Who will clean up America’s nuclear wastes in Greenland?
Maine Voices: Long-buried U.S. nuclear waste would complicate any bid for Greenland https://www.pressherald.com/2019/08/24/maine-voices-long-buried-u-s-nuclear-waste-would-complicate-trumps-bid-for-greenland/
Would the U.S. or Denmark be responsible for cleaning up over 47,000 gallons of Cold War-era radioactive waste?
Deadly alliance: Why has the CIA decided to allow US media to confirm its involvement in Ukraine’s brutal assassination campaign?
The scale of US intelligence support for Kiev’s murderous operations has been brought to light at a very interesting moment
https://www.rt.com/russia/586692-cia-sbu-kiev-assassinations/
By Chay Bowes, journalist and geopolitical analyst, MA in Strategic Studies, RT correspondent
As Ukraine slips quietly from the top of the Western media’s news agenda, fascinating insights into the granular nature of the CIA’s involvement in Kiev’s assassination program are being revealed. By the very same outlets that had previously suggested Ukraine was on a solo run with its slew of extrajudicial killings and terror attacks.
Western media has routinely ignored the brutal exploits of Kiev’s successor to the KGB, the SBU. When they are reported upon, instead of calling out the illegal killing of journalists and activists, the press seeks to frame them as masterful operations of a band of freedom fighters administering tough justice to the “enemies of Ukraine.” A key element of that narrative was that while the US, British, and French intelligence services worked closely with the SBU, they didn’t have any direct control of its actions, particularly when those actions involved assassinating unarmed civilians. However, a recently published article in the Washington Post has now revealed that the CIA had, and continues to have, a central role in the group’s most disturbing activities.
A Washington Post article “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia” outlines a labyrinthine relationship between the two intelligence agencies, and while the CIA still maintains it doesn’t sanction particular operations, the details revealed in the telling article suggest that this is nothing more than the usual stock disclaimer which accompanies most of Langley’s covert operations. The article is based on interviews with “more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, US and Western intelligence and security officials” and its revelations are both shocking and fascinating.
One of the first claims it makes is that the relationship between the Ukrainian SBU and the CIA has been developing for decades with the latter working to “develop” Ukraine’s abilities to carry out sabotage and “operations” since at least 2014. The CIA has also been providing detailed intelligence, equipment and training to the SBU during that period and continues to spend “tens of millions” of dollars developing its capabilities. The sources quoted also confirm that the CIA even designed and built a new headquarters for the SBU in Kiev and currently share “levels of information and intelligence unthinkable” prior to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.
According to the Washington Post, the CIA also now maintains a significant presence in Kiev, not only in terms of men and materiel but also information flow, all of which suggests that despite maintaining an overt distance, the CIA is in fact intimately involved in all aspects of SBU operations including the planning and execution of operations outside the state.
One such operation, and probably the most infamous carried out by the SBU since February 2022, was the assassination of Daria Dugina, daughter of prominent Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. The Washington Post article goes into great detail to outline the complexity of the “operation” performed by the SBU that resulted in the death of the unarmed 23-year-old non-combatant in a car bombing outside Moscow in August 2022. It tells of the use of a pet carrier to transport explosives into Russia, and of the surveillance of the deceased woman’s home by the assassin, who then fled across the border soon after the horrendous killing, which was cynically referred to by the SBU as a “liquidation.”
The granular details outlined in the article suggest sources either within the CIA or SBU have now confirmed that their relationship, once presented as purely advisory and business-like, is in fact a deep and long-standing partnership. The article goes on to confirm the SBU’s involvement in several other targeted murders on Russian territory, including the assassination of Vladlen Tatarsky with a bomb in a crowded St. Petersburg cafe and the murder of ex-submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, who was shot in the back while jogging unarmed in a park in Krasnodar.
The revealing article also refers to “uneasiness” in Kiev and Washington regarding the SBU’s penchant for this kind of assassination, noting concern that they could tarnish Ukraine’s image abroad especially among donor countries who recently admitted that without their help Ukraine would collapse within weeks.
What is most interesting about this piece is probably not its confirmation that the CIA is intimately involved in the operations of the SBU, what’s most fascinating is why a newspaper widely recognized as itself having an intimate relationship with the CIA has suddenly decided to basically confirm what many analysts already knew when it comes to Langley and the SBU.
