nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

A dump, not a future

We’re not buying it. This is a nuclear dump dressed up as an “innovation campus,” and DOE is simply hoping that the temptation of jobs and billions of dollars will convince us to turn Idaho into America’s nuclear waste dump.

   by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/09/13/a-dump-not-a-future/

The “innovation” pitch for Idaho doesn’t match the radioactive reality, writes Leigh Ford

The Department of Energy (DOE) has a problem. They have a nuclear addiction and a growing mountain of toxic, radioactive waste. To solve it, they are eyeing Idaho once again. Governor Little recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DOE, and they are trying to sell it to us as a “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Hub.”

We’re not buying it. This is a nuclear dump dressed up as an “innovation campus,” and DOE is simply hoping that the temptation of jobs and billions of dollars will convince us to turn Idaho into America’s nuclear waste dump.

Recently, I sat down with Roland Beres, who wanted to get the Snake River Alliance’s reaction to the governor’s signing the MOU with DOE. Roland has a lot of experience following nuclear issues.

Notably, he covered events leading up to the Idaho Settlement Agreement, when Govenors Batt and Andrus were fighting the feds for sending out-of-state radioactive waste into Idaho. That history matters, because it tells us this isn’t a new fight — it’s the same fight, with slicker marketing.

Today’s political machinery is quickly paving the way for Manhattan Project 2.0, endangering our health and silencing local opposition. Per Executive Order 14300, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is revising radiation standards and reducing protections for workers and communities. Idaho’s Senate passed SCR 120 to claim that reprocessing nuclear waste fits into the Idaho Settlement Agreement framework. Not to be left out, Idaho’s House passed HB 714, which prohibits local governments from saying “NO” to these dumps and reprocessing facilities in their communities.

The Nuclear Myths

The first myth is money. The DOE isn’t handing Idaho billions of dollars. According to their own request for proposals, they are looking for projects that *prioritize private and state capital*. They offer “targeted, conditional, and time‑limited federal support.” In other words, Idaho taxpayers are on the hook for the cost, while the feds offer a loan and a promise to protect themselves from “open-ended liabilities.”

The second myth is the jobs. Idaho’s response to DOE’s request states we already have the infrastructure and can start fast. That translates to fewer construction jobs. And while the Tech bros designing these untested reactors are boasting that they “practically run themselves,” that means they aren’t going to hire many permanent workers. The promise of “thousands of jobs” is a mirage. We might fix a few roads, but beyond that, thousands of long-term jobs are far-fetched.

The third myth is the waste. Our radioactive legacy can still be seen out at the site in the Arco Desert. Last year, when the Snake River Alliance visited Idaho National Lab I noticed the waste we got from the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 is still there, sitting in huge concrete sarcophagi. We saw a warehouse stacked with barrels of waste, much from the Rocky Flats bomb factory—barrels that needed to be recategorized because we have no idea what Colorado actually shipped us. We drove around the 90-acre burial grounds, where a “thousand-year cap” will be placed.

Governor Little might say “that’s all been cleaned up,” but that is dangerously deceptive. We can’t completely clean up nuclear waste. INL has done a good job mitigating a lot of it, but the truth is there is no permanent nuclear waste repository in the country. The waste just keeps piling up, mostly at nuclear power plants back east, and if that waste comes here, it will stay in Idaho permanently. The DOE has a track record of broken promises, and they are not to be trusted.

A Dangerous Bet 

Some politicians and nuclear cheerleaders claim we can reprocess our way out of this. We cannot. Some point to the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) facility in New Mexico, but it only takes defense-related transuranic waste, and was never meant to be permanent. There have already been two 10-year extensions since 2010, and New Mexico isn’t a solution for Idaho’s burden. New Mexicans don’t want a permanent nuclear dump either.

Idaho is being asked to accept a permanent nuclear burden in exchange for a few temporary construction jobs and mythical money. The waste isn’t leaving. The feds and the nuclear industry have had decades to solve this, and they haven’t. We shouldn’t be the dumping ground for their failures. It is time to reject this dangerous bet and demand a real plan that doesn’t put our people, water, and land at further risk.

Idaho is not America’s dumping ground – not for cash, not for jobs, and not for nuclear waste that outlives our great, great grandchildren’s grandchildren.

September 16, 2026 Posted by | USA, wastes | 1 Comment

The Race to Solve Nuclear Energy’s Biggest Problem

By Felicity Bradstock – Sep 12, 2026,
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Race-to-Solve-Nuclear-Energys-Biggest-Problem.html
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Race-to-Solve-Nuclear-Energys-Biggest-Problem.html

  • Nuclear expansion is increasing pressure on governments to establish permanent disposal facilities for spent fuel.
  • Canada is advancing a deep geological repository near Ignace, Ontario, using copper-coated containers, bentonite clay, and hundreds of metres of rock.
  • The United States still lacks an operating permanent repository and is exploring new nuclear-waste arrangements beyond the stalled Yucca Mountain project.

Nuclear power is growing in popularity once again as governments worldwide look to diversify their energy mix and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Several countries are now looking to develop or expand their nuclear energy capacity over the coming decades. However, one challenge remains – nuclear waste. Disposing of waste materials from nuclear energy operations remains a complex task with no perfect solution.

As countries worldwide have grown their nuclear power capacity, many governments are still struggling to decide on the best solution for disposing of nuclear waste. There are three types of nuclear waste: low-, intermediate-, and high-level radioactive waste. Most of the waste produced by nuclear plants consists of lightly contaminated items, such as tools and work clothing, with radioactivity levels of around 1 per cent. High-level waste consists of spent fuel, which accounts for around 3 per cent of the total volume of waste from nuclear energy production, yet contains 95 per cent of the radioactivity.

Nuclear facility operators are responsible for the safe disposal of any radioactive waste they produce. Nuclear power plants generate relatively little waste compared to many other energy sources; however, it is some of the most difficult to manage. Nuclear fuel is very energy-dense, meaning little is required to generate large quantities of electricity and just 5 grammes of high-level waste is produced to provide for an individual’s annual energy needs. A conventional 1 GW nuclear plant, which can supply over one million people with electricity, produces around three cubic meters of vitrified high-level waste per year.

In Oakville, Canada, the Nuclear Waste Management Organisation (NWMO) has developed a test site for nuclear waste storage. The site is situated in a warehouse, where a driverless forklift stacks 8,000 kg of bentonite clay blocks into a narrow rock tunnel, and another autonomous machine fills the gaps around the blocks with crumbled clay. Each one encases a copper-coated steel container created to hold spent nuclear fuel. These blocks are then sealed behind additional clay and concrete in tunnels deep underground, so that the radioactive material can slowly decay over thousands of years with no risk to the public.

