Iran accuses Europe of surrendering nuclear deal to Trump’s veto
Foreign ministry official says US will be dictating what happens once UN-wide sanctions are reimposed.
Patrick Wintour in Tehran, 2 Sept 25, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/iran-accuses-europe-surrendering-nuclear-deal-trump-veto
Europe is on the verge of abandoning its role as a mediator between the US and Iran and instead handing the Iran nuclear file over to Donald Trump’s veto, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson has said in an interview with the Guardian in Tehran.
Esmail Baghaei said that as soon as UN-wide sanctions were reimposed at Europe’s demand in less than 30 days’ time, the US would regain its security council veto over what happens next, including the continuance of sanctions.
“The Europeans are doing what Trump dictated to them,” he said. “The Europeans’ role is going to be diminished. If you go back to the European foreign policy leaders in the history of the nuclear deal, Javier Solana, Cathy Ashton, Federica Mogherini, Josep Borrell, they all tried to liaise between Iran and the US.
“They tried to prove they were credible negotiating partners. But now the Europeans have decided to be the proxy of the US and Israel. It is absolutely irresponsible of them to hand over that role to the US.”
He highlighted the claim by Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, that Israel was doing “the dirty work … for all of us” by attacking Iran’s nuclear sites in June. “In a way, all of the European countries condoned what Israel did, and very likely provided information to the Israeli regime,” Baghaei said.
His remarks may be designed to put pressure on European capitals to distance themselves from the US and tone down the conditions they have set before they will agree to defer UN sanctions.
Baghaei also said the Iranian government was not constitutionally able to block Iran’s withdrawal from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) if the Iranian parliament went ahead and passed a law withdrawing from it in response to the European reimposition of UN sanctions. Withdrawal from the treaty was the prerogative of parliament, he said.
The number of MPs backing an NPT withdrawal bill is due to be revealed on Tuesday but MPs said the measure was likely to be rushed through parliament with overwhelming support. Withdrawal from the NPT would mean the UN loses all rights to oversee Iran’s nuclear programme and would inevitably raise US concerns about whether Iran will build a nuclear bomb covertly or overtly.
The powerful factions in the parliament seem convinced that Iran has the firepower to inflict heavy damage on Israel in the event of a second western attack.
We are prepared because this is a matter of our dignity and sovereignty,” Baghaei said. “I think you in the UK had your blitz spirit when attacked by Nazi Germany. We have the same spirit because we knew this war imposed on us in the middle of negotiations was so unjust.”
The three European signatories to the original nuclear deal – France Germany and the UK – notified the UN last Thursday that they intended to use their right to reimpose UN-wide sanctions at the end of September unless Iran met three conditions: a return of UN weapons inspectors to the bombed Iranian nuclear sites, the handover of details of the whereabouts of its 400kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and agreement to open talks with America on the future of its nuclear programme.
Europe says there is still room for diplomacy in the coming four weeks to reach an agreement on these conditions. Baghaei described the European conditions as “a sign they are not serious and they do not have good faith”.
He said: “There is an extreme trust deficit between the UN weapons inspectors from IAEA and Iran. There is a real concern that the information gathered at the sites by the IAEA would end up being passed on to Israel.
“It has been a real concern especially after the highly politicised approach of the IAEA. We cannot ignore the fact that previous IAEA reports were abused by America and Israel to craft the resolution to the IAEA board which claimed that Iran was not in compliance with its obligations.” He said that resolution was used as a pretext for the Israeli attack on Iran in June.
He conceded that Iran’s room for diplomatic manoeuvre at the UN in the next month was limited because of the public mood in Iran.
“The fact is our public is outraged because of the unlawful attacks on our facilities and as a government we have to be accountable to our people and to our parliament,” he said.
“The western media goes on about our cooperation with the IAEA and stockpiles, but the western public has to remember the outrageous [acts] committed by Israel and the US. They torpedoed the diplomatic process, they attacked the rule of international law because our facilities have been under inspection 24 hours a day for throughout the past three decades.”
Iranian officials insist that the aim remains to reach a compromise in the next month that will allow the weapons inspectors to return. Iranian diplomats have given assurances to the IAEA that the stockpiles have not been moved. They also insist they are willing to speak to the Americans, but repeated messages sent to Washington have not been met with any response so far.
Baghaei said Iran was willing to reduce the purity level to which it enriched uranium back to 3.67%, the level set in the old nuclear deal, so long as an overall agreement was reached that preserves Iran’s right to enrich uranium domestically.