The Washington Post’s revelation comes not only in the aftermath of the bloody Hamas incursion into Israel and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza but also as international attention, and more importantly, appetite to support Kiev, wanes. This shift in attention, not only in the media but also potentially in the scale of aid, bodes poorly for President Vladimir Zelensky’s regime, as it faces increasing domestic pressures and war-weary neighbors.
Couple this with the oncoming winter and the view looks increasingly grim for Zelensky even before mentioning Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and recent Russian battlefield gains. It now also looks inevitable that Ukraine will find itself playing second fiddle to an emerging political and potentially military crisis in the Middle East while competing for the vital US aid that keeps the Kiev regime afloat. Crucially, all of these woes offer a beleaguered NATO an opportunity to apply pressure on Zelensky to seek peace, potentially solving an increasingly difficult puzzle for Kiev’s backers as they head towards elections that will be decided by populations ever more vocal in their disdain for the conflict.
So as Kiev’s woes compound and the world’s gaze shifts towards Gaza, it seems the truth about the West’s intimate relationship with the SBU is now being pulled out of the closet, not by a whistleblower or dissenting investigative journalist, but by a stalwart of the US intelligence community, the Washington Post. The question we should all be asking is why? How does this benefit or promote a Western ‘victory’ in Ukraine? The answer may well be that it’s not a victory that these revelations are supposed to facilitate. It’s more likely that it’s part of a strategy of edging Kiev towards accepting the undeniable reality that the entire US project in Ukraine is set to fail, and for Zelensky to seek accommodation before there’s nothing left to negotiate with.
The task now is to end it as painlessly as possible for NATO and Kiev’s exhausted backers, and to move on to the next crusade, leaving a devastated and dysfunctional Ukraine to be consigned to the growing graveyard of bloody US foreign policy misadventures.
Biden and Xi will sign a deal to keep AI out of control systems for nuclear weapons: report
Tom Porter , Nov 13, 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-xi-deal-ai-out-nuclear-weapons-systems-apec-report-2023-11
- China’s President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden will meet this week.
- They’re expected to agree to limit the use of AI in nuclear weapons, a report said.
- The meeting comes amid increasing tensions between the US and China.
US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are set to sign a deal limiting the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear weapon control systems, according to The South China Morning Post.
The leaders are due to meet Wednesday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco against a backdrop of increasing tensions between the superpowers.
Among the top items on the agenda is the proliferation of AI in military technologies, two sources familiar with the planned discussions told The South China Morning Post.
Biden and Xi will pledge a deal limiting the use of AI in autonomous weaponry, such as drones, as well as the systems used for the control and deployment of nuclear warheads, the report said.
U.S. Space Force and the dangerous clutter of human-produced stuff in space
What Does the U.S. Space Force Actually Do? Inside the highly secretive military branch responsible for protecting American interests in a vulnerable new domain
NYT, By Jon Gertner, Nov. 8, 2023
Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch of the U.S. Space Force sat down in his office in Los Angeles one morning in September to deliver a briefing known as a threat assessment. The current “threats” in space are less sci-fi than you might expect, but there are a surprising number of them: At least 44,500 space objects now circle Earth, including 9,000 active satellites and 19,000 significant pieces of debris.
What’s most concerning isn’t the swarm of satellites but the types. “We know that there are kinetic kill vehicles,” Lerch said — for example, a Russian “nesting doll” satellite, in which a big satellite releases a tiny one and the tiny one releases a mechanism that can strike and damage another satellite. There are machines with the ability to cast nets and extend grappling hooks, too. China, whose presence in space now far outpaces Russia’s, is launching unmanned “space planes” into orbit, testing potentially unbreakable quantum communication links and adding A.I. capabilities to satellites.
An intelligence report, Lerch said, predicted the advent, within the next decade, of satellites with radio-frequency jammers, chemical sprayers and lasers that blind and disable the competition. All this would be in addition to the cyberwarfare tools, electromagnetic instruments and “ASAT” antisatellite missiles that already exist on the ground. In Lerch’s assessment, space looked less like a grand “new ocean” for exploration — phrasing meant to induce wonder that has lingered from the Kennedy administration — and more like a robotic battlefield, where the conflicts raging on Earth would soon extend ever upward.
