Finland’s Olkiluoto nuclear power station to be disconnected for 37 days
The Olkiluoto-3 nuclear power plant in Finland – the first of its type
in Europe – will be disconnected from electricity production on 2 March
for its first annual outage, owner and operator Teollisuuden Voima Oyj
said. Regular electricity production began at the 1,600 MW EPR unit one
year ago with full commercial operation on 1 May.
TVO said the planned
outage is expected to last 37 days. The lengthy duration is due to the
technical characteristics of the plant type and the large number of
periodic tests and maintenance activities to be carried out during the
outage, TVO said. “As OL3 is the largest nuclear power plant unit in
Europe, there is a considerable number of components and equipment that
need to be serviced.” The plan for the Olkiluoto-3 outage includes some
1,900 different activities with almost 6,500 work phases.
Nucnet 1st March 2024
So They’re Experimenting With Military Robots In Gaza Now
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 4, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/so-theyre-experimenting-with-military?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=142282788&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
One of the most horrifying facts about this dystopia we live in is that large-scale military operations are routinely used as testing grounds for new war machinery, using human bodies as guinea pigs for experimentation in what amount to giant blood-soaked field laboratories — all to benefit the strategic objectives of empire managers and the profit margins of the military-industrial complex.
Haaretz has a new article out titled “Gaza Becomes Israel’s Testing Ground for Military Robots”, which reports that “In an effort to avoid harming soldiers and dogs, the IDF has been experimenting with the use of robots and remote-controlled dogs in the Gaza War.”
(Yeah because my gosh, can you imagine how terrible it would be if Israeli soldiers and dogs got harmed while carrying out a genocide?)
The article’s author Sagi Cohen reports that drone-mounted robot dogs and remotely controlled bulldozers are two of the new apocalyptic horrors currently being battle-tested in Gaza, saying “defense establishment officials confirm that there has been a leap in the use and sophistication of robots on the battlefield.” Which is a pretty disconcerting sentence to read.
This news comes out at the same time as a new Public Citizen report warning of the likely imminent arrival of autonomous weapons systems which will kill people with minimal instruction from human pilots, saying “The most serious worry involving autonomous weapons is that they inherently dehumanize the people targeted and make it easier to tolerate widespread killing, including in violation of international human rights law.”
The more normalized robots become within the world’s militaries the closer we come to this point, and steps are already being taken in that direction. As Common Dreams’ Thor Benson notes in an article about the Public Citizen report, “Israel has purchased and at times deployed self-piloting, lethal drones.”
Back in January I wrote that “Gaza is a live laboratory for the military industrial complex,” saying “Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies in Gaza (just like has been happening in Ukraine) to be used to benefit the war machine and arms industry.”
What sparked this comment at the time was reports and first-hand witness accounts we’d seen coming out about the prolific use of IDF “sniper drones” in Gaza since October, with Israeli forces frequently shooting Palestinians with quad drones armed with rifles. Copious records are most assuredly being compiled on the effectiveness of these newer weapons and tactics in ending human lives, which will then be used to help market those weapons to other states and to improve their efficiency in killing.
When I say this is most assuredly happening, I am not being hyperbolic for effect. Author and journalist Antony Loewenstein gave a lengthy interview on The Chris Hedges Report back in December about Israel’s long and extensively documented history of using Gaza as a testing ground for new weapons, spyware, surveillance and security systems, AI, drones, and tactics, which has profited scores of corporations and enabled Israel to become a player of outsized success in the global weapons industry.
“Israel’s drones, surveillance technology including spyware, facial recognition software, and biometric gathering infrastructure, along with smart fences, experimental bombs, and AI-controlled machine guns are all tried out on the captive population in Gaza, often with lethal results,” says Hedges in introduction. “These weapons and technologies are then certified as ‘battle-tested’ and sold around the world.”
This doesn’t only happen in Gaza. This past September The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “The War in Ukraine Is Also a Giant Arms Fair,” subtitled “Arms makers are getting orders for weapons being put to the test on the battlefield.” In January of last year CNN published a report titled “How Ukraine became a testbed for Western weapons and battlefield innovation,” with one source saying that Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations.”
And of course we are also seeing this same phenomenon in Africa. In 2021 Mintpress News published a report by Scott Timcke titled “West Africa is the Latest Testing Ground for US Military Artificial Intelligence” about this very same trend. In 2020 Libya saw what is believed to have been the first time a human being has ever been killed by a fully automated drone attack — that is, killed without the machine having been told to do so by a human.
The other day we discussed how the empire’s great weakness is that it depends on normal human beings to carry out its orders and turn the gears of the machine. If you look at the facts and think about them for a moment, it’s not hard to see how the empire managers are hoping to overcome this weakness in the future.
Could climate change release 35 swimming pools’ worth of nuclear waste? Or worse… unleash a world-ending pandemic? These are the terrifying unexpected consequences of melting ice
By ROB WAUGH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM, 2 March 2024 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13135571/Could-climate-change-release-35-swimming-pools-worth-nuclear-waste-worse-unleash-world-ending-pandemic-terrifying-unexpected-consequences-melting-ice.html
- Buried ‘nuclear city’ and swimming pools’ worth of nuclear waste
- Frozen viruses have already begun to infect human beings
- READ MORE As melting ice exposes new oil reserves, oil giants move in
Around the world, glaciers and permafrost are melting, and in some places the retreating ice is releasing buried secrets people hoped would remain forgotten.
Rising waters have exposed a secret Greenland nuclear base that engineers thought would never resurface as well as a radioactive ‘Tomb’ at the site of American nuclear tests.
And while it sounds far-fetched, very credible experts have warned that the next pandemic may well come from ancient pathogens buried in the ice, or even from diseases harbored by frozen dead Neanderthals.
The ‘secret nuclear city’ under Greenland’s ice
Camp Century in Greenland is a secret nuclear-powered ‘city under the ice’, where U.S. Army engineers carried out weapons research
The base has been abandoned for almost half a century, but now poses a serious concern over nuclear waste.
Powered by a portable nuclear generator, Camp Century was built in 1959, and was built to host 200 soldiers, with a plan to expand the base to hold 600 ballistic missiles.
‘Camp Century’ was abandoned in 1967, but the nuclear reactor at the base – which also had a hospital and a church in its tunnels – has long since been removed, but radioactive waste remains.
When the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) left the base, they assumed that frigid temperatures and falling snow would keep the nuclear waste there forever.
In total, the waste is equivalent to the mass of 30 Airbus A320 airplanes – and researchers now fear that it could be released into the sea.
A 2016 study suggested that the nuclear waste could be released into the sea this century, but newer measurements at the base suggest that this will not happen until 2100.
