3 Myths About the Shah of Iran — “Dictator, CIA Puppet, Brutal”
Quick article debunking Cold War-era propaganda that’s still being repeated
SL Kanthan, Jan 22, 2026, https://slkanthan.substack.com/p/3-myths-about-the-shah-of-iran-dictator?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=844398&post_id=185383071&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Now that Iran is experiencing the biggest protests since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there is renewed interest in the history of the country during the Shah era. This is a short article to debunk three myths about the Shah of Iran. I have written a much longer article on this topic — here is the link. Okay, let’s look at the myths and debunk/clarify them.
The three talking points to demonize Mohammad Reza Pahlavi are:
- He was a dictator
- He was a puppet of the US, since he was installed by the CIA in the 1953 coup
- He ran a brutal secret police known as the SAVA
All of these accusations have some truths and some lies. The claims are exaggerated and miss the context.
Shah being a Dictator
First, the Shah was a monarch and would be considered a “dictator” by today’s Western standards. But, in those years, most countries in the world were under dictatorships — left or right. From the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc to China and the Middle East to Latin America and even Spain and South Korea, dictators ruled the world!
What matters is this: Iranians had incomparably more political freedom, more economic freedom and more social freedom under the Shah than under the current theocratic regime in Iran.
Below [on original] is a photo of protesters — in Tehran from 1978 — with a sign that says, “Down with the Shah, the blood-sucker.” Can you imagine a similar sign today that says, “Down with Khamenei, the blood-sucker”? The protesters will be hanged from a crane.
Anti-Shah groups such as liberal university students, communists (like the Tudeh Party), and Islamic extremists thrived in Iran under the Shah. A terrorist group named as Fedayeen of Islam tried to assassinate the Shah — they fired five bullets, of which 4 narrowly missed, and one hit him in the shoulder.
Ironically, all the anti-Shah groups were brutally suppressed and eliminated by their former ally, Khomeini, after the revolution.
Within a month after coming to power, Khomeini denounced leftist Iranians as “non-Muslims” who “are at war with the philosophical beliefs of Islam.”
One year later, the Ayatollah openly declared a jihad on Iran’s liberals, Marxists and communists.
During the Shah’s rule, Iran had a parliament (majlis) which was freely elected by the people. In fact, one of the Prime Ministers — Mossadegh — was so powerful that the Shah had to flee the country for a couple of days in 1953!
The simple fact is that, if the Shah were a true dictator, there would have been no revolution in 1979!
Shah was a Puppet of the USA
This is a Soviet-era propaganda that is still being repeated today — remember that during the Cold War, both the US and the USSR were fighting over control of Iran, a very strategic country in terms of resources, influence and location.
The USSR was funding communist groups within Iran to destabilize the Shah’s government. And from radio stations near the Iranian border, the Soviets were blasting anti-Shah propaganda 7 hours a day.
The Shah was a very Westernized man who gravitated towards the US/Europe. But, of course, in such relations, the US would naturally have more power.
But he was not a “puppet.” In fact, the CIA complained in a classified psychological profile that the Shah was a “megalomaniac” who followed his “own plans, while disregarding US interests.” Not the description of a subservient leader.
The Shah also met with Soviet leaders in an act of extraordinary diplomacy during the intense Cold War. Here he is [on original] in Moscow with his wife Soraya in 1956:
About that infamous 1953 CIA coup: It was a coup to stop a coup
Contrary to the popular myth, the Shah was NOT installed by the CIA in a 1953 coup. He had actually come to power in 1941– that was 12 years before the coup and even 6 years before the CIA was created!
But… here is the nuance. The CIA certainly carried out the coup and helped the Shah, who had left/fled the country for 3–4 days.
Here is what happened:
Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh was an influential and ambitious populist, who nationalized the oil sector in 1951. But it was a total disaster — Iran’s oil production fell a staggering 95% over the next two years, as the British withdrew all their technicians, and Iranians did not have the skill to operate the refineries.
At that point, the Shah tried to fire Mossadegh, but couldn’t. (So much for being a brutal dictator). Afraid of a coup or worse (assassination), the Shah fled to Italy for a couple of days.
At the same time, powerful Western oil interests and the deep state (MI6/CIA) were waiting for an opportunity to get rid of Mossadegh. Hence the CIA coup of 1953.
It was a coup to stop a coup.
SAVAK — The Shah’s Brutal Secret Police
After the 1953 coup discussed above, the Shah sought help from the West. That’s why SAVAK was created in 1957 with help from the CIA and MI6. Yes, SAVAK was ruthless, operated outside the law, and engaged in spying, arrests, torture etc.
But guess what happened after the Islamic Revolution? SAVAK was not dismantled, but simply renamed as SAVAMA! In fact, the deputy chief of SAVAK — General Hossein Fardoust — became the head of SAVAMA. All the infrastructure, files, intelligence, torture methods, along with most intel agents continued under Khomeini.
The anti-Shah people never talk about this inconvenient fact.
Conclusion
For ideologues on the far left, a good dictator is an anti-American dictator. So, they worship Stalin, Fidel Castro, Islamic regime in Iran etc., while hating on the Shah.
This is a short summary. You can read my much longer article on Substack:
President Trump’s radical attack on radiation safety.
By Daniel Hirsch, Haakon Williams, Cameron Kuta | October 15, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/10/president-trumps-radical-attack-on-radiation-safety/?variant=B&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Trump%20s%20attack%20on%20radiation%20safety&utm_campaign=20251009%20Thursday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29
In May, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders that, in part, require the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to consider dramatically weakening its radiation protection standard. If federal radiation limits are gutted in the manner urged by the president, the new standard could allow four out of five people exposed over a 70-year lifetime to develop a cancer they would not otherwise get.
Contesting the scientific consensus. Section 5(b) of the executive order—formally titled “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”—directs the NRC to issue a proposed “wholesale revision of its regulations and guidance documents,” including reconsideration of the agency’s “reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure.” The LNT model maintains that risk from radiation exposure is proportional to the dose: Even a tiny amount of radiation causes some small but real increased risk of cancer, and that risk goes up linearly as the dose increases.
While most Americans have doubtless never heard of the LNT model, it has been the bedrock of radiation exposure risk analysis for decades and forms the basis of public health protection from radiation. The LNT model is scientifically robust, supported by the longstanding and repeatedly affirmed determinations on low-dose radiation by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, virtually all international scientific bodies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the NRC itself.
Despite the LNT model’s long track record and the well-established body of scientific evidence upon which it is built, President Trump has unilaterally issued a presidential finding that this scientific consensus is wrong. His order could lead to LNT’s complete abandonment in a matter of months, posing a serious increase in the amount of radiation that industries and government agencies would be allowed to inflict upon the public.
If the NRC goes along with Trump’s assertion, the weakening of radiation protection standards would likely be extreme. Advocates of abandoning LNT have often asserted that low-dose radiation is harmless or even beneficial, and therefore, that the public health radiation limits should be hugely increased. In 2015, three petitions for rulemaking to the NRC proposed doing away with the LNT model and increasing allowable radiation exposures for everyone—including children and pregnant women—to 10 rem. (The Roentgen equivalent man (rem) is a unit of effective absorbed radiation in human tissue, equivalent to one roentgen of X-rays. One rem is equal to 0.01 Sievert in the international system of units.)