The Space Force, the sixth and newest branch of the U.S. military, was authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in December 2019. Its creation was not a partisan endeavor, though Trump has boasted that the idea for the organization was his alone. The initiative had in fact been shaped within the armed forces and Congress over the previous 25 years, based on the premise that as satellite and space technologies evolved, America’s military organizations had to change as well……………………………………………………………………………….
nearly every aspect of modern warfare and defense — intelligence, surveillance, communications, operations, missile detection — has come to rely on links to orbiting satellites………………
the strategic exploitation of space now extends well beyond military concerns. Satellite phone systems have become widespread. Positioning and timing satellites, such as GPS (now overseen by the Space Force), allow for digital mapping, navigation, banking and agricultural management. A world without orbital weather surveys seems unthinkable. Modern life is reliant on space technologies to an extent that an interruption would create profound economic and social distress…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Guardians tend to think of the realm they patrol as a kind of structured multilevel terrain — Earth as being surrounded by three highways, or three rings. The nearest level, low Earth orbit (LEO), is host to constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink network and the International Space Station, which moves about 250 miles above us at 17,500 miles per hour. A medium Earth orbit (MEO), between 1,200 and 22,000 miles above, is where GPS satellites circle. At the highest ring — at least for now — is a track known as “geosynchronous” orbit (GEO), because an object in such an orbit keeps pace with Earth’s rotation. This band is home to DirectTV satellites, weather-tracking instruments from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and crucial Defense Department communication links.
It’s a technological zoo up there. The satellite mix is foreign and domestic, young and old, sinister and peaceful. The technologies are all different sizes, flying at different speeds and altitudes. The challenge for the force is to monitor all movement but also to track the threatening presence of debris, some of which is naturally occurring (tiny rocks, for instance) and some of which has human origins (like shards of old rockets). Because space junk can move at extraordinary velocities, a floating screw might pack a destructive punch equivalent to a small bomb……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Capt. Raymond Pereira, drawing on a white board, pointed me to another concern: the crowd of satellites in low Earth orbit. “I would say we’re probably already entering into an area where congestion is a problem,” he said, “and anything that would generate debris would be catastrophic for the domain.” One plausible theory is known as the Kessler Syndrome, named after the former NASA scientist Donald Kessler, which posits that a release of wreckage and fragments in this orbit could eventually lead to a domino effect of unstoppable destruction. Pereira pointed out that if someone (or something) were to touch off such an event, “they would not only be harming their adversary; they would be harming themselves.” But even short of that, a single collision or attack might hamstring science missions to the moon, or to Mars, or lead to failures for GPS and communications systems, a problem that could have huge consequences for life on Earth.
………………………. A treaty from the late 1960s, signed by most of the major nations on Earth, prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in space and designates the moon for peaceful purposes. But recently, I was told, satellites from foreign adversaries have been coming close to machines from the United States and its allies. The treaty says nothing about such provocations — or about grappling hooks, nesting dolls and cyberwarfare.
Space Force leaders readily describe their guardians as working toward a state of combat readiness…………………………………………………………..
Debris has led military strategists to ponder a related issue: In space, it’s difficult to get out of the way of conflict……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
………………….. “And then potentially every satellite becomes more debris,” Saltzman remarked. “Every peaceful satellite could become a weapon accidentally.”…………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/magazine/space-force.html
Biden Moves To Reduce U.S. Reliance On Russian Nuclear Supply Chain
The U.S. depends on Russian state-operated firm Rosatom for nearly 50% of
global uranium enrichment, essential for the nation’s nuclear energy
production. America’s reliance on Russian nuclear supply chains continues
despite sanctions, inadvertently funding Russia’s defense sector and
creating a critical vulnerability in energy security. The Biden
administration is seeking $2.16 billion to boost domestic uranium
enrichment capabilities, emphasizing the urgency to diminish dependence on
Russian nuclear fuel for national security and energy independence.
Oil Price 11th Nov 2023
Deal to build pint-size nuclear reactors canceled, ‘avoiding a giant financial debacle.’
NuScale Power’s small modular reactors promised cheaper nuclear power, but costs soared and utilities balked
Science, NOV 2023 BY ADRIAN CHO
A plan to build a novel nuclear power plant comprising six small modular reactors (SMRs) fell apart this week when prospective customers for its electricity backed out. Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), a coalition of community-owned power systems in seven western states, withdrew from a deal to build the plant, designed by NuScale Power, because too few members agreed to buy into it. The project, subsidized by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), sought to revive the moribund U.S. nuclear industry, but its cost had more than doubled to $9.3 billion.
