Sites with radioactive material more vulnerable as climate change increases wildfire, flood risks
the agency does not specifically consider future climate risks when issuing permits or licenses for new sites or projects
Likewise, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers only historical climate data rather than future projections in licensing decisions and oversight of nuclear power plants.
“We’re acting like … (what’s) happening now is what we can expect to happen in 50 years,”
The Canadian Press. Wed, May 22, 2024,
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/sites-radioactive-material-more-vulnerable-050548288.html
As Texas wildfires burned toward the nation’s primary nuclear weapons facility, workers hurried to ensure nothing flammable was around buildings and storage areas.
When the fires showed no sign of slowing, Pantex Plant officials urgently called on local contractors, who arrived within minutes with bulldozers to dig trenches and enlarge fire breaks for the sprawling complex where nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled and dangerous plutonium pits — hollow spheres that trigger nuclear warheads and bombs — are stored.
“The winds can pick up really (quickly) here and can move really fast,” said Jason Armstrong, the federal field office manager at Pantex, outside Amarillo, who was awake 40 hours straight monitoring the risks. Workers were sent home and the plant shut down when smoke began blanketing the site.
Those fires in February — including the largest in Texas history — didn’t reach Pantex, though flames came within 3 miles (5 kilometers). And Armstrong says it’s highly unlikely that plutonium pits, stored in fire-resistant drums and shelters, would have been affected by wildfire.
But the size and speed of the grassland fires, and Pantex’s urgent response, underscore how much is at stake as climate change stokes extreme heat and drought, longer fire seasons with larger, more intense blazes and supercharged rainstorms that can lead to catastrophic flooding. The Texas fire season often starts in February, but farther west it has yet to ramp up, and is usually worst in summer and fall.
Dozens of active and idle laboratories and manufacturing and military facilities across the nation that use, store or are contaminated with radioactive material are increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather. Many also perform critical energy and defense research and manufacturing that could be disrupted or crippled by fires, floods and other disasters.
There’s the 40-square-mile Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where a 2000 wildfire burned to within a half mile (0.8 kilometers) of a radioactive waste site. The heavily polluted Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Southern California, where a 2018 wildfire burned 80% of the site, narrowly missing an area contaminated by a 1959 partial nuclear meltdown. And the plutonium-contaminated Hanford nuclear site in Washington, where the U.S. manufactured atomic bombs.
That realization has begun to change how the government addresses threats at some of the nation’s most sensitive sites.
The Department of Energy in 2022 required its existing sites to assess climate change risks to “mission-critical functions and operations,” including waste storage, and to develop plans to address them. It cited wildfires at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories and a 2021 deep freeze that damaged “critical facilities” at Pantex.
Yet the agency does not specifically consider future climate risks when issuing permits or licenses for new sites or projects, or in environmental assessments that are reviewed every five years though rarely updated. Instead, it only considers how sites themselves might affect climate change — a paradox critics call short-sighted and potentially dangerous.
Likewise, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers only historical climate data rather than future projections in licensing decisions and oversight of nuclear power plants, according to a General Accounting Office study in April that recommended the NRC “fully consider potential climate change effects.” The GAO found that 60 of 75 U.S. plants were in areas with high flood hazard and 16 were in areas with high wildfire potential.
“We’re acting like … (what’s) happening now is what we can expect to happen in 50 years,” said Caroline Reiser, a climate and energy attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The reality of what our climate is doing has shifted dramatically, and we need to shift our planning … before we experience more and more of the extreme weather events.”
The National Nuclear Security Administration’s environmental safety and health division, which oversees active DOE sites, will conduct an internal review and convene a work group to develop “crucial” methodologies to address climate risks in permitting, licensing and site-wide assessments, John Weckerle, the division’s director of environmental regulatory affairs, told The Associated Press.
Assessments before and after projects are built are critical to protecting infrastructure and waste materials, said Dylan Spaulding, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“We know that climate change makes it likely that these events will happen with increased frequency, and that brings the likelihood for unprecedented consequences,” Spaulding said. Sites “can be better protected if you are anticipating these problems ahead of time.”
One of the most dangerous radioactive materials is plutonium, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It can cause cancer, is most dangerous when inhaled, and just a few hundred grams dispersed widely could pose a significant hazard, he said.
Experts say risks vary by site. Most plutonium and other radioactive material is contained in concrete and steel structures or underground storage designed to withstand fire. And many sites are on large tracts in remote areas where risk to the public from a radiation release would be minimal.
Even so, potential threats have arisen.
In 2000, a wildfire burned one-third of the 580-square-mile (1,502-square-kilometer) Hanford site, which produced plutonium for the U.S. atomic weapons program and is considered the nation’s most radioactive place.
Air monitoring detected plutonium in nearby populated areas at levels higher than background, but only for one day and at levels not considered hazardous, according to a Washington State Department of Health report.
The agency said the plutonium likely was from surface soil blown by the wind during and after the fire, though site officials said radioactive waste is buried several feet deep or stored in concrete structures.
Because the Hanford site is fire-prone — with 130 wildfires between 2012 and 2023 — officials say they’re diligent about cutting fire breaks and removing flammable vegetation.
The 2018 Woolsey Fire in California was another wakeup call.
About 150,000 people live within 5 miles (8 kilometers) of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a former nuclear power research and rocket-engine testing site.
The fire burned within several hundred feet of contaminated buildings and soil, and about 600 feet (183 meters) from where a nuclear reactor core partially melted down 65 years ago.
The state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control said sampling by multiple agencies found no off-site radiation or other hazardous material attributable to the fire. But another study, using hundreds of samples collected by volunteers, found radioactive microparticles in ash just outside of the lab boundary and at three sites farther away that researchers say were from the fire.
The state ordered demolition of 18 buildings, citing “imminent and substantial endangerment to people and the environment because unanticipated and increasingly likely fires could result in the release of radioactive and hazardous substances.”
It also ordered cleanup of old burn pits contaminated with radioactive materials. Though the area was covered with permeable tarps and did not burn in 2018, the state feared it could be damaged by “far more severe” wildfire, high winds or flooding.
“It’s like these places we think, it’ll never happen,” said Melissa Bumstead, founder and co-director of Parents Against Santa Susana Field Laboratory. “But … things are changing very quickly.”
Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said he and others successfully urged federal nuclear security officials to include a wildfire plan in a 1999 final environmental impact statement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The next year, the 48,000-acre (19,000-hectare) Cerro Grande Fire burned 7,500 acres (3,035 hectares) at the laboratory, including structures, and came within a half-mile (0.8 kilometers) of an area with more than 24,000 above-ground containers of mostly plutonium-contaminated waste.
The plan’s hypothetical fire “eerily matched the real fire,” Coghlan said, adding that it “could have been catastrophic,” if containers had been compromised and plutonium become airborne. But the lab had cut fire breaks around the area — and since then, most containers have been shipped to a permanent storage site in southern New Mexico.
Remaining radioactive material — including from the World War II Manhattan Project — now is underground with barriers to prevent leaching, or in containers stored under fire-retardant fabric-and-steel domes with paved floors until it can be processed for disposal.
The amount of radioactive material in each container is kept low to prevent a significant release if it were compromised, said Nichole Lundgard, engineering and nuclear safety program manager at DOE contractor N3B.
The lab also emphasizes fire preparedness, including thinning forests to reduce the intensity of future fires, said Rich Nieto, manager of the site’s wildland fire program.
“What used to be a three-month (fire) season, sometimes will be a six-month season,” he said.
Wildfires aren’t the only climate-related risk. Flooding from increasingly intense rainstorms can wash away sediment — especially in areas that have burned. Floods and extreme cold also can affect operations and have forced the shutdown of several DOE sites in recent years.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California was evacuated during a 2020 wildfire, and last year the lab was forced to shut down for three weeks because of heavy flooding.
The 2000 fire at Los Alamos was followed by heavy rainstorms that washed away sediment with plutonium and other radioactive material.
In 2010, Pantex was inundated with 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain that forced the plant to shut down, affecting operations for almost a month. The plutonium storage area flooded and corrosion later was found on some containers that’s since “been addressed,” said Armstrong, the field office manager.
