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Experts Warn Trump Attack on Nuclear Regulator Raises Disaster Risk

“Simply put,” said one critic, “the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority.”

Brett Wilkins, 24 May 25, https://www.commondreams.org/news/nuclear-regulatory-commission-trump

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday signed a series of executive orders that will overhaul the independent federal agency that regulates the nation’s nuclear power plants in order to speed the construction of new fissile reactors—a move that experts warned will increase safety risks.

According to a White House statement, Trump’s directives “will usher in a nuclear energy renaissance,” in part by allowing Department of Energy laboratories to conduct nuclear reactor design testing, green-lighting reactor construction on federal lands, and lifting regulatory barriers “by requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to issue timely licensing decisions.”

The Trump administration is seeking to shorten the yearslong NRC process of approving new licenses for nuclear power plants and reactors to withinf 18 months.

“If you aren’t independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident.”

White House Office of Science and Technology Director Michael Kratsios said Friday that “over the last 30 years, we stopped building nuclear reactors in America—that ends now.”

“We are restoring a strong American nuclear industrial base, rebuilding a secure and sovereign domestic nuclear fuel supply chain, and leading the world towards a future fueled by American nuclear energy,” he added.

However, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) warned that the executive orders will result in “all but nullifying” the NRC’s regulatory process, “undermining the independent federal agency’s ability to develop and enforce safety and security requirements for commercial nuclear facilities.”

“This push by the Trump administration to usurp much of the agency’s autonomy as they seek to fast-ttrack the construction of nuclear plants will weaken critical, independent oversight of the U.S. nuclear industry and poses significant safety and security risks to the public,” UCS added.

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the UCS, 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,” Lyman added. “Such a disaster will destroy public trust in nuclear power and cause other nations to reject U.S. nuclear technology for decades to come.”

Friday’s executive orders follow reporting earlier this month by NPR that revealed the Trump administration has tightened control over the NRC, in part by compelling the agency to send proposed reactor safety rules to the White House for review and possible editing.

Allison Macfarlane, who was nominated to head the NRC during the Obama administration, called the move “the end of independence of the agency.”

“If you aren’t independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident,” Macfarlane warned.

On the first day of his second term, Trump also signed executive orders declaring a dubious “national energy emergency” and directing federal agencies to find ways to reduce regulatory roadblocks to “unleashing American energy,” including by boosting fossil fuels and nuclear power.

The rapid advancement and adoption of artificial intelligence systems is creating a tremendous need for energy that proponents say can be met by nuclear power. The Three Mile Island nuclear plant—the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history—is being revived with funding from Microsoft, while Google parent company Alphabet, online retail giant Amazon, and Facebook owner Meta are among the competitors also investing in nuclear energy.

“Do we really want to create more radioactive waste to power the often dubious and questionable uses of AI?” Johanna Neumann, Environment America Research & Policy Center’s senior director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, asked in December.

“Big Tech should recommit to solutions that not only work but pose less risk to our environment and health,” Neumann added.

May 26, 2025 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s Golden Dome Is a Combover

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 21, 2025, https://worldbeyondwar.org/trumps-golden-dome-is-a-combover/

According to world-leading war-profiteer Lockheed Martin, its Golden Dome, marketed for it by Donald Trump, “stands as a layered defense shield, safeguarding the American homeland with unwavering precision, ensuring the security and resilience of our nation.” But it doesn’t exactly “stand” anywhere in the present day or what some of us like to call “reality.” Rather, it’s one of those scientific research projects Trump loves to defund if they might succeed or do anyone any good. In the words of Lockheed Martin, the Golden Dome will try to “develop game-changing tech – like space-based interceptors and hypersonic defenses.” In case you’ve been in a daze since Ronald Reagan was pushing non-functioning space-based interceptors, Ronald Reagan was pushing this same madness, and it’s never gone away.

The Golden Dome is guaranteed to waste vast resources desperately needed by people.

The Golden Dome is guaranteed to do tremendous environmental damage in production, testing, and accidents — and especially if ever used.

The Golden Dome is guaranteed to kick start a crazed race to weaponize space by a number of governments, all but one of which have long been trying to ban space weaponization by treaty. It will also fuel arms races to develop new weapons to evade defenses, and to duplicate and out-do the Golden Dome.

The Golden Dome is highly unlikely to actually ever protect anyone from anything.

The Golden Dome is definitely going to be perceived as an aggressive threat by most of the world — already by China, no matter how many times the word “defense” is uttered. It will therefore be a blow to disarmament, cooperation, and the rule of law.

The Golden Dome is the belief in militarism taken to its logical extreme, so it’s very interesting that most of the militarists don’t like it any more than I do.

Here’s the BBC doing its level best to report on this insanity with a straight face:

“An initial sum of $25bn (£18.7bn) has been earmarked in a new budget bill – although the government has estimated it could end up costing 20 times that over decades. There are also doubts about whether the US will be able to deliver a comprehensive defence system for such a huge land mass. Officials warn that existing systems have not kept pace with increasingly sophisticated weapons possessed by potential adversaries. A briefing document recently released by the Defense Intelligence Agency noted that missile threats ‘will expand in scale and sophistication’, with China and Russia actively designing systems ‘to exploit gaps’ in US defences. . . . ‘Israel’s missile defence challenge is a lot easier than one in the United States,’ Marion Messmer, a senior research fellow at London-based Chatham House, told the New York Times. ‘The geography is much smaller and the angles and directions and the types of missiles are more limited.’ Shashank Joshi, defence editor at the Economist, told the BBC the Golden Dome would probably work by using thousands of satellites to spot and track missiles and then use interceptors in orbit to fire at the missiles as they take off and take them out. He said the US military would take the plan very seriously but it was unrealistic to think it would be completed during Trump’s term, and the huge cost would suck up a large chunk of the US defence budget.”

Here’s The Independent not even trying:

“[T]he Golden Dome is overly ambitious in a way that is typical of Trump. Like his infamously unfinished and useless wall along the Mexican border, it is supposedly ‘visionary’, but is, in reality, flawed and vastly expensive. There is no reason why the relatively small Iron Dome system, designed to frustrate short to medium-range missiles, could be scaled up in anything like the way necessary to withstand a sustained attack from intercontinental ballistic missiles or rockets from space itself. Even if it could be made to work, it may not be 100 per cent effective, as is the case with Israel’s Iron Dome – and you wouldn’t want to be in a position where you’d need to find out. By that point, you’d have spent far in excess of Trump’s optimistic costing of $175bn finding out. Maybe he should ask his now strangely absent friend Elon Musk about whether the Golden Dome is a good use of American taxpayers’ money. This brings us to the next typically Trumpian problem: it’s not very well thought through. When Reagan proposed his Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) in 1983, it was obvious who he had in mind – the Russians. Yet now Trump wants to befriend them and partner up with Putin, and maybe even Presidents Xi, Kim and others in a global strongman alliance. If Golden Dome is protecting America, who is it protecting it from? As yet unknown and unforeseen enemies would be a rational answer, but not if Trump wants to make friends with them all.”

That last argument would be stronger if Trump and his supposed allies were disarming, rather than rapidly building up weapons to slaughter each other’s people and the rest of humanity. Unfortunately, the Golden Dome is a giant declaration that the United States will never be part of global cooperation and disarmament.

May 26, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Coalition urges Carney to drop nuclear from energy plan

by Abdul Matin Sarfraz, National Observer, May 23, 2025

A coalition of First Nations, physicians and environmental organizations is ramping up pressure on Prime Minister Mark Carney to drop nuclear energy from his “energy superpower” strategy, warning it comes with high costs, long delays and long-term risks.

In an open letter, dozens of organizations urge the federal government to halt funding for nuclear development and instead prioritize renewables, energy efficiency and storage. The letter warns that new nuclear projects are likely to increase electricity costs while delaying meaningful climate action.

