Paris wants to manufacture drones in Ukraine
9 June 25 https://www.rt.com/news/618818-paris-renault-produce-drones-ukraine/
The French Defense Ministry has asked Renault to set up military production for Kiev.
Paris is pushing France’s largest automaker, Renault, to establish a military drone production operation in Ukraine, the company has confirmed. Kiev has been significantly intensifying drone attacks on Russian infrastructure.
During the final week of May, 2,300 Ukrainian UAVs were shot down after being sent across the border to target Moscow and other regions, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
“We have been contacted by the [French] Defense Ministry about the possibility of producing drones,” Renault said in a statement to several media outlets, including Reuters, on Sunday. Although “discussions” on the issue have taken place, the company insisted that “no decision has been taken at this stage,” and that it is awaiting further details from the ministry.
French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu first revealed the plan on Friday, describing it as an “unprecedented partnership” in an interview with broadcaster LCI.
“We are going to embark on a completely unprecedented partnership… to equip production lines in Ukraine to… produce drones,” Lecornu said, noting that the project would involve both a major carmaker and a smaller defense contractor.
Renault could be tasked with setting up drone assembly lines “a few dozen or hundreds of kilometers from the front line” in Ukraine, France Info reported on Sunday.
According to the newspaper Ouest-France, the project could also involve Delair – a Toulouse-based drone manufacturer that supplies UAVs for border surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, and special operations forces. The company has previously delivered kamikaze drones to the French Defense Ministry, which were later sent to Ukraine.
Lecornu described the initiative as a “win-win” for Paris and Kiev, claiming no French personnel would be deployed to Ukraine.
The production lines would be operated by Ukrainian workers, and the drones built for the country’s military would also be used by the French Armed Forces for “tactical and operational training that reflects the reality” of modern warfare, he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov condemned the strikes as deliberate attempts to sabotage peace talks. Moscow has repeatedly warned that any weapons production facilities in Ukraine are considered legitimate military targets and subject to “unequivocal destruction.”
Firm fined £26k after worker exposed to radiation at Teesside site
Mistras Group Limited was fined £26,000 after a radiographer was overexposed to ionising radiation while working at a site in Hartlepool.
By Nicole Goodwin, City Centre Reporter, Jade McElwee, Content Editor,
Teesside Gazette 7th June 2025, https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/mistras-group-limited-radiation-hartlepool-31808465
A global firm has been slapped with a £26,000 fine after a radiographer was exposed to ionising radiation at a North East site.
The 69-year-old man was working for Mistras Group Limited in December 2020 when the company was alerted by their approved dosimetry service that he had received a dose exceeding legal limits. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) was also informed, leading to the prosecution of the company following an investigation.
Ionising radiation is widely used in various industries including energy production, manufacturing, medicine and research. While it offers numerous benefits to society, it’s crucial that its risks are sensibly managed to safeguard workers and the public.
The incident occurred at Mistras Group Limited’s former Hartlepool site when a gamma emitting radioactive source used for radiography failed to return to its shielded container. Due to lax adherence to the company’s own radiation safety protocols, this wasn’t promptly identified, resulting in the radiographer being overexposed to radiation.
Although no symptoms were reported, excessive exposure to ionising radiation can heighten the risk of developing certain cancers. The HSE investigation discovered that pre-use safety checks hadn’t been completed and recorded by the radiographer, reports Chronicle Live. These checks are vital stages in verifying that radiography systems are functioning properly and ensuring the safe use of equipment.
The firm Mistras Group Limited was hit with a £26,000 fine and must pay £11,353 in costs after admitting to breaches of radiation safety regulations at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court on May 22. The company, based in Norman Way, Cambridge, had provided alarming Electronic Personal Dosemeters (EPDs) and radiation monitors to employees, yet it emerged that a radiographer failed to use the equipment; this could have alerted them to dangerous radiation levels allowing for a safe retreat.
Radiation incidents had not been reported correctly. Additional failings by the company to ensure adherence to radiation protection rules and procedures included not following local rule instructions and insufficient supervision leading to a lack of compliance. Moreover, the firm previously faced enforcement actions from HSE for similar shortcomings.
Commenting on the case, HSE’s radiation specialist inspector Elizabeth Reeves stated: “Industrial radiography is a hazardous practice if not managed properly. Radiation protection is an area where employers and employees must not become complacent with.
“Safety checks and the use of monitoring equipment such as EPD’s and radiation monitors are essential elements to ensuring the safe operation of equipment and protection to personnel. This prosecution demonstrates that the courts, and HSE, take failure to comply with the regulations extremely seriously.”
The HSE’s enforcement lawyer, Jonathan Bambro, and paralegal officer, Rebecca Forman, led the prosecution in this case.
A Mar-a-Lago in the sky?
Meanwhile, as Trump is due to parade his military hardware through the streets and skies of Washington, DC this week, at a cost of $45 million to US taxpayers, we are told there is too much wasteful spending, so Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps must be slashed.
by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/06/08/a-mar-a-lago-in-the-sky/
US taxpayers are about to get golden fleeced, again, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
Last week we reported on the White House executive orders that would lay waste to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and put an end to any meaningful safety oversight of the US commercial nuclear sector.
Not that there was a whole lot to begin with. None of us will be standing outside the agency’s Rockville Maryland headquarters any time soon holding “Save the NRC” signs.
I mentioned last week that there were five orders affecting the nuclear sector. Technically, the fifth – Restoring Gold Standard Science — didn’t mention nuclear, but its overarching mission— to do the opposite of what its title says — will most certainly negatively affect the integrity of any evaluation of new reactor designs, with the stamp of approval given to the Department of Energy and even the Department of Defense, rather than the NRC.
The Gold Standard order served to remind us of Trump’s perennial obsession with everything gold and golden, also reflected, as it were, in his cheap bordello-style aesthetic on display at Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.
The wannabe king boasted during his January 20 inaugural address that “The Golden Age of America begins right now,” then reminded us six weeks later, during his March 4 Joint Address to Congress, that his Golden Age truly was coming. “Get ready for an incredible future,” he said. “The Golden Age of America has only just begun. It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before.”
That last part was certainly true.
As if all this golden fleecing of American taxpayers wasn’t enough, cue the next fanfare — but without any actual golden trumpeters — the Golden Dome for America!
“Golden Dome for America is a revolutionary concept to further the goals of peace through strength,” asserts its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, our first clue that the Golden Dome has nothing whatever to do with peace, as Lockheed Martin is a major player in the US nuclear weapons complex.
The Golden Dome is effectively a reboot of Ronald Reagan’s ill-fated Strategic Defense Initiative, mockingly nicknamed Star Wars, which was supposed to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles. That was just the latest failed iteration of a US missile defense concept that has been in the works since the 1950s.
Reagan’s SDI arguably cost us a chance to rid the world of nuclear weapons altogether when in 1986, he and then Russian premier Mikhail Gorbachev were poised to do just that. Gorbachev wanted Star Wars consigned to the laboratory. Reagan refused. The arms race continued.
Trump brags he has already picked out the architecture he likes for his Golden Dome, which makes you wonder whether he thinks it’s some sort of floating palace, a Mar-a-Lago in the sky?
The price tag for the Golden Dome is a whopping $175 billion (there’s austerity for you!) and apparently it will all be up and running before Trump’s term is out in January 2029, (assuming Trump willingly leaves office and we still have a democratic election process by then.)
That’s a timeline longtime national security and nuclear policy expert, Joe Cirincione, called “insane” in an interview with The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “You probably won’t even get the architecture of the system settled by the end of his administration,” Cirincione said.
Even more insane is that, far from enhancing the safety of the US, the Golden Dome is entirely provocative and, as a nervous China has already warned, will only increase the risks of militarizing space and could even relaunch a global arms race (arguably something that is already underway).
In any case, there’s not much use in a Golden Dome unless it’s one hundred percent effective, which it has a one hundred percent probability of not being. Its predecessor certainly didn’t achieve that and was what Cirincione described as “the longest-running scam in the history of the Department of Defense.”
