nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

War Games in Arctic: What’s Driving the West’s New Passion?

“Now, that Finland and Sweden are becoming active NATO members, this opens the possibility for the US to deploy nuclear weapons in the Far North.” 

“because of the Arctic’s sparsely located population, collateral damage from the use of nuclear weapons there will be less noticeable.” 

Bruce K. Gagnon , MARCH 15, 2024 https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2024/03/war-games-in-arctic-whats-driving-wests.html

Two unprecedented military exercises are being conducted by the US and its NATO allies simultaneously in various parts of the Arctic, signaling a new aggressive stance by the West in the region. 

Thirteen NATO countries participated this week in the Nordic Response 2024 exercise held in Finland and Sweden, near the border with Russia. Additionally, the US Army recently conducted a training event near Fairbanks, Alaska, also close to Russia’s borders. 

The US exercise was conducted within the framework of the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) and involved 8,000 American servicemen from the 11th Airborne Division and an unspecified smaller number of “foreign allies.” 

The Nordic Response exercises in Finland and Sweden are even bigger in scope, since they involve 20,000 service members from 13 NATO member countries, 50 warships and 100 military aircraft. The United States and Norway contributed their F-35 fifth-generation fighter jets to the organizers of the Nordic Response drills. Additionally, the UK agreed to send several of its own F-35s from the Royal Air Force, stationed on the British aircraft carrier, Prince of Wales. 

“We just want to beef up our presence in the Far North,” said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who came to inspect the Nordic Response 2024 war games. “This is the biggest and the most important NATO exercise in 40 years,” he contended.

German submarines, along with troops from new NATO members Finland and Sweden, also participated in the military exercises. However, the majority of the fighting force consisted of Americans, who openly expressed their intention to “rebuild their capacity to fight in the Arctic”, a capability that had somewhat weakened since the end of the Cold War.

The presumed adversary in both Alaska and the Finnish forests was the same: Russia and its possible ally China. The American newspaper Business Insider reported that the new “Arctic Strategy” of the US Army is pivoted towards “regaining Arctic dominance.” The new strategy has been operational since 2021. 

However, Business Insider noted that the rivalry with Russia now is not limited to the military sphere, as it was during the Cold War era. The economy has a role to play, too. “Rapidly melting sea ice in the Arctic Circle, warming twice as fast as the rest of the world is opening up new opportunities for natural resource extraction, shipping routes, and commercial fishing, as the Arctic becomes navigable,” the publication wrote. 

Vladimir Vasilyev, the chief research associate at the Institute of the US and Canada at the Russian Academy of Sciences, suggests that the Americans may be interested in gaining control over the North Sea Route. This route is considered the shortest maritime connection between the growing economies of Southeast Asia and Europe. Russia has extensive experience in utilizing the North Sea Route, which goes along the country’s northern shores. As the ice continues to melt, this sea route is becoming increasingly accessible to commercial vessels. 

“The United States is striving to ‘rediscover’ the Arctic region militarily,” a member of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences Alexander Bartosh told Sputnik. “Now, that Finland and Sweden are becoming active NATO members, this opens the possibility for the US to deploy nuclear weapons in the Far North.” 

The goal of the US beefing up its military force in the region, in Bartosh’s opinion, is two-fold. The first is to leverage their superiority at sea and in the air for potential strikes against Russia. And secondly, they seek to exploit the region’s untapped natural resources, primarily focusing on oil and gas.

Vladimir Vasilyev notes the historic roots of the ‘military side’ of American interest in the Arctic. “The Arctic region plays an indispensable role in the long-time US strategy of encircling Russia,” Vasilyev highlighted. He also did not exclude the deployment of American nuclear weapons in the region. “In the Arctic, nuclear accidents are easier to cover up,” Vasilyev noted and added: “Also, for a very long time Americans had an illusion that because of the Arctic’s sparsely located population, collateral damage from the use of nuclear weapons there will be less noticeable.” 

March 16, 2024 Posted by | ARCTIC, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Paves Way for Increase in Production in Commercial Reactors of Tritium for Nuclear Weapons

The U.S. no longer has a Department of Defense, as it has become The U.S. War Department.  This article shows that the private nuclear industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy are factotums of The U.S. War Department.  We need a list of the people who are pro The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and who sent a letter in favor of expanding nuclear power all over the world to mitigate climate change.  They completely forgot how India first developed nuclear weapons.  One of these amnesiacs is Ernest Moniz, but I’m not sure of the others who schizophrenically hold both views.  They need help seeing the contradictions in these mutually exclusive positions. —Jan Boudart, secretary, Nuclear Energy Information Service, NEIS.org

Expansion of Tritium Gas Production for DOE in TVA’s Commercial Nuclear Reactors Undermines Nuclear Non-Proliferation Norms, Keeps U.S. on Nuclear War Footing.