He questioned why the US was so intent on removing Iran’s right to enrich if, as Trump claimed, Iran’s ability to undertake such enrichment had been already destroyed by the joint US-Israeli attacks.
The lunacy of Britain’s Sizewell C nuclear project
Tom Burke:
All of these problems have been pointed out to the Government
very often, by many energy experts for several years. Even so this only
tells you part of the lunacy of this project. Britain’s electricity
consumers will start paying for Sizewell C now and will go on doing so
without receiving any electricity from it for the next 12-15 years.
They are in effect compulsory investors. However, unlike the private sector
investors in the project they will not receive a handsome double digit
returned on their forced capital investment. Instead they will then be
forced, as the Bloomberg diagram shows, to pay about three times as much
for Sizewell C’s electricity than would otherwise be available to them from
other sources as cheaper electricity will be forced off the grid in order
to preferentially take that from Sizewell C. It is truly said that those
whom the Gods destroy they first make mad.
FT 27th Aug 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/ee89bce2-a3e9-48ed-82eb-85916eb24777#comments-anchor
What will happen if the Ukrainian Armed Forces attempt to strike the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant?
A drone of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was shot down near the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. Metro learned what such an attack would entail if it hit the station
On Thursday, Kursk Region Governor Alexey Smirnov reported the destruction of a Ukrainian drone 5 kilometers from the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. According to official information, the Ukrainian Armed Forces attempted to hit the nuclear power plant, but the drone was destroyed on approach.
As Andrey Ozharovsky, an engineer-physicist and expert on the Radioactive Waste Safety program, told Metro , the Kursk NPP is extremely vulnerable to external influences.
— The Kursk nuclear power plant has a serious feature that makes it extremely vulnerable to a military or terrorist attack. These are RBMK-100 reactors of the Chernobyl type. At this station, as at the Ukrainian one, there is no protective shell for the reactors. That is, the “cap” that usually covers the reactor itself at nuclear power plants and thus protects it from external influences, — the expert explained.
He noted that due to such a technical solution, any shelling poses a very serious danger to the station. According to the scientist, it is especially dangerous that the reactors at the Kursk NPP are located in non-specialized buildings.
“Of course, these Chernobyl-type reactors have been modernized and a literal repeat of Chernobyl is impossible. But in the event of a shelling at the station, a graphite fire and the release of a huge amount of radioactive substances into the environment with contamination of territories hundreds of kilometers away from the reactor cannot be ruled out,” the nuclear physicist emphasized.
He added that the recent attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces could have been not on the station, but on another facility in Kurchatov.
East Lothian Council calls for a study into new nuclear at Torness
EAST Lothian Council will ask the UK Government to carry out a study into
the possibility of creating a new nuclear power station at Torness. The
Council will ask the UK Government to fund the study. The Tories and Labour
supported the motion; SNP and Greens opposed it.
Musselburgh Courier 28th Aug 2025, https://www.pressreader.com/uk/musselburgh-courier-SAXC/20250828/281548002004589
An Elbit-Bain Consortium is Nightmare Fuel: the UK Government Must Not Award £2bn Contract to These Corporate Horrors
Why are Israel’s largest arms firm and a company mired in a corruption scandal even being considered for training British troops?
ANDREW FEINSTEIN, PAUL HOLDEN and JACK CINAMON, DECLASSIFIED UK.
28 August 2025
Britain’s Ministry of Defence might imminently award a 15 year contract, worth £2.5bn, to a consortium headed by the British subsidiary of the Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems and including the US management consultancy firm, Bain and Company.
If successful, Elbit’s consortium would be responsible for training as many as 60,000 members of the UK military.
The consortium seems well-placed to win the contract; it is, in fact, one of only two shortlisted and preferred bidders.
The Ministry of Defence has already given the consortium a £2m contract so that it can develop its proposals further.
This is unacceptable. And it is frankly unbelievable that this consortium is even in the running considering its track record.
Elbit Systems UK is the fully-owned subsidiary of Elbit Systems Limited. Elbit Systems Limited is headquartered in Tel Aviv and is listed on both the Israeli and US stock exchanges.
Elbit is one of the two largest Israeli weapons manufacturers and is central to the IDF’s operations, providing 85% of its drones. Elbit International is also a major contributor to the F-35 fighter jet program, bragging that it plays a ‘critical role’ in the ‘success of the world’s most advanced fighter jet.’
