Trusting the ‘Five Eyes’ Only
For Their Eyes Only
The “Five Eyes” (FVEY) is an elite club of five English-speaking countries — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States — that have agreed to cooperate in intelligence matters and share top-secret information. They all became parties to what was at first the bilateral UKUSA Agreement, a 1946 treaty for secret cooperation between the two countries in what’s called “signals intelligence” — data collected by electronic means, including by tapping phone lines or listening in on satellite communications. (The agreement was later amended to include the other three nations.) Almost all of the Five Eyes’ activities are conducted in secret, and its existence was not even disclosed until 2010. You might say that it constitutes the most secretive, powerful club of nations on the planet.
Anglo-Saxon solidarity supersedes all other relationships.
JULY 5, 2024 By Michael Klare / TomDispatch, https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/05/trusting-the-five-eyes-only/
Wherever he travels globally, President Biden has sought to project the United States as the rejuvenated leader of a broad coalition of democratic nations seeking to defend the “rules-based international order” against encroachments by hostile autocratic powers, especially China, Russia, and North Korea. “We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world,” he told veterans of D-Day while at Normandy, France on June 6th. “Today… NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.”
In other venues, Biden has repeatedly highlighted Washington’s efforts to incorporate the “Global South” — the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East — into just such a broad-based U.S.-led coalition. At the recent G7 summit of leading Western powers in southern Italy, for example, he backed measures supposedly designed to engage those countries “in a spirit of equitable and strategic partnership.”
But all of his soaring rhetoric on the subject scarcely conceals an inescapable reality: the United States is more isolated internationally than at any time since the Cold War ended in 1991. It has also increasingly come to rely on a tight-knit group of allies, all of whom are primarily English-speaking and are part of the Anglo-Saxon colonial diaspora. Rarely mentioned in the Western media, the Anglo-Saxonization of American foreign and military policy has become a distinctive — and provocative — feature of the Biden presidency.
America’s Growing Isolation
To get some appreciation for Washington’s isolation in international affairs, just consider the wider world’s reaction to the administration’s stance on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden sought to portray the conflict there as a heroic struggle between the forces of democracy and the brutal fist of autocracy. But while he was generally successful in rallying the NATO powers behind Kyiv — persuading them to provide arms and training to the beleaguered Ukrainian forces, while reducing their economic links with Russia — he largely failed to win over the Global South or enlist its support in boycotting Russian oil and natural gas.
Despite what should have been a foreboding lesson, Biden returned to the same universalist rhetoric in 2023 (and this year as well) to rally global support for Israel in its drive to extinguish Hamas after that group’s devastating October 7th rampage. But for most non-European leaders, his attempt to portray support for Israel as a noble response proved wholly untenable once that country launched its full-scale invasion of Gaza and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians commenced. For many of them, Biden’s words seemed like sheer hypocrisy given Israel’s history of violating U.N. resolutions concerning the legal rights of Palestinians in the West Bank and its indiscriminate destruction of homes, hospitals, mosques, schools, and aid centers in Gaza. In response to Washington’s continued support for Israel, many leaders of the Global South have voted against the United States on Gaza-related measures at the U.N. or, in the case of South Africa, have brought suit against Israel at the World Court for perceived violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
In the face of such adversity, the White House has worked tirelessly to bolster its existing alliances, while trying to establish new ones wherever possible. Pity poor Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has made seemingly endless trips to Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East trying to drum up support for Washington’s positions — with consistently meager results.
Here, then, is the reality of this anything but all-American moment: as a global power, the United States possesses a diminishing number of close, reliable allies – most of which are members of NATO, or countries that rely on the United States for nuclear protection (Japan and South Korea), or are primarily English-speaking (Australia and New Zealand). And when you come right down to it, the only countries the U.S. really trusts are the “Five Eyes.”
For Their Eyes Only
The “Five Eyes” (FVEY) is an elite club of five English-speaking countries — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States — that have agreed to cooperate in intelligence matters and share top-secret information. They all became parties to what was at first the bilateral UKUSA Agreement, a 1946 treaty for secret cooperation between the two countries in what’s called “signals intelligence” — data collected by electronic means, including by tapping phone lines or listening in on satellite communications. (The agreement was later amended to include the other three nations.) Almost all of the Five Eyes’ activities are conducted in secret, and its existence was not even disclosed until 2010. You might say that it constitutes the most secretive, powerful club of nations on the planet.
The origins of the Five Eyes can be traced back to World War II, when American and British codebreakers, including famed computer theorist Alan Turing, secretly convened at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking establishment, to share intelligence gleaned from solving the German “Enigma” code and the Japanese “Purple” code. At first an informal arrangement, the secretive relationship was formalized in the British-US Communication Intelligence Agreement of 1943 and, after the war ended, in the UKUSA Agreement of 1946. That arrangement allowed for the exchange of signals intelligence between the National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — an arrangement that persists to this day and undergirds what has come to be known as the “special relationship” between the two countries.
Then, in 1955, at the height of the Cold War, that intelligence-sharing agreement was expanded to include those other three English-speaking countries, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. For secret information exchange, the classification “AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY” was then affixed to all the documents they shared, and from that came the “Five Eyes” label. France, Germany, Japan, and a few other countries have since sought entrance to that exclusive club, but without success.
Although largely a Cold War artifact, the Five Eyes intelligence network continued operating right into the era after the Soviet Union collapsed, spying on militant Islamic groups and government leaders in the Middle East, while eavesdropping on Chinese business, diplomatic, and military activities in Asia and elsewhere. According to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, such efforts were conducted under specialized top-secret programs like Echelon, a system for collecting business and government data from satellite communications, and PRISM, an NSA program to collect data transmitted via the Internet.
As part of that Five Eyes endeavor, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia jointly maintain a controversial, highly secret intelligence-gathering facility at Pine Gap, Australia, near the small city of Alice Springs. Known as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), it’s largely run by the NSA, CIA, GCHQ, and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Its main purpose, according to Edward Snowden and other whistle-blowers, is to eavesdrop on radio, telephone, and internet communications in Asia and the Middle East and share that information with the intelligence and military arms of the Five Eyes. Since the Israeli invasion of Gaza was launched, it is also said to be gathering intelligence on Palestinian forces in Gaza and sharing that information with the Israeli Defense Forces. This, in turn, prompted a rare set of protests at the remote base when, in late 2023, dozens of pro-Palestinian activists sought to block the facility’s entry road.
Anglo-Saxon Solidarity in Asia
The Biden administration’s preference for relying on Anglophone countries in promoting its strategic objectives has been especially striking in the Asia-Pacific region. The White House has been clear that its primary goal in Asia is to construct a network of U.S.-friendly states committed to the containment of China’s rise. This was spelled out, for example, in the administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States of 2022. Citing China’s muscle-flexing in Asia, it called for a common effort to resist that country’s “bullying of neighbors in the East and South China” and so protect the freedom of commerce. “A free and open Indo-Pacific can only be achieved if we build collective capacity for a new age,” the document stated. “We will pursue this through a latticework of strong and mutually reinforcing coalitions.”
That “latticework,” it indicated, would extend to all American allies and partners in the region, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea, as well as friendly European parties (especially Great Britain and France). Anyone willing to help contain China, the mantra seems to go, is welcome to join that U.S.-led coalition. But if you look closely, the renewed prominence of Anglo-Saxon solidarity becomes ever more evident.
Of all the military agreements signed by the Biden administration with America’s Pacific allies, none is considered more important in Washington than AUKUS, a strategic partnership agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Announced by the three member states on Sept. 15, 2021, it contains two “pillars,” or areas of cooperation — the first focused on submarine technology and the second on AI, autonomous weapons, as well as other advanced technologies. As in the FVEY arrangement, both pillars involve high-level exchanges of classified data, but also include a striking degree of military and technological cooperation. And note the obvious: there is no equivalent U.S. agreement with any non-English-speaking country in Asia.