Tom Clements
Savannah River Site Watch COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, US, February 27, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken a big step forward in allowing expansion of production of tritium, a radioactive gas used to boost the explosive power of all U.S. nuclear weapons. Increased tritium production would take place in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar nuclear power reactors, further undermining nuclear nonproliferation norms by allowing continued production of nuclear weapons materials in commercial nuclear power reactors.

The NRC published a notice in the Federal Register on February 23, 20241 that supports the decision to dramatically increase the production of tritium in the Watts Bar units 1 and 2 reactors in Tennessee. The NRC, a civilian regulatory agency, recommends that the licenses for both reactors be amended to allow for an increase in irradiation of special tritium-producing rods from 1,792 to 2,496 for each reactor in a single operating cycle of about 18 months.

The significant increase in irradiation of Tritium Producing Burnable Absorber Roads (TPBARs) in the reactors’ cores would result in production of much greater amounts of tritium, as requested by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for its client, the Department of Defense. According to NNSA’s 2023 “Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan,” the goal is “to reach maximum tritium production in each of the two Watts Bar reactors by FY 2025.”

“Expansion of tritium production for use in all nuclear warheads reveals that the U.S. aims to keep a massive nuclear weapons stockpile far beyond any level of deterrence,” said Tom Clements, director the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch, Columbia South Carolina. “For the sake of global security, the U.S. must adopt a policy to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons and in parallel halt the production of weapons tritium in civilian nuclear reactors,” added Clements. (See sources here linked in SRS Watch news, Feb. 23, 20242.)

he apparent objective with this larger tritium supply is for the NNSA to fill the tritium “reservoirs” in all warheads to maximum capacity, which could be up to around 5 grams of tritium per warhead. This would allow the weapons to operate with greater flexibility, including at their highest explosive yield, thus keeping the U.S. on a footing to “fight” a nuclear war with maximum destructive effect. Russia and China could react to this US decision, possibly stimulating a “tritium race,” underscoring the risks of enduring reliance on nuclear weapons, according to SRS Watch.

The NRC has documented in an “environmental assessment” (EA) that radiation exposure, tritium release into the environment and nuclear waste production would all increase due to the action but has declined preparation of an in-depth “environmental impact statement” (EIS). The NRC claims the impacts are within earlier-considered bounds and has thus issued a “Finding of No Significant Impact” (FONSI) and recommends that a license amendment be issued by the NRC to allow more tritium rods to be irradiated. The NRC declined to review both the proliferation impacts of the decision and the impacts on a brewing nuclear arms race.

Both the EA and FONSI are included in the text of the short Federal Register notice, revealing that an inadequate analysis was conducted of the proposed action of dramatically increasing TPBAR irradiation. According to SRS Watch, an in-depth EIS, with public meetings, should have been prepared, especially given that tritium leakage from TPBAR irradiation has been documented, with diluted tritium-contaminated water being discharged into the Tennessee River from the “tritiated water storage tank with a capacity of 500,000 gallons.”

…………………………………………………………Due to increased tritium production, TPBAR manufacture at the Westinghouse uranium fuel plant near Columbia, SC would also expand. Production in that commercial nuclear facility of TPBARs used to produce tritium for military use exposes the reality that the Westinghouse facility is a dual use military-commercial facility, thus crossing the imaginary line between civilian and military uses of nuclear technology, as documented by SRS Watch in the 2021 report “Crossing the Line: South Carolina Nuclear Weapons Secrets Exposed3.” https://www.einpresswire.com/article-print/691542118/nuclear-regulatory-commission-paves-way-for-increase-in-production-in-commercial-reactors-of-tritium-for-nuclear-weapons?

March 16, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Dounreay workers vote on strike action after pay talks stall

 https://www.gmbscotland.org.uk/newsroom/gmb-scotland-ballot-at-dounreay.html 13 Mar 24

Workers at Dounreay nuclear site are being balloted on industrial action after long-running pay talks stalled.

Members of GMB Scotland and other unions are voting on industrial action including working to rule, overtime bans and strikes after a pay offer was overwhelmingly rejected.

Discussions with management at the Caithness site have been continuing for 18 months and Keir Greenaway, GMB senior organiser in public services, said workers cannot be expected to wait any longer for a fair offer.

He said: “This delay would be unacceptable at any time but when our members have been enduring an unprecedented cost of living crisis, it is beyond the pale.

“Managers insist they are bound by civil service rules but have chosen not to seek exemption from those rules for their own reasons.

 “We have heard a lot of words but seen no action by management and words do not pay our members’ bills.

“They deserve to see a fair pay offer urgently and will take whatever action is necessary to secure one. Enough is enough.”

Dounreay joined Magnox Ltd last year and then became part of Nuclear Restoration Services, which is responsible for the clean-up of the Caithness site and 11 others across the UK.

A ballot on industrial action by GMB Scotland, Unite and Prospect members is now open and will continue for three weeks.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s Spring budget a ‘myopic sop’ to nuclear obsessives

 https://cnduk.org/spring-budget-a-myopic-sop-to-nuclear-obsessives/ 14 Mar 24

CND Vice-President Dr Ian Fairlie writes for us on the purchase of the Wylfa nuclear site in last week’s budget.