“We are concerned that you may be unduly influenced by the nuclear and fossil industry lobbies,” reads the letter.

During the federal election campaign, Carney pledged to make Canada “the world’s leading energy superpower,” focusing on clean and conventional energy. His platform promised faster project approvals and a national clean electricity grid, among other energy promises. The coalition sent their letter in an effort to ensure Carney does not invest more significantly in nuclear energy, as he prepares to set his government’s agenda and ministers’ mandates.

While Carney’s plan doesn’t mention nuclear energy, he praised it during the first leaders’ debate and referenced two companies in the sector he previously worked with at Brookfield Asset Management…………………………………………..

In an open letter, dozens of organizations urge the federal government to halt funding for nuclear development and instead prioritize renewables, energy efficiency and storage.

The federal government — through the Canada Infrastructure Bank — has committed $970 million in low-cost financing to Ontario’s Darlington New Nuclear Project, which aims to build Canada’s first grid-scale small modular reactor. 

The federal government also invested millions in Moltex Clean Energy, a New Brunswick-based company developing a technology called Waste to Stable Salt, which aims to recycle nuclear waste into new energy. 

Jean-Pierre Finet, spokesperson for le Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie, one of the organizations that signed the open letter, said he worries about the long-term future of any nuclear plants built today without a plan for their waste.

“We object to our federal taxpayer dollars being spent on developing more nuclear reactors that could be abandoned in place, ultimately transforming communities into radioactively contaminated sites and nuclear waste dumps that will require more federal dollars to clean up,” Finet said. 

Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and a longtime nuclear critic, says the federal government is backing the slowest and most expensive energy option on the table.

“In a climate emergency, you have to invest in things that are faster and cheaper,” Edwards said. “Canada hasn’t built new reactors in decades. There’s no practical experience left, and what’s being proposed now is largely speculative.”

“We’re very concerned about a misappropriation of public money and investment in what we see as a losing strategy,” Edwards said, stressing that the coalition is not asking private companies to stop building plants — but rather asking the federal government to stop subsidizing them. 

International concerns echo at home

Much of the current controversy focuses on Ontario’s Darlington New Nuclear Project, as growing skepticism around the cost of small modular reactors mirrors global concerns.

In the US, two nuclear reactors in South Carolina were abandoned after $12.5 billion (CAD) had already been spent, triggering the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Nuclear — now owned by Canadian firms Brookfield and Cameco. Meanwhile, two completed Vogtle reactors in Georgia came in at $48 billion, more than double the original $19-billion estimate, making them among the most expensive infrastructure projects in US history.

In the UK and Europe, new nuclear power project efforts are facing delays, budget overruns, or outright cancellations.

………………………………ome energy experts say the small modular reactor path is out of sync with climate timelines and economic realities. “Nuclear is a very high-cost and high-risk option,” said Mark Winfield, professor at York University and co-chair of its Sustainable Energy Initiative. “These subsidies divert resources from much less costly and lower-risk options for decarbonizing energy systems. The focus on nuclear can delay more substantive climate action.” 

Winfield calls small modular reactors “a distraction and likely a dead end,” warning that the technology carries catastrophic accident, safety, security and weapons proliferation risks not found in any other form of energy production. 

Winfield said Canada lacks a significant comparative advantage in energy production beyond its legacy hydro assets, and remains a relatively high-cost fossil fuel producer.

“There is no reason to believe that we would be better at other energy production technologies (nuclear, renewables) than anyone else,”  Winfield added in an email. ome energy experts say the small modular reactor path is out of sync with climate timelines and economic realities. “Nuclear is a very high-cost and high-risk option,” said Mark Winfield, professor at York University and co-chair of its Sustainable Energy Initiative. “These subsidies divert resources from much less costly and lower-risk options for decarbonizing energy systems. The focus on nuclear can delay more substantive climate action.” 

Winfield calls small modular reactors “a distraction and likely a dead end,” warning that the technology carries catastrophic accident, safety, security and weapons proliferation risks not found in any other form of energy production. 

Winfield said Canada lacks a significant comparative advantage in energy production beyond its legacy hydro assets, and remains a relatively high-cost fossil fuel producer.

“There is no reason to believe that we would be better at other energy production technologies (nuclear, renewables) than anyone else,”  Winfield added in an email.ome energy experts say the small modular reactor path is out of sync with climate timelines and economic realities. “Nuclear is a very high-cost and high-risk option,” said Mark Winfield, professor at York University and co-chair of its Sustainable Energy Initiative. “These subsidies divert resources from much less costly and lower-risk options for decarbonizing energy systems. The focus on nuclear can delay more substantive climate action.” 

Winfield calls small modular reactors “a distraction and likely a dead end,” warning that the technology carries catastrophic accident, safety, security and weapons proliferation risks not found in any other form of energy production. 

Winfield said Canada lacks a significant comparative advantage in energy production beyond its legacy hydro assets, and remains a relatively high-cost fossil fuel producer.

“There is no reason to believe that we would be better at other energy production technologies (nuclear, renewables) than anyone else,”  Winfield added in an email.ome energy experts say the small modular reactor path is out of sync with climate timelines and economic realities. “Nuclear is a very high-cost and high-risk option,” said Mark Winfield, professor at York University and co-chair of its Sustainable Energy Initiative. “These subsidies divert resources from much less costly and lower-risk options for decarbonizing energy systems. The focus on nuclear can delay more substantive climate action.” 

Winfield calls small modular reactors “a distraction and likely a dead end,” warning that the technology carries catastrophic accident, safety, security and weapons proliferation risks not found in any other form of energy production. 

Winfield said Canada lacks a significant comparative advantage in energy production beyond its legacy hydro assets, and remains a relatively high-cost fossil fuel producer.

“There is no reason to believe that we would be better at other energy production technologies (nuclear, renewables) than anyone else,”  Winfield added in an email.ome energy experts say the small modular reactor path is out of sync with climate timelines and economic realities. “Nuclear is a very high-cost and high-risk option,” said Mark Winfield, professor at York University and co-chair of its Sustainable Energy Initiative. “These subsidies divert resources from much less costly and lower-risk options for decarbonizing energy systems. The focus on nuclear can delay more substantive climate action.” 

Winfield calls small modular reactors “a distraction and likely a dead end,” warning that the technology carries catastrophic accident, safety, security and weapons proliferation risks not found in any other form of energy production. 

Winfield said Canada lacks a significant comparative advantage in energy production beyond its legacy hydro assets, and remains a relatively high-cost fossil fuel producer.

“There is no reason to believe that we would be better at other energy production technologies (nuclear, renewables) than anyone else,”  Winfield added in an email. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/05/23/news/civil-society-first-nations-groups-carney-nuclear-energy-plan?nih=cCuxV9ZjIGLlEj3vVOQpRJBIfmNu0W4xzKEBn8bDrx8&utm_source=National+Observer&utm_campaign=d2c908330f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_05_23_02_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cacd0f141f-d2c908330f-277064766

May 26, 2025 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Is Impossible—and It’ll Make Defense Companies a Ton of Money.

A new study detailed all the problems with plans to shoot a missile out of the sky.

By Matthew Gault Gizmodo, April 6, 2025

The Pentagon is expected to deliver plans for a “Golden Dome” to Trump this week. In the crudest sense, the Golden Dome is a missile defense system that would shoot nukes, missiles, and drones that threaten the U.S. out of the sky. A scientific study published earlier this month detailed the scientific impossibility of the scheme

America has tried to build a missile defense system since before Ronald Reagan was president. Reagan wanted to put satellites into space that would use lasers to blast Soviet nukes out of the sky. What we built was somewhat more pedestrian. It also probably won’t work. But defense contractors made a lot of money.

