Nukewatch – Page 25

May 29, 2025 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Who’s on the List of Radical Left Thugs that Live Like Vermin?

By John LaForge

**A stark monument in Hamburg’s courthouse square, near the infamous Dammtor prison. Photo by the author.**

I’m married to a German citizen who’s a life-long resident here in Hamburg, and I spent most of the winter and spring in this city of two-million — a far cry from my rural Wisconsin homestead outside a town of 2,000. Not far from our flat is Hamburg’s federal, state and municipal courthouse square, which has a billboard-sized concrete cuboid monument with a blunt, stark, and grim reminder. It reads simply: 1933. The monument is also the site of Dammtor prison where during the terror the Nazi regime conducted 468 executions using the guillotine.

It’s frightening to follow news of repression in the United States, and people here ask why I intend to fly back this month. The short answer is my connection to the rest of my family and friends, my work colleagues, personal identity, the national park system, and the intentional community farmstead that a group of us built with our own hands over the last 36 years.

The prevalence and unpredictable expansion of political persecution is what my friends here and at home are afraid of. They know even high-ranking Republican Party stalwarts like Alaska’s U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski have said publicly, “We are all afraid. I’m oftentimes very anxious about using my voice because retaliation is real.”

This trepidation in high places prompted Sally Quinn to write in the New York Times May 10, “Washington is physically, emotionally, psychologically and spirituality permeated with an invisible poison. The emotion all around … is fear. Nobody feels safe.” Perhaps nobody should. Trump said Nov. 17, 2023 in New Hampshire, “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” I wonder if Sally Quinn and I qualify for the “vermin thug” list.

It’s hard to say, since Trump himself could hardly be more thuggish. On his first day in office he demonstrated that his magical thinking can’t find thugs among his radical right storm troopers. He released from prison 1,500 January 6 rioters led by far-right militias, many of whom had been convicted of violently assaulting police officers, injuring 140.

Speaking of thugs with the rightwing website National Pulse, Trump said that immigration was “poisoning the blood of our country” — his Hitlerian dog whistle heard around the world which he would repeat. At an Ohio rally March 16, 2024, he said about immigrants, “I don’t know if you call them people. In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion.” Using his best words, Trump added, “I’ve seen the humanity, and these humanity, these are bad, these are animals, okay?”

Dehumanization and vengeful cruelty

Robert Jones, of the Public Religion Research Institute, told National Public Radio in 2023 that “dehumanization of political opponents are the bricks that pave the road to political violence.” In view of Charlottesville, January 6, and the pardons of unrepentant paramilitary rioters, that road’s been paved, resurfaced, and upgraded to a speedway.

Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts Univ. graduate student from Turkey was grabbed March 25 in Somerville, Mass. by masked secret agents, shipped off to a Louisiana jail, and held there 7 weeks for signing an opinion piece in the college paper. Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, was abducted without a warrant from his Columbia University housing in New York City by ICE agents March 8 and shipped to jail in Louisiana, although he’s not charged with a crime. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland sheet metal worker with no criminal record, was mistakenly shipped to El Salvador’s notorious “Center for Terrorism Confinement” or Cecot maximum security mega-prison, in violation of a federal immigration judge’s 2019 order prohibiting the U.S. from returning him to El Salvador, where gangs could “pose a threat to his life.” Garcia is still there.

The Kafkaesque nightmare nature of Trump’s martial law dreams is that neither the U.S. State Department nor the government of El Salvador have even identified the 260 prisoners sent to the giant maximum-security prison, and neither state has provided evidence of the men’s alleged crimes or gang membership. A federal judge’s order forbade the White House from invoking an antique wartime law to justify the deportations, but the flights had already left. The imprisoned men have effectively vanished indefinitely inside a Salvadoran dictator’s police state nihilism, without recourse. Is that federal district judge on the list?

And immigrants aren’t Trump’s only targets. Lydia Polgreen reported May 8 in the New York Times that the president “muses about ejecting U.S. citizens too,” and enacting “the fantasy of expelling every person he deems undesirable.” In January, Trump talked about sending U.S. citizens who are “repeat offenders” to El Salvador’s gulag-for-hire. Repeatedly belaboring his repetitive repetition again and again, Trump said January 27 in Miami, “If they’ve been arrested many, many times, they’re repeat offenders by many numbers.”