One petition to the NRC went so far as to ask, “Why deprive the public of the benefits of low-dose radiation?” The NRC strongly rejected the petitions in 2021, citing the conclusions of numerous scientific bodies that “[c]onvincing evidence has not yet demonstrated the existence of a threshold.
Low-level, or “low-dose,” radiation is generally defined as a dose range of 10 rem and below. However, “low dose” is something of a misnomer, as 10 rem is still relatively high. Even when doses are low, they nonetheless cause substantial harm when spread across a large population over time, especially for sensitive groups like children.
Raising radiation exposure limits. If President Trump’s executive order results in a new public radiation exposure limit of around 10 rem—the level LNT opponents often advocate—the increased health risks would be extraordinary. Longstanding radiation protection limits for members of the public are in the range of 10 to 100 millirem (0.01 to 0.1 rem) per year. A 10-rem limit would increase allowed exposures to radiation by factors of 100 to 1000—and so would increase the risk of cancer.
A single chest X-ray is about 2 millirem (0.002 rem) of radiation exposure. An annual limit of 10 rem would correspond to a person receiving a dose equivalent to 5,000 chest X-rays each year, from conception to death. Current official radiation risk estimates—adopted by EPA from the National Academies’ BEIR VII study on the health risks from exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation—indicate that receiving 10 rem per year over a 70-year lifetime would result in about four out of every five people exposed getting a cancer they would not get otherwise.
Despite what opponents of the LNT model claim, there is no threshold at 10 rem below which there is no measurable health harm. A substantial body of scientific work has demonstrated significant negative health impacts well below 10 rem. Beginning in the 1950s, pioneering Oxford researcher Alice Stewart demonstrated that a single fetal X-ray with a dose of 200 millirem (0.2 rem) was associated with a measurable increase in the risk of that child dying of cancer. The radiation establishment fought Stewart’s findings vigorously, but her research has long since been vindicated.
More recently, a major study covering an international cohort of over 300,000 nuclear facility workers has found that annual doses well below 1 rem create measurable increases in the risk of developing a variety of cancers, and that, as NRC put it, “even tiny doses slightly boost the risk of leukemia.” A second massive study of nearly one million European children found that those who received a CT scan, at an average dose of 800 millirem (0.8 rem), suffered a measurable increase in their risk of getting cancer.
Standards already weak. Radiation protection standards should be tightened, not weakened. The US government has a long history of underestimating radiation risks. The more scientists have learned about low-dose radiation, the more their estimates of the risk per unit dose have tended to increase. Yet the NRC has not updated in step with the science.
The NRC protection limit for workers of 5 rem per year was set in the early 1960s and has not changed since, despite decades of increasing official estimates of radiation risk. The current best estimate, from the National Academies’ BEIR VII, indicates that one out of every five workers receiving the NRC’s allowable dose each year from ages 18 to 65 would develop a cancer.
NRC’s radiation exposure limits for the public have not been updated in 35 years. Despite a requirement to employ EPA’s more conservative radiation risk standards, the NRC has long ignored it and instead continues to use 100 millirem per year—100 times lower than what Trump’s executive order could lead to. Current risk figures from the National Academies and the EPA indicate that 70 years of exposure at that level would result in nearly one in 100 people getting cancer from that exposure. That is 100 to 10,000 times higher than the EPA’s acceptable risk range. As the former director of EPA’s Office of Radiation and Indoor Air said years ago, “To put it bluntly, radiation should not be treated as a privileged pollutant. You and I should not be exposed to higher risks from radiation sites than we should be from sites which had contained any other environmental pollutant.”
The NRC held a webinar in July to gather public feedback on implementing President Trump’s executive order on abolishing the LNT model. Many presenters—including representatives from the National Council on Radiation Protection and the Union of Concerned Scientists—gave a vigorous defense of the LNT model, as did many of the comments from the public. Yet the NRC, despite itself having strongly reaffirmed this standard only 4 years ago, seemed to minimize low-dose radiation risks and suggested that all radiation cancer risk models be treated equally (including the long-discredited view that low-dose radiation has health benefits). More concerning, the NRC has put its thumb on the scale, giving special treatment to LNT opposition by posting among the general meeting materials a link to one presenter’s paper, which suggests that an annual dose of 10 rem is acceptably safe.
At a time when radiation protection should be strengthened, President Trump has directed action to weaken it markedly. If the NRC implements the executive order, the potential outcome would be a new, deeply flawed radiation standard as much as a thousand times weaker than the current standard, resulting in a massive increase in radiation-related health hazards across the American population.
Trump Could Offer Deals to U.S. States to Store Nuclear Waste
Oil Price, By Charles Kennedy – Jan 22, 2026,
The Trump Administration plans to offer U.S. states incentives for building nuclear reactors in exchange for agreeing to store nuclear waste, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
However, a spokesperson for the U.S. Energy Department told Reuters that the story was “false” and that “no decisions have been made at this time,” after POLITICO first reported on the plan late on Wednesday.
The POLITICO report said that the Energy Department could invite interest from U.S. states as early as this week.
Handling nuclear waste is a politically and environmentally sensitive issue, and the U.S. may have much more of that in the coming years as it the Trump Administration plans to facilitate the expansion of U.S. nuclear energy capacity from about 100 gigawatts (GW) in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050.
The U.S. Administration has bet big on nuclear power, alongside gas, to meet the expected surge in America’s electricity demand driven by AI, data centers, and the onshoring of manufacturing………….
Earlier this month, the Energy Department announced a $2.7 billion investment to strengthen domestic enrichment, in support of President Trump’s commitment to expand U.S. capacity for low-enriched uranium (LEU) and jumpstart new supply chains and innovations for high-assay low-enriched uranium.
Last month, the Energy Department awarded $800 million to TVA and Holtec to advance the deployment of U.S. small modular reactors.
In November, DOE extended a $1-billion loan to help Constellation Energy restart the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor to add baseload power to the grid and help the AI advancement in the United States. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Trump-Could-Offer-Deals-to-US-States-to-Store-Nuclear-Waste.html
Plans to ease nuclear build rules could spell disaster for nature, says Wildlife Trusts
Jack Loughran, Engineering and Technology,
ENDS 20th Jan 2026
Government plans to cut environmental protections in a bid to make it easier to build nuclear power plants is “misguided” and based on “misleading advice”, the Wildlife Trusts has said.
Published in November 2025, the Nuclear Regulatory Review proposes a number of changes to the habitats regulations so that developers building nuclear plants would face less stringent requirements to avoid harming protected nature sites before they build.
In theory, it would allow developers to proceed, even if there is potential harm to nearby habitats, by moving directly to off-site compensation or mitigation rather than blocks to their original proposals.
But the Wildlife Trusts has said the rule changes would have “devastating consequences” for what remains of Britain’s natural landscape and warned that many habitats are “irreplaceable” and would be lost forever if proper protections were not in place.