“We still see a future for new nuclear,” says Mason Baker, CEO and general manager of UAMPS, which planned to build the plant in Idaho. “But in the near term, we’re going to focus on … expanding our wind capacity, doing more utility-scale solar, [and] batteries.” NuScale, which was spun out of Oregon State University in 2007, declined to make anyone available for an interview. But David Schlissel of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says, “The communities and their ratepayers have avoided a giant financial debacle.”
To some observers, the plan’s collapse also raises questions about the feasibility of other planned advanced reactors, meant to provide clean energy with fewer drawbacks than existing reactors. NuScale’s was the most conventional of the designs, and the closest to construction. “There’s plenty of reasons to think [the other projects] are going to be even more difficult and expensive,” says Edwin Lyman, a physicist and director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The U.S. nuclear industry has brought just two new power reactors online in the past quarter-century. In a deregulated power market, developers have struggled with the enormous capital expense of building a power reactor. Two new reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, one of which came online in May, cost more than $30 billion.
To whack down cost, engineers at NuScale decided to think small. Each NuScale SMR would produce just a fraction of the 1.1 gigawatts produced by one of the new Vogtle reactors. As originally conceived in 2014, the plant would contain 12 SMRs, each producing 60 megawatts of electricity, for $4.2 billion.
Small reactors are not an obvious winner. Basic physics dictates that a bigger nuclear reactor will be more fuel efficient than a smaller one. And a big nuclear plant can benefit from economies of scale. However, a small reactor can be simpler. For example, NuScale engineers rely on convection to drive cooling water through the core of each SMR, obviating the need for expensive pumps. SMRs also can be mass-produced in a factory and shipped whole to a site, reducing costs.
Size aside, NuScale’s SMR is relatively conventional. Whereas other advanced reactor designs rely on exotic coolants, NuScale’s sticks to water. It also uses the same low-enriched uranium fuel as existing power reactors. Those features helped the NuScale design win approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in September 2020—the only advanced reactor to have done so.
DOE agreed to host the plant at its Idaho National Laboratory, bypassing the long site permitting process commercial reactors ordinarily face. Still, by the time NRC approved the design, the cost for the project has risen to $6.1 billion. That led DOE to chip in $1.4 billion and developers to reduce the design to six modules, each pumping out 77 megawatts. In January, an analysis revealed that the cost had increased by an additional $3 billion. It suggested power from the plant would cost $89 per megawatt-hour, roughly three times as much as power from wind or utility-scale solar.
Why the costs sky-rocketed remains unclear. Lyman notes that NuScale’s first plant was always going to be expensive, as the company’s production lines still need to be developed. Even so, he says, NuScale designers overestimated how much they could save with a simpler design. “They never demonstrated that you could compensate for that penalty in economies of scale with these other factors.”
Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the NuScale design has an Achilles’ heel. Each reactor’s core resides within a double-walled steel cylinder, with a vacuum between the walls to keep heat from leaking out. The reactor modules sit in a big pool of water, which in an emergency can flood into the vacuum space around a reactor to prevent it overheating. Compared with a conventional reactor’s building, the pool requires more reinforced concrete, the price of which has soared, Buongiorno says. “In terms of tons of reinforced concrete per megawatt of power, NuScale’s design is off the chart.”
UAMPS’s members balked at the cost of that power. UAMPS had to line up agreements to buy 80% of the plant’s 462 megawatt output before early next year, Baker says, but it had commitments for only 26%. On 7 November the 26 of the 50 UAMPS members that had signed up for the project voted to terminate it, Baker says.
Other, more ambitious nuclear projects are in the works. DOE has agreed to help a company called Terrapower develop a reactor that will use molten sodium as a coolant. It will also help another company, X-power, develop an SMR cooled by xenon gas. Both plants would use novel fuel enriched to 20% uranium-235. That fuel is not yet commercially available, and it could make those designs even more expensive, Lyman says………………………….. https://www.science.org/content/article/deal-build-pint-size-nuclear-reactors-canceled
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White House Aides “Simply Cannot Stomach” Biden’s Israel Policy, Dissent Memos Leak, Revolt At State Dept
BY TYLER DURDEN, FRIDAY, NOV 10, 2023, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-aides-simply-cannot-stomach-bidens-israel-policy-dissent-memos-leak-revolt
A revolt is brewing within the Biden administration over how the White House is handling the Israel-Gaza war, as the civilian death toll and mass Palestinian displacement soars, and as Biden’s top officials continue to say “no conditions” have been placed on how Israel uses US-supplied weapons. Pressure from the press pool is also piling on, with near daily spats and antagonistic back-and-forth exchanges on display in the State Department and White House briefing rooms.