In 2017, storms flooded facilities that processed nuclear material and led to power outages that affected a fire alarm control panel.
Then in 2021, Pantex was shut down for a week because of extreme cold that officials said led to “freeze-related failures” at 10 nuclear facilities and other plants. That included failure of a sprinkler head in a radiation safety storage area’s fire suppression system.
Pantex has since adopted freeze-protection measures and a cold weather response plan. And Armstrong says there have been upgrades, including to its fire protection and electrical systems and installation of backup generators.
Other DOE sites also are investing in infrastructure, the nuclear security agency’s Weckerle said, because what once was considered safe now may be vulnerable.
“We live in a time of increased risk,” he said. “That’s just the heart of it (and) … a lot of that does have to do with climate change.”
Endless Trump reporting in USA media, but very little reporting of genocide in Gaza
Why so little reporting of genocide in Gaza?
Walt Zlotow, 22 May 24 https://heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com/
If you only watch mainstream news, cable and network, you may not even be aware the US is enabling Israel’s grotesque genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. There’s a couple of reasons for that.
The entire commercial media has largely scrubbed reporting on genocide there. To cover it would reveal US complicity in the first major genocide of the 21st century, destroying any semblance of a livable existence for 2,300,000 Palestinians. Why expose the truth which doesn’t fit the now debunked narrative of American exceptionalism and decency round the world.
But there’s a more ghoulish reason scenes of genocide in Gaza are missing from the American version of Pravda. Israel is killing as many reporters on the ground as US 2,000 lb. bombs can obliterate. In the first 7 months of the genocide, 143 Palestinian reporters have been killed. That is more reporters than were killed in WWII and Vietnam War combined. But worse, it only includes credentialed reporters, not the many uncredited bloggers, writers and their family members killed along with them.
As in previous Israeli campaigns in Gaza, virtually all international media professionals are barred from entering Gaza to ensure Israeli crimes against the entire Palestinian people go unreported. Israel also imposes a gag order on its own journalists who might dare report the truth of its 8 month long genocide enabled by America. Just this week Israeli authorities seized Associated Press broadcasting equipment in southern Israel and blocked the outlet’s live feed of Gaza.
Turn on the endless loop of Trump trial coverage that passes for informing the American public and ponder: ‘If the genocide in Gaza is not being covered…does that mean it’s not happening?’
In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all weapons shipments to Israel
The national organization Veterans For Peace is demanding that the Biden administration abide by U.S. law regarding the illegal possession of unregulated nuclear weapons and halt all military aid to Israel.
In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all military aid to Israel because it possesses nuclear weapons in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel does not admit it possesses nuclear weapons, has not signed the NPT, and does not allow inspections of its nuclear arsenal.
The letter lists multiple credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the NPT, the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, require the suspension of all military aid.
The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors.
The president may not waive the cutoff of the aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the president to waive some or all of these sanctions.
“The law is quite simple,” said VFP National Director Mike Ferner. “Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘Will you obey the law or continue to let the Madmen Arsonists run America?’”
The well-referenced 11-page letter was researched and written by VFP member Terry Lodge, an activist lawyer who specializes in nuclear issues. It makes for a fascinating read, detailing Israel’s many illegal actions to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and Henry Kissinger’s approval of Israel’s “strategic ambiguity.” Israel has never officially admitted it possesses nuclear weapons, but “everybody knows.” In November, an Israeli cabinet member actually suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
The letter also references former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s hacked email (“The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands.’’). Colin Powell’s assertion that Iran’s capital Tehran has long been targeted by Israel’s nuclear weapons is especially chilling at this moment, when Israel has provoked an armed conflict with Iran and may be trying to drag the U.S. into a wider war in the Middle East. Would Israel attack Iran with nuclear weapons?
All U.S. Military Aid to Israel Must Be Ended Immediately
In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all military aid to Israel because it possesses nuclear weapons in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel does not admit it possesses nuclear weapons, has not signed the NPT, and does not allow inspections of its nuclear arsenal.
The letter lists multiple credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the NPT, the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, require the suspension of all military aid.
The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors.
The president may not waive the cutoff of the aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the president to waive some or all of these sanctions.
“The law is quite simple,” said VFP National Director Mike Ferner. “Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘Will you obey the law or continue to let the Madmen Arsonists run America?’”
The well-referenced 11-page letter was researched and written by VFP member Terry Lodge, an activist lawyer who specializes in nuclear issues. It makes for a fascinating read, detailing Israel’s many illegal actions to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and Henry Kissinger’s approval of Israel’s “strategic ambiguity.” Israel has never officially admitted it possesses nuclear weapons, but “everybody knows.” In November, an Israeli cabinet member actually suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
The letter also references former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s hacked email (“The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands.’’). Colin Powell’s assertion that Iran’s capital Tehran has long been targeted by Israel’s nuclear weapons is especially chilling at this moment, when Israel has provoked an armed conflict with Iran and may be trying to drag the U.S. into a wider war in the Middle East. Would Israel attack Iran with nuclear weapons?
All U.S. Military Aid to Israel Must Be Ended Immediately
Israel’s provocative approach to foreign relations before and since commencing the genocidal invasion of Gaza suggests that nuclear weapons might be used against both real and perceived existential threats to Israel. In May 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assessed that Israel’s security problems come from Iran, and then in September, he insisted at the United Nations that “[A]bove all, Iran must face a credible nuclear threat.”
Presently, Israel has at least 90 warheads, and possibly as many as 200.Israel’s bombs are deliverable via aircraft, land-based ballistic missiles, and submarine-based cruise missiles. Israel’s Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missiles are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead from 4,000 miles away, which means that Iran, Pakistan (another NPT scofflaw non-weapons state believed to have nuclear weapons), and all of Russia west of the Urals—including Moscow—are within range of Israeli nuclear targeting, should Israel resort to The Bomb.
Israel is conducting an ongoing genocidal military campaign in the Gaza Strip against Palestinian civilians and the Hamas government, even as it bombs and fires artillery and rockets into Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors. Given the overwhelming evidence that Israel has received many nuclear weapons from its military branch and has maintained that offensive nuclear capability for decades, federal law compels President Biden to immediately terminate all military assistance to Israel.
US-Saudi officials meet for security and nuclear deal
the Biden administration is offering a strategic deal on nuclear deal to the Saudis to assist a Saudi civilian nuclear program, as Iran has reached the weapons threshold under President Joe Biden’s watch.
May 20, 2024 , https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240520-us-saudi-officials-meet-for-security-and-nuclear-deal/
US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, and Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, met in Dhahran to discuss a range of issues, including normalisation of ties with Israel, Reuters reports.
According to the report, a Saudi statement on Sunday also said, “the semi-final version of the draft strategic agreements between the two countries, which are almost being finalised”, were discussed.
The report added that the Biden administration is offering a strategic deal on nuclear deal to the Saudis to assist a Saudi civilian nuclear program, as Iran has reached the weapons threshold under President Joe Biden’s watch.
The meeting also covered “what is being worked on between the two sides on the Palestinian issue to find a credible path towards a two-state solution”, as well as attempts to stop the war in Gaza and facilitate the distribution of humanitarian aid there.
Militarism will inevitably lead America to bankruptcy
Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst, , October 16, 2023 https://infobrics.org/post/39611
The United States likes to boast about its much-touted industrial might and how it’s still “the world’s largest and most advanced economy”. Indeed, Washington DC holds several absolute world records when it comes to the economy. Namely, it has the highest national debt in the history of mankind, incurred by going all over the world, burning, pillaging, murdering and generally destroying the lives of hundreds of millions. Back in mid-September, the US national debt topped $33 trillion for the first time. Worse yet, by October 12 (just a bit more than 20 days later) it already grew another $520 billion. In August, it was estimated that the US budget deficit will be $1.7 trillion by year’s end, although experts now believe it’s extremely likely to go past that and reach around $2 trillion. If true, this means the deficit will grow by over 40% in comparison to last year when it stood at around $1.4 trillion.