In July 2025, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestine Territories, published an excoriating report setting out corporate complicity in Israel’s “plausibly” genocidal conduct in Gaza – for which she was subsequently sanctioned by Donald Trump.
Her report is clear that Elbit forms a central part of Israel’s military-industrial complex, which has become “the economic backbone of [Israel].”
“Elbit has cooperated closely on Israeli military operations, embedding key staff in the Ministry of Defence,” Albanese points out, further noting that Elbit provides “a critical domestic supply of weaponry.”
Bain
But we’re also deeply concerned about Elbit’s partner, Bain and Company. Bain and Company (not to be confused with the mega hedge fund Bain Capital, which confirmed to us that it is not involved in the Elbit consortium) is a US-based management consultancy firm. …………………………………………………………………….. https://www.declassifieduk.org/labour-must-not-award-elbit-a-2-billion-military-deal/
Assessment of Asse storage chamber conditions begins
Tuesday, 19 August 2025, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/assessment-of-asse-storage-chamber-conditions-begins
An exploratory borehole is providing the first indications of the condition of the stored drums containing radioactive waste within Storage Chamber 12 at the former Asse II salt mine in the district of Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, Germany.
Between 1967 and 1978, thousands of barrels of mostly low-level radioactive waste were emplaced in a total of 13 former mining chambers at the Asse II mine on behalf of the federal government. However, the facility has proven unstable and retrieval of the waste has been legally mandated since 2013.
Germany’s Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE) has announced it “made significant progress” in its preparations for the retrieval of radioactive waste from the Asse II mine at the beginning of August.
“Through a tennis ball-sized hole, we were able to take a look into Storage Chamber 12 for the first time in decades,” said Iris Graffunder, Chair of the Management Board of BGE. “Our first impression is that at least the visible barrels are in good condition. Now we will find out the exact composition of the chamber atmosphere and measure the activity levels in the chamber. For this, we need more space and will have to expand the borehole.”
Storage Chamber 12 contains 7,464 containers, including 6,747 drums and 717 so-called ‘lost concrete shields’ (drums encased in concrete). The containers were stacked horizontally. Storage took place in 1973 and 1974. The eventual formation of a sump containing contaminated solution in the access area to this storage chamber led, among other things, to the Asse II mine being placed under nuclear law in 2009.
Storage Chamber 12 is one of the highest radon emitters in the Asse II mine. At the end of May 2024, miners began the targeted drilling into the chamber under the highest radiation protection standards. At a depth of 750 metres, a borehole about 117 metres long was drilled to access the chamber. On 6 August, radiation protection measurements during drilling showed elevated radon levels, indicating that the chamber had been reached.
A planned gas measurement will reveal the composition of the chamber atmosphere and the factors that influence it. Further geological exploration is also underway. Preliminary investigations revealed that the chamber ceiling was deeper than expected. The first images from the chamber confirm these radar and magnetic measurements. A planned 3D scan is intended to provide a more complete picture of the emplacement chamber.
All of the measured values obtained will be utilised in the further planning of retrieval and in future licensing procedures. Among other things, they will allow BGE to determine which recovery technologies can be used in Storage Chamber 12.
BGE – a federally owned company within the remit of the Federal Environment Ministry – took over responsibility as operator of the Asse II mine and the Konrad and Morsleben repositories from the Federal Office for Radiation Protection in April 2017. It is also tasked with searching for a repository site to dispose of the high-level radioactive waste generated in Germany on the basis of the Site Selection Act that came into force in May 2017.
According to current planning, retrieval of the radioactive waste stored in Asse II is scheduled to begin in 2033. Currently, costs of about EUR4.7 billion (USD5.5 billion) are expected until retrieval begins, including the costs of keeping the mine open and implementing the emergency planning precautions. The costs for retrieval, interim storage, and final disposal after 2033 have not been taken into account.
On fusion liability, Energy Minister completely sidelines the issue.
NFLA 27th Aug 2025
NFLA Secretary Richard Outram is disappointed that the new Energy Minister has completely missed the point that taxpayers should not be on the hook for unlimited liabilities to the nuclear fusion industry ‘resulting from incidents involving nuclear matter or emissions of ionising radiation arising from fusion activities relating to the STEP programme’.
On July 21, Climate Minister Kerry McCarthy issued a Departmental Minute to Parliament indicating that the Government will assume these liabilities for STEP (the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) project, the fusion experimental plant being built on a former power station site in West Burton with taxpayer money.
