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France Cuts 6.4 GW of Nuclear Power as Heatwave Grips the Country

By Michael Kern – Jul 13, 2026, https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/France-Cuts-64-GW-of-Nuclear-Power-as-Heatwave-Grips-the-Country.html

France’s nuclear power generation was slashed by 6.4 gigawatts (GW) on Monday amid a prolonged and intense heatwave that hiked river temperatures and limited the ability of the power plants to use the water to cool reactors.

As many as eight reactors in France, which is Europe’s leader in nuclear power generation, were forced to curtail power output, according to data from the plants’ operator EDF and grid operator RTE cited by Reuters.

The 6.4 GW of curtailed power output was equivalent to 14% of France’s overall power demand as of Monday morning. 

The reactors where output has been limited include Saint Alban 1 and 2, reactors 3, 4, and 5 at Bugey, Golfech 2, and Blayais 1 and 3.

The Golfech 2 and Bugey 3 reactors were taken fully offline, while the other six were operating at reduced rates as of Monday morning.  

This is not the first time France has had to curb output at reactors and limit the nuclear power production, due to high summer temperatures. 

France’s nuclear power generation accounts for around 70% of its electricity mix, and when its reactors are fully operational, it is a net exporter of electricity to other European countries. 

Despite the curbs of nuclear generation during the current heatwave, data from RTE suggests that France would remain a net exporter with over 10 GW of power exported to France’s neighboring countries on Monday. 

The hydropower generation would also be a concern amid the heatwave that has lasted a least a week and is expected to continue at least until Wednesday this week. 

With temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) for days, red alerts have been issued throughout France amid the heatwave, and thousands of people have died of heat-related conditions since late June, when the record-breaking extreme summer temperatures started to disrupt life. Even the most famous and prestigious cycling event, the Tour de France, held a shortened stage on Sunday for the first time ever, due to the extreme heat.

July 18, 2026 Posted by | climate change, France | Leave a comment

Europe is Teetering on the Brink.

The NATO summit sent a message that no one wants to hear. Europe is openly declaring war on Russia—and it’s doing so with President Trump’s full support.

Peter Hanseler, Forum Geopolitica Mon 13 Jul 2026

Two Fires That Could Escalate Into a Storm

World War I began on July 28, 1914—112 years later, the scene looks much the same, because it wouldn’t take much for the situation to escalate fully. Today, there are two centers of conflict that have the potential to plunge the entire world into a global conflict.

When it comes to Iran, “peacemaker” Trump is breaking the MOU, just as we expected, and is attacking Iran once again—nota bene—during the largest funeral the world has ever seen. Iran has responded militarily, but with restraint. Some link this to the funeral ceremonies. More likely, however, is the implementation of a strategy to bring the West to its knees economically by blockading the Strait of Hormuz. The Middle East and Europe are in a state of limbo—but for how much longer?

The Collective West claims that it wants to—and is capable of—forcing Russia to make peace through war. To the surprise of many observers—including those in Russia—the Russian army has not (yet) struck back against Europe.

In this article, we discuss the situation in Europe.

Trump Is More Aggressive Than Biden

President Biden was considered a warmonger and a puppet of the deep state. Consequently, the US and Europe have been supplying Ukraine with weapons since the start of Russia’s special military operation, even though Joe Biden himself initially expressed concerns that this behavior by the West could lead to World War III.

“The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews… that’s called ‘World War III.'”
President Joe Biden, 11 March 2022

This led many commentators—including us—to favor Donald Trump: a man who promised peace and pledged not to start any new wars, and who boasted he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. Yet now, at the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump has endorsed Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia.

“Trump said he supported Ukraine striking targets deep inside Russian territory, calling it an escalation that could help end the war.”
The Wallstreet Journal, 8 July 2026

Europe and the US in Open War Against Russia

Almost all of the weapons used by Ukraine in this war are supplied by Europe and the US. However, many of them cannot be deployed without NATO personnel in Ukraine or at one of NATO’s bases, and cannot find their targets in Russia without satellite support from the US. It is therefore misleading to speak of a conflict between Ukraine and Russia here: Europe, with the active support of the US, is waging war against Russia. While this took place covertly until recently, the aggressors are now proudly flaunting their direct involvement.

So far, Russia has not responded militarily to Europe and, until recently, had relied on diplomacy. But times have changed, even though Russia continues to emphasize that it is not opposed to a diplomatic solution that takes all sides into account. Roger Köppel, publisher, editor-in-chief, and owner of the Swiss magazine Weltwoche, learned this firsthand. During an interview with Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, he tried not once, not twice, but three times to elicit a statement from the influential journalist to the effect that Russia also bears responsibility for the situation in Ukraine. Each time, she rejected this request in no uncertain terms, but Köppel refused to understand. Finally, Simonjan diplomatically but unequivocally put the Swiss journalist in his place with the following words: “I feel like a blind man is talking to a deaf man here.”……………………………………………

Friedrich Merz is Pushing for War

As a German, Friedrich Merz apparently feels compelled to stir up painful memories among the Russians and reopen old wounds that, over the past 80 years, have been steadily healing thanks to considerable effort on both sides. Using forceful and blunt language, he is trying to talk his way into a German victory before the Russians have even responded militarily………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/europe-is-teetering-on-the-brink

July 18, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

Insuring Small Modular Nuclear Reactors.