The US debt-to-GDP ratio is nearly 130%, but Washington DC keeps raising the debt ceiling. Namely, in January 2023, the belligerent thalassocracy hit its debt limit and by June 2023, it was forced to suspend it to avoid default. We all remember last year and how the political West kept patting itself on the back for effectively stealing hundreds of billions in Russian foreign reserves and denying Moscow the ability to service its debt. The mainstream propaganda was maliciously overjoyed with the prospect of Russia’s artificially induced default. And yet, this never happened, while the US is the one that found itself in a near-default situation. What’s more, the only way to avoid it was to use a perpetual “cheat code” that simply enables it to incur more debt. A responsible government would do something to prevent the escalation of the crisis, but Washington DC has other plans.
Apart from making sure that its economic issues spill over to the rest of the world, where impoverished and heavily exploited countries pay the price of US imperialism, the belligerent thalassocracy keeps militarizing and creating enemies in order to feed the monstrosity called the American Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Back in late March, as the debt ceiling crisis was unfolding, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that the Pentagon would be doubling its military budget. At the time, Milley kept parroting about “a looming global conflict”, but clearly “forgot” to explain that if there were to ever be one, its sole cause would be the US itself, as it’s the only country on the planet with an openly stated strategy of “full spectrum dominance”. However, the only way to accomplish this is to keep spending funds that Washington DC simply doesn’t have.
Global military spending for 2022 was around $2.1 trillion, meaning that the US is already at over 40% of the world’s total with its current budget. Doubling it, even over the next several years (also taking into account that other superpowers would certainly respond to it), could push that figure close to 60%. In terms of the US federal budget, it would also require further cuts to investment in healthcare, infrastructure, education, etc. As the military currently spends approximately 15% of the entire US federal budget, obviously, doubling it would mean the percentage would go up to (or even over) 30%. Such figures are quite close to what the former Soviet Union was spending, which was one of the major factors that contributed to its unfortunate dismantlement and the later crisis in all post-Soviet countries that needed approximately a decade to recover.
As previously mentioned, such a move would also force others to drastically increase their own military spending in response to US belligerence. If China were to follow suit, its military budget would then rise to approximately $500 billion, while Russia’s military budget would be close to $200 billion. In fact, Moscow is already in the process of doing this, as it recently increased its defense spending by 70% in 2024 alone in order to tackle NATO aggression in Europe. As we can see, this is causing a military spending “death spiral” that’s extremely difficult to control and is leading the world into an unprecedented arms race. However, it seems that’s exactly what Washington DC wants. On October 12, the US Congress Strategic Posture Commission issued its final report and called for further expansion of America’s already massive arsenal of thermonuclear weapons.
It should be noted that the reasoning (although there’s hardly anything reasonable in it) behind such a decision is a simultaneous confrontation with both Russia and China. This includes massive investment into new weapons systems such as the B-21 “Raider” strategic bomber/missile carrier and Columbia-class SSBN (nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine), as well as the replacement of the heavily outdated “Minuteman 3” ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) with new LGM-35 “Sentinel” missiles. All three types are in different stages of development and are expected to be fully operational by the early 2030s. However, with the US debt projected to reach over $50 trillion in less than ten years (the best-case scenario), the viability of such a massive expansion in American military spending is highly questionable (if possible at all).
By 2027, interest payments alone are expected to surpass the Pentagon’s entire budget. What’s more, America’s ability to keep up with the technological advances of its geopolitical adversaries is also falling short, particularly in the development of hypersonic weapons, a field in which Russia has an absolute advantage, despite spending approximately 20-25 times less on its armed forces. The only way for the US to avoid bankrupting itself is to finally leave the world alone and focus on the mountain of domestic issues that keep piling up.
Source: InfoBrics
Blinken to Zelensky: ‘Here’s another $2 billion to get thousands more Ukraine troops killed for nothing
There is something demented in America’s foreign policy toward Ukraine. President Biden just sent his Secretary of War…make that State, Antony Blinken, all the way to Kyiv to demand Ukraine keep America’s proxy war against Russia raging in Ukraine till the eastern quarter of Ukraine becomes part of Russia, and all Ukrainian soldiers are dead.
Blinken touted how this new $2 billion will be a gift for Ukraine to buy US weapons, further enriching US arms makers while Ukraine is collapsing as a functioning state. Blinken further heralded how some of that weapons largess will be used to purchase weapons from US allies, enriching their weapons makers as well.
Besides furthering Ukraine’s ruin, Blinken essentially greenlighted Ukraine using new US weapons to attack the Russian mainland if they so wish. Such Ukraine attacks risk serious escalation that could easily spin out of control. Russia has already warned the UK that it could hit British military sites if Ukraine uses British-provided weapons to attack targets in Russia. When asked about dangerous escalation, Blinken channeled Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman muttering ‘What, me worry?’
If Hollywood ever remakes the series ‘Mad Men’, it should not be about the 1950’s advertising executives of Madison Avenue. It should chronicle the 2020’s Mad Men of Pennsylvania Avenue, Biden and Blinken, leading America and the world to ruin destroying countries in Europe and the Middle East.
NuScale ($SMR) Has Deceived Investors about the Certification of its Reactor.
May 16, 2024 https://iceberg-research.com/2024/05/16/nuscale-smr-has-deceived-investors-about-the-certification-of-its-reactor/
NuScale is a developer of small modular reactors (“SMR”) with no credible orders. The company has not landed a single deal since the termination of the UAMPS contract, caused by cost overruns. Without any serious customer, NuScale’s marketing now leans heavily on one claim: having the first and only SMR design certified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC”).
This statement is everywhere. It features on NuScale’s website, investor presentations, and on earnings calls. Unfortunately, journalists have also echoed this story, without questioning its meaning.
This claim is important. Certification is notoriously long and demanding in the nuclear industry, so NuScale wants investors to believe that it is ready to sell reactors now to meet AI’s rising demand for energy, while competitors are still engaged in the lengthy process.
The problem is that this claim is grossly misleading. NuScale’s design certification was for the original 50-MWe reactor design that was obtained in 2023. The company was forced to upsize its SMR to 77-MWe after it found that the economics of the 50-MWe version didn’t work. The new 77-MWe that NuScale wants to commercialize has zero approval. NuScale has recognized that it does not plan to commercialize the old 50-MWe version anymore (Pg 5).
The regulatory process for the new reactor is more complex and lengthier than what NuScale presents:
- The 77-MWe reactor is not a simple update of the previous design, as increasing the power output by ~50% will cause more stress to critical components of the reactor.
- The company requested for a Standard Design Approval (“SDA”) and not full certification. SDA is a less rigorous step in the approval process. It does not prevent issues resolved by the design review process from being reconsidered during a rulemaking for a design certification, or during hearings associated with a construction permit, or combined license application (Source). SDA progress stands at 40% as of today with approval expected in July 2025. Then, if NuScale seeks full certification to mitigate the above mentioned regulatory uncertainty, we estimate this would take an additional two years.
NRC certified the previous 50-MWe design under the condition that three issues had to be addressed by the constructor/operator of the power plant (Pg 3 of Design Certification). These were the design of the shielding wall, containment leakage from the combustible gas monitoring system, and steam generator stability. It is quite puzzling that NuScale has never resolved these issues, despite being exactly the same ones when it got the SDA in 2020 (Pg 5 of SDA letter).
NuScale deliberately misleads investors into believing that its current design has been certified, which is absolutely incorrect. The regulatory process in reality will take years before NuScale can commercialize its SMR, provided demand exists.
Elusive Clients
NuScale still does not have any binding licensing contract.
- Standard Power
We called the Standard Power contract a pipe dream. Even some sell-side analysts found it hard to take this client seriously. This seems even more like wishful thinking now. NuScale’s 10-K reveals that Standard Power is merely a potential customer.
