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Looking Back….Going Forward

Andrew and Varrie Blowers writing for the Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG) for Energy and Environment Regional Life Column for August, 2026

This month we’ve decided to look back over previous August issues of
this column to reflect on our preoccupations over the past decade. We’ve
picked on two themes – radioactive wastes and new nuclear power – covered
in four columns which focus on our successes as well as our continuing
concerns during these years. August 2017: BANNG led a successful campaign
to force the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to abandon its
experimental scheme to flush dissolved Fuel Element Debris (FED) residue
into the Blackwater. As a result, Magnox cancelled its plans to use FED
dissolution at its other sites. August 2020: In the midst of the pandemic,
the Chinese project to build reactors at Bradwell reached its apotheosis
with its pre-application for planning consent. The outrage against the
project was palpable. Combined with local political and public opposition
and government concerns around national security risks, BANNG was
emboldened to conclude the project was dying. Later, when the Chinese
walked away, we could presume the project dead.

BANNG 5th Aug 2026, https://www.banng.info/news/regional-life/looking-back-going-forward/

August 19, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

It’s Getting So Hot That Nuclear Plants Are Being Forced to Power Down

Governments are freaking out.

By Joe Wilkins Aug 14, 2026 , https://futurism.com/science-energy/europe-heat-wave-water-nuclear-plants

Nuclear energy is often touted as an ultra-efficient alternative to dirtier energy sources like coal or natural gas. Expanding the world’s capacity for atomic power is the key to avoiding a cascading climate disaster, some of the industry’s proponents say — but what if it’s too late?

With record setting heatwaves scorching Europe, water levels in the continent’s major rivers are reaching all-time lows. While receding water levels are a huge boon for European archeologists as ancient ruins surface for the first time in centuries, the situation is causing massive headaches for nuclear engineers, who have had to scramble to power down nuclear energy facilities across the continent.

As German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported, facilities like the two gigawatt Paks nuclear plant in Hungary have come close to powering down completely, as a critical lack of water flowing from the Danube threatened the facility’s ability to cool its reactors. That’s a major crisis, because in any given year, the Paks plant generates nearly half of the country’s total electricity supply.

The Hungarian government is now scrambling to keep things running, ABC reported, mobilizing engineers to deliver some 145,000 cubic meters of rocks into the riverbed to manually slow the current and conserve water upstream.

The situation isn’t much better in Romania, where the state-owned nuclear power producer may be forced to completely shut down its last remaining reactor, per Reuters. That’s not for lack of trying: earlier this month, the Romanian navy detonated 180 kilograms of explosives meant to redirect water from the Danube to cool its nuclear reactors.

Meanwhile in France, a combination of extreme drought and a recurring jellyfish invasion have reduced the nation’s nuclear energy production by 20 percent, though a more diversified energy grid means the situation isn’t quite as hairy as those in Hungary or Romania.

With yet another heat wave already on the horizon, Europe’s nuclear energy woes may really just be the tip of the iceberg.

August 18, 2026 Posted by | climate change, EUROPE | Leave a comment

We Talk: Japanese residents warn against ‘nuclear sharing’

Global Stringer, 14 Aug 26, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-08-14/We-Talk-Japanese-residents-warn-against-nuclear-sharing–1PB6c6oYkp2/p.html

August 15 marks 81 years since Japan announced its surrender in World War II.

Since taking office in October last year, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government has pushed to revise Japan’s three national security documents and has repeatedly called for a review of the “no introduction” clause of the Three Non-Nuclear Principles. The moves have sparked concern in Japan and abroad over the future direction of the country’s nuclear policy.

A poll released by the Japan Association for Public Opinion Research on August 1 found that 76% of respondents support maintaining the Three Non-Nuclear Principles of not possessing, not producing and not permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons.

A CGTN stringer in Tokyo spoke with local residents about the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, the concept of nuclear sharing, and the possibility of Japan allowing the United States to deploy nuclear weapons on its territory.

One interviewee, Hikaru Kusano, said Japan should never engage in nuclear sharing, warning that it would pose a threat to other countries. Another respondent, Masahiro Sawa, argued that nuclear weapons can never guarantee security and that a world free of nuclear weapons may be the best path forward.

August 18, 2026 Posted by | Japan, politics | Leave a comment

The Microreactor Miracle Meets a Morphing AI-Nuclear Future

questions about whether the country will achieve its long-term core nuclear deployment objectives. And over-relying on a boost from the micro reactor miracle offers meager dividends when deployment is paramount.

August 15, 2026, By: Kenneth Luongo, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/the-microreactor-miracle-meets-a-morphing-ai-nuclear-future

The microreactor milestone is real, but shifting AI models, China’s challenge, and deployment delays could complicate America’s nuclear ambitions.

It was impressive that four microreactor start-up companies beat the clock and achieved reactor criticality in compliance with the Trump administration’s arbitrary July 4 Reactor Pilot Program (RPP) deadline. But these reactors are years away from deployment, and the excessive swaggering associated with this modest achievement is out of step with the quavering nuclear energy realities ricocheting off a rapidly evolving artificial intelligence (AI) system.  

US Microreactor Achievements

Of the four reactors that achieved zero power, only Antares has an identified market application beyond this demonstration. Its Mark-1 reactor has been selected as a pilot technology for powering Joint Base San Antonio, Texas.

The Antares Mark-0 reactor, which is the zero-power test reactor and prototype for the commercially oriented R1 Mark1, was the first to meet the criticality deadline on June 4 at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). It uses High Assay Low-Enriched (HALEU) TRistructural isotropic (TRISO) fuel and is sodium-cooled. The projected commercial reactor can provide 100 kilowatts to 1 megawatt (MW) electric power. Beyond its work with the Department of Defense (DOD), Antares also has been working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on potentially powering a Moon base. 

Valar Atomics’ Ward-250 achieved criticality on June 18 in Utah and claimed it produced 10 kilowatts (kW) of thermal output. It had previously announced a criticality test at Los Alamos National Laboratory in November 2025. The Ward-250 is a TRISO-fueled high-temperature gas reactor (HTGR) that uses helium as a coolant. After the test, Valar announced a partnership with Nvidia to explore powering AI data centers and stated that its evolving commercial unit could be “deployed by the hundreds at ‘gigasites’” that could support manufacturing as well as energy production.