“When engineers have been under intense political pressure to deploy a system, the United States has repeatedly initiated costly programs that proved unable to deal with key technical challenges and were eventually abandoned as their inadequacies became apparent,” explained a new study from the American Physical Society Panel on Public Affairs.

Under Trump, we’re going to do it again.

Trump signed an executive order on January 27 that called on the Pentagon to come up with a plan for an “Iron Dome for America,” which the President and others have taken to calling a “Golden Dome.” According to the EO, Trump wants a plan that’ll keep the homeland safe from “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.”

The dream of the Golden Dome is simple: shoot missiles out of the sky before they can do any damage. “It’s important to not simply think of Golden Dome as the next iteration of the ground-based missile defense system or solely a missile defense system because it’s a broader mission than that,” Jonathan Moneymaker, the CEO of BlueHalo, a defense company working on Golden Dome adjacent tech, told Gizmodo.

Moneymaker was clear-eyed about the challenges of building Golden Dome. “Everyone looks at it as a replication of Israel’s Iron Dome, but we have to appreciate that Israel’s the size of New Jersey,” he said.

Israel’s Iron Dome has done a great job shooting down Hamas rockets and Iranian missiles. It’s also covering a small territory and shooting down projectiles that aren’t moving as fast as a nuclear weapon or a Russian Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile might. The pitch of the Golden Dome is that it would keep the whole of the continental U.S. safe. That’s a massive amount of territory to cover and the system would need to identify, track, and destroy nuclear weapons, drones, and other objects moving at high speed.

That’s like trying to shoot a bullet out of the sky with a bullet. The missile defense study, published on March 3, detailed a few of the challenges facing a potential Golden Dome-style system.

Trump’s executive order is vague and covers a lot of potential threats. “We focus on the fundamental question of whether current and proposed systems intended to defend the United States against nuclear-armed [intercontinental ballistic missile] now effective, or could in the near future be made effective in preventing the death and destruction that a successful attack by North Korea on the United States using such ICBMs would produce.”

Stopping a nuke is the primary promise of a missile system. And if one of these systems can’t stop a nuke then of what use is it?

The study isn’t positive. “This is the most comprehensive, independent scientific study in decades on the feasibility of national ballistic missile defense. Its findings may shock Americans who have not paid much attention to these programs,” Joseph Cirincione told Gimzodo.

Cirincione is the retired president of the Ploughshares Fund and a former Congressional staffer. He investigated missile defense systems and nukes for the House Armed Services Committee. “We have no chance of stopping a determined ballistic missile attack on the United States despite four decades of trying and over $400 billion spent. This is the mother of all scandals,” he said………………………………………………………………………………………………..

So we’re talking about ringing the planet in thousands of munitions-armed satellites. And remember that this is just to handle one nuke launched by North Korea. Imagine scaling up a similar defense shield to guard against all the nukes in Russia and you’ll begin to see the size of the problem………………………………. https://gizmodo.com/trumps-golden-dome-is-impossible-and-itll-make-defense-companies-a-ton-of-money-2000584372

May 25, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Canada wants to join Golden Dome missile-defence program, Trump says

Ottawa confirms it’s talking to U.S. about major multi-year program

Alexander Panetta · CBC News ·May 20, 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/golden-dome-trump-us-missile-defence-canada-1.7539390

Donald Trump says Canada has asked to join the missile-defence program his administration is building, adding a new chapter to a long-running cross-border saga.

The U.S. president dropped that news in the Oval Office on Tuesday as he unveiled the initial plans for a three-year, $175 billion US project to build a multi-purpose missile shield he’s calling the Golden Dome.

“Canada has called us and they want to be a part of it,” Trump said. “They want to hook in and they want to be a part of it.”

Canada will pay its “fair share,” he added. “We’ll work with them on pricing.”

Ottawa confirmed it’s talking to the U.S. about this but added a caveat. In a statement, the federal government cast missile-defence discussions as unresolved and as part of the overall trade and security negotiations Prime Minister Mark Carney is having with Trump. 

What this means is still extremely murky. It’s unclear what, exactly, Canada would contribute; what its responsibilities would include; what it would pay; and how different this arrangement would be from what Canada already does under the Canada-U.S. NORAD system.

Refused to join

Canada has long participated in tracking North American skies through NORAD, and feeds that data into the U.S. missile-defence program.

But Canada never officially joined the U.S. missile program, which was a source of controversy in Ottawa in the early 2000s when Prime Minister Paul Martin’s government refused to join.

That previous refusal means Canadians can monitor the skies but not participate in any decision about when to launch a hypothetical strike against incoming objects.

New developments have forced the long-dormant issue back onto the agenda. 

For starters, the U.S. is creating a new system to track various types of missiles — one more sophisticated and multi-layered than Israel’s Iron Dome, intended to detect intercontinental, hypersonic and shorter-range cruise weapons. 

And this happens to be occurring as Canada’s sensors in the Arctic are aging out of use. Canada has committed to refurbishing those sensors.

Rumblings of Canada’s interest started months ago

The first public indication that these combined factors were fuelling a policy shift in Canada came in public comments made earlier this year in Washington.

One U.S. senator said, in February, that he’d heard interest in the missile program from a Canadian colleague, then-defence minister Bill Blair.

Blair publicly acknowledged the interest, saying that, given the upgrades being planned by both the U.S. and Canada, the partnership “makes sense.”

But the form of Canadian participation is, again, unclear. The U.S. commander for NORAD appeared recently to suggest that Canada’s participation will be limited to tracking threats.

One missile-defence analyst says it sounds like an extension of existing Canada-U.S. co-operation through NORAD. Still, says Wes Rumbaugh, it’s interesting that Trump chose to draw attention to it. Trump mentioned Canada’s role several times, unprompted, during his announcement Tuesday.

As for the president’s three-year timeframe, Rumbaugh calls it a long shot. He predicts that only part of the system could be built in that period, and that it will take more years, and more funding, to complete.

It could take much, much more funding. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this project could cost hundreds of billions more than the $175 billion US figure cited by the president. 

“This is still a significant challenge,” said Rumbaugh, a fellow in the missile defence project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington.

“We’re talking about sort of a next-generation and a widely enhanced missile-defence system. We’re talking about a step-change evolution in American air and missile defence systems that will require significant investment over potentially a long time period.”

Canada confirms Golden Dome discussions

Nearly three hours after Trump’s announcement, Ottawa confirmed the discussions are happening. An evening statement from Carney’s office said Canadians gave the prime minister an electoral mandate to negotiate a comprehensive new security and economic relationship with the U.S.

“To that end, the prime minister and his ministers are having wide-ranging and constructive discussions with their American counterparts,” said the statement. 

“These discussions naturally include strengthening NORAD and related initiatives such as the Golden Dome.”

A Canadian cabinet minister involved in similar discussions in the early 2000s says it’s high time the conversation resumed. 

“I see this as a positive,” said David Pratt, a Liberal defence minister in the first Martin cabinet. 

He favoured Canada’s participation in a North American missile defence system back then but says the government blanched out of fear of political blowback, with its minority government fragile. 

He said the refusal to join came with a cost. In part, NORAD lost part of its potential vocation, as missile interception became a U.S.-only activity, and related research and manufacturing opportunities flowed to the U.S., he said. 

The specific U.S. ask of Canada was never fully defined back then, he said. Pratt recalls negotiations having just gotten underway about what role Canada would play and whether it would merely host sensors or also interceptors on its soil.

I’m hoping we’ll see NORAD assume what should have been its rightful role,” he told CBC News. 

May 25, 2025 Posted by | Canada, weapons and war | Leave a comment

I wrote a speech for Trump’s Golden Dome defense. Get ready to feel something.

Golden comes first, of course, because the entire thing will be made of gold, which everyone knows is the strongest of all the metals. That’s why I use it in all my properties.