Nuclear power plants were originally limited to just eight sites in the UK, but these restrictions are being scrapped ahead of a new wave of small modular reactors that are expected to be more numerous and constructed in various locations around the country.
The Wildlife Trusts said that a major expansion of the UK’s nuclear power infrastructure, which is planned by the government in order to decarbonise the energy grid, risks weakening critical environmental safeguards that protect habitats and landscapes across the country. The body also argues that the Nuclear Regulatory Review exaggerates the cost of adhering to nature regulations while underplaying the real ecological consequences of nuclear development near sensitive areas………………………………….. https://eandt.theiet.org/2026/01/20/plans-ease-nuclear-build-rules-could-spell-disaster-wildlife-says-wildlife-trusts
Oppose Israel’s Abuses While You Still Can
I’ve seen some Australians expressing confusion as to whether or not they can still legally criticize Israel online after new “hate speech” laws were passed on Tuesday under the pretense of combatting “antisemitism”. The answer is yes, and you definitely should keep opposing Israel and its genocidal atrocities.
I am worried that these new laws may indirectly have a bit of a chilling effect on pro-Palestine activism due to Australians not understanding these new laws and what people are allowed to do without being jailed. So let’s clear this up thoroughly so we’re all on the same page.
To be perfectly clear: it is still legal for Australians to oppose Israel and to associate with pro-Palestine groups — and we should. What’s changed is that now those groups can be classified as “hate groups” and banned, similarly to how Palestine Action has been banned in the UK. But this hasn’t happened yet, and hopefully never will. We need to push for these new laws to be repealed, because they look guaranteed to be abused at some point in the future.
Know your rights, Australians:
It is still legal to criticize Israel. So we should criticize it as much as possible, because we don’t know how much longer we’ll have that right.
It is still legal to associate with pro-Palestine groups. So we should do so at every opportunity, because we don’t know when they’ll start listing them as “hate groups” and imprisoning anyone who continues to associate with them.
Unless you are in certain parts of Sydney while the post-Bondi protest ban remains in effect, it is presently fully legal to hold pro-Palestine marches. So attend as many as you are able, because you don’t know when they’ll be shut down altogether.
It is still legal to say that Israel is a genocidal apartheid state, and to share information and opinions about its abuses. So we should do so as much as we can, because we don’t know when that right will be taken away.
It is still legal to state the fact that Zionism is a racist and murderous political ideology and that everything we’ve seen in Gaza is the result of Zionists getting everything they want. So we should say it frequently, because that right could vanish at any time.
It is still legal to say “Fuck Israel, free Palestine.” So we should say it loud and say it often, because we don’t know how much longer we’ll be allowed to do so without getting thrown into prison.
The Israel lobby is working frenetically to crush free speech in Australia, and the swamp monsters in Canberra are either actively facilitating this agenda or doing far too little to stop it. The more aggressively they work to take away our right to oppose Israel, the more aggressively we need to oppose both them and Israel.
We’re not just fighting for Gaza anymore, we’re fighting for our own civil rights, and for our children, and for our grandchildren. They’re actively assaulting our ability to speak critically of power and make this nation a more tyrannical place. The only appropriate response to this is ferocious defiance.
Our future depends on it.
Today in History – January 24: Pure luck stops two nuclear bombs destroying US city
By Nick Pearson, Jan 24, 2026, https://www.9news.com.au/world/today-in-history-january-24-what-happened-on-this-day/67dc0e76-b5a5-4799-8fd0-ef2c401b7812
Two concurrent nuclear explosions over a US town were narrowly averted on January 24, 1961.
A B-52 bomber flying over Goldsboro, North Carolina, started to break up in mid-air after a fuel leak.
The centrifugal forces set off a trigger in the cockpit which would be used to drop the payload in the back of the plane.
That payload was two hydrogen bombs, which dropped out of the plane as it broke up in the sky.
Five of the eight crew were able to bail out safely, but three were killed.
Meanwhile, the two hydrogen bombs fell to the ground.
By pure luck, neither of the weapons exploded.
The first weapon had landed in a field on a farm, landing reasonably softly because of its deployed parachute.
With one of the 24-megaton warheads, there were six interlocking safety mechanisms which needed to be triggered for the bomb to explode.
“When Air Force experts rushed to the North Carolina farm to examine the weapon after the accident, they found that five of the six interlocks had been set off by the fall,” nuclear safety supervisor Parker F. Jones wrote in a 1969 report.
“Only a single switch prevented the 24-megaton bomb from detonating and spreading fire and destruction over a wide area.”
The second bomb landed in a muddy field, leaving a 1.5m hole in the ground.
When it was recovered after a three-day operation, they found the safety switch had been turned to “Armed”.
It created a mystery as to why this bomb did not detonate.
The conclusion from investigators was that the impact from hitting the earth shifted the switch to “Armed”, but that same impact had broken the circuits that would have set the bomb off.
After breaking up on impact and sinking into deep mud, some major components of the bomb have still not been recovered.
If either bomb had detonated, it would have likely wiped out a city of about 30,000 people.
The farmer was paid $100 by the US government for a 61m-radius section of the farm.
They are still allowed to use the land for agricultural purposes but forbidden from digging more than five feet down.
Kushner Reveals Dystopic Plan to Build Data Centers on Ruins of Gaza Genocide.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’”
The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s bulldozing of Gaza to make real estate opportunities for investors.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’”
The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s bulldozing of Gaza to make real estate opportunities for investors.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, January 22, 2026, https://truthout.org/articles/kushner-reveals-dystopic-plan-to-build-data-centers-on-ruins-of-gaza-genocide/
White House Adviser Jared Kushner revealed a neocolonial plan to transform Gaza into a home for luxury tourist resorts and data centers at the World Economic Forum on Thursday.
The plan has been widely condemned by human rights advocates, who say it is an an attempt to erase Palestinians by building a capitalist dystopia on the ruins of Israel’s genocide.
At the signing ceremony for President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” Kushner shared a set of slides depicting a colonialist fantasy of the Gaza Strip under a hypothetical “demilitarization” of Hamas — despite the group’s repeated refusal to disarm, saying it would leave them defenseless against further attacks by Israel or otherwise.
The slides show computer-generated photos of high rise buildings along the coast and rows of residential buildings elsewhere.
The presentation includes a blueprint of Gaza divided into sections, which Kushner says is the U.S.’s plan for “catastrophic success” in the event of demilitarization of Hamas. The blueprint, labelled as the “Master Plan,” shows the entirety of the coast — where Palestinians have long fished for sustenance — dedicated to “coastal tourism,” with a sea port and an airport. There are large swaths dedicated to “parks, agriculture, and sports facilities.”
Tellingly, numerous parts of the map located next to residential areas are dedicated to industry and “data centers.” Ruinous technology like AI, reports have said, are slated to be a major part of the White House’s plan for Gaza, with other slides in the pitch deck reported by The Wall Street Journal showing a transformation of the Strip into a “smart city” with “tech driven governance.”
Nowhere is there a designation for cultural sites, nor does the map seem to be built around keeping or restoring any parts of Gaza that retain Palestinian heritage or life. The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s razing of the territory, clear the rubble in which thousands of Palestinians’ bodies are thought to be trapped, and replace it with real estate opportunities for investors.