‘Tomb’ of poison at nuclear test site
In the Marshall Islands, a huge ‘lid’ which locals know as ‘The Tomb’ covers 31 million cubic feet of nuclear waste – equivalent to the volume of 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The islands were the site of American nuclear tests, but the U.S. military also shipped in waste from the mainland.
From 1946 to 1958, America conducted 67 nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
The concrete ‘lid’ officially known as the Runit Dome was built on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands to contain radioactive material from American nuclear tests in the 1950s.
Some studies have suggested that radiation levels near the site are similar to those near Chernobyl and the waters around the dome are rising every year.
Changing temperatures are causing the lid to crack, while rising waters are lapping at the atoll.
Plutonium – and a lost hydrogen bomb?
A 1968 plane crash scattered plutonium from American nuclear weapons over the ice in Greenland, which could be released by global warming.
The U.S. military assumed that the Thule air base in Greenland would be rapidly attacked in a nuclear war, so kept nuclear-armed bombers in the air to fly towards Russia in the event of an attack.
The Thule incident saw large amounts of radioactive plutonium dispersed onto the ice sheet, as a cabin fire in a B-52 bomber forced the crew to bail out.
Conventional explosives inside the four B28FI thermonuclear bombs detonated, spreading radioactive waste.
But the uranium-235 fissile core of one of the bombs was never found, despite a search with submarines.
Reports in the decades since have suggested that the lost bomb is lying under the seabed.
Frozen viruses and the next pandemic
Researchers have warned that the next pandemic could come from melting ice.
Genetic analysis of soil and lake sediment near the highest Arctic freshwater lake, Lake Hazen, suggests that the risk of ‘viral spillover’ may be high close to melting glaciers.
‘Spillover’ is where a virus infects a new host for the first time – and analysis of viruses and potential hosts in the lakebed suggests this risk may be higher near to melting glaciers.
Researchers at Ohio State University found genetic material from 33 viruses, 28 of which were unknown, in the Tibetan plateau in China, putting their age at 15,000 years old.
Viruses from Neanderthals
Other researchers have warned of viruses unleashed by melting permafrost: one-quarter of the northern hemisphere sits on top of permanently frozen ground – known as permafrost, but large areas are now melting as the world warms.
There are already examples of this – with a 2016 anthrax outbreak in Siberia attributed to melting permafrost exposing an infected reindeer carcass.
Previously researchers have warned that global warming and thawing ice might unearth diseases such as smallpox frozen into the corpses of victims, with a few infectious particles enough to revive the pathogen.
As permafrost thaws due to climate change, virologist Jean-Michel Claverie has warned that ancient viruses harbored in the long-frozen ground could be released.
Claverie explains that if an ancient pathogen eradicated Neanderthals, for instance, their frozen remains might still contain infectious viruses that could be unleashed as ice melts.
Claverie told Bloomberg News, “With climate change, we are used to thinking of dangers coming from the south.
“Now, we realize there might be some danger coming from the north as the permafrost thaws and frees microbes, bacteria and viruses.”
Claverie’s team previously revived giant viruses from up to 48,000 years ago – and the veteran scientist has warned that there could be even more ancient viruses in the ice, some of which could potentially infect humans.
Frozen poison in the ice
Polar regions have acted as a ‘chemical sink’ for the planet, locking away poisons in the ice – but melting ice could release this.
A study in Geophysical Research Letters found huge reserves of the toxic heavy metal mercury frozen in Arctic permafrost.
The amount may be 10 times higher than all the mercury pumped into the atmosphere from industry in three decades.
Paul Schuster, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, “This is a complete game-changer for mercury. It’s a natural source, but some of it will be released through what we’re doing with climate change.”
Mercury is released by industry, volcanic eruptions and rock weathering – but what’s less clear is what will happen if the ‘pool’ in the Arctic is released.
The reawakening of America’s nuclear dinosaurs
“The issue of plutonium pit aging is a Trojan horse for the nuclear weaponeers enriching themselves through a dangerous new arms race,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, an anti-nuclear group based in Santa Fe. “Future pit production is not about maintaining the existing, extensively tested stockpile. Instead, it’s for deploying multiple new warheads on new intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
The risk of a false alarm is enough reason to “do away with the ICBMs altogether,……. “An accidental launch is a major contributor to the overall probability of an all out nuclear war.”
Are America’s plutonium pits too old to perform in the new Cold War? Or are new ones necessary?
by Alicia Inez Guzmán February 28, 2024
Sprinkled across five western states, in silos buried deep underground and protected by reinforced concrete, sit 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Each of those missiles is equipped with a single nuclear warhead. And each of those warheads is itself equipped with one hollow, grapefruit-sized plutonium pit, designed to trigger a string of deadly reactions.
All of those missiles are on “hair-trigger alert,” poised for hundreds of targets in Russia — any one of which could raze all of downtown Moscow and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Except — what if it doesn’t? What if, in a nuclear exchange, the pit fizzles because it’s just too old? In that case, would the weapon be a total dud or simply yield but a fraction of its latent power?
Outwardly, at least, that’s the question driving a whole new era of plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility in South Carolina.
Plutonium is widely known as one the most exotic elements in the periodic table. Trace amounts of it have been identified in the earth’s crust, though all of what’s now used for America’s nuclear weapons is manmade. For decades, these pits were cast with plutonium and other materials at a breakneck pace, installed in warheads and strapped into missiles that were regularly upgraded and modernized in an escalating arms race with the Soviet Union. Plutonium pits were never intended to grow old and senescent.
“We never worried about aging,” said Siegfried Hecker, former director of LANL and one of the world’s leading plutonium experts. “Because bombs were supposed to be out there for a dozen years or so.”
It’s been almost 40 years since America’s Cold War pit factory at Rocky Flats near Denver was raided by FBI agents and closed due to environmental crimes — among them, releases of radioactive effluent into nearby waterways. In that time, pit production went largely dormant, the USSR collapsed, arms reductions treaties were signed, stockpiles reduced and underground testing ceased.
Now, as the nuclear industrial complex awakens from its long slumber, the resumption of plutonium pit production has emerged as a deeply polarizing and political act. Anti-nuclear activists have accused the federal government of exploiting the uncertainty around aging to jumpstart a nearly $60 billion dollar manufacturing program. They assert that the real reason America has resumed the production of pits is for the purpose of introducing a new generation of warheads for a new generation of missiles — the first of which is the Sentinel, one of the most complex and expensive programs in the history of the U.S. Air Force.
The Sentinel ICBM has the capability to carry three separate warheads, each with its own target. Earlier versions of America’s missiles could and did have such capabilities and the option has remained available, but with post-Cold War weapons reductions, the number of warheads per missile was also reduced — one warhead, one intercontinental ballistic missile. As the U.S., Russia and China barrel toward a new Cold War, the U.S. will likely eschew such a convention in a matter of years.
