Sorrowful day for peace largely ignored thruout America
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 7 Feb 26
The New Start Treaty between Russia and US expires today and America largely yawned. Big story on mainstream news? Faggedaboudit. Ask the person on the street about New Start and he might mutter something about giving disadvantaged kids free comprehensive early childhood education. Wait, wait…that’s Head Start.
Nope, New Start is the 16 year old treaty Obama signed with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on February 8, 2010. It caps the number of nuclear warheads each side can deploy at 1,550 and limits the number of deployed and non-deployed strategic launchers to 800. Still enough for either side to incinerate us all, but prevents a senseless arms race and symbolic of the critical need to reduce nuclear tensions.
But limited US Russian nuclear arsenals go back 54 years as 2010 Russian New Start signer Medvedev reminded us yesterday. “That’s it. For the first time since 1972, Russia (the former USSR) and the US have no treaty limiting strategic nuclear forces. SALT 1, SALT 2, START I, START II, SORT, New START – All in the past, winter is coming.”
President Trump rebuffed Russian President Putin’s offer to extend the limits for another year for sensible diplomacy to negotiate a new treaty.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio used the lame excuse that any new treaty must include China. But with a nuclear arsenal a pittance of the two nuclear giants, China demurred saying any treaty involving China must include US Russian nuclear stockpiles reduced to China’s level. Rubio knew his requirement was a poison pill deal breaker for any new extension of New Start.
Dumping nuclear agreements is nothing new for Trump. He left office in January 20, 2021 ignoring New Start’s eminent expiration. Successor Biden promptly renewed New Start for 5 years, exactly 5 years ago today. This time Trump has succeeded in letting it expire on his watch.
This gives Trump a trifecta in dumping critically needed nuclear agreements. In August 2019 Trump withdrew from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that banned all land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km. . In November 2020, just before leaving office, Trump withdrew from the 2002 Open Skies Treaty which allowed the US and Russia to conduct short-notice, unarmed reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory to monitor military activities.
The only positive glimmer to put on Trump’s refusal to extend New Start, even for a measly year to negotiate a long term agreement? Trump has no more nuclear agreements to withdraw from in the last sorrowful 3 years of his second term.
This January the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock, symbolic of approaching global catastrophe, to 85 seconds to Midnight, the closest in its 79 year history. With Trump president, the Bulletin might want to quickly reconvene for another gander at our march toward world annihilation. Next January, none of us might around to hear the 2027 announcement.
The US Keeps Openly Admitting It Deliberately Caused The Iran Protests
Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 06, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-us-keeps-openly-admitting-it?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187080859&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Speaking before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explicitly stated that the US deliberately caused a financial crisis in Iran with the goal of fomenting civil unrest in the country.
Asked by Senator Katie Britt what more the US can be doing to place pressure on the Ayatollah and Iran, Bessent explained that the Treasury Department has implemented a “strategy” designed to undermine the Iranian currency which crashed the economy and sparked the violent protests we’ve seen throughout the country.
“One thing we could do at Treasury, and what we have done, is created a dollar shortage in the country,” Bessent said. “At a speech at the Economic Club in March I outlined the strategy. It came to a swift and I would say grand culmination in December when one of the largest banks in Iran went under. There was a run on the bank, the central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded, and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street.”
This is not the first time Bessent has made these admissions. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, the treasury secretary said the following:
“President Trump ordered Treasury and our OFAC division, Office of Foreign Asset Control, to put maximum pressure on Iran. And it’s worked, because in December, their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank go under; the central bank has started to print money. There is dollar shortage. They are not able to get imports, and this is why the people took to the street. So, this is economic statecraft, no shots fired, and things are moving in a very positive way here.”
Following these remarks, Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Farres wrote the following for Common Dreams:
“What Secretary Bessent describes is of course not ‘economic statecraft’ in a traditional sense. It is war conducted by economic means, all designed to produce an economic crisis and social unrest leading to a fall of the government. This is proudly hailed as ‘economic statecraft.’
“The human suffering caused by outright war and crushing economic sanctions is not so different as one might think. Economic collapse produces shortages of food, medicine, and fuel, while also destroying savings, pensions, wages, and public services. Deliberate economic collapse drives people into poverty, malnutrition, and premature death, just as outright war does.”
Bessent laid out these plans in advance at the Economic Club of New York back in March of last year, saying the following:
“Last month, the White House announced its maximum pressure campaign on Iran designed to collapse its already buckling economy. The Iranian economy is in disarray; 35% official inflation, has a currency that has depreciated 60% in the last 12 months, and an ongoing energy crisis. I know a few things about currency devaluations, and if I were an Iranian, I would get all of my money out of the Rial now.
“This precarious state exists before our Maximum Pressure campaign, designed to collapse Iranian oil exports from the current 1.5–1.6, million barrels per day, back to the trickle they were when President Trump left office.
“Iran has developed a complex shadow network of financial facilitators and black-market oil shippers via a ghost fleet to sell oil, petrochemical and other commodities to finance its exports and generate hard currency.
“As such, we have elevated a sanctions campaign against this export infrastructure, targeting all stages of Iran’s oil supply chain. We have coupled this with vigorous government engagement and private sector outreach.
“We will close off Iran’s access to the international financial system by targeting regional parties that facilitate the transfer of its revenues. Treasury is prepared to engage in frank discussions with these countries. We are going to shut down Iran’s oil sector and drone manufacturing capabilities.
“We have predetermined benchmarks and timelines. Making Iran Broke Again will mark the beginning of our updated sanctions policy. Watch this space.”
The US has been orchestrating plans to foment unrest in Iran by causing economic strife for years. In 2019 Trump’s previous secretary of state Mike Pompeo openly acknowledged that the goal of Washington’s economic warfare against Iran was to make the population so miserable that they “change the government”, cheerfully citing the “economic distress” the nation had been placed under by US sanctions.
As unrest tore through Iran last month, Trump egged protesters on and encouraged them to escalate, saying “To all Iranian patriots, keep protesting, take over your institutions, if possible, and save the name of the killers and the abusers that are abusing you,” adding, “all I say to them is help is on its way.”
Deliberately trying to ignite a civil war in a country by immiserating its population so severely that they start attacking their own government out of sheer desperation is one of the most evil things you can possibly imagine. But under the western empire it’s just another day. They’re doing it in Iran, and they’ve also aggressively ramped up efforts to do it in Cuba, where the government has just announced it will be rationing oil as the US moves to strangle the island nation into regime change.
A lot of attention is going into the Epstein files right now, and understandably so. But it’s worth noting that nothing in them is as depraved and abusive as what our rulers are doing right out in the open.
Will soaring electricity rates kill Ontario’s nuclear expansion?
At $20.9-billion, the Darlington SMRs are expected to cost nearly as much as larger reactors that would have generated far more power. The government is betting that the economic benefits will be worth it: by building the first-ever BWRX-300 reactor, it hopes to win export opportunities for Ontario-based nuclear suppliers.
Future plans include what would be two of the largest nuclear plants on Earth, which will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. And while the IESO holds competitive procurements for other forms of generation including natural gas, wind and solar, nuclear plants are exempted from that requirement………… “There’s no real competition and there’s no real incentive for them to deliver that power at the cheapest cost “
Matthew McClearn, The Globe and Mail, Feb 5, 2026
The Ontario government’s plans to more than double the capacity of the province’s fleet of nuclear power reactors is sprawling in its ambition – and has a price tag to match.
Last May, Energy Minister Stephen Lecce stood alongside Premier Doug Ford to announce that the government would spend $20.9-billion to build four new small modular reactors in Clarington, Ont. In November, they approved a $26.8-billion overhaul of four old reactors at Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, just east of Toronto.
Ontario’s electricity rates shot up 29 per cent in November, driven in part by rising nuclear generation costs. Further hikes are virtually certain: Ontario Power Generation (OPG) recently filed a rate application before the Ontario Energy Board, which it says will lay the foundation for the province’s energy supply over the next quarter century. The utility seeks roughly a doubling of the payments it receives for the electricity generated by its nuclear power plants. If granted, monthly bills would increase by an average of $3.50 each year for the next five years.