- RoPower
In January 2023, Romanian nuclear energy firm RoPower Nuclear SA — a joint venture established by Nuclearelectrica and Nova Power & Gas — awarded a front-end engineering and design (“FEED”) work contract to NuScale to develop an SMR plant in Romania. As of now, NuScale has completed work for phase 1, but phase 2 hangs in the balance. Nuclearelectrica shareholders were expected to vote on continuing with the NuScale project at a meeting last month. However, the controlling shareholder, the Ministry of Energy, did not vote. This halted the project’s progress, and as reported in Romanian media (1, 2), the abstention meant the project’s FEED 2 study, the signing of key contracts, and the Ministry of Energy’s decision to raise the loan ceiling for the project’s financing were not approved. The Ministry of Energy later stated that these matters will be put back on the agenda but the uncertainty is starting to look like version 2 of the UAMPS debacle.
- Ukraine
NuScale even claims to be in talks to deploy its technology in Ukraine for ammonia production, but wishes that ‘the bombs stop falling’. The country probably has other priorities.
Fluor the long-suffering shareholder
Fluor is NuScale’s largest shareholder and invested more than $600m in the company between 2011 and 2021. However, it is no secret that Fluor wants to offload a significant chunk of NuScale. As an insider, Fluor is familiar with the regulatory struggles, and most likely expects a litany of cost overruns – all too common in this industry.
The loss of faith in NuScale began as early as twelve years ago. In 2012, David Seaton, Fluor’s CEO at the time, told analysts that the company was ‘keenly focused on bringing in additional investors’ for NuScale. Since then, Fluor has made multiple attempts to substantially get rid of NuScale, without much success, finding some relief only during the SPAC boom, which provided a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to cut bad asset exposure.
Fluor has made clear since the start of 2021 about its long-term plan to hold just 20%-25% of NuScale. This stems from a desire to stop funding NuScale’s losses and deconsolidate the company to get rid of the drag on earnings. In 2019, former CEO Carlos Hernandez told analysts that the company does not ‘expect to provide any additional funding out of Fluor for NuScale’, and added that NuScale was ‘going to affect earnings because we have to consolidate…’.
The disinvestment plan is not going well. As of 1Q23, the company told investors to expect news on strategic investment in NuScale ‘near the end of the year’. The timeline keeps shifting, to ‘end of the year or early in the new year’ in 3Q23, and then to ‘update in the first half of this year’ during the 4Q23 call held on 20 February 2024. Most recently, on the 1Q24 call, management said Fluor will ‘continue to provide updates on this front in the coming quarters of 2024’.
This lack of buyer interest is unsurprising, for a company with no orders, no certification for its new design, and dwindling cash balances.
Cash burn update
Our estimates show that NuScale has 14-21 months of cash. We expect cash outflows of ~$118m, and liquidity to vary, depending on whether or not the company draws down on its at-the-market facility.
Russian uranium ban reopens threat of uranium mining escalation in US
Executives from Uranium Energy, Terrapower, Centrus and Energy Fuels couldn’t contain their excitement. Nor can they wait to begin mining, milling, and enriching uranium again in the US, to the detriment most especially of Native American tribes living on the land already permanently scarred and poisoned by previous such operations and who are still waiting for adequate or any cleanup and reparations.
Beyond Nuclear, By Linda Pentz Gunter, 19 May 24
When Russia first invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, no one knew how long the fighting would continue and what the outcome might be. Kyiv was expected to fall immediately. It didn’t. More than two years on, the war continues and the rumblings from Russia about nuclear weapons use grow frighteningly louder.
The rush by the United States and its NATO allies at the time of the invasion to help defend — and to some extent arm — Ukraine included a quick decision to sanction Russian fossil fuel imports. On March 8, 2022, just 12 days after the invasion, US president, Joe Biden, signed an Executive Order banning the import of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas, and coal to the United States. Russian uranium was not included.
At the time of the 2022 ban on Russian fossil fuels, many of us in the anti-nuclear movement were agitating for a Russian uranium ban as well. At least 12% of US uranium imports comes from Russia to fuel domestic US reactors. That number rises to close to 50% if you also factor in uranium sourced from Russian satellites Kazakhstan (25%) and Uzbekistan (11%). (Canada is the other major single-source supplier of uranium to the US at 27%.)
On May 13, 2024, President Biden finally signed into law a bipartisan bill — the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act — banning imports of Russian low-enriched uranium. According to the bill, the ban affects: “Unirradiated low-enriched uranium that is produced in the Russian Federation or by a Russian entity” (read Rosatom operating outside Russia).
When we were pushing for a Russian uranium boycott at the start of the war, it was in the context of highlighting the detriment of nuclear power and fed into our agenda to permanently end the use of this dangerous and discriminatory technology. We asked then why the nuclear sector was getting a pass. Now we have the answer. The bill is a poisoned pill, almost literally.
The bill’s enactment “releases $2.72 billion in appropriated funds to the Department of Energy to invest in domestic uranium enrichment further advancing a secure and resilient global nuclear energy fuel supply consistent with our international obligations,” said the US State Department.
This is all part of the absurd agenda to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050 (too late) and, said the State Department, “to establish a secure nuclear fuel supply chain, independent of adversarial influence, for decades to come.” It will do nothing of the kind.
While the new law may claim to end US dependency on Russian uranium, it does not end American addiction to a fatal energy source that victimizes the communities least resourced to fight back. Furthermore, it will make America’s path to a renewable energy economy all the harder, redirecting funds and precious time toward the most expensive and slowest way to address the climate crisis (nuclear) instead of faster, cheaper renewables.
There are no prizes for guessing who was cheering the loudest as Biden wielded his pen last week.
Executives from Uranium Energy, Terrapower, Centrus and Energy Fuels couldn’t contain their excitement. Nor can they wait to begin mining, milling, and enriching uranium again in the US, to the detriment most especially of Native American tribes living on the land already permanently scarred and poisoned by previous such operations and who are still waiting for adequate or any cleanup and reparations.
One of those places, the Grand Canyon, is already under threat from the Pinyon Plain uranium mine, a project of Canadian-owned Energy Fuels and which started operations in January 2024, against the strong opposition of the Havasupai tribe who live there.
“We have been against uranium mining for decades because of the known risks to land and air, water and people,” said Carletta Tilousi, a leader of the Havasupai tribe who is fighting to cancel the uranium operations at Pinyon Plain, which is located near Red Butte, a sacred site to the Havsupai people.
“Uranium mining in the southwest has scarred and left a horrifying legacy of death in our communities. Thousands of abandoned uranium mines on federal and tribal lands have not been cleaned up,” she said.
“Uranium will continue to poison the Grand Canyon including the aquifers that feed into the Colorado River,” added Tilousi. “Contaminants from the uranium mine are likely to make their way to the deep aquifers that feed Havasu Springs. The mine closure is the only way to avoid this risk.”
The Navajo Nation, who have banned uranium mining on their territory, was home to more than 500 uranium mines at peak operations, all of which are now abandoned but not cleaned up. (There are more than 4,000 abandoned uranium mine sites across the US.) Tribal members understand all too well what uranium mining can do to the health and wellbeing of a community.
“This decision by Biden is terrible news,” said former uranium mine worker, Larry King of the Navajo Nation, a member of Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining that has advocated mine cleanup for decades. Added King: “They’ve never returned an aquifer to pre-mining stages,” after extracting uranium through in-situ leach mining, the predominant technique currently used. “The companies got what they want out of Navajo and moved on.”
Despite the ban, the Navajo Nation had already been under a renewed threat of resumed uranium mining when Uranium Resources tried to open a new in situ leach mine at Church Rock, a plan that was defeated by tribal opposition. But Toronto-based Laramide Resources has since bought out Uranium Resources and wants to mine uranium there because the land is surrounded by — but not within — the boundaries of the Navajo reservation.
King’s home lies within view of Laramide’s plans. “The environmental impact statement says there are certain dwellings within the diameter of the project and those people will have to move,” King said. “I’m not moving. This is where I’m from. I’m not moving a foot.”
After Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, the Washington Post ran a disgracefully slanted article, in which not a single Native American voice was heard. Reporter Maxine Joselow quoted executives from four nuclear corporations and two politicians, all of whom favored the legislation. She made only a glancing reference to mine opponents as “others” and “still others” after prefacing their anonymous mention with “Though some environmentalists support nuclear power…”
But she was more than happy to repeat the utter nonsense spewed by Energy Fuels senior vice president, Curtis Moore, who said the company’s Grand Canyon mine would have “zero” risk to water supplies there and that “Uranium is absolutely essential to the fight against climate change.”
Americans, and especially Native Americans, will pay the price for this bill which, instead of banning uranium imports and transitioning away from nuclear power, seeks instead to stimulate exponential domestic growth of this dirty industry………………………………………………………..
it’s unclear how deeply the boycott will actually harm Russia and when. As bne IntelliNews clarified in a January 19, 2024 article: “even though Kazakhstan is the world’s biggest player in uranium supply, much of its milled uranium travels through Russian conversion plants before it is exported to global markets.” Russia has “control of over 26% of Kazakh uranium deposits and holds rights to an additional 22% of annual production.”
However, the Russia uranium ban doesn’t specifically include Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan and the “Russian entity” wording in the bill leaves the situation vague.
Kazakhstan seems to have no doubt about the opportunity presented by the Russia ban and is eager to fill the void. “This bill represents a significant opportunity for Kazakhstan, the world’s largest producer of uranium, which could potentially step into the breach and provide the mineral necessary to meet the U.S.’ nuclear energy needs,” reported The Times of Central Asia in January after the bill had passed the US House last December.
Furthermore, there is a pretty big waiver included in the bill which could keep the door wide open to Russian uranium. It states that imports can continue if “no alternative viable source of low-enriched uranium is available to sustain the continued operation of a nuclear reactor or a United States nuclear energy company; or importation of low-enriched uranium described in paragraph (1) is in the national interest.”
This is in place to insure against a resulting shortage of uranium fuel supplies that could cause US reactors to shut down prematurely or permanently. The waiver extends until January 2028. So a win-win for Rosatom, Kazatomprom, North American uranium corporations, the US Congress and the Biden Administration, and another tragic betrayal of Native American people.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/05/19/terrible-news/
U.S. conducted first subcritical nuclear test since September 2021
At left – underground test craters -Nevada
COMMENT. Alice Slater. We stopped nuclear testing in 1992 and Clinton promptly created a mew weapons program under the euphemism “stockpile stewardship” which incuded blowing up plutonium with explosives 1,000 ft below the desert floor on Western Shoshone holyland in Nevada which didn’t go critical so Clinton said it wasn’t a nuclear test!!!
Totally going backwards into WWIII and nuclear armageddon!! How could we!!??!!
KYODO NEWS – May 18, 2024 –
The United States conducted a subcritical nuclear test on Tuesday, the first since September 2021, a government agency said, in an apparent effort to bolster deterrence against countries such as China and Russia.
The experiment, the third under the administration of President Joe Biden, was carried out in Nevada to collect “essential data” regarding the country’s nuclear warheads, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Although China and Russia, as well as Iran and North Korea, continue to expand their nuclear capabilities, the test is likely to trigger criticism as running counter to disarmament hopes in places such as Hiroshima, a Japanese city that was devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb during World War II…………………………
The United States suspended underground nuclear tests in 1992 and began subcritical nuclear tests five years later.
As subcritical nuclear tests do not result in a nuclear explosion, the United States has asserted that they are not prohibited under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the country has signed but not ratified……………
Tuesday’s test was the first in the “Nimble series,” carried out with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the NNSA said, adding it will continue the new cycle of experiments also with support from Los Alamos National Laboratory…………………… https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/05/7483d70178a7-update2-us-conducted-1st-subcritical-nuclear-test-since-sept-2021.html
US Senators Threaten Criminal Court & Advise Israel to Nuke Gaza
By Thalif Deen, https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/05/us-senators-threaten-criminal-court-advice-israel-nuke-gaza/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=us-senators-threaten-criminal-court-advice-israel-nuke-gaza
UNITED NATIONS, May 16 2024 (IPS) – As the ancient Greek saying goes: those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive them mad. Perhaps destruction is too far-fetched here, but madness is closer home—in Washington DC
With the 7-month-old Israeli-Gaza conflict showing no positive signs of a permanent solution, there is a lingering sense of growing political craziness in Capitol Hill, the seat of the US government, once described as Israeli-occupied territory.
Last week Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican senator from South Carolina, who once chaired the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, implicitly advised Israel it should drop nuclear bombs over Gaza—perhaps ignorant of the fact that a nuclear fallout will also destroy parts of Israel.
In a TV interview, Graham advised Israel: “Do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state”—as he compared Israel’s war on Gaza to the US war with Japan during World War II.
“When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons,” Graham said in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press.
Meanwhile, Tim Walberg, a Republican House member said wiping out Gaza “should be like Hiroshima and Nagasaki” “Get it over quick”, he advised Israel.
Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and Editor of The Palestine Chronicle told IPS: “Sure, Israel is yet to drop a nuclear bomb, but it has dropped enough US bombs over the besieged Strip to create the impact of nuclear weapons.”
He pointed out that 75 percent of Gaza has been destroyed, and about 5 percent of the population have been killed or wounded. This was done by Biden and his supposedly softer approach, if compared to Graham, to the war.
“This is indeed madness, but, in a sense, it also reflects a degree of desperation,” said Baroud.
Meanwhile, 12 US Republican senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have openly threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) with sanctions if they target Israeli officials.
The threat is directed at both ICC officials and their family members — if and when, the Court moves forward with international arrest warrants against Israeli leaders over the war in Gaza.
“Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States,” read the April 24 letter.
“You have been warned,” the letter added.
Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS the goal posts on the USA’s political field have been dragged rightward since last autumn by the combined forces of standard militarism, craven political jockeying, biased mass-media coverage and ferocious pro-Israel messaging.
The countervailing force in the United States is coming from grassroots opposition to Israel’s mass murder and rejection of its support provided by the U.S. political establishment.
Often led by activists in such organizations as Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, the highly visible protests last fall and winter seeded the ground for the upsurge in student-led protests in recent weeks on U.S. college campuses, he said.
This nonviolent grassroots resistance to Israeli genocide and oppression of Palestinian people has shocked the traditional American Zionist establishment and its allies in the leadership of the Democratic Party.
“The growing resistance has also provoked an extreme reactionary response from right-wing media outlets such as Fox News and many dozens of Republicans in Congress who have vocally and mendaciously denounced efforts to end the slaughter, which is subsidized by U.S. taxpayers to the benefit of both the fascistic Israeli government and military contractors based in the United States”, he argued.
“The flagrantly racist and ethnocentric reactions of Republican leaders, combined with the rhetorical Democratic vacillation that continues to support the Israeli-inflicted carnage in Gaza, comprise the two wings of U.S. governance. Most young Americans, in particular, are now emphatically opposed to both wings enabling the genocide,” he noted.
This is an ongoing political struggle over whether the U.S. government will continue to support Israel as it pursues its systematic slaughter of civilians in Gaza, declared Solomon, national director, RootsAction.org and author of, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.”
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/campus-protests-gaza
In their letter to Karim A. Khan, ICC Prosecutor, the 12 Senators say: “We write regarding reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) may be considering issuing international arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and if carried out will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.
By issuing warrants, you would be calling into question the legitimacy of Israel’s laws, legal system, and democratic form of government. Issuing arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel would not only be unjustified, it would expose your organization’s hypocrisy and double standards.
“Neither Israel nor the United States are members of the ICC and are therefore outside of your organization’s supposed jurisdiction. If you issue a warrant for the arrest of the Israeli leadership, we will interpret this not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
The US a Direct Partner in the Israeli War
By Ramzy Baroud, https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/05/us-direct-partner-israeli-war/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=us-direct-partner-israeli-war
SEATTLE, Washington, May 16 2024 (IPS) – A major mistake we often commit in our analysis of the US political discourse on the Gaza war is that we assume that the US and Israel behave as if they are two political entities with separate agendas and sets of priorities.
Nothing could be further from the truth. From the start of the war, top US officials including President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken saw themselves as the guardians of Israeli interests. Blinken attended Israel’s first War Council meeting as if an Israel official, and Biden carried on reiterating that he is a Zionist.
Despite purported difference on various matters between Tel Aviv and Washington, for example, the nature and size of Israel’s military operation in Rafah, their interests remain identical: defeating Palestinians, restoring Israeli so-called deterrence, returning to the status quo in the region, and reigning in Israel’s enemies, including Iran, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansarullah.
The US is a direct partner in the Israeli war: defeating any UN attempt at calling for immediate, unconditional, and binding ceasefire, arming Israel with billions of dollars of the deadliest weapons and fighting, directly – as in the case of Yemen – or indirectly against Israel’s regional enemies who are showing solidarity with the Palestinians.
That context in mind, the dangerous comments by Senator Graham are consistent with the Biden’s administration actions regarding Gaza.
Sure, Israel is yet to drop a nuclear bomb, but it has dropped enough US bombs over the besieged Strip to create the impact of nuclear weapons. 75 percent of Gaza has been destroyed, and about 5 percent of the population have been killed or wounded. This was done by Biden and his supposedly softer approach, if compared to Graham, to the war.
This is indeed madness, but, in a sense, it also reflects a degree of desperation.
Israel is losing in Gaza. Not ‘losing’ as in failing to achieve its objectives, but losing militarily against Palestinian groups who are employing successful guerrilla warfare tactics.
After over 7 months of war, the fighting is back exactly where it started; and while Palestinians are perfecting their resistance craft, Israel is losing more soldiers at a much higher rate.
Comments about nuclear bombing Gaza comes within this context, that of Israel’s failure, if not desperation. US and Israeli officials know well that the war has been lost, or, at best, cannot be won.
But also losing the war means a fundamental shift in the power paradigm in the Middle East, the kind of change that neither Netanyahu, Graham nor their ilk can afford.
On November 5, Israel’s minister of heritage also spoke about the possibility of nuking Gaza, using Israeli mainstream media to communicate his ideas. Graham is now saying the same thing, using US mainstream media as an outlet to convey the same notion.
There is much to learn here about the nature of the relationship between both countries, but also this language teaches us that top politicians in Tel Aviv and Washington realize that the limits of traditional warfare have been reached yet failed to alter the reality on the ground in any way, aside from massacring tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). The link to his website follows: www.ramzybaroud.net
IPS UN Bureaur
Promising the Impossible: Blinken’s Out of Tune Performance in Kyiv
On May 14, in his address to the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Blinken described what could only be reasoned as a vast mirage…….. This astonishingly irresponsible statement makes Washington’s security agenda clear and Kyiv’s fate bleak: Ukraine is to become a pro-US, anti-Russian bastion, with an open cheque book at the ready.
The gong of deceit and delusion must.. go to Blinken.
May 18, 2024, Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/promising-the-impossible-blinkens-out-of-tune-performance-in-kyiv/
Things are looking dire for the Ukrainian war effort. Promises of victory are becoming even hollower than they were last summer, when US President Joe Biden could state with breathtaking obliviousness that Russia had “already lost the war.” The worst offender in this regard remains the United States, which has been the most vocal proponent of fanciful victory over Russia, a message which reads increasingly as one of fighting to the last Ukrainian.
Such a victory is nigh fantasy, almost impossible to envisage. For one thing, domestic considerations about continued support for Kyiv have played a stalling part. In the US Congress, a large military aid package was stalled for six months. Among some Republicans, in particular, Ukraine was not a freedom loving despoiled figure needing props and crutches. “From our perspective,” opines Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, “Ukraine should not and cannot be our problem to solve. It is not our place to defend them in a struggle with their longtime adversary, Russia.” The assessment, in this regard, was a matter of some clarity for Paul. “There is no national security interest for the United States.”
Despite this, the Washington foreign policy and military elite continue to make siren calls of seduction in Kyiv’s direction. On April 23, the Senate finally approved a $US95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, with the lion’s share – some US$61 billion – intended for Ukraine’s war effort.
On April 24, a press release from US Secretary State Antony Blinken announced a further US$1 billion package packed with “urgently needed capabilities including air defense missiles, munitions for HIMARS, artillery rounds, armored vehicles, precision aerial munitions, anti-armor weapons, and small arms, equipment, and spare parts to help Ukraine defend its territory and protect its people.”
On May 14, in his address to the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Blinken described what could only be reasoned as a vast mirage. “Today, I’m here in Kyiv to speak about Ukraine’s strategic success. And to set out how, with our support, the Ukrainian people can and will achieve their vision for the near future: a free, prosperous, secure democracy – fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community – and fully in control of its own destiny.” This astonishingly irresponsible statement makes Washington’s security agenda clear and Kyiv’s fate bleak: Ukraine is to become a pro-US, anti-Russian bastion, with an open cheque book at the ready.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made the prevention of that vision an article of faith. While Russian forces, in men and material, have suffered horrendous losses, the attritive nature of the conflict is starting to tell. While Blinken was gulling his audience, the military realities show significant Russian advances, including a threatening push towards Kharkiv, reversing Ukrainian gains made in 2022.
There are also wounding advances being made in other areas of the conflict. US and NATO artillery and drones supplied to Ukraine’s military forces have been countered by Russian electronic warfare methods. GPS receivers, for instance, have been sufficiently deceived to misdirect missiles shot from HIMARS launchers. In a number of cases, the Russian forces have also identified and destroyed the launchers.
Russian airpower has been brought to bear on critical infrastructure. Radar defying glide bombs have been used with considerable effect. On the production and deployment front, Colonel Ivan Pavlenko, chief of EW and cyber warfare at Ukraine’s general staff, lamented in February that Russia’s use of drones was also “becoming a huge threat”. Depleted stocks of weaponry are being replenished, and more soldiers are being called to the front.
Despite concerns, one need not scour far to find pundits who insist that such advances and gains can be neutralised. Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace admits to current Russian “material advantage” and holding “the strategic initiative,” though goes on to speculate that this “may not prove decisive.”
The gong of deceit and delusion must, however, go to Blinken. Americans, he claimed, understood “that our support for Ukraine strengthens the security of the United States and our allies.” Were Putin to win – and here, that old nag of appeasement makes an undesirable appearance – “he won’t stop with Ukraine; he’ll keep going. For when in history has an autocrat been satisfied with carving off just part, or even all, of a single country?”
Towards that end, “we do have a plan,” he coyly insisted. This entailed ensuring Ukraine had “the military that it needs to succeed on the battlefield.” Biden was encouraged by Ukrainian mobilisation efforts, skipping around the logistical delays that had marred it. Washington’s “joint task” was to “secure Ukraine’s sustained and permanent strategic advantage”, enabling it to win the current battles and “defend against future attacks. As President Biden said, we want Ukraine to win – and we’re committed to helping you do it.”
Even by the standards of US Secretaries of States, Blinken’s conduct in Kyiv proved brazen and shameless. A perfect illustration of this came with his musical effort alongside local band, 19.99, involving a rendition of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”
Local indignation was quick to follow. “Six months of waiting for the decision of the American Congress” had, fumed Bohdan Yaremenko, legislator and former diplomat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, “taken the lives of very, very many defenders of the free world.” What the US was performing “for the free world is not rock ’n’ roll, but some other music similar to Russian chanson.”
As for the performance itself, the crowd at Barman Dictat witnessed yet another misreading – naturally by a US politician – of an anthem intended to excoriate American failings, from homelessness to “a kinder, gentler machine gun hand.” Appropriately, the guitar, much like the performer, was out of tune.
U.S. rejects China’s proposal to ban first use of nuclear weapons.
People’s World May 16, 2024 BY JOHN WOJCIK, MARK GRUENBERG AND BEN CHACKO
The U.S. has dismissed Chinese calls for a no-first-use treaty between nuclear weapons states, saying it has questions about China’s “sincerity.”
The outright dismissal of China’s proposal followed a major speech in which Biden announced radical tariffs of up to 100 percent, on steel imports from China. That speech follows months of U.S. military buildup in the waters off the coast of China, including the placement of additional nuclear submarines around the Korean peninsula, all in the name of “protecting” Taiwan, which is, of course, a part of China itself.
Undersecretary of State Bonnie Jenkins, the country’s top arms control official, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last night that the U.S. worried China had increased its number of nuclear warheads to over 500, might have 1,000 by 2030, and that this was proof that the country was not “sincere” about its proposal to ban first use of the apocalypse-engendering weapons.
The Biden administration’s claim that China had increased the number of its warheads to 500 is just that – an unverified claim. In addition, the U.S. has 12 times that number with an admitted 3,700 of such warheads.
The U.S. says China refuses to engage in nuclear disarmament talks with it. China actually has engaged in talks, first by discussing with the U.S. the need for the U.S. to reduce its outrageously large number of missiles, as compared to China’s number, to show it is serious about fairness. And now it has added to those talks with its proposal to ban the first use of the weapons.
China’s position is that it has an arsenal that is tiny in comparison with that of the United States and that the size of the arsenals has to be part of serious talks. China has also gotten India to sign a no-first-use deal between those two countries. While all these initiatives by China were underway the U.S. was busy unilaterally canceling nuclear arms deals between the U.S. and Russia and continuing to push expansion of NATO not just up to the borders of Russia but into the Pacific regions near China.
China also stores its warheads and delivery systems separately, to avoid the risk of launches by accident or misunderstanding, as almost happened in 1983, when Soviet lieutenant Stanislav Petrov recognized reports of incoming U.S. missiles as a system malfunction and prevented a retaliatory strike which could have begun World War III.
The new, highest-ever U.S. tariffs on Chinese products were announced by President Biden shortly before the Chinese peace initiatives were rejected by his administration. The tariffs would apply to government-subsidized Chinese steel, aluminum, solar cells, electric vehicles—rising to 100% tariffs this year—and their batteries, semiconductors, and some raw materials.
The Biden tariffs are much higher than the Trump tariffs that Biden opposed when Trump was president……………………………… more https://peoplesworld.org/article/u-s-rejects-chinas-proposal-to-ban-first-use-of-nuclear-weapons/—
The Arsenal of Genocide: the U.S. Weapons That Are Destroying Gaza
the Biden administration has given itself a green light to keep sending weapons and Israel a flashing one to keep committing war crimes with them.
During the Second World War, the United States proudly called itself the “Arsenal of Democracy,” as its munitions factories and shipyards produced an endless supply of weapons to fight the genocidal government of Germany. Today, the United States is instead, shamefully, the Arsenal of Genocide, providing 70% of the imported weapons Israel is using to obliterate Gaza and massacre its people.
By Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Davies May 14, 2024, https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-arsenal-of-genocide-the-u-s-weapons-that-are-destroying-gaza/—
On May 8, 2024, as Israel escalated its brutal assault on Rafah, President Biden announced that he had “paused” a delivery of 1,700 500-pound and 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, and threatened to withhold more shipments if Israel went ahead with its full-scale invasion of Rafah.
The move elicited an outcry from Israeli officials (National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted “Hamas loves Biden”), as well as Republicans, staunch anti-Palestinian Democrats and pro-Israel donors. Republicans immediately prepared a bill entitled the Israel Security Assistance Support Act to prohibit the administration from withholding military aid to Israel.
Many people have been asking the U.S. to halt weapons to Israel for seven months, and of course Biden’s move comes too late for 35,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza, mainly by American weapons.
Lest one think the administration is truly changing its position, two days after announcing the pause, the State Department released a convoluted report saying that, although it is reasonable to “assess” that U.S. weapons have been used by Israeli forces in Gaza in ways that are “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, and although Israel has indeed delayed or had a negative effect on the delivery of aid to Gaza (which is illegal under U.S. law), Israel’s assurances regarding humanitarian aid and compliance with international humanitarian law are “credible and reliable.”
By this absurd conclusion, the Biden administration has given itself a green light to keep sending weapons and Israel a flashing one to keep committing war crimes with them.
In any event, as Colonel Joe Bicino, a retired U.S. artillery officer, told the BBC, Israel can “level” Rafah with the weapons it already has. The paused shipment is “somewhat inconsequential,” Bicino said, “a little bit of a political play for people in the United States who are… concerned about this.” A U.S. official confirmed to the Washington Post that Israel has enough weapons already supplied by the U.S. and other allies to go ahead with the Rafah operation if it chooses to ignore U.S. qualms.
The paused shipment really has to be seen in the context of the arsenal with which the U.S. has equipped its Middle Eastern proxy over many decades.
A Deluge of American Bombs
During the Second World War, the United States proudly called itself the “Arsenal of Democracy,” as its munitions factories and shipyards produced an endless supply of weapons to fight the genocidal government of Germany. Today, the United States is instead, shamefully, the Arsenal of Genocide, providing 70% of the imported weapons Israel is using to obliterate Gaza and massacre its people.
As Israel assaults Rafah, home to 1.4 million displaced people, including at least 600,000 children, most of the warplanes dropping bombs on them are F-16s, originally designed and manufactured by General Dynamics, but now produced by Lockheed Martin in Greenville, South Carolina. Israel’s 224 F-16s have long been its weapon of choice for bombing militants and civilians in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
Israel also has 86 Boeing F-15s, which can drop heavier bombs, and 39 of the latest, most wastefully expensive fighter-bombers ever, Lockheed Martin’s nuclear-capable F-35s, with another 36 on order. The F-35 is built in Fort Worth, Texas, but components are manufactured all over the U.S. and in allied countries, including Israel. Israel was the first country to attack other countries with F-35s, in violation of U.S. arms export control laws, reportedly using them to bomb Syria, Egypt and Sudan.
As these fleets of U.S.-made warplanes began bombing Gaza in October 2023, their fifth major assault since 2008, the U.S. began rushing in new weapons. By December 1, 2023, it had delivered 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.
The U.S. supplies Israel with all sizes and types of bombs, including 285-pound GBU-39 small diameter glide bombs, 500-pound Mk 82s, 2,000-pound Mk 84s and BLU-109 “bunker busters,” and even massive 5,000-pound GBU-28 bunker-busters, which Israel reportedly used in Gaza in 2009.
General Dynamics is the largest U.S. bomb manufacturer, making all these models of bombs. Most of them can be used as “precision” guided bombs by attaching Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s Paveway laser guidance system or Boeing’s JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) GPS-based targeting system.
Little more than half of the bombs Israel has dropped on Gaza have been “precision” ones, because, as targeting officers explained to +972 magazine, their Lavender AI system generates thousands of targets who are just suspected rank-and-file militants, not senior commanders. Israel does not consider it worth “wasting” expensive precision munitions to kill these people, so it uses only “dumb” bombs to kill them in their homes—obliterating their families and neighbors in the process.
In order to threaten and bomb its more distant neighbors, such as Iran, Israel depends on its seven Lockheed Martin KC-130H and seven Boeing 707 in-air refueling tankers, with four new, state-of-the-art Boeing KC46A tankers to be delivered in late 2025 for over $220 million each.
Ground force weapons
Another weapon of choice for killing Palestinians are Israel’s 48 Boeing Apache AH64 attack helicopters, armed with Lockheed Martin’s infamous Hellfire missiles, General Dynamics’ Hydra 70 rockets and Northrop Grumman’s 30 mm machine guns. Israel also used its Apaches to kill and incinerate a still unknown number of Israelis on October 7, 2023—a tragic day that Israel and the U.S. continue to exploit as a false pretext for their own violations of international humanitarian law and of the Genocide Convention.
Israel’s main artillery weapons are its 600 Paladin M109A5 155 mm self-propelled howitzers, which are manufactured by BAE Systems in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. To the layman, a self-propelled howitzer looks like a tank, but it has a bigger, 155 mm gun to fire at longer range.
Israel assembles its 155 mm artillery shells from U.S.-made components. One of the first two U.S. arms shipments that the administration notified Congress about after October 7 was to resupply Israel with artillery shell components valued at $147.5 million.
Israel also has 48 M270 multiple rocket launchers. They are a tracked version of the HIMARS rocket launchers the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, and they fire the same rockets, made by Lockheed Martin. U.S. Marines used the same rockets in coordination with U.S. airstrikes to devastate Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, in 2017. M270 launchers are no longer in production, but BEA Systems still has the facilities to produce them.