The metal fuel containers are designed to withstand the pressure of being buried beneath a 3-kilometre-thick glacier, should the next ice age arrive before the radiation has fully decayed. They have also been successfully tested for resistance to crushing under an extremely strong force, equivalent to being over 6 km underwater. The NWMO team aims to build the final site 1,600 km northwest of the test facility, in the town of Ignace. It will be buried at a depth of around 750 metres in the hard rock of the Canadian Shield. Once complete, around 2040, it is expected to be capable of storing nearly 6 million bundles of spent fuel produced by Canada’s four nuclear power plants over their operational lives.

Similar sites are also being developed in other countries, such as Finland, Sweden, and Japan. Scientists have overcome several technical challenges associated with developing deep geological repositories over the years, making them a viable site for nuclear waste storage. However, securing political and public support for these facilities remains a challenge due to fears of contamination.

The United States government began exploring potential deep geological repository sites in the 1980s but has now fallen behind other countries in development due to widespread local opposition. The government chose Yucca Mountain in northern Nevada as the location for the development of its first geological repository, becoming the first in the world to submit a licence application for such a site. 

There are several concerns about developing a facility at this location, including the nearby volcano, which geologists still consider active. The proposed location is in an active earthquake zone and lies above the water table, posing a risk of radioactive particles, known as radionuclides, being released into the environment. However, the biggest challenge has been political opposition. When Nevada Senator Harry Reid became the U.S. Senate’s majority leader in 2007, he put the project on permanent hold.

In the age of the nuclear renaissance in the United States, the lack of progress in Nevada has led the Department of Energy (DoE) to return to the drawing board. The DoE selected sites in Utah, Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Tennessee as possible locations, but Yucca Mountain remains the only legal option for permanent storage at present. The Trump administration would need to pass legislation to remove Yucca Mountain from its designation as a federal site to develop a repository elsewhere. Meanwhile, the U.S. has built up around 95,000 metric tonnes of nuclear waste over the years, which needs to be suitably managed. 

Several deep geological repositories are expected to commence operations in various countries over the coming decades. Meanwhile, scientists are continuing to explore alternative waste management solutions. However, as multiple governments are now exploring the potential to develop their nuclear power capacity, they must also address the waste problem and construct safe disposal facilities alongside new nuclear power projects.

September 16, 2026 Posted by | Canada, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

The case for declassifying 9/11 records

Government secrecy on intelligence related to the attacks impedes the justice process for some and allows conspiracy theories to fester.

MS Now By Lauren Harper, Sept. 10, 2026, 

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently ordered the release of more than 170,000 pages of city records about the air quality in Lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. This release, the first in a series of planned disclosures, shows how opening decades-old records, including those that expose government wrongdoing, is in the public interest. Political will to expand such efforts elsewhere is crucial

Thousands of 9/11 survivors and victims’ families in Lower Manhattan have fought for more than two decades to hold foreign entities liable for the terrorist attacks — only to find that one of the biggest obstacles is their own government. While successive U.S. administrations have promised closure for victims, critical records remain classified 25 years after 9/11, delaying justice and accountability.

The executive order governing classification, EO 13526, mandates that most historical records must be automatically declassified at 25 years, unless they meet certain strict criteria.

In theory, this means the records of the defining national tragedy of this century should start becoming public on Dec. 31. In practice, the declassification system is so ineffective that millions of pages are all but certain to remain hidden in agency archives from Quantico to Langley for years, possibly even decades, whether or not they require continued protection.

This impedes justice on multiple fronts. 

In the Southern District of New York, for example, thousands of people have been fighting since 2002 to hold a variety of defendants — from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to members of Al Qaeda — responsible for the attack. They have been impeded in part by the Justice Department, which has aggressively invoked the state-secrets privilege to block the release of records discussing, among other things, whether Saudi officials aided the hijackers when they arrived in the United States in 2000. While a Biden-era executive order forced the partial declassification of some records relevant to this case, many interagency communications and witness interviews remain heavily redacted or fully classified.

At Guantánamo Bay, enduring secrecy has complicated the prosecution of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several co-conspirators. The military commission has dragged on for nearly 25 years, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, in part because the government’s evidence was obtained from the CIA’s torture program. Although classification rules explicitly prohibit keeping records classified to conceal violations of law, including torture, the federal government has withheld records from the agency’s black-site prisons for years, ultimately prolonging proceedings. In doing so, the government prioritizes its need for secrecy over ensuring the commission’s tribunals proceed at a reasonable speed toward justice………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Although the summary and the closed-door interviews have not reached the 25-year mark, having been compiled by the 9/11 Commission in 2003 and 2004, releasing them would help promote public understanding of the attacks and government intelligence. It could also help dismantle agency pretexts for withholding the older, underlying intelligence………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.ms.now/opinion/9-11-victims-declassifying-records-intelligence-threats

September 15, 2026 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | 1 Comment

Trump Is Planning Round Three of the US-Israeli War Against Iran — But Will Tehran Strike First?

In conversation with Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute

Ian Proud, Sep 11, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/trump-is-planning-round-three-of?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=215182894&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

This conversation with Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, was recorded before President Trump promised Americans $5,000 if he wins the midterms. That pledge does not change the argument. It sharpens it. With round three of the US-Israeli war against Iran looming, the big question is who will strike first?

Trita argues that the slow military escalation and economic warfare now under way are not the third round of the war against Iran. They are the preparation for it.

In his view, the United States and Israel are planning a much larger campaign after November. Trump believes he has already tried diplomacy, sanctions and what might generously be called limited war. What he has not tried is the menu of threats he issued and then abandoned: taking an island, striking desalination plants, hitting critical infrastructure.

After the midterms, Trita fears, that is the direction he will go. Israel is likely to be part of it. Washington kept the Israelis out of round two because it did not trust them to stay inside the box. If the United States no longer wants a box, Trump and Netanyahu may have another crack, despite prior efforts having proved a catastrophic failure.

That, Trita argues, is why Iran is hitting American bases in Jordan. Those sites matter because they help shoot down missiles bound for Israel. Tehran is clearing the path so that, when round three comes, more of its missiles get through.

