Fears Royal Navy nuclear submarine docks will be built overseas
A multibillion-pound nuclear submarine maintenance contract is at risk of
being awarded to a foreign shipyard, despite safeguards that normally
dictate that high-security work must be performed at secure sites in the
UK. The Ministry of Defence is preparing to kick off a tender for the Royal
Navy’s Additional Fleet Time Docking Capability (AFTDC) programme to build
floating dry docks that are pivotal to national security. The scheme would
double the availability of nuclear submarine docks at HM Naval Base Clyde.
The new docks would allow concurrent dry-dock maintenance of two submarines
at the base, also known as Faslane.
Times 9th May 2026,
https://www.thetimes.com/business/companies-markets/article/royal-navy-nuclear-submarine-docks-programme-euston-v22btzbm3
Putin names condition for meeting with Zelensky
Face-to-face negotiations can take place, but only after a final long-term peace agreement is fully prepared, the Russian president has stressed
9 May, 2026 , https://www.rt.com/russia/639812-putin-names-condition-for-meeting-zelensky/
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that a meeting with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky could take place “anywhere,” including in a third country, but only after a final long-term peace agreement is fully prepared and ready for signing.
“The Ukrainian side and Mr. Zelensky, they are ready to have a personal meeting… We have never refused,” Putin said during a press conference after Victory Day celebrations on May 9. “We can meet in the third country as well, but only after there is an ultimate agreement regarding a peace deal that must be a long-term deal.”
He stressed that the meeting should be the “final thing,” the signing ceremony, and not turn into negotiations. Recalling the Minsk Accords experience, Putin noted: “We can speak hours, day and night and it would yield no results. We need specialists to take care of that… then we can meet, we can sign.”
During the same May 9 briefing, Putin declared that the Ukraine conflict “is heading towards the end.”
These remarks came one day after US President Donald Trump expressed hope that the ceasefire declared by Moscow on May 8 could lead to the fighting wrapping up soon.
Last December, Putin reiterated that Russia seeks a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict provided its root causes are eliminated.
Covert NATO initiative turns film into anti-Russia battleground
The Grayzone and Kit Klarenberg, May 10, 2026
A scandal has erupted over covert NATO conferences with the Western entertainment industry. Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone show how NATO has sought to infiltrate film and TV for decades, with UK intel operatives taking the lead.
On May 3, The Guardian revealed that NATO has held a series of secret meetings with film directors, screenwriters and TV producers in cities from Paris to Los Angeles. The disclosure suggests NATO is seeking to employ the entertainment industry in its propaganda operations as a European war looms.
To date, NATO’s “conversations” with scriptwriters have reportedly “inspired, at least in part” three separate unstated projects, which are already in development. At a forthcoming London summit, NATO operatives are set to meet with screenwriters tied to the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB). In email correspondence, the union told its members the event will focus on the “evolving security situation in Europe and beyond.”
Organizers claim NATO was “built on the belief that cooperation and compromise, the nurturing of friendships and alliances, is the way forward.” The alliance is actively seeking to influence film and TV projects extolling this mantra, stating, “even if something so simple as that message finds its way into a future story,” as a result of the meeting, “that will be enough.”
But collusion between NATO and the entertainment industry has a well-established history. Over recent decades, NATO has covertly sought to employ film and television creatives as psychological operations specialists, while influencing popular culture. A core driver of this push has been Chris Donnelly, a veteran British Ministry of Defence and military intelligence operative, who led alliance expansion into Central and Eastern Europe during the 1990s.
Donnelly later developed the Integrity Initiative to cultivate support for conflict with Russia through covert networks of influential pro-war pundits and operatives. Hidden behind a seemingly legitimate think tank called the Institute for Statecraft, the Integrity Initiative only became known to the public after independent outlets like The Grayzone reported on leaked emails from Donnelly revealing its existence.
In leaked documents discussing NATO expansion, Donnelly stated, “What I needed in the 1990s and did not have” was a major international public relations firm to “scale up successful activities to have real impact,” and achieve “essential behavioural change” in audiences. To address the problem, he proposed “advertising campaigns on TV promoting change, a TV soap opera looking at the problem of corruption” and other innocent-seeming cultural products aimed at enhancing NATO control.
Donnelly expanded NATO – often against significant public opposition – in the former Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia by penetrating target countries’ governments, militaries and even religious institutions. This ensured a NATO-friendly lobby on the streets, and throughout corridors of power, across the region. This experience was fundamental to Donnelly’s founding of now-defunct ‘charity’ the Institute for Statecraft. Through its subsidiary Integrity Initiative, the Institute constructed clandestine nexuses of journalists, academics, and military and intelligence operatives throughout the Western world, known as “clusters”.