“The issue of plutonium pit aging is a Trojan horse for the nuclear weaponeers enriching themselves through a dangerous new arms race,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, an anti-nuclear group based in Santa Fe. “Future pit production is not about maintaining the existing, extensively tested stockpile. Instead, it’s for deploying multiple new warheads on new intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
But to hear Hecker and his colleagues tell it, the question of pit aging is as scientifically vexing as it is political. Plutonium, to its most studied acolytes, borders almost on the mystical, its properties as capricious as the human body. It can be brittle or soft under some circumstances or turn to powder when heated in air. It can disintegrate at room temperature. It can bombard itself with radiation and mar its own internal lattice structure. It can even heal that damage within fractions of a second, if not over the course of several decades.
According to Glenn Seaborg, former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission and the chemist credited with first synthesizing the element for use in weapons, plutonium is “so unusual as to approach the unbelievable.”
This quality means that even the most knowledgeable experts are reluctant to commit themselves to anything definitive when it comes to a plutonium pit’s long-term prospects. Does it last 50 years? One hundred? Is it comparable to a human body, whose bones weaken and whose mind is vulnerable to dementia? Or is it actually impervious to entropy?
“It is difficult to quantify how much the properties of a plutonium pit will change over time,”…………………………………………………………………………………………..
Too big to fail”
The political machinations actually go back even further — to the 2010 concession that President Barack Obama made to a largely Republican bloc of Senators: arms control in exchange for a revival of the nuclear weapons complex.
………………….
the beginning of a new era, a tectonic modernization of America’s nuclear triad — land, sea and air — now projected to cost close to $2 trillion over the next 30 years. That’s roughly the GDP of Canada.
Plutonium pits, of course, represent only a small fraction of the cost. That mind-boggling figure reflects a total reimagining of the nation’s entire nuclear program, complete with brand new ballistic missile submarines, 400 new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles, tactical aircrafts, underground silos and 800 nuclear warheads.
The Sentinel program alone — cost, $131 billion — is a juggernaut. “I think this program has become too big to fail for an entrenched part of the military-industrial-congressional complex,” said Geoff Wilson, an expert on federal defense spending at the Independent watchdog, Project on Government Oversight.
…………………………………………………………. America’s warheads have also been regularly surveilled since the late 1990s, leading even the most cautious scientists to vouch for their reliability. In 2000, Raymond Jeanloz — a professor of earth and planetary science and astronomy at University of California, Berkeley— found little evidence that defects in those warheads increased significantly with age. His statistical models, based on data culled from LANL and LLNL, showed that such defects, if any, accumulate at the glacial rate of one percent per quarter century…………………….
A new Cold War
In the unthinkable scenario that a Sentinel is deployed, it would propel like a rocket beyond earth’s atmosphere and into space. As it reached its apogee, the missile would shed all its pieces and the warheads would descend toward their intended targets, half a world away.
For now, though, the Sentinel is barely a reality. The program is so complex and vastly over budget that some in the arms control community are calling for its complete cancellation. Experts question such a missile’s ability to deter China without provoking Russia. Other critics consider the plan to build new weapons as a dangerous return to the policies of the Cold War.
As for the plutonium pits, LANL is behind by at least four years; Savannah River by at least six. Indeed, to meet the projected quota demanded for future weapons could take decades.
But even if all the timetables are met, intercontinental ballistic missiles will always be a “danger to the world as long as they are on launch-on-warning alert,” according to Frank N. von Hippel, senior research physicist and professor of public and international affairs emeritus with Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.
The risk of a false alarm is enough reason to “do away with the ICBMs altogether,” as he and others — presidents, retired commanders, and at least one secretary of defense, alike — have long campaigned to do. “An accidental launch is a major contributor to the overall probability of an all out nuclear war.”…………………………. And once an ICBM is launched, there would be no way to stop it
US Vetoes UN Resolution Condemning Israel for Flour Massacre
Nearly 1,000 Palestinians were killed and wounded after Israeli forces opened fire on people surrounding an aid convoyby Kyle Anzalone March 1, 2024
The US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for a massacre of civilians surrounding an aid convoy in Gaza, a motion supported by all other member states. The Israel Defense Forces has acknowledged its soldiers fired on the crowd.
On Thursday, hundreds of Palestinians were killed and injured by Israeli soldiers as they gathered around an aid convoy near Gaza City. As some people took aid off the trucks, the IDF claimed the same Palestinians approached Israeli soldiers nearby, saying its troops felt “endangered” and opened fire. The killing has been dubbed the “flour massacre.”
More than 100 Palestinians were killed in the shooting and ensuing panic, while at least 750 others were injured. Tel Aviv has attempted to blame the Palestinians for the deaths, saying the violence was caused by the mob. Washington has claimed it needs more information to assess the incident.
While Israeli troops would bear responsibility for the carnage whether they fired upon civilians or merely incited a deadly stampede, doctors treating the victims said most of the injuries were gunshot wounds. Some outlets report that IDF forces also fired artillery or tank shells at the desperate crowd………………………………………………………………….
With a growing number of Palestinians on the brink of starvation amid dire food shortages, aid convoys have increasingly faced unrest from hungry crowds – most crucially in devastated northern Gaza, where aid shipments have all but ground to a halt. Jens Laerke, the spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, explained that famine is now almost inevitable, and “once a famine is declared, it is too late for too many people.”
The UN estimates that one in four Palestinians are teetering on the edge of famine. The situation is worst in northern Gaza where one in six children are suffering from acute malnutrition and wasting.
In response to Hamas’ October 7 attack, top Israeli officials declared that Gazans would be cut off from food, water, fuel, and other aid. Tel Aviv has largely followed through with that threat, allowing only a trickle of aid into the besieged coastal enclave.
World Peace Foundation executive director Alex de Waal explained the starvation inflicted on the Palestinians is uniquely horrific in recent history. “Nothing is comparable in terms of the speed and the concentrated effort at destroying what is essential to sustain the life of people – nothing compares to Gaza over the last 75 years. The speed of deterioration of humanitarian conditions is absolutely terrifying,” he said.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest. https://news.antiwar.com/2024/03/01/us-vetoes-un-resolution-condemning-israel-for-flour-massacre/
New Research from Antarctica Affirms the Threat of the ‘DoomsdayGlacier,’ but Funding to Keep Studying It Is Running Out.
In a worst case scenario, rising global temperatures and marine heatwaves could melt enough of the Thwaites Glacier and other Antarctic ice to raise sea levels 10 feet by the early 2100s.
Inside Climate News, By Bob Berwyn, February 26, 2024
“………………………………………………………….. It took a whole day of sailing just to monitor and map the front of the Thwaites Glacier’s floating shelf, he said, with ice cliffs in some places towering several hundred feet above the water, marking the abrupt edge of an ice expanse about the size of Nebraska and averaging between 2,500 and 4,000 feet thick. If all the ice melts, it would raise average global sea level about 2 feet.
The sediment samples Kirkham and other scientists collected four years ago provided the data for a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences that affirms one of the most serious concerns about Antarctica—that an irreversible meltdown of some of the frozen continent’s ice masses has already started.
“You just can’t ignore what’s happening on this glacier,” said lead author Rachel Clark, a University of Houston ice researcher who also works with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a team that has been trying to figure out just how fast the vulnerable ice will melt. But, she said the new study is important because it shows that the melting is not just random or limited to one glacier.
“It is part of a larger context of a changing climate,” she said.
Not Just Thwaites
After analyzing the chemistry and other characteristics of seafloor sediment grains from various depths and different locations near the floating edge of the glacier, the team’s members were able to show that the glacier had been relatively stable for nearly 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age, but that it started to retreat in the mid-1940s.
Shifts in regional winds and associated changes in ocean currents are pushing more relatively warm water toward Antarctica’s frozen fringe, melting the ice and loosening it from rocky seafloor anchor points that have held the floating part of the glacier in place for thousands of years. As the ice melts away from the pinning points, it can float to sea and disintegrate faster, allowing the glacier behind it to accelerate toward the ocean. In the last 30 years, the amount of ice flowing out to sea from the Thwaites and Pine Island glacial areas and their associated floating ice shelves has doubled.
……………………………………the Thwaites Glacier, and the neighboring Pine Island Glacier, have kept retreating since the 1940s. …………………..
While the Thwaites Glacier has been identified as being among the most vulnerable to pinning point loss, a similar pattern of melting and retreat in many other Antarctic glaciers and ice shelves at least since the 1970s was documented in a separate study published Feb. 21 in Nature.
………………………………………………………… “We already seem to have pushed the climate and ice sheet system past certain irreversible thresholds, and need to observe and understand more about Thwaites, not less,” said Pam Pearson, founder and director of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative. “Pleas of ignorance will be little comfort to future generations displaced by Antarctic sea-level rise that we could have stopped had we only acted in time.” https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26022024/new-research-from-antarctica-affirms-threat-of-doomsday-glacier-but-funding-is-running-out/
Mistakes, Misfiring and Trident: Britain’s Flawed Nuclear Deterrence
Australian Independent Media, March 4, 2024, Dr Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear weapons are considered the strategic silverware of nation states. Occasionally, they are given a cleaning and polishing. From time to time, they go missing, fail to work, and suffer misplacement. Of late, the UK Royal Navy has not been doing so well in that department, given its seminal role in upholding the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. In January, an unarmed Trident II D5 nuclear missile fell into the Atlantic Ocean after a bungled launch from a Royal Navy submarine.
The missile’s journey was a distinctly shorter than its originally plotted 6,000 km journey that would have ended in a location somewhere between Africa and Brazil. In language designed to say nothing yet conceal monumental embarrassment, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps called it “an anomaly” while the Labour opposition expressed concern through its shadow defence secretary, John Healey. An anonymous military source was the most descriptive of all: “It left the submarine but it just went plop, right next to them.
The anomaly in question, which Shapps witnessed on board the HMS Vanguard, took place off the coast of Florida during a January 30 exercise at the US’s Navy Port site. Its failure is the second for the missile, which was also tested in 2016 and resulted in its automatic self-destruction after veering off course and heading to the United States. It was therefore galling for the Defence Secretary to then claim in a written statement to Parliament that Trident was still “the most reliable weapons system in the world”, a claim also reiterated by the missile’s manufacturers, Lockheed Martin. With a gamey sense of delusion, Shapps continued to argue that the test merely “affirmed the effectiveness of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, in which the government has absolute confidence. The submarine and crew were successfully certified and will rejoin the operational cycle as planned.”…………………………………………………………………………………..
Even at the best of times, deterrence, as a claim, is the stuff of fluffy fiction, astrological flight and fancy. It is unverifiable, speculative, highly presumptuous. Who is to know if a nuclear weapon will be fired at any point, at any time, against any target, on whatever pretext presents itself?
The madman theory suggests that such a weapon will be deployed, though we are not sure when this might eventuate. Keeping company with such a theory is the rational, mass murderer type who takes comfort in the prospect that 100 humans might survive a holocaust killing billions. Shoot and take your chances. Human stupidity glows with the hope that errors will be healed, and mass crimes palliated.
In actual fact, the true proof of such deterrence would lie in hellish murder: weapons launched, catastrophe ensuing. Those recording such evidence are bound to be done by coarse skinned mutants with plumbing problems.
The Trident misfiring episode can be seen in one of two ways. First, it illustrates the point that we are here because of dumb luck, having survived error, misunderstanding and miscommunication. In the second sense, it yields an uncomfortable reality for the war planners in White Hall: Trident may not work when asked to.
Whether a system fails because of faulty machinery or accident, the problem of misfiring does not go away. At some point, a misfire with potency will result in deaths, though we can perhaps be assured that Trident may simply fail to live up to the heavy sense of expectation demanded of it. We can hope it just plops. https://theaimn.com/mistakes-misfiring-and-trident-britains-flawed-nuclear-deterrence/
US Refuses to Assure UK Judges That Assange Won’t Be Executed If He’s Extradited
UK law prohibits extradition to a country that may impose capital punishment.
By Marjorie Cohn , TRUTHOUT, February 27, 2024
n February 20 and 21, as nearly 1,000 supporters of Julian Assange gathered outside the London courthouse, a two-judge panel of the High Court of Justice presided over a “permission hearing.” Assange’s lawyers asked the judges to allow them to appeal the home secretary’s extradition order and raise issues that the district court judge had rejected without full consideration.
The High Court panel, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson, were concerned that the U.S. government could execute Assange if he is extradited to the United States, a penalty outlawed in the U.K. Although Assange faces 175 years in prison for the charges alleged in the indictment, there is nothing to prevent the U.S. from adding additional offenses which would carry the death penalty.
The Trump Administration Indicted Assange for Exposing U.S. War Crimes
Assange is charged with 17 counts of alleged violations of the Espionage Act, based on obtaining, receiving, possessing and publishing national defense information. He is accused of “recruit[ing] sources” and “soliciting” confidential documents just by maintaining the WikiLeaks website that stated it accepted such materials. Assange is also charged with one count of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” with intent to “facilitate [whistleblower Chelsea] Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information related to the national defence of the United States.”
The basis for the indictment, Assange’s lawyers told the panel, is WikiLeaks’s “exposure of criminality on the part of the U.S. government on an unprecedented scale.” Assange is charged for revealing war crimes committed by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. The indictment has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election or Swedish allegations of sexual misconduct, which have been dropped.
WikiLeaks revealed the “Iraq War Logs” — 400,000 field reports including 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, as well the as systematic rape, torture and murder after U.S. forces handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad. The revelations also included the “Afghan War Diary” — 90,000 reports of more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported.
In addition, WikiLeaks revealed the “Guantánamo Files,” 779 secret reports with evidence that 150 innocent people had been held at Guantánamo Bay for years, and 800 men and boys had been tortured and abused, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
WikiLeaks also revealed the notorious 2007 “Collateral Murder Video,” in which a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter targeted and killed 11 unarmed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists and a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured. The video contains evidence of war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
And WikiLeaks exposed “Cablegate” — 251,000 confidential U.S. State Department cables that “disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale.” According to The New York Times, they told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money.”
“These were the most important revelations of criminal U.S. state behavior in history,” Assange attorney Mark Summers argued to the High Court panel.
Assange’s Appellate Issues
Assange is asking the U.K. High Court to review issues of treaty obligations, human rights violations and political persecution.
The U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty would allow the U.S. to amend or add charges which could expose Assange to the death penalty, a punishment prohibited in the U.K. In response to questioning by one of the judges, the prosecutor admitted that the U.S. had not provided assurances that Assange would not be subject to the death penalty if extradited.
Article 4(1) of the extradition treaty does not allow extradition for political offenses. Espionage is the “quintessential” political offense, Assange attorney Edward Fitzgerald told the panel. “The gravamen (and defining legal characteristic) of each of the charges is thus an alleged intention to obtain or disclose US state secrets in a manner that was damaging to the security of the US state,” which makes them political offenses, Assange’s lawyers wrote. The defense claimed it was an abuse of process for the United States to pursue extradition of Assange for a political offense……………………………………………………………………………….
“The Most Important Revelation Since Abu Ghraib”
The Collateral Murder video is “the most important revelation since Abu Ghraib,” Summers told the panel. “The cables Assange published disclosed extrajudicial assassinations, rendition, torture, dark prisons and drone killings.” Summers said the Guantánamo Files revealed a “colossal criminal act.” The defense pointed out that WikiLeaks’s revelations actually saved lives. After WikiLeaks published evidence of Iraqi torture centers established by the U.S., the Iraqi government refused President Barack Obama’s request to grant immunity to U.S. troops who committed criminal and civil offenses there. As a result, Obama had to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq.
The Obama administration, which prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all prior U.S. administrations combined, considered prosecuting Assange, but feared it would violate the First Amendment. The administration was unable to distinguish what WikiLeaks did from what The New York Times and The Guardian did since they also published documents that Chelsea Manning had leaked.
But the Trump administration did indict Julian Assange. The U.K. arrested Assange and has held him in Belmarsh Prison for nearly five years pending a decision on whether he should be extradited to the U.S. to stand trial.
In January 2021, following a three-week hearing, Baraitser denied extradition after finding that Assange’s mental health was so frail there was a “substantial risk” of suicide if he was extradited to the U.S. because of the harsh conditions of confinement in which he would be held. But she rejected all other legal objections to extradition that Assange had raised.
U.S. “Assurances” That Assange Will Be Treated Humanely
After Baraitser had already ruled, the U.S. came forward with diplomatic “assurances” that Assange would be treated humanely if extradited to the United States. The Biden administration assured the court that Assange: (1) would not be subject to onerous Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that would keep him in extreme isolation and monitor his confidential communications with his attorneys; (2) would not be housed at the notorious ADX Florence maximum security prison in Colorado; (3) would receive psychological and clinical treatment in custody; and (4) could serve any custodial sentence in Australia.
But the U.S. said the assurances wouldn’t apply if Assange committed a “future act” that “met the test” for the SAMs. That unspecified contingency would be based on a subjective determination of prison authorities with no judicial review.
Although the United States has reneged on nearly identical assurances in the past, the High Court accepted them at face value, saying it was satisfied that the U.S. was acting in good faith, and in December 2021, the High Court reversed Baraitser’s denial of extradition.
However, in a 2023 decision, the U.K. Supreme Court unanimously held that the court has an independent duty to determine the validity of assurances,
writing, “The government’s assessment of whether there is such a risk is an important element of that evidence, but the court is bound to consider the question in the light of the evidence as a whole and to reach its own conclusion.”
In June 2023, a single High Court judge, Jonathan Swift, refused Assange permission to appeal in a cursory three-page ruling. The hearing on February 20 and 21 was an effort by Assange’s legal team to reverse that decision so that the High Court will entertain his appeal.
Assange Redacted Names of Informants to Protect Them
…………………… Several witnesses testified at the 2020 extradition hearing that Assange took great care to ensure that the names were redacted. Other outlets published the unredacted cables before WikiLeaks with no adverse consequences.
………………….Moreover, Brig. Gen. Robert Carr testified at Manning’s court martial that no one was harmed by the WikiLeaks releases. Summers told the panel that Baraitser never balanced the public interest in the disclosures against the fact that no harm came from them.
Conviction of Assange Would Chill Investigate Journalists From Exposing Government Secrets
In November 2022, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, DER SPIEGEL and El País signed a joint open letter calling on the Biden administration to drop the Espionage Act charges against Assange. They wrote, “Publishing is not a crime,” noting that Assange is the first publisher to be charged under the Espionage Act for revealing government secrets.
The indictment would punish conduct that national security journalists routinely engage in, including cultivating and communicating confidentially with sources and soliciting information from them, shielding their identities from disclosure, and publishing classified information. If Assange is prosecuted and convicted, it will discourage journalists both in the U.S. and abroad from publishing evidence of government wrongdoing.
No publisher has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets. The U.S. government has never prosecuted a publisher for publishing classified information, which constitutes an essential tool of investigative journalism.
But rather than dropping Trump’s prosecution of Assange consistent with the position of the Obama-Biden administration, Joe Biden has zealously pursued extradition and prosecution.
Pending House Resolution Would Call for Dismissal of All Charges Against Assange.
On December 13, 2023, House Resolution 934 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Arizona), with cosponsors from both political parties. It would express “the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States ought to drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.” The resolution states that the WikiLeaks disclosures “promoted public transparency through the exposure of the hiring of child prostitutes by Defence Department contractors, friendly fire incidents, human rights abuses, civilian killings, and United States use of psychological warfare.”
…………… The conviction of Assange under the Espionage Act, the resolution continues, “would set a precedent allowing the United States to prosecute and imprison journalists for First Amendment protected activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, something that occurs on a regular basis.”
…………..
At the conclusion of the two-day hearing, the High Court panel set a due date of March 4 for further written submissions from the parties. If the court agrees to review at least one of Assange’s appellate issues, there will be a full hearing. Meanwhile, Assange, who is in poor physical and emotional health, remains in prison.
If the High Court denies his right to appeal, Assange can ask the European Court of Human Rights to hear his case. If that court finds “exceptional circumstances” and an “imminent risk of irreparable harm,” it can order provisional measures, including a stay of execution while the case is pending in the European court. But there is a danger that the U.K. could immediately extradite Assange to the United States before the European Court of Human Rights has a chance to consider Assange’s petition.
Holderness: Government guarantees plans for nuclear waste dump will be dropped for good
A Government minister has guaranteed that proposals for a nuclear waste dump in south Holderness will be dropped for good, the area’s MP has said.
By Joe Gerrard, 28th Feb 2024, https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/environment/holderness-government-guarantees-plans-for-nuclear-waste-dump-will-be-dropped-for-good-4536953
Beverley and Holderness MP Graham Stuart said he had secured a commitment from Nuclear Minister Andrew Bowie that a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) will not come to south Holderness.
The Conservative MP said he was delighted with the confirmation after people from Holderness and local councillors managed to put a stop to the plans..
It comes after Nuclear Waste Services, the Government agency behind the proposals, said it would wind down the South Holderness Working Group after East Riding councillors voted to withdraw.
It followed pressure from local campaigners and South West Holderness ward’s Coun Sean McMaster and Coun Lyn Healing, backed by Mr Stuart, after GDF proposals were announced in January.
They would have seen radioactive nuclear waste transported to south Holderness and stored in a network of vaults and tunnels hundreds of metres underground for up to 175 years.
The establishment of the Working Group began a process that would have lasted at least a decade while also bringing between £1m and £2.5m-a-year in funding to the area.
Nuclear Waste Services said the international consensus was that GDFs were the best long-term solution for disposing of nuclear waste and it would have brought economic benefits to south Holderness
It comes after Nuclear Waste Services, the Government agency behind the proposals, said it would wind down the South Holderness Working Group after East Riding councillors voted to withdraw.
They would have seen radioactive nuclear waste transported to south Holderness and stored in a network of vaults and tunnels hundreds of metres underground for up to 175 years.
The establishment of the Working Group began a process that would have lasted at least a decade while also bringing between £1m and £2.5m-a-year in funding to the area.
Nuclear Waste Services said the international consensus was that GDFs were the best long-term solution for disposing of nuclear waste and it would have brought economic benefits to south Holderness.
But residents and councillors who spoke at East Riding Council’s full meeting on Wednesday, February 21, said it threatened tourism and farming and had caused house sales to fall through.
Former UK Government nuclear waste disposal adviser Paul Dorfman told LDRS putting a GDF in an area at risk of flooding such as south Holderness was ludicrous.
Mr Stuart said Nuclear Minister Mr Bowie had told him Nuclear Waste Services would fully respect the council’s decision to end discussions about the GDF
The Beverley and Holderness MP added the council vote reflected deep opposition in the local community to the plans.
Mr Stuart said: “Many people in Holderness didn’t want nuclear waste to come to the place they call home.
“I always want to see our communities strengthened, and Coun McMaster and Coun Healing did just that through their motion to have the council withdraw from discussions with Nuclear Waste Services.
“I’m delighted that the government minister responsible has confirmed that Nuclear Waste Services will now withdraw from Holderness, and leave us alone for good.”
Setting the record straight on Canada’s arms exports to Israel
Canadian officials, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, have recently claimed that Canada does not export weapons to Israel, and instead has only exported “non-lethal” equipment to that country. Moreover, the Prime Minister stated before Parliament on February 14, 2024, that no export permits have been issued for Canadian arms transfers to Israel since October 7, 2023.
The Foreign Minister’s statement is misleading. The Prime Minister’s is patently false.
Documents recently released by Global Affairs Canada show that Canadian officials authorized nearly $30-million in military goods to Israel since October 7, 2023. These recent arms export authorizations are in addition to the more than $140-million (constant CAD) in military goods Canada has transferred to Israel over the last decade.
Under Canada’s export control regime, there exists no category for “non-lethal” arms exports. The relevant question is whether Canada has authorized the export of controlled military goods to Israel – and it has.
Given that the Government of Canada recognizes all these proposed exports as military goods, the claim that Canada only exports “non-lethal” equipment to Israel is misleading. Technology does not need be lethal itself to otherwise enable lethal operations.
We urge the Government of Canada to clarify and rectify its messaging on this matter.
Project Ploughshares also reiterates its call for Canada to end the supply of military goods to Israel, as per its obligations under the Export and Import Permits Act and the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.
“Tritium Removal”: A Report on the Proposed MCECE Facility at Chalk River.
Gordon Edwards, 2 Mar 24
As it happens, both heavy water (used in all Canadian CANDU reactors) and tritium (produced in great quantities as a radioactive pollutant from CANDU reactors) are sensitive materials from the point of view of nuclear weapons proliferation.
Heavy water can be used to produce nuclear-weapons usable plutonium without the need to buy enriched uranium, a carefully controlled material. And tritium, in a purified form, can be used to vastly increase the explosive yield of an atomic bomb by acting as a “booster”. As little as two grams of tritium can magnify the blast of an implosion-type nuclear bomb by a factor of ten.
These matters are briefly touched upon in this report, which is mainly focussed on the dangers of tritium as an environmental pollutant that can endanger the health and safety of humans and the environemnt, especially for pregnant women.
“Tritium Removal”: A Report on the Proposed MCECE Facility at Chalk River
Prepared for Keboawek First Nation by Gordon Edwards, Ph.D.
Executive Summary
In a letter to Keboawek First Nation dated February 2, 2024 (reference # 2), we read that “CNL is restoring and protecting Canada’s environment by reducing and effectively managing nuclear liabilities. Among these liabilities is Atomic Energy of Canada’s (AECL) large inventory of tritium- contaminated heavy water.” In an accompanying Fact Sheet (reference # 3) CNL states that “tritiated heavy water cannot be used, re-used or disposed of in its current form.”
The fact that tritium-contaminated heavy water cannot be used, re-used, or even disposed of in its present form is a testament to the considerable hazards posed by radioactive tritium. Nevertheless, tritiated heavy water can be safely stored, and kept out of the environment, as is being done at present. There is no reason given by CNL as to why such storage cannot be continued indefinitely, until the radioactive tritium has disintegrated to innocuous levels.
Instead, CNL plans to build a tritium removal facility called the Modernized Combined Electrolysis and Catalytic Exchange facility (MCECE) to extract the radioactive tritium in a gaseous form from the non-radioactive heavy water. In the above-mentioned letter from CNL, we learn that CNL expects tritium emissions into the environment from this facility. Some simple arithmetic reveals that up to 10.7 trillion becquerels of tritium will be dispersed into the environment per year from this facility. (In the letter, up to 2 curies per week of tritium gas (T2) and up to 5 curies per week of deuterium tritium (DT) will be released into the atmosphere, for a total of 259 billion becquerels of tritium per week. Assuming an 80 percent capacity factor, that’s 10.7 trillion becquerels of tritium released per year.)
