Weekly Column

June 5, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Radiation Exposure Rule Changes to Increase Cancer Rates

PLEASE SEND COMMENTS TO THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Image by Dan Meyers.

Among the hundreds of Trump White House executive orders (EO), No. 14300 directs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to weaken its long-standing radiation exposure rule, “Standards for Protection Against Radiation.

Based on the EO, an upcoming NRC rule change calls for setting a radiation exposure “threshold” or level below which your exposure to ionizing radiation “would not count” or would be considered “never to have occurred.”

The proposed NRC exposure rules will be 5-100 times less protective than current law, and will likely be based on the archaic “Reference Man” standard, the grossly outdated radiation risk model. “Reference Man” represents a young adult male, and so the standard both ignores and denies the greater harm exposure to the fetus, to infants, to children, and to women, done by a given radiation exposure.

The EO would impact people in thousands of communities surrounding the 94 operating nuclear reactors in the United States by increasing exposure to radiation from routine offsite emissions: from reactors, nuclear weapons facilities, nuclear material transport systems, and nuclear waste sites.

Forty citizen organizations, including the national nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility, wrote to federal officials warning of public health consequences of Trump’s EO. The joint letter points out sharply disproportionate impacts on women and children from weakening existing radiation exposure standards and calls for strengthening them.

But vested interests in the nuclear industry want to save money by attacking the basis of NRC regulation, the “Linear No Threshold” or LNT risk model.

Decades of published peer-reviewed research support the LNT model, including the authoritative National Academy of Sciences report “Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, VII Phase 2” (BEIR VII), as well as many studies of nuclear industry and nuclear weapons production workers.

One industry-sponsored “Petition for Rule-making” appealed to the NRC in 2015 and it triggered a formal review of the ‘no threshold” model. The NRC then soundly rejected the petition in a 2021 decision. In fact, the NRC reaffirmed the scientific basis and global consensus that no radiation exposure is so small as to carry no risk of harmful effects. Well-documented findings show that even exposures so small that they cannot be measured may, sometimes, result in fatal cancer. Reducing the risk to zero requires zero radiation exposure.

A detailed analysis of the proposed rule change and its dire consequences was published by Princeton’s Frank von Hippel in the May 27 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. For more about sending comments to the NRC, see: www.nirs.org/radiation or www.radiationproject.org/online .

NRC rule changes, and its abandonment of the no-threshold model, are scheduled to be issued as a proposal on June 8, 2026, marking the start of a 30-day public comment period. We must oppose this dangerous deregulation and demand more, not less, protection against radiation. ###

— A version of this article appeared at Counterpunch, June 5-7, 2026

May 8, 2026 by Nukewatch 2 Comments

Blind Eyes at the United Nations While the U.S. Bombs for Nonproliferation

John LaForge, Counterpunch, May 8, 2026

There is deadly irony in the juxtaposition of Trump’s ‘anti-nuclear war’ on Iran, and the ongoing United Nations Review Conference for the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, or NPT RevCon.

The decision to initiate a war of aggression against Iran killing thousands of civilians was made (among other public pretexts) in order to prevent Iran’s allegedly intended future construction of a nuclear weapon.

The 1970 NPT prohibits the development of nuclear weapons or the transfer of nuclear weapons among or between nations that ratify the treaty. The NPT has slowed the spread of such weapons, while pushing the spread of nuclear reactors. The U.S., Iran, and 187 other UN member states are parties to the NPT.

Iran’s civil nuclear program is lawful under NPT rules, and its representatives are here in New York attending the RevCon which runs until May 22. Still, one after another UN member representative used their ‘general debate’ time to attack Iran for its processing of uranium and Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, but not the United States for its unprovoked, internationally illegal war on Iran.

No friend or military ally of the United States except Israel was consulted or informed about the U.S.’s February 28 Middle East blitzkrieg — with plenty of reason. Trump’s war of distraction would never have been supported much less joined by U.S. allies because: 1) Iran’s nuclear facilities were “totally obliterated” in June 2025 by U.S. Air Force and Navy bombardments; and 2) the International Atomic Energy Agency — the UN body that oversees compliance with the NPT — has reported since 2025 that it has found no evidence of an ongoing Iranian nuclear weapons program.

