In order to keep abreast of the weekend nuclear news, I will post Saturday and Sunday’s news, but without editorial comment. If a weekend story warrants a critical review, it will show up on Monday’s postd . . .
If you are not familiar with the weekday daily blog post, this is how the nuclear news post works . . . llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
In traditional nuclear reactors, even when the reactor shuts down in an emergency, significant heat continues to be generated. To prevent a meltdown, …
In order to keep abreast of the weekend nuclear news, I will post Saturday and Sunday’s news, but without editorial comment. If a weekend story warrants a critical review, it will show up on Monday’s posts . . .
If you are not familiar with the weekday daily blog post, this is how the nuclear news post works . . . llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The collision happened mid-air over the Potomac River as the jet attempted to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. All 67 people on both …
… threats of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and a possible U.S. involvement. In the interview aired on Friday, Araghchi noted that Iran’s nuclear …
“This particular volcano is probably the best-monitored submarine volcano in the world,” said Mike Poland from the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, as …
… caldera, and Ijen. Yellowstone quakes · Yellowstone quakes. Latest earthquakes under Yellowstone volcano. List and interactive map of current and past …
(See published article below for descripti9on and photo credit)
LAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES for TOMORROW . . .
To my mind the following article from the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” and author Jon B. Wolfsthal, although well covered and written, is little more than wishful thinking or at best a hopeful possible agreement among nuclear nations that are always, even if ratified, sure to be broken and abandoned, creating more conflict because of the insanity of nuclear arms control and constant build-up and the incredible cost of what’s called nuclear “deterrence”, which is the only shaky preventative we currently have that presently shelters the world from nuclear war..
I am not a believer in the very concept of nuclear armed nation-leaders honestly honoring — especially, the U.S., Russia, and China — any peace agreements that involve anything nuclear. And, Trump’s record of breaking peace and other international agreements is not what one would call commendable nor “peaceful”.
I suppose that optimism is a valuable characteristic, but being optimistic about anything that #47 does or will ever do is not a part of my own confidence that he will even avoid the idea of a potential world-engaging nuclear war. Iran is already threatening the U.S. (meaning Trump) to stay away from them and their nuclear program(s).
Time will tell, of course, but Trump is not yet two weeks into his 2nd presidency and not a single action he has taken thus far has been beneficial nor even tolerable to the United States of America as we know it. ~llaw
The authoritative guide to ensuring science and technology make life on Earth better, not worse.
Trump wants a nuclear deal. Can he be the ultimate negotiator?
On April 4, 2019, President Trump pushed for new arms-control agreements with Russia and China ahead of trade talks at the White House with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. In Davos last week, Trump suggested again that he may try to negotiate a new arms control agreement with Russia and enter in arms control talks with China. (Credit: White House, via Flickr)
The world has entered the third nuclear age, and nuclear weapons are increasingly seen as valuable—and even usable—weapons by a growing number of states. Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons, China’s rapid nuclear buildup, the United States’s unprecedentedly expensive nuclear modernization, and ongoing nuclear work in North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran all make clear the 21st century will be defined by nuclear risks.
The re-election of President Trump is likely to accelerate many of these trends as US allies increasingly question whether the United States will defend their security in a crisis, all while it doubles down on its nuclear investment. This modernization-turned-expansion will likely include at least one new nuclear weapon—a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile—and could also include the resumption of explosive nuclear testing in the United States. Despite these negative developments, Trump suggested at the Davos World Economic Forum last week that he may try to negotiate a new arms control agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s initial offer also included calls to negotiate with China. But it is very unlikely that China will agree to any such talks until its nuclear build-up reaches some parity with the United States and Russia, something that will take perhaps two decades. Until then, any agreement will likely be bilateral between Washington and Moscow.
Sadly, President Trump’s track record of actually negotiating nuclear agreements is poor. During his first term, Trump said he wanted to negotiate a nuclear deal with North Korea (he tried and failed), with Iran (he never tried and withdrew from an existing agreement), and with Russia and China at the same time (he failed at both). But this time around, Trump has a chance to prove his negotiating skills—but only if he does it the right way.
Terms of a nuclear deal. Trump is a baby of the Cold War, an era when nuclear weapons were seen as the ultimate symbol of US and Soviet national power and prestige. And Trump has always seen himself as the ultimate negotiator. In the 1980s already, Trump even reached out to the Reagan administration and proposed himself as the lead negotiator for nuclear talks with the Soviets. Reagan’s team passed on his offer and eventually negotiated the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty or INF in 1987 and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or START I in 1991—the first nuclear agreement to effectively reduce nuclear arsenals. Ironically, President Trump withdrew from the INF treaty in 2017, some 30 years after he was passed over for the job. But past rejections and failures die hard with Trump.
Trump’s comments in Davos beg some serious questions: Should Trump negotiate with Russia’s Putin, and what terms should he pursue if US and global security is to be enhanced?
The United States and Russia are currently parties to the New START agreement—a successor to START I—negotiated in 2010 by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev. The agreement caps each country at no more than 1550 strategic offensive weapons on 700 deployed launchers. Russia has stopped reporting nuclear forces as required by the agreement since March 2023, but both states have pledged to continue to abide by the treaty’s limits. The Biden administration announced in its final days that Russia may have exceeded these limits by a small margin, casting doubt on the entire agreement’s future under Trump. In any event, New START expires in February 2026 and no extension is legally possible. If any limits are to be put in place, a new deal will need to be negotiated, and the clock is ticking on Trump.
China’s nuclear expansion will clearly influence any US effort to negotiate with Russia. In addition to Russia remaining a nuclear peer, US nuclear and security officials from both parties are concerned about China building up its nuclear forces. Yet here, too, facts matter: China has roughly 600 total nuclear warheads, compared to the United States’s 1550 accountable strategic weapons under New START and 3700 weapons in total. And Russia’s arsenal is even larger. However, as China catches up, some analysts and officials believe the US must expand its arsenal to deter and, if needed, defeat Russia and China at the same time. This has yet to be proven militarily or strategically, but politically, in the United States, it is being taken at face value. The policy being pushed is that the United States should try to match the combined nuclear arsenals of Russia and China. That mindset will result in a never-ending arms race—the same one that led Russia and the United States to possess combined arsenals of 70,000 nuclear weapons at the peak of the Cold War—to no one’s advantage or security.
