which part of the plant the fire occurred.

Kursk NPP is 40 kilometers west of Kursk city, the regional capital, on the bank of Seim River. The first unit was launched in 1976. Other units were added in 1979, 1983, and 1985, according to the press service.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly warned of the dangers of fighting around nuclear plants since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Earlier on August 23, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region were attacked by drones, regional authorities said, adding that six drones were shot down over the Leningrad region and two were shot down over St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg authorities said windows were shattered in a residential building in the Krasnoselsky district when the drone was “neutralized.” There were no reports of injuries or deaths.

The drone attacks led to flight delays and cancellations at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. More than 30 flights were diverted to alternate airports during the day, and more than 50 flights were delayed. The airport resumed operations by in the evening.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that a drone flying toward Moscow had been shot down.

August 26, 2025 Posted by | Russia, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Chicago Tribune letters again avoid reality of Ukraine’s impending battlefield defeat

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 25 Aug 25

It’s understandable the Trib would publish letters promoting further aid in weapons, severe economic sanctions, even NATO troops to enable Ukraine to prevail in their war with Russia. But it is not understandable that all 7 August 25th letters advocating that policy are disconnected from the battlefield reality.

Virtually all historians, political scientists and military realists concur that Ukraine’s military is within months, if not weeks of collapse. They also agree there is no way outside of all out war, likely to go nuclear, to reverse that collapse They understand any peace settlement must include Russia’s 3 security objectives including no NATO for Ukraine, neutrality for Ukraine going forward, and no return of the Ukraine oblasts containing Russian leaning Ukrainians seeking peace and separation from the Kyiv government bent on their destruction.

This alternative, reality based assessment of the war, deserves to be provided to the Trib’s readership. But only publishing readers promoting endless war which simply ensures Ukraine’s battlefield defeat, is not responsible journalism. Trib readers deserve a full range of views; indeed ones more connected to reality.

August 26, 2025 Posted by | media, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

German experience shows transition to renewables possible for Taiwan and the world.


https://tcan2050.org.tw/en/nonuke-2/ 2025-08-19, Dr. Ortwin Renn |Professor emeritus of Environmental Sociology and Technology Assessment, Stuttgart University; Scientific Director emeritus, Research Institute for Sustainability at GFZ, Potsdam , Germany (RIFS)

I am writing to express my full support for your initiative to keep Taiwan’s nuclear power reactors permanently shut down and to accelerate the transition toward renewable energy. This position is not only grounded in scientific evidence but also in practical experience from countries such as my home country Germany that have successfully advanced toward a sustainable energy future.

In 2011, I served as a member of the German Federal Government’s Ethics Committee on a Safe Energy Supply, established after the Fukushima disaster. Our task was to assess the future role of nuclear energy in Germany. After extensive consultations with leading scientists, economic stakeholders, and civil society organizations, the Committee reached a consensual recommendation: to phase out nuclear energy within ten years while investing heavily in renewable energy sources. This decision was not only an ethical imperative but also based on sound economic and technological reasoning.

The results speak for themselves. Between 2011 and 2025, Germany’s share of renewable energy in electricity generation rose from 23% to over 54%—an increase of 230%. Nuclear power, which contributed less than 18% in 2011, was more than compensated for by renewables. In addition, the expansion of renewables significantly reduced reliance on fossil fuels, thereby contributing to climate protection and energy sovereignty.

Today, renewable energy is not only clean but also cost-competitive. The production of electricity from wind and solar power is now cheaper than generating electricity from coal or gas and even cheaper than nuclear power when comparing the costs of building new facilities. It is true that the transition requires substantial upfront investment in grid upgrades, storage systems, and backup solutions. However, once this infrastructure is in place, the long-term costs of renewable energy generation are lower than those of fossil or nuclear alternatives.

Germany’s relatively high electricity prices are not a consequence of renewables, but largely due to global gas price spikes and the cost of imported electricity. The long-term trend is clear: renewable energy is becoming the most economical, environmentally sound, and politically stable source of power.

The lessons for Taiwan are evident. A transition to renewable energy is possible, economically viable, and ultimately beneficial for society. It contributes to climate protection, environmental quality, and public health. It reduces dependence on imported fuels and avoids the long-term risks and costs associated with nuclear energy, including waste management and potential catastrophic accidents. Most importantly, it enables a decentralized and resilient energy system that benefits local communities.

Achieving this transformation requires significant investment and strong political will, but the German experience demonstrates that it is both feasible and advantageous. I strongly encourage Taiwan to seize this opportunity and prioritize a renewable-based energy future over a return to nuclear power.
https://tcan2050.org.tw/en/nonuke-2/

August 26, 2025 Posted by | Germany, renewable, Taiwan | Leave a comment

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