What comes next, though, promises to be even more expensive.
The Ford government asserts that Ontario will need roughly 18,000 additional megawatts of nuclear capacity by mid-century. (Ontario’s existing Darlington, Bruce and Pickering stations represent about 12,000 megawatts.) They’re ready to embark on what they describe as “the largest expansion of nuclear energy on the continent,” which includes plans for two of the largest nuclear plants on Earth. They could easily cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
This aspect of Ontario’s nuclear ambitions – the cost, and how residents and businesses will pay – is rarely discussed by provincial officials, and then only in vague terms. But the Ford government has long insisted that it can do it all while keeping electricity costs down. Critics – particularly those favoring renewable generation – have warned for years that this nuclear-focused approach would eventually lead to steep rate hikes.
“Ontario is on a track to more expensive energy in the future,” said David Pickup, manager of electricity at the Pembina Institute, an energy thinktank.
In a presentation in late January, Jack Gibbons, chair of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, said Mr. Ford’s plans would see 75 per cent of Ontario’s electricity produced by nuclear power by 2050.
“If his nuclear projects proceed, our electricity rates will rise dramatically,” he predicted.
The Ford government came to power in 2018 riding a wave of dissatisfaction with the energy policies of its Liberal predecessors, which also led to surging power bills. Have Mr. Lecce and Mr. Ford similarly miscalculated?
Surging rates
Ontario’s Nov. 1 rate hike of 29 per cent was likely the largest on the continent last year. In the past year, Maine and New Jersey experienced increases of 25.5 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively, according to data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The U.S. national average was just 6.6 per cent.
OEB spokesperson Tom Miller attributed Ontario’s rate increase partly to unexpectedly high nuclear generation last year, including from a refurbished reactor at Darlington that returned to service five months earlier than expected.
The November hike was almost entirely offset by an accompanying increase in the Ontario Energy Rebate, a provincial subsidy the government uses to lower residential electricity bills. But those subsidies will cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, competing with other priorities.
For now, Ontarians’ rates still compare favorably to some provinces, including Nova Scotia, and also U.S. states around the Great Lakes. But the higher payments sought by OPG, if approved, would endure for years.
Traditionally, OPG recovered its costs for projects once they began generating electricity – a common practice worldwide. But nuclear plants can take a decade or two to construct and therefore tend to rack up sizeable interest charges, adding to their final tab.
Last year the government amended the Ontario Energy Board Act to allow OPG to immediately begin recouping some costs associated with building the small modular reactors (SMRs) and refurbishing Pickering.
“The intended effect is to smooth out the cost over time, rather than massive jumps from one year to the next,” explained Brendan Frank, who heads policy development and analysis at Clean Prosperity, a clean energy thinktank.
The Association of Major Power Consumers of Ontario, which represents major industrial electricity users, accepts the charges.
“It’s a legitimate ask from the generators,” said Brad Duguid, the organization’s president. “They have preliminary costs that they’re incurring, and they need to have a way to pay for that.”
Nonetheless, similar regulatory changes elsewhere in North America led to misfortune. In the U.S., a practice known as Construction Work in Progress was introduced in South Carolina and Georgia, which obligated ratepayers in those states to pay up front for the only new nuclear plants built in the U.S. since the 1980s. The South Carolina plant was never finished, and the Georgia plant came in well over budget and many years late, contributing to major rate increases in both states.
Another factor driving up rates in Ontario are refurbished reactors returning to service. Including Pickering, Ontario has decided to refurbish 14 reactors, at a cost of several billions of dollars each. OPG is wrapping up an overhaul of its Darlington plant while Bruce Power’s is scheduled to run until 2033.
Refurbishments enjoy broad political support. One reason is that Ontario’s nuclear industry employs tens of thousands of people. At a press conference held in November to announce the Pickering refurbishment, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy turned to the unionized workers behind him and assured them: “You folks are gonna be working for a long time. By the way, you’ve got job security…I can guarantee you that we’ll have the nuclear industry’s back all the way through for the next 50 years.”
Local economic benefits are central to Mr. Lecce’s enthusiasm for nuclear, as is energy security.
“The alternative is either a dirty source of power,” he said, “or it is leveraging procurements or materials that are often made in China.
“When I think about President Trump’s attack on the country and his ongoing antagonistic approach to allies and historic friends of the U.S. like Canada, it only reaffirms to me that we are on the right path.”
An expensive future
How much of a premium are Ontarians prepared to pay?
At $20.9-billion, the Darlington SMRs are expected to cost nearly as much as larger reactors that would have generated far more power. The government is betting that the economic benefits will be worth it: by building the first-ever BWRX-300 reactor, it hopes to win export opportunities for Ontario-based nuclear suppliers.
Nuclear plants worldwide have routinely suffered serious delays and cost overruns during construction, and one in nine is never completed. Mr. Lecce exudes confidence that OPG can repeat its performance with the Darlington refurbishment.
Mr. Lecce emphasized that his government is pursuing an “all-of-the-above” approach. The province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has awarded contracts to natural gas and battery storage projects, which are to come online in 2028. But the slogan obscures the fact that the government’s plans would see Ontario lean even more heavily on reactors than it has in the past.
And while the IESO holds competitive procurements for other forms of generation including natural gas, wind and solar, nuclear plants are exempted from that requirement.
Said Mr. Pickup: “There’s no real competition and there’s no real incentive for them to deliver that power at the cheapest cost – unlike these competitive procurements, where if they don’t come in at low cost, they won’t win and they won’t get built.”
The Ford government supports Bruce Power’s proposal to build four large new reactors at its plant in Kincardine, Ont., adding up to 4,800 megawatts to what is often described as the world’s largest nuclear power plant. Known as Bruce C, it could be Canada’s first large-scale nuclear build in more than 30 years. The government has agreed to pay for most of the impact assessment, a benefit few other private power producers enjoy.
Simultaneously, OPG has begun planning an even larger plant at Wesleyville, the site of a partly-constructed oil-fired facility near Port Hope. Wesleyville’s capacity could be as high as 10,000 megawatts, enough to seize the Bruce’s crown as the world’s largest nuclear plant.
Nuclear plants take at least a decade, often two or more, to plan and build. This long lead time, accompanied by their huge output of electricity, requires governments to make big bets about future demand.
Mr. Lecce has placed his. He expects 21 million people will live in Ontario by mid-century, up from 16 million currently. He anticipates mass-adoption of electric vehicles, new data centres and massive investment in Ontario’s industry, including electrification of steel mills.
“We need 65 per cent more power at least, 90 per cent at the high,” Mr. Lecce said. “The province is going to be investing in energy generation, one way or another.”
But many EV projects announced in the past few years have stalled or been cancelled outright. U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to curtail automotive imports into his country has led automakers to lower production in Ontario, and the future of other power-intensive industries such as steel are similarly unclear.
The path not taken
The Ford government’s nuclear expansion plots the opposite course to that taken by most other jurisdictions globally.
According to the International Energy Agency, renewables (particularly solar) are growing faster than any other major energy source, and will continue to do so in all scenarios it has presented – even accounting for continuing hostility from the Trump administration.
“Renewables and storage have come down massively” in cost over the last 15 years, Mr. Pickup said. “Cost reductions have been 80 to 90 per cent, so renewables aren’t just competitive, they’re much cheaper.”
Mr. Ford resolutely opposed wind generation when he first assumed office; his government sought to halt construction of two partly-constructed wind farms, much as Mr. Trump now attacks offshore wind projects.
Mr. Ford’s antipathy toward renewables appears to have softened since then. Nonetheless, the IESO expects renewables will supply roughly the same proportion of Ontario’s electricity 25 years from now as they do today.
Mr. Pickup said the Pembina Institute doesn’t think Ontario should throw out its nuclear plans entirely, only that it should moderate its ambitions considerably in favor of alternatives, particularly renewables and energy storage.