If just one missile does get through, the level of destruction would be devastating, and the US would then likely retaliate after which all bets are off.
So far, US missile defense interception attempts (fortunately all tests), have had a success rate that spans a range of 41% to 88% depending on whether you accept an independent analysis, which generates the lower number, or “official” tallies, which produce the higher one. Either way, it’s not 100%.
The whole sorry saga, which began with the deployment of the earliest iterations of US missile defense in 1962, has cost at least $531 billion to date, according to Stephen Schwartz, a longtime analyst on nuclear weapons costs.
On BlueSky, Schwartz called the Golden Dome project “delusional and reckless. There’s no way to design, test, construct, and deploy a comprehensive system to reliably stop any missiles launched from land, sea, or space, and do it in ‘two-and-a-half to three years’ for $175 billion.”
The White House counters that none of this matters as the Golden Dome is meant as a deterrent to frighten off aggressors. It’s the same flawed argument that says spending billions to have our own nuclear weapons is worth it because then our adversaries will never use theirs, either. This, of course, exposes the ludicrousness of the whole deterrence myth, since clearly we could achieve the same end if we all abolished our nuclear weapons, and save a whole lot of money to boot.
But if we proceed on the basis of the White House assertion, then it means we are about to spend $175 billion on something the US would never actually use.
The Golden Dome, it turns out, is no golden ticket to survival.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Any opinions are her own.
Britain has escalated the global nuclear arms race – and is bringing us closer to armageddon
Simon Tisdall, 8 June 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/08/uk-strategic-defence-review-nuclear-arms-race-armageddon
The UK’s strategic defence review risks normalising nuclear warfare. Don’t believe the PR hype: these weapons are immoral, irrational and catastrophic.
Britain has escalated the global nuclear arms race – and is bringing us closer to armageddon
The UK’s strategic defence review risks normalising nuclear warfare. Don’t believe the PR hype: these weapons are immoral, irrational and catastrophicSun 8 Jun 2025 15.00 AESTShare1,163
Plans by Keir Starmer’s government to modernise and potentially expand Britain’s nuclear weapons arsenal, unveiled in the 2025 strategic defence review (SDR), seriously undermine international non-proliferation efforts. They will fuel a global nuclear arms race led by the US, China and Russia. And they increase the chances that lower-yield, so-called tactical nukes will be deployed and detonated in conflict zones.
This dangerous path leads in one direction only: towards the normalisation of nuclear warfare.
These unconscionable proposals are a far cry from the days when Robin Cook, Labour’s foreign secretary from 1997 to 2001, championed unilateral nuclear disarmament and helped scrap the UK’s airdropped gravity bombs. They are a continuation of a redundant, inhuman, immoral, potentially international law-breaking deterrence policy that cash-strapped Britain can ill afford, will struggle to implement at cost and on time, and which perpetuates illusions about its global power status.
Starmer’s justification for spending an additional £15bn on nuclear warheads for four as yet un-built Dreadnought-class submarines, whose price tag is £41bn and rising, is that the world – and the threat – has changed. But in terms of nuclear arms, it really hasn’t. Even as cold war tensions receded, the eight other known nuclear-weapons states – the US, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – clung on to their arsenals. Some expanded them.
Today, as the global security environment deteriorates again, governments that ignored an obligation to pursue nuclear disarmament “in good faith” under article six of the 1970 non-proliferation treaty (NPT) are finding new reasons to keep on doing so. Britain must not compound its decades-long failure to honour the spirit of the treaty. The SDR’s assertion that “continued UK leadership within the NPT is imperative” seems disingenuous, given government intentions.
The SDR concedes the NPT, up for review next year, is close to failing. “Historical structures for maintaining strategic stability and reducing nuclear risks have not kept pace with the evolving security picture,” it says. “With New Start [the 2010 US-Russia strategic arms reduction treaty] set to expire in February 2026, the future of strategic arms control – at least in the medium term – does not look promising.”
This is a Trident missile-sized understatement. Nuclear proliferation is once again a huge problem. The US will spend an estimated $2tn over 30 years on weapons development. Donald Trump said in February he wants to “denuclearise”. Guess what! He’s doing the opposite. The White House is seeking to raise the National Nuclear Security Administration’s annual weapons budget by 29%, to $25bn, while slashing funding for the arts, sciences and foreign aid. That’s on top of several multibillion-dollar Pentagon weapons programmes.
China’s nuclear strike force has more than doubled in size since 2020, with some pointed at Taiwan. Russia’s expanding capabilities include a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, recently fired into Ukraine. And Trump’s Golden Dome plan upends prior undertakings on anti-missile defence. By joining the proliferators, hypocritical Britain sends a cynical signal to Iran, Saudi Arabia and others whose supposed nuclear ambitions it opposes.
One future scenario is especially chilling: the possible reintroduction by Britain of air-launched nuclear weapons for the first time since Cook scrapped them. This could involve buying US F-35A fighters and arming them with US-designed B61-12 bombs. These bombs have variable yields and could be used tactically, against a battlefield target, a command HQ or a city. They could be launched remotely, using unmanned drones. They bring the prospect of nuclear warfare measurably closer.
Starmer is leaning heavily on the review’s claim that Russian “nuclear coercion” is the biggest menace facing the UK. Even if true, no amount of nuclear missiles and bombs may suffice if political will is lacking to directly confront Vladimir Putin by, for example, deploying Nato conventional forces to defend Ukraine and responding forcefully to hybrid attacks on Britain. Like the former US president Joe Biden, Starmer gives too much credence to Moscow’s crude threats. Putin knows that if he presses the nuclear button, it will explode in his face. He’s many things – but not suicidal.
This is the conundrum at the heart of nuclear deterrence theory. Nuking a nuclear-armed adversary guarantees self-destruction (which is why India and Pakistan jibbed at all-out war last month). And hurling nuclear threats at states and foes that lack nuclear weapons is ineffective. As Ukraine shows, they grow more defiant. As a weapon, nuclear blackmail is overrated. Fear of British nukes did not deter Argentina’s 1982 Falklands invasion. Nukes did not stop al-Qaida in 2001 or Hamas in 2023. So why have nukes at all?
Retaining nuclear weapons at current or increased levels does not make Britain safer. Their use would be immoral, irrational and catastrophic. They are grossly expensive, consuming resources that the UK, facing painful Treasury cuts again this week, could more sensibly use to build hospitals and schools and properly equip its armed forces.
It’s uncertain how independent of the US the British deterrent really is in practice. Does Starmer or Trump have the final word on use? Official secrecy prevents adequate democratic scrutiny. And the idea that nuclear warfare, once the taboo is broken, might somehow be contained or limited is a fast-track ticket to oblivion. Gradual disarmament, not rearmament, is the only way to escape this nightmare.
The SDR urges a government PR campaign to convince the British people of the “necessity” of a nuclear arsenal. No thanks. As Russia again raises nuclear war fears, what’s needed is public education about the dangers of weapons proliferation. People worry about everything from an existential global climate emergency to the cost of living. But what we’re discussing here is the universal cost of dying.
Nuclear warfare is the most immediate threat to life on earth. Worry about that first. It’s a shortcut to apocalypse – now.
Nuclear Watchdog Meeting Sparks Tensions With Iran
By RFE/RL staff – Jun 07, 2025,
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Nuclear-Watchdog-Meeting-Sparks-Tensions-With-Iran.html
- Iran has vowed to react strongly to potential IAEA findings of noncompliance pushed by Western nations, citing past actions as precedent.
- The IAEA’s latest report indicates a sharp increase in Iran’s production of highly enriched uranium, exceeding limits set by the 2015 nuclear deal.
- US-Iran nuclear talks have stalled, leading to heightened risk of escalation, and Israel has reportedly assured the US it will not strike Iran’s nuclear sites without explicit authorization.
Iran has vowed to take strong action against Western nations pushing a resolution at a quarterly meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog that would find the Islamic republic in noncompliance with its safeguards obligations for the first time in 20 years.
In a June 6 post on X, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi slammed Britain, France, and Germany — collectively known as the E3 — for “falsely accusing Iran” of violating its obligations and claimed the move was “designed to produce a crisis.”