Consider, for instance, the Pillar I submarine arrangement. As the deal now stands, Australia will gradually retire its fleet of six diesel-powered submarines and purchase three to five top-of-the-line U.S.-made Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs), while it works with the United Kingdom to develop a whole new class of subs, the SSN-AUKUS, to be powered by an American-designed nuclear propulsion system. But — get this — to join, the Australians first had to scrap a $90 billion submarine deal with a French defense firm, causing a severe breach in the Franco-Australian relationship and demonstrating, once again, that Anglo-Saxon solidarity supersedes all other relationships.
Now, with the French out of the picture, the U.S. and Australia are proceeding with plans to build those Los Angeles-class SSNs — a multibillion-dollar venture that will require Australian naval officers to study nuclear propulsion in the United States. When the subs are finally launched (possibly in the early 2030s), American submariners will sail with the Australians to help them gain experience with such systems. Meanwhile, American military contractors will be working with Australia and the UK designing and constructing a next-generation sub, the SSN-AUKUS, that’s supposed to be ready in the 2040s. The three AUKUS partners will also establish a joint submarine base near Perth in Western Australia.
Pillar II of AUKUS has received far less media attention but is no less important. It calls for American, British, Australian scientific and technical cooperation in advanced technologies, including AI, robotics, and hypersonics, aimed at enhancing the future military capabilities of all three, including through the development of robot submarines that could be used to spy on or attack Chinese ships and subs.
Aside from the extraordinary degree of cooperation on sensitive military technologies — far greater than the U.S. has with any other countries — the three-way partnership also represents a significant threat to China. The substitution of nuclear-powered subs for diesel-powered ones in Australia’s fleet and the establishment of a joint submarine base at Perth will enable the three AUKUS partners to conduct significantly longer undersea patrols in the Pacific and, were a war to break out, attack Chinese ships, ports, and submarines across the region. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the Chinese have repeatedly denounced the arrangement, which represents a potentially mortal threat to them.
Unintended Consequences
It’s hardly a surprise that the Biden administration, facing growing hostility and isolation in the global arena, has chosen to bolster its ties further with other Anglophone countries rather than make the policy changes needed to improve relations with the rest of the world. The administration knows exactly what it would have to do to begin to achieve that objective: discontinue arms deliveries to Israel until the fighting stops in Gaza; help reduce the burdensome debt load of so many developing nations; and promote food, water security, and other life-enhancing measures in the Global South. Yet, despite promises to take just such steps, President Biden and his top foreign policy officials have focused on other priorities — the encirclement of China above all else — while the inclination to lean on Anglo-Saxon solidarity has only grown.
However, by reserving Washington’s warmest embraces for its anglophone allies, the administration has actually been creating fresh threats to U.S. security. Many countries in contested zones on the emerging geopolitical chessboard, especially in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, were once under British colonial rule and so anything resembling a potential Washington-London neocolonial restoration is bound to prove infuriating to them. Add to that the inevitable propaganda from China, Iran, and Russia about a developing Anglo-Saxon imperial nexus and you have an obvious recipe for widespread global discontent.
It’s undoubtedly convenient to use the same language when sharing secrets with your closest allies, but that should hardly be the deciding factor in shaping this nation’s foreign policy. If the United States is to prosper in an increasingly diverse, multicultural world, it will have learn to think and act in a far more multicultural fashion — and that should include eliminating any vestiges of an exclusive Anglo-Saxon global power alliance.
Trump Advisers Call for U.S. Nuclear Weapons Testing if He Is Elected
A former national security adviser says Washington “must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world,” while critics say the move could incite a global arms race that heightens the risk of war.
New York Times, By William J. Broad, 5 July 24
Allies of Donald J. Trump are proposing that the United States restart the testing of nuclear weapons in underground detonations should the former president be re-elected in November. A number of nuclear experts reject such a resumption as unnecessary and say it would threaten to end a testing moratorium that the world’s major atomic powers have honored for decades.
In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Robert C. O’Brien, a former national security adviser to Mr. Trump, urges him to conduct nuclear tests if he wins a new term. Washington, he wrote, “must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992.” Doing so, he added, would help the United States “maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles.”
At the Cold War’s end, in 1992, the United States gave up the explosive testing of nuclear arms and eventually talked other atomic powers into doing likewise. The United States instead turned to experts and machines at the nation’s weapons labs to verify the lethality of the country’s arsenal. Today the machines include room-size supercomputers, the world’s most powerful X-ray machine and a system of lasers the size of a sports stadium.
In his article, Mr. O’Brien described such work as just “using computer models.” Republican members of Congress and some nuclear experts have faulted the nonexplosive testing as insufficient to assure the U.S. military establishment that its arsenal works, and have called for live tests.
But the Biden administration and other Democrats warn that a U.S. test could lead to a chain reaction of testing by other countries. Over time, they add, resumption could result in a nuclear arms race that destabilizes the global balance of terror and heightens the risk of war.
“It’s a terrible idea,” said Ernest J. Moniz, who oversaw the U.S. nuclear arsenal as the secretary of energy in the Obama administration. “New testing would make us less secure. You can’t divorce it from the global repercussions.”
Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons lab in New Mexico where J. Robert Oppenheimer led the creation of the atomic bomb, called new testing a risky trade-off between domestic gains and global losses. “We stand to lose more” than America’s nuclear rivals would, he said.
It’s unclear if Mr. Trump would act on the testing proposals. In a statement, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, Mr. Trump’s co-campaign managers, did not directly address the candidate’s position on nuclear testing. They said that Mr. O’Brien as well as other outside groups and individuals were “misguided, speaking prematurely, and may well be entirely wrong” about a second Trump administration’s plans.
Even so, Mr. Trump’s history of atomic bluster, threats and hard-line policies suggests that he may be open to such guidance from his security advisers. In 2018, he boasted that his “Nuclear Button” was “much bigger & more powerful” than the force controller of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader.
A U.S. detonation would violate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, long considered one of the most successful arms control measures. Signed by the world’s atomic powers in 1996, it sought to curb a costly arms race that had spun out of control……………………………………………………………… more https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/05/science/nuclear-testing-trump.html
Former New Brunswick energy minister joins nuclear industry after resigning in June
Mike Holland will be joining AtkinsRéalis, formerly SNC-Lavalin
CBC News · Jul 05, 2024
A former New Brunswick cabinet minister who resigned in June is joining AtkinsRéalis, a Montreal-based company previously known as SNC-Lavalin Group.
Mike Holland, who was natural resources and energy development minister and MLA for the riding of Albert, announced at the end of June that he was quitting to pursue a job in the private sector.
Holland will be joining the AtkinsRéalis team as the director of business development for North America.
The company told Radio-Canada the reason it recruited the former minister was to help increase sales of its nuclear reactor models and invest in the development of small modular reactors.
In a statement, the company said it’s “working to accelerate” sales of its Candu reactors in Canada and internationally.
…………………….When Holland announced his resignation from the New Brunswick government, he said the company he accepted an offer from is not a company he dealt with in his role as a minister, nor as an MLA.
However, AtkinsRéalis, then known as SNC-Lavalin, announced a partnership with Moltex Energy Canada in 2022 and Holland was quoted in the news release at the time.
“This agreement contributes not only to the growth of long-term, high-quality jobs in New Brunswick’s energy sector, it also recognizes the leadership role of both Moltex and the province in advancing the next generation of nuclear technology,” he said in the 2022 release.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/energy-minister-nuclear-resignation-1.7255601
US announces more than $2 billion package for Ukraine
BY BRAD DRESS – 07/02/24, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4752120-biden-administration-lloyd-austin-2-million-ukraine-aid-package/
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a $2.3 billion security assistance package for Ukraine ahead of a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Tuesday.
The package will include critical air defense interceptors and other weapons. A spokesperson for the Pentagon said more details on the package would be made available soon.
Austin met with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov at the Pentagon on Tuesday and underscored the U.S. commitment to defending the country against a Russian invasion.
“Ukraine is in a tough fight,” Austin said in remarks ahead of the meeting, adding “make no mistake, Ukraine is not alone.”
The Pentagon chief also noted that the U.S. has signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement with Ukraine, providing Kyiv with defense cooperation guarantees over a decade. He added that he would discuss with Umerov additional ways to strengthen the partnership.