The catastrophically ill-advised and criminal U.S. war on Iran had to be launched by surprise, without NATO, or UN or U.S. authorization, because the White House’s justifications were so easily debunked, and because the NPT is already working to stop the spread of nuclear arsenals.

During the first days of the NPT RevCon, member states spoke with a shocking and confounding display of double standards, with one after another condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Iran’s alleged violations of NPT inspection rules, but not one criticizing the U.S. attack on Iran, its January 3^rd bombing of Venezuela, or its June 2025 bombardment of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Argentina for example said, “This Review Conference is taking place against a backdrop that we cannot ignore …. the nuclear program of the Islamic Republic of Iran…,” while the Nordic States together singled out Russia, saying its “war of aggression against Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law, including the United Nations Charter….” The U.S. war on Iran was evidently aggression non grata.

The nuclear weapons states’ 56-year-long violation of the NPT’s Article VI — requiring good-faith efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons — was often bemoaned, but the U.S., U.K., Russian, Chinese, and French violators were never called out by name. (North Korea, India, Israel, and Pakistan have nuclear weapons but have not joined the NPT.) Likewise, open, ongoing U.S. violations of the Treaty’s Articles I and II — which forbid the U.S. transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear States Parties including Germany, Italy, Holland, and Belgium — were ignored, while the European Union’s delegate said, “The EU condemns in the strongest possible way Russia’s … announced deployment of nuclear weapons in the territory of Belarus.”

Comically, a few ministers openly excused the U.S.’s Article I & II violations — its stationing of B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs at six air bases in Europe — as when the representative of the Nordic States, asserted that “NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements are fully consistent with the NPT”. The 110-member Non-Aligned States Parties Group politely pushed back and condemned the practice, noting without naming names, “The Group reiterates its deep concern over … practices that run contrary to the principles and objectives of the Treaty such as … nuclear weapons sharing arrangements”.

The most brazenly selective and myopic presentation to date was the “Joint Statement on Russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine” signed by 43 NPT States Parties. The paper said, “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law, including the UN Charter….” Every use of the word ‘Russia’ in the text could have been replaced with ‘the U.S.’ and still made perfect sense. The letter endorsed Ukraine’s but not Iran’s “independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity”; Ukraine’s but not Iran’s “inherent right to self-defense” in accordance with the UN Charter “against Russia’s”, but not the United States’ “ongoing illegal war of aggression.” The paper acknowledged the critical danger of attacking nuclear sites and condemned Russia, but not the U.S., both of whom continue to put “nuclear facilities at risk.” The group did manage to generally denounce “indiscriminate attacks that have resulted in civilian deaths and destruction of critical infrastructure….” Yet, the 43 states urged the General Assembly “to condemn Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric”, but not Trump’s mindless threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” or his genocidal outburst that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

For UN member states to ignore U.S. government violations of the UN Charter and the Laws of War is evidence of not just hypocrisy and double standards, but a submissiveness reminiscent of the groveling fear of state terrors of 1930s. More than just Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez and Pope Leo XIV the have to stand up to the megalomaniacal madman of the hour. ###

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter. https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/08/blind-eyes-at-the-united-nations-while-the-u-s-bombs-for-nonproliferation/

March 2, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Monticello Reactor is Down for Repairs Until at Least March 20

The 55-year-old Monticello nuclear power reactor, a General Electric designed boiling water reactor like the melted and exploded Fukushima reactors in Japan, leaked almost 1-million gallons of highly radioactive cooling water into the ground under the reactor complex and some of the radioactive tritium reached the Mississippi River which is used for drinking water.

By John LaForge

The 55-year-old Monticello nuclear reactor owned by Xcel Energy was unexpectedly shut down Friday, Feb. 20, and the Monticello Times reports the reactor will be offline for at least 30 days, maybe more to “perform maintenance” and to “determine appropriate repairs.”

No regional or national news service made mention of Xcel’s reactor outage in spite of the “over 1 million users” that rely on its electricity, according to Xcel’s website. The reasons for the embarrassing outage were not made public by the company, which did not name the equipment that is in need of repair.

Further, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission made no announcement of the shutdown, and NRC Sr. Public Affairs Officer Viktoria Mitlyng wrote to Nukewatch Feb. 26 that, “The shutdown at Monticello was a planned maintenance shutdwon (sic) and did not require formal notifications. It’s a routine practice for nuclear plants.” The lack of an NRC notification might explain why not a single state-wide Minnesota news service made mention of the outage.