“Mark my words as Europe ponders another major strategic mistake: Iran will react strongly against any violation of its rights. Blame lies solely and fully with irresponsible actors who stop at nothing to gain relevance,” Araqchi warned.
A draft resolution prepared by the E3 and backed by the United States was shared on June 5 with the 35 members of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Board of Governors, which will hold its quarterly meeting on June 9-13.
Araqchi pointed to a similar episode in 2005 when Iran resumed uranium conversion activities after suspending them during earlier negotiations with the E3.
In response, the European trio pushed for Iran to be declared in noncompliance and referred to the UN Security Council. Iran retaliated by ending voluntary transparency measures and significantly expanding its uranium enrichment program — a turning point Araqchi described as “in many ways the true birth of uranium enrichment in Iran.”
In its latest quarterly report, the IAEA said Iran has sharply increased its production of highly enriched uranium, stockpiling 408.6 kilograms enriched to 60 percent — up from just under 275 kilograms in February.
The agency also criticized Iran for poor cooperation, particularly its failure to explain nuclear traces detected at undeclared sites.
While 60 percent enrichment is below the 90 percent threshold required for weapons-grade material, it far exceeds the 3.67 percent limit set by the 2015 nuclear deal, which US President Donald Trump exited in 2018 during his first term in office. Trump returned to the presidency in January.
The Trump administration has held five rounds of talks with Iran since April to reach a new agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program. But this week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected a US proposal after Trump stated that Iran would not be allowed to continue enriching uranium under any future deal.
Axios says the White House’s “interpretation” of Trump’s two-month deadline for a deal is that it expires next week. Israel, which has long been planning to strike Iranian nuclear sites, is said to have assured Washington it will not launch a military strike on Iran unless diplomatic negotiations fail and it receives explicit clearance from Trump.
Group protest against Sizewell C ahead of Spending Review
Campaigners gathered to further protest against Sizewell C just days
before the conclusion of the Spending Review. Supporters of Stop Sizewell C
and Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) met for an ‘Outrage’ rally at
Sizewell Beach on Saturday, June 7. The weekend rally also paid tribute to
former TASC chair and campaigner Pete Wilkinson who died in January of this
year. His daughters Emily and Amy spoke at the protest and tied yellow
ribbons onto the fence. The protest came ahead of the conclusion of the
Spending Review on Wednesday, June 11 where it is believed the government
will set out its plans for future investment in Sizewell C.
East Anglian Daily Times 8th June 2025,
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/25222586.group-protest-sizewell-c-ahead-spending-review/
Israeli Forces Board Gaza Aid Flotilla Boat
Drones dropped a white paint-like substance on the Madleen before the boardingby
Dave DeCamp June 8, 2025 https://news.antiwar.com/2025/06/08/israeli-defense-minister-orders-military-to-stop-gaza-aid-boat/
The Madleen, a sailboat that was trying to break Israel’s starvation blockade on Gaza, has been boarded by Israeli forces, and the 12 activists onboard have been detained, according to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the group behind the humanitarian effort.
“Connection has been lost on the ‘Madleen’. Israeli army have boarded the vessel,” the FFC wrote on Telegram.
Francesca Albanese, a UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, was in touch with the crew before they lost communications and said that the boat was being circled by Israeli speedboats and quadcopter drones that dropped a white paint-like substance on the Madleen.
“The Madleen is currently under assault in international waters. Quadcopters are surrounding the ship, spraying it with a white irritant substance. Communications are jammed, and disturbing sounds are being played over the radio,” the FFC said before the boarding.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry released a statement that said the activists on the boat would return to their homes. “The ‘selfie yacht’ of the ‘celebrities’ is safely making its way to the shores of Israel. The passengers are expected to return to their home countries,” the ministry wrote on X.
Earlier in the day, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the IDF to intercept the Madleen. The boat was carrying 12 civilian activists who are traveling unarmed, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who Katz labeled “antisemitic” due to her opposition to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
“I have instructed the IDF to act to ensure that the hate flotilla ‘Madleen’ does not reach the shores of Gaza—and to take all necessary measures to achieve this,” Katz wrote on X.
“To the antisemitic Greta and her friends, propagators of Hamas propaganda, I say clearly: You’d better turn back—because you won’t reach Gaza. Israel will act against any attempt to break the blockade or assist terrorist organizations—by sea, air, or land,” Katz added.
A senior Israeli official told Israel’s Channel 12 that if the boat doesn’t turn around, it would be boarded by Israeli Navy commandos and brought to the port of Ashdod.
“We are surrounding Gaza from every direction in order to strangle Hamas and not enable [Gaza] to get any aid from any factor that is not overseen by Israel. If we allow one flotilla to enter, masses will follow, and this provocation will create a wave of flotillas that are hostile to Israel. We will not let this happen,” the official said.
Back in 2010, Israeli commandos raided six Freedom Flotilla boats that were attempting to break the blockade on Gaza and killed 10 Turkish activists. Just last month, an Israeli drone hit a Freedom Flotilla boat, the Conscience, when it was off the coast of Malta.
Israel supporters in the US have suggested Israel should sink the Madleen, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” Graham said in a post on X.
Trump’s Nuclear Power Obsession
He failed to mention the “nuclear clause” in all homeowners insurance policies in the U.S. which states: “This policy does not cover loss or damage caused by nuclear reaction or nuclear radiation or radioactive contamination.”
Karl Grossman – Harvey Wasserman, June 6, 2025, https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/06/trumps-nuclear-power-obsession/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKxt5pleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFvTWNBeXVHWThCTEtyczlZAR4Wy4zp3k26LXBFk9nJmvu3gAlxlzaxf_bLpDX3vn4MeB8PdK4OTy_hrIw0-Q_aem_GM2n7mrZ43KodEXQfa0ZsA
Donald Trump on May 23rd declared nuclear power to be “a hot industry.” Nuclear power plants are “very safe and environmental,” he said. He made the claims as he issued executive orders to quadruple nuclear energy capacity in the United States.
He failed to mention that nuclear power plants are subject to catastrophic accidents—such as the Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters. And in routine operation, they release deadly radioactive emissions. Also, the nuclear fuel cycle—including mining, milling, enrichment of nuclear fuel—is highly carbon-intensive.
He missed the fact that in pure economic terms they portend the largest economic debacle in human history. He omitted mention of who would pay for 300+ new nuclear plants in the U.S. to be built under his executive orders. (There are currently 94 nuclear plants operating in the U.S.)
Trump didn’t say why the nation would quadruple nuclear power capacity when renewables—primarily wind turbines and solar panels—account for more than 80% of the world’s new electric generating capacity and are coming in at up to 90% cheaper than nukes and years faster to deploy.
He failed to mention the “nuclear clause” in all homeowners insurance policies in the U.S. which states: “This policy does not cover loss or damage caused by nuclear reaction or nuclear radiation or radioactive contamination.”
That’s been the situation since 1957 when, with the insurance industry refusing to cover nuclear plant disasters, the Price-Anderson Act was enacted limiting liability in the event of a nuclear plant catastrophe. Congress passed it to jump-start the “Peaceful Atom” program of seven decades ago. The Price-Anderson Act has been extended and extended and Congress recently renewed it for another four decades to cover the untested “Small Modular Reactors” now all the rage in the latest ultra-hyped so-called “nuclear renaissance.”
Trump was surrounded at a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of The White House by executives of the nuclear power industry, including Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear power plant operator in the U.S., Jake Dewitte, CEO of Oklo Inc., and promoters, including Maria Korsnick, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main nuclear power lobbying organization in the U.S.
Also present was U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum who said: “This is a huge day for the nuclear industry.”
It was a flip from Trump’s comments on the Joe Rogan podcast last year in which he said: “I think there’s a little danger in nuclear.” An article about this on the E&E energy website of Politico said his reservations “seem to qualify his campaign promise to ‘unleash energy production from all sources, including nuclear.’”
But it was a total nuclear advocacy declared by Trump in his executive orders.
