The First Small-Scale Nuclear Plant in the US Died Before It Could Live
“One of the stories they’ve kept telling people was that the SMR was going to be a lot cheaper than large-scale nuclear,” David Schlissel, an analyst at the nonprofit Institute for Energy Economics and Fiscal Analysis, told WIRED last month. “It isn’t true.”
Wired. 10 Nov 23
Six nuclear reactors just 9 feet across planned for Idaho were supposed to prove out the dream of cheap, small-scale nuclear energy. Now the project has been canceled.
The plan for the first small-scale US nuclear reactor was exciting, ambitious, and unusual from the get-go. In 2015, a group of city- and county-run utilities across the Mountain West region announced that they were betting on a new frontier of nuclear technology: a mini version of a conventional plant called a “small modular reactor” (SMR).
Advocates said the design, just 9 feet in diameter and 65 feet tall, was poised to resurrect the US nuclear industry, which has delivered only two completed reactors this century. It was supposed to prove out a dream that smaller, modular designs can make splitting atoms to boil water and push turbines with steam much cheaper. But first that reactor, the Voygr model designed by a startup called NuScale, had to be built. A six-reactor, 462-megawatt plant was slated to begin construction by 2026 and produce power by the end of the decade.
On Wednesday, NuScale and its backers pulled the plug on the multibillion-dollar Idaho Falls plant. They said they no longer believed the first-of-its-kind plant, known as the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) would be able to recruit enough additional customers to buy its power.
Many of the small utilities underwriting the pioneering project, members of a group called the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) saw the pint-sized nuclear plant as a potential solution to pressure to reduce their carbon emissions. The Department of Energy, which was due to host the plant at Idaho National Lab, awarded $1.4 billion to the project over 10 years.
But as WIRED reported in February, the utilities backing the plant were spooked late last year by a 50 percent increase in the projected costs for the project—even after factoring in substantial funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. The Idaho Falls reactors’ chances of survival began to look slimmer.
At the time, commitments in place to buy the reactor’s future power covered less than 25 percent of its output. UAMPS set itself a year-end deadline to bump that figure to 80 percent by recruiting new customers. Reaching that number was seen as key to ensuring the project’s long-term viability. As the project moved into site-specific planning and construction, its costs were poised to become more difficult to recoup if the plant ultimately failed, heightening the risks for the members.
Atomic Homecoming
As recently as last month, local officials returned to their communities from a UAMPS retreat with a reassuring message that the Idaho Falls project was on track to secure the new backers it needed, according to local meetings reviewed by WIRED.
That appeared to be good news in places like Los Alamos, New Mexico, where an official this spring described the project as a “homecoming” for atomic technology. The project was due to arrive just in time to help the county meet its goal of decarbonizing its electrical grid and adjusting to the retirement of aging fossil fuel plants nearby. At the time, locals expressed concern about where they would find clean and consistent power if the first-of-its-kind plant was to go away, given limited capacity to connect to new wind and solar projects in the region.
Now that the project is dead, SMR skeptics say the municipalities should find those cleaner power sources and focus on proven technologies. “One of the stories they’ve kept telling people was that the SMR was going to be a lot cheaper than large-scale nuclear,” David Schlissel, an analyst at the nonprofit Institute for Energy Economics and Fiscal Analysis, told WIRED last month. “It isn’t true.”
UAMPS spokesperson Jessica Stewart told WIRED that the utility group would expand its investments in a major wind farm project and pursue other contracts for geothermal, solar, battery, and natural gas projects………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.wired.com/story/first-small-scale-nuclear-plant-us-nuscale-canceled/
NuScale shares plunge as it cancels flagship small nuclear reactor project
BY DAVID MEYER, November 10, 2023
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, yesterday warned that nuclear energy has to be part of the energy shift away from fossil fuels. However, while the UN agency is increasing its forecasts for nuclear energy production, Grossi also said this was contingent on “a better investment playing field.”……………. (behind a paywall, of course) more https://fortune.com/2023/11/09/nuscale-shares-smr-small-modular-reactor-cfpp-utah-rolls-royce-microsoft/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
‘Buying influence’: top US nuclear board advisers are tied to arms business
“What we’ve consistently seen is the nuclear weapons industry buying influence and that means we cannot make serious decisions about our security when the industry is buying influence through thinktanks and commissioners that are skewing the debate,” said Susi Snyder, program coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
“Instead of having a debate about the tools and materials we need to make ourselves safe,” she added, “we’re having a debate about which company should get the contracts. And that doesn’t make the American people safe or anyone else in the world.”
None of the potential conflicts of interest between commissioners’ financial interests and the policy proposals laid out in their final report were disclosed by the CCSPUS itself within its final report or at any public event highlighting its findings.
Nine of 12 members of the commission charged with avoiding nuclear conflict have financial ties to defense contractors
Eli Clifton and Ben Freeman, 10 Nov 23 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/10/us-congress-nuclear-weapon-committee-conflict-interest
Nine of the 12 members of a high-level congressional commission charged with advising on the US’s nuclear weapons strategy have direct financial ties to contractors that would benefit from the report’s recommendations or are employed at thinktanks that receive considerable funding from weapons manufacturers, the Guardian and Responsible Statecraft can reveal.
While the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (CCSPUS) purports to recommend steps to avoid nuclear conflict, it does nothing to disclose its own potential conflicts of interest with the weapons industry in its final report or at rollout events at thinktanks in Washington.
The United States will soon face “a world where two nations [China and Russia] possess nuclear arsenals on par with our own”, warned the commission’s final report, released in mid-October. “In addition,” the report charged, “the risk of conflict with these two nuclear peers is increasing. It is an existential challenge for which the United States is ill-prepared.”
According to the CCSPUS, this potential doomsday scenario requires the US to make “necessary adjustments to the posture of US nuclear capabilities – in size and/or composition”, a policy shift that would steer billions of taxpayer dollars to the Pentagon and nuclear weapons contractors.
“What we’ve consistently seen is the nuclear weapons industry buying influence and that means we cannot make serious decisions about our security when the industry is buying influence through thinktanks and commissioners that are skewing the debate,” said Susi Snyder, program coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
The CCSPUS was established two years ago via the annual defense policy bill, and conflicts of interest on the commission were apparent from the beginning. But an analysis by the Guardian and Responsible Statecraft found deep ties between the commission and the weapons industry.
The most recognizable member of the CCSPUS is its vice-chair, Jon Kyl, who served as a senator from Arizona from 1995 to 2013, and again in 2018 after the death of John McCain. While this is included in his biography in the commission’s report, what’s left out is his more recent employment as a senior adviser with the law firm Covington & Burling, whose lobbying client list includes multiple Pentagon contractors that would benefit from the commission’s recommendations.
In 2017 Kyl, personally, was registered to lobby for Northrop Grumman, which manufactures the B-21 nuclear bomber that the commission recommends the US should purchase in greater numbers, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $700m each.
Kyl did not respond to questions about his employment status with Covington & Burling, but the former senator was listed as a “senior adviser” on the firm’s website until at least 1 December 2022, nearly 10 months after the commissioner selections for the CCSPUS were announced in March 2022.
Another commissioner, Franklin Miller, is a principal at the Scowcroft Group, a business advisory firm that describes Miller as having expertise in “nuclear deterrence”, and acknowledges its work in the weapons sector.
“The Scowcroft Group successfully advised a European defense leader on a strategic acquisition opportunity,” says the consulting firm in the “Defense/Aerospace” section of its website. “We have also assisted a major defense firm in pursuing global partnerships and co-production opportunities.”
Miller did not respond to a request for comment about the identity of the Scowcroft Group’s clients.
Kyl and Miller are joined on the CCSPUS by retired general John E Hyten, who previously served as the vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the second-highest-ranking member of the US military.
While Hyten’s biography in the commission’s report lauds his extensive military service, in retirement he has worked closely with a number of firms that could benefit immensely from the commission’s recommendations.