“Gaza, as President Trump has been saying, has amazing potential,” said Kushner.
At the signing ceremony, Trump said that Gaza, home to millions of Palestinians, is “a great location” that should be viewed as a “big real estate site,” and expressed his interest in the region as a “real estate person at heart.”
“I said, look at this location on the sea, look at this beautiful piece of property — what it could be for so many people, it’ll be so great, people that are living so poorly are gonna be living so well,” Trump said.
Kushner touted the White House’s goal of applying “free market economy principles” to the razing and redevelopment of Gaza. He also expressed a desire to replace the humanitarian aid system for Palestinians in the region using those principles.
Palestinians have strongly condemned the plan.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’” wrote Palestinian American writer Susan Abulhawa. “Palestinians will be pushed behind walls and gates, retrained in ‘technical schools’ to serve Israel’s supremacists ideology. The indigenous traditions and social fabric of this land will be obliterated utterly.”
“If the goal is truly peace, then the path is simple: end the occupation and help restore the rights that have been taken from Palestinians since 1948,” said Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer from Gaza. “We, the Palestinian people, are the ones who must determine our own future. Peace cannot be imposed while our land is occupied, our lives controlled, and our voices ignored.”
Nuclear project with locals opposed will get federal review
Federal law requires large projects to examine whether there are other feasible ways to meet the same goals with fewer risks.
That opens the door to arguments that renewables, storage and grid upgrades could deliver similar benefits faster, more cheaply and with less environmental harm.
Recent studies from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance suggest alternatives exist and that the province could save up to $19 billion per year by investing in wind, solar and storage instead of pursuing the Wesleyville nuclear megaproject.
Canada’s National Observer, By Abdul Matin Sarfraz, January 22nd 2026
For most of her life, Faye More has lived in the shadow of nuclear waste, grappling with radioactive contamination in her home and her hometown left behind by uranium and radium processing.
She grew up in Port Hope, a lakeside community about 100 kilometres east of Toronto that is still undergoing cleanup of contaminated soil that continues to be removed from neighbourhoods and stored in a huge engineered mound about the size of 70 hockey rinks, visible from Highway 401.
In the 1970s, government investigators found high levels of radon gas at St. Mary’s elementary school in Port Hope, where radioactive mining waste from the town’s uranium mine had been used as fill beneath the building. The school was closed and tests were conducted elsewhere around the town. Investigators uncovered contamination in unexpected places — including backyards and basements.
“I grew up in a contaminated house. I later ended up buying a contaminated property without knowing it and I raised my family there because the locations of radioactive waste were not being disclosed,” More said.
Radon is a colourless, odourless radioactive gas that forms naturally as uranium breaks down in soil and can seep into homes through foundations — it’s naturally occurring in many places but, in Port Hope, levels were significantly higher than normal. Health Canada says radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer after smoking, linked to about 16 per cent of cases nationwide, or more than 3,000 deaths each year.
Now, More’s community is being asked by the Ford government to shoulder another nuclear burden, one of the largest nuclear projects in the world. This time, she is fighting back, helping lead local residents who say they have already paid the price.
The province last year announced that Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is proposing a new nuclear generating station on its Wesleyville property. The company says the project could eventually host up to 10,000 megawatts of generating capacity, enough to power up to 10 million homes for roughly 78 years.
In its own documents, the Ontario Power Generation says it is not considering alternatives to the Wesleyville project itself. It describes nuclear expansion as a policy decision already made by the province.
The Ford government celebrated the project, claiming more nuclear power is essential to meet rising electricity demand while helping Canada hit its climate targets.
Nuclear energy is frequently cited as a clean, reliable alternative to fossil fuels…………………….
“I was really shocked and appalled,” said More, now chair of the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee. “I felt it was very disrespectful to the people, the way it was announced as good news.”
More says the group has more than 100 members and is a volunteer-run non-profit formed in 1995 to address health and environmental risks linked to radioactive contamination in the town.
The group organizes public meetings, shares information online, writes letters to officials and urges residents to take part in public consultations.
Last week, the federal government formally designated the proposed Wesleyville project for a federal environmental impact assessment, opening the door to public consultation.
Unlike most major infrastructure projects, nuclear plants fall largely under federal jurisdiction. The Federal Impact Assessment Act requires a full review for any new nuclear facility larger than 200 megawatts.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission must then decide whether the project meets safety and environmental rules under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act and the Impact Assessment Act before issuing a licence.
More hopes the federal process will stop the project altogether. She says the risks to nearby communities are too great, that safer alternatives exist and that the Ford government ignored Port Hope’s long and painful history with the nuclear industry.
For her, the idea of building one of the world’s largest nuclear plants nearby feels surreal.
“To suddenly hear that in this beautiful rural area they are going to build what could be the largest nuclear plant in the world is really unimaginable,” she said.
More worries about what that would mean for land, water and ecosystems. “It is hard to picture the scope of changes that would happen out there,” she told Canada’s National Observer. “And with that scale comes enormous risks, including emissions to the water, the air and impacts on biodiversity.”
OPG’s filings describe major physical changes that would come with the project. These include shoreline filling, dredging, building docks and large-scale excavation and blasting.
The company also says the plant would rely on cooling water from Lake Ontario. The company acknowledges the site includes wetlands, creeks and fish habitat. It also says parts of the area fall within highly vulnerable aquifer zones.
More says the pace of the project is almost as alarming as its size. She believes people should have veto power, a view not shared by the Ford government, which like the federal government is seeking to build infrastructure more quickly.
“One of the most basic questions in any environmental assessment is: Do we actually need this much energy? And if we do, why does it have to come from here?”
The company says it already owns the property, that it has been intended for electricity generation for decades and that the region has major infrastructure nearby such as transmission corridors, rail access and road that make the site ideal for the expansion plans.
Moving faster than expected
Legal experts note the project is moving at unusual speed.
Theresa McClenaghan, executive director and counsel at the Canadian Environmental Law Association, has followed nuclear projects for decades and says the timeline alone should raise red flags.
“From the very first idea, where the province asked OPG to look at potential new sites, to filing a project description with the federal agency, it’s been something like a year,” she told Canada’s National Observer. “That’s incredibly fast for something of this scale.”
McClenaghan believes OPG is trying to secure approvals while political conditions are favourable.
““They see a friendly Nuclear Safety Commission. They see a supportive provincial government and a supportive federal government,” she said.
“I think they’re thinking: let’s get this licence in our back pocket.”
She points to earlier cases where OPG obtained approvals long before construction began, protecting itself from future political or economic shifts. That strategy matters, she says, because nuclear megaprojects often face soaring costs.
Recent regulatory changes mean many of those costs can now be passed on to ratepayers long before any electricity is produced.
McClenaghan says the federal impact assessment may be the only real opportunity for the public to closely examine the project’s risks, costs and alternatives.
“It’s extremely rare for nuclear projects to be denied,” she said. “But it’s not impossible.”
The review will eventually combine two decisions into one: whether the project’s impacts are acceptable under federal law and whether the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission should grant OPG a licence.