Deploying the next generation of nuclear technologies is likely to present a number of novel challenges, notably securing appropriate insurance coverage for both property and liability. Without early engagement developers could face significant obstacles to commercial roll-out.

Nuclear Engineering International, By Ron Rispoli, Senior Vice President, Energy Group, Stephens Insurance, LLCJuly 9, 2026

s small modular reactors (SMRs) move from concept to commercialisation, one of the least visible yet most critical enablers of deployment is insurance. Property and liability coverage for nuclear are not only a financial safeguard, they are also a regulatory requirement. However, nuclear insurance is highly specialised, capacity constrained, and dependent on early engagement with underwriters.

Insurance requirements for SMRs and microreactors may vary based on reactor size, design, fuel forms, coolant types, and power levels. Existing regulatory frameworks establish baseline liability and financial protection requirements, but these were developed for large, traditional light water reactors. As a result, regulators and insurers may apply a more risk-informed approach when determining appropriate insurance levels for smaller or non-traditional designs.

The US liability insurance framework

In the United States, nuclear liability insurance is governed by the Price-Anderson Act, a federal programme designed to ensure compensation to the public following a nuclear incident. The Act establishes a two-tier structure………

In addition to the Price-Anderson Act, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations in 10 CFR Part 140 establish detailed financial protection requirements based on reactor size and operating status. These regulations differentiate between nuclear power plants with a rated capacity of 100 MWe or greater and those with lower electrical output, a distinction that is particularly relevant for small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors. For smaller units, required liability coverage may be reduced or determined on a case-specific basis, reflecting their lower potential risk profile. The regulations also include provisions for multiple reactors located at a single site. This allows the NRC to evaluate financial protection requirements on a site-specific basis. This introduces additional flexibility for SMR deployments but also creates complexity in structuring appropriate liability coverage for multi-unit configurations.

…..In the United States, reactor licensees are generally required to maintain approximately $1.06bn in onsite property insurance per reactor site. ….

Globally, nuclear liability is governed by a set of international conventions, including the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC), the Paris Convention and Brussels Supplementary Convention, and the Vienna Convention and Joint Protocol. While implementation varies by jurisdiction, these frameworks share core principles: liability is channelled exclusively to the operator, with liability caps supplemented by public funds.

For SMR developers pursuing international deployment, this creates a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction insurance strategy that often requires coordination across multiple national insurance regimes…………

A constrained market and specialised brokerage

Existing insurance frameworks were developed for large, traditional reactors, creating added complexity for SMR deployment. Unlike conventional insurance markets, nuclear insurance is provided by a small number of highly specialised pools and mutual insurers. Global underwriting capacity is limited, and participation is tightly controlled.

This dynamic is particularly relevant for SMRs, as developers may pursue multi-unit deployments, novel reactor designs, or non-traditional ownership structures – all of which introduce new risks from an underwriting perspective. In practice, access to insurance capacity – not reactor design – may become a gating factor for deployment. Given the complexity of the nuclear insurance market, engaging a broker with demonstrated experience in nuclear insurance is essential. Nuclear insurance is not transacted in a broad, competitive marketplace; rather, it is concentrated among a small number of insurers each with distinct underwriting requirements and processes…….

Emerging technologies, multi-unit deployment strategies, and evolving regulatory frameworks introduce uncertainties that must be translated into insurable risk. Without specialised expertise, projects may face delays, higher costs, or challenges in securing adequate coverage.

Insurance cannot be treated as an afterthought…..Delayed engagement with insurance markets can expose developers to significant risks, including coverage exclusions, insufficient limits, or, in extreme cases, an inability to secure required insurance. Coverage is not guaranteed to be available in the necessary amount, form, or timeframe. As the SMR market grows, competition for limited insurance capacity is likely to intensify….https://www.neimagazine.com/analysis/smrs-advanced-reactors/insuring-smrs/?cf-view

July 18, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

CALLING THE ODDS ON DOOMSDAY

Jonathon Porritt 14 July  2026, https://jonathonporritt.com/existential-risks-climate-nuclear-ai/

I got roundly ticked off the other day for claiming that the climate crisis was “in a league of its own” when it comes to contemplating causes for the possible extinction of the human race – or, at least, “human civilization”, as we mistakenly refer to the current world order. (‘Existential’ means, in this context, ‘pertaining to existence or the end of existence’).

My reprimand went something like this: “You’re so obsessed with the climate crisis that you’re ignoring equally important threats. Like all-in nuclear warfare. Or AI”.

Well, in my defence, I plead not guilty on ignoring the threat of nuclear war. By contrast, I plead 100%, reprehensibly guilty on the AI charge.

Let me go one by one. Nuclear first.

I remember to this day the talk we were given at school in 1963 about a possible nuclear attack on the UK. This was at the height of the Cold War and shortly after the Cuba missile crisis. It scared the shit out of me.

A few years after that, I joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and later became obsessed with what are called ‘broken arrows’ – when things go badly wrong in terms of ‘lost’ nuclear warheads, accidents in nuclear facilities, near misses, communication breakdowns and so on. It’s acknowledged that there have been at least 32 of these major incidents — and these are just the ones that we know about!