He added, “We’re going to get approval, hopefully, to get them the hell out of our country, along with others,” NBC News reported. The next day Trump said in the Oval Office he wanted U.S. citizens convicted of crimes sent to foreign prisons “to get these animals out” of the United States. “If we could get them out of our country, we have other countries that would take them.” In February, El Salvador offered to jail violent U.S. citizen convicts in the “most severe cases,” in addition to the 260 men flown there earlier from the U.S. without due process.

On May 9, White House adviser Stephen Miller said for the cameras, “The Constitution is clear — and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So, it’s an option we’re actively looking at.” Miller misquotes the U.S. Constitution to suit his Apartheid agenda. Article VI says, “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby.”

Habeas corpus is the right to challenge your detention in court and threats of its suspension moved Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut to warn, “The slope to despotism can be slippery and quick.” Maybe the senator is on the vermin list. And this is where Trump’s deliberately irrational, secret and rogue police actions, designed to keep opponents off balance, can look and feel like terror. In my work against nuclear weapons and the war system over 4 decades, I’ve been convicted of dozens of nonviolent misdemeanor charges for sit-ins, blockades, and non-payment of fines, and have been sent to 20 county jails and four federal prison camps — including one here in Germany. Within our bands of “repeat offenders,” we call ourselves “nuclear resisters,” but the peace movement’s resistance has never garnered much more than a “pffff” from the police, the masters of war, or the courts that protect them. That’s why I’ll likely be left alone at passport control when I return.

But in view of warrantless, secret police snatching and detention of nonviolent immigrants and students, without due process and even in violation of court orders, Sally Quinn’s withering warning gives pause. “The hallmark of this administration is cruelty and sadism, vengefulness carried out with glee.” As if to prove the point, Trump’s richest friend, the Afrikaner Elon Musk, has declared: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Jawohl, Herr Musk! Cue the stiff-arm salute. ###

April 7, 2025 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

New U.S. Hydrogen Bombs May Have Arrived at NATO Bases in Europe, Air Force Hints at Endless Production

By John LaForge

The transfer of new U.S. nuclear bombs to air bases in Europe as part of the quaint-sounding “nuclear sharing” program seems to have been confirmed by Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Jill Hruby.

In remarks to the Hudson Institute on January 16, Hruby said, “The new B61-12 gravity bombs are fully forward deployed, and we have increased NATO’s visibility to our nuclear capabilities.”

Hruby’s announcement came just a week after the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) revealed that production of the U.S.’s newest thermonuclear gravity bombs was complete. “In December 2024, the B61-12 life extension program … finish[ed] its production run,” the Eurasian Times reported on January 18.

NNSA’s notification came only three days after Hans Kristensen, et al. reported in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “[I]t remained unclear whether any B61-12s had been delivered to European bases.” Hruby’s surprisingly rare public declaration prompted Kristensen, of the Federation of American Scientists, to tell Eurasian Times, “This almost sounds like official confirmation that deployment of the B61-12 to Europe has begun.”

Despite resistance to illegal U.S. nuclear weapons, new hydrogen bombs may already have arrived at NATO bases. Photo: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

That Hruby’s announcement was “almost like” official confirmation is about as much openness as the public ever gets regarding the highly secretive world of nuclear weapons. Only an eye-witness account of the arrival of a giant U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane at any of six NATO “nuclear sharing” bases — in Germany, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands — could be a more certain affirmation.

In preparation for the delivery of the new air-drop thermonuclear gravity bombs, the foreign air force bases have all undertaken major, costly upgrades and expansions. The Bulletin reports, “these upgrades include the installation of double-fence security perimeters, modernizing the weapon storage and security systems and the alarm communication and display systems….” In addition, “A loading pad designed for U.S. C-17 aircraft that transports nuclear weapons is also being added at Kleine Brogel (Belgium), Büchel (Germany), Ghedi (Italy), and Volkel (the Netherlands).”

The approximately $1.14 billion Büchel Air Base upgrade also makes way for the new F-35 Stealth jet fighters being purchased by Germany to be flown by German Air Force pilots who will continue their role as planners, preparers, and prospective executioners of nuclear weapons attacks aimed at Russia.

News of the likely transfer of the new B61-12s came just as a group of nuclear weapons opponents were gathering only 15 miles from Germany’s Büchel Air Base, south of Cologne. The anti-nuclear group Nonviolent Action for Abolition met to welcome out of prison the U.S. nuclear resister Susan Crane, who had served 230 days resulting from protests at the base, and to discuss the coming year’s schedule of events which are directed against “nuclear sharing” in general and Büchel’s collaboration in particular. The NNSA’s January 18th B61-12 “job done” announcement included the thrilling, career saving and budget retaining news that its 60-year-old bomb-building assembly line “will transition to producing the B61-13 bomb.”