Richard wrote to his MP, Debbie Abrahams protesting that ‘As a citizen, I do not want my future taxes in hoc to a private company whose insurance risk for its nuclear activities would reside 100% with the future taxpayer. The procedure is certainly experimental; it may also be risky’. He asked that a request be placed with the Minister ‘with a full published risk analysis for STEP’ prior to a Parliamentary debate and vote.
In response, Ms Abrahams advised Richard that she had written to ‘the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to make further enquiries about the STEP programme and make representations about your concerns’.
Ms McCarthy has now written back with a standard response in which she waxes lyrical about the supposed benefits that will be delivered through nuclear fusion, yet this is a technology described in the minister’s response as ‘nascent’, a euphemism for currently non-functioning.
The Minister makes a summary assessment that the risk presented by fusion is low, yet concedes ‘there is no private insurance market to provide cover to UKIFS (UK Industrial Fusion Limited) or their industry partners for liabilities in the unlikely event that radiological material or radiation is released from STEP outside of permit conditions‘.
This could suggest that the private sector might not want to insure any emerging nuclear fusion market because of the risk it presents, and if this is the case His Majesty’s Government might ultimately also have to indemnify nuclear fusion operators other than STEP in the future.
The Ministerial Direction effectively saddles the British taxpayer with responsibility to indemnify UKIFS ‘for an unlimited amount of money, for an unlimited time’.
And there is ambiguity in the timescale as some sources suggest STEP will be operational by 2040, whilst the Minister’s statement of 21 July says ‘by the 2040s’. This could mean 2049.
Finally, Richard was gratified to hear that the Minister’s letter was made in response to ‘a number of constituents’ suggesting some level of public disquiet with the Government’s decision………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/on-fusion-liability-energy-minister-completely-sidelines-the-issue/
The nuclear fusion delusion -Government proposals re Nuclear Fusion Siting Policy
Twelve months after a consultation on a proposed new siting policy for
nuclear fusion concluded in July 2024, the Department for Energy Security
and Net Zero finally published the government’s response to the
submissions received. This new policy (EN-8) mirrors that under development
for nuclear fission (EN-7). Consequently, the NFLAs submitted a response to
both consultations which shared many similarities.
It is clear from the
flavour of the government response that the new Climate Minister Kerry
McCarthy MP has like her predecessors been drinking from the fusion ‘Kool
Aid’, continuing to believe that fusion technology will be deployable on
time and at scale to provide a remedy to climate change.
NFLA 26th Aug 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/wp/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/A438-NB324-Govt-proposals-over-nuclear-fusion-siting-policy-Aug-2025.pdf
Is the UK’s giant new nuclear power station “unbuildable”?
The design of the UK’s latest nuclear power station is “terrifying”,
“phenomenally complex” and “almost unbuildable”, according to Henri
Proglio, a former head of EDF, the French state-owned utility behind the
project.
One month after the final green light for Sizewell C, 1,700
workers are on site in Suffolk, on the UK’s east coast, preparing the
sandy marshland for two enormous reactors that will eventually generate
enough electricity for 6mn homes. The plant will be a replica of the
European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) design that is running four to six years
late and 2.5 times over budget at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, which has
had problems wherever it has been built, in France, Finland and China.
But unlike at Hinkley, where EDF was responsible for spiralling costs and took
a hit of nearly €13bn after running late and over budget, the UK
government and bill payers are on the hook for Sizewell. The state will
provide £36.5bn of debt to fund the estimated £38bn price tag and be
responsible if costs go beyond £47bn
“Being able to build an EPR in the
timeframe, with the planned costs? I don’t think so,” Proglio, a critic
of the design, told the Financial Times. “The EPR is a machine that is
phenomenally complex to build, with more rebar than concrete, it is
terrifying . . . it’s almost unbuildable. As long as the design has
not changed, the difficulty of building will not have changed either.”
FT 27th Aug 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/ee89bce2-a3e9-48ed-82eb-85916eb24777
Government allocates £154m for plutonium disposal.
Jason Arunn Murugesu, BBC News, North East and Cumbria, 28 Aug 25, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czjmzdj7l7wo
More than £150m will be spent by the government to investigate how best to dispose of the 140 tonnes of radioactive plutonium it currently stores at a nuclear plant.
Sellafield in Cumbria holds the world’s largest stockpile of the hazardous material.