Rex Huppke, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/05/22/trump-golden-dome-missile-defense/83776830007/

After watching President Donald Trump announce plans for a $175 billion “Golden Dome” missile-defense system, I took the liberty of preparing him a speech to better introduce the country to this sure-to-be fabulous and best-ever multilayered space-weapon extravaganza. He says it will be “fully operational before the end of my term,” so it seems a strong sales pitch is in order.

Here goes:

Hello America, it’s me, your favorite president of all time, currently polling higher than any president in history, except for in a few FAKE polls. In keeping with my promise to protect all Americans, except for the few I might accidentally deport or imprison because they say mean things about me — nobody will miss them, and it will all be totally legal and totally cool — I’m excited to give you some more details about our big, beautiful, totally golden Golden Dome, a super-impenetrable anti-missile — it’s so anti-missile you won’t believe it — defense system.

Let’s look at these two beautiful words: golden and dome. Golden comes first, of course, because the entire thing will be made of gold, which everyone knows is the strongest of all the metals. That’s why I use it in all my properties. Tough stuff. I had a big contractor come up to me one time — a huge, tough guy, tears in his eyes — and he said, “Mr. President, you’re the only one smart enough to use gold this much. Nobody else gets it like you do.” It’s so true.

The second word is DOME. I love domes. They’re like a ball, only half. The best half, of course, that being the one on top. Ask any basketball player and they’ll tell you the top half of the ball — what they call the dome — is the best. So many baskets.

Now this dome, aside from being made of gold, will be a slightly different shape than most domes. Not a lot of people know this, but America is not round. I pointed this out to some of my people the other day, and they said, “Sir, that’s such a good point. We never thought of that.”

So I came up with the fact that America is not round. If you look at a map, it’s more kind of a rectangle. And of course it’s flat. Completely flat. They say the earth is round — although some very smart people don’t agree with that — but it’s clear from any map that America, at least, is completely flat.

So you have this big, flat rectangle, and we’re going to protect it from missiles using a Golden Dome that will be more of a rectangle-ish-shaped dome. It could also be a series of domes, I suppose. But like a bunch of domes forming a giant, flat rectangle. We’ll see.

But as I said, it will be impenetrable, and that will be thanks to space and lasers and other things that very smart people like myself totally understand. It’s going to be so fantastic, really. Our Golden Dome will be the best roughly rectangular dome anyone has ever seen.

Now, some losers out there are already complaining about this perfect plan. A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman named Mao Ning said our beautiful, perfect flat-and-rectangular dome of gold “heightens the risk of space becoming a battlefield.”

Well, I’ve got news for you, Mao. I’m pretty sure space is already a battlefield. Love is a battlefield — I’ve heard many say that — and that means space is definitely a battlefield too. And it’s a battlefield we’re going to win with our precious, precious gold and tough lasers.

Some in the fake news have whined like little losers about the cost. We have $25 billion in the big, beautiful tax bill that is currently moving through Congress. And the cost of the whole thing — and can you really put a cost on gold or domes? — will be easily covered by cuts to services that for far too long have been going to ungrateful poor people who have no gold.

Many of those poor people are supporters of mine, of course, and I love them dearly, and they love me. But they’ll understand if we make a few little — or possibly very large, because large is good, we love large — cuts to Medicaid and Medicare while also adding trillions to the debt Republicans used to care about. They’ll understand that’s a perfect decision when they look into the sky and see those giant sheets of beautiful gold protecting us from missiles, and they’ll know their hunger is worth it for our protection. Trust me, they will. Those people will believe anything.

As everyone knows, everything I’ve ever built is perfect and infallible. And that will be the case with our amazing, patriotic Golden Dome. You can now purchase scale models of the dome — gold-plated and of the very highest quality — on my website, and 1% of all sales will go to building the dome or to dome marketing.

MAKE AMERICA DOME AGAIN!

May 25, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Two stories: Denmark’s soaring renewable success and global nuclear construction disaster

Denmark will soon achieve 100% electricity from wind and solar; but across the world nuclear power construction cost overruns soar

David Toke, May 22, 2025, https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/two-stories-denmarks-soaring-renewable

Two stories emerged on May 19th giving diametrically opposed results; one is very positive news for the booming deployment of renewable energy but the other is crushingly bad for nuclear power prospects. Renewables will make up more than of Danish 100% electricity in a couple of years time and just wind and solar not long after that. On the other hand a new study concludes that, around the world, nuclear power projects have cost overruns that are over 100%. Solar and wind have very low, if any cost overruns.

Danish renewables to reach 100 per cent of electricity

You can see the shares of electricity generation for Denmark in 2024 in Figure 1. Wind and solar already make up 69 per cent of generation and together with bioenergy they made up 87 per cent of electricity generation. But wind and solar generation is increasing rapidly. The different shares of power production can be seen in Figure 1.

Denmark blazed the trail for wind power starting in the 1970s as farmers and wind cooperatives put up their own wind turbines. Initially the turbines were only 20 kW in peak output. But the latest planned offshore windfarm will have turbines of 20 MW in size – a thousand times bigger! The early start for wind power in Denmark boosted its industry tremendously. Today Denmark also hosts Vestas, the largest wind generator manufacturer in the world.

There are still a trickle of onshore wind turbines being built. However, these days most of the new wind capacity is coming from offshore wind. The 1.08GW Thor windfarm that is currently being built will be fully operational in 2027. [on original]…………………………………………………………………………

Academic study reveals enormous average nuclear cost overruns around the world

Meanwhile, on the same day as the announcement of the forthcoming auction for the Danish offshore windfarms, an academic paper was announced which showed truly awful results for the nuclear industry. The study scoured the world for details on as many energy infrastructure projects that coud reliably be found – 662 in all – including 204 nuclear power plant constructions.

The researchers found that the average cost overrun for nuclear power plant was a staggering 102.5 per cent. That means that the construction costs were more than double the cost that was originally estimated before the construction started. What makes this figure all the more remarkable is that this was an average across the whole of the world.

The study includes Eastern countries like China. In these states there is still the specialist industrial skills (and more relaxed health and safety at work regulations) required to deliver nuclear power stations at anywhere near their projected construction time. Yet, in western countries, the construction cost overruns are much worse. Essentially, in western conditions, it has become impossible to deliver nuclear power plant at anything below astonomical costs.

I should add that there is an incredible amount of nonsense being spouted at the moment about how ‘small modular reactors’ are some way of saving nuclear power. Apart from occasioning a small amount of ultra-expensive nuclear capacity they are nothing of the sort. They are much worse in economic terms than even conventional reactors. See my discussion ‘Why small modular reactors do not exist – history gives the answer’. See HERE.

It is a completely different matter for renewable energy projects of course, where cost overruns are very low. But, from the press coverage, you would not guess all of this! 

Conclusion

As we can see from this post Denmark is, within a few years, about to be the first country in the world with a net surplus of wind and solar power. Interestingly this is the country that turned its head against nuclear power forty years ago, although it never bult any nuclear power plant before then. I have heard an incredible amount of what could be described as nonsensical disinformation in the mainstream press about how nuclear power is accelerating around the world and even that is some sort of way renewables are in crisis. The reality is the exact opposite as the information in this post demonstrates.

May 25, 2025 Posted by | Denmark, renewable | Leave a comment

Civil society says nuclear deserves no place in Prime Minister Carney’s “Energy Superpower” project.

Gordon Edwards, May 21, 2025

Today 131 civil society and Indigenous groups representing many thousands of members across Canada reminded Prime Minister Mark Carney that climate action requires renewable – not nuclear – energy.