The U.S. has announced billions of dollars of assistance to Ukraine since the last congressional package of some $60 billion was approved in April. That legislation came after months of delays, giving Russia the advantage on the battlefield before more U.S. aid began arriving on the battlefield.
Ukrainian troops are fighting across the 600-mile front against Russian forces, including in the northeastern Kharkiv region, where Moscow opened a new front in May.
Why Julian Assange couldn’t outrun the Espionage Act
the grave threat the Espionage Act poses to journalism and the First Amendment
SOTT, Jordan Howell The FIRE, Wed, 26 Jun 2024
Julian Assange spent seven years in self-exile in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy avoiding arrest, and five more in prison, for publishing classified documents on WikiLeaks.
Julian Assange is a free man, and one of the most contentious press freedom controversies in living memory may finally be coming to a close.
The WikiLeaks founder reached a plea deal with the Department of Justice on Monday after spending five years in an English prison fighting extradition to the United States. Federal officials sought to charge Assange with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national security information under the Espionage Act of 1917.
Assange and WikiLeaks shocked the world in 2010 by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret military documents and diplomatic cables related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were leaked by Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Months later, Assange was on the run and Manning was in jail.
Assange claimed that by receiving and publishing confidential information, what he did was no different than the type of routine news reporting that journalists around the world engage in every day. As the Supreme Court ruled in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), better known as “The Pentagon Papers” case, publishing leaked documents is protected under the First Amendment.
FIRE has long opposed use of the Espionage Act to curtail the rights of journalists to source information. And in December 2022, FIRE signed an open letter organized by the Committee to Protect Journalists along with 20 other civil liberties groups calling on the federal government to drop its charges against Assange.
“We are united . . . in our view that the criminal case against him poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad,” we argued. “[J]ournalists routinely engage in much of the conduct described in the indictment: speaking with sources, asking for clarification or more documentation, and receiving and publishing official secrets. News organizations frequently and necessarily publish classified information in order to inform the public of matters of profound public significance.”
Assange’s 12 year ordeal, including seven years in self-exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London before his arrest and imprisonment, underscores the continued threat that the century-old Espionage Act still poses to civil liberties today — and not just in the United States. Assange is not a U.S. citizen, nor was he ever a resident. But because of modern extradition treaties, there were few places in the world where he could travel to escape the Act’s reach,
Under the terms of Monday’s deal, Assange pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 62 months incarceration, but with credit for time served, according to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
Ultimately, freedom of the press is what was at stake with the government’s case against Assange. It was never only about him. The precedent that would have been set by his extradition and trial would have sent a chilling message to journalists across the country and the world: You can run, but you can’t hide from the Espionage Act.
What is the Espionage Act?……………………………………………………………………………………….Based on the Defense Secrets Act of 1911, the Espionage Act of 1917 included much stiffer penalties — including the death penalty — for sharing secret or confidential information or otherwise interfering with the operations of the U.S. military.
The Espionage Act made it a crime to obtain information regarding national defense “with intent or reason to believe” that doing so would hurt the U.S. or to advantage another country. While subsequent amendments and court decisions have refined its language and scope, its core purpose remains the same.
Espionage Act and the Supreme Court
The law was immediately controversial because its use was not limited to actual acts of espionage. Rather, the Espionage Act allowed the government to clamp down on anyone who opposed the war effort.
In Schenck v. United States, in 1919, the Supreme Court upheld the conspiracy conviction against socialist Charles Schenck under the Espionage Act for distributing anti-war leaflets that urged people to boycott the draft.
The problem with the Court’s ruling in Schenck, as subsequent decisions would affirm, is that Schenk’s speech was not calling for violence or even civil disobedience. Rather, his speech was precisely the kind of political expression that decades of subsequent Supreme Court decisions would ultimately uphold. Numerous convictions under the Espionage Act would make their way to the Court, including that of socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was arrested for giving a speech opposing the war.
Since then, one of the most nefarious uses of the Espionage Act has been to silence journalists. At least insofar as publishing the leaked documents on the Wikileaks website, what Assange did was little different than what The New York Times and The Washington Post did in 1971 when they published and reported on thousands of pages from a classified report about the war in Vietnam.
……………………………………….As the Supreme Court has ruled, freedom of the press is a foundational principle, enshrined in the Bill of Rights. And though Julian Assange is finally free, FIRE continues to have serious concerns about the grave threat the Espionage Act poses to journalism and the First Amendment. https://www.sott.net/article/492768-Why-Julian-Assange-couldnt-outrun-the-Espionage-Act
You Don’t Want to Live in America’s ‘Nuclear Sponge’
military planners often describe ICBMs as a “nuclear sponge” that would soak up hundreds of Russian warheads as they tried to destroy the missiles before they could launch.
People living in Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado may not think of their homes as “nuclear sponges” but that is one of the primary justifications for ICBMs today………. . ICBMs are sitting ducks
By Joseph Cirincione, National Security Analyst, 3 July 24, https://www.newsweek.com/you-dont-want-live-americas-nuclear-sponge-opinion-1919646
ou have to be a real optimist to think that we can keep thousands of nuclear weapons in fallible human hands indefinitely and nothing terrible will happen. Something terrible will happen—and it could mean the end of human civilization.
The risks are growing. Today, nine nations hold over 12,000 nuclear weapons, each many times more powerful than those used on Japan. The United States and Russia have most of them—about 90 percent of the global total—but China may be trying to catch up.
The fear that China might increase its nuclear arsenal from some 500 to 1,000 weapons has fueled calls for America to abandon all arms control limits and vastly increase its stockpile of some 5,000 weapons. In fact, massive new programs to build a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, submarines and missiles were well under way before China began its build up—and may well have triggered China’s move.
The cost of this new nuclear arms race is high. A new report shows that global spending on nuclear weapons jumped last year—and that the United States accounted for 80 percent of that increase.
The global costs and the U.S. share will grow. This year, U.S. spending climbed again to more than $70 billion. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the government will spend over $750 billion on nuclear weapons over the next 10 years. The total modernization cost will likely be over $2 trillion. Add in the $30 billion a year spent on programs to try to intercept ballistic missiles and the cost goes from unimaginable to unaffordable.
It gets worse. The Air Force just disclosed that the price of its new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has jumped 37 percent. Originally, the Air Force claimed that replacing the existing force of 400 Minuteman III missiles would cost only $62 billion. That rose to $95 billion, then to more than $125 billion (plus tens of billions more for the nuclear warheads). In a new report, the watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, warns that the price tag could hit $315 billion.
For a family, a cost increase of 37 percent on a house or car they want to buy would certainly change their minds. Even for the Pentagon, this hike was “a critical breach” of cost projections, triggering a rare report to Congress.
This is likely why defense contractors are working furiously with their Congressional supporters to defend the program, supplying members with talking points and briefings, in addition to the generous contributions that flow into their campaign coffers. Members in the few states that have nuclear bases also do not want to lose the considerable economic benefits they provide.
Thus, Sen. Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska, home to the Strategic Command, pleads in her recent piece for Newsweek, to continue the programs no matter what the cost. She argues that “Our ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are indispensable. …by virtue of their location in our heartland, [they] are also unlikely to be targeted by enemy attacks.”
That would be a surprise to military planners who often describe ICBMs as a “nuclear sponge” that would soak up hundreds of Russian warheads as they tried to destroy the missiles before they could launch. This would complicate an adversary’s planning so severely that it would discourage any attack, the theory goes.
People living in Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado may not think of their homes as “nuclear sponges” but that is one of the primary justifications for ICBMs today. Formerly valued as being more accurate and faster to launch than missiles from submarines, that is no longer the case. As the Taxpayers report notes. “Both ballistic missile submarines and nuclear-armed aircraft carry more accurate and powerful nuclear weapons than they used to,” allowing them to destroy even the most hardened target. Meanwhile, “the survivability of U.S. ICBMs has steadily declined as U.S. adversaries have developed more powerful and accurate nuclear weapons.”
Submarines are undetectable and bombers can be scrambled. ICBMs are sitting ducks that must be launched on warning of an enemy attack, stressing their human controllers to decide within minutes whether to launch Armageddon. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry says we must eliminate these relics of the Cold War, calling them, “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world. They could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.”