These networks could be mobilized to spread pro-NATO propaganda, and encourage public and state-level antagonism towards Russia. Integrity Initiative played a not insubstantial role in laying the Ukraine proxy war’s foundations. An essay published on the Institute’s website in July 2014 by MI6-connected academic Victor Madeira openly laid out this objective, declaring “economic boycott, breach of diplomatic relations” and “propaganda and counter-propaganda” could produce “armed conflict of the old-fashioned sort” with Moscow, “that Great Britain and the West could win.”
In a leaked Institute file, Madeira discusses precisely the kind of “propaganda and counter-propaganda” he meant. “We’ll need to go beyond old-style military ‘romps’ and get entertainment ‘outputs’ that draw out the nature of 21st-century conflict: diffuse, across society, without clear boundaries at times,” he wrote. “That’s the real fight we’re fighting; we can more than hold our own on the military side of things.”
Popular TV show ‘McMafia’ influenced by British intelligence
In February 2018, a veteran writer on US state cultural policy and public diplomacy named Martha Bayles emailed Donnelly to pitch a “multi-episode, multi-season dramatic television series” about Russia in the 1990s. Bayles pointed to a US-UK co-production called McMafia as an example of the “commercial and cultural dominance” of long-form TV with “an avid following among young and old alike.” The widely-watched program drew on former BBC World Service reporter Misha Glenny’s 2008 non-fiction book of the same name………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Donnelly and the British military-intelligence veterans who staffed his now-defunct Institute for Statecraft were hard at work weaponizing popular culture to drive public hostility to Russia. In January 2018, the British state broadcaster interviewed a staffer at Donnelly’s Institute, Euan Grant, about “the impact of suspect Russian money” on London, as part of BBC wider series enquiring “How Real is McMafia?”………………………………………………………………………………
As part of the proposed collaboration, NATO would be granted “input” into the show’s script. At the time, the Institute for Statecraft was the British representative of NATO’s Atlantic Treaty Association, a “community of policy-makers, think tankers, diplomats, academics and representatives from industry.” The organization described its mission as “inform[ing] the public of NATO’s role in international peace and security and promote democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law through debate and dialogue.”
Western popular culture infiltrated by NATO for years
Leaked files show Grant masterminded a dedicated Institute project countering supposed “Russian destabilisation” of “international financial sectors.” Contacts in journalism and the arts provided an ideal delivery mechanism. He argued the broadcast of popular TV shows and films referencing Russian organized crime provided an extraordinary propaganda bonanza for the British military-intelligence apparatus, potentially exposing millions of Westerners to anti-Russian programming……………………………………….
In other leaked documents, Grant strategized a covert propaganda blitz to expose how the NATO protectorate of Moldova was supposedly “exploited” by Moscow, for “building Russian and Russian speaking influence in EU, EU applicant and Eastern Partnership countries.” He noted how recent Hollywood films and the smash French drama series Spiral had featured “Moldovan linked” plotlines, providing “opportunities” to Institute for Statecraft propagandists. He suggested the BBC “might also be interested” in covering recent books about Russian organized crime, “set in Moldova.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Were these top serials demonizing Russia organic products?
It is uncertain which recent Western cultural productions have resulted from NATO’s covert meddling. However, inexplicably timed historical dramas in recent years, featuring highly negative portrayals of Russia and Russians, raise serious questions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/covert-nato-initiative-turns-film?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=474765&post_id=197028664&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=4ds0bd&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Genocide Is Still The Political Test That Matters
May 9, 2026 , Nate Bear, https://www.donotpanic.news/p/genocide-is-still-the-political-test
Yesterday elections were held in parts of England to elect local councillors, and in Scotland and Wales to elect their devolved parliaments.
Fearing a challenge from the left, Starmer’s ruling Labour party spent the campaigning period, in coordination with Britain’s legacy media, confecting antisemitism slurs about Green party candidates.
The final effort, on the morning of the elections, was to turn a comment by the Green leader, Zack Polanski, that Israel nor any other country has an inherent right to exist, into one final psychodrama about antisemitism.
It hasn’t worked.
According to early results, the Greens are on course to beat pre-election forecasts for how many seats they’d win. Labour has suffered a heavy defeat.
The (very) dark, although not unsurprising lining to the cloud, is that the far-right Reform party is on course to win a large number of seats. Unsurprising because neither Labour nor the UK’s state-corporate media went after Reform with the rabid, ferocious intensity they went after the Greens.
Why?
Because Reform’s imperialist, hyper-capitalist, bigoted policies aren’t a threat to the establishment.