One of the four, titled “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” notes that since 1978 “only two reactors have entered into commercial operation….Instead of efficiently promoting allegedly “safe, abundant nuclear energy,” the NRC has instead tried to insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion. The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure. Those models lack sound scientific basis and produce irrational results.”
“Beginning today,” said this order, “my Administration will reform the NRC, including its structure, personnel, regulations, and basic operations. In so doing, we will produce lasting American dominance in the global nuclear energy market…”
The order then says: “It is the policy of the United States to: Reestablish the United States as the global leader in nuclear energy” and “Facilitate the expansion of American nuclear energy capacity from approximately 100 GW [gigawatts] in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050.”
To avoid a politically suicidal brush with economic reality, Trump ducked this simple calculation: the most recent new U.S. reactors, at Vogtle, Georgia, have come online seven years late, at a price of $18 billion each. (They were originally estimated to cost $7 billion each.) Meanwhile, the other two reactors, the construction of which began also this century, an expected $9.8 billion project at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant site in South Carolina, was abandoned when its estimated cost increased to $25 billion, having generated no electricity at all,
Today there are no large reactors under construction in the U.S. Based on the Vogtle/Summer experiences, to build another 300 nuclear power plants from scratch would cost a “base price” minimum of $5.4 trillion, though the historic likelihood is that they would cost at least double or triple that. Each would likely require 15 years or more to build.
A parallel and thus far theoretical fleet of the much-hyped Small Modular Reactors (“silly mythological rip-offs”) is certain to cost more. Their development has been plagued with soaring price projections, lagging production schedules and a series of cancellations. SMRs produce more radioactive waste per kilowatt-hour than the older, bigger nukes, nuclear proliferation concerns, and there are other problems.
Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in an article last year titled “Five Things the ‘Nuclear Bros’ Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors” on its publication “The Equation” starts off with: “1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.” He said, “According to the economies of scale principle, smaller reactors will in general produce more expensive electricity than larger ones,” and he elaborates. He further exposes other SMR issues.
Of the Trump order to “reform” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in an article published last week in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Lyman wrote it “mandates that the NRC fundamentally change its mission to support the absurd and reckless goal of quadrupling of U.S. nuclear energy capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050—which would, if achieved, add the equivalent of 300 large nuclear plants to the U.S. fleet—by prioritizing speedy licensing over protecting public health and safety from radiation exposure. This would effectively make the NRC a promotional agency not unlike its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, thereby undoing the NRC’s 51-year history as the independent safety regulator established by the 1974 Energy Reorganization Act.” The piece was titled: “NRC’s new Mission Impossible: Making Atoms Great Again.”
Another Trump executive order, specifically on “advanced reactors,” was titled “Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security” and say they “have have the potential to deliver resilient, secure, and reliable power…”
The nuclear industry in recent years has been touting what it calls “advanced” nuclear power plants—which include the SMR—claiming they are safer than current designs.
However, the Union of Concerned Scientists conducted extensive research on the “advanced” plants and its 140-report, authored by Lyman, a physicist, “found that they are no better—and in some respects significantly worse—than the light-water reactors in operation today.”
Another Trump order, “Reforming Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy,” directs “the Department of Energy, the National Laboratories, and any other entity under the [Energy] Department’s jurisdiction to significantly expedite the review, approval, and deployment of advanced reactors.”
And a fourth executive order, “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base,” states: “Swift and decisive action is required to jumpstart America’s nuclear energy industrial base and ensure or national and economic security by increasing fuel availability and production, securing civil nuclear supply chains, improving the efficiency with which advanced nuclear reactors are licensed, and preparing our workforce to establish America’s energy dominance and accelerate our path towards a more secure and independent energy future.”
A former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Dr. Gregory Jaczko, a physicist, commented that the Trump orders show that “he is committed to further lawlessness, more nuclear accidents, and less nuclear safety. This guillotine to the nation’s nuclear safety system will only make the country less safe, the industry less reliable, and the climate crisis more severe….The executive orders look like someone asked an AI, ‘how do we make the nuclear industry worse in this country?’”
Lyman in a statement distributed by the Union of Concerned Scientists said: “Simply put, the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority. By fatally compromising the independence and integrity of the NRC, and by encouraging pathways for nuclear deployment that bypass the regulator entirely, the Trump administration is virtually guaranteeing that this country will see a serious accident or other radiological release that will affect the health, safety and livelihoods of millions. Such a disaster will destroy public trust in nuclear power and cause other nations to reject U.S. nuclear technology for decades to come.”
Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project of the organization Beyond Nuclear, said of the order on “reform” of the NRC, that it “most explicitly exposes the Trump Administration’s deliberate attack upon the public’s democratic due process regarding undisputably still hazardous nuclear power and strips away the appearance of maintaining an ‘independent’ federal regulatory agency exercising its due diligence in the interest of public health, safety, security and environmental protection.”
Gunter cited the 1974 Energy Reorganization Act, as did Lyman in his article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was abolished by Congress” by the act “precisely because it could no longer maintain the façade of being both the chief promoter and regulator” of nuclear power, said Gunter. This Trump order, said Gunter, “illuminates the obvious 50-year throwback to AEC and its abolition by Congress in 1975 for its blatant ‘conflict of interest’ as simultaneously a promotional agency for atomic power and supposedly an unbiased regulator.”
Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said: “After 70 years of promoting nuclear power, it is still too expensive and produces radioactive waste that will be dangerous for over a million years. President Trump’s executive orders will not fix those problems….There is no ‘fixing’ or ‘reviving’ nuclear energy. The orders are a shortsighted, wasteful effort that will only make nuclear power less safe and more polluting. They will further weaken the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and forever sabotage its already dubious ability to protect public safety and national security.”
Judson said, “One order ignores decades of scientific findings and thousands of families’ tragic experiences with radioactivity, directing the NRC to reduce radiation protections. The National Academy of Sciences has repeatedly found that radiation increases the risk of cancer and other diseases. Only kooks and crackpots under the spell of a Dr. Strangelove-like infatuation with nuclear power say otherwise.”
“Another order,” Judson continued, “will slash the NRC’s staff and subjugate the agency to White House approval of its regulations and licensing decisions, ending even the pretense that an independent regulator will be there to protect the public health and safety. The root of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear meltdowns in 2011 was found to be the subjugation of a nuclear safety regulator to politicians and corporations. The disaster displaced over 100,000 people, shut down the whole nuclear industry, and will cost Japan up to $700 billion. President Trump’s executive orders will increase the changes that could happen here.”
And Judson, like many others, concludes: “The truth is, we can meet all of our energy needs, safely, securely, and affordably, with renewable energy sources that are ready to deploy today. In the last two years alone, the world brought online as much new wind and solar as the entire nuclear industry worldwide can generate after 60 years.”
The Trump pro-nuke executive orders have sparked immediate stock market jumps for Trump’s insider atomic cronies while promising almost incomprehensible losses for the rest of us which includes the spread of atomic machines prone to catastrophe, regularly spewing lethal radioactivity, producing unmanageable waste and this funded by trillions of public dollars.
It further will sink us all into what Forbes Magazine in 1985 described as “the largest managerial failure in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale,” in a lead article titled “Nuclear Follies.”
Meanwhile, renewables are more than ready now, safe power which we can live with. Yet while prices and production times for renewable sources plummet, Trump and his anti-green minions have been vigorously assaulting the wind, solar and other green energy technologies. Trump has attacked not only tax breaks and clean energy grants for the clean energy movement, he has also assaulted the permitting process for renewables, at the same time pushing to expedite it for nuclear power.
He has been joined by California’s “Green Democrat” Governor Gavin Newsom, who has showered subsidies on two decrepit reactors at Diablo Canyon while slashing permits and rate and tax supports for renewables and forcing California ratepayers to fork over $11 billion for the Diablo reactors which are near multiple earthquake fault lines and slated to now be closed, Diablo Canyon is the last nuclear plant running in California. Newsom has devastated the state’s once-booming rooftop solar industry, destroying at least 17,000 green jobs, while sticking California with the continental U.S.’s highest electric rates.