Under federal rules, the process must look at accident scenarios, long-term environmental effects and whether the project makes sense in its proposed location, including near population centres. In its own documents, OPG says it is not considering alternatives to the Wesleyville project itself. It describes nuclear expansion as a policy decision already made by the province.
McClenaghan says that stance could become a major sticking point. Federal law requires large projects to examine whether there are other feasible ways to meet the same goals with fewer risks.
That opens the door to arguments that renewables, storage and grid upgrades could deliver similar benefits faster, more cheaply and with less environmental harm.
Recent studies from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance suggest alternatives exist and that the province could save up to $19 billion per year by investing in wind, solar and storage instead of pursuing the Wesleyville nuclear megaproject.
Ontario’s big nuclear bet
More than half of Ontario’s electricity currently comes from nuclear power.
Under the province’s long-term planning, that share is projected to rise above 70 per cent by 2050 as electricity demand is expected to increase by about 75 per cent.
Nuclear projects are expensive and complex. The province says it plans to explore new ownership models and equity partnerships to attract private capital.
The government argues nuclear power is more cost-effective and land-efficient than renewables. It says alternatives would require vast amounts of land and major new transmission infrastructure, a claim challenged by energy experts.
For More, the fight has already begun. She is organizing meetings, sharing information online and urging people to take part in the consultation. But she says the timelines are too short for communities to respond in a meaningful way.
She worries that political efforts to “cut red tape” are turning health and environmental protections into barriers to be removed.
“What happens at Wesleyville doesn’t stay at Wesleyville. The reach of a nuclear plant is enormous,” More said. “When a wind turbine fails, it doesn’t contaminate an entire region,” she said. “Nuclear is different.”
More says her community has already paid the price of Canada’s nuclear history once and they are not willing to do it again.
All Unquiet on the Ukrainian Front
“The Kremlin has tried every which way to bring its ‘special military operation,’ along with its broader confrontation with the West, to a mutually beneficial conclusion.”
The Europeans have run out of postures and gestures in the way of performative statecraft: This is my conclusion. And the Russians, evidently sharing it in one or another form, see no point in indulging them any further.
By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, 22 Jan 26, https://consortiumnews.com/2026/01/21/patrick-lawrence-all-unquiet-on-the-ukrainian-front/
The Europeans have run out of postures and gestures in the way of performative statecraft, and the Russians see no point in indulging them any further.
Sometimes wars have occasions that can be read — immediately, soon or in time — as turning points, clarifying moments. D–Day, June 6, 1944, is an obvious case: The Allies and the Red Army were in Berlin less than a year later.
The Tet Offensive, which began 58 years ago next week (Can you believe it?), is another: All the victory-is-near illusions the American command had cultivated for years collapsed. There were many more casualties at the altar of imperial delusion, but the war in Southeast Asia was on the way to over.
On Jan. 8 Russia attacked Lviv, the city in western Ukraine, with an Oreshnik missile. To me this looks very like a clarifying event in the Ukraine war — Moscow’s announcement that it has decided to begin the beginning of the end.
The Oreshnik is a new-generation weapon that already wears a little of the mystique of Ares, the Greek god of war. It travels at hypersonic speeds and is undetectable by air-defense systems. It is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, although the missile that hit Lviv wasn’t armed with one.
This was not Russia’s first use of the Oreshnik in Ukraine. Its first was in November 2024, when the target was a munitions factory in Dnipro, not far from the front lines. That blew minds as well as production lines.
But the missile that hit Lviv seemed to have more to say to the regime in Kiev and its Western backers, notably all those supercilious Europeans. Lviv, Ukraine’s cultural capital, has been a safe haven these past four years of conflict. Not to be missed, it lies roughly 45 miles from the border with Poland.
Russia’s declared intent in launching its second Oreshnik was to respond to the Dec. 29 drone attack the Ukrainians, with the usual assistance of the Americans and Brits, launched on President Vladimir Putin’s secondary residence in Valdai, northwest of Moscow.
Parenthetically, Kiev and the C.I.A., two famous truth-tellers, deny any such attack took place, but let us not waste any time with this silliness. The Russians have reportedly presented Western officials with evidence of the event.
Would Putin raise it in a telephone exchange with President Trump were it, as corporate media now have it, just another disinformation operation?
These things said, the Oreshnik hit in Lviv merits a broader reading, in my view.
Here is an account of the Oreshnik as it descended through the winter clouds above Lviv. It is written by Mike Mihajlovic, who publishes, edits and writes frequently for Black Mountain Analysis, a Substack newsletter I have found worth looking at on previous occasions.
This passage is based on Mihajlovic’s apparently diligent study of digital evidence and eyewitness accounts. Good enough we know what happens when these things arrive, as there may be more of them in the skies above Ukraine as the war begins its fifth year:
“As the hypersonic penetrators broke through the cloud layers, each was enveloped in a luminous plasma sheath, producing brief but violent flashes that momentarily illuminated the surrounding atmosphere. These flashes were not explosions in the conventional sense, but visual signatures of extreme velocity, friction, and compression as the warheads tore through dense air at hypersonic speed.
Observers on the ground reported an unsettling soundscape that followed the visual phenomenon. Rather than a single detonation, there were sharp, cracking noises that seemed to ripple across the terrain, as if the ground itself were fracturing under stress.
“What made the event particularly striking was the setting. The impacts occurred against the backdrop of an idyllic winter landscape: fields and forests blanketed in snow, small settlements dimly lit, and a horizon that, moments earlier, conveyed calm and stillness.
Against this muted palette, the light generated by the strike stood out with almost surreal intensity. Reflections danced across the snow, briefly turning the ground into a mirror that amplified the event’s brightness. Witnesses described the glow as unnatural, a cold, shimmering illumination that lingered just long enough to be noticed and remembered.”
The Lviv attack seems to be part of an intensifying campaign to cripple Ukraine’s power grids, energy infrastructure and productive capacity. The Russians have been hitting such targets for years, of course, but these new operations suggest Moscow is after the endgame now.
Moscow’s Attempts to End Conflict
The Kremlin has tried every which way to bring its “special military operation,” along with its broader confrontation with the West, to a mutually beneficial conclusion. You can go back to the spring of 2022, when was ready to sign an accord with Kiev a few months into the war — only for the Brits, with American consent, to scotch it.
Or December 2021, when it sent Washington and NATO draft treaties as a basis of negotiating a new security framework between the Russian Federation and the West. They were dismissed as “nonstarters,” a British-ism the Biden regime thought was clever.
Or the Minsk Protocols, September 2014 and February 2015, which the British and French sabotaged. Or back to the early 1990s, when Michail Gorbachev hoped to bring post–Soviet Russia into “a common European home.”
The Kremlin has proven exceptionally restrained, not to say forebearing, through all of this. And it would be a mistake now to conclude the Russians have lost their patience.
No, in my read they have simply concluded there is no point waiting around while the Western powers indulge themselves in pantomime statecraft or — maybe better put —some kind of group onanism they seem to find satisfying.
And in public, no less.