“Nuclear comes in as expensive today,” he said. “It’s going to be relatively more expensive tomorrow.”
Mr. Gibbons, of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, asserted that the cost of new nuclear capacity is between two and eight times more expensive than wind and solar generation.
“If we build new nuclear stations, our electricity rates will rise. If we actually want to lower our electricity bills, we need to invest in the lower cost options.”
But renewables have their own shortcomings and hidden costs. Unlike nuclear plants, wind and solar facilities provide electricity only intermittently, the amount of which is largely determined by environmental conditions like wind speed and daylight. And they require additional transmission infrastructure to connect to the grid, not to mention lots of land.
Europe feels the impact of weeks of wet weather and freezing cold.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated in Spain, Portugal and
Morocco after Storm Leonardo caused widespread flooding. Emergency services
and the military have been helping rescue people from their homes with
residents who remain warned to leave immediately. The Portuguese government
have extended a state of emergency due to what it describes as the
“devastating crisis” caused by a wave of storms. Saturday will see the
arrival of Storm Marta which will bring more rain to the region.
BBC 6th Feb 2026, https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cwy8450qkwwo
Decommissioning of Gentilly 1
Ken Collier, 7 Feb 26
As in many industrial projects, many of the hazards come to be known only after the project is well under way or, very often, completed and discontinued. Gentilly 1 is one of those projects. Like others, the Gentilly 1 detritus presents grave dangers to living things as the building, equipment and supplies are taken apart. Complete public review of the decommissioning of Gentilly 1 is required, in my view. It should not be skipped or sidestepped in any way.
Notice of the project was posted on the website of the federal impact assessment agency, but it bears scant resemblance to formal and complete impact assessments, and the public is instructed to send comments to the private consortium, rather than to the federal authorities responsible for making the decision.
To cite Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR): “Heavily contaminated radioactive concrete and steel would be trucked over public roads and bridges, through many Quebec and Ontario communities, to the Chalk River site just across the Ottawa River from Quebec.”
How Flexibility, Not Nuclear, Can Secure Ontario’s Electricity Future
Michael Barnard, Clean Technica, 6 Feb 26
Ontario is moving forward with planning for an entirely new nuclear generation site in Port Hope, 100 km east of Toronto, at a moment when its electricity system is already one of the most nuclear-heavy in the world. Nuclear power today provides roughly 55% of Ontario’s electricity, with hydro adding another 25%. Wind, solar, batteries, and demand-side resources together account for a much smaller share, having been cut off at the knees in 2018 when the provincial conservative party took power and summarily cut 758 contracts for renewable generation. Advancing a new site signals how the province understands its future electricity challenge. It reflects an expectation that Ontario will require another large block of firm, always-available capacity to remain reliable as demand grows, particularly during the most constrained hours of the year.
Ontario’s electricity planners, primarily through the Independent Electricity System Operator, frame the case for new nuclear around long-term reliability rather than annual energy supply. Their planning outlook projects electricity demand rising by about 65–75% by 2050—a low energy value not aligned with actual climate or competitiveness goals—with a projected winter peak reaching roughly 36–37 GW. Summer peaks are also expected to rise, but they remain slightly lower, in the range of about 35–36 GW by mid-century. The winter peak, not the summer peak, is treated as the binding constraint, and it is that single cold, dark evening hour that underpins the justification for new nuclear capacity.
This framing matters because of how nuclear is treated in planning models. Nuclear plants supply energy year-round, but the decision to build new nuclear capacity is driven mainly by how much firm capacity planners believe is needed to meet future peak demand. Nuclear units are counted as fully available during peak hours, even though they operate continuously, do not follow demand and are not available when down for maintenance, refueling or refurbishment for months or years. From a reliability perspective, this approach is understandable. System operators are rewarded for avoiding shortages and penalized heavily for blackouts, while overbuilding capacity carries fewer immediate consequences………………………….
The distinction between energy growth and peak growth is critical here. Energy demand, measured in TWh, reflects how much electricity the system produces over a year. Peak demand, measured in GW, reflects the single hardest hour the system must meet. Nuclear plants are not built to follow peaks, but they are sized to peaks. If peaks remain sharp and high, nuclear looks attractive in planning models. If peaks flatten or decline due to significant system component flexiblity, the value of adding large, inflexible, always-on generation falls quickly, even if total energy demand continues to rise.
Electrification without flexibility is genuinely concerning, and planners are right to worry about it……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Ontario does not lack clean electricity. It lacks a planning framework that fully reflects how electricity systems are changing, why winter peaks appear hard only under outdated assumptions, and how firm capacity is actually used in a flexible, digitized grid. The choice facing the province is not between reliability and decarbonization, but between building infrastructure sized for a winter peak that no longer needs to exist and building a system designed to avoid creating that peak in the first place. https://cleantechnica.com/2026/02/06/how-flexibility-not-nuclear-can-secure-ontarios-electricity-future/
Britain courts private cash to fund ‘golden age’ of nuclear-powered AI.
SMR trials are on the horizon, but commercial viability is not expected until the 2030s.
Things get a little hazy over the question of any financial support.
Framework aims to lure investors into powering the compute boom
Dan Robinson, Thu 5 Feb 2026,
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/05/uk_private_finance_smr/
The British government today launched the Advanced Nuclear Framework to attract private investment in next-generation nuclear technology for factories and datacenters.
The framework aims to accelerate development of advanced modular reactors to power the AI infrastructure boom and provide [?]clean energy for economic growth.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) will create a “pipeline” of projects meeting readiness criteria, offering a “concierge-style” service to help the developers navigate UK planning, regulations, and secure private investment.
DESNZ says emerging nuclear technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs) can be prefabricated in factories, enabling faster, cheaper assembly using skilled jobs across multiple regions. These reactors can provide [?] clean energy to the grid or directly to industrial users, it claims. SMRs, as Reg readers likely know, are newfangled designs with a power capacity of up to about 300 MW per unit, about a third of the generating capacity of traditional atomic reactors.
However, the novelty of these designs means they probably won’t be pumping out the megawatts any time soon. As Omdia principal analyst Alan Howard told us last year, SMR trials are on the horizon, but commercial viability is not expected until the 2030s.
Howard was commenting on the announcement of the UK’s first SMR plant last November, which being built at Wylfa on Anglesey, an island off the coast of Wales.
DESNZ also points to plans for X-Energy and Centrica to build 12 advanced modular reactors in Hartlepool, while Holtec, EDF, and Tritax aim to build SMRs at a former coal-fired power station site at Cottam in Nottinghamshire.
Lord Patrick Vallance, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear, claimed advanced nuclear technology could revolutionize the power and AI datacenter industries, delivering [?]clean energy and more jobs.
“We are seizing the opportunity to become a frontrunner in this space as part of our golden age of nuclear, creating the conditions for the industry to flourish,” he said.
The British government today launched the Advanced Nuclear Framework to attract private investment in next-generation nuclear technology for factories and datacenters.
The framework aims to accelerate development of advanced modular reactors to power the AI infrastructure boom and provide clean energy for economic growth.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) will create a “pipeline” of projects meeting readiness criteria, offering a “concierge-style” service to help the developers navigate UK planning, regulations, and secure private investment.
DESNZ says emerging nuclear technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs) can be prefabricated in factories, enabling faster, cheaper assembly using skilled jobs across multiple regions. These reactors can provide clean energy to the grid or directly to industrial users, it claims.
SMRs, as Reg readers likely know, are newfangled designs with a power capacity of up to about 300 MW per unit, about a third of the generating capacity of traditional atomic reactors.
However, the novelty of these designs means they probably won’t be pumping out the megawatts any time soon. As Omdia principal analyst Alan Howard told us last year, SMR trials are on the horizon, but commercial viability is not expected until the 2030s.
Howard was commenting on the announcement of the UK’s first SMR plant last November, which being built at Wylfa on Anglesey, an island off the coast of Wales.
DESNZ also points to plans for X-Energy and Centrica to build 12 advanced modular reactors in Hartlepool, while Holtec, EDF, and Tritax aim to build SMRs at a former coal-fired power station site at Cottam in Nottinghamshire.