On March 6, as part of the Spring Budget, the Chancellor announced a deal with the Japanese multinational Hitachi to purchase the defunct and closed Wylfa and Oldbury nuclear sites for £160 million. Hitachi suspended the much larger Wylfa project in 2019 and then abandoned it in September 2020 due to the massively rising costs of building nuclear plants.

Many nuclear enthusiasts read into the Chancellor’s statement that the government was going to build new plants at these sites. However a careful reading of the Budget statement reveals no such commitment. Instead, several independent commentators drily remarked that if Hitachi had decided the Wylfa nuclear plant was commercially untenable, why would anyone in Government think it was.

In fact, it is likely the £160 million land purchase was little more than a sop to myopic nuclear obsessives in the Conservative Party. The reality is that, in energy strategy terms, this sum is a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated £46,000 million (£46 billion) which Hinkley C nuclear plant would cost if it ever were completed. And, in another comparison, the Chancellor confirmed that the budget for the 2024 Contracts for Difference (CfD) auctions mainly for wind and solar projects will be set at over £1,000 million (£1 billion).

The environmental group People Against Wylfa B called the Chancellor’s statement a cynical move to try to support Tory Virginia Crosbie MP to keep her Ynys Môn parliamentary seat. Not much chance of that happening as her majority is under 2,000, and several recent by-elections have shown that Tory majorities of even 20,000 or more are now unsafe.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

NuScale nuclear power is among Top 5 Industrials Stocks That May Fall Off A Cliff In Q1

As of March 15, 2024, five stocks in the industrials sector could be flashing a real warning to investors who value momentum as a key criteria in their trading decisions.

The RSI is a momentum indicator, which compares a stock’s strength on days when prices go up to its strength on days when prices go down. When compared to a stock’s price action, it can give traders a better sense of how a stock may perform in the short term. An asset is typically considered overbought when the RSI is above 70, according to Benzinga Pro.

Here’s the latest list of major overbought players in this sector………………………………………………………

NuScale Power Corporation (NYSE:SMR)

  • On March 14, NuScale Power posted downbeat quarterly sales. “Over the course of 2023, we made significant progress towards commercializing our SMR technology, including continued activities to ensure readiness for manufacturing of our first NuScale Power Modules, building traction amongst data centers and further developing industrial applications for SMRs, such as process heat, hydrogen, and ammonia production,” said John Hopkins, President and Chief Executive Officer of NuScale Power. The company’s stock gained around 55% over the past five days and has a 52-week high of $9.27.
  • RSI Value: 84.89
  • SMR Price Action: Shares of NuScale Power gained 2.3% to close at $7.24 on Thursday…………………………………………………………………………..

General Electric Company (NYSE:GE)

  • On March 7, General Electric said that GE Aerospace reaffirmed its guidance, presenting a longer-term financial outlook, including achieving operating profit worth $10 billion in 2028. The company’s stock jumped around 12% over the past month and has a 52-week high is $175.81.
  • RSI Value: 72.30
  • GE Price Action: Shares of General Electric fell 2% to close at $166.75 on Wednesday.

.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

Radioactive waste, baby bottles and Spam: the deep ocean has become a dumping ground

The ocean’s depths are not some remote alien realm, but are in fact intimately entangled with every other part of the planet. We should treat them that way

by James Bradley. Guardian 12 Mar…….

“…………………………………………………………………………………………..The ocean’s depths have also been used as the final resting place for large amounts of nuclear material.

A 2019 study found at least 18,000 radioactive objects scattered across the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, many of them dumped there by the Soviet Union. These objects include vessels such as the K-27, the 110-metre nuclear submarine powered by an experimental liquid-metal-cooled reactor, which was scuttled in 1982 with its reactor still on board (when the explosive charges that were supposed to sink the K-27 failed to fully detonate, it had to be rammed with a tug); the wreck of the K-141 Kursk, which sank in the Barents Sea in 2000 during a naval exercise, killing all 118 on board and bearing its reactor and fuel to the bottom; and the K-159 attack submarine, which sank while being towed near Murmansk in 2003 with 800kg of spent uranium fuel on board. The head of Norway’s Nuclear Safety Authority says it is only a matter of time before these objects begin to release their toxic legacy into the water; others have called the situation a “Chornobyl in slow motion on the sea floor”.

While the Soviet Union dumped more nuclear waste on the sea floor than any other country, it was certainly not alone. Between 1948 and 1982, the British government consigned almost 70,000 tonnes of nuclear waste to the ocean’s depths, and the US, Switzerland, Japan and the Netherlands are just a few of the nations that have used the ocean to dispose of radioactive material, albeit in much smaller quantities. And while international treaties now prohibit the dumping of radioactive material at sea, the British government is exploring plans to dispose of up to 750,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste, including more than 100 tonnes of plutonium, beneath the sea floor off Cumbria. British officials argue this sort of geological disposal offers a way of keeping waste stable and secure over hundreds of thousands of years, although incidents such as the 2014 leak of radioactive material at a waste disposal facility half a kilometre beneath salt beds in New Mexico suggests that like many of the assurances offered by the nuclear industry, this claim should be approached with great caution.