The obvious objection is that Trump may emerge from the midterms a bruised lame duck. Trita does not think that restrains him. American institutions, he says, are weaker now than ever before. Congress has shown no appetite to defund the war. A Democratic House, and perhaps a Democratic Senate, would mean impeachment of Trump and a president playing defence at home.

However, that is when Trump has been most reckless before. After he lost to Biden in 2020, Mark Milley later said his fear was that Trump would look for an Iran war to block a peaceful transfer of power. He did not get that war. He got 6 January instead. Humiliation makes Trump dangerous, rather than cautious.

But the problem is that Tehran understands this and can see how critical the midterms will be to Trump’s power in the second half of his term. Trita therefore thinks there is a high likelihood that Iran starts the third round of the war a week or two before the midterms, to inflict the maximum political cost on Trump.

That may well damage Trump at the polls. But it may also leave him with fewer constraints and a taste for risk.

The escalation trap is now familiar. Washington reads every tactical gain — more oil leaving the Gulf, a weaker Iranian economy — as proof that time is on its side.

Trita’s warning is the opposite. If the squeeze actually works, Iran will not crumble. It will escalate. It has the options which it is demonstrating daily. Even if Iran fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz, the United States would not lift the blockade. The key demand on the American side has ratcheted up to state collapse, which appears no more likely to happen now than in February.

The Pentagon talks of bombing Iran periodically to degrade its ability to close the Strait. That is not a strategy, but rather “mowing the lawn”.

Yet, no one will be able to sell this war as a victory if in practice it means an on-off air campaign and no diplomacy as the world economy sinks further into depression. Which brings us back to the midterms and the fact that Trump may find that, despite the inducement of a $5000 bribe, many Americans will realise that what they need is a new lawnmower.

You can watch the full conversation here:

You can find Trita’s analysis on his Substack: tritaparsi.substack.com.

Wherever you are in the world, whatever your nationality and religion, I wish you much peace.

September 14, 2026 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Exposed: How The CIA Manipulates Public Opinion

SCHEERPOST, September 8, 2026, Joshua Scheer

Ben Norton examines the little-discussed history of CIA influence over the American left—and the role played by one of the most celebrated feminist icons of the modern era, Gloria Steinem. Steinem’s work with a CIA-funded organization during the Cold War, Norton argues, was part of a broader effort to cultivate a “compatible left”: liberal voices that could promote American power while presenting the United States as a force for democracy, human rights and progress.

But the story doesn’t end with Steinem. Norton connects the Cold War propaganda apparatus to CIA interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Italy and Indonesia, the enormous human toll of U.S. post-9/11 wars, and the cultural institutions and intellectuals allegedly enlisted to fight the ideological battle against communism.

He then brings that history into the present, arguing that the same political language can be heard in today’s Democratic Party—from Hillary Clinton to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—particularly in rhetoric about “democracy vs. authoritarianism,” U.S. intervention abroad and the supposed moral distinction between American power and its rivals.

The central question is provocative: Has the machinery of Cold War propaganda really disappeared—or has it simply learned how to speak the language of modern liberalism?

Highlights

  • Gloria Steinem and the CIA: Steinem acknowledged working with the CIA-funded Independent Research Service during the Cold War.
  • The “compatible left”: Norton argues that the CIA sought to cultivate center-left figures who opposed communism without challenging U.S. imperial power.
  • CIA coups and intervention: The analysis examines U.S. involvement in the overthrow of governments in Iran and Guatemala, as well as CIA interference in Italy’s 1948 election. – Indonesia: Norton examines U.S. support for the Indonesian military amid the mass killings of 1965–66.
  • The cultural Cold War: The analysis explores the CIA-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom and its connections to artists, writers and intellectuals.
  • From Steinem to today: Norton argues that Cold War narratives about democracy, authoritarianism and U.S. power continue to influence contemporary liberal politics.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This transcript has been cleaned for readability while maintaining the speaker’s original words, meaning, arguments, and overall sequence. Timestamps have been removed, punctuation and paragraphing have been lightly edited, and obvious transcription/spelling errors in names and terms have been corrected.

Today I’m going to be explaining one of the ways in which US intelligence agencies manipulate public opinion in order to support U.S. wars and interventions abroad. And this scandal involves one of the most prominent political activists in modern US history. Her name was Gloria Steinem. She was a major feminist leader and she just passed away this September. And the reason that I’m talking about Gloria Steinem today is that many people have heard of her and they know that she was a feminist icon. But what many people do not know is that she was a CIA agent. She worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency for years. And later in this analysis today, I’ll look at the evidence detailing how Steinem was used by the U.S. in order to manufacture consent for the U.S. Empire’s wars of aggression for its imperial crimes and especially as a vehicle for anti-communist propaganda. Steinem worked for the CIA at the height of the first cold war and she was a proud part of the U.S. Empire’s global propaganda narrative when the US tried to portray itself as a progressive beacon of liberal values that was defending democracy in scare quotes and human rights and fighting against the big bad boogeymen of the Soviet Union fighting against communism. This is why the CIA hired Steinem because she was a very effective propagandist………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/08/exposed-how-the-cia-manipulates-public-opinion/

September 14, 2026 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Left out by the state, residents take SpaceX concerns to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

“our politicians have once again sold their souls for corporate welfare,”

the Louisiana Legislature recently passed a slew of laws that shield SpaceX and companies with similar projects from certain legal responsibility and damage claims from residents affected by their facilities.

The Current, by Stephen Marcantel, September 3

State leadership sought no public comment on a massive SpaceX project in Vermilion Parish. Louisiana residents took their concerns to the feds instead.

By the time the public comment period on a proposed Federal Aviation Administration rule change closed Monday night, thousands had shared their thoughts — more than half of them mentioning Louisiana and its rapidly eroding coastline, fragile wetlands and migratory bird populations.

The proposed change would allow the FAA to fast-track approval of launch facilities like SpaceX’s recently announced Starbase Louisiana in Vermilion Parish. In the planning process for that $100 billion project, there was no official public comment process prior to approval, leading over 1,000 people to voice their concerns to the FAA instead.

“We tamed this land, full of mosquitoes, water moccasins, and alligators, to the best of our ability. We’ve become symbiotic [with] all of the nature in south Louisiana,” self-described lifelong Louisiana resident and Vermilion Parish native Tim Meaux writes. 

“Apparently my voice, and millions of others, have zero say [in] what becomes of Vermilion Parish because our politicians have once again sold their souls for corporate welfare,” Meaux continues in his comment to the agency, asking them to hold SpaceX accountable. “With our Louisiana government completely failing to hold on to any protection for us, you are our last bastion of hope.”

On the state level, the Louisiana Legislature recently passed a slew of laws that shield SpaceX and companies with similar projects from certain legal responsibility and damage claims from residents affected by their facilities.

The 1,647 public comments specifically mentioning Louisiana, a majority of which were submitted in the week after the SpaceX announcement, criticize the plans for the 125,000-acre Vermilion Parish launch facility, and warn of the possibly irreparable harm that a launch site could cause if federal guardrails were waived.

“Anyone who lives here and knows the area, the marshlands, ecosystem, knows this is the most inappropriate site for such a facility,” writes Nina Guidry, who describes herself as a Vermilion Parish resident. “[The] majority of people in this parish, if asked, would be dead against SpaceX locating here. We were never given that courtesy. It was decided in backroom deals of our state legislators signing NDAs and our governor. It will impact a centuries old way of life & traditions.”

If approved, the new rule would waive the need for compliance with more than a dozen environmental protections, including the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, in the issuing of permits for launch facilities.

A handful of environmental groups, such as the Louisiana Wildlife Federation, National Wildlife Federation and the Pontchartrain Conservancy, were among the first to publicly criticize the waiver request, which the FAA proposed on July 30. 

“We believe a strong permitting review does help with site planning and project construction. Other projects undergo the same review, and these are really important oversight processes to protect our natural resources.” Rebecca Triche, director of the LWF, tells the Current.

Of the more than 3,000 comments on the proposed waiver, more than 600 comments mention Vermilion Parish directly, many coming from current or former parish residents. 

Paula Rae Broussard, an American expat living in New Zealand who has roots in Vermilion Parish, says she’s “deeply concerned” about the effect the waiver may have on the protection of the fragile ecosystem around the planned SpaceX site. 

“Vermilion Parish should not be treated as a test case for reducing federal environmental oversight simply because the project promises economic development,” she writes in her comment. “My grandparents live on land that has been in our family since my great-great-grandparents. That land isn’t just property. It is our history. It is where our family comes from. It is our place.”………………………………………

“The proposed rule builds on President Trump’s innovative “Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry” Executive Order and advances a decades-old Congressional mandate to simplify and expedite commercial space licensing,” an FAA spokesperson told The Current. 

……………………………………………………. https://thecurrentla.com/2026/left-out-by-the-state-residents-take-spacex-concerns-to-faa/

September 14, 2026 Posted by | space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Widespread Fraud Lawsuit Settled for Former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Whistleblowers

Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, 11 Sept 26

From 1946 to 1969, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was used as the station for top-secret nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean. It was also the place where decontamination was done on the ships used in hydrogen bomb tests. Radioactive and toxic waste was disposed there.

In 1989 the shipyard was declared to be a Superfund site as a result of the high levels of toxic and radioactive waste from those operations.  The engineering firm, Tetra Tech EC, submitted false reporting to the U.S. Navy about the contamination.  https://www.tetratech.com/

In late August, a federal judge approved a $57 million settlement, plus interest, against Tetra Tech for breach of contract and for reporting false test results. Tetra Tech, a U.S. Navy contractor, was accused of widespread fraud in the cleanup of a 400-acre site where homes were razed to construct more than 10,000 homes in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. https://missionlocal.org/bayview/

In 2018, two Tetra Tech supervisors were charged with falsification of records and each were sentenced to eight months in federal prison.  

September 14, 2026 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

A worthy 9/11 remembrance  – Walt Zlotow

11 September 2026 AIMN Editorial, Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL, https://theaimn.net/a-worthy-9-11-remembrance/

On the 25th 9/11 anniversary we should also ponder victims and cost of America’s War on Terror – designed and implemented to reshape the Middle East in America’s image in response to and revenge for the attacks. 

Estimates from the Brown University Costs of War project place the toll at 4.5–4.7 million people since 2001, including ~940,000 direct deaths (combatants, civilians, journalists, aid workers) and 3.6–3.8 million indirect deaths from disease, malnutrition, and health complications.

U.S. military and contractor deaths: About 7,074 U.S. military deaths and 8,189 contractor deaths 

Costs according to warcosts.org

Total cost: $8+ trillion since 2001

Breakdown:

  • Direct military operations: ~$3.2 trillion.
  • Pentagon budget increases: ~$1.8 trillion.
  • Veterans care (projected through 2050+): ~$2.2 trillion.
  • Homeland Security expansion: ~$1.1 trillion.
  • Interest on war debt: ~$1.1 trillion

On 9/11 Remembrance Day Americans should urge its government to turn away from senseless war whether it be against Iran, Venezuela, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, Cuba, little unarmed boats plying the Caribbean or other locals we’re not informed of. That would be a noble way to honor the victims of the senseless violence perpetrated on America 25 years ago today.

September 13, 2026 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Uranium mining ban enacted for New Mexico lands

11 September https://www.ans.org/news/article-8382/uranium-mining-ban-enacted-for-new-mexico-lands/

On September 4, New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard issued an executive order that bans the leasing of state lands for new uranium mining and associated activities. The executive order also directs the State Land Office to focus on cleaning up legacy uranium sites and urges the uranium industry and federal government to prioritize legacy uranium problems in the state.

According to the State Land Office’s announcement, “New Mexico has a painful history as the largest producer of uranium ore in the United States, which has left a legacy of over 1,000 former uranium mining, milling, and exploratory drilling sites in the state, of which 250 are considered abandoned because they are not associated with a viable responsible party (at least 50 of the sites involve state trust lands).”

The State Land Office also said the Trump administration is “aggressively pushing to increase uranium production nationwide despite the fact that the federal government and responsible private parties have failed to address the thousands of unremediated uranium sites in New Mexico and beyond.”

Nuclear history of New Mexico: New Mexico has long been associated with the United States’ nuclear history. Los Alamos is, of course, where J. Robert Oppenheimer directed the development of the first atomic bombs as part of the Manhattan Project, and is the home of Los Alamos National Laboratory. New Mexico is also home to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, and Urenco USA’s National Enrichment Facility, near Eunice.

The Grants uranium district in northwestern New Mexico was the largest source of uranium in the United States from 1951 to 1980. Today, there are hundreds of abandoned uranium mines in the state, but no active mines. Some of the abandoned mining sites have had cleanup projects initiated, such as the former Northeast Church Rock Mine in northwestern New Mexico.

The old Grants region and other areas in New Mexico remain sites of interest for potential future uranium mining operations, and there are currently two active uranium leases in the state.

New Mexico has no commercial nuclear power plants. Most of the state’s electricity is generated by—in order of decreasing percentage—wind, natural gas, coal, and solar, with other renewables providing lesser amounts.

A contentious topic: At a press conference announcing her executive order, Commissioner Garcia Richard accused federal authorities of ignoring and disrespecting the citizens of New Mexico regarding uranium legacy sites, pledging, “That stops now.” Since becoming land commissioner in 2019, she said, “I have not allowed any uranium mining on state lands, and today’s action solidifies this prohibition to protect our communities and our land and water.”

She added, “Indigenous communities and New Mexico families have suffered the environmental and health effects inherent in living near a uranium pit or downwind from a nuclear testing site. The Trump administration’s push for aggressive uranium development is a low blow to these communities, and I will keep doing everything in my power to fight back.”

State Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández (D., 3rd Dist.), whose constituents include those in northern and most eastern parts of the state, including Los Alamos and the Grants uranium district, expressed her gratitude to Garcia Richard, saying that “all of the people who protect and hold sacred the land that we are standing on today are saying, ‘no more uranium mining.’”

Leger Fernández noted that she has cointroduced legislation in the state legislature “to withdraw federal lands from uranium mining in the Chama watershed [which is in southern Colorado and north-central New Mexico] because we know that that watershed is precious and it is fragile. That Chama watershed is important not just for the Native Americans who rely on it, not just important for the people who might want to go and be enjoying themselves at Abiquiu Lake or Ghost Ranch. It is the water that feeds our crops along the acequias. It is the water that feeds into the rivers that feed and nourish Santa Fe.”

In recent years, officials in New Mexico have set up certain obstacles to nuclear-related development in the state. In 2023, for example, legislation was passed to ban the storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste in New Mexico without the state’s explicit consent. That legislation played a role in Holtec International’s canceling its plans last year to build a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico.

Nuclear advocacy: Although some in New Mexico are opposed to uranium mining, as well as to nuclear energy in general, there are also forces advocating on behalf of nuclear development. The New Mexico Nuclear Alliance made its debut as a nuclear energy advocate late last year, specifically noting support for new uranium mining in the state. The Clean Energy Association of New Mexico is another nuclear advocacy group in the state.

September 13, 2026 Posted by | politics, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Public Interest Groups Warn National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Plutonium Giveaway

South Carolina Environmental Law Project, Savannah River Site Watch & Nuclear Watch New Mexico September 8, 2026, https://www.scelp.org/news/groups-warn-nnsa-on-plutonium-giveaway

South Carolina – Today, the South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) sent a letter of demand to the Department of Energy (DOE) and its semi-autonomous agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), about their proposed unsound and dangerous management of U.S. plutonium. The letter notified them that they must comply with the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirement for public review of the Trump Administration’s troubling plan to give away 19.7 metric tons of nuclear weapons-grade plutonium to private corporations.

SCELP’S letter, on behalf of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch, and a private citizen who lives near the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, outlines why NNSA must be held to its legal NEPA obligations. The letter describes how recently issued presidential executive orders:

…constitute a vast change in the prior decisions and purposes of the DOE/NNSA surplus plutonium disposition program that has been in place since at least 1996… This change is also contrary to the larger nuclear non-proliferation policy of the United States restricting the commercial use of plutonium that has been in place for approximately fifty years.

This action follows SCELP’s earlier NEPA lawsuit on behalf of SRS Watch and Nuclear Watch New Mexico. In a landmark settlement, that litigation successfully compelled the NNSA to prepare a nationwide programmatic environmental impact statement on the production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores for nuclear weapons (the “Pit Production PEIS”).

SCELP’s new letter of demand states as follows:

In a generally analogous NEPA situation, my clients are concerned that the Department of Energy and NNSA are radically changing course in their surplus plutonium disposition program without preparing a necessary supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement.

On May 23, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14302 “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base” which officially terminated DOE’s previous “dilute and dispose” program for excess weapons-grade plutonium. In that program, 40 metric tons of plutonium were to be treated as nuclear waste for underground disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, as analyzed in several earlier NEPA documents.

President Trump’s 2025 decree directed DOE to establish a program to supply surplus plutonium in a form usable by the commercial sector—specifically for advanced nuclear technologies and small modular reactors. Notably, the Executive Order focused extensively on “recycling” and “reprocessing” spent nuclear fuel to remove plutonium for use in reactors. It then contemplated agreements “with domestic nuclear energy companies” that “implement methods to enhance the capacity to manage spent nuclear fuel, including the recycling and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel….” Not only was this significant shift in policy done without required NEPA analysis, but there is no justified demand to use plutonium as nuclear fuel.

In addition to serious proliferation, environmental and radioactive waste concerns, this planned giveaway of weapons-grade plutonium is also linked to the increasingly controversial issues of artificial intelligence and data centers. Still hypothetical and untested advanced nuclear reactors and speculative small modular reactors are being eyed to power future data centers across the country. This urgently underscores the need for a nationwide public programmatic review, which SCELP’s letter of demand seeks.

In May 2026, NNSA announced yet another major policy shift in the plutonium disposition program, again without mandated NEPA review. The government agency selected five private companies to receive the 19.7 metric tons of plutonium: Oklo Inc., Exodys Energy, Shine Technologies, Standard Nuclear, and Flibe Energy, Inc. The current Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, had to resign from the Oklo board of directors to assume his job as the head of DOE. That continues to raise eyebrows as DOE funnels money to Oklo, a private corporation, for its ill-defined program which will purport to use some of the government’s weapons-grade plutonium.

The Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina is key to the Trump Administration’s plans to give away weapons-grade plutonium to private corporations. As the SCELP letter notes:

[I]n support of its new plutonium utilization program, DOE announced in March its ‘decision to restart HB-Line operations at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.’ This activity was stated to provide ‘the capability to power America’s nuclear future by recycling surplus plutonium and partnering with industry to produce uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for advanced nuclear reactors. The facility is an integral part of H-Canyon, the only chemical separations facility of its kind in the United States.’

This is ironic. DOE and NNSA have been on the Government Accountability Office’s High Risk List for project mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ dollars ever since GAO started the List in 1991. An ill-conceived MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at SRS—terminated in 2017—was a ~$7 billion failure for which there has been no government accounting. That boondoggle plutonium MOX fuel facility is now being “repurposed” by NNSA into a new $30 billion production facility to produce plutonium “pit” bomb cores for new-design nuclear weapons, which will be the most expensive building in U.S. history.