This is where the possible terms of a Trump deal might come together.
The United States and Russia have been part of arms limitation agreements since 1972. Allowing these agreements to lapse altogether opens the door to further arms racing and instability. Into this gap, Trump might be tempted to offer Russia a shorter-term deal of perhaps five or 10 years that puts an upward cap on nuclear arsenals but allows both to expand their forces from where they are now. Because arms control negotiations typically favor nice round numbers (New START is an exception), the United States and Russia might agree to, say, 3000 strategic weapons each. This new limit would allow Russia and the United States to roughly double their deployed strategic weapons while creating the illusion that the arms race is under control. However, an agreement that does not require weapon reductions would be a major step back in such agreements. The last time Washington and Moscow agreed to a deal that allowed both sides to build up their arsenals was in 1972.
In addition, arms control negotiations—from Reagan through Obama—all featured on-site inspections and effective verification. Support for this approach has broad political consensus. Yet agreeing to such steps requires hard and determined work, something the Trump team has yet to demonstrate in this arena. Trump may, therefore, bypass such steps and simply agree to an exchange of data with Russia and rely on national intelligence means (spying) and satellites for the rest. Trump’s negotiators offered Russia a similar approach during his first term, in a deal that never came to fruition. And while any agreement without effective verification would be far less effective than New START or its predecessors, it could still be sold as offering some marginal intelligence and defense value. This is not what any traditional arms control approach should seek to produce, but it should be clear to anyone by now that Trump does not tend to follow traditional approaches.
Bottlenecks. The form of a US-Russian nuclear deal is also an open question.
In the past, most but not all nuclear arms control agreements with Russia have been submitted as treaties to the Senate for its advice and consent. The now Republican-controlled Senate would likely pair approval of any such agreement with additional funding and requirements to accelerate and expand the ongoing nuclear modernization program, which is already slated to cost almost $2 trillion over the next 30 years. Of course, the current Congress is likely to fund this program, treaty or not. Still, Senate Republicans have railed against agreements in the past that cannot be enforced or effectively verified, and any deal without it would put them in a tough spot. However, in the current US political environment, it is easy to see Senate Republican leaders rubber-stamping any of Trump’s efforts in this area—as they might do in so many others.
It is not entirely clear how and when Trump will make negotiating a nuclear treaty with Russia a priority. However, it is easy to see why this kind of strategy might be attractive to Russia’s Putin. Indeed, the benefits of such a deal for Putin are what may lead Trump to invest time and energy on this nuclear agenda. Putin remains an indicted war criminal (Russia has stolen and re-educated Ukrainian children throughout the war), and he might seek to repair his global reputation and regain his position on the world stage. If the war in Ukraine ends or achieves a cease-fire—another goal Trump has promised but has yet to fulfill—the next step would be for Putin to ensure that Trump lifts US sanctions against Russia. A new nuclear arms control agreement might fit very well into Putin’s public relations campaign and facilitate Trump’s efforts to build political support to undo US pressure on Russia. This will also put the Republicans’ puzzling but sustained admiration for Russia under Putin to the test.
Last, Trump might find this approach to the deal attractive because it would put the Democratic caucus in the Senate in a tight spot. Democrats have traditionally supported negotiated nuclear arms control with Russia to control arms racing and nuclear dangers. Asking them to support a deal, even with Putin—and commit to even larger nuclear budgets to pay for it—is all but certain to divide Senate Democrats. To gain Senate approval, a treaty would require 67 votes. It is not hard to see at least two dozen Democrats or so supporting a deal to cap—even at such a large increase of forces—nuclear weapons and fund what will be billed as a necessary expansion of the US deterrent forces.
Bad deal vs. no deal. These bottlenecks beg the central question of whether a US-Russian agreement along these lines is in the United States’s interest. Put in terms familiar to conservatives: Is a bad agreement worse than no agreement at all?
Answering this requires deciding whether the United States needs to expand its nuclear force to deter Russia and China at the same time. But that is hotly debated right now. Needed or not, the United States is taking steps now that will enable it to expand its forces in the future year. The Biden administration considered steps to pursue this expansion, and the Trump team is likely to follow suit, including by putting more warheads on existing US land-based missiles and bombers.
By any historical standard, an agreement that is not effectively verified and does not substantially limit the growth of US, Russian (or Chinese) nuclear forces has marginal value for the United States and its allies. One that enables a doubling of strategic forces is better described as performative arms control. A hollow agreement might feel good, but it would likely do little to reduce nuclear risks or address growing international pressure to take serious steps toward disarmament.
Of course, these voices are likely to have little, if any, influence on the Trump administration, which now feels empowered and eager to destroy past norms and agreements. And such a nuclear deal might even bolster Trump’s self-promoted case that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, another one of Trump’s long-held wishes. But even if negotiated and approved, such a treaty would not bring stability or peace—and it would have to be heavily scrutinized. Yet without an agreement, the three largest nuclear powers will likely keep building up their arsenals. Weighing the benefits of a performative agreement versus no agreement at all is a choice the United States can and should seek to avoid.
The ultimate negotiator. Trump has an opportunity to negotiate a deal that effectively reduces nuclear risks and improves US security.
There remains hope that the president might put in the hard work required to achieve a treaty that caps US and Russian strategic weapons at current or lower levels—a level still far above what China possesses. If Washington and Moscow lock in current levels, it could take China as long as 20 years for them to catch up. This means Russia and the United States together would have almost 10,000 total weapons and China would have no more than 1500 for at least the next decade. And if China’s arsenal ever gets to a size that undermines the United States’s deterrent, whoever is president at the time would always have the possibility of withdrawing from a treaty that no longer serves US interests. Given how quickly the international security environment is changing, the new agreement could have an initial period of five years, with the option to extend for additional five-year periods, as needed. In the intervening years, circumstances and leaders will change. Creating some nuclear stability and predictability for a decade or more is a worthy achievement and should be seriously considered.