In an open letter to Prime Minister Carney, available HERE, representatives from the civil society and Indigenous groups wrote that building more nuclear reactors is not a cost-effective, clean or smart climate option. The government’s “Energy Superpower” project should include renewable energy and exclude nuclear reactor development from public subsidies.

The groups reminded the Prime Minister that, as an economist, he must appreciate that energy efficiency, renewables and energy storage are the best investments for energy supply, requiring less capital investment and providing the best return on the dollar for energy production, job creation, and rapid greenhouse gas reduction.

New nuclear projects are already far more expensive than proven renewable energy sources and there is no guarantee that new nuclear reactor designs will ever generate electricity safely and affordably. Spending on nuclear development is wasting time that must be spent urgently on genuine climate action.

“The nuclear industry, led by American corporations and start-ups, has failed to convince us that new reactor designs will address the climate crisis and overcome the exorbitant cost, toxic radioactive waste and threats of nuclear disasters that have plagued the nuclear industry for decades,” said Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR).

“Quebec has rejected nuclear power. We object to our federal taxpayer dollars being spent on developing more nuclear reactors that could be abandoned in place, ultimately transforming communities into radioactively contaminated sites and nuclear waste dumps that will require more federal dollars to clean up,” said Jean-Pierre Finet, spokesperson for le Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie (ROEÉ).

The groups are asking for a meeting with Prime Minister Carney to discuss Canada’s energy future.

Read the letter HERE with the list of 131 signatory groups.

May 24, 2025 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

US House seeks to create another Ukraine disaster in Georgia

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 22 May 25

Not satisfied with destroying Ukraine to weaken Russia, the US House passed a deranged bill to set the stage for a Ukraine redo, this time in tiny former Soviet republic Georgia.

It overwhelmingly passed the Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence Act (MEGOBARI Act) by a vote of 349 to 42.

MEGOBARI may be the stupidest acronym ever. But its intent is even stupider.

The bill is simply a Ukraine style regime change ploy to kick Russia out of its neighbor Georgia’s polity so Georgia can join NATO and the EU.

MEGOBARI doesn’t mince niceties” “[T}he consolidation of democracy in Georgia is critical for regional stability and United States national interests… (so it is) the policy of the United States to support the constitutionally stated aspirations of Georgia to become a member of the European Union and NATO,” to “continue supporting the capacity of the Government of Georgia to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity… (and) to combat Russian aggression, including through sanctions on trade with Russia and the implementation and enforcement of worldwide sanctions on Russia.”

The US regime change party, including all but 34 Republican and 8 Democrats, can’t tolerate the duly elected Russian aligned Georgian Dream Party ruling Georgia. Claiming this tiny spec of a country with just 3.8 million souls and a miniscule $35 billion GEP is essential to US national security interests is preposterous.

Georgia has suffered thru senseless US intervention for 22 years beginning with the 2003 CIA aided Rose Revolution that eventually installed pro US puppet Mikheil Saakashviili as president, ousting pro Russian

Eduard Shevardnadze. Hear echoes of Ukraine there?

Five years later, goaded by the US, Saakashvili tried to reclaim 2 breakaway Georgian provinces aligned with Russia. Big mistake. His attack provoked a Russian pushback that crushed the Georgian intervention. At the start, premier US war lover Sen. John McCain shouted “Today we are all Georgians.” When Georgia caved so did McCain, likely channeling SNL’s Roseanne Roseannadanna’s ‘Oh, never mind.’

But here we are 17 years on and US war lovers are at it again in the ‘Weaken Russia’ game with patsy Georgia. MEGOBARI even includes the ominous directive that allows Congress “…in consultation with the Secretary of Defense… to expand military co-operation with Georgia, including by providing further security and defense equipment ideally suited for territorial defense against Russian aggression and related training, maintenance, and operations support elements.”

Might be time for all 349 clueless congresspersons supporting MEGOBARI to be flown to Ukraine’s eastern war front to see just how glorious their ‘Weaken Russia’ campaign is going with our hapless Ukrainian proxies.

May 24, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Govt Eyes Reuse of Fukushima Soil at PM’s Office

  Tokyo, May 23 (Jiji Press) https://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2025052300665

–The Japanese government is considering reusing soil removed from the ground during radiation decontamination work after the 2011 nuclear reactor meltdowns in Fukushima Prefecture in the grounds of the prime minister’s office in Tokyo, informed sources have said.
   The government hopes to promote public understanding over the reuse of the soil from the decontamination work in the northeastern Japan prefecture, home to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
   The move came after planned pilot projects for using the soil in Tokyo and its northern neighbor, Saitama Prefecture, have stalled due to opposition from local residents.
   The government plans to compile a basic policy on the recycling and final disposal of the soil shortly, including its use at the prime minister’s office. It also plans to draw up a specific road map by around this summer.
   Some 14 million cubic meters of the soil from the decontamination work is currently stored at interim facilities in the Fukushima towns of Okuma and Futaba, where the TEPCO plant is located.

May 24, 2025 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

Drone attacks Zaporizhia NPP training centre third time this year – IAEA

 Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) told the team of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) based at the Plant that the drone hit the roof
of the training centre located just outside the ZNPP site perimeter on May
21, according to an update on the situation in Ukraine on the IAEA website
late on Wednesday.

The drone hit the roof, without causing any casualties
or major damage. It was not immediately known whether the drone had
directly struck the building or whether it crashed on the structure after
being shot down. The IAEA said that it was the third time this year that
the training centre was reportedly targeted by such an unmanned aerial
vehicle.

 Interfax Ukraine 22nd May 2025, https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/1073812.html

May 24, 2025 Posted by | incidents, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Revealed: three tonnes of uranium legally dumped in protected English estuary in nine years

Expert raises concerns over quantities allowed to be discharged from nuclear fuel factory near Preston

Pippa Neill, 23 May 2025 , https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/22/revealed-uranium-from-uk-nuclear-fuel-factory-dumped-into-protected-ribble-estuary

The Environment Agency has allowed a firm to dump three tonnes of uranium into one of England’s most protected sites over the past nine years, it can be revealed, with experts sounding alarm over the potential environmental impact of these discharges.

Documents obtained by the Guardian and the Ends Report through freedom of information requests show that a nuclear fuel factory near Preston discharged large quantities of uranium – legally, under its environmental permit conditions – into the River Ribble between 2015 and 2024. The discharges peaked in 2015 when 703kg of uranium was discharged, according to the documents.

Raw uranium rock mined from all over the world is brought to the Springfields Fuels factory in Lea Town, a small village roughly five miles from Preston, where the rock is treated and purified to create uranium fuel rods.

According to the factory’s website, it has supplied several million fuel elements to reactors in 11 different countries.

The discharge point for the uranium releases is located within the Ribble estuary marine conservation zone – and about 800m upstream of the Ribble estuary, which is one of the most protected sites in the country, classified as a site of special scientific interest, a special protection area (SPA) and a Ramsar site (a wetland designated as being of international importance).

The government’s latest Radioactivity in Food and the Environment report, published in November 2024, notes that in 2023 the total dose of radiation from Springfields Fuels was approximately 4% of the dose limit that is set to protect members of the public from radiation.

However, Dr Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment, who was a scientific secretary to the UK government’s committee examining radiation risks of internal emitters, said that in terms of radioactivity, the discharges from Springfields Fuels were a “very large amount”.

“I’m concerned at this high level. It’s worrying”, he said, referring specifically to the 2015 discharge.

In a 2009 assessment, the Environment Agency concluded that the total dose rate of radioactivity for the Ribble and Alt estuaries SPA was “significantly in excess” of the agreed threshold of 40 microgray/h, below which regulators have agreed there would be no adverse effect to the integrity of a protected site. The report found the calculated total dose rate for the worst affected organism in the estuary was more than 10 times higher than this threshold, with discharges of radionuclides from the Springfields Fuels site to blame.

As a result, a more detailed assessment was undertaken. In this latter report, it was concluded that based on new permitted discharge limits, which had been lowered due to planned operational changes at Springfields Fuels, the dose rates to wildlife were below the agreed threshold and therefore there was no adverse effect on the integrity of the protected site.

Under the site’s current environmental permit, there is no limit on the weight of uranium discharges, which in itself has raised eyebrows. Instead, the uranium discharge is limited in terms of its radioactivity, with an annual limit of 0.04 terabecquerels. Prior to this, the discharge limit in terms of radioactivity was 0.1 terabecquerels.

A terabecquerel is a unit of radioactivity equal to 1tn becquerels. One becquerel represents a rate of radioactive decay equal to one radioactive decay per second.

Despite this tighter limit having been agreed six years ago, experts have raised concerns over the continued authorised discharges from the site.

Fairlile specifically questioned the Environment Agency’s modelling of how this discharge level could be classified as safe. “This is a very high level. The Environment Agency’s risk modelling might be unreliable. Which would make its discharge limits unsafe”, he said.

The Environment Agency said its processes for assessing impacts to habitats were “robust and follow international best practice, including the use of a tiered assessment approach”.

Dr Patrick Byrne, a reader in hydrology and environmental pollution at Liverpool John Moores University, said the 703kg of uranium discharged in 2015 was an “exceptionally high volume

Dr Doug Parr, a policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “Discharges of heavy metals into the environment are never good, especially when those metals are radioactive.”

An Environment Agency spokesperson declined to comment directly, but the regulator said it set “strict environmental permit conditions for all nuclear operators in England, including Springfields Fuels Limited”.

It said these permits were based on “detailed technical assessments and are designed to ensure that any discharges of radioactive substances, including uranium, do not pose an unacceptable risk to people or the environment”.

While the government’s Radioactivity in Food and the Environment report found sources of radiation from Springfield Fuels were approximately 4% of the dose limit to members of the public, it also concluded that radionuclides – specifically isotopes of uranium – were detected downstream in sediment and biota in the Ribble estuary due to discharges from Springfields.

This is not the first time uranium levels in the estuary silt have been noted. Research conducted by the British Geological Survey (BGS) in 2002 detected “anomalously high” concentrations of uranium in a silt sample downstream of the Springfields facility.

The highest level recorded in the BGS report was 60μg/g of uranium in the silt – compared with a background level of 3-4μg/g. The researchers described this as a “significant anomaly”.

The UK is looking to expand its nuclear fuel production capabilities, including at Springfields Fuels. This is in order to increase energy security and reduce reliance on Russian fuel, and to deliver on a target of 24GW of new nuclear capacity by 2050.

A spokesperson from Westinghouse Electric Company UK, the operator of the factory), said: “Springfields is committed to strong environmental stewardship in our Lancashire community. The plant is monitored and regulated by the Environment Agency and operates well within those regulations. For nearly the past 80 years, Springfields has provided high-quality jobs to the local community and the fuel we provide to the UK’s nuclear power plants has avoided billions of tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuels.”

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “The Environment Agency strictly regulates Springfields Fuels through robust environmental permits that control radioactive discharges, ensuring they pose no unacceptable risk to people or the environment. These permits are based on international best practice and are routinely reviewed, including detailed habitat assessments. Discharge limits have been progressively reduced over time, and monitoring by both the operator and the Environment Agency confirms no cause for alarm.

May 24, 2025 Posted by | UK, Uranium | Leave a comment

Top nuke officials admit staffing challenges after DOGE layoffs, hiring freeze

Testifying to a Senate committee, National Nuclear Security Administration leaders acknowledged staffing woes after DOGE-led reductions.

Davis Winkie. USA TODAY, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/21/nuclear-weapons-leaders-describe-workforce-woes-doge/83770727007/

Key Points

  • During May 20 testimony, top acting officials from the National Nuclear Security Administration acknowledged the risk and impact of workforce vacancies caused by Elon Musk’s DOGE.
  • A USA TODAY investigation published May 18 detailed the potential impact of endemic federal staffing shortages at NNSA recently exacerbated by the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce.

WASHINGTON − Top leaders of the agency responsible for the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile admitted to DOGE-related staffing challenges at a Senate hearing.

Asked by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, if a hiring freeze, resignations and attrition could bring “some pretty important vacancies,” acting National Nuclear Security Agency defense programs head David Hoagland said, “That’s very true.” Hoagland said at the May 20 hearing that his office had “shifted people around” to meet “critical needs.”

Hundreds of NNSA staff were fired by Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year, amid a $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons upgrade, in a chaotic wave of layoffs. Most were later rehired. Other critical staffers agreed to leave their jobs under DOGE’s “fork in the road” resignation offer.

King said NNSA claims that staffing shortages hadn’t placed agency’s mission at short term risk “strikes me as implausible.”

The NNSA struggled with staffing and talent pipeline issues for decades before the new Trump administration, a recent USA TODAY investigation found. Then Musk launched efforts to reduce the federal workforce, which further destabilized the NNSA workforce, experts said.

The agency currently faces a near-total hiring freeze and lost more than 130 of its 2,000 federal employees to the DOGE deferred resignation program. More than 300 more employees were fired and reinstated in February damaging morale.

NNSA’s acting principal deputy administrator, James McConnell, said told senators on a subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee the agency could handle the losses “in the short term,” but he said the NNSA needs to “make sure that our resources are adequate.”

Experts told USA TODAY sustained staffing shortages could cause further delays and cost overruns on the agency’s beleaguered portions of the nation’s broader $1.7 trillion nuclear arsenal modernization effort. USA TODAY documented billions of dollars in overruns, as well as safety issues, at NNSA facilities that were attributed to staffing shortages.

Marv Adams, Hoagland’s Senate-confirmed predecessor atop NNSA’s defense programs, said in an interview that during his tenure, “our federal [warhead] program offices struggled to keep up and not get behind because of understaffing.”

The agency’s field offices faced similar strain, according to David Bowman, a retired civil servant and former manager of the NNSA’s Nevada Field Office. From 2020 until his retirement in the fall of 2024, Bowman oversaw operations at the expansive Nevada National Security Site.

NNSA field offices must review and approve much of the work the agency’s massive contractor workforce does on the nuclear arsenal, as well as safety management plans. In an interview, Bowman said such review “requires … technical experts who are feds.”

“If the field offices or the safety experts are short staffed, the work is going to back up,” he said.

Bowman described finding qualified staff for his far-flung office northwest of Las Vegas as “the big challenge we had.”

Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman, USA TODAY

May 24, 2025 Posted by | employment, USA | Leave a comment

Atomic bombs destroyed their lives – now they want Russia to pay

“People living around the test site “became unwitting test subjects, and their lives were treated with casual disregard due to racism and ignorance,”

“It was a crime of negligence, whereby secrecy, control, and the acquisition of more powerful nuclear weapons were prioritised over the lives of local people.”

Amid calls to restart nuclear testing, families are still suffering from mutations passed down through the generations

Arthur Scott-Geddes. Simon Townsley Photographer, in Semey, Telegraph, 21 May 2025 

The Geiger counter came to life as we trudged toward the lip of the crater, its clicks becoming frantic before giving way to an alarm.

“This is the Atomic Lake,” said the hazmat-suited guide, throwing out his arms against the wind to encompass the circular expanse of water below. “Don’t get too close to the edge.”

Sixty years ago a nuclear bomb ten times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima exploded at the bottom of a 178-metre shaft in this remote (but not unpopulated) corner of Kazakhstan.

The blast excavated a basin a quarter of a mile wide and several hundred feet deep, sending up a plume of pulverised rock and radioactive material that was detected as far away as Japan.

It was not a one off. The hydrogen bomb was one of 456 nuclear weapons detonated by the Soviet Union at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, a 7,000 square mile swathe of steppe known as the Polygon.