Democratic governors in Michigan, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois and elsewhere have also boosted nuclear power while assaulting renewables.
Led by Trump and Newsom, the corrupt corporate leadership of both political parties thus seems bound and determined to bankrupt and irradiate us all with deadly, “nuclear-clause”-covered atomic reactors that can’t compete with the otherwise vibrant, fast-evolving renewable revolution which they are so cynically aiming to kill.
Harvey Wasserman wrote the books Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and The Peoples Spiral of US History. He helped coin the phrase “No Nukes.” He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition at www.electionprotection2024.org Karl Grossman is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and Power Crazy. He the host of the nationally-aired TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman (www.envirovideo.com)
When Will Western Support for Israeli Genocide Finally Crack?
If the so-called international community were really “very, very clear on that,” the United States and Israel would not be able to wage a campaign of genocide for more than 600 days while the world looks on in horror.
The U.S., U.K., Canadian, and other governments remain deeply complicit in Israel’s atrocities and violations of international law. But the rhetoric is shifting and protest movement is growing louder.
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / Common Dreams, 5 June25 https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/when-will-western-support-for-israeli-genocide-finally-crack
After 20 months of horror in Gaza, political rhetoric in Western countries is finally starting to shift—but will words translate into action? And what exactly can other countries do when the United States still shields Israel from efforts to enforce international law, as it did at the UN Security Council on June 5th?
Trump’s military and political support for Israel’s genocide stands in stark contradiction to the image he promotes of himself as a peacemaker—and which his most loyal followers believe in.
On May 30th, Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, accused Israel of committing a war crime by using starvation as a weapon against the people of Gaza. In a searing interview with the BBC, Fletcher explained how Israel’s policy of forced starvation fits into its larger strategy of ethnic cleansing.
“We’re seeing food set on the borders and not being allowed in, when there is a population on the other side of the border that is starving,” Fletcher said. “And we’re hearing Israeli ministers say that is to put pressure on the population of Gaza.”
After 20 months of horror in Gaza, political rhetoric in Western countries is finally starting to shift—but will words translate into action? And what exactly can other countries do when the United States still shields Israel from efforts to enforce international law, as it did at the UN Security Council on June 5th?
On May 30th, Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, accused Israel of committing a war crime by using starvation as a weapon against the people of Gaza. In a searing interview with the BBC, Fletcher explained how Israel’s policy of forced starvation fits into its larger strategy of ethnic cleansing.
“We’re seeing food set on the borders and not being allowed in, when there is a population on the other side of the border that is starving,” Fletcher said. “And we’re hearing Israeli ministers say that is to put pressure on the population of Gaza.”
He was referring to statements like the one from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who openly admitted that the starvation policy is meant to leave Palestinians “totally despairing, understanding that there’s no hope and nothing to look for,” so that they will submit to ethnic cleansing from Gaza and a “new life in other places.”
Fletcher called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop this campaign of forced displacement, and insisted, “we would expect governments all over the world to stand for international humanitarian law. The international community is very, very clear on that.”
Palestinians might wish that were true. If the so-called international community were really “very, very clear on that,” the United States and Israel would not be able to wage a campaign of genocide for more than 600 days while the world looks on in horror.
Some Western governments have finally started using stronger language to condemn Israel’s actions. But the question is: Will they act? Or is this just more political theater to appease public outrage while the machinery of destruction grinds on?
This moment should force a reckoning: How is it possible that the U.S. and Israel can perpetrate such crimes with impunity? What would it take for U.S. allies to ignore pressure from Washington and enforce international law?
If impoverished, war-ravaged Yemen can single-handedly deny Israel access to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and drive the Israeli port of Eilat into bankruptcy, more powerful countries can surely isolate Israel diplomatically and economically, protect the Palestinians and end the genocide. But they haven’t even tried.
Some are now making tentative moves. On May 19th, the U.K., France, and Canada jointly condemned Israel’s actions as “intolerable,” “unacceptable,” “abhorrent,” “wholly disproportionate,” and “egregious.” The U.K. suspended trade talks with Israel, and they promised “further concrete actions,” including targeted sanctions, if Israel does not end its offensive in Gaza and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid.
The three countries publicly committed to the Arab Plan for the reconstruction of Gaza, and to building an international consensus for it at the UN’s High-Level Two-State Solution Conference in New York on June 17th-20th, which is to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.
They also committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood. Of the UN’s 193 member states, 147 already recognize Palestine as a sovereign nation, including ten more since Israel launched its genocide in Gaza. President Emmanuel Macron, under pressure from the leftist La France Insoumise party, says France may officially recognize Palestine at the UN conference in June.
Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, claimed during his election campaign that Canada already had an arms embargo against Israel, but was swiftly challenged on that. Canada has suspended a small number of export licenses, but it’s still supplying parts for Israel’s 39 F-35s, and for 36 more that Israel has ordered from Lockheed Martin.
A General Dynamics factory in Quebec is the sole supplier of artillery propellant for deadly 155 mm artillery shells used in Gaza, and it took an emergency campaign by human rights groups in August 2024 to force Canada to scrap a new contract for that same factory to supply Israel with 50,000 high-explosive mortar shells.
The U.K. is just as compromised. The new Labour government elected in July 2024 quickly restored funding to UNRWA, as Canada has. In September, it suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel, mostly for parts used in warplanes, helicopters, drones, and targeting. But, like Canada, the U.K. still supplies many other parts that end up in Israeli F-35s bombing Gaza.
Declassified UK published a report on the F-35 program that revealed how it compromises the sovereignty of partner countries. While the U.K. produces 15% of the parts that go into every F-35, the U.S. military takes immediate ownership of the British-made parts, stores them on British air force bases, and then orders the U.K. to ship them to Texas for use in new planes or to Israel and other countries as spare parts for planes already in use.
Shipping these planes and parts to Israel is in clear violation of U.S., U.K. and other countries’ arms export laws. British campaigners argue that if the U.K. is serious about halting genocide, it must stop all shipments of F-35 parts sent to Israel–directly or indirectly. With huge marches in London drawing hundreds of thousands of people, and protests on June 17th at three factories that make F-35 parts, activists will keep applying more pressure until they result in the “concrete actions” the British government has promised.
Denmark is facing a similar conflict. Amnesty International, Oxfam, Action Aid, and Al-Haq are in court suing the Danish government and the nation’s largest weapons company, Terma, to stop them from sending Israel critical bomb release mechanisms and other F-35 parts.
These disputes over Canadian artillery propellant, Danish bomb-release mechanisms, and the multinational nature of the F-35 program highlight how any country that provides even small but critical parts or materials for deadly weapons systems must ensure they are not used to commit war crimes.
In turn, all steps to cut off Israel’s weapons supplies can help to save Palestinian lives, and the full arms embargo that the UN General Assembly voted for in September 2024 can be instrumental in ending the genocide if more countries will join it. As Sam Perlo-Freeman of Campaign Against the Arms Trade said of the U.K.’s legal obligation to stop shipping F-35 parts,
“These spare parts are essential to keep Israel’s F-35s flying, and therefore stopping them will reduce the number of bombings and killings of civilians Israel can commit. It is as simple as that.”
Germany was responsible for 30% of Israel’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023, largely through two large warship deals. Four German-built Saar 6 corvettes, Israel’s largest warships, are already bombarding Gaza, while ThyssenKrupp is building three new submarines for Israel in Kiel.
But no country has provided a greater share of the tools of genocide in Gaza than the United States, including nearly all the warplanes, helicopters, bombs, and air-to-ground missiles that are destroying Gaza and killing Palestinians. The U.S. government has a legal responsibility to stop sending all these weapons, which Israel uses mainly to commit industrial-scale war crimes, up to and including genocide, against the people of Palestine, as well as to attack its other neighbors.
Trump’s military and political support for Israel’s genocide stands in stark contradiction to the image he promotes of himself as a peacemaker—and which his most loyal followers believe in.