For weeks toward the end of last year we read incessantly of the intense diplomatic work Kiev, the Europeans and the Trump regime’s contingent were getting up to. The swashbuckling Musketeers cooked up a 20–point peace plan that was supposed to supersede Trump’s 28–point document.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s unconstitutional president, went from one European capital to another and then to Washington and then to Mar-a–Lago and then back to Europe, all along asserting he and his backers were “90 percent there.”
Ninety percent there on security guarantees providing for European troops to serve as peacekeepers on Ukrainian soil. Ninety percent there on a territorial settlement. And so on.
You watched all this with your jaw dropping. None of it had anything to do with fashioning an accord Moscow would find even preliminarily negotiable. The 20–point plan’s intent, indeed, was to subvert the 28–point plan, the first pieces of paper since the spring 2022 attempt that Moscow appeared to find worth its time.
Not Enough Delusion
No, the Trump plan was too realistic as a draft of a settlement accord in recognizing that Moscow was the victor in its war with Ukraine, Kiev the vanquished. There wasn’t enough delusion in it.
And now, roughly since the start of the year, more or less complete silence from Zelensky and the Musketeers — Kier Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, a prime minister, a president and a chancellor.
There is no establishing any certain causality between the Oreshnik attack in previously safe — relatively speaking — western Ukraine, and this nothing-to-say lapse in Kiev, London, Paris and Berlin (and for that matter Washington). But the point may prove the same.
The Europeans have run out of postures and gestures in the way of performative statecraft: This is my conclusion. And the Russians, evidently sharing it in one or another form, see no point in indulging them any further.
As to the Trumpster, it seemed to me unimaginable from the outset that the national security state in all its appendages would ever allow him to reach a comprehensive settlement with Moscow that would open into a new era in East–West relations.
So has the war turned. So do matters clarify. So does the war in Ukraine appear set to end — not with a single detonation, no, rather with sharp cracking noises that seemed to ripple across the terrain.
Nuclear lapses overshadow reactor restarts in post-Fukushima Japan.
Power provider admits to manipulating data to downplay effect of large
earthquake. This month, one of Japan’s biggest utilities admitted to
manipulating data to downplay the effect of a large earthquake on a nuclear
power plant under review for reopening.
The admission followed a security
failure at Japan’s nuclear energy watchdog, in which an employee lost a
work phone with contact details of staff involved in nuclear security
during a personal trip to China.
The compliance lapses at Chubu Electric
and the Nuclear Regulation Authority threaten confidence in Japan’s safety
regime as the country tries to reopen its nuclear plants 15 years after a
massive quake caused a tsunami that inundated reactors in Fukushima.
FT 22nd Jan 2026,
https://www.ft.com/content/0bb511ab-80dc-44c2-ab06-d0e587c8367e
Nuclear reactor owned by Fukushima plant operator TEPCO to shut down again hours after restart.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS, 22 January 2026 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-15487139/Nuclear-reactor-owned-Fukushima-plant-operator-TEPCO-suspends-hours-old-restart.html
TOKYO (AP) – A reactor at the world’s largest nuclear power plant that restarted for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster is now being shut down again Thursday due to a glitch that occurred hours after the unit’s resumption, its operator said.
The No. 6 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in north-central Japan reactivated Wednesday night for the first time in 14 years, as plant workers started removing neutron-absorbing control rods from the core to start stable nuclear fission.
But the process had to be suspended hours later due to a malfunction related to control rods, which are essential to safely starting up and shutting down reactors, the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said.
TEPCO, which also manages the wrecked Fukushima plant, said there was no safety issue from the glitch.
Kashiwazak-Kariwa plant chief Takeyuki Inagaki told a news conference that he has decided to shut down the reactor to ensure safety. The operation had to stop when an alarm went off after 52 of the 205 control rods were removed from the core, he said. Inagaki said he hoped to start putting them back in later Thursday to bring the No. 6 reactor to a shutdown.
“The equipment is essential to safe operation, and we will examine it inside out,” he said, adding that the reactor will not be restarted until the cause is found and measures are taken.
“I don’t think this is going to be resolved in a couple of days,” Inagaki said.
The restart at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was being watched closely since TEPCO also runs the Fukushima Daiichi plant that was ruined in the 2011 quake and tsunami. Resource-poor Japan is accelerating atomic power use to meet soaring electricity needs.
All seven reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa have been dormant since a year after the meltdowns of reactors at the Fukushima plant contaminated the surrounding land with radioactive fallout so severe that some areas are still uninhabitable.
TEPCO is working on the cleanup at the Fukushima site that´s estimated to cost 22 trillion yen ($139 billion). It’s also trying to recover from the damage to its reputation after government and independent investigations blamed the Fukushima disaster on TEPCO´s bad safety culture and criticized it for collusion with safety authorities.
Fourteen other nuclear reactors have restarted across Japan since 2011, but the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, about 220 kilometers (135 miles) northwest of Tokyo, is the first TEPCO-run unit to resume production.
A restart of the No. 6 reactor could generate an additional 1.35 million kilowatts of electricity, enough to power more than 1 million households in the capital region.
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant´s combined output capacity of 8 million kilowatts makes it the world´s largest, though TEPCO plans to resume only two of the seven reactors in coming years.
Anti-climate opinion columns becoming a regular feature in UK newspapers.
Sidhi Mittal, 21st January 2026, https://www.edie.net/anti-climate-opinion-columns-becoming-a-regular-feature-in-uk-newspapers/
Nearly 100 UK newspaper editorials were published opposing climate action in 2025, a record figure that shows the scale of the backlash against net-zero policies in the right-leaning press.
Carbon Brief examined editorials published since 2011. These included those written by external columnists and those acting as a publication’s official editorial ‘voice’.
In 2025, it identified 98 editorials rejecting climate action, compared with 46 in support. This was the first year in which opposition overtook support across the 15 years of data.
All 98 editorials opposing climate action appeared in right-leaning titles. The largest contributors were the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, followed by the Times and the Daily Express.
By contrast, almost all of the editorials pushing for more climate action were published in the Guardian and the Financial Times, which have far smaller circulations than several of the conservative papers.
Overall, 81% of climate-related editorials in right-leaning newspapers in 2025 rejected climate action – either overall, or due to specific policy interventions.
Carbon Brief said this marked a sharp change from a few years earlier, when many of the same papers showed increased enthusiasm for climate policy as Conservative governments under Theresa May and Boris Johnson introduced the net-zero by 2050 target and backed measures to deliver it.
Right-leaning press drives opposition
The media shift has coincided with political changes on the UK right, according to the research.
Over the past year, the Conservative party has distanced itself from the net-zero target it legislated for in 2019 and from the Climate Change Act.
Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch has stated that she would scrap the Act altogether if elected. This would spell the end of the UK Government’s official climate advisory body and all future carbon budgets.
Reform UK has also been rising in the polls while pledging to “ditch net-zero”. Carbon Brief said the positions taken by right-leaning newspapers tend to reflect and reinforce the politics of the parties they support.
None of the editorials opposing climate action questioned the existence of climate change or the science behind it. Instead, they criticised the policies designed to address it, a position Carbon Brief describes as “response scepticism”.
In many cases, newspapers attacked “net-zero” without mentioning climate change at all.