The tests started in 1949 and continued right up until 1989 and the fall of the Berlin wall. They account for a quarter of all the nuclear explosions in history, creating an ongoing health crisis of a scale and nature that is hard to fathom.

The Kazakh authorities estimate that one-and-a-half million people living in nearby cities, towns and villages were exposed to the residual fallout.

The region has elevated rates of cancer, heart disease, birth defects and fertility problems – all linked to the tests. Suicides are common and the area’s graveyards are filled with people who died young.

But as well as sickening those who were directly exposed, the fallout has worked its way into the population’s DNA, leading to mutations that have been passed down through the generations.

‘There were so many children born with different mutations’

Almost everyone who grew up in Semey, a city of about 350,000 that lies only 75 miles from the Polygon, was affected in some way by the testing programme.

Olga Petrovskaya, the 78-year-old chair of Generation, a campaign group founded in 1999 to petition the government for greater support for the victims of the tests, remembers explosions shaking the city.

“We would be taken out of the classroom because they were worried about the windows shattering,” she said. “But nobody would explain why it was happening.”

White dust would sometimes fall on the city, causing sores to form on exposed skin. It was not long before people started dying.

“When we were six years old, at nursery school, there was a girl who died of leukaemia,” she said. “And then at [primary] school our classmates were also dying of cancerous diseases.

“Cancer became a very common diagnosis – there is no family that hasn’t been affected by it – and there were so many children born with different mutations.”

Ms Petrovskaya lost her brother, her aunt and her in-laws to cancer in the 1960s. She herself suffered numerous miscarriages and still has debilitating headaches and dizzy spells that she believes are linked to the radiation.

Her group of activists has dwindled as its members succumbed to their illnesses. There are now only a handful of them left.

The Soviet testing programme has been frequently criticised for its recklessness.

For instance, the first test of a two-stage hydrogen bomb created a blast much more powerful than anticipated, causing a building to collapse and killing a young girl in Kurchatov, the closed-off city 40 miles away where the tests were directed from

But the scientists and military personnel responsible understood the risks inherent in what they were doing. Modelling has shown that people who lived through all 456 tests received doses of radiation up to 120 times greater than survivors of the Hiroshima bombing.

“The Soviet authorities were absolutely not ignorant of the dangers of nuclear weapons testing,” said Dr Becky Alexis-Martin, a Lecturer in Peace, Science, and Technology at the University of Bradford.

“The tests occurred long after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and records from the time reveal that the scientists involved in the Polygon tests had expert understandings of the impacts of ionising radiation on health.”

People living around the test site “became unwitting test subjects, and their lives were treated with casual disregard due to racism and ignorance,” added Dr Alexis-Martin

“It was a crime of negligence, whereby secrecy, control, and the acquisition of more powerful nuclear weapons were prioritised over the lives of local people.”

There is a growing body of evidence showing that radiation-induced mutations can be passed down multiple generations.

In 2002, an international study of 20 families living around the Semipalatinsk test site showed that exposure to fallout nearly doubled the risk of inherited gene mutations.

“Genetic consequences manifest in many different ways and any gene can be affected by radioactive exposure. Some gene changes are invisible beyond our DNA – but others can have harmful and intergenerational impacts,” said Dr Alexis-Martin.5

“We often think of birth defects when we think of radiation exposure, but hereditary heart conditions, blindness, and deafness can also arise.”

Today many Kazakh families still bear the marks of the tests several generations after the explosions stopped.


‘I will not live much longer’

Read more: Atomic bombs destroyed their lives – now they want Russia to pay

Asel Oshakbayeva was born in 1997, eight years after the last atomic detonation at the Polygon.

Yet she soon began to have seizures, and at the age of three months suffered a brain haemorrhage that left her blind and unable to speak, move or eat.

“She was in a coma, she couldn’t see anything,” said her mother, Sandugush.

The family sold their home and two cars to fund experimental surgical treatment in Russia that, after 14 operations, repaired damage to her optic nerve, partly restored her speech and made it possible for her to eat again.

But she remains totally dependent on her mother, and the pair left Semey and now live cheek-by-jowl with five other relatives in a small flat in Astana, the capital.

Sandugush, like her parents before her, was exposed to high levels of radiation while living near the Polygon.

In total, three generations of her family have now been officially recognised as victims of the testing, including her daughter. Her husband died of cancer 10 years ago, and she herself has a host of unusual health complaints.

“I will not live much longer,” she said, gesturing to her side where surgeons removed cancerous tumours from her breast and lymph nodes.

She now worries who will look after her daughter in the future. “She has the mind of a ten-year-old. If I die, what will happen?”

Despite the high prevalence of disability in the communities affected by the Polygon, a stigma around the children born with deformities persists.

Maira Zhumageldina, 56, lived for a time in the area of maximum radiation risk and gave birth to her daughter Zhannur in 1992.

Zhannur’s ribcage, spine and limbs never properly formed, leaving her permanently disabled – unable to walk, talk or feed herself.

When the extent of Zhannur’s disability became clear, Ms Zhumageldina came under pressure to give her up, even from her own family.

“When I had Zhannur about 13 or 14 children were born with different kinds of disabilities, so some were abandoned and some died at early ages,” she said.

“My parents-in-law said: ‘Why don’t you leave her?’ But I said ‘this is my child’ I could never leave her.”

A well-thumbed album of photographs documents the 28 years that Ms Zhumageldina devoted to caring for her daughter.

She trained as a massage therapist to ease her pain, and took her to Astana for specialised treatment……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

‘The slow genocide’

……people whose families have been torn apart by the tests accuse the government of a “genocide” by inaction.

Reluctant to cough up the cash to properly support the hundreds of thousands of people sickened by the radiation and unwilling to press Russia for help in fear of provoking a diplomatic row, the government, they say, is simply waiting for them to die.

………Most of the fallout came their way – the Soviet scientists in Kurchatov made sure not to detonate any weapons while the wind was blowing towards them.

Hardly anyone here lives to retirement age, and cancer and birth defects are common.

“It’s a genocide,” said Acen Kusayenuli, 59, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who recently had a portion of his lung removed after being diagnosed with cancer. He cannot afford chemotherapy so instead chews herbs to fight the disease.

“We were just like mice,” he said. “Why else would they not relocate the people and animals? They wanted to see how we would be affected.”

Even the landscape has suffered……..

the villagers, always kept in the dark about what was going on, bore the burden of death with a strange stoicism common to many parts of the former Soviet Union.

“We just accepted that whoever gets sick, gets sick,” she said……………………..

“The nuclear weapons tests were undertaken in the knowledge that the local ethnic Kazakhs could be harmed or even gradually eradicated,” said Dr Alexis-Martin.

“The lack of impetus and action across the decades by successive Soviet, Russian, and Kazakhstan governments and the global community amounts to ‘slow genocide’ – this arises when an ethnic or cultural group is gradually and systematically destroyed due to cumulative and sustained harm over time.”

Seventy-five miles further down the road is the village of Kaynar, which sits in the shadow of a rock formation overlooking the test site. Older residents remember climbing to the top to watch the explosions. ……………………………………………………………

Dr Saule Isakhanova, the head doctor of the Abralinski Regional Hospital which looks after around 2,100 people in Kaynar and the surrounding villages, said nearly half of her patients had health problems linked to the tests.

Her husband, the former mayor, was one of those who used to go out into the steppe to collect grass. He now has bowel cancer.

She said the effects of the tests could continue to harm people living in the area for a long time.

“Research shows that particles of these elements can remain in the dust for 300,000 years,” she said, referring to the radionuclides released by the bombs. “Those particles, once you breathe them in, they get into your bones.”