Lord Patrick Vallance, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear, claimed advanced nuclear technology could revolutionize the power and AI datacenter industries, delivering [?]clean energy and more jobs.
“We are seizing the opportunity to become a frontrunner in this space as part of our golden age of nuclear, creating the conditions for the industry to flourish,” he said.
The AI datacenter focus reflects the government’s ambitions for UK AI leadership. It is encouraging a rash of datacenter projects to house AI infrastructure, which is notoriously hot and hungry. One of many reports published last year estimated that global datacenter electricity use is set to more than double by 2030 thanks to AI.
Interested parties will be able to use the Advanced Nuclear Framework to submit proposals to join the pipeline from March. These will then be assessed by Great British Energy-Nuclear, the government-owned atomic energy company.
Things get a little hazy over the question of any financial support. Successful applicants get government endorsement “in principle,” and while they will be expected to secure private finance, the government says it is open to discussions on what may be needed to help get projects off the ground.
Developers will also be able to approach the National Wealth Fund, which can act as a “catalytic investor” for projects that meet their criteria.
The UK isn’t alone in looking to revitalize nuclear power. The US is also encouraging new builds and the development of advanced technologies, and it appears the Trump administration is prepared to overlook safety precautions to speed things along.
US and Russia negotiating New START deal – Axios.
The issue was reportedly discussed on the sidelines of the Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi
5 Feb, 2026 , https://www.rt.com/news/632065-us-russia-negotiate-new-start/
Moscow and Washington are working on a deal to continue the New START nuclear reduction treaty, Axios reported on Thursday, citing three sources familiar with the issue. The strategic arms control agreement officially expired on February 5.
Signed in 2010, the treaty put caps on the number of strategic nuclear warheads and launchers that can be deployed and establishes monitoring mechanisms for both Russian and American arsenals. It was initially set to expire in 2021 but was extended for five years at the time.
According to Axios, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff discussed the issue with the Russian delegation on the sidelines of the Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi. “We agreed with Russia to operate in good faith and to start a discussion about ways it could be updated,” a US official told the media outlet. Another source claimed that the sides had agreed to observe the treaty’s terms for at least six months as the talks on a potential new deal would be ongoing.
Earlier on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow suggested sticking to the treaty’s provisions for another year but its initiative “remained unanswered.” Russia will “keep its responsible attentive approach in the field of strategic stability [and] nuclear weapons” but will be always “primarily guided by its national interests,” he said.
The UN also called the treaty expiration “a grave moment for international peace and security.” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “the risk of a nuclear weapon being used is the highest in decades” as he urged Moscow and Washington to negotiate a successor framework.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier proposed to his US counterpart Donald Trump a one-year extension of the treaty but the American president said that he wanted a “better” agreement that includes China.
On Thursday, Peskov said that China considers joining the talks on a new treaty “pointless” since its nuclear arsenal is incompatible with that of Russia and the US. “We respect this position,” the Kremlin spokesman said.
Impact Assessment of the Planned Dismantling of the Core of the Gentilly-1 reactor.
To: The Honourable Julie Aviva Dabrusin, Minister of Environment and Climate Change
From: The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR)
Re: Impact assessment of the final dismantling of the Gentilly-1 nuclear reactor
Date: July 5 2026
Reference Number 90092
Cc Impact Assessment Agency of Canada
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories \
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
The final dismantling of the most radioactive portions of the Gentilly-1 nuclear reactor, proposed by the licensee Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), will mark the first time that a CANDU power reactor has ever been fully decommissioned – that is, demolished.
This project is not designated for a full panel review under the Impact Assessment Act (IAA) but you, Minister Dabrusin, have the power to so designate it under the terms of the Act.
The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility urges you to do so for the reasons stated below.
(1) When it comes to post-fission radioactivity (human made), the long-lived radioactive decommissioning waste from the core area of a nuclear reactor is second only in radiotoxicity and longevity to the high-level radioactive waste (irradiated nuclear fuel) that has already been designated for a full panel review under IAA at the initiative of NWMO, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. The deadline for initial comments on the NWMO Deep Geological Repository project (DGR) for used nuclear fuel was yesterday, February 4, 2026. [Our comments: www.ccnr.org/GE_IAAC_NWMO_comments_2026.pdf ]
(2) Fully dismantling a nuclear reactor core is a demanding and hazardous undertaking, resulting in voluminous intermediate level radioactive wastes. The highly radioactive steel and concrete structures – fuel channels, calandria tubes, tube sheet, thermal shield, calandria vessel, biological shield, reactor vault, and more – need to be carefully disassembled, using robotic equipment and perhaps underwater cutting techniques with plasma torches. Such methods are described in a 1984 article published by the Canadian Nuclear Society and linked below, on the detailed advanced methods required for dismantling Gentilly-1.
Gentilly-1 Reactor Dismantling Proposal, by Hubert S. Vogt
Reactor and Fuel Handling Engineering Department
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited – CANDU Operation
Published by the Canadian Nuclear Society in the
Proceedings of the 5th Annual Congress
(3) Dismantling the reactor core will create large amounts of radioactive dust and debris some of which will almost certainly be disseminated into the atmosphere, or flushed into the nearby St. Lawrence River, or added to the existing contamination of the soil and subsoil (including groundwater) at the Gentilly site. It is worth noting that, during the Bruce refurbishment operations in 2009, over 500 workers – local tradesmen, mainly – suffered bodily contamination by inhaling radioactive airborne dust containing plutonium and other alpha emitters (i.e. americium) for a period of more than two weeks. The workers were told that respirators were not required. The radioactivity in the air went undetected for two and a half weeks because neither Bruce managers nor CNSC officers on site took the precaution to have the air sampled and tested.
(4) Once disassembled, the bulky and highly radioactive structural components of Gentilly-1 will have to be reduced in volume by cutting, grinding or blasting. Radioactive dust control and radioactive runoff prevention may be only partially effective. Then the multitudinous radioactive fragments must be packaged, and either (a) stored on site or (b) removed and transported over public roads and bridges, probably to Chalk River. The Chalk River site is already overburdened with high-level, intermediate-level, and low-level radioactive wastes of almost all imaginable varieties. Toxic waste dumping at Chalk River is contrary to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the federal government’s “duty to consult”, since Keboawek First Nation and other Indigenous rights-holders in the area have not given their free, prior, informed consent to either the storage or disposal of these toxic wastes on their unceded territory. A panel review could weigh the options of temporary on-site storage versus immediate relocation. Since there is as yet no final destination for intermediate level wastes, moving those wastes two or three times rather than once (when a final destination exists) will be costlier and riskier. Hence on-site storage is attractive.
(5) The decommissioning waste must be isolated from the environment of living things for thousands of years. The metallic fragments contain such long-lived radioactive species as nickel-59, with a 76,000 year half-life, and niobium-94, with a 20,000 year half-life. The concrete fragments also contain long-lived radioactive species like chlorine-36, with a 301,000 year half-life. Such radioactive waste materials are created during the fission process; they were never found in nature before 1940. NWMO has recommended that such intermediate-level decommissioning waste requires a Deep Underground Repository (DGR) not unlike that proposed for used nuclear fuel. CCNR believes that it is only logical and entirely responsible to call for a panel review of this, the first full decommissioning project for a nuclear power reactor in Canada. The lessons learned will have important ramifications for all of Canada’s power reactors as they will all have to be dismantled at some time. This is not “business as usual”.
Read more: Impact Assessment of the Planned Dismantling of the Core of the Gentilly-1 reactor.(6) Demolition of buildings is often a messy business, but demolition of a nuclear reactor core is further complicated by the fact that everything is so highly radioactive, therefore posing a long-term threat to the health and safety of humans and the environment. A panel review by the Assessment Agency is surely the least we can do in the pubic interest.
(7) To the best of our understanding, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) is a private contractor managed by an American-led consortium of multinational corporations, whose work is paid for by Canadian taxpayers through the transfer of billions of dollars to CNL from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, a crown corporation wholly owned by the Canadian government. As CNL is a contractor, paid to do a job by AECL, CCNR does not feel assured that the best interests of Quebec or of Canada will automatically be fully served by CNL, as it is not accountable to the electorate. When the job involves demolishing, segmenting, fragmenting, packaging and transporting dangerous radioactive materials, involving persistent radiological toxins, we feel that a thorough public review by means of a comprehensive impact assessment, coupled with the involvement and oversight of accountable federal and provincial public agencies is required to ensure that the radioactive inventory is verified and documented, that no corners are cut and no presumptions go unchallenged. The International Atomic Energy Agency strongly advises that before any reactor decommissioning work is done, there has to be a very precise and accurate characterisation of the radioactive inventory –
all radionuclides accounted for, all becquerel counts recorded, and all relevant physical/chemical/biological properties carefully noted. We have seen no such documentation, but we believe it is essential to make such documentation publicly available before final decommissioning work begins, and to preserve such records for future generations so that they can inform themselves about the radioactive legacy we are leaving them. A panel review could help to ensure that we do not bequeath a radioactive legacy that is devoid of useful information, a perfect recipe for amnesia.
(8) The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) is federally incorporated as a not-for-profit organization, whose official name in French is le Regroupement pour la surveillance du nucléaire (RSN). CCNR/RSN is a member of le Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie (ROEÉ). The ROEÈ has also filed comments on this dossier, linked below, with 10 recommendations. We endorse the ROEÉ submission and all of its recommendations. The ROEÉ submission is en français www.ccnr.org/IAAC_ROEE_G1_2026.pdf and here is a link to an English translation
www.ccnr.org/IAAC_ROEE_G1_e_2026.pdf .
Yours very truly,
Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President,
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
‘Significant’ fire risks at nuclear plant site
Maisie Lillywhite, West of England, 4 Feb 26, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgqexej138jo
‘Significant’ fire risks have been uncovered at the first nuclear plant to be built in Britain for 30 years, including flammable materials left on emergency exit stairs.
Inspectors from the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said they found significant fire safety shortfalls at Hinkley Point C, EDF’s twin-reactor nuclear power station in Somerset.
The ONR has served enforcement action notices on five organisations which are overseeing mechanical, electrical and heating (MEH) and ventilation and air conditioning work (HVAC) at the site.
Bosses of the five organisations will need to address the shortfalls ahead of the next inspection.
A spokesperson for Hinkley Point C said they are working closely with contract partners to ensure that the appropriate enhancements are made.
“Safety is our overriding priority, and we are already acting to oversee improvements,” they added.
Mahtab Khan, ONR’s head of regulation, said fire safety is not optional and it is a legal requirement that protects lives.
“We will not hesitate to take enforcement action where safety standards fall short, and we expect all dutyholders to treat fire safety with the urgency it demands.
“Working alongside the principal contractor and MEH alliance, we have made good progress in understanding the root causes of these shortfalls to ensure they are addressed,” Khan added.
The Hinkley Point C contractors given fire enforcement notices are Altrad Babcock, Altrad Services, Balfour Beatty Kilpatrick Ltd, Cavendish Nuclear, and NG Bailey.
The combustible material, found during an inspection in December, was discovered in the staircase and was waste typical of construction activities, the ONR said.
It added although the waste did not block the fire exit, it could have compromised access to the building in the event of a fire.
Inspectors found the construction site did not have an adequate fire risk assessment.
There were also insufficient means of escape exits for the number of people working in the building.
The ONR said the shortfalls had no direct impact on the likelihood of a fire, but that the enforcement means adequate routes should be available to workers in the event of a fire.
It comes after inspectors found there was a “risk of serious injury” due to “inadequate fire controls” being used by civil engineering firm Bylor JV, which is run by both Laing O’Rourke and Bouygues Travaux Publics.
In December, the company was served with a fire safety notice and was told it had until June to implement changes.
The estimated cost of Hinkley Point C has risen to £46bn from the £18bn predicted in 2017, and it is expected to open in 2031.
Growing stockpiles of radioactive waste beside the Ottawa River upstream of Parliament Hill causing widespread concern.
| The Ottawa River flows through an ancient rift valley that extends from near North Bay through Ottawa toward Montreal. The area is seismically active, and experiences dozens of minor earthquakes each year. Stronger earthquakes also occur such as the magnitude 5 quake in June 2010 that caused shaking, evacuations and damage in Ottawa including shattered windows in Ottawa City Hall and power outages in the downtown area. |
| February 3, 2026The Ottawa River flows through an ancient rift valley that extends from near North Bay through Ottawa toward Montreal. The area is seismically active, and experiences dozens of minor earthquakes each year. Stronger earthquakes also occur such as the magnitude 5 quake in June 2010 that caused shaking, evacuations and damage in Ottawa including shattered windows in Ottawa City Hall and power outages in the downtown area.Experts say Ottawa is at risk for a big earthquake.The Government of Canada is currently in the process of shoring up and earthquake-proofing the buildings on Parliament Hill. The project will take 13 years and cost billions of dollars.Incredibly, at the same time as billions are being spent to earthquake-proof Canada’s Parliament Buildings, the Government of Canada is paying billions of dollars to a US-based consortium that is importing large quantities of radioactive waste to the Ottawa Valley. |
| Soon after it took control of Canada’s nuclear laboratories and radioactive waste in 2015, the consortium, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), announced its intention to consolidate all federally-owned radioactive waste at Chalk River Laboratories, alongside the Ottawa River, 180 km upstream of the Nation’s Capital. There was no consultation or approval from the Algonquin Nation in whose unceded territory the Chalk River Laboratories is located, nor any consultation with residents of the Ottawa Valley about the plan. |
| CNL is importing nuclear waste from federal nuclear facilities in Manitoba, southern Ontario and Quebec. The imports comprise thousands of shipments and thousands of tonnes of radioactive debris from reactor decommissioning, and dozens of tonnes of high level waste nuclear fuel, the most deadly kind of radioactive waste that can deliver a lethal dose of radiation to an unprotected bystander within seconds of exposure. |
| High level waste shipments from Becancour, Quebec have already been completed. They involved “dozens of trucks” and convoys operating secretly over several months, from December 2024 through July 2025, under police escort, to move 60 tons of used fuel bundles to Chalk River. Tons of high level waste from Manitoba will follow soon. |
| Since there is no long-term facility for high level waste at Chalk River, nor is there any such facility anywhere in Canada at present, CNL built silos (shown in the photo below) to hold the waste at a cost of 15 million dollars. This high level radioactive waste is ostensibly in storage at Chalk River, but there is no guarantee it will ever be moved. |
| CNL plans to put the less deadly waste into a giant, above-ground radioactive waste mound called the Near Surface Disposal Facility, a controversial project currently mired in legal challenges. The dump would hold one million tons of radioactive waste in a facility designed to last about 500 years. Many of the materials destined for disposal in the dump, such as plutonium, will remain radioactive for far longer than that. According to CNL’s own studies, the facility would leak during operation and disintegrate after a few hundred years, releasing its contents to the surrounding environment and Ottawa River less than a kilometer away. |
Shipping containers filled with radioactive waste are piling up at Waste Management Area H on the Chalk River Laboratories property, awaiting a time when they can be driven or emptied into the NSDF. At last count there were 1500 shipping containers there, shown in the photo below. [on original] Source photo is at https://concernedcitizens.net/2025/12/13/cnl-environmental-remediation-management-update-june-2025/
| It would be hard to choose a less suitable place to consolidate all federal radioactive waste than in a seismically-active zone beside the Ottawa River that provides drinking water for millions of Canadians in communities downstream including Ottawa, Gatineau and Montreal. |
| Concerns about imports of radioactive waste to the Ottawa Valley are widespread and growing. |
| In 2021, Ottawa City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for radioactive waste imports to the Ottawa Valley to stop. Ottawa Riverkeeper recently called for transportation of radioactive waste to the Chalk River Laboratories to stop until a clear, long-term plan for the waste is available. A December 2025 letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney from Bloc Québécois and Green Party MPs along with First Nations and many civil society groups requested a moratorium on shipments of Canadian radioactive waste to Chalk River. |
| Action is urgently needed to halt the imports of radioactive waste to the earthquake-prone Ottawa Valley. |
One year on, the Green party continues to voice concerns about the Last Energy Nuclear Power plant in the Llynfi Valley
However, Green Party policy is clear. We are against the development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Wales has the capacity for energy self-sufficiency in solar, wind and tidal power. Moreover, it is quicker, safer, cheaper and has proven technology to develop renewable energy.