There have been dozens of close calls in the nuclear age, most caused by the need to launch these hulking missiles so quickly. Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), Don Beyer (D-VA) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) will hold a public hearing July 24 to examine the troubled missile program and “raise the alarm about our unsustainable, reckless nuclear posture.”
“We must confront the challenges before us, not by building ever more dangerous weapons,” says Garamendi, “but by placing the same priority on effective arms control and risk reduction measures that we currently place on modernization.”
This hearing may be our last, best chance to evaluate the risks of putting more nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert before it is too late.
Joe Cirincione is the author or editor of seven books and over a thousand articles on nuclear policy and national security.
Unable to effectively operate its lone existing nuclear reactor, New Brunswick is betting on advanced options.
The International Panel found that sodium-cooled reactors proved expensive to build, complex to operate, prone to malfunctions, and difficult and expensive to repair. Sodium reacts violently with water and burns if exposed to air. Major sodium fires have occurred in previous reactors, often leading to lengthy shutdowns.
If NB Power needs outside assistance with a conventional reactor it has owned and operated for more than 40 years, one might question the wisdom of building two more featuring untested designs. Mr. Holland’s replacement as energy minister, Hugh Flemming, must now decide how comfortable he is with the province’s SMR ambitions.
Perhaps the most fundamental risk to New Brunswick’s SMR push is that the province can’t afford it.
MATTHEW MCCLEARN, JULY 2, 2024 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-new-brunswick-nuclear-reactor-technology-arc-clean-moltex-energy/
Mike Holland was among Canada’s leading evangelists for small modular nuclear reactors. During his tenure as New Brunswick’s energy minister, from 2018 to when he stepped down on June 20, he vigorously supported plans by the province’s Crown utility, NB Power, to construct two different small reactor designs from startup companies: U.S.-based ARC Clean Technology and Britain’s Moltex Energy. This represents Canada’s most ambitious – and perhaps riskiest – foray into bleeding-edge nuclear technology.
In an interview shortly before he resigned to pursue an opportunity in the private sector, Mr. Holland recalled how SMRs arrived on his agenda soon after he assumed office. He began exploring what advanced reactors could mean for decarbonizing the province’s electricity sector and growing its economy, and concluded New Brunswick could become a hub for nuclear design and manufacturing, and export reactors around the world.
“I saw the opportunity for New Brunswick to not just participate, but be a leader in this,” he said. “I am someone that loves to be on the cutting edge.”
His enthusiasm and risk tolerance proved a boon for ARC and Moltex, two tiny startups that have neither licensed nor constructed a commercial reactor. Under Mr. Holland’s leadership, New Brunswick became an incubator and helped the companies attract government funds to continue their work.
But NB Power is already struggling with persistent problems at its lone existing reactor at Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. It has been negotiating a partnership with Ontario Power Generation that could see the latter assume partial ownership and help fix the ailing plant.
If NB Power needs outside assistance with a conventional reactor it has owned and operated for more than 40 years, one might question the wisdom of building two more featuring untested designs. Mr. Holland’s replacement as energy minister, Hugh Flemming, must now decide how comfortable he is with the province’s SMR ambitions.
Unconventional thinking
Nearly all of the more than 400 nuclear reactors operating today use water to cool their highly radioactive cores. Water also acts as a “moderator,” slowing down the high-energy neutrons produced by nuclear fission. Though water-cooled reactors have dominated for decades, they cost huge sums to build and produce waste that remains hazardous for countless human lifetimes. They’re vulnerable to severe (albeit rare) accidents that can render surrounding areas uninhabitable.
Virtually every SMR is marketed as addressing these and other shortcomings – and most have ditched water as coolant and moderator.
According to documents released by New Brunswick’s energy ministry through the province’s freedom of information legislation to researcher Susan O’Donnell, and provided to The Globe and Mail, in 2017 NB Power reviewed dozens of SMRs it read about in nuclear industry publications. It came up with a short list of five, which it later narrowed to ARC and Moltex, and enticed both companies to set up headquarters in Saint John.
ARC and Moltex are pursuing what the industry calls “fast” neutron reactors, so named because they lack a moderator. The ARC-100 reactor would be cooled using liquid sodium metal and consume enriched uranium metal fuel. Moltex’s Stable Salt Reactor-Wasteburner (SSR-W), meanwhile, would use molten salt fuel placed in fuel assemblies similar to those in conventional reactors.
The SSR-W would require its own fuel reprocessing plant called WATSS (short for Waste to Stable Salt), which would convert Point Lepreau’s spent fuel into new fuel. For NB Power, that’s a major attraction: As of last summer, Point Lepreau had more than 170,000 Candu spent fuel bundles. Moltex says that’s enough to power its reactor for 60 years.
In May, 2019, NB Power sent a letter to Mr. Holland and Premier Blaine Higgs urging them to support fast reactors. The utility told its government masters that there was enough room at Point Lepreau for both reactors and that they could be up and running by 2030.
“These two technologies have different market applications and there is no downside to letting both of them work through the process,” the letter stated.
New Brunswick’s latest energy plan suggests electricity consumption will nearly double in the next few decades. NB Power’s challenge is to satisfy that demand while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions; Lori Clark, its chief executive, has cast SMRs as playing an important role in the utility’s efforts to reach net zero by 2035.
What New Brunswick covets most, however, is a shot of economic adrenalin.
Even optimists expect that SMR demonstration units will be too expensive to be economically attractive. Multiple units must be built to exploit economies of scale and reduce costs.
NB Power is counting on that. According to documents released under the federal Access to Information Act, the utility expects the first ARC-100 would be followed by 11 more units by mid-century. By then, up to 24 would be built in Canada, and the same number in other countries. And the first SSR-W would lead to 11 more built across Canada and two dozen more in the United States, Britain and Eastern Europe. If that happened, they’d be among the most successful models in history.
NB Power thought more than half of the components would be manufactured in New Brunswick. It also enthused about royalty payments on reactor sales, “potentially worth billions of dollars.”
Technical risks
But to realize any of that, New Brunswick’s SMR program must overcome technical challenges that have plagued the nuclear industry from its earliest days.
Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has warned policy makers about the pitfalls of betting on “advanced” reactor designs, which he has studied over many years. “Developing new designs that are clearly superior to light water reactors overall is a formidable challenge, as improvements in one respect can create or exacerbate problems in another,” he wrote in a 2021 report.
Fast reactors, which originated in the earliest years of the nuclear age, bear this out. The U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, Japan and India all pursued so-called “fast breeder” reactors that could produce more plutonium fuel than they consumed. A report that examined the history of those reactors, produced in 2010 by the International Panel on Fissile Materials, a group of arms control and non-proliferation experts, found member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development collectively invested about US$50-billion researching breeder reactors. Outside the OECD, Russia and India also spent heavily.
They didn’t have much to show for it. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are only two fast reactors currently generating electricity – both in Russia. The International Panel found that sodium-cooled reactors proved expensive to build, complex to operate, prone to malfunctions, and difficult and expensive to repair. Sodium reacts violently with water and burns if exposed to air. Major sodium fires have occurred in previous reactors, often leading to lengthy shutdowns.
As for molten salt reactors, there have only been two experimental exemplars, the most recent of which operated in the 1960s. Mr. Lyman’s 2021 report said molten salts were highly corrosive to many materials typically used in reactor construction. Moreover, “liquid nuclear fuels introduce numerous additional safety, environmental and proliferation risks.” Molten salt reactors likely couldn’t be built before the 2040s at the earliest, he concluded.
In addition to confronting such technical challenges, New Brunswick’s strategy also presupposes that reprocessing of spent fuel will be permitted and affordable. But a report published last year by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, the industry-controlled organization tasked with disposing of Canada’s reactor waste, was skeptical on both counts.
NB Power is also counting on circumstances that are beyond its control. According to a letter signed by former CEO Keith Cronkhite in 2020 and released under the Access to Information Act, New Brunswick’s plan hinges on Ontario and other provinces building multiple BWRX-300s. (The letter was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.) If they do not, “SMR companies based in New Brunswick will not be able to attract private investment necessary to ever deploy a new reactor,” Mr. Cronkhite’s letter predicted.