A new agreement at current or lower levels should and could include robust on-site verification that uses the lessons learned from over 50 years of inspections, as well as rely on advanced satellite and other sensor technology. All can be brought to bear in a way that protects secrets but provides the necessary transparency to make a deal worth having.
Certainly, a bad nuclear deal with Russia can, in many ways, be worse than no deal at all. But in this case, President Trump has a chance to prove his negotiating prowess and produce a deal that benefits US security now and into the future without compromising the ability of the United States to deter both Russia and China, at the same time. If President Trump seizes that chance, he will deserve accolades.
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
All Things Considered. Next Up: 5:30 PM Marketplace. 0:00. 0:00. All Things … nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary …
… nuclear weapons with the capability to wipe out cities. At the event, which All Things Nukes, a graduate student organization that examines nuclear ..
“Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant site area emergency. Everyone in Ocean Reef, Key Largo Anglers Club and Card Sound Road should monitor local media ..
Analysis: Australia needs to follow Donald Trump’s lead and declare a national energy emergency on high power bills | Paul Starick … Nuclear energy is …
It later included dangers posed by climate change and other existential threats. “The purpose of the Doomsday Clock is to start a global conversation …
Democrats have traditionally supported negotiated nuclear arms control with Russia to control arms racing and nuclear dangers. Asking them to support …
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) detected a magnitude 3.9 quake near Norris Geyser Basin, considered the Yellowstone Volcano, Tuesday at 8pm …
IAEA Weekly News
31 January 2025
Read the top news and updates published on IAEA.org this week.
World Wetlands Day highlights the importance of conserving these threatened ecosystems. The IAEA is helping to protect wetlands with isotopic techniques. Read more →
Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi will travel to Ukraine next week for high-level meetings in Kyiv, in which the ongoing efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to help prevent a nuclear accident during the military conflict will be discussed. Read more →
An IAEA team of experts said that the operator of the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant in the Russian Federation has shown a commitment to enhancing operational safety. Read more →
On Cervical Cancer Awareness Month we celebrate developments in Papua New Guinea, which has recently started radiotherapy and brachytherapy with the support of the IAEA. Read more →
In a special meeting today the IAEA Board of Governors elected Ambassador Matilda Aku Alomatu Osei-Agyeman of Ghana as its Chairperson for 2025. Read more →
Scaling up nuclear power to the level needed to achieve net zero is a significant and multifaceted undertaking, and while many reactor types may play a role, large reactors are set to lead the way. Read more →
(See published article below for image description and photo credits)
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
Without saying so the Nuclear Energy world has ignorantly placed their questionably productive cart before their very lame horse. What possible good is a nuclear power plant with no nuclear fuel (primarily enriched uranium) to run the new and old refurbished nuclear reactors. It’s like buying a new or used car with no gasoline (or batteries) to make it go.
Evidently nobody —because they were all back-slapping politicians being politically driven by global warming and the near-death nuclear industry — thought about an adequate nuclear fuel supply at that COP28 summit in December of 2023 when more than 20 countries launched the “Declaration to Triple Nuclear Power”. And, yes, it was the United States who cheer-led the summit that had its own dried up functional uranium producing industry that has steadily shriveled up since the early 1980s.
So it is that now the nuclear industry is in a bind to fuel the “White Elephants” — meaning the new potentially dangerous unproven nuclear reactors as well as older refurbished potentially dangerous nuclear reactors that are being raised from the dead.
And we should have known long ago that Nuclear Power is never going to solve the global warming issue. ~llaw
Nuclear revival puts uranium back in the critical spotlight
A view shows railway packages for containers with uranium hexafluoride salt, raw material for nuclear reactors, similar to the one to be used for the IAEA Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank, at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in the northeastern industrial city of Oskemen, Kazakhstan May 26, 2017. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Is uranium a critical mineral?
Not according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which dropped it from its critical minerals list in 2022 on the grounds it didn’t qualify because it was a “fuel mineral”, opens new tab.
U.S. President Donald Trump wants it to think again.
One of Trump’s many “Unleashing American Energy”, opens new tab directives requires the Secretary of the Interior to instruct the director of the USGS to “consider updating the survey’s list of critical minerals, including for the potential of including uranium.”
Inclusion on the list would open up federal funds and fast-track permitting for domestic uranium projects.
It seems curious that uranium has slipped through a legal gap in the Energy Act of 2020, which stipulates only a “non-fuel mineral” can be considered a critical mineral.
Uranium ticks many of the criticality boxes. It’s experiencing a step-change in demand, global supply is heavily concentrated and the United States is almost totally import dependent.
The uranium price reflects these changing dynamics. Last year’s frothy rally to a 16-year high of $106 per lb has dissipated. But at a current price of $71 per lb, uranium is still higher than at any point in the decade that followed the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.
Spot COMEX uranium price
NUCLEAR COMEBACK
Fukushima caused many countries to rethink the role of nuclear in their energy mix but the threat of global warming has brought nuclear power in from the cold.
And at the moment, you have got this kind of overhang and uncertainty with Trump and tariffs from the U.S. and potential implications on the European economies.
The affirmation came at the COP28 summit in December 2023, when more than 20 countries launched the “Declaration to Triple Nuclear Power”.
It was official recognition, opens new tab of “the key role of nuclear energy in achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and keeping the 1.5-degree goal within reach.”
Such green credentials likely don’t count for much with the Trump administration but Republicans view nuclear energy as a core component of national security, meaning it enjoys bipartisan support in the United States, albeit for different reasons.
Big tech is also enthusiastic as it searches for ever more power to feed its data centers. Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab signed a deal with Constellation Energy (CEG.O), opens new tab in September to help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
The re-embrace of nuclear power is a global trend.