Yet there are signs that Trump is beginning to assert some independence from Netanyahu and from the war hawks in his own party and inner circle. He refused to visit Israel on his recent Middle East tour, he’s negotiating with Iran despite Israeli opposition, and he removed Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor for engaging in unauthorized warmongering against Iran with Netanyahu. His decisions to end the Yemen bombing campaign and lift sanctions on Syria suggest an unpredictable but real departure from the neocon playbook, as do his negotiations with Russia and Iran.
Has Netanyahu finally overplayed his hand? His campaign of ethnic cleansing, territorial expansion in pursuit of a biblical “Greater Israel,” the deliberate starvation of Gaza, and his efforts to entangle the U.S. in a war with Iran have pushed Israel’s longtime allies to the edge. The emerging rift between Trump and Netanyahu could mark the beginning of the end of the decades-long blanket of impunity the U.S. has wrapped around Israel. It could also give other governments the political space to respond to Israeli war crimes without fear of U.S. retaliation.
The huge and consistent protests throughout Europe are putting pressure on Western governments to take action. A new survey conducted in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain shows that very few Europeans—between 6% and 16% in each country—find Israel’s assault on Gaza proportionate or justified.
For now, however, the Western governments remain deeply complicit in Israel’s atrocities and violations of international law. The rhetoric is shifting—but history will judge this moment not by what governments say, but by what they do.
£127M wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan
Don’t worry, only 100 more years of Sellafield nuclear site cleansing to go
Lindsay Clark, Sat 7 Jun 2025,
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/07/mps_find_127_million_wasted_sellafield/
The center for the UK’s nuclear industry wasted £127 million ($172 million) during delays and replanning as it scrambled to find alternatives for facilities which treat and repackage plutonium, a Parliamentary report found.
In the face of a 2028 deadline to replace its 70-year-old analytical lab, Sellafield Limited, part of a group of companies and government bodies on the northwest England Sellafield site, has abandoned plans for its Replacement Analytical Project (RAP). Ditching RAP was chalked up to multiple expected delays from 2028 until at least 2034 and a half-a-billion-pounds cost increase to £1.5 billion ($1.93 billion).
A new report from the Parliament’s public spending watchdog says RAP “has been managed very poorly indeed.”
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, has been the center of the UK’s nuclear industry since the 1950s. While the site is home to a number of companies, and the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Sellafield Limited, is a British nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company controlled by the NDA.
In October last year, the UK’s public spending watchdog said Sellafield depends on an on-site laboratory that is “over 70 years old, does not meet modern construction standards and is in extremely poor (and deteriorating) condition.”
The National Audit Office said [PDF] the laboratory is “not technically capable of carrying out the analysis required to commission the Sellafield Product and Residue Store Retreatment Plant (SRP)” to treat and repackage plutonium.
Sellafield’s plan in 2016 was to convert a 25-year-old laboratory on the site, which would replace the 70-year-old lab, under the “Replacement Analytical Project.” The outline business case was approved in 2019 with an estimated cost of between £486 million and £1 billion ($626 million – $1.3 billion).
It later emerged that it could take until December 2034 to deliver the full capability, while cost could reach £1.5 billion ($1.93 billion). Sellafield “strategically paused” RAP in February 2024.
In a report this week, the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee said: “Sellafield Ltd’s performance in delivering major projects (such as new buildings to store waste or make it safe) has historically been very poor, with large cost increases and delays occurring all too frequently.
“There are signs of improvement – however, given Sellafield’s track record, we are yet to be fully convinced that this is not another false dawn. Another reason to be skeptical is Sellafield’s poor management of the RAP. At the point it paused work, the forecast cost had risen by £820 million, and the project was five years delayed,” the PAC report said.
After abandoning the RAP, Sellafield plans to convert a different building to support a Store Retreatment Plant, which re-treats and repackages existing plutonium material, making it more suitable for durable, long-term storage. It also plans to refurbish the 70-year-old existing building — including replacing the roof — so it can carry on using it until 2040. The alternative plan would provide a service until 2040, whereas the RAP was expected to remain in use until 2070.
However, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority told PMs the new plan would cost between £420 million and £840 million ($570 million – $1.1 billion), much less than the RAP. Although some of the costs from the early projects could be recouped in the new plan, the PAC said £127 million ($172 million) spent on RAP will have been wasted.
The NDA expects the clean-up of the Sellafield site to go on until 2125 and cost £136 billion ($184 billion), an estimate which has increased nearly 19 percent since March 2019. ®
Nuclear power: a dream not worth having
The Government wants more nuclear power stations, but renewable energy is cheaper, safer, and more sustainable.
by Steve Dawe, 7 June 2025, https://westenglandbylines.co.uk/business/energy/nuclear-power-a-dream-not-worth-having/
Labour is committed to building new nuclear power stations on eight coastal sites. Margaret Thatcher was also an enthusiast for nuclear power. She wanted one new nuclear power station built each year in the UK during the 1980s. Only one, Sizewell B, was built. Why? Because it cost too much, as was obvious in 1990:
Mr Illsley: “The Secretary of State must be aware that recent estimates have put the final cost of Sizewell B at about £3.8 bn, taking into account the cost overruns, delays and lack of economies of scale… £2bn can be saved by cancelling the project now. Does the Secretary of State agree that the time to cancel Sizewell B is right now?”
(House of Commons Debates, 25 June 1990).
Renewables are cheaper
Sizewell B did not come online until 1995. The Government admitted in 2020 that renewables can be cheaper than they thought. Given decades of nuclear industry propaganda intended to obscure the deficiencies of this sector, support for nuclear appears less about stating a technology preference than an indirect political statement in favour of nuclear weapons.
We need electricity; we don’t need it to come from nuclear. But successive UK governments have used public money to subsidise the industries involved, instead of using it for things actually sustainable, cost-effective, and with minimal pollution. Keir Starmer has even ignored the nuclear watchdog when he blamed regulations for implementation delays.
The extensive range of reasons to oppose nuclear power
Here is a short list of some of the reasons to oppose new nuclear power stations, and phase out existing ones:
- Nuclear power is too slow to implement to be relevant to the climate emergency. Construction times are an average of 10 years per nuclear power station.
- Nuclear power stations are at risk of terrorist sabotage or attack in war, as has been demonstrated in Ukraine.
There are comprehensive reasons to oppose nuclear power, based partly on the British experience and that of other states recently. These also include:
The radioactive waste that needs storage for at least 100,000 years makes the true costs of nuclear power incalculable.- Part of the reason for this storage is the known health effects of radiation.
- Since major nuclear accidents have continued to occur and spread radioactive material into the environment, preference for other means of generating electricity and for radically improving insulation in buildings to reduce energy needs is unarguable.
- This is especially the case when the water implications are considered: nuclear power stations require water for cooling, on a planet with increasing droughts and extreme weather events. Nuclear power stations using water from watercourses have had to shut down during periods of drought, emphasising the desirability of solar and wind power which do not require water to operate.
- Making it easier to build more nuclear power stations on the eight coastal sites the Government prefers completely ignores the risk of sea level rise discussed below. It is extraordinary that these sites have been chosen.
Hence, to quote from one of the recent critical analyses, new nuclear power is “doomed to fail“. It is certainly prone to extreme weather events such as storms, if the proposed sites are used.
Nuclear power supports nuclear weapons
Most countries in the world do not have nuclear weapons. Today, 120 countries belong to the Non-Aligned Movement, committing themselves not to belong to alliances which perpetuate long-term confrontations between states.
The UK Government admits part of its support for existing and new nuclear power stations is to maintain essential supplies to its nuclear weapons programme. What is true for the UK clearly applies to other states with nuclear weapons.
Since nuclear weapons proliferation is against the general interest of all species on the planet, phasing out both nuclear power and nuclear weapons would be rational when alternatives exist, are becoming cheaper, and are expanding in use year after year.
New nuclear is too expensive to consider
Nuclear power is notoriously expensive. The International Energy Agency reported in 2023 that new solar and on-shore wind are cheaper than fossil fuels. Greenpeace has summarised the current situation, comparing renewables to nuclear, as follows:
“The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt-hour (MWh), the World Nuclear Industry Status Report said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189 per MWh. Over the past decade, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report estimates levelised costs… for utility-scale solar have dropped by 88% and for wind by 69%. According to the same report, these costs have increased by 23% for nuclear.”