This March he was appointed as special adviser to the CEO of C3 AI, an artificial intelligence company that boasts of working with numerous agencies at the Department of Defense. In June 2022, Hyten was named executive director of the Blue Origins foundation, called the Club for the Future, and as a strategic adviser to Blue Origin’s senior leadership. Blue Origin is wholly owned by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and works directly with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), the air force and the space force on space launch-related capabilities.
Hyten’s ties to these firms are notable given the CCSPUS report’s repeated overtures for improving and investing in space and artificial intelligence capabilities. Specifically, the report recommends the United States “urgently deploy a more resilient space architecture” and take steps to ensure it is “at the cutting edge of emerging technologies – such as big data analytics, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence (AI)”.
Hyten did not respond to a request for comment.
The CCSPUS also included thinktank scholars whose employers receive significant funding from the arms industry. Two commission members work at the Hudson Institute, which, according to its most recent annual report, received in excess of $500,000 from Pentagon contractors in 2022. This includes six-figure donations from some of the Pentagon’s top contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems.
On Monday, 23 October, the Hudson Institute held an event to highlight the CCSPUS’s report that included the two Hudson Institute employees who also served as commissioners. The event unabashedly promoted recommendations from the report that would be a financial windfall for Hudson’s funders. The landing page for the event features a photo of a B-21 stealth bomber, the same photo used in the commission report that also recommended that the US strategic nuclear posture be modified to “increase the planned number of B-21 bombers and tankers an expanded force would require”.
Neither at the event nor in the report is it noted that the plane’s manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, is in the Hudson Institute’s highest donor tier, contributing in excess of $100,000 in 2022.
The Hudson Institute staff who served as commissioners did not respond to requests for comment.
Another commissioner, Matthew Kroenig, is a vice-president at the Atlantic Council, a prominent DC thinktank which, according to the organization’s most recent annual report, is funded by several top Pentagon contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon (now RTX), General Atomics, Saab and GM Defense. The Atlantic Council also receives more than $1m a year directly from the Department of Defense and between $250,000 and $499,999 from the Department of Energy, which helps manage the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
These seeming conflicts of interest were not mentioned at any point in the CCSPUS’s report or at an Atlantic Council event promoting the report and featuring the same photo of the B-21 used by the Hudson Institute and the commission.
Kroenig did not respond to a request for comment.
Even commissioners whose careers had included positions that were notably critical of nuclear weapons had recently established ties with firms that profit from the nuclear and conventional weapons industry.
Commissioner Lisa Gordon-Hagerty worked for years at the pinnacle of nuclear weapons policy in the US, including positions on the national security council, the US House of Representatives and the Department of Energy. She was also the director of the Federation of American Scientists, a non-profit organization known for advocating for reductions in nuclear weapons globally. Her last government position before joining the commission was serving as the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is responsible for military applications of nuclear science. She resigned from the post in 2020, allegedly after heated disagreements with the secretary of energy, who tried to cut NNSA funding.
While much of her career is mentioned in the commission report, what’s left out is that Gordon-Hagerty has also been cashing in on her nuclear expertise. After leaving the NNSA, in 2021 she joined the board and became director of strategic programs at Westinghouse Government Services, a nuclear weapons contractor that has been paid hundreds of millions of dollars for work with the Department of Defense and Department of Energy.
Gordon-Hagerty did not respond to a request for comment.
Like Gordon-Hagerty, fellow commissioner Leonor Tomero had a distinguished career at the highest levels of nuclear weapons policy. According to her bio in the commission report, she was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy and served for over a decade on the House armed services committee as counsel and strategic forces subcommittee staff lead, where her portfolio included the establishment of the US space force, nuclear weapons, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear cleanup, arms control and missile defense.
Outside government, Tomero was director of nuclear non-proliferation at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, an organization that has repeatedly called for reductions in the US nuclear weapons arsenal. Tomero is also on the board of the Council for a Livable World, which explicitly states that its goal is to eliminate nuclear weapons.
Yet, in September, Tomero became a vice-president of government relations at JA Green & Company, a lobbying firm whose client list includes a host of military contractors that could see revenues soar if the CCSPUS’s recommendations are adopted. SpaceX, for example – which pays $50,000 every three months to JA Green for lobbying related to “issues related to national security space launch” – would probably benefit mightily from the commission recommendation that “the United States urgently deploy a more resilient space architecture and adopt a strategy that includes both offensive and defensive elements to ensure US access to and operations in space”.
“No clients of JA Green & Company sought to influence the work of the Commission or the Commission’s recommendations in any way,” said Jeffrey A Green, president of JA Green, in an email. “We follow all applicable ethics rules and there are no conflicts of interest.”
None of the potential conflicts of interest between commissioners’ financial interests and the policy proposals laid out in their final report were disclosed by the CCSPUS itself within its final report or at any public event highlighting its findings.
While many commissioners did not respond to requests for comment, the commission’s executive director, William A Chambers, provided a statement on behalf of the CCSPUS and its members.
“Members of [the commission] were chosen and appointed by Members of Congress based on their national recognition and significant depth of experience in such professions as governmental service, law enforcement, the Armed Forces, law, public administration, intelligence gathering, commerce, or foreign affairs,” wrote Chambers. “Before they began performing their role as Commissioners, they were instructed on the ethics rules that govern congressional entities and were required to comply with rules set forth by the Select Committee on Ethics of the Senate and the Committee on Ethics of the House of Representatives.”
Chambers did not respond to a request for a copy of the ethics rules.
But the opacity about potential conflicts of interest leaves some experts questioning the CCSPUS’s recommendations.
“There’s a huge argument raging over what is security, how much does it rely on transparency and, especially when it comes to nuclear weapons, there is a call for greater transparency,” said Snyder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “That light they’re asking to shine on China, North Korea and Iran is a light they also need to shine on their own decision-making.”
Co-published with Responsible Statecraft
Disputes over safety, cost swirl a year after California OK’d plan to keep last nuke plant running
Disputes over safety, cost swirl a year after California OK’d plan to keep
last nuke plant running. More than a year after California endorsed a
proposal to extend the lifespan of its last nuclear power plant, disputes
continue to swirl about the safety of its decades-old reactors, whether
more than $1 billion in public financing for the extension could be in
jeopardy and even if the electricity is needed in the dawning age of
renewables.
Daily Mail 10th Nov 2023
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-12733339/Disputes-safety-cost-swirl-year-California-OKd-plan-nuke-plant-running.html #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Anti-Nuclear Activist Goes on Trial Amid the Fallout of Oppenheimer’s LegacyKansas City’s Ties To The Bomb
Flatland, Clarence Dennis, cdennis@flatlandkc.org 10 Nov 23
At time zero the first thing I noticed was that although facing away from ground zero, it felt like someone had slapped my face: it was of course the heat radiation from a most successful test.”Hugh Richards, Ph.D., “Through Los Alamos, 1945: Memoirs of a Nuclear Physicist”
Last month, Ann Suellentrop, 71, stood before a judge in the 16th Judicial Court of Missouri.
A retired maternal-child nurse and lifelong activist, Suellentrop was one of three people arrested for trespassing during a Memorial Day protest organized by PeaceWorks KC at the National Security Campus of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in south Kansas City earlier this year.
The only property line crosser who would plead not guilty, Suellentrop represented herself in court on Oct. 25. She argued that intentionally crossing the alleged boundary line by 10 feet or less, approximately three-fourths of a mile from the NNSA facility, was not trespass, but a peaceful, “limited protest” on a matter of principle and should not result in fines or jail time.
Facing a $500 fine, six months in jail, or both, the defendant argued her action was an expression of her First Amendment rights and stressed that advanced notice and planning of the annual protest was communicated to police and NNSA campus officials.
In front of more than a dozen supporters sporting bold black stickers that read “NO NUKES Y’ALL,” Suellentrop raised points to Judge Anne LaBella about her own character, the nature of her peaceful protest and the threats nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism pose to human health and society.
Facing a slew of objections based on relevance and witness testimony from the NNSA campus security guard who was on duty during the protest and warned the protesters to step off the property, all signs pointed to a guilty verdict.
Moments after all arguments were heard and the city rested its case, the prosecutor asked the judge to amend the charge to include NNSA campus administrator Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies.