The report links this to earlier research by Dr James Painter of the University of Oxford, which found that UK newspaper coverage has been “decoupling net-zero from climate change”. This comes despite polling showing majority public support for many of the policies that underpin net-zero and for the 2050 target itself.
Economic arguments dominated the opposition. Carbon Brief found that more than eight in ten of 2025’s editorials rejecting climate action cited cost as a reason, describing net-zero as “ruinous” or “costly” and blaming it for driving up energy bills.
Earlier this month, several national newspapers also gave prominent coverage to a pamphlet from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) on the “cost of net-zero” that misrepresented the work of the National Energy Systems Operator (NESO).
The IEA claimed net-zero costs could exceed £7.6trn, but the figures were based on the flawed assumption that no investment would be made in energy systems if the UK did not have its 2050 climate target.
Critics also say the IEA mischaracterised NESO’s analysis. Regardless, the pamphlet appeared on the front page of the Daily Express and was reported by political correspondents at the Express, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph without scrutiny of the underlying energy data.
Miliband under sustained attack
Alongside criticism of policy, newspapers also targeted the Labour Government’s energy security and net-zero secretary, Ed Miliband.
In 2025, UK newspapers published 112 editorials taking personal aim at him, nearly all in right-leaning titles. The Sun alone published 51.
Six in ten editorials opposing climate action used criticism of climate advocates as part of their justification, and almost all of these mentioned Miliband.
Miliband was described as a “loon”, a “zealot” and the “high priest of net-zero”, and accused of “eco insanity” and “quasi-religious delusions”.
Newspapers frequently framed policies as “Ed Miliband’s net-zero agenda”, “Mr Miliband’s swivel-eyed targets” or “Mr Miliband’s green taxes”, presenting climate measures as being imposed on the public by the energy secretary. This is despite the fact that many targets and initiatives were kick-started under the Tories.
Renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels
Carbon Brief additionally analysed editorials on specific energy technologies.
There were 42 editorials criticising renewable energy in 2025. For the first time since 2014, anti-renewables editorials outnumbered those supporting them.
Cost was the dominant argument, with 86% of critical editorials using economic justifications.
The Sun referred to “chucking billions at unreliable renewables”, while the Daily Telegraph warned of an “expensive and intermittent renewables grid”.
At the same time, right-leaning newspapers continued to support nuclear power despite its high costs. There were 20 editorials backing nuclear energy in 2025, nearly all in conservative titles, and none opposing it.
The Times was the only right-leaning newspaper to publish any editorials backing renewables.
Support for fracking also reappeared. After falling away in 2023 and 2024, there were 15 editorials in 2025 arguing that fracking would be economically beneficial, even as the Government plans to ban the practice permanently.
North Sea oil and gas remained a major focus. Thirty editorials, all in right-leaning newspapers, mentioned the issue, with most arguing for increased extraction while also opposing climate action or renewable expansion.
Related article: Tories invoke fears of electricity blackouts to criticise renewable energy roll-out
Why the Nuclear Regulatory Review is flawed – and how itcould turn the nature crisis into a catastrophe.
January 2026, Research commissioned by The Wildlife Trusts
“…………………………………………………. Large nuclear projects, using potentially risky technology, have potential for significant environmental impacts on sensitive places and so it is right for there to be robust environmental assessments of these projects. The Government has an ambitious programme of nuclear
deployment. It has published a new National Policy Statement for nuclear power.3
It has removed the restriction on new nuclear power to eight sites around the UK. It has said it will aid
the completion of Hinkley Point C, provide additional funding for Sizewell C, and consider one
large new nuclear power plant alongside the deployment of Small Modular Reactors. Due to
their requirements and the types of site needed, nuclear projects have often impacted on
ecologically sensitive areas. The new National Policy Statement on nuclear reiterates the
importance of the Habitats Regulations and the protection of legally protected sites and wildlife.
As part of its efforts to boost nuclear deployment, the Government commissioned John
Fingleton to lead a taskforce review of nuclear regulation. The final report of the Nuclear
Regulatory Review was published in November 2025.
It diagnosed environmental regulations
as a blocker to nuclear deployment and included recommendations to water down those
regulations. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have said that the Government accepts the
principles of the Review, that within three months a plan will be published by DESNZ to
implement the Review, and that its recommendations will be implemented within two years
using legislation.6 Environmental groups are very concerned the recommendations will be
adopted for the nuclear sector using legislation and potentially applied to other types of major
infrastructure.
The Nuclear Regulatory Review is part of a wider pattern of the Government adopting the
arguments of developers to pinpoint where delays are coming from; however, it is inaccurate
and does not represent reality. Research by The Wildlife Trusts already shows that – despite
the headlines and claims by the Chancellor and others – bats and newts, for example, were a
factor in just 3.3% of planning appeals.7 This briefing will highlight how the claims made by the
Nuclear Regulatory Review are similarly short on evidence and, if adopted, will do little to speed
up planning decisions but, instead, will turn the nature crisis into a catastrophe. Many industries
already say that the uncertainty caused by constantly changing regulations holds back
development; the Nuclear Regulatory Review threatens to do just that.
Flaws and Inaccuracies in the Nuclear Regulatory Review
The Review, commissioned by the Government, identifies three major areas for reform: risk
aversion, process over outcomes, and a lack of incentives. The Review also turns nature into a
scapegoat for a failure to deliver nuclear projects.
Recommendation 11 calls for various changes to the Habitats Regulations, including removing
the requirement for compensation to be like-for-like. Recommendation 12 calls for nuclear
developers to be allowed to comply with the regulations simply by paying a fixed sum (an
amount per acre), which would be used by Natural England for nature somewhere else. When it
comes to local planning, The Wildlife Trusts remain concerned with the related idea of
payments for Environmental Delivery Plans as a way for developers to meet their legal
obligations. A strategic approach might be appropriate when it comes to, for example, pollution
impacts, but would not be suitable for irreplaceable habitats or species that cannot re-establish
elsewhere easily.8
Recommendation 19 would remove the duty on Local Authorities to seek and further National
Parks and Landscapes, returning to the old language of “have regard to”. The combination of
these changes would not only substantially weaken protections for nature but would also
introduce significant uncertainty in the nuclear sector and for other sectors about whether
standards and regulations that are bedding in and increasingly becoming well understood are in
fact about to change.
The Review was produced without enough environmental expertise – and this shows. It
contains a number of errors when it comes to environmental evidence, which has led to a
misdiagnosis of the problem and to damaging recommendations about environmental
regulations.
The Review relies heavily on the case study of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. It is
quick to use the case study to blame nature without examining the actions and decisions of the
developer. A large amount of confusing and misleading information has been issued to the
media and in the Review itself to further this narrative.
Here are some of the facts:
- Hinkley Point C is on the edge of one of the most highly ecologically protected sites in
Europe and will draw through a swimming pool’s worth of water every second for 70
years of operation. This will have enormous impacts on surrounding ecosystems, fish,
and other species.9 - A £700 million figure has been widely circulated in the press relating to fish deterrents
and is quoted in the Review. This is incorrect. The cost of the fish deterrent system is
£50 million.10 - EDF themselves unilaterally decided in 2017 not to proceed with the fish deterrent
system, despite it being a requirement. They then proceeded to apply for permit
variations, undertake further environmental assessments and initiate a public inquiry to
attempt to remove the requirement. These developer decisions have caused selfinflicted delays.11 - Hinkley Point C’s original budget was £18 billion. It has since risen to an estimated £46
billion. The fish deterrent (at £50 million) comes to just 0.1% of this increased £46
billion budget. Nearly £30 billion in cost increases for Hinkley Point C have nothing to
do with nature.12 - The Nuclear Regulatory Review says (for example) that just 0.08 salmon, 0.02 trout,
and 6 lamprey per year would be saved. This deliberately downplays the impact on
nature. This statement relies on analysis by the developer EDF, who captured fish and
put trackers on them and used old data from Hinkley B power station. Since then ,a
more thorough analysis has been completed for the Environment Agency, who have found that 4.6 million adult fish per year being killed is a more accurate number, or 182 million fish in total over sixty years.13 These fish populations are a foundation stone for the wider ecosystem of the Severn Estuary, supporting internationally important migratory bird populations and other species. Many of the fish are rare or endangered. Damage on the scale suggested by the Environment Agency figures could have calamitous impacts on that ecosystem and the economic and social activities that rely on it………………………………………………………………………………
Environmental Damage of Nuclear Regulatory Recommendations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Conclusion
The Nuclear Regulatory Review recommendations 11, 12 and 19 will harm nature and
biodiversity. They are based on flawed evidence relating to environmental regulations and how
they have been applied. As discussed, the true reasons for nuclear delay lie elsewhere.
Implementing the Nuclear Regulatory recommendations would devastate nature without
speeding up the nuclear planning and delivery process. The Government must reject the three
Nuclear Regulatory Review’s recommendations on environmental regulations and end its
confected war on nature as a barrier to planning.
20th January 2026
Research commissioned by The Wildlife Trusts and conducted by Matt Williams, https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/sites/default/files/2026-01/WhyTheNuclearRegulatoryReviewIsFlawed_TheWildlifeTrusts.pdf
Nature groups question UK’s Fingleton nuclear review
The Engineer, 21 Jan 2026, https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/nature-groups-question-fingleton-nuclear-review
More than a dozen environmental groups and over 60 MPs are questioning the ‘Fingleton recommendations’ set out in the recent Nuclear Regulatory Review.
Led by economist John Fingleton, the Nuclear Regulatory Review made several recommendations designed to ease the path of nuclear development. Among these were proposals to weaken the Habitats Regulations which protect nature sites. But environmental groups, led by The Wildlife Trusts, claim that the review is based on flawed evidence, and that the recommendations could have a catastrophic effect on nature across the UK.
“The dice were loaded from the start – the nuclear review confirms a false narrative that was already being circulated by certain industry lobby groups and think tanks,” said Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts.
“The errors in the review form a clear pattern: repeated exaggeration of the costs of preventing harm to nature – and minimisation of the impact to wildlife of nuclear development without those measures. The fact that no environmental experts served on the panel is a disgrace and the resulting distorted picture obscures the value the natural world delivers for economic stability and net zero.”
A new report from The Wildlife Trusts points to specific examples where it believes the nuclear review falls short. It claims that, rather than £700m, Hinkley C’s much-debated fish deterrent system would actually cost £50m. This is against a total project cost of £46bn, up from an original estimate of £18bn.
The Nuclear Regulatory Review also claims that the fish deterrent system would save just 0.08 salmon, 0.02 trout and 6 lamprey per year. However, The Wildlife Trusts cites a report from the Environment Agency that suggests up to 4.6 million adult fish per year could be killed per year if no protective measures are put in place.
“There is limited evidence that environmental protections impose undue costs on infrastructure developers,” said Bennet. “In fact, evidence shows that frequently cited examples of expensive mitigation measures originated from developer mistakes and were unconnected to environmental issues. Blaming nature is unacceptable and a way of avoiding accountability.
“The developers of Hinkley C are trying to blame everyone but themselves for their own failure to think about nature from the outset. When developers think about nature too late in the design process, they end up creating bolt-on engineering solutions for ecological problems, which tend to be more expensive and less effective than committing to make infrastructure nature positive from the very start of the designing process. It’s pretty pathetic that the government is now trying to bail out energy infrastructure developers for this failure of commitment and imagination.”
The Wildlife Trusts’ campaign to save the environmental protections that are threatened by the recommendations of the Nuclear Regulatory Review is supported by 14 other organisations: Wildlife and Countryside Link, Rivers Trust, Campaign for National Parks, Marine Conservation Society, Plantlife, Buglife, Bat Conservation Trust, Amphibian Reptile Conservation, Badger Trust, Beaver Trust, Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Butterfly Conservation, Open Spaces Society, and Client Earth.
A Board of Peace built on the rubble of Gaza
22 January 2026 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/a-board-of-peace-built-on-the-rubble-of-gaza/
There are moments in politics when language becomes so detached from reality that it tips from cynicism into a farce. Appointing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” for Gaza is one such moment.
Netanyahu is not a neutral stakeholder. He is not a reluctant participant dragged into a tragic conflict. He is the leader who has overseen the systematic destruction of Gaza: tens of thousands of civilians killed, entire neighbourhoods erased, hospitals flattened, universities bombed, and a population deliberately deprived of food, water, shelter, and hope. He is also the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
That Israel has rejected those charges or dismissed them as political is beside the point. Courts exist precisely because perpetrators rarely accept responsibility for their own actions. The question is not whether Netanyahu agrees with the accusations – it is whether the facts on the ground support them.
They do.
International law defines genocide not by slogans or historical analogies, but by actions and intent. Killing members of a protected group. Causing serious bodily or mental harm. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s destruction, in whole or in part. Gaza today bears the unmistakable imprint of each of these elements.
Add to this the repeated, dehumanising rhetoric from senior Israeli officials – Palestinians described as “human animals”, Gaza spoken of as something to be “flattened”, “erased”, or emptied – and the claim that this is merely an unfortunate but lawful military campaign collapses under its own weight.
Legal processes move slowly. They always do. Genocide is almost never recognised as such while it is unfolding. Rwanda was denied until the machetes were put down. Srebrenica was minimised until the mass graves were opened. History shows that moral clarity arrives long before judicial finality.
Which is precisely why Netanyahu’s elevation to a “Board of Peace” is so grotesque. Peace is not brokered by those actively prosecuting a war of annihilation. Reconstruction is not overseen by those who created the ruins. And justice is not served by rehabilitating leaders while the bodies are still being pulled from the rubble.
Trump’s board is not a peace initiative. It is a branding exercise – one that launders responsibility, flattens moral distinctions, and asks the world to accept Orwellian doublespeak as diplomacy.
Calling this arrangement a farce is not rhetorical excess. It is an accurate description. When an alleged war criminal is recast as a peacemaker, language itself has been bombed into submission.
And Gaza, once again, is expected to pay the price.
1 This Month
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com/
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
-
Archives
- February 2026 (20)
- January 2026 (307)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 