The SMR plan is already falling behind schedule. At a rate hearing in June before the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board, Brad Coady, vice-president of strategic partnerships and business development, said NB Power believes it is no longer possible to have SMRs operating by 2030; the earliest date for the first unit has been pushed back to 2032 or 2033.
Delays will have consequences, because NB Power needs options to replace its coal-fired generation while at the same time satisfying growing demand for electricity. The utility, he said, has been studying alternative scenarios “if we don’t have them in time.”
Paying for it
Perhaps the most fundamental risk to New Brunswick’s SMR push is that the province can’t afford it.
Last year, ARC and Moltex each estimated that developing their reactors would cost around $500-million per company. NB Power is Canada’s most heavily indebted utility, and its budgets must be approved by the province’s Energy and Utilities Board. It has limited ability to pay for crucial early steps such as studies necessary to establish what the environmental consequences of the SMRs might be. In published reports, NB Power has acknowledged that its research and development efforts might have to be sacrificed to meet debt-reduction targets.
David Coon, leader of New Brunswick’s Green Party, said NB Power faces huge capital spending to retire its Belledune coal-fired generating plant and refurbish its Mactaquac hydroelectric dam and transmission lines.
“That is why they’re really not putting much into this,” he said. “Their approach has been, well, if we get a new nuclear plant out of this that that doesn’t really cost us much of anything, then bonus!”
ARC and Moltex also don’t have the money. In late June, ARC parted ways with CEO William Labbe and laid off an undisclosed number of staff – a move some observers said was likely due to a shortage of funds. Mr. Chronkite’s 2020 letter warned that the two SMR developers were small startups that couldn’t afford to do work using their own resources, and were at immediate risk of insolvency.
“Without federal support this year to the SMR developers in New Brunswick, one or both companies are expected to close their offices in the next year,” Mr. Cronkhite’s letter stated.
Indeed, New Brunswick officials have counted on continuing and generous support from Canadian taxpayers. In his letter, Mr. Cronkhite called on the federal government to provide $70.5-million that year to ARC and Moltex – and more than $100-million the following year – to “keep the SMR development option in New Brunswick viable.” In 2022, the two companies would need another $91-million.
Ottawa obliged, but only partly. It gave Moltex $50.5-million in 2021. The federal government also provided ARC $7-million last year. The lobbying efforts continue: When NB Power board vice-chair Andrew MacGillivray received his mandate letter in May, 2023, it instructed him to “support efforts to acquire federal funding” for the SMRs.
New Brunswick’s own history suggests the risks inherent in counting on boundless federal support.
Andrew Secord, an economics professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, has studied decision-making in the 1970s that led to the construction of the original Point Lepreau reactor. In a 2020 paper, he detailed how Point Lepreau arose in part from an export-led strategy under which multiple large reactors would be built and their electricity exported to New England. NB Power (then known as the New Brunswick Electric Power Commission, or NBEPC) first focused on building interconnections with New England and then pivoted to building reactors.
This strategy failed by 1972, but by that point NBEPC was unwilling to change course. Over the next three years, it assumed ever greater risks as potential partners failed to materialize.
“NBEPC managers continued along the nuclear path, exhibiting higher risk behaviour in the process,” Mr. Secord wrote. “As NBEPC executives spent more time and resources on the nuclear option, their personal attachment and the associated institutional commitment increased.”
Mr. Coon said New Brunswick’s SMR plan so far has cost the provincial and federal governments only around $100-million. But it could start costing taxpayers and ratepayers “much more money” if things progress further.
“It seems like we haven’t learned our lesson in New Brunswick,” he said.
U.S. Congress Votes To Bar State Department From Citing Gazan Health Ministry
If passed into law, US diplomats would be unable to discuss casualty figures from Palestinian sources that are generally considered credible.
by Kyle Anzalone June 27, 2024 https://news.antiwar.com/2024/06/27/house-votes-to-bar-state-department-from-citing-gazan-health-ministry/
During the debate of the State Department funding bill, the House added a provision that would bar American diplomats from citing statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry. The amendment would prevent American diplomats from discussing the casualty figures produced by the Palestinian agency.
On Thursday, the House voted 269-144 for an amendment to the Department of State appropriations bill proposed by a bipartisan group led by Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL). The provision “prohibits funds appropriated by this act to be made available for the State Department to cite statistics obtained from the Gaza Health Ministry.”
The amendment received bipartisan support. All but 14 Republicans voted yes, with Reps. Paul Gosar (AZ) and Matt Rosendale (MT) are the only no votes. The Democrats split support 69-114. The Democratic leadership in the House elected not to endorse or oppose the amendment.
During Israel’s nearly nine-month-long onslaught in Gaza, the Health Ministry has recorded nearly 38,000 deaths and 85,000 injuries. Many of those injured have life-altering wounds. The head of the UN Palestinian Aid Agency (UNRWA) estimates that over 2,000 children, or nearly ten per day, have lost legs since October 7.
Prior to Israel’s most recent military campaign in Gaza, the casualty figures were generally considered accurate and regularly cited by Western media. During Israel’s “Swords of Iron” operations, the corporate press has started to slant cover of those numbers by asserting Hamas runs the health ministry whenever the numbers are reported.
However, many human rights groups and officials believe the official figures are an undercount. Save the Children estimates that in addition to the 15,000 dead Palestinian children counted by the health ministry, an additional 4,000 are uncounted because their bodies have not been recovered.
During the debate over Moskowitz’s amendment, Rep Rashida Tlaib blasted the provisions as being a part of the decades-long coordinated effort by the House to “erase Palestinians from existence.”
“Today, we are witnessing the apartheid Israeli government carry out a genocide in real-time. This amendment is an attempt to hide it.” She added, “My colleagues don’t even want to acknowledge that Palestinians exist at all.”
Why cost should not be an obstacle to compensating nuclear survivors
By Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Susi Snyder | July 1, 2024, https://thebulletin.org/2024/07/why-cost-should-not-be-an-obstacle-to-compensating-nuclear-survivors/?utm_source=Newsletter+&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter07012024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_CompensatingNuclearSurvivors_07012024
Passing an extended and expanded Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) would be an enormous victory for those affected by US nuclear weapons testing and development who will receive compensation from the legislation. A proposed revised bill would include many communities formerly left out from the compensation program, including additional residents of Arizona, Nevada and Utah, for the first time, residents of Colorado, Idaho, Guam, Montana and New Mexico, uranium miners after 1971, veterans of nuclear waste clean-up in the Marshall Islands, and St. Louis area residents exposed to nuclear waste. The bill, originally estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost $147 billion over 10 years, was cut down to cost $50 billion over 10 years, due to concerns by members of Congress about the expense. A RECA bill has gained overwhelming support in the Senate, but it has yet to be passed by the House, in part due to ongoing concerns about the price tag.
Our research shows that more resources exist and should be directed to this important effort, in the United States and internationally, where many nuclear survivors still wait for justice. In our report, we found that nuclear-armed countries spent $91.4 billion on nuclear weapons in 2023 alone. That’s nearly $3,000 every second. The United States spent more than half of that total – $51.5 billion or $1,633 per second. In the five years that we have done this research, from 2019 to 2023, governments have spent a total of $387 billion on nuclear arsenals. The United States alone spent more than $212 billion of that total.
The amount that the United States and other nuclear-armed governments have put towards addressing the harmful legacy of nuclear weapons for their citizens pales by comparison. Since RECA was passed in 1990, the United States has put $2.67 billion into one-time settlements to compensate those whom the United States considered eligible. To address the nuclear legacy of its testing in the Marshall Islands, the United States gave $150 million to establish a Nuclear Claims Tribunal in 1987, but has not provided further funds explicitly for this purpose since.
Internationally, compensation for survivors also comes up short. Russian nuclear test veterans receive one-time compensation for harm to health of 22,102 roubles ($245 as of February 1, 2024) as well as small monthly stipends for food. In 2023, Russia spent 710.5 billion roubles ($8.3 billion) on its nuclear arsenal. In France, CIVEN, le Comité d’Indemnisation des Victimes des Essais Nucléaires, provided 14.9 million euros ($15.9 million) to victims of its nuclear testing in Algeria and French Polynesia in 2022. Last year, France spent 5.6 billion euros ($6.1 billion) on its nuclear weapons. The United Kingdom provided a “full and final” settlement payment of £20 million to Australia in 1993 to remediate former nuclear tests sites there, in comparison to the £6.5 billion ($8.1 billion) it spent on its nuclear arsenal in 2023.
It is no coincidence that, around the world, formerly colonized and Indigenous populations were the first to be bombed and the last to receive recognition and compensation. Existing programs rarely address the multifold harms of nuclear testing beyond physical harm from radiation, such as the psychological and economic toll of displacement, deprivation of traditional ways of life or the fear of children also suffering the scars of nuclear weapons.
But international efforts to address nuclear harms, grounded in human rights principles, have increased in recent years. In July 2017, 122 governments adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty includes Articles 6 and 7, creating for the first time an international collective effort to address the impacts of nuclear weapons use and testing on people and the environment. States affected by nuclear weapons use and testing that have joined the treaty—such as Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Fiji, and New Zealand—take the lead in identifying needs for affected people and for environmental remediation in their countries and designing national plans of action and structures to address those needs. All governments that have joined this treaty pledge to help if they are able. States are currently discussing establishing an international trust fund to support this work.
Providing adequate assistance to those suffering from nuclear harm and beginning to remediate contaminated environments will cost money. It will also take time. But the cost is not an excuse to forgo necessary nuclear justice programs. Our research clearly shows that ever-growing budgets to build and rebuild nuclear arsenals are readily approved by every nuclear-armed government, while funds to help those suffering are a pittance in comparison.
The exorbitant funding poured into producing and maintaining weapons of mass destruction—as those who have borne the brunt of their impacts are dismissed—constitutes a gross dereliction of duty by the nuclear-armed countries. Governments must work together at the national and international level to address the multifaceted harms that nuclear weapons production and testing have inflicted on survivors and the environment. Extending and expanding RECA would be a good place to start. House leaders should stop stalling and start acting.
Most important issue facing US, world, largely absent from presidential debate.
Chances for a serious debate on America’s despicable wars in Ukraine and Gaza at the next debate? Zero
Biden claimed Hamas must be destroyed before there can be any discussion of a Palestinian nation. But Biden, like Netanyahu, remains in denial of Israeli military leaders who tell Netanyahu, you cannot destroy Hamas because it’s an idea…the idea to end Israeli Apartheid and establish a sovereign and genocide free Palestinian state.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 30 June 24, https://heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com/
Chances for a serious debate on America’s despicable wars in Ukraine and Gaza at the next debate? Zero.
Americans concerned about ending 2 catastrophic wars the US is funding in Ukraine and Gaza were sorely disappointed by the Biden, Trump presidential debate.
Neither candidate offered a single coherent nor encouraging statement to explain why we’re squandering upwards of $200 billion to maintain these wars in perpetuity. Millions dead, wounded, homeless or refugees have made no dent on the conscience of either man.
Trump’s statements Ukraine were delusional. He claimed he’s so tough, Russia would not have dared attack Ukraine had he been president at the time. Same goes for Hamas attacking Israel. He topped that by charging he’d end the Ukraine war while he was still president elect. How? Trump believes he’s so tough, he would scare Putin into crying ‘Uncle’ out the fear of Trump’s retribution upon reentering the White House.
Regarding Israel, Trump was bloodthirsty. He scolded Biden for trying to stop Israel from completing the destruction and takeover of Gaza even tho Biden is doing the opposite. Trump’s position all along on this 9 month long bloodbath destroying life for 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza, is to let Israel “finish the job.”
Biden was even worse on Ukraine and Gaza because, as president, he’s responsible for supporting both grisly wars with hundreds of billions in weapons instead of sound diplomacy to end them. His utter lack of conscience and compassion for the beleaguered people of Ukraine and Gaza prevent him from doing that.
Biden remains locked in1970’s Cold War brinkmanship. He charged Russia is trying to recreate the old Soviet Union when Russia’s ceasefire proposal, which Biden dismissed out of hand, leaves Ukraine west of Donbas and all of Europe in peace and the Donbas Ukrainians free from Kyiv’s neo-fascist marauders.
On Israel, Biden offered up huge whoppers befitting dinner at Burger King. He claimed only Hamas is preventing peace when it’s Netanyahu kicking the sand of war in Biden’s face at every Biden overture for peace. Biden poses as sympathetic to Palestinians while bragging how he’s given Israel everything they need to destroy any semblance of sustainable life in Gaza.
Biden claimed Hamas must be destroyed before there can be any discussion of a Palestinian nation. But Biden, like Netanyahu, remains in denial of Israeli military leaders who tell Netanyahu, you cannot destroy Hamas because it’s an idea…the idea to end Israeli Apartheid and establish a sovereign and genocide free Palestinian state.
Most of the post debate chatter concerned Biden’s feeble attempt to appear vigorous enough to govern America and Trump’s blizzard of lies. While Biden did nothing to appear ready for another 4 years, Trump did offer one astounding truth about Biden’s governance that should terrify us all. He charged that Biden’s reckless foreign policy is risking WWIII. That ominous possibility has stalked the world since Biden provoked the war in Ukraine and has kept it ravaging Ukraine for 29 months with mushroom clouds more likely every day on the horizon.
Chances for a serious debate on America’s despicable wars in Ukraine and Gaza at the next debate? Zero.
Do the research and end the nuclear hype in New Brunswick
by Susan O’Donnell, June 29, 2024, https://nbmediacoop.org/2024/06/29/do-the-research-and-end-the-nuclear-hype-in-new-brunswick/
New Brunswick’s ARC nuclear project is in trouble. This situation highlights the lack of critical knowledge about nuclear reactor designs within NB Power and the New Brunswick government.
The ARC project goal is to design and build a nuclear reactor cooled with liquid sodium metal at the Point Lepreau site on the Bay of Fundy. NB Power also plans a second reactor at the site, the Moltex reactor design cooled with molten salt.
The proposed nuclear reactor designs lack commercial viability
If NB Power and the provincial government reviewed available research, they would learn that both sodium-cooled and molten salt reactors have never operated successfully on a commercial electricity grid.
An expert report from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stated that inherent problems with sodium-cooled and molten salt reactors means new builds will have difficulty reaching commercial viability by the year 2050, far later than the federal 2035 deadline for utilities to transition to a net-zero electricity grid.
For sodium-cooled reactors like the ARC design, tens of billions of dollars have been spent over decades trying to make them work in a commercial setting, by companies in other countries with considerable experience building nuclear reactors. The failures are well-documented.
Liquid sodium metal is reactive and burns when exposed to air or water. The first commercial sodium-cooled reactor in the U.S. had a partial meltdown and was quickly scrapped.
In other countries, sodium fires and unpredictable performances led to sodium-cooled reactors being abandoned in France (the Superphénix), Japan (the Monju breeder), Germany (the Kalkar plant), and Scotland (the Dounreay reactor).
All these shut-down sodium-cooled reactors cost far more to decommission than they did to build, partly due to the expense of removing the sodium from the reactors’ radioactive waste material so it could be safely disposed without causing underground explosions due to sodium-water reactions, as happened for Scotland’s Dounreay reactor.
The proposed reactor designs lack financing
The ARC sodium-cooled design is in its preliminary stage. Bill Labbe, the ARC CEO who suddenly left the company recently, said in 2023 that $500 million is needed to develop the ARC reactor design, and a further $600 million in power purchase agreements to move the project forward. The money raised to date for the ARC project is only a tiny fraction of that.
Since 2018 the provincial government has handed $25 million to ARC and $10 million to Moltex, as ‘seed’ funding to attract private investment. The federal government gave Moltex $50.5 million in 2021 and ARC $7 million in 2023.
However, six years of trying to entice private investors to the ARC and Moltex projects has not yielded results. Globally, private investment in the energy sector is going into renewable – not nuclear – energy.
Misplaced government hype
Despite the ARC company’s financial difficulties, according to news reports both NB Power and the New Brunswick government continue to support the ARC project.