The Nuclear industry is not welcome in Wales. We can and should focus on solar, wind and tidal power.
We are not alone in our concerns. Local people and environmental organisations are also increasingly asking questions about why the Llynfi Valley has been chosen as a potential site for four nuclear reactors.
February 3, 2026 Editor Bridgend, Energy, News , https://bridgend-local.co.uk/2026/02/03/one-year-on-the-green-party-continues-to-voice-concerns-about-the-last-energy-nuclear-power-plant-in-the-llynfi-valley/
Last Energy Nuclear Power is an American company funded by venture capitalists, with no previous experience of building, operating or managing nuclear power stations. It is a very ambitious company, and is also involved in talks with NATO. The Welsh Government will not have to fund the initial costs of this development. So why does the Green Party think this is such a betrayal of people in the Valleys?
At the first meeting I attended, in Pencoed College, the skills, knowledge and understanding of the presenters representing Last Energy were questionable. Their PowerPoint Presentation computer indicated that it had low power and the panicked presenters rushed around fiddling with various wires. Eventually they ascertained that they had not switched on the plug point at the wall. Last Energy were proud to announce that they would fund food banks as part of their contribution to the local community. When I pointed out to them that what locals needed was a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, without having to rely on food banks, this appeared to surprise them.
Over the following months in 2025 I attended many of the Last Energy consultation meetings, held throughout Bridgend County Borough. They were very poorly attended, and I questioned how they had informed local people that they were having these consultation meetings. At first Last Energy were adamant that every household had a leaflet inviting them to a meeting. It transpired that there were leaflets being delivered, frequently too late for locals to know about the meetings, and definitely not to every household. Many locals never had a leaflet. At one meeting a man described a leaflet he received as akin to a takeaway menu, beige and uninteresting in design. He almost threw the leaflet in the bin before noticing the word nuclear, in very small print.
Eventually Last Energy admitted that they had not delivered the leaflets door to door in a timely fashion, nor approached the local schools and parents to discuss how a nuclear power plant may affect their children. Last Energy agreed to run the consultation meetings again, starting in September 2025, this time inviting the public to attend. No such meetings have been widely advertised, and it is now February 2026.
I question whether Last Energy has been advised to cease communications with the public, in order to wait for the results of the Senedd Election. Locals have written to Senedd and Westminster representatives. Responses by Labour representatives are generally in favour of the nuclear development. Plaid Cymru has yet to reveal its policy on nuclear plant development.However, Green Party policy is clear. We are against the development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Wales has the capacity for energy self-sufficiency in solar, wind and tidal power. Moreover, it is quicker, safer, cheaper and has proven technology to develop renewable energy.
Locals are particularly concerned that the proposed build is on a flood plain and next to the River Llynfi. Natural Resources Wales has said that ‘The PWR-20s will be constructed, operated and decommissioned in groundwater and therefore introduce a significant risk to the environment’. Otters, bats, dormice and great crested newts are all known to live within a few kilometres of the site.
The Last Energy site would be accessed via the only road from Bridgend to Maesteg, a road known to have daily heavy traffic. Safe access to Maesteg and the Garw Valley from Bridgend and back is already an issue for those needing emergency transfer to a hospital. It is hard to fathom why this site has been chosen.
There is a grid connection on the site, which could be brought back into use by establishing an energy battery storage station, supplied by renewable energy. This would address a real need for the
Valleys as it would improve energy supply resilience. Bettws lost power for days after the December 2024 storm. We need to strengthen our resilience by improving our grid system and this is an obvious opportunity that should not be sidelined due to the next government’s failure to prioritise the needs of the local communities over men in smart suits with smiling eyes. The novel ‘The Rape of the Fair Country’ by Alexander Cordell will resonate once more with our Valleys communities. History must not be allowed to repeat itself.
Essentially, if the planning application is granted, a private, profit focused company known as Last Energy will supply soon to be built data centres with energy by direct wire transfer. Private companies are investing in nuclear power in order to make a profit during the years of electricity production. Private companies are building data centres, known for their high energy and water consumption. Both businesses will employ very few local people. These businesses would be owned by people outside of Wales, and any profits made will not be spent in our communities.
We need developments that bring long term skilled jobs to our communities. This can be accomplished if we pay attention to what we want, and demand that our government is of the people, for the people and by the people.
Planning permission has not yet been granted for the nuclear power plant. If enough people voice their concerns then Welsh Government must listen.
The people of the Llynfi Valley deserve a just transition to renewable energy. Insulating buildings and retrofitting homes with the correct materials can bring safe and healthy jobs, housing security and even prosperity back to our valleys.
None of the benefits of this development will be for local people. The power is mostly going to be sold to big businesses. Any profits will stay in the hands of private companies’ owners. Bridgend has been declared to be a AI growth zone by the UK government. Many decisions directly impacting on Bridgend’s future generations are being made outside Wales. However, the planning application will either be accepted or rejected by Welsh Government.
The real risks – if this nuclear factory goes ahead – will be taken by the local people and future generations. Will our children thank us for allowing this development to go ahead? Imagine how the children will feel in the local schools when in addition to practicing fire evacuation drills they will have to learn the emergency drill if there is a nuclear incident. Schools and families within a 30 kilometre radius of a nuclear power station should typically have supplies of iodine tablets, according to Dr Ian Fairlie, who gave evidence to the UK parliamentary committee. This minimises the risks of thyroid cancer to which children are typically more prone after a radiation incident.
Some argue that nuclear power is a low carbon fuel. This is only true for the initial generation stage. Nuclear power has long term risks for radioactive waste. We do not have safe storage for nuclear waste anywhere in the UK, and an underground safe storage site is at least decades from being constructed. Last Energy expects to produce fuel for 42 years, followed by an 8 year cooling off period, then decommissioning will take 10 years. The burden of clearing the site is highly likely to fall on the tax payers of the future.
The Last Energy nuclear power plant is considered to be a development of National Significance. Planning Environment Decisions Wales (PEDW) is the “planning authority” The final decision will be made by the Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary for Energy. In order to comply with due process the planning application has to be submitted by February, 2026, since this is the date listed on the PEDW website as the deadline for the submission of the application. There are mechanisms in place for extending the deadline of the application, which may be triggered in order to take account of the next Senedd Election. Consultation will be open for a minimum of 5 weeks.
When the application is assessed they must focus on public interest, local impacts on communities and public health. They must also take into account national government plans and policy statements.
Where does nuclear power sit in Welsh policy?
Welsh government has committed to meeting 100% of our energy demand by renewable energy by 2035. Planning Policy Wales (PPW12) makes no reference to nuclear power. Importantly, Wales has passed the Future Generations Act in 2015.
Bridgend’s Local Development Plan.
There is a presumption against industrial development in the countryside. Proposals for development other than for wind energy within the countryside will only be permitted where it can be demonstrated that they would not unacceptably prejudice the renewable energy potential. The special landscape area of Western Uplands is very close to the site. Importantly, Bridgend County Borough Council is a signatory and member of Nuclear Free Local Authorities.
Coalition of Opposition Local Authorities (COLA)
Mid Glamorgan County Council is the precursor of Bridgend County Council. It is a member of COLA, it opposed Hinkley Point C in the 1980’s and submitted lots of evidence to the Hinkley Point C enquiry. Bridgend has a long history of objecting to, and voicing concerns regarding nuclear energy and nuclear weaponry.
Locals continue to organise local meetings throughout the Bridgend County Borough Council area. There was a stall in Bridgend during the Christmas Lights 2025 switch on.
Locals are encouraged to access more information about Last Energy. Volunteers knocked 700 doors in the immediate area of the planned nuclear power site to share information with locals.
Locals who know about these developments have been organising consultation meetings, to share the plans with their local communities. Still many more are unaware of the potential of a nuclear power plant being built in their community. True consultation does require sharing the plans in ways that actually can be seen and heard by the local community.
Bridgend Green Party
Our message is clear and unequivocal. We do not support the development of Nuclear power and Nuclear weapons. We would not support them even if the nuclear power plants were publicly owned or freely gifted to the people of the Llynfi Valley, or indeed in any part of Wales.
The Nuclear industry is not welcome in Wales. We can and should focus on solar, wind and tidal power.
Trump to Congress: “I don’t need your stinkin’ approval to fund Israeli genocide in Gaza”
4 February 2026 AIMN Editorial Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL https://theaimn.net/trump-to-congress-i-dont-need-your-stinkin-approval-to-fund-israeli-genocide-in-gaza/
Trump is so anxious to continue funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians Gaza that he won’t wait for customary congressional approval.
He authorized a mammoth weapons tranche of $6.6 billion to Israel which includes:
- AH-64E Apache Helicopters and related equipment costing $3.8 billion
- Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and related equipment costing $1.98 billion
- Armored Personnel Carrier equipment and related logistics support costing $740 million
- AW119Kx Light Utility Helicopters and related equipment costing $150 million
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House oversight committee, blasted Trump’s action.
“Just one hour ago, the Trump administration informed me it would disregard congressional oversight and years of standing practice, and immediately notify over $6 billion in arms sales to Israel. Shamefully, this is now the second time the Trump administration has blatantly ignored long-standing Congressional prerogatives while also refusing to engage Congress on critical questions about the next steps in Gaza and broader US policy,”
Trump has no interest in using our tax dollars to fund decent health care, education, affordable housing, green energy, infrastructure; indeed everything needed to uplift the commons. But like predecessor Biden did when Israeli Prime Minister calls for more genocide weapons, Trump listens… then stands and delivers.
The new era of Israeli expansionism and the war economy that fuels it
By Ahmed Alqarout February 2, 2026, https://mondoweiss.net/2026/02/the-new-era-of-israeli-expansionism-and-the-war-economy-that-fuels-it/
While Israel’s current trajectory is being framed domestically as a triumph, its long-term outlook remains grim and costly. Permanent war locks Israel into permanent military mobilization, accelerates demographic and moral exhaustion, and increases long-term exposure to asymmetric retaliation from Palestinian resistance, Syria, Lebanon, and others.
How Israel’s war-driven economy, regional realignments, and Netanyahu’s push for military independence are ushering in a new period of Israeli expansionism in its quest for regional dominance.
Israel has entered a new era of territorial expansionism and military aggression beyond the borders of historic Palestine. Its belligerent actions have accelerated across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Qatar, Libya, and most recently, Somaliland. These developments aren’t due to a change in Israeli strategic ambitions, but rather to the loosening of constraints that had kept it bounded before October 2023.
This expansionist turn reflects a structural recalibration of risk, leverage, and international tolerance rather than a sudden ideological shift. But it is also due to the way Israel’s economy is now structured: the military industry has been carrying the economy ever since Israel experienced a level of global isolation that decimated most other sectors over the past two years. The result? Israel now has an additional structural incentive to be in a perpetual state of war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave voice to this reality when he announced that Israel would need to become a “super Sparta” — a highly militarized warrior state with a self-sufficient military industry, capable of defying international pressure and arms embargoes because it no longer has to rely on American military beneficence.
A crucial recent strategic declaration sharpens this trajectory. In January 2026, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to end U.S. military aid to Israel within roughly a decade, framing this as a path toward military-industrial self-sufficiency and strategic autarky. This announcement signals that Israel is no longer content to remain subordinate to the U.S., instead seeking to operate as its strategic partner in the region at a time when the U.S.’s national security strategy is shifting attention from the Middle East to the Western Hemisphere.
Netanyahu’s declaration amplifies the urgency of the export-led growth model, which is largely based on arms and defense-linked industries. The problem is, if Israel is to replace $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid, it must dramatically scale up its domestic production and export capacity.
Also read: Israel moves to embrace its isolation.
The Israeli state is attempting to institutionalize this export surge through policy, committing roughly NIS 350 billion (equivalent to $100–108 billion) over the coming decade to expand an independent domestic arms industry. Economically, this means that military production will become central to Israel’s long-term industrial strategy, diverting capital, labor, and state support toward weapons manufacturing rather than civilian recovery, a strategy that is untenable during wartime. This also embeds Israeli firms deeper into global security supply chains, even as the state itself becomes diplomatically isolated.
The structural dimension: incentive for permanent war
Since 2023, Israeli military exports have become one of the few sectors compensating for its broader economic slowdown. In 2023, defense exports reached approximately $13 billion, and in 2024 they climbed further to around $14.7–15 billion, setting successive records. This expansion took place while civilian economic growth weakened, labor shortages and unemployment intensified due to the prolonged mobilization of the army, and large segments of the small and medium enterprise sector reported sustained losses and bankruptcies. Arms exports essentially functioned as a countercyclical stabilizer during wartime stress, but now they’re becoming a permanent part of how the Israeli economy aims to reproduce itself.
In 2025, this trajectory accelerated even further. Israel signed some of its largest defense agreements to date with the U.S., UAE, Germany, Greece, and Azerbaijan, covering air defense systems, missiles, drones, and advanced surveillance technologies. While full contract values are not always disclosed, these deals are expected to push total defense exports beyond the 2024 record, reinforcing the arms sector as Israel’s most dynamic export industry, even as other exports, such as agriculture, face an imminent “collapse,” according to Israeli farmers.
The war economy has become the organizing principle of political survival and regime insurance.
As civilian sectors stagnate, the war economy provides growth, foreign currency earnings, and political insulation. This creates a structural incentive for permanent mobilization: war sustains demand, shields the government from accountability, and reinforces a worldview in which force is treated as the primary currency of international relations.
In this configuration, military aggression and territorial expansionism are the mechanisms through which the Israeli economy now seeks to reproduce itself. As a result, Israel’s governing coalition rests on permanent securitization. The war economy has become the organizing principle of political survival and regime insurance.
The global dimension: the end of international law
The international dimension is equally decisive. Israel’s territorial expansionism and military aggression have been enabled by the hollowing out of global constraint mechanisms such as international law.
Western states have demonstrated that there is no meaningful red line when violence is framed as counterterrorism or civilizational defense. Legal norms remain rhetorically intact but operationally suspended. This has altered Israel’s strategic calculus, because if Gaza produces diplomatic noise but no material sanctions, then Lebanon, Syria, or Iraq carries even lower expected costs.
The collapse of normalization: no reason to play nice
Read more: The new era of Israeli expansionism and the war economy that fuels itNormalization politics also play a role. The collapse of Israeli-Saudi normalization talks — which had accelerated throughout 2023 under U.S. mediation but stalled after Israel launched its genocide in Gaza — did not discipline Israeli behavior, but liberated it.
Without Saudi recognition serving as a bargaining chip or incentive for restraint, Israel abandoned any pretense of using territorial compromises as a negotiating tool. It doubled down on the objective of establishing facts on the ground while seeking bilateral security ties with smaller or more vulnerable actors. Expansion now substitutes for Israel’s dying soft power, and recognition is increasingly extracted through leverage rather than negotiation.
What makes the post-2023 moment distinctive is Israel fighting across multiple theaters simultaneously, in the open, and with confidence that escalation will not trigger systemic pushback. Furthermore, Israel’s strategy has become structurally enabled by an ever-increasing reliance on new technologies developed during war. It is no longer a response to threats but a method of governance at home and influence abroad.
Since 2023, Israel has no longer pursued peace through containment, as it did during the Arab Spring period. Instead, it has shifted toward permanent occupation, land seizure, and the redrawing of political maps to sustain and expand its war machine.
How Israel is pursuing regional dominance
Domestically, Israeli territorial expansionism aims to permanently resolve the Palestinian question through a combination of expulsion, cantonization, co-optation, and ultimately displacement. The underlying logic is to eliminate what is perceived as Israel’s primary domestic security problem — the very presence of the Palestinian people on their land — once and for all, thereby restoring elite and societal confidence in the long-term survival of the state.
At the regional level, Israel pursues diverse objectives across the countries in which it intervenes, some involving territorial acquisition or semi-permanent occupation, others focused on subordination, fragmentation, and neutralization of perceived threats.
In Iran, aggression takes the form of seeking regime destabilization and military degradation through sustained airstrikes on nuclear and military facilities, alongside efforts to exacerbate social and political unrest. The June 2025 war between Israel and Iran marked the most direct military confrontation between the two states to date, yet it terminated in an informal pause rather than escalating into full-scale war, with neither side crossing recognized deterrence thresholds despite the intensity of exchanges.
Since then, large-scale protests inside Iran have introduced a new internal pressure point that external actors increasingly frame as a strategic vulnerability. This has coincided with explicit threats of war from Donald Trump and renewed U.S. military signalling, which together reinforce Israel’s long-standing view of Iran as an existential threat to be confronted through regime change. Yet the persistence of non-escalation reflects how aggression against Iran operates within implicit boundaries that territorial expansionism in Palestine or Syria does not face, even as the fusion of internal unrest and external coercive rhetoric makes this equilibrium more fragile.
In Lebanon, Israel seeks to dismantle Hezbollah not only as a military actor but as the backbone of a Shiite-led political order that obstructs Israeli regional dominance. The deeper objective is to fracture Lebanon into a minorities-based system in which Druze, Christians, and other groups are incentivized to seek external protection and economic linkage with Israel. A weak and segmented Lebanon provides strategic depth without the costs and liabilities of direct occupation. For now, the cross-border escalation in Lebanon functions less as a pathway to outright military victory and more as a tool for reshaping Lebanon’s internal political balance over time.
As of January 2026, despite the ceasefire nominally holding, Israel has maintained “temporary” positions in five “strategic” locations in southern Lebanon, refusing to complete its withdrawal. The result is a tense stalemate in which Israel maintains military leverage over Lebanon while withholding its commitment to a full withdrawal and leaving open the possibility of renewed major escalations.
Israel’s strikes across Syria are somewhat more complex, becoming a central theater of Israeli military intervention and engineered political fragmentation following the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. The Israeli strategy in Syria involves both direct military action and efforts to prevent unified Syrian state consolidation by providing military support for and coordination with Syrian Kurdish forces (the SDF) aimed at fragmenting the new Syrian government’s authority.
In March 2025, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz publicly announced that Israel would permit Syrian Druze workers to enter the Golan Heights for agricultural and construction work, framing this as a humanitarian gesture while simultaneously cultivating labour dependencies and economic ties that bind border communities to Israel. In July 2025, Netanyahu adopted a formal policy of “demilitarization of southern Syria,” declaring that Israeli forces would remain in southern Syria indefinitely and that no Syrian military forces would be permitted south of Damascus, effectively partitioning Syrian territory. Netanyahu framed this policy as “protection of the Druze.”
Israel’s setbacks in Syria
By late 2025 and early 2026, the SDF’s position had collapsed. Arab tribal defections in Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zour, mounting pressure from Turkish forces to the north, and a lack of sustained external support led to a rapid SDF retreat from much of northern and eastern Syria by January 2026. This collapse of Israel’s primary Kurdish proxy, coupled with the failure of Israeli-backed Druze militia resistance to prevent Damascus’s consolidation of authority in southern Syria, has undermined Israel’s strategy of preventing unified Syrian state reconstruction through proxy warfare.
The Druze and Alawite populations represent potential economic and demographic assets at a time when Israel faces a structural shortage of both soldiers and workers. Since 2023, this shortage has become acute. The Syrian periphery offers a pool of labor that can be selectively incorporated under autonomy arrangements or informal annexation, which Israel has already done by allowing a number of Syrian Druze to work in the Golan Heights. What is emerging is a strategy of economic annexation without formal borders, integrating the southern Syrian periphery into the Israeli economy on subordinate terms.
As for Yemen, its alignment with Gaza and its demonstrated capacity to disrupt Red Sea shipping have elevated it from a peripheral conflict to a strategic threat for Israel, especially since Ansar Allah’s blockade undermines Israel’s global trade architecture and its security relationships with Western shipping insurers, logistics firms, and port operators.
Yemen’s growing ties with Russia and China have only compounded this threat. That’s why attacking Yemen isn’t about Yemen alone, but about preserving a Western-aligned maritime order in which Israel is embedded as its key security node.
This is where Israel’s recognition of Somaliland comes in, allowing Israel to bypass internationally recognized states and to work directly with sub-state entities. Somaliland has allegedly agreed to have an Israeli military base established in the territory and to accept displaced Palestinians from Gaza in exchange for this recognition.
Regarding direct Israeli involvement in North Africa more broadly, Israel has not pursued direct military operations in Egypt or sustained military intervention in Sudan or Libya, but it has pursued indirect strategies of influence and intelligence gathering, from maintaining contacts with both sides of the Sudanese civil war to secretly meeting with Libyan officials before October 2023.
The costs of expansionism and potential for resistance
While Israel’s current trajectory is being framed domestically as a triumph, its long-term outlook remains grim and costly. Permanent war locks Israel into permanent military mobilization, accelerates demographic and moral exhaustion, and increases long-term exposure to asymmetric retaliation from Palestinian resistance, Syria, Lebanon, and others.
Each absence of consequence recalibrates expectations on both sides. Within Israel, it reinforces the belief that force carries no meaningful cost. Among those targeted, it sharpens incentives to develop longer-horizon strategies of attrition and retaliation. Geographic overreach further compounds these vulnerabilities. Israel’s efforts to embed itself within overseas military infrastructures in places such as Somaliland and southern Yemen (and to establish bases through regional proxies like the UAE) expose Israel’s operational reach to extended supply lines that are distant, insecure, and vulnerable to interdiction.
Rather than Israeli-operated facilities, these arrangements rely on third-party bases (principally Emirati), whose stability depends on shifting regional power dynamics and state priorities beyond Israel’s direct control. Maintaining an effective presence at such a distance raises the likelihood of further military stumbling blocks, financial constraints, and unanticipated entanglements that may prove difficult to sustain over time, especially as Yemen’s Ansar Allah threatens to target any future military bases in Somaliland.
Lawmakers spark backlash with controversial fee imposed on residents: ‘Colossal financial risk’
There’s a political battle unfolding in Scotland over a new charge critics
are calling a “nuclear tax” — a levy that could leave Scottish households
paying for nuclear construction projects hundreds of miles away. At the
center of the dispute is England’s Sizewell C nuclear power station, a
project that has ballooned beyond its original budget and is raising
questions about who should foot the bill.
According to The National,
Scottish lawmakers are raising alarms over a levy introduced by Westminster
to help fund the plant in Suffolk, which is now projected to cost £38
billion ($51.9 billion) — nearly double its original estimate of £20
billion ($27.3 billion). Scottish bill payers could contribute around £300
million ($409.3 million) over the next decade even though the plant is
being built in England.
The Scottish National Party has criticized Labour
leadership for not opposing the tax, arguing that residents are paying for
a project they did not approve and may never directly benefit from. “Your
support for these projects in Scotland would see us exposed to colossal
financial risk and undermine our renewables future,” SNP lawmaker Graham
Leadbitter said.
However, Labour representatives argue that nuclear power
is an important part of the United Kingdom’s long-term energy mix. Gregor
Poynton has said Scotland risks missing out on jobs and investment by
turning away from new nuclear technologies such as small modular reactors.
TCD 2nd Feb 2026, https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/nuclear-tax-scotland-household-energy-bills/
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
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