This week there have emerged reports of scathing ‘dissent memos’ criticizing White House Israel policy being circulated, collecting many hundreds of signatures chiefly from among State Department and USAID staff. A primary theme of the pushback and pressure is that President Biden must change course on the Gaza crisis.
First, on Monday Politico obtained and published portions of a memo issued by State Department personnel giving a blistering critique which according to the publication argued that “among other things, the U.S. should be willing to publicly criticize the Israelis.”
It was issued after the Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, repeatedly made clear that the US does not back a ceasefire, but is only sheepishly calling for brief humanitarian ‘pauses’. Politico points out the memo represents a “growing loss of confidence” among Biden’s corps of diplomats:
The message suggests a growing loss of confidence among U.S. diplomats in President Joe Biden’s approach to the Middle East crisis. It reflects the sentiments of many U.S. diplomats, especially at mid-level and lower ranks, according to conversations with several department staffers as well as other reports. If such internal disagreements intensify, it could make it harder for the Biden administration to craft policy toward the region.
The memo has two key requests: that the U.S. support a ceasefire, and that it balance its private and public messaging toward Israel, including airing criticisms of Israeli military tactics and treatment of Palestinians that the U.S. generally prefers to keep private.
The memo, marked “sensitive but unclassified’ was sure to leak, and that was likely the point. It bluntly underscores that Biden’s policy is hurting America’s standing in the world as much of global opinion has been appalled at the Gaza death toll which this week surpassed 10,500.
The memo sates that the gap between Biden officials’ private and public messaging “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor, which at best does not advance, and at worst harms, U.S. interests worldwide.”
“We must publicly criticize Israel’s violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets,” the dissent memo continues. “When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity.”
Next, hundreds of staffers at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have issued a letter calling for an “immediate ceasefire” while also criticizing the White House’s failure to hold Israel accountable in any way for “numerous violations of international law” and the huge numbers of Gaza civilian casualties, especially among women and children.
The USAID staffers are also outraged that the US last month vetoed a UN Security Council resolution which sought a pause in fighting in order to allow humanitarian aid to get through to the Gaza Strip. The USAID dissent memo, which also went public by the middle of this week, includes the following:
“We believe that further catastrophic loss of human life can only be avoided if the United States Government calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of Israeli hostages, and the restoration of water, food, fuel, and electricity to the people of Gaza by the State of Israel,” it reads.
“In the longer term, we call on the United States Government to join the international community and human rights organizations in holding all parties, including the State of Israel, to international law, which includes ending Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and settlements on occupied land.”
Publicly, President Biden is coming under most pressure from a tiny handful of outspoken Progressive Democrats in Congress (the Squad), but the more significant pushback appears to be coming from within his own administration.
Increasingly, bold public statements from Israeli leaders themselves have introduced huge, obvious contradictions between the White House’s rhetoric and that of Netanyahu’s government, which is much more open about its intent in Gaza…
On Thursday, CNN issued a new investigative report quoting senior White House staffers as saying they increasingly “cannot stomach” defending Biden’s policy anymore. The report also describes “great moral anxiety” – in the words of one unnamed senior admin official, who is quoted in the following:
Angst, unease and outrage are spreading through corners of the Biden administration as Israeli forces show no signs of letting up their relentless attacks inside Gaza and the civilian death toll in the besieged enclave – already in the thousands – continues to climb.
One month into the Israel-Hamas war, some senior officials privately say there are aspects of Israel’s military operations they simply cannot stomach defending; calls for the US to back a ceasefire are growing among government employees; and others are distraught by the incessant images of Palestinian civilians being killed by Israeli airstrikes, multiple sources told CNN.
“It has created great moral anxiety,” said one senior administration official. “But no one can say it because we all work at the pleasure of the president and he’s all in.”
More high level resignations could come as a result, which will certainly only increase the pressure on Biden’s team while headed into an election year, already has his poll numbers are at record lows.
CNN notes that a full-on revolt is underway in the State Department: “Some of the fiercest backlash has come from inside the State Department, including an official who publicly resigned from the agency last month over the Biden’s administration’s approach to the conflict,” the report says. “Elsewhere in the administration, officials are quietly fuming as the civilian death toll mounts.”