Every nuclear-armed country will have its own ‘broken arrows’ portfolio. The Nuclear Information Service here in the UK tracks as many of these incidents as it can; back in 2017, its ‘Playing with Fire’ report detailed 127 accidents, near misses and “dangerous occurrences” on UK soil and in its coastal waters since the 1960s. And we know that thousands of cyber-attacks are launched against the Ministry of Defence and its contractors every day. Hair-raising really doesn’t cut it!

So, I guess I’ve been living in a state of measured, back-of-mind nuclear dread for a long time — with the front of my mind increasingly taken up with dread at the thought of the climate apocalypse bearing down on us! But however bad that gets, it would be nothing in comparison to an all-out nuclear war.

So, I’m finding it really painful to see how the notion of Mutually Assured Destruction (the crazy idea that lies at the heart of nuclear deterrence theory) is being gradually ‘re-normalised’. Ideas such as ‘tactical nuclear weapons’ or ‘limited nuclear strikes’ (particularly in terms of the war in Ukraine) pop up all over the place, even as the all-important 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) lurks unregarded in the margins of this new nuclear discourse.

The fact that Article Six (of the NPT) enjoins all 191 signatories to the Treaty ‘to pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith’ is studiously ignored. In fact, exactly the opposite is going on. Today’s nine nuclear-armed nations already lay claim to tens of thousands of ‘Hiroshima bomb equivalents’, and yet this is increasingly seen as insufficient.

China is increasing its arsenal of warheads by around 100 every year. Russia is known to be expanding its capabilities in many different areas. President Trump is already committed to prioritising nuclear weapons programmes over other security programmes, based on $25 billion of additional investment in nuclear weapons every year, with an ambition of reaching $2 trillion on total arms expenditure over 30 years — including massive new expenditure on his so-called ‘Golden Dome’ defensive shield — which essentially undermines the rationale behind any nuclear deterrence theory.

Which brings me to AI.

I enter this territory with massive trepidation. Until recently, when asked about it, I burbled on about the massive energy and water footprint of AI, relying on a basic instinct to cover off the rest of it: that anything emerging from and under the total control of the techno-fascists in California just had to be wrong. Simple as that. Follow the money. Track the track records of these evil mind-fuckers.

Such an approach obviously only takes one so far. Which means I’ve recently been doing some rather more serious work on AI, to which I will no doubt return at some point in the future.

However, for the purposes of this little exercise, I’ve come to the conclusion (from an existential risk perspective) that AI is right up there with both the climate crisis and the threat of nuclear warfare.

Ever since I came across AI’s so-called ‘evolution of capability and complexity’, I’ve been sunk deep in the whole reversible/irreversible dynamic: at what point does a rapidly evolving change process cease to be reversible as it ‘tips over’ into a sequence of irreversible effects?

Climate wonks live with that dynamic every waking moment of their working lives: feedback loops; sensitivity calculations; tipping points – 40 years of brilliant climate science has given us an eloquent lexicon of how to avoid the apocalypse. We approach it via ‘average temperature increase’, average concentrations in the atmosphere, potential tipping points for critical ecosystems etc, etc. Tragically, this seems to have had zero impact on our fossil-fuel-addicted political leaders. Suffice to say, it’s not looking good.

So, is there an analogy for AI? Sort of. As AIs evolve from bog-standard LLMs (Large Language Models) to ANI (Artificial Narrow Intelligence) to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) to ASI (Artificial Superintelligence) to CASI (Conscious Artificial Superintelligence), one is bound to ask: at what point is that forward momentum still reversible?

This was the point at which I discovered the whole wondrous literature about the so-called ‘X risk’  – which, happily, has nothing to do with the world’s first totalitarian trillionaire. I quote from a fascinating article by David Rollo:

“Consider that Geoffrey Hinton (the so-called ‘godfather of AI’) gives a 10 to 50% chance that AI would result in extinction – the ‘ X risk.  Yoshua Bengio, the most cited AI researcher and most cited living scientist, gives an X risk of 20% .

Eliezer Yudkowsky (co-author of the bestseller ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’, a title relating directly to AGI), and Roman Yampolskiy give an X risk of over 95%, while Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, gives an X risk of 10 to 25%”.

Given the single-minded, profit-obsessed drive of the so-called ‘frontier AI companies’ (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and XAI), there would appear to be no political regulatory constraints on them cracking the AGI challenge. Does that turn out to be the not-so-far-off point of irreversibility? On our unstoppable way to the equivalent of all-out nuclear conflagration?

Which makes me think about how things might look in this existential league table – keeping nuclear conflagration in the mix, as it truly deserves to be, even before we start thinking about that deranged, psychopathic narcissist in the White House with his finger on the button.

So, my question for all readers who’ve stuck with my strange apocalyptic speculation so far: where would you locate the point of irreversibility for each of these three domains of existential risk?

And how does that make you feel?

July 18, 2026 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Faslane set for £15bn upgrade to ‘future-proof it for war-fighting’

15th July, By Gregor Young

MORE than £15 billion will be spent transforming Faslane over the next decade, the UK Government has announced.