According to Xcel spokesperson Theo Keith, who spoke to editor Lauren Flaum of The Monticello Times, the shutdown “is not related to the tritium leak discovered at the facility in 2023.” Tritium is the radioactive form of hydrogen, and Mr. Keith’s reference is to the leak of nearly one-million gallons of highly radioactive coolant that contaminated groundwater under the reactor site, groundwater that reached the Mississippi River which is a drinking water source for Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Xcel explained to the press that the regional electrical power grid draws from multiple generators across the Midwest, and that the mix of providers allows uninterrupted service even when individual systems are taken offline.

Myths busted by Monticello shutdown

The shutdown debunks two principal myths endlessly repeated by the nuclear industry.

First, that nuclear reactors provide uninterrupted generation of electricity. The Nuclear Energy Institute’s website page-1 slogan is: “Only nuclear has the power to … deliver 24/7/365.” Let’s call BS. As the NRC’s Mitlyng said, “It’s a routine practice” for nuclear plants to shut down. Nuclear reactors are taken offline regularly and repeatedly by unplanned emergencies, by unexpected repair work, by refueling outages, and by emergencies and accidents that plague the youngest and the oldest reactors. Monticello is the sixth oldest in the United States.

Second: Promoters of commercial nuclear reactors say their electricity “is needed to keep the lights on.” This is BS again, as Xcel told the press that it “does not anticipate any impact to electric service while the plant is offline.”

Imagine a nuclear-free Mississippi River watershed. Xcel’s Monticello reactor isn’t needed to keep the lights on, and it’s so old that it can’t operate without major equipment repairs severe enough to gut Xcel’s profit-taking for thirty days. ###

February 26, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

No rationale for presidential war on Iran

uss gerald r. ford cvn-78 aircraft carrier cvw-8 oslo norway 2025 159

USS Gerald R Ford, the largest air craft carrier in the US Navy, now making bombing raids on Iran. [March 2, 2026]

By John LaForge, February 24, 2026

The president says Iran must not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. In his February 24 speech to Congress, he said of Iran’s leaders, “They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’”

This is untrue, as we have heard “those secret words” many times.

For decades Iran has declared that nuclear weapons production would violate principles of the Quran, the government’s holy book, that it is not pursuing a nuclear arsenal, and that its uranium enrichment is strictly for civilian uses. The enrichment of uranium for civil nuclear reactor fuel is permitted by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Iran is a party to this treaty while the openly genocidal government of Israel, which possesses an arsenal of several hundred nuclear weapons, is not.

Speaking in Tehran on January 21, 2025, Ahmadreza Pourkhaghan, the head of Iran’s Armed Forces Judiciary, said, “The late Imam Khomeini did not allow the use of chemical weapons or any illegal and unconventional weapons, even against enemy forces,” and therefore, “it is based on this doctrine that the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] does not permit the armed forces of the Islamic Republic to develop nuclear weapons.”

Dr. Saeid Golkar, at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, reported Feb. 11, 2025 that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “reaffirmed Iran’s commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and cited a religious decree, known as a fatwa, by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which bans weapons of mass destruction as evidence of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”

In October 2003, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued an oral fatwa, or a religious order, declaring that nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islamic law, and condemning nuclear weapons as “haram” (forbidden), and banning the production and use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in any form.

Ever since, Khamenei and other officials have repeatedly declared that Iran does not wish to produce nuclear weapons because Islamic law prohibits WMD.

For example, in 2021, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reported that:

“Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s years-old fatwa banning nuclear weapons is again making headlines. The regime and its supporters, including former nuclear spokesman Hossein Mousavian, have long claimed that the fatwa is permanent and adduced it as proof that Iran is religiously forbidden from acquiring such weapons.”

In 2019, the radio broadcast The World reported that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “said that Iran was not looking to acquire nuclear weapons for a surprising reason — that they were illegal under Islamic law.”

In 2012, Farhad Shahabi Sirjani reported that:

“[A]longside the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, special media attention was paid to a Fatwa (religious decree) issued by Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, banning all weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons in particular.”

With a vast armada of U.S. Navy warships now menacing Iran, the memory of undeclared, unlawful, and unconstitutional U.S. forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ought to echo in the minds of Pentagon brass and White House advisors. The world knows Iran has no WMD, and no propaganda campaign or ginned-up White Papers have even been unveiled as a pretext for another unprovoked U.S. war of aggression. The bombing of Iran last June, the bombing of Venezuela last January, the ongoing bombing of civilian speed boats may not yet have habituated the public to blindly gratuitous militarism. ### [This comment was first published by PeaceVoice.org]

February 24, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Illegal Orders and the Criminals Who Give Them

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly with John Stewart on The Daily Show Jan. 6, 2026

by John LaForge

The president and secretary of defense have failed in their effort to see to the execution of six members of Congress after the lawmakers urged members of the U.S. military to obey the law.

The six Democrats — Representatives Jason Crow of Colo., Maggie Goodlander and Chris Deluzio of New Hampshire, and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, as well as Senators Mark Kelly of Ariz. and Elissa Slotkin of Mich. — aired a 90-second video last year reminding military personnel that they “must refuse illegal orders.”

When the video aired, President Trump called for the execution of all six. Then, Washington, DC prosecutors sought to charge all six with federal crimes, including treason, sedition, and subversive activities – some of which can carry the death penalty.

Of course, urging the rank and file to obey military law and the laws of war is not a criminal act or a violation of any law, so [on February 10] a grand jury refused to indict the lawmakers.

Senator Kelly is a former astronaut and commander of the Space Shuttle, and a retired Navy Captain with 25 years in the Marine Corps. Sen. Kelly spoke to John Stewart on The Daily Show about the video and reported, “We said, ‘don’t follow illegal orders.’ We stated the law. Donald Trump didn’t like that,” and he “called for me to be hanged.”

The president’s berserker reaction speaks volumes about the administration’s hair-raising criminality and its pursuit of police state impunity. (As when VP Vance claimed falsely that ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who murdered Renee Good in Minneapolis, is “protected by absolute immunity.”) Because the lawmakers’ video message directly implied that certain orders from today’s chain of command (headed by Hegseth and Trump) could be illegal — orders, say, to kill civilians in the open sea, in Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, in Nigeria, Minneapolis, or elsewhere — the two TV stars lost their heads.

At the time of the video’s airing, Hegseth hurried to the press and lied outright about the lawmakers’ message. He said Sen. Kelly had told military personnel “not to follow lawful orders” — knowing full well that his blistering falsehood would go viral and be reported as fact. The Pentagon’s formal Jan. 5 memo attacking Sen. Kelly corrected Hegseth’s lying and noted that the senator had said, “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.” To John Stewart, Sen. Kelly confirmed, “It’s what we said, and that’s the law.”

Leave it to the twice-impeached, convicted felon and sex predator Trump — and to Hegseth, who once doled out $50,000 to quash a sexual assault accusation — to be politically apoplectic by the video’s insinuation that the administration’s unconstitutional and undeclared acts of war around the world and across the United States might be criminal and require lawful military insubordination.

The gruesome irony of Mr. Trump’s “they should be hanged” outburst is that, after WWII, Nazi war criminals were hanged for following illegal orders. The defendants claimed “superior orders” as justification, but prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunals, led by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, thundered in response: “Following orders” is no defense.

Legally, the same goes for U.S. military attacks on civilians in Iraq or Caracas, civilians in fast boats, or attacks on sovereign independent states, including Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria that have not attacked the U.S. In opening the military tribunals in Germany, Justice Jackson spoke partly to the victorious Allied powers who presided, warning: “While this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and, if it is to serve a useful purpose, it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment. … [T]he record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.”

Recent U.S. military aggression in Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, and on the High Seas seems to violate the laws of armed conflict and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is partly based on the Nuremberg Judgment. And at least Admiral Alvin Holsey, who was Commander of the U.S. Southern Command and in charge of missile attacks on civilian fast boats, seems to have seen the writing on the wall. Adm. Holsey offered to resign and left last December after reportedly questioning Pete “kill them all” Hegseth about the legality of the attacks. ###

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, and edits its newsletter. This comment was first published at Counterpunch (https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/13/illegal-orders-and-the-criminals-who-give-them/)

Blind Eyes at the United Nations While the U.S. Bombs for Nonproliferation

Monticello Reactor is Down for Repairs Until at Least March 20

No rationale for presidential war on Iran

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