Deployable Energy, a year-old company, met the criticality mark on June 30 at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The company’s founder reportedly delivered the reactor core in the bed of a Ford F-150 truck. The reactor is part of the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad initiative at INL, which is designed to carry the RPP into the future. The reactor is a water-moderated, helium-cooled design using 4.9 percent enriched fuel. It is considered a “nuclear battery” and would max out at 1 MW. It is designed to fit in a 20-foot shipping container and be dropped at any location.

Aalo Atomics Aalo-X Critical Test Reactor sneaked in under the criticality deadline at midnight on July 4 at INL. The test reactor included a full-scale core and was designed to demonstrate key components that will be used in the Aalo-X, a low-enriched uranium (LEU) fueled, sodium-cooled 10 MW reactor. The goal is to deploy groups of these reactors in 50 MW Aalo Pods to support commercial data centers. Aalo recently formed a strategic partnership with Crusoe, a vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider, to  “validate nuclear power’s effectiveness with AI workloads” at INL.

The Mutating AI Data Center Model 

With the microreactor milestone behind them, the Trump administration and reactor developers now face an evolving landscape for nuclear energy. AI data centers have been viewed as the top driver of America’s energy growth and ideal for pairing with nuclear energy. Projections indicate these centers could add 100 gigawatts (GW) to the US grid by 2030. 

But the data center opportunity is rapidly morphing, and opposition is growing; the now-dominant American AI model is under pressure at home and abroad. That raises questions about what role new nuclear power ultimately will play as the AI arena evolves.

The assumption has been that the hyperscalers, including Apple, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, will build massive data centers as fast as they can to support US AI  frontier modelcomputing growth. One assessment identified the data center build time as roughly two to three years

But the frontier model concept and its computing campuses are under pressure.

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, has been on a recent crusade criticizing the American AI frontier model as a trap that requires businesses to provide their intellectual property (IP) to AI’s leading companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Karp claims that these models’ architecture creates an “addiction” among users and allows the system provider to absorb proprietary corporate data that can be used to compete against their current customers in the future. 

He argues that companies should build their AI systems on models they own, training them on their proprietary content and keeping their data under their control. He also advocates for an “application layer” his company has developed with NVIDIA that can protect an enterprise’s IP. If Karp’s concept catches on, and Meta seems to have taken note, it could impact the mega data center build-out, reducing the number required and downsizing their power requirements. That could be a challenge for some leading nuclear reactor companies betting on the data center boom, or it could favor dial-an-output modular reactors if the costs are competitive.

China’s Dual AI Challenge

A version of the Karp concept seems to have already been adopted by China, which, because it is already closing the quality gap with the best US AI models, now poses a double threat to US dominance. 

China is giving away fast, cheap open-source AI models. These free Chinese AI platforms are popular in Africa and Latin America but are also being used by US and European companies, including Siemens, DoorDash, and Airbnb. 

Of course, one goal of China is to allow companies to easily build systems on their platform in order to serve geopolitical objectives and create dependencies it can exploit in the future. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) evaluated China’s DeepSeek AI model and found that its AI offerings advance Chinese Communist Party narratives. It concludes that China’s DeepSeek “remains a leading open weight model developer and has contributed to a rapid increase in adoption of PRC [People’s Republic of China] models globally.”  It cautions that the expanding global use of these models “May pose a threat to application developers, to consumers, and to US national security.” 

This approach by AI is similar to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has helped the country capture hundreds of infrastructure projects across over 140 countries, resulting in deep relationships and financial dependencies, particularly with emerging economy nations. And while its energy projects so far have heavily tilted toward fossil fuels, BRI’s relationships and financial model enhance China’s position as a future provider of new nuclear energy in the Global South, posing a threat to the future US export of small reactors and creating worry for the US political, commercial, and national security establishment.

Lagging Nuclear Reactor Technology and Scaling Challenges

Even if the US data center boom were to play out as planned, there are questions about when and whether new US nuclear power will be ready to power it. 

So far, the hyperscalers have modestly invested in small modular reactors (SMRs), but they are unlikely to be available in time for a near-term data center boom. If the buildout is over by the early 2030s, most SMRs will still be on the sidelines.

As a hedge, these companies have banked on the resurgence of mothballed nuclear power plants like Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Palisades in Michigan. Both of those projects are estimated to deliver new power before the end of this decade for a combined 1.6 GW. What the hyperscalers have not done is back construction of new large reactors despite the fact that a single Westinghouse AP-100 can provide over one GW of power. 

The US government wants 10 new AP-1000s under construction by 2030, but its $80 billion strategic partnership with Westinghouse and its commitment to provide $17.5 billion in loans for long lead items haven’t attracted the necessary additional investment and commitment required from the private sector. 

The US government wants 10 new AP-1000s under construction by 2030, but its $80 billion strategic partnership with Westinghouse and its commitment to provide $17.5 billion in loans for long lead items haven’t attracted the necessary additional investment and commitment required from the private sector. 

This reticence reflects a cost-overrun risk aversion from domestic electric utilities and Wall Street. In response, the administration is repurposing federal lands to create data center-nuclear power campuses. And it has turned to allies such as South Korea and Japan to jumpstart the process with foreign cash derived from bilateral trade and tariff deals. 

But that avenue also doesn’t seem to be working. The Trump administration has been frustrated with the lack of progress on the nuclear energy component of the $350 billion South Korean commitment to invest in the United States, and with Japan, it has found that its involvement in a $40 billion nuclear power project is running aground over nuclear liability concerns.

With less than 30 months left in Trump’s term, and the prospect of a hostile House of Representatives sucking the air out of his agenda, there is an urgency in rethinking the Trump administration’s nuclear deployment policy. The dependence on a rapidly evolving AI and data center market leaves questions about whether the country will achieve its long-term core nuclear deployment objectives. And over-relying on a boost from the micro reactor miracle offers meager dividends when deployment is paramount.

About the Author: Kenneth Luongo

Kenneth N. Luongo is a recognized innovator, entrepreneur, and leader in global nuclear energy and transnational security policy. He is the president and founder of the Partnership for Global Security (PGS). He has been a TEDx presenter, written over 100 articles, including in The New York Times and Foreign Affairs, and engaged extensively with global media, governments, and audiences around the world on nuclear energy and transnational security challenges and responses. He was formerly a senior advisor to the secretary of energy and a professional staff member on Capitol Hill.

August 18, 2026 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

US says lower oil prices, not Iran’s nuclear program, are now top priority in war

16 Aug 26https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east /2026/08/14/us-says-lower-oil-prices-not-iran-s-nuclear-program-are-no-top-priority-in-war

The top US priority now in the Iran war is no longer its nuclear program but to bring gasoline prices down for American consumers, the vice president said Thursday, with the treasury secretary adding that new economic punishment to wear down Tehran is imminent.

The comments by Vice President JD Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent illustrate the powerful leverage Tehran has gained by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.

Preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon – consistently touted by President Donald Trump as his main reason for the war – now takes a back seat to getting oil flowing again freely through the strait, Vance said on Fox News.

Vance’s comments underscored the stark reality that the war now centers on control of the strait, the critical fuel supply conduit that was open before Trump started the war along with Israel in late February.

Iran has all but shut it down in retaliation and thus found a crucial bargaining chip against Trump as he struggles to find a way out of the war and shies away from resuming large-scale attacks.

The 80-year-old president’s approval rating is plummeting, the war is unpopular among Americans and midterm elections are approaching in November.

Republicans fear Trump and the war, which has caused gasoline prices to soar, will cost them their control of Congress.

“I know that oil is down today and it’s way down from the highs in the early days of the conflict,” Vance said on Fox News. “That’s goal number one – keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country.”

“And then obviously goal number two is ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon,” he added.

‘Low-keying it’

The vice president has been among the members of the administration most skeptical of the offensive launched against Iran in late February.

These remarks, however, appear to confirm the more cautious approach now favored by the US president, which involves maintaining strong economic pressure on Iran by blockading its ports and preventing it from selling oil.

Heralding more economic punishment, Bessent threatened to subject Iran to economic isolation “like the world has never seen before.” He said new measures are expected next week.

Only days ago Trump had said an agreement to reopen the strait was imminent. Now his administration seems to be digging in, with diplomacy on hold as he hopes economic suffering will cause Iran to yield.

“We are low-keying it,” Trump said Sunday. “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump told the news outlet Axios.

The US military reportedly burned through stockpiles of costly high-tech missiles and other weapons in the months since the war started at a cost of billions and is now reportedly running low, limiting Trump’s options for resuming attacks on Iran.

“Sometimes we’re focused on the energy piece of it because we want Americans to be able to afford the price of oil and gas. Sometimes we’re obviously focused on the military… on the nuclear program,” Vance also said.

Trump had said recently he would hold off on attacking Iran again only if an agreement were reached quickly to reopen the strait.

Now Iran has set a list of conditions for reopening the passageway that the Trump administration is unlikely to accept: an end to the war on all fronts, the lifting of the US blockade of Iranian ports, the end of sanctions, the release of frozen assets and compensation for wartime damage.

Those conditions echo the terms of a so-called memorandum of understanding which was reached in June and collapsed as fighting resumed. It included a provision to create a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran.

August 18, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

The 100,000-year plan for Finland’s and Sweden’s nuclear waste turns on something very small — whether bacteria half a kilometre underground can make enough sulphide to eat through five centimetres of copper

Why don’t i find this terribly reassuring?

When I wonder aboutall the countries busily producing radioactive trash, why doesn’t this article make me feel that it is all OK?

Two centuries of engineering innovation may ultimately depend on whether microorganisms in the bedrock can generate enough corrosive compounds to breach the copper canisters meant to contain radioactive waste for the next hundred thousand years.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Edited by Mal James, August 14, 2026, https://spacedaily.com/m-the-100000-year-plan-for-finlands-and-swedens-nuclear-waste-turns-on-something-very-small-whether-bacteria-half-a-kilometre-underground-can-make-enough-sulphide-to-eat-through-five-centim/

he strange thing about the biggest engineering promise being made in northern Europe right now is that it does not really hinge on the steel, the concrete, or the granite. It hinges on how fast a population of microbes, living in near-total darkness half a kilometre down, can turn one chemical into another.

Finland and Sweden are both burying spent nuclear fuel for good, using a Swedish method called KBS-3. It wraps three barriers around the waste: a copper canister with a cast-iron insert inside it, a thick jacket of packed clay called bentonite, and then the bedrock itself.

In Finland the repository is Onkalo, about 430 metres down. In Sweden it sits near Forsmark at roughly 500 metres. The copper shell around each canister is 50 mm thick, five centimetres of it. The design is supposed to keep the waste sealed off for at least 100,000 years.

We are not corrosion scientists, microbiologists, or nuclear engineers. What follows is reading and reflection on the published research, not a verdict on whether these repositories are safe. The studies cited are mostly lab experiments and modeled projections, and a lab result about clay in a test cell is not a guarantee about a specific canister in the ground 40,000 years from now.

What 100,000 years actually asks of a metal box

It is hard to hold the number in your head. These canisters need to outlast everything humans have ever built, several times over, with no maintenance and no one watching.

The clever part of the design is that copper is not being asked to do the impossible. In pure water with no oxygen and no aggressive chemistry, it just sits there. The catch is that the ground is not chemically dead. So the real question was never “is copper strong?” It was “what, specifically, in this rock and this water can attack copper over geological time?” The answer comes down to a surprisingly short list.

Why the enemy is sulphide, not oxygen

When the canisters go into the ground, there is a short window, perhaps a few years to a few decades, where trapped oxygen can corrode the copper a little. Then the oxygen gets used up and never comes back. From that point on the canister lives in an oxygen-free world for essentially its entire life. By one estimate, a KBS-3 canister spends more than 99.99% of its expected service life in these oxygen-free conditions.

That flips the corrosion problem on its head. Oxygen, the thing that rusts most metals, barely matters here. The agent that matters in an oxygen-free repository is sulphide, and sulphide is not just sitting in the rock waiting. Most of it has to be made by living things.

Deep groundwater carries dissolved sulphate. Sulphate on its own leaves copper alone. But a group of microbes called sulphate-reducing bacteria breathe sulphate the way we breathe oxygen, and their waste product is sulphide. That is the chemical that can actually corrode the copper. So the load-bearing question in a 100,000-year safety case turns out to be biological: how busy are the bacteria, and how much of their sulphide reaches the metal.

Meet the bacteria, and what they need

Sulphate-reducing bacteria are ancient, widespread, and perfectly at home in deep oxygen-free groundwater. Give them dissolved sulphate, an energy source, and liquid water they can move around in, and they will make sulphide. That this kind of microbe-driven corrosion is real, and can move fast in the right conditions, is not hypothetical. An in-ground study in packed bentonite soaked with groundwater at repository depth measured active sulphide production by bacteria, with the rate dropping sharply as the clay was packed to higher densities.

So why is anyone confident the canisters last? Because the whole design is arranged to deny the bacteria the one thing they need most: room to work and a clear path to the metal. That is the job of the clay.

The bentonite bottleneck

The bentonite around each canister is not passive packing material. When it gets wet it swells into a dense, gel-like barrier. Two things happen at high density. The pores get so small and the water so tightly held that bacteria struggle to live and move. And sulphide can no longer flow freely; it can only creep through slowly.

A 2000 lab study led by Karsten Pedersen and colleagues tested exactly this. They reported that “sulphate-reducing bacteria were found to be active, reducing sulphate at the lowest density studied, 1.5 g cm-3, but sulphate reduction activity ceased at higher densities.” The paper’s own conclusion is carefully hedged: at full repository packing, it says the bacteria will most probably not be able to induce corrosion. That is one study, on Swedish KBS-3 clay, and it reads as suggestive rather than final. But it points at something the whole safety case leans on: squeeze the clay hard enough and the microbial factory inside it may largely shut down.

That still leaves sulphide arriving from the surrounding groundwater. Here the argument shifts from biology to plumbing. A 2017 review by Fraser King and colleagues argues that the long-term corrosion rate is set not by how eagerly copper reacts, but by how slowly sulphide can travel to its surface through the clay. As long as the sulphide supply stays low, the corrosion is throttled to a crawl.

Put those numbers into a 100,000-year projection and the developers reach a comfortable conclusion. SKB’s own review estimates that, counting the sulphide already in the deposition holes plus what can seep in from groundwater, the copper corrosion depth after 100,000 years comes to less than 5 mm. Against a 50 mm wall, that leaves a large margin.

Closing thoughts

So the summary is a split one. That copper resists corrosion in an oxygen-free repository is well supported. That dense bentonite slows the bacteria and throttles the sulphide is supported by lab work, with the caveat that it is lab work. That the resulting rate holds steady for 100,000 years is a modeled projection, reasonable and carefully argued, but a projection all the same. The five centimetres of copper is the easy part. The hard part is a number about how much a colony of bacteria, buried in clay half a kilometre underground, can do over a span of time longer than civilisation.

August 18, 2026 Posted by | Finland, Sweden, wastes | Leave a comment

Benjamin Netanyahu describes UK as ‘first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon’

Israeli PM criticised by political rival for attacking an international ally and overseeing ‘horrific diplomatic failure’

Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem and Rowena Mason, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/benjamin-netanyahu-describes-uk-first-islamic-republic-to-get-nuclear-weapon

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the UK “the Islamic republic of Britain” in a podcast interview, where he also described the country as the “first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon”.

His comments, made during an interview for Israel’s army radio, played into a common far-right Islamophobic trope about Britain’s small Muslim population.

Netanyahu praised positive coverage of Israel by the journalist Randolph Churchill, the son of former prime minister Winston Churchill, over half a century ago, then said: “Go find that in today’s Britain, in what is called the Islamic republic of Britain.”

Rather than challenge Netanyahu’s comments, the host questioned whether he is unfairly singling out the UK, asking: “Isn’t all of Europe is like that?”

Netanyahu replies by doubling down. “Yes, but you know someone said the first Islamic republic with nuclear weapons will be the Islamic republic of Britain.”

Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, has had a nuclear arsenal since the 1990s.

Relations between the UK and Israel have been increasingly strained in recent months, especially since Andy Burnham took over in No 10. Shortly before becoming prime minister, he apologised for Labour’s initial response to Israel’s military action in Gaza, saying the party “didn’t get it right” and needed to “do better” under his leadership, signalling a significant shift in the UK’s approach to the Middle East.

In July, he said he would “do more to put pressure on the Israeli government”, including through further sanctions on individuals and entities, as well as a potential ban on the trade of goods with illegal settlements.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, made remarks similar to Netanyahu’s comments during the 2024 presidential campaign, saying the UK could become the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon”.

London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has also been a frequent target of racialised attacks from rightwing leaders abroad, including Donald Trump, seeking to gain political advantage from Islamophobic lies.

Muslim leaders in the UK have said that hate crimes targeting their community are hitting new levels amid a rise in far-right rhetoric and growing support for anti-immigrant political parties.

Avi Dabush, who is running for the Knesset with Israel’s opposition Democrats party, attacked Netanyahu for mocking a critical ally at a time when Israel faces unprecedented global isolation. “That’s what happens when there’s a horrific diplomatic failure, and an inability to rally countries in the world in favour of our interests,” he said in a social media post.

Leading the most far-right government in Israel’s history, Netanyahu has alienated traditional allies while aligning with far-right figures, including some with a history of antisemitism.

The British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “These comments are completely unacceptable and we have raised them with the Israeli government.”

The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to requests for comment on whether Netanyahu’s statement represented the official position of the Israeli government.

August 18, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics international, UK | Leave a comment

‘Menace to the World’: With Iran Talks Stalled, Trump Vows to Declare Strait of Hormuz a US Territory

“He absolutely needs to be impeached, removed, and locked up,” said one progressive critic, calling the president “a completely unhinged lunatic.”

Jessica Corbett, Aug 14, 2026, https://www.commondreams.org/news/donald-trump-strait-of-hormuz

In yet another remark that triggered alarm around the world, President Donald Trump said Friday that he planned to declare the Strait of Hormuz—which Iran has blockaded for much of the past five months over his and Israel’s illegal war—a US territory.

Just two days after the latest inflation figures demonstrated, in the words of one expert, “Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement of our economy,” the president ignored the economic fallout from his war, which led Iran to restrict ship traffic through the strait, driving up fuel prices worldwide.

“We’re bringing the prices way down,” he told a Long Island crowd. Trump also said that “after we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon, I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.”

Some critics responded to clips of the comments on X by mocking Trump—an infamous liar. Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) quipped, “Awesome! And the Easter Bunny is real.”

Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, said that “this jingoism rings a bit hollow when most of the US bases near the strait have been essentially abandoned due to danger from Iranian missiles and drones.”

Progressive political commentator Kyle Kulinski declared that “he absolutely needs to be impeached, removed, and locked up. He’s a completely unhinged lunatic, and he’s a sadistic violent menace to the world.”

After high initial claims about lower prices, Trump admitted that gasoline has soared due to his war, but said: “For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a—a country, really it’s the No. 1 state sponsor of terror in the world—we don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So, remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4, it’s OK. I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing.”

Trump’s threat over the strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman came just before a monthlong ceasefire between the US and Iran is set to expire on Monday. A senior White House official told Politico that the situation is “static.”

“It doesn’t matter how close or how far we are,” said the official, who has heard no mention of a potential extension of the ceasefire. “What matters is if Iran wants to come to the table and agree to a deal. Right now, they haven’t done that.”

The Associated Press reported Friday that “the Trump administration appears to be reaching out to a broader swath of countries that might be able to help pressure Tehran,” and Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, told the outlet that “everyone is just urging both sides to stop this reckless game of chicken.”

In addition to launching an illegal war on Iran in February, and invading Venezuela in January to abduct its president, Trump has made threats against various other nations during his second term, including Canada, Cuba, Colombia, Greenland, and Mexico. He’s also threatened to seize the Panama Canal and killed hundreds of people by blowing up boats allegedly smuggling drugs.

August 18, 2026 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

‘U.S. Out of Korea’

August 15, 2026, by Bruce K. Gagnon  https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2026/08/us-out-of-korea.html

Currently in South Korea national protest actions are being held at U.S. bases around the country as part of ‘U.S. Out of Korea’ campaign being organized by a vast coalition of peace groups. 

The numbers vary but it is believed that between 48,000-60,000 US military personnel and their families now live on Camp Humphreys. (When regular war games are held the numbers rise.) This would make Camp Humphreys the largest U.S. base outside of the continental United States.

Much of the base expansion was due to the closing of the Yongsan U.S. Army base in downtown Seoul. That base had become a toxic mess and since closing it is still partially unavailable for new usage due to the U.S. essentially refusing to clean-up the damages. They have left it to the ROK (Republic of Korea) government to deal with. That is after the U.S. forced the South Korean government to pay about 90% of the costs to relocate Yongsan to Camp Humphreys.

Of course one reason for the move was the toxic mess at Yongsan. But other reasons I have heard was to move the base about 90 minutes to the south thus making it more difficult for North Korea to hit the base in any war. Plus the ROK government didn’t like having Seoul as a prime target.

In 2015 I had the honor to participate in some of these events and below is a report I posted on this blog on August 12, 2015. 

Bruce

We were taken to U.S.’s Osan Air Force Base in Pyeongtaek for a guided tour by a prominent local activist.  We were driven around the perimeter of the bulging base that is now adding a second runway – likely as a result of Obama’s ‘pivot’ of Pentagon forces into the Asia-Pacific to encircle China.  (More airfields are needed for Pentagon warplanes.) In order to make the base expansion possible the U.S. has forced the South Korean government to take even more lands from local farmers. Local citizens and their supporters resisted this land grab by waging a long fierce campaign but their villages and rice fields were eventually stolen.

Osan AFB currently has F-16 and A-10 warplanes stationed there as well as the high-flying U-2 spy planes.  In addition the air base hosts PAC-3 (Patriot third generation) missile defense systems that are aimed at China.  Their job is to take out the retaliatory response following a U.S. first-strike attack against Chinese nuclear forces. (The U.S. has also recently created a Space Force unit at Osan AFB.)

The tour continued to the nearby US Army base called Camp Humphreys that is also undergoing major expansion.  Similar to Osan AFB, the U.S. forced the grabbing of two rice-farming villages near the Army base to provide additional lands for the base expansion. These new facilities at Camp Humphreys will allow the U.S. to move its current base inside downtown Seoul southward making it more difficult for North Korea to retaliate against the U.S. bases following a Pentagon attack on the north.

We had dinner with one rice farmer who lost his land when his village was taken. He and others moved to another nearby location but they couldn’t replace their rice farms in the local area. The farmer, now the mayor of his current small village, had to buy new rice land two hours away and must make that long drive back and forth to work in his rice fields. I was told he spent time in prison for “obstructing” the expansion of the Army base during their protest campaign.

The Pentagon currently has in South Korea about 70 bases and military facilities.  In order to pay for the current expansion of its bases the U.S. has demanded that the South Korean government pay for the big changes taking place at these military outposts.  (My liberal Democrat Congresswoman Chellie Pingree calls it ‘burden sharing by the host nation’.) Thus for the Korean people it is a double insult – not only is their government an occupied client state of the U.S. empire but the people must increasingly pay for unwanted toxic and dangerous U.S. military operations inside of their country.

Our guide today several times, while driving us around the perimeter of the two bases, said, “The U.S. is a bad country.”  I immediately thought how much I wished the American people could take this tour and hear his words. This remarkable activist also spent time in prison for trying to protect his people from the American assault on their culture and way of life. I was told that he helps take care of the elderly farmers who were not able to purchase new rice fields and now struggle to find ways to make money in order to survive.

I came away from Pyeongtaek feeling sad, ashamed of the U.S., and disgusted with those many American people who don’t really care what happens to the people around the world who are displaced by U.S. military bases – or are killed by the soldiers that make war from these outposts on behalf of corporate capitalism. 

August 18, 2026 Posted by | politics international, South Korea, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear police costs rise as stress cases nearly double

UK Defence Journal, By Craig Langford, August 15, 2026 

Operating expenditure at the Civil Nuclear Police Authority rose by almost £25 million during 2025-26, while reported workplace stress cases increased by 86% during a year of expansion, site closures and organisational change.

Operating expenditure at the Civil Nuclear Police Authority increased to £178.7 million during 2025-26, while reported workplace stress cases rose from 29 to 54, the UK Defence Journal understands.

Defense Industry

The figures are contained in the CNPA’s Annual Report and Accounts, covering a year in which the Civil Nuclear Constabulary expanded its armed protection role to four non-nuclear energy sites while also managing the cessation of policing at older nuclear facilities. Total operating expenditure increased from £154.1 million in 2024-25 to £178.7 million, a rise of approximately £24.6 million or 16%. The Authority says £19.7 million of additional pay costs reflected the full-year effect of previous pay awards, higher employer pension and National Insurance contributions, and the transfer of Ministry of Defence Police personnel into the CNC as responsibility for the four additional sites changed hands.

Staff costs reached £131.1 million, compared with £111.3 million a year earlier, including £99.2 million in wages and salaries, £14 million in social security costs and £17.3 million in pension costs. Despite the increase in overall expenditure, the Authority spent less than had originally been approved for the year. Pay costs were below forecast because of vacancies and fewer new officers entering training than expected, while delayed project activity and lower-than-anticipated property maintenance costs also produced underspends. The CNPA said its standard operational activities achieved a breakeven position, although the accounts recorded £6 million more expenditure than income overall, mainly because of technical accounting adjustments and non-operational costs reimbursed by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/nuclear-police-costs-rise-as-stress-cases-nearly-double/

August 18, 2026 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Hungary to sink two barges near nuclear plant as river runs dry

Paks nuclear plant ⁠i currently operates at around 25% of its capacity

Rich BoothFriday 14 August 2026, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/danube-river-low-hungary-nuclear-power-b3033182.html

Authorities in Hungary will sink two barges today to raise the water level at the Paks nuclear plant ⁠in the Danube, Prime Minister Peter Magyar said on Friday.

The plant currently operates at around 25% of its capacity due to a historic drought and record low water levels on ⁠the Danube river, from which the ​nuclear ⁠plant draws its coolant.

Neighbouring Romania shut down its last working reactor on Thursday as drought this ⁠summer has wreaked havoc in European power production, shipping ​and ⁠public health systems. The drought ‌also raised questions in Hungary and Romania about how to adapt atomic energy to an increasingly extreme climate.

Hungary’s ‌government announced on Wednesday that it ‌would build a riverbed “sill”, a submerged, dam-like structure built crosswise on the bottom of a river channel, to manage water flow. That will ⁠take weeks.

The government also said that two 80-metre (260-foot) barges would be submerged near the nuclear plant to raise the water level in the short term so that the plant’s two turbines could be kept working while the riverbed sill was under construction.

“The controlled sinking (of the barges) ‌is expected to begin late this afternoon in order ​to raise the water level on the Danube,” ‌Magyar said in a ⁠Facebook video from Paks on Friday.

Sinking of ⁠the barges could raise the water level by 20 centimetres (8 inches) in ‌the short term, ​while the river sill is ‌expected to raise it by ​up to 1 metre.

It comes as wrecks of World ​War Two German warships have resurfaced further up the Danube River in eastern Serbia as record-low water levels exposed sandbanks and ⁠stranded boats.

Rusted hulls that have lain submerged for decades since 1945 have emerged, while further north in Novi Sad many small boats docked in ⁠marinas remain stranded.

“This has ​literally ⁠never happened before, these wrecks we’re heading towards right now have never ⁠been visible like this,” Ljubisa Karalic, a local ​fisherman ⁠in Prahovo, told Reuters.

“They’ve always ‌been completely submerged; what we’re seeing now is utterly unprecedented.” A succession of record-breaking heatwaves ‌in Europe this summer has caused ‌a severe drought in parts of the continent, affecting major waterways such as the Danube and ⁠the Rhine. The Danube water temperatures in Serbia hovered around an all-time maximum of 28 degrees Celsius.

“A record has been broken regarding the Danube’s discharge. We hope this represents the minimum, given that rain is forecast for upstream ‌stretches, which should help the situation improve,” ​Jelena Jerinic of Serbia’s Hydrometeorological Service said. ‌She warned that ⁠the river’s biodiversity is threatened as well.

“High (water) ⁠temperatures, alongside low water volume, accelerate the proliferation of ‌microorganisms and ​bacteria while depleting dissolved oxygen ‌levels.” 

August 17, 2026 Posted by | climate change, EUROPE | Leave a comment

One-fifth of France’s nuclear capacity offline due to extreme weather and jellyfish

In total, 13 of the 57 reactors in EDF’s nuclear fleet were affected, resulting in a more than 20% shortfall in nuclear power production capacity, a record deficit.

Le Monde with AFPP, August 12, 2026, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2026/08/12/one-fifth-of-france-s-nuclear-capacity-offline-due-to-extreme-weather-and-jellyfish_6756421_98.html

France on Wednesday recorded a more than 20% shortfall in nuclear power production capacity, a record deficit caused by environmentally related outages linked to drought, extreme heat and a jellyfish invasion. France uses nuclear power to generate around 70% of its electricity. The country has seen nuclear power production disrupted by multiple heatwaves and droughts this year.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP) calculations based on data published by energy group EDF since 2015, 20.4% of generating capacity was unavailable. Between 9:45 am and 10:00 am, EDF’s nuclear fleet recorded a new peak in outages due to “environmental constraints” or “external environmental causes,” both in terms of the number of reactors shut down or operating at reduced output and in terms of lost generating capacity.

In total, 13 of the 57 reactors in EDF’s nuclear fleet were affected. Eight reactors were completely shut down while five were operating at reduced power. Much of the lost nuclear generating capacity was due to full or partial shutdowns at five of the six reactors at the Gravelines nuclear power plant after a swarm of jellyfish clogged pumps used to cool the units.

Experts say overfishing, plastic pollution and warming seas due to climate change have created conditions allowing jellyfish to thrive and reproduce. Outside the Gravelines plant, the largest in Western Europe, the shutdowns or production reductions affecting other reactors are linked to extreme heat and droughts, depriving the plants of the water they need for cooling.

August 17, 2026 Posted by | climate change, environment, France | Leave a comment

Mutiny aboard US carrier Abraham Lincoln off Iranian coast

mounting complaints from crew members following protests by their families over the ship’s prolonged deployment

The USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed for over 260 days, which is a modern-era record for a U.S. aircraft carrier. This prolonged deployment has led to significant stress and mental health challenges among the crew

August 12, 2026, Bruce K. Gagnon, https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2026/08/mutiny-aboard-us-carrier-abraham.html

Recent reports indicate a serious mutiny situation aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Seven U.S. Navy personnel have possibly been killed and several others injured in a violent clash among the crew, highlighting growing unrest and morale issues during an extended deployment.

Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow”.

A woman at the meeting told acting navy secretary, Hung Cao that the navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership”, the paper reported. The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended. “He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” she said. 

Bonnie York, whose stepson is aboard the Lincoln, told MS NOW she had been told a doctor or therapist on the ship warned the crew needed to reach port before people started “losing their minds.” She voted for Trump—and partly because he promised not to start any new wars. She no longer believes the country is safer for it. “You’ve essentially stranded them out there,” she said of the crew. 

Seven US Navy personnel have reportedly been killed and several others wounded in a violent clash aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as growing unrest among the carrier’s crew has exposed mounting pressure inside the US military amid a prolonged deployment. 

The incident erupted after an adviser to US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Brad Cooper boarded the carrier to address mounting complaints from crew members following protests by their families over the ship’s prolonged deployment, according to Tasnim News Agency, citing an informed military source. The adviser was reportedly met with boos and had water bottles thrown at him while addressing a gathering of personnel. The confrontation subsequently escalated into a fight among crew members involving knives and other bladed weapons, leaving seven personnel dead and several others wounded, according to the source.

Pistol Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, dismissed the accounts as “more fake news”.

Deployment Context

The USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed for over 260 days, which is a modern-era record for a U.S. aircraft carrier. This prolonged deployment has led to significant stress and mental health challenges among the crew

Conditions and Morale

Reports from military families describe poor living conditions, including food shortages and inadequate facilities, contributing to the deteriorating morale. 

Response and Claims

In addition to internal conflicts, there are external tensions, with Iran claiming to have attacked the carrier, although U.S. officials have denied these allegations. 

August 17, 2026 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Paper Tiger: the Failure of America’s Trillion Dollar War Machine

So the US is using multi-million dollar missiles that are irreplaceable in the short term to try, and often fail, to intercept Shahed drones that cost Iran between $20,000 and $50,000 each.

To make up for the Navy’s dwindling missile stocks in the war zone, the US is flying B-1 bombers from a British airbase at Fairford in England to fire Tomahawk missiles at Iran

 SCHEERPOST, August 12, 2026, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies​

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States spent $21 trillion on its military between 2001 and 2024 (in constant 2024 dollars), equal to the combined military spending of the next eighteen countries. Iran barely made that list at all, spending only 2% of what the US did, and SIPRI estimated Iran’s 2025 military budget at only $7.5 billion. So how is Iran holding its own against the multi-trillion-dollar US war machine?

A critical difference between the US war on Iran and previous US and allied bombing campaigns against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Gaza, is that the US and Israel have failed to destroy Iran’s air defense system and cannot fly warplanes over Iran without risking the loss of planes and pilots to enemy fire. Iran has wisely built its critical defense infrastructure underground, with arms factories, weapons stockpiles and launch sites sheltered safely beneath its impenetrable mountainous terrain.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed on March 10th that the US had “total air dominance” over Iran, but that is still not true. Instead, US forces are mainly attacking Iran with stand-off weapons from outside Iran’s borders, radically depleting US stockpiles of extraordinarily expensive weapons. 

Even though US warplanes avoid entering Iranian airspace, the Congressional Research Service has reported that the US has lost at least four F-15 fighters, an F-35, an A-10, seven KC-135 refueling planes, an E-6 AWACS plane, two MC-130J special operations aircraft, a helicopter, a high-altitude Triton drone and 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones.

By contrast, during the full-scale invasion of Iraq in 2003, US forces lost only one A-10 and six helicopters, after systematically destroying much of Iraq’s air defenses through a low-intensity bombing campaign conducted under cover of the so-called no-fly zones, which the US, UK and France unilaterally imposed after the First Gulf War in 1991.

In 2003, the US Armed Forces dropped 13,000 tons of bombs and missiles on Iraq in the first 30 days of the war. But only 800 tons, or 6%, of those munitions, were cruise missiles and other stand-off weapons like the ones the US is now relying on against Iran.

The US has already depleted a third of its stand-off and air defense weapons stocks, including JASSM and Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-2, -3 and -6 anti-aircraft missiles, as well as half its stocks of Patriot and THAAD interceptors and the new Precision Strike Missiles that are replacing the shorter-range ATACMs. These missiles range in price from $700,000 each for JASSMs up to $12 million each for THAAD interceptors, and many will take years to replace.

So the US is using multi-million dollar missiles that are irreplaceable in the short term to try, and often fail, to interceptShahed drones that cost Iran between $20,000 and $50,000 each. This is a stark contrast from Iraq in 2003, when the US weapon of choice was its 500 lb. GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb, which cost only $22,000, and the 7,000 bombs used to attack Iraq were easily restocked.

To make up for the Navy’s dwindling missile stocks in the war zone, the US is flying B-1 bombers from a British airbase at Fairford in England to fire Tomahawk missiles at Iran. So many planes are now flying from so far away to attack Iran that the US has also had to send dozens more aerial refueling planes to reinforce the sixty it already hadstationed in Israel.

The Russians have demonstrated in Ukraine that the capacity to quickly ramp up production of relatively inexpensive artillery shells and drones can be more critical in a war than spending trillions on big-ticket weapons programs. Meanwhile, the corrupt US military-industrial complex has built a gold-plated revolving door between the US arms industry, the Pentagon top brass and a captive, co-opted civilian government. It has produced ever more expensive weapons, but it has lost nearly every war it has fought. 

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. in his 2018 book Losing Military Supremacy: the Myopia of American Strategic Planning, Andrei Martyanov warned that huge US investments in aircraft-carriers and other big-ticket warships and warplanes were rapidly being rendered obsolete by a new generation of Russian and Chinese missiles capable of traveling much faster and farther than the most advanced missiles in the US arsenal. 

Now Iranian missiles and drones have fundamentally altered the military balance in the Middle East. They have driventhe US military out of its bases in the Persian Gulf and are forcing US aircraft carriers to stay 1,000 miles from the coast of Iran. US Central Command has had to relocate its regional headquarters from Qatar to Jordan, but Iran has attacked it there too. 

Now the United States is repositioning more of its forces in the Middle East to Israel. This raises the stakes, and increases the risks, of any future escalation in the war on Iran, and it further expands the entangling US military alliance with the genocidal state of Israel, which most Americans now oppose.

On August 8, Iran reiterated six points from the Memorandum of Understanding that Trump already signed on June 17, and insisted that the United States must comply with them before it will reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping. 

Western commentators have described these as tough new conditions, but they are neither new nor tougher than before. They simply make explicit what was already implicit—for example, by specifically mentioning Palestine and Yemen, whereas the original memorandum merely called for ending the war “on all fronts, including Lebanon.” The United States and Israel started this war, and the United States has the power to end it by negotiating in good faith, based on the memorandum it already agreed to.

The American people have sacrificed enormously to pay for this obsolete, overpriced, and ineffective war machine. Many have paid with their lives, their limbs or their health. All of us pay the opportunity cost of our leaders’ warmongering and reckless squandering of our national wealth, leaving us without the basic support systems that our neighbors in other developed countries take for granted, from universal free healthcare and quality public education to living wages and paid vacation time. 

The US government’s corrupt priorities leave our most serious problems unaddressed, while undermining global efforts to address them, from the destruction of the climate and the natural world to the ever-present danger of nuclear war. 

As this year’s primary election results suggest, most Americans want a society that cares for its people, with a government that addresses our most urgent needs. That must surely include dismantling this failed, corrupt, out-of-control and absurdly expensive war machine.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors ofWar In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, now in a revised, updated 2nd edition.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/12/paper-tiger-the-failure-of-americas-trillion-dollar-war-machine/

August 17, 2026 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Growing U.S. military Footprint In Guam Intensifies Concerns Over Environmental Damage And Sovereignty

SCHEERPOST,August 15, 2026, Gaea Cabico Prism

In Yigo, the northernmost village in Guam, there is a well that cannot be shut down. 

Known as Y-15, the well sits atop the island’s northern aquifer, which supplies around 80% of the island’s drinking water. Even if contaminants are detected, Y-15 has to keep pumping. There is simply no alternative. 

The well also sits just below a hill near Upi Elementary School—attended by around 400 children—and just outside the back gates of Andersen Air Force Base, which hangs over the community like a permanent shadow. Generations of Indigenous CHamoru families have called Yigo home, relying on these waters for drinking, cooking, and other daily activities.

But in September 2025, one such family learned that the well supplying their home of 17 years was contaminated with high levels of dieldrin, a pesticide once widely used on crops and for termite control beginning in the 1950s. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which classifies dieldrin as a probable human carcinogen, banned all uses of the pesticide in 1987 over concerns about its damage to the environment and links to serious health effects, including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and reproductive issues such as decreased fertility and increased numbers of stillbirths. Because dieldrin accumulates in the body, long-term exposure—even in small amounts—can cause serious harm, according to the EPA. 

More than 1,200 residents of Yigo were told not to drink water from Y-15 because of dieldrin contamination……………………………………..

Dieldrin is just one piece of a much larger and troubling environmental legacy in Guam. 

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—better known as “forever chemicals”—have also been detected across the island’s water systems. These compounds can persist in soil and groundwater for decades, and they have been linked to a range of health effects, including cancer, immune and thyroid dysfunction, liver and kidney disease, and serious reproductive issues. 

For Monaeka Flores, an advocate with the grassroots environmental organization Prutehi Guåhan, the island’s environmental problems are inseparable from the military buildup that has reshaped the island. From hazardous waste dumping, base construction, and open-air detonations of munitions to live-fire exercises in sensitive habitats, advocates say that Guam’s land and water bear the toxic legacy of the U.S. military………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The long arc of colonization

While Guam is only 30 miles long and nine miles wide, the U.S. Defense Department controls roughly a quarter of its land—and military expansion is accelerating. Much of the military buildup on the island is justified on the grounds of national security as the U.S. seeks to strengthen its position in the Pacific amid tensions with China and North Korea. 

A missile defense system designed to protect the territory from potential outside threats, live-firing range complex, and new Marine Corps base are currently in the works. The buildup could also expose more people to potential environmental contamination. Roughly 10,000 active-duty personnel, their dependents, and government civilians are expected to arrive by 2036.  ………………………………………………………….

What is unfolding in Guam is not happening in isolation. 

From Okinawa, Japan to the Marshall Islands and the Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos Archipelago, communities living near U.S. military bases have documented patterns of environmental harm, including contamination linked to toxic chemicals and hazardous waste. 

There is “very significant environmental damage” due to leaks and the military’s accidental—or sometimes intentional—dumping of hazardous, toxic materials, said David Vine, a political anthropologist and author of “Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.” “It’s a clear pattern across the network of bases in the Pacific and around the world, including the 50 states,” he told Prism 

Guam’s many environmental problems are concentrated around military bases, the island’s airport, and sites where firefighting occurred. As just one example: A major source of PFAS contamination on the island is the powerful fire suppressant known as Aqueous Film Forming Foam, which is used to extinguish jet fuel fires……………………………………………………………………………………………………

Activists, community leaders, and CHamoru families increasingly frame their struggle against the military’s pollution and contamination not only as an effort to protect fragile ecosystems, but also as a broader fight for demilitarization and decolonization. They are demanding both the removal of militarized infrastructure and the restoration of sovereignty over their ancestral lands………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/15/growing-u-s-military-footprint-in-guam-intensifies-concerns-over-environmental-damage-and-sovereignty/

August 17, 2026 Posted by | environment, OCEANIA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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