HMNB Clyde, which houses the UK’s nuclear
submarines, will receive £15.1bn in a move expected to support thousands of
jobs. It is part of the £26bn Project Royal Oak investment programme into
critical UK naval bases which defence minister Luke Pollard said will
increase the “readiness, availability and lethality” of the Royal Navy.
On a visit to Faslane on Tuesday, he said it is the biggest upgrade of the
UK’s naval bases since the end of the Cold War.

The National 14th July 2026,
https://www.thenational.scot/news/26280622.faslane-set-15bn-upgrade-future-proof-war-fighting/

July 18, 2026 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Winfrith decommissioned nuclear site restoration plans

THE restoration of the Winfrith nuclear site to heathland is expected to be
opposed by the neighbouring Innovation Park – which wants to use at least
some of the land to create jobs. A masterplan for the former nuclear site
is currently being proposed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency – looking
15-20 years ahead. Its current plans say all of the former nuclear site,
including 21 hectares adjacent to the Innovation Park, would be restored to
natural heathland. Nick Webster, head of growth and economic regeneration
at Dorset Council, told an Innovation Park shareholders committee on
Tuesday, that the heathland restoration proposal was “an issue” for the
Park, although a final decision was still some way off, with an estimated
8-10 years likely for the remaining nuclear site decommissioning, with
restoration to heathland, if that happened, to follow on. He said the
masterplan was currently open for comment and Dorset Council would have to
consider its views over the heathland restoration proposal, possibly making
the case that not all the site be restored to heathland.

Dorset Echo 15th July 2026 https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/26279161.winfrith-decommissioned-nuclear-site-restoration-plans/

July 18, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Cumbrian environmental groups quit GDF nuclear waste talks

By Gareth Cavanagh

ENVIRONMENTAL groups have left a partnership designed to discuss the possibility of hosting a nuclear waste disposal facility in South Copeland.

This decision reflects a
growing opposition to the project and a desire for local elected
representatives to no longer be associated with the discredited project.
The partnership’s internal conflict and increasing community opposition
have led to its withdrawal from the discussions.

Carlisle News & Star 15th July 2026,
https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/26270672.cumbrian-environmental-groups-quit-gdf-nuclear-waste-talks/

July 18, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The global small nuclear reactor bandwagon is led by Britain. It ought to fail, but will it?

14 July 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/the-global-small-nuclear-reactor-bandwagon-is-led-by-britain-it-ought-to-fail-but-will-it/

Why on Earth does the Small Nuclear Reactor media bandwagon exist?

That’s a fair question, because it has been shown time and time again that small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) are not an economically viable way to provide electricity.

I can only conclude that there are other reasons for the present juggernaut of promotion of SMRs.

You may not have noticed the blithering onslaught of media promotion of SMRs going on over the past weeks, (interestingly, in conjunction with the political demise of Sir Keir Starmer). With the dramatic events in the Persian Gulf, and in climate extremities, dominating the media, a fuss about SMRs seems a small matter.

But it is not a small matter.

The global media juggernaut for SMRs is potentially essential for the survival of the global nuclear industry. If one nation sets up a multitude of, or even a few, small nuclear reactors, that will provide the necessary respectability for the industry – to be accepted as cheap. clean. safe, and embraced by local communities.

Hooray – Britain to the rescue!.

Now, there’s extraordinary excitement in both the British and overseas media. A current example:

The High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult has launched a national consultation, to help UK industry capture the economic and industrial benefits of more than £100bn of expected investment in the country’s civil and defence nuclear programmes over the next decade. Industry, government, academia and regional partners are invited to contribute to the consultation through written submissions, stakeholder workshops and a programme of regional engagement running throughout 2026.

HVM Catapult doesn’t specifically state SMRs, but that’s where the UK media fervour is at. In a previous article, I have mentioned The Times, Telegraph, PR Newswire, Energy Live, Business Green, among the British enthusiasts. Internationally, there’s Construction News, Global Banking and Finance Review, World Nuclear News, Indux, and more.

What is new and remarkable about this UK SMR media fervour?

Well, there are two things. One is that it is all pitching the UK as the leader for the new nuclear renaissance. The other is that this will be a privately-led renaissance. Hence the importance of the “private” SGE £35bn plan for a fleet of SMRs across Britain, rather than the government supported Rolls Royce plan.

I digress here to point out that three nations have tried and failed to set up small nuclear reactors. Russia and China have each managed to develop one actually functioning small nuclear reactor. – in both cases – that took decades, and neither is working out very successfully – Russia – (Akademik Lomonosov floating NPP) and China (HTR-PM high temperature gas cooled reactor). The USA nearly got one happening – The Rise and Fall of NuScale: a nuclear cautionary tale.

So – at last it’s all going to happen ! And the UK is the leader – hip hip hooray! Except that the UK’s biggest SMR promoter, PM Keir Starmer is about to bow out at any moment. The policies of the heir apparent, Andy Burnham, are curiously unknown. He’s got a respectably Leftie background in supporting nuclear veterans, but I couldn’t find anything on his nuclear industry views. And, I’m inclined to think that he, or any new UK Prime Minister, would not be able to withstand the pressure of the cavalcade of vested interests in the nuclear industry. Those vested interests include not only all the UK and global stakeholders in the industry’s supply chain, but the fawning corporate media and the financially dependent universities.

There are some strong voices that speak out against this smr folly. Phil Johnstone and Andy Stirling of the University of Sussex have given a powerful condemnation of this SMR push – The hidden military pressures behind the new push for small nuclear reactors.

The nuclear industry was inaugurated in the early 1940s, specifically for creating an atomic bomb. That has continued to be its purpose for nearly a century, and it its sole real purpose today. Commercial “peaceful” nuclear power was set up as a temporarily successful fig leaf over that truly inhuman purpose. Temporarily successful, because it did provide efficient and seemingly cheap, seemingly clean, seemingly safe electricity for millions of people. We now know that not only are there long term costs – financial, environmental, health and safety costs – but that new big nuclear reactors are monumentally unaffordable.

In this 21st Century – how to make this industry look peaceful, clean, safe, and attractive to bright young career-oriented people? Well if that’s now an impossible task for dirty great Big nuclear reactors, how about a plethora of Small fig-leaves – Small Modular Nuclear Reactors.?

There may be a continued media deluge about UK’s golden SMR future, as promised by the dear soon-to- be-departed Starmer. But I doubt that there will be a deluge of investors keen to get on board the juggernaut. One saving grace of our capitalist society is that our financial writers tend to tell the truth about investment prospects. They might save the UK from this SMR folly. Then the nuclear lobby will have to really ramp up the war-mongering fever that already exists.

July 17, 2026 Posted by | Christina's notes, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

How Israel planned the Gaza genocide decades ago

Jonathon Cook, 12 June 2026

In October 2023, Israel found an excuse to breathe new life into an old story of slaughter and expulsion. The chief differences this time have been of scale and duration

The truth slowly comes to light: Israel‘s genocide in Gaza was planned decades ago.

Listen to the testimonies of four Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza.

Soldier 1: “Human lives didn’t matter. You could kill, there was no law. No one would say a word to you. But it’s not a good feeling. It mainly kills your humanity.”

Soldier 2: “At first I wasn’t willing to execute Arabs who weren’t resisting [that is, civilians]. Then we came to the conclusion that we had to kill. We went through the process of ceasing to see them as human beings.”

Soldier 3: “We caught guys, lined them up and eliminated them. In retrospect, it looks like murder.”

Soldier 4: “We would roam through refugee camps in Gaza and carry out purges… Every soldier who was there created a ‘concentration camp’, and they didn’t hesitate to kill people who caused a slight disturbance.”

No, these testimonies are not new. The whistleblowers did not serve in Gaza during the current, ongoing genocide there. These accounts are nearly 60 years old, published last week by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline “We were ordered to kill”.

Israeli soldiers interviewed shortly after the 1967 war – often referred to as the Six-Day War – not only confessed that they and others routinely committed war crimes but they pointed out that they did so under orders from their commanders.

The accounts were compiled into a book, The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six-Day War, by Avraham Shapira, though many testimonies were not included because they were too shocking.

None of this should be simply of historical interest. These accounts are a vivid reminder that what Israel has been doing during its current, near three-year destruction of Gaza – levelling all homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries and government offices; murdering tens of thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands, of Palestinian civilians; and blocking aid and starving the population – is part of a decades-old pattern of Israeli military conduct.

Nothing “started” on 7 October 2023, when Hamas broke out for a single day of the Gaza “concentration camp” – the plight of Gaza’s Palestinians noted 59 years ago by Soldier 4.

Rather, Israel found an excuse that day to breathe new life into an old story, one in which it has been slaughtering and expelling Palestinians for decades. The chief difference this time is simply one of scale and duration.

Washington and other western capitals have given Israel the time and space to finish in Gaza what, earlier, it had only been able to achieve in part. Israel’s much greater firepower today, provided by modern munitions supplied by the United States, has allowed Israel to realise what before it could only dream of doing: wiping Gaza off the map.

Starvation policy

The whistleblowing soldiers of 1967 admitted their job was not to “fight the enemy” – or “eradicate the terrorists”, as Israeli leaders now term it. It was to kill and terrorise Palestinian civilians under cover of war.

Few soldiers were shy of saying why they were committing atrocities. Their task was to create a reign of terror, integral to Israel’s efforts to expel as many Palestinians as possible from the last remaining parts of the Palestinian homeland, the territories captured by the Israeli military in 1967 and then illegally occupied.

This was seen as a new opportunity to complete the ethnic cleansing campaign begun by Zionist militias in earnest in 1947 and 1948 as the British Mandate authorities withdrew from Palestine. By the end of that campaign, some 80 percent of Palestinians had been expelled from their homes inside the borders of the newly declared Jewish state.

Many ended up in refugee camps in neighbouring states such as Lebanon and Syria. But some fled into the surviving pockets of historic Palestine in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza – the 22 per cent of their homeland that had been shielded from further Israeli advances in 1948 by Jordan and Egypt.

The 1967 war was seen by the Israeli leadership as a second bite of the cherry: a chance both to seize and colonise all of historic Palestine through military occupation and the establishment of Jewish militia settlements, and to expand the ethnic cleansing operation to rid historic Palestine of its native inhabitants.

Weeks after Israel seized the Palestinian territories, the prime minister of the time, Levi Eshkol, told his cabinet where the expulsions must begin. “We are interested in emptying out Gaza first,” he said.

Given international pressures, he was clear that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza would need to proceed by stealth, so as to attract less attention. Foreshadowing Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza that started in 2007, he proposed that Palestinians could be forced out of Gaza “precisely because of the suffocation and imprisonment” Israel was imposing there.

The ethnic cleansing programme could be hastened, he suggested, by depriving the population of essentials like water. “Perhaps if we don’t give them enough water, they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.”

In this spirit, 40 years later, Israel would go on to calculate the minimum number of calories to allow into Gaza so that the people there would grow steadily more malnourished. Or as senior government adviser Dov Weisglass explained in 2006: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Seventeen years after Gaza was forced on to its “diet”, when Hamas briefly broke out of the enclave, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals seized their moment.

They destroyed those “orchards” and transformed the “diet” into a full-blown starvation blockade – a crime against humanity for which Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are wanted by the International Criminal Court.

Targeting innocents

The crimes of 1967 were understood long ago by Palestinian historians, who were, of course, not listened to. Israeli historians took much longer to start piecing together the story as they gained access to parts of Israel’s military archives.

Haaretz’s new investigation, based on research by the Akevot Institute, provides details of the ruthlessness of the mass expulsions of Palestinians beginning in 1967.

As the paper reports: “The historical inquiry shows that Israel expelled and drove out some 300,000 Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and the [Syrian] Golan Heights. And as in 1948, the expulsion included killing civilians, sowing terror in Arab communities, looting and ultimately, destruction.”

Having managed in 1967 to again expel large numbers of Palestinians, the next task – as in 1948 – was to prevent their return.

Uri Avnery, a journalist and member of the Israeli parliament, recorded testimonies from soldiers stationed at the borders with Jordan and Egypt, into which Palestinians had been expelled. The soldiers’ job was to murder any Palestinian families trying to get back to their homes.

Here is one soldier’s testimony, reported by Haaretz, that Avnery noted in his autobiography:

We blocked these crossings and received orders to shoot to kill, without prior warning. Indeed, such shots were fired every night at men, women and children, even on moonlit nights when it was possible to identify those crossing. That is, to distinguish between men and women and children.

In the morning, we would go out to scan the area, and we would kill, by explicit order of the officer present, those who were alive, including those hiding and the wounded. After the killing was over, we would cover the bodies with dirt until a tractor arrived.

Today’s Israeli whistleblowers warn that this military doctrine is unchanged…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Erasing context

As the US cosmologist Carl Sagan famously observed: “You have to know the past to understand the present.”

Which is precisely why western politicians and media have been so careful to strip out the past, excising the context and background, such as Israel’s violent ethnic cleansing campaigns of 1948 and 1967, that explain Israel’s behaviour in the present – in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon.

Western audiences, deprived of the region’s history, have been more easily manipulated into believing that Israeli atrocities are a response – and a supposedly “proportionate” one, at that – to Hamas’ one-day attack on Israel in late 2023.

An obvious truth has been obscured: that for at least eight decades, Israel has been exploiting any opportunity it could find to expel the Palestinians from their homeland……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Prisons of complicity

Gaza is not an aberration. It is fully in accord with an eight-decade-long Israeli military strategy. Westerners aren’t aware of that only because their political and media class have worked strenuously to stop them from learning about it…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2026-06-12/israel-gaza-genocide-planned/

July 17, 2026 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, history, Israel | Leave a comment

Dennis Kucinich Warns Congress Is Quietly Merging the U.S. and Israeli War Machines

SCHEERPOST,  July 13, 2026

The former congressman tells Robert Scheer that a provision buried in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act could integrate the United States and Israel at the highest levels of military technology—without meaningful public debate or congressional scrutiny.

Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich has spent decades warning about the machinery of permanent war. But in a new conversation with Robert Scheer, he argues that Congress is now on the verge of crossing a line without precedent in American military history.

At the center of Kucinich’s warning is Section 219 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a provision he says would formally integrate key areas of U.S. and Israeli military development, including artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, quantum sensing, cyber and electronic warfare, biotechnology, missile defense, drones and directed-energy systems.

“They call it integration, but I call it a merger,” Kucinich tells Scheer.

The implications, he argues, go far beyond traditional military aid or weapons sales. Kucinich warns that the provision could create new counterintelligence risks, deepen U.S. dependence on Israel’s military infrastructure and technology, blur questions of war powers and further entangle Washington in Israel’s expanding regional conflicts.

Even more alarming, Kucinich says, is how little debate the proposal has received. Rather than being considered through a separate treaty or subjected to extensive congressional hearings, the provision has been folded into a massive defense authorization bill that lawmakers will face enormous political pressure to support.

“This provision has been smuggled into the bill,” Kucinich argues. “There’s never been any debate.”

For Scheer, the contradiction is impossible to ignore. At the moment the United States marks 250 years since declaring its independence, Washington may be moving toward an unprecedented military dependence on another state—one whose conduct in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon has placed it at the center of international accusations of genocide and grave violations of international law.

In this urgent edition of Scheer Intelligence, Scheer and Kucinich examine what Section 219 could mean for American sovereignty, constitutional government and the future of war—and why a provision of such consequence has received so little attention from Congress, the Democratic opposition and the mainstream press.

The Secret U.S.-Israel Military Merger Hidden in Congress’ $1.5 Trillion War Bill

“They call it integration, but I call it a merger,” Kucinich tells Scheer. “Why do corporations have mergers? They have them to eliminate duplications, to be able to integrate operations. This is exactly what’s happening here.”

The provision, according to Kucinich, would deepen cooperation between the United States and Israel in artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, quantum sensing, cyber and electronic warfare, biotechnology, missile and air defense, drones and directed-energy technology.

“We’re not only sharing now military potential with this legislation,” Kucinich warns. “We’re also integrating values with the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces.”

For Scheer, the implications are staggering. U.S. support for Israel is hardly new. Washington has supplied Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance, weapons and diplomatic protection for decades. But Scheer repeatedly presses Kucinich on what makes Section 219 different.

“Do we have mergers with other countries?” Scheer asks. “Why Israel?”

Kucinich’s answer is unequivocal.

“The United States has never had this kind of an agreement with one other nation where they’ve merged the defensive and offensive capabilities,” he says. “Never.”

‘This Provision Has Been Smuggled Into the Bill’

Perhaps most disturbing to Kucinich is not simply what Section 219 proposes, but how he says it has moved through Congress.

“I would argue that this provision has been smuggled into the bill because there’s never been any debate,” Kucinich says. “There’s been no separate committee hearings on this. It just landed in a bill of about a thousand pages.”

Kucinich argues that an agreement of this magnitude more closely resembles a treaty—something that traditionally requires Senate approval.

“Treaties have to be approved by the Senate,” he tells Scheer. “But they’re just trying to slip this through—an unprecedented merging of function. It doesn’t exist. We’ve never done this with any other country.”

The political mechanism is familiar. The NDAA is a massive piece of legislation that lawmakers face enormous pressure to support. Voting against it can quickly be portrayed as voting against American troops or national defense.

Scheer calls the maneuver “treacherous.”

“You have to buy the whole package,” Scheer says. By burying the provision inside a sprawling defense bill, he argues, lawmakers who object to Section 219 risk being accused of refusing to “support the people protecting our country.”

Kucinich notes that Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie have attempted to force greater congressional consideration of the issue. But, he says, Section 219 has been “streamlined and expedited” inside the broader legislation.

A ‘Strategic Entrapment Into Forever Wars’

The risks Kucinich outlines are extensive………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/13/dennis-kucinich-warns-congress-is-quietly-merging-the-u-s-and-israeli-war-machines/

July 17, 2026 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

France temporarily shuts down three nuclear reactors over heatwave

France’s main energy provider on Sunday said that three nuclear reactors have been temporarily shut down, while eight others are operating at reduced power. The measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming from the heatwave.

FRANCE 24, 12/07/2026, https://www.france24.com/en/france/20260712-france-temporarily-shuts-down-three-nuclear-reactors-over-heatwave

France‘s main energy provider on Sunday said three nuclear reactors had been temporarily shut down and eight others were operating at reduced power due to the heatwave sweeping France.

“Due to the weather conditions and to comply with regulations on (cooling water) discharges, and thus to protect the environment,” reactors at the Golfech, Bugey and Chooz plants, located on the banks of the Garonne, Rhone and Meuse rivers respectively, have been shut down, the EDF energy group told AFP.

The measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming from the heatwave.

The economy ministry on Saturday issued an exemption to the temperature limits for the heating of the Rhone around the Bugey plant “to ensure the security of the power grid”, valid until July 20.

The shut downs are the second time in recent weeks that EDF has had to stop nuclear reactors due to extreme heat, after a record-breaking heatwave hit France in June.

On Sunday, the third heatwave to sweep the country since May saw more than a third of France under the national weather service’s highest heat alert.

More than 25 million people were baking in temperatures that forecasters said could reach up to 41C, according to an AFP tally based on population data.

The heatwave has forced tourist hotspots to shutter early, event cancellations and a shortened stage on the Tour de France.

Wildfires have proliferated and deaths by drowning have spiked amid the heat.

Since the end of May, France has been hit hard by repeated episodes of intense heat, which have caused excess mortality and exposed problems with infrastructure maladapted to extreme weather, the increasing frequency of which scientists have linked to man-made climate change.

July 17, 2026 Posted by | climate change, France | Leave a comment

Trump Administration Scrapping Nuclear Energy Rules Requiring Plants to Keep Radiation Levels “As Low as Reasonably Achievable”

Horrifying.

By Joe Wilkins,  Jul 12, 2026, https://futurism.com/science-energy/trump-nuclear-regulation-radiation-energy

As government agencies go, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has left a lot to be desired, often operating less like a government watchdog and more as an industry partner. There’s fee recovery, for example, which effectively mandates the industry pay its own regulators’ salary, as well as the NRC’s habit of trusting voluntary leak reports from reactor operators, not to mention its history of hiding internal safety data to protect its reputation.

As if those deficiencies weren’t bad enough, president Donald Trump is now stripping what’s left of the commission’s mandate down to the bone. Last week, the NRC proposed a bold amendment to its long-standing nuclear safety principles: deleting a line requiring nuclear plant operators to keep radiation exposure “as low as is reasonably achievable.”

According to the Hill, the NRC justifies the move by saying it will remove “unnecessary ambiguity.” But critics say this rule is the whole reason energy companies bother keeping radiation levels as low as possible in the first place.

“Facility owners felt like… ALARA [as low as reasonably achievable] was forcing them to go well below the allowable radiation limits and spend a lot of money to do that,” director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists Edwin Lyman told the Hill. “This is opening the door for sloppier practices,” Lyman continued, and “worse management.”

It gets worse. Also per the Hill, the NRC likewise announced plans to significantly weaken its approach to the National Environmental Policy Act, a foundational piece of legislation dating back to 1970. On Wednesday, the NRC said it wants to gut draft environmental reviews entirely — which, in practice, means kneecapping the public’s chance to weigh in before a reactor gets the green light.

If that weren’t enough, the commission also wants to wash its hands of its mandate to review basic environmental nuisances like noise, dust, and air pollution associated with nuclear facilities. That’s if they even do a review in the first place, as the proposed changes would exempt certain existing reactors, and even new reactors from regular inspection altogether, the Hill reports.

The proposed changes come just a few months after the US Department of Energy began stripping safety regulations that limited nuclear workers’ exposure to radiation. In effect, these changes allow energy companies to speed up productivity, unlocking higher profits at their workers’ expense.

The timing of it all is hard to overstate: with several new nuclear reactors gearing up for operations throughout the US, it’s clear the Trump administration is doing all it can to fast-track incoming nuclear facilities, consequences be damned.

July 17, 2026 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

The risk of nuclear war is rising. This is what Burnham must do.

In his first Downing Street briefing, the incoming prime minister is going to learn some hard truths about his country’s ultimate deterrent

David Blair

The risks of nuclear war are rising. This is what Burnham must do. In his
first Downing Street briefing, the incoming prime minister is going to
learn some hard truths about his country’s ultimate deterrent. The ritual
for an incoming prime minister, unchanged for decades, has never been so
fraught with significance.

Soon after Andy Burnham enters No 10, he will be
taken to a secure room where Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the
Chief of the Defence Staff, will brief him on how to authorise a British
nuclear strike. At that moment, Burnham will join the handful of world
leaders with the individual power to inflict a greater measure of
destruction than has ever been wrought before.

Burnham will be inducted
into the dreadful – in the true sense of the word – and singular
responsibility of what Lord Hennessy, the constitutional historian, calls
the “purely prime ministerial function” of overseeing Britain’s
ultimate deterrent and deciding this country’s nuclear policy.

 Telegraph 13th July 2026, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/13/burnham-must-bolster-britains-nuclear-defences/

July 17, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Federal government proposes to lessen nuclear reactor environmental reviews

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the move takes away an education tool for the public.

“If you don’t do the NEPA evaluations, then the public might not even know or understand how bad things could get,” Lyman said. 

Comments:by Rachel Frazin – 07/09/26 

A key government agency is proposing to lessen the scope of environmental reviews for nuclear reactors, limiting public input and exempting some reactors altogether.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Wednesday announced that it is narrowing review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a bedrock environmental law.

This includes exempting reviews of some activities altogether, including the reapproval of existing reactors, as well as some new reactors.

For other projects, the agency will still review radiological impacts — but it is proposing to no longer consider factors such as dust, noise and air pollution that it says are beyond its scope.

NRC Chair Ho Nieh also said that the agency is also proposing to no longer issue draft environmental reviews, limiting the public’s ability to weigh in to the start of the process before the environmental impacts are considered. 

Nieh described the move in a written statement as “concentrating on impacts the NRC can address,” adding that it would “strengthen environmental protection while making licensing reviews more timely and predictable.”

However, Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the move takes away an education tool for the public.

“If you don’t do the NEPA evaluations, then the public might not even know or understand how bad things could get,” Lyman said. 

The move comes amid other deregulatory efforts from the independent agency as the Trump administration pushes to quadruple the nation’s nuclear power capacity.

Last week, the NRC proposed to eliminate a long-standing nuclear power safety principle that directed plants to keep radiation levels “as low as reasonably achievable.”

July 17, 2026 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Ukraine draft law on Chernobyl decommissioning to 2036 approved

World Nuclear News 10th July 2026, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/ukraine-draft-law-extends-chernobyl-decommissioning

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved a draft law which extends to 2036 the funding for the State Programme for the Decommissioning of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the Transformation of the Shelter Object into an Environmentally Safe System.

The funding allocated for the programme to 2036 amounts to UAH50.8 billion (USD1.1 billion), of which UAH45.6 billion is to be financed via the state budget and UAH5.2 billion from “international technical assistance”.

According to the Ministry of Energy, the programme required updating following the completion of the shutdown and preparatory phases of the Chernobyl decommissioning process “to reflect current challenges” including additional measures to tackle the damage caused during the war by the month-long Russian occupation in 2022 and by a drone strike last year to the New Safe Confinement protective arch, “and the actual progress of projects” at the site.

“The next stage involves the direct decommissioning of the plant and the continued transformation of the Shelter Object into an environmentally safe system,” a ministry statement said.

“Extending the programme will ensure the uninterrupted continuation of the Chornobyl NPP decommissioning process, support Ukraine’s international commitments in the field of nuclear safety, and facilitate the mobilisation of international technical and financial assistance for projects at the plant,” the ministry said. (Chornobyl is Ukraine’s preferred spelling). The draft law will now go to the Ukrainian parliament for consideration.

July 17, 2026 Posted by | decommission reactor, Ukraine | Leave a comment

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