The Bulletin noted more soberly that the B61-version 13 comes with a thermonuclear explosive force of 360 kilotons, “significantly higher than the B61-12’s yield of 50 kilotons.”

With 24 Hiroshima-sized firestorms in each new “13,” you could say this jobs program has “unlucky” written all over it. Yet there is evidently no thought of arms control or belt-tightening when it comes to mass production of this Ford Mustang of mass destruction. The War Zone online reports this month that, “The B61-13 and future variants will require highly specialized engineering … the U.S. Air Force’s Nuclear Weapon Center’s recent contracting notice said.” (emphasis added).

Yes, contracting is the thing. And you thought it was about deterrence.

April 7, 2025 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

The Lies Have It: Xcel Energy Wins Operating Extension for Nation’s 6th Oldest Nuclear Reactor

By John LaForge

I.F. Stone famously said, “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” The aphorism applies equally well to nuclear reactor operators, including Minneapolis based Xcel Energy.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has granted Xcel a second license extension for operating its 53-year-old Monticello reactor on the Mississippi River in Minnesota. The decision will permit this General Electric jalopy, a Fukushima clone, to run until it’s 80 years old — a dangerous feat that’s never been done in the history of nuclear power. The NRC received over 3,000 public comments mostly critical of the extension, but the commission has rubber-stamped 87 of 92 similar requests, so call the NRC “Never Really Concerned.”

The NRC nod is based partly on the commission’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the re-licensing, even though the document confirms that Xcel repeatedly made false statements about its massive 2022-23 leak of radioactive cooling water. According to a March 16, 2023, Associated Press (AP) story, Xcel’s first public response to the major leak was, “There’s no danger to the public.” Xcel then proceeded to understate by more than half the leak’s actual volume, estimating it was only 400,000 gallons.

Xcel eventually acknowledged that the volume of the leak, from an old corroded underground pipe, was 829,000 gallons, and that the groundwater plume of reactor cooling water — some of which would later reach the Mississippi River — had a radioactive footprint of some fourteen curies of tritium — a very large amount. (For reference, the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island released an estimated 15 curies of gaseous radioactive iodine-131 to the Pennsylvania atmosphere. Other radioactive materials went into the Susquehanna River.)

Xcel’s 829,000-gallon leak was always a direct threat to drinking water because — as the company’s own 2023 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report states on page 13 — “It is assumed groundwater continuously flows to the river…” The Mississippi is the drinking water source for 20 million people, including Minneapolis, St. Paul, and their surrounding suburbs 37 miles downstream from the leaky reactor.

The extension will allow the Monticello reactor to operate until it’s 80 years old.

The fact that Xcel’s radioactive groundwater plume would automatically move toward the Mississippi meant the leak posed a gargantuan public relations problem. Lying about it was Xcel’s and the NRC’s first action. One NRC spokesperson, Victoria Mitlyng, told WCCO TV News, March 17, 2023, “There is no pathway for the tritium to get into drinking water.”

This mis-step was so blatant that, following pressure from Nukewatch, NRC Senior Environmental Project Manager Stephen S. Koenick publicly apologized for the fudge, at an NRC open meeting in the city of Monticello, May 15, 2024. Koenick told the gathering, “I know we had meetings in which we reported there were no indication[s] of a tritium leak making it to the Mississippi. However, in our Draft Environmental Impact Statement, we do say, we do conclude there were some very low concentrations of tritium in the Mississippi River.”

Curies and picocuries: code language helps to confuse

When these radioactive accidents take place, public relations language is employed by the industry to confuse, befog, and try to trivialize their size, scope, and potential health and environmental effects. Xcel reported to the NRC Dec. 15, 2022 that its leaked cooling water contained 5,020,000 “picocuries of radioactive tritium per liter,” sometimes written as “picocuries/liter.” This concentration is 251 times the EPA’s allowable limit for drinking water.

A picocurie is one-trillionth of a curie. Anything in the world divisible by one trillion is naturally very large, and a curie is a very large cache of radioactivity indeed. One curie amounts to 37 billion atomic disintegrations-per-second.

The NRC’s final EIS states on page 3-48, “Monticello reported an abnormal discharge to the Mississippi River from tritium contaminated groundwater of 0.167 curies of tritium between 07/27/23 and 12/31/23….”

The figure “0.167 curies” may give the impression of a small amount, but this amount of tritium contamination leaked to the Mississippi translates to 167 billion picocuries. Again, 20,000 picocuries-per liter is the current EPA allowable drinking water limit.

Over seven million gallons of groundwater has been pumped from Xcel’s onsite wells to try and keep more tritium from reaching the Mississippi. The final EIS says about this pollution at page 3-206 “For the period from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023, a total of 0.388 Ci [curies] of tritium (released via natural evaporation from the temporary tanks and the groundwater remediation pond) was reported during calendar year 2023.” This is to say 388 billion picocuries of tritium were sent floating around Minnesota’s Wright and Sherburne counties. This underreported and unplanned, emergency stop-gap response poses some risk for the surrounding residents who breathe.

Xcel’s estimated leak of 14 curies of tritium will contaminate the moving groundwater for a very long time. Its radioactive half-life is 12.3 years, so the tritium will persist for about 12 decades while it decays to helium-3 (radioactive substances are considered hazardous for ten half lives). Once tritium contaminates water, it is impossibly expensive to remove. A new textbook on tritium reports, “its half-life is short enough that it is extremely radioactive. For a given mass, it is, for instance, about 150,000 times as radioactive, in terms of disintegrations per unit time, as plutonium-239. One teaspoon of tritiated water would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the U.S. drinking water limit.”

Alarmingly, when tritium is internalized (ingested or inhaled) it can result in problem pregnancies, miscarriages, and birth abnormalities because this machine-made radioactive poison crosses the placenta where it threatens the fetus. Yet the NRC has neither imposed a penalty nor even issued a rebuke to Xcel for its enormous leak or for its public lying that still paints a false picture of its consequences.

Xcel’s home website seen Jan. 8, 2025 still includes the uncorrected notice of March 16, 2023 that claims, “Xcel Energy took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment,” and in the next paragraph it still says, “the leaked water is fully contained on-site and has not been detected beyond the facility”. Of course, Xcel knows that nothing “contains” groundwater which is constantly moving willy-nilly. This company’s public pronouncements must not be believed.

The Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River, made up of regional environmental, climate, and justice groups has vowed to see the reactor closed before the achy, breaky Monticello unit causes a more catastrophic radiation release.

— John LaForge and the Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River, Lindsay Potter contributed research to this report.

April 7, 2025 by Nukewatch 1 Comment

Minnesota Legislature Considers Repeal of Nuclear Moratorium

By Lindsay Potter

Bills are circulating in the Minnesota legislature to repeal the state’s 31-year-old moratorium on building new nuclear reactors. Members of the Nukewatch and the Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River testified before committees in the House and Senate and are collaborating with the Rise and Repair Alliance to oppose the repeal. Now is the time for Minnesota residents to write, email, and call state legislators: urge them to oppose the repeal. As the Nukewatch Quarterly has emphasized again and again, nuclear power cannot aid in confronting the climate crisis — it is simply too costly and too slow. (See Welcome to Planet Vogtle: The Lessons of Georgia’s Nuclear Boondoggle and Seven Reasons Why Nuclear Energy is Not the Answer to Solve Climate Change.)

Nuclear electricity costs about 3-14 times that of onshore wind, takes 7 to 21 years longer between planning and operation than wind, and produces 9 to 37 times the emissions as wind. Nuclear creates risk and cost associated with nuclear weapons proliferation, meltdowns and accidents, the uranium fuel chain, radiation health risks, radioactive waste, threats to vital water sources, and environmental racism.

Nuclear power has received four times more federal funding for research and development over the last 70 years than renewables and is still the most expensive energy option. The U.S. Energy Information Agency’s 2024 comparison of energy sources calculated that nuclear power costs three to four times more than the combination of renewable wind and solar power plus back-up batteries. This does not include the cost of meltdowns or accidents, or the cost of packaging and storing radioactive waste, which must be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years.

So far, the only U.S. long-term waste storage project, at Yucca Mountain, Nev., had a projected total cost of $96 billion, took 18 years and wasted $8 billion before being cancelled as scientifically unviable. Canada has proposed a waste site 90 miles northeast of Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park and 150 miles north of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Prospective small modular reactor (SMR) technology has yet to produce a single commercial reactor in the U.S., and the first licensed project folded after costs soared. Like large reactors, SMRs produce radioactive waste and suffer the same climate-worsening construction times and cost overruns.

Leading experts have shown we do not need nuclear to reach 100% renewable energy in Minnesota — this can be done with wind, solar, and battery storage. Research has shown batteries can meet demand fluctuations more effectively than nuclear.

Visit nukewatchinfo.org/protect-minnesotas-nuclear-moratorium/ to find template letters and how to contact legislators.

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