Generation from the world’s fleet of nearly 420 reactors is on track to reach new heights in 2025, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Some 63 reactors are currently under construction, one of the highest levels since 1990, and the lifetimes of over 60 reactors will be extended, the IEA said.
SUPPLY STRESS
The resurgence of nuclear power means the world is going to need a lot more uranium and supply is already struggling to match demand.
A decade of low prices has taken its toll, particularly in the United States, where production fell from almost five million lb in 2014 to just 21,000 lb in 2021, according to the IEA.
Global uranium production is now heavily concentrated. Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia accounted for around two-thirds of global output in 2022, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Indeed, one of the triggers for the January 2024 price spike was a warning from Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom (KZAP.KZ), opens new tab, the world’s largest producer, it might not achieve production targets due to a shortage of sulphuric acid.
Market stress is compounded by political stress.
The United States is trying to break its dependence on Russia for enriched uranium. Russian material accounted for 27% of the enriched uranium supplied to U.S. commercial reactors in 2023.
The Joe Biden administration banned Russian imports, albeit with waivers through 2027. Russia has responded by imposing restrictions on shipments to the United States, also with waivers.
Complicating things further is Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Canada, which is the largest supplier of uranium to the U.S. market.
GOING CRITICAL
The uranium market is recharged after a decade in hibernation.
There was a lot of speculative froth in last year’s price spike with both institutional investors such as Goldman Sachs and retail investment vehicles such as Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (U_u.TO), opens new tab chasing the rally.
But the uranium price remains historically high. The market is pricing in a supply shortfall relative to demand from a growing global fleet of nuclear reactors.
The United States has plenty of potential new supply projects, many of them using leach technology, with which to fill the gap.
How quickly they can be activated depends on the difference between a critical mineral and a “fuel mineral” that is increasingly critical.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters
Get a look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets with the Morning Bid U.S. newsletter. Sign up here.
Senior metals columnist who previously covered industrial metals markets for Metals Week and was EMEA commodities editor at Knight-Ridder (subsequently Bridge). Started up Metals Insider in 2003 and sold it to Thomson Reuters in 2008, he is author of ‘Siberian Dreams’ (2006) about the Russian Arctic.
Subscribed
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Rob Neely heads weapon simulation and computing at the lab. He says this new machine can do it all. ROB NEELY: Button to boom, so everything from the …
All Things · Culture · Food and Drink · The Guide · All … Amid growing tensions, Russia, China and the U.S. are all upgrading their nuclear test sites …
Fukushima caused many countries to rethink the role of nuclear in their energy mix but the threat of global warming has brought nuclear power in from …
‘Doomsday Clock’ moves closer to midnight amid threats of climate change, nuclear war, pandemics, AI · A science-oriented advocacy group advanced its .
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
Holy Cow — it’s a 1st! One of my “LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR posts actually made my own Google daily TODAY’s NUCLEAR WORLD’s NEWS, from Monday, (01/27/2025). The story was originally posted on news Category 1, “All Things Nuclear” of the email post from my Substack media source outlet.
So, because, yes, it the story is among the very best of the human-interest posts I have made on this daily blog, I am re-posting it again today with the hope that the CODEPINK article by Danaka Katovich from Sunday’ news on my Monday blog will get a whole helluva lot more reads that this important human-interest story deserves ~llaw
I interviewed three anti-nuke activists to understand the Doomsday Clock and how our society thinks about the very real threat of nuclear war.
“Dear young people who have never experienced war, ‘Wars begin covertly. If you sense it coming, it may be too late.’” -Takato Michishita, survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki.
On a rainy Saturday afternoon in the Catskill Mountains where New Yorkers went for the summer to escape the city heat, Alice Slater’s mother took her to go see a movie in town. It was late summer in 1945, and the second World War had just ended. Alice remembers parading around the Catskills town a few weeks earlier as everyone celebrated the end of the war. When I asked her when she first became aware of nuclear weapons, the first thing she thought to tell me was about her trip to the theater with her mom. Instead of trailers before the movies they used to show news reels. The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima projected across the screen and Alice asked her mom, “What is that?”
“That’s a wonderful new weapon and now all the boys would come home,” her mom answered.
Between what they showed on the screen and what her mom had told her, at that moment Alice had no real idea what a nuclear bomb was, or what it did to the people it was used on. It was only a mushroom cloud, and the mushroom cloud meant the war was over.
Seventeen years later, Alice was a young mom who had moved to the suburbs of New York City. Her husband was working for CBS and one day he didn’t come home – he had to stay at work to deal with breaking news for a handful of days. The world had just found out that the Soviet Union, bringing us to the height of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow, put nukes just 90 miles off the coast of the United States in Cuba. Alice, even with close proximity to someone who worked in the news, had no idea what was happening. Americans didn’t know the US had nukes near the Russian border in Turkey, too. All they knew was that the communists were threatening them with nuclear bombs. We are far removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis now, but Alice said it was probably the most afraid she’s ever been. People really thought we were about to enter another war and send the entire world into a nuclear winter. Later people found out Kennedy had negotiated to move US nukes out of Turkey. But now they’re back, and scattered all over Europe.
Carol Gilbert, around the same week Alice’s husband didn’t come home from CBS, was at her aunt’s house in Michigan. She was around fifteen years old at the time and she remembered that it must have been during the school year – it was special that she got to go stay there that day, she loved spending time with her cousin. “I remember my mom calling my aunt and saying she was going to come pick us up because they were worried about the bomb,” Carole continued, “At some point I think we knew something bad was happening, but I don’t think I fully understood what was going on.”
On the other side of Lake Michigan from Carol, Kathy Kelly was in her home in Garfield Ridge, Chicago when her mother started putting stuff down in the basement on the day the news broke. Kathy’s parents lived in London during World War II, and tried every way they could to keep her sheltered from the trauma of war, but in the face of nuclear war – what are parents to do?
All three women recall the Cuban Missile Crisis as a time of uncertainty. Where people were freaked out and didn’t know what to do. Alice was afraid for her kids, and Carol’s and Kathy’s moms were clearly afraid for their children too. Then the missiles were taken out of Cuba, and the panic disappeared.