Israel makes its own Merkava tanks, which fire U.S.-made tank shells, and the State Department announced on December 9, 2023, that it had notified Congress of an “emergency” shipment of 14,000 120 mm tank shells worth $106 million to Israel.
U.S. shipments of artillery and tank shells, and dozens of smaller shipments that it did not report to Congress (because each shipment was carefully calibrated to fall below the statutory reporting limit of $100 million), were paid for out of the $3.8 billion in military aid that the United States gives Israel each year.
In April, Congress passed a new war-funding bill that includes about $14 billion for additional weapons. Israel could afford to pay for these weapons itself, but then it could shop around for them, which might erode the U.S. monopoly on supplying so much of its war machine. That lucrative monopoly for U.S. merchants of death is clearly more important to Members of Congress than fully funding Head Start or other domestic anti-poverty programs, which they routinely underfund to pay for weapons and wars.
The move elicited an outcry from Israeli officials (National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted “Hamas loves Biden”), as well as Republicans, staunch anti-Palestinian Democrats and pro-Israel donors. Republicans immediately prepared a bill entitled the Israel Security Assistance Support Act to prohibit the administration from withholding military aid to Israel.
Israel has 500 FMC-built M113 armored personnel carriers and over 2,000 Humvees, manufactured by AM General in Mishawaka, Indiana. Its ground forces are armed with several different types of U.S. grenade launchers, Browning machine-guns, AR-15 assault rifles, and SR-25 and M24 SWS sniper rifles, all made in the USA, as is the ammunition for them.
For many years, Israel’s three Sa’ar 5 corvettes were its largest warships, about the size of frigates. They were built in the 1990s by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, but Israel has recently taken delivery of four larger, more heavily-armed, German-built Sa’ar 6 corvettes, with 76 mm main guns and new surface-to-surface missiles.
Gaza Encampments Take On the Merchants of Death
The United States has a long and horrific record of providing weapons to repressive regimes that use them to kill their own people or attack their neighbors. Martin Luther King called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and that has not changed since he said it in 1967, a year to the day before his assassination.
Many of the huge U.S. factories that produce all these weapons are the largest employers in their regions or even their states. As President Eisenhower warned the public in his farewell address in 1960, “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” has led to “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
So, in addition to demanding a ceasefire, an end to U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel, and a restoration of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the students occupying college campuses across our country are right to call on their institutions to divest from these merchants of death, as well as from Israeli companies.
The corporate media has adopted the line that divestment would be too complicated and costly for the universities to do. But when students set up an encampment at Trinity College in Dublin, in Ireland, and called on it to divest from Israeli companies, the college quickly agreed to their demands. Problem solved, without police violence or trying to muzzle free speech. Students have also won commitments to consider divestment from U.S. institutions, including Brown, Northwestern, Evergreen State, Rutgers and the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
While decades of even deadlier U.S. war-making in the greater Middle East failed to provoke a sustained mass protest movement, the genocide in Gaza has opened the eyes of many thousands of young people to the need to rise up against the U.S. war machine.
The gradual expulsion and emigration of Palestinians from their homeland has created a huge diaspora of young Palestinians who have played a leading role in organizing solidarity campaigns on college campuses through groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Their close links with extended families in Palestine have given them a visceral grasp of the U.S. role in this genocide and an authentic voice that is persuasive and inspiring to other young Americans.
Now it is up to Americans of all ages to follow our young leaders and demand not just an end to the genocide in Palestine, but also a path out of our country’s military madness and the clutches of its deeply entrenched MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media- academia-think-tank) complex, which has inflicted so much death, pain and desolation on so many of our neighbors for so long, from Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan to Vietnam and Latin America.
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022.
Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
New report to Congress shows US determined to militarize space
Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst, 8 May 24, https://infobrics.org/post/39611
Back in mid-February, the mainstream propaganda machine bombarded us with a slew of reports about “big bad Russian space nukes“, claiming that Moscow is using its technological prowess to build strategic space-based weapons. And while it’s true the Eurasian giant is a cosmic superpower and that it certainly has the know-how to accomplish such a feat, the mainstream propaganda machine conveniently “forgot” to explain why the Kremlin would make the decision to expand its space capabilities. Namely, Russia is indeed planning to deploy a nuclear-powered anti-satellite weapon (ASAT), but there’s a massive difference between having thermonuclear warheads pointed at Earth from space and having a nuclear-powered spacecraft. The Russian military is already in possession of the former, as it was the world’s first operator of the FOBS back in the early 1960s.
FOBS, an acronym for the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (СЧОБ in Russian), is a thermonuclear weapon system found on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), designed to make their range effectively limitless. China tested its own version of the technology only in 2021, while the United States has been unable to create anything similar. Thus, Moscow has had this capability for well over half a century, so why is there such hype over a supposed nuclear-powered ASAT all of a sudden? It’s exceedingly difficult to ignore the fact that this is being used as yet another excuse to push several warmongering agendas at once. First, it furthers the idea that there “cannot be peace” with the Kremlin, and second, it gives Washington DC the perfect excuse to continue militarizing space, started years (or, in reality, even decades) before the special military operation (SMO).
Apart from making sure that its economic issues spill over to the rest of the world, where impoverished and heavily exploited countries pay the price of US imperialism, the belligerent thalassocracy keeps militarizing and creating enemies in order to feed the monstrosity called the American Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Back in late March, as the debt ceiling crisis was unfolding, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that the Pentagon would be doubling its military budget. At the time, Milley kept parroting about “a looming global conflict”, but clearly “forgot” to explain that if there were to ever be one, its sole cause would be the US itself, as it’s the only country on the planet with an openly stated strategy of “full spectrum dominance”. However, the only way to accomplish this is to keep spending funds that Washington DC simply doesn’t have.
Global military spending for 2022 was around $2.1 trillion, meaning that the US is already at over 40% of the world’s total with its current budget. Doubling it, even over the next several years (also taking into account that other superpowers would certainly respond to it), could push that figure close to 60%. In terms of the US federal budget, it would also require further cuts to investment in healthcare, infrastructure, education, etc. As the military currently spends approximately 15% of the entire US federal budget, obviously, doubling it would mean the percentage would go up to (or even over) 30%. Such figures are quite close to what the former Soviet Union was spending, which was one of the major factors that contributed to its unfortunate dismantlement and the later crisis in all post-Soviet countries that needed approximately a decade to recover.
As previously mentioned, such a move would also force others to drastically increase their own military spending in response to US belligerence. If China were to follow suit, its military budget would then rise to approximately $500 billion, while Russia’s military budget would be close to $200 billion. In fact, Moscow is already in the process of doing this, as it recently increased its defense spending by 70% in 2024 alone in order to tackle NATO aggression in Europe. As we can see, this is causing a military spending “death spiral” that’s extremely difficult to control and is leading the world into an unprecedented arms race. However, it seems that’s exactly what Washington DC wants. On October 12, the US Congress Strategic Posture Commission issued its final report and called for further expansion of America’s already massive arsenal of thermonuclear weapons.
It should be noted that the reasoning (although there’s hardly anything reasonable in it) behind such a decision is a simultaneous confrontation with both Russia and China. This includes massive investment into new weapons systems such as the B-21 “Raider” strategic bomber/missile carrier and Columbia-class SSBN (nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine), as well as the replacement of the heavily outdated “Minuteman 3” ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) with new LGM-35 “Sentinel” missiles. All three types are in different stages of development and are expected to be fully operational by the early 2030s. However, with the US debt projected to reach over $50 trillion in less than ten years (the best-case scenario), the viability of such a massive expansion in American military spending is highly questionable (if possible at all).
By 2027, interest payments alone are expected to surpass the Pentagon’s entire budget. What’s more, America’s ability to keep up with the technological advances of its geopolitical adversaries is also falling short, particularly in the development of hypersonic weapons, a field in which Russia has an absolute advantage, despite spending approximately 20-25 times less on its armed forces. The only way for the US to avoid bankrupting itself is to finally leave the world alone and focus on the mountain of domestic issues that keep piling up.
Source: InfoBrics
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