It is concluded that there is no justification for the proposed facility in terms of “protecting the environment by reducing and effectively managing nuclear liabilities”. The proposed facility does nothing to reduce the amount of radioactive tritium, but it does provide a mechanism for dispersing trillions of becquerels of tritium into the environment every year. Tritium is not effectively managed to protect the environment. Evidently, indefinite safe storage of tritium- contaminated heavy water is the preferred option if protecting the environment is the goal.
South Korea (and U.S.) has a permanent war economy.
The only real jobs investment by Washington these days is going toward weapons of war.
South Korea is now being flooded with so-called ‘missile defense’ systems.
Bruce Gagnon – coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2024/03/south-korea-and-us-has-permanent-war.html
Yesterday was the last day of my space issues speaking tour across South Korea.
I had two meetings in the afternoon before my final talk in the evening in Seoul.
The first was a meeting with two representatives from SPARK (Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea) which was formed to organize for national self-determination, peace and disarmament, and the reunification of the two East Asian Korean nations.
SPARK is now working on holding an ‘International People’s Tribunal to hold the U.S. accountable for dropping Atomic bombs’ in New York City in 2026 (date not yet set). The event aims to highlight the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 from the perspective of Korean A-bomb victims (an oppressed ethnic group) in Japan who are usually the forgotten victims. The goal of the tribunal will be to contribute to the realization of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and world, free from the threat and use of nuclear weapons.
I agreed that the Global Network would help in every way possible to make the event a success. (Let me know if your group would be interested in co-sponsoring this tribunal.)
Next on the schedule was a dinner meeting with Dr. Kang-Ho Song and other members of the organization called The Frontiers. Dr. Song was a major supporting activist in Gangjeong on Jeju Island during the long campaign to oppose the Navy base that was forced upon the 500 year old fishing/farming village by the United States. Dr. Song went to jail three times (the longest sentence was more than a year) for his non-violent protests against the base.
The Frontiers recently has become quite active supporting Japanese controlled islanders who are opposing the deployment of offensive missiles being aimed at China. They have made sailboat trips to the string of islands (including Okinawa and Taiwan) to build inter-island solidarity. In their literature The Frontiers states: ‘We sail with the hope of driving out war, military training, and bases from this sea and creating a sea of co-existence and peace where humanity and all sea creatures can live together.’
Last presentation
My last talk was attended by 55 people. I’m told that even for Seoul that is a good turnout as similar peace talks these days are lucky to draw 30 people.
It was fun to see several old friends show up who I know from my many visits to Jeju Island since 2009. The talk went well (my voice which these days occasionally gets shaky has held up throughout this trip) and there was a healthy question and answer period.
One woman approached me after the talk and said that ‘South Korea’s economy is not good for the people, we are becoming a permanent war economy’. I responded that it is the same in the United States these days as well.
In fact just this morning I received an email that in my home state of Maine Governor Mills, U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Angus King, and U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree will participate in the unveiling of the Maine Defense Industry Alliance (MDIA) at the York County Community College (YCCC) Instructional Site in Sanford. The MDIA is a newly established non-profit coalition of Maine defense companies, state agencies, community colleges and universities, and other vocational training organizations. The partnership was created to attract and train thousands of new employees for critical jobs in Maine’s defense industrial base.
This is a perfect example of what a permanent war economy looks like. The only real jobs investment by Washington these days is going toward weapons of war. In the case of Maine, the so-called leaders want expanded Pentagon funding for more Aegis destroyers at Bath Iron Works shipyard. They also want hypersonics testing at a former US air base in the northern part of the state (Loring). And they want a rocket launch center near Acadia national park that would hoist mini-satellites for the US Space Force to help fill up Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) before China and Russia can put significant numbers of satellites there.
South Korea is now being flooded with so-called ‘missile defense’ systems. They are on-board Navy Aegis destroyers which are consistently ported on Jeju Island. They are the THAAD and PAC-3 systems deployed at several bases throughout the ROK. And the US is deploying these same ‘shields’ in Guam, Japan/Okinawa, Taiwan, Philippines, and other locations in the region.
U.S. bases in the ROK are expanding and held more than 200 days last year of US-ROK war games right along the border of North Korea.
Alternative media
As a result of my talks during this tour there are already articles and interviews by people who came to hear me speak and quickly moved to share what they learned. Here are three examples and I am told there will be more to come.
- A woman named Oh Hyun-hwa in Daejeong gave a local radio interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJfcAvmL8uo
- Anti-War Peace Activist Concerned Jeju seems to be turning into a big South Korea-U.S. military base. Article by Kim Soon-ae. https://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0003004637
- Space industry erodes the space, the commons, and destroys the future.Article by Kim Na-hee. https://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0003005816
Macron stands by remarks on NATO troops in Ukraine
https://www.sott.net/article/489392-Macron-stands-by-remarks-on-NATO-troops-in-Ukraine— 1 Mar 24
The French president brushed off criticism from fellow NATO members, insisting his words were “thought-through and measured”
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday stood by his controversial remarks on Monday about the prospects of deploying troops to Ukraine, which have caused uproar among some NATO members, and has insisted his words were well thought out.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a visit to inspect the 2024 Olympics village near Paris, Macron refused to backtrack on his statements despite a flurry of criticism from some fellow members of the US-led bloc.
“These are sufficiently serious issues; every one of the words that I say on this issue is weighed, thought-through and measured,” Macron claimed.
The French president triggered the political furore on Monday while speaking to reporters after hosting a meeting of European leaders in Paris. Macron insisted that the West should stop at nothing to prevent Russia from getting the upper hand in the conflict, saying the deployment of troops by NATO and other Western countries to Ukraine could not be ruled out.
“There’s no consensus today to send, in an official manner, troops on the ground,” he said. “In terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything. We will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning this war.”
The statement prompted a wave of denial from NATO members, with multiple major members of the bloc, including the US, the UK and Germany insisting they harbor no such plans. Some lesser members of the bloc, however, namely Estonia and Lithuania, appeared to back Macron, suggesting that sending troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out.
“We shouldn’t be afraid of our own power. Russia is saying this or that step is escalation, but defense is not escalation,” the Prime Minister of Estonia Kaja Kallas told Sky on Wednesday. “I’m saying we should have all options on the table. What more can we do in order to really help Ukraine win?”
Moscow has strongly condemned Macron’s remarks, cautioning the US-led bloc against taking further hostile moves. Should NATO troops actually be deployed to Ukraine, a direct confrontation between the alliance and Russia will become not only “possible” but actually “inevitable,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned.
From the same source there was:
1 Mar, 2024 06:34
Vast majority of French oppose Macron’s ‘troops in Ukraine’ comment – poll
Survey results published on Thursday by French newspaper Le Figaro showed that 68% of respondents disapproved of Macron’s comments on a possible future NATO deployment to the war-torn state, while just 31% said they agreed. The remainder, just 1%, were undecided.
Given the many cases of having stood up against the popular wind prevailing in France, 31 % is a pretty good score.
Add to this that although Macron has met with resistance to implications of the statements, he has support from a country like Estonia:
29 Feb, 2024 15:59
NATO member backs ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine
Estonia is “not afraid” of Russia and thinks sending NATO ground troops to Ukraine ought to be under consideration, Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has told Sky News in an interview aired on Wednesday.
So far, only Estonia and Lithuania have expressed any enthusiasm for the idea of escalating NATO support to Kiev beyond deliveries of weapons, ammunition, and money.
“We shouldn’t be afraid of our own power. Russia is saying this or that step is escalation, but defense is not escalation,” Kallas told Sky. “I’m saying we should have all options on the table. What more can we do in order to really help Ukraine win?”
Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron argued that the US-led bloc should not rule out sending troops to Ukraine, or any other options. Most members of the bloc have sincedistanced themselvesfrom the idea – except two of the former Soviet Baltic republics.
On Tuesday, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis urged NATO to “think outside the box.” Meanwhile, the country’sambassador to Sweden, Linas Linkevicius, said the bloc would “neutralize” the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad if Moscow “dares to challenge NATO.”
The Estonian and Lithuanian officials are supported by the US or were they given the cue cards, … like Macron?
29 Feb, 2024 23:57
Pentagon warns of direct Russia-NATO clash
Addressing the US House Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, Austin once again urged lawmakers to approve additional funding for Kiev’s war effort, painting a grim picture for NATO allies.
“If you are a Baltic state, you are really worried about whether you are next… And, frankly, if Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia,” the Pentagon chief said.
Austin went on to claim that “other autocrats around the world will look at this and will be encouraged by the fact that this happened and we failed to support a democracy.
Macron is probably aware he is in the same situation as Rishi Sunak. That is there are already French “advisors” involved:
29 Feb, 2024 19:14
UK ‘directly involved’ in Ukraine conflict – KremlinThe outlet RTVI asked Peskov to comment a report from The Times which claimed that Admiral Tony Radakin, the head of the UK armed forces, has helped make “battle plans” for Ukraine.
“In general, it’s no secret that the British really provide different forms of support [to Ukraine]. People on the ground and intelligence and so on and so forth,” Peskov said. “That is, they are actually directly involved in this conflict.”
According to the British outlet, citing a Ukrainian military source, Radakin “is understood to have helped the Ukrainians with the strategy to destroy Russian ships and open up the Black Sea,” and seen as “invaluable in coordinating support from other senior chiefs in NATO.”
The admiral also reportedly visited Kiev and met with President Vladimir Zelensky, to discuss Ukraine’s strategy and the ways in which the West could help.
The Kremlin doesn’t have specific information related to Radakin, but “probably our military knows about this,” Peskov said.
Radakin, 58, was due to retire in November after three years as chief of the defense staff, but will stay on the job for another year at Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s request, the Times reported. One source told the outlet that the British government considered it important to retain“continuity”ahead of the upcoming general election.
Inside Europe’s only nuclear unicorn — and its €1bn fundraising hopes
Sifted, Kai Nicol-Schwarz 1 Mar 24
UK-based Newcleo could make the first close as soon as April — but the startup wants to raise €billions more by the end of the decade
UK-based unicorn Newcleo is on a mission to raise €1bn in equity this year.
The nuclear energy startup is developing small modular reactors (SMRs) fuelled with radioactive waste, and the first close could come as soon as April, founder and CEO Stefano Buono tells Sifted.
If it lands the round, the raise will be the second largest in the nuclear sector globally — and the largest, by some way, in Europe.
It’s piqued the interest of European governments increasingly keen to shore up their energy sovereignty in the face of climate change and Russia’s war in Ukraine — and of investors (including the French government), who’ve written cheques to the tune of €400m since the startup launched in 2021.
But if Newcleo is to achieve its lofty ambitions, it’ll need billions more by the end of the decade.
The startup plans to complete a research facility in Italy by 2026, as well as a fuel processing plant and a demonstrator reactor in France by 2030. And that’s before it launches its first revenue-making commercial reactor — possibly in the UK, says Buono — sometime after 2033 and then — eventually — deploys a fleet of its reactors across Europe.
To get there, it will need to find big cheque investors with the patience of saints and convince governments to cough up their nuclear waste…………………………………………………………………………………….
Can Europe’s nuclear sector raise the billions it needs?
While funding in Europe has shot up over the past few years, bringing the region’s fourth-generation reactors to market will require tens of billions more.
Newcleo alone will need to invest €3bn in France by 2030 to build its fuel processing plant and a 30MW demonstrator reactor. And that’s all before it builds a commercial reactor — “possibly” in the UK, says Buono — which it hopes to have completed by 2033.
While several companies have raised megarounds in the US — since 2021, deals like Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ $1.8bn, TerraPower’s $750m and Helion Energy’s $500m have rolled in — the sector has hit funding troubles in the past year.
Startup reactor plans have fallen through and huge deals have collapsed as rising interest rates, inflation and the nuclear industry’s poor record of delivering projects on time have dented investor confidence, the FT reported in December…………………………..
Newcleo hopes to raise from family offices, high net-worth individuals and institutional investors. Existing backers include US VC Exor Ventures, the investment vehicle of the Agnelli family office — founder of Italy’s largest carmaker Fiat, Italian investor Azimut Group and Italian tech transfer fund LIFTT.
And for future fundraises, Newcleo could look to tap public funds in the form of tax credits too, says Buono…………………………
And then there’s the small matter of convincing investors to part with €1bn during a downturn. https://sifted.eu/articles/newcleo-1bn-fundraise
France accused of ‘unacceptable’ behaviour after demanding UK taxpayer cash for Hinkley nuclear.
Former energy secretary Chris Huhne says Paris must cover cost overruns
Jonathan Leake, 29 February 2024 •
France’s demands for UK taxpayers to help fund Hinkley Point
C are “wholly unacceptable”, according to the former energy secretary
who helped develop the nuclear project. Chris Huhne, who was energy
secretary from 2010 to 2012, said he was “astonished and saddened” to
hear that both Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, and Luc
Rémont, chief executive of EDF, were pressing the UK to help with the cost
overruns.
Mr Huhne was a leading architect of the deal with EDF, France’s
state-owned electricity supplier, to build the nuclear power station. Under
the deal, finally signed off by Mr Huhne’s successor, Ed Davey, EDF was
responsible for all the estimated £18bn costs, with a start date of 2025.
Telegraph 29th Feb 2024
1 This Month
23-25 October – on Zoom – World BEYOND War’s annual global conferenc
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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