I chose Alice, Kathy, and Carol to interview on this topic because they are anti-war activists I deeply admire. I figured the concern over nuclear weapons amongst my peers may be less than older generations because of things like the Cuban Missile Crisis, or even becoming conscious in the years right after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the more elders I talked to, the more I realized how little it may have impacted their trajectory as activists. Alice didn’t become an anti-nuke activist after the missile crisis, and neither Carol nor Kathy mentioned it as a moment they remembered in the awakening of their conscience. Kathy was radicalized on the issue of nukes by the women who worked at the bookshop in downtown Chicago that she would stop into on her way to work as a teenager. Alice was pulled into the movement by the war in Vietnam.
On January 28th, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the Doomsday Clock in 1947, will reveal how close we are to midnight, or “doom”. Since the clock was made, nukes have proliferated all over the world. First it was the US, and then US and Russia – now nine countries have a nuclear weapons stockpile. It would only take a fraction of that firepower to send us into a nuclear winter, wiping out all life as we know it. The Doomsday Clock was created as a warning – a warning that the most powerful people in the world are playing God. It’s not an exaggeration in the slightest, because of a handful of people, one political misstep or accident and our whole planet is destroyed along with every precious life on it. Governments continue to pour trillions of dollars into developing these weapons while people they are supposed to care about sleep out on the street.
With tensions between the US, Russia, China, and Iran at a high, we should all be putting things in the basement, picking our kids up from their playdates, and preparing for disaster. Instead, we walk around like a bomb was never dropped. Like hundreds of thousands of Japanese people didn’t have their lives taken or destroyed. With no reason to believe so, we act like our government would never do it again. While our leaders have bombed a dozen countries to oblivion since World War II ended, we still act like we are the civilians the world ought to care about, like we are untouchable. We aren’t. Mutually assured destruction might be useful if the people with their fingers on the buttons cared for the people they governed, but oftentimes they don’t.
I asked Carol why she thinks no one is really freaked out about nuclear weapons like they ought to be, whether they be my age or hers. She said, “We have too much.” She was talking specifically about Americans, whose lives are inherently made more comfortable because of the conquest and wars of our past and present. Whether we would like to admit it or not, the United States and the entire modern life it provides is built on war. When I asked Alice, specifically in relation to the Cuban Missile Crisis, if people were scared into becoming anti-nuke activists she said, “You’re asking me if I was scared…I just kept hoping that democracy would prevail in some way, I guess.”
Carol, a Roman Catholic sister, along with two other Dominican nuns were convicted of sabotage after pouring their blood into a Minuteman III missile loaded with a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb in Colorado. She spent two and a half years in federal prison for drawing attention to the real weapons of mass destruction while George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made up fake ones in Iraq. In the eighties, Kathy was greeted by four armed soldiers riding in a large military vehicle after she planted corn on top of a nuclear missile silo in Missouri. A soldier was left behind with Kathy while she was handcuffed, kneeling on the ground. “Do you think the corn will grow?” she asked him. “I don’t know ma’am,” he responded, but I sure hope so.” Following a trial, Kathy spent nine months in maximum security prison.
Whether or not the Doomsday Clock reveals we are inching closer to midnight or staying where we are, the fear around nuclear armageddon seems to freeze most of us in our tracks. If the whole world is going to be annihilated and suffering is imminent anyways, why think about it at all? We can cross that bridge to hell when we get there. If there wasn’t a nuclear stockpile that could end life at any moment, maybe people would feel more inspired. Afterall, preventing doom isn’t a particularly motivating notion. On the other side of doom is just life as we’ve been living it, which isn’t that great for a lot of people.
Alice, Carol and Kathy are all inspired activists. When you talk to them you don’t really ever get the sense that they will stop pushing ahead for what they believe in. I met Carol in the halls of Congress last February, despite being over fifty years older than me she was leaving me in the dust. After 12,000 steps on Capitol Hill, she walked with me to a vigil for Aaron Bushnell, an active duty airman who self-immolated over the genocide in Gaza. Never once in any of my conversations with them did I ever get the sense they did what they did out of fear – whether it be fear of war, nuclear winter, or overall doom. They all talk about a world that gives people what they need to survive and thrive. Kathy talked to me about international cooperation and laughed at the idea of borders, “When there’s a nuclear energy accident like Chernobyl or Fukushima, the poison that floats around in the air doesn’t care about your borders.” And she made note of the brilliant atomic scientists, and how quickly they’d figure out how to address the climate catastrophe if only we were to change our priorities. They talk at length about how the world ought to be, and their vision for a better future is what propels them ahead, not doom. Doom isn’t good enough to get us to where we need to go.
Planting corn over a nuclear silo, disrupting a weapons manufacturer, and creating a community of war resisters are steps we can take toward something much more impactful. A world that is mindful about nuclear weapons can push towards their elimination, and we absolutely must. If you’re not moved away from doom, be moved towards peace. At CODEPINK, we’ve created a Peace Clock to give us ways not to just move away from doom, but to bring us closer to the kind of world we want to see. It’s something that’s been within our sight a thousand times, we have to sprint towards it.