Since the two start-up companies arrived in Canada and landed in Saint John in 2018, the government’s hype around the ARC and Moltex projects at times has been intense, surprisingly so, given that neither company has ever built a nuclear reactor.
In the past, Energy Minister Mike Holland has been the biggest booster of the ARC and Moltex “advanced” reactor designs.
However, in a curious coincidence, Holland quit the cabinet and gave up his MLA seat just days before the troubles at the ARC company hit the news, after previously announcing he would not stand in the upcoming election.
New Brunswick’s money-losing Point Lepreau nuclear plant
NB Power wants to build the ARC reactor near its existing Point Lepreau nuclear reactor, a consistent money loser for the utility.
According to the NB Auditor General, about three-quarters of NB Power’s $5 billion debt is from cost over-runs on the original CANDU reactor build 40 years ago and the re-build more than a dozen years ago.
At the recent Energy and Utility Board hearings, it was clear that the ongoing poor performance of the Lepreau plant is contributing to the utility’s financial difficulties and its request for an unprecedented rate hike.
Nuclear: the most expensive option for generating electricity
New Brunswick’s abysmal prior experience with nuclear reactors raises an obvious question: why is the province intent on trying to develop experimental nuclear reactors as part of its energy transition plans?
Nuclear power is a more expensive way to generate electricity than renewable energy with storage. Nuclear plants take much longer to build than solar or wind farms. These facts are well-known.
Even the right-wing magazine The Economist recognizes the global trend toward renewables and away from nuclear energy, stating in its most recent issue that: “the next ten-fold increase (in solar energy) will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight, in less than the time it typically takes to build one of them.”
New Brunswick: clinging to an outdated vision of electricity production
The challenge for New Brunswick is that our public utility NB Power is stuck, along with Ontario Power Generation, in the Jurassic era, feeding their nuclear dinosaurs while the rest of the utility world is getting on with their renewables and storage rollouts.
Across the globe, countries are focused on technological revolutions in energy efficiency and productivity, building smart grids with demand management and response and distributed renewable energy and storage resources. These offer lower-cost, lower-risk, faster and more flexible pathways for decarbonized electricity grids without large centralized nuclear systems.
Building more nuclear reactors and increasing power rates is not compatible with what many commentators in the province want in our shared economic, social and cultural future. It’s time for New Brunswick to end the nuclear hype.
Susan O’Donnell is the principal investigator with teammates of the CEDAR project, St. Thomas University in Fredericton.
What does Chevron mean for nuclear? The USA courts can now supercede the safety role of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
should we trust the courts to be better arbiters of how nuclear power plants should be regulated than the actual agency set up to regulate them?
In the worst-case scenario, rogue judges are now empowered to issue out-of-pocket decisions on highly technical matters they don’t actually understand.
The NRC was the undisputed final word in what goes for nuclear energy in the United States. Did the overturning of the longstanding Chevron decision now put the courts above the regulatory agency?
Elemental, ANGELICA OUNG, JUN 30, 2024
The US Supreme Court just overturned the longstanding “Chevron deference” This is a move so dramatic that Dahlia Lithwick, senior legal editor at Slate, described it as a “requiem” for the Administrative state.
According to Lithwick in the Slate Podcast on the issue, the Chevron doctrine said that when a statute is unclear, federal courts should defer to a reasonable interpretation by administrative agencies. No more. Courts can now decide from the get-go what a statute means, regardless of what the agency thinks.
Once upon a time, ironically, it was the conservative Justice Scalia who was the Chevron doctrine’s biggest fan. But as it becomes increasingly clear that the conservative justices are going to enjoy a generational hold on the Supreme Court while the party holding the Executive Branch flips and flops, it became an advantageous political project for the court to take out Chevron and transfer power from the “ABC agencies,” which of course includes the National Regulatory Commission (NRC) over to the courts.
“This fundamentally changes the way government governs,” said Lithwick.
So what now? If the court is now the final arbiter for whether, say, a bump stock makes a gun a machine gun, is it also going to become the final arbiter on whether a giant trampoline works as well as a reinforced containment dome for that purpose of protecting a nuclear reactor from the impact of a large commercial aircraft?
In fact, since the Aircraft Impact Assessment (AIA) is a part of the NRC’s regulations, not explicitly mandated by law, the court can even opt to throw the regulation out entirely.
The undercutting of the NRC goes both ways: just as nuclear companies can now challenge what they see as unreasonably onerous NRC regulations in court, they are now also vulnerable to individuals or groups claiming harm, even if the companies followed all the regulatory guidelines, increasing their legal risk.
As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion in the landmark 6-3 ruling, “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan warned that Congress does not have the ability to write perfectly complete regulatory statutes and it would be preferable for the gaps formed by inevitable ambiguities to be filled by the responsible agency, not a court. The decision “is likely to produce large-scale disruption.”………………………………………………………………………………………………
…….should we trust the courts to be better arbiters of how nuclear power plants should be regulated than the actual agency set up to regulate them?
In the worst-case scenario, rogue judges are now empowered to issue out-of-pocket decisions on highly technical matters they don’t actually understand. https://elementalenergy.substack.com/p/what-does-chevron-mean-for-nuclear
Save Ukraine from American meddling
COMMENT. While the fatuous mainstream media focusses on nan unintelligent TV debate between two US presidential candidates – we increasingly look for some intelligent news.
And today – to my amazement, today – “The Hill” actually does give us an analysis of the Ukraine situation. And it’s not from the mega-paid lackeys of the military-industrial-corporate-media complex, but from the respected economist Jeffrey Sachs.
BY JEFFREY SACHS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR – 06/27/24 https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4741597-save-ukraine-from-american-meddling/
Ukraine can only be saved at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield. Sadly, this point is not understood by Ukrainian politicians such as Oleg Dunda, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, who recently wrote an oped on this site against my repeated call for negotiations.
Dunda believes that the U.S. will save Ukraine from Russia. The opposite is true. Ukraine actually needs to be saved from the U.S.
Ukraine epitomizes Henry Kissinger’s famous aphorism, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
Thirty years ago, Ukraine was embraced by America’s neoconservatives, who believed that it was the perfect instrument for weakening Russia. The neocons are the ideological believers in American hegemony, that is, the right and responsibility of the U.S. to be the world’s sole superpower and global policeman (as described, for example, in the Project for a New American Century’s 2000 report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”).
The neocons chose three methods to push U.S. power and influence into Ukraine: first, meddle in Ukraine’s internal politics; second, expand NATO to Ukraine, despite Russia’s red line; and third, arm Ukraine and apply economic sanctions to defeat Russia.
The neocons whispered a sweet fantasy into Ukraine’s ear back in the 1990s: Come with us into the glorious paradise of NATO-land and you’ll be safe ever after. Pro-European Ukrainian politicians, especially in Western Ukraine, loved the story. They believed that Ukraine would join NATO just as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had in 1999.
The idea of expanding NATO to Ukraine was fatuous and dangerous. From Russia’s perspective, the NATO expansion into Central Europe in 1999 was deeply objectionable and a stark violation of the solemn U.S. promise that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward,” but it was not deadly to Russia’s interests. Those countries do not border the Russian mainland. NATO enlargement to Ukraine, however, would mean the loss of Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet at Sevastopol and the prospect of U.S. missiles minutes from the Russian mainland.
There was, in fact, no prospect that Russia would ever accept NATO enlargement to Ukraine. The current CIA Director, William Burns, said as much in a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when he was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 2008. The memo was famously entitled “Nyet means Nyet.”
Burns wrote, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
The neoconservatives never described this Russian redline to the American or global public, then or now. Senior diplomats and scholars in the U.S. had reached the same conclusion about NATO enlargement more generally in the 1990s, as has been recently documented in detail.
Ukrainians and their supporters insist that Ukraine has the “right” to join NATO. The U.S. also says so repeatedly. NATO’s policy says that NATO enlargement is an issue between NATO and the candidate country, and that it is no business of Russia or any other non-NATO country.