The dumping of nuclear waste in the ocean is only one part of a far larger story of carelessness and greed. Human waste in the form of plastics and other objects is everywhere in the deep ocean, a fact that is made brutally apparent by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology’s Deep-sea Debris Database, which documents the presence of tyres, fishing nets, sports bags, mannequins, beach balls and baby’s bottles spread across the sea floor at depths of many thousands of metres. In some regions, the number of such objects exceeds 300/sq km.

This tide of garbage has even reached the deepest and most remote parts of the ocean: …………………………………………………………………………………….

Possibly more disturbing, though, is the growing accumulation of microplastics in the ocean depths………………………………………………..

Nor is plastic the only thing that drifts downwards. In 2019 Chinese scientists discovered radioactive carbon-14 from the detonation of nuclear bombs in the 1940s and 50s in the bodies of amphipods living at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, borne into the deep not by ocean circulation, but in the rain of organic matter from above. More recent studies have found radioactive caesium from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in sediment more than 7,000 metres down in the Japan Trench……………………………………………………….. more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/12/radioactive-waste-baby-bottles-and-spam-the-deep-ocean-has-become-a-dumping-ground

March 15, 2024 Posted by | oceans, wastes | Leave a comment

Aid Wars over Gaza: Resuming Funding to UNRWA

March 12, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark  https://theaimn.com/aid-wars-over-gaza-resuming-funding-to-unrwa/

The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling. The lynchpin in the effort was a thin, poison pen dossier making claims that 12 individuals were Hamas operatives who had been involved in the October 7 attacks. Within a matter of days, two internal investigations were commenced, various individuals sacked, and US$450 million worth of funding from donor states suspended.

As the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, explained at a press conference on March 4, he has “never been informed” or received evidence of Israel’s claims substantiating their assertions, though he did receive the prompt about the profane twelve directly from Israeli officials. Every year, both Israel and the Palestinian authorities were furnished with staff lists, “and I never received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”

Had Israeli authorities signed off on these alleged participants in bungling or conspiratorial understanding? Certainly, there was more than a pongy whiff of distraction about it all, given that Israel had come off poorly in The Hague proceedings launched by South Africa, during which the judges issued an interim order demanding an observance of the UN Genocide Convention, an increase of humanitarian aid, and the retention of evidence that might be used for future criminal prosecutions for genocide.

An abrupt wave of initial success in starving the agency followed, with a number of countries announcing plans to freeze funding. In the United States, irate members of Congress accused the agency of having “longstanding connections to terrorism and promotion of antisemitism.” A hearing was duly held titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures” with Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies frothing at an agency that supposedly incited “violence against Israel, subsidizes US-designated terrorist organizations, denies Palestinians their basic human rights, and blocks the pathways to a sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

The attempt to cast UNRWA into gleefully welcomed oblivion has not worked. Questions were asked about the initial figure of twelve alleged militants. News outlets began questioning the numbers.

The funding channels are resuming. Canada, for instance, approving “the robust investigative process underway”, also acknowledged that “more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians.” The initial cancellation of funding to the agency, charged Thomas Woodley, president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, had been “a reckless political decision that never should have been made.”

The Swedish government was also encouraged by undertakings made by UNRWA “to allow independent auditing, strengthen internal supervision and enable additional staff controls”, promising an initial outlay of 200 million kroner (US$19 million).

The Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Johan Forssell, promised that it would “monitor closely to ensure UNRWA follows through on what it has promised.” Aid policy spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, Gudrun Brunegård, also conceded that, given the “huge” needs on the part of the civilian population, that UNRWA was “the organisation that is best positioned to help vulnerable Palestinians.”

Much the same sentiment was expressed by the European Union, with the Commission agreeing to pay 50 million euros to UNRWA from a promised total of 82 million euros on the proviso that EU-appointed experts audit the screening of staff. “This audit,” a European Commission statement explains, “will review the control systems to prevent the possible involvement of its staff and assets in terrorist activities.” Having been found wanting in her screeching about-turn, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU stood “by the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. Innocent Palestinians should not have to pay the price for the crimes of [the] terrorist group Hamas.”

Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was stiffly bureaucratic in expressing satisfaction at “the commitment of UNRWA to introduce robust measures to prevent possible misconduct and minimise the risk of allegations.” At no point was Israel’s own contribution to the calamity, and its insatiable vendetta against the agency, mentioned.

The bombast and blunder of the whole effort by Israel was further discoloured by claims that UNRWA staff had been victims of torture at the hands of the IDF in drafting the dossier. In a statement released by the agency, a grave accusation was levelled: “These forced confessions as a result of torture are being used by the Israeli Authorities to further spread misinformation about the agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA.” In doing so, Israel was “putting our staff at risk and has serious implications on our operations in Gaza and around the region.”

For its part, the IDF, through a statement, claimed that this was all exaggerated piffle: “The mistreatment of detainees during their time in detention or whilst under interrogation violates IDF values and contravenes IDF [sic] and is therefore absolutely prohibited.”

Increasingly on the losing side of that battle, Israeli authorities decided to cook the figures further, declaring with crass confidence that 450 URWA employees in Gaza were members of militant groups including Hamas. Sticking to routine, those making that allegation decided that evidence of such claims was not needed. Those employees, claimed Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, “are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza”. “This was no coincidence. This is systematic. There is no claiming, ‘we did not know’.”

In the fog of war, mendacity thrives with virile vigour; but the current suggestion on the part of various donor states is that the humanitarian incentive to ameliorate the suffering of the Gaza populace has taken precedence over Israel’s persistently lethal efforts. That, at least, is the case with certain countries, leaving the doubters starkly exposed.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Hollywood stars put their name to a good message, but it’s the messengers who are problematic.

Nuclear Threat Initiative’s CEO is, yes, Ernest Moniz, the former US Energy Secretary, who is at the forefront of promoting nuclear power to anyone and everyone who wants it

Moniz is one of the chief architects behind the pro-nuclear infiltration of the COP28 climate summit

Make (some) nukes history, Hollywood stars put their name to a good message, but it’s the messengers who are problematic

By Linda Pentz Gunter,  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/03/11/make-some-nukes-history/

A handful of Hollywood celebs, some highly recognizable including Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Lily Tomlin, Emma Thompson and Michael Douglas, as well as musicians such as Jackson Brown and Graham Nash, just signed their names to a letter published in the LA Times urging that we “Make Nukes History”.

Hooray, right? Well, only half hooray.

The Hollywood letter was part of a quickly launched campaign to coincide with the Oscar buzz around the successful feature film, Oppenheimer, in order to leverage attention for the need to abolish nuclear weapons. The Make Nukes History campaign aims to raise public awareness about the civilization-ending risks posed by today’s nuclear arsenals. It reminds us that while Oppenheimer is a history lesson, nuclear weapons are very much still with us, but that we can put an end to what J. Robert Oppenheimer started.

So far, all so good. Far too few of us are thinking about nuclear weapons and the threat they pose, let alone doing something about getting rid of them. It’s an important message that needs reiterating.

Meanwhile, Oppenheimer duly swept seven Academy Awards on Sunday. We waited hopefully for one of the winners to say something about the effect of Oppenheimer’s bomb down the ages. It came only from Cillian Murphy at the end of his Best Actor acceptance speech. “We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb and for better or for worse we are all living in Oppenheimer’s world so I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers, everywhere,” Murphy said.

The Make Nukes History message did not make it to the Oscar stage and the LA Times letter was surprisingly skimpy, failing to get at the heart of the two key takeaways missed in the Oppenheimer film: the unwilling, unrecognized and still uncompensated victims of Oppenheimer’s original Trinity bomb; and the on-going harm down generations to all peoples whose lands were seized and used for atomic tests.

The letter includes a quote from President John F. Kennedy, then states:

“At a time of great uncertainty, even one nuclear weapon—on land, in the sea, in the air, or in space—is too many. To protect our families, our communities, and our world, we must demand that global leaders work to make nuclear weapons history—and build a brighter future.”

Demand indeed. Some of us have been doing this for decades. And we have a treaty for that. But thank you for waking up.

But what does “build a brighter future” actually mean? That, it turns out, is the slogan of the organization behind the orchestration of the Hollywood letter and Oscar campaign — the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Let’s first take a look at who actually signed the letter. With two exceptions, all the signatories are white. There are no Native Americans on there. No US Marshall Islanders. Almost none of the Oppenheimer film cast and crew signed it.  The last four signatures belong to the board of NTI.

NTI was the brainchild of Fonda’s ex, Ted Turner. NTI’s CEO is, yes, Ernest Moniz, the former US Energy Secretary, who is at the forefront of promoting nuclear power to anyone and everyone who wants it. Turner is also a firm supporter of nuclear power (I know because I tried to challenge him on it in person and was quickly deflected by a very large gentleman in possession of an impressive set of muscles.)

Moniz is one of the chief architects behind the pro-nuclear infiltration of the COP28 climate summit and its ridiculous “let’s triple global nuclear power capacity by 2050” proclamation. He will be in Brussels later this month, headlining the International Atomic Energy Agency’s propaganda-fest, billed as the First Ever Nuclear Energy Summit. So will Charles Oppenheimer, Robert Oppenheimer’s grandson and another signatory to the LA Times letter.

So here we have a slightly star-studded short-lived campaign to proclaim an end to one kind of nuke, while behind the scenes the same organization is working hard to promote the other kind of nuke, thus ensuring that the door to nuclear weapons development stays firmly open.