“Dear young people who have never experienced the horrors of war – I fear that some of you may be taking this hard-earned peace for granted.” Takato Michishita
Danaka Katovich is CODEPINK’s National Co-Director. Danaka graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science in November 2020
Subscribed
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
It’s about the Tuesday’s (tomorrow) “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) update of the “Doomsday Clock”, the “Cold War”, and the public impact (or lack …
(See Article from U.S. News below for photo credits and description) ~llaw
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
So it is that the “Doomsday Clock” was moved forward to 89 seconds from the two-year stint of 90 seconds. It was, I believe, simply a gesture to say that nothing has improved and that therefore a new risk record was set. Watching the speakers who gave their independent reasonings that caused the change, the 1st human name from the 1st speaker was that of Donald Trump (who is oddly not mentioned as a possible uncooperative leader in the U.S. News article posted below) and the risks he presents to the mandatory cooperative world of leadership that is required to set the clock back to a more reasonable amount of time. It occurred to me as the other speakers spoke of global warming, pandemic disease (including avian flu), and, surprisingly, AI and its potential intelligence risk to humanity, and the other usual scourges, mostly of a nuclear variety, the clock had no unusually valid reason other than Trump to move the clock at all with the possible exception of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The already written fill-in-the blanks hurried stories from the media this morning were, with the AI exception, all about the same old controversies, similar to the one posted below . . . ~llaw
‘Doomsday Clock’ Moves Closer to Midnight Amid Threats of Climate Change, Nuclear War, Pandemics, AI
A science-oriented advocacy group says the Earth is moving closer to destruction
Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, second from left, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists member Robert Socolow, second from right, reveal the Doomsday Clock, set at 89 seconds to midnight, as fellow members Herbert Lin, left, and Suzet McKinney, right, watch during a news conference at the United States Institute of Peace, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Earth is moving closer to destruction, a science-oriented advocacy group said Tuesday as it advanced its famous “Doomsday Clock” to 89 seconds till midnight, the closest it has ever been.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists made the annual announcement — which rates how close humanity is from ending — citing threats that include climate change, proliferation of nuclear weapons, instability in the Middle East, the threat of pandemics and incorporation of artificial intelligence in military operations.
The clock had stood at 90 seconds to midnight for the past two years and “when you are at this precipice, the one thing you don’t want to do is take a step forward,” said Daniel Holz, chair of the group’s science and security board.
“A lot of the rhetoric is very disturbing,” Holz said. “There is this growing sense that … some nation might end up using nuclear weapons, and that’s terrifying.”
Starting in 1947, the advocacy group used a clock to symbolize the potential and even likelihood of people doing something to end humanity. After the end of the Cold War, it was as close as 17 minutes to midnight. In the past few years, to address rapid global changes, the group has changed from counting down the minutes until midnight to counting down the seconds.
The group said the clock could be turned back if leaders and nations worked together to address existential risks.
___
Subscribed
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
‘Doomsday Clock’ moves closer to midnight amid threats of climate change, nuclear war, pandemics, AI … Watch breaking news and other live events from …
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
A must read! This very thoughtful, accurate, and interesting story is from LLAW’s All Things Nuclear WEEKEND NEWS, Sunday, (01/26/2025). It’s about the Tuesday’s (tomorrow) “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) update of the “Doomsday Clock”, the “Cold War”, and the public impact (or lack of) the meaning of a potential nuclear war from a feminine-way perspective with an anti-nuclear point of view — a view that we all must place foremost in our lives and our vision of the future if we are to be sure of our survival.
Author Danaka Katovich understands implicitly why it is that so few of us today are worried about all things nuclear and nuclear war in particular. Since I began this blog, for the very same reasons as her own concerns, about two and a half years ago, I understand and absolutely empathize along with her that we have grown to ignore the threat of “armageddon” from nuclear war because we believe our government(s) have our best interests in mind and therefore they will do the right thing and take care of us — so why bother to worry about the impending threat of “Doom”?
My experience of the futile writing and posting every-day, sadly witnessing an enormous lack of concern for our future and our ultimate human destiny has been a rude awakening for me in the same way it has for Danaka and anyone else who has a sense of facing a possible merciless global nuclear war that threatens our collective reality of life versus a made-up pretentious politicized and militaristic government(s)-led world of forced “peace” through a few world-leaders’ nuclear threats, deterrence, and eventually a doomsday war. And so it is that the “doom” of avoiding nuclear self-destruction, as I’ve stated so many times before on this very blog, only we-the-people — the masses — can prevent our demise at the hands of one power-crazed world leader with a nuclear arsenal at his disposal. ~llaw
I interviewed three anti-nuke activists to understand the Doomsday Clock and how our society thinks about the very real threat of nuclear war.
“Dear young people who have never experienced war, ‘Wars begin covertly. If you sense it coming, it may be too late.’” -Takato Michishita, survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki.
On a rainy Saturday afternoon in the Catskill Mountains where New Yorkers went for the summer to escape the city heat, Alice Slater’s mother took her to go see a movie in town. It was late summer in 1945, and the second World War had just ended. Alice remembers parading around the Catskills town a few weeks earlier as everyone celebrated the end of the war. When I asked her when she first became aware of nuclear weapons, the first thing she thought to tell me was about her trip to the theater with her mom. Instead of trailers before the movies they used to show news reels. The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima projected across the screen and Alice asked her mom, “What is that?”
“That’s a wonderful new weapon and now all the boys would come home,” her mom answered.
Between what they showed on the screen and what her mom had told her, at that moment Alice had no real idea what a nuclear bomb was, or what it did to the people it was used on. It was only a mushroom cloud, and the mushroom cloud meant the war was over.
Seventeen years later, Alice was a young mom who had moved to the suburbs of New York City. Her husband was working for CBS and one day he didn’t come home – he had to stay at work to deal with breaking news for a handful of days. The world had just found out that the Soviet Union, bringing us to the height of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow, put nukes just 90 miles off the coast of the United States in Cuba. Alice, even with close proximity to someone who worked in the news, had no idea what was happening. Americans didn’t know the US had nukes near the Russian border in Turkey, too. All they knew was that the communists were threatening them with nuclear bombs. We are far removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis now, but Alice said it was probably the most afraid she’s ever been. People really thought we were about to enter another war and send the entire world into a nuclear winter. Later people found out Kennedy had negotiated to move US nukes out of Turkey. But now they’re back, and scattered all over Europe.
Carol Gilbert, around the same week Alice’s husband didn’t come home from CBS, was at her aunt’s house in Michigan. She was around fifteen years old at the time and she remembered that it must have been during the school year – it was special that she got to go stay there that day, she loved spending time with her cousin. “I remember my mom calling my aunt and saying she was going to come pick us up because they were worried about the bomb,” Carole continued, “At some point I think we knew something bad was happening, but I don’t think I fully understood what was going on.”
On the other side of Lake Michigan from Carol, Kathy Kelly was in her home in Garfield Ridge, Chicago when her mother started putting stuff down in the basement on the day the news broke. Kathy’s parents lived in London during World War II, and tried every way they could to keep her sheltered from the trauma of war, but in the face of nuclear war – what are parents to do?
All three women recall the Cuban Missile Crisis as a time of uncertainty. Where people were freaked out and didn’t know what to do. Alice was afraid for her kids, and Carol’s and Kathy’s moms were clearly afraid for their children too. Then the missiles were taken out of Cuba, and the panic disappeared.
I chose Alice, Kathy, and Carol to interview on this topic because they are anti-war activists I deeply admire. I figured the concern over nuclear weapons amongst my peers may be less than older generations because of things like the Cuban Missile Crisis, or even becoming conscious in the years right after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the more elders I talked to, the more I realized how little it may have impacted their trajectory as activists. Alice didn’t become an anti-nuke activist after the missile crisis, and neither Carol nor Kathy mentioned it as a moment they remembered in the awakening of their conscience. Kathy was radicalized on the issue of nukes by the women who worked at the bookshop in downtown Chicago that she would stop into on her way to work as a teenager. Alice was pulled into the movement by the war in Vietnam.
On January 28th, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the Doomsday Clock in 1947, will reveal how close we are to midnight, or “doom”. Since the clock was made, nukes have proliferated all over the world. First it was the US, and then US and Russia – now nine countries have a nuclear weapons stockpile. It would only take a fraction of that firepower to send us into a nuclear winter, wiping out all life as we know it. The Doomsday Clock was created as a warning – a warning that the most powerful people in the world are playing God. It’s not an exaggeration in the slightest, because of a handful of people, one political misstep or accident and our whole planet is destroyed along with every precious life on it. Governments continue to pour trillions of dollars into developing these weapons while people they are supposed to care about sleep out on the street.
With tensions between the US, Russia, China, and Iran at a high, we should all be putting things in the basement, picking our kids up from their playdates, and preparing for disaster. Instead, we walk around like a bomb was never dropped. Like hundreds of thousands of Japanese people didn’t have their lives taken or destroyed. With no reason to believe so, we act like our government would never do it again. While our leaders have bombed a dozen countries to oblivion since World War II ended, we still act like we are the civilians the world ought to care about, like we are untouchable. We aren’t. Mutually assured destruction might be useful if the people with their fingers on the buttons cared for the people they governed, but oftentimes they don’t.
I asked Carol why she thinks no one is really freaked out about nuclear weapons like they ought to be, whether they be my age or hers. She said, “We have too much.” She was talking specifically about Americans, whose lives are inherently made more comfortable because of the conquest and wars of our past and present. Whether we would like to admit it or not, the United States and the entire modern life it provides is built on war. When I asked Alice, specifically in relation to the Cuban Missile Crisis, if people were scared into becoming anti-nuke activists she said, “You’re asking me if I was scared…I just kept hoping that democracy would prevail in some way, I guess.”
Carol, a Roman Catholic sister, along with two other Dominican nuns were convicted of sabotage after pouring their blood into a Minuteman III missile loaded with a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb in Colorado. She spent two and a half years in federal prison for drawing attention to the real weapons of mass destruction while George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made up fake ones in Iraq. In the eighties, Kathy was greeted by four armed soldiers riding in a large military vehicle after she planted corn on top of a nuclear missile silo in Missouri. A soldier was left behind with Kathy while she was handcuffed, kneeling on the ground. “Do you think the corn will grow?” she asked him. “I don’t know ma’am,” he responded, but I sure hope so.” Following a trial, Kathy spent nine months in maximum security prison.
Whether or not the Doomsday Clock reveals we are inching closer to midnight or staying where we are, the fear around nuclear armageddon seems to freeze most of us in our tracks. If the whole world is going to be annihilated and suffering is imminent anyways, why think about it at all? We can cross that bridge to hell when we get there. If there wasn’t a nuclear stockpile that could end life at any moment, maybe people would feel more inspired. Afterall, preventing doom isn’t a particularly motivating notion. On the other side of doom is just life as we’ve been living it, which isn’t that great for a lot of people.
Alice, Carol and Kathy are all inspired activists. When you talk to them you don’t really ever get the sense that they will stop pushing ahead for what they believe in. I met Carol in the halls of Congress last February, despite being over fifty years older than me she was leaving me in the dust. After 12,000 steps on Capitol Hill, she walked with me to a vigil for Aaron Bushnell, an active duty airman who self-immolated over the genocide in Gaza. Never once in any of my conversations with them did I ever get the sense they did what they did out of fear – whether it be fear of war, nuclear winter, or overall doom. They all talk about a world that gives people what they need to survive and thrive. Kathy talked to me about international cooperation and laughed at the idea of borders, “When there’s a nuclear energy accident like Chernobyl or Fukushima, the poison that floats around in the air doesn’t care about your borders.” And she made note of the brilliant atomic scientists, and how quickly they’d figure out how to address the climate catastrophe if only we were to change our priorities. They talk at length about how the world ought to be, and their vision for a better future is what propels them ahead, not doom. Doom isn’t good enough to get us to where we need to go.
Planting corn over a nuclear silo, disrupting a weapons manufacturer, and creating a community of war resisters are steps we can take toward something much more impactful. A world that is mindful about nuclear weapons can push towards their elimination, and we absolutely must. If you’re not moved away from doom, be moved towards peace. At CODEPINK, we’ve created a Peace Clock to give us ways not to just move away from doom, but to bring us closer to the kind of world we want to see. It’s something that’s been within our sight a thousand times, we have to sprint towards it.
“Dear young people who have never experienced the horrors of war – I fear that some of you may be taking this hard-earned peace for granted.” Takato Michishita
Danaka Katovich is CODEPINK’s National Co-Director. Danaka graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science in November 2020.
Subscribed
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… all be speculation about investments that won’t eventually happen. Nuclear energy’s big challenge. It’s easy to speculate about AI’s need for nuclear …
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The news that NextEra Energy Resources, the owner of Iowa’s only nuclear power plant, is beginning the process to reopen the plant by 2028, mirrors a …
Trump’s idea that the Kremlin would run screaming due to his threats of tariffs is making the Russians chuckle. According to the mainstream propaganda …
In order to keep abreast of the weekend nuclear news, I will post Saturday and Sunday’s news, but without editorial comment. If a weekend story warrants a critical review, it will show up on Monday’s posts . . .
If you are not familiar with the weekday daily blog post, this is how the nuclear news post works . . . llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
We got to get hands on gas turbines,” he said. “If you take all those things together, when is gas really going to be able to contribute at scale? We’ …
… nuclear presence, focusing on reductions in nuclear forces after the Cold War. … threats blend nuclear and non-nuclear elements. By integrating hybrid …
See image description and credit in the following article from “The Nation”.
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
The Wednesday announcement by the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” will likely shorten their “Doomsday Clock” clock from the current “90 Seconds to Midnight” on January 28th. Much of the ticking off of a few more seconds, if any, will no doubt be attributed to the new 2nd presidency of Trump, who has made, during his previous 1st term, numerous regrettable and dangerously negatively threatening statements relative to nuclear war.
Learning how much time, if any, will come off the clock and the explanation for it will be very interesting . . . ~llaw
January 23, 2025
The Doomsday Clock Will Move Forward
So why is the grave threat of nuclear war virtually absent from our politics?
The Doomsday Clock set to 90 seconds to midnight at the National Press Club, in Washington, DC, Tuesday, January 24, 2023.(Patrick Semansky / AP Photo)
With Donald Trump’s inauguration, the lame-duck period has finally ended, but another unnerving countdown is upon us. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will update the Doomsday Clock—a metaphorical device to warn the public about our proximity to self-destruction, especially through the use of nuclear weapons—on January 28.
For the last couple of years, the hands of the clock have remained at 90 seconds to midnight, its most perilous position since its creation in 1947. The Bulletin has cited the emergence of artificial intelligence and bio-threats like bird flu as influencing its impending update. No doubt it has also taken note of an emboldened and expansionist Donald Trump, who is already threatening to invade Mexico, annex Canada, and seize the Panama Canal.
Though Trump’s surreal efforts to reignite American imperialism are rightfully making headlines, the grave threat of nuclear weapons is virtually absent from political attention. Might Trump’s parade of underqualified national security cabinet nominees bring renewed scrutiny to these threats? So, too, will an almost certain advancement of the Doomsday Clock. The challenge for the media and political movements and electeds will be to sustain that attention—and turn it into action.
Thirty years ago, the United States was dismantling warheads at a historic pace. But in 2002, John Bolton—then the undersecretary of state for arms control—persuaded George W. Bush to withdraw from the cornerstone of anti-nuclear scaffolding, the decades-long Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. Absent bilateral guarantees and incentives to the contrary, Russia has increasingly incorporated nuclear weapons into its military planning. That normalization culminated last year, when Vladimir Putin authorized using tactical nukes in response to nonnuclear attacks, perhaps the most hazardous military doctrine since the Cold War’s mutually assured destruction.
Unsurprisingly, the incoming administration has divulged no intentions for a detente. The New START Treaty, a continuation of a nuclear reduction strategy begun under Ronald Reagan, will expire next year, and it’s uncertain whether President “Fire and Fury” has any intention of renewing it. (The first Trump administration had the opportunity to renew the treaty in 2020, but reached a stalemate and left the Biden administration to extend it in 2021.)
Given the executive branch’s belligerence, the responsibility of raising this issue falls to an engaged media. Whether the corporate media understands the weight of that responsibility, however, remains totally unclear. Neither presidentialdebate featured a single question about nuclear weapons. Still, some publications have become more active in their coverage. The New York Times, for example, recently dedicated a 14-piece series to “the threat of nuclear weapons.” This examination may have been partly inspired by the recent surge of pop-culture interest in the atomic question, from the 2023 blockbuster film Oppenheimer to Annie Jacobsen’s 2024 bestseller, Nuclear War: A Scenario.
As public consciousness around this threat continues to swell, voters will inevitably begin to ask: What is the Democratic Party’s position on all of this? The 2024 Democratic National Convention didn’t provide solace or answers, with presidential nominee Kamala Harris pledging to make America’s military “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Other than a sculpture of a mushroom cloud at an off-site art installation, the convention—and the resulting party platform—offered few specifics about nuclear policy.
In contrast, a handful of Democratic politicians have used their bully pulpits for peace. Earlier this week, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) urged imposing guardrails on the executive authority to launch a nuclear strike, deeming it “terrifying, dangerous, and unconstitutional.” Markey, alongside the cochairs of the Congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, has also cautioned against overspending on nuclear modernization. A small group of representatives that includes Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rules Committee chairman James McGovern (D-MA) has gone further, calling on the US to join an international agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons altogether.
As we wait for more politicians and journalists to treat the prospect of nuclear annihilation with, well, gravity, this country’s most reliable driver of progress is already organizing: the American people. To name one effort, Back from the Brink is a national coalition of almost 500 organizations aiming to make nuclear weapons “a local issue.” In 2021, it convinced 300 state and local officials to write to President Biden urging action toward nuclear disarmament. Despite receiving too little attention, it inspired further engagement, like high schoolers successfully lobbying the mayor of Burbank to call for abolishing nuclear weapons.
Amid this activism, US nuclear bunker sales are also on the rise. That money and energy would be better invested in preventing the need for such a shelter in the first place. But this trend nonetheless reflects prevailing concerns. Pundits and candidates alike are fond of asking: “Should this person have the nuclear codes?” But that misses the more fundamental question: Should anyone have any nuclear codes at all? The longer we take to answer this quandary—or even begin to debate it—the closer the Doomsday Clock ticks to midnight.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.
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Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has long believed that independent journalism has the capacity to bring about a more democratic and equitable world.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
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