Judge LaBella said the request came too late and she would not amend the charge. She then promptly announced her ruling on Suellentrop’s case.
Not guilty.
Modern-Day Peaceniks
A member of PeaceWorks KC and the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, Suellentrop has been arrested twice before in protests at the NNSA campus. The facility manufactures 80% of the non-nuclear components that go into the national nuclear stockpile……..
“Our ultimate goal is to convert the plant into a peaceful production of hopefully something that can fight the environmental crisis that’s going on. We need those brains, those skills and that money to convert it into something we really need,” Suellentrop said ahead of the trial.
Immediately following the verdict, Suellentrop and her peacenik partners picked up where her testimony left off. The group of mostly older adults gathered outside of the Jackson County Courthouse, taking turns passing a child’s toy microphone, celebrating the win and speaking about the threat nuclear weapons present to anyone who would listen.
“Because there is a group of old people, it doesn’t mean we are wrong. Historically, civil disobedience has played a big role in changing things,” said PeaceWorks KC board chair Chris Mann.
Mann, 73, participated in her first protest in college – a silent vigil during the war in Vietnam.
“Our group is becoming increasingly younger… a tradition of civil disobedience is only one of the measures,” Mann said, speaking to the makeup of PeaceWorks KC. “We think that younger people have a hard way to go now.”…………………………………….
The experience, plus an admiration for Australian physician, author and anti-nuclear advocate Helen Caldicot, fueled a lifetime of activism for Suellentrop, particularly in anti-nuclear efforts.
As for what keeps her civil disobedience going into her 70s, Suellentrop points to her faith.
“Like any person, I have fears and worries and self-doubts and what have you, but I just go to God and prayer,” Suellentrop said. “I get an overwhelming feeling of, ‘I got this.’ God is good and he’s opposing this – and this is an unspeakable evil.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://flatlandkc.org/news-issues/anti-nuclear-activist-goes-on-trial-amid-the-fallout-of-oppenheimers-legacy/
Why are US weapons transfers to Israel shrouded in secrecy — but not the weapons to Ukraine?
the purposeful lack of transparency over what weapons the U.S. is supplying to Israel ‘on a daily basis’ is tied to the larger administration policy of downplaying the extent to which Israel will use those weapons to commit war crimes and kill civilians in Gaza.”
Ken Klippenstein, The Intercept, Tue, 07 Nov 2023 https://www.sott.net/article/485820-Why-are-US-weapons-transfers-to-Israel-shrouded-in-secrecy-%E2%80%94-but-not-Ukraine
The Biden administration put out a three-page list of arms for Ukraine, but information on weapons sent to Israel could fit in one sentence.
One month since Hamas’s surprise attack, little is known about the weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel. Whereas the Biden administration released a three-page itemized list of weapons provided to Ukraine, down to the exact number of rounds, the information released about weapons sent to Israel could fit in a single sentence.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged the secrecy in an October 23 press briefing, saying that while U.S. security assistance “on a near-daily basis,” he continued, “We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course.”
The argument that transparency would imperil Israel’s operational security — somehow not a concern with Ukraine — is misleading, experts told The Intercept.
“The notion that it would in any way harm the Israeli military’s operational security to provide more information is a cover story for efforts to reduce information on the types of weapons being supplied to Israel and how they are being used,” William Hartung, a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and expert on weapons sales, told The Intercept. “I think the purposeful lack of transparency over what weapons the U.S. is supplying to Israel ‘on a daily basis’ is tied to the larger administration policy of downplaying the extent to which Israel will use those weapons to commit war crimes and kill civilians in Gaza.”
A retired Marine general who worked in the region, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized by his former employer to speak publicly, attributed the secrecy to the political sensitivity of the conflict. In particular, the retired officer said, weapons used in door-to-door urban warfare, which are likely to result in civilian casualties, are not going to be something the administration wants to publicize. (The National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.)
In recent years, flare-ups of violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip have often entailed Israeli air wars with limited numbers of Israeli troops entering the besieged coastal enclave. The last time there was a large-scale ground incursion by the Israel Defense Forces into Gaza was during the Israelis’ 2014 Operation Protective Edge.
While the 2014 invasion saw Israeli troops in Gaza for less than a month, Israel’s defense minister recently told reporters the war would take at least several months. The goal of removing Hamas completely from power is widely expected to take a significant commitment to a long-term ground presence and heavy urban fighting. According to the New Yorker, Israeli officials told their American counterparts that the war could last 10 years. The Biden administration is reportedly worried that Israel’s military objectives are not achievable.
“Delicate Matter Politically”
Hamas’s attack on Israel, which took place on October 7, resulted in a cascade of arms assistance from the U.S. Though the Biden administration at first declined to identify any specific weapons systems, as details trickled out in the press, it has gradually acknowledged some. These include “precision guided munitions, small diameter bombs, artillery, ammunition, Iron Dome interceptors and other critical equipment,” as Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder has said.
What “other critical equipment” entails remains a mystery, as do specifics about the quantity of arms being supplied, which the administration has refused to disclose. When a reporter asked for a “ballpark” figure for the security assistance during a background press briefing on October 12, the Pentagon demurred. “I’m not going to do that today and would defer you to the government of Israel,” a senior defense official told the reporter.
“To date, U.S. government reporting on arms transfers to Israel has been sporadic and without any meaningful detail,” Stimson Center research analyst Elias Yousif recently concluded. “Updates should be compiled on a single factsheet page, as is the case for Ukraine, and include details on the authorities invoked for the provision of assistance as well as the type and quantity of arms provided with enough specificity to enable public research and assessments.”
Hartung, the Quincy fellow, noted the contrast with the administration’s openness on military aid to Ukraine.
“Transparency on arms transfers to Ukraine came in large part due to the administration’s feeling that they were engaged in a noble venture,” Hartung said. “Although Israel certainly has the right to defend itself against the kind of horrific attack carried out by Hamas, its response — bombing and blockading a whole territory of 2 million people, killing thousands of innocent people in the process — has been described by independent experts as committing war crimes.”
“So even as the Biden administration backs Israel with weapons and rhetoric,” Hartung said, “it is a delicate matter politically to give all the details on U.S. weapons supplied to the Israeli military, some of which will certainly be used in illegal attacks on civilians if the war continues to grind on.”
Beyond just the quantities, there are specific weapons the Pentagon is providing Israel which have not been publicly disclosed, the Marine general told The Intercept.
As the arms continue to flow, dozens of C-17 military transport planes likely carrying munitions have criss-crossed the Atlantic traveling between the United States and Israel, open-source flight tracking data show, with most landing at Nevatim Air Base, an IDF base in Israel’s southern Negev desert. President Joe Biden has requested $14.3 billion in aid for Israel in addition to the over $3 billion in military assistance it already provides. Most recently, the Biden administration is planning to send $320 million in precision Spice bombs to Israel, as multiple outlets informed by Congress reported on Monday.
Ken Klippenstein is a D.C.-based investigative reporter who focuses on national security. He is also an avid Freedom of Information Act requester. Prior to joining The Intercept, he was The Nation’s D.C. correspondent.
Chess, cards and catnaps in the heart of America’s nuclear weapons complex
At Los Alamos National Laboratory, workers collect full salaries for doing nothing
Across those decades, the notion of keeping secrets from adversaries has simultaneously morphed into keeping secrets from the American public — and regulators.
| by Alicia Inez Guzmán. Searchlight New Mexico, 8 Nov 23 |
| A few days after beginning a new post at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Jason Archuleta committed a subversive act: He began to keep a journal. Writing in a tiny spiral notebook, he described how he and his fellow electricians were consigned to a dimly lit break room in the heart of the weapons complex. “Did nothing all day today over 10 hrs in here,” a July 31 entry read. “This is no good for one’s mental wellbeing or physical being.” |
“I do hope to play another good game of chess,” noted another entry, the following day.
A journeyman electrician and proud member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 611, Archuleta had been assigned to Technical Area 55 back in July. He had resisted the assignment, knowing that it was the location of “the plant,” a sealed fortress where plutonium is hewn into pits — cores no bigger than a grapefruit that set off the cascade of reactions inside a nuclear bomb. The design harks back to the world’s first atomic weapons: “Gadget,” detonated at the Trinity Test Site in New Mexico in 1945, and “Fat Man,” dropped on Nagasaki shortly afterward.
It has been almost that long since LANL produced plutonium pits at the scale currently underway as part of the federal government’s mission to modernize its aging stockpile. The lab, now amidst tremendous growth and abuzz with activity, is pursuing that mission with single-minded intensity. Construction is visible in nearly every corner of the campus, while traffic is bumper to bumper, morning and evening, as commuters shuttle up and down a treacherous road that cuts across the vast Rio Grande Valley into the remote Pajarito Plateau on the way to the famous site of the Manhattan Project.
But from the inside, Archuleta tells a different story: that of a jobsite in which productivity has come to a standstill. With few exceptions, he says, electricians are idle. They nap, study the electrical code book, play chess, dominoes and cards. On rare occasions, they work, but as four other journeymen (who all requested anonymity for fear of retaliation) confirmed, the scenario they describe is consistent. At any given time, up to two dozen electricians are cooling their heels in at least three different break rooms. LANL officials even have an expression for it: “seat time.”
The lab recognizes that the expansion at TA-55, and especially the plant, presents challenges faced by no other industrial setting in the nation. The risk of radiation exposure is constant, security clearances are needed, one-of-a-kind parts must be ordered, and construction takes place as the plant strives to meet its quota. That can mean many workers sit for days, weeks, or even, according to several sources, months at a time.
“I haven’t seen months,” said Kelly Beierschmitt, LANL’s deputy director of operations, “It might feel like months,” he added, citing the complications that certain projects pose. “If there’s not a [radiation control technician] available, I’m not gonna tell the craft to go do the job without the support, right?”
Such revelations come as red flags to independent government watchdogs, who note that the project is already billions of dollars over budget and at least four years behind schedule. They say that a workplace filled with idle workers is not merely a sign that taxpayer money is being wasted; more troublingly, it indicates that the expansion is being poorly managed.
“If you have a whistleblower claiming that a dozen electricians have been sitting around playing cards for six months on a big weapons program, that would seem to me to be a ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ moment,” said Geoff Wilson, an expert on federal defense spending at the independent watchdog Project on Government Oversight.
Given the secrecy that surrounds LANL, it is virtually impossible to quantify anything having to do with the lab. That obsession is the subject of Alex Wellerstein’s 2021 book, “Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States.” Wellerstein, a historian of science at Stevens Institute of Technology, traces that culture of secrecy from the earliest years of the Manhattan Project into the present. Across those decades, the notion of keeping secrets from adversaries has simultaneously morphed into keeping secrets from the American public — and regulators.
“What secrecy does is it creates context for a lack of oversight,” said Wellerstein in a recent interview. “It shrinks the number of people who might even be aware of an issue and it makes it harder — even if things do come out — to audit.”
The code of secrecy at LANL is almost palpable. The lab sits astride a forbidding mesa in northern New Mexico some 7,500 feet above sea level, protected on the city’s western flank by security checkpoints. Its cardinal site, TA-55, is ringed by layers of razor wire and a squadron of armed guards, themselves bolstered by armored vehicles with mounted turrets that patrol the perimeter day and night. No one without a federal security clearance is allowed to enter or move about without an escort — even to go to the bathroom. Getting that clearance, which requires an intensive background investigation, can take up to a year.
Sources for this story, veterans and newcomers alike, said they fear losing their livelihoods if they speak publicly about anything to do with their work. Few jobs in the region, much less the state (one of the most impoverished in the nation), can compete with the salaries offered by LANL. Here, journeyman electricians can earn as much as $150,000 a year; Archuleta makes $53 per hour, almost 70 percent more than electricians working at other union sites.
Nevertheless, in late September, Archuleta lodged a complaint with the Inspector General’s office alleging time theft. He and two other workers told Searchlight New Mexico that their timesheets – typically filled out by supervisors – have shown multiple codes for jobs they didn’t recognize or perform. To his mind, the situation is “not just bordering on fraud, waste and abuse, it’s crossing the threshold.”
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………“By all the normal measures our society uses to evaluate cost, benefit, risk, reliability, and longevity, this latest attempt has now already failed as well,” said Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG), a respected nonprofit that has been monitoring LANL for 34 years. “Federal decision makers will have to ask ‘Will the LANL product still be worth the investment,’” Mello said, referring to the plant, which will have exceeded its planned lifetime of 50 years by 2028.
The cogs of this arms race have been turning for years. In May 2018, a few months after President Donald Trump tweeted that he had a much “bigger & more powerful” nuclear button than North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the Nuclear Weapons Council certified a recommendation to produce plutonium pits at two sites.
That recommendation was enacted into law by Congress, which in 2020 called for an annual quota of plutonium pits — 30 at LANL and 50 at the Savannah River plutonium processing facility in South Carolina — by 2030. According to the LASG, the cost per pit at LANL is greater than Savannah River. The organization estimates that each one will run to approximately $100 million.
Whether such production goals are achievable is another question: Just getting those sites capable of meeting the quota will cost close to $50 billion—and take up to two decades from the project’s start. After that, another half a century may pass before the nation’s approximately 4,000 plutonium pits are all upgraded, according to the calculations of Peter Fanta, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Plutonium is one of the most volatile and enigmatic of all the elements on the periodic table. It ages on the outside like other metals, while on the inside, “it’s constantly bombarding itself through alpha radiation,” as Siegfried Hecker, a former LANL director and plutonium metallurgist put it. The damage is akin, in his words, to “rolling a bowling ball through [the plutonium’s] crystal structure.” Most of it can be healed, but about 10 percent can’t. “And that’s where the aging comes in.”
The renewed urgency dodges the most resounding “unanswered question at the heart of the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal,” Stephen Young, the Washington representative for the Global Security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in “Scientific American.” “What is the lifetime of a pit?” And why hasn’t the NNSA — the federal agency tasked with overseeing the health of the nuclear weapons stockpile — dedicated the resources to finding out?
“It seems entirely possible that this was not an oversight on the part of NNSA but reflects that the agency does not want to know the answer,” Young went on. With novel warhead designs on the horizon, it was entirely plausible, he posited, that the NNSA wasn’t merely seeking to replace old pits but instead wanted to populate entirely new weapons — a desire driven less by science than by politics.
Booms and blind spots
This uncertainty has worked in LANL’s favor, propelling the mission forward and all but securing the lab’s transformation. As Beierschmitt, the deputy director of operations, publicly described the lab’s goals this summer: “Keep spending and hiring.”
Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office, which investigates federal spending and provides its findings to Congress, has pointed to a gaping blind spot in the mission. A January report detailed how the NNSA lacked a comprehensive budget and master schedule for the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex — essential for achieving the goal of producing 80 pits per year. The agency, in other words, has thus far failed to outline what it needs to do to reach its target — or what the overall cost will be, the GAO concluded.
“How much they’ve spent is pretty poorly understood because it shows up in so many different buckets across the budget,” said Allison Bawden, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment. “We tried to identify these buckets of money ultimately tied to supporting the pit mission. But it’s never presented that way by NNSA, so it’s very difficult to look across the entire pit enterprise and say, ‘this is how much has been spent, and this is how much is needed going forward.’” The GAO includes the DOE on its biennial list of federal agencies most vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse — and has done so since 1990. A major reason is the Möbius strip of contractors and subcontractors working on DOE-related projects at any given time.
The DOE, for instance, oversees the NNSA, which oversees Triad National Security — a company owned by Battelle Memorial Institute, the Texas A&M University and the University of California. Triad oversees its own army of subcontractors on lab-related projects, including construction, demolition and historic preservation. And many of those subcontractors outsource their work to yet other subcontractors, creating money trails so byzantine they defy tracking.
But one thing is known: Subcontractors will rake in billions of dollars. “We expect to be executing at least $5.5 billion in construction over the next five years and $2.5 billion in subcontracting labor and materials,” Beierschmitt said at a 2019 forum.
“Most people think that for something so giant and so supposedly important to the nation, there would be some kind of well-thought through plan,” said Mello of LASG. “There is no well-thought through plan. There never has been.”
Secrets on the plateau
……………………………………………….. Over time, systems at LANL and across the U.S. weapons complex have ossified into “their own little universes,” said Wellerstein, the science historian. “And when you combine that with the kind of contractor system they use for nuclear facilities, you create the circumstances where there’s very little serious oversight and ample opportunities and incentives for everybody to pat themselves on the back for a job well done…………………………………………………….. https://searchlightnm.org/chess-cards-and-catnaps-in-the-heart-of-americas-nuclear-weapons-complex/?utm_source=Searchlight+New+Mexico&utm_campaign=77629f0906-11%2F08%2F2023+-+Chess%2C+cards+and+catnaps&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8e05fb0467-77629f0906-395610620&mc_cid=77629f0906&mc_eid=a70296a261 #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes #radioactive
Patrick Lawrence: Biden’s Frankenstein
SCHEERPOST, November 8, 2023
The new wave of violence in Israel and Gaza now enters its second month. More than 10,000 people have been killed, The Associated Press reports, 40 percent of them children. Where is this catastrophe going? What are the limits of Israel’s inhumanity? Does the Biden regime, in its unforgivable support and encouragement of this ethnic-cleansing operation, have another Frankenstein on its hands—a monster it cannot control?
The new wave of violence in Israel and Gaza now enters its second month. More than 10,000 people have been killed, The Associated Press reports, 40 percent of them children. Where is this catastrophe going? What are the limits of Israel’s inhumanity? Does the Biden regime, in its unforgivable support and encouragement of this ethnic-cleansing operation, have another Frankenstein on its hands—a monster it cannot control?
It starts to look as if Biden and his foreign policy people have lost what control they may have had over Bibi Netanyahu and the fanatical regime he directs. Last week Antony Blinken, on his second trip to Israel since the Hamas assault on southern Israel October 7, asked the Israeli prime minister to “pause”—we must not propose a ceasefire—Israel’s daily bombing campaign up and down the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu refused the American secretary of state more or less point blank. Ask yourself: Who was in charge of that meeting, who was running the show? I have to say, Blinken does come over as a diplomatic pipsqueak time and time again, as he did last summer in Beijing, when the Chinese leadership actually scolded him before sending him home with nothing but lectures to show for his effort.
The Biden White House has been making sotto voce requests such as Blinken’s for the past couple of weeks, all to very little avail. Dim and wanting in all subtlety, even Biden, Blinken and the rest of the regime’s national security crew are now aware that Biden’s open-door, open-wallet support for Bibi’s frenzied violence against Palestinians has turned into a political disaster from which it will be difficult to recover. West Asian nations may not stand with Palestinians to the extent one would like to see, but the old client relationships with Washington appear to have been altered more or less permanently.
It all looks so very bad. Last week the Latin Americans began recalling their ambassadors to Tel Aviv, Bolivia going so far as to sever relations, and bravo for the Bolivians. This week Jordan, Bahrain, Turkey, Chad and South Africa followed suit. The Israelis show no sign of giving a damn, but look at the names: America has traditionally counted these nations among its friends (or clients). Now they stand among those treating apartheid Israel as the pariah state it deserves to be called. Think about where this will leave Washington out in the middle distance. It will be another case of U.S. support for South Africa before the apartheid regime gave up the ghost in 1990, or for Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe 10 years earlier. It will be embarrassing and costly.
There are cracks in the façade at home, too. There are murmurs in Congress that the Israelis have gone too far, although very few have made the daring leap from ineffectually suggesting a “temporary pause” in the bombing to demanding a ceasefire. Unnamed officials now acknowledge that Israel’s hysterical violence has nothing to do with self-defense and everything to do with preserving the Israeli Defense Force’s reputation for merciless retribution. I read these sorts of admissions as indications of dissatisfaction and disapproval, if not disgust.
…………………..There is an election now one year away, after all, and I am reading opinion surveys indicating the majority of Americans favor humanitarian aid to Gaza rather than military aid to Israel. I read that 300,000 people marched in Washington last weekend. The risk seems clear, then, that Biden’s Israel-über-alles policy—so devoid of imagination, so betraying of his limited intelligence—could jeopardize his chances next November 5. This is not, obviously, a candidate with room to spare for major policy errors, and fielding the Israel–Gaza crisis as Biden has is a very, very major error.
…………………………….Biden is stuck. This is the simple answer. He has—and far from alone is he in this—painted the U.S. into a corner with the Israelis. They know very well Israel is America’s true Frankenstein and that Washington cannot possibly cut the current. Please tone down the violence against innocents, and here is $3.8 billion in annual military aid, and a new $14.3 billion atop it, so you can keep on going: How else are Bibi and his fanatic ministers supposed to read this if not as a license to continue bombing and starving Palestinians?
What we witness as the second month of this atrocity begins, and this is the (slightly) complicated read, is a two-sided, impossibly contradictory policy. The U.S. needs to control a political and public-relations disaster while supporting the savagery that produces the disaster. ………………………….
American policy toward Israel has nothing to do with protecting Israeli people, “honest brokering,” or any such notion. It has to do with maintaining the imperium’s presence in West Asia—this the objective since at least the 1967 war. In my read we can count this the first, second, third and only priority of the policy cliques in Washington. This is why it is fine that the post–1967 leadership in Tel Aviv has turned Israel into a garrison state just as Harold Lasswell memorably defined this in 1941. The Israelis are “specialists in violence,” precisely as Lasswell used this term. It is what the U.S. wants them to be.
And depends on them to be. The rest—please pause, please use smaller bombs and so on—is merely to trifle pointlessly with a monstrous regime that needs to be unplugged altogether. https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/08/patrick-lawrence-bidens-frankenstein/ #Israel #Palestine
NuScale Power, UAMPS agree to terminate nuclear project
Reuters, November 9, 2023
– NuScale Power (SMR.N) said on Wednesday it has mutually agreed with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) to terminate the company’s small modular reactors project, sending shares sliding 20% in extended trading.
The six-reactor, 462 megawatt Carbon Free Power Project was expected to be the first small modular reactor (SMR) design certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January. But NuScale said it appeared unlikely the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment.
NuScale said in January the target price for power from the plant is $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MWh, a jump that raised concerns about whether customers would be willing to pay.
SMRs are meant to fit new applications such as replacing shut coal plants and being located in more remote communities.
So far, the design for only NuScale Power Corp’s SMR had been approved by U.S. regulators.
NuScale had previously said the project will be fully running in 2030.
Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Krishna Chandra Eluri #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Flagship US nuclear reactor project collapses owing taxpayers $600m
Ben Potter, Australian Financial Review, 9 Nov 23
A flagship US small modular nuclear reactor project has collapsed, taking with it $US600 million ($930 million) of American taxpayers’ money.
Develop NuScale said the Portland, Oregon-based company and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) had agreed to terminate their Carbon Free Power Project after cost blowouts scared off potential customers.
“It appears unlikely that the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment,” NuScale said in a statement.
Its shares fell 30 per cent in after-market trade, on top of a 70 per cent decline for the year to date.
The Utah project to build a 462-megawatt small modular reactor was one of a handful aimed at demonstrating the commercial viability of SMRs.
The nuclear industry is pinning its hopes on the ambitious technology as a zero-carbon option for firming variable renewable energy after massive cost blowouts in conventional large-scale nuclear reactors in the US and UK.
It has been enthusiastically promoted by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and his energy spokesman Ted O’Brien. However, Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen and local experts such as The Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood have dismissed the technology as too costly and too far away in terms of implementation to be of use to Australia’s faltering grid decarbonisation.
A small modular reactor project being pursued by Ontario Power Generation remains on foot.
……………………………………………………..Reuters reported the US Department of Energy had agreed to provide $US1.35 billion to the collapsed project over 10 years, of which about $US600 million had been disbursed since 2014.
Municipal participants in the project were unnerved when the indicative wholesale cost of power from the Utah project jumped to $US89 per megawatt hour ($A137/MWh) from $US58/ MWh last January.
Mr Bowen said: “The opposition’s only energy policy is small modular reactors. Today, the most advanced prototype in the US has been cancelled. The LNP’s plan for energy security is just more hot air from Peter Dutton.” ……………………………………. https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/flagship-us-nuclear-reactor-project-collapses-owing-taxpayers-930m-20231109-p5eit0 #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
The moniker ‘Genocide Joe’ beginning to fit President Biden
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn I https://heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com/ 8 Nov 23
The moniker ‘Genocide Joe’ beginning to fit President Biden
The Chicago Tribune headline last nite should have been in the largest type available:
‘Civilians trapped in Gaza running out of food, fuel and hope.’
That’s not 23 or 230 or 2,300 civilians in Gaza. It’s 2,300,000.
That near genocidal ethnic cleansing by Israel is fervently supported and enabled by President Biden. It is the most ghoulish US foreign policy I’ve witnessed in my 72 years following America’s international affairs.
Biden appears to view the grotesque destruction he’s enabling of the 2.3 million folks there in purely political terms. He’s feeling the heat of tens of million nationally and likely billions worldwide, that immediate ceasefire and unlimited humanitarian relief must occur forthwith.
But Biden simply fakes empathy, calling for a ‘pause’ for humanitarian relief before the onslaught continues unabated. He sent his Secretary of State Tony Blinken to Israel to literally beg Prime Minister Netanyahu to implement such a pause. Netanyahu brushed him off like a fly on his lapel.
Biden has tremendous leverage to force both an immediate ceasefire and a commitment to work for a true two state solution to end Israel’s 75 yearlong imprisonment and destruction of the Palestinian people. He must implement his own ceasefire by cancelling America’s $3.8 billion annual giveaway to Israel forthwith. He should withdraw his request for a supplemental $14 billion in weaponry and other aid that supports genocidal ethnic cleansing. Israel needs not one dollar in US largess. Israel’s annual expenditure on defense has dropped from over 20% of GDP in ’73 to just 5% today. Why should Israel spend more when Uncle Sam helps make up the slack with borrowed US treasure?
It has by far the most powerful military in the Middle East. No other power comes close.
Many can no longer look at Joe Biden’s visage without pondering: ‘Why is the most powerful leader in the world, allowing this unrelenting humanitarian catastrophe continue?’ Without an immediate and robust pivot to peace, Biden’s legacy may not be America’s 46th president.
He’s risking more and more it simply being ‘Genocide Joe.’ #Israel #Palestine
US Says It’s Powerless To Stop The Genocide That It Is Directly Funding And Supplying
Of course the US can stop this. Of course it can. The US is currently pouring weapons into Israel on an almost daily basis, is pouring billions of dollars into Israel and is preparing to pour in billions more, and is currently physically assisting Israeli operations in Gaza with drones and special operations forces while US warships swarm the eastern Mediterranean. All of this can easily be pulled away if Israel refuses to stop murdering children by the thousands in an indiscriminate bombing campaign that reportedly isn’t even doing any meaningful damage to Hamas.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE. NOV 6, 2023
In a bizarre new article titled “White House frustrated by Israel’s onslaught but sees few options,” The Washington Post reports that the Biden administration believes Israel has gone too far and is killing too many civilians in its assault on Gaza, but are powerless to do anything about it.
The Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb writes the following, citing anonymous US officials:
“As Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza escalates, the Biden administration finds itself in a precarious position: Administration officials say Israel’s counterattack against Hamas has been too severe, too costly in civilian casualties, and lacking a coherent endgame, but they are unable to exert significant influence on America’s closest ally in the Middle East to change its course.
“U.S. efforts to get Israel to scale back its counterattack in response to the Oct. 7 killings by Hamas that left at least 1,400 Israelis dead have failed or fallen short. The Biden administration urged Israel against a ground invasion, privately asked it to consider proportionality in its attacks, advocated a higher priority on avoiding civilian deaths, and called for a humanitarian pause — only for Israeli officials to dismiss or reject all those suggestions.
“In recent days, they said, the administration has become deeply uncomfortable with some of Israel’s tactics. Last week, Israel bombed the densely packed Jabalya refugee camp two days in a row, an attack that Israel said killed a Hamas leader but that also killed dozens of civilians. On Friday, an Israeli airstrike hit near the entrance of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, a strike the Israeli military said was aimed at an ambulance ‘being used by a Hamas terrorist cell.’ And Israeli authorities recently expelled thousands of Palestinians who had been in Israel for work, sending them back into Gaza even as it continues to bomb the enclave.”
All this helpless hand-wringing is exposed for the load of ridiculous bullshit that it plainly is a few paragraphs down in the very same article:
“Washington is Israel’s largest military backer, and the White House has asked Congress for an additional $14 billion in aid for Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks. But administration officials and advisers say the levers the United States theoretically has over Israel, such as conditioning military aid on making the military campaign more targeted, are nonstarters, partly because they would be so politically unpopular in any administration and partly because, aides say, Biden himself has a personal attachment to Israel.”
So the Biden administration does in fact have tons of leverage it can use to stop the genocidal massacre in Gaza, it just doesn’t want to because it would be “politically unpopular” and because “Biden himself has a personal attachment to Israel.”
The US president does indeed have a personal attachment to Israel. Biden has proudly described himself as a Zionist, and has gone on record to say that if Israel didn’t exist the United States would have to invent an Israel to advance its interests in the middle east.
We’ve been asked to believe a lot of very stupid things since this onslaught began last month, but the idea that the Biden administration is powerless to stop a genocide that it is directly arming and supplying has got to be the absolute stupidest.
Of course the US can stop this. Of course it can. The US is currently pouring weapons into Israel on an almost daily basis, is pouring billions of dollars into Israel and is preparing to pour in billions more, and is currently physically assisting Israeli operations in Gaza with drones and special operations forces while US warships swarm the eastern Mediterranean. All of this can easily be pulled away if Israel refuses to stop murdering children by the thousands in an indiscriminate bombing campaign that reportedly isn’t even doing any meaningful damage to Hamas.
What’s that? You didn’t know this murderous bombing campaign is doing no meaningful damage to Hamas? Well let’s clear that up then.
A new report by The New York Times cites an anonymous US military official saying that Israel “has not come close” to destroying Hamas leadership or even its mid-level command.
“One senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details, said the operations so far have not come close to destroying Hamas’s senior and middle leadership ranks,” The New York Times reports………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: the US is every bit as culpable for the murder of all these civilians as Israel. Don’t let the empire’s narrative managers try to tell you different. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-says-its-powerless-to-stop-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=138626181&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email
‘We’re a War Machine as a Nation’: The Truth About American Politics
“We prefer war over healthcare. We prefer war over housing. We prefer war over education. We prefer war over the economic welfare of our own citizens”
SCHEERPOST, By Chris Hedges / The Real News Network November 6, 2023
Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza has stirred worldwide calls for a ceasefire to stop the genocide unfolding. The United States has been no exception, which countless demonstrators taking to the streets in recent weeks. That hasn’t stopped the US government from backing Israel’s horrific campaign in Gaza to the hilt. The White House has refused to heed calls for a ceasefire and even deployed two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean—not to defend Palestinians, but to dissuade regional powers from joining the fray to defend Palestine. As the possibility of a regional war looms with the entry of Yemen into the conflict, many wonder how the US might respond to such a scenario. Former US Congressperson Dennis Kucinich joins The Chris Hedges Report for a discussion on the US war machine—what it is, how it works, and how it might respond should the war in Palestine spiral into a wider conflagration.
TRANSCRIPT
Chris Hedges: As a member of the US Congress for 16 years, Dennis Kucinich gave over 500 speeches warning about the consequences of US wars against Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria. He also spoke out for the imperative of peace in the Middle East on behalf of Israelis and Palestinians. He met with leaders of many countries who were grappling to keep their nations out of conflicts and came to understand the role some in the US government have played to intentionally catalyze war, fueling arms sales globally without regard for the consequences. Dennis warns that we, in his words, are “cartwheeling towards a massive East versus West war with religious and ethnic overtones. This seemingly inexorable march of nuclear folly may,” he writes, “pit the US militarily against China, Russia, and their allies.”
Joining me to discuss how, as he writes, the polarization of US politics, the cognitively impaired and failing executive branch, the instability of the congressional leadership, the pure blind partisanship, and the ideologically click-bait driven media has produced, a mad bloodlust for war against Iran and perhaps China and Russia, is Dennis Kucinich. You have fought the war industry with probably more consistency and courage than any US. politician. You’ve paid the price for it. But let’s lay out globally the reach of the war industry, how it functions, and why it seems to be beyond the control of either political party.
Dennis Kucinich: ………….. We are in a moment of peril and the subtext of it, or maybe the context of it, begins with the fact that the US has over 800 bases around the globe. This has been part and parcel of an attempt by America to use its military power to be able to control not only the politics of a country but the economics of a country and to stop the rise of any counterforce in the world. Of course, we know that was vainglorious. The efforts have failed, and notwithstanding the fact that we have this archipelago of bases around the world, we have slipped from a position of unipolar leadership moving to a multipolar world in which the US has less and less influence, with the exception of certain economic moves that can be made to try to hamstring the economies of various countries through sanctions.
Now, where this all begins is in the appropriations process. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower so famously warned us about in January of 1961 has… Every district of the US, every congressional district has programs and projects in it that require funding and are put into an appropriations bill. Lobbyists confront members of Congress from their own community, saying we need this for the jobs in our community. Together you have a defense production establishment that is nationwide and it has enormous influence on individual members. Beyond that, you have when members of Congress come in and they take an oath to defend the Constitution, unfortunately, for many members of Congress, that means signing on to any military action that the administration recommends. So there’s very little deep thinking that goes on, especially where the money’s going to come from. Because the 31 trillion-plus national debt, which the US has a substantial part of, comes from the country putting wars on a credit card.
Ingrained into our system is the funding of wars and a perpetuation of conflict because if you’re making all these arms materiel, you’ve got to use them. The more that you use, the more you make. There’s a continuous loop here of money that pours in. Right now we’re close to $1 trillion in this particular fiscal year of 2023 for the Pentagon plus the various intelligence services. That then is a substantial part of discretionary spending of the US. Depending on who you’re talking to and what math, it’s anywhere from about 40%-45%. We’re spending our national treasure on war. We’re a war machine as a nation. We prefer war over healthcare. We prefer war over housing. We prefer war over education. We prefer war over the economic welfare of our own citizens. This is something that more and more people are catching onto. Unfortunately, the last ones to catch on appear to be members of the US Congress.
………………………………. Dennis Kucinich: The decisions to go to war ostensibly would be made at the administration level. However, there is a broad network of public policy groups masquerading as independent voices, think tanks, academic organizations, and people in the media who feed into any narrative that would prompt the country to start to rattle the sabers or determine, well, we need to go here in order to defend our national interest. Once that appropriation process starts, let’s keep in mind, that they have close to $1 trillion in all accounts. They’re on their own. That money’s fungible. That money’s there, which enables the US at this very moment to send two aircraft carrier units out into the area near Israel. Now you have to wonder, what’s that all about? What it’s all about is that the US right now has the money to be able to send troops anywhere they want in the world or to pay for the ones that are already stationed, and they put the country at the threshold of a war the minute they do that.
When I say “of a war,” I mean of actual combat interactions. The people who are pushing for this and we have to keep in mind that one of the things that drags us into war is an ideological mindset. Today in the US, it’s sponsored by a group famously known as neoconservatives, who see America as a force fighting against evil all over the world.
The Manichaen struggle that they invite is one that is generally of their own making, the desire to be able to create wars and to cash in. There are earnings reports coming out lately where some of the war contractors or those who hold them in a portfolio, are citing what a great thing it is for the profits that are going to come as a result of what’s happening in the Middle East right now. It’s unconscionable but we’re in this cycle where we have a war-dependent economy and the more that we spend on war materiel, the more likely we are to go to war. The more people we have at forward bases around the world, the more likely we are to go to war.
When an international crisis develops, such as has developed after, most famously signed on October 7, 2023, we then see things go into motion that will support and justify the reason why we are there, to begin with. Then from there, you go on to additional appropriations. One of the things that I want to point out, is the over $14 billion which Congress will vote on perhaps at the beginning of November, once Congress votes on that, forget declarations of war, Article One, Section Eight, the role of Congress in balancing off the executive’s desire to go to war. Forget all that. Once the money is there, we’re there. We’re stuck. It’s like gamblers, in for a dime, in for a dollar. Once we put that money down, we are at war, whether it’s declared or not.
This is the danger of the moment that we’re in right now, because the American people, unless they can convince their members of Congress, for whatever reason – Whether it’s as one member of Congress, Tom Massey from Kentucky says, we can’t afford it. That’s one way. Another way is to say don’t fuel the fire. Another way is to say, stop killing the Gazans – There are so many different reasons to avoid it but the American people have to be heard from. Immediately call their members of Congress to say don’t fund the war. If they’re so intent on spending money, spend it for diplomacy, spend it for humanitarian purposes, spend it for food, shelter, clothing, electricity, water; anything to try to relieve people from the veil of tears they’re in right now and the fears for their life.
But right now, our country, we are ready for war. It’s not about funding an effort against the people of Gaza but it’s about getting ready for war against Iran which would be catastrophic for the US and for Israel. . We’re really at a crossroads right here, Chris and the piece that I wrote in Substack outlines the contours of it because this war has both. It’s not just geographical; it is ethnic and it is religious.
Chris Hedges: You have a situation where once the money comes in, it’s not a congressional decision, it’s a unilateral decision by the White House, for instance, to send these carriers. No, Biden didn’t consult anybody except maybe Jake Sullivan who probably made the decision for Biden. But all that power, that potential to essentially trigger a war is in the hands of the presidency. Congress isn’t even part of the decision.
Dennis Kucinich: Once the money is there… This is what I’d like your viewers to understand. You have the Constitution, Article One, Section Eight, in which the Founders clearly put the power to make war in the hands of the House because they didn’t want an executive roaming the world, looking for enemies to slay, as Adams was famously warned about. But if Congress approves an appropriation that the president then wants to take to create a war, courts have held pretty consistently that Congress’s ultimate power is the power of the purse. If Congress wants to stop a war, don’t fund it. If Congress wants to start a war, fund it, but Congress cannot go back after it funds a war and say, oh, we didn’t mean that. We didn’t mean for him to escalate. Hey, once they have the money, the administration, the president as commander-in-chief under the Constitution, is able to use that war material in any way that he or in the future she would please.
Chris Hedges: And yet we see no pushback. The last budget Congress gave the Pentagon $40 billion more than they even requested. In many ways, the Democratic Party is worse.
Dennis Kucinich: Yeah, it’s become reflexive. The inability to ask questions about why. Only after the fact will you see the Inspector General’s reports come back and say, well, you misspent billions or billions there. After a while, it adds up. You go back to Major General Smedley Butler who won two medals of honor for his service to the country at the beginning of the 20th century. He concluded famously, “War is a racket.” And this is a racket. The members of Congress go along. Let’s face it, once Citizens United became the law of the land, and money equaled free speech from the corporate standpoint, this entire defense establishment was emboldened to pour money into congressional races. And they do. They do it openly through $5,000 contributions or whatever they’re allowed right now and in addition to that, Super PACs, which can make a difference in a congressional or Senate race.
We have almost a closed-loop system that guarantees that we will continue to go to war. There is no counterbalance for diplomacy or peace. That doesn’t exist. The Department of State is there to rattle the saber, as the current Secretary of State Blinken has proven. The National Security Advisor Sullivan, is there to keep fulminating. Of course, we know about the gentle lady who is a deputy secretary who has famously kept her neoconservative credentials alive since the beginning of her service to the US as somebody who promotes war. We have an entire phalanx of people at the administrative level who are promoting it every day. They’re supported by the think tanks, academics, and the media. People don’t question and so we get pulled into this maw of war. Then people wonder why.
Watch American troops, when their lives are put on the line – They’re already being out there as bait, as far as I’m concerned. Our troops are in that region as bait – If and when the troops start to die and you get reports, maybe some have already, but if and when that starts to happen in large numbers, the American people are going to be horrified. The money could go out this week unless people call and object strongly. That’s the way you stop a war. Stop funding it.
Chris Hedges: What they’re playing with, as you’ve written, is a very dangerous global conflagration. It’s like throwing and tossing lit matches toward pools of gasoline, not only in Ukraine and not only in the Middle East, but also in China. The consequences are potentially catastrophic. In the case of China and Russia, we’re dealing of course with nuclear powers. Then of course Israel has nuclear weapons. There’s nothing to stop Israel from using a tactical nuclear weapon on Iran. Talk a little bit about how this could all go bad.
Dennis Kucinich: When we have these discussions about the danger that we can sense lies ahead, we have to look at things not out of fear, but out of a cold strategic analysis. The US and Israel are seen as simultaneous in the actions in Gaza right now. That has created a furor, particularly in the Arab and the Muslim world. The head of Turkey, Erdogan, yesterday gave a speech to about a million people whom he warned about, he invoked the image of the Crescent versus the Cross. We’re talking Crusades here, folks. The idea that if the US and Israel are aimed at trying to wipe out people who are Arabs and most of whom are Muslims, what does that say to the rest of the Muslim world? Nine million people in Israel, maybe a million and a half of them Palestinians, in the larger Arab world surrounding Israel, hundreds of millions of Muslims and Arabs are watching people in Gaza being slaughtered.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. There’s a game being played here that is so dangerous that could pull us all into not only a regional war but a world war. So those are some of the antecedents that we have to consider when we’re looking at an analysis of what we could be facing………………………………………………………..
Dennis Kucinich: Well, first of all, you have to look at President Biden himself. He has never really been anyone who has said, whoa, wait a minute. Let’s not do this. He’s generally been congenial to voting for the war as a senator and voting for certain defense or Pentagon appropriations. That’s where it’s at. Then who surrounds him? The neocons are his closest advisors. They’re spoiling for a war against Iran. This has been going on since Bush was president. There’s no question. I gave about 150 speeches on Iran alone, where I saw the Bush Administration was actually talking about a strike on a nuclear research lab at Bashir. …………………………………………………………………
more https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/06/were-a-war-machine-as-a-nation-the-truth-about-american-politics/
U.S., European officials broach topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine, sources say
The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal with Russia.
nbc news, Nov. 4, 2023, By Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee and Kristen Welker
WASHINGTON — U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior U.S. official and one former senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions.
The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said. Some of the talks, which officials described as delicate, took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the officials said.
The discussions are an acknowledgment of the dynamics militarily on the ground in Ukraine and politically in the U.S. and Europe, officials said.
They began amid concerns among U.S. and European officials that the war has reached a stalemate and about the ability to continue providing aid to Ukraine, officials said. Biden administration officials also are worried that Ukraine is running out of forces, while Russia has a seemingly endless supply, officials said. Ukraine is also struggling with recruiting and has recently seen public protests about some of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s open-ended conscription requirements.
And there is unease in the U.S. government with how much less public attention the war in Ukraine has garnered since the Israel-Hamas war began nearly a month ago, the officials said. Officials fear that shift could make securing additional aid for Kyiv more difficult.
Some U.S. military officials have privately begun using the term “stalemate” to describe the current battle in Ukraine, with some saying it may come down to which side can maintain a military force the longest. Neither side is making large strides on the battlefield, which some U.S. officials now describe as a war of inches. Officials also have privately said Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin. U.S. officials have shared their views on such a timeline with European allies, officials said…………………………………………………………………………………..
The Biden administration has spent $43.9 billion on security assistance for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, according to the Pentagon. A U.S. official says the administration has about $5 billion left to send to Ukraine before money runs out. There would be no aid left for Ukraine if the administration hadn’t said it found a $6.2 billion accounting error from months of over-valuing equipment sent to Kyiv.
Public support slipping
Progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been very slow, and hope that Ukraine will make significant advances, including reaching the coast near Russia’s frontlines, is fading. A lack of significant progress on the battlefield in Ukraine does not help with trying to reverse the downward trend in public support for sending more aid, officials said. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-european-officials-broach-topic-peace-negotiations-ukraine-sources-rcna123628 #Ukraine #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNuke
Biden Wants Arms Deals With Israel to Be Done in Complete Secrecy
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Josh Paul, a former top State Department official.
By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUT November 2, 2023, https://truthout.org/articles/biden-wants-arms-deals-with-israel-to-be-done-in-complete-secrecy/
In a highly unusual move, the White House has requested for it to be able to conduct arms deals with Israel in complete secrecy, without oversight from Congress or the public — in a time when the U.S. is supporting a military that experts say has been committing war crimes in Gaza and beyond.
The White House made the request within a $106 billion supplemental defense funding request sent on October 20. As reported by Women for Weapons Trade Transparency for In These Times, the White House is asking for up to $3.5 billion in military funding for Israel to be able to purchase weapons and other equipment, from sources like the U.S. military or U.S. defense contractors, without the spending having to be approved by or even disclosed to Congress.
Crucially, such notifications to Congress are also logged in the Federal Register, where they are viewable to the public — but the White House is trying to get rid of that transparency for Israel for funding through September 2025 and potentially beyond if Israel chooses to set aside funding before then.
Experts have said that the move is alarming and rare. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Josh Paul, the former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, told In These Times. Within the State Department, where he worked for 11 years, Paul helped the bureau in its work on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its genocidal siege on Gaza.
“A proposal in a legislative request to Congress to waive Congressional notification entirely for [Foreign Military Financing ]-funded Foreign Military Sales or Direct Commercial Contracts is unprecedented in my experience,” Paul said. “Frankly, [it’s] an insult to Congressional oversight prerogatives.”
Paul added that the White House is already allowed to unilaterally approve foreign military transactions in “emergency” situations but still has to notify Congress. The move, then, seems calculated to specifically create opacity around Israel sales. “This doesn’t actually reduce the time, it just reduces the oversight,” he said.
John Ramming Chappell, advocacy and legal fellow on U.S. issues for the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told In These Times that Congress should reject the White House’s request. “The waiver would further undermine meaningful scrutiny of weapons sales on Capitol Hill at a time when U.S. support is enabling bombings that have killed thousands of civilians,” Chappell said.
The request comes as the Biden administration has sought to crush dissent on its support of Israel, even within its own ranks. A new report by HuffPost published Thursday found that Biden officials are sidelining work within the State Department on the atrocities that Israel is committing in Gaza, seeking to seemingly cover up the issue and disallow employees from speaking up against the genocide.
Citing Paul and five workers within the agency, the outlet reports that State Department staff have been told by higher ups that they are not going to be able to move the needle on the executive branch’s approach to Israel, no matter their credentials or the horrific things they report coming out of Gaza.
The workers say work from staff on conditions in Gaza is being ignored — perhaps like a recent internal State Department report finding that over 80,000 babies under six months and pregnant people in Gaza are being forced to drink contaminated or brackish water due to Israel’s blockade.
Rather, State Department staff told HuffPost, the administration seems to be sweeping aside evidence of the humanitarian crisis and genocide, even from its own staff, in favor of fealty to Israel’s fascistic military and leaders. At listening sessions within the agency, discussion about the genocide is redirected to fears of antisemitism, while some staff, particularly Muslim workers, say that they feel like they have to censor themselves.
This culture of silence is happening even as senior agency officials may acknowledge in private that Israel is committing war crimes, according to the report. “Over the past weeks, as I have heard from numerous officials across both the executive and legislative branches, it has become clear to me that many senior leaders not only fully understand how Israel is currently using U.S.-provided arms in Gaza, but are even, behind closed doors, willing to acknowledge that these actions include ‘war crimes,’” Paul told HuffPost. “The fact that none are willing to do so publicly … points to a deep moral rot in our system.” #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes #Israel #Palestine
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