Yes, ain’t it grand! We, the God-fearing, God-loving, West and Israel don’t really need any longer to put our $billions of tax-payer money into those horribly expensive nuclear missiles, bombs, submarines. Good old new technology is providing us with much cheaper little drones.
The beauty of it all is that our enemies, those bad people in Iran, Russia, China, have got ready-made nuclear sites just sitting there, waiting to be gloriously exploded by our drones. If some sites, like nuclear reactors with strong containment covers are a bit too tough for drones, well non-nuclear missiles should do the job – still a lot cheaper than nuclear weapons.
And of course, there’s an awful lot of other nuclear stuff that is just as vulnerable, even more vulnerable, than the actual nuclear reactor. Nuclear spent fuel pools are a beaut target, with their extremely high radiation levels, risk of cooling system failure, with ensuing massive fire. Nuclear canisters, even ones clad with concrete, are quite a good target, too. And so are the various forms of transport of nuclear materials. And that’s before we’ve even considered the nuclear submarines, (some in operation, many dead and awaiting burial), nuclear weapons sites, and the transport of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear facilities have strong safety protections, the experts tell us.. But the trouble is, that was then, and this is now: in addition to material tools like drones and missiles, we have cyber digital tools – malaware and malicious computer code can be used to seriously disrupt, even destroy the other side’s nuclear systems – whether they be military, energy, or just research, nuclear facilities.
So, it’s an exciting time for the war-makers.
Perhaps too exciting? The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists discussed the Epic Fury threat by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, to obliterate Iran and its nuclear sites:
… “signaling” near a live reactor is a high-stakes gamble with an unclear ultimate purpose. While the plant continues to feed the grid, a direct hit on its containment dome would trigger a radiological catastrophe far exceeding that of Chernobyl or Fukushima. With 70-80 tons of uranium dioxide in its core and a massive inventory of spent fuel lying in nearby cooling ponds, a breach would shroud the Persian Gulf with a lethal miasma of radioiodine and cesium-137. This wouldn’t just be a strike against a regime; it would be a death sentence for the region’s environment and its people.
And wait! What if the other side has the same idea? And they do.
In 2021, Hamas deliberately targeted Israel’s secretive Dimona nuclear reactor site. Iran has recently attacked Israeli areas close to that site. Russian drones have struck the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, and the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, though these strikes could have been unintentional.
I don’t want to bore you with the gloomy details – but these are some countries that have already developed sophisticated drones and missiles capable of devastating “our side’s” nuclear facilities – Iran, Russia, China, North Korea.
And the other subject of gloom is the diminished safety policies of the United States. Karl Grossman and Harvey Wasserman report:
“Trump’s “flood of executive orders on nuclear power have weakened or eliminated nuclear safety regulations – making nuclear power plants more dangerous than ever – and has expedited their being built.”
Bennet Ramberg in his 2024 book Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy, outlined the dangers posed by nuclear sites.
Nuclear experts are well aware of these new dangers. On April 13th on a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists panel, eminent experts discussed them. Rachel Bronson, Lars van Dassen, Laura S. H. Holgate, all closely tied to the International Atomic Energy Agency, (IAEA), went into the subject in some detail. They looked to the IAEA as the one body that might lead the world out of this perilous nuclear vulnerability mire. But they expressed anxiety, in view of the fact that that the IAEA is underfunded and under-resourced.
I am sorry – experts. But I can’t get out of my mind the fact that the IAEA has a dual mission. Its job is to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities, and to promote the peaceful nuclear industry.
Even these three very earnest experts acknowledge that the “peaceful” and the “military” nuclear industries are now irrevocably entwined. So, apart from the weakness and lack of funding for the IAEA, it is hopelessly caught up in its own conflict of interest.
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