The Democratic base too, could increasingly shift to become more sympathetic to the unrelenting denunciations issued by the Squad. Progressives and protesters are calling Biden “genocide Joe” – as CNN describes further:
The internal administration dissent is becoming so visible that White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was forced to address it in a press briefing on Tuesday. He sought, and failed, to calm anxiety by saying, “the president understands that there’s strong emotions and feelings here, all around, all across the board – and here inside the administration and the federal government, that’s certainly the case as well.”
These tensions are likely only to grow given there are no signs Israel’s military is ready to exercise any restraint, given Israeli leadership likely perceives that Washington has given it a ‘blank check’ (akin to Ukraine). Already Israel receives at least $3.8 billion in military aid annually, and Biden is now seeking some $14 billion more in assistance this year.
No possibility of Gaza ceasefire – Biden
Rt.com 12 Nov,23
Israel has, however, agreed to daily “four-hour pauses” in fighting, the White House says
US President Joe Biden has ruled out any hope of achieving a lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
“None. No possibility,” Biden told reporters outside the White House on Thursday when asked about the chances of a firm cessation in hostilities.
Speaking to reporters separately later in the day as he was boarding Air Force One, the president revealed he had been pushing for a “pause” in fighting “for a lot more than three days.”
The US, however, has not managed to secure any significant pause from Israel, which is reportedly determined to continue its war on Hamas until the militant group is completely destroyed…………………………………………………………. more https://www.rt.com/news/586950-gaza-ceasefire-no-possibility/
Small Nuclear Reactor Contract Fails, Signaling Larger Issues with Nuclear Energy Development in U.S
Statement by Dr. Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety, Union of Concerned Scientists, Nov 9, 2023
https://www.ucsusa.org/about/news/small-nuclear-reactor-contract-fails-signaling-larger-issues-nuclear-energy-development
NuScale Power Cooperation, the first company in the United States to secure approval for the design of a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), ended its contract with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) on Wednesday. The companies cited rising costs as the reason for terminating the contract.
Throughout the development process, NuScale made several ill-advised design choices in an attempt to control the cost of its reactor, but which raised numerous safety concerns. The design lacked leak-tight containment structures and highly reliable backup safety systems. It also only had one control room for 12 reactor units despite the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) typically requiring no more than two units per control room.
Additionally, the company led efforts to sidestep critical safety regulations, including requirements for offsite emergency response plans to protect nearby communities. But NuScale’s justification for all this regulatory corner-cutting—that the design is “passively safe”—was undermined when concerns about its passive emergency core cooling system arose late in the design certification process.
The end of the project reflects the fragility of the advanced nuclear power industry in the U.S., which has been driven by an oversupply of reactor developers and a lack of genuine demand. As new reactor developers look for utilities and other end users to buy their products, the high cost and risks of their experimental, untested technologies are proving too onerous.
Below is a statement by Dr. Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
“The termination of NuScale’s contract signals the broader challenges of developing nuclear energy in the United States. Placing excessive reliance on untested technologies without adequate consideration of economic viability, practicality, and safety concerns is irresponsible and clearly won’t work. The failure of this project underscores the need for decision makers to work diligently to ensure that the pursuit of nuclear energy aligns with the imperatives of public safety and financial feasibility.
“For all its problems, NuScale is one of the designs with the best prospects for commercialization because of its similarity to conventional light-water reactors, which allowed the company to learn from extensive operating experience and to leverage much of the existing nuclear power supply chain. Thus, the failure of the NuScale project with UAMPS does not bode well for the dozens of other, more exotic reactor types in various stages of development that are being touted as the next best thing in nuclear power, such as sodium-cooled fast reactors, gas-cooled reactors and molten-salt reactors. These reactors, which are based on much less mature designs and generally require fuels and materials that are not readily available, will be even riskier bets than NuScale for the foreseeable future. There are currently no other new nuclear power reactor designs under NRC licensing review.
“As private interests continue to turn their attention to emerging nuclear energy technology, lessons from this project should be held top of mind.” #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
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.
1 This Month
No Nuclear in Cwm Llynfi! Stop the nuclear power station near Maesteg.
4 August – WEBINAR – Hiroshima & Nagasaki: Nuclear Bombs Never Again
Tuesday, Aug. 4 at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET.
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Join the Nuclear Bombs Never Again webinar on August 4th at 5pm Pacific Time / 8pm Eastern Time / 9am Japan Standard Time.
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