SCELP’s letter of demand concludes:

Before bringing suit on the Pit Production PEIS, my clients wrote to NNSA five times reminding the agency of its legal obligations under NEPA. They never received a response. It is my hope that we can avoid a similar predicament. My clients request that DOE and NNSA respond to this letter within 30 days. If NNSA and DOE do not elect to engage, my clients will evaluate what legal actions may be necessary and proceed accordingly. 

Ben Cunningham, SCELP Attorney, commented, “Since the mid ‘90s, DOE and NNSA have scrutinized how to address the surplus plutonium issue many times across several administrations. The public has been engaged in the process each time. NEPA continues to require that same level of scrutiny and public engagement before these agencies commit to a course of action that would place plutonium in private hands.

Tom Clements, Director of SRS Watch, added, “It is imperative that DOE and NNSA immediately halt questionable plans to introduce weapon-grade plutonium into civilian reactors and other nuclear facilities and affirm that it will now begin preparation of the legally required environmental review.”

The Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Jay Coghlan, concluded, “As nuclear threats increase around the world, the last thing we need is government giveaways of nuclear weapons-grade plutonium to private profit-seeking corporations. We are asking the NNSA nicely for the public review legally required by the National Environmental Policy Act. If it blows us off again like it did with the Pit Production PEIS, we’ll discuss it with NNSA in court.”

Contacts:

Tom Clements, Director, SRS Watch, 803-240-7268, tomclements329[at]srswatch.org;

Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505-989-7342, jay[at]nukewatch.org

Shelby Cohen, Comms Manager, SC Env. Law Project, 864.414.7726, shelby[at]scelp.org 

About the nonprofit organizations: The South Carolina Environmental Law Project has used its legal expertise to protect land, water and communities across South Carolina since 1987. Savannah River Site Watch, based in Columbia, SC, works for the public interest by monitoring activities at the Savannah River Site. Nuclear Watch New Mexico, based in Santa Fe, NM, watchdogs plutonium pit production at both the Los Alamos Lab and SRS. Learn more at scelp.org/, srswatch.org/, and nukewatch.org/.

September 13, 2026 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Witkoff and Kushner Cite Progress in Kyiv Talks, Push for Renewed Russia-Ukraine Negotiations

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner described talks with Ukrainian leaders as encouraging after carrying new proposals from Moscow to Kyiv, though major disputes over territory and security remain unresolved.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom, | Sep 6, 2026

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner said they made progress during their first official visit to Kyiv on Sunday, expressing optimism that direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine can be revived after more than three hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow a day earlier.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held three rounds of discussions with the Americans, with national security advisers from the United Kingdom, France and Germany joining the final session. The talks covered possible pathways toward ending the more than 4½-year war as well as Ukraine’s immediate military needs, long-term security guarantees and economic support for postwar reconstruction.

Witkoff said Washington remains focused on “a diplomatic resolution to this conflict, not a kinetic resolution.” He said Saturday’s Kremlin discussions produced “new ideas” that he and Kushner brought directly to Kyiv, adding that the participation of advisers from France, Germany and Britain demonstrated that “collaboration is critical” to reaching an agreement.

Both Moscow and Kyiv would have to compromise, Witkoff acknowledged, but he said the administration believes a negotiated settlement remains possible. “We think we have the ingredients to get to that place,” he said.

Kushner similarly said the United States is seeking a “win-win” outcome rather than simply pressuring one side to accept the other’s terms. He said President Donald Trump is focused not only on stopping the fighting but on creating “a framework that could actually lead to a durable peace.” Kushner described Saturday’s meeting with Putin as “constructive and substantive” and said the discussions explored what Russia, Ukraine and the broader international community could gain from a settlement.

The two envoys hope to revive trilateral negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine and the United States, a format last used roughly six months ago. Kushner said Washington has remained in near-daily communication with Ukrainian officials even during the recent slowdown in diplomatic activity, which coincided with the administration’s increased focus on the Iran war.

Zelenskyy said several major issues remain unresolved, particularly territory. He said the territorial question “remains relevant” but argued that such difficult decisions “can only be resolved at the level of leaders.” He also emphasized that any settlement must include lasting security arrangements, saying a strong Ukrainian military remains “one of the main guarantees of security.”


Immediate defense requirements formed another major part of Sunday’s talks. Zelenskyy said Ukraine is seeking “serious volumes” of American support for a winter package combining air defense with protection for energy infrastructure as colder weather approaches. Kyiv is particularly seeking additional Patriot systems and interceptor missiles, with European governments expected to help support the effort.

The Ukrainian president said the United States plans to increase production of Patriot interceptor missiles next year and that Germany is also expanding production under existing licensing arrangements. Ukraine is simultaneously working with 67 domestic companies developing systems capable of destroying Russia’s increasingly common jet-powered drones………………………………………………………………

Zelenskyy said Sunday that Ukraine, the United States and European partners agreed to another meeting, although no location has been selected. The planned session is expected to continue work on territorial questions, security guarantees, military support and the economic framework surrounding any eventual settlement……………………………..

The central obstacles, however, remain substantial. Territory has not been resolved, security guarantees are still being negotiated and the aerial war continues even while diplomats discuss peace. The next test will be whether the “new ideas” carried from Moscow to Kyiv can produce the renewed direct negotiations Washington is now seeking. https://yournews.com/2026/09/06/7187875/witkoff-and-kushner-cite-progress-in-kyiv-talks-push-for/

September 12, 2026 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

US universities get millions to do military research for Israel.

xpayers give money to the US government. The US government then sends billions of dollars to Israel. Israel uses that money – there’s not a strict accounting – to purchase goods and services from US war corporations and research from US academic institutions.”

These projects are not funded by traditional academic grants. Instead, they are procured as “defense articles and services,” paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars via the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program – the same mechanism Israel uses to purchase F-35 fighter jets and other U.S. defense exports.

The projects, which often fail to disclose their funding, include efforts to create surveillance robots and improve missile guidance

See an insect crawling in the corner of the room? It might be a surveillance robot, thanks to research at Carnegie Mellon University to develop cockroach-like robots with, and for, the Israeli military.

Robot cockroaches, “terror-network” mapping, and rapid missile guidance are just three examples of at least 70 research projects U.S. universities have conducted on behalf of the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMoD). Over a thousand pages of internal university and U.S./Israeli military documents reveal a sweeping, decades-long program to sponsor military research collaborations with at least 30 U.S. universities, from Cornell to the University of California at San Diego, since at least 2009.

Projects are conducted in collaboration with the Israeli military and sometimes explicitly incorporate environmental conditions in Palestine into the work. One project designed fuel cells for “distributed sensor networks” tailored to the temperature and soil conditions of an Israeli border that could monitor “potential terrorist activity” for “border security.”

Recent reports from Dropsite News, The Nation, and the Anti-War Initiative found millions of Israeli military dollars flowing into U.S. schools. Public records obtained from 13 U.S. universities reveal this money was directed via a U.S. arms export program to fund collaborations with Israeli scientists and military officials.

These projects are not funded by traditional academic grants. Instead, they are procured as “defense articles and services,” paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars via the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program – the same mechanism Israel uses to purchase F-35 fighter jets and other U.S. defense exports.

At least 11 contracts sent U.S. scientists to Israel to work face to face with their counterparts at an Israeli university and/or the IMoD, earmarking funds for U.S. professors to attend meetings and present their research to the IMoD.

The research

Though research subjects span the breadth of Israel’s military interests, including drone swarms, missile guidance, fuel cells, and quantum sensing, we highlight just a few threads to illustrate how U.S. universities support Israel’s military.

Alongside robotic cockroaches, Prof. Sarah Bergbreiter built “inchworm-like” crawlers with an IMoD scientist at the University of Maryland. Profs. Indejrit Chopra, also at Maryland, and Kenneth Breuer at Brown University were inspired by hummingbirds and bats to develop micro-drones that can search caves and demolished buildings. Columbia Prof. Hod Lipson built the Flexipod, a “soft quadrupedal robot” agile enough to do backflips and navigate varied terrain.

The IDF has used other drones to collect massive surveillance datasets that are fed into AI software to track targets and accelerate “kill-chains.” Recent Israeli innovations in this area follows years of IMoD-sponsored research at U.S. universities on this kind of technology.

In December 2016, the IDF prototyped an AI tool to “Tell You What’s Happening in a Video,” generating captions to help soldiers “keep an eye on the battlefield.”

The following year, Prof. Kate Saenko received $120,000 from the IMoD for research on “Generating Natural Language Descriptions for Video” using AI to automatically describe and classify people and objects in a video. While sponsored by a second IMoD contract on “Zero Shot Captioning,” or using machine-learning to describe things not seen before, Saenko’s group presented software for the “detection of novel objects” titled “Learning To Detect Every Thing” at a Tel Aviv conference.

Saenko told RS the conference paper was not related to her IMoD funding, but did not answer repeated requests to clarify which of her papers are.

According to an ex-IDF intelligence officer, a human eye “will go over [AI-generated] targets before each attack, but it need not spend a lot of time on them.” One IMoD-sponsored project at the University of California, Berkeley could make that process even faster.

Neuroscientist Robert Knight tested electrodes in a brain-computer-interface (BCI) for “cognitive enhancement” of “high throughput tasks requiring visual recognition.” In his internal proposal to the IMoD, but not in his published study, Knight discusses applications like “detecting ‘suspicious’ activity.”

Prof. V.S. Subrahmanian at the University of Maryland received IMoD funding to study “Targeting of Terror Networks” to “find weak points for the destabilization of terrorist networks.” He has applied these algorithms to identify alleged “sympathizers” of Hezbollah on social media.

Another of Subrahmanian’s IMoD contracts on “Massive Social Networks” involved analyzing “1.04 million person-days” of cellular location data for tracking population flow in Israel and its Occupied Territories. The study notes its algorithms are “related to… monitoring for evading targets by a flock of unmanned air vehicles.”

Other IMoD-sponsored projects studied drone swarms directly.

“Human-Robot Interaction Design for a Single Operator with Many Robots” was the IMoD project of Prof. Holly Yanco, the director of the University of Massachusetts’ Lowell’s Robotics Center. MIT Prof. Emilio Frazzoli devised “trajectory optimization” algorithms for groups of quadrotors, emphasizing his results are “easy to implement and may be used directly.”

When reached for comment, Frazzoli stated his research was on a “very basic/generic problem in robotics: how to generate a path to move one robot from point A to point B,” and that there was “nothing specific to defense” about the work.

Frazzoli’s IMoD-sponsored contract was titled “Rapidly Exploring Random Trees for Missile Guidance.”

Prof. Joaquim Martins at the University of Michigan optimized “package delivery UAV” fleets for the IMoD, given “mission requirements” with “various package weights and delivery distances.” He found that quadrotors are best for “long-range missions with small numbers of customers,” and thanked Israeli arms company Rafael’s CTO of Multi-Domain Warfare for help with “research methodology.” Martins’ published paper only lists civilian applications like delivering “medical supplies” despite its IMoD sponsorship. 

This is not the only seeming example of a gap between an IMoD proposal and the published paper that followed it. In 2015, Profs. Alexander Yarin (University of Illinois Chicago) and Eyal Zussman (Technion) submitted a chemical sensing proposal telling the IMoD their “Overall research objective is to develop [a] fundamental understanding of sampling and detect[ing] buried explosives,” elaborating that “the detection of buried improvised explosives and mines [is] a major challenge in the battlefield.”

But a public-facing paper detailing experiments nearly identical to their internal application only listed civilian applications like “mining,” without any references to “explosives” or the “battlefield.” The paper did not acknowledge any funding sources, including the IMoD. Neither professor responded to a request for comment.

The funding pipeline

The research is purchased by the IMoD Mission to USA, the Israeli military procurement office that spends roughly $3.3 billion in annual U.S. aid to buy defense goods and services.

As analyst Christian Sorensen of Eisenhower Media Network explained over e-mail: “US taxpayers give money to the US government. The US government then sends billions of dollars to Israel. Israel uses that money – there’s not a strict accounting – to purchase goods and services from US war corporations and research from US academic institutions.”

To receive IMoD funds, universities like UC Irvine certified they were “entering into an agreement to sell defense articles … to the foreign government listed above,” and that the payment would be made “under the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act.” The projects are classified as Direct Commercial Contracts (DCCs), or sales from a defense contractor to a foreign military, subsidized by the U.S. government. Because only DCCs of over $100 million to Israel require legislative notification, the program has no public reporting mechanism or granular congressional oversight, and we do not know if any other countries use DCCs to sponsor U.S. science. In an e-mail to the IMoD, one university administrator called this funding arrangement a “departure from standard process.”

For over 35 years, Israel was one of just ten countries authorized to use DCCs, spending over a billion dollars annually on defense exports from private entities such as these research projects. But in April 2026, the Pentagon extended this privilege to over 50 countries.

A bureaucratic carve-out known as the Fundamental Research Exclusion allows the IMoD to bypass export controls for defense research it sponsors if the results are eventually “published and shared broadly.”

Both MIT and the University of California systems censored their funding databases after student activists discovered their schools’ IMoD contracts. In July 2025, an MIT professor canceled a proposed IMoD contract due to public backlash.

A spokesperson for the State Department referred questions about this purchasing arrangement to a fact sheet on U.S.-Israeli Security Cooperation. The sheet notes that the U.S. participates in “a variety of exchanges with Israel,” including research and weapons development.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense declined to comment.

September 12, 2026 Posted by | Education, USA | Leave a comment

US to NATO: Keep buying US weapons for lost Ukraine war…it gooses our economy- Walt Zlotow

But not one weapon will be supplied by the US. They must all be purchased by NATO countries struggling with their declining economies due in large part by squandering tens of billion of Euros on Ukaine sinking deeping into failed state status.


Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, Sep 9, 2026,

If there was a Nobel Prize for the most most cynical foreign posicy among the world’s 193 countries, the US would win weapons down.


Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby just told European NATO countries to keep buying US weapos to keep Ukraine being destroyed in their lost war with Riussia.

“The situation makes it all the more important for Europe to sustain support for Ukraine while also accelerating its own rearmament and reindustrialization. First, Europe must continue — and where necessary increase — support for Ukraine’s immediate battlefield requirements through Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL). The continued flow of munitions and critical capabilities is effective; it remains essential to enabling Ukrainian forces to hold the front line and deny further Russian advances. Second, Europe must plan now for sustained procurement that supports both Ukraine’s long-term force reconstitution and Europe’s own defense requirements.” Colby omitted that NATO weapons purchases fit neatly into US economic policy.

But not one weapon will be supplied by the US. They must all be purchased by NATO countries struggling with their declining economies due in large part by squandering tens of billion of Euros on Ukaine sinking deeping into failed state status. The fact Ukraine has suffered over over two million causualties and lost a fifth of their land forever means nothing to Colby and his bosses War Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump. All they care about is how those billions in weapons sales will help salvage the declining US economy from Trump and Hegseth’s failed Iran war debacle ahead of the approaching November 3 midterms.

Trump has been lusting for a Nobel Peace Prize since hie took office in January 2017. He’s been tirelessly promoting his candidacy claiming he’s ended 8 wars when he’s ended none while waging war on Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and any small boat in the Caribbean he claims is carrying drugs.

Yep, the Nobel Committee should consider awarding a Nobel Cynical Foreign Policy Prize. Donald Trump, on behalf of the United States would be selected unanimously.

September 11, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sodium cooled nuclear reactors are not necessarily safer

While no sodium-cooled reactors currently operate in the United States, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is working with industry on a number of “advanced” reactor designs, including the Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR).  One of the SFR’s safety advantages, to quote the DOE, is that the design provides a “Long grace period for corrective action, if needed.” SRE’s meltdown transpired over a two-week period. Fermi Unit 1 had indications of inadequate core cooling in June that were repeated in August and dismissed until extensive damage occurred in October 1966. The “if needed” grace period is never long enough when warning sign after warning sign is dismissed or ignored.

DOE did acknowledge some “challenges” for the SFR: their higher speed and higher energy neutrons can embrittle and degrade nearby materials, liquid sodium coolant reactors with air and water and degrades concrete, and the opaqueness of the liquid sodium coolant complicates in-service inspections and maintenance.

Thank goodness for the “Long grace period for corrective actions, if needed.” That and the fact that SFRs only operate in cyberspace where the primary threat is carpal tunnel syndrome

safety-symbol-SmFlag-USANuclear Plant Accidents: Fermi Unit 1, Union of Concerned Scientists , director, Nuclear Safety Project | July 12, 2016, Disaster by Design

Jorge Agustin Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, also known as George Santayana, wrote that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Continue reading →

September 11, 2026 Posted by | Reference, technology, USA | Leave a comment

Gates-backed TerraPower targets British nuclear power plant start by 2034

Sodium cooled nuclear reactors are not necessarily safer. https://blog.ucs.org/dlochbaum/nuclear-plant-accidents-fermi-unit-1/

By Susanna Twidale, September 7, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gates-backed-terrapower-targets-british-nuclear-power-plant-start-by-2034-2026-09-07/

  • Summary
  • Companies
  • Britain would be TerraPower’s first market outside United States
  • First UK plant could be operational by 2034
  • Electricity cost expected under £100 per megawatt hour

ONDON, Sept 7 (Reuters) – TerraPower, the U.S. nuclear developer backed by Bill ‌Gates, expects its Natrium reactors to begin generating electricity in Britain by 2034, its CEO told Reuters, making the UK its first market outside the United ​States.

Britain has backed the development of small modular reactors (SMRs) to help ​to increase energy security and meet climate targets, launching an ⁠Advanced Nuclear Framework this year to support privately funded projects.

Chris Levesque, ​TerraPower’s president and CEO, said progress on the company’s first Natrium reactor, ​due to be completed in 2031, showed that “2034 nuclear electricity in the UK from Natrium is very possible”.

The technology has cleared regulatory requirements in the United States, ​where the first plant is being constructed in Wyoming and is currently ​being assessed under Britain’s Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process.

Each sodium-cooled Natrium reactor generates 345 megawatts ‌of ⁠baseload power and includes storage capable of boosting output to 500 MW for more than five hours. The reactors run on high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU).

Britain and the U.S. are both building plants to produce the fuel, which ​was previously only commercially ​available from ⁠Russia.

Levesque said electricity generated by Natrium plants would be competitive with other low-carbon technologies, including combined solar-and-battery projects, ​at less than £100 ($135.32) per megawatt hour.

TerraPower has yet to ​choose a ⁠site for its first UK project, but said its British subsidiary is likely to be based in Liverpool, northwest England, close to the country’s ⁠nuclear regulator.

In ​the U.S., the company has an agreement with ​tech giant Meta (META.O), opens new tab to develop up to eight reactors. Levesque said TerraPower could seek similar ​partnerships in Britain.

September 11, 2026 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK, USA | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »