Why nuclear power isn’t the green energy solution you’ve been told
Lynn Jamieson, Chair Scottish CND, The National 30th May 2025
Energy policy has become a political
football with outrageous dishonesty about the real environmental
consequences and financial costs of nuclear power. Nigel Farage, Tony Blair
and, sadly, some Scottish political representatives are contributing to the
false narratives that only building nuclear power stations will save us
from future energy crises and that nuclear power is “green” or carbon
neutral.
Encouraged by persistent, well-funded charm offensives by the
nuclear industry, pro-nuclear narratives are repeated with vehement
conviction, ignoring counter-evidence. Pro-nuclear political leaders may
also be motivated by their wish to support Britain’s capacity to build
nuclear bombs.
Even setting aside this deadly link, however, there are
injustices, harms and risks that contradict the supposed attractiveness of
nuclear. Green claim ignores the carbon footprint of [uranium] mining, and
the milling and construction that involves extraordinary amounts of
concrete, the manufacture of which significantly contributes to climate
change. Moreover, the nuclear cycle ends with various levels of radioactive
nuclear waste that must be kept secure for the decades, hundreds and even
thousands of years it remains hazardous to health.
The National 30th May 2025,
https://www.thenational.scot/comment/25201517.nuclear-power-isnt-green-energy-solution-told/
Pope Leo XIV Renews Call for Gaza Ceasefire, Laments Israeli Killing of Palestinian Children
by Dave DeCamp May 28, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/05/28/pope-leo-xiv-renews-call-for-gaza-ceasefire-laments-israeli-killing-of-palestinian-children/
On Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV renewed his call for a ceasefire in Gaza and lamented the death of Palestinian children, who have been killed by Israeli forces in staggering numbers.
“In the Gaza Strip, the intense cries are reaching Heaven more and more from mothers and fathers who hold tightly to the bodies of their dead children,” Leo said during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.
His comments came about a week after Gaza’s Health Ministry published a list of 16,506 children killed by the Israeli military in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The list includes 917 babies who didn’t make it to their first birthdays.
Leo, the first US-born pontiff, also noted the forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, saying they are “constantly forced to move in search of some food and safer shelter from the bombardment.”
“To those responsible, I renew my appeal. Stop the fighting, liberate all the hostages, and completely respect humanitarian law,” he added.
The pope also renewed his call for peace in Ukraine, saying that his thoughts often turn to “the Ukrainian people affected by new serious attacks against civilians and infrastructure.”
Leo said he reiterated his “appeal to stop the war and to support every initiative of dialogue and peace” and invited Catholics to join “in prayer for peace in Ukraine and wherever there is suffering because of war.”
Since being elected on May 8, Leo has repeatedly called for peace in Gaza, Ukraine, and other conflict zones around the world, and has put a focus on the issue of war.
“War is never inevitable. Weapons can and must fall silent, for they never solve problems but only intensify them,” the pontiff wrote on X on May 14. “Those who sow peace will endure throughout history, not those who reap victims. Others are not enemies to hate but human beings with whom to speak.”
World faces new danger of ‘economic denial’ in climate fight, Cop30 head says
André Corrêa do Lago says ‘answers have to come from the economy’ as climate policies trigger populist-fuelled backlash
Fiona Harvey Environment editor, Guardian, 28 May25
The world is facing a new form of climate denial – not the dismissal of climate science, but a concerted attack on the idea that the economy can be reorganised to fight the crisis, the president of global climate talks has warned.
André Corrêa do Lago, the veteran Brazilian diplomat who will direct this year’s UN summit, Cop30, believes his biggest job will be to counter the attempt from some vested interests to prevent climate policies aimed at shifting the global economy to a low-carbon footing.
“There is a new kind of opposition to climate action. We are facing a discredit of climate policies. I don’t think we are facing climate denial,” he said, referring to the increasingly desperate attempts to pretend there is no consensus on climate science that have plagued climate action for the past 30 years. “It’s not a scientific denial, it’s an economic denial.”
This economic denial could be just as dangerous and cause as much delay as repeated attempts to deny climate science in previous years, he warned in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.
As the climate crisis has gathered pace, temperatures have risen and the effects of extreme weather have become more obvious, scientists have been able to draw ever more clearly the links between greenhouse gas emissions and our impacts on the planet. So the argument has shifted, Corrêa do Lago believes, from undermining or misrepresenting the science to attempts to counter climate policy.
“It is not possible to have [scientific] denialism at this stage, after everything that has happened in recent years. So there is a migration from scientific denial to a denial that economic measures against climate change can be good for the economy and for people.”
The rise of populist politicians around the world has fuelled a backlash against climate policy, most clearly seen in the presidency of Donald Trump in the US, where he has set about cancelling policies intended to boost renewable energy and cut greenhouse gases, and dismantling all forms of government-sponsored climate-related institutions, including scientific research labs.
Corrêa do Lago wants to spur a new global effort to persuade people that remodelling the economy away from a reliance on fossil fuels and towards a clean energy future will reap benefits for all people. “The new populism is trying to show [that tackling the climate crisis does not work],” he said. “It’s the turn of those who believe in the fight against climate change to show and to prove that fighting climate change is possible, and that it can come with economic advantages and with a better quality of life.”
Corrêa do Lago is an economist by training – the youngest of five brothers, all of whom became economists. “My mother was horrified with our lack of originality,” he joked.
He has been a career diplomat, having joined Brazil’s foreign service in 1983 and serving previously as ambassador to India and Japan. He is also a veteran of the Cop talks – the annual “conference of the parties”, which will take place this year in Belém, near the mouth of the Amazon, in November.
“Most of the answers have to come from the economy,” said Corrêa do Lago. “Because we have now enough science, enough demonstration of how climate change can affect people’s lives. Now we need answers [in the form of policy measures]. We need economists to rally.”
Over the past two decades, economists have begun to take on the challenge of the climate crisis, after the 2006 landmark review by Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank, which found it would be cheaper to tackle emissions than to allow them to run unchecked. That contradicted the conclusions of some previous economists, who had claimed it was not worth trying to move away from fossil fuels, or it would be too expensive.
Since then, multiple reports have proved the same point. Most recently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the UN Development Programme produced a joint report this year, with the final version to come out next month, showing that tackling the climate crisis would materially increase economic growth, rather than being a necessary cost.
But much mainstream thinking on economics does not take the climate crisis into account. Most governments preparing budgets, for instance, do not include climate impacts in their estimates, and nor do businesses. Many of the economic estimates of climate damage are also far too modest. For Corrêa do Lago, this shows that much more needs to be done.
“Climate has not been incorporated into economic theory in a satisfactory way yet,” he said. “Because it’s a very disturbing element.”…………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/28/andre-correa-do-lago-cop30-interview-climate-crisis
Reform leader hits back after Tories saying he’s gone back on nuclear waste site promise.
By James Turner, Lincolnshire World, 28th May 2025, https://www.lincolnshireworld.com/news/environment/reform-leader-hits-back-after-tories-saying-hes-gone-back-on-nuclear-waste-site-promise-5149751
The new Reform UK leader of Lincolnshire County Council has hit back at accusations of failing to deliver on his election promises regarding a nuclear waste site.
The Lincolnshire Conservative group has highlighted that Coun Sean Matthews, recently elected as council leader, has yet to pull out of talks with government agency Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) about a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) — despite saying he would cancel Lincolnshire’s involvement in the project on day one if elected.
NWS, formerly known as Radioactive Waste Management Limited, outlined three potential sites for its Geological Disposal Facility in January, including East Lindsey, and communities in Mid Copeland and South Copeland in Cumbria.
East Lindsey District Council withdrew from talks with NWS after the proposed location changed from the former gas terminal in Theddlethorpe to open countryside on land between the villages of Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton.
The former Conservative administration of Lincolnshire County Council announced its intention to withdraw from talks in March, effectively cancelling the company’s consideration of the Lincolnshire coast for the facility. However, this had yet to be formalised before the local elections in May, when the administration switched to Reform UK.
During a demonstration outside East Lindsey District Council offices in early March, dozens of protesters called on Lincolnshire County Council to withdraw from the talks. Councillor Matthews attended with four of his Reform UK colleagues.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “On day one if elected as the leader of the Reform council, we will withdraw from the agreement.”
Coun Richard Davies, leader of the Conservative opposition group on the county council, said: “This is a clear U-turn from Sean Matthews and Reform UK.
“Local people were told the project would be scrapped on day one. Instead, the new Reform administration is delaying, consulting, and refusing to give communities the certainty they deserve.”
He added: “We call on Sean Matthews to explain why he has not kept his word to Lincolnshire residents. Reform UK cannot have it both ways — either they stand by their promises or admit they misled the public to win votes.”
Responding to the comments from his Tory counterpart, Coun Matthews said: “As Richard is well aware, there is a democratic process that needs to be followed to officially review the council’s membership of the Community Partnership. And he knows that if we don’t follow that process, we could open ourselves up to challenge, causing further uncertainty for local residents.
“We were clear in the campaign about our intentions, and on my first day as leader of the Reform group, I started that process — even enacting the council’s urgency protocol to allow us to have these important discussions as quickly as possible.
“It took me less than a day to start a process that the previous Conservative administration couldn’t complete in the several years they were in power. In fact, the mere fact they entertained the plans to bury nuclear waste under Lincolnshire in the first place is why this community has had to live with uncertainty for so many years.
“As far as I am concerned, in just one week a decision will have been made and then residents can judge for themselves whether their Reform councillors stick to their word.”
Councillors on Lincolnshire County Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Management Board were to review the council’s participation in the Community Partnership at a meeting on Thursday, May 29. A final decision on the council’s future involvement is expected to be taken by the Executive on Tuesday, June 3.
UK government’s Spending Review needs to allocate nuclear clean-up funds
Letter David Lowry: Julia Pyke, joint managing director of the planned
giant new nuclear power plant at Sizewell C in Suffolk (news, May 26)
asserts that the nuclear industry “prices decommissioning and waste
disposal into the price of its electricity”.
This is misleading. It is true that ministers have established a Nuclear Liabilities Fund, which aims to cover the future costs of dealing with the stewardship of radioactive
waste created from nuclear generation and with defunct contaminated
buildings at closed nuclear plants.
However, resources recovered from the
electricity bill payer, included in the cost of nuclear-generated
electricity, may not foot the full bill. The problem is that cleaning up
the radioactive residue from nuclear power is not a decades-long task, but
one that will last centuries. Nobody yet knows the final bill, but
experience tells us that it is likely to be higher than projected.
The top-up costs will fall to future taxpayers, even though Sizewell C will be
majority privately-owned. When the chancellor is considering allocating
billions of pounds in construction funds for Sizewell C in next month’s
spending review, she will need to allocate nuclear clean-up funds too.
Times 29th May 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/comment/letters-to-editor/article/times-letters-no-benefit-child-payment-cap-rc8xnsrn3
Dysfunctional: review reveals South Copeland GDF partnership at war
It reads like the potential plot for a sequel novel to J K Rowling’s
‘A Casual Vacancy’. For the report of the review of the South Copeland
GDF Community Partnership highlights internal disarray, with members in
conflict with an overbearing Nuclear Waste Services, whilst experiencing
increasing opposition within the local community.
The catalyst for the
review was the letter of withdrawal of Millom Town Council dated 28
November 2024, detailing numerous criticisms of its composition and
function. No consideration appears to have been given by NWS to have
convened a Task and Finish Group with Community Partnership members.
Such a group could have been charged with discretely, though earnestly,
considering the criticisms raised in the Millom Town Council letter, and
then to bring back its own report to the Partnership with its own
recommendations.
Instead, NWS commissioned an ‘external review of the
South Copeland GDF Community to ensure that is effectively fulfilling its
purpose and meeting the needs of the local community’; which for the
NFLAs begs two key questions, who determines its purpose and how are local
needs defined? For the review, Mary Bradley, the former Chair of the
Allerdale GDF Community Partnership, was commissioned by NWS to conduct
interviews with Partnership members and the NWS team and write a report
with her recommendations………………..
NFLA 29th May 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/dysfunctional-review-reveals-south-copeland-gdf-partnership-at-war/
Protesters demand meeting with MP over nuclear shipyard’s economic and environmental harms
RESIDENTS fed up with a nuclear shipyard’s drain on their local economy
and history of radioactive leaks will hold a protest on Friday. Locals will
gather outside their local MP and armed forces minister Luke Pollard’s
constituency office after raising concerns over Devonport Dockyard with him
in writing.
The dockyard maintains Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet and
operated by arms company Babcock and has seen at least 10 serious nuclear
leaks in the past 30 years, with over 570 litres of radioactive liquid
leaking over the period, according to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(CND).
CND chairman Tom Unterrainer said: “Plymouth residents want to
discuss their legitimate concerns about the safety of living next to a
nuclear dockyard, both in terms of radioactive leaks but also being a
target in the event of a nuclear war.
“Instead of sticking to its international obligations to work towards nuclear disarmament, Britain is ploughing ahead with expanding its nuclear arsenal and building a new
generation of death machines. “This makes the world less safe and
increases nuclear risks. Meanwhile, the British public is footing the bill
with new rounds of austerity and crumbling services.”
Morning Star 28th May 2025, https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/protesters-demand-meeting-mp-over-nuclear-shipyards-economic-and-environmental-harms
Sorry If This Is Antisemitic But I Think It’s Wrong To Burn Children Alive
Israel has done more to promote hatred toward Jews in the last year and a half than Stormfront has in its entire existence. No white supremacist propaganda will ever be as effective at spreading hatred against Jews as openly mass murdering children under a Star of David flag.
Caitlin Johnstone, May 28, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/sorry-if-this-is-antisemitic-but?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=164612152&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israel is burning children alive in Gaza. And call me an antisemitic Jew-hating Nazi terrorist lover if you must, but I happen to believe that’s wrong.
❖
Now that it’s been made clear that Israel’s goal in Gaza is the complete ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians, Israel apologists have been shifting from bleating about hostages and Hamas to arguing that ethnic cleansing is actually fine and good. Which makes sense; that’s really the only argument they can make at this point.
❖
Never forget that the US Congress gave Netanyahu dozens of standing ovations during a single speech while he was in the middle of perpetrating history’s first live-streamed genocide. This is who they are. It will always be who they are.
Israel has done more to promote hatred toward Jews in the last year and a half than Stormfront has in its entire existence. No white supremacist propaganda will ever be as effective at spreading hatred against Jews as openly mass murdering children under a Star of David flag.
❖
Support for Israel used to be the overwhelmingly dominant opinion in the western world. Luckily that’s changing, but the fact that this was the case until Israel exposed itself shows you really can’t just go along with majority opinion on any issue. You need to think for yourself.
Ignore what the crowd says. Ignore people who scream at you for disagreeing with their position. Look at the raw facts as free from your own cognitive biases as you are able, and have the courage to stand on your own if necessary.
❖
Gaza is such an easy moral issue to get right that there’s no way anyone who gets it wrong isn’t a shitty person in other areas of their life as well. I feel sorry for anyone who has interpersonal relationships with Israel supporters, because they’d suck to be around.
❖
World Food Programme director Cindy McCain is saying that she’s seen no evidence of Hamas stealing aid entering Gaza. Israel’s one and only argument for continuing to block aid to Gaza is being publicly debunked by a member of one of the most pro-Israel families in US politics.
The US has reportedly delivered some 90,000 tons of weapons to Israel since October 2023.
I mostly focus on the Gaza genocide these days, but sometimes figures like this make me zoom out a few clicks and think about how bat shit insane our civilization is as a whole. Just think how much good we could do in the world if we weren’t pouring resources into evil shit like this.
❖
Murdoch-owned publication The Australian came after me the other day for tweeting “Two Israeli embassy staff getting shot in Washington DC is less newsworthy than tens of thousands of Palestinians being killed in Israel’s genocidal land grab. It is less important. It deserves less attention. It is not the main story. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the main story.”
They called me a “journalist” in scare quotes, which I guess is supposed to be an insult, but coming from the Murdoch press it can only be seen as a compliment.
❖
According to the official western narrative, Americans becoming violently radicalized by a US-backed genocide is a bigger issue than the US-backed genocide.
According to the official narrative, university protests against a transparent ethnic cleansing operation are a greater concern than the transparent ethnic cleansing operation.
According to the official narrative, western Zionist Jews feeling emotionally upset about opposition to a modern-day holocaust is a more urgent problem than a modern-day holocaust.
All of our institutions are backwards and evil. Our media. Our politics. Our education system. Our manufacturers of mainstream culture. This should be clear to everyone by now.
Every historical evil we were taught never to repeat is being repeated by our own rulers.
Everything we were taught to fear about the countries that the western empire hates is true of the western empire.
Every dark future we were warned about in dystopian fiction is true of the dystopia we are living in presently.
We live in a nightmare of a civilization, under an empire that is fueled by human blood. The closer you examine it, the uglier it gets.
This cannot be allowed to continue. It must not be allowed to continue.
The empire must fall.
Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes- Former Israeli PM
SCHEERPOST, Ehud Olmert, Haaretz, May 27, 2025 .Ehud Olmert is the former Israeli prime minister from 2006 to 2009 and mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003. Olmert was a member of the Likud party from 1973 to 2006.
The government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success. Never since its establishment has the State of Israel waged such a war. The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.
The obvious result of Operation Gideon’s Chariots is, first and foremost, the confused activity of Israeli military units deployed around Gaza. This is true particularly in neighborhoods where our soldiers have already fought, were hurt and fell while killing many Hamas combatants, who deserve to die, and many more innocent civilians. These have joined the statistics of pointless victims among the Palestinian population, reaching monstrous proportions.
Recent operations in Gaza have nothing to do with legitimate war goals. The government sends our soldiers – and the military obeys – to wander around Gaza City, Jabalya and Khan Yunis neighborhoods in an illegitimate military operation. This is now a private political war. Its immediate result is the transformation of Gaza into a humanitarian disaster area.
Over the past year, harsh accusations were voiced worldwide against the Israeli government and its military’s conduct in Gaza, including accusations of genocide and war crimes. In public debates in Israel and on the international arena, I’ve rejected such accusations firmly, though I didn’t shrink from criticizing the government. The international media listens to all voices in the public debate in Israel. It can discern between those who serve as mouthpieces for Netanyahu and his lackeys and his opponents, who view him, as the media is currently fond of saying, as the head of a crime family. I didn’t hesitate to give interviews in Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.K. and elsewhere in the international arena. Quite often, I disappointed interviewers when I vehemently asserted that Israel wasn’t committing war crimes in Gaza. Excessive killing happened, but, I claimed firmly and with conviction, in no case did a government official give orders to hit Gazan civilians indiscriminately.
The great number of innocent civilians killed in Gaza was hard to fathom, unjustified, unacceptable. But all, as I have said on every media outlet in the world, resulted from a vicious war.
This war should have ended by early 2024. It continued without justification, without any clear goal and with no political vision for the future of Gaza and the Middle East in general. The military, charged with and duty-bound to execute government orders, acted in many cases rashly, incautiously, over-aggressively. However, it did so without any order or instruction or directive from military top brass to hit civilians indiscriminately. Therefore, as I understood it at the time, no war crimes had been committed.
Genocide and war crimes are legal terms that very much refer to the intent and responsibility of the people authorized to formulate the war’s objectives, its conduct and its purpose, the boundaries of fighting and the limitations on the use of force. I took every available opportunity to distinguish between the crimes we have been accused of, which I refused to admit, and the carelessness and indifference regarding Gazan victims and the unbearable human cost we’ve been levying there. The first accusation I rejected, the second I admitted to.
In recent weeks I’ve been no longer able to do so. What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy – knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.
First, starving out Gaza. On this issue, the position of senior government figures is public and clear. Yes, we’ve been denying Gazans food, medicine and basic living needs as part of an explicit policy. Netanyahu, typically, is trying to blur the type of orders he’s been giving, in order to evade legal and criminal responsibility in due course. But some of his lackeys are saying so outright, in public, even with pride: Yes, we will starve out Gaza. Because all Gazans are Hamas, there’s no moral or operational limitation on exterminating them all, over two million people.
Israeli media outlets, each for its own reasons (some understandable) are trying to present a moderate version of events in Gaza. But the picture displayed around the world is much broader, much more devastating. It’s impossible to view it with equanimity and a nod, as if the world’s reaction is merely a widespread outburst of antisemitism, because everybody hates us and they’re all antisemites.
Well, no. French president Emmanuel Macron is no antisemite. I know him well. I’ve been talking to him over the last few months. When the hour was at hand, the French military stood on the front line to defend Israel and cooperated in intercepting Iran’s missile attacks. “We’re fighting with you against your enemies under my direction, and you’ve been accusing me of supporting terrorism,” Macron recently said. He is a friend of Israel, as are British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and many others who’ve joined them from within the ranks of Europe’s most outstanding and important cabinet ministers and leaders.
They’ve been hearing the voices from Gaza. They see the suffering of hundreds of thousands of civilians. They’ve been hearing the voices from Israeli cabinet meetings and realize the obvious: Israeli cabinet ministers, headed by crime boss Netanyahu, are actively, unhesitatingly and with malice aforethought are pursuing a policy of starvation and humanitarian pressure, with potentially catastrophic results.
Voices are already rising from Israel-friendly governments such as Canada, the U.K. and France, calling for concrete measures against the government, though these could cause grievous harm to Israel. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://scheerpost.com/2025/05/27/former-israeli-pm-enough-is-enough-israel-is-committing-war-crimes/
Legacy of US nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands created global radiation exposure: new study
Hamburg, Germany – Nearly seven decades since the US government ended nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands, a new study has revealed the impacts were far greater than what the US government has so far publicly acknowledged. According to a new study, all atolls, including the southern atolls, received radioactive fallout, but only three of the 24 atolls, all northern and inhabited at the time of fallout, received medical cancer screening.[1]
“The Legacy of U.S. Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands” by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) and commissioned by Greenpeace Germany, has comprehensively analyzed official documents from US government military and energy archives, scientific analyses, and medical sources from 1945 to the present day.
“Among the many troubling aspects of the Marshall Islands’ nuclear legacy is that the United States had concluded, in 1948, after just three tests that the Marshall Islands was not ‘a suitable site for atomic experiments’ because it did not meet the required meteorological criteria. Yet testing went on,” said Arjun Makhijani, report author and President of IEER.
Among the key findings of the study:
- U.S. government radioactivity measurements and dose estimates show that the entire country was impacted by fallout.
In the immediate aftermath of Castle Bravo – the US government’s largest ever nuclear weapons test – its capital, Majuro, was officially considered a “very low exposure” atoll. However, radiation levels were tens of times, and up to 300 times more, relative to background gamma radiation levels - Nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands created radiation exposures globally, with “hotspots” detected as far west of the Marshall Islands as Colombo, Sri Lanka and as far east as Mexico City.
The total explosive force detonated on the Marshall Islands was 108 megatons – the equivalent of dropping a Hiroshima bomb every single day for twenty years. On a proportional basis, the nuclear fall out is estimated to result in roughly 100,000 excess cancer deaths worldwide (rounded).[2] - Remediation of contaminated areas is complex and costly. The Marshall Islands lacks technical capacity in a number of fields crucial to health, environmental protection, and possible resettlement. The history of damage by, and distrust of the United States is compounded by Marshallese dependence on the United States for funds and for scientific and medical expertise. As an example, the Runit Dome, which houses decades of nuclear waste, has been deemed “safe” by the US Department of Energy despite cracks and the impact of climate change and sea level rise.
“The tests on the Marshall Islands are exemplary of an inhumane, imperial policy that deliberately sacrificed human lives and ignored Pacific cultures. As a result of this nuclear legacy, the Marshallese have been robbed of their land, traditions, and culture, with the people of Bikini and Rongelap forever displaced,” said Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific. “The US still fails to acknowledge the full extent of the deep impact. However, these atomic bomb tests are not a closed chapter and they are still having an impact today. Reparations that fit the extent of the harms caused by testing are long overdue.”
In March and April, Greenpeace and its flagship vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, completed a six-week mission with radiation specialists and independent scientists to conduct research across the atolls to support the Marshall Island’s government in its ongoing fight for nuclear justice and compensation.[3] It also marked 40 years (May 1985) when Greenpeace helped answer a call and evacuated the people of Rongelap Island to Mejatto due to nuclear fallout from Castle Bravo, which rendered their home uninhabitable.
In July, Greenpeace and the Rainbow Warrior will mark another 40 year anniversary – the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior I by the French secret service, who were attempting to halt Greenpeace’s campaign against nuclear testing in French Polynesia (Maohi Nui).
Protest against Chalk River nuclear waste disposal project
It’s a choice between defending life and water or protecting the nuclear industry.
Pierre Chapdelaine de Montvalon, Radio-Canada, Espaces Autochtones, May 26, 2025-https://ici.radio-canada.ca/espaces-autochtones/2167618/chalk-river-kebaowek-dechet-nucleaire
Opposition to the proposed Chalk River nuclear waste disposal site continues unabated. A coalition of Aboriginal leaders and elected officials met Monday morning in Montreal to denounce the proposed Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River.
For nearly 10 years, the community of Kebaowek, in Témiscamingue, has been fiercely opposed to the construction of such a site, and is leading a court battle against the organization responsible for the project, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL).
At a press conference, First Nation Chief Lance Haymond reiterated his community’s fears about the risks of water contamination and the effects on biodiversity of such a project, which he said would not respect First Nations’ rights.
Several speakers added their voices to call on the governments of Quebec and Canada to reject the project.
For the new Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, Francis Verreault-Paul, such a project is a threat to our waters, our rights, our cultures and our traditional ways of life.
“Where is the free, prior and informed consent of First Nations, which is at the heart of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?” he asked at a press conference.
It’s a choice between defending life and water or protecting the nuclear industry.
The Quebec government challenged
Manon Massé, Aboriginal Affairs spokesperson for the Québec solidaire party, took advantage of the press conference to directly challenge Quebec Premier François Legault, Environment Minister Benoit Charette and Ian Lafrenière, Minister responsible for relations with First Nations and Inuit.
“What do you mean, these people should not react against such a project? It’s immoral and inhuman to allow Quebecers to be put at risk like this.”
At the time of publication, the office of the Minister of the Environment had not responded to our questions.
“It makes no sense for such a project to be so close to such an important water resource,” added Rébecca Pétrin, Director of Eau secours. “Why aren’t our governments opposed to this?”
A Long Term Project
The proposed near-surface waste management facility is a project launched in 2016 by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, a private-sector consortium [of multinational corporations] responsible for managing federal nuclear sites.
The corporation’s proposed site would house low-level radioactive waste from the Chalk River Laboratories site, Canada’s largest nuclear science research complex, and other Canadian sites.
This waste includes contaminated soil and discarded items such as mops, protective clothing and rags that have been slightly contaminated.
LNC claims in its documentation that the project poses no contamination risk to the river.
“The NSDF is designed to protect the Ottawa River, not harm it. Drinking water downstream is not at risk,” states the LNC reference document.
The organization also assures us that radioactivity at the site will return to naturally occurring levels in a hundred years, and that the site will be monitored for hundreds of years.
Preventing long-term contamination
The president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Gordon Edwards, insisted at the press conference that such waste should not be stored near any watercourse, and feared long-term contamination.
[14 of the 31 radioactive waste materials to be stored in the NSDF have half-lives of more than 100,000 years, and 22 of them have half-lives of more than 5,000 years.]
The octogenarian activist cited the example of a disused salt mine in Germany, which had been used as a dump for low-level nuclear waste.
After 20 years, radioactive pollutants began to seep into the environment and contaminate the ground water, despite all the precautions taken.
“Instead of pretending that this is not a problem, or that it’s a problem that has been solved, we need to consider that we have an intergenerational responsibility. We shouldn’t be thinking of simply abandoning this waste permanently. I don’t think we have sufficient scientific knowledge to do that,” he explains in an interview.
In early 2024, the Chalk River site was found to be discharging toxic wastewater.
A project challenged in court
In 2024, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) announced that it was giving the green light to construction of the NSDF.
This decision was successfully challenged in court by the Kebaowek Algonquin community.The Federal Court first ruled in favor of the Kebaowek on the government’s failure to obtain free, prior and informed consent in the case, which runs counter to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), adopted and codified by Ottawa in 2021.
“We never gave our consent to the project, and we were never consulted,” said Chief Lance Haymond.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories has appealed the court’s decision, but has also initiated a consultation process with the First Nation.
“It’s difficult to talk to CNL representatives about the parameters of a consultation process, when on the other hand, their lawyers are fighting us in court,” lamented Lance Haymond in an interview.
“The government can’t talk about reconciliation while appealing court decisions.”
– Lance Haymond, Chief of Kebaowek First Nation
In writing, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) states that it is committed to working with Kebaowek First Nation and CNL to implement the court’s directive in a transparent and judicious manner. “We are working with the Kebaowek First Nation and the CNL to develop a collaborative consultation process consistent with the court’s directive.”
The Federal Court also recognized that the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories had not sufficiently examined other options for the location of the nuclear waste dump. [This is required by law because of several species at risk that have been identified by Kebaowek.] CNL has also appealed the decision.
A third lawsuit by citizens’ groups and scientists opposed to the project was dismissed by the Federal Court.
Nine other Anishnabeg Algonquin communities support Kebaowek’s fight against the development of the NSDF, as do dozens of Quebec municipalities.
Pikwakanagan, an Anishnabe community on the other side of the Ottawa River in Ontario, supports the project.
Does Tehran want the bomb?
by beyondnuclearinternational, Linda Pentz Gunter
https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/05/25/does-tehran-want-the-bomb/
Is Iran’s nuclear power program a tactical threat or purely commercial, asks Linda Pentz Gunter
“As a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on its religious and ethical principles, has never sought nuclear weapons and remains committed to the principle of non-production and non-use of weapons of mass destruction.”
That was the reassurance given by Iran’s foreign minister, Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, during the Tehran Dialogue Forum hosted earlier this month by the Center for Political and International Studies of Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
It’s a familiar refrain. Iran has consistently argued that it is exercising its “inalienable right” as a signatory to the NPT “to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes” as allowed under Article IV of the treaty.
But is it?
Iran has freely admitted that it has enriched uranium-235 up to 60% — considered at least “weapons usable” (higher than 90% is considered weapons-grade.) Why would it choose to — or need to — do this if it has no intention of seeking nuclear weapons production, as Araghchi and others before him have claimed?
The answer to that question seems obvious and one we have repeated ad infinitum when exposing the flaw in the NPT which, in granting the development of civilian nuclear programs to signatories, ensures the pathway to the bomb is left permanently clear.
Even should Iran never actually develop nuclear weapons, it can use its civil program as a threat to do so. It is no idle threat. The possession of a civilian nuclear program affords Iran the materials, equipment, personnel and know-how to transition to nuclear weapons should it so choose.
What might push Iran to make that choice depends a lot on how the current talks go. Keeping Israel at bay — which wanted to start bombing Iran’s nuclear installations immediately — was one of the few sensible decisions the Trump administration has made.
However, in the view of Mohsen Milani, Executive Director of the Center for Strategic & Diplomatic Studies and Professor of Politics at the University of South Florida, developing nuclear weapons has always been on Iran’s agenda. Milani was speaking during a May 20 webinar on the Iran nuclear talks hosted by the Quincy Institute. You can watch the full webinar below.
“I have always believed and I continue to believe that Iran’s nuclear program was based on turning Iran into a potential nuclear power,” Milani said. “That is a power that has the infrastructure, the expertise, to develop a bomb should they decide to develop a bomb.”
How close Iran might be to that achievement is also much debated. In July 2024, then Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, suggested Iran “is now probably one or two weeks” away from producing enough weapons grade material to make a nuclear weapon. Milani thinks Iran “is much closer than it has ever been,” but doubts the timeline is one or two weeks.
But the key is that “Iran’s nuclear program has never been the central part of Iran’s defense posture, nor has the axis of resistance,” Milani said, referring to the informal coalition of Iranian-supported organizations across the region united to counter the influence of Israel and the US. What Iran is doing is ensuring it can keep the nuclear option, “should there be a need for it,” Milani said. The Trump administration’s approach in these negotiations, in Milani’s view, “is they want to make sure that Iran is incapable of doing what it has tried to do for the past twenty years.”
The whole issue of Iran’s nuclear aspirations is squarely in the news again as the Trump administration continues talks with Tehran about its nuclear program. Confusion and uncertainty has been created by the US side, principally Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, who has told Iran it can enrich uranium to commercial grade (below 5%), then changed his tune and insisted Iran can have no nuclear program at all.
After four rounds of largely fruitless talks, the Iranians began to lose patience, laying down their red line. “To say that ‘we will not allow Iran to enrich uranium’ is a huge mistake,” warned Ayatollah Khamenei of the American threat. “No one is waiting for permission from anyone. The Islamic Republic has its own policies, its own methods, and it pursues its own agenda,” he added.
Pushing Iran around on this might lead to another negative outcome. Iran could leave the NPT. “As a founding advocate for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in West Asia and a long-time NPT member, Iran has shown good faith by engaging in indirect talks with the United States,” Araghchi said at the conference. “But the Iranian nation cannot forfeit its legitimate right to peaceful nuclear technology, including enrichment, which is enshrined in the NPT.”
The speakers on the Quincy webinar agreed that this public back-and-forth by both sides was a mistake and that Iran should deal directly with the United States instead of through an intermediary, and behind closed doors.
By last Wednesday, the Iranian parliament had also made its views known, declaring it would not be held to any uranium enrichments level caps.
By Friday, a fifth round of talks had taken place, again with the Omanis as intermediaries at least some of the time. It was unclear what, if any, progress had been made, with both sides sounding cautiously optimistic. However, a red line for Iran remains the prospect of shipping its entire stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, as the Americans have suggested. Iran still insists it is happy to renounce any future nuclear weapons production, but not uranium enrichment. Further talks are planned.
But at the end of the day a larger question looms, which is whether nuclear nations like the US, which claims might and influence due to the possession of its nuclear weapons, has a right to tell another country it cannot have them?
Rather than perpetually wrestling with the nuclear hydra, the US could lead by a very different example and show the world that all of these extreme threats would be eliminated by disarming from nuclear weapons altogether. And given the template of flaws that Iran has laid out for us regarding our current disarmament treaties, that means abolishing nuclear power as well.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Opinions are her own.
The health impact of nuclear tests in French Polynesia – archive, 1981
there is mounting, though not yet definitive evidence of cancer and brain tumours in the area, especially among the young.
France spent €90,000 countering research into the effects of its Pacific nuclear tests in the 1960s and 70s. Learn how the Guardian reported early accounts of sickness and contamination
Guardian, Compiled by Richard Nelsson, 28 May 25
The health impact of nuclear tests in French Polynesia – archive, 1981
France spent €90,000 countering research into the effects of its Pacific nuclear tests in the 1960s and 70s. Learn how the Guardian reported early accounts of sickness and contamination
Compiled by Richard NelssonWed 28 May 2025
Pacific islanders agitate in the shadow of the bomb
By Christopher Price
17 September 1981
A recent Canard cartoon shows Adam and Eve looking at an H-bomb. “Look, H for Hernu,” (the new Socialist defence minister), says Adam. “Yes and for Horror, Holocaust, Hecatomb and Hiroshima,” adds Eve.
French Socialists have never hitherto allowed the nuclear issue to dominate their politics. If it is beginning to do so now it is partly because keeping their independent nuclear deterrent, which they continue to test underground in Muroroa atoll in French Polynesia, implies continuing colonial domination of the islands of the South Pacific – an issue which is very much alive, both among the Indigenous people of the Pacific and in the rank and file of the Socialist party in France.
The official position – “auto-determination” – as stated by Mr Henri Emmanuelli, the French Colonial minister when he visited France’s Pacific colonies was that he would discuss anything if a democratic majority wanted to. But he also said that recent election results made a referendum on the subject unnecessary.
That none of these three groups of islands (Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Wallis and Futuna) can immediately prove a majority for independence is partly due to strenuous French efforts over the years to stamp on emerging independence movements. More powerful than anything else [influencing the calls for independence] are the pollutant effects of nuclear tests on the human and natural environment. They are now beginning to make themselves felt. Hitherto everything that happens on Mururoa has been officially secret. But Mr Hernu has now a new “frankness” about the tests in an effort to allay anxiety; and immediately after he left the Centre d’Expérimentation du Pacifique issued its first-ever admission of an accident; it was not safe to swim off Mururoa.
In fact, authoritative reports state that there is now a crack 15 to 19 inches wide and over half a mile long in the atoll below sea level; that radioactive leaks into the Pacific have been taking place for many years; that a neighbouring atoll, Fangataufa, has been literally blasted out of the sea.
It is not yet possible to gauge the effect of such leaks, but coupled with the profound disquiet about Japanese plans to use the Pacific as a nuclear waste dumping ground, fears about pollution of fish and other marine life and consequently poisoning of the whole ocean, island populations will undoubtedly put further pressure on the Mitterrand government to reconsider its nuclear testing policy.
“Why don’t they do it in Nice?” was the one constant question put to me by the Polynesians. It echoed “Mururoa and Auvergne”, the most telling of the posters in the campaign which forced the French, eight years ago, to put the tests underground. Now there is a new twist to the story. It’s not just H-bombs the French are exploding inside Mururoa.
It was confirmed by Mr Giscard in June 1980 that France had been undertaking feasibility studies of neutron bombs since 1976, and this week Mr Mauroy, the Socialist prime minister, committed his government to strengthening France’s strategic nuclear arsenal and to the development of the neutron bomb. The knowledge that France is as keen as the US on upping the nuclear option can only add to the disquiet.
On top of this there is mounting, though not yet definitive evidence of cancer and brain tumours in the area, especially among the young. The French authorities counter that there is still less radioactivity in Polynesia than in the Massif Central. Maybe, but the fact that they go to quite extraordinary lengths of security in the treatment of such cases in French hospitals, suggesting a pathological desire to suppress such evidence as exists. One Actuel reporter, Mr Luis González-Mata, who tried to investigate the issue in Polynesia and in France, met continuous hostility.
So far the French government’s response to the political pressure has been to offer that decentralisation of local government to its overseas territories which the towns and cities of France are soon to enjoy. But it will be pressed to go further. The Pacific Forum comprising all independent Pacific countries, decided in Vanuatu in August to send a delegation to Mr Mitterrand demanding to know his intentions.
This is an edited extract. Read the article in full.
Testimonies from the atoll
Mururoa has been the centre of French nuclear tests for decades, largely in secret and often with scant regard for the people who live nearby. For the first time the native workers and their families tell their side of the story.
7 September 1990
Manutahi started work as a welder on Mururoa in 1965 at the age of 32. That was before the tests had started. He worked on the construction of the blockhouses Dindon and Denise.
In 1965 and at the beginning of 1966, we were allowed to eat all the fish in the lagoon but when we returned in 1967, we were forbidden to eat any. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2025/may/28/the-health-impact-of-nuclear-tests-in-french-polynesia-1981
Earth is heading for 2.7°C warming this century. We may avoid the worst climate scenarios – but the outlook is still dire.
Is climate action a lost cause? The United States is withdrawing from the
Paris Agreement for the second time, while heat records over land and sea
have toppled and extreme weather events have multiplied.
In late 2015,
nations agreed through the Paris Agreement to try to hold warming well
under 2°C and ideally to 1.5°C. Almost ten years later, cutting emissions
to the point of meeting the 1.5°C goal looks very difficult. But humanity
has shifted track enough to avert the worst climate future.
Renewables,
energy efficiency and other measures have shifted the dial. The worst case
scenario of expanded coal use, soaring emissions and a much hotter world is
vanishingly unlikely. Instead, Earth is tracking towards around 2.7°C
average warming by 2100. That level of warming would represent
“unprecedented peril” for life on this planet. But it shows progress is
being made.
The Conversation 27th May 2025, https://theconversation.com/earth-is-heading-for-2-7-c-warming-this-century-we-may-avoid-the-worst-climate-scenarios-but-the-outlook-is-still-dire-254284
Lincolnshire County Council leader Sean Matthews defends stance on nuclear waste site amid criticism from Tories
By James Turner, Local Democracy Reporter, 27 May 2025, https://www.lincsonline.co.uk/louth/reform-leader-hits-back-at-accusation-that-he-s-gone-back-on-9418880/
The new Reform UK leader of Lincolnshire County Council has hit back at accusations of failing to deliver on his election promises regarding a nuclear waste site.
The Lincolnshire Conservative group has highlighted that Coun Sean Matthews, recently elected as council leader, has yet to pull out of talks with government agency Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) about a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF)—despite saying he would cancel Lincolnshire’s involvement in the project on day one if elected.
NWS, formerly known as Radioactive Waste Management Limited, outlined three potential sites for its Geological Disposal Facility in January, including East Lindsey, and communities in Mid Copeland and South Copeland in Cumbria.
East Lindsey District Council withdrew from talks with NWS after the proposed location changed from the former gas terminal in Theddlethorpe to open countryside on land between the villages of Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton.
The former Conservative administration of Lincolnshire County Council announced its intention to withdraw from talks in March, effectively cancelling the company’s consideration of the Lincolnshire coast for the facility. However, this had yet to be formalised before the local elections in May, when the administration switched to Reform UK.
During a demonstration outside East Lindsey District Council offices in early March, dozens of protesters called on Lincolnshire County Council to withdraw from the talks. Councillor Matthews attended with four of his Reform UK colleagues.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “On day one if elected as the leader of the Reform council, we will withdraw from the agreement.”
Coun Richard Davies, leader of the Conservative opposition group on the county council, said: “This is a clear U-turn from Sean Matthews and Reform UK.
“Local people were told the project would be scrapped on day one. Instead, the new Reform administration is delaying, consulting, and refusing to give communities the certainty they deserve.”
He added: “We call on Sean Matthews to explain why he has not kept his word to Lincolnshire residents. Reform UK cannot have it both ways—either they stand by their promises or admit they misled the public to win votes.”
Responding to the comments from his Tory counterpart, Coun Matthews said: “As Richard is well aware, there is a democratic process that needs to be followed to officially review the council’s membership of the Community Partnership. And he knows that if we don’t follow that process, we could open ourselves up to challenge, causing further uncertainty for local residents.
“We were clear in the campaign about our intentions, and on my first day as leader of the Reform group, I started that process—even enacting the council’s urgency protocol to allow us to have these important discussions as quickly as possible.
“It took me less than a day to start a process that the previous Conservative administration couldn’t complete in the several years they were in power. In fact, the mere fact they entertained the plans to bury nuclear waste under Lincolnshire in the first place is why this community has had to live with uncertainty for so many years.
“As far as I am concerned, in just one week a decision will have been made and then residents can judge for themselves whether their Reform councillors stick to their word.”
Councillors on Lincolnshire County Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Management Board will review the council’s participation in the Community Partnership at a meeting on Thursday, May 29. A final decision on the council’s future involvement is expected to be taken by the Executive on Tuesday, June 3.
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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