While much of the research attention has so far focused on rates of cancer and birth defects, little has been done to understand the prevalence of developmental disorders among children affected by the tests.

……………………………………………………..Dr Talgat Moldagaliyev, the former Director of the Institute of Radiation Medicine and Oncology in Semey, said more work is needed to understand the effects the tests are continuing to have.

“It’s a living experimental zone, but not enough research has been done.”

‘It should never happen again’

Most of the victims of the Polygon only learned the truth about what had been happening to them after the Soviet Union collapsed and Kazakhstan gained independence.

That moment gave rise to Kazakhstan’s first civil society movement, which connected survivors of the Polygon tests with communities affected by American nuclear testing in Nevada.

Over 35 years since the last nuclear explosion at the Polygon, there is a renewed push to win justice for those affected by the radiation.

Maira Abenova, the founder of Committee Polygon 21, an advocacy group representing the victims, lost her mother, brother, sister and husband to diseases related to the Polygon and now suspects she has cancer herself.

She wants the world to recognise that the suffering did not end with the closure of the test site.

“Currently the law recognises as a survivor of the nuclear tests only those people who lived in four regions around the Polygon from 1949 to 1991,” she said, referring to a law brought in in 1992 which gave people who qualified a “radiation passport” certifying their exposure to the radiation.

Those given the small, beige documents, which bear a blue mushroom cloud stamp on the cover, receive a small amount of compensation and other benefits including longer holidays.

While older survivors of the tests say the system worked at first, many of the families The Telegraph spoke to, particularly those in the hard-hit villages, said it was difficult to get official recognition for their children.

Rising medical costs far outstrip benefits worth around $40 a month and moving away from the villages, even to seek better medical care, disqualifies survivors from support.

Ms Abenova has been petitioning government agencies, who are more interested in collaborating with Russia on nuclear energy and turning the test site into a dark tourism destination, to take action on a grander scale.

“You cannot solve the problem just by paying small additional payments, you have to upgrade the economy in the region,” she said.

United Nations resolutions and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) should also be used to improve the lives of those living in the areas affected by the tests, and a new law is needed “which recognises all the survivors,” she said.

Committee Polygon 21 was among several Kazakh civil society groups to appeal to the UN in New York urging global action on justice for the testing victims.

After Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, withdrew his country’s ratification of the global treaty banning nuclear weapons tests, and with advisers of Donald Trump urging him to restart US testing, Ms Abenova hopes her work will also energise calls for disarmament.

“Kazakhstan suffered from nuclear tests […] Our people should use this opportunity to appeal to other countries that it should never happen again,” she said.

Meanwhile, how safe it is to live in the area around the Polygon remains unclear.

The site itself has been picked over by scavengers looking for – often highly irradiated – scrap metals.

Some 116 bombs were detonated in the atmosphere, but 340 exploded underground, and a secretive joint US-Russian-Kazakh cleanup programme to secure fissile material and even bomb components left behind by the Soviets in tunnels and shafts was only made public after it ended in 2012.

Those living nearby still do not know if their food and water is safe.
……………………..https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/soviet-union-nuclear-testing-atomic-bomb-kazakhstan/

May 23, 2025 Posted by | health, Kazakhstan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

We’re all pretending to be mad at Israel now that 14,000 babies are starving to death

At least we’re proving we’re serious about our opposition to genocide though. So serious, in fact, that the RAF is conducting surveillance flights and helping Israel select targets to bomb with the F-35s we helped build. Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?

This is about saving our reputations and avoiding arrest…

Laura and Normal Island News, May 21, 2025, https://www.normalisland.co.uk/p/were-all-pretending-to-be-mad-at?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1407757&post_id=164073303&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

As a journalist in the mainstream media, I have proudly defended Israel for the last 19 months, but now that everyone is realising how bad they are (and more ICC arrest warrants are coming), I would like to express my genuine anger at the killers I encouraged.

While I took no issue with the bombing of apartment buildings and hospitals and schools and universities and food distribution centres and aid vehicles and tents and even my fellow journalists, I have suddenly my found my conscience, which is a real thing that definitely exists.

The mass murder of civilians was fine while we could get away with blaming everything on Hamas, but now that Israel is starving 14,000 babies to death and openly boasting about it and saying not even the west can stop us, I’m shitting myself to be honest. I’m worried the International Criminal Court might see Normal Island News in the same light as Radio Rwanda.

I feel particularly bad for you, my obsessed readers, who face the real prospect of no more Normal Island News unless I act. If anyone knows a quick way to purge the internet of everything I’ve ever written it would be most appreciated.

I’m not alone in shitting myself because not only is almost every western journalist finding their conscience at the very last moment, but we’ve even seen Lammy and Starmer pretend to be mad at Israel in parliament. I say “pretend”, but they genuinely are mad, just not about the babies. They’re mad that Israel is making them look really fucking bad.

The foreign secretary has shrewdly noticed Israel has been blocking food for 11 weeks and Gaza’s babies look like skeletons. He has even noticed the genocidal words of Israeli ministers like Smotrich and Ben Gvir, but I’m unclear if he has noticed all the buildings have been destroyed and Gaza has the largest cohort of child amputees in history.

When discussing Netanyahu’s plans to take over Gaza and minimise food distribution, Lammy told MPs: “We must call this what it is. It is extremism… It is monstrous. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.” He insisted the extremists have a right to defend themselves though and said he believes in their cause. Warms your heart, doesn’t it?

Sadly, Lammy’s olive branch was not enough to appease Israel whose spokesperson insisted Britain has an “anti-Israel obsession” and still thinks it is a colonial power. Obviously, Israel is the only colonial power in this equation.

Sadly, we’re all getting smeared now, apart from Priti Patel who is the only person in parliament still backing Israel. Turns out, Priti is as stupid as she is evil because she said she didn’t want to let Hamas win by feeding babies. She seemed blissfully unaware she could end up in jail for this. When the time comes, I will be more than happy to throw Priti under a bus to save my own skin.

As you can imagine, the Westminster WhatsApp group has been in panic mode so we’ve knocked together a cover story. The short version is that everything is Jeremy Corbyn’s fault. The long version is that we were so ashamed by the Labour antisemitism scandal (that we fabricated) that we felt the need to support Israel, no matter what. Our genocide support was our way of saying sorry about all those lefties who knew Israel was genocidal before it was cool.

Since 2015, the Corbynistas had accused Israel of being a genocidal state that would not stop until all the Palestinians were gone. It was antisemitic of them to be correct about Israel, every step of the way, long before the rest of us caught up.

Please understand it was our sense of national shame (combined with generous lobbying and threats from Mossad) that made us cheer for genocide for 19 straight months. Why did the Corbynistas make us do this? Why?

Thankfully, the prime minister is taking a principled stand against Israel by suspending trade talks. You know how we spent forever insisting BDS was antisemitic? Well, we’re now threatening Israel with sanctions which is a bit embarrassing, isn’t it? It’s gonna be so awkward if taking a stand works now when we’ve spent 19 months insisting nothing we could do would make a difference.

At least we’re proving we’re serious about our opposition to genocide though. So serious, in fact, that the RAF is conducting surveillance flights and helping Israel select targets to bomb with the F-35s we helped build. Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?

The prime minister said the suffering in Gaza is “utterly intolerable” which is quite the U-turn on that time he said Israel has the right to withhold food, water and medicine. I’m unclear if we’re supposed to be using the “G” word in public so I messaged Starmzy for an update, but I’m not getting a read receipt, presumably because his phone might explode for no apparent reason.

By the way, Spain’s mobile network coincidentally went down right after its government criticised Israel, just like that time its power grid went down right after it criticised Israel, so if the same happens to us, please remember to blame Jeremy Corbyn. If anyone blows up Starmer’s phone it will be him

May 23, 2025 Posted by | media, UK | Leave a comment

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