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New UK data sends nuclear warning for Australia

February 5, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Trump and the global nuclear order

The potential impact of Trump’s second term on the global nuclear order is profoundly negative. His previous acts, as well as the declared goals of those in his orbit, indicate that unilateral policies that emphasise short-term gain over long-term global stability will likely be maintained and intensified. The consequences – an unregulated nuclear weapons race, the loss of global norms, and heightened regional instability – call for immediate action from the international community. 

Anubhav S Goswami,  https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/trump-global-nuclear-order 2 Feb 25

The impact of the President’s second term on the
global nuclear order could be profoundly negative.

Donald Trump’s comeback to the White House poses a substantial challenge to the global nuclear order. His previous administration had contempt for arms control agreements. The United States’ exit from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty removed a vital guardrail to nuclear escalation in Europe. This move, while deemed legitimate by the US in reaction to Russian transgressions of the Treaty, considerably weakened the international framework for arms control. Moreover, the hesitance of his first administration to prolong New START, the last existing nuclear weapons limitation treaty between the US and Russia, nearly led to its rupture prior to the Biden administration obtaining a five-year extension. This reluctance originated from Trump’s insistence on including China in future arms control talks.

The transactional approach to arms control in Trump’s first-term is casting a long shadow on the future of the global nuclear order in his second term. His America First platform is expected to reinforce his pursuit of unilateral nuclear programs.

The impending expiry of New START in February 2026 could be a pivotal moment in the stability of the global nuclear order. Trump was previously either uninterested in renewing the treaty or sought renegotiation under conditions disadvantageous to Russia. The good news is that both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have signalled a willingness to restart nuclear arms talks as soon as possible. However, the expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal is a complication because Trump insists on China being a party to the talks.

Even if there’s a breakthrough on this front, there won’t be any stopping the massive US nuclear modernisation program already underway and costing $1.7 trillion over 30 years or nearly $75 billion per year from 2023 to 2032. The plans include “a new class of ballistic missile submarines, a new set of silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, a modified gravity bomb, a new stealthy long-range strike bomber, and associated warheads … for each delivery system”. Trump’s expected backing for this program, combined with plans for new systems like the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) and the potential deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to the Indo-Pacific and European theatres, contribute to a resurgence of nuclear arms development on a global scale.

Furthermore, Trump is backing the upgrading of US missile defence shield by adding an interceptor layer in space. He laid out his vision for missile defence in his first term, saying in 2019: “[W]e will recognise that space is a new warfighting domain, with the Space Force leading the way. My upcoming budget will invest in a space-based missile defence layer. It’s new technology. It’s ultimately going to be a very, very big part of our defence and, obviously, of our offense”. If Trump pursues a nationwide missile defence shield, it could lead Russia and China to build more numerous and sophisticated offensive missile systems to overwhelm and evade American defences. 

To make matters worse, the United States may resume nuclear testing for the first time since 1992. Breaking the long-standing tradition of refraining from nuclear testing may see other nuclear-armed states follow suit. According to several analysts, the US does not need to start testing again to preserve the credibility or efficacy of its nuclear weapons, with current modelling and simulation methods enough to guarantee the safety and dependability of nuclear weapons. Therefore, critics argue, recommencing testing would be solely a political decision to demonstrate strength. Supporters argue that although simulation is improving, it cannot fully replace real world testing, especially for new weapon designs.

The potential impact of Trump’s second term on the global nuclear order is profoundly negative. His previous acts, as well as the declared goals of those in his orbit, indicate that unilateral policies that emphasise short-term gain over long-term global stability will likely be maintained and intensified. The consequences – an unregulated nuclear weapons race, the loss of global norms, and heightened regional instability – call for immediate action from the international community. 

The absence of a balanced strategy risks ushering in a period of increased nuclear peril. Experts and advocates working to reduce nuclear threats should remind US authorities that just having more nuclear weapons during the Cold War did little to make the country safer. Rather, the accidents and miscalculations generated by the pursuit of nuclear superiority nearly led to Armageddon on several occasions.

February 5, 2025 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

The Guardian view on Star Wars II: US plans for missile shield risk nuclear instability

Editorial, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/02/the-guardian-view-on-star-wars-ii-us-plans-for-missile-shield-risk-nuclear-instability

Donald Trump’s initiative echoes past mistakes and could provoke adversaries and undermine efforts toward nuclear diplomacy.

With a stroke of his pen, Donald Trump last week ordered an “iron dome for America” – an act that risks sparking a destabilising global arms race. Mr Trump’s proposal takes its name from Israel’s air defence system, but it is cast in more ambitious terms for the US: a space-based interception system designed to counter nuclear, hypersonic and cruise missile threats.

It is also the latest turn of the wheel in a cycle of escalation. Moves by Washington to “increase security” have repeatedly ended up making the world more volatile and unsafe. The historic chance to eliminate nuclear weapons in 1986 slipped away over Ronald Reagan’s insistence on America’s unproven “Star Wars” missile defence system. In 2002, George W Bush – citing the threat from North Korea – ditched the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which was built on the idea that mutual vulnerability cools the nuclear arms race while unchecked defences fuel it. In The New Nuclear Age, Ankit Panda points out that Russia and China responded with countermeasures to ensure “their nuclear forces would have the ability to penetrate a sophisticated US system”.

The upshot of such policies has been that Russia and China can deliver devastating nuclear attacks against which the US has no real hope of defence, while North Korea has intercontinental ballistic missiles that can hit the US mainland. Proverbially, insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome. Yet Mr Trump is launching Star Wars II. Given the technological hurdles and prohibitive costs involved, the odds are that its vision will never be realised. The rhetorical effect, however, is likely to be to scare other countries into building more nukes.

Mr Trump’s executive order also represents a shift in US policy. Rather than missile defence centring on “rogue states” such as North Korea and Iran, it is being refocused on Russia and China. Its logic is that a new system would be such a strong deterrent that it would reduce the temptation for enemies to attack in the first place. Whether it does misses the point that it risks triggering an uncontrolled arms race.

In January 2022, a month before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the five recognised nuclear powers reaffirmed the “taboo” that using nuclear weapons is morally unacceptable. But their continued strategic value shows that nukes have not been truly stigmatised – because if they were, no one would be discussing them as useful military tools. Indeed, the dangerous rhetoric from Mr Trump, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and even India’s Narendra Modi suggests a worrying normalisation of a nuclear exchange.

This is particularly concerning when detente, eventually pursued by the US and the Soviet Union in the cold war, “appears elusive in this new three‑player great power nuclear contest” between Washington, Moscow and Beijing, as Mr Panda writes. The use of just a fraction of the trio’s nuclear arsenals would lead to mass destruction on an unprecedented scale. Unless there is a major shift, the last remaining US-Russia arms control treaty, New Start, which limits strategic nuclear warheads and restricts missile launcher numbers, will expire in 2026. US, Chinese and Russian officials must sit down together and rebuild nuclear stability. The world’s survival rests on them reviving an adversarial cooperation. True security comes from arms control and reductions and creative nuclear diplomacy, not trying to build an impenetrable shield.

February 4, 2025 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

15 – 29 March 2025 Virtual Film Festival: The Untold Stories of Nuclear Weapons

15 – 29 March, World Beyond War,

Join World BEYOND War for our 5th annual virtual film festival!

Join World BEYOND War for our annual virtual film festival throughout the month of March to explore the untold stories of nuclear weapons, in commemoration of Nuclear Remembrance Day (March 1).

Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to humanity. 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the impacts of which are still felt to this day. The tentacles of the nuclear weapons industry are far-reaching, from the uranium mining, to the testing, to the waste disposal. World BEYOND War’s 2025 film festival shares the untold stories of nuclear weapons – from the Marshall Islands to St. Louis, Missouri, to the Saharan desert – in light of the escalating conflicts of our time, to expose the historic and current impacts of nuclear weapons and serve as a clarion call that it is time once and for all to ban the bomb.

Scroll down to learn more about each film and our special guests, and to purchase tickets!……………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://worldbeyondwar.org/filmfest2025/?link_id=6&can_id=438b89ea63c299137ec80f405e1a4d53&source=email-wbw-news-action-the-futility-of-war&email_referrer=email_2604296&email_subject=wbw-news-action-country-is-humanity

February 4, 2025 Posted by | Events | Leave a comment

Threat of nuke dump falls on Cumbrian and Lincolnshire rural communities

 NFLA 3rd Feb 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/threat-of-nuke-dump-falls-on-cumbrian-and-lincolnshire-rural-communities/

Residents living in rural villages in West Cumbria and East Lincolnshire will have been shocked to discover that Nuclear Waste Services has its eye on their backyard as the potential location for Britain’s high-level nuclear waste dump.

For contained amidst the detailed announcements made last week by NWS of that organisation’s plans to conduct more intensive investigations in so-called Areas of Focus in the three GDF Search Areas were revelations that several small villages are now potentially threatened by this huge civil-engineering project.

The Geological Disposal Facility will be the final repository for Britain’s historic and future high-level nuclear waste, including redundant nuclear submarine reactors, spent nuclear fuel, and the world’s largest civil stockpile of deadly plutonium. Nuclear Waste Services is charged with finding a forever site for the GDF that combines ‘suitable’ geology and a ‘willing’ community.

The facility will comprise a surface site approximately 1 km square that shall receive regular shipments of nuclear waste. This waste will be transferred downwards along a sub-surface accessway into a network of deep tunnels located between 400 and 1,000 metres below the seabed. Here the waste will be placed in permanent storage with tunnels sealed up as they are filled. The network of tunnels could be between 20 – 50 kms square in area and extend up to 22 kms out from the coast (the UK territorial limit).

Last week, Nuclear Waste Services published three ‘brochures’, which identified specific Areas of Focus within each Search Area that NWS consider may have potential to locate the surface facility, the accessway, and the tunnel network. NWS intends to conduct more intensive investigations in these areas, seeking official approval at a later stage to carry out deep borehole drilling at those sites deemed to be most geologically promising by NWS.

It is in the South Copeland and Theddlethorpe GDF Search Areas that the chosen Areas of Focus will court controversy.

In South Copeland, NWS has now finally conceded – as the NFLAs and many local Cumbrians have long suspected – that their area of choice is West of Haverigg, incorporating the former RAF airfield and surrounding the prison [Figure 1]. Although Nuclear Waste Services have made much of their efforts to avoid Haverigg and Millom, referencing the provision of a ‘buffer zone’, they have given no similar consideration to the poor residents of Kirksanton, who will find that the Area of Focus comes up to their very doorsteps and, in some sorry instances, incorporates their properties. In so doing NWS have provided for direct access to the railway line.

As the Area of Focus incorporates the former RAF airfield and surrounds the prison, it seems inconceivable that HMP Haverigg would remain open if the GDF surface facility were to be located there, and the two wind farms owned by Thrive Renewables and Windcluster might also be lost[i]. The prison’s closure would impact more than two hundred staff, over 100 of them local, as well as local businesses which supply the prison[ii].

There is at least some consolation for the good people of Drigg, living on the other side of the South Copeland Search Area. Although a parcel of land northeast of the village was identified as being of interest, in recognition that the Low Level (Radioactive) Waste Repository is located nearby it was considered that ‘an Area of Focus so close to the LLW Repository site could potentially impact ongoing operation of the site’. Consequently, NWS are ‘not prioritising it at this stage’, but this is one to watch as this may represent a stay, rather than a commutation, of execution.

In the Theddlethorpe Search Area, a huge bombshell has been dropped on the unsuspecting residents of Great and Little Carlton and Gayton-le-Marsh, as Nuclear Waste Services’ primary focus has moved from the former Theddlethorpe Conoco gas terminal to the fields that lie between these villages [Figure 2]. As the new site is so far inland, NWS are looking at a prospective accessway of considerable length under the King’s National Nature Reserve to the coast [Figure 3 on original].

The current site selection appears worse than the original. Local Theddlethorpe and Withern Ward Councillor Travis Hesketh explains why: “After 4 years NWS have abandoned the 69-acre brownfield former gas terminal site for 250-1000 acres of productive farmland”. The NFLAs look forward to hearing senior Lincolnshire politicians berating the loss of agricultural land to this energy project as they have so readily condemned the encroachment of solar farms and pylons. But we won’t be holding our collective breath!

Also worrying is the illustration used in the accompanying ‘brochure’, a more detailed version of which is used with this media release [Figure 4 on original and at top of this page]. This incorporates a jetty – termed a Marine Off-loading Facility – which suggests that if the Lincolnshire site is chosen, NWS might consider bringing waste shipments to the site by ship from Sellafield as there is no immediate rail station.

This news will have been a tremendous shock to many local people in Cumbria and Lincolnshire for now the threat of a nuclear waste dump suddenly appears writ large. Residents are already up in arms, and doubtless in coming days, there will also be new protest groups formed to represent the people affected.

It is important though to emphasise that the identification of the final site for a GDF is a long way off, is still very uncertain, and that there is still time to organise and fight back! Cllr Hesketh is clear what should happen next: “Residents are well informed and want a vote now. East Lindsey District Council and Lincolnshire County Council promises of a vote by 2027 are worthless as they will be abolished in local government reorganisations.” 

As ever the NFLAs as always stands ready to offer advice and support to these new groups, as we continue to work with existing groups which have long campaigned against the GDF.

February 4, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear delusion in Ynys Môn will deny islanders green jobs


 NFLA 3rd Feb 2025

Welsh antinuclear campaigners believe that the continued fixation of certain Senedd politicians and civil servants on bringing a new nuclear project back to Wylfa amounts to a delusion which will deny local people of Ynys Môn the opportunity to take up green jobs in the interim and make of Ynys Môn a true ‘green energy island’.

Former Labour First Minister Vaughan Gething MS convened an inaugural meeting of the Nuclear Energy Senedd Cross-Party Group recently with the primary objective of bringing a new nuclear power plant to Wylfa. In the gushing pre-amble accompanying the meeting invite the organisers describe such a project as the ‘single biggest inward investment opportunity in Welsh history’, without seemingly being cognizant that such a project will be costly and uncertain with a previous gigawatt project being derailed by the enormous financial cost and a condemnatory Planning Inspector’s report setting out clear and valid reasons for refusal.

Antinuclear campaigners are adamant that new nuclear cannot deliver ‘clean Welsh power, good jobs and skills and investment in communities’; they believe there should instead be a focus on renewable energy technologies, which will guarantee new ‘green’ jobs and a boost to the Ynys Môn economy.

The promise of such a strategy was outlined in the publication a ‘Manifesto for Mon’, authored by the late renowned Dr Carl Clowes, who identified that the development of sustainable industries, including renewable energy, on the island could create 2,500 – 3,000 jobs for local people. Existing jobs decommissioning the old Wylfa plant would be retained as the project will take decades to complete.

In July 2022, campaign groups met in Caernarfon to adopt a declaration outlining their common goals in opposing new nuclear power and affirming the commitment to achieving a renewable energy future for the nation.

Of nuclear power, the declaration states that ‘it costs too much; takes too long; will come too late [to address the energy or climate change crisis]; is accompanied by operational risks; causes long-term damage to the natural environment; is dependent upon foreign technology, finance, and uranium; is inevitably linked to the production and possession of nuclear weapons; always represents a potential target for terrorists or hostile powers in times of war; and creates toxic waste, left for future generations to deal with.’ ………………………………………………………………………………………………

 the reality, as established at the two existing gigawatt projects, at Hinkley Point C in Somerset and increasingly at Sizewell C in Suffolk, is that, for these large construction projects, large national and multinational civil engineering contractors are engaged, with experience in delivering mega projects at this scale, and they bring with them specialist subcontractors with their own transient workforces. These workers require housing and landlords, recognising that they are in highly paid employment and able to pay higher rents, displace existing tenants to free up houses for the workforce. Alternately local holiday camps have been acquired to house the workers denying this accommodation to tourists for years. It is hardly likely that any more than a tiny minority of this workforce would be local or Welsh-speaking.

Referencing specific concerns about its impact on Welsh-speaking Gwynedd and Ynys Môn, the Declaration states that new nuclear ‘will inevitably lead to a huge influx of temporary workers, most of whom will not use Welsh as their first language. This will lead to a dilution in the first use of the Welsh language for daily conversations and transactions, and inevitably adversely impact the linguistic heritage of the region.’

Wylfa was described by former Conservative Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak as the ‘best site for new nuclear in Europe’ without either backing this bold statement with any evidence. The Planning Inspectorate clearly had a contrary view as they published a report recommending refusal of Hitachi’s proposal to build the Wylfa Newydd plant.

Energy company Horizon – a subsidiary of Hitachi – needed a Development Consent Order to allow their £16bn project to go ahead, but refusal of the DCO was recommended on several grounds. Although the project was expected to create 1,000 permanent jobs and 9,000 temporary construction posts, planning officers believed that ‘on balance, the matters weighing against the proposed development outweigh the matters weighing in favour of it’ for their assessment identified that the project would displace the Arctic and Sandwich tern populations from Cemlyn Bay where the plant was set to be built, and that the influx of thousands of building workers would have an adverse impact on the local economy and tourism, put huge pressure on local housing, and dilute the prevalent use of the Welsh language.

For the reality, as established at the two existing gigawatt projects, at Hinkley Point C in Somerset and increasingly at Sizewell C in Suffolk, is that, for these large construction projects, large national and multinational civil engineering contractors are engaged, with experience in delivering mega projects at this scale, and they bring with them specialist subcontractors with their own transient workforces. These workers require housing and landlords, recognising that they are in highly paid employment and able to pay higher rents, displace existing tenants to free up houses for the workforce. Alternately local holiday camps have been acquired to house the workers denying this accommodation to tourists for years. It is hardly likely that any more than a tiny minority of this workforce would be local or Welsh-speaking.

In May 2024, Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho announced that Wylfa was the Conservative Government’s ‘preferred site’ for a third large-scale nuclear power plant. Although the Welsh Nuclear Free Local Authorities had urged the Welsh Government to themselves purchase and redevelop the site as a renewable energy hub as a step towards making Ynys Mon a ‘green energy island’, this suggestion was declined and instead the site was eventually bought by the British Government from the former owners – Hitachi – who had wound up its Horizon Nuclear Power subsidiary in March 2021 after failing to secure a satisfactory public subsidy from Conservative Ministers and must have been keen to sell the site, with Oldbury, for £160 million.

It remains unlikely that any third new gigawatt plant at Wylfa will be developed. With two similar projects currently in development securing the necessary finance for a third remains the overriding challenge.

Hinkley Point C is being developed at its own expense by EDF Energy, which is owned by the French state. It is significantly above budget and will be delivered years late. The original estimated cost was £18 billion, but this has risen to £34 billion, based on 2015 prices. Although the project was first expected to be generating by the end of 2017, it is now unlikely to be completed before 2031.

British newspapers have recently reported comments attributed to sources close to the Sizewell C project that the likely budget has doubled to £40 billion. EDF Energy is also a minority stakeholder in this project, but, based on their sobering experience in backing Hinkley Point C, French state auditors have just recommended that no further significant investment be made in such foreign enterprises. The UK Government is the majority stakeholder. It has so far burnt through, or committed, £5.5 billion of taxpayer cash to finance preliminary works, whilst conducting an extensive and, so far, elusive, search for committed private sector partners upon which to offload much of its stake.

With future French and British Government financial support likely to be limited or non-existent, with Chinese state investment being currently effectively excluded by government diktat, and with private finance so difficult to find, it is highly unlikely a third gigawatt project at Wylfa can be funded. Indeed, the Final Investment Decision to proceed at Sizewell C has been put on hold pending the conclusion of an overall Government Spending Review, amidst a backdrop of more and more cross-party voices in both Houses calling for its abandonment.

Prior to the 2024 general election, Conservative Ministers courted the American nuclear concerns Bechtel and Westinghouse as potential suitors to develop the site. The Welsh NFLAs have previously highlighted their very chequered history of working on the Vogtle and V C Summer projects in the United States, with huge cost overruns, work being charged to state taxpayers which has never been delivered, senior executives being prosecuted for corruption, a corporate bankruptcy, and, in South Carolina, $9 billion being squandered on an incomplete and abandoned nuclear plant which shall never generate electricity. Such businesses, averse to risk, focused on profit, and hooked on grift, would be looking for a big public handout to pique their interest; a handout which Chancellor Rachel Reeves, already contemplating the price tag of Sizewell C and an alleged £22 billion blackhole inherited from the Tories to boot, would baulk at.

With a gigawatt plant at Wylfa then unlikely, what then is the new Senedd committee seeking?

Well, the invite gives a big clue as it references potential developments in the spring. This could of course allude to the outcome of the Spending Review, but equally it might refer to the much-delayed decision about which two Small Modular Reactor designs the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero should take forward with support from the public purse (again) following the conclusion of the SMR competition that is being conducted by Great British Nuclear. Four designs are in the running, with the expectation that two will be selected and offered money and development sites for deployment.

As antinuclear campaigners have previously, and repeatedly, pointed out none of these SMR designs have yet fully navigated the regulatory road to approval for deployment, nor have any been built or operated, and it is uncertain where the finance would come from. It is also unlikely that any will be deployed before the early or mid-2030’s, even if they work; are economically viable; and an acceptable solution to the management and disposal of radioactive waste can be identified. Like gigawatt plants, these modular projects will be assembled on-site by specialist teams who doubtless will be moved from site to site by the developer. Operators will thereafter be often specialists who will be relocated with no family or Welsh connections to Wylfa.

Even were new nuclear to eventually come to the ‘energy island’, it would come far too late to help address the energy and climate change crisis we face now. Remember those 2,500 – 3,000 jobs for local people predicted in the Manifesto for Mon; they could be delivered far more quickly and at a much lower cost, and with local people engaged in renewable energy technologies they would also be contributing to reducing the carbon footprint of Wales and generating the affordable energy the nation’s electricity consumers need……………………………………… https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nuclear-delusion-in-ynys-mon-will-deny-islanders-green-jobs/

February 4, 2025 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

More nuclear news in the time of Trump

I quote Hannah Arendt because her message is so timely right now. The Anglophone world, led by Donald Trump, is about to descend into a morass of lies, deceptions, omissions. Already, climate scientists in America wonder whether or not to speak out. Here in Australia, we rightly condemn anti-semitism, but no-one dares to speak out against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.  Similarly, no mention of Ukraine gives the full picture. Who dares speak of the positive achievements of China?  It is de rigueur to condemn everything about China. I fear that journalists of integrity are losing their jobs in the USA, and are threatened in other countries, too.

I still realise that in nuclear dangers, the big one, nuclear war, is looming in the context of the Middle East, of Ukraine, and of the visceral hatred of Russia and China.  But I do feel relief in now deciding rather than wading through those morasses, – to concentrate on more strictly nuclear issues.

TOP STORIES.

 AI’s Energy Demands Threaten a Nuclear Waste Nightmare. 

Drones, Nukes, and the Myth of Reactor Safety. 

China AI startup rattles US new nukes plan. 

Open source vs. closed doors: How China’s DeepSeek beat U.S. AI monopolies.

An “American Iron Dome”: Perhaps the Most Ridiculous Trump Idea Yet.

Climate. Climate change made LA fires worse, scientists say.   The surface of our oceans is now warming four times faster than it was in the late 1980s.   Leaders in the Pacific raise alarm over ‘direct impact’ of Trump’s climate retreat and aid freeze.

Noel’s notes. Dangerous climate radical, Lloyd’s of London, threatens the world economy.

AUSTRALIA. “Nuclear for Australia” – a CHARITY ? Whaa-at ! 

Nuclear waste. AUKUS agency’s reckless indifference. Dutton’s nuclear plan requires ‘huge’ new bureaucracy– ALSO AT https://antinuclear.net/2025/02/02/duttons-nuclear-plan-requires-huge-new-bureaucracy/  Dutton defends nuclear costings as opponents warn of power bill hit .        More Australian nuclear news at https://antinuclear.net/2025/02/03/australian-nuclear-news-27-january-to-3-february/

NUCLEAR ITEMS.

ART and CULTURE. Pentagon Warns China Developing Love, The Greatest Weapon Of All.

ECONOMICS. NuScale Power Corporation (SMR) Stock Plunges 25% Amid DeepSeek AI Concerns and Reevaluation of AI-Driven Energy Demand. Vistra, Constellation lead S&P losers as DeepSeek market rout takes down nuclear plays.

ENERGY. Power stocks plunge as energy needs called into question because of new China AI lab. Renewables to dominate future EU energy supply despite nuclear buzz – German engineers.

ENVIRONMENT. Hinkley Point C owner warns fish protection row may further delay nuclear plant.
EVENTS. Anti-Nuclear War Activists Roll Out Counter Version of Doomsday Clock: The Peace Clock. 
Save Severn Estuary’s Fish: Demand Action from Hinkley — Sign the petition.
 23 February GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION TO CLOSE BASES. – https://worldbeyondwar.org/closebases/ 
April 19-26: SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE, Spring Action Week, NM, 2025. 
Make your State a Nuclear Free Zone.
HEALTH. Social effects– Towns near Fukushima plant struggle to attract families with children. Radiation. 40% of workers cite radiation concerns at Fukushima plant.
MEDIA. Media coverage of Dutton’s nuclear ‘plan‘: Scrutiny, stenography or propaganda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzZO66-3HfU
PLUTONIUM Hot Plutonium Pit Bomb Redux. Radioactive Plutonium In Sahara Dust Came From An Unexpected Source
SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. Nuke Mars, Elon? Not with your Outer Space Treaty.
TECHNOLOGY. The Evolution of the Militarized Data Broker. 
How a Chinese nerd destroyed the US AI biosphere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzrpMohWkmY DeepSeek: how a small Chinese AI company is shaking up US tech heavyweights.
 Do AI and Nukes Mix? Hint: Keep ‘Human Decision in the Loop’.
URANIUM. Concerns about Agnew Lake Uranium Mine Unheard at Nuclear Commission Meeting.
WASTES. Sweden building world’s second nuclear waste storage site amid safety concerns. Potential UK nuclear waste sites identified
WAR and CONFLICT. Russia claims nuclear plant targeted during massive Ukrainian drone attack. Closer than ever: It is now 89 seconds to midnight.
WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. 
Israel sends missiles to Ukraine – Axios. 
The Guardian view on Star Wars II: US plans for missile shield risk nuclear instability. 
Trump orders ‘Iron Dome for America’ in sweeping missile defense push.
General in Charge of Nuclear Weapons Says Heck, Let’s Add Some AI.
Government announces dangerous new plan for more plutonium at Livermore Lab. 
Sole control -No US president should be allowed to unilaterally authorize a first strike of nuclear weapons.

February 3, 2025 Posted by | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

Sole control -No US president should be allowed to unilaterally authorize a first strike of nuclear weapons

Clearly, a first-use nuclear strike carried out by the United States would constitute the ultimate act of war and a first-use nuclear strike conducted absent a declaration of war by Congress would violate the Constitution. And yet, as the law currently stands, a US president can launch a first strike of nuclear weapons in, as it were, a sacred vacuum where only he — and unfortunately it is still a he — is making that choice.

 Linda Pentz Gunter, 2 Feb 25,  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/02/02/sole-control/

President Trump once again has sole authority to make a decision to launch the U.S. nuclear arsenal. He can do so unilaterally, without consulting, getting permission from or even informing his defense secretary or Congress. 

We are back on very thin atomic ice.

Not that anyone should ever launch nuclear weapons, whether they are allowed to or not, and no matter who approves it. Under what circumstances would there by any point in doing so? If it’s in retaliation, it’s already too late. If it’s a first strike, our own extinction is 15 minutes away.

But a trigger happy US president, whether literal or metaphorical, does not instill confidence that in a moment of who knows what kind of impulsive petulance, the nuclear button won’t get pushed. Despite Trump’s pronouncements in Davos last month that he wants to work with the leaders of Russia and China to “see if we can denuclearize,” something Trump says he thinks is “very possible,” there is no reason to be confident that a man who lied more than 30,000 times last time he was US president, really means what he says.

Anticipating that chaos is more likely to be Trump’s preferred modus operandi, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and his fellow Democrat in the House, Ted Lieu of California, wrote to then president Joe Biden last December 12, to urge him to make the change himself and mandate that a president must obtain authorization from Congress before initiating a nuclear first strike. No one individual, including the US president, should be able to start a nuclear war without congressional approval they said. They described current U.S. nuclear launch policy as “terrifying, dangerous, and unconstitutional”.

”As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress’s constitutional role is respected and fulfilled,” wrote Markey and Lieu in their letter to Biden. But Biden did not act.

Accordingly, two days after Trump’s inauguration, the pair put out a similar warning. “As Trump returns to the White House, we cannot let the power to start a nuclear war rest in the hands of a single individual,” they wrote, at the same time announcing the reintroduction of their The Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act.

The bill, if enacted, would restrict the first-use strike of nuclear weapons. The Constitution already gives Congress the sole power to declare war. Why then does the US president have the sole power to start what would be the most deadly and final war of all?

As the Markey-Lieu bill states, “The framers of the Constitution understood that the monumental decision to go to war, which can result in massive death and the destruction of civilized society, must be made by the representatives of the people and not by a single person.”

Given the hateful rhetoric and destructive decision-making already coming out of the Trump White House, passing this legislation has never been more imperative. As the statement from Markey and Lieu reads: “We must put guardrails on presidential authority to start nuclear war. We must never again entrust the fate of the world to just one fallible human.” 

Clearly, a first-use nuclear strike carried out by the United States would constitute the ultimate act of war and a first-use nuclear strike conducted absent a declaration of war by Congress would violate the Constitution. And yet, as the law currently stands, a US president can launch a first strike of nuclear weapons in, as it were, a sacred vacuum where only he — and unfortunately it is still a he — is making that choice. (This last comment is not meant as an endorsement of Kamala Harris’s candidacy for US president but rather a mournful observation that it is high time the US felt able to elect a woman to that highest of offices.)

U.S. nuclear launch policy may indeed be “terrifying, dangerous, and unconstitutional”, but ANY nuclear launch policy is  “terrifying and dangerous”, even if it is constitutional. 

Despite the good intentions of this bill, to make us just a tiny bit safer and reduce the likelihood of a nuclear launch, it keeps us within a mindset that we COULD launch nuclear weapons and that under certain circumstances this might actually be a good idea.

Until we accept that using nuclear weapons under any circumstances would be an act of omnicide, gaining nothing for either side while resulting in a global catastrophe beyond imagining, we will always be one bad decision away from such an outcome, whether caused by a single mad despot or with the approval of a compliant cabinet and Congress.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Views are her own. Her forthcoming book, Hot Stories. Reflections from a Radioactive World, will be published later this year.

February 3, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

40% of workers cite radiation concerns at Fukushima plant

By KEITARO FUKUCHI/ Asahi Shimbun, Staff Writer, February 2, 2025 

Forty percent of the workforce at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant worry about radiation issues on the job, a nearly three-fold spike over the previous year, a survey found.

More than half of those respondents cited fears of their body coming into contact with a radioactive substance.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator that conducted the annual survey, said recent incidents at the plant probably contributed to the heightened concerns.

For example, two workers were hospitalized in October 2023 after they were accidentally splashed with waste liquid containing highly radioactive substances while cleaning piping in a contaminated water treatment facility.

The survey was carried out between September and October to improve the working environment. TEPCO distributed a questionnaire to all workers at the plant and received responses from 5,498 individuals, or 94.5 percent……………………….

Asked to choose specific issues they were concerned about, 52.2 percent, the largest percentage, picked “physical contamination,” up about seven points from 2023.

In another incident, about 1.5 tons of contaminated water flowed out of a water purification facility at the plant through an air exhaust opening in February 2024…… more https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15609878

February 3, 2025 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, radiation | Leave a comment

Leaders in the Pacific raise alarm over ‘direct impact’ of Trump’s climate retreat and aid freeze

Leaders and environmental advocates in the Pacific have expressed alarm
over Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement
and freeze foreign aid, warning the moves will accelerate the existential
threats they face as nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

Guardian 1st Feb 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/01/leaders-in-the-pacific-raise-alarm-over-direct-impact-of-trumps-climate-retreat-and-aid-freeze

February 3, 2025 Posted by | climate change, OCEANIA | Leave a comment

Dangerous climate radical, Lloyd’s of London, threatens the world economy

Dangerous climate radical, Lloyd’s of London, appears to be threatening the world economy

Look – the world authorities have got everything in hand. There should be no need to worry about that global heating nonsense. We learned at Climate Summits Cop 28 and Cop 29 that our shares in oil, gas, coal are going to continue OK. And now, the world’s leader, the USA is going  to again withdraw from the landmark Paris climate agreement, so we can forget all that silly reductions emissions nonsense. And no more of our money to be grabbed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Gee, America has just been saved from a “national energy emergency,” by President Trump’s foresight, with an executive order with its promise to “drill, baby, drill.” Saved in several other ways, such as removing incentives for electric cars.

Phew ! What a relief – as things can now go back to normal. We’ve really had the wool pulled over our eyes, by silly organisations like the UK Met Office, NASA. Copernicus in Europe, Berkeley Earth, U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center, the World Meteorological Organization, and The China Meteorological Administration.

All of these smartaleck bodies have very recently reported on climate change and its effects. The latest nonsense is in the January 15th Report from The World Economic Forum. Listing the top global risks, No.2 is Extreme weather events.

Now what would those elitists know – compared to the common-sense wisdom of a Donald Trump, a J.D. Vance, or a Peter Dutton? We don’t need to worry about all that complicated doom and gloom from academic old fogeys.

But one thing that bothers me is treachery. I’m talking about highly respected companies – in this case Lloyd’s of London, which apparently, in 2019 refused to reinsure some Canadian insurance companies. It is hard to find detail on this, but it was due to Canada’s succession of climate disasters – hurricanes,  floods, wildfires, and extreme heat. Lloyds is the biggest global reinsurer, so could be said to have started, or at least accelerated a trend. In California from 2015-2019, insurers refused 350,000 policy renewals, because of the devastating wildfires. This trend is spreading to the reinsurance of insurance companies in other countries, including Australia.

Reinsurance companies nowadays adopt what is quaintly called “robust”underwriting decisions . In the most recent years, they’re assessing not only huge climate disasters, but also recognising smaller climate perils, like  wind, hail or water damage. For areas at risk, they’re requiring preventative measures, insurance companies must charge more for homes in flood plains, wildfire-prone zones, or coastal areas at risk of hurricanes. So, insurance companies must comply, as they themselves need to be insured. Up go the premiums – for everybody – and especially those in the climate danger zones. . The current Los Angeles fires just add to the developing crisis in insurance. Insurance for many becomes unaffordable, –  “It’s called the hardening of the market.”, and this flows on to mortgage costs. banks and stranded assets- threatening  the overall financial sector.”

All this trauma is the result of Lloyds and others foolishly using the figures from The World Economic Forum, and those other bodies, and not paying proper attention to those who know the truth – of the non-existence or non-importance of global heating, top people – Donald Trump, JD Vance and Peter Dutton.

Climate researcher Paul Beckwith has set out the absurd climate claims: –

The World Economic Forum report preceding the Davos conference looks at global risks – with input from business leaders CEOs, scientists, and a wide range of academics- planetary risks over the next year or 2 and 5 years out. and 10 years out. The top risks by far are climate change risks, abrupt tipping points, extreme weather events – In 5 years more prevalent in 10 years they”ll dominate.

banks are in trouble too. In that chain of events, the stock bubble could blow up. Should we expect the unexpected: 2025 as the year of climate blow-back into the economy?

Climate scientists in America are thinking twice about whether to talk publicly about climate change. The Trump team has already demanded control over the next U.S. National climate assessment, due out in 2026 or 27. It is possible that the same concern about losing their jobs could affect Australian scientists, if Peter Dutton should win Australia’s federal election , due in a few months.

February 2, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Government announces dangerous new plan for more plutonium at Livermore Lab

January 27, 2025, By Marilyn Bechtel,  https://peoplesworld.org/article/government-announces-dangerous-new-plan-for-more-plutonium-at-livermore-lab/

In a surprise mid-January announcement, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) revealed it proposes to significantly increase the quantities of nuclear-grade plutonium to be stored at its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., and to be trucked in and out of the lab on area roads and freeways such as nearby I-580. NNSA’s proposal would also allow riskier activities with plutonium than those currently authorized, and could allow increases of other nuclear materials at the Lab.

Livermore Lab is one of two locations designing and developing every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal.

The proposal announced on Jan. 14 also projects an abbreviated 30-day public comment period on the new Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement which must be prepared. Just a week later, NNSA announced that a virtual public hearing will take place on Wednesday, Jan. 29, from 6 – 8 p.m. PST.

NNSA’s announcement came just a year after a lengthy public process had been completed to disclose and analyze the environmental impact of the Lab’s activities during at least the next decade. In that process, some increases in plutonium-related activities and plutonium at the Lab were indicated, but far less than the “bomb-usable” quantities envisioned in the new plan.

Scott Yundt, executive director of Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (Tri-Valley CAREs), which monitors nuclear weapons and environmental cleanup activities with a special focus on Livermore Lab and surrounding communities, says the new proposal “increases both the likelihood and potential severity of an accident, or intentional destructive act, at the Livermore Lab.” He said some 90,000 people live within five miles of the Lab, which is closely surrounded by houses, apartment buildings, sports fields and schools. Over 7 million live within a 50-mile radius, identified in Lab environmental documents as the “potentially affected population.”

Yundt said the new proposal “skirts the intended purpose of the National Environmental Policy Act. The Lab was repeatedly asked in public comment sessions during the year-long Site Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) process if it was contemplated that the Security Category limits at Livermore Lab would change over the next decade to allow for increased quantities of plutonium and a return to the riskier kinds of nuclear weapons activities that used to occur there during the height of the Cold War. And the answer given to Tri-Valley CAREs and the public was a flat ‘no.’”

Yundt called it “unfortunate” that the new plan wasn’t included in the SWEIS process but is now being presented as a new, stand-alone environmental document: “This is exhausting for members of the public who are concerned about the Lab’s activities, forcing them to again engage and grapple with the cumulative environmental impacts of the Lab’s actions so soon. This feels like a deliberately induced whiplash.”

Livermore Lab has a dubious record both on maintaining security of nuclear-weapons-usable amounts of plutonium it has stored in its most heavily guarded facility, and on avoiding pollution of surrounding communities.

Tri-Valley CAREs Senior Adviser Marylia Kelley says the Lab “has already proven that it cannot keep weapons-usable quantities of plutonium safe.” Kelley recalled the scheduled force-on-force security drill the Department of Energy conducted there in 2008, to test the security of nuclear-weapons-usable amounts of plutonium stored in the Lab’s most heavily-guarded area, the “Superblock.”

While the attack wasn’t a surprise, the mock-terrorists were able to enter the Superblock, get the material they wanted, and hold their ground long enough to detonate a simulated nuclear “dirty bomb.” Additionally, a DOE team was able to take away some of the plutonium material.

Lab lost its Category II security

“This is how Livermore Lab lost its Category II security,” Kelley said, adding that removal of the Lab’s large stock of plutonium was completed in 2012, and the Lab currently holds a lower Category III security classification which limits the amount of nuclear material it can hold on-site.

Kelley called it “shocking and dangerous that Livermore Lab management and its overseeing agency plan to bring large quantities of deadly plutonium back to Livermore” because developments since 2012 have made it even less safe to have large quantities of plutonium there. The City of Livermore has a larger population now and has extended its boundaries so the plutonium would now be within Livermore City limits, and the Lab has recently ramped up its workforce.

“The bottom line is that more Lab employees and local residents could die due to a terror attack or serious accident,” she said. “We must ensure this does not happen.”

Adding to environmental concerns, both the Lab and its Site 300 high explosives testing range near the city of Tracy are federal Super-Fund sites, undergoing cleanup the government expects will not be complete until about 2060.

Though the U.S. hasn’t built new plutonium pits on an industrial scale since 1989, Congress and recent federal administrations have mandated that U.S. nuclear weapons must be modernized, and the NNSA has started plutonium production for newly designed nuclear weapons including the W87-1 warhead, designed by Livermore Lab to top the new Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. New pits are being built at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and to provide a second site, a major retrofit is proposed for an existing facility at Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

At the end of September, a South Carolina District Court ruled in favor of a lawsuit by plaintiffs Tri-Valley CAREs, Savannah River Site Watch and Nuclear Watch New Mexico against DOE and NNSA. U.S. Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled in favor of the monitoring organizations’ contention that the government agencies had failed to “programmatically” evaluate the environmental aspects of proposed enhanced production of plutonium bomb pits.


Judge Geiger’s ruling requires NNSA to issue a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) analyzing the full impacts of its plutonium pit production plans across the nuclear weapons complex. Yundt said this should include the role of Livermore Lab, where this year’s funding for plutonium pit production has escalated by 50% over last year.

“The enhanced plutonium activities suddenly being proposed at Livermore’s Plutonium Facility should be included as part of the nationwide PEIS on plutonium pit production because it is a ‘connected action’ to producing new cores for new nuclear weapons,” Yundt said.

“That PEIS is the appropriate document  for a thorough analysis of alternatives in conjunction with the pit production plans, in order to evaluate if this Livermore proposal is truly necessary, rather than producing a stand-alone Supplemental EIS focused solely on the Livermore site that may not include any analysis of the pit production mission, even though that is a driver for the decision.”

February 2, 2025 Posted by | - plutonium, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

What Happens In A Nuclear Blast With Author Of Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen

February 2, 2025 Posted by | Resources -audiovicual, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran warns that any attack on its nuclear sites would trigger ‘all-out war’.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tells Al Jazeera that Iran would ‘immediately and decisively’ to an US or Israeli attack.

By Al Jazeera Staff, 31 Jan 202531 Jan 2025


Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has told Al Jazeera that any attack by Israel or the United States on Iran’s nuclear facilities would plunge the region into an “all-out war”.

In an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic during a visit to Qatar, Araghchi warned that launching a military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would be “one of the biggest historical mistakes the US could make”.

He said Iran would respond “immediately and decisively” to any attack and that it would lead to an “all-out war in the region”.

Concerns have grown in Iran that US President Donald Trump might empower Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran’s nuclear sites while further tightening US sanctions during his second term in office.

Araghchi said he met Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani in Doha to discuss key regional issues.

“We highly commend Qatar’s mediation role in reaching the ceasefire in Gaza,” Araghchi said in an interview broadcast on Friday. “I hope all other issues will be ironed out.”………………………… more https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/31/iran-fm-abbas-araghchi-attack-nuclear-sites-war-us-israel-gaza

February 2, 2025 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel sends missiles to Ukraine – Axios

 https://www.rt.com/news/611950-israel-patriot-missiles-ukraine/, 30 Jan 24

Russia had warned against the transfer of Patriot interceptors

About 90 interceptor missiles for Patriot air defense systems have been sent from Israel to Poland, from where they will be forwarded to Ukraine, Axios has reported, citing three anonymous sources.

After Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retired their US-supplied Patriots in April 2024, Kiev asked for the missiles. Moscow warned West Jerusalem of potential consequences at the time, and the idea seemed to have gone nowhere.

“In recent days,” Axios reported this week, several US Air Force C-17 transport planes ferried the missiles from an airbase in southern Israel to the Polish city of Rzeszow, NATO’s logistics hub for supplying Ukraine.

West Jerusalem informed Moscow of the move and said it was “only returning the Patriot system to the US” rather than supplying weapons to Ukraine, Axios reported, citing an anonymous senior Israeli official. The same official claimed this was the same thing as the US transfer of artillery shells from “emergency storage” in Israel to Ukraine two years ago.

Both the Pentagon and the US European Command declined to give Axios a comment for the story. Russia has not officially addressed the matter as of yet.

According to Axios, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to take calls from Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky “for weeks.” The situation changed in late September when Netanyahu needed Zelensky’s permission for Hasidic pilgrims to visit Uman, a town south of Kiev where their movement’s founder, Reb Nachman of Bratslav, is buried. Zelensky refused until Netanyahu approved the Patriot transfer, a Ukrainian official told Axios.

A spokesperson for Netanyahu acknowledged to Axios that a Patriot system has been “returned to the US,” adding that “it is not known to us whether it was delivered to Ukraine.” The spokesperson also denied any connection between the Patriots and the Uman pilgrimage.

The missile delivery is the “most significant” Israeli contribution to Kiev since the Russia-Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022. West Jerusalem has long insisted on providing only humanitarian aid to Kiev, out of concern about retaliation from Moscow in Syria, or through supplying Iran with sophisticated weapons, according to media.

Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, warned Israel in July that arming Kiev would “have certain political consequences,” noting that any weapons sent to Ukraine “will eventually be destroyed,” just like the others.

Moscow has reduced its military presence in Syria after President Bashar Assad’s government in Damascus collapsed under an offensive by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militants in December. Israel used the upheaval to destroy much of Syria’s military infrastructure and occupy additional territory in the Golan Heights. Earlier this month, Russia concluded a “strategic partnership” agreement with Iran.

February 2, 2025 Posted by | Israel, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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