This is preposterous. I’ll start to believe that claim when Adm. John Kirby declares from the White House podium that Mexico has the “right” to invite China and Russia to put military bases along the Rio Grande, based on the same “open door policy” as NATO. The Monroe Doctrine has said just the opposite for two centuries.
So Ukraine was set up for disaster by the neocons. Actually, the Ukrainian public sensed the truth, and overwhelmingly opposed NATO membership until the 2014 uprising that overthrew Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Let’s retrace the chronology of this shockingly misguided American policy. In the early 2000s, the U.S. began to meddle intensively in Ukraine’s politics. The U.S. spent billions of dollars, according to Victoria Nuland, to build Ukraine’s “democracy,” meaning to turn Ukraine to the U.S. and away from Russia. Even so, the Ukrainian public remained strongly against NATO membership, and elected Viktor Yanukovych, who championed Ukrainian neutrality, in 2010.
In February 2014, the Obama team actively sided with neo-Nazi paramilitaries, which stormed government buildings on February 21 and overthrew Yanukovych the next day, cloaked as a “Revolution of Dignity.” The U.S. immediately recognized the new government. The astounding intercepted call between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, where they talk about who should be in the new Ukrainian government several weeks before the rebellion, demonstrates the level of American involvement.
The post-uprising government in Ukraine was filled with Russia-haters, and was backed by extremist right-wing paramilitaries like the Azov Brigade. When the ethnically Russian Donbas region broke away from the uprising, the central government aimed to retake the region by force. A peace agreement was reached between Kyiv and the Donbas in 2015, known as Minsk II, that would end the fighting by extending autonomy to the ethnically Russian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Alas, Ukraine and the U.S. undermined the treaty even while publicly endorsing it. The treaty was a mere temporizing measure (according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel) to give Ukraine time to build its army. The U.S. shipped armaments to Ukraine to build up its military, make it interoperable with NATO and support the retaking of the Donbas by force.
The next diplomatic opportunity to save Ukraine came in December 2021, when Vladimir Putin proposed a U.S.-Russia Treaty on Security Guarantees, calling for an end to NATO enlargement, among other issues (including the urgent question of U.S. missile placements near Russia). Instead of negotiating, Biden again flatly said no to Putin on the question of ending NATO enlargement.
Yet another diplomatic opportunity to save Ukraine arose in March 2022, just days after the start of Russia’s “special military operation,” launched on February 24. Russia said that it would stop the war if Ukraine would agree to neutrality. Zelensky agreed, documents were exchanged and a peace deal was nearly reached. Yet, according to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the U.S. and other NATO allies, notably the U.K., stepped in to block the agreement, telling Ukraine to fight on. Recently, Boris Johnson said that Ukraine should keep fighting to preserve “Western hegemony.”
Ukraine can still be saved through neutrality, even as hundreds of thousands of lives have been squandered by the failure to negotiate. The rest of the issues, including boundaries, can also be resolved through diplomacy. The killing can end now, before more disasters befall Ukraine and the world. As for the United States, 30 years of neoconservative misrule is long enough.
Uranium and the Grand Canyon – A Call to Close and Cleanup the Pinyon Plains Uranium Mine
http://nuclearactive.org/ 27 June 24
A recent mapping project by Stanford University shows about 23,000 abandoned uranium mines across the country. One must question beginning a new round of uranium mining when closure and cleanup of previous mining efforts have not been done. As a result, water continues to be contaminated.
June 27th, 2024
One of the most beautiful and majestic sights is found by looking across and down into the Grand Canyon at the spread of the red walls, the patches of green and the glorious Colorado River. All of this is threatened by an exemption from a federal law banning uranium mining in the watershed that feeds the complex river system. Uranium mining is allowed on U.S. Forest Service lands where the Pinyon Plains Uranium Mine is located less than ten miles from the Grand Canyon’s south rim. https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/grand-canyon-uranium
In December 2023, the Pinyon Plains Uranium Mine, formerly called the Canyon Mine, began mining operations. The owner of the mine, Energy Fuels Inc., plans to begin transporting extracted uranium 300 miles across the Navajo Nation to the corporation’s White Mesa Uranium Mill in southeast Utah. https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/white-mesa-uranium-mill and https://www.energyfuels.com/
Tribes and others in this large area know little about the corporation’s plans for transporting the dangerous materials. The federal and state agencies have done little, or none, of the required consultation with the tribes and communities about the transportation plans. The corporation has brought the threat of harm while ignoring its responsibilities to consult with those who want to keep their families safe. See links to the Uranium and the Grand Canyon panel conversation below.
The Navajo Nation passed a law against the transport of uranium across its lands. https://opvp.navajo-nsn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/President-Nygren-signs-uranium-legislation-for-April-30.pdf It is unknown what the Nation will do when the first load leaves the mine.
It is irresponsible to mine, let alone transport uranium ore through the Grand Canyon Watershed when we have already experienced the harm done to all living beings by decades of uranium mining.
A recent mapping project by Stanford University shows about 23,000 abandoned uranium mines across the country. One must question beginning a new round of uranium mining when closure and cleanup of previous mining efforts have not been done. As a result, water continues to be contaminated.
New groundwater scientific studies reveal what Peoples living in and around the Grand Canyon know: that the high interconnectivity of the groundwater systems makes uranium mining not only risky, but extremely risky. https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/blog/uranium-mining-near-grand-canyon-too-risky-research-shows and https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/blog/flooding-uranium-mine-near-grand-canyon-tops-66-million-gallons
To learn more, watch the June 27, 2024 Uranium and the Grand Canyon panel conversation with a tribal leader, a health professional, an activist, and a former uranium miner. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-iba-3&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-3&hspart=iba&p=kjzz+news&type=teff_10019_FFW_ZZ#id=3&vid=9775763ef083421924a855a8b7311be1
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren provided an opening message. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-iba-3&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-3&hspart=iba&p=kjzz+news&type=teff_10019_FFW_ZZ#id=2&vid=9d88817057e55e3bb6c9803bc3b59c88&action=click
Gabriel Pietrorazio, of KJZZ News, hosted the event. He is a national award-winning tribal natural resources reporter. Pietrorazio’s most recent article about these issues: https://www.kjzz.org/news/2024-06-27/inside-pinyon-plain-mine-the-grand-canyon-uranium-dispute-from-two-points-of-view
Take action by going to the Grand Canyon Trust website to sign the petition to close and clean up the Canyon Mine, which was recently renamed the Pinyon Plains Uranium Mine. https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/take-action
Complete BS from the IAEA about the non-existent “global consensus” on nuclear power.
The latest (today) International Atomic Energy Agency newsletter includes this BS info about a fantasy “global consensus” on nuclear power.
The World Bank and other MDBs currently do not contribute financing to nuclear power new build projects, although some MDBs have provided lending for upgrades to existing nuclear power reactors or their decommissioning. Mr Grossi said that financing nuclear power would better align MDBs with the “new global consensus” forged at last year at COP28 in Dubai, where the world called for accelerating the deployment of nuclear power along with other zero emission energy technologies to achieve deep and rapid decarbonization.
Dozens of countries have also signed on to a pledge made at COP28 to work towards tripling global nuclear power capacity to achieve net zero by 2050. The pledge also called on the World Bank, regional development banks and international financial institutions to include nuclear in their lending. That call was echoed by scores of countries at the first-ever Nuclear Energy Summit organized by the IAEA and Government of Belgium in March.
**
The statement supporting nuclear power was made at a private media event at COP 28 and was not part of the official COP proceedings. Canada’s nuclear industry booster NRCan has it on its website but it is not on the site of Environment Canada, which is responsible for COP declarations.
There is no “global consensus” on nuclear energy. Here’s the full IAEA statement:
How I read this: the nuclear industry is desperate. If you read the full item above, you will see a desperate plea for the World Bank and others that do not currently fund nuclear projects to begin doing it. What’s not here is why the private sector is not funding nuclear projects but rather putting their money into solar and wind development, which is that nuclear is a terrible investment and renewables are a good investment.
1 This Month
29 Jan. Thursday 7-8 p.m. Webinar – World’s Largest Nuclear Station in Port Hope, ON?
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com/
31st January – Challenging the War Machine – a DECLASSIFIED UK SUMMIT
Website of the Week
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
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