Worse for the British Government, an authoritative report asserts that the new nuclear power in the UK would actually be the world’s most expensive. Support by political parties in the UK for nuclear power is therefore a choice of the most expensive of options under consideration.
Jonathon Porritt, former head of the Government’s Sustainable Development Commission, has indicated that the cost of Hinkley C and Sizewell C are both likely to rise to about £75bn each. Others have argued that nuclear power may simply not be cost-effective in relation to realistic cost assessments including paying for very long-term radioactive waste storage.
The toxic twins: Hinkley C and Sizewell C
“Hinkley C in Somerset will cost the energy bill payer up to £17.6bn in subsidies. The agreed price of £92.50 per MW/hour is over double the current wholesale price at just over £41 per MW/hour.” (People Against Wylfa-B)
The construction costs were already predicted to rise by a third in early 2024, illustrating the general problem of high-cost infrastructure in the UK. Sizewell C costs were also predicted to double in early 2025.
Nuclear is never ‘clean’
The UK is going ‘all out’ to be a clean energy superpower, said Keir Starmer. But nuclear power has never been a ‘clean’ technology. Essentially, many alleged solutions to the problem of radioactive nuclear waste need to rely on perfect storage for 100,000 years.
This is a conception worthy of science fiction. Uranium mining is known to cause health problems in proximate populations, often to indigenous peoples.
Small modular nuclear reactors – why bother?
The nuclear industry has problems with scaling up to reduce costs. Nuclear power construction and related expense means reduced costs do not materialise.
The small modular reactor (SMR) is allegedly going to change this. However, a US Department of Energy report of September 2024 suggested a cost per megawatt more than 50% higher than for large reactors.
There are only three operating SMRs: one in China, with a 300% cost overrun, and two in Russia, with 400% cost overrun. In March, a Financial Times analysis labelled such small reactors “the most expensive energy source.” Others concur that SMRs are very expensive, and slow to construct, with negative environmental implications.
Sea level rise and nuclear sites
All eight of the Government’s preferred sites for new nuclear power development are coastal. There are concerns about the impact of sea-level rises for all the sites. There should also be concerns about storms increasing in power and frequency too as the climate changes.
Hinkley and Sizewell are already in development. Will an island be created to protect the proposed Sizewell C site from the sea? Does the Government privately think this might be necessary for all eight sites?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) may have under-estimated sea level rise up to 2100. Scientific papers have been predicting higher sea level rises than the IPCC since at least 2012. It has been suggested that: “All energy-related infrastructure is at risk from the impacts of climate change, especially due to the changing frequency and intensity of surface water and coastal flooding.”
And the rate of sea level rise has been increasing. Very low-lying sites like that of Sizewell C should be abandoned. And back in 1981, the Hinkley Point site was flooded, forcing closure of a nuclear power station there for a week.
Communities with nuclear legacies need alternatives
Communities with declining nuclear industry work would need alternative jobs. This is a general need for all localities experiencing employment transitions.
Each district and unitary council should have its own Green New Deal to promote and directly support just transitions. This would involve re-introducing a version of the Community Programme of the 1980s to employ people in projects and programmes, in cooperation with local voluntary bodies where possible. This should both support existing sustainability initiatives and help introduce new ones.
Training on the job should feature, to provide a better range of local skills appropriate to a just transition in areas like construction, forestry and nature, gardening, agriculture, energy efficiency, installing heat pumps in homes and more.
Just transition or another failure to future-proof the UK?
The colossal financial impact of nuclear power in the past and future in the UK is difficult to calculate, especially when radioactive waste storage is considered. The repercussions of public spending on this technology and its aftermath include inadequate spending on sustainable retrofitting of the existing built environment.
We certainly need electricity. We have never needed it to be specifically from nuclear power. The scale and diversity of energy alternatives are more than enough to meet future needs, including by increasing battery storage to address any potential problems in maintaining baseload supply.
Political will is absent. The long shadow of nuclear power remains in place over the major political parties, at public expense and with zero long-term vision.
To Trump, a million casualties in Ukraine war he’s enabling, is nothing more than a kids’ fistfight
Actually, it takes three to tango since the war goes on because Trump continues enabling it with billions in weapons, logistics and Intel support. Pull that away and Ukraine’s Zelensky would have to negotiate the peace he ran away from in April 2022 at America’s behest. Had he made peace then Zelensky would still control the 45,000 square miles annexed and not incurred over a million senseless casualties.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 7 June 25
The depravity of Trump’s view of catastrophic war was on full display in his White House meeting with fellow Ukraine war enabler, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Trump told reporters present about the million plus dead and wounded in the largely degraded Ukraine:
To Trump, a million casualties in Ukraine war he’s enabling is nothing more than a kids’ fistfight
The depravity of Trump’s view of catastrophic war was on full display in his White House meeting with fellow Ukraine war enabler, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Trump told reporters present about the million plus dead and wounded in the largely degraded Ukraine:
Actually, it takes three to tango since the war goes on because Trump continues enabling it with billions in weapons, logistics and Intel support. Pull that away and Ukraine’s Zelensky would have to negotiate the peace he ran away from in April 2022 at America’s behest. Had he made peace then Zelensky would still control the 45,000 square miles annexed and not incurred over a million senseless casualties.
And cruel, clueless, delusional Trump sits back pretending he’s still concerned about ending a catastrophic war he’s enabled for the past 137 days.
Defence review dodges Britain’s nuclear blind spot.
THE UK’s nuclear enterprise is in crisis. Not just because of cost
overruns or ageing submarines, but because of the deepening secrecy and
silence that surrounds it. That silence should have been broken by the
Labour Government’s new Strategic Defence Review 2025.
Instead, it was quietly reinforced. Presented as a roadmap to “Make Britain Safer”, the
review promised clarity and accountability, but it fails to confront the
most pressing truths: that the UK’s nuclear programme is financially
unsustainable, strategically unbalanced, increasingly unaccountable and a
real and present danger to us all.
These concerns are not hypothetical. In
the final months of the last Parliament, I raised them on the floor of the
House of Commons, not out of party dogma, but in response to serious and
public allegations from Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to the then
prime minister, remember him? He described Britain’s nuclear
infrastructure as a “dangerous disaster”, responsible for the secret
“cannibalisation” of other national security budgets and shielded from
meaningful scrutiny. Instead of confronting the truth, the review restates
familiar platitudes and leaves the public and Parliament no wiser about the
scale cost, or consequences of the UK’s nuclear commitment. The Defence
Secretary, who heard these warnings first-hand from the opposition bench,
is now in a position to act – he has chosen not to.
The National 8th June 2025,
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/25222635.defence-review-dodges-britains-nuclear-blind-spot/
Protesters raise environmental fears as wait continues for Sizewell C funding announcement
ITV 8 June 2025
Hundreds of people voiced their concerns over the multi-billion pound Sizewell C nuclear power station on the Suffolk coastline ahead of an expected announcement from the Government.
The rally on Sizewell Beach on Saturday, organised by Stop Sizewell C and Together Against Sizewell C, included speeches from campaigners against the major project including Greenpeace members, and musical performances.
The peaceful protest ended with the 300-strong crowd walking to the Sizewell complex and tying ribbons with messages, emphasising people’s concerns, to the gates.
Plans for Sizewell C were given the go ahead by the then Chancellor in November 2022 but the funding is yet to be approved by the Government, although an announcement on the project is expected in Labour’s Spending Review on Wednesday 11 June.
Construction has already started for the nuclear site and surrounding infrastructure on the Suffolk coast which will sit next to the Sizewell B plant, and has already been given £250m in local funding……………….
many people fear the environmental impact of Sizewell C and believe it will destroy the area.
Jenny Kirtley, from Together Against Sizewell C, said: “You’ve only got to look around the area and see the devastation that’s happened. I’ve been fighting this for 12 years. We knew it would be bad, but we didn’t know it would be so devastating. A whole area is changing before our very eyes and it’s heartbreaking.
“There are a huge mountains of earth everywhere and of course the wildlife is suffering. The deers don’t know where to go. They’re rambling around everywhere. The birds are leaving their nests.
“It’s all very well saying it’s going to create thousands of jobs but who’s going to work in the supermarkets, the care homes, the restaurants? This is a small area.
“We’ve got 6,000 people living around here so where are people going to live? We know rents are going sky-high so it’s going to get worse. It’s going to be a real problem.”
Alison Downes, from Stop Sizewell C, also believed the project would be a waste of tax-payers money and said there were better options to provide renewable energy.
She said: “We’ve always had people behind us in the local area. I think a lot of new people have woken up and seen the destruction that’s been caused by the project. They are now feeling the same sense of outrage that we do.
“Sizewell C is too slow, risky and expensive to be the solution to our climate emergency. This is the wrong type of reactor. It’s in the wrong place on an eroding coastline so we are here to express our outrage about Sizewell C.”
The outrage rally, which was the third of it’s kind, was also a tribute to Pete Wilkinson – a former chairman of campaign group, Together Against Sizewell C, who died in January 2025
His daughters Emily and Amy Wilkinson were at the event and spoke about their father.
Emily Wilkinson, 29, said: “Dad was such a fantastic human being. He was a passionate and courageous man who spent his entire life fighting whatever he saw is wrong. That’s what drove him in life. He saw the beauty in the planet and fought for it every single time.”…………………………………………………………….. https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2025-06-07/protesters-take-to-suffolk-beach-against-sizewell-c-plans
US Vice President JD Vance announces new strategy of blatant imperialism, aimed at China
So now, the Trump administration is redirecting US foreign policy to prepare for potential war on China.
“when we send you to war, we do it with a very specific set of goals in mind”.
Vance indicated that the US empire will continue to wage wars, and will try to win those wars through the use of “overwhelming force”. However, this will no longer be done in the name of “democracy” or “human rights”.
US Vice President JD Vance revealed the Trump administration’s “generational shift in [foreign] policy”, emphasizing “great power competition” and preparation for war with China. They’re abandoning soft power and focusing on “hard power” and “overwhelming force”, in a return to blatant, 19th century-style imperialism.
Geopolitical Economy, By Ben Norton, 2 June 25
US Vice President JD Vance has announced what he calls a “new era” in military strategy.
“What we are seeing from President Trump is a generational shift in [foreign] policy”, he claimed.
The Donald Trump administration is abandoning the US government’s previous emphasis on soft power, Vance explained, and is instead focusing on “hard power” and “overwhelming force”, in a return to blatant, 19th century-style imperialism.
According to Vance, Washington’s top priority is now “great power competition”, and preparation for potential war with China.
The vice president laid this out in a speech at the commissioning ceremony of the US Naval Academy on 23 May.
The “era of uncontested US dominance is over”
JD Vance lamented the fact that the US empire has lost its unipolar dominance, as the world has become more multipolar.
“In the wake of the Cold War, America enjoyed a mostly unchallenged command of the commons, airspace, sea, space and cyberspace”, Vance recalled.
“Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, our policymakers assumed that American primacy on the world stage was guaranteed. For a brief time, we were a superpower without any peer, nor did we believe any foreign nation could possibly rise to compete with the United States of America”, he added.
“But the era of uncontested US dominance is over”, Vance warned. “Today we face serious threats in China, Russia, and other nations, determined to beat us in every single domain.
Preparing for war on China
The US vice president complained that, in the past, “our leaders traded hard power for soft power”. He argued that this was an error, and that the US empire should have focused on containing China.
“Instead of devoting our energies to responding to the rise of near-peer competitors like China, our leaders pursued what they assumed would be easy jobs for the world’s preeminent superpower”, Vance said.
“Our government took its eye off the ball of great power competition and preparing to take on a peer adversary, and instead, we devoted ourselves to sprawling, amorphous tasks, like searching for new terrorists to take out while building up far away regimes”, he added.
The vice president argued that it was a mistake to think that, by deepening economic integration and trade with China, the US could pressure Beijing to change its socialist system.
“Too many of us believed that economic integration would naturally lead to peace by making countries like the People’s Republic of China more like the United States”, he lamented.
In other words, Vance was acknowledging that many officials in Washington wanted China to become an obedient proxy, like Japan. They thought they could pressure Beijing to subordinate itself to the US, but they ultimately failed.
So now, the Trump administration is redirecting US foreign policy to prepare for potential war on China.
A return to a more blatant form of imperialism
Some Trump supporters have taken Vance’s comments out of context to claim that the Trump administration is supposedly moving away from a hyper-interventionist foreign policy and toward a more restrained, isolationist one. But that is not what is happening.
Vance’s speech made it clear that the Trump administration wants to return to a more overt, traditional form of imperialism.
What is changing is that the Trump administration is dropping the cynical propaganda narrative that US foreign policy is supposedly motivated by “democracy promotion” or “human rights”.
Vance indicated that the US empire will continue to wage wars, and will try to win those wars through the use of “overwhelming force”. However, this will no longer be done in the name of “democracy” or “human rights”.
Vance warned US Naval Academy graduates that they are in a “very dangerous era”, and will have a new “mission”.
The vice president stated openly that US troops will be sent to more wars, and that it is not a matter of if, but rather when.
“We’re returning to a strategy grounded in realism and protecting our core national interests”, Vance said. “Now this doesn’t mean that we ignore threats, but it means that we approach them with discipline, and that when we send you to war, we do it with a very specific set of goals in mind”.
Trump admin’s military strategy: “Overwhelming force” and $1 trillion budget
As an example of the new Trump Doctrine, Vance proudly pointed to the Pentagon’s bombing campaign in Yemen, the poorest country in West Asia.
Vance boasted that the Trump administration used “overwhelming force against Houthi military targets”. This was a reference to the so-called “Houthis”, the armed group officially known as Ansarallah that governs northern Yemen.
Trump’s war on Yemen was “how military power should be used: decisively, with a clear objective”, Vance said.
“We ought to be cautious in deciding to throw a punch, but when we throw a punch, we throw a punch hard, and we do it decisively, and that’s exactly what we may ask you to do“, he told the Naval Academy graduates.
Vance added, “With the Trump administration, our adversaries now know when the United States sets a red line, it will be enforced, and when we engage, we do so with purpose, with superior force, with superior weapons, and with the best people anywhere in the world”.
In fact, instead of promoting isolationism and opposing interventionism, the Trump administration is boosting the US military budget to more than $1 trillion per year.
“I’ll be supporting a record-setting $1 trillion investment in our national defense”, Trump said in a speech at a US military base in April. “We’re going to go $1 trillion, the largest in the world, the largest ever in our country”.
“No other country has invested that much”, Trump bragged. “We have a $1 trillion budget for military this year, and we have tremendous plans”.
US ideological crusades
In one of the most hypocritical parts of his speech at the US Naval Academy graduation ceremony, JD Vance claimed that the Trump administration is carrying out a “shift in thinking, from ideological crusades to a principled foreign policy”.
This was deeply ironic, because Trump’s extremely hawkish secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, is a self-declared “crusader”.
In his 2020 book “American Crusade”, Hegseth — a former Fox News host — wrote with pride that the US right wing is waging a “holy war” against China, the international left, and Islam.
Hegseth, an ardent hawk, has sought to rebrand US soldiers as “warfighters”, constantly using the term in his public remarks.
In his speech at the Naval Academy, Vance did the same, repeatedly praising US soldiers as “warfighters”.
Marco Rubio: China is the main target of the US government
Top officials in the Trump administration have made it clear that the main target of the US empire is China.
JD Vance conveyed this in his speech at the US Naval Academy.
It has also been repeatedly emphasized by Marco Rubio, a lifelong neoconservative war hawk, who is serving simultaneously as Trump’s secretary of state and national security advisor (making him only the second person in US history to hold both positions at the same time, following Henry Kissinger).
In his Senate confirmation hearing in January, Rubio stressed that this entire century will be built on Washington’s new cold war against China……………………………….https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/05/31/us-vp-jd-vance-strategy-imperialism-china/
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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