So sorry, no two thumbs up for this bit of Hollywood theatre.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. All opinions are her own.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | media, spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

Putin warns again that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty is threatened

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 14, 2024

President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence is threatened, issuing another blunt warning to the West just days before an election in which he’s all but certain to secure another six-year term.

The Russian leader has repeatedly talked about his readiness to use nuclear weapons since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The most recent such threat came in his state-of-the-nation address last month, when he warned the West that deepening its involvement in the fighting in Ukraine would risk a nuclear war.

Asked in an interview with Russian state television released early Wednesday if he has ever considered using battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Putin responded that there has been no need for that. He also noted that he doesn’t think that the world is heading for a nuclear war, describing U.S. President Joe Biden as a veteran politician who fully understands the possible dangers of escalation…………………………….

In an apparent reference to NATO allies that support Kyiv, he also declared that “the nations that say they have no red lines regarding Russia should realize that Russia won’t have any red lines regarding them either.”https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-putin-nuclear-weapons-82ced2419d93ae733161b56fbd9b477d

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Film RADIOACTIVE: The women of Three Mile Island will start streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video from March 12

This film, more than many, brings the destructive impacts from nuclear technology into the hearts of a community of women who suffered from becoming Radioactive in Harrisburg, PA when the Three Mile Island reactor had its accident.

RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island will also be featured in Asheville NC, March 24 as part of the International Uranium Film Festival offerings here that weekend.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Nuclear power and artificial intelligence: the perfect marriage

DAVID MORRISON, THE GLOBE AND MAIL David Morrison is the chief executive officer of Eight Capital, one of the largest independent investment banks in Canada.

“AI will eat software” is the mantra driving the technology industry – but where will it get its power?

Recently, the world’s most valuable chip maker, Nvidia Corp. reported a blow-out quarter with revenues surging 265 per cent, pushing the company’s market capitalization beyond US$2-trillion. Chief executive officer Jensen Huang highlighted the soaring demand for accelerated computing and generative artificial intelligence (AI) worldwide.

AI will drive the next wave of GDP productivity growth. And the next infrastructure race will revolve around the global competition to house data centres. Governments will prioritize securing the data of their citizens and businesses while facilitating the increased domestic utilization of AI.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New York Time’s Morning Newsletter Blames Everyone but Israel for Israeli Crimes

HARRY ZEHNER, FAIR, 13 Mar 24

With over 17 million subscribers, the Morning, the New York Times’ flagship newsletter, is by far the most popular newsletter in the English-speaking world. (It has almost three times as many subscribers as the next most popular newsletter.)

Since October 7, as Israel has waged an unprecedented war on Palestinian children, journalists, hospitals and schools, the New York Times’ highly influential newsletter has bent over backwards to blame everyone but Israel for the carnage.

Waging a legitimate war

According to the Morning—led by head writer David Leonhardt—Israel’s war on Gaza is a targeted operation designed to eliminate Hamas. The Morning propagates this narrative despite well-documented declarations of collective punishment and even genocidal intent by high-ranking Israeli officials—a tendency that South Africa has forcefully documented in their case before the ICJ (UN, 12/29/23). Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s comments on October 12, 2023, are typical: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved.”

This sentiment has been echoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, multiple cabinet-level ministers and senior military officials. Speaking from a devastated northern Gaza, one top Israeli army official said (UN, 12/29/23): “Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”

Despite these statements and the body of supporting evidence, the Morning has consistently portrayed the war on Gaza as a focused campaign targeting the military infrastructure of Hamas.

For instance, in one October edition (10/13/23), Leonhardt and co-writer Lauren Jackson explained, “Israel’s goals are to prevent Hamas from being able to conduct more attacks and to reestablish the country’s military credibility.”

Despite these statements and the body of supporting evidence, the Morning has consistently portrayed the war on Gaza as a focused campaign targeting the military infrastructure of Hamas.

For instance, in one October edition (10/13/23), Leonhardt and co-writer Lauren Jackson explained, “Israel’s goals are to prevent Hamas from being able to conduct more attacks and to reestablish the country’s military credibility.”

The Morning did, in the same edition (1/28/24), quote Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s comments in the immediate aftermath of October 7:

After the Hamas-led October 7 terrorist attacks, Israel ordered what its defense minister called a “complete siege” of Gaza. The goal was both to weaken Hamas fighters and to ensure that no military supplies could enter.

This is, however, a downright fictional interpretation of Gallant’s quote (Al Jazeera, 10/9/23), given that the Morning failed to quote the next words out of his mouth:

There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly.

Blame the terrorists

The Morning consistently has argued that Hamas makes densely populated civilian areas legitimate targets for Israeli attacks by conducting military operations nearby. This deflects blame from Israel and frames civilian casualties as a necessary evil, as in the October 30 edition of the newsletter:

Hamas has hidden many weapons under hospitals, schools and mosques so that Israel risks killing civilians, and facing an international backlash, when it fights. Hamas fighters also slip above and below ground, blending with civilians.

These practices mean that Hamas is responsible for many of the civilian deaths, according to international law.

Similar rhetoric was deployed in this December edition (12/20/23):

Hamas has long hidden its fighters and weapons in and under populated civilian areas, such as hospitals and mosques. It does so partly to force Israel to make a gruesome calculation: To fight Hamas, Israel often must also harm civilians.

The Morning has not yet found it pertinent to report on, for instance, the Israeli soldiers who dressed as doctors to gain access to the Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank, and proceeded to assassinate three Palestinian militants in their hospital beds.

To the Morning (11/14/23), Israel’s mass slaughter of civilians is unavoidable:

The battle over Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza highlights a tension that often goes unmentioned in the debate over the war between Israel and Hamas: There may be no way for Israel both to minimize civilian casualties and to eliminate Hamas.

It repeats this line again in a late January edition (1/22/24), once again framing the mass murder of civilians as a “difficult decision”:

The Israeli military faces a difficult decision about how to proceed in southern Gaza…. Israel will not easily be able to eliminate the fighters without killing innocent civilians.

And again in the October 17 edition:

Longer term, there will be more difficult choices. Many steps that Israel could take to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, such as advance warnings of attacks, would also weaken its attempts to destroy Hamas’s control.

These themes are repeated across all editions of the Morning, and echo throughout the New York Times’ reporting on Israel. Israel’s motivations in the war (beyond eliminating Hamas) go unquestioned, while the openly genocidal statements made by high-ranking politicians and military leaders go unacknowledged.

And when Israeli mass murder of Palestinian civilians is mentioned, it is constantly qualified by the line that Hamas is fully or partially to blame.

Let’s break down one emblematic newsletter (12/7/23) written by Leonhardt in December, in which he “puts the [civilian death] toll in context and explains the reason for it.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

It is notable that—unlike with Israel—Leonhardt did not attempt to contextualize Hamas’ actions by noting the horrifying conditions that Israel has imposed on Gaza for years, or the over 900 Palestinian children killed by Israel in the decade preceding October 7. To Leonhardt, history is only relevant when it justifies Israeli aggression.

While Leonhardt states unequivocally that Hamas is violating international law, he does not find it worthwhile to investigate Israel’s flagrant and abundantly documented violations of international law. He also does not mention the Palestinian right to resist occupation, a right enshrined under international law.

This unequal treatment leads straight to the jarringly contrasting conclusions, in which he essentially excuses Israel’s genocidal war as unavoidable, while he condemns Hamas for “simply not prioritizing Palestinian lives.”

Leonhardt’s December 7 piece is not an aberration: It is emblematic of the language, selective contextualization and framing that the Times‘ Morning newsletter wields to provide ideological cover for Israel’s crimes.  https://fair.org/home/nyts-morning-newsletter-blames-everyone-but-israel-for-israeli-crimes/

March 15, 2024 Posted by | media, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

South Dakota Governor Signs Bill Into Law That Conflates Criticism of Israel With Anti-Semitism

Under the law, drawing ‘comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ is considered anti-Semitic

by Dave DeCamp March 11, 2024 ,https://news.antiwar.com/2024/03/11/south-dakota-governor-signs-law-that-conflates-criticism-of-israel-with-anti-semitism/

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed a bill into law last week that conflates some criticisms of the modern state of Israel with anti-Semitism.

By signing the bill into law, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism must be taken into consideration in investigations of unfair or discriminatory practices within the state of South Dakota.

The IHRA’s definition was first adopted in 2016 and lists “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as an example of anti-Semitism. Noem signed the bill into law as Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza has killed over 31,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and after the International Court of Justice ruled it’s “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide.

The IHRA also defines anti-Semitism as applying “double standards” to Israel by “requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” It lists “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” by “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” as another example of anti-Semitism.

According to The Jerusalem Post, South Dakota has become the 12th US state to codify the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism into law. At least 23 other states have supported the definition through legislative action but have not officially made it into law. The US State Department has also adopted the definition, as the US is a member country of the IHRA.

Many US states have also passed laws to punish individuals or companies who boycott Israel. The legislation is designed to fight against the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that advocates for global boycotts against Israel.

Over 30 states have adopted anti-BDS laws, and several states used them to punish Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, over the ice cream maker’s decision to stop selling its product in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Arizona, Florida, and Texas all took action against Unilever by moving to divest state pension funds from the British conglomerate. 

When Ben & Jerry’s first announced it would stop selling ice cream in the occupied territory, Israel launched a “maximum pressure” campaign and urged states to take action against Ben & Jerry’s. Unilever eventually sold the ice cream company’s business interests in Israel to a local company that would keep selling the product in settlements.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Keep Your Money Out of Nukes! Anti-Nuclear Financial Fitness w/Domini’s Mary Beth Gallagher. PODCAST

NH #664  https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/nukes-money-anti-nuclear-financial-fitness/

Want to know how to stop nukes? Follow the money – and then take it away from the nuclear industry. Mary Beth Gallagher is Director of Engagements for Domini Impact Investments, a mutual fund firm that’s women-led and, among other ethical choices, does not invest in any company that manufactures any part of nuclear weapons. After hearing her speak at the United Nations Second Meeting of States Parties on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons last December, I knew the conscientious listeners of Nuclear Hotseat deserved to hear what she had to say.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

European Powers Stab Each Other in the Back Over Ukraine Proxy War Defeat

Finian Cunningham, March 13, 2024,  https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/03/13/european-powers-stab-each-other-in-the-back-over-ukraine-proxy-war-defeat/—


The failure of being vassals for the American empire and the impending disaster of defeat for the NATO proxy war in Ukraine is weighing heavily. 

Europe is rife with treachery in the age-old fashion of imperial rivalry. It’s pathetic to watch, but highly instructive about who the real villains of the piece are.

The failure of being abject vassals for the American empire and the impending disaster of defeat for the NATO proxy war in Ukraine is weighing heavily.

Each European power is pushing the other over the abyss to save its own political skin.

France’s Emmanuel Macron has emerged to be a little king rat. He has taken to talking up deploying NATO troops to Ukraine to salvage the proxy war against Russia. Macron struts around like a rat in jackboots too big for his feet calling on other European leaders not to be cowards.

The former Rothschild banker Macron then turns around and cancels yet another trip to the Ukrainian capital Kiev. Maybe the French leader got scared by the Russian air strike on Odessa last week when the Greek premier was touring the city along with Ukraine’s puppet president Zelensky.

Macron sent his Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné to Lithuania last Friday to discuss with the rabid Russophobic Baltic states the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine. Given the history of the Baltic states aiding and abetting the Third Reich’s invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa in 1941, we can safely posit the same states are an open door for such French-inspired madness.

However, with classic elite cowardice, Macron obviously doesn’t want to be anywhere near the front line when the action gets hot. Better to hunker down on a comfy armchair in Elysée Palace and bark out your angry poodle orders from there.

Meanwhile, that other bastion of European civility (meaning treacherous deception) the good old British are cajoling Germany to send long-range missiles to Ukraine to strike deep into Russia.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is balking at supplying the Taurus cruise missiles to the Ukrainian regime. The German-made weapon has a range of 500 kilometers. Given the unhinged NeoNazis in Kiev (headed up by a Jewish puppet Zelensky) it is a certainty that the Taurus missiles would be fired at Moscow to kill “Untermenschen Russians”.

That’s why Scholz is worried. His top Luftwaffe commanders have already been caught red-handed planning how the Taurus “super tools” would be used to hit deep Russian targets.

Enter the ever-so-polite British with a helping hand to the Germans. Britain’s Foreign Secretary “Lord” David Cameron visited Berlin last week urging the Germans to supply the Taurus missile to Ukraine.

Cameron said London was ready to help Germany “solve the problem” of its reluctance to provide the long-range weapon.

The British top diplomat offered a swap arrangement whereby London would buy Taurus missiles from Germany while supplying more of its Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine. In that way, Berlin would not be implicated in attacking Russia, according to Cameron.

Laughably, the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she considered the British offer to be viable.

Her nominal boss, Chancellor Scholz, has officially remained reluctant to the idea of sending Taurus missiles.

Germany would do well to treat any British proposal with deep suspicion. After all, it was the British that inveigled Germany into two world wars. The first one was with the objective of destroying an imperial rival, while the second one was engineered to unleash Hitler’s war machine on the Soviet Union.

The cold facts are that the United States and its European NATO vassals embarked on a proxy war against Russia using Ukraine as the battleground. That war was at least 10 years in the making from the CIA-sponsored coup in Kiev in 2014 which brought to power the present NeoNazi regime.

The two-year proxy war has turned out to be a colossal failure for the American empire and its European satellites. The Kyiv regime is collapsing from overwhelmingly superior Russian firepower. The wasting of the Ukrainian military – as many as 500,000 men – as well as up to $200 billion in financial and military aid paid for ultimately by Western taxpayers will rebound with massive political repercussions for the warmongering Western elites.

Each one of these imperialist criminal powers wants to save their own necks as the noose of public anger inevitably tightens.

The French cock-turned-rat Macron would no doubt like to muddy the battlefield with NATO troops – while avoiding any muck splashing on his dainty little boots of course.

The Americans are beginning to realize they can’t win and are finally cutting off the money, leaving the Europeans high and dry to deal with a continental-sized mess. Joe Biden can’t even remember if it was Ukraine or Iraq that he made a fatal mistake in.

Britain, ever the arch Machiavellian maggot, would like to throw Germany into the frontline against Russia. No doubt the City of London could pick up some much-needed capitalist business from war reconstruction contracts.

The proxy war in Ukraine is over and the Western rats are scurrying off the ship.

The Western public needs to hold each one of them to account and not let them blow up a bigger war with Russia as a way to distract from their culpability.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »