Quarterly Newsletter

November 12, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Four DOE Test Reactors Go Critical in Public Relations Stunt

By Lindsay Potter

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and private Big Tech investors have spent billions of dollars, and side-stepped decades of safety regulation work, to jump-start the small modular and “advanced” new nuclear reactors that the Trump White House dreams will deliver a “nuclear renaissance.” The DOE even declared in a press release that the “Golden Era of American Nuclear Energy has Arrived.”

There were 15 projects chosen for an expedited DOE approval process as a pilot program, and five have now achieved “criticality,” or a sustained nuclear reaction, most without producing electricity.

With its zero-power criticality demonstration, the company Antares Nuclear, Inc.’s reactor design, the Mark-0, was the first. The demonstration took place June 5 at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) under DOE authorization.

The test reactor demonstration was conducted in partnership with DOE, INL, and BWX Technologies, Inc. ⸺ supplier of the TRISO fuel used to power the reactor ⸺ and with support from the U.S. Army, which is seen as a future end user of the reactor.

The Antares TRISO fuel comes from scrap materials provided by the DOE’s nuclear weapons program, the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The criticality demonstration represents a key step toward deploying electricity-producing micro-reactors for U.S. military installations “by the end of September 2028,” Antares said.

Other Criticalities and Milestones this Summer

**Idaho National Lab, the site of recent tests of small modular nuclear reactors, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. Photo: inl.gov**

Valar Atomics’ “Ward 250” reactor ⸺ the size of a minivan ⸺ is the first of the DOE-approved reactors that was not constructed at a national lab. Under the DOE pilot program, it reached criticality on June 18, 2026, and powered up to 10 kilowatts as of June 22.

Deployable Energy, Inc’s reactor, a helium-cooled high-temperature gas, 1-megawatt micro-reactor called the “Unity Nuclear Battery,” also at INL, was the third to reach criticality.

The fourth reactor in the program, Aalo Atomic’s reactor “Aalo-X” reached zero-power criticality on July 4, again at INL.

The “Groves Isotope Test Reactor,” developed by Oklo, and Atomic Alchemy, became the first reactor on private land using fully commercially available fuel, to reach criticality.

Where do we go from here?

What all these new criticalities mean, beyond validating the fanfare of Trump’s Executive Order 14301, remains to be seen. The road from criticality to producing electricity ⸺ and from there to being commercial viability and utility scale ⸺ is long. It does, however, mean that this administration and the Big Tech firms that have so vehemently wooed it, are pushing hard ⸺ with their collective trillions ⸺ toward realizing new reactor ambitions, largely in hopes of powering AI data centers, surveillance, and imperial military outposts. It is no coincidence that most of these reactor designs are being tested at national labs and military sites, skirting Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules for civilian licensing and safety regulation.

Antares CEO Jordan Bramble put it this way: “We said criticality in 2026, electricity production in 2027, and power to the war fighter in 2028 … That doesn’t happen by accident. … It also doesn’t happen without decades of DOE investment …. Idaho National Laboratory and DOE-Idaho provided the design, regulatory, and facilities support that enabled this schedule.”

As an all-star cast of Big Tech heavyweights appeared before Congress for a hearing this September ⸺ imploring the federal government to finally regulate rollout of new artificial intelligence technology ⸺ it is worth remembering that the same lineup of suits has spent ten years privately funding development of small modular “advanced” nuclear reactors and lobbying Congress to repeal federal regulation of commercial reactor licensing, construction, and operation.

⸺ World Nuclear News, June 5; MSN, July 2; Forbes, July 2; Real Clear Energy, July 14; U.S. Department of Energy “Fact Sheet,” July 25; goingcritical.org, Sept.

November 12, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Gaza’s Board of Pieces Morphs into War on Iran

**Pulitzer prize-winning photo by Palestinian** Saher Alghorra. The family, pictured amidst the rubble of Beit Lahia, shares a meal to break the Ramadan fast in the devastated remains of their home. Israel violates agreements with daily violence, starvation, eviction, and killing of Palestinians. Prizes such as the Pulitzer magnify the hypocrisy that the world will honor recording such suffering but refuse to take real action to end it.

By Chris Hedges

Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza is a mirage, a conjuring trick in which peace is unilaterally declared as Israel seizes more Palestinian land and brings the genocide to its grim conclusion.

There is no ceasefire in Gaza. There is no functioning “Board of Peace.” There is no roadmap to ending the genocide or mechanism to creation of a Palestinian state. Israel has refused to implement or abide by any of the conditions of Trump’s “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” since its inception. It won’t begin to honor them now.

There is only genocide. It changes shape and intensity. But it does not change its essence.

Trump’s plan is a mirage, a conjuring trick, a fleeting vanity project. In October 2025, Trump gathered world leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to announce his peace deal, which he said “took 3,000 years” to achieve, before disappearing offstage. The peace plan, like the smoke-and-mirrors act that defines the Trump era, has been relegated to a dark memory hole, as our P. T. Barnum commander-in-chief trots out another bloody spectacle: war on Iran.

Trump announced an “historic” agreement on July 30 that entailed “the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.” He called the 15-point plan, credited to the Board of Peace, which has no Palestinian representatives and installed Trump as its chair for life, “a monumental step toward lasting peace and security.”

But Hamas swiftly qualified the demand by saying that handing over its heavy weapons was only contingent on Israel ending “all forms of” its “aggression” and withdrawing its occupying forces from Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu blithely dismissed Trump’s proposal. Israel, he said, will not withdraw its forces until Hamas is “genuinely” disarmed. Read this to mean never.

The peace plan — which was endorsed by the United Nations in a stunning disregard for Palestinian sovereignty and international law — was never more than a publicity stunt. It exists to provide Israel with the diplomatic cover to bring the genocide to its intended conclusion — the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza — a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.

Since the “ceasefire” went into effect on Oct. 10, 2025, two months before the Trump “peace plan” was formalized, Israel has killed 1,258 Palestinians in Gaza.

Ceasefires with these body counts are not ceasefires. Once Gaza is emptied, the West Bank will be next. Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, [this] one is the least serious.

Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire began — which took place — it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement. That is the point.

“It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand,” I wrote when the plan was announced. “Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only ‘rhetoric.’”

Israel, I noted, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”

“Who decides if Hamas has ‘fully implemented’ the agreement?” I asked. “Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?”

“How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the [United Nations] International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?” I continued. “How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?”

“Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an ‘International Stabilization Force,’ a polite term for foreign occupation?” I wrote. “Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?”

Ninety-two percent of Gaza’s residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed and around 81 percent of all structures are damaged, according to UN estimates. The Strip has been reduced to 61 million tons of rubble, including nine million tons of hazardous waste that includes asbestos, industrial waste, and heavy metals, in addition to unexploded ordnance, and an estimated 10,000 decaying corpses. Israel has demolished some 1,500 buildings since the ceasefire went into effect.

How can anyone believe that Israel, intent on leveling Gaza, will reverse itself to allow Palestinians to rebuild what it spent so much time, money and blood to destroy?

Retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council, echoed this sentiment [August 9] on Israel’s 103FM radio station. “Israel has no interest in Gaza being rebuilt, it is better for us that it be destroyed for generations to come,” Eiland said.

“The greater the despair in Gaza and the greater the destruction, and the greater the monument to what they did on October 7, years to come, that is good,” he added.

Israel will never permit reconstruction in Gaza. It will never restore health facilities or water treatment systems. It will never turn over authority to an International Stabilization Force (ISF), one which only exists on paper. It will never permit the creation of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza or agree to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
Trump promises a Gaza Riviera that will function as a “special economic zone” — a territory operating outside of state law governed entirely by private investors, such as the Peter Thiel-backed charter city in Honduras. But Trump’s Gaza Riviera is nothing more than a pathetic temporary camp along the ceasefire line near Rafah. It consists of “portable cabins” under Palestinian administration and a tiny international security force, according to The Guardian. It is touted, in desperation, as a pilot scheme.

Despite some $17 billion in pledges to the Board of Peace, as of late May 2026 not a single dollar had reached its official World Bank-administered Gaza reconstruction fund. Only about $23 million had been received through alternative channels for operating costs, with a further $100 million pledged by the United Arab Emirates that was earmarked for a future Palestinian police force, though it remains “frozen,” according to The Financial Times.

This amounts to about $0.72 for every $100 pledged.

Given the heavy economic costs incurred by Gulf and regional donor countries because of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran — including Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the UAE — it is very unlikely the pledged funds will be paid.

The European Union, the U.N. and the World Bank, in an assessment published in April, estimated that $71.4 billion is needed for recovery in Gaza.

The Board of Peace, for which Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov is the principal official, is desperate for funds. The U.S. attempted to pilfer $11 billion in Palestinian tax revenues and frozen bank funds withheld by Israel, which was rejected by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Israeli withholding of tax revenues has deepened the ⁠financial crisis in the West Bank, with the PA slashing salaries in half of thousands of Palestinian civil servants. The ISF, a multinational peacekeeping force that is supposed to be composed of troops from Albania, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Uganda and Indonesia — the latter of which has since suspended its commitment, is also nonexistent.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Settlements and National Missions Minister Orit Strook have demanded that Netanyahu reconvene the Security Cabinet so that its July 26 vote authorizing the entry of ISF troops can be reversed.

The entire Trump project is an Alice-in-Wonderland fantasy.

Anyone in Gaza who strays close to the Yellow Line — which is constantly shifting and poorly marked — is shot. Police are shot. Hamas leaders, along with their families — including Azzam Khalil al-Hayya, the son of Khalil al-Hayya who was the head of Hamas’ political bureau and the faction’s lead negotiator — are assassinated. Palestinians lining up at food kitchens and those handing out aid to them are obliterated by Israeli bombs. Israel restricts food and humanitarian aid to half of the trucks stipulated in the ceasefire agreement.

Palestinians, 90 percent of whom have been displaced, continue to live in tent cities amid rubble and open pools of raw sewage. They lack toilets or electricity. There is an 80 percent unemployment rate. Tens of thousands of children suffer acute malnutrition in Gaza. A child, on average, is killed every day.

Tacitus understood. They made a desert and call it peace.

Trump’s plan was not designed to end the conflict. It was not designed to provide an equitable settlement for the Palestinians. It was not designed to halt the ongoing mass slaughter. It was designed to allow Israel to complete its genocide and drive surviving Palestinians from their homeland — the culmination
of the Zionist dream.

Trump, however obtuse, has at least figured this out.

— Hedges wrote this piece for his Chris Hedges Report, Aug. 10, 2026

November 12, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Pentagon Mulling Attacks Using “Tactical” Nuclear Weapons

The strategy is being overseen by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s Policy Chief, who has long called for the U.S. to prepare to fight a “limited nuclear war.”

By Dave DeCamp

Edited for space by Nukewatch Staff

The Pentagon is reportedly drafting a new nuclear strategy that’s expected to emphasize the use of tactical nuclear weapons to give the president more “options” in a potential nuclear conflict.

The strategy, first reported by NBC News, is being drafted by the Pentagon’s Elbridge Colby, who has for more than a decade called for the U.S. to develop additional capabilities to fight a “limited nuclear war.”

The idea would be to shift the U.S. nuclear strategy away from the focus on using strategic nuclear weapons to wipe out an adversary’s nuclear capabilities, and focus more on the possibility of using smaller, tactical nuclear weapons in a “regional” conflict.

[Editor’s note: The word “smaller” here is an extremely misleading understatement. The “tactical” Air Force B61-12 gravity bomb has a 50-kiloton explosive force, which is four times greater than the U.S. atomic bomb that killed 140,000 people at Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.]

“If you actually want extended deterrence to be credible, you have to provide the nation’s political leadership with nuclear capabilities that common sense indicates you could actually use,” a source told NBC. “Otherwise you’re reducing our leadership’s options to extreme choices that the adversary won’t find credible.”

While the potential strategy would be carried out in the name of deterrence and preventing war, arms control advocates have strongly warned against the idea of developing more tactical nuclear weapons to prepare for a potential limited nuclear conflict over concerns that it would make nuclear war much more likely and that any nuclear exchange would likely lead to a global catastrophe.

“Without a firm rejection of the option to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict, by building and fielding more tactical nuclear weapons the administration is signaling its intention to use them against enemy forces and industrial infrastructure in a conflict,” the Arms Control Association (ACA) said in response to the NBC report.

The ACA said that it “strongly opposes the administration’s decision to build more tactical nuclear weapons to supplement the options that exist” and pointed to the fact that the U.S. already has at least two types of tactical nuclear weapons, including B61-12 gravity bombs, which are deployed in Europe, and the W76-2 warhead for the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile.

The ACA said the U.S. Navy is also “acquiring a new nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missile that may be available at the end of the decade for possible use in conflict with China.”

Breaking Defense online reported that Colby announced on August 5 that the Pentagon was reviewing the U.S. nuclear posture and repeatedly emphasized the term “options” in a speech he delivered that has not been made public.

Colby has been one of the leading voices in Washington’s policy circles advocating for the U.S. to prepare for “limited nuclear war.” In a 2015 paper for the Center for a New American Security titled “A Nuclear Strategy and Posture for 2030,” Colby said the U.S. “should make a special effort to develop the platforms and weapons, doctrine, planning capacity, and other capabilities needed to fight a limited nuclear war more effectively than plausible adversaries.”

He said that the ideal U.S. nuclear force is:
“One that is not only highly survivable and able to issue a devastating blow against any adversary under any scenario but that is also capable of conducting effective limited nuclear operations in a controlled fashion while maintaining the ability to escalate to full-scale war if necessary.”

Colby made a similar argument in a 2018 piece written in Foreign Affairs titled “If You Want Peace, Prepare for Nuclear War,” published just a few months after he left the first Trump administration, where he led the development of the 2018 National Defense Strategy.

“Washington’s task is clear. It must demonstrate to Moscow and Beijing that any attempt to use force against U.S. friends and allies would likely fail and would certainly result in costs and risks well out of proportion to whatever they might gain,” Colby wrote. ‘‘This requires conventional military power, but it also means having the right strategy and weapons to fight a limited nuclear war and come out on top.”

— Dave DeCamp is News Editor of Antiwar.com where this piece originally appeared.

November 12, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

12 Democrats Warn of “Massively Corrupt” Golden Dome Missile Defense Plans

By John LaForge

A dozen Senate and House Democrats sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth July 8th, calling the proposed Golden Dome missile defense program “a corrupt waste of taxpayers” dollars that, like its earlier versions, can’t work.

“[P]lans for Golden Dome could make it prohibitively expensive, operationally ineffective, massively corrupt, and detrimental to U.S. and global security by igniting a nuclear arms race with Russia and China,” the letter said. “We are concerned that Golden Dome will be much more effective at wasting taxpayer dollars than countering missile attacks. We urge you to rein in this dangerous plan.”

Led by Senators Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Reps. John Garamendi, D-Calif., and Don Beyer, D-Virg., the letter warned that, “Estimates by the Congressional Budget Office [are] that the system could cost up to $542 billion to complete [over the next 20 years], more than three times the cost that the Trump administration projected.”

To save some money, Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines has proposed a federal exemption from the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), whose requirements apply to major government construction projects.

Environmental protection is the function of NEPA, but meeting its requirements would slow and vastly increase the cost of replacing the 400 underground missile silos, their 40 underground launch control centers, and hundreds of miles of buried cables that connect missiles to controllers.

Senator Daines is a long-standing member of the ICBM lobby — senators with Minuteman missiles in their states. He has worked strenuously to create support for the dangerous, destabilizing U.S. land-based missiles, offering an amendment to the must-pass military appropriations bill that would exempt the Air Force from NEPA compliance.

Congress may lawfully exempt the Golden Dome plan and any other Pentagon project from NEPA requirements if Sec. Hegseth declares that “it is critical to national security,” or “is necessary for national defense.” Under NEPA rules, Hegseth must inform Congress of the reasons for any exemption, but the reasons may be classified “secret” if he determines secrecy is “necessary for reasons of national security.”

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