Reform’s promises to mass deport brown people, build private prison camps, privatise what’s left to privatise of public services, plough money into the war machine, support Israel, and cut taxes for oligarchs, are supported by a right-wing establishment.
What the establishment fears are threats to their power and wealth. What they fear are those who will redistribute wealth, expand the social welfare state and tax millionaires to do it. And with Zionism so deeply ingrained within western institutions of power, they fear anti-Zionists.
As absurd and morally depraved as it is, the establishment fear those who oppose genocide.
Which is why the media and political establishment made ‘antisemitism’ (actually anti-Zionism of course) into a central election issue. But when it was becoming clear it wasn’t working, when it was obvious that genocide, not fake claims of antisemitism, was a more salient issue for people of conscience, Labour MPs took desperately to social media to tell people not to think about Gaza when voting.
Despite this, despite the full weight of the British establishment being arrayed against the Greens, they have fought back, and fought back successfully.
The full results won’t be known until tomorrow, but a significant win saw a Green mayor elected in the London borough of Hackney, the first time the Greens have won a mayoralty election, and the first time the area has had anything other than a Labour mayor since it was formed.
More significant was that two days before her victory, Zoe Garbett had refused to praise the police for the violent arrest of the mentally ill man whose attacks on three people were mischaracterised as antisemitism (and weaponised against the Greens).
The bottom line is that genocide for many people is still, rightly, one of the primary, if not the primary political test. A test of character, ethics, morality and judgement.
The argument that local elections have nothing to do with Gaza appears logical on one level, but is an evasion.
Politics is (or at least should be) about all these things. About values.
And if you can’t oppose genocide, if you can’t stand up to genociders, why should anyone trust you to stand up for justice, or for anything decently progressive?
But for so many in Britain’s Labour party, as for those in the Democratic party in the US, and most liberal parties across the west, it’s worse than that. It’s not just that they don’t oppose genocide, it’s that they provide active support for genocide and a genocidal state.
The Labour party has effectively criminalised support for Palestine. An anti-genocide and community activist in the UK is facing fourteen years in prison having been charged under terrorism laws for social media posts. For tweets! And an NHS GP, Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, has been arrested numerous times for tweets opposing Israel and genocide and is facing years in prison. Meanwhile, another NHS GP, a Jewish Zionist who served in the IDF and claimed he didn’t kill enough babies, has faced no consequences and is still a practicing doctor.
And of course the Labour government provided funding, support and arms to Israel during the genocide, which included daily spy flights feeding back info to the Israeli army, helping fuel their genocidal assault. An assault that continues to this day, with the majority of Gaza now living in tents among rats and disease atop the wasteland of their former homes.
It’s a disgrace. More than a disgrace. Gaza is a moral collapse, and should be at the centre of all of our politics.
Gaza and genocide should very obviously be the test.
If you provide material and rhetorical support for genocide and genociders, if you have revealed genocide and apartheid as one of your core values, you should have no place in decent society, let alone be anywhere close to political power.
Which is why earlier this week I revealed that a Labour councillor in the London borough of Waltham Forest is a genocide supporter who at the height of Israel’s campaign of mass slaughter visited the country on an atrocity propaganda tour.
The final count isn’t in, so whether Lewis has lost the seat, and whether Labour lost the council to the Greens, we don’t yet know.
But what we do know is that the pro-Israel, pro-genocide, Zionist ideology Lewis wears proudly is rife within Labour.
And while Labour’s moral collapse has spurred the rise of the Greens, the overall environment being created in the UK is aiding the rise of the far-right Reform party.
Because in a country where being anti-genocide is lampooned and criminalised, and where being pro-genocide is considered the sensible and protected position, the emergence of fascism is hardly surprising. The rise of fascism is downstream, as they say, of pro-genocide sentiment. Which makes perfect sense, given genocide is the peak expression of fascism.
The UK is the perfect incubator for the emergence of hyper reactionary politics.
But these elections at least show us that Zionism may, slowly but surely, be losing its grip on western politics.
They also demonstrate that the power of legacy media to kill popular leftist politics with lies and slurs is waning, if not yet dead.
Russia’s Threat Of A Massive Retaliatory Strike On Kiev Likely Isn’t A Bluff
Andrew Korybko, May 07, 2026, https://korybko.substack.com/p/russias-threat-of-a-massive-retaliatory
Russia can’t afford to discredit itself abroad, nor can Putin’s ruling United Russia party afford to discredit itself at home four months before the next polls, by threatening overwhelming retaliation against Ukraine if it attacks Moscow’s Victory Day parade only to symbolically retaliate or do nothing at all.
The Russian Defense Ministry warned local civilians and the staff of diplomatic missions in Kiev of their country’s plans to launch a massive retaliatory strike on the city center if Ukraine goes through with Zelensky’s threat to attack Moscow’s Victory Day parade on 9 May. This was followed by Russia announcing ballistic missile tests from Kamchatka from 6-10 May. Shortly afterwards, the Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated the Defense Ministry’s warning, thus ensuring that the world is aware of it.
This threat likely isn’t a bluff for three sequential reasons. The first is that Russia wants to deter Ukraine from attacking Moscow’s Victory Day parade for self-evident reasons, both relating to optics and the security of its VIPs, to which end it threatened overwhelming retaliation if this happens. The second reason is that Russia cannot threaten such a response without actually going through with it if provoked, otherwise it would irredeemably discredit itself, and more audacious attacks would then likely follow.
And third, Russia is finally signaling its willingness to overwhelmingly retaliate against decision-making centers in Kiev per the Foreign Ministry’s additionally specified threat in the event of Ukraine carrying out this high-profile provocation due to its hardline Kremlin faction partially superceding its moderate one. To explain, Putin hitherto restrained his military due his belief in “The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” as well as his concerns about an uncontrollable escalation spiral sparking World War III.
Once Trump returned and responded positively to Putin’s offer of dialogue for resolving the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, which Biden rejected, Putin and his fellow moderates dangled a resource-centric strategic partnership for incentivizing compromises. The US was receptive to such a partnership, but Russia rejected its demanded compromises that were presented as a precondition, while the US rejected Russia’s own such demands and didn’t coerce compliance from Ukraine or NATO either.
While Trump declined to escalate the Ukrainian Conflict amid this impasse, he still greenlit the rolling back of Russian influence across the world in a bid to coerce Putin into the US’ demanded compromise, namely freezing the conflict in exchange for sanctions relief without resolving the root issues. Informally known as the “Neo-Reagan Doctrine”, it’s placed Russia under pressure in at least 15 different countries, thus discrediting the moderate faction and prompting some among it like Putin to rethink their views.
The Third Gulf War, in which Iran attacked regional US bases without triggering an uncontrollable escalation spiral, then convinced Putin to finally listen to the hardliners who’ve been urging massive strikes on Ukrainian decision-making centers in Kiev since the get-go. Public opinion, which is important ahead of September’s next Duma elections, has long aligned with the hardliners on this issue. Putin now seems to have assented but only in retaliation to Ukrainian attacks against Moscow’s Victory Day parade.
These factors make it unlikely that Russia is bluffing, in which case the country itself wouldn’t just be discredited abroad, but so too would the ruling United Russia party be discredited in voters’ eyes four months before the next polls. There’s already speculation of a protest vote in support of the communist and nationalist opposition parties, which might prompt various reforms if it happens, but a large-scale one driven by any hypothetical bluff could herald an era of uncertainty that Putin would prefer to avoid.
Combatants must address root causes to end Ukraine, Iran wars
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 8 May 26
Ukraine cannot win its war with Russia, now in its 51st month. Why? Russia will never allow Ukraine to join NATO which would allow NATO nukes on Russia’s borders to weaken, isolate Russia from the European political economy. Nor will Russia give back the Donbas containing mostly Russian leaning Ukrainians being brutalized and killed for 8 years prior to the Russian invasion.
Isolating, weakening Russia while ignoring Russia’s security concerns represent the root causes of the war which for Russia is an existential threat to their national security. The Biden administration knew both threats would provoke a Russian invasion but did so anyway figuring war would weaken, if not collapse Russia.
The opposite occurred. Russia has prospered both economically and militarily while Ukraine is a failed state near collapse and totally supported by hundreds of billions in US, NATO aid. But even a trillion in aid will not prevent Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.
Russia always preferred the West negotiate the war’s root cause, their sensible security demands both for themselves and their Russian speaking Ukrainian brethren. While the US is not averse to this now, European NATO countries continue to pour tens of billions into the lost cause to weaken, isolate Russia. Therefore, Russia is committed to resolve the root causes of the war on the battlefield.
All this could have been avoided in November 2021 if the Biden administration had the decency and common sense to negotiate Russia’s national security interests, the root cause of their invasion three months later.
Failure to address the root causes of war also applies to the current US, Israeli war against Iran. For Israel the root cause of the war has nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program which is not developing a nuclear weapon. It is simply Israel’s lust to destroy Iran as a hegemonic rival for Middle East supremacy. The US, supplying most of the fire power, has no dog in Israel’s quest. We can only lament that Israel exerts such malicious control over the Trump administration that it willingly engaged in suicidal war to please Israel.
Just like with Ukraine, the US attack had the opposite effect of a quick collapse of our imagined enemy. Iran prepared a robust defense that has largely destroyed US Gulf States bases, inflicted heavy damage on Israel and Gulf States oil infrastructure. Unless the root causes of Israel’s quest to destroy Iran and Iran’s determination to survive intact are addressed, the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, possibly crashing the world economy.
The war in Ukraine now in its 51st month, and war in Iran now in its 3rd month, will not be resolved till the root causes of both are addressed. Neither the US, NATO nor Israel show any desire to bring peace by addressing them.
Sweden generates 99% of electricity from clean sources. So why is wind power under attack?
Sweden generates 99% of electricity from clean sources. So why is wind
power under attack? Thousands of anti-wind social media posts have been
analysed, as researchers warn that Europe’s energy security could be
threatened. Sweden has been hit the hardest by a coordinated attack on wind
power, according to a new analysis.
Euro News 6th May 2026, https://www.euronews.com/2026/05/06/sweden-generates-99-of-electricity-from-clean-sources-so-why-is-wind-power-under-attack
The World’s Biggest Fusion Reactor Just Hit a Milestone
By Haley Zaremba – May 06, 2026,
- The final components of ITER’s central solenoid magnet — a 59-foot, 3,000-tonne superconducting system 15 years in the making — have arrived in France, clearing a major path toward first plasma.
- ITER will never supply electricity to the grid; it exists purely as a research tool, and at €22 billion and counting, it’s still years from achieving its primary milestone.
- A wave of well-funded private fusion startups is on track to hit the same technical benchmarks as ITER faster and more cheaply — raising real questions about the megaproject’s relevance even as it celebrates progress……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Worlds-Biggest-Fusion-Reactor-Just-Hit-a-Milestone.html
Accountability is optional
Hamza Yusuf | Declassified UK , May 8, 2026
| The Metropolitan Police has declined to investigate Britons accused of committing war crimes while serving with the Israeli military in Gaza.Last April, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC) filed an extensive, 240-page dossier to the Met’s War Crimes Team. |
The report detailed the alleged involvement of the 10 British nationals, including dual citizens, in the “targeted killings of civilians and aid workers, indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, attacks on hospitals and protected sites, and the forced transfer and displacement of civilians”.
Over 70 legal and human rights experts urged the Met’s War Crimes Team to investigate all suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by Britons when the dossier was handed in.
In its recent decision letter, the Met Police accepted that international bodies have found that Israel’s actions in Gaza “could amount to war crimes” and identified at least four individuals of “particular interest.”
However, the War Crimes Team has refused to move beyond a scoping exercise, saying there was “no realistic prospect of conviction” and that an “effective investigation could not be conducted.”
Paul Heron, a solicitor at PILC, said: “We reject The Met’s conclusions”.
“By demanding evidence capable of securing a realistic prospect of conviction before even opening an investigation, the Police have applied the wrong legal test and set the bar far too high. British nationals and residents cannot be allowed to participate in atrocities abroad with impunity.”The PILC maintains that the referral provided credible material warranting a full investigation. We recently revealed that at least 2000 Britons served in Israel’s military during the Gaza genocide. Meanwhile, Britain’s recognition of a Palestinian state may also place British nationals serving in the Israeli army in breach of the 1870 Foreign Enlistment Act. The act prohibits citizens from fighting for a foreign state at war with another state at peace with the UK, but there is no sign of enforcement. |
And what is absent is equally telling: The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) travel advice for Ukraine explicitly warns British nationals that fighting there “may amount to offences under UK legislation”and that they “could be prosecuted on your return”.
No equivalent warning appears in FCDO advice for Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
This exposes a glaring and systemic accountability gap – one the Foreign Office recently deepened by quietly shutting down its unit tracking Israeli breaches of international law.
The Met’s refusal is the latest in a pattern of dereliction: British institutions, one by one, declining to act on Israel’s crimes.
Labour and SNP row over submarines at Rosyth Dockyard
THE SNP have been accused of “scaremongering” after warning that Rosyth
has become a bigger target for terrorists and “rogue nations”. Labour
councillor Patrick Browne took aim and said the request for a public
consultation, on the prospect of Trident submarines carrying nuclear
missiles being maintained at the dockyard, was pointless and never going to
be accepted. He said: “The SNP have been scaremongering for months about
the contingent dock proposal for Rosyth. “With their latest comments they
have reached new levels of doom-mongering.”
But SNP councillor Brian
Goodall, who stated that having subs with warheads on the Forth increased
the threat of attack on Rosyth, said that response and the criticism of his
actions showed “just how right wing many in the Labour Party have become”.
The dispute has arisen due the plan for a contingent dock at Rosyth by 2029
to temporarily house the UK’s next generation of nuclear subs until a
permanent home at Faslane on the Clyde is ready in the 2030s.
Dunfermline Press 6th May 2026, https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/26084331.labour-snp-row-submarines-rosyth-dockyard/
When will the new nuclear operators be required to put money aside for decommissioning?
4 May 26
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/ai-search/?q=When%20will%20the%20new%20nuclear%20operato
New nuclear operators are required by law to set aside funds for decommissioning and waste disposal from the very first day of a plant’s operation . Under the legal framework established by the government, energy firms must have a robust, funded decommissioning plan (FDP) in place and approved by the Secretary of State before they are even granted permission to begin construction on a new power station
Key Funding Requirements
The regulations are designed to ensure that the financial risk of cleaning up nuclear sites remains with the developers rather than the taxpayer. According to the government’s Funded Decommissioning Programme Guidance:
- Insolvency-Proof Funds: Operators must establish funds for clean-up that are administered independently of both the operator and the government to ensure they remain protected even if the company faces financial difficulties .
- Full Cost Responsibility: Operators are responsible for the full costs of decommissioning and their share of waste disposal. Energy Secretary Charles Hendry stated that requiring a credible funding plan “is the best way to protect taxpayers from having to pick up the bill” .
- Waste Transfer Pricing: To provide cost certainty for investors, the government proposed a cap on the waste transfer price for disposing of higher-activity waste in a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF). This cap was suggested to be set at a high level—roughly three times current cost estimates—with an additional risk fee charged to operators to compensate the government for accepting any residual risk .
Evolving Models: The Sizewell C Precedent
While the standard requirement involves operators building up independent funds, the government has introduced a new financial model for the Sizewell C project. As detailed in the written ministerial statement Sizewell C | Public on the hook for decommissioning costs of up to £12bn, this project utilises a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model:
- Consumer Funding: Decommissioning for Sizewell C will be funded via the RAB, which can include additional costs on consumer electricity bills .
- Contingent Liabilities: While the RAB includes protections to minimise public risk, the government has acknowledged a potential exposure of up to £12bn in “remote circumstances” where a fund shortfall materialises .
- Timeline: For modern plants like Sizewell C, decommissioning is expected to be a long-term process, potentially beginning toward the end of the 21st century and continuing until 2160
The government continues to update these roadmaps to ensure they remain suitable for new technologies, such as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), while protecting future generations from bearing legacy costs .
You may be interested in learning more about the estimated total cost of the UK’s nuclear cleanup mission, the progress of the Geological Disposal Facility, or how the Regulated Asset Base model impacts consumer energy bills.
Scots are right to back renewables over nuclear energy.
By Dr Paul Dorfman, Bennett Institute, University of Sussex; Dr Keith
Baker FRSA, Glasgow Caledonian University; Professor Peter Strachan, Robert
Gordon University; Professor Steve Thomas, University of Greenwich; Dr
David Toke, University of Aberdeen.
POLLING released a couple of weeks ago
found that nuclear power has a “miserable” level of support in
Scotland, with more than half of those surveyed saying that the main focus
should be on renewables. According to the facts, this makes sense. Solar
and wind now dominate global electricity generation. Worldwide, solar and
wind power will both surpass nuclear in 2026.
This surge has halted the
fossil fuel power generation rise, with renewables overtaking coal,
supported by battery storage providing system flexibility at scale. All
this points to a shift in the dynamics of the power system. When renewable
energy generation exceeded the rise in global electricity demand last year,
an important threshold was crossed. In 2025, solar became the EU’s top
power source, with wind and solar now the bedrock of European energy
self-reliance. Power generation from renewables in Europe has reached a new
record of 384.9 Terrawatt-hours (TWh).
Meanwhile, Scottish wind power has
also set new records. More renewable energy is produced in the Scottish
Highlands per household than any other area of the UK. Annual renewable
generation across the Highlands is staggering. Renewable energy development
will be further supported by SSEN’s investment of £7 billion in Scotland
in 2026-31, creating 17,500 jobs. More than 100% of Scotland’s
electricity demand has been produced by renewables for the first time,
supporting more than 42,000 jobs and an economic output of more than
£10.1bn.
New UK nuclear plans would be yet another blow to electricity
bill-payers, when Scottish families are already paying what amounts to a
“nuclear tax” to fund the two most expensive nuclear power plants in
the world, England’s Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C.
Meanwhile, the
Norwegian Nuclear Committee has just said no to nuclear power in Norway.
Due to new nuclear construction timescales – up to 17 years according the
UK Government – and the vast cost over-runs, fissile fuel is a policy
dead end, diverting scarce resources away from realistic climate and energy
solutions.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are another a costly distraction.
They are still in development and decades away from deployment at scale.
All this means that new nuclear is too late for the climate and energy
crises. What’s worse, every pound invested in nuclear is a pound not
invested in renewables, energy efficiency, storage and grid resilience –
investments that would provide a much bigger pay-off.
The National 6th May 2026,
https://www.thenational.scot/business/26081051.scots-right-back-renewables-nuclear-energy/
The UK Descends Into Confected Antisemitism Hysteria
Nate Bear, Do Not Panic May 05, 2026
The UK has descended into confected hysteria over antisemitism to protect Keir Starmer and Labour from being wiped out by the Greens in local elections this week.
The British establishment is well-practiced in manufacturing antisemitism hysteria, of course, having used it to destroy Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party when it got too close to power.
Now the UK’s political and media establishment is trying to pull the same trick, but this time on the Green Party and its Jewish leader, Zack Polanski.
This fresh round of hysteria really ramped up after a man with a history of mental illness (and of stabbings) stabbed two Jews in north London last week. Neither died and both will live. Omitted from almost all state-corporate media coverage was the fact that he also stabbed a third man, a Muslim. Also omitted was his history of stabbings (he previously stabbed his own dog, a Somali man, and two police officers), and his history of psychotic breaks.
Despite the circumstances clearly pointing to random attacks by a person suffering an acute mental episode, the police treated it not just as a planned antisemitic attack, but as terrorism.
The terrorism threat level in the UK was raised to severe.
I remember when terrorism used to mean car bombs, political goals, manifestos and scores of dead people, not a mentally disabled man with a butter knife scratching a few people.
But the attack was perfect fodder for the British media and political establishment, who blamed support for Palestine and opposition to genocide for enabling antisemitism, and instantly began demanding pro-Palestine protests were fully outlawed.
The environment of hysteria that ensued is hard to describe if you don’t follow British media or politics closely, but it has been extraordinary.
Keir Starmer gave a primetime televised address to the nation.
His speech was a complete misrepresentation of the facts of the case, completely omitting the Muslim victim, completely omitting the man’s history of illness and random stabbing attacks. But they were deliberate lies of omission critical to constructing an antisemitism narrative.
And it worked.
Every headline, every news broadcast for a week led with the story about ‘the antisemitism crisis in Britain.’
I remember when terrorism used to mean something. I also remember when antisemitism used to mean something. And implying all Jews support the actions of Israel used to be considered antisemitic.
But now that’s all anyone with political or media power does.
Starmer said that anti-genocide, pro-Palestine protests have created the environment for antisemitic attacks. The Green Party’s opposition to Israel’s genocide, the media said, has fuelled antisemitism. The Guardian had a story on the Green Party’s ‘struggle against antisemitism,’ a story which presumably included how just eight months ago the entire Green Party membership antisemitically elected a Jewish leader.
And when you deconstruct the logical conclusions behind the implication that Jews are being attacked because of what Israel has done, it will break your brain.
Firstly the implication that Jews are attacked because of Israel, not because of their religion, means Israel represents all Jewish sentiment……………………………….
We’ve reached the point where everything is antisemitism apart from the thing that is actually antisemitism.
And this is because the Zionists have lost the propaganda war. Genocide is not going back in the bottle. Everyone sees what Israel has done. Everyone can now see what Israel is: a genocidal settler-colony apartheid state run by ethno-supremacists.
The deliberate conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism then is intended to silence criticism of Israel, and erase the truth about what Israel is and has done.
It’s also intended to stop the Green Party inflicting a humiliating defeat on Keir Starmer and his Labour Party in local elections this week.
The establishment calculation is that if you can establish in the mind of progressives the idea that a vote for the Greens is actually a vote for hate, not a vote against genocide or apartheid, you can stop Labour bleeding leftist votes to the Greens.
If the Zionist establishment can reestablish that black is white, they think they have a chance.
But it goes even deeper than that.
The UK establishment aren’t just using the attack for rhetorical purposes, they are using it to actually get Green Party election candidates arrested.
Andrew Gilligan, a former adviser to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, and now a right-wing journalist, wrote a story about two Green Party candidates Saiqa Ali and Sabine Mairey who he said had made ‘antisemitic’ posts. Last week, he gloated that following his stories, they’d both been arrested…………………………………………………
Three people are stabbed every day in London. Over one thousand people a year, of all religions and none.
None of these ever warrant a national prime ministerial TV address.
Twenty-seven mosques in the UK were attacked between July and October last year.
No extra security funding (Starmer has promised an extra £25 million for Jewish areas). No discourse about Islamophobia. Just tumbleweed.
But a random attack on two Jews gets the full national psychodrama treatment because it can be so usefully weaponised to serve the interests of Zionism.
Are people going to fall for this?
I don’t think so.
Is Zack Polanski going to fall for this after seeing what happened to Corbyn?
Hopefully not.
We have more than enough evidence by now to know that you can never appease Zionists.
There is no middle-ground, no strategy of accommodation.
Any concession is interpreted as a sign of weakness. As Corbyn showed us, once they’ve drawn blood, they’ll bleed you dry.
The only anti-Zionist strategy that makes any sense is one of full confrontation.
The only route to victory is their full defeat. https://www.donotpanic.news/p/the-uk-descends-into-confected-antisemitism
Nuclear Sector Must Step Up Cybersecurity
The nuclear industry is weak on cyber security, says a policy institute analysis. To respond, the sector has to take a more transparent and collaborative approach – and speed up action on improvement
Staff Writer NS ENERGY, 4th May 2026
THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL Affairs (a UK policy institute colloquially known as ‘Chatham House’) has described the nuclear industry’s status on cybersecurity as “playing catch-up”. It has warned that “the nature of licensing systems for nuclear operators means that long periods of risky working practices are often tolerated”. As an example, it highlighted the UK’s Sellafield fuel cycle site, which pleaded guilty in June 2024 to criminal charges that related to gaps in its cybersecurity between 2019 and 2023. The site had been repeatedly flagged in inspections by the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which warned it would apply ‘enhanced regulatory attention’ to cybersecurity practices.
The Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) warning came in a report, ‘Cybersecurity of the civil nuclear sector’ that considered the threat landscape and the international legal framework for cybersecurity as it applies to the nuclear industry. The group examined the issue because it saw the civil nuclear industry expanding worldwide at the same time as cyber threats are evolving, and because cyber operations targeting civil nuclear systems have been reported worldwide…………………………………………………………………………
Playing catch-up
RIIA says that the nuclear sector lacks a comprehensive understanding of the threat landscape around cybersecurity and effective resilience strategies.
Vulnerabilities arise from technical and non-technical factors, including the use of older software, personnel being targeted and the lack of sufficient sector-wide awareness and collaboration. Cyber incidents can also occur accidentally as a result of existing vulnerabilities in commercial software. These vulnerabilities include: entry points such as inadequate IT infrastructure maintenance; missing patches and updates; unsafe working practices such as connection to unprotected networks; the use of portable storage devices; legacy systems; and inadequate data protection. The report says, “this range of potential threats makes it doubly essential to ensure fundamentally secure working practices, as it is very difficult to identify and protect against every individual vulnerability”.
The authors say “the nuclear industry was a comparatively late starter” on cybersecurity, compared with other industries associated with critical national infrastructure or sectors such as finance. They add that “the nuclear industry’s strong pre-existing physical security, and its use of bespoke or uncommon industrial control software, meant that there was a sense within the sector that all aspects of security were sufficiently covered.” That sense has gone: more systems in nuclear power plants have acquired digital elements, including commercial off-theshelf software solutions and more cyber vulnerabilities have been introduced as a result. This has increasingly left systems and facilities open to attack and, “in some respects, the civil nuclear industry is thus still playing catch-up”.
The group also says that another challenge to realising cyber security is that the nuclear industry is isolated from other sectors. It is therefore difficult to exchange experiences of best practice with other industries; instead the exchange is “ad hoc, often informal, and largely based on the personal drive and networks of individuals in cybersecurity roles”. The industry is not transparent about incidents, because it is concerned about revealing information about vulnerabilities and equally concerned about public perception if vulnerabilities are revealed. Regulators typically discuss cybersecurity gaps only with specific operators rather than sharing concerns more widely. The report says, “the nuclear industry’s preoccupation with perceptions can get in the way of transparency, even though stronger disclosures would help to bolster confidence in the safety of working practices”…………………………………………………………
………… SMRs may have more cyber vulnerabilities because they are less bespoke than traditional reactors, are connected to the internet and cannot have sterile ‘air gaps’ where there is no connection, because operators require remote access. They may be “more of a target for opportunistic cybercriminals”. In addition, SMRs will also be vulnerable through the construction supply chain, while using artificial intelligence (AI) could lower the entry barrier for cyberattack by making tools for cyber intrusions more accessible and affordable. Finally, if they are successful there will simply be more SMRs, in more places where cyber criminals can attack…………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/analysis/playing-catch-upon-cyber-safety/
1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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