Earlier this year, the government announced the material would not be reused and instead would be made ready for permanent disposal deep underground and put “beyond reach”.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said the money would be used to “test and prove” two technologies currently being explored to “immobilise” the highly radioactive material.
Plutonium has been kept at Sellafield for decades and successive governments have kept it to leave open the option to recycle it into new nuclear fuel.
Storing it in its current form is expensive and difficult as it frequently needs to be repackaged because radiation damages storage containers.
In January the government said the safest, most economically viable solution was to “immobilise” its entire plutonium stockpile.
DESNZ said it would spend £154m over five years to allow the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to build specialist lab facilities at Sellafield which would be used to test two emerging immobilisation technologies – Disposal Mox and Hot Isostatic Pressing.
Dr Lewis Blackburn from the University of Sheffield said the two methods involved converting the plutonium into a “mechanically and chemically stable ceramic material” which could then be disposed of.
Mid Copeland and South Copeland in Cumbria are the only two sites in the UK currently being considered by the government to host a nuclear waste disposal site.
It follows a possible site in Lincolnshire earmarked by the government body Nuclear Waste Services pulling out in June.
OUR NUCLEAR WORLD: PICK YOUR TARGET
Why use your own nuclear weapons (with all the risks of escalation that this entails) when you can just take out your enemy’s nuclear power stations or nuclear waste facilities?
Jonathon Porritt 27th Aug 2025
I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only way the nuclear industry’s hype-machine is going to be stopped in its tracks is a Russian cyber-attack on the nine nuclear reactors still operating here in the UK, causing them all to close down and leading to the grid temporarily collapsing. That should do it.
I jest – sort of. But nothing else has worked. In just the last few weeks:
1 The Treasury’s financial modelling for the new power station at Sizewell C (seen by the Financial Times) gives a range of roughly £80 billion to £100 billion, far higher than the official estimate of £47 billion from the Department of Net Zero and Energy Security – which in itself was already nearly double the original cost of £20 billion!
2 The Treasury recently described the Government’s proposals for a new Geological Disposal Facility to deal with the 700,000 cubic metres of spent nuclear fuel as ‘unachievable’. This is a truly extraordinary development – confirming that the UK still has NO idea what to do about its legacy nuclear waste, let alone the waste that will be produced by any new reactors. Yet this got hardly a mention in the media.
3 The Government confirmed that it will be splurging a further £17 billion of taxpayers’ money between now and 2030 on Sizewell C, Small Modular Reactors and fusion energy – even as it continues to ignore the scourge of chronic poverty here in the UK, with 4.5 million children living in poverty – the highest number ever recorded.
On top of which, the industry’s hype-machine is now being turbocharged by the even more powerful hype-machine of AI. Never forget that the nuclear industry is supremely well-equipped to leap onto any and every boondoggle coming down the track – the Bitcoin/Crypto boom a decade ago (which never quite happened), and then green hydrogen. With every hard-to-abate sector queueing up for its share of vanishingly small volumes of green hydrogen, the Knights of Nuclear were up into their saddles just as fast as enough hobby horses could be corralled together to claim that it is only nuclear power that can provide the electricity required.
And now it’s AI. We’ve all read the growth projections for AI-enabled markets – from billions of dollars today to trillions tomorrow. I won’t weary you with the extrapolated increases in electricity consumption for all the new data centres that this entails – but it’s going to be a lot. On a par with the electricity consumption of small countries. New data centres are being built right now, ever bigger, already gobbling up more and more electricity. Nor will I invite you to ask why this AI boom must not – ever, on any terms – be subjected to much deeper scrutiny as to the balance of costs and benefits that will emerge. AI represents the apogee of latter-day technological determinism: if it can be done, then it must and will be done. So suck it up.
I’m not making light of this. The AI-driven nuclear boom in the USA is for real. Donald Trump is getting rid of most regulatory oversight of the nuclear industry, to speed things up, and stock prices of all the publicly traded nuclear companies are up by huge percentages. And it doesn’t seem to matter what kind of nuclear we’re talking about: 40-year-old decommissioned reactors to be given a new lease of life; plans for new big reactors, even in blue states like New York, being fast-tracked; Big Tech applying for construction permits for Small Modular Reactors that are still on the drawing board; and more than $500 billion apparently raised for new fusion reactors – seriously!
It’s not (yet) quite so insane here in the UK, but the signals are worrying. Strenuous efforts are being made by Ministers to force the Office for Nuclear Regulation to fast track any old nuclear proposal. Sweetheart deals with the private sector are being sorted out – regardless of the costs to taxpayers. Rational, evidence-based decision-making is a long-gone memory.
What exactly lies behind this mania? In the timeless words of Sherlock Holmes: ”once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”.
So, let’s try that out for size in the context of nuclear power. It would surely be completely impossible for any responsible government pursuing a Net Zero energy strategy to prioritise nuclear power over all other options, given that:
- Large-scale nuclear reactors are now by far the most expensive option (on a Levelised Cost of Energy basis). UK Government figures in July this year showed new nuclear at £109 per MWh, offshore wind at £44MWh, large-scale solar at £41MWh and onshore wind at £38MWh.
- Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) don’t yet exist, but all experts agree their electricity will be even more expensive than that of large reactors – precisely because they can’t achieve the same economies of scale.
- The contribution of both big and small new reactors to a Net Zero electricity system in the UK will be literally ZERO before 2035 at the very earliest.
- Both big and small reactors will continue to produce significant levels of nuclear waste, adding to a waste crisis to which (as already mentioned) we have no long-term solution.
- ALL nuclear facilities pose a significant security risk, both from the point of view of cybersecurity (more later) and the very real possibility of physical attacks through ‘hostile third parties’.
Which brings us to the extraordinarily improbable truth of it: these days, nuclear power has little to do with electricity generation, and a whole lot more to do with the maintenance of the UK’s nuclear weapons capability……………………………………………………………………
It took a while for the UK Government to catch up, but in its latest Nuclear Roadmap it no longer beats around the bush. There are multiple references to the synergies between nuclear power and nuclear weapons: “this Government will proactively look for opportunities to align delivery of the civil and nuclear defence enterprises….it acknowledges the crucial importance of the nuclear industry to our national security, both in terms of energy supply and the defence nuclear enterprise”, and so on.
Big corporations are loving the fact that this is now out in the open. Bechtel, Babcock and Wilcox, AECOM, Rolls Royce – they’ve all spent decades feeding at the trough of either overt or hidden cross-subsidies between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Rolls-Royce has been one of the most outspoken advocates for Small Modular Reactors, arguing their importance back in 2017 “to relieve the Ministry of Defence of the burden of retaining the skills and capability”………………………………………………………………….
As nuclear nations double down on nuclear power, it’s blindingly obvious that they are ramping up serious threats to national security. Nowhere is this clearer than with the drive to develop SMRs. Most designs currently on the drawing board (that are not light water reactors) will be using as their fuel high-assay, low-enriched uranium – or HALEU, to use the jargon. When it’s first extracted from the earth, uranium concentrations are usually around 1% of the total volume of the ore. HALEU fuel has to be enriched up to around 19% – just below the 20% threshold for the kind of highly-enriched uranium judged to be viable for the manufacture of nuclear bombs. And almost all HALEU fuel comes from Russia!
Beyond that, every nuclear facility (old and new) becomes a target for hostile third parties. Welcome back to the inconceivably scary world of nuclear cyberwarfare. Despite the highest grade of propaganda promoted by the Ministry of Defence – that all nuclear facilities are ‘bomb-proof’ (I kid you not!) – most cyber-experts grudgingly acknowledge that this is just bullshit when it comes to cyber-defence.
And we have no finer example of that than Sellafield, one of the most hazardous nuclear waste and decommissioning sites in the world, sprawling across 2 square miles on the Cumbrian coast. Back in December 2023, a Guardian exclusive revealed that Sellafield had been hacked into ‘by cyber groups closely linked to Russia and China’ since 2015 – despite years of cover-ups by senior staff. “The full extent of any data loss and any continuing risks to systems was made harder to quantify by Sellafield’s failure to alert nuclear regulators for several years”. The denials didn’t last long. The Guardian’s painstaking research over 18 months had got Sellafield bang to rights. In October 2024, it was fined £400,000 by the Office For Nuclear Regulation after it pleaded guilty to criminal charges over years of cyber-security breaches. Astonishingly, the ONR also found that 75% of its computer servers were vulnerable to cyber-attack.
…………………..Why use your own nuclear weapons (with all the risks of escalation that this entails) when you can just take out your enemy’s nuclear power stations or nuclear waste facilities?
…………………… https://jonathonporritt.com/uk-nuclear-policy-risks/
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/
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.
